The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Millionaire Real Estate Tycoon Spending $500,000 Per Month

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Get 20% off your order plus FREE Shipping  at https://www.ettitude.com/icedcoffee . Use Code "ICEDCOFFEE" at checkout! Get $10 in free Bitcoin when you sign up today at https://Coinbase.com/ICH This week we are joined by Ryan Serhant, star of Million Dollar Listing New York, and founder of SERHANT. One of most successful real estate brokerages in New York. Ryan:  https://www.instagram.com/ryanserhant https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanSerhant Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w DOWNLOAD MY NEW FINANCIAL APP: https://hungrybull.page.link/graham GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 26 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. What's up you guys. So before we start, I want to intro our guest. He's a star of million dollar listing New York and he's one of the most successful real estate brokers of all time. He recently created his own brokerage called Sir Hant. That's wildly successful. He's done over $5 billion in sales and he also invests heavily in real estate. Oh, this is going to be a good episode.

Did you smash the like button, Jack? I smashed it so hard. Hey, everybody, I'm Ryan Sirhan, and you are watching the Ice Coffee podcast, which has so far made $117,0,160, basically. Is that good? That's enough. That's fantastic. Okay.

It's great. It's almost like you've been on TV before. Sort of. Sometimes I get the numbers mixed in my head, which when selling real estate is bad. But for this, you know, it's close enough. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for coming all the way to Las Vegas from all the way here for you. New York.

Yeah. This is crazy. Now, what's really cool is that we did an episode together, maybe like, maybe almost four years ago. Yes. It's four years. Like, we hadn't even really started YouTube, but I don't think. Like, maybe it was just at the beginning days.

You just started. And we were in L.A. You were still like a real estate agent, right? You were working at the Ophanheim group. Yeah, you're at Ombudsman. Before. This was way before, though. Before selling sunset.

You were in one of his houses, I think. Yeah. Right. It was in Jason's house. Yeah. And he showed up and he was like, working out. very into his fitness. That's right. And you had never met Jason Offenheim before that day, had you? No. No. So I was nervous going into it because I had watched a million dollar

listing New York, of which you're the feature agent of the show. And now you've had, what, $5 billion at the sales? Is it more than that now in total? By the end of this year, it'll be a little bit over. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So what have these last few years been like for you in terms of the real estate market, in terms of yourself? Are you investing in real estate? What do you think of the current market right now? That's a lot. There's a load of question right there. It's a lot to talk about.

Yeah. The last few years have been crazy. I mean, you know, we are primarily sellers in New York. Yeah. But we are global brokers, you know, so we sell things everywhere. We sell in Florida. We'll sell in California. I've never done a transaction in Nevada, but we like it here now.

You know, we're kind of across the board. The biggest thing for me, though, is in the middle of 2020, I left the brokerage I was at for the last 12 years and we started our own company. Is that Douglas? No, we were at a company called. nest seekers for 12 years yeah small brokerage in the city and i was just there for a long time because i never needed to go anywhere else and weren't any other good options and before covid even hit i made the decision that you know there are no other good options so i'm just going to go start my own

thing and bring in a lot of different verticals all the stuff that i do and we're going to put it all under one roof then covid hits and i thought for a day or so like maybe i shouldn't do this Especially when the market tank 10,000 points, everyone left New York City and all the big, smart, wealthy companies started furlowing and laying people off left and right. And the real estate market didn't come back in New York until 2021, really, right? Unlike everywhere else in the country where the real estate market bounced back nine days later. And so we started the company, Sirhant in September, announced in the Wall Street Journal and pulled everything in house and had been growing rapidly ever since. You know, we have the benefit now to a very, very fast. strong real estate market. New York has got to catch up to the rest of the country,

which is unique this cycle because typically New York leads the way. This time New York is playing catch up. But next year will be a great year because foreigners will finally be able to come back, right? Borders will open on November 8th, which will be a big, big deal for us. But numbers have been awesome. Volume has been great. Ancient count's been great. And so things are looking nice and positive for right now. So what were the main reasons you decided to start your own brokerage? Yeah, I have to say, too, learning from Jason, Oppenheim, running a brokerage is expensive. It's a very difficult business model. So how is yours different? And like Jack said, why did you start it up? So we are, if you want to call it this,

we're a hybrid, right? So you have two types of brokerages right now in the world, if you will. You have the traditional brokerage, which can be mom and pop, tiny, right, some small groups, or it can be huge brokerages, but they're big brand brokerage. They give you your marketing. You get an ad budget and you get a split. That's it. But they own you. And then you have kind of like your Shopify's of real estate, which are the EXPs, the sides, kind of now like the Keller Williams, a lot of like the big firms where it's 80, 20 or 90, 10 split to the agent up to a cap and then it's 100%. And they're just kind of in the background.

But there's no brand support. There's no marketing support. They give you some stuff. There is nothing in the middle that has a physical presence in luxury markets, which is important for us because we sell in mostly luxury markets, that has an exclusive agency role that then also provides a virtual brokerage experience to agents. anywhere on any device with any client. And that's what I always thought would work really well.

No one else is doing it. So everyone forced me to do it. And so that's why we're here. And yeah, it's expensive, but like running any business is expensive. But we have considerable income from you do education as well. So we have a big education platform. So we have about 10,000 agents now in 109 countries in a subscription platform. That kept us going through COVID when no one is buying apartments.

Right. We have the media business. We have the books. We have TV. We have everything. And the brokerage has grown really, really fast this past year. Can you talk about the numbers behind the brokerage? Because I'm curious what the investment looks like every single month, how much office space costs you, how many agents you have right now.

And what sort of revenue you bring in. If you could talk about like, let's say, the splits or what this looks like for you at the end of the day. If you could talk about that. We want the nitty gritty. Yeah, clearly. Listen, the overhead's heavy, right? The startup costs weren't that crazy because we only have one office. And we will only have one office per market, which is built out like a clubhouse.

So in New York City, we have a 15,000 square foot space. That was the old Tommy Hill Figure flagship store in Soho. And it is where all of our production team is based. It's our education team's based there and our in-house creative agency are all there. And that way, there's no desk hierarchy because there's no desks. And so anyone who's licensed in New York City or New York State, for that matter, can use that space or not use the space. The brokerage is completely virtual. everything is on your phone.

You use a computer. We give everyone the computers they need. We give them all the platforms and resources that they could possibly want and lead flow, right, which is important. And other brokerage really provides solid lead flow. And we do that because we've been working on the brand for 13 years. When people think real estate, one of the things they think about is my last name, which is also why we named it that versus like Sunflower Group or something like that. Yeah.

Right. The office, right, pays a lot. I don't know, what would we pay for the office? pay like 40,000 a month for the office. Overhead expenses in general are probably like half a million bucks a month. Wow. Yeah. That's heavy.

That's a lot. Yeah. Are you ever worried that you're not going to be able to make enough commission to cover that or is there a break-even point where like you got to grow to a certain point for that to start being in a profit? I mean, our first year in the business will do like $1.3 billion in sales, right? So even if all things stop, the education platform, is a considerably profitable business,

way more profitable than the brokerage. Education is a profit margin of like 85%. We carried it about 50% because we just wanted to grow. And we hire people, or they hire people. My team hires people like every week is unbelievable. Like, take your time. Let's go fine, let's go that, but they really want to take advantage

of the momentum while it's there. And so that business does well. And if all real estate sales go away, For me, as I think about an entrepreneur, diversifying income, the, you know, real estate is my oak tree. Okay. One huge branch is real estate brokerage. And then there's mini branches. There's resales.

There's townhouses. There's condos. New development is another big branch. We sell towers, right? Then consulting is another branch. You've got leasing, landlord representation, consulting across markets. Then the other branch I have is education and sales training, right? That's a subscription-based business.

It's between $10 to $25 a month, different courses or, $499 to $1,000,000, you can bundle them, you can do whatever you want. And then the pro-course membership is really where the business has really grown and it's made the most impact on agents around the world. But it's also a big money driver because that's $10,000 to $25,000 per year for people to come in. And we have a whole coaching business and a whole mentorship program. And those people now, due to COVID, get to work wherever. They don't have to be in New York City now, right? Our head of that program is based in Denver. Yeah. So how big is your team when you reference them?

What's an idea? Depends. So we have three businesses. We have real estate, brokerage, right? We then have education, and then I've got media. So I've got studios. All combined on payroll, I have just under 50 people on pure payroll. And that doesn't include freelance contractors and everything.

But when I talk about brokerage team, I don't know. I just divide that by three. It's pretty, it's pretty evenly spread. Okay. So that's not for stress you out having so many different people relying on you? no I need way more people there's only somebody like too like you you you realize as you start to build people get their slates get filled real fast and so you realize like when you're small

everyone wears a thousand hats because they almost have to but you're also not producing as much as you do much later and so then we get to a point where it's like he only has time to do that one thing now because we do so much of it so the other nine things he was doing before, now I need nine damn people to come in and do that if I want to continue to do them. And those are decisions that we have to make all the time. It doesn't stress me out to have the people because I'm a very big believer. Like if you build it, they will come. The more people I have by default, we will sell more. We will do more business. We will make more money. Like I just know it. And it's always kind of proven that case. Like when I got my first car and

driver way before I could ever even afford a car and driver in New York, I just did the math and made it real simple for myself and said, okay, this is what the car is going to cost. This is what insurance is going to cost. This is what average gas costs will be car wash once a month, let's say, and then a driver will cost this. Where is that total? All right, after tax for me, how many homes do I need to sell in addition to what I do now to afford a car and a driver, right? So I got to sell three more homes per year on average, not that many. But what is that going to do to my time? How can I buy my minutes back? So that, I can be way more productive.

So I'm not just selling three more apartments next year to afford the car and driver. Now I can sell 300 more. Yeah. Right? Because they go from home office to mobile office to office to office and back and back. But first, we have to thank our sponsor, Etitude. Guys, getting a good night of sleep is so important if you're trying to be productive. So you've got to make sure you have the right betting to do so.

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attitude.com slash iced coffee and enter promo code iced coffee at checkout. That's attitude.com slash iced coffee for 20% off plus free shipping. Remember guys, that's attitude as an eco attitude. And with that said, let's get back to the podcast. So what are the things have you outsourced? We outsource. It's a good question. I feel like I outsource a lot. I leverage everything that I do. So all day long, what I focus on brand, sales. That is it.

You know, I don't do anything else. Everything else I have done by other people, really. We outsource, you know, coaching on the education side. Okay, we outsource like all those people that people come to us and pay for. It doesn't pay for us to have those people in-house, right? So we pay them kind of what their fee is, and then we take the Vig on top of it from whoever's paying for that service. On the broker's side, we'll outsource right now, like web service development, stuff

like that. It doesn't pay for me to have an in-house software engineering team. On the studio side, we outsource not a whole lot, really. I don't know. What do we outsource? Nothing. Yeah, we don't outsource anything. I should outsource more, probably.

Cody, you're not going to be outsource. I'm going to outsource you. So we go, oh, you know what we do? Yeah. So our app, so the apps that we create, that team is outsourced. Again, it doesn't make sense for me to have those people in house. Got it. That's been a really difficult part for me is to delegate.

Jack knows. But even bringing on Jack for me was a significant change. Yeah, because I was doing everything myself. Yeah, dude, I remember when you were doing it. Everything. Yeah, you're like the Ed Shearin of content creation, right? Have you been to a concert with Ed Shearin? Yeah, he is the most.

profitable musician of all time. Why? Look at it. Because he will come out on concert, sell more tickets than anybody else. No band, no production, one guitar. And he comes out, he plays everything by himself on stage alone. Everything is done with his feet, and he sets it all up, and he makes the music as he goes. The most profitable live musician in the history of the world.

No band behind him? He creates the band. If you look at YouTube, Ed Shear and in concert, here and there, he'll have a band behind him. Does he loop stuff on like the piano? Yeah. Yeah, we saw him at Berkeley Center like a couple years ago. And it's like, wait, what is happening? He comes out by himself and he immediately goes into it.

He's also the most efficient performer. If that concert starts at 8, he's on stage at 7.59 and you better be ready. Wow, that's so nice. You go to like you two or any other band. Right. I know why I brought up you two. And you're like, all right, starts at 8. I'm going to get there at 930.

Yeah. I saw Kanye once and like came on at like 11 p.m. Like, this guy does not respect us. Ed Shearin, he's like two-hour concert. two hours is what I'm going to give you. I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. See, that's kind of my philosophy is that you don't need a big team.

It's just like you could do most of it yourself. Jack was a huge help. And we wouldn't even have this podcast for wasn't for Jack. Yeah. But even hiring somebody else beyond Jack, Jack wanted to get. It was two years. He and I worked together. Yeah.

Before even getting on a third person. And even then, I was like, oh, Jack, do we really need to? Why don't you just do this? We got a good thing going on. And he's like, well, we could try it. But I don't know. I'm not finding myself that much, that much more productive with another person. I'm worried about just creating busy work.

Yes. Like you hire another person, but you only get 2% more done. Sure. Can't do that. You can't do that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I, we, we definitely don't hire for busy work.

We hire for specific tasks that bandwidth does not allow us to do in-house anymore. So, like, what are those tasks? Like I was saying, you know, like, Adrian. can only do so much on our studio side. Cody can only do so much, and he might die soon because we really overwork it. And actually, wait, Cody, we just hired somebody else for you, what, yesterday? Yeah, literally yesterday. He joins Monday.

Yeah, from Food Network. Someone else who are really beefing up that team. Cody's super excited because there's just the work. But we definitely don't hire just to hire. Everybody did that, I would have like 200 people on staff. And we do not, right? We keep it as efficient as we possibly can. And like my head of new development is also like our acting COO.

And she's also our acting sales manager. You know what I mean? Like we put that all together until we can grow comfortably. I'm really curious how you balance everything because you have a family. And how many kids do you have? You have a wife and is one? I'm pretty sure I only have one. One child.

Yeah. That you know of. Yeah. Could be more though. Yep. It is, it is definitely difficult. Like I'm not there now, you know? Right.

I'm here. I'm spending time with you, not spending time with my two-year-old daughter. That's a conversation that I have all the time. Like what is most important, what will be most important in the future. But I'm a big believer, and I think we even talked about this last time. Like, I really believe in manifestation and the power of positive energy. And like what I put out there today is where I want to be two years from now. And if I don't put it out there now and act that way, then it's never going to happen. Or I'm just gambling with my time. And time is our greatest asset. So why would I gamble? You're right?

Why would I? So like I'd rather put it all on the table today because I'm 37. How old are you? 31. 31, yeah. How old are you? 23. Get out.

Just kidding. You have to get out. Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. Like you, you know, do as much as you can while you have the opportunity to do it. You know, like I used to work seven days a week every single day. Saturdays were my office days. Sundays were open house and running around.

my relationship time with my girlfriend, who's now my wife or anybody else before or evenings. I would never take weekends. Rarely, rarely, my first three years in the real estate business, I didn't take a single day off. Now, Saturdays are dadder days, you know, and with the baby, and I want to be. And it's awesome. And then other times I have to FaceTime with her. Two nights a week, my deal is that I'm home, very structured. So two nights a week, I'm home to put the baby to bed if she allows me to, but at least I see her before she goes to bed.

And that's Monday through Friday, we structure that on Sundays. What are my two nights? Saturdays or dadder days, one night a week, if we can, is a date night. So we can just, like, focus and I don't look at my phone. Got it. What's your, like, work hour? Like, how do you schedule all of that? I have multiple assistants.

I have a traditional executive assistant who handles calendar, gatekeeper, kind of culture type stuff. I have an email assistant who's been a godsend for me for the last five years. Are these, these, these are not, are they in-house? Or are they- They're in-house. Wow. Do I get a thousand?

Yeah, but an email assistant, me could, you know, outsource that to a different, like, country. No, not to, I could outsource admin tasks, but someone who can think like me, write like me, talk like me, understand my deal flow. Okay. That makes sense. Right. So, like, he sits there.

I mean, I get a thousand emails a day that are not spam. And so email is like, the, email is my life at the end of the day, which is really annoying. But it's also a nonstop. kind of objective list. But Monday through Friday, my day start just after 4 a.m. You know, and I'm in the gym by 5 o'clock. Otherwise, I'd be a total fat kid. And so I fight against that all the time.

And then work starts at 7.30. And it depends on the day, right? Now that COVID is totally over. Well, not totally, but it is over enough in terms of how work goes. I'm, you know, there's work events now. There's dinner parties again. There's a lot of stuff. I kind of miss COVID, to be honest.

I don't know if I say that. The team gets mad at me when I say I miss it. But like New York City during COVID, everyone left. I could get from the Upper East Side to try back in like seven minutes, right? No one wanted to meet. Everyone just wanted to talk in Zoom. And the only business we were doing was really important. Sure.

You know, it was like a nice calm time. Dude, no traffic. It was the same with L.A. It was insane Friday rush hour. It was empty. Every place was empty. And all I got to do is. pretend to be a politician, go on the news and say you guys got to stay home and everyone

listens to you. It's crazy. You should tell everyone, stay home and see how traffic gets. Stay home, guys. Yeah. I don't leave. I don't leave the house. So like I'm one less car on the road, especially, especially in California, not there anymore. So enjoy. You're welcome. But first, we got to thank our sponsor, Coinbase. Seriously, guys, this is a huge one since everyone in this house and my house have been using Coinbase to buy and sell crypto. So you guys have probably all heard the hype about cryptocurrency lately, and I get it, it can be a little confusing. You might have questions like, where do I buy, how do I buy, or what is cryptocurrency? Well, fortunately, we are lucky to announce that this episode's sponsor, Coinbase solves all

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Yep. Yep, yep. But it's all fun. Listen, I learned early on, like, I'm like you. You know, I wanted to do everything by myself and manage everything alone. But I had to make the determination of like, do I want to control everything and have it be absolutely perfect? Or I want to grow.

And I could be the single greatest basketball player, but I will never win the game because I need other players with me. You know, like LeBron's awesome, but he also needs the other guys around him. Otherwise, he would never win. Also, he would never be in the NBA. But what about the Ed Shearan example where it's like he's winning? Sure.

He's the LeBron James, like by himself. Correct. I'm sure he doesn't produce his own music when he's in, you know, the studio and stuff like that. He has a team behind him. I'm sure he definitely has people. But it's also, again, it's a different act. Sure.

Like, you have a different act from everybody else. Like, we all have our different stories to write, you know? Mine requires more people.

Yours, thankfully, doesn't. You know, it depends on what you want to do. Yeah. We were just with Supercar Blondie,

Alex Hershey. Oh, no way. Cool. Right. So she was in the office, New York, and she has a massive platform and following.

Crushes it on Facebook. It's insane. I know. Dude. She's growing on Facebook. She went hard on Facebook. When people were like, Facebook's for old people.

And she was like, okay, I'm going to show you all the cool cars. Anyway, like she is, you know, she was like, how much you pay for this office?

That's really cool because we're looking for one in Dubai, you know, because we're growing. I'm like, growing. So how many people do you have working for you? She's like, oh,

in the next year we'll have like $250. It's like, 200. What do they do? Yeah. It's like, she's like, well,

I have me and then there's all the other people. And then we have like all these people per platform. Like TikTok, she hires all these people to do it so that she can just pump and pump and pump and pump. No way. totally different business plan. I worry people lose their, that like homegrown feel.

Like I think with TikTok, people love to feel like they're just, it's some person with their phone, even though it might not be, but it feels like it's just you and them. And that's it. And sometimes when I see some of these videos, it's just, you could tell there's a production team behind it. It doesn't have that same connection. Dude, she gave me advice and I've told the studios team as well, and it's something that we wrestle with.

I asked her, it's like, listen, okay, you have a huge platform, right, that you started through social. I went the opposite way, right? I started on television and then came into social and have kind of grown it from there slowly but surely like what's your advice, Alex to me? And without even blinking, she said, raw. She's like, stop producing. If people like see clean lighting and this, that they're going to think that you're automatically selling them something. Just go raw. Go raw. Hold a phone. Make it shaky. Show bad lighting. And it's like, really? So we're still wrestling with that advice. I would do it. A hundred percent I would do it. That's why Ty Lopez did so well the very beginning because it was just him and his phone.

Yeah. And there wasn't a huge crew behind like what he was doing. I've seen some of his videos and he literally just sets up his iPhone. Yeah. And that's it. And like the audio is kind of quality. Yeah. It's Kacey Nice that.

Right. It works. Yeah. It really worked for him. Even Doberick. I mean, it's like, you know, these guys kind of running around, running and gunning. You know, we've been with Logan Paul while he's been vlogging and it's like,

grab the camera, run around, you know? So it's, it's, I don't know, but you also have to determine like what is the story you're trying to tell? What is your market? What's your thing? Like, what are you putting out there? Like, I can't iPhone a $20 million property to her, unfortunately. The seller would not use me, you know?

But why wouldn't they trust you to do that? I think you have good judgment so far. You have a good track record. Why wouldn't they say, okay, you know what? We're going to trust you to go through with an iPhone in this house. I think they'd say, sure, do that. Also, please do a full production because the iPhone's not going to show the lighting the best. It's not going to do the sound the best.

We want a full-on beautiful, you know, video two. were. Yeah. Speaking of which, I want your opinion on producer Michael and the one. Did you see that video?

Yeah. The $500 million house? Yeah, we tried to get up there. It's a little bit in some banking problems. Right. Yeah. We actually did the house on Soma

two days ago on the market for just under $70 million. That's like, you can like touch the one. It's like right above there. Yeah. House is crazy. Yeah.

Totally insane. What are your thoughts about the developer going so crazy with both the expense, the attention to detail? Well, listen, real estate sales is all in the timing, and you can never predict it, right? You know, like Bel Air Road, right? We did that property tour.

It was $188 million. Okay. Fawaz from Saudi Arabia came through and he paid $94 million for it. And it was fully done with the cars, with the candy, all that stuff. But he wanted something fully finished. But the house also sat in the market for a long time and was chopped in price over and over and over. but then in Palm Beach in February, right? Lawrence Mowens and his builder crew years ago paid a huge amount of money for a plot of land at 535 North County on the ocean to build a massive spec mansion, all things included.

And like Palm Beach, which is only for old people, right? That's never going to work. They finish the house. They TCO basically like at the end of 2020. They put it on the market, fully finished the beginning of January for $140 million. which is an insane price that no one would ever pay in Palm Beach. I bring a buyer down from New York on Thursday, and we bought it the next day on Friday.

And it was the biggest home sale ever in the state of Florida and it was done in February. And so you can say to them like, oh, see, good timing. But we also bought that deal because it was fully finished. Didn't even have to think about it. Everything they put into it, it just was all in the timing. Wouldn't have been a year ago? It might not happen a year from now.

right after kind of the clow covid you know buying season ends have no idea where things go yeah but it's a total gamble yeah yeah that wasn't fortunate because uh for those that aren't aware this is uh what what they called like the most expensive house in the urban world basically 500 million dollars in belair this guy started the project 10 years ago takes forever bought the plot of land i think it was like 10 million or it was it was some really low price for this old decrepit house that kind of looked like an old warehouse building on top of this parcel of land. Yeah.

Spent 10 years building it. And I think he's probably into it about, what, $150, $160 million. Yeah. And banks are knocking at the door because they want their money in the house. It's been a long time. I mean, listen, look, but at the same time, look at billionaire row in New York City. Look at XTel, Gary Barnett, like 157, West 57, still not sold out. He started that project 11 years ago.

Wow. So, like, this is one guy banking it all on one house, looking for one person. you know, developers will diversify that risk across lots of different types of people, but you're also still going for the same type of person. You know, 157, like you're going to buy a one bedroom for $4 million, you know. Are you ever concerned about more people leaving New York? Because I think COVID really disrupted where people work. Sure.

And now that people could work anywhere or at least have an element to their business that's remote, people are leaving for low-tax dates. Like from California, a lot of people are coming here from both California, New York. It seems to be where the majority of like this community, is from. Yeah. More people move to New York City than left New York City in 2020, which no one talks about because it's not a good click-through rate for that story.

Are we talking about people moving to or just the population growth of New York City? Like more people are born there. That's a good question. I don't think it's population growth. I definitely don't think as many people were born in New York in 2020 than there were the year before. But people move to New York because all of a sudden they've had the opportunity to. So while people in New York who are on the fence said,

this is a good chance to go to Florida or Nevada or Alabama or Austin, Texas. There's also a huge sector of people. I mean, this is, it was big business for us saying, is New York on sale? Like, yeah, we just sold this apartment for 50% off. Like, ah, this is a good time to move to New York, right? Everything's to be fine. Yeah, I'm here. Everything's fine.

And so a lot of people then came in and now they're coming in in droves. You cannot rent an apartment in New York. Look for a townhouse to rent in Brooklyn, of which there used to be many. Right now, Brownstone, Brooklyn. Brooklyn, there are zero listings. I've never seen that in my entire career. People are coming in and they're renting and they're paying double. We just rented a townhouse at 123 East 61st Street. Pre-COVID would rent for maybe $35,000, $40,000 a month. We just rented it for $84,000 a month. We just rented an apartment at $432 Park Avenue for $140,000 a month.

I'm just curious. What type of person? New Yorkers. It is a total mix. People have money now in a way they've never had it before. Like, give us the example of like $100,000 a month. Like what type of clients I was doing it. Finance. Finance. Different types of interestry, technology. Okay. Right.

That's a crypto these days. Do you see a lot of your clients crypto people? I wouldn't say a lot. But I would say way more than anticipated, right? And they're very flashy. Because you're dealing with, you're just dealing with new money. Right. Right.

It's like, it's kind of classic. You know, when you deal with people who worked really, really hard for their money and remember every single dollar. Yeah. They are not flashy because they've been. built it through blood, sweat, and tears. When you're working with somebody who made all their money in the last 18 months, you know, like, you're dealing with someone who's like, I don't know what's going to go.

So let me put it into real estate. So we have a lot of that. That's actually interesting. How have you seen your clients change over time? For example, like your clients 10 years ago because you were still selling luxury real estate back down. They got a lot younger. So they've gotten younger. Yeah.

And at the same time, like, how have their career's been changing? They are more and more part of the gig economy, right? People are not graduating high school and going off to college and W-2ing the rest of their life anymore, at least not as many. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams. Or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going.

Start your search at autotrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. But my buyer base has definitely gotten younger, which four years ago was a big push, or three years ago, was a big push for us to get into YouTube, right? Was us in saying, okay, Bravo's not going to be out there forever. Cable TV won't be there forever, right? Everything's changing. So let's get ahead of that. And my buyer, when they're 15, I want them to know me so that when they're 21 or 22 and buying their first place, I want them to think of me as their first choice.

And then they'll be surprised when I respond or someone at my company response. And so let's go after that Gen Z buyer really, really, really early. Even as a company now, like my future real estate agent that I'm working for today is right now 17 years old. You know, like I'm not building a company for people that are in their 30s or 40s. They can make educated decisions and be adults. They've done that already. I'm building a company for people that have either been watching my content since I was,

since they were 12, right? Or they're currently 15 and they're thinking about what their life is going to be like and what they want to do. And maybe they don't want to be doctors or lawyers or accountants. You know, maybe they do want to go and take control of their own life and sell something. Doesn't even have to be real estate. And that's why they bought Shiba Inu now available for public down below. It's good. Now, I'm kidding.

But no, I feel the same way. I've even noticed in the whole finance space on YouTube, four years ago, it was really predominantly stocks. And you would go in and be like, oh, this stock went up. It was Tesla stock a few years ago that was always, that would be the biggest on clicks. What did Tesla stock do? But now, people care less and less and less about the stock market and more about crypto. And I've noticed that a lot of this is shifting.

Nobody cares what the stock market's doing anymore. It's like, what is the cryptocurrency market doing? Sure. Nobody cares about Tesla. It's like, what's the latest NFT? What did Dogecoin just do today? It's wild to see this evolve. And then also see that, like, now I'm the old fart when I can look like, where like,

I'm trying to understand. I don't get NFTs at all. I truly don't understand. I'm trying to learn. But meanwhile, like the channels that are kind of blown up now, both on TikTok and YouTube are like these like 19 year olds who are like, I bought this board ape NFT and this thing. And it's like, I don't get it.

Yeah. But that's where the audience, I think, is beginning to shift. Yeah. That's very cool to see. It's trading clout, right? It's trading baseball cards. It's, and it's on your phone, right? And it's gamified now.

So, like, how do you gamify finance? You make it animated. So that's what NFTs are, right? And so for a younger audience, who especially are playing with play money, who've been used to using play money that has been totally fake, right? Or real money through, like, the PlayStation store or through their parents' credit card, their whole life. If they put money into cryptocurrency when it was a joke, and now they have real money,

or at least that's what it looks like on their phone. phone and they're transferring it over to Robin Hood or they're using Coinbase. Like they can now become, you know, active quote unquote traders all day long. I'm curious. Do you own cryptocurrency? Yeah. What do you own? I own Bitcoin. I own Ethereum. I own a few other random things. I don't pay attention to it as much, but it's been interesting to play with.

Any doge coin? I have some doge coin. There we go. How much? How much? That's a small amount. I bought like $5,000 worth of doge coin. That's like when?

This is the answer. This is crucial. No, like at the beginning of the year. Like, yeah, it's not. The beginning of the year would be really good. That would be fantastic. You must be doing well at Dogecoin. Dogecoin is fine for me.

It's not where it should be, though. But also, it was five grand. Like it was just sort of like a, let's have some exposure. See, I told Graham to get into Dogecoin on a podcast because I told him I put some money in. I put in a hundred bucks. And Graham's like, you know what? I'll throw in $1,000. You guess what?

This is when it was a third of a. a penny. Yeah, which for him is, it's nothing, right? And what would it have been at the peak? At the peak, $150,000. It was a thousand dollar investment made as a joke on the podcast. It's betting. So we were, I was just talking to my guy, Wall Street bets and oh, we had him on the podcast yesterday. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Such a cool guy to talk to. Yeah. It's been around that, but he's also like so real and authentic, you know, and, um, uh, but it's what it is. Like, people, people like to gamble. They like to bet. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's, doesn't feel like it's your money because you just got it yesterday and you didn't have to go and like dig a ditch to get your hourly wage and it's just sort of showing up.

Sure, I'll bet it on something else. Why not? Yeah. But it's been nuts. The wealth creation as you talk about all the time, you know, in your content. Like in the last two years has been insane. Like Elon Musk is about to be worth $300 billion. Yeah. First ever.

In the world history. Yeah. Off of one company and one stock. Yeah. Well, I think they're also valuing SpaceX. Sure. It's like, but one kind of umbrella. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The umbrella, like the guy, you know? It's crazy. Yeah. So what consists of your portfolio? You have some cryptocurrency. Like, what percentage of crypto are you in overall? Is it 5%, 10%? I don't know.

Do you do it all yourself or do you handle it? No. No. Like, I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm not good at. And I don't want to be, I would be, I was too stressed out. If I'm sitting there, like, watching my stock portfolio go up and down, I just have, you know, I just put money with, uh, I've got a good wealth

advisor team that have worked with for a while give them money and I'm like don't lose it. Do you know where your money is invested? Kind of, but not really. Okay. Yeah. If you ever want a second opinion? I would love to be good to double check. Yeah, sure.

I would love to see where it is. Because if you're telling them just don't lose my money and worried it might be too safe. They could be doing bonds and stuff like that. Yeah. No, they don't, it's not too. Sometimes I wish it was safer. Safe. Yeah.

Like I, I don't know, they take enough risk. from what I can tell. Okay. But I'm also not a thousand percent. It's where we sell a significant amount of real estate, right? And the businesses are where all of my focus is. And then I have guys that invest money and make money on it. So do you know what your like percentage returns are annually?

Because if you do, then we'd be able to basically understand how much risk. I have no idea. I was not prepared for these questions. Oh, that's fine. I just showed up as much. Of course. I don't know. They're good return.

I mean, I think they've been great returns so far. Do you have just a set amount that goes in every single month? How do you structure that portion of your portfolio? Depends. A couple years ago, I would like, you know, I would, it was, I almost viewed it as like my savings account. All right, you guys are going to figure out where you're going to invest money. And then every month, it's either going to be a percentage of earnings or it's going to be kind of a set fee, right? Or it's not set fee, but like a set dollar amount.

Right. And so that way you're always saying, okay, I'm going to put this away in a way and away over and over, which a lot of people have done with Bitcoin too, right? Where they just said, I don't want to, I can't time it. So I'm going to put 100 bucks a week, right? Or a thousand bucks a month, something like that. But I think like when I first really got started years and years ago, it was like, all right, 100 grand a month. Like, I'm going to put that in, invest it.

That way I don't spend it. Yeah. You know, and then as business grows, the dollar amount gets a lot higher. Do you base that on a percentage of your income that month or is it just a set amount? At one point, it was like 10%. And then sometimes it was a little bit more. then sometimes less real estate sales and you want to put more back into the business. Yeah.

Because I work for myself, right? And so it's like, am I going to invest this or am I going to hire 10 more people? That's always the dilemma that I have to go in as an entrepreneur. Do I put this into the stock market where I'm not going to see it? And hopefully it gives me in a return. I put my money to work because that's what I'm supposed to do. Or do I build out this new department and this new vision? Or do I take the money I earn, put it over here and invest it and then go get a loan because

interest rates are really low? or do I do a pledge asset line through Charles Schwab and get a really, really low interest rate and just borrow cheap money and then grow that way? Like there's just lots of different options and there's just lots of money out there. How do you balance that between real estate in terms of where you invest your money? I invest heavily back into our business. I believe in the business really, really strongly and I think we can grow it to be something that's incredibly huge.

And it's been 13 months and so far, so good. So so far, like, I own a lot of real estate, but it's not, I only own real estate because I see good deals. I'm like, I don't want someone else to buy that, so I'll just do it. Yeah. You know? How many good deals do you see these days now? Because I've kind of stopped. Yeah.

Yeah. In New York, there's still good deals. You think so. Yeah. And New York, New York is, will always have inventory. Like, there's still 10,000 apartments on the market. It's a lot. But for quality inventory, there's, it's getting less and less and less.

just depending on where you want to go. Like if you want to buy, like I was talking about townhouses in Brooklyn. Like if you want to buy a townhouse in Park Slope, Godspeed. You're paying half a million millions over asking price, right? If you want to buy an apartment on 57th Street, you get your pick, right?

There's choice because New York City's built vertically. So like here, you got to build out a whole new gated neighborhood, which, by the way, how do I get back to the strip from here? Just go straight down the street. It's easy. Yeah. On my feet?

No, wait. Can you call an Uber here? Yes. When Uber show up? Oh, absolutely. Because we were in other neighborhoods. And Uber's like it wouldn't come. I could drive you.

Because I'm actually, I'm leaving a meeting after this. Oh, really? Yeah, yep. If you don't mind driving with Jack, he's a bit of a slow driver, but he'll get you there in one piece. Have I ever ridden in a Lamborghini Uris before? Is that what you drive? No, I drive with Lexis. I was just curious.

Oh, okay. No, no, that was to do. Rolls Roy's calling it. Yeah, exactly. The new Maybach, it bounces. I feel like, man, your podcast is crushing. Yeah. Questions for you guys.

So what is your day like? Like, what do you do? What do you do? You wake up, create content, go to bed kind of thing? Pretty much. Yeah? Yeah. No, honestly,

what are your businesses now? It's not, well, it's five channels. Yeah. So my main channel, the Graham Stephan show, the iced coffee hour, this to family and millennial money. Ice coffee are clips. Oh, and the ice coffee. Down below.

The six channels. Yeah. So. What was the fourth one? Something family, what? It's the family. It's like a vlog channel with like, like, him me

me see Alex the assistant yeah got it got it so you have six channels and you're creating content for all six channels every day yes yeah between so there are nine videos posted well if we're not counting the clips channel I think it's eight or nine videos posted

every single week and I've been doing that consistently for well probably nine a week for almost a year but seven a week for two and a half years who who creates most of the content for you who's filming most of it I film everything

you film everything yeah even the Stafamly stuff. No, Alex films. So basically, this to family, we started because we wanted to just monetize everything. Sure. So we were thinking,

well, if I'm busy working, how can I make more money? So I could film myself working. Got it. And I could just post that. It's like behind the scenes. Like,

I really liked Gary V. style, just like document everything. So I figured, well, we're at the house anyway. Some of the stuff I think is kind of interesting. So we may as well film it.

Yeah. Content. Yeah. So our first video was Jack and I trying to make a thumbnail for my video about buying a Ford GT. And so we figured, well, we may as well film it.

And I wanted to get this really cool shot kind of laying on top of the Ford GT, like kind of like crazy, and we got a drone just like flying above because I wanted like an overhead shot. And we had our friend Colby just film the thing. And we posted it, and it got like 100,000 views.

It was blown away. I was like, wow, there's an audience for this. So then I just documented setting up the aquarium. And that was another like 90,000. I was blown away. And so we just kept doing that. Nice. So, I mean, things have slowed down since then

because everyone's excited about like a brand new channel. But the purpose behind it is just once a week, we could just film throughout the week and just post a video. And you're actually sitting there editing? No, no, no, Alex edits. And then I go in and I do a revision, and then usually I'll make a few edits on top of that. And then we show Graham and then we just post it.

Yeah. I edit all the main channel videos. So everything you see on Graham Stephan, that's me. Got it. The Graham Stephan show, that's three times a week. That's Jack who edits this video. is. Okay.

It's the family is Alex. How do you... Got it. How do you determine what you're going to talk about every week on your two main? It's so bad. It's, that's honestly probably one of the most stressful parts. If I knew,

if I had a topic, I just woke up and a topic appeared at 6 a.m. every morning. Yeah. Be easy. Because then I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do that. Once I have a direction,

the hardest part is picking a direction because if you pick the wrong video, all of your work is for nothing. You throw off the algorithm. Yeah. So if I, I've usually noticed where if I have two, bad performing videos in a row, the third video suffers by like 30, 40%,

like it's really bad. Because YouTube just won't promote it. Right, because YouTube's like, well, their audience isn't watching their videos now. They're getting fewer reviews twice in a row. That third video, we're not going to recommend it as much

because it's probably not good. Yeah. We're going to push somebody else instead. So I could only have one video at a time not perform well. And if I have that one video, that's so stressful. It is.

Because then the next video has to hit. How do you know that it has to, like how are you going to, How do you determine what you're going to do? It's hours. It's honestly, it's hours every single morning trying to figure out. Like, I read everything on the news. I see everything on Reddit.

I subscribe to like 50 different YouTube channels. I see what people are talking about. The biggest thing that I look at is the homepage of YouTube because that's what's getting pushed to you. That's their algorithm suggesting content. So I look at the front page and I say, okay, well, these videos on Shiba Inu are getting a lot of views right now. Maybe I should look into this.

Wow, it's gone up and priced a lot. Let me make a video about that. And I can show my opinion. Super smart. So it's stressful, but that's probably, I could spend five hours a day. And even then, I'm usually texting Jack to get his idea. Because sometimes I'll have this idea that I think is good. And I'll send it to Jack and say, no, it's not that interesting.

Because you're so in it, you can't really, don't really realize that. Yeah. So, like, today, there's no topic. So if I were to post any video tomorrow, people wouldn't care unless really it's about Tesla or maybe Shiba Inu. And that's it. I've already talked about Shiba Inu. So the only thing left to talk about is Tesla. So I have to make a video on Tesla tomorrow.

If I were to post anything else, people would be here. Do you write the stuff up and you put it in front of you? You're just going to be going to riff it. Oh, I never riff it. Yeah. Every video is scripted down to the word. Every joke that is like supposed to be like five to six hours a day. Thinking about what you're going to do and you write it out.

And I write it out word for word. Personally. Yeah. Holy mother. I agree with you. I know what you're going to say. I agree with you, man. You can outsource stats and you can hire somebody.

We do a lot. I know, but it's your voice. But like I am telling you, we do a lot of writing and we do a lot of live feed. We do a lot of webinar like all that stuff. And it got to the point where I was like, I need to find someone who understands how I talk and how I think. And then they will script it and you improvise the script. Right. So you buy your time back.

I don't think I can do that. You say that now. But five to six hours is a long, long time. I don't think so. I don't think so. It's just you have to have such an eye for like trying to figure out what goes on YouTube. You're basically a newscaster. Like we talk to newscasters all the time.

They wake up super early. They go there to figure out the news. They work on their reports. And then they go live and they tell everybody exactly what they've been working on all day long. Yeah. I don't know. Part of me thinks that's the reason why the channel's grown so much. No, no, no, no.

Because I spend the time that no one would else would care like I do on that sort of stuff. That's true. I think that's true for sure. For your big videos, for the vast majority of people, they watch your content for the transfer of education. They, or information. They want to learn,

right? Every video that you, that you post that gets like a million views is like very education heavy, right? Yes. Exactly.

And they're learning from you. Yeah, but it's a structure. It's a structure of figuring out what the hook points are. Because every paragraph has to have a hook to keep people watching.

So there's never a point where I'm just like from start to finish like one thought. There's always got to be, and this was building up, and then this happened. And then I have to change a scene to keep the,

retention high. Like everything is thought out. So, so you're going to do this for the next 10 years? Yes. Probably. Probably. I don't know to this degree.

I've talked to Jack before about maybe going down to two videos a week in the main channel instead of three. It's spending more time on those videos. But I know once I go down, I'm never going back. So like, yeah. It's like once I,

I don't know how I'm like able to do this. Yeah. And I know I'm going to look back and like, I don't know how I was able to do all that work. Well, now you put the responsibility on your shoulders, right? Now the audience demands it. So now you can't stop it.

You don't have to go down if you outsource. Yeah. I don't know. I've tried. I'm trying to outsource my editing because that's the only part where I feel where I probably three to five hours to edit a video. I would tell you, though, like the edit is super important. And there's a lot of personality that goes into it.

Like I can tell the difference between who edits are videos, depending within studios, right? Because there's certain people that understand jokes or other people that don't. certain people know how to color. You know what I mean? Like everything's a little bit different. Certain people are really passionate about the content. Other people are just, I got to get this done. And so it's like, if you're going to do that, you just got to find an editor who like really, again, just like writing.

Yeah. Just like my email management. Like you got to get somebody who really understands your voice because that's what people are listening to. They could read all the information you're giving them, but they're watching it for your voice. Right. Giving me the information. So it could be scripted. It's just got to be in your voice.

Correct. But the other thing is that for retention rates, the video has to be structured in such a way to keep people watching. So even though it's my voice, there is a portion of people out there who will watch the video and if they're not entertained visually,

they'll just tune out, even if the information is good. How much money you're making? That's what he wants to know. We want to know. How much money? No. Graham will tell you how much he's making.

I know, but it's a career. It's like, who else we were just talking to? Oh, Portnoy. Yeah, he's so to Portnoy. Like, he's so open about how, much money he never had and then how much money he does he have now. I want to know. He's like, what was it, like, $225 million, I think.

Okay. Yeah. That's a decent amount. Yeah. Yeah. From selling newspapers, you know, it's a cool story. Could you give us a ballpark about that? The IRS is not watching this.

Listen, we, we, I mean, we clear, so we'll do gross, like, I don't know, $35 million this year. and net is a good amount. Okay. And that I take includes your education portion of the business. High profit margins. The broker is probably a lot lower. Yep.

Okay. Oh yeah. Any advice? What can we be doing better? We ask our guests this. It's very helpful. How can we improve? Yeah, yeah.

I've told you already. I would embrace leverage. I want to micromanage absolutely everything. I understand what you're saying with, that's why you've gotten to where you are. But what got you here won't get you there. That's why it's a phrase. It's a common theme.

I've never heard that. I've never heard that. You've never heard that? No, what got you here won't get you there? Yeah. I've never heard of the car. Like, I had to do the same thing because I would take out every buyer, every seller.

And I got an assistant, you know, and like everything was me, me, me, me, me, me, me, all the time. And then, like, what got you here, it won't get you there. And so you, the voice doesn't change. The work doesn't change. You're not going to get, like, less busy. Your work is just going to change. You're just going to do more.

And so you're going to make more money. I don't know what else I could do that. It's like the exact opposite of what Graham thinks. Yeah. Well, God, I'm here. We'll get him there. Yeah. Because I'm still going there.

That's the thing. It's like, I've not stopped getting there. It's still going in that direction. So why take a different path when the one that you're on is working? That's an idea, which is, you know, why, what is it? Like, if the wheel's not broken, then don't fix it. Right. But anyway, my advice is to leverage what you've created.

Okay. Right. Leverage what you've created. However you want to do that. And maybe it's not doing things through. through other people. Maybe it's something else that we didn't even talk about today.

But this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. One final question. Yeah. That RMS. Is that for your name? Yeah, Ryan Matthews, Sirhand. Wow.

All right. Well, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Make sure to hit the like button. Subscribe. We'll link to your information down below in the description. Thanks, guys.

Cool. Until next time. Yes. And then, oh, yeah, and then we'll finish it.