January 4, 2024 • 41 mins
Real Estate Star Ryan Serhant reveals to Bethenny the highs and lows of trying to do his job for an audience.
Find out how he reacted when producers suddenly flipped on him and the most insane reason he almost lost a $40 million deal!
All that plus, the power of negativity.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
My guest today is real estate broker, author, and reality
television star Ryan Surhan. Ryan is currently on Bravos Million
Dollar List in New York and It's spinoff Sell It
Like Surrant. Ryan was born in Houston, Texas, and moved
to New York City to launch his acting career, eventually
starring as Evan Walsh in nineteen episodes of As the
(00:34):
World Turns. He runs his own New York real estate firm.
He is charismatic, he is successful, he is engaging, he
is nice. This is just be with Ryan, Sirhan, Let's
get into it. Oh my god, thanks for coming and
being here. Where are you now and where do you live?
(00:55):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm in Soho right now I'm in the office.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
So you've stayed in New York. You're not leaving. You're
a New Yorker.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Yeah, I mean the business is headquartered here. I mean
we have a lot in Florida. Now, we have stuff everywhere.
We're in six states at the moment, and so I've
end up bouncing around a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
But like our daughter's in school here, it's a good spot.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's a good okay.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah. I grew up on a farm, so like for me.
During COVID, a lot of people were like, oh, I
got to get out of the city, and I'm like, dude,
I spent my life out of the city, Like I
feel like I just got here. I mean even though
I didn't, like I don't want I don't want to
go back, like I don't need a lawn, like a
lawnmower and a weed whacker, or like my fucking hell.
So I love having a sidewalk. I'm like, I think
(01:39):
it's great. And when everyone left in twenty twenty, twenty one,
twenty two, it was like the greatest thing of all time.
I mean, there was sadness, but it was still great.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
And what about your wife, she feels the same way.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
No, she's in Greece right now. I think she would
live in London and a heartbeat. She lived in Miami
and a heartbeat. I think she was born in New
York and then bouncedund and then they went back to
Athens pretty quickly, so she grew up in Athens. But
like for her, I think she just experiences New York
in a very different way than I experience it, because like,
New York is my office, you know, and for her
(02:11):
it's like you know New York. It's a little messy, right,
there's other places to live.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I just bought an apartment back in New York. I
sold the other place. I sold it. I ended up
selling it for full ask, which was great, especially in
the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
It was weird. And then I just got lucky, I think.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
And then I ended up buying another small place, almost
like a two bedroom, two and a half bathroom hotel room,
if that makes any sense, just for when I'm there, Yeah, easy, yeah, exactly.
But I haven't been back in a while. And this
is on the Upper west Side, which is I've spent
less time in the Upper west Side than I have
in LA.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I don't know it.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, it's fun, it's not I mean it's Upper West's families.
It's residential. There's very few office buildings, a lot of townhouse.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yes, yeah, I mean that's more. It's like the suburbs
of the city.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And what about does your wife?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
How does your wife feel about forward facing public profile
like being on TV?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
What's her relationship to that?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Uh, it would not be her choice, that's for sure.
I mean she she did it for ten years on
Million Dollar Listing and the spin offs and everything. For
for me, we worked on something else you know this
year that will come out next year that she has
a very limited limited exposure too, And I think she
(03:30):
was she was happy with that, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Because for her, like, what's that? What's the benefit?
Speaker 4 (03:35):
You know, if you can see a real benefit to
the exposure, then you want as much of it as
you possibly can. Like for me, selling real estate and
the books and the education, like all the stuff that
we do. It's important for me now and but for her,
and I think for a lot of people, like it's
just it's almost just a negative more.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Than anything exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's funny because with my fiance, we've talked about it
very briefly because it's a kind of an no starter.
But it's the same thing that you're saying, where is
the upside? Like he even felt even him being his
face being on for two seconds, even without even speaking, yeah,
just to say that he existed. There is no upside
because what if he felt unpleasant about what he was
(04:19):
wearing or what he looked like or anything like he does,
there's no reason, you know, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
People are mean, at least the people that the Keyboard
Warriors are mean. So I'm pretty good at turning all
that stuff off, Like I don't, you know what I mean,
Like I've dealt with rejection and ridicule for a long
long time. But for people that don't, I mean, you see,
you know, billies from Tennessee's you know, negative comment on you,
and you take it to heart.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
You can't sleep. You're like, well, maybe I do look
stupid like you.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
You really really it affects you, and so like, why
put yourself in that situation if you can't handle it,
you know, if you don't let it roll up your shoulders.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I would have I would have thought you were more
shielded because you sort of have like with the Housewives women,
it's just like women so close to other women with
the interactions. You at least had the shield of like
real estate as a reason you're all there and that
kind of stuff, which does present obviously other cutthroat aspects.
(05:16):
But I would have thought you were more shielded from
all the criticism.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
A little bit.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah. No, I definitely empathize with you and especially every
other woman who's whoever puts themselves out there, whether it's
a reality TV or.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Through social media. Now, you know, like you see how.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
People treat even just large TikTok influencers now, and these
these people are young, you know, you know, they're teenagers,
Like I can't even imagine having to deal with international
verbal abuse at fifteen, just because I'm kind of like
having fun on social media, like I, you know, my
daughter's four, and I don't even know how we're going
(05:57):
to handle that.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's getting worse.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And it's funny because I was just texting with Denise Richards,
who came on the podcast and we did a whole episode,
but she was discussing her dinner where you may or
may not have seen it, but you may have seen clips,
and she had an upside down jacket and she was loopy,
and even her because she's been away from it for
a minute, and as the kind of person that usually
lets things roll off her back, I said, well, first
(06:21):
of all, right, now it's Christmas and people are really unhappy.
Many people are unhappy, which makes sense because of the
marketing of this. Second of all, like it's gotten really
really intense. And what's weird is that I used to
say that sex cells and or people used to say
that sex cells and now hate cells. It really does
sell and you could think, like, sure that you're being hated,
(06:44):
yet the numbers are going up and you're succeeding, and
oddly the hate is turning into success.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And it's very counterintuitive.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Misery loves company, you know, it's it's yeah, that's that's it.
I mean, I remember like when million doar listing started,
you know, Bravo the network producers were very focused on wins,
like people want to see people winning.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
For the first let's say four years of our time
on air.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, people they want to root for someone, they want
to root for someone. They would say, that's.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
What it was, Yeah, they want to root for you.
So you know it's going to be messy on this listing,
but you got to figure out how to sell it.
There was a lot of pressure because the deals were
all you know, real, and we filmed for a year
and if there was a loss, it was like a
was it was like it was like an issue. And
then everything changed in twenty sixteen and all of a sudden,
it was like, no, people don't want to see you
(07:38):
winning anymore because they can't relate to winning, and so
they want to see you losing because they can relate
to that. And so don't be so nervous about getting
everything sold. You know that big listing over there, impossible
to sell. Oh perfect, let's see you get fired. And
so like the show of the season for those ten years.
First four to five years was a lot of yes,
awesome when I sold it, great, and then the next
(07:59):
five years it's like the market everything's terrible, you know, losing.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Crying toe so interesting, and.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
That's what people want, you know, that's what people wanted
to see.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's fascinating because I'm thinking about Housewives plots and I'm
thinking about Genshaw going to jail, and I'm thinking about
how so many shows have been pitched about divorce and
not purchased because.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Theirs broken relationships.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well no, but back then, if you pitched a show
about divorce, they would say, nobody wants to see a
show about divorce because it's not happy. And you're right, now,
shows like The Scanderval whatever, that Scanderval and the Maurice
and Kyle like it sells because it's misery and breakup.
That's so fascinating. It used to not be like that.
You're right, Wow, I never thought of that interesting. Okay,
(08:45):
So I also I didn't know that you wanted to
have an acting career, and it made me think of
something I saw, I think on one of the talk
shows with Arianna from vander Pump who's dancing and doing
really well, and I guess she initially wanted to be
an entertain and Kyle was an actress, and you know,
that didn't really pan out. And so so many people
(09:06):
that end up in this reality sphere that wanted to be,
you know, scripted actors. So I did not know that
that was you. So how did this all converge?
Speaker 4 (09:17):
I mean, I graduated college in two thousand and six
and I moved to New York City to do theater.
You know. It was it was that or try to
retake the ELSAT and go to law school, which I
did not want to do. And I had had little
money saved up from my grandfather who died, and some
construction job money in the summers and things, and so
I gave myself a couple of years and I promptly
(09:37):
ran out of money after the first two years. It
was summer two thousand and six to summer two thousand
and eight, and I just did not want a survival job,
like I didn't want to wait tables or bartender, because
I just knew if I did that, I would then
get comfortable paying my rent with my tip money and
all that, and then I would never progress in my life.
You know, at least that's the way I felt at
(09:58):
the time. Said listen, acting, improv thinking on your feet,
memorizing information, being able to talk with a smile. That's sales.
You don't know it, but you just spent the first
twenty three years of your life actually preparing to be really,
really great at selling things. So you could sell anything
(10:19):
you want to anybody because you know how to have
conversations with strangers, and so you should get into real estate.
And this was the summer of two thousand and eight,
so Lehman Brothers hadn't filed for bankruptcy yet, right the
recession hadn't started.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that all happened on September.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Fifteenth, two thousand and eight, which was my first day
in the business. And then I put acting to the
side because I just I ended up enjoying the work
of working in real estate in New York City. And
even though there's a significant amount of rejection, which is
why like ninety percent of the people who get their
real estate license in this country then quit in the
(10:54):
first two years. It wasn't the rejection I'd been used
to when acting, like, you know, going to auditions, you
get rejected to your face because of your face, you know,
and your voice or the fact that I went gray
when I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And you know, so in real estate, people reject you because.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
They are going to work with someone else, or they
want to go buy something somewhere else, so they don't
want to rent, you know, it's all you know, it's
it's work focused. And I just was able to charge
through it. And then a casting notice got put out
for a millionaire listening to New York in twenty ten.
So I've been doing it for like eighteen months and
I saw that, So I go, they're looking for the
greatest real estate agents ever invented. I've been doing this
(11:35):
for like four minutes, that's probably me. And so I
went to an open call in Times Square.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So you were like building the plane while flying, you
already knew you had something and that you were good. Yeah,
but right, so when you got that gig, you sort
of the Emperor had some clothes.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I mean, the Emperor knew what clothes he had to
put on.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I don't know if they were on at the time,
but I knew what to say when I went into
the room like it was on As the World Turns,
which is soap opera. For a little while, I'd done
some other small things, but I knew how to be
in front of a camera. I knew how to not
be nervous. I knew how to talk without my mouth
getting dry.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I knew how to Now, you're portraying yourself on this
show as like the greatest real estate person at all time,
so you have to become that at the same time.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Is portraying it?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, future me?
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I mean that was a That's always been a big
thing for me though, is like my boss is me
in the future, right, My boss is me at sixty
five years old. Like that guy's life better be awesome
because I work for him, you know. And you can
use those you can use those face apps on your
phone to age yourself to make you look old, and
for a long time I actually did that.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, do you spend at below or above your means?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You know?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
For a while, I definitely spent above. And I would
use financial pressure as a way to force myself.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
To work harder.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I get that. I like that.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
When I bought my first apartment, like I I was,
my budget that I like was comfortable with was like
a million and a half right when I was like
walking around New York and in New York City, that
gets you like maybe a nice one bedroom, you know,
unless you're willing to do a ton of work, which
I didn't know I wanted to do. And then I
started thinking about future me like, Okay, if I buy
(13:38):
a one bedroom, I'm going to have to move in
two or three years.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And then I've got transaction costs. I've got this.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
So do I do what's really comfortable for Ryan today
or do I do what's comfortable for Ryan in three years?
And I don't care that Ryan would be uncomfortable today
because he's going to grow out of it. And so
my first apartment, it was like three point seven.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Wow, that's a big jump, was.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
And my parents were like, this is the stupidest financial
decision you've ever made. But guess what two years later,
I'm like, I've outgrown this place now because I pushed myself,
you know, I pushed myself and did it, and then
you know, you move up that way and then starting this.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I mean, I started my.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Own company in twenty twenty and totally bootstrapped and spent everything,
but it was all it was all worth it. So
I definitely spend I spend above means, but I'm not stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, but you only spend it sounds like you don't
spend above means on like the trappings and the cars
and in the vacations, in the air mes or you
spend only You only spend above in something that you're
betting on yourself, like an investment.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, I bet it myself all day every day. I don't. Like,
I have some nice stuff, but I just don't. I
don't get enjoyment out of that. Like what would I
do with a sports car? Like I would never I
have cars and I drive them once on saturdays. Like
I don't know what I right?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What do I do?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
What I will take and spend money on is like
I need a full time driver all times, and I
want that car to be nice because I live in it, right,
you know I want a nice office. I have an
entire building for myself with my name on it in
the center of SOHO. You know that's bigger than product,
Like I couldn't have afforded this building had I been
like spending money on clothes and cars and vacations for
(15:24):
ten years.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's the point. It's a strategic spend. It's always a
strategic spend with you.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe I could have nicer stuff, but
I don't know. It just doesn't make me happy and
it would probably stress me out way too much.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Well, no, that's that's something interesting for people to think about,
like where it could there's different ways to spend above
your means or just I call it getting over your
skis a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I think there's a balance between really putting yourself in
debt and being a little over your skis. But I'm
like that with real estate, where everything I ever look at,
even if it's going to be an investment or something
I might flip, I always look at it as its
potential and could I move.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It in a minute?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And would I be willing to live in it if
I could if I lost everything and had to get
rid of everything else. So everything is sort of like
a moveable piece. Even though I do get emotional, and
do you get emotional about any real estate?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Not really because I this is all It's what I do,
you know, And so I I probably wish I could
get emotional sometimes. I mean, I get emotional over over deals.
You know, I'm very personally attached to the deal process.
But I'm not like I don't walk into a loft
and get super excited about the exposed beams. I get
(16:38):
excited about the exposed beams if I know it a
canad one hundred dollars a foot to the sale price.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You're in Brooklyn now, which is an interesting thing, Like
I would have bet that you would be in New York.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
You moved to Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, built a townhouse.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Are you emotional about your own place?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Why that place?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
It was a listing I had. It was Jonathan Saffron
Foyer's house, a big author, and was selling it. And
the market was tough, and it was like twenty seventeen
going into twenty eighteen, Trump is in office, people stopped
getting excited about buying real estate, right it was all
people were just keeping money in the stock market, and
so pricing was just coming down across the board. And
(17:14):
he wanted to sell it, and I said, well, I
could just buy it, but I'm not going to pay
your asking price. I could pay X and he said okay.
And then all of a sudden, I was buying a
townhouse in Brooklyn, but it's a significant amount of space.
And then I gutted it for four years, which was
not the plan because then we got stuck during COVID
(17:36):
and it took forever, and it was just like, oh
my god.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But I love it now that you know.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I was walking through this weekend just you know, at
the Christmas tree up and the decorations around, like this
is this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I'm glad.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I'm glad I did this, even though I get terrified
every time it rains.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
So you are emotional about your own place now, like
no one could buy that from you right now?
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Oh no, I would sell it. Yeah sure, I mean
I'm a broker. At the end of the day, like,
I'll move somewhere else, I'll do another project, I'll go
back to the city. I'll go into a building. I
mean in the townhouse, you just don't have the you
don't have the view. You know, you don't have the view.
Your doorman, you don't have the services. So it's cool,
it's cool, but I don't I don't think I'll be
there forever.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Well, what is the biggest challenge deal A deal where
you were like I'm getting fucked right now, or this
is going to be bad, or this you know what
when was it that you really had to like grab
onto something because you were scared?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In real estate, like a personal deal all together?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Right, Well, I think it's all personal because it's your commission,
it's or your reputation, it's your client, your contract, whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, we we get involved.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
We have a significant new construction business where we do
a lot of new development towers. We work with developers,
and you know there's a lot of you know, we
don't I don't I don't take a salary. You know,
people can complain about broker commissions all day long, but
there's no like, I only succeed if you succeed. And
I'm not hedge fund. I'm not taking twenty percent of
your profits. Our commissions are like two or three. You know,
(19:04):
our lawyers paid way more per hour than we do.
But you know, on developments, there's a lot of pressure
and you can spend a lot of time working on
those and working on those and working on those and
then not have them come to fruition or like you
just said, with your place right, like busted my butt
(19:25):
to try to get your place sold. And then you
switch brokers and a guy comes through and offers you
the full but like, sometimes these things just happen and
you can't control it, and you know, sometimes it's in
the timing.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I've come into listings and buildings.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
As the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth broker and like
a woman calls the name, or this just happened to me.
It's at a townhouse on sixty first Street where we
were the second broker and the.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
First broke exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
They did a bad job really, you know, they don't
have the exposure we do and their marketing was boring.
But like the market's also really you know, it's been
hard this year. Interest rates went to eight percent, like
there's a liquidity crunch, you know, it's and so we
put it out there and not long after we did,
someone reached out from Croatia okay and said how much
(20:12):
to buy the house.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It felt like a scam.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yes, the asking price is sixteen, sent me your money, yeah,
and they were like, okay, what about all the furniture?
And I knew the sellers would just include the furniture.
It's like, the furniture is not included in the price,
and they're like sixteen million for the house, three hundred
thousand for the furniture. We want to sign a contract
in two days. We want to close in ten days.
It's like okay, sure that it's been on the market
(20:36):
for a long long time and it was real and
they closed, it went through. It was in the press
like it was like what, yeah, So I've been on
both sides. I'm you know, I'm an adult. Everything's cool.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well, this this is interesting to me. I think in
my experience, I have limited experience, but I've sold, bought
and sold a few places.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I have. I mean, I've flipped three places.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
In Connecticut during the pandemic, and I have like a
little bit of the bug. But so my opinion is
it's like life and relationships, people get caught up on
the small things. Like in divorce too, people get tripped
up on the small things. So furniture negotiations, for example,
when people want to include the furniture, don't you find
that all those stupid details are what really lose deals?
(21:19):
Like people are worried about Wait a minute, he said
it was going to be that you like, shut the
hell up, do the deal. We'll worry about the furniture after.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, I was doing a mansion sale on the water
in the Hampton's in Bridge Hampton. It was an off
market deal. It was forty million dollars. The seller was
a billionaire. My buyer was a billionaire, which is which
is tough because you're putting two kings of industry against
each other. Right, And the deal was struck. Fine, we'll
pay forty million for this house, all furniture, everything included,
(21:48):
the way we saw it, no problem. OK. Yeah, you're
gonna take your personal items like your photos of your family.
We don't want those.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
But that was it. That's how the deal was done.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And these types of guys like they they're like, you know,
they got to trust you, otherwise who cares. And then
the seller comes back to us with an exclusion list
of like oh I forgot my wife wants to keep,
and we're keeping this and we're taking the blanket downstairs.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And that deal nearly died over one blanket.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And I had to posture back to the sellers like
here's here's what's going to happen. If you want me
to go to my buyer and tell them that you
forgot to tell us about a blanket.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I don't care who made it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I don't care if it's made out of the hair
of baby Jesus. You know what he's going to say.
He's going to say, I don't care about the blanket.
But what else is the seller now not telling us?
What else did they forget? You know what, I don't
feel good about this deal anymore. I'm way too busy
buying whatever else he goes and buys in his companies
and all that they keep their blanket. I'm going to
(22:44):
keep my forty million dollars.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Thanks, Oh thank god.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
That's how these people work. And I've been in that
situation where the deals have died. So you have to
practice the art of selective communication, right. You have to
be honest at all times. But when you're honest is really, really,
really important, especially in these trains his actions, and so
I had to handle the blanket issue. I had to
get them to leave the damn blanket. It was a
whole thing I had to anyway. It was like this whole, whole,
(23:10):
whole process. And then when the deal got done, I
went to the buyers like Hey, I just wanted to
let you know. I had to buy the seller a
really expensive blanket from like Indonesia. I guess it was
in order to get this deal done, and they it.
Just so you know, I just want you to know
because I needed.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
All to be me.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I just need to know what the blanket was. That's fascinating,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It was they got it.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
They'd gotten it on their honeymoon when they got married
thirty years prior, and they had like traveled the world
for it or something something, and it was like this
heirloom and they thought they had had it in another
house because they hadn't been to this house in a
long time. And so when they realized it, they didn't
think it was a big deal without understanding that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It could be like it was what it represented.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Yeah, you shouldn't have said, Okay, we have a deal
forty million everything in the house and that's what they said.
So then if you're representing that, oh maybe what you
said wasn't one hundred percent accurate. We're not talking about
forty dollars price anyway, sold that out and uh, that
was a tricky one, but I.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Feel like every deal is tricky. None of them.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, well people do. It's like worrying about a deck
chair off the qi qi too. And the thing I
think is interesting, I want to talk to you about
this because you're an expert on this, and I do
this a lot, not in real estate but in other areas,
and so people have a certain negotiating style and everyone's
is different.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
And I find that whether someone's.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Buying a car or anything that seems like it's negotiable,
they always come in super super low, thinking that the
person who listed something doesn't really mean it. Percent of
people do it, and I don't do that. Like I
went into that apartment that we just talked about that
sold for seven million, and it was I walked in
(25:00):
there with Frederick two days before the election when Trump
got elected, and like everyone was just like not knowing
what was going on. And I saw this apartment and
it had been listed for a long time and it
was a problem apartment and I could just see what
it would be, and everybody thought I was nuts that
I wanted to buy this place. And it was four
point two and that just didn't feel like too much
for this place, and I didn't want to fuck around,
(25:20):
so I just said to him full ask like, which
is confusing because everybody's like, wait, why would you you
could have? Because if I see something that I really
think has potential and I'm not willing to lose it,
what was I going to do go in at three
nine and then take two days?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And somebody else like, is that? Do you? What do
you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I'm a very like I appreciate that, but I'll also like,
go in at three seventy five if that's what I
really meant, and I'll be like, that's it too. I'm
not kidding either, Like I'm just not a kidding negotiating
like this is what it. I just really mean what
I think, Like you know, and I try to be
rational about it, But I wonder what your style is personally,
and what you think about the psychology of how people
(25:56):
should negotiate, and if people should get to know their style,
and if everyone's is different, and that's okay.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Every culture's negotiating style is different, and so you end
up doing this a long enough time you understand who
you're talking to, how they operate, how they posture. They
tell you they're pulling out, but you know they're really
not Like I obviously I appreciate people who just tell
it the way it is, like you do, like I.
You know, in January of twenty twenty one, as the
(26:23):
COVID market actually started to become a thing, so I
met a guy in the Upper East Side and I
told him, you should buy a place in Florida instead.
It's like, you should declare tax residency in Florida. You
have enough time to do it. What are you doing here?
We have we have an office there. Now let's go.
And that was a Tuesday. On Thursday, we flew down
to Palm Beach and on Friday we were in contract
(26:43):
for a house on the ocean in Palm Beach for
just under one hundred and forty million dollars. And that
guy makes decisions fast, and he's incredibly smart, obviously, but
I really appreciated that moment. And then I took myself
to a lobster dinner for one because I had no
idea what to do with myself in that moment. I
just sat there by myself at the breakers and it
was like, can I have taken lobster by myself?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Please?
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:08):
But you know, we also deal with a lot of
people who, no matter what the price, is even if
it's so discounted, the price makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
It's too low.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
They come in and they offer twenty five percent off,
like those people would negotiate the price of a bagel.
I also don't understand how those people even order dinner,
Like you must go to a restaurant. At a diner,
if it has more than a page, you must have
a you must have a heart attack, Like how do
you decide what to eat?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I find that people who fuck around lose things, like
if you were. I found that the use their time more,
but they lose the place too. I feel like, you know,
I feel like real estate's different than it used to be.
Like now the watch industry is different than it used
to be. Watches are way above market. Used to be
able to get watches below market, Like that's just a
(27:49):
you you get, you buy what we're asking it for.
That's like kind of what that industry is about now.
And real estate seems more like that. It used to
be the paining full ask was never happened. Ever, now
it's like a thing or even over market.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, it depends, it depends on the market. You know,
there's there's still negotiability and in lots of parts of
New York. There's negotiability again in Miami, in some parts
of the rest of Florida, there's no negotiability in our
markets in South Carolina or North Carolina, or you know,
in parts of Connecticut. Who you know, where you are,
you know, it depends on inventory, you know. I care
(28:23):
the most about time, Like if you if you're going
to waste other people's time or your time because you're
going to fight for every dollar again, future you at
twenty years from now is never ever ever going to
remember that you save twenty bucks, right, you know. And
you learn a lot about people when when they spend
so much time doing that. And I've learned a lot,
(28:45):
like I try to spend time with people who are
more successful than me. Like if I'm going to spend
my time away from my family or away from my
own personal time doing whatever the hell it is I
like doing, I want to make sure that time is
spent with people who are going to make me better,
you know. And I work with a lot of clients
now who are are I guess technically classified as billionaires,
(29:07):
and I just find it really interesting to see how
they operate, Like they go to restaurants and they don't
look at the menu, you know, they tell them, hey,
I got about an hour and a half, bring me
the best why And they don't even bother, Like why
even bother looking at them?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
If you have a dietary restriction or an allergy.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
And I learned that, And so now when I take
clients out to dinner, I don't even pick up the menu.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And you saved time.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
You save that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, do what do you like? What do you like?
Do you like the salmon?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
No?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I don't fuck it, I don't, dude, just eat the food.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Just let's move, let's talk, let's engage us time wisely.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Right, that's so funny. Yeah, I'm not exaggerating. It would
take me longer to order a pasta than it would
to buy an apartment. So I'll take that trade very
I care deeply about food and the foreplay of it,
but that's just a pat That's something I'm passionate about.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That's very funny, though. What about now?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So now people are locked in their homes because of
interest rates. I don't know how the pandemic was for
you personally, but you a person who like in the
stock market, you know, bets the dip and can like
play the volatility, because most brokers have had their ass
is handed to them one way or the other in
the last couple of years. But if you're a person
who can like move like Frogger with the market, I
(30:34):
don't know if your business has that ability, Yeah, a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I mean I as I spend a lot of time
in school, in history class, and what I've learned is
that history repeats itself time and time again. Every time
the market's great, it's never been better. Anytime the market's bad,
it's never been worse. Whether it's whether it's the saving
and loan crisis of ninety one, or the dot com
(30:57):
bubble or two thousand and eight, or Hurricane Sandy or
the pandemic. Right, it's unfortunately, we have minimal memories, and
I think that's I think that's a huge part due
to evolution. Like if you knew the pain you felt
or the fear, if you could really remember how scared
you were when you were broke that time, you wouldn't
(31:18):
be able to get out of bed, right, Like we don't.
We are not programmed to remember pain, right, We're programmed
to remember pleasure so that we can procreate and keep
the earth going in our own way, right, and that
that translates into business too. And so for me, like
COVID hit, New York City shut down. Everyone was screaming
doom and gloom, end of the world. New York Times
(31:39):
was saying New York City's over and done with. I
was like, I think, and I went on like Fox
News in December twenty twenty and like, this is going
to be a W shape recovery, which means the market's
going to spike all the way down, which it did.
Stock market felt ten thousand points. Everyone, Oh my god,
everything's over, and then we're going to rocket ship out
of it, which we did in twenty one and twenty two,
and then we're going to be like, holy moly, wait
(32:01):
a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, we spent
way too what's happening, what's happening, And then we're in
a rocket ship back down, which is what this year
has been in most markets. Rights, tech markets sell off,
real estate market got tough, interest rates went high, and
now twenty twenty four, especially given the Fed's announcement last week,
is the last peak of that w and we're coming
out of it. And now That doesn't mean that in
(32:23):
twenty twenty nine it's not all going to crash like
it did in nineteen twenty nine. But I think for
at least the next couple of years, I'm super bullish
and excited, and so I've made big bets that way.
I mean, last December, everyone was saying the end of crypto,
crypto's over. Oh my god, everyone's stupid, all these crypto people.
Bitcoin dropped to sixteen thousand, and I went in hard, hard,
and because I missed it when it was at like
(32:46):
three you or three thousand, and when it hard at
sixteen And now we's I don't know, like forty five
thousand dollars and they're about to approve a bitcoin spot
ETF And so it's like you got to turn off
the news and turn off your phone and understand that.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Like you were saying, misery loves company people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I was thinking the same thing. It's exactly right what
you just said. When you said the clicker, I thought, oh, right,
hate cells. That's where we are now. Misery cells fascinating.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
I think ad dollars on news channels or on positive influencers,
you're not even turning on the news if things are happy,
Like what do you can turned on? And everyone's like, goepy,
it's a nice, happy day to day, go to work,
enjoy your life like no one's watching it. So you
have to kind of propagate negativity, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
It's it's fucked up, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
So if you can learn how to tune that out
and turn that off, things are actually so much better
than people make out or.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Use it and just realize it says more about other people.
I've started to have more compassion. I feel like people
must be really miserable, and I do attribute some of
it to the holidays, and so think about how sad
they must be if it makes them feel better to
be miserable and to criticize.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You have a four year old, I have a thirteen year.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Old, and it's helpful to tell kids like that they
can use it like fuel, like it really it isn't
about them what people are saying about them.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
So I think that's huge.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
That's such a great point, Like, you know, it's not
we learned that and understand that you can.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I have that.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
I have the ability for some reason. Sometimes like someone
says something so nasty and my first reaction is like
to smiles like, wow, I really just triggered that person.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
That means when I was.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Doing when I was in I think it was like
tenth grade, there was a bully in my school, right
who this is where I learned that, and the meanest
kid ever. Because I did theater. You would make fun,
you would call me every name under the sun. He
would like come up to me in class and flick
me behind my ears and like hit me. And you
(34:42):
know I was, you know, telling the whole school I
was was gay, and which is not a big deal,
but at the time when I was in tenth grade.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
You know I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Oh no, that was a big deal.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Yeah, And you know it was tough. And then I remember,
because we couldn't drive yet, I think we were we
were fifteen. I remember getting picked up from school late
and then driving home and on the drive home his family,
his dad's car was pulled over and his dad was
like screaming at him like out of a movie and
(35:14):
was slapping him in the face, and the kid was crying, crying, crying,
And I have that image is burned in my head
of hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Wow, that's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Wow, And so never forget that. So anytime anyone's ever
mean or anything, I'm like you, Well, one, I get annoyed,
but then I'm also like you, and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
This is how they don't know another way to react
to you, so they do it the way that they
were told to, which is to be mean and to
hurt you.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Right, Yeah, that's so crazy, that's so yeah, that's so true,
and I I do try. I was literally just talking
to Denise Richards about it is like you have to
just like use it as fuel.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You have to be like, wow, I really got that
person lit up.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And you know, it's either it's either they are really
thinking about it you and they hate you, or they
love you. But in the middle is indifference. I means
you're making no impact whatsoever. So I'd rather I'd take
the hate over the indifference. I guess in general, what
are the biggest things going on now? Like what are
the things if someone's on a plane being like what
are you what are you working on? Like what would
you say besides like this apartment, that apartment, like generally
(36:17):
like another book, another show, Like what are the big
ticket items?
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Well, we I mean I started my own company in
twenty twenty and that was crazy. So, you know, we
run the real estate brokerage. We expanded to six states
this year. You know, we're about five hundred agents, one
hundred and fifteen staff members. We run an ed tech
business that's like Salesforce for sales training, that's B to
B and direct consumer as well. That's been super wild
(36:46):
and fun to watch that grow. And then we have
a production company for real estate. You know, I like
to stay with my within my niche. I think the
niche is key right, riches and niches, and so all
of those are growing. Next year, they're there's a lot
of big things happening. My third book comes out in February.
There is something that we made this year that we
shot that I can't talk about, but that'll come out
(37:09):
next year, which is super cool and just very different
and been a lot of fun. And I'm just excited
about growth, and you know, I'm excited for people. I
think twenty twenty three was a trying year for so
many and I'm excited for that to kind of be
behind us and now use that use twenty twenty three
is that if it wasn't a good year, for you
use it as fuel to make twenty twenty four your fire.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
You know, it's like that quote.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Yeah, if you know, you know gasoline, like, if you
know how to use it, it can it can.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
It can warm your house. Right. If you don't know
how to use it, it'll burn your house down.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
So use it, use it the right now you do
motivational speaking, I assume right like you are.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I used to do a lot more until I got
so busy, and that's hard. But I talked to salespeople
all over the world. It's Dubai and Abu Dhavi and
Monaco and Australia and Scare which were nice, which were fun.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, I grew up on stage.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
It's like the one thing I can go back to
and step up on stage like, oh, I'm kind of home.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, you're very, very like enlightening and positive and motivating.
I want to tell you something that someone told me.
Noble told me. So many people have said to get
my real estate license because I bought you know, probably
in my life like ten to fifteen plate maybe not
even that many, but like ten twelve places if I
count to, maybe maybe fifteen.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
So I went online.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
I don't know which one it was in Connecticut, I think,
I don't remember if it was New York. And I
started doing the chapters and I wasn't gonna like I
wanted to go to the class, and everyone's like you're
a loser, like you don't need to go sit in
a class like driving school. So I was like fine,
So in the car, I started the online thing and
then like every single chapter, and I would read through
the whole thing like I was doing it right because
people said they kind of finagle it, and they don't.
(38:51):
They don't really pay attention and they try to take
the test at the end or I don't know what
their way is, but or someone else sits there in
front of it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I was really doing it.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And at the end I would fail the quiz like
three times until it wouldn't let you do it again,
and then I would like reset, and then finally.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
I would pass the quiz.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And Paul, my fiance, who's in real estate, that's his business.
He you know, develops as shopping centers, very successful and
you know, millions of square feet in real estate, and
he I was trying to get him to help me,
and he couldn't. We both were failing the quiz. I'm like,
we're fit. You're a fucking failure. You're in real estate.
We are I was on the cover of Forbes. I
can't do this dumb test. So we only got through
(39:28):
like a certain amount of chapters and I literally said
to him, I was like, you think Ryan, Sirhank could
like pass this test right now? Cold, Like, I just
want to give you the quizzes and see if you
could pass them.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
No, no, because they don't.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
You couldn't pass them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
No, the quizzes don't.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They're hard.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Yeah, it's like anything like, they don't. They don't test
you on anything you actually need to know. Like I
don't remember all the laws from the sixties that were
created for the board.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
There's this board, there's that board. There's how many days until?
And I'm such a dork that I was like really
paying attention, but I gave I haven't finished at least.
It's not like I'm going to get demoted, Like it
doesn't expire. I can go back. But one day I'll
get my real estate license. And if you open in Connecticut,
I can be a broker.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
We are opening in Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
You should finish ready.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Yeah, Yeah, Florida is the hardest one. I'm the broker
record in Connectic.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Nothing can be harder than the one I talk because.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's hard because in Florida you guys to start dealing
with with with floodplanes and you know the state tests.
You know, like if you're taking it in in Connecticut,
you're like, what's what's the big deal in Florida? Like
they have to test you on meats and bounds and
you know, like ranch and farm and that's like.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Me getting an MBA. I don't stop. I'm not ready
for that. Okay, I'm not ready. I have to get through.
I have like twenty four more chapters. I'm only through six.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I have faith in you. You're a committed woman. You
will figure it out.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
I'm going to pass and we're going to we could
do a graduation ceremony. I will call you when I pass,
and then I will be a broker anyway. Yeah, awesome,
Wow your list of responsibilities exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
It was so fun talking to you. I really appreciate
you doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Have a happy holiday you too.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
You two h
My guest today is real estate broker, author, and reality
television star Ryan Surhan. Ryan is currently on Bravos Million
Dollar List in New York and It's spinoff Sell It
Like Surrant. Ryan was born in Houston, Texas, and moved
to New York City to launch his acting career, eventually
starring as Evan Walsh in nineteen episodes of As the
(00:34):
World Turns. He runs his own New York real estate firm.
He is charismatic, he is successful, he is engaging, he
is nice. This is just be with Ryan, Sirhan, Let's
get into it. Oh my god, thanks for coming and
being here. Where are you now and where do you live?
(00:55):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm in Soho right now I'm in the office.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
So you've stayed in New York. You're not leaving. You're
a New Yorker.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Yeah, I mean the business is headquartered here. I mean
we have a lot in Florida. Now, we have stuff everywhere.
We're in six states at the moment, and so I've
end up bouncing around a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
But like our daughter's in school here, it's a good spot.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's a good okay.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah. I grew up on a farm, so like for me.
During COVID, a lot of people were like, oh, I
got to get out of the city, and I'm like, dude,
I spent my life out of the city, Like I
feel like I just got here. I mean even though
I didn't, like I don't want I don't want to
go back, like I don't need a lawn, like a
lawnmower and a weed whacker, or like my fucking hell.
So I love having a sidewalk. I'm like, I think
(01:39):
it's great. And when everyone left in twenty twenty, twenty one,
twenty two, it was like the greatest thing of all time.
I mean, there was sadness, but it was still great.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
And what about your wife, she feels the same way.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
No, she's in Greece right now. I think she would
live in London and a heartbeat. She lived in Miami
and a heartbeat. I think she was born in New
York and then bouncedund and then they went back to
Athens pretty quickly, so she grew up in Athens. But
like for her, I think she just experiences New York
in a very different way than I experience it, because like,
New York is my office, you know, and for her
(02:11):
it's like you know New York. It's a little messy, right,
there's other places to live.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I just bought an apartment back in New York. I
sold the other place. I sold it. I ended up
selling it for full ask, which was great, especially in
the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
It was weird. And then I just got lucky, I think.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
And then I ended up buying another small place, almost
like a two bedroom, two and a half bathroom hotel room,
if that makes any sense, just for when I'm there, Yeah, easy, yeah, exactly.
But I haven't been back in a while. And this
is on the Upper west Side, which is I've spent
less time in the Upper west Side than I have
in LA.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I don't know it.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, it's fun, it's not I mean it's Upper West's families.
It's residential. There's very few office buildings, a lot of townhouse.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yes, yeah, I mean that's more. It's like the suburbs
of the city.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And what about does your wife?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
How does your wife feel about forward facing public profile
like being on TV?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
What's her relationship to that?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Uh, it would not be her choice, that's for sure.
I mean she she did it for ten years on
Million Dollar Listing and the spin offs and everything. For
for me, we worked on something else you know this
year that will come out next year that she has
a very limited limited exposure too, And I think she
(03:30):
was she was happy with that, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Because for her, like, what's that? What's the benefit?
Speaker 4 (03:35):
You know, if you can see a real benefit to
the exposure, then you want as much of it as
you possibly can. Like for me, selling real estate and
the books and the education, like all the stuff that
we do. It's important for me now and but for her,
and I think for a lot of people, like it's
just it's almost just a negative more.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Than anything exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's funny because with my fiance, we've talked about it
very briefly because it's a kind of an no starter.
But it's the same thing that you're saying, where is
the upside? Like he even felt even him being his
face being on for two seconds, even without even speaking, yeah,
just to say that he existed. There is no upside
because what if he felt unpleasant about what he was
(04:19):
wearing or what he looked like or anything like he does,
there's no reason, you know, that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
People are mean, at least the people that the Keyboard
Warriors are mean. So I'm pretty good at turning all
that stuff off, Like I don't, you know what I mean,
Like I've dealt with rejection and ridicule for a long
long time. But for people that don't, I mean, you see,
you know, billies from Tennessee's you know, negative comment on you,
and you take it to heart.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
You can't sleep. You're like, well, maybe I do look
stupid like you.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
You really really it affects you, and so like, why
put yourself in that situation if you can't handle it,
you know, if you don't let it roll up your shoulders.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I would have I would have thought you were more
shielded because you sort of have like with the Housewives women,
it's just like women so close to other women with
the interactions. You at least had the shield of like
real estate as a reason you're all there and that
kind of stuff, which does present obviously other cutthroat aspects.
(05:16):
But I would have thought you were more shielded from
all the criticism.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
A little bit.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah. No, I definitely empathize with you and especially every
other woman who's whoever puts themselves out there, whether it's
a reality TV or.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Through social media. Now, you know, like you see how.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
People treat even just large TikTok influencers now, and these
these people are young, you know, you know, they're teenagers,
Like I can't even imagine having to deal with international
verbal abuse at fifteen, just because I'm kind of like
having fun on social media, like I, you know, my
daughter's four, and I don't even know how we're going
(05:57):
to handle that.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's getting worse.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
And it's funny because I was just texting with Denise Richards,
who came on the podcast and we did a whole episode,
but she was discussing her dinner where you may or
may not have seen it, but you may have seen clips,
and she had an upside down jacket and she was loopy,
and even her because she's been away from it for
a minute, and as the kind of person that usually
lets things roll off her back, I said, well, first
(06:21):
of all, right, now it's Christmas and people are really unhappy.
Many people are unhappy, which makes sense because of the
marketing of this. Second of all, like it's gotten really
really intense. And what's weird is that I used to
say that sex cells and or people used to say
that sex cells and now hate cells. It really does
sell and you could think, like, sure that you're being hated,
(06:44):
yet the numbers are going up and you're succeeding, and
oddly the hate is turning into success.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And it's very counterintuitive.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Misery loves company, you know, it's it's yeah, that's that's it.
I mean, I remember like when million doar listing started,
you know, Bravo the network producers were very focused on wins,
like people want to see people winning.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
For the first let's say four years of our time
on air.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, people they want to root for someone, they want
to root for someone. They would say, that's.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
What it was, Yeah, they want to root for you.
So you know it's going to be messy on this listing,
but you got to figure out how to sell it.
There was a lot of pressure because the deals were
all you know, real, and we filmed for a year
and if there was a loss, it was like a
was it was like it was like an issue. And
then everything changed in twenty sixteen and all of a sudden,
it was like, no, people don't want to see you
(07:38):
winning anymore because they can't relate to winning, and so
they want to see you losing because they can relate
to that. And so don't be so nervous about getting
everything sold. You know that big listing over there, impossible
to sell. Oh perfect, let's see you get fired. And
so like the show of the season for those ten years.
First four to five years was a lot of yes,
awesome when I sold it, great, and then the next
(07:59):
five years it's like the market everything's terrible, you know, losing.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Crying toe so interesting, and.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
That's what people want, you know, that's what people wanted
to see.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's fascinating because I'm thinking about Housewives plots and I'm
thinking about Genshaw going to jail, and I'm thinking about
how so many shows have been pitched about divorce and
not purchased because.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Theirs broken relationships.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well no, but back then, if you pitched a show
about divorce, they would say, nobody wants to see a
show about divorce because it's not happy. And you're right, now,
shows like The Scanderval whatever, that Scanderval and the Maurice
and Kyle like it sells because it's misery and breakup.
That's so fascinating. It used to not be like that.
You're right, Wow, I never thought of that interesting. Okay,
(08:45):
So I also I didn't know that you wanted to
have an acting career, and it made me think of
something I saw, I think on one of the talk
shows with Arianna from vander Pump who's dancing and doing
really well, and I guess she initially wanted to be
an entertain and Kyle was an actress, and you know,
that didn't really pan out. And so so many people
(09:06):
that end up in this reality sphere that wanted to be,
you know, scripted actors. So I did not know that
that was you. So how did this all converge?
Speaker 4 (09:17):
I mean, I graduated college in two thousand and six
and I moved to New York City to do theater.
You know. It was it was that or try to
retake the ELSAT and go to law school, which I
did not want to do. And I had had little
money saved up from my grandfather who died, and some
construction job money in the summers and things, and so
I gave myself a couple of years and I promptly
(09:37):
ran out of money after the first two years. It
was summer two thousand and six to summer two thousand
and eight, and I just did not want a survival job,
like I didn't want to wait tables or bartender, because
I just knew if I did that, I would then
get comfortable paying my rent with my tip money and
all that, and then I would never progress in my life.
You know, at least that's the way I felt at
(09:58):
the time. Said listen, acting, improv thinking on your feet,
memorizing information, being able to talk with a smile. That's sales.
You don't know it, but you just spent the first
twenty three years of your life actually preparing to be really,
really great at selling things. So you could sell anything
(10:19):
you want to anybody because you know how to have
conversations with strangers, and so you should get into real estate.
And this was the summer of two thousand and eight,
so Lehman Brothers hadn't filed for bankruptcy yet, right the
recession hadn't started.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that all happened on September.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Fifteenth, two thousand and eight, which was my first day
in the business. And then I put acting to the
side because I just I ended up enjoying the work
of working in real estate in New York City. And
even though there's a significant amount of rejection, which is
why like ninety percent of the people who get their
real estate license in this country then quit in the
(10:54):
first two years. It wasn't the rejection I'd been used
to when acting, like, you know, going to auditions, you
get rejected to your face because of your face, you know,
and your voice or the fact that I went gray
when I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And you know, so in real estate, people reject you because.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
They are going to work with someone else, or they
want to go buy something somewhere else, so they don't
want to rent, you know, it's all you know, it's
it's work focused. And I just was able to charge
through it. And then a casting notice got put out
for a millionaire listening to New York in twenty ten.
So I've been doing it for like eighteen months and
I saw that, So I go, they're looking for the
greatest real estate agents ever invented. I've been doing this
(11:35):
for like four minutes, that's probably me. And so I
went to an open call in Times Square.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So you were like building the plane while flying, you
already knew you had something and that you were good. Yeah,
but right, so when you got that gig, you sort
of the Emperor had some clothes.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I mean, the Emperor knew what clothes he had to
put on.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I don't know if they were on at the time,
but I knew what to say when I went into
the room like it was on As the World Turns,
which is soap opera. For a little while, I'd done
some other small things, but I knew how to be
in front of a camera. I knew how to not
be nervous. I knew how to talk without my mouth
getting dry.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I knew how to Now, you're portraying yourself on this
show as like the greatest real estate person at all time,
so you have to become that at the same time.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Is portraying it?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, future me?
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I mean that was a That's always been a big
thing for me though, is like my boss is me
in the future, right, My boss is me at sixty
five years old. Like that guy's life better be awesome
because I work for him, you know. And you can
use those you can use those face apps on your
phone to age yourself to make you look old, and
for a long time I actually did that.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, do you spend at below or above your means?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You know?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
For a while, I definitely spent above. And I would
use financial pressure as a way to force myself.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
To work harder.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I get that. I like that.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
When I bought my first apartment, like I I was,
my budget that I like was comfortable with was like
a million and a half right when I was like
walking around New York and in New York City, that
gets you like maybe a nice one bedroom, you know,
unless you're willing to do a ton of work, which
I didn't know I wanted to do. And then I
started thinking about future me like, Okay, if I buy
(13:38):
a one bedroom, I'm going to have to move in
two or three years.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And then I've got transaction costs. I've got this.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
So do I do what's really comfortable for Ryan today
or do I do what's comfortable for Ryan in three years?
And I don't care that Ryan would be uncomfortable today
because he's going to grow out of it. And so
my first apartment, it was like three point seven.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Wow, that's a big jump, was.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
And my parents were like, this is the stupidest financial
decision you've ever made. But guess what two years later,
I'm like, I've outgrown this place now because I pushed myself,
you know, I pushed myself and did it, and then
you know, you move up that way and then starting this.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I mean, I started my.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Own company in twenty twenty and totally bootstrapped and spent everything,
but it was all it was all worth it. So
I definitely spend I spend above means, but I'm not stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, but you only spend it sounds like you don't
spend above means on like the trappings and the cars
and in the vacations, in the air mes or you
spend only You only spend above in something that you're
betting on yourself, like an investment.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, I bet it myself all day every day. I don't. Like,
I have some nice stuff, but I just don't. I
don't get enjoyment out of that. Like what would I
do with a sports car? Like I would never I
have cars and I drive them once on saturdays. Like
I don't know what I right?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What do I do?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
What I will take and spend money on is like
I need a full time driver all times, and I
want that car to be nice because I live in it, right,
you know I want a nice office. I have an
entire building for myself with my name on it in
the center of SOHO. You know that's bigger than product,
Like I couldn't have afforded this building had I been
like spending money on clothes and cars and vacations for
(15:24):
ten years.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's the point. It's a strategic spend. It's always a
strategic spend with you.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe I could have nicer stuff, but
I don't know. It just doesn't make me happy and
it would probably stress me out way too much.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Well, no, that's that's something interesting for people to think about,
like where it could there's different ways to spend above
your means or just I call it getting over your
skis a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I think that's good.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I think there's a balance between really putting yourself in
debt and being a little over your skis. But I'm
like that with real estate, where everything I ever look at,
even if it's going to be an investment or something
I might flip, I always look at it as its
potential and could I move.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It in a minute?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And would I be willing to live in it if
I could if I lost everything and had to get
rid of everything else. So everything is sort of like
a moveable piece. Even though I do get emotional, and
do you get emotional about any real estate?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Not really because I this is all It's what I do,
you know, And so I I probably wish I could
get emotional sometimes. I mean, I get emotional over over deals.
You know, I'm very personally attached to the deal process.
But I'm not like I don't walk into a loft
and get super excited about the exposed beams. I get
(16:38):
excited about the exposed beams if I know it a
canad one hundred dollars a foot to the sale price.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You're in Brooklyn now, which is an interesting thing, Like
I would have bet that you would be in New York.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
You moved to Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, built a townhouse.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Are you emotional about your own place?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Like?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Why that place?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
It was a listing I had. It was Jonathan Saffron
Foyer's house, a big author, and was selling it. And
the market was tough, and it was like twenty seventeen
going into twenty eighteen, Trump is in office, people stopped
getting excited about buying real estate, right it was all
people were just keeping money in the stock market, and
so pricing was just coming down across the board. And
(17:14):
he wanted to sell it, and I said, well, I
could just buy it, but I'm not going to pay
your asking price. I could pay X and he said okay.
And then all of a sudden, I was buying a
townhouse in Brooklyn, but it's a significant amount of space.
And then I gutted it for four years, which was
not the plan because then we got stuck during COVID
(17:36):
and it took forever, and it was just like, oh
my god.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But I love it now that you know.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I was walking through this weekend just you know, at
the Christmas tree up and the decorations around, like this
is this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I'm glad.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I'm glad I did this, even though I get terrified
every time it rains.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
So you are emotional about your own place now, like
no one could buy that from you right now?
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Oh no, I would sell it. Yeah sure, I mean
I'm a broker. At the end of the day, like,
I'll move somewhere else, I'll do another project, I'll go
back to the city. I'll go into a building. I
mean in the townhouse, you just don't have the you
don't have the view. You know, you don't have the view.
Your doorman, you don't have the services. So it's cool,
it's cool, but I don't I don't think I'll be
there forever.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Well, what is the biggest challenge deal A deal where
you were like I'm getting fucked right now, or this
is going to be bad, or this you know what
when was it that you really had to like grab
onto something because you were scared?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
In real estate, like a personal deal all together?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Right, Well, I think it's all personal because it's your commission,
it's or your reputation, it's your client, your contract, whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, we we get involved.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
We have a significant new construction business where we do
a lot of new development towers. We work with developers,
and you know there's a lot of you know, we
don't I don't I don't take a salary. You know,
people can complain about broker commissions all day long, but
there's no like, I only succeed if you succeed. And
I'm not hedge fund. I'm not taking twenty percent of
your profits. Our commissions are like two or three. You know,
(19:04):
our lawyers paid way more per hour than we do.
But you know, on developments, there's a lot of pressure
and you can spend a lot of time working on
those and working on those and working on those and
then not have them come to fruition or like you
just said, with your place right, like busted my butt
(19:25):
to try to get your place sold. And then you
switch brokers and a guy comes through and offers you
the full but like, sometimes these things just happen and
you can't control it, and you know, sometimes it's in
the timing.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I've come into listings and buildings.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
As the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth broker and like
a woman calls the name, or this just happened to me.
It's at a townhouse on sixty first Street where we
were the second broker and the.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
First broke exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
They did a bad job really, you know, they don't
have the exposure we do and their marketing was boring.
But like the market's also really you know, it's been
hard this year. Interest rates went to eight percent, like
there's a liquidity crunch, you know, it's and so we
put it out there and not long after we did,
someone reached out from Croatia okay and said how much
(20:12):
to buy the house.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It felt like a scam.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yes, the asking price is sixteen, sent me your money, yeah,
and they were like, okay, what about all the furniture?
And I knew the sellers would just include the furniture.
It's like, the furniture is not included in the price,
and they're like sixteen million for the house, three hundred
thousand for the furniture. We want to sign a contract
in two days. We want to close in ten days.
It's like okay, sure that it's been on the market
(20:36):
for a long long time and it was real and
they closed, it went through. It was in the press
like it was like what, yeah, So I've been on
both sides. I'm you know, I'm an adult. Everything's cool.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well, this this is interesting to me. I think in
my experience, I have limited experience, but I've sold, bought
and sold a few places.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I have. I mean, I've flipped three places.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
In Connecticut during the pandemic, and I have like a
little bit of the bug. But so my opinion is
it's like life and relationships, people get caught up on
the small things. Like in divorce too, people get tripped
up on the small things. So furniture negotiations, for example,
when people want to include the furniture, don't you find
that all those stupid details are what really lose deals?
(21:19):
Like people are worried about Wait a minute, he said
it was going to be that you like, shut the
hell up, do the deal. We'll worry about the furniture after.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, I was doing a mansion sale on the water
in the Hampton's in Bridge Hampton. It was an off
market deal. It was forty million dollars. The seller was
a billionaire. My buyer was a billionaire, which is which
is tough because you're putting two kings of industry against
each other. Right, And the deal was struck. Fine, we'll
pay forty million for this house, all furniture, everything included,
(21:48):
the way we saw it, no problem. OK. Yeah, you're
gonna take your personal items like your photos of your family.
We don't want those.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
But that was it. That's how the deal was done.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And these types of guys like they they're like, you know,
they got to trust you, otherwise who cares. And then
the seller comes back to us with an exclusion list
of like oh I forgot my wife wants to keep,
and we're keeping this and we're taking the blanket downstairs.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And that deal nearly died over one blanket.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And I had to posture back to the sellers like
here's here's what's going to happen. If you want me
to go to my buyer and tell them that you
forgot to tell us about a blanket.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I don't care who made it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
I don't care if it's made out of the hair
of baby Jesus. You know what he's going to say.
He's going to say, I don't care about the blanket.
But what else is the seller now not telling us?
What else did they forget? You know what, I don't
feel good about this deal anymore. I'm way too busy
buying whatever else he goes and buys in his companies
and all that they keep their blanket. I'm going to
(22:44):
keep my forty million dollars.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Thanks, Oh thank god.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
That's how these people work. And I've been in that
situation where the deals have died. So you have to
practice the art of selective communication, right. You have to
be honest at all times. But when you're honest is really, really,
really important, especially in these trains his actions, and so
I had to handle the blanket issue. I had to
get them to leave the damn blanket. It was a
whole thing I had to anyway. It was like this whole, whole,
(23:10):
whole process. And then when the deal got done, I
went to the buyers like Hey, I just wanted to
let you know. I had to buy the seller a
really expensive blanket from like Indonesia. I guess it was
in order to get this deal done, and they it.
Just so you know, I just want you to know
because I needed.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
All to be me.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I just need to know what the blanket was. That's fascinating,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It was they got it.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
They'd gotten it on their honeymoon when they got married
thirty years prior, and they had like traveled the world
for it or something something, and it was like this
heirloom and they thought they had had it in another
house because they hadn't been to this house in a
long time. And so when they realized it, they didn't
think it was a big deal without understanding that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
It could be like it was what it represented.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Yeah, you shouldn't have said, Okay, we have a deal
forty million everything in the house and that's what they said.
So then if you're representing that, oh maybe what you
said wasn't one hundred percent accurate. We're not talking about
forty dollars price anyway, sold that out and uh, that
was a tricky one, but I.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Feel like every deal is tricky. None of them.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, well people do. It's like worrying about a deck
chair off the qi qi too. And the thing I
think is interesting, I want to talk to you about
this because you're an expert on this, and I do
this a lot, not in real estate but in other areas,
and so people have a certain negotiating style and everyone's
is different.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
And I find that whether someone's.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Buying a car or anything that seems like it's negotiable,
they always come in super super low, thinking that the
person who listed something doesn't really mean it. Percent of
people do it, and I don't do that. Like I
went into that apartment that we just talked about that
sold for seven million, and it was I walked in
(25:00):
there with Frederick two days before the election when Trump
got elected, and like everyone was just like not knowing
what was going on. And I saw this apartment and
it had been listed for a long time and it
was a problem apartment and I could just see what
it would be, and everybody thought I was nuts that
I wanted to buy this place. And it was four
point two and that just didn't feel like too much
for this place, and I didn't want to fuck around,
(25:20):
so I just said to him full ask like, which
is confusing because everybody's like, wait, why would you you
could have? Because if I see something that I really
think has potential and I'm not willing to lose it,
what was I going to do go in at three
nine and then take two days?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And somebody else like, is that? Do you? What do
you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I'm a very like I appreciate that, but I'll also like,
go in at three seventy five if that's what I
really meant, and I'll be like, that's it too. I'm
not kidding either, Like I'm just not a kidding negotiating
like this is what it. I just really mean what
I think, Like you know, and I try to be
rational about it, But I wonder what your style is personally,
and what you think about the psychology of how people
(25:56):
should negotiate, and if people should get to know their style,
and if everyone's is different, and that's okay.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Every culture's negotiating style is different, and so you end
up doing this a long enough time you understand who
you're talking to, how they operate, how they posture. They
tell you they're pulling out, but you know they're really
not Like I obviously I appreciate people who just tell
it the way it is, like you do, like I.
You know, in January of twenty twenty one, as the
(26:23):
COVID market actually started to become a thing, so I
met a guy in the Upper East Side and I
told him, you should buy a place in Florida instead.
It's like, you should declare tax residency in Florida. You
have enough time to do it. What are you doing here?
We have we have an office there. Now let's go.
And that was a Tuesday. On Thursday, we flew down
to Palm Beach and on Friday we were in contract
(26:43):
for a house on the ocean in Palm Beach for
just under one hundred and forty million dollars. And that
guy makes decisions fast, and he's incredibly smart, obviously, but
I really appreciated that moment. And then I took myself
to a lobster dinner for one because I had no
idea what to do with myself in that moment. I
just sat there by myself at the breakers and it
was like, can I have taken lobster by myself?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Please?
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:08):
But you know, we also deal with a lot of
people who, no matter what the price, is even if
it's so discounted, the price makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
It's too low.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
They come in and they offer twenty five percent off,
like those people would negotiate the price of a bagel.
I also don't understand how those people even order dinner,
Like you must go to a restaurant. At a diner,
if it has more than a page, you must have
a you must have a heart attack, Like how do
you decide what to eat?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I find that people who fuck around lose things, like
if you were. I found that the use their time more,
but they lose the place too. I feel like, you know,
I feel like real estate's different than it used to be.
Like now the watch industry is different than it used
to be. Watches are way above market. Used to be
able to get watches below market, Like that's just a
(27:49):
you you get, you buy what we're asking it for.
That's like kind of what that industry is about now.
And real estate seems more like that. It used to
be the paining full ask was never happened. Ever, now
it's like a thing or even over market.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, it depends, it depends on the market. You know,
there's there's still negotiability and in lots of parts of
New York. There's negotiability again in Miami, in some parts
of the rest of Florida, there's no negotiability in our
markets in South Carolina or North Carolina, or you know,
in parts of Connecticut. Who you know, where you are,
you know, it depends on inventory, you know. I care
(28:23):
the most about time, Like if you if you're going
to waste other people's time or your time because you're
going to fight for every dollar again, future you at
twenty years from now is never ever ever going to
remember that you save twenty bucks, right, you know. And
you learn a lot about people when when they spend
so much time doing that. And I've learned a lot,
(28:45):
like I try to spend time with people who are
more successful than me. Like if I'm going to spend
my time away from my family or away from my
own personal time doing whatever the hell it is I
like doing, I want to make sure that time is
spent with people who are going to make me better,
you know. And I work with a lot of clients
now who are are I guess technically classified as billionaires,
(29:07):
and I just find it really interesting to see how
they operate, Like they go to restaurants and they don't
look at the menu, you know, they tell them, hey,
I got about an hour and a half, bring me
the best why And they don't even bother, Like why
even bother looking at them?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
If you have a dietary restriction or an allergy.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
And I learned that, And so now when I take
clients out to dinner, I don't even pick up the menu.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And you saved time.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
You save that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, do what do you like? What do you like?
Do you like the salmon?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
No?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I don't fuck it, I don't, dude, just eat the food.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Just let's move, let's talk, let's engage us time wisely.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Right, that's so funny. Yeah, I'm not exaggerating. It would
take me longer to order a pasta than it would
to buy an apartment. So I'll take that trade very
I care deeply about food and the foreplay of it,
but that's just a pat That's something I'm passionate about.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That's very funny, though. What about now?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So now people are locked in their homes because of
interest rates. I don't know how the pandemic was for
you personally, but you a person who like in the
stock market, you know, bets the dip and can like
play the volatility, because most brokers have had their ass
is handed to them one way or the other in
the last couple of years. But if you're a person
who can like move like Frogger with the market, I
(30:34):
don't know if your business has that ability, Yeah, a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I mean I as I spend a lot of time
in school, in history class, and what I've learned is
that history repeats itself time and time again. Every time
the market's great, it's never been better. Anytime the market's bad,
it's never been worse. Whether it's whether it's the saving
and loan crisis of ninety one, or the dot com
(30:57):
bubble or two thousand and eight, or Hurricane Sandy or
the pandemic. Right, it's unfortunately, we have minimal memories, and
I think that's I think that's a huge part due
to evolution. Like if you knew the pain you felt
or the fear, if you could really remember how scared
you were when you were broke that time, you wouldn't
(31:18):
be able to get out of bed, right, Like we don't.
We are not programmed to remember pain, right, We're programmed
to remember pleasure so that we can procreate and keep
the earth going in our own way, right, and that
that translates into business too. And so for me, like
COVID hit, New York City shut down. Everyone was screaming
doom and gloom, end of the world. New York Times
(31:39):
was saying New York City's over and done with. I
was like, I think, and I went on like Fox
News in December twenty twenty and like, this is going
to be a W shape recovery, which means the market's
going to spike all the way down, which it did.
Stock market felt ten thousand points. Everyone, Oh my god,
everything's over, and then we're going to rocket ship out
of it, which we did in twenty one and twenty two,
and then we're going to be like, holy moly, wait
(32:01):
a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, we spent
way too what's happening, what's happening, And then we're in
a rocket ship back down, which is what this year
has been in most markets. Rights, tech markets sell off,
real estate market got tough, interest rates went high, and
now twenty twenty four, especially given the Fed's announcement last week,
is the last peak of that w and we're coming
out of it. And now That doesn't mean that in
(32:23):
twenty twenty nine it's not all going to crash like
it did in nineteen twenty nine. But I think for
at least the next couple of years, I'm super bullish
and excited, and so I've made big bets that way.
I mean, last December, everyone was saying the end of crypto,
crypto's over. Oh my god, everyone's stupid, all these crypto people.
Bitcoin dropped to sixteen thousand, and I went in hard, hard,
and because I missed it when it was at like
(32:46):
three you or three thousand, and when it hard at
sixteen And now we's I don't know, like forty five
thousand dollars and they're about to approve a bitcoin spot
ETF And so it's like you got to turn off
the news and turn off your phone and understand that.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Like you were saying, misery loves company people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I was thinking the same thing. It's exactly right what
you just said. When you said the clicker, I thought, oh, right,
hate cells. That's where we are now. Misery cells fascinating.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
I think ad dollars on news channels or on positive influencers,
you're not even turning on the news if things are happy,
Like what do you can turned on? And everyone's like, goepy,
it's a nice, happy day to day, go to work,
enjoy your life like no one's watching it. So you
have to kind of propagate negativity, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
It's it's fucked up, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
So if you can learn how to tune that out
and turn that off, things are actually so much better
than people make out or.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Use it and just realize it says more about other people.
I've started to have more compassion. I feel like people
must be really miserable, and I do attribute some of
it to the holidays, and so think about how sad
they must be if it makes them feel better to
be miserable and to criticize.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You have a four year old, I have a thirteen year.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Old, and it's helpful to tell kids like that they
can use it like fuel, like it really it isn't
about them what people are saying about them.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
So I think that's huge.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
That's such a great point, Like, you know, it's not
we learned that and understand that you can.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I have that.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
I have the ability for some reason. Sometimes like someone
says something so nasty and my first reaction is like
to smiles like, wow, I really just triggered that person.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
That means when I was.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Doing when I was in I think it was like
tenth grade, there was a bully in my school, right
who this is where I learned that, and the meanest
kid ever. Because I did theater. You would make fun,
you would call me every name under the sun. He
would like come up to me in class and flick
me behind my ears and like hit me. And you
(34:42):
know I was, you know, telling the whole school I
was was gay, and which is not a big deal,
but at the time when I was in tenth grade.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
You know I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Oh no, that was a big deal.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Yeah, And you know it was tough. And then I remember,
because we couldn't drive yet, I think we were we
were fifteen. I remember getting picked up from school late
and then driving home and on the drive home his family,
his dad's car was pulled over and his dad was
like screaming at him like out of a movie and
(35:14):
was slapping him in the face, and the kid was crying, crying, crying,
And I have that image is burned in my head
of hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Wow, that's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Wow, And so never forget that. So anytime anyone's ever
mean or anything, I'm like you, Well, one, I get annoyed,
but then I'm also like you, and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
This is how they don't know another way to react
to you, so they do it the way that they
were told to, which is to be mean and to
hurt you.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Right, Yeah, that's so crazy, that's so yeah, that's so true,
and I I do try. I was literally just talking
to Denise Richards about it is like you have to
just like use it as fuel.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You have to be like, wow, I really got that
person lit up.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And you know, it's either it's either they are really
thinking about it you and they hate you, or they
love you. But in the middle is indifference. I means
you're making no impact whatsoever. So I'd rather I'd take
the hate over the indifference. I guess in general, what
are the biggest things going on now? Like what are
the things if someone's on a plane being like what
are you what are you working on? Like what would
you say besides like this apartment, that apartment, like generally
(36:17):
like another book, another show, Like what are the big
ticket items?
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Well, we I mean I started my own company in
twenty twenty and that was crazy. So, you know, we
run the real estate brokerage. We expanded to six states
this year. You know, we're about five hundred agents, one
hundred and fifteen staff members. We run an ed tech
business that's like Salesforce for sales training, that's B to
B and direct consumer as well. That's been super wild
(36:46):
and fun to watch that grow. And then we have
a production company for real estate. You know, I like
to stay with my within my niche. I think the
niche is key right, riches and niches, and so all
of those are growing. Next year, they're there's a lot
of big things happening. My third book comes out in February.
There is something that we made this year that we
shot that I can't talk about, but that'll come out
(37:09):
next year, which is super cool and just very different
and been a lot of fun. And I'm just excited
about growth, and you know, I'm excited for people. I
think twenty twenty three was a trying year for so
many and I'm excited for that to kind of be
behind us and now use that use twenty twenty three
is that if it wasn't a good year, for you
use it as fuel to make twenty twenty four your fire.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
You know, it's like that quote.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Yeah, if you know, you know gasoline, like, if you
know how to use it, it can it can.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
It can warm your house. Right. If you don't know
how to use it, it'll burn your house down.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
So use it, use it the right now you do
motivational speaking, I assume right like you are.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I used to do a lot more until I got
so busy, and that's hard. But I talked to salespeople
all over the world. It's Dubai and Abu Dhavi and
Monaco and Australia and Scare which were nice, which were fun.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, I grew up on stage.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
It's like the one thing I can go back to
and step up on stage like, oh, I'm kind of home.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, you're very, very like enlightening and positive and motivating.
I want to tell you something that someone told me.
Noble told me. So many people have said to get
my real estate license because I bought you know, probably
in my life like ten to fifteen plate maybe not
even that many, but like ten twelve places if I
count to, maybe maybe fifteen.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
So I went online.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
I don't know which one it was in Connecticut, I think,
I don't remember if it was New York. And I
started doing the chapters and I wasn't gonna like I
wanted to go to the class, and everyone's like you're
a loser, like you don't need to go sit in
a class like driving school. So I was like fine,
So in the car, I started the online thing and
then like every single chapter, and I would read through
the whole thing like I was doing it right because
people said they kind of finagle it, and they don't.
(38:51):
They don't really pay attention and they try to take
the test at the end or I don't know what
their way is, but or someone else sits there in
front of it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I was really doing it.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And at the end I would fail the quiz like
three times until it wouldn't let you do it again,
and then I would like reset, and then finally.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
I would pass the quiz.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And Paul, my fiance, who's in real estate, that's his business.
He you know, develops as shopping centers, very successful and
you know, millions of square feet in real estate, and
he I was trying to get him to help me,
and he couldn't. We both were failing the quiz. I'm like,
we're fit. You're a fucking failure. You're in real estate.
We are I was on the cover of Forbes. I
can't do this dumb test. So we only got through
(39:28):
like a certain amount of chapters and I literally said
to him, I was like, you think Ryan, Sirhank could
like pass this test right now? Cold, Like, I just
want to give you the quizzes and see if you
could pass them.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
No, no, because they don't.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
You couldn't pass them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
No, the quizzes don't.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
They're hard.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Yeah, it's like anything like, they don't. They don't test
you on anything you actually need to know. Like I
don't remember all the laws from the sixties that were
created for the board.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
There's this board, there's that board. There's how many days until?
And I'm such a dork that I was like really
paying attention, but I gave I haven't finished at least.
It's not like I'm going to get demoted, Like it
doesn't expire. I can go back. But one day I'll
get my real estate license. And if you open in Connecticut,
I can be a broker.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
We are opening in Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
You should finish ready.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Yeah, Yeah, Florida is the hardest one. I'm the broker
record in Connectic.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Nothing can be harder than the one I talk because.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
It's hard because in Florida you guys to start dealing
with with with floodplanes and you know the state tests.
You know, like if you're taking it in in Connecticut,
you're like, what's what's the big deal in Florida? Like
they have to test you on meats and bounds and
you know, like ranch and farm and that's like.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Me getting an MBA. I don't stop. I'm not ready
for that. Okay, I'm not ready. I have to get through.
I have like twenty four more chapters. I'm only through six.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I have faith in you. You're a committed woman. You
will figure it out.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
I'm going to pass and we're going to we could
do a graduation ceremony. I will call you when I pass,
and then I will be a broker anyway. Yeah, awesome,
Wow your list of responsibilities exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
It was so fun talking to you. I really appreciate
you doing that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Have a happy holiday you too.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
You two h
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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