Ryan Serhant: How a Billion-Dollar Broker Sells Without Selling

Real estate broker Ryan Serhant tells Shane Parrish how he sells without selling, follows up with prospects for years, and treats each day as a bank of 1,000 minutes. Serhant founded the brokerage SERHANT., starred in Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York and now Netflix’s Owning Manhattan, and in his last year as an agent crossed $1 billion in sales. In this episode of The Knowledge Project he walks through the audition that started his television career, his frameworks for closing and follow-up, the strangest deal he ever did, and what his drive costs the people around him.

TLDW

Serhant’s sales method is to make a real connection, help with something unrelated to the deal, and only then ask. He rejects “fake it till you make it” in favor of acting today like the person he expects to be in 12 to 24 months, and says a willingness to be embarrassed is what separates people who earn more. He credits his results to treating time like money and to following up until people buy or tell him to stop. The second half turns to media: he argues that distribution is the most valuable asset in any business, explains how social video became a contract term with developers, and admits the growth he chases is hard on his family.

Thoughts

Serhant’s audience became a line item in his contracts, and that detail says more about his business than any sales framework in the episode. By 2015 to 2017, he says, developers and billionaire sellers were adding clauses to old-fashioned listing agreements requiring him to post a tour of the building on his personal YouTube channel, and awarding him the building in exchange. A claim like “distribution is the most valuable asset in any business” is easy to make. Proof that it is true is when the other side writes it into the agreement. It also explains why his advice travels poorly for an ordinary agent. The closing techniques are available to anyone, but the reason he got the listing in the first place was an audience nobody else could offer, built on a decade of television that he calls luck.

The follow-up story works because of what he left out of the messages. Serhant wrote to one prospect every other week for five years without a reply, then sold him homes for $16 million, $73 million and $33 million. Persistence alone would have earned a block. What he sent was a personal note about the market, or a line of congratulations triggered by a Google Alert on the man’s name, and he never asked for anything. Each note cost the reader nothing to ignore. That is the difference between following up and pestering, and it is the part most people skip, because a message with no ask feels like wasted effort to the person sending it. He is also honest that it does not always work.

The craziest-deal story is told as a win for persistence, and it reads just as well as a warning. A stranger offers $8 million by phone, vanishes, and months later wires an $830,000 deposit from a bank in a country the lawyer says you should probably not do business with. People around Serhant explain how such deposits can be used to launder money. His response is to trace the buyer to Paris, fly there, and drink tequila with a man who arrives with an entourage. It ended well: the buyer was real, paid cash, and said he closed partly because Serhant would not leave him alone. But a good ending does not make it a good decision, and a new agent hearing this should notice that every signal pointed the other way.

Serhant insists that “future me” is different from faking it, and the distinction is thinner than he allows. For the Million Dollar Listing casting crew he borrowed a Range Rover, had friends call his phone all morning, and recruited an acting classmate to play an irritable hedge fund client. That is staging. What keeps it from being a lie in any way that matters is the audience: casting directors were looking for someone who could perform a character on television, and he showed them he could. The approach is sound when the thing being judged is your ability to play the role. It becomes the lying he says he hates the moment the audience is a client relying on the picture being true.

The least rehearsed moment comes when Parrish raises a scene from Owning Manhattan in which Serhant’s wife tells him he used to be happy. He answers with an axiom about companies: if you are not growing, you are dying. It is a reply about business to a question about a marriage. He then says he started his firm in 2020 largely because his parents told him not to, and that encouragement would have felt too comfortable. He ends by recasting his ambition as responsibility to the people who win when he wins. That may be true. It is also a framing in which stopping is never allowed, and he does not say what his wife made of it.

Key Takeaways

Serhant got his real estate license the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, because he was a broke actor who needed $2,000 a month for rent. He made $9,000 in his first year.
He replaces “fake it till you make it” with “future me”: write down who you will be in 12 to 24 months and act like that person today. He says the world is attracted to confidence and competence.
About 3,000 agents went to the open casting call for Million Dollar Listing New York in 2010. Serhant made the final 16, staged his day for the crew, then walked out on them mid-shoot on the theory that people want what they cannot have.
He recommends improv classes to his agents. In his view people are no longer afraid of failure but are terrified of embarrassment, and those willing to embarrass themselves make more money.
The 1,000 minutes framework: of 1,440 minutes in a day, about 1,000 are usable, and they should be treated like dollars. If someone takes five of them with a bad phone call, you do not hand over the rest.
He splits his day into three jobs, finding business, keeping business and doing business, and runs it in 15-minute increments. In 2018 his team sold about $800 million and beat the next team by roughly $350 million.
His view of selling is that people hate being sold and love shopping. Start with the two Cs, a compliment and something in common, then ask questions that cannot be answered with no and let the other person talk.
CODO stands for close on day one. It means setting expectations and next steps at the first meeting so the relationship does not drift into a friendship with no transaction.
The three Fs are follow up, follow through and follow back. Follow up until people buy, die or ask you to stop, do what you said you would, and go back to everyone who worked with you.
He uses Google Alerts on prospects’ names and companies, and sends a short congratulation when something happens, with no request attached.
On negotiation he says ego kills more deals, careers and relationships than anything else. His approach is to over-communicate, flatter the largest ego in the room and play for the other side to win.
Advertising pushes a message at people, while social media and PR pull them in. Serhant says developers began writing his YouTube property tours into listing agreements.
To build a personal brand from nothing in a new town, he would interview every small business owner on his phone, publish the interviews on a local website tuned for search engines and AI models, and only later turn the audience into a real estate business.
In 2019, his last year purely as an agent, his team crossed $1 billion in sales and he puts his commissions at about $22 million. He started his own company in 2020, during COVID, against his parents’ advice.

Chapters

02:19 Future Me, Not Fake It Till You Make It

Serhant says faking it implies lying, which he calls the worst thing in sales. For his Million Dollar Listing audition he wrote down who a cast member would be, then borrowed a car, met the Los Angeles crew at a gym at 5:00 a.m. to tire them out, and showed them a penthouse with a friend playing the client. When his next showing fell through, he remembered a date who had walked out on him, cited The Art of War on surprise, and left the crew standing in the apartment. They called the next day.

10:03 Acting Classes and the Fear of Embarrassment

His family moved often when he was a child, and the theater kids were the ones who took him in. Acting taught him to memorize, speak in complete sentences and breathe properly, and he says selling uses the same muscle because you are on all day. He used to require improv classes for agents and now strongly recommends them. Getting on stage to play something ridiculous is practice for talking to 100 strangers to meet five.

12:28 The 1,000 Minutes a Day Framework

As an independent contractor with no boss, Serhant had to work out what to do all day. He decided to be the CEO, CFO and COO of his own life and to treat his minutes as a bank balance that refills each morning. Meetings shrank to 15 or 30 minutes. He says offering people less time is usually welcomed, and that it rules out unproductive talk, not small talk.

16:26 The Art of the Sale and CODO

The best sale, he says, is no sale: nothing is for sale and he is not selling you anything. He builds a real relationship, even a brief one, talks about everything except the transaction, and lays out how the process will work. Some properties sell themselves and the only question is to whom. For an overpriced one with a single showing, he sells the lifestyle first. Bad salespeople sell the bed, and he sells the dream.

20:57 The Three Fs and Google Alerts

Everyone is in sales, Serhant says, and the first thing anyone sells is themselves. He met one of his biggest clients briefly in 2012 and wrote to him every other week until the man replied at the end of 2017. He does not keep contacting people who tell him to stop. Giving up is easy and trying is free, and he would sooner regret what he did than what he never attempted.

23:21 The Craziest Deal in Serhant History

In 2011 a caller offered $8 million for an Upper West Side apartment listed at $8.5 million, agreed to $8.3 million, and disappeared. Months later a deposit arrived, then silence again when the condo board application was due. Serhant found an address in Paris, got a few pages signed over drinks, and filed the application unfinished. The buyer eventually turned up in New York, detoured to inspect a plane he was buying, and closed in cash. He never used the apartment.

31:21 How to Handle Ego in Negotiations

At sales of $20 million to $100 million, the agent, buyer and seller all have large egos. Serhant’s answer is to respect everyone and communicate constantly. Unlike a championship game, most business deals only work if both sides win, so he partners with the biggest ego and helps it win. He keeps friends close and enemies closer.

33:02 Rock Bottom and the Only Way Out

In the summer of 2008 his debit card was declined at a grocery store while an impatient shopper stood behind him, and he cried on the subway home. His parents told him to come back. A friend told him to get a real estate license. The financial crisis hit two weeks after he made rent, and most agents quit, which left him far less competition. He lived by the line that the only way out is through.

38:56 Building a Social Media Engine and a Brand From Scratch

When the show first aired, the phone did not ring, but Serhant noticed early communities of buyers, sellers and agents forming on Twitter and Facebook. Instagram put beautiful homes in everyone’s hand, and YouTube let him publish faster than reality television, which airs a year after filming. He calls the model content to community to commerce. His training business, Sell It, now teaches about 60,000 salespeople in 133 countries the sequence hook them, help them, ask them.

46:51 The Personal Cost of Success

Serhant says a business that is not a lifestyle business has to grow because costs always rise, and that people are wired to want more. After reaching the top of the sales charts he chose to start again from last place with his own firm. The chip on his shoulder comes from being the chubby kid picked last for teams, who wrote stories in his closet. He holds that a hard past explains a person and does not excuse rudeness. He defines success as a happy legacy.

Notable Quotes

“If you’re willing to embarrass yourself, you make more money every time.”
Ryan Serhant, on why he sends agents to improv classes

“People don’t want to be sold. But they love shopping.”
Ryan Serhant, on the art of the sale

“Giving up is so easy. Quitting is so easy. Trying is so much harder, but it’s also free.”
Ryan Serhant, on following up with one client for five years

“Ego kills more deals than anything.”
Ryan Serhant, on negotiating between buyers, sellers and agents

“The most valuable asset in any business is distribution.”
Ryan Serhant, on why he built a media operation inside a brokerage

“I think your past explains you but it does not excuse you.”
Ryan Serhant, on where his drive comes from

“It’s not ambition. It’s not a chip. It is pure brutal responsibility.”
Ryan Serhant, on why he keeps pushing

Watch the full conversation between Ryan Serhant and Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project.