WHOOP Podcast - Million Dollar Mindset: How Ryan Serhant Keeps Building

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by one of the most successful real estate brokers in the world. You may have seen him on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing or read one of his best-selling books. Real estate broker, CEO, and founder of SERHANT, Ryan Serhant is here to discuss his latest book Brand It Like Serhant, as well as his views on health and wellness and high performance. Will and Ryan discuss Ryan using WHOOP (2:00), getting started with Million Dollar Listing (3:33), the line between performing and being authentic (8:45), being comfortable under pressure (13:45), launching SERHANT (15:12), Ryan’s work ethic (21:24), Brand It Like Serhant (26:12), starting to build a brand (33:24), Ryan’s focus on health and fitness (37:52).Resources:Ryan's Website Brand It Like SerhantSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we'd sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder, and CEO of Woop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. Today I am joined by a very successful real estate broker, one of the most successful in the world. You may have seen him on Bravo's million dollar list. or read one of his best-selling books. If you haven't guessed it yet, my guest is Real Estate Broker's CEO and founder of Sir Haunt, Ryan Sir Haunt. Ryan is a longtime

Woop member and was declared CEO of the fastest growing brokerage by Market Share. He's here to discuss his insights on health and wellness, high performance, and his newly released book Branded Like Sir Haunt. Ryan and I discuss how Ryan got started with a million dollar listing. We dive into how he was filming four shows at once for multiple years, getting comfortable with the pressure, launching the Sir Haunt brokerage and brand, his daily grind and work ethic, how to launch a brand and the learnings from his new book, and Ryan's dedication to health and fitness. If you have a question once he answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. And here is my conversation

with Real Estate Mobile, Ryan Sirhant. Ryan, welcome to the Whoop Podcast. Thanks for having me, man. I'm whooped to be here. Well, I knew we were going to get along great because I realized that you've been wearing whoop for a long time and you've got a new book out and you're on million dollar listing, which we're going to talk about. So I'm excited for this. You know when I was like, the Whoop is actually super cool and I'll show you. and we don't have to talk about you this entire time.

On top of everything else it does, I do a lot of speeches, right? Sales conferences everywhere. And so, I mean, this was years ago the first time, but then I gave a speech to like a thousand salespeople in Montreal, Canada yesterday. And then it grabs my stage performance. Oh, yeah, look at that.

Dude, grab, I don't know if you can see it, if it's blurry. I can. What is that, like a 15 strain or something for 10 straight for stage? Dude, 11-3. 11-3. My workout that morning was 8-1, but my stage performance was an 11-3. Granted, my stage performance was for a lot longer than my workout was because I went to bed at 1 a.m. the day before, but I am consistently in the yellow.

Sometimes even the red, you know, and then it stresses me out. I'm trying to get better. What got you into whoop in the first place? I had a nutritionist slash kind of personal trainer who was like, listen, It'll help me track, like, just add me to your part of the community there. And she's like, then I'll, then I'll just track. So you don't have to go and tell me that, like, this morning you had a light workout or the other day and everything.

And then you guys introduced, now you can track, like, the actual workout and the weight lifting stream. Yeah, stress monitor. Yeah, the strength trainer and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's to, I think, like, any personal trainer in the world should probably use it with their clients as just a way to track. That way you're, that way it's not gut instinct.

right well for sure look incredibly grateful to have you whoop we'll get back to your health and fitness journey i want to start with your remarkable real estate career because you show up if i've got this right you show up for a million dollar listing as one of like three thousand agents that's trying to get on this show and you're about one and a half years into real estate yep and you've got an open casting like just take me back to that moment what were you thinking i was not thinking anything i was thinking this is a potential big waste of my time i'm not i'm not a top real estate agent by any means i barely been doing it it was mostly doing rentals in new york city i am uh i have no no no legitimacy for being in this room but i'd rather regret the things i did than the things i

never tried. It's the whole reason I moved to New York City in the first place to try theater, to try acting, to see if I can do it. You know, I ran out of money in the summer of 2008 and my survival job was getting my real estate license because a friend told me to. And then when I started making money as a real estate agent, just on rentals, like helping people find rental apartments doing their application process, the credit, all that stuff. Then it was like, oh, you know what, it actually makes me happier to, if I'm going to work all day every day and work for for free until I'm successful without a salary, no benefits, no nothing, then it might as well do it where I can increase my chances of success. And being a salesperson is a performance.

Right. You, you know, there's no down days. Like, you can't be a successful salesperson on an off day. Like, no one buys anything from someone who's just upset, like her off or turned off or not high energy. Right. So you got to be on all the time. And that is. is, that's like, that's part of the training as, as an actor that I went where I was like studying at the globe, you know, Shakespeare and, you know, in London or, you know, doing regional theater and all the stuff that I did for so, so long. It all played into my budding real estate career. And so then I put that all to the side, got into real estate full time, started taking it seriously for like a year. And then the audition happened for the New York version of million dollar list. listing the New York, sorry, for Millionaire listing the New York version. And I just went. And they saw 3,000 people at the Hudson Hotel in Times Square in March of 2010. And over the next nine months, they slowly, slowly whittled it down. And then they cast four of us. And they said, only three of you will make the final show. Good luck. And then that's pretty

hardcore, by the way. Just as like a production strategy. Hey, we're going to take 3,000 people. We're going to make them four. we're going to have the four compete for three spots that's intense new one of the i mean listen bravo knows what they're doing man like they they are you know they're not that successful just by winging it or by taking you know chances so they uh they know what they're doing they know how to make things happen and um uh you know it was a big moment it was a big legitimizer for me no one called me like that show aired in 2012 for the first season it's not like people pick up the phone

And we're like, hey, I saw you on TV last night. Can you help me buy my $20 million house? No, like that. No one calls anyone they see on TV ever. But it helped me open doors, especially with developers. Developers, new construction, because those people had an incentive to get their product on television. You know, it would help them raise more money. It would be benefit.

They don't care. They just want to sell. And so we really used it that way. And then we were nominated for two Emmy Awards. And 10 years later, it's sunset. said it when I started my own company. I couldn't be a real estate agent dancing around in a clown outfit with cupcakes anymore. And did you find the process of being a real estate agent on television was mostly performative or consistent with like your actual day to day?

50-50. I mean, my actual day to day is I'm here at the desk and I'm like if you just said, Ryan, go to work all day, I would be on the phone and on email all day long. Like, that's my work. I might have an appointment. I've got to go meet a seller, go meet a buyer, go meet a developer, just do a property tour. But other than that, like, everything's an email. Our whole lives are in our phones or in our computer screens here.

I have three screens in front of me right now. And so that's what it would be. So the show becomes performative when it's like, well, no one wants to see you get an offer in email. Right. So if they're going to send you an offer and it's for a property that we're tracking on the show, you are going to tell them to call you

and tell them to present it after 5 o'clock because that's when we're going to be filming you with the seller. So like that stuff was then performative, but they were all real listings, real deals, real everything. Did you find yourself becoming a personality of yourself or did you find the whole thing quite natural?

For me, it was kind of natural, maybe because I grew up performing. It was quite, I mean, I played myself as a real estate agent. Like, I, you know, I think, I think people meet me or they read my books or or anything and what people will say consistently is like, oh, you're just like you are on TV. Like, what were you expected? Like, I don't know.

I've met other people on TV and they're funny on TV, but they're mean in real life. Or, like, I don't know. I don't like, I don't have the time to try to be different people. Hey, there's too much going on. And we film these shows, man, they take a year. Like, they don't. We just, we just shot an, I mean, so my new show comes out on Netflix and the next soon-ish. That show shot fast.

And like, that was nuts. But million or less than we would take a year, shoot for a year. And so you had cameras with you, how often? For nine years. Right. But how often during the day? Four days a week, Tuesday through Friday. For how many hours?

On Tuesday morning, it could be two hours. Wednesday, it could be an hour, 30 hours. Thursday, it might be six hours, Fridays would then be like the interview. You know, you watch reality TV and you see someone sitting there talking. And then I did four TV shows for Bravo, right? I think you're listing New York. I did my wedding TV show. I did my renovation show is a renovating show.

I did my, I did sell like Surnt, an entire season of that. That was a separate year, all filming all at the same time. Plus being a full-time real estate broker plus, plus all the other. It was a lot. It's a lot. It takes time. It's a hustle. I mean, and you're also getting very comfortable behind camera in that process.

Like, you must have realized quickly in that first season, okay, this is something I feel good doing. In the second season, I did. The first season, I'd never done anything like that before. Like, I'll go be myself in front of a camera for a year. Plus, I'm new to this business. Like, what do I, how do I walk into a listing? Like, what are people going to pay attention to? Like, I didn't, I didn't think anyone would care about the color of my hair.

I'd never even thought about it. Turns out that being, like, 26, with gray hair, it was not necessarily normal. And people talked about it. It was like, oh, okay, I guess that's what people know me for. I think you play a heightened version of yourself. Richard Rubenstein, a big PR guy here in New York City, who's a publicist. friend of mine then his best piece of advice was two things one he just said when you're in front of a camera no matter what if you if you're going to do this make the most out of it if you're

going to do it win like if you're going to play football win if you're going to go for a run win if you're going to do it go do it otherwise don't do it so if you're going to do this show and and take on all the risks associated with them one go hard just go hard if you think you're not going hard enough, you're definitely not going hard enough, so go harder, right? Push yourself. Think outside the box. Go hard. And two, remember the person you are today is not the person you're going to be in two years when this show comes out because they're going to film it for a year and then they're going to edit and it'll come out six, 12 months later. And I had never thought about it that way. He's because, you know, he was a big PR guy. So he had other people on other shows

and he was super aware. So he's like, just remember, just because you do $4,000 a month rentals and small sales now, and that's what they want to come show you, like living your life and what's your life like now? Is that the kind of business you want to be doing in two years? It's like, well, no, I want to do better. I want to do bigger listings, bigger stuff.

I want to grow. So you have to grow by tomorrow at 10 a.m. Because you got to go on camera showing the you that you want to be known for in two years. because that type of business is what people are going to call you on. So if you go and do a small little sale on TV today and it airs in two years, the world's going to see that and say, oh, that's the guy who does small sales. And that was the best advice he gave me also by far the most stressful. Like the most stressful.

It's like telling somebody who like wants to run a, you know, wants to run, wants to run a mile in under four minutes, you know, being like, hey, you got to do that tomorrow, by the way, because we're going to show you doing it in two years. So just run real fast. Don't throw up. Like, it's just, ugh, it was, I like lost weight during that. See, yeah, it's just a lot. I didn't have a look back then. I don't think you existed. Well, it certainly contributed to, uh, to pulling forwards your success. It must have come with a fair amount of stress. Like, did you do anything along the way to get more comfortable under that pressure? Did you kind of get off to that pressure? I think more than anything, man, it teaches you that like nothing's

real, everything's possible. Because I fast forwarded my career by two to five years in the span of six months and all it took was really the fear of future brutal international embarrassment because what it forced me to do was I could go home at five because I have no more appointments in my calendar or I could go meet up with a buddy and grab a beer or maybe I'll go to the gym tonight or go on a date but I couldn't I had this reality TV shotgun to my head saying you need to be number one or we're going to put you on international television as a failure. You decide. It's all on you.

You control it. And so then you make that extra phone call. Like you send that extra email. You put yourself in uncomfortable situations and, you know, it's like the meme, right? It's like that's where the magic is. It was brutal. It was brutal. But I still kind of do it that way today.

Now it's all I know. It's like, all right, I'm going to go start my own company. it's going to be the greatest real estate company of all time, and we go bigger, we go home. So we might as well just go big. And so even though it's on top. And so you launched Sir Hunt in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah. Take me back to that moment.

I only do things at the worst times will. I started my, I mean, I got my real estate career started the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. It was day one. It was day one, right? They were finally for bankruptcy first thing in the morning and I was like in the office trying to learn how to do a lease application. And it was the worst time and the best time because everybody got out of the business, everybody was failing. And so that's the best time to learn because every idea you have is a fresh idea that's not negative.

Same thing during COVID. Things were really, really tough, right? New York City especially, you know, the city was shut down, SWAT on the streets, like the riots. It was a complete insanity for, for, you know, for a year, really. It was like New York City was closed from April of 2020 to April of 2021, really, before vaccine came out and it slowly started to open. That's like a sequence of words that like I just hope will never be said again in our lifetime. Like New York City was closed.

It's such a. Yeah, for a year. Such a horrible and dumb statement, you know. Yeah. At the same time, though, and it was. Definitely terrible. People lost their lives. It was insane, right?

I would not be here today, would not have this company today, had it not been for COVID. And that's a, that's like a scary sentence to say, but it's true. Like, had I not had that time gifted to me? Like, I couldn't, we never would have done what we did. Like, we would never have been able to start. And we also wouldn't have achieved. the immediate success we did out of the gate because every other firm was pulling back,

furlowing people, firing people, stopping growth, all that, obviously. Whereas for me, I was just getting started. Like, I should not have had, like, a front page Wall Street Journal article written about the starting of my brokerage company. Like, that wouldn't have happened in 2019, and it probably wouldn't happen today. Because so what? But in 2020, September? of 2020.

You know, it was more like, okay, Ryan Surnan crazy person makes big bet on real estate like a crazy person, especially in New York City, like a crazy person. But I also just knew that I'm pretty sure it's going to be okay. And we just grinded, man. None of us Netflix's and chilled. None of us quarantined. We all went to the office every single day and just dared someone to arrest. us, you know, said hi to the police officers and the SWAT and just went and worked.

Every building was completely empty, chairs on the floor everywhere. It was like, dude, New York was I Am legend for a year. And I made a vlog running from 86 in Central Park West through Times Square down to the battery and only ever went by police, just ran down the middle of the road from Central Park West all the way down. It was the craziest thing ever. And I told my guys, I'm like, listen, mask up. we got to go get this get the drones because we're never getting this time again like we must take advantage of this time dude i can get from tribeca to the upper east side it's seven minutes

by car yeah now it's like 45 minutes right it's just it's just nuts so it was a crazy time but thank god i did it when we did it and how did you think about building a team out of the gates so i i i know i was a real estate agent from 2008 to 2020 And then I blew up my whole life. I had a team of 65 people and a lot of different markets. You know, we, in 2019, I don't know, we did like $1.2 billion in sales. That's great. You know, we were one of the largest sales teams ever in the United States anyway.

And so I blew it all up and I left them all behind. I had no choice. It was the only way that I could do what I needed to do without going into details. And so I had to go by myself with two people. one person, her name is Jen Elise, who started the company with me, and she runs new construction for us, actually just promoted her. And then our CFO, who I found because one of our biggest competitors, one of the big public companies, was just firing people left and right. And they were firing great people, right? And so I was starting my company, and it was like, oh, wait, you don't,

what happened to your non-compete? Like, oh, they're getting rid of all of them, just so that we don't ask for severance. It's like, holy, COVID is the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm getting, like, imagine now? Now I interview people and they're like, do, we have non-solicits and non-competence for two years. In order to buy me out, it'll be this, that. It's, oh, my God. COVID, it's like, just, it's great for hiring. And then it became tough. And so we just, we just grinded and we just built and tried to move as quickly as we possibly could. what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop that's right you can check out whoop at woup dot com

it measures everything around sleep recovery strain and you can now sign up for free for 30 days so you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free get to try it for 30 days to see whether you want to be a member and that is just at whoop.com back to the guests i mean i think a lot of people probably look at you and they're like okay this guy's been on tv he's got all these bestselling books he does three billion in sales like talk a little bit about the grind like uh you've mentioned that a lot you seem to have a very big work ethic what what's all the work that people don't see I mean, I work seven days a week.

I spend very little time with family. I wake up at 4.30 every day. I work out from, depending on the day, it's either 5 to 6 or 5.30 to 645 slash 7 o'clock. I'm in the car and off to work at 7.30. I work until 7.30 or 10.30, depending on the day. I try to get in bed by around 11 to wake up at 4.30 the next day and do it all over again. I get somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 emails a day that are not spam. I have three assistants that help me with all of it.

There's a significant amount of work and a significant amount of pressure. And it's not just one company. There's three of them. We have the brokerage, which is all things real estate, which is a massively full-time job in itself running that. Plus, I'm a full-time real estate broker, which most people don't have any time to do anything else, but I do that too. Plus, we run an education business, which is sell it, where we have 22,000 members across

128 countries where we're doing sales training for the next generation, and B2B and direct to consumer, which is a whole other job in and of itself. And then I run a production company called Studios, which is a whole other job in and of itself. Plus just wrote the third book. It took me two years to write that and did that for four to five hours every Saturday for two years plus we have our podcast plus all the content and the social across all platforms you know we're just over six million followers subscribers across all platforms and so we need to feed that beast all day every day and make content and do property tours and all the things plus i do speeches

i was in montreal just last night you know giving a speech to a thousand people that's my stage performance there and it's all a grind it's all really tiring i have a compressed l5 s1 i now have a standing desk that I'm standing at so I can go to walk so I don't sit as much because I sit and just grind it out going from my home office to my mobile office to my office to my office and back so now I need to even though I thought I worked on my core a lot apparently I didn't so now I need to work on my core even when I'm standing and at the desk and I manage costs and expenses and revenue and our P&Ls all day every day while trying to push the machine forward oh man that's the it's the grind well I'm glad you gave that level of deep

because I get messages from a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs. I'm sure you get messages from thousands of people who want to be real estate agents or have their own company. And I think people don't actually appreciate how much of it is just really hard work and not being entitled to any of it. It is a lot of work. It is a significant amount of work. but you have to be willing to push it forward you know what I mean like you have to you have to understand what your wall is you have to understand what your win is you have to understand what your why is it's really really clear with your goals like I I you know I don't know like I could make less work less live somewhere else that's not New York City like I like have a easier quality of life

I don't know. That just doesn't, it's just not in my DNA. You have to understand the type of person you are more than anything. You have to understand truly what your core identity is. Like what is, what is what makes you you, what are, what are you. I think a lot of people just don't do that. You know, I, I, I, I, I, it's why we teach it. It's why I wrote the, my book that just come out, you know, brand it like Sirhan. It was, it's in part to help people understand what their core identity is so that they can understand what they should go build or not build. successful limitless polished that to me those are the three words you use to describe yourself right yeah and it can and it can change you know when i was writing the book like that's you know i i think i think it was important to help people define me right so you're reading this book and you understand who i am so that i've done these exercises too and i've done them with you There's actually a fitness personal trainer that we track in the book that I track as she goes through all the exercises and the process, which I thought was super cool. So really trying to get the, you know, just not all real estate, not all sales, but really, okay, I'm a personal trainer and I'm looking to build a brand, do it on social, influence the world. And so, yeah, successful, limitless polished.

When I think about how I want to be known, at least now, right, that's what I focus on. I think people need to find their adjectives. And that's a part of the book as well. It's a part of the work. The book is branded like Sir Haunt. It's your third book. I've got it here in front of me. I've been reading through it.

And we were just talking about the notion of branding oneself with specific words. I mean, overall, I'm impressed with just how much you think about brand. It's not surprising, but it's something that I've thought a lot about in building a technology company. why don't we just start with what's the difference between a brand and a company in your mind well i think every company is a brand whether it knows it or not right a company is made up of the people the product and hopefully the profits not all companies um but i think the goal is eventually to get to a profit um uh the brand is the reputation right what is what is the math for a brand we really like pull it back the brand is core identity of either

the person or the product and if it's a product who's the character what's the product's name so for the whoop what if the wolf was a human and you've probably done this work too like what is what is what is the name what do they what kind of tv do they watch what would they be eating what's their diet like that character is your first target audience that affects your target market right that's who you're going to buy ads against. That's how you're going to track. That's going to be that first audience that then you're going to grow up from there.

For a person, right, for that personal brand, you're doing the work to understand what your and is. So I'm real estate and what, right? That person over there is fitness and what? What is that niche? That niche that you're going to attract yourself to and attract others to that you're passionate about. Maybe it's kids, maybe it's cats,

maybe it's food, whatever, whatever it is, whatever makes you you, whatever makes you happy, whatever that passion is that you have, right? That creates passion commerce. I think great brands build great companies, right? And great companies build great brands. So that core identity, the minute it leaves your fingers as you're typing or your lips as you're talking as the CEO or just you yourself turns into the perception the world has of you. That perception, once you leave the room or leave the chat, leave the social media platform, turns into reputation. It's how people talk about you and talk about your business behind your back.

And then that reputation slowly but surely over time builds that brand. It's how people remember you. It's what that awareness is. I think individuals can build great personal brands. They don't have to necessarily be attached to companies or to businesses or to selling, obviously. I mean, there are influencers out there for better or for worse. There's people out there. There's big brands.

There's tiny brands. But I think every person and every company has a brand. whether it's intentional or unintentional, right, is up to you. And if it's unintentional, then it's on you to kind of take that intention back and control the narrative. What would be an example in your mind of a company that has an unintentional brand? I don't know. I mean, I'm drinking my 5 o'clock protein shake right here, right? And so maybe this is a brand that, where I get this from, I don't want to call out this company, I'm sure it's fine, but like maybe it's a, you know, the protein powder, you know, maybe it's their brand intentionally. They're trying to make super organic, you know, plant-based protein, but maybe it just doesn't taste great.

And they're so focused on the ingredients, the compound, the logo, the look, getting you to buy. it that they forget about really the one reason why someone might buy a protein over the other isn't necessarily just the ingredients it's it's if i'm going to replace food with the protein shake it better taste good so i want it to taste good and if yours doesn't taste great because that was the last thing you thought about then you built an unintentional brand and the brand is yeah i think it's healthy but it tastes like shit well it's interesting like i work obviously in the technology space and technology i think is often lacking of brand building. Yes, the products and the services have an identity,

but what does it stand for? And I think a lot of technology companies have unintentional brands. Like I even think about a company like Facebook. It's like I would argue that their products and services are a lot better than their brand, right? And that's like, you know, an example of a company that's almost successful in spite of their brand. Sure. Sure. I think media companies fall into that as well. Right.

I mean, they set out to tell the news, but if they tell the news only one way, right? Then their brand, just like you said, is then unintentional, right, in spite of itself. And then that's really, really hard to change unless you make a specific, like, conservative effort to go and change it. The biggest mistake I see people making, and, you know, the reason I wrote the book, it wasn't for huge brands to figure out how to brand it, but mostly for people trying to build from scratch. I'm going to build a company from scratch, a business from scratch, I have a following, build that from scratch, build my personal brand from scratch as a salesperson. You know, by 2027, the U.S. Department of Labor says that over 50% of U.S.

taxpayers are going to fill out a 1099 over 50 percent like that's that's a lot of gig workers that's a lot of people making a lot of money outside of a nine to five right so those people are all selling something whether it's a service it's you know the therapist their real estate agents they're artists and everything in between the biggest mistake i see is that they just don't even start right there's there's no starting they or they start and it's start with the wrong things. They focus on the stuff. They shouldn't focus on the start, which is the logo, the office, the things you can see, feel, and touch instead of the foundation. You know, and a good analogy of that is in building a house, you know, like, obviously that's

right up my alley, but like, so, you know, the amount of houses that I see that are beautiful on the outside, but falling apart on the inside, it's only a matter of time before that house comes crumbling down. It's a house of cards, right? The foundation is cracked, but you have a nice marble kitchen. That's not a great deal. It's not a great house. So you've got to start with the foundation, which is that core identity, which is a lot of the early brand work, which is a big chunk of the book. What would you say are the few sort of early checklist moves that someone in this gig economy could make to start building their brand? So the first thing that I would do, let's say you're building a personal brand and not just a product brand.

If you're trying to build a personal brand for yourself, is you find somebody, okay, you can do this on social too. You can just do a survey, but you could find somebody that you trust, but that doesn't love you. Because love has a different level of trust, okay? And it's not always honest. So find somebody you trust and ask them to describe you without using your name and see what they say. you know take the best leave the rest try to get the most honest response you might not realize that you're the one who talks too loud you might not realize that you're the one who walks with their eyes on the ground and doesn't make eye contact which means that your personal brand and your

first impression as you walk through every room as a potential salesperson is hi my name is ryan sirhant and i'm insecure how are you right like really try to do that work because we don't think about it often. We all think we're great. Or the other side of the spectrum is we all think we're terrible. You know, we either talk ourselves up or we talk ourselves down, right? It's far harder to talk ourselves down the middle, right, to know that there are great things about us, and there's also things that we're all working on. It's much, much easier to go far right or far left. And I would do that work and have that influence that initial core identity. Part of our, and what we teach and I go through is called our Sirham brand strategy system where we go

through core identity, really figure out what that and is who you are. And then we develop a content plan, right? It doesn't mean you have to go dance on TikTok, right? But it does mean that you have to be out there. Maybe your version of content is actual events. You do a monthly event or a monthly dinner. Maybe your version of content is LinkedIn thought leadership. Maybe your version of content is TwitterX, right? And that's where you're going to be and you're going to post 10 times, whatever it might be what's that consistent content that you're creating and maybe it's ads for a product right we want to consistently be on i-95 that billboard we got to have it we want to consistently be in the commercials out during squawk box we got to have whatever that might be

what is that consistent because great brands are consistent they're also clear concise and memorable right especially at the beginning especially at the beginning and then you take that consistency and turn it into wins. And then the third phase when you're building your personal brand or even a product brand is shouting it from the mountaintops, it's amplification. So how do you make sure that success begets success? How do you make sure that people are aware of your wins so that they know your wins are out there because those wins are going to enable other people to want to win with you? And then those wins, those successes are attractive. Like I wear the whoop, not because someone said oh it doesn't work right wear it because people said oh no it works you got to try

it oh okay i guess i will success be get success and then round around around you go it's been other perceptions of the whoop brand oh i don't know i haven't asked a lot of people i'm sure you focus on it a lot more than i do um uh you know what's i think a lot of people know it but if they don't have it they don't know what the the app looks like yeah right because it's a lot about this and so anytime I post I don't know if my strain is really down or stage performance or anything like I'll screenshot the you know that main page and you can post it and the amount of comments I get from people like what is that where can I get that what is that thing and having to having to explain it you know I don't know I'm sure sure people look at it as a you know like a you know a fitness tracker but don't necessarily truly understand the technology around you behind it unless they follow you on on Instagram and know that you took down on Amazon and maybe that's right I appreciate that reference thank you for that great a great post yeah well you know they came after us I know it's I saw totally totally totally totally awesome and I do every now and then I want to like I don't

want to break it I do want to open it to see that thing that you write on the inside but I don't you know I don't have to get a new one rides referring to the don't bother copying us we will win circuit board, which lives inside every 4.0, which is a pretty good, a pretty good story. So, you know, you're, you're clearly into health and fitness. It sounds like you're getting, what, six hours of sleep a night? Yeah, for now. I mean, tonight I'll sleep more. Okay. Saturday night I'll sleep more. So maybe seven or eight? Yeah, I'll try. Like I, you know, over New Year's There's one night. I think I slept, I think our daughter, you know, she's four.

She slept like 12 hours. We slept like 11. So that's catching up on your sleep debt? Yeah, it makes me feel better. Yeah, I'll sleep, you know, minimum I try to sleep six. Anything below six is, it's, it's, you definitely feel it, right, the next day. Like I had to give this speech yesterday on five hours of sleep. That's hard, man.

Like that is, like you feel, especially as you get older, like you, you, you, you, you, you, you know you feel it um i also find that you're like especially for a stage performance like that you're a little bit more at least i am like a little bit more jittery like if i've gotten my seven hours you know if i've gotten over three hours of restorative sleep i just feel very calm yeah under the public speaking environment yeah your body's operating at maximum performance that way, right? You know, it's interesting as you talk about age. Like, I think a lot this year about sacrifice. You talk about my schedule, my calendar, and, you know, what we all sacrifice to achieve our goals. And is it actually worth it? And I feel like when you're younger, like,

how old are you now? I'm 34. Yeah. So I feel like up until you're 35, you measure, we measure our life by our wins. And then something happens when you turn 35, I'm 39 now, where you know, you still want to win, it never goes away, you still want to have successes, you want to make more, you want to build more, but you start to measure your life by your losses. Like, I don't think so much about the deals I've won now, as much as I think about the deals I've lost. Like, I don't think so much about the trip that I took to Canada and did that really, really cool thing, and that's a notch on my belt. I think about the time I lost with my daughter. you know like and it's it's interesting as that changes and i i think life is like a full glass of

water you know like ice water and the winds are the ice you know and it's like how do you how do you balance that that glass so that you can live at peak fullness at all times if i just focus on the winds which are the ice and i got to take the ice out and then i got a lot of emptiness in there it's a lot of loss if i just factor if i just focus on the journey and don't care about my wins then i got to take all the ice out and throw it away and And then there's still a lot of emptiness in there, right? There's still a lot of loss. And it's just been something I've been thinking about in 2024.

Definitely getting older here, Will. Well, you seem like someone who's definitely on the dopamine cycle of the next, you know, the next deal, the next close, the next thing. It'd be hard to be answering a thousand emails a day otherwise. Yeah, you have to. But I'm also like a product of my environment. I remember like I was not always this way like I remember I was in real estate for like a year so I got into it September 2008 so then Thanksgiving 2009 been in it for a year I was in it doing like small rentals but I was losing them to you know and I started to be an actor my whole life I was I was an introvert quiet you know kind of kid and I remember going home and then at dinner my dad asked me so like what you know Ryan what he'd been up to and I just started talking about talking. And then before I know it, I'm looking around the whole table, my family, my two brothers, everyone's just staring at me. I was like, what? My little brother goes, dude,

you talk so fast now. I'm like, what do you mean? I don't talk fast. You talk slow, dude. Why don't you talk a little bit faster? I don't have the fucking time to have this conversation with you people. It was just, and they were like, man, dude, New York has changed you. I was like, I don't know if New York changed me as much as like being a New York City real estate broker changed me and every single minute counts. I don't know. That was a core memory of mine. I was like maybe I should slow down just a little bit. Do you do anything to, I mean, it sounds like you exercise every day. Do you do anything like meditate or breathing stuff? Are you a big coffee guy? No, I drink one cup of coffee on Saturdays. I don't want to, I, I try to limit my addictions, you know. Um, and so I, uh, I just

drink my big thing of electrolytes for a long, long time. And that keeps you. I feel like when I fill my, I fill my stomach with water, it kind of does the same thing, you know, um, at least I've convinced myself of that anyway. And, you know, I, uh, working out is, is kind of my meditation, right? Yeah, that works. It's, it's, it's, it's music. I can't talk, I don't talk to anybody, I just do my thing, move forward. You know, you're counting a lot. If you, when you lift, you count. You're present.

You're a lot of count. Present. Yeah. You're counting. You're keeping track of time. You're breathing. You're watching your breathing. You're flexing.

You're bracing your core and your back. So it's like, then I go and sit there for half an hour and meditate. I'm like, it's kind of the same thing. Just way more boring with no potential benefits other than my mind might be in a clearer headspace. after, but like my mind's pretty clear, and I have my best ideas while I'm working out anyway. Keep my phone by me, quickly jot down notes. If I'm with my personal trainer, I don't have my phone. And if I look at my personal trainer text message chain, it's all him texting me random things. I'm like, hey, can you text me 99 times 2? 2 p.m. I'll know what it

means. So it's just like this whole list of just to-do list items because it's like, that's what it pops up. That's what it pops up. Same thing. That's why we all have thoughts in the shower. It's like that's when you actually have to stop. Stop. You're not looking at a screen. You're not watching a thing. You're not talking anybody else. You're in the shower and you're just focused on get hair now, body.

Oh shit. What about that thing at seven? Like your brain actually starts to say, okay, here's all these things that we didn't think about today because you were just too distracted by everything else. I get it. I mean, for me, meditating has been very powerful. I started doing it like when I was maybe about 25 and I was struggling with managing them, the company and like the weight of you know having people and investors that you're responsible

to and not feeling comfortable with that i think before and after meditation like life before versus life after like both versions of myself were good at your like day-to-day tasks and just like go go go go go go but the meditated version became much more comfortable with leadership and stress and look it's not for everyone it's hard thing to push on people. But for people listening to this, really, should I try it or not, there's two sides to it. Well, you're a, you're a hardware and a software and a motivation business, right? You, you know, are a disruptor. I mean, you, you guys get classified as a lot of different

things, not just one thing, right? So you got to, you gotta wear a lot of different hats, right, all the time. And how do you build upon that? I mean, you, I mean, do you spend how much time do you spend thinking about the hardware, the product, the software, ARR, like the next quarter versus last quarter? Like, what do you spend your time stressing about, thinking about iterating on? A lot of what I spend my time on is thinking about the next versions of the product. And that could be what we're releasing from a software standpoint in the next two weeks or two days. That could also be looking at very futuristic generations.

of the hardware. So I would say that's where my gravitational pull is, but there's also a massive responsibility around hiring and, you know, working with your leadership team and managing finances and budget and this and that. Are it, what now? We're like $5.50, something in that neighborhood. Jesus.

On payroll? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. do you look at that like every week do you get that breakdown you're like oh my god we have to we that's a lot it's a lot of people but i'm more focused i would say on the overall output of the company versus sure the question of costs i mean what they're deeply related and obviously you can't get over your skis but when you feel like you've got control

of growth everything else follows when you feel like you have control of innovation and everything else follows. What is the aligned mission for those 550 people? Like, where are they going to hoot and holler at at the end of the year? Like, what's that? How do you keep that many people aligned on a singular mission? Well, our mission is to unlock human performance. And the deeper meaning behind that is we want to improve health and fitness for millions of people.

and we look at that across verticals of growth, which is getting more people on whoop, retention, which is keeping them on whoop, and then operational excellence, which is how our business is successful and profitable and healthy. And that's kind of the pyramid that everything marches from. And then you can look at a bunch of different OKRs throughout growth and retention and operational excellence. And hopefully every single person within this building knows how the work they're doing is pointed at a few of those different OKRs or one in, you know, very specific one. Yeah. Got it. So super cool. Yeah.

Very interesting. Big fan over here. I appreciate you. Let me ask you that. Yeah. Well, grateful to have you on Woop. The book is a brand it like Sir Haunt. and it is officially out as of one last Tuesday okay so it's fresh out and uh you can find it

where uh books are sold where can folks find you ryan at ryan sirhant everywhere easy to find very popular on social media any closing thoughts for us ryan no i'm glad that monick our lovely squash player connected us in the first place Monique's the best. Yeah. No, man, this has been a super, super great time. I really appreciate you. Likewise, look forward to meeting in person soon,

and congrats on everything, and congrats on the book. Thanks, ma'am. I'll talk to you soon. Okay. Big thanks for Ryan for joining me this week. Great to hear about his health and wellness journey and check out his new book, Brand It Likes or Haunt. If you enjoyed this episode of the Woof podcast,

please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question, was he answered on the podcast, podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-49-5-2. If you're thinking about joining WOOP, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership. And new members can use the code, W-I-L, to get a $60 credit on WOOP accessories. That's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.

Thank you.