Welcome to Hal leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Ryan Sirhan, star of Bravo's television series Million Dollar Listing New York and sell it like Sirhan. He also runs a wildly successful real estate firm. We all know that a leader casts a shadow in their organization, meaning the people in the company mirror what they see in their leader. The truth is some leaders aren't fully committed. While they may be clocking in every day, their teams can see them just going through the motions. And so what they get in return is a disengaged team that's mirroring that lack of commitment they see in their leader. But then there are leaders like Ryan who go all in, they are the leaders who are excited to go to work and their excitement and energy spill over to their teams. And as a result, they have engaged teams who bring their best each and every day. I know that you want to be a leader like Ryan. How do you make it happen? Well, what you're about to learn from Ryan Sirhan is what it looks like to go all in and the impact that that approach will have on the team you lead. And boy does Ryan have some crazy stories. I'll let him tell you the full versions, but there was a time he flew to Europe in an attempt to close an $8 million deal for an apartment in New York. Talk about going all in. This is going to be a fun one. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Ryan Sirhan. Ryan, I can't wait to get into your career, but I always like to start out at the beginning. Can you tell us about your upbringing? Sure. Yeah, I mean, real quick, nothing too crazy. I was born in Houston, Texas, and I bounced around a little bit, kind of grew up a little bit outside Long Island, really kind of settled down outside Boston. My parents made me play every single sport known to man. It took me a long time to really figure out what I liked and what I wanted to do. I was okay at school. I wasn't great at school. I really liked making little movies though. My favorite thing that I ever received as a gift was a video camera and I would force my little brother to star in every single one of my little movies. I kind of got into acting and theater, and that kind of became the one thing when I was in high school that I sort of had a passion for that I really wanted to study and read about all the time. I went to Hamilton College in upstate New York. I majored in theater and my dad made me have a real major as well, so I majored in English literature. Ryan, your dad was a very successful financial executive as the vice chairman of the state street, Global Advisors. You go into theater. That might have shocked him a little bit. I'm guessing. Did you ever really want to follow in your dad's footsteps and how hard was it for you to buck the trend? My older brother followed in his footsteps and my little brother followed in his footsteps. My little brother still to this day works at State Street. I wasn't smart enough. I wasn't able to do what he was able to do with his brain at the dinner table. I always like to take mental personal checks. You need to know what you're really good at. You need to know what you're not good at. You need to not go out there and try to do the things you're bad at unless it really makes you happy and maybe you could do it as a hobby. But I knew that I was never going to be able to think about math and think about the macro economy and have an interest in the things that he did the same way that he did to a point where I wanted to wake up and do it every day. My thing was being in front of people, was performing, was improvising, becoming other people, which for me when I was younger was theater. But what was interesting for me was little did I know it, all that training that I had was really to make me a salesperson and to make me a pretty strong salesperson. I didn't realize that until much later. But my dad was kind of okay with it. I think that for him, he just wanted me to be healthy, safe and happy. But when I graduated college and said, "Listen, I don't have a job. I have a little bit of money saved up because you forced me to work in construction every summer which I hated every little minute of. I'm going to New York City with two roommates. We're going to rent a one bedroom on 66th and 1st. I'll keep you posted, let you know how it goes because I'm going to do theater ." I think he had a little bit of a heart attack. I always knew that I could move home, but I did know that they weren't going to help me. They would help me if I needed it. I was out there on my own to try to make it on my own. I give them a lot of credit for pushing me but also letting me go when I needed to go. There's a lot of people I know whose parents are so petrified of what their kids decide to do. They just hold on to them for so long. They fund their professions for 10 years. Then it's like what happens when you feed the deer. The minute the food goes away, how does the wilderness survive? He really taught me the value of the dollar if there's anything. He taught me that success begets success. He taught me the value of the dollar. He taught me the value of hard work especially when I was a little kid. He would pay us nickels to pick up sticks and to do roofing and demolition or all the stuff that he didn't do. He forced us to do it so that when we grew up, we knew, wow, I understand the value of $100 because I distinctly remember what it was like working for $2.50 an hour, picking up sticks and mowing grass and doing all that stuff for months and months and months on end. You went to Hamlet College and then you went into acting. It's notoriously hard to get an acting career started. How did you start and what was your first big break? Oh man, I don't think it really had a big break. I mean, I came to the city and I knew that I just had to meet as many people in the business as possible. I knew I needed an acting coach. I got a good acting coach named David Epstein who's still an acting coach in the city who's amazing. I started going to auditions. Kind of the same way I do as a real estate agent now where I go out there and try to meet as many people every day who are looking to buy, sell or rent a home. Then I wanted to be seen for as much as possible and then I'd study as much as possible. Study monologues, study scenes, try to meet with other actors and try to look at theory and breadth and feel you know all these different things that you wouldn't think that millennial actors would do anyway. My dad told me when I first moved to the city because I said I'm going to be an actor without a real job and my two roommates were going to be paralegals at massive corporate law firms and then they were going to go to law school. My dad said, listen, if you want to be successful, if you want to make it as an actor, you have to work harder than your two roommates. You have to wake up when they do, to go to bed when they do and if you really want to be successful, you have to wake up before they do and go to bed after they do because it's going to be very easy for you without a boss, without anyone telling you what to do, without punching in for some sort of time clock for you to adhere yourself to a schedule that's wake up at 5 a.m., memorize monologues at 6, go to this audition today, do this, do this, do this. And so I got onto a soap opera relatively quickly called As the World Turns that has since now been canceled, not because of me. But it was on the air for over 50 years. I was a doctor on there, Evan Walsh the fourth. I got onto that show funny enough on an internet reality show on CBS.com called In Turn. And so they would take eight actors to be interns on As the World Turns and we would have an audition every day and we would get fired. One person would get fired every day. It was awful. It was just emotionally the worst thing in the world. And then they aired it. I made it to the final three. They put it on the internet. And then America had to vote for which of the final three actors they wanted to win a contract role on As the World Turns. And I won that in 2007, the year after I graduated and I became Dr. Evan Walsh the fourth. I'm sure you were a good doctor. There's no question about that. But you know, you did well in acting and then you decided to shift gears and to go into the real estate. What was harder breaking into acting or getting yourself started than real estate? That's a good question. I think acting was definitely hard to start because you don't really know what to do. At least with real estate, I knew that I could show up in the office. I could post ads for apartments on Craigslist because that's what we used to do 10, 11 years ago. I knew that clients would call and I knew that I could meet them on the corner and I could show them apartments for rent from a thousand to two thousand, three thousand, four thousand dollars a month if I was lucky to get that type of high roller. With acting, you just kind of sit there. You don't know what to do. You try to look for auditions. You submit your acting resume. You try to make little videos and submit it to casting agents. You try to write letters to casting agents into talent agents. But there's no blueprint whatsoever. You just try to get seen as much as you possibly can and it's hard and you could meet the right person tomorrow or in 15 years. Morgan Freeman didn't get known until he was, I think, 50 years old. There were a lot of people that I met that really scared me, to be honest, who were much, much older than me who were still trying to get their big break. They were still living in a tiny studio apartment sharing bathrooms and they were 60 years old and they were still trying to meet that one agent and they were still working for free. I had to make a decision in the summer of 2008 because I'd run out of money from my savings and I basically had to decide, do I want to do this? Do I have the willpower to work for free in a business that will really beat you down until I'm 60 or do I not? And do I have to find a way to survive? And so I kind of chose both. Yeah, right. That's how it's kind of turned out and we get more into that. But as I understand and when you got into real estate, you couldn't sell anything at first or very little. How did you stay motivated to stay after it? Oh, man. It was so hard. My back was just up against a wall. And I talk about that a lot to kind of Gen Z and millennials who come to me who want to be entrepreneurs and want to be real estate agents. I didn't choose to have my back up against a wall. It just sort of happened. And I could have always gone home, but that would have been a massive failure to me. I had to figure out a way to do it on my own in the city. And if I could figure out how to do that, I knew I could then be successful. And at the beginning was super hard because I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anybody. I didn't know the city. I'm not from here. I didn't go to school here. And the real estate brokerage community here is very, very, very tight knit. I mean, there's 80,000 of us. So there's a lot of us, but everybody knows each other. And the best ones are really from here. You know, they're from here. They know each other. The guy that sold Jeff Bezos, his apartment for $80 million is from the Upper East Side. You know, he's got his restaurant people come to. People have known him forever. And I just, you know, I didn't have that. And so I had to start figuring out how to create that the same way I did when I first came to the city to try to be an actor. And I did it just through volume and having as many balls up in the air as possible and figuring out kind of how to run away from my wall. And my wall was not having enough money for rent. Right. I want to get as far away from that moment as possible. Are you a person, Ryan, that's driven by the fear of failure? A thousand percent. I think I'm driven equal parts by the fear of failure and by the fear of loss potential. I try to do as much as possible because I'm so nervous that I'm going to leave something on the table. Like, I want to write the book. So let's do it. And then we're going to write another one. Let's do it. And I want to do an online sales course for real estate agents. No one can stop me. I could do whatever I want. I might as well do it. I don't want to regret it. And that was the same mindset I had when I moved to New York City after college , which was, sure, I could retake the LSAT, which I took once and bombed, by the way. So I couldn't go to law school. Totally bombed it. But I could study even harder. I could retake it. I could go to law school. That's what you're supposed to do when you graduate a liberal arts school. Or I could do better in my econ classes and go and work with my dad, maybe. But for me, it was I have this thing in my system and I have this passion for theater and for performance. And I have to try it. If I don't try it, one day I'm going to die and maybe there was something amazing, you know, in that coffin that never got out there and that's going to be a real, real, real shame. That's a great concept, the fear of loss potential. And when you think of people who want to be entrepreneurs, you know, what would be a few tips that you would give them for a given entrepreneur who, you know, has those moments where they really wonder if they have what it takes to succeed. I mean, you obviously had to have those moments and you had to keep going. So what advice would you give to help people work through those times? I would say the first thing that I would do, and it's probably the most uncomfortable. But if I think about what worked for me when I first started in sales was you have some sort of parachute you're holding onto. It's either your job that you're currently in. It's your parents' house you're living in, someone subsidizing you in some way. Like you have to cut the rope. Like you got to cut the rope, you got to cut the net and you got to go all in. It's very difficult to be the most successful part-time anything. Okay. I found that equally treated when I was doing real estate at the beginning. I didn't get into real estate because I wanted to be a real estate broker. Real estate brokers are the worst. You know, I didn't want to be a real estate agent and wear suits all day. I mean, that just sounded terrible. I got into real estate because it was better hours from what I was told anyway, from a bartender and a waiter, which were my two other survival job options so that I could continue to do theater and pay my rent so I didn't have to move home. And having run out of money was the best thing for me. It kind of removed the net and made me force myself to figure out a way to innovate and move outside my comfort zone and make money, which for real estate sales at the beginning was literally go outside, talk to people on the street. They have more than three sacks of Fifth Avenue bags in their hand. They can probably afford an apartment. If she is holding a Whole Foods bag and she's pregnant, maybe she needs more space. Go talk to her. Those are things that I'd probably be too terrified to do. If my mom will take care of me. Like, it's okay. I have my next shift in a couple hours. I'll be fine. I'll do something that's uncomfortable tomorrow. So you got to cut the net in some way. And it is terrifying. But if you have what it takes to be successful, you will land on your feet in some way, shape or form. I think my other big piece of advice is just brutal, brutal, brutal consistency . I don't think anybody ever knows something as a thing until they see it over and over and over again. And you know this really well. You know, when it comes to advertising, it comes to marketing and putting out your brand name and putting out your image and putting out whatever it is that you're going to talk about over and over and over and over and over again to your farm, right? To figuring out what your target market is going to be and pushing out to those people so they know you whether they want to know you or not. And so if you look at my life and everything I've done, whether I've been successful at or not, all exposure is good exposure. And every single person told me not to do million dollar listing New York. Every single person told me not to do the vlog that I do on YouTube because I had no time and why should I do that? Now that is my number one lead source for business, right? But I'm consistent with it and I do it every week. You know, what was your first big sale and what did you learn from it? My first big sale, I sold an apartment at 45 West 67 Street, an apartment 15 ABC for $8.3 million to a guy over the internet. And I thought he was fake. I didn't think he was real whatsoever. I thought it was just somebody trying to scam us to take a contract out who then will sell the contract to other foreigners. And that's what happens a lot in New York, right? You have people who do sketchy things. You completely disappeared. And then one day randomly the real estate attorney got a wire for $830,000 and I realized it was real. But then he disappeared again and wouldn't close. And then we had to fly to Europe to go and find him and then realize that he was real and he was just so busy and he was a billionaire and he didn't have the time. And he finally eventually closed. And at the closing table, he looked at me and this was a year later from saying you wanted to buy this place. And he said, you know, the only reason I eventually did this was because he stayed on top of me. I felt bad for you. So what was the big learning? Get people to feel sorry for you? No, no, not really. The big learning curve for that was, you know, it was create relationships with all of my clients that have some sort of emotional connection in some way, shape or form. Clients are not just customers. They're all friends and people love shopping with friends and they hate being sold. Right? That's really what that taught me and the power of persistence and the power of follow up. I mean, that is really my business. I mean, I was about ready to follow up with you for the next 10 years. If you didn't get back to me to do this podcast. You know, Ryan, it's kind of amazing for me to be having this kind of business. It's a conversation with you because, you know, I know as a kid, you know, and you say this that you were socially awkward and you talk about being shy and zero confidence , you know, how in the world did you transition yourself into this outwardly confident guy who's so successful? I had to. It was like kind of like what I talked about. It was my wall. Like my back was up against the wall and I had been, you know, a friend told me to get my real estate license and I couldn't be a shy real estate agent. I couldn't be an introverted real estate agent. I had to like I did with theater. I had to put on a character. I had to improvise. I had to go out there and be Ryan the real estate agent. Now if at home I wanted to be quiet and turn the lights off and watch a movie that's totally fine. But, you know, during the day I had to be Ryan the real estate agent. That was my character. He's going to wear suits and a tie and he's going to meet as many people as possible. So that way it wasn't me, right? It was a way for me. And I did the same thing when I moved around so much as a little kid. Like every new school that I would go into, like it was kind of inventing the character that I was going to put myself out there as, which was still me, but it helped me not be so uncomfortable and so physically locked up into myself so that I could, you know, I could just live, be happy. You know, now that you're successful and you've got quote made it, do you still feel scared, insecure, uncertain? And if you do, what triggers that? Groups of people, large groups of people, large groups of people who I don't know, you know, walking into a room and I think a lot of people feel the same way, but it 's, you know, walking into a room and we go to a lot of networking events, a lot of big gals in New York City. We have them all the time where everybody's already talking to each other and I don't know a single person because the person that told me to come there is now half an hour late. Like, what do I do? Do I stand in the corner? Do I talk to the waiter? Do I just go tap this person on the shoulder and try to make conversation about what? Who is this? I mean, it's very, very, those are the moments I dislike the most, but I've turned it kind of into a game. You know, when I walk into moments like that, I really look at it like an operation, right? Like it's not me waiting for someone who's half an hour late. I'm going to go in there. I look up my watch and I say, okay, let's see if I can meet five people. Let me see if I can meet five people and let's just make it a game. I want to meet that guy, her, her, her, and that guy. And to see if they'll say hi to me. That way it's not Ryan awkwardly and a large group of people. Now it's Ryan, the people meter who's going to go meet five people. And if I meet six, I just won my game and then I give myself a reward. Maybe I'll actually have a drink that night. You know, is there anything else you do either physically, practically or mentally that when those anxieties and insecurities creep in, did you kind of have something that you go to that helps you work through it? That's one. Honestly, I do this. I make it a game so that it's not just me. It's like, okay, I'm going into a game now. It's either win or lose. Like for me, I feel like I need those stakes. The other thing I'll do is I'll take my phone out and I'll write a list, right? I'll write a pro list and a cons list, which really, really helps me. A lot of times when you're really anxious or you're sad and clinical depression aside, you know, it helps a lot to sit down and write two lists. Like what really makes me nervous about this moment? And also what really good happened today? Like what good could come from this moment? And so walking into a big room of people and it's always funny. The list of reasons why this could be bad is like one or two things that make literally no sense that if you looked at it tomorrow, you laugh and, you know, be angry that you didn't take advantage of the situation. And the list of all the good things that could come are awesome. And it just calms you down. And then while writing that list, your breathing slows down and your heart rate slows down. And it works. It works. And I do that a lot for a lot of such even before big deals. What made you Ryan, launch your own brokerage team? Because I wanted to be the number one real estate broker in the history of the world. And in order to do that, I can't do it all by myself. And I hate saying no to business, you know, like I said, like a big fear of mine is the fear of wasted potential. And you know, kind of losing isn't an option. You know, it's it's if I can win, I might as well win, like life is short. And I need people around me to do that. And sales is a volume business, right? It's about keeping as many balls in there as possible. And so with a large team underneath me, and I, you know, I've got 64 people underneath me who I can work with on all of my deals who are there helping me all day long . And we're, you know, a nice, big, happy, strange family every day. You and your team are known for doing some what might seem like pretty crazy things to close a deal. What's your favorite story? The biggest deal that I closed at the beginning of my career that I told you for a point three million got on a plane to go to Europe to meet somebody who I was 99% sure if he was real, he was going to harvest my organs. Like that was by far the craziest thing that we've we've ever done. But I've, you know, now I've like, you know, we'll, we'll charter an airplane last minute to get a client to go look at a house in the hopes that maybe he'll buy in that moment. And, you know, we'll do crazy things like that just because our economies of scale have changed. You mentioned Jeff Bezos buying a property in New York. How much did it kill you that you didn't get that deal? Every deal that gets done in the city angers me when it's not mine. I mean, I'll live. It's okay. There's a lot of New York City. There's a lot of homes that gets sold. I don't want to sound like I wake up every day upset that they're not all mine, but that would have been a great deal to do. And at the same time, I do a lot of deals that anger a lot of other brokers. But I think, you know, the competition is a good thing. And I talk about that a lot. And I don't know how to separate it between friendly competition and kind of like tough competition, but New York can be really, really tough. Real estate brokers here can be really tough. You know, million dollar listing paints us as sharks all the time, in part because it's true, right? We're going after each other's business. Like I said, there's 80,000 of us. And probably this year, only 11,000 homes are going to sell. How do you break out of the clutter? I mean, you know, how important do you think it is for a leader in any business to break out of the clutter and be different? That's what I focus the majority of my time on. That's marketing 101. Why should someone call me instead of one of those other 80,000 real estate agents? And how are people even going to know about me? I mean, I meet people all the time. You say to me, oh, if I just known you or known that you would have picked up the phone, I totally would have used you to buy my place last year. And that kills me all the time. How do I get in front of that person? How do I do more in a way that's not just spending money? Right? The easiest thing to do is throw money at it, do billboards all over New York City, take out commercials, but is that really going to work? But for me, I've really turned media into the biggest piece of my real estate outreach in a way that no other broker has yet. I use YouTube in a way no other broker has. We sell houses on YouTube. We just sold a house for $13 million over YouTube. We sell things over Facebook watch over IGTV. We use all the tech in our hands. And it's not just to hit the actual clients. That house we sold on YouTube, the 14 year old daughter of the mom who bought the house, saw the video, showed it to her mom. Mom said, I don't want to be on the West side of Manhattan, but then she looked at the video and said, okay, that actually looks pretty cool. Why not? Let's go see it. Told her broker. She came through. She bought it for $13 million through YouTube. Right? That's crazy to me. I try to separate myself as much as possible that way. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Ryan Sirhan in just a moment. As a leader, when you go all in, what that really means is that you're willing to walk and talk, you're someone who will model behaviors you want to see in your organization and on your team. And that reminds me of a great conversation I had with Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors. Listen to this one. If you want your players to feel joy and you've got to display that every single day, whatever that means, there's got to be a feeling, a sense of joy in your practice facility every single day. And that's how your value of joy will actually come to light. Go listen to my conversation with Steve Kerr, Episode 62 here on How Leaders Lead. I understand you require all your salespeople to do, improv. What is that? Much, much to their distinct. Because I think there's nothing better than being in a comfortable environment and making yourself really, really, really uncomfortable. There's a safety in that. And you learn how to think on your feet, how to answer questions you don't know the answer to. You carry on conversations where you don't know where they're going to go when you take improv classes and you pretend to be a dog on Mars, on fire, having a baby in front of a hundred other people. But that's the job. That's what you do. And a lot of real estate sales and selling anything, not just real estate, is being able to think on your feet, is being able to start conversations with people that don't want to start conversations with you, is being able to get somebody to purchase with you when they were going to purchase something anyway, but probably with somebody else or now over the Internet. Right? There's a lot of websites now where you can just go and buy real estate online. Why use a real estate agent? Well, if you know how to think on your feet and you can be creative, think outside the box, improvise in any situation in a way that other real estate agents can't, you up your ROI and your ability to convert that lead. And it works. Hey, Ron, how important is your culture that you create for your team, the work environment, and what do you personally do to drive it? Culture is something I don't spend enough time on. I lead through discipline and the power of hard work, and I make sure that I'm the hardest worker in the room in my office. I'm not a team leader who rests on the coattails of my 64 agents who really do most of the work, right? But I'm here before anybody, and I leave after everybody. For the most part, I work every single day, and I hustle harder than anybody else who I will ever ask to work for me. And I'm not afraid of doing dirty work either. If we have to paint something, I'm not going to cry because we have to get a painter to come through. It can't come through on time. I will physically go over there and do it right now, and my team knows that. And so I think our culture really is being relentless with ourselves, our own expectations, but also with our clients and in our ability to get deals done. And I think that's how we sell as much as we do. It seems like you're not a very patient person with yourself. I mean, you go public and say, I want to be the number one salesperson, don't demand kind. You put a lot of personal pressure on yourself. What kind of patients do you have for your own team members? Are you as impatient with them as you are with your own performance? No, no, no, no. It's the opposite, actually. My entire team is kind of the same way. They are very, very impatient with themselves. We are all patient with results, but we're impatient with behavior. And that's a big thing for my team. So anyone who's new that starts on my team, I give them a year at the beginning with no goals they need to hit. No quotas, no nothing because the business is hard. You know, and it takes some time. It takes now for large listings in New York City in the high end, the average days on market is something like 407. The rest of the country, you go to the West Coast, it's like seven days. I got an extra 400 days on average that we got to try to sell things in. So it takes time. But you have to have good behavior. You have to have a great personality. You have to be able to be nice. You have to be friendly. You have to be able to work with others around you. And that's something I'm really impatient with. You know, when you look back and you think about what you, the challenges you have building a team, what would you say is the biggest mistake you've made as a leader or any leader makes when they're building a team? The biggest mistake I made at the beginning of my career when building a team was treating my team like assistants, right? Basically saying, okay, I'm the quarterback. They're all going to be my assistants. And that's why I have a team because I have so much business. But really everybody on the team needs to be their own individual rock star. They need to be able to sell as much as possible. And I cannot win the game without any of them. None of them are my assistants. Everybody, even the most junior of agents, can be the most valuable person on my team. And the minute I kind of made that call, which almost sounds so, so commonplace , like why would you not do that? But it's just it's not. Everything changed for me. Everybody was happy. Everyone was more excited. Everybody was a part of every win instead of just a part of Ryan's wins. And that was a big deal. People look at you, Ryan. It's so successful when you have it all. But when you look at your own leadership and what you're trying to achieve, is there anything in particular that you're struggling with? And how do you go about attacking that so you get better at it? I think like a lot of people, you know, organizing time, right? And balancing my fear of mispotential along with trying to get everything I need to get done during the day. Like, how do I do that? How do I do as much as possible? And I look at people in the world, like when Obama was president, how in the world did he get everything done? Is it just having good people around you? Or is it having a much better sense of self, right? Is it just having a great calendar? Or is it having nine assistants? Like, what is it? And for everybody, it's different. But for me, that's something that I still kind of struggle with and I'm trying to figure out, especially now that I'm married and now that I have a baby, it kills me every moment. I'm not with her. And when I come home to her, I don't want to be on my phone, but I need to be in that's hard. How much have you changed your behavior because of that change in life? Having a child, you know, you're very happily married to Emily. You know, how much, how do you prioritize all that you have going on with your family? I kind of made some rules, honestly. I sat down with Amelia and I said, okay, anything I ever do after 6 p.m. We're going to make as a joint decision. You can tell me no and there's no grudge, no resentment. I will 100% be home. Okay. But now it's not my choice anymore. Now it's our choice because we're a family. And then Saturdays are for you and I'm not going to work. I used to go to the office every single day. I was in the office seven days a week. The first three years of my career, I didn't take a single day off. Now looking back on it, I'm happy I didn't take a day off because I think that 's really what propelled me past a lot of other people. When they were vacationing, I was taking more business. But now, you know, I've kind of made those little rules and it's helped a lot, you know, and kind of treating little free bits of time. There's always a little time in the day, maybe where there's an extra half hour . If I'm downtown, I can swing by and see the baby even for two minutes, like little things like that. So those like three little rules that I made myself work. How did you get to starring role in Million Dollar Listing New York? How did that come about? Oh, man. I went to an open casting call with 3,000 real estate agents in March of 2010. I'd been a broker for basically a year. And they cast it between March and December of 2010. And there was all these different auditions and everything. And then they whittled it down to four of us. The show has three. They whittled it down to four of us. And Bravo said, okay, we're going to film the whole first season with four of you. The three best agents are going to make it on the show. Good luck. You got a pretty cutthroat life, it sounds like. It's just between clients trying to kill me all day. Like if you don't sell my apartment by 5 p.m., you're fired. Between Bravo putting a gun to my head. Have you ever like, give rid of clients because they're rude to you and don't appreciate what you do or it's like you're going to sell anybody and anything? It's something I'm working on. I do now. I didn't always because I needed the business. And I really learned how to have a thick skin. I mean, a big part of how acting really helped me. Those first two years in New York City, this statistic is I think 84% of all new real estate agents in New York City quit within the first 12 months. Because it is just too hard. You can't make money. It's too hard. It's way too long. It's just too hard to survive here. The city is just too expensive. And the rejection is really hard for people that have never experienced it. But for me, I got into it. I already had no money. So I knew how to kind of get by that way. And with the rejection, I mean, I had spent two years with people rejecting me to my face because of my face. Well, you've been able to survive and now you even have a television spinoff, which carries your name, where you coach underperforming salespeople. What do you find is the key trait of an underperform? Not believing in themselves, right? Every salesperson I worked with on that show, it wasn't just that they didn't believe in the product. That's an easy fix for me. It was not believing in themselves. And it was trying to find that confidence. Like if you're not confident in yourself, you're not going to be able to get a date or a job. You got to be able to find, even if you have to fake it. How do you go about coaching somebody to get confidence? So let's say I'm an underperform, okay? You know, where would you start with trying to get me to understand that I have this unlocked potential? So misery loves company and it's easy to focus on negative thoughts. It's easy to focus on what you don't like about yourself because a lot of times what you don't like about yourself is looking at you in the mirror when you're brushing your teeth in the morning. And it just reminds you of, oh, that's what I don't like about myself. Or maybe your parents are mean or a friend said this. So one of the first things I do is going back to one of my traits for how to fix anxiety is I would sit with them and I would sit down and I'd say, listen, you've got low self-confidence. That's why you're not going up to people in the store and selling more shoes, okay? As an example, we're going to make lists. We're going to write down a list of things that you like about yourself and a list of things you don't like about yourself. And it's amazing what happens when you just sit down with a pen and paper, what people will write out. And then you write out what bad happened to you this year and what good happened to you this year. And if they can't remember, we'll even go to that day. What was the worst thing that happened today? What was the best thing that happened today? And then we take a look and we take a step back and look at those lists and it has nothing to do with me, has nothing to do with what I just told you. I can't give you confidence by telling you you look great in glasses and look at that hairline. That's amazing, right? It's got to come from you, right? It's got to be kind of that inception. It's got to be a seed that's planted in your brain where you say to yourself after I leave the room. Wow, you know what? He's right. I can do this. And I always start with those lists. It's such a simple trick in it and it really, really, really works. You know, my company did some research and we discovered that there's a real recognition deficit in business. Like 82% of employees feel like their supervisor doesn't recognize them for what they do. 79% people quit a job because they don't feel appreciated for what they do. Why do you think this is? And how important is recognition in your line of business? Oh, man, it's really important in my line of business because it's no one here is salaried. No one on my team who's a team member or an agent gets a salary or benefits. You eat what you kill. You make as much money as you want if you can be successful at your job, right? There's no base here. There's no hourly wages. There's nothing so. Anytime there's a win, it is so important to recognize that. When I do it publicly, I do it over email, I do it over tax phone calls, I do it over social media, so it's public. I do it as much as I possibly can. Otherwise, like if I don't recognize them, then somebody else will, right? And everybody likes to be liked. Everybody likes to be recognized. And I think that the reason a lot of people don't do it, leaders anyway and management, I don't think it's because they don't care. I think they definitely appreciate good people and they appreciate people who work hard. I think everyone just gets so busy and so wrapped up in their own stuff and their own issues and the fact that that manager doesn't feel appreciated from their manager that they almost sometimes just forget. So I'll literally put into my calendar, right, which is attached to my phone, which is on my desktop and everywhere. Appreciate the team. And I will remind myself to touch base with everyone on the team because I should do it anyway and I want to, but sometimes I just get so busy to touch base with them. You know, even short little emails or a short little phone call and say, "You are awesome." And it goes a long way. Yeah. What was your most meaningful recognition moment, personally or in business? And what made it so meaningful to you? There's a lot of rankings, you know, in real estate. I think I was ranked the number one real estate agent by sales, so I sold the most. I think it was in 2016, maybe it was 2015. And that was just, that was such a wild, crazy moment for me because it happened so much faster than I anticipated and it was just really cool for my team. You know, just to say like we worked our butts off, none of us are really from here. They're just sort of winging it. We don't work for one of the big firms and buy the numbers, okay? Not by what we want to tell people, but by the numbers, we sold more than anyone else in the hardest city to sell real estate in in the world. Like that was, that was pretty crazy. What would be the three bits of advice you'd give aspiring leaders? I think the first bit of advice that I'd give an aspiring leader is kind of what you just touched on. You can't win on your own. You can't lead a company on your own. You can't lead a football team on your own. You can't lead a real estate brokerage team on your own is, you know, you were there with everybody else, like treat the rest of your team, the rest of your company better than you treat yourself. Give them as much recognition as you possibly can. Number two is you got to lead by example. Like that's why I work so hard, right? That's why I put myself out there all the time. I can't ask my team and the people that I manage and the people I lead to do things that I don't do. Like, why would they then do it? They'd say to me, you don't have to do it. Why should we do it? Like that's, that's just, that's common. Right? So it's lead with recognition lead by example. And then I guess my third piece of advice to aspiring leaders would just be to do it with kindness, man. You know, I think that sounds super simple. I don't think it's a cop out, but you know, do it with kindness and do it with a smile on your face. Life is hard for a lot of people and you have the option every day, if you can, to look out a window or the sun is shining and look out a window where the rain is falling and choose sun if you can. It goes a long way. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the fact that you try to provide a lot of sunshine to the disadvantage by supporting Operation Smile, be the children, make a wish, just to name a few. You know, why have you put your focus in on children it seems like? Because children don't have a choice. They didn't choose to be here. They didn't choose to be sick. They didn't choose to live in the household that they live in. They don't have a choice. And if they're going to grow up to be the adults that we all know that they can be, they're going to need a little help. And if no one else is going to give them help, then I want to help as many of them as I can. And a lot of it too is you get to remember like, you know, people talk about charity and taxes and all these things. I mean, it's any money that I make is not mine, right? It's, yeah, did I earn it? Sure. But the reason the number was $1 versus $100 isn't because of me. It's because I'm playing with the house's money. No matter where you are, you're playing with the house's money. And it's okay to help the house. It's okay to help the other people in the house. You know, that's important. So Ryan, one last question. What's the unfinished business for you? Oh, man. And all of it. You know, I don't know. I'm just a real estate agent in, you know, on a tiny, tiny little island that is such a blip. I want to sell as much as I can all over the world. And I haven't done that yet. I don't know what it's like to sell something in Hong Kong or in Singapore or in Cape Town. You know, I don't know what it's like to put my flag in Dallas, you know, like I want to do as much as I possibly can while I can. I think that's my, my unfinished business. Maybe my kids will help me. Well, I guarantee that they're going to grow up with some ambition and desire and passions. And they better. Thank you very much, Ryan. I really have a fun time doing this. Thanks so much, David. Well, like I said, that was a fun one. Talk about a leader with some giant ambitions for himself and his team. And here's the thing. Ryan knows that there's no way he can accomplish these big goals unless he goes all in. And what I love so much about Ryan's approach is how it has him leaning into life. He's not a bystander. He's making things happen and inspiring others to do the same. This week, as part of your weekly personal development plan, I want you to be really honest about how you would answer this question. Are you all in? Are you giving it everything that you have? Or are you holding back for some reason? Now, don't judge yourself on this. Just be honest and figure out where you're at. If you're not fully committed, dig into why and explore why that might be the case. Because if you want to lead your team and you want to drive them towards a big goal and make big things happen, you have to be excited and engaged and be all in yourself. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders go all in. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. I'll see you next week. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]