Ryan Serhant Built a Brokerage During COVID. Here's What He Learned. | BAT Disrupt

Everyone said launching a brokerage during a pandemic was a terrible idea. Ryan Serhant did it anyway. SERHANT. now has over 600 advisors and is one of the fastest-growing firms in the country.

What you'll learn:
• Why Serhant walked away from a top brokerage to build his own during COVID
• How he scaled from zero to 600+ advisors and became a top brokerage in under four years
• The AI-powered tools SERHANT. is building that most firms won't have for years
• His aggressive pricing strategy and why the old brokerage model is already dead

Ryan Serhant is the CEO of SERHANT., star of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing New York, and Netflix's Owning Manhattan. He's one of the most recognized names in real estate.

00:00 Intro
01:28 From Reluctant CEO to Brokerage Leader
04:25 Managing a Growing Team
09:00 Pandemic Opportunities for Business Growth
13:56 Reaching Future Buyers With YouTube
18:20 Leveraging AI in Real Estate
20:15 The Future of Brokerages
23:20 AI-Powered Real Estate Assistant Demo
29:44 Expansion Plans
32:14 Aggressive Pricing Strategy Explained
36:53 Attracting Top Advisors from Big Brokerages

BAT Disrupt is hosted by Matt Breitenbach — born and raised in the Hamptons, Managing Principal Broker and CEO of the Breitenbach Advisory Team (BAT). Twenty years in this market. Over $3 billion in career sales. He started at 22, crossed $1 billion in sales before 30, and has represented NBA champions, hedge fund principals, and entertainment executives across some of the most significant transactions on the East End — including the $85M former Calvin Klein oceanfront estate.

BAT is the Hamptons' leading luxury real estate team. Featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Billboard. Named by Inman News as one of the best real estate podcasts in the country.

🎙️ New content drops every month. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. 🔔

📩 Want instant updates? DM us or email disrupt@batrealestate.com to be added to our mailing list.

💼 Work directly with Matt → matt@batrealestate.com
🏡 Hamptons real estate & more about BAT → batrealestate.com
🌐 All BAT Disrupt episodes → batdisrupt.com
🎤 Be a guest or attend a BAT Disrupt Live Event → disrupt@batrealestate.com
📲 @mattbreitenbach | @breitenbachadvisory

#HamptonsRealEstate #LuxuryRealEstate #RealEstatePodcast #BATDisrupt

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:22

All right, Matt, right back here with Bath Disrupt Podcast. Really excited to have Ryan Sterhand here at your amazing office. We had to get the cameras going because we're getting some good some good material right out the gates. But I appreciate you coming on. Bath Disrupt's all about interviewing and having conversations with the innovators, the best disruptors in real estate. And I can't think of a perfect guy to have on than you, man.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

It's your podcast, man. So just quick uh expectation to set. We're currently at my clubhouse here in Soho, uh the corner of West Broadway in Broome. And in like 10 minutes, this might get real loud. It's all right. There's honking, there's everything. And what they're doing, they're honking at us. Like, I need houses. They're also trying to get into the tunnel, but the way I hear it is I'm like, guys, there's just low individuals.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I'm like a cat. I'm used to like quiet and like serenity. And then you come into the city and there's I try to make a turn coming down here, and some cop is screaming at me. I was in the wrong lane. So like I'm just trying to keep my nerves down. But yeah. So hopefully I don't freak out if there's too much hot too.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Stay calm. Stay calm. It's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

No, I love I love having you on. I remember back in 2016, I think we had a listing together years ago in the Hamptons.

SPEAKER_03 1:30

Yeah, Main Street.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah. And it was like, I guess, like, take me back to then, like, Sir Hand team was like starting a brokerage always in the cards for you, or you know, where were you at that point?

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Not really, man. Like, you know, there's there's major overhead in the brokerage business. There's, you know, the margins are tight. I I always look at like the person that I want to become in 10 years, someone's that person right now. I'll be my own version, but someone is that person right now. So I think if you had asked me in 2016 to look, like, hey, do you want to start your own company? I would have looked at the top CEOs and I would have said, nope, you don't want to be those people. Um uh, you know, at that time I was still very much looking at like who are the top real estate brokers globally?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Right? Residential, commercial, like what are their lives like? What do they do? How do they operate? Um, and I was excited around that time when we when we first started working together in 2016 about just seeing what expansion felt like and really testing things out in different markets.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Right? Like you are your own brand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Right?

SPEAKER_03 2:35

You know, when clients call you, they want you.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Okay. And if it's a certain price point and above, you're probably gonna be there and fixing the microwave. If it's a certain price point and below, you have a team, you've got people, you'll still facilitate the transaction. And at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Yeah, right. So, what is it, what does that look like if you can't be there at two o'clock ever?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Because you're not there. Yeah. And so the Hamptons was kind of like my first test. And that summer of 2016, I I took on the the Gurney's resort and did that, and that was hard. Yeah. That was hard.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

And you're out there a lot, I've never seen a lot of comments.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Every weekend.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

In that tunnel coming out of the dude.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Every weekend. No, that one would take me to Jersey every weekend. I got lost. He's going the wrong way. No, every weekend uh going out there, and it was just, you know, it was just tricky. Um, it's deep. Yeah, you gotta go out there and live it and breathe it. And so I really learned that process during 2016 of how like real estate brands can be shopped globally, but they are sold hyper-locally. You know? And so uh, but I started the team in like 20, like really like 2012, built and then built it up through 2020 until I started my own stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

It's so hard, teams. I mean, just on a vulnerable level of myself, like trying to figure out how to scale, you know, try to grow. Yep. Like, I mean, how it seems like there's limitations. It feels like teams you have to go either really small or like really big. I don't know how you feel. I mean, what do you think about teams? I mean, how is it changed? How has teams structure changed from then to now, I guess?

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Oh. Well, when I first started, I mean, I so I started building the Surhan team in 2012, and it was literally for me, it was just about being in New York City and handling geography. So it was, okay, I'm based in Soho. Um, I always have been. I'll be based in Soho. I want to be able to meet clients in the Upper East Side within 15 minutes at any given point in time. The Upper West Side within 15 minutes, everywhere was just within 15 minutes. So downtown, it could be me. Um, everywhere else, I needed to expand myself. So I looked at myself almost as like the quarterback of a football team. Yeah. And then said, okay, if I want to win the Super Bowl, I'm not going at it by myself. I'm going at it with players. I have to have an offensive line, I need tight ends, I need wide receiver, I need running backs. Um and I want to be able to be a resident agent everywhere. So that way I can work on branding and expanding.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

That'll be my through line all day long. And then I'll have amazing lieutenants everywhere else. So my team first was all right, my Upper East Side go-to is Amy, right? My Upper West Side go-to at that time was Roya. And then I just filled out all the neighborhoods, and then they would get too busy.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

And then I would strengthen the neighborhoods, is really kind of how it started. Yeah. Um, uh, and I was small to begin with, and then we just grew out of default. And that's what I tell everybody about building real estate teams is first you have to really write, like write down or type. Like, why do you want to build a team? If you have inbound lead flow and you need somebody to help you with that, okay, there's that's a reason. If it's just to make more money, more people equals more problems.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You become a manager. That's what I've found out. And I'm like, I feel like it's almost like a small business problem, too, right? It's like you know, the great painter, the great attorney, and it grows, and you know, then you get too big, they try to figure out you're maybe good at I'm good at brokering deals, but you know, do this stuff too. And a lot of brokers, it's not like we're educated on this stuff or you know what the you have MBAs, you know, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

No, me neither. I didn't go to business school. Did I have a degree in English literature and theater?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

No, what's up?

SPEAKER_03 6:07

There you go. We're gonna talk about Beowulf after this. Dude, Middle earth, man. Let's go back to it. I love it, man. Old English. Yeah. The um uh Yeah, so then the team started growing, and then I started placing people in like different markets. I tried and failed in LA. It's just that is a tough time zone difference. Yeah. And it's like it just I ended up I like really quickly, I was like, oh, yep, I'm a st I'm I'm an absentee dad.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

And then why would you be with me? Like if you're in in across the country, unless I've set up clear expectations for value proposition, yeah, which I just in 2016 I just didn't have. Yeah. Um, but the team built, like by 2020, we were 65 people. Um we did, you know, we were doing a lot. You know, our our my 2019 GCI was like just over 20 million, and then COVID hit. Uh, but I had already put in to plan the activities to like go and start our own thing. Because by that point, I was like, where do I go from here?

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Yeah, you kind of hit a level where you're like, okay, what's the next stage? So that's kind of where the Storhand maybe idea came into like around 2020 or so.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Yeah, well, it was it was a bit yeah, it was like 2018, because we had set up a media company. I wrote my first book, we set up the education company, which then became sell it.com this year. Yeah. Um, so we built all that. So I had all these things while I was at the brokerage. We had 60, 65 people, we had operations, graphic design. We we were our own company, right? We were doing all the new developments, so I had all of the the overhead, right, without actually owning the thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Um, and I just that at that then I my mindset shift. I looked at all the CEOs of brokerages, and I was like, oh man, I definitely now don't want to be them. You know what? I'm gonna go be better.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Because somebody's gotta lead the charge for this business into real estate 3.0.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

That's what I love about you, man. Like that's what I always had in my ethos too, trying to do it better, innovate, elevate. I love having you on it, man, because you totally, you know, and and building Sir Hand. So I guess like when you start to build Sir Hand, like what's the how did how did that go? How was that process trying to build a brokerage?

SPEAKER_03 8:10

Well, this is somewhat controversial to say, but thank you, COVID. Yeah. Like, when am I ever gonna get a you were really, really busy because you were out east. Yeah. It's probably the busiest year of your life.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yeah, yeah. Right? We were out in there breaking laws in New York. Maybe don't know that.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

In the city, we everything was shut down. There were bodies in Central Park, right? You had the Red Cross ship, it was the end of the world. And so we had our spring market for free like just given to us. Yeah. Like, hey, you don't have to show, you don't have to go outside. Just you can do one of two things. One, you could just watch Netflix and chill.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Or you really stress yourself out and build a company.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

And so I chose like option two. There were a handful of us who all stayed back in New York City. We didn't go anywhere else for COVID. We all stayed back, and we just built, like, I'll show you on the third floor. We put up, we took an office in Soho that was abandoned because all office space was abandoned in the city. Yeah. It was a wild 28 days later style. Yeah. We put up construction paper everywhere and we just started writing down. All right, so legal, what do we need to do? Right? Branding, what do we need to do? Marketing, policy, everything. And uh, I found my CFO pretty quick because what also happened during COVID, which I did not anticipate, was a lot of amazing talent at a lot of other firms were let go to save costs. And so all of a sudden, all of these great people that I could never get before because of either non-competes or they're being paid so well, were like ready to go. Yeah. And they're like, wait a minute, you're hiring? You're I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna build a new company. Like, are you sick? Yeah. Are you are you do you understand that there's a lot of people?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

But the look at the time too was like, is New York ever gonna like rise?

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Yeah, every newspapers.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

It was like real doom and gloom, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

I know, and I was here like, yeah, let's go. I was in a superhero outfit. It's like, guys, it's all gonna be okay. Yeah. And it was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Um that's an amazing story. So you had you guys just got up there and papered a whole wall and started building out what you guys wanted to do.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

And yeah, and we started, we started small. I rented a friend of mine has a townhouse in Tribeca that he used as his office. Um, and he left, obviously, because of COVID. Yeah. And I was like, what are you doing with that building? Yeah. Because I could just know doorman, I didn't have to deal with anybody. Because a lot of the doorman buildings in the city were like COVID protocol, you know, swabs every day. And this was just a townhouse with a door. And he's like, I don't know, I'm doing nothing. I'm like, oh, I'll give you, I'll give you like 10,000 bucks a month if you just it'll be my office now for a short period of time. So, okay. So I used that and started onboarding people, building out all of our documentation, all of our processes. And we were we started three companies on the same day. So we started the brokerage, and from the brokerage, you know, I'm still a broker, but then there's all of the support for the agents, plus also new development, which is a separate arm, right, which is completely separate. Uh, and then ID Lab, which is the in-house creative agency. Then over here, we started sell it like Sur Hant, um, but just like for real this time, because before it had just been like, hey, let's make a course and see what happens. Yeah. But at that point, we had onboarded like 10,000 members around the world. Right now we're like just about 30,000, but back then it was about 10, we're like nine, somewhere in that range.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Um your books are really good, man, all this stuff. Like even your I've read your first one. I've made a game like like Finder Keeper Doer, I think it's phenomenal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Yeah. So uh so that happened, and then we started Sir Hand Studios, which is the production company.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:30

We were filming the last season of Million Dollar List in New York at the same exact time. I was filming a separate show about my house renovation in Brooklyn called Ryan's Renovation at the same exact time, and I was writing my second book, Big Money Energy, at the same exact time, and I had just had Xena, our daughter, at the same exact time. So all of that was happening all in 2020, plus COVID hit and like all money went away. Yeah. Like every deal died. And I was on the phone with lawyers trying to stay litigation. Yeah. Because everyone just started suing each other, but the force majeure clauses didn't hold up during 9-11.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

And so the case law for COVID meant they didn't hold up during COVID either.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Oh wow. So you had that.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Yeah. So we had like there was a judge for a lot of these cases who's like, you guys can battle it all out, but 9-11 didn't cancel contracts. This won't. Not in New York. Wow. And so everyone just had to settle. So we just started like settling townhouse deals and settling things, and some people walked, and then we'd already had the media company already set up. So whereas everyone else started scrambling to do things in video, we were like, hey, remember that goofy thing that people made fun of us for? We were like taking videos of all of our apartments. Well, fuck you guys. Thank you. Here we go. And we like flooded the market with all of our content. We just started doing virtual deal after virtual deal after virtual deal.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

There was a lot of guys that won on TV like that hasn't made it. I feel like one thing that always differentiated you, just as a broker, was some of your media game, your YouTube game, like your video game. I mean, like, speak to that. I mean, where did that start?

SPEAKER_03 12:57

2016. Yeah. Um, yeah, like my first YouTube tour was twenty, I think it was 2016. So Million Dollar Listing premiered in March of 2012. Uh and I kind of saw not after the first season, but after like the third season, so like 2015, like people were calling. Because at the beginning, no one calls people they see on TV.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:20

Like you don't watch like the Kardashians, and you're like, yo, get Kendall on the phone. Right. So no one, and they there was social following, but it just wasn't the same. And so after this third season, people started reaching out and they're like, hey, 36 Grammarcy Park East. I saw, is it still available? What you saw on the show last night. I'm like, well, dude, we filmed it last year. No, it's sold. Did you not finish the episode?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Um, I was like, what if I could do that faster? And then I was on a vacation with my sister and her two little kids, who were like, I don't know, nine and eleven or something at the time. And we went to a place that had no TV. And I was like, dude, what the fuck am I gonna do? There's no TV. And her kids, I was like, dude, we're screwed. Yeah. They were totally fine. Yeah. All they needed was Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

And I guess I didn't spend enough time with little kids. It was like, where and this was 2016.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

My daughters can face the time. They can like dude.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

I was like, wait, so what are you guys gonna do? Like, what do you mean? We have our iPads. Like, what about TV? And they're like, what's TV?

SPEAKER_02 14:15

It's like the Arabic streaming, you know.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

And so at that moment, and like House of Cards was on in 2016. So like Netflix had just only recently gone into heavy streaming. And so I was like, okay, our future buyers aren't gonna watch Million Dollar Listing in New York. And these kids have influence over their mom.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

I know, because we're on this day on vacation because of these fuckers. Yeah. So uh where are they? And they were just watching YouTube, and so I reached out to my uh uh uh my team, my social team, and it was like, we need to start doing property tours like right away. Yeah, and there was a guy that works with me, Joe Loresca, uh, at the time, who was like, you need to sort of vlog, and that's what I thought was so stupid. Um, but then I did it anyway, and so we started just doing those, and those more people watched those YouTube tours, yeah, and everything's any TV show.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

My dad's 75 years old, I went over his house like two weeks ago. He's got YouTube on. He's not even watching, he's like, he's a builder, he's watching TSC built.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

I'm like, my parents, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

But it's amazing. Like, I feel like it's now true. Like, I got a $15 million lead in the Hamptons because of a video I recently shot, and I feel like it's like it's even more so now. It's cool that you were so ahead of the game then. I mean, are you guys doing anything with Sir Hand Studios now video differently? Like, where's the future video, you think?

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Oh man. So we do a significant amount now compared to what we we used to do via uh via lives, right? So I think so a lot of it is.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

That seems like Twit, all this stuff is like coming into it. Like, what do you think of it? I guess.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Yeah, I think I think there's a play for that in the real estate space. The problem is consistency. With the video game, you can plug in all day, every day. The video game exists and it's right in front of you. You gotta like really have a full-time job of going and seeing properties, which can be kind of it can be a lot. So that's tough to do. I tried it, it's it's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Um, uh, but I do think that live is going to become more and more prominent. You see it now, even Netflix now. Yeah. What they they're what they really care about over there is live.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Well, that roast with Tom Brady went crazy. That was huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

It's still huge, it's still like number one there.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah, it seems like the then you cut up the short form content. I like I didn't even watch roast, but I know clips of the roast because I just go on Instagram and anywhere else, and you see it all all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

And now you see, you know, Disney, Hulu, HBO Max, all of those are gonna wrap them all up and bundle it. So we're just gonna get cable back, live TV is gonna come back, and we're just gonna run around in a big circle. Yeah. But I think for all of us, our ability to create you know vertical video short form across all platforms uh for properties, and what we've really started doing is split screen. So that way it saves so much time. Because for the last eight years, I've run around personally and ran through these properties to give tours, and they take time, you gotta edit them, they've got to be lit well. Now, what do you really care about? You care about people seeing it.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yeah. Right? That's what I love. I I noticed about you too. Like you just like jump on there and just film something. Yeah, move fast. Like, yeah, move fast, man. Yeah, for sure. Like, and you'll just put like you put up your schedule, which I thought was amazing. Actually, made me like, damn, I gotta get better at my own schedule because you're just people stressed now about that schedule. Yeah, but like you you you'll just put up there and and shoot short form video too, like that. It seems like that does better sometimes on the video.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Always always now. We don't I don't have any, it's been two years since I made a true long form vlog.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Um just because the market changes, people change, so you gotta pivot. And so we just started doing you know vertical short form split screens where I will sit either at our blue wall downstairs or in my office, and I'll talk about the property, just my authentic thoughts, or like the top five things I love about this house, and then the B-roll we'll still get, and then we'll put it above. And then what we're also starting to do is I'm trying to find as many efficiencies as I can because, like you saw, my schedule is using AI to do things like so. This is me um in Chinese giving a property tour of one of our videos uh one of our property.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

That's amazing. I mean, so what do you think what's your thoughts on AI? Like, what are you like you guys are working on AI a lot here too, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:17

Yes. I think it's a it's a paradigm shift. Um it's a paradigm, yeah, it's a paradigm shift, man. I think it's it's it's the democratization of of tasks, you know? Yeah. And um I think eventually you won't even do things on your phone. It's just gonna do it all for you. Right? So I think you'll have action models that do a lot of that work for you, and they're gonna be people that move fast enough to adapt to it, and then people that that don't. Um, you know, we use AI for obviously my voice, you know, and then we use there's a program that we use that does my video. So like you'll start seeing property tours where it's just AI Ryan, AI voice, and I don't have to go there anymore.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

And it's the the effect is gonna be the same. We're getting the content in front of the people, yeah. And you're never gonna be able to replace authentic live moments. And I think like star power, even for real estate, is actually gonna get even stronger because people are gonna care about seeing the real thing more than anything.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

And I think that's kind of where you saw like the peaks and valleys of NFTs and stuff. Yeah, it's really, really exciting at the beginning, but then I kind of did fizzle. Yeah, let that calm down for a second and see where people have real focus.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah, amazing. I mean, you always seem to be so forward thinking from your team to your brokerage. I mean, when you set up Saran, like what what we were thinking about, you know, you talk a lot about future and your branding, future real estate. Like, what does the future look like for you? And what we what what is the what were you doing with the brokerage to make it compatible with the future, I guess?

SPEAKER_03 19:45

A couple things. First, I believe that the process of buying and selling a home and working with people who need to buy and sell homes must be simpler. I think that there was brokerage 1.0, which was I want to buy a house, I want to go to the real estate agent's office, he's gonna tell me what's on the market for sale. If I like him, he'll show me things, we'll see signs out there, maybe there's a cupcake involved, and we buy it, and there's a significant amount of paperwork, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:11

That was a hundred years. Brokerage 2.0 is saying, okay, how do I take all that and put it in your phone or your computer? Right? And so then you've got Compass, you've got Redfin, you've got uh, you know, all these other firms that said, you know what, we're gonna take that as a problem, and the solution is gonna be we're not gonna make it simpler, we're just gonna make it easier. So now you don't actually have to do a lot of that, we're gonna make it easier by putting it in screens. And with every problem that we come that we see, we're gonna create a new screen. So now it's like, oh, AI, here's another screen. Go learn it, go figure it out. It makes things easier, but it doesn't make it simpler. And so in my mind, it was always I think the greatest value that a brokerage could ever give to a real estate agent is to make their life simpler. Right? Whether that's through lead generation, which we do through branding and through creative. So that's why we have the creative agency and we have the film studio and studios, right? Or it's in democratizing their tasks, right? So that the tasks uh get done for you. Yeah. So that you say, hey, thank you so much, brokerage 2.0, for giving me all these screens. But over here, brokerage 3.0, I I don't even need the screens.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Because the screens do the work for me. And so that's what we created with Simple. Yeah. Right. Simple does that work for us.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

And you're creating you creating tech, like in-house tech and stuff, like for Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

I'll show it to you. Hold on, I have a protein shake delivery.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

I love that. I need that.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

I'll give it to you. That's fine. It's an energy drink that we actually we own called uh called update that I was holding that whole time, where they split the caffeine molecule and use parizanthine so there's no crash. And you d but there's no crash, there's also no buzz. Yeah. So you don't coffee either. Yeah, there's sometimes like you people like to drink coffee because they get addicted to the feeling. You know, but then there's always then there's everything that comes after it. Um and so you drink more coffee. With that, you drink one and you're like, I don't think it did anything. And then at the end of the day, you're like, why do I feel normal? Yeah. And I wasn't tired. It's so crazy.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

This is just So you still brokering like Wait, you asked about tech. Oh yeah, go back into that.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

So stay there. Hold on. Uh I didn't tell you what it is. Yep. Yep. Whoops. Crazy. Um you gotta be careful with me opening my phone.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah, I feel you as a broker. My wife sees me open the phone, she's like, what do you think?

SPEAKER_03 22:31

I know. So this is simple, right? So simple, Surhan, simple. So this is AI, we built it, we we announced it in January. We're in beta right now, just with people at the company. Okay. So anything you would want ever done in your life is just done through this. So for example, I mean, like, so transaction workflows, like everything's here. You you there's no need for assistance anymore. Sorry to all the assistants that's walk that are watching. All marketing, everything is all in one spot. Okay. That's amazing. But what it really does, yeah, all that's great, and we have agents who just do it that way. Yeah. But you would say, like, um I'm sitting with Matt Breitenbach. I'm on his podcast right now. He has a new house at on Meacox Road. Um, and he needs a CMA and a listing presentation sent to the seller. And uh also put a calendar invite in his calendar for tomorrow morning at 9 15 so he doesn't forget. Add it to his uh follow-up process as well, just so that he has everything in order, please. Thanks. So you would do that, right? And then you would just check it for any errors. So, I mean, I don't know if it'll catch how I spelled your name how I said your name. Um, hold on. So then you go here, so you go through, right? It catches all the audio, and then I would just send it. Um uh I didn't give it an actual address, but like if I gave it an actual address, all everything I just told it to do now just happens without issue. And the follow-up processor put into place, all the work gets done, all the CMAs, the pricing. Yeah, man, there's like they're out there right now. They bump it to someone on the street and they're like, hey, I've seen everything in SOHO. Yeah, so then so here it is already. So it's Matt's CMA listing and reminder already. So it's automated there, right? And then we're gonna watch the process like a domino pizza tracker. So now it's at red and slowly it'll go through.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Uh so if you wanted to create, say, you know, you can create a marketing, say you want to do a marketing manager or whatever. You want to create a marketing something, you can't.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

Yep. So uh so yeah, so you can go here. So if I just want to chat with one of the advisors, I'll just go in here and chat and I'll just I'll type them whatever, like, hey, I forgot X, Y, or Z. Right? And what you can also do is you can go through here and you can start to add collaborators. So like for your team and everything, like, hey, this is a task, but I'm gonna add Tom as my collaborator on the task just so that he knows this is happening so that he can do what he needs to do. And really what it is is um actually I don't want to tell you if what it is. I want to be kind of careful here. I end up talking too much all the time.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

It's like my problem myself, so I get it. But no, it's amazing. It's pretty cool. I mean, it's kind of built almost like a project management, task management, but specifically for real estate, which is nice. Yeah, for sales teams. With AI. Yeah, for sales teams. Yeah. Yep. So you feel like that's probably the future. That's cool. So you're working a lot on the technology.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

Turns everything, yeah, we spent a lot of time on that. Turns everything makes everything simple. Yeah. Um simple. You know, because it's like I was, you know, I had the idea because I was dealing with banks. And like I was I couldn't figure out something on chase.com.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

And the person on the other end of the phone was like, but it's so easy. Just go click on that thing on the right. I'm like, I promise you. I'm trying to click on that thing on the right.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

You're like, you understand technology.

SPEAKER_03 25:59

And the woman kept saying to me, but it's so easy.

unknown 26:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Like, yeah, but it's just not, but it's not simple.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Like back in the day, even when I was a kid getting my first paycheck from cutting lawns and stuff, yeah, like there was no internet, right? And so, but you would take that check, you would go to the bank, yeah, and you're done.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

And it was super simple. Now it wasn't easy because I had to get in the damn car, I had to wait till my mom drove me down there, I couldn't see everything else. If you want to deal with your investments, they're over here. And then they're so like, but it was super simple. And then all screens did was make things easier, but it removed all the simplicity. Yeah. So especially for us as salespeople, like you see this, like we're in this now for an hour, and then you're gonna be in commuting and they'd be running around, and then you meet somebody and be like, shit, did I answer that? And then all of this stuff's gonna happen. So, yes, things are easier, but they they're just not a few.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

I compare this business to like always feeling like you're late for an airflame.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Oh, dude, all the time.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

That's the feel like you just feel like even like we were joking off camera, like you can answer all those texts. I'm like, I struggle, it's like funny. Like, I guess that's what I want to get into. It's like, I love that you still consider in all the success and all these things you do, you still consider yourself like a real estate broker. And I guess like, how do you do that?

SPEAKER_03 27:07

There's a team that came, uh one of the earlier teams to join the company. Because like when we started, I don't know, like if you started your own company, yeah. I mean, maybe you'd have a lot more confidence than I did, but like I didn't, dude, I didn't know. Like I didn't know if people were gonna want to. I knew people wanted to join my team.

unknown 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

I had a team for a long time, I did that for a long time. I knew why people wouldn't join my team either. Yeah. It's like if I go start my own company, are people gonna want to join like Ryan's little real estate company? Yeah, you know, I have big visions, but I gotta operationalize the vision first. Yeah. And so a team that joined, you know, there was a big team that joined early on, you know, in 2020, and they're still here today. And um uh uh they explained to somebody else, and they tell agents all the time, like, dude, you gotta just go talk to Ryan. Like, go talk to Ryan, go talk to Paul, go talk to the team over there. Because people ask them, hey, how come you made that switch? You know, you're doing really well over the last four years. And the way he described it was, listen, yes, things at Surhan are cool, it's fun, it's different, everything moves fast, but at the end of the day, it was started by a dude who was a realtor who just wanted it to be done better. Yeah, and if someone at the top of the heap is gonna be making decisions around my career, I want them to have also been late to a rental showing. Yeah, I want them to have also gotten yelled at by a seller.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

You understand it, you get it. Like, you know, you understand the game, which is so so powerful. So how's it going? Like you're you're expanding, you're going different markets. I mean, how how's it been since so you start the brokerage, you start in New York, and then you're like, we're talking a little bit about Palm Beach before. I mean, where what markets are you in and where do you where what's the what's the goal? Like you're trying to go everywhere?

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Yeah, I mean, like, I never set out to do anything small, but I I am moving cautiously at our own pace.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Like we are we're much bigger now than we were when we started, but we are like finances are great, we are profitable, like we're smart. I could spend a million dollars to do that thing over there, or I could spend $78,000 and just make it fucking painful.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

I'll take the pain.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

You know? And I think my back being up against a wall because I'm doing this by myself has just always proven to be the right way to do it. Um, and so yeah, we started in 2020 just in New York. In 2021, on the brokerage side, we really worked on our foundation. Like, what is the foundation of this business? Is it gonna work? Okay, it worked. 2022, all right, great. What are the walls look like? What's the roof look like? What are the systems and processes? So we did that. 2023, we then started expanding. So I went on the same day, we opened up Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Florida. This year we opened Georgia in Q1, Orlando, and a bunch of other submarkets. Um, and we're continuing to grow. As people like our value prop. If you don't like our value prop, we don't we won't do it.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so when you're expanding these areas, you kind of like are you like looking first, or you have targets, or the people come to you more? Like, how does it organic?

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Like, it's a bit of both. It's it's probably what you guys see. Like agents who are here, like, oh, we gotta go here, I've got my best friend, and they connect us and we have a conversation. We have policy and we have requirements for what will allow us to open a market. But I say it over and over and over again like I'm here for a long time, not a good time.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Like, this is my life. Yeah, you know, I didn't start the company as a widget to then raise money and see what happens. Yeah, like this is my life. I still broker deals, not nearly as many as I used to. I focus on the bigger things, then I work with our our agents and all our markets and try to get creative. Like, for example, there's an agent we have in the Hamptons, he's been with me for a long time. His name is Jack Richardson, young, hungry guy.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Love Jack.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Right. Uh he has a deal right now on Fordune. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So the ask is $25 million. The house is like 80% complete. Right? So, but so it's tricky. So my value on that deal is this Friday, the one that just passed, talk to them and they're like, what do what should we do? We should move it. Like, here's what you're gonna do. On Monday, literally today, two hours ago, um, you're gonna drop the price to 12 and a half and see what happens. It's not an auction, it's nothing else. Freeze the marketplace and see what happens. If no one shows up, we have a problem. Yeah, and just see. And then use that. But because I've done that before a lot of times, and it works every single time.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

What about disruption? That's a pretty cool, that's a cool strategy. It's tough to get someone to kind of, hey, let's cut this thing by $15 million, $10 million. I'm like so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Years and years ago, I went to Australia.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

And I'm talking to all the brokers there, and the biggest question they had for me, because they would watch million dollar listing, is so wait a minute. Who determines the listing price in America? Yeah. It's like, well, we well, the seller does, and we do. And they're like, and you just put that on the internet?

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

Well, yeah, that's how people come. And like to them, mind blown.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

In Australia, they have reserve prices. So if you think it's worth 10, it's listed as a reserve at seven. And then buyers search based on what they can afford in a range. Oh, wow. So they're not missing your property. And then everything's on the market for 30 days. The seller covers all costs and it sells after a month or it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

So they call them auctions. To me, I hear the word auction, and I'm like, that's that's negative. Yeah. That's bad. That's distress.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

For them, having a seller put something on the put it on the market for 12 when it's actually worth 10, and having it sit there for six months, that's distress.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

And a waste of everyone's time. Yeah. It's like, oh. So I came back to the US. Um, we were selling uh a cushioner townhouse from their development portfolio on the upper west side that a previous broker had had at 16 million, then they dropped it to 14, and then they were gonna give it to me at 12. Wow. And I was like, guys, I just went to Australia.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

This is what it's I have an idea. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Um, what do you want to sell it for? And that's where most people have a hard time. Like anything above 10. If we get 10 or above, that would be great. It's like, well, the comps are actually nine to ten. So if we can get you 10, take it and run. Here's what we're gonna do. Instead of pricing at 12, we're gonna price it at six. And it's gonna be 50% off for a week. See what happens. Eventually, somebody's gonna stop this from happening because it does disrupt the market for a week. And it freezes the marketplace, and everyone has a panic attack. But we had 80 people come through in five days.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

We didn't create that urgency.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

We had 20, we had 20 offers, and a bunch of people were right around 10, and we sold it to one guy for 10 million bucks. And he would have he would have sat there and waited for the price to come down for six months.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

I've done that in the hands, but not to that degree. But I I got a really cool standford Wilson house at Sagar, it was just major captain's house. And I'm never going into that. And the guy was the ex-Secretary of State for the UK. And it was a very I was pitching against every top broker, the whole, the whole crew, every top broker. And I'm like kind of like you, I'm like a little bit of the younger guy, like I'm not that, you know, of these guys that have been doing it 20, 30 years. And I came in and underpriced it by like probably three to five million less than everybody else. Yeah. And this guy was like a very stern UK politician, and it was not an easy drop, but we sold it full price within two weeks. Yeah. And I feel like if more brokers have that kind of conversation, a lot more real estate would move fast. But it's hard. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

I think if sellers paid agents by the hour, property would be priced far more realistically.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

We do that in the Hamptons too, because there's guys that they're not gonna name names, but they'll just take it. It's one percent commission, crazy prices.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

You know what I learned in the Hamptons from those guys?

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Is the strategy of overprice, overcommunicate, allows you to oversell. So it can it can work. Yeah. If you do the middle part.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

And it's kind of a lot of fluff, but they don't, you know. Actually, we've I had a guy on my team, we ran all the numbers, and if you look at their sell-off ask, it's ridiculously high. Like their percentage off the original ask is through the roof, which is this is not good. I mean, it should be more public what that happens for. Yeah. Um this is this is a really fun run. I mean, I guess like going back to like broker, like, say I'm coming in here, like what a guy like me, yeah, you know, what's your pitch? Like that maybe come at her hand.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Um's your when's your compass on it? What's your compass contract up and what are your clawbacks like? What are those golden handcuffs? How tight are they, man? Those handcuffs are like they're just the blood in the wrists.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Well, what's your what's the pitch like for a broker like T like, you know, listen, for me, trying to build a team, scale team, that's always been a pain point, trying to figure that out. So what do you do with a guy like me, a guy who's been in Hamptons a while, do this good about business, but like, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

There's significant value proposition, okay? So first and foremost, what I care the most, and like every time I meet with any agent, or Elva who runs the Hamptons for us, meets with any agent, or in any of our other markets, because I did this process in 2019 from 2017 to 2019, I went and met with everyone. I met with Robert, I met with I met with the Zekendorfs, I met with Howard Lorper, I met with Pam Lee, everybody. All the the the five kings. Yeah. So I met with them all. Yeah. And the through line from all of them was if you come to us, we're gonna make you better. We use this. We're this, we're this. All of this is gonna make you this. Okay. If you come to us, we're gonna make you better. And I was like, okay, I get it. But I feel like there's gotta be a way where if I work with you, you should be better for me. So I'm pretty sure I'm the one doing the business. Yeah, unless you're gonna give me guaranteed leads.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Which we have here because we have a massive marketing funnel and a new TV show coming out on Netflix in June, and like a significant amount of lead flow that comes through where everyone here is super happy, right? So we have that, the other firms don't. Um, and none of them wanted to hear that. They're like, well, we have that, we got bureaucracy, the politics, of this. I'm like, yeah. So so I blame every other real estate CEO for forcing me to do this, to be completely honest. I would have been totally happy. Yeah, just going someplace and like, yes, you get it. Yeah, and so we have an in-house production studio, so you never have to think about content creation. You can do your own thing as much as you want, yeah. But we're there, they're also based in the Hamptons. We have in-house creative agency that is also based out in the Hamptons as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

All content, all creative, everything.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

What do I do for agents? Like branding, exactly, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

And then three, what we really do is really look at okay, let's say you come to us in a year from now, what is true where you're happy?

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Is it you have a well-oiled machine as a team with a great dynamic? Is it you have a clear and concise brand and you're starting to take greater market share on the ocean? Is it you actually have more time for your family because you're now using simple and holy shit, how did you not have that before?

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Everyone's a little bit different. And we will custom create what that process looks like. Then you work with me, and then there's lead flow, and then there's things we get to do together, especially in the Hamptons, and it works out on top of everything else.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

I mean, how do you do it all? I mean, like, how do you, you know, porn these agents? How do you, I mean, you got a daughter, wife, like all the stuff, family stuff.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

I mean, how do you I totally just forgot that I had a family? Um you just reminded me. I was like, wait, what's your thing?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

I think we said family, so we both reminded each other. Um, I mean it's a lot. I mean, it's amazing. I'm I'm inspired by. I've always been inspired by you. I think your incredible, incredible energy, what you do, what you've accomplished and continue to accomplish. I mean, it's awesome. Same. You know, it's a lot of a lot of hats, you know.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

It is a lot of hats. Um uh it's all about the people and surrounding yourself with the right people, being super being quick to hire, but also quick to fire, right? And quicker to promote.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:18

That's been really important. I learned that one the hard way. I also learned the quick, I learned all of these the hard way.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

Um, and then allowing those people to have freedom, but also understanding that the buck stops with you and letting them know three things. One, never tell me what I want to hear. If you do that, we will all go bankrupt.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Yeah. Never tell me what I want to hear. Two, you are now solution-oriented only. It's really, really easy to point out the problems. It's really hard to point out the solutions.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

I've found that myself too. You just keep focused on the damn problems.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

Bring me solutions. Tell me, tell me the problem, and what are your three ideas for solutions? That's how we're gonna build and grow.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

And then three, just like you read in the first book, it's it's follow through on everything. If you say you're gonna do something, do it when you say you're gonna do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Follow up again, follow through.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

Yeah, follow up, follow through, follow back.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

The three F's. So so amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

Yeah, man. And then a bunch of other things.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Like, what's the end game for you? Like, is it is is it always real estate? I mean, where are you going with this whole this Shurhan ship? I mean, where's it going? Yeah. Elon to the moon, Mars.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

Oh my goodness. This is a this is a um uh there's a holding company here. Sell it just rebranded to sell it.com a month ago. Um, and so that's Salesforce for sales training. Uh, real estate, we are making simple and expanding as as quickly and as at pace as we're comfortable with. Studios uh is you know, is is what they're really building is HGTV for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Yeah. They're involved in the Netflix show and everything else that we've been working on and are really democratizing content.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

I don't think people talk about that enough, like the truth example, like Phil Knight from Nike's what, eighty, eighty-five years old, right? Yeah, his son is a millennial or and is gonna be trying all that transfer of wealth that's going to millennials in Gen Z, that's gonna be happening.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

So where do they meet these people? Yeah, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's why we just agreed to the I'll show it to you. Why when will this come out?

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Probably, I think we usually do next, not this month and the month after, so two months from now.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

Okay, so this will be out by then. But this is the new uh the new so that uh Netflix will announce this next week.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Yeah, I've heard you teasing some of this stuff. So it's it's just it's just a yeah, well, houses different than the Bravo stuff. I mean, well Bravo's over. I know, but I'm saying, like, what's like what's is it a different premise?

SPEAKER_03 41:37

Like what's the So this show is uh it's called Owning Manhattan. Um it starts in New York City because that's where we started and then kind of watches us as it would grow and expand, and it follows myself and a bunch of other agents here as we do deals throughout the city. So it's million-dollar listing, but just me, um, not the other guys, meets like succession with a little humor.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Yeah. It's kind of what I think. You're great, you're great on TV, and you got a great question. That's what it feels like.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

Yeah, it'll be super stressful to watch, so make sure you turn it.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

One thing I don't want to get to and then we'll wrap it up, but I think one thing I always ask, and I think it's a great question. I mean, what keeps you what what worries you? Uh what keeps you up at night? You wake up at 2 a.m. What's what's on your mind?

SPEAKER_03 42:17

I to be completely honest, I I feel like it was just yesterday when I moved to New York City uh and was very, very quickly running out of money because the city is so expensive. And like I'll never forget that. Like I'll never forget running out of money at the grocery store, you know, and like crying in the subway. Like, yeah, what do I do at that point? So even though my life is very, very different now, I still react that way. And so I'd say like in the middle of the night, I still think about like all right, what is our payroll now? Yeah like what are we, what do I pay for this building? Yeah like I think about things not working, I think about just realizing like dreams and creating reality from vision and just moving as quickly as we can. All those things.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Yeah, it's gotta be heavy, all this all this all the people, especially the brokers, like everything is you know on top of you.

SPEAKER_03 43:14

Yeah, and they I think they whether they do or they don't, you know, they put a lot of responsibility on my shoulders by saying, hey, listen, I could I could work by myself, I could do a totally different job, I could be at any other firm. All these other firms are offering us money, but I'm gonna choose you and I'm gonna attach myself to this rocket ship. Don't let me down. And so I feel that, right? There's like across markets now, there's like six, just under 600 people here on the agent side. There's like 150 employees. And so that's you know, it's a lot of it's a lot of people that keep me up at night now. Yeah. And it's not just because they text me and call me the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

Yeah, yeah. And on top of that, everything else, yeah. So Ron, this has been amazing, man. I won't keep you too much. I know I got a busy day. Oh, great, man. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, thank you.