During Episode 92 of The HyperFast Agent Podcast, hosts Dan Lesniak and Keri Shull speak with Ryan Serhant, a billion-dollar agent, author, and the star of Million Dollar Listing: New York. Ryan answers questions from audience members at The HyperFast Sales Summit about what to do when you’re a brand new agent, how to manage an effective team, what inspires him, and more.
Episode Highlights:
- What's Ryan’s biggest piece of advice for a real estate agent starting out?
- If you're a brand new real estate agent starting out don't do it by yourself. Work on a team.
- Agents get in thinking they're going to make a lot of money and they quit in the first year because it’s hard.
- Treat those first 2-3 years as if you are in graduate school.
- Focus on learning and absorbing as much information as possible.
- Ryan is a very strong believer in taking improv classes.
- His ability to sell comes from his ability to talk to strangers.
- Taking improv classes will change the way you talk to people.
- Was there a moment when he realized exponential growth was right there?
- Ryan says there was no “A ha!” moment for him. When he got the team up to ten people he knew something was happening.
- If you want to get to a higher price point, bring someone on.
- Keri says that bringing more people on doesn’t necessarily mean more problems, but new problems.
- Grow for the right reason.
- Procrastinators are busy getting nothing done.
- Ryan discusses the balance between being a disciplinarian and leading by example.
- His reputation is his brand.
- His strategy for managing people is to hire good people. Hire agents that take initiative.
- As long as he trains people the way he wants, then he doesn't have to explain it twice. He has to set expectations and be a clean and honest communicator from the get-go.
- The first new agent he brought on was someone to do rentals.
- What is his opinion on the importance of marketing automation and how much time that's saving him?
- A lot of the business they do isn't cold lead business. They do a good amount of marketing automation. They do a lot of manual marketing to people as well.
- Ryan is inspired by the real estate community.
- He talks about how being a realtor is a crazy job.
- Agents wake up every day to deal with other people's emotions and they do it for free.
- People should give realtors a little more credit.
- Anything that could go wrong, tell them from the beginning.
- An audience member asks how Ryan managed to shut down Times Square for an hour when he proposed to his wife.
- Ryan tells the story of planning his epic marriage proposal.
- Ryan did not have a mentor starting out but wishes he had.
3 Key Points:
- In your first few years of real estate, focus on learning and absorbing as much information as you can.
- Realtors work for free until multiple other people make the same decision that is majorly financial.
- Communicate and set expectations from the beginning with everyone, including long-term friends.
Resources Mentioned:
