RV (00:06): Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. You are about to get backstage access to one of the biggest personal brands in the world. Not only one of the biggest personal brands, but somebody who I admire and respect for how he’s turned his personal brand into an actual scalable business with enterprise value. Something extremely rare that we see. And this is my pal a a brambles group client. Now, Ryan Serhant. And if you don’t know Ryan, you will he’s, he’s quite possibly the most famous real estate agent in the world. RV (01:07): So he became really popular while selling some of the \most expensive properties in Manhattan and, you know, New York and other areas, two celebrities. And he was the TV star of the two time Emmy nominated series, million Dollar Listing on Bravo. He since has had multiple TV shows, and he has another one coming out soon on Netflix. But he’s also, more importantly the CEO of Serhant, which is a tech forward real estate brokerage known for really cutting edge innovation. Extravagant listing listings, a full service media production company. And also he has basically like a whole nother half, which does digital education which is a, is a platform that has more than 14,000 members in 110 countries. And all of these things together have led to Ryan accumulating a personal brand with more than three, 4 million plus followers on social media. He’s the bestselling author of multiple books. And you know, he writes columns for Forbes and other places and has just really done a phenomenal job of turning a personal brand into a huge business. And so we invited him on the show to say, Hey, could we hear some of those secrets? So, Ryan, welcome to the show, man. RS (02:28): Thank you. I appreciate it. I was, was like, man, when is it? When’s the intro gonna end? We have so much to talk about RV (02:33): . I know. So much RS (02:34): Intro, so much RV (02:35): Information. Well, you’ve done a lot of, you’ve done so many things like that. Doesn’t even scratch the surface of, of it. But let’s start by the most recent thing, which is what brought us together was your book brand. It like Sirhan. Tell us about brand it like Sirhan, why did you write that book? It’s the third book in a trilogy. So let’s start there and then we can kind of go backwards. RS (02:58): Sure. You know, the book yeah. Just came out it and thank you for all your help, by the way. Really appreciate it. It definitely stands alone, you know, for people who want to go and build a brand in 20, 24 and beyond, right? It is, it is very, very tactical. No fluff. You wanna build a brand from scratch that’s personal. So a personal brand, or you wanna build a product brand and it has everything you need to know from, you know, social channels to working with pr. It has our whole, what we call our Sir Amp brand strategy system, which I can get into. But it’s, it’s really, really great. And I, you know, I wrote it because I couldn’t, I, again, I couldn’t find something like it, you know, there’s, there’s branding books that are old, you know, that talk a lot about newspapers and radio. RS (03:44): But it’s just a, it’s a different world now, right? And everything moves incredibly, incredibly fast as part of a, a trilogy, right? I wrote my, my first book in 2018 called Sell It Like Sirhan. We did a TV show about it for Bravo where I was like helping people sell wine and sell body and bikini waxing memberships and all this kind of stuff, . So that was fun. And then that got turned into like an education business called Sell Like Sirhan dot com, which grew and built. And literally 22 minutes ago the evolution of that brand just turned into sell it.com. Come on, RV (04:20): Sell it. Do RS (04:21): Super exciting com. Sell it.com. That, so that’s been super exciting. So that was just, that was sales tools, right? That’s what was that book? Was the sales tool belt. Like, if you’ve never sold anything, you don’t classify yourself as a salesperson. You hate salespeople, you hate selling, whatever. If you wanna control your own life, you wanna be an entrepreneur, a gig worker, you wanted to have a side hustle. You wanna sell real estate, sell cars, sell software, whatever. Read this, it is your, it’s your Bible. And I followed that up with my second book, big Money Energy, which, which really was, Hey, okay, I gave you all the tools. But if you don’t have the confidence to use them, then it’s gonna be a great tool belt that sits in your closet. So how can you start acting and carrying yourself, like the you of the future, you know, where you want to get to two years from today. RS (05:08): So be that person today. And so how do you do that? And so I looked at those two books and it was the sales skills, you need the confidence to use them. But then if no one knows what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter how confident you are, it doesn’t matter how many tools you have in your Jewel belt, you’re never gonna sell anything to anybody. So how do you, how do you create awareness? How do you cut through attention? How do you, how do you really build right, a brand both for yourself or for a product. And that’s where branded like Shanz comes into play. Yep. Spent the last two years writing it and putting it together. RV (05:43): So one, one of the things, I mean, you’ve done masterfully is PR and specifically, I, I can, can you share with us the story of like, how did, how did you get on tv? How does it work? Like, how does it even work to get a show with Bravo or Netflix? Because you’ve done that not just once, multiple times. You got your new Netflix show coming out in June. Yeah. And like, that’s, very few people have been able to do that. So like, did you just call them or like send a submission or show up to a casting call or what? RS (06:22): Well, the first time I was ever on TV was on a soap opera. So I, I trained to be an actor for a long time my whole life. Like, I was terrible at sports, but I liked being on stage. And so I did theater since I was a little kid and made like little home movies and all that. I went to college, I was a double major in English literature, so writing books and and theater, right? So, so performance. And I moved to New York City in 2006 to do theater. My dream was Broadway. That was my dream to be on stage or Broadway. You know, if TV or film worked out, that would be awesome. But I didn’t wanna move to California. It was the other end of the country. I’d never even been there before. And so I was like, you know, I’ve been to New York City before. I know people in New York, I’ll go make that happen. And I promptly ran out of all my money. And because when you go to theater school, they, which RV (07:12): Probably took a few days, right? Like in New York, you anyone can burn through like a lot of money pretty quickly, RS (07:17): All of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had like, I had what I thought was like five years of savings, and I was out of it in less than two years. And I made some money along the way, like I did some regional theater and made some money. I did a soap opera called As The World Turns, which isn’t Around anymore. And Oh, nice. Yeah. Made some money from that and for a while. And then, and then it just basically was down to my last couple thousand dollars. And, you know, the classic, how am I gonna eat? How am I gonna pay rent? Do I go become a bartender, a waiter? What do I do? And a friend said, get into real estate is the same thing. You know, I was great at improv, so I would do improv classes and you know, your acting classes really are about breathing, right? RS (07:55): They’re about listening. They’re about, you know, morphing into this conversation and that conversation. It’s about using your voice. And selling is the same exact thing. Memorize information. You meet strangers and you play an improv game, right? And so he’s like, listen, get your real estate license. Rent Apartments. New York City is tens of thousands of rental apartments and rental agents. You can make, you can make, you know, you can make a thousand dollars a day, you can make a hundred grand a year. You know, no one knows what to do. The city is all upside down. It’s crazy. So do that. So I got my license the day Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy in 2008, and everyone gets outta the business, but I already had no money. So I was like par for the course. I just thought the business was really, really hard. RS (08:44): And I, I kind of, you know, it was real estate was my survi survival job. I had no intention of being a real estate agent or a broker or salesman. I had all the intention of buying time. It’s like all if I rent an apartment a month, and if I can make my rent and pay for food and incidentals, which was about $2,000 a month, I could stay in New York and not have to move home to Colorado where my parents were at the time. And so what, you’re from Colorado? I didn’t know that. I’m from Colorado. I’m from, well, I’m from Texas. I grew up outside Boston. We moved a lot as a little kid, but when I, when I graduated high school, my parents sold our house in Boston and moved to Colorado. So if I were to go home, you know, at that time, I would’ve moved home to Colorado to live with my parents. RS (09:29): Gotcha. And so I, you know, I did my first rental deal. It was like, huh, wow, okay, so if I just work, I can make money . Like, I was so used to working for free, you know, being an actor in New York City, you do everything for free. You, you, you, you agree everything’s for free until it’s not. And so I spent two years basically working for free. And so I just was totally fine with not getting paid. And I didn’t need anyone to pat me on the back. I was just excited that if someone decided not to take an apartment from me, they took it because of another apartment, or because they didn’t want that apartment. It was never because of the color of my hair or my face or my voice, or they thought I wasn’t sexy enough. Right? So it wasn’t as personal. RS (10:10): And so a lot of salespeople get into sales and they, you know, 90% of them churn out because the rejection is just too hard and they just don’t wanna deal with it. For me, like my whole life had been rejection. So I was, I was kind of fine with it. I didn’t bank on anybody or anything ever. I just knew I was gonna bet on myself. ’cause That’s why I moved to New York in the first place. And so then I started doing sales, and I got my first sales commission check of like a couple thousand dollars. It was like, holy moly. And I actually liked it. I liked touching base with people. I liked seeing apartments all day. I liked running around, and I was totally fine working for free. Amazing. Because, you know, in, in, in sales, your, your success is your client’s success, right? RS (10:48): Amen. And so I then I built, and a little over a year later, there was a casting call that got put out for the New York version of a show called A Million Dollar Listing, which had been on the air for a couple years in Los Angeles on Bravo. And so I saw that and was like, oh, that’d be so weird, if I did a reality show, I know how to be in front of a camera. And so I just went to an open casting call. 3000 agents showed up. You know, you have to remember, at that time, I think there was 50,000 real estate agents in New York City, and that was in 2008. There’s something like 80,000 now. And so I went to an open casting call at the Hudson Hotel, and then six months later, they called me and were like, Hey, we whittled it down to a thousand people submit a written application. RS (11:38): And then a couple months later, they called me back and they were like, Hey, we’re doing a Skype interview. We wanna get to know you better. And they whittled it down to a couple hundred at that point, and then, then they whittled it down to 16 people to, to find the final agents that would be on that show. And they, they, they flew a, a whole production crew in from Los Angeles and said, we’re gonna follow all 16 of you around New York City for half a day. Show us what your day’s like. Show us how you operate, what do you do? And I made sure that that half day was the craziest half day in the history of real estate in New York City. Nice. Because I had just got into the business. I was like, a half day in my life, I’ll post some ads on the internet, I’ll get a bagel. RS (12:19): And so I didn’t want it to be that. And so I made sure it was, it was worth watching. And then they cast us, you know? Wow. And so out of obscurity. So then we did Million Dollar Listing. It premiered in 2012 and ran for 10 years. And from that we did spinoff shows. I did a, my wedding was a spinoff show. My, my renovation of my home was a spinoff show Sell, like Sirhan was a spinoff show. And then, you know, I saw the world change during that experience, right? Like we, when we started listing first came out like two to 3 million people would tune in live every week, right? There was no Netflix, Netflix was DVDs. There was no video, there was no Instagram in 2012, right? There was no Instagram. There was, YouTube was like reruns of Kevin Bacon’s movies and scenes, like, it was, it was just a different, different world . RS (13:06): And then Instagram comes out, right? So social becomes a thing. The heyday of reality TV kind of really kicks off 2013 to like 2016, Netflix moves to streaming, house of Cards comes out, reality TV explodes everywhere. And people’s attention starts being grabbed, you know? And I saw that like 20 16, 17 really 17, 18, 19 ratings started going down for all TV shows because YouTube became a real thing, right? The next generation didn’t need, didn’t, they weren’t watching TV anymore. Everyone was just watching. So as you had wifi, they had all the entertainment they need. And then TikTok hit and everything really changed. So it’s like, okay, so one day cable TV isn’t gonna exist anymore. And so I need to plan for my next, my next step. I built a whole career and a whole business on the back of a reality TV show. RS (13:56): What’s next for me? So I started my own company in 2020 called Sirhan. We do real estate brokerage services, education services, and we have a production company. So we do media services. And I created a pitch reel, right? Where I took a couple of my camera guys and we created a reel, and I pitched it around, and we took it to Netflix, we took it to HBO Max, we took it to Peacock, we took it to Amazon Prime, we took it to Hulu. And we got offers from almost all of them. But Netflix was, was the strongest. And they already had a, a world built, right? They already had a viewership that understood reality real estate. And they had the biggest global audience. And so for my business, even though those other networks are fun, and they’re cool, like, I wanna make sure that someone in India, Japan, Brazil, you know globally would have the opportunity to come in, into contact with our brand. And so we chose Netflix. We shot it all last year, and it comes out in a couple months. RV (14:56): Dude, RS (14:56): That, that’s a really long answer to your super RV (14:58): Simple. Yeah. That, but that, I mean, that’s, that’s so powerful. I mean, I love how God uses your, you know, backstory and pulls it all together, right? Like one, one of the things that we always say is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And like, there you are not making it as an actor, starting with real estate. And then all of a sudden with a casting call of 3000 people who is more qualified to know exactly what those people need and, and to make, you know, something worth watching. When, when you say you pitched it, okay, like in, in 2020, you say, we, we created a pitch reel, and then we took it around to Yeah. Peacock, et cetera. What does that mean exactly? Who are you taking it to? How do you take it to them? What, like, how do you find these people? I mean, I assume it’s somewhat of a referrals and prospecting game, like anything, but is it basically like, yeah. Do you hire a showrunner and they like, take your pitch deck and show it to producers? Or how does that work? The RS (15:57): Show, the showrunner came later once the show got picked up, because there was no show to run prior to that, that was a whole separate process. You know, I had been on TV previously. Yeah. So I had the, the, the, I was in a fortunate position where, you know, I had a great agent at UTA, you know, agents are are good people, right? They can get business done. So I had a great agent at UTA that I kind of brainstormed with for a bit. The production company that I worked with World of Wonder based in LA that did Million Dollar Listing and all my spinoff shows with me on Bravo. Were down to try something new with me. So it’s like, this is gonna be different. I’m not, I don’t wanna make million dollar listing again for the new world. RS (16:35): Like, I wanna do something that kind of redefines the genre a bit, and it’s gonna be weird. Maybe it won’t, maybe it won’t work. I have no idea. And they said, okay, well, so we made, we made our first reel, like on our own, so that we weren’t really spending tons of money and wasting it. And then my agent and World of Wonder, the production company, set up the meetings because that’s all they do, right? That’s what their jobs are. It’s like, if you’re like, all right, how do I go buy a house in New York? You find a good agent and you say, this is what I want. The agent has all the relationships and has doing, been doing this for 10 years, and they set up those appointments, they know exactly who to talk to, and they don’t waste any time. So we did our Zoom, or it was like our Zoom tour, right? RS (17:11): Where we would send our little reel over and they would watch it, and then we would, we would talk about it on those, on those pitches. Like, Hey, here’s the vision. So you just saw five minutes of kind of like a taste of what we’re looking at, which was our company in New York, our building in soho that I’m standing in right now. Kind of our crazy cast of characters and, and really helping define what the universe would look like, because I think the most successful TV shows create, create a World, right? They create a universe that really grabs the viewer, and then you have to hook and release, right? So how are you hooking people and then giving them a cliffhanger and then releasing them, and then giving them a hook, giving ’em a cliffhanger, and then releasing them. And so there’s, there’s kind of an algorithm that you look at when you’re telling story long form. RS (17:58): I mean, short form too, for sure, but also long form. And so then we walked the Netflix executives, the HOO Max executives, Hulu Peacock, Amazon Prime. Amazon gave us a great offer, a great one. And they were super, super bullish. And the only reason I didn’t go with Amazon, and that was a tough, I remember that, like that summer which was summer of 22, when, when we kind of got the green light. These, these things take forever, by the way. I remember like going back and forth and just saying, what do we do? Who do we go with? Like, how do I, like, it’s such a big decision. How do I choose? And the way we did it was like, all right, well why, why am I doing this? I don’t, I don’t care about being famous. I don’t care about selling toasters. Like we, our business is the most important. What’s gonna be the most entertaining? ’cause We’re gonna make the same show regardless of the network. But what’s gonna be best for business? And we just looked, we’re like, all right, so we got a client. Did you RV (18:57): Say you, you do want it to be most entertaining, or you’re saying you didn’t care about? RS (19:01): No, we want it to, we just two, you want it to be entertaining, but we know what’s gonna be entertaining. ’cause We know how to make great tv, but we also want it to be great for the business, otherwise it’s a waste of time. Right? So like, like, I don’t wanna spend all this time, all this effort, effort and go make a TV show and have it sit in a box, right? Would sure. Super entertaining in that box. Or it’s, RV (19:18): Or it’s a distraction that pulls you away from the business. But if you can make them aligned, all of a sudden one is like jet fuel for the other. RS (19:25): Yeah. So, exactly. So we really, we looked at it, and so then we, I was like, okay, well where are our clients right now coming from, you know, that are using us? You know, and they were across Asia, south America, India, different parts of Europe. Like we had a buyer in Croatia. And I just went to all of them and I said, Hey, do you watch Netflix, Amazon, or where do you see tv? Every single one of them said they had Netflix. Whoa. And it just, that was just the differentiator. I was like, I, I gotta be in front of people in Croatia, Sao Paulo, Patagonia, you know, India, et cetera. And New York is a big, it’s, it’s a very New York show. It’s gritty, you know, it’s tough. It feels very New York and, and around the world. New York’s an interesting place for people to see, like, it’s just a wild, it’s wild little island that we have here. RV (20:18): But you’re deliberately going after, I mean, multiple times, just this, you’ve said about the importance of the international audience. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . So why, why is that so important to you international versus just going like, why not just dominate New York? Or why not just dominate the US or like, you know, other markets? RS (20:40): So New York is where we dominate in real estate. So, you know, I’m based in New York City. I live in New York. There’s enough real estate here to go around. It’s a big part of our business. But our brand has, has grown pretty globally now. And so we want to take as much advantage of it, of it as we possibly can. So sell it.com right now has, we have members in 128 countries, you know, most of which I’ve never even been to. And so if we’re gonna create a TV show and spend two years making it like it is a significant amount of work and really put the time and effort behind it, then I wanna make sure that it has the biggest opportunity possible. You know? And, and that’s why really, like what’s the best platform to be on? Like when it was cable TV only, then you’re like, you, you really run the risk of, okay, well a lot of people are gonna see it, but if it’s not any good, it’ll go off the air pretty quickly. Streaming’s actually kind of worse, because if it’s not good, that thumbnail goes away real fast, right? That algorithm just starts showing you more things to keep you in the platform. Like Netflix is just, you know, is a social media app, basically, right? They wanna keep you in there, hook you in. Don’t, don’t leave us, don’t go to Amazon. Don’t go to Hulu. Right. Stay, stay. RV (21:57): Yeah. It’s, but it’s amazing just to even hear your brain of how far ahead you’re thinking, like the patience it takes to pursue a TV show, knowing it could take two years to get a deal, two years to film it, then it finally gets out and at any moment they could drop you. Right? They can pull the thumbnail down. That’s super, super powerful. So, so like talk to me about, now a lot of reality TV shows, stars, we, we actually have a lot of brand builders, clients, like a fair number who were on the Bachelor or were an NFL player or like, yeah. You know, a lot of people have been on TV or they’ve had their minute of fame and then the moment the thing goes away, they struggle to monetize, they struggle to keep the momentum going. You didn’t do that. Like, you have gotten bigger and bigger. Like everything has sort of snowballed and even, even small business owners. I think that’s the thing is going, how do you turn your personal brand into a business? How do you scale it past you? What are the things that you’ve done internally? How do you think strategically about sort of scale and enterprise value and making it extend beyond the person of Ryan? RS (23:13): So I’m always thinking at minimum 12 months out, all the work that I’m doing today is not to the benefit of Ryan tomorrow. It’s to the benefit of Ryan in April of 2025. Like, that’s all the work we’re doing today. Like March was across our businesses. March was our biggest revenue month in company history, right? And it’s because of the work that we did a year ago, you know, and it’s really important for me always to remind our employees of that because they’re like, oh, oh, we can take time off. I’m like, well, well, no, no, because all the work you’ve done from the past year got us to today. Now imagine what could happen if we even dialed that down even further, where we’re gonna be a year from for now. So you’re always working for future. You like that is, that’s my world. RS (24:00): That’s the world I live in. Nothing is for me today, like I go to the gym this morning, it has no effect on my body today. Right? Am I more mentally aware? Sure. Right. But I’m doing it for my long-term health so that Ryan, next year, two years from now, Ryan, who’s 80, can look back and say, Hey, thanks , thanks for doing that. I know you didn’t want to, I know you were tired. I know it was stressful. I know you sometimes had sleepless nights, sometimes you cried ’cause you were lonely, right? And there’s too much responsibility on your shoulders. But thank you. That’s, so that’s how I think about it, you know, in terms of pulling myself out of it, you know, I was a real estate broker for 12 years. Everything was me, right? I had a team. There were, you know, but they helped me. RS (24:46): They were assistants on the business. It was like, so how do I, how do I scale sales when I’m the, when I’m, when I’m, when I’m kind of selling is myself, right? Because the apartments are there, the houses are there, but I’m really selling is using Ryan to go to those houses or to sell those houses. Totally. Like what is, what’s scalable that way? So lemme build a brand. Let me focus a lot on talking about Serhant and not just Ryan Serhant. I have a funky last name. It is check. And so not a lot of people have it so I could use it, right? Because it’s every time someone mispronounces it and says Sirhan or Ser Ann or Seacrest, it’s great. Right? It just means they’re thinking. And so, and that was a big part of creating early on, because I didn’t start, so I didn’t start Serhant until 2020, but I knew I was going to eventually, which is why I wrote sell it like Serhant in 2018. RS (25:36): I mean, we started writing it in 2016, so like, kind of four years ahead of time. And then with the brand, right? Our brand strategy system, that brand it, like Serhant the book really goes into is three phases. So it’s core identity, consistent content, and then amplification or, or shouting it from the mountaintop. And so I did those exercises, like what is the core identity of, of, of Sirhan in, in as much as how it’s different from Ryan, right? So like, what’s Ryan? And then what is Sirhan? Now let’s create consistent content around Sirhan being separate from Ryan. Let’s build a production arm that is just pushing out the product brand and focusing on those product successes in that kind of third period, which is the, the amplification. So let’s make sure that there are, there are publications that are just pushing the brand, and then let’s align ourselves with other successful people under the Samp brand so that they have their own personal brands, but they’re using Sirhan to power them. RS (26:36): That’s gonna help us over time, slowly build that brand away from just me. And the first year, it definitely didn’t work. Killed me. Second year, it definitely didn’t work. Still killed me. Third year, it was like, huh, all right, so it’s working. And we started expanding. So it was like, what is, what, what do I do in North Carolina? Like, what is sur in these different states and markets? Like, I’m not there. How does this work? And so it started working and then this year we’re really kind of off to the, off to the races. That’s kind of high level. Fifth year. Fifth year RV (27:09): In RS (27:10): The fifth, well, 2020, we didn’t start, we weren’t legal until like January, 2021. So all 21, 22, 23. So it took a three fiscal years. And so we’re at the beginning of 2024, so we’re like into our fourth year. RV (27:21): Yeah. And I would say like that, that, it’s so interesting to hear that it’s, it’s great to have that on a story because that’s what it we see for a new personal brand. Like if they don’t have a TV show or something pop, like even just a business in general, like the first two years suck. The third year you kind of start to see momentum year four and five, it starts to take off and you can see the light, and then it’s like by year 10 you’re going, I am unfairly paid. I’m getting unfair rewards for all the work as you said that you put in. Yeah. So I wanna point y’all back. So brand like Sirhan, there’s this three part system. It’s all in the book brand. It like Sirhan, so you guys can go get it. Ryan, where do you want people to go to learn? Obviously they can buy brand it like Sirhan anywhere, but like where should people go if they want to connect you with you and follow up? And RS (28:10): At, at Ryan Sirhan, anywhere the book is brand it like Sirhan, you can get that anywhere. Books are sold. You go to the website brand it like serhant.com to check it out for sales training, you can go to sell it.com. As of 46 minutes ago, and any real estate services, anything, we’re up and down the East coast and it’s just serhant.com. It’s RV (28:32): Really, really cool. The, the last question I have for you, man, is I, I know that there’s had to have been some, some dark nights and some heavy moments. You, you do have a lot of jobs, a lot of pressure, a lot of things weighing on you. You got family, right? You got daughter, you got married. And in those moments where inevitably you come across a little bit of feeling overwhelmed, a little bit of feeling that pressure days when things fall apart, people quit, you know, customer’s unhappy. The dream you thought was gonna happen starts to look like it’s falling apart. Like, what do you do to keep yourself going in those, those moments specifically in case someone listening right now happens to be in one of those? RS (29:17): So I tell myself always right? Because it nothing is bad forever. Time heals all wounds. You have great days, you have awful days. The greatest day I’ve ever had, I haven’t even lived it yet, you know, and reminding myself of that is a, is a kick in the butt to get outta bed and to actually go and do the thing. Because maybe that’s today. Like maybe today is the greatest day I’ve ever had. Like, that could be awesome on the sales side, you know, I am, I am, you know, I sell lots of things all day long. You know, the greatest deal I’ve ever done. I haven’t even done it yet. Hmm. You know, like I remember when we started the company and it was summer 2020 in New York City. Lockdown not allowed to go outside. There’s swat, there’s bodies in Central Park. RS (30:10): You turn on the tv, there’s a death clicker, okay? The George Floyd riots happen in June. It’s a really, really bad time for our country. It was really, really tough. Everything, all sales stopped for me. All real estate sales in New York City were dead. Every deal I had went into immediate litigation, it was the worst. I, any, any money I had that was like in the stock market, the stock market sold off 10,000 points, right? It was just brutal. And I’m like, I’m going to start my own company right now. I was also in the middle of renovating my house right at that point, which is a cash heavy operation. And I just had my first baby. So it, you know, it was a lot. And I was like, man, all I gotta do is just every day’s a new day. Like every day’s a new day. RS (30:57): The greatest day I’ve ever lived, I haven’t even lived it yet. The greatest deal I’ve ever done. I haven’t even done it yet. I just got, I just gotta push forward. And you know what? Everything’s gonna be okay eventually. It always is no matter what, unless we get hit by a comet and we’re the dinosaurs and it’s over forever. And then if that happens, then again, who cares? I just gotta keep it moving. And when things are bad, this is when you should build, because you can’t get these moments back. Like when things are great, of course you’re gonna start your own company like every other idiot, right? When things are bad, everyone’s so scared. So go, go do it. Go build. And so we just buckled down and I looked at it with a glass half full. It’s like, all right, so covid happened. RS (31:38): Everything sucks. Well, it looks like I just got the spring and summer markets for free. Like, when am I ever gonna get all this time that I don’t have to work? Like, I don’t, I’m not showing because I’m not on pod. Like I wasn’t do we know everything was shut down. Filming was shut down, everything was shut down. This is insane. Like, if I wanted to go start a business today, I’d be like, I need six months of quiet. I just gotta buckle down and just go do it. I’m never gonna get that again. So boom, glass half full. Awesome. You know, what else? Awesome. Everyone’s expectations are gonna be so low. I don’t have to go that crazy. like if this was 2019 or 2024, I’d have to do a parade if I was starting my own thing. , you know, in 2020. I, like, I went to the press, I was like, Hey, I’m starting my own company. RS (32:27): And they’re like, are you crazy? Are you sick? Do you have long covid? You know? And they were like, you should do a test. Are you wearing gloves right now? I’m like, no, we’re building for the future that everything’s gonna be okay. It’s like, man, if I could do one deal, if I did like a $20 million sale when we kicked off the company, that would just be like the greatest thing ever. And we started the company a couple months later, I sold a house in Palm Beach for $140 million. Whoa. And the whole world changed. The market changed overnight, right? And it’s been a rocket ship ever since. And so the greatest day you’ve ever had, you haven’t even lived it yet, you know, RV (33:12): Man. I love that. I love that. Well, brother, thank you for making a little bit of time for us. We’ll link to of course, book and everything. And it’s been, it’s been an honor to get to know you a little bit. I love the way that your mind works and and the heart and, and the energy. I mean, big money, energy, like, talk about the enthusiasm that you have all day, every day and you bring to so much stuff. I mean, it’s legendary. And so to have some insight into what you’re doing behind the scenes with these three books and just to get to meet you a little bit, I really, really appreciate it, brother. And we’ll be following you. Thanks ma’am. We, we wish you the best.