Takeaways:
- Networking consciously for just a few months helps you do it unconsciously for life.
- Real estate is a business riddled with jealousy — it’s unfortunate, but don’t let it affect you.
- Waking up four hours early five days a week gives you 1,040 hours a year more than your competition to work. That’s 43 days.
We invited the Twittersphere to tweet questions to Ryan Serhant using #AskRyanSerhant and this is what emerged — with Ryan’s advice added:
1. @yourbestwayhome: Have you ever used real estate coaching services? If so, whom did you use?
Yes — I did Brian Buffini’s Peak Producer class that he has on DVD. This was in 2011. Coaching has a negative connotation to it in real estate when it absolutely shouldn’t. Coaching is training.
Do people think negatively about LeBron James being coached? I don’t think so. As agents, real estate is our sport, and we have to constantly be training, taking classes, learning and adapting so that we can better and excel in our business.
Brian’s class didn’t teach me how to be a better negotiator — it taught me how to make the key principles of the real estate agent mentality part of my muscle memory.
For example, Brian says you have to meet five new leads every day. It doesn’t matter where those leads come from. If you don’t do that, you have failed your day as a real estate agent — even if you sold $100 million in real estate that day. Doing this consciously for just a few months helps you do it unconsciously for life.
I get everyone’s info when I meet them. I probably meet 15 new people a day. That’s 5,475 new people a year who I now have contact info for.
If each of those people have a network of 100 people, and I keep reminding them through e-blasts and social media that I’m a real estate agent, then I’m really hitting those contacts and their network. That’s a network I now have of almost 550,000 people that I only have because I started being conscious about meeting new people and getting their contact info.
2. @CooleSanDiego: What do you do if another real estate office or Realtor speaks badly about you?
A hater’s gonna hate — that’s a saying because it’s true. Real estate is a business riddled with jealousy. It’s unfortunate. But I don’t let it ever affect me.
In fact, when people stop saying bad things, then I will have a problem because that will mean I’m not making enough waves.
3. @MoneyFindersLLC: Do you still get up at 4:30 a.m. every morning?
Monday through Friday I wake up just before 4:30 a.m. It’s part of my blood to do that now. I’ve trained myself.
It’s no fun, and I wish I could sleep in all day and eat cereal on the couch and watch (TV) on demand, but working hard and tasting success gets me up every day.
You can’t control how tall you are, how smart you are, where you were born or what you look like (for the most part), but you can make sure you wake up earlier and go to bed later than your competition.
If I have an extra four hours a day to work compared to my competition, how could I not beat them? Think about it: Four hours a day — five days a week — is 1,040 hours a year that I have worked more than my competition. That’s an extra 43 days that I have over every one of my competitors.
We all complain about how there’s never enough time, right? Well there you go — I just gave you an extra month and change to get to the top, and all you have to do is focus. You don’t even have to go to school for that.
Ryan Serhant is a licensed associate real estate broker at Nest Seekers International. You can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.