Build Your Personal Brand: The Key to A Bigger and Greater Life with Ryan Serhant

It's not that I fell in love with branding as much as I fell in love with the toolkit. To build a bigger and greater life, you need your phone and a willingness to do the work and to put yourself out there and anything is possible.

Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to have you on.

I'm excited to be here. Let's do it.

Okay. So you have an awesome new book out. It's your third book. You did it to yourself again.

Yeah.

Your third book ran it like Sirhant. Where did this come from? Why are you so passionate about branding?

Honestly, it's not that I fell in love with branding as much as I fell in love with, with the toolkit to build a bigger and greater life. And what excited me so much about where we are today, in 2024 and where we're going to be in the future is, is it used to be that if you wanted to build a brand for yourself, build a product, build a personal brand, it was just so, like, where do you. I don't even know where you start. It's so hard. It's hand to hand combat, right? You know, there's. There were only a few prints, advertisements or articles or newspapers or magazines you could be in. There's a few network news shows that you could ever be on. Other than that. Your boots to the ground. Today, it's a different world. Like, you can get lucky. I mean, you could build a brand in a day, right, that goes worldwide and that's by accident. So imagine what you can do if you actually take control of building awareness for something you care about, which is either your. Your personal awareness. You know, like me, I'm a salesperson. You know, I, we build brands for, for buildings. We sell, apartments, we sell. But really it's about building a personal brand so that people are aware of me and then they want to work with me because people don't like to be sold. They love shopping with friends. No one wants to work with strangers. And if you're building a product, I mean, it's easier now than ever before. And I, I just couldn't find a blueprint for it, like I couldn't find a manual for anywhere else. And so I said, okay, here we go. All right. Book three. Brand it like Sirhan. Okay.

So we work with a lot of different entrepreneurs and sometimes we get in the rooms and they, they think that they need to be spending more time on their product, but they haven't built their audience yet. So the, the first Thing is, what comes first when you're thinking of wanting to launch something. Do we focus on personal branding or do we focus on the thing that we want to sell?

Well, I think it's, you know, it depends on what you're trying to build, but I always focus on the people first. So it's the people that are building with you or the people that you are building for. Like, remember, it's the people that are going to be making the purchases, right? They're going to be making the purchases, they're going to be signing the contracts with you. They're going to be the ones who are doing the word of mouth still. It's still the people, right? All the technology and all the tools we have out there to empower us, right? To, to empower human beings to interact more with each other and pass along information about you or your product. And so I think if you focus on, on the right people, then you can build any kind of product, right, that you want. You can make mistakes a thousand times as long as you got the right people with you. And then once you kind of have that audience, then I think you focus on the product, right? Like, we have a, we have a product. One of our businesses is a, is a real estate brokerage. We're headquartered in New York. We have agents across eight different states now. And we have a technology product called Simple. And it's a. I don't know how really to describe it, but it's, it's, it's basically Amazon prime for salespeople, okay. And it makes their life much easier, much, much simpler, if you will. And you know, I could have spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars building that product and then giving it to the people you know and seeing if it worked. When really we had a simple idea, we created a beta for very, very little money. And we put it out there to our audience to see if they liked it. Like, hey, go break it. Go tell us what they. I know it looks shitty. I know it's terrible. Just what is your opinion to this? And then let's use your feedback to build. And that's actually something I talk about a lot in the book because I learned that a lot from people we interviewed in, in Branded, like Sirhan. I'd never done that before. In my first two books, it's just me and Real Estate Deal War stories and all my pain and trauma and everything I learned from them. In this one, I interviewed like Gary Vaynerchuk, Rebecca Minkoff, Kenneth Cole. I mean, I interviewed so many Cool people. And a through line was build through community. Like content to commerce isn't enough anymore. You have to build content to community to commerce. Because now anybody in the world can create content, which is good and bad. Anybody in the world can have a stripe account and start, start doing commerce. But not everybody can build something or someone up so much that it starts to build a community. And allowing that community to dictate the future of your product or of your personal brand is a huge part of how to build success going forward. And we really dive into that in the book.

So how do we start, how do we start building a brand that's authentic to us but also like those future offers in mind? Because sometimes you'll see people build something, but they want to offer something else.

Oh yeah, absolutely, always. And products change and people change. Right? We all, we all evolve. No one wants to be a one hit wonder, both as a, as a human, but then also as a, as a product. And so what I, what I created a couple years ago was something I called our Sirhant brand strategy system. And it really was about how to create personal brands for the people that work for me and then how to create personal brands for products for people that would hire us to do it. You know, and we had this whole system and I really boiled it down to three core phases, right? So three phases. And so the book is broken up into three easy, digestible phases of how to build a brand. And phase one is core identity. So as a person, you have to understand what your and is. So you are podcasting and what, like I am real estate and media. If you were to ask anybody who they are, if I go on the street, if I open my door right now, someone's gonna stop me and say, hey, you're the YouTube TikTok TV broker, right? Okay, so whether I want that to be the case or not, that is my end. I am real estate and media. Once you understand what your and is, you can really kind of narrow down what that core identity is without using your name. Another exercise that a person can do is go to somebody you trust, but not somebody like your parents who are going to be nice to you, somebody you trust to be authentic and real with you and tell them, can you do me a favor? Can you describe me to a stranger without using my name? How would you do that? What is it? What would that, what would I look like? Be open. Be open and honest. Like, it's important for me to know. And so I did this. When the guy goes, yeah, he's that, that kind of tall, premature, gray haired guy who's, who thinks he's, who thinks he's funnier than he actually is and he looks at the ground while he walks. And I was like, great, thanks so much. I don't know how that helps me in any way, shape or form, but it did, actually. It did. I was like, that's how you describe me? It's like, yeah, that's who you are. Like, are you. That's, that's my brand. My brand is what you just described, which is, which is not where I want it to be. So, so how do I fix that? You know, there's certain things I'm not gonna, I, I can't change how tall I am. I used to dye my hair and then I got sick of it, so I stopped. So you know what? Maybe my, the fact that I'm young but have a gray hair is just going to be my thing. So people will think I'm older. Great. No problem. Walking while I stare at the ground. Like I had to dig into that one. I was like, no, I don't. Turns out I did because for a long, long time, from like seventh grade until I was like 22, I had really, really bad skin. And I think when I was, when I was much younger, I would get embarrassed when people would look at me when I was walking because their eyes would dart around my face. You know, like you look at someone in the eye, but then their eyes look to like your chin and your cheek or they look, you know, they look anywhere. And so it would make me feel bad. And so I just got used to walking while my eyes were on the ground. Like, why make eye contact with anybody if it's going to make me feel bad? I guess I just won't do that. And so there were little things about that exercise that taught me things about myself that you ordinarily wouldn't know. And so that helps you, you build that core identity. And then there's, there's so much more that goes into it, but just like two things to think about and then you do the math. So brand is your core identity. And the minute you understand what that is, it leaves your lips, it leaves your fingertips. You know, you're typing, you're talking. That becomes perception, right? The perception the world has of you, either for better or worse. As I kind of just went through, once you leave the room, once you leave the chat, once you make that post and then you put your phone down, people go into the comments, right? People talk about you behind Your back, that becomes reputation. And then like a pot of water that boils over time, that reputation becomes your brand. It becomes the awareness the world has of you. It becomes, you know, what you're known for. And you can take control of that if you build into it slowly over time. And so that core identity then, then becomes consistent content. Right? That's how we then take control of it. So how are we creating consistency? Am I doing a podcast every week? Because that's my thing, my posting every single day. Am I, am I writing on LinkedIn? Maybe I don't want to go on camera, man. I don't want to do any of that stuff. That's fine.

2026 is the year that you launch your business. It's the year that you've become the boss, you become the leader. That, that you have, that has been eating at you forever, that just will not leave you alone, is going to come to life. Maybe it's something that someone tells you you should always sell or a store you've already designed in your head. And with Shopify, 2026 is when you finally make it happen. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. Millions of entrepreneurs have already made this leap from household name to first time business owners. Just getting started, you guys. I use Shopify for glossy and I remember when they sent me my little shopping bag celebrating my 10,000 sales and I literally cried because I was so scared to take the leap. And I'm so glad that I did and that I use Shopify. It gives you all the tools to easily build your dream store. You can choose from hundreds of beautiful templates that you can customize to match your brand. Set up as fast with Shopify's built in AI tools that write product descriptions and headlines and help you edit photos. So marketing is built in too. You can create email and social campaigns that reach customers wherever they scroll. So as you grow, Shopify grows with you. You can handle more orders, expand to new markets, and do it all from the same dashboard. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com happy go to shopify.com happy that's shopify.com happy. Hear your first cha Ching this new year with Shopify by your side. Too many people finish their workday feeling frustrated, drained and unfulfilled. I know that. I have experienced that myself. And the good news is it doesn't have to be this way. And you don't need A new job to fix it. Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and more than a dozen other bestsellers, created the working genius assessment to help you pinpoint the kind of work that gives you energy, the kind that lights you up, and it also shares the kind that drains it. So over a million people, including me, have taken it and completely changed how I lead and show up every day. If you're a CEO, an entrepreneur, or someone who just wants to level up in business and in life, working genius is going to give you the clarity and confidence to operate in your strengths and find greater joy in what you do. Because confidence isn't pretending to be good at everything. It's knowing where you're truly gifted. Take the working genius assessment today and get 20% off with code earn@workinggenius.com that's working genius.

Com.

You'll be glad you did it.

Okay, so I want to be a thought leader in yarn. I want to be the thought leader in yarn. Actually, I don't even want to be number one. I just want to sell my yarn. And I want people to know more about yarn and knitting and crocheting than. Than. Than before, because I really, really like that. You know, one of the biggest companies out there on the Internet as a guy that sells educational materials on how to take care of orchids globally. That guy's website breaks all the time because he's created that niche, right? And people go, and it's clear you have no idea what that guy looks like. I have no idea who he is, but I know that his and is guy and orchid caring. That's his thing. And he's leaned into it. And it's consistent content about orchids. And then from there, your third phase is amplification or like what I like to say, shouting it from the mountaintop. How do you take every single moment of success and turn it into more success? How does success begin to success? And. And then I just really tried to make the book as tactical as possible so there's no fluff, like, there's no bs it's all. This is how you get a publicist. This is what you pay the publicist. This is how you work with a publicist. This is how you get PR for free. This is how you work with reporters. This is how you generate awareness. The power of. Of pr. The fall of advertising, right? What, what it means to push your message onto people versus pull your message into people. What that consistent content looks like. How to use X. Now you know, now that it's not Twitter, how to use TikTok, how do you use Instagram reels? And then do it to your benefit. When to be personal, when to be professional, so on and so on and so on. That was a really long answer to your question.

I literally love when people can take it and run with it. But one of the things that you said in the. In the first phase, when you were talking about when you first realized your, you know, part of your identity was, oh, you look down at the ground. So a lot of us have personal brands, and we are kind of like starting to realize maybe there's this blaring part of our brand that we don't love or that we want to change. How did you start changing that into something that you wanted?

Oh, great question. So the first thing I had to do was I had to totally write down everything about me that was my personal brand. At the time, I was a rental real estate agent, and no one knew me as that because I didn't talk about it. Right. I didn't talk about it. And so on the left side of a piece of paper, you write down everything about you that people would use to describe you for better and for worse. On the right side of the piece of paper, you write down everything you want people to describe you as 24 months from today. And I found in doing this, and we now teach, we have a whole. We have a education business, and we teach sales training and coaching and all that. But a big part of that business is brand strategy. And that business only exists because people ask for it. Like, it wasn't like, I was like, I'm going to go teach people how to build a brand. Five years ago, it was, you know, we had someone who owns a surgical center in Mumbai come to us and say, I want to generate more business for my surgical center. I need to build a better brand for my surgical center. And I don't want to pay a branding agency. I want to do it by myself. How do I do it? Okay, well, we'll teach you. We have people that sell advertisements for Formula E race cars in South Korea. We have people, we have beauticians. We have obviously a lot of people in the real estate business, because that's what, you know, that's my aunt. That's what people know me for. And so on the right side of that paper, you write down what you want to be known for two years from today. That gives you a year to take action and a year to let that pot boil, because a washed pot never boils. That's why they say that. And I found that it takes about two years putting in the work, and then before you know it, you're going to take a left, you're going to take a right, and someone's going to say, hey, you're the one who. And they're going to describe you exactly as you've always wanted to be described. And it's going to happen sooner than you know. It could happen in six months. You know, I just like to be as conservative with timing as possible because you got to put the work in right. That's the one thing that people don't do a lot is the work. So I took control. I started. I started looking at people in the eye. You know, my skin had cleared up. I had nothing to be embarrassed about anymore. I just started looking people in the eye. I started presenting myself like the person I wanted to be two years from today. And so at the time, I was a real estate agent who was doing small rentals in the. In Queens, the Bronx, Harlem and Koreatown where I lived. And I lived in a tiny studio. I shared a bathroom with 16 guys. It was super fun. And I told myself, in two years, I want to be doing sales. I don't want to be doing small rentals. I want to be doing sales of homes that are over a million dollars. I want to have a different suit for every day of the week. I don't want to wear the same suit every day. I want to live in an apartment with a doorman. Like, I wrote down this whole. This whole list of things, and some of it is I was material, obviously. Like, I want to have a better life. Like, I want to. I want to not be afraid of money. I want to not be scared of losing money. And I want to. I want to be on my road towards building an enterprise. And then I think I wrote a bunch of other things like I want to have a girlfriend and stuff like that. And, and, and it all. It all happened before. I. Sorry. We're in an active shoot location right now, so we got people coming and going. It all happened before. It before. I told myself that it was going to happen. Took some time, but it, but it all happened that way. And so, you know, that's the only way that I know how to actually affect change is to be very, very, very specific, very measured, and, and write it down and make it so. And then anything is. Anything is possible.

So when you, when you talk about that list. So you wrote your list of who you want to be and what you want to be. And you were looking at it. Were you looking at it? Okay? And then were you building? How did you go about just structuring like this content that you were going to put out to the world?

So the content changes as your core identity change. This. The same content that I create today is not the content I created 10 years ago. Right. I don't. It's the same for everybody. You change, your life changes, you have a family, everything changes. The cadence in which you post also changes as platforms change. You know, it used to be that it's just Facebook, you know, and Twitter for your thoughts. And then things change, right? Different platforms become available. And also a question I get all the time is how do I know what platform to use for my consistent content phase? Do I use all of them around the time? My advice is to choose two because each platform has a different audience. But if you have to, it's okay to have one. Like, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Like, if you are best in short form, vertical video, I think you can do YouTube shorts and you can do TikTok. You don't have to, but pick one that you use. Like, what are you gonna like? If you're building a product brand, you know, one of the exercises that you do that we talk about in the book is you, you give the product a name and you humanize it, right? You, you make it human. Who is a person who. Okay, so this, this hammer. You want to sell hammers? I don't know, I just saw a hammer. So you want to sell hammers. That's your thing. You're reading, you do. You got really cool hammers and they're different colors. Okay, Is your hammer named Pete? His name is Pete. Where's he from? Do that exercise. That's an exercise you actually do in theater and in like acting classes when you first get started, acting is, you know, it's hard to pick up a script and say, all right, my character is bop. All right, Bob talks like this. No, you sit there and you write the biography. You write stories. Like there are major actors, a list actors who sit and like, they'll write full on novels about their characters. They really just go into the backstory and who they are because that's got to inform how they pick up a cup of coffee, right? Because it doesn't say it on the page. But when Bob was 12 years old, you know, his dad ran over his hand with a tractor and he's always picked up a cup of coffee. A little bit fun like, that's little things like that go towards character development for your brand, too. And so that cadence for how you post and when you post is obviously it's personal preference, but typically you do where your audience is. If you're selling hammers, your audience might be in a different place than if you are selling your coaching business or if you want more people to know about your podcast. Right. It's all kind of independently, case by case, and I talk in the book about how to determine that.

So when you were. When you were starting your personal brand, had you always. And I'm trying to think back to when I first, like, saw you on the real estate show, but I feel like you've always been pretty true to you. Like, you've always woven. And I would say one of your core things about you is that you're funny. Have you always felt like that was easy to. To weave in? I'm just thinking of people who sometimes, you know, they have a personal brand, but they feel like they're not totally being authentic to themselves. Like, how can we start weaving more of ourselves into content?

Yeah. So as part of that first exercise, and one of the things that he said to me was he thinks he's funnier than he is. Okay. So, yeah, you know, and honestly, I remember when. When Million Dollar Listing first aired, you know, and obviously, I've had the benefit of being on a TV show and, And. And seeing what my life is like played back to me. Well, I remember my mom called me and she was like, you know, bud, sometimes the things you think are funny are not funny to other people. And, you know, I don't know. I'm like a millennial who grew up on the North Shore of Boston. You know, I was in a fraternity. Apparently, some of the things that probably my friends and I grew up thinking were funny are probably. I probably should not think are funny anymore. And I didn't know that at the time. You know, you live and you learn. So.

There are so many challenges to business that I don't want starting to be one of them for you. And when want more. When you're starting a business, you need Northwest Registered agent because you get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. And it's all in one place. You can build your complete business identity with Northwest.

Today.

Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow business for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. You can sign up for free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer, drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, bills of sale and more at no cost. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business, they give you the free tools you need after you form it like operating agreements, meeting minutes and thousands of how to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And let me tell you, this is life changing cause I had no idea how much went into this. So don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business Identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com Earn free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at www.northregisteredagent.com forward/ear free.

I try to be as authentic to myself as possible. So like my sense of humor is my sense of humor. Like I'm not going to, I'm not going to. I know not to be funny at a funeral. I know it's probably the best. Not the best. I start like popping jokes in the middle of a stressful negotiation or when someone in front of me is losing, is losing their money maybe. And I know that that's the time to be sincere. But also the way I know how to get in with people is by helping them smile, right? That's just what's authentic to me. I know a lot of people that aren't funny at all. They have no, they have, you know, they, they like to laugh, but they, they will never, ever, ever be funny. But the way that they have an in to building character relationships with people is a different way. And so I, I think you have to be authentic to yourself, but you also know the time and place, right? If you are authentically jeans and a T shirt and a crude sense of humor and you want to sell a service, you have to understand that if that's the way you're going to present yourself, then you're only going to attract that type of customer. You're only going to get people that are jeans, T shirt, crude humor. And if that's okay with you, then by all means just own it. But if you want to cast a wider net, if you want to make more money, if you want to generate lots of types of business, then you don't have to hide who you are. But like I wear a suit not because I'm Forced to. But because I show respect. My customer before, respect for myself. I wear gym shorts right now.

Yeah.

Way more comfortable. But I also don't want to walk into a room with a potential client and have them say, ah, Ryan Serhant wearing gym shorts to come and meet me. He cares more about his comfort than in my needs. So this meeting is going to be quick.

Yeah. That's so interesting. Just in the last two years, I've, my husband and I do events and we've decided to like get really dressed up for them. And I'm telling you, the whole audience changed like in a year.

Yeah.

Elevated, which was awesome. And we're like, go figure. You change like your own perception and your whole audience.

So yeah, you put, you put yourself. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta take that risk and put yourself out there that way. And, and I think it's completely, completely okay. Now this isn't. There's clearly people who have personal brands of gym shorts and jeans and T shirts and like you. But, but it makes sense for them if you're building a, a fitness app. Like it would not make, it wouldn't be on brand for you to show up in a suit.

Right.

You can for special occasions. But like, I don't know. I don't know if people would take you seriously, you know, and you're. Maybe, maybe that would be your stick. Maybe it's a thing. It was a gag. That's fine. But you want to make sure that what you're doing is on brand while being as authentic to you as possible.

I love that it goes along with the whole thing that you said, like writing down the 24 months, but showing up as that person right now and then it's like starts to catch up. So as, as we're building our personal brands, one of the, I think one of the things that we can get trapped in is we try to, especially if we're doing a lot, like I know you do a lot. And a lot of different people with brands tend to start doing different things. But what should we delegate? What should we not delegate? Like, what are the absolute most important things for us to stay in within our personal brands?

So. Great question. I mean, I just want to put it on the record that, you know, as I, as I go through in the book, you don't have to have the resources to delegate anything. Like you, you can build a great brand today using your phone. That is it. That's all you need. You need your phone and a willingness to do the work and to put yourself out there. And anything is possible, right? As long as you have consistency. You drive and you and you. And it's really a, what I like to call passion commerce. You know, I see a lot of people try to build their personal brand because they feel like they supposed to or they try to build a product brand because they feel like they're supposed to, but you can tell they'd rather be doing something else or this is really not them. Like, I think if you watch any property tours I've done on YouTube or social over the years, like I am a nerd when it comes to them. Like I, I actually. And it's not even just the real estate, like I love and I'm passionate about showing off real estate. I don't know why I have a problem, but I'm passionate about it. And I think it shows, like, I think it shows in my energy. I get excited about the views, the price, the finishes. Holy. It took you 20 years to build this. And I think that passion can turn into commerce. And if you, if you can't manufacture that passion, then you have to, you have to, then you have to figure something else out, right? Or find somebody who, who can be the passion for you. Maybe you're just an unpassionate individual, right. You're just very, very dry. Right. You know, you have passion on, deep down on the inside, but no one's ever going to see it. Okay, so then the face of your product or your brand to your question is somebody that you can delegate that to. You see this a lot in like husband wife brands, right? Like couple brands, spouse brands, you know, best friend brands. You know, there's, there's typically, or like co founders, right? One person is in the back doing the work, you know, pounding away the keyboard. The other person is the one who's attracting that passion commerce, who's up front and center. It's like Hugh Grant in two weeks Notice, his brother did all the work, but he was the face delegating the writing. There's obviously tons of tools now that can help you do that, right? Delegating out the posting. Maybe you have a full time job and what you're trying to do is build your brand out of your side hustle. But you're on time Monday through Friday. Like you got kids, you've got, you know, you're nine to five. So maybe on Saturdays before everyone wakes up, that's when you're doing your, your branded content. You're putting it together and you have an intern or your, your son or somebody who's Doing the work and posting it on a schedule that you've set up for the remainder of the week. Like you can delegate that kind of stuff, but I really, really hesitate in telling people they can delegate their voice. People see right through that, right? There's a reason why certain influencers are, are so large because you just know, like they typed out themselves, like they do not care. It's authentic, it's real. They show you the warts, the beauty and everything in between. And it makes them human, right? It makes them relatable. The best brands are the ones that are either the most relatable or the most attainable. Like Nike, I don't think is the most relatable brand because I don't think everyone is born a star athlete. But they make it inspirational by making it attainable. And it makes you want to wear their shoes, wear their shorts. Right, Wear their shirts. And you just have to pick your direction, you know, and, and stick to it.

Okay, last question on a lot on pivoting. Essentially, when people have a personal brand and they want to pivot, what, what can that look like to make it graceful as they kind of like change their different careers throughout the years? Because there's, that's a question I get a lot is I'm about to pivot. I'm nervous that people won't get it or understand or my audience won't go with me. What does that sure like having a personal brand pivoting.

You take the audience on the journey, right? You do that the same way I was talking about earlier. Like really building through your community, building the product with your community. Have them be involved as an example. Like I the the world for the Bravo audience anyway. And the social media audience knows me as Ryan Sirhan, celebrity realtor. The guy from that TV show, right, the, the gray haired American guy. Like, okay, so in 2019, I said, great, I've now done this for 10 years. I don't just want to sell apartments the rest of my life. I want to do more. I want to go start my own company. That sounds terrible and awesome at the same time. So let's go start our own company. But will the audience really follow me on my CEO journey? Like, will they take me seriously as a CEO? I want to go build tech. I'm obsessed with technology. I've always been obsessed with it, but it's never had its place on Million Dollar List in New York or on my Instagram and where I got to dress up like a lion and show real estate off. And so will people Take me seriously. And I don't think people actually have a fear of failure anymore. Let's say maybe you have a fear of financial failure like I have that they have a fear of being embarrassed. And so you fix that by taking the audience on the journey with you and making it relatable, Making the fact that this is scary relatable, Making the fact that you are taking this change relatable. I think it's a big miss when your audience knows you for X and then all of a sudden tomorrow you're why, like, hey, I made a change. Career change. Follow me. Yay. It's kind of like you didn't earn it.

Yeah, right.

You have to earn the audience's trust. And if they've been with you on one journey, allow them to influence journey number two or journey number three. Like, I made so much content during that time when I was transitioning from just being a real estate agent to running my own brokerage and starting my own edtech platform and starting our own production studio all at the same time. It's like, I, you know, I. We hired part of my audience. Like, they became our they. We brought them into the company. Come help us. You know, like, we had them influence our brand. We had them influence, like, the types of content and things we were creating, and we allowed them to be a part of the journey. And it's. And it's been super cool to experience, even from my point of view, because I get people who, you know, write to me all the time. You know, even with this book, you know, it comes out, it's my third book, and people are like, listen, I've been with you from the beginning. And they don't say, they've been watching me. They don't say, hey, I read your first book. Like, the amount of messages I get and people who stop me on the street who say, I've been with you, I've been with you, man. Remember your first date? Like, yeah, dude, I. I remember. You know, they're like, I've been with you. You keep it up. You can do it. I know it's hard because they watch me on video. Be like, my life. This is so hard. Why does anyone do this to themselves? You know, they've. They've seen me post and, you know, list properties and fail at selling them. And you're like, it's okay. You're going to get the next one. I've been with you. I think that's a, a very vulnerable position to put yourself in. But I think it's Also the most rewarding long term. Mm.

Okay. So what else would you share with people about this book? Like, what is one of the most surprising things that you feel like you have heard or that you. That has kind of come from writing this book about branding?

I'm always the most surprised when people in industries I never expected, take value away from, from what I've written. Because I think. I think deep down I do feel like I have pretty. Pretty intense imposter syndrome. Like, I. I'm a real estate agent. Like, what am I doing writing a book about branding products in Asia? Like, who. Who am I as an authority that way? And I think I definitely get nervous about, you know, having written now, like, three books and having put myself out there so much. And so I'm always surprised when somebody, like, someone reached out to me this morning, you know, who got the book. It came out last week, came out five days ago. And they, they read the whole thing in a day. Like, damn, is it that short? But they're like, they, they, they. They practice matrimonial law and they read it because they've got good proof of concept. But obviously, lawyers are salespeople too, right? So they want, they want. They want to attract more clients. They want to attract. How do they generate more leads from. More for more lawyers to come and work for them? How do they build a big law firm? How do they scale so they're not the ones doing every single little meeting? And they wrote and they said, book changed my life. Read it in one day. Thank you so much. I've been looking for something like this. I've never seen anything. I can't remember exactly how they said it, but basically so tactical. And so, like, I think that's the biggest surprise, that if you don't think this book is for you, it's probably for you.

Well, we are so grateful for you. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your time while you guys. He's literally driving all around New York right now.

Thanks. Thanks for. Thanks for coming on this. You. We started this podcast in the daylight. It is now dark by the time the podcast is over.

Like, I. I just am going to send you money for this New York tour.

We started uptown. We're downtown together. I apologize that we did this on the road, but better now than never. All good.

It's so great. And you guys definitely go grab his book. I want to do a little book giveaway for the people listening. So I am going to buy 10 books for the first people who share this. So make sure you tag Ryan. Ryan, where can they tag you at?

Ryan Serhant. S as in Sam, Er H A N as in Nancy, T as in Thomas for all you listeners everywhere, I would love it so much.

So tag Ryan, Let him know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast. I'm gonna buy the first 10 listeners a book and I am so grateful for you guys. Go check it out. We're gonna put the link in the show notes to be able to grab the book, which you can buy the books, I'm sure, wherever you can buy books. And Ryan, thank you again for coming on. And you guys, until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

Sam.