 Because maybe today, you are not the person you want to be or know you could be. You believe in a bigger potential for yourself. I want it to be tactical. I want it there to be strategy. I want to be taking notes, right? I want to, I want to get ahead. I want to be four years ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky Garoo. He is an investor, a speaker and soon to be remembered, in my opinion, as a legend in the industry. The cool thing about what he was doing was he was documenting everything. Like he would post his calls, his work he was putting in, the strategies. He was sharing everything. It's way worse than for somebody that's looking to build, right? And looking to grow because people just expect way too much out of it. Your success in selling is interesting and people do care. So you want to promote your success all the time. Having an opinion about what you are uniquely qualified to have an opinion about. Marketing yourself, building your brand, putting yourself out there, do it the right way, takes considerable consistency, make more friends, live more life, life is short. Most agents get into the business because they're their own boss, they make their own money, this is exciting, they can do what they want and then they get in and they're a slave to their business. I think you should post as much as you are comfortable with. If you have no idea what you're comfortable with, then you start with, I would honestly start with three times a week. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back today. I've got the man, the myth, the legend, Ryan Serhan on here for the third time. What's up, bro? Thanks for coming on. I don't know what my life is like without you. So I just keep harassing you so I can get back on the pod. You wake up in the morning, you see me, you go to bed, you see me. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, but I still stop calling your name out all the time. My wife gets weirded out. Oh, shit. Now, good to see you, man. Today's a big day. You got your third book dropping. Yeah. No, it's big day. Yeah, book drops. Been working on it for a long time. It is my third and final, like most likely, excuse me, this one's two years and it completes the selling trilogy for me. You know, sell like Serhan, big money and energy and brand it like Serhan. And that's, that is the trifecta. Like that's what you need. You want to build a big sales career? Those are the three. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. You'll write a fourth one. Like in ten years. I need to live more life now, man. Yeah. Like these three books, like it's like a thousand pages of my life and stories and I got to go live life and, you know, create new stories that I can then write a new book about. But, you know, I don't know, you know, these authors that do books like every other year, they end up just becoming like third party anthologies where it's, it's like, you know, it's the extension of a blog post, really. Um, and I feel like people just don't have that kind of, that kind of bandwidth anymore. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way. No, guys, you can go to branded like Serhan.com and actually got a couple signed copies of branded like Serhan. So if you want to win one of those, just share this video on Facebook or wherever and comment, comment below your favorite part of this interview and I'm going to pick a couple winners and you're going to get a signed copy of branded like Serhan today. So cool, man. Tell, tell me about it. Like, tell me about the book. There's a lot, there's a lot we can talk about. I mean, super simply branded like Serhan, um, uh, uh, as I thought about, okay, if I'm going to give back to the, the sales world, right, to the gig economy, to real estate agents, yes, but to all salespeople, how do I do that? So I wrote my first book, uh, basically built on eight years of notes while selling, while being rejected left and right, while, while losing hard, failing hard, but then also learning from them and that, that was sell like Serhan. So I came out in 2018. We turned it into a TV show. It then became a big, you know, education business for us, which has been cranking ever since, but what I realized from that was, okay, so great. I just gave you the tools to sell, right? Here's, here's how you literally, here's how you follow up. Here's how you do email. Here's how you talk to people, buy side, sell side. Here's how you do everything. Now you have the tools. But if you don't have the confidence to use those tools, right? If you don't have the know-how, then great. You have a tool kit and it sits in your garage, right? You don't actually know how to pick up the hammer. You know you got one. You know what it does. You read the book on it, but I don't think I should actually be swinging it and that was big money energy. So my follow-up to that was really about, okay, so how do you take that tool kit and put it to use and how do you position yourself as you in the future? Because maybe today, you are not the person you want to be or know you could be. You believe in a bigger potential for yourself and you know that in two years, I'm going to be amazing in two years. Okay. So how do you start acting like that person today? Right? That's, that's what, that's what big money energy is really about. So then you've got the tool kit. You have the confidence, right, to use it, but then if no one knows what you're selling, then you could be the most confident salesperson on the planet. You're not selling anything to anybody. And in today's day and age, you got to be able to build a personal brand or build the brand for a product. You have a podcast. You want to build that brand so more people listen to it. You're in a real estate sales. You want to be the person who is the most known for selling two family homes by the beach, whatever it is that works for you. How do you go and do that? And I, I looked, you know, I, I looked around like I've never just written a book just to write a book. Like I look around and I make sure, okay, I just want to make sure this book hasn't been written already. Cause if it has been, I don't want to, I don't want to like, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. And all the branding books I found weren't written by people that had ever actually done it themselves from scratch. They'd either been like CMOs or they had worked in branding, but they never actually built something for themselves with their face, their name, their reputation, the ups and the downs, or it was old or just dated, you know, and no one had updated it. So, so branded like SirHant is, is what I call my brand strategy system for building a brand from scratch. It's, it's three parts in the book. And it was super fun. I mean, it was a lot of work. It's my longest, most tactical book I've ever written. I interviewed a lot of people for this, which if you've read my first two books, I've never done before. So in this one, I mean, I, I interview everyone from, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk to Kenneth Cole and like everyone in between, you know, Steve Madden, Rebecca May. Like it's a, it's a very, it's a big array of people that I went to to say, okay, what is brand to you and how did you build your brand? And we go really, really detailed. And then I track throughout the entire book a real life story of a girl named Sydney who's building her own fitness brand called Self by Sid. And I had her do all the things in real time that I tell people to do and then I tracked it in the book so that the reader can follow along and not just say, yeah, well, Ryan, of course, he did this, he did that. He's Ryan Serian. No, no, no, here's, here's Sydney. You don't know she is yet. Here's how it's working for her. Here's how she's doing the work and you can follow along with hers. And I think that's really, really fun. So that's branded like Serian. It comes out today going by 100 copies. Wow. So you took a, took a like work. You took somebody that was in the fitness world. Just no brand. Yeah, she did like a case study for the book. Yeah. So there's like a, yeah, at the end of every chapter is, is a section where Sydney writes out basically how she put everything in the previous chapter to use for her, for her fitness brand, right? As she's building kind of like a personal training, coaching, fitness brand across social and digital and how that actually has worked for her. And the ups and downs with that too. So, you know, I, I, I read a stat years ago. I think it was the US census said that by 2027, I think it was 50% of the United States economy will in some way shape or form be attached to the gig economy. Which means that 50% of the people who go to work every day in some way shape or form within the next three years are making 1099 income, which means they're selling something either their services as an author or as an entrepreneur, solopreneur or as a real estate agent in some way shape or form. So what is that? What is that percentage today? Did it say? Good, good question. I don't know what it is today. Yeah. I'm going to take that as a note. I feel like I should know that. What is the percentage today if 50% in 2027? Great question. See, this is why I hang out with you. You asked a question. Are you asking chat GPT? No, no, no, I'm not going to ask chat GPT. I'm going to ask our head of research. I got you. No, that's amazing, man. So this isn't just like a book he wrote. This is interviews. This is other people interjecting their ideas on branding, like legends in the industry, Gary Vaynerchuk. I saw that interview you did with Gary. That was really good. Yeah. Like I, you know, if I'm going to not watch TV, not sit with my daughter, not actually be at work, not be at the gym, not sleep, not be with friends. If I'm going to take time from my day and I only have so much of it to actually read something for me, I need it to be tactical. Like I don't need to read fluff. Like that's what I have to talk for. You know, if I want to see fluff and bullshit, I got social media. Like I want to, if I'm going to read a book or listen to it because I did the audio book. So it's my voice. Then I want it to be tactical. I want there to be strategy. I want to be taking notes, right? I want to, I want to get ahead. I want to be four years ahead by the time I've done with the book. Otherwise, like why, why write it and why read it? So, you know, it is, it literally is just your branding manual. You want to build your personal brand, the brand of a product. Use branded likes or hands branding manual. Good luck and you're welcome. And if you take your company public because you crushed it, just shout me out and I would love that. Yeah, no, this, this is amazing. This isn't just like another book. This is, this sounds like the real deal. Do you, do you scroll on social? Like how much time do you actually like get lost like looking at social? Do you ever do that? Yeah, during the day, I don't. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty booked, right? So I'm pretty, I'm pretty booked and like, you'll even see, you know, like if you follow me on Instagram, like there are moments in time when, you know, I've got 50 stories up at any given time, you know, that those are probably slower work days. And then there's times when like, sir, hand hasn't posted in a while. Like I just, I just haven't had the time. Yeah. Uh, and I think that's, that's probably pretty standard. No, I, I, I, you know, I like, listen, man, TikTok is fun. I like scrolling through it. I don't remember the last time I turned on my TV, you know, like, as you sit down and turn on TV, I'm like, Oh God, like, okay, is it going to be more interesting to me than flipping through TikTok and, and seeing a lot of different types of content? Although TikTok has started to get really add see, and it's kind of annoying. And you see the same stuff over and over. And it's like kind of, I lost a little bit of that organic reach and touch that it had in 2020 when we all first kind of jumped on the bandwagon, but I'm, I don't know, I like to, you know, I need a mental departure here and there. Yeah. You said that if, you know, you hadn't posted in a while, it means you're kind of busy. You're still actually the one posting on Instagram and stuff like that. You post all, maybe there's no way you, do you post every single thing on all platforms for yourself? I'm aware of everything that goes out. I'm not, I'm not personally in feed posting on all platforms. Like I just, I just don't know as well how to make an engaging TikTok or real. You know, as I used. Okay, hold on a second. Now, Brandon, like sir, a hand here doesn't know how to make a engaging real. No, no, no. It's, it's to clarify me personally making a real, you know, that where I'm going to like know how to do the edits and stuff, right? And all that. Like there's a lot of things in the book about how to do social and do well, but like at my level now, it's actually like, it's actually like, it's way worse than for somebody that's looking to build, right? And looking to grow because people just expect way too much out of me. So I have, I have help at this point. Yeah. But a lot of it is, yeah, a lot of it is still me. And it's also something we talk about in the book. Like you don't need what I have. You don't need a crew. You don't need a studio. You don't need people doing like everything is relatively pretty simple. But I still find the best engagement for me is in stories and LinkedIn. Like we do a lot on LinkedIn these days, a lot more on Twitter X than ever before, you know. What's working on LinkedIn right now? Like what kind of content like like articles or video? What's yeah, LinkedIn LinkedIn is is the new like is the new blog, you know, and I think people have used it that way for a while. But you know, my association with LinkedIn five years ago was it was a place where you would find business moves and everyone would share articles. Like, oh, I just read this an entrepreneur or an ink or we're wired and you're sharing it and giving some feedback and it was relatively pretty professional. I've kind of turned it into a blog outlet, you know, like I have an article coming out that I just wrote about AI tomorrow. You know, like all I have interesting thoughts about the Bitcoin ETFs and and and why the Bitcoin price isn't responding well, you know. So I just jot down 700 words and clean it up and post it there and it's actually, you know, it's really, really an important platform for building thought leadership because anyone can take a photo of a house and stick it on Instagram. That is not interesting and no one cares. Your success in selling is interesting and people do care. So you want to promote your success all the time. That's that's basically a big thesis to the base three of our brand strategy system in the book. But I'm, you know, I really like building thought leadership through LinkedIn and it's worked really, really well. As of yesterday, I'm now a, I'm a, what did my guy say to me? I'm a voice, you know, a helpful voice. If there's like the LinkedIn voices is like how they do verification or something like that. And 10 years later, here I am. Yeah. No, absolutely, man. Do you find that the those raw videos you do, you know, cause I do those as well. They're, they're my best engaging video. I mean, the edited ones are, you know, nothing compared to the engagement I get on those raw, organic, just me right there, talking my talk, you know, do you find the same? Well, those are the videos you watch too, right? From other people. Anything super, super produced, you know, unless it's, unless it's immediately attention grabbing, you know that that person is trying to push something on you and you don't want to have a message pushed on you, right? You want to be pulled in. And so those organic stories, like where someone's just laying there in bed or just going for a walk and just saying, Hey, this is what's on my mind. Ends up being far more engaging. And I, I, yeah, I'm right there with you. I think the, the, the algorithms have all picked up on that too. So now you're seeing kind of more and more of that produced content fall by the wayside to just become more and more authentic, you know, people will sit there. For my dude, even my four year old, like I really try not to let her use the tablet or watch YouTube, but like she doesn't watch TV shows, right? She likes watching little kids watching TV shows and little kids playing with Barbies. And it's just weird. It is different. It is strange. It may, it almost makes you want to start making those kind of videos because you see they have like 400 million views. Yeah. Because they watch the same ones over and over and over and over. Yeah. And it's just somebody, you can see their hand. You're holding the whole Barbie. They're talking. You know, it's them talking. It's not even, they're not, it's not like they're not even trying. But it's kind of, I don't know, there is something a little bit sad about it because it's like you're taking the time to sit by yourself and watch something like that instead of going and doing the same exact thing with friends. So it's, there's, you know, there's a loneliness factor there that the social media companies have tapped into, you know, that have just sort of, you know, prodded people to, to have friends through screens. And I don't know where that, I'm more afraid of that than I am of AI. Like I'm, I'm more afraid of people's lack of interactions, you know, and the future of the human race because of things like that with, especially with little kids, because you're so, you're, you're so malleable when you're four and five and 10. And if you grow up and your brain is molded to understand that loneliness isn't real. If you pick up a screen like that's fucking, that's crazy. Yeah. What do we do? So do you think social media has had a positive input that is having more of a positive impact or more of a negative impact on society? I think it's like, I think it's like anything. It's like TV, right? There's, there, if you don't know how to do anything in moderation, TV has had a big negative impact, you know, the spreading of different types of information, you know, couch potatoes, all those things. But do you think the fact that it's actually in the palm of our hand, instead of sitting on the mantle and are, as to the, you know, to the negativity that it brings? Yeah. I think anything that just becomes easier, right, also has that double-edged sword attached to it. But I, I mean, look at the, look at the Apple Vision Pro. Like, are we holding these things in our hands? And it's going to be a fun paperweight in five years. You know, I don't, like, are we going to be all with the goggles or the glasses as that technology just gets better and better and better? Am I going to be doing this podcast with you years from now, but I'll have my glasses on and I'll be scrolling through with my left eyeball off to the left. Like, you know, you start plugging in Neuralink and am I going to be on Instagram just in my brain all the time? Like, what do you, I don't know. You know, I have no idea. I mean, listen, you, you know, cars put horses out of business and I'm sure that was a really stressful time too. Yeah. And at the same time, you know, we, are there a lot, what percentage opportunities that you have right now you wouldn't have without social media? Yeah. So I think you got a, there is massive change happening around us at all times and it all happens so much faster now than it ever used to even look at like market trends. They used to take 10 to 20 years. Now they take five or less or less. And so if you can look at that and say, wow, that's scary. You can look at that and say, I can't individually do anything about it. So I can try to take advantage of it and I can look at it as great opportunity. And I think that you just have to, you just have to look at everything that way. So yes, social has been great for our ability to build business, to build community. Right. So to meet people, I never would have met ever in my life. Like we have, we have friends, clients, customers on the other side of the planet. And how would I have ever been in contact with them previously? And now we, we have them in South like Sirhands, you know, our education platform. You know, we have, we have members in Singapore. We have Formula E race car drivers in South Korea. Like that would never have happened. So I, I appreciate the speed and the breath of the platforms, but I think you have to do everything in moderation. I think even Tim Cook said in an interview the other day, like they didn't build the iPhone for you to have a glue to your face all day every day, right? They built it to, to bring the world together to help the transfer of information to make a lot of different things easier, which they did, but you've got to be able to self-regulate. I think awareness of what you're saying has been growing for years, you know, like, you know, the fact that it's had a negative impact on society and people feel more lonely and depressed and stuff because of it. Yeah. I think the more more awareness, you know, you know, we're going to go through phases with it, you know, where people are craving that, you know, interaction because they've been locked to their screens. What is the one B stand for behind you? One billion. Yeah. I know, but what does it symbolize for? Why is it on your wall? Oh, yeah, yeah. I am. So when we first started the business and we came in here, you know, it ended up being my, my vision board. I was like, what do I put on this wall? And it's like, we're going to build a billion dollar brand like Sirhant and all the moving pieces that are attached to it. It's going to be a billion dollar brand and I've got to do that. And so what better way than to stick it over my shoulder all day every day so that people see it on zooms and podcasts and and hold it against me. You know, it's like, you know, it pushes me forward. Just reminds me I got to keep moving forward. I got to keep growing. Yeah. There's no doubt you're going to get there. Yeah. Well, from your, from your lips to God's ears, Ricky. When you so, so, you know, you were on the show and you know, you were selling real estate and and all that stuff, but then somewhere along the line, you said, I'm going to break into social and I remember that, you know, you started really crushing YouTube and Instagram and stuff like that. What was the switch that made you say? Because because really, I mean, you know, the other guys on the show, you've done it at a far higher level than the other guys on the show, which, you know, they didn't really go as hard as you did. What was that switch where you said, I'm going to, I'm going to go this direction, you know, because this was when, when did you start really focusing and saying, OK, I'm going to build, you know, these socials, you know, they're all later or eventually built some businesses out of. So great question. I'm actually looking up right now this date. Let me see. So I can, because I can literally tell you exactly when that switch happened. But but but but but but but is this really 2019? I don't think so. It was somewhere around there. Yeah. No, it was it was definitely it was before it's a different house. So I want to say 2019. So probably 2018. So I got married in 2016 and I started the vlog in 17. And so right after that, you know, we we had started doing things on YouTube, you know, but I was sort of like vlogging and not really going so heavy into property tours. It was more about personal branding and in a way that I could control, you know, you mentioned the show. So millionaire listing New York like our peak ratings for that show were seasons two, three and four. And then at that point, then people started, you know, they stopped watching things live. I had Netflix with House of Cards came out Netflix all of a sudden DVDs no longer. So the world changed. Streaming became a thing. So it's like, OK, so this probably isn't going to last forever. I want to how do I how do I take control of my brand exposure? Right. I've seen what a TV show can do for my career. If I put it to use, how can I how can I really take control of everything else? And we're like, all right, so I can go on social, but then everyone was like socials for kids, right? It's just for kids. And there's a guy I met. His name is Joe and he was like, who influences the buyers though, their kids. So go heavy on YouTube. No one at your level is doing that. And so I go and I make a property tour of a house on West 18th Street. Tough house to sell. And it was like 15 million dollars right in the city. I was brokerer, I think number three. I just been out there, been on. It was a tough. It was a narrow small house. But I had a pool and so we made some really cool fun social content. We put it across YouTube. I mean, there was no shorts back then. So it was, you know, long form elsewhere. And a 13 year old girl saw the video in her feed on YouTube, showed it to her mom and the mom was only looking for a house on the east side and our house is on the west side, you know, which is different in New York City. The mom showed it to a real estate agent that she was working with and said, Hey, how come you haven't shown this to me yet? And he was like, Oh, I don't I well, that's on the west side. You told me you didn't want to be on the west side. She's like, I don't know what I want. And I thought, I mean, can we go see it? And they bought it for 13 million dollars. And so there were still real estate agents involved in the deal. We're gonna gotten done otherwise, right? We still have to market so to do all the showings in the open houses. So none of that goes away. But what really changed was that that lead generation, that point of first substantive contact at that moment. I was hooked. It's like, holy moly. Are you kidding me? So we just broken number three and we just sold this because a teenager saw the property tour on YouTube. We will now do this with every house ever. And it so I built Sir Hamp Media Group, which were, you know, in a fact, a handful of different videographers and editors who could move at lightning speed to take our real estate branded content and new construction content and aging content and put it out there to the masses. And that's where I really lit that fire. I made that financial investment and I pushed it and pushed it, pushed it, you know, to to get a, you know, to get to get deals done and it and it worked, you know, and we've been doing it ever since and it fueled the kind of creation of Sir Hamp, which is our brokerage that we started in 2020. We have a full on production studio here that does everything that I used to do, but like to the end, you know, one hundredth degree and it's about that greater brand awareness and exposure because you never know where your clients going to come from, you know, and I think the world has just gotten more and more global. How many of those stories are there where the kid watched it? And a lot of parents bought it. A lot because I remember that I remember you saying this, you know, maybe it was about that one. It happened that one time or I'm wondering if it's happened. Oh, it happens happens all the time and we sell. I mean, if you ask any agent at Sir Hamp, like when they they come over and they're uncomfortable about going on camera and we don't force it. I don't want to be super clear. It is a resource that we have that, you know, big news for everybody, definitely not for everybody. That's why I like LinkedIn and written content. And now with chat, GPT and everything like you, you anyone can be a thought leader. Right. You have an opinion. I spend your time right having an opinion about what you are uniquely qualified to have an opinion about and put that out there. People will be interested. You're the only version of you that's ever existed. Ever. That's that's what makes us special, you know, but it happens all the time. We have condos that sell because kids, you know, sell send them to their parents and all of our projects right now. And it's then not just the kids, right? It's the kids. It's the assistants. It's the business managers. It's the cousin, right? It's the lawyers. It's it's all of those different people that are in the circle of trust of the actual client. Then forwarding and sharing at the one thing that was hard to do on Million Dollar List in New York, you know, if you're watching a TV show, you see something interesting. How do you share it? What are we doing? Picking up your phone and screen recording or just texting someone and saying, hey, did you see that latest episode in this? It's not as easy. Right. It is not as easy. Now social, there's that little arrow button you can share with anyone you want. You share with your own social, right? Network. You can put it out there to anybody. Little button is really what changed things. Yeah. So you so you sold a property off of it from the child watching show. Yeah. Yeah, like you're like, let's go in with this and do this on every listing. All right. And so you started creating content there, but then at was it at the same moment that you were like, I'm going to start creating content for agents as well, because this is a that's a different industry. Yeah. No, when we started the angle. Yeah. When we started the brokerage, that's where that came into play because I said, OK, I did this for myself and no one on YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, LinkedIn these days, like no one follows me or absorbs our content because of a TV show I did for a long time. People stop me on the street because they know me from social. Yeah. Right. So I said, OK, so I could do that from scratch and anybody could do it if they want to put in the work. And I don't think most people understand how much work it is and how much time it takes and how much thought process goes into it. It's a job marketing yourself, building your brand, putting yourself out there to do it the right way takes considerable consistency and it is a lot of work. And so we started doing that for agents in 2020 and it's worked really, really well, like phenomenally well, you know, which is which is a problem in and of itself because now too many people want those resources and there's only so many. There's only so many studios to go around. So we've been, you know, we've been very kind of selective in our hiring process and, you know, we don't take everybody with a heartbeat. That's for sure. With the agents you bring in, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. So so when you say do it for them, you mean like have them come in? You would you help them scripts the content? Like how what all is involved? They like a few of our. Yeah. So what we do, it depends on where you're located. And a few of our markets, we have actual studios members like salaried Sirhan Studios creators that you can work with to do your virtual tours, your property tours, your your deal stories to sit down with do social audits. Right. Go through, you know, you want to you you posted a few times in 2023. You don't think that was good enough. Like let's let's go through it. Right. And in markets where we don't have those salary professionals through sell like Sirhands, we have what we call our pro brand strategy program where we work with you. We work with our agents on building their personal brands and that includes like social strategy. Right. It concludes newsletter strategy, includes a cold calling strategy. If that's what works well in your marketplace. And so, you know, I've always believed, you know, I'm not a franchise. We're not a I'm not like a Christie's licensing our brand name. Not yet. Maybe maybe some time in the future we would do that. But for right now, like everything is so personal to me. The success here is so personal that it's all one corporate company. It's all one family and I care as much about our agents in South Carolina, you know, selling dirt, you know, and track land to national home builders that they do and all that fun stuff as I do about an agent who's on the other side of my wall here and so ho in New York. What uh, where what all States is Sirhands. Right now, expanded to how many agents do you have? Like how big is the company right now? The company right now. We are just over 500 agents. We're just over 120 staff members. Our headquarters is in New York because that's where I'm based. But we have big presence in kind of up and down Florida. We're, you know, Miami all the way up to Palm Beach. We're about to open in Orlando. We just opened in Tampa. We're in South Carolina, North Carolina. We are about offices. Yeah, the agents, the agents and the kind of founding members open up physical offices. Yeah, we're about to open in Georgia. We are in Connecticut. We are in New Jersey and we're in Pennsylvania. And, you know, listen, I could be in all 50 States already if we wanted to be. But I think there's like I don't want to grow so fast that I regret it and then you make mistakes and then you end up having to shut down offices. Like I see I've been watching and I've been in this business since 2008. Like I watch. I've watched other firms or teams expand too quickly. And then I've watched them shrink and contract. It's like so. So why did they do that? Like why? Because then what's the last reputation they have? Right? What's the last impression you have in that market? Was oh, they came and it didn't work and they shut down. Not much harder it is now to go and create a brand new first impression. It's so much harder to go in and say, hey, we learned from the last time where we've got different partners now. Everyone's going to be like, what what is happening? So, you know, we go all in. We open a market. We onboard an agent. If we've decided to create that alignment and that partnership, we go all in. And really get that market really good before you move on. Yeah, and get nationwide. Yes. Yeah. The goal is to be nationwide. You know, our model is a bit different. You know, we are not the 100% split model, you know, thing. We're not the recruiting first, sales, second model. Right. I look at this kind of like, you know, there's if you looked at like the music industry over the past 25 years, you know, it used to be that you buy a CD and you know, even a cassette tape before then and the music industry crushed it. They made so much money. Then they do their concerts and they held all the information. Right. And then the internet comes around and then you have MP3s. You have the Napsters, the LimeWires of the world and they said, yeah, that sucks. You should go do it like this or give things out for free. And that kind of to me was like the you know, those there's firms out there that really are just they hang your license and they move things around really cheap. You're not paying the company anything really but you're supposed to go out there and keep sharing your music, share your music, share your music. That's how we make money. And I think there's a happy medium. Yeah, somewhere, you know, and then iTunes comes around and all of a sudden everyone's like, well, it's so simple now. Fine. I'll pay a dollar a song. Even though it was free before you're like, but this is simple. Right. This is just easy, simple and easy. And then you'll pay for it. And I think our model kind of runs along that line where it's not like what it was 20 years ago. Right. It's you're not coming in here and being owned by the brokerage and waiting on your lead cards and you got to go out there and make something of yourself. But you are getting the brand support and the empowerment to go and build a bigger career and to double your income every year in a way that a lot of the 100% split firms like they don't have the bandwidth to do that. They don't make any money. Yeah. Yeah. You can't. How do you provide support if you lose money all day? Yeah. What I've found is that the probably the the most important the only thing the agent really cares about when they're picking a brokerage. What I've found is that they have the ability at that brokerage to the the opportunity to double or triple their volume over the next you know, 12 months. It's all they care about. You could tell them they're going to make 40 extra grand if you know, they do nothing different in their business and they don't care. Yep. You're saying they're going to do nothing different in their business. But if you tell them I'm going to help you double or triple now they're listening. So what do you what do you guys is value proposition right at Sirham for an agent? Yep. So the the the first value proposition from the day we started was if if you are looking to double or triple if you are looking for lead flow if you're looking to increase brand awareness build your brand right really to level up. We are the absolute best choice for that. If you are looking to get into luxury if you're looking to recruit better agents you know, this is why we've hired we've onboarded so many independent brokerages like I opened up in Delray New Jersey and South Carolina with solid indie brokerages like entire firms who would turn down offers to be bought by everybody else and I just absorb them because they said by aligning ourselves with SirHands we can get bigger properties better properties and I can recruit better agents than would have come to my 50 person firm because it gets harder and harder to compete with the bigger brands as margins get tighter and tighter and tighter especially now in the class action lawsuit world we all live in. So the brand awareness the ability to level up that way the attention kind of from me and then I think our our systems and our processes and our support staff are really incredible. You know, but today I'm about to go on stage and introduce our first ever product and it's called simple and it is literally any administrative work an agent whatever want to do from running comps to setting appointments to creating listing presentations to adding people to your database so that you can build a follow-up plan all of those things just get done for you because what I what I saw over a long period of time was that and I did this like I went and interviewed with every brokerage for years man years before I started Sir Hand and I my my goal wasn't to go and start my own company and have overhead and managerial problems like my goal was to go and just have a great life but I kept interviewing with all these firms and the pitch that everyone gave me was the same like really the through line was come to us and we're going to make you better and I sat in all these meetings with all the players you know and I was like you know I think I'm pretty great already like I don't I don't think I don't think you really are going to make me better unless you're making me promises or guarantees and they're like oh well no we can't do that like okay so I can't there be a firm that has a mission to be better for me like to work so hard to be better for you and I couldn't really find one that just didn't try to what do you think was empty promises? Yeah just like hey we're going to give you this screen and then this screen and then this screen and then this screen and sure certain firms have have solid technology that can make your life easier but it doesn't make your life simple and that's that that quote just like ran through my head for years and I interviewed a lot of other agents and I kept asking all the time what's your what are your number one goals for moving firms like what's your number one goal for your life right now and like you said number one is always you know if they want to do more business I want to do more business I want to make more money like I'm not in this business to not do that okay great perfect and two I want to just I want things to be simple I don't want them to be overly complicated or annoying every time right and I want to own as much of my time as I possibly can and so that's what our product that we're putting out today software I mean what is that yeah it's an app that's called simple the website probably goes live at like noon it's only for our own agents we'll see what happens like I don't I don't know we could license it out I don't know that's pretty cool you've got a little beta test group there yeah yeah I've never done it I've never done this before ever like I'm used to getting up on stage and you know talking about deals and stories and being motivational this is like on this screen I don't know so literally after I get off with you I'm going back into like my preparation bubble for that because I gotta go up on stage at one o'clock but it's exciting man it's cool and I think it's I think that probably becomes a pretty solid more time generating business and sitting with clients that no AIs ever gonna be able to do right this is still a people business no matter what probably even more so now than ever before or I can use that time to spend it with my daughter like you and I were talking when we first started go go to her recital at noon because I actually have more time like go spend time with friends make more friends live more life yeah life is short and like I made abundantly clear to me over the past couple years and if I can help be a champion for change in this industry that just puts a lot of lipstick on pigs then I'm gonna do that whether people take me down or not it's a change that needs to happen too it's something that I'm really big on because most agents get in the business because they're their own boss they make their own money this is exciting they can do what they want and then they get in and they're a slave 10 o'clock at night and they have no freedom yep it's really get your freedom back exactly yeah yeah 100% going back to social and having guys audit you know agents your agents socials you only posted three times last year and stuff like that what is you know just generally speaking what should agents be posting how often should they be posting you know what's your advice for agents on that front that you are comfortable with if you have no idea what you're comfortable with then you start with I would honestly I would start with three times a week anything less than that you go for it but you're you're just gambling you know and then anything more than three times a week I think it's I think it's fine you don't want to spam people like I know people post once an hour I'm like and you gotta mute that person because then there's nothing of value but really think through like listen there's lots of people that have been on social media every platform is different it's all a different audience and the the post the feeds and the stories and the videos that get the attention and attraction are very different per platform so you gotta keep that in mind you gotta post for the platform right that's a big part of our of the book too and something I preach all the time you gotta post for the platform and you gotta just have a unique opinion right you don't think your life is interesting enough to post on social because you've lived in your own you are unique to everybody else you know I would follow someone who's showing me houses in Arkansas like I would follow somebody who's talking to me about their life and how interest rates are affecting their market and businesses that are coming in and the restaurants that are good to know like that's interesting to me and then there's an SEO part to all of this too like the more you put yourself out there as the one who does every platform the more Google the more every search engine is gonna go to you as the one but you gotta put yourself out there no one's gonna talk about you if you don't talk about yourself yeah yeah so you think just like restaurants market stuff like an agent yesterday on a zoom it's like I don't know what to post and I was like okay well did you show property in the last week they're like how many buyers they were like five I said any of them make offers not under contract yet I was like there's a post I showed property to five buyers in the last week two made offers we're still looking for properties for the other three that's inside information that you that your client that's market on Zilla market pulse for sure it is market post right market pulse it's that is that's the most important right even the new agents have like people are interested and even what the new agents are going through you know they don't even realize it they think they have nothing to do with the conversation really they they might even have more to add if you're a brand new sales person everything you do is interesting because you're learning as your audience is learning you know and you've got a unique perspective and you should talk about that unique perspective whether you just got out of high school or this is your second third or fifth career have that unique perspective and opinion if you've been in the business a couple years right that's a unique perspective because you're like this house was only X and now it's Y right and you get to start doing year over year analyses and your thoughts as your market changes and the industry changes and if you're a veteran you're like well I don't know what to talk about what are you talking about your whole life is now a story you get to talk about what you did ten years ago and what was happening over here and even for me I'm like all of a day I'm like what the hell do I talk about today and then you just look out the window there and that apartment was worth seven dollars now you know and all of a sudden you're like you're that guy you know talking about what things used to be like that's interesting that's a unique perspective it is very interesting last year you know the interest rates the market you know lower transactions in 30 years and stuff a lot of agents did worse there's some agents that did better last year than the year how did you navigate that market and what's your 2024 message to your agents and outlook so my message to everybody last year was markets do not dictate your outcome they only dictate your strategy markets are going to go up markets are going to go down you are not allowed to be exuberant when they're on the way up and then complain when they're on the way down it's like what did you think was going to happen it's just the way the world works but if you look at statistics markets go up markets go down they go back up they come back down and so how are you going to take on that opportunity when markets come down someone is being very successful someone's going to have the biggest year of their career why not you that's part of your story right back in 2008 like isn't that part of your story you emerged from the I mean mine too yeah but yeah I started during the started during the recession day one for me was the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy the subprime mortgage collapse everywhere every agent in the office I started and quit they all got out within like the next 60 days and I was by myself but it was okay for me because I didn't know I didn't know any better you know sometimes ignorance is bliss that way and so you know what was it years and years later now you know you have to understand that you have to have that day one attitude right that I mean I have a group chat with a bunch of people where it's called page one every day is page one of the book so if you were brand new today what would you do you'd be doing the basics okay so if you're not brand new go back to basics almost the last time you picked up the phone just called 15 people you haven't touched base with in forever you probably haven't done it because you're just waiting on those referrals but when you first got into the business you're like I don't know anybody I got to call 15 people today so you got to drop the ego you have to drop the idea that you're better than you were yesterday because you're not no job is too small or too big and you got to start to pivot you know I think 2024 obviously rates have started to come down I think the market's gonna remain pretty hot I think the Fed isn't going to let Biden look like he's failing right so I think you're gonna have that benefit there I don't know what happens after November though so God bless all of us and I think you just have to work work hard and pivot where needed if you have no inventory then go create it go find sellers and convince them now is the time to move you know why because the market's gonna get softer and it's gonna change what's your outcome what's your end game what are you trying to get to and explain that process and I think 2024 is exciting all I know is 2023 was really hard for us to recruit as agents because people were scared rates were rising fast and no one wanted to move because it was kind of hunkered down yeah because people were hunkering down this year so far right we're one month into 2024 I have recruited in our core markets more agents in the first month of this year than I budgeted for the entirety of 2024 so now I'm like now I have no idea what's going on I don't know what's happening so now I gotta now I gotta re-budget and ebb and flow and say damn it I have to support I think it'll be good but the markets on the way up you take advantage of it if it's pouring rain on the way down you grab your buckets you grab all the rain and you go and you get everything ready for when the rain stops it's just it's what you do I've been really loud the whole time about prices aren't gonna crash and stuff like that you know there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff out there about recessions and the house price crashing and stuff like that you know what are your thoughts on you know like that you know like you've got you've got this sector that scares the shit out of the general public and agents you know um for really no reason there's no fundamentals behind it yeah right you know then you've got guys like myself and others who are like don't listen to these guys yeah yeah I I I don't know where pricing goes you know pricing is a factor of inventory yes right ability to purchase okay and market sentiment you know I I I like everybody else during COVID I think was surprised but then very excited by the fact that all of a sudden I was able to do real estate transactions with people that wanted the real estate they were buying or they wanted to sell the real you know sell the real estate they were selling I especially in my markets like I had spent 10 years working with people who were buying property only because they needed to they were having a baby they were getting divorced they were you know job moves they needed more room but like they weren't they didn't want it you know maybe they convinced themselves they wanted to but like we weren't doing a whole lot of speculative purchasing for a decade and then COVID flipped that around and it was fun fun working with clients for the first time like hey we want to go get something bigger I want a backyard I want to pool I want a garage let's go do it like this is a fun way to go look at homes I think a little bit of that want has now died down yeah back kind of to the need economy right the need market that we're in I don't know if pricing is going to crash and even if it does it's not 1971 it's not lasting for 10 years right even if pricing comes down there's so much cash on the sidelines there are so many people looking for opportunity all it's going to do is prop everything right back up because people are going to dive right in and you see that you know you see it so take advantage of that if and when it does happen do you feel like agents have job security for the next decade yeah I think all of the systems out there I think the AI the processes everything is there to support a business built on human interaction and that's what this is right houses aren't going away everyone's going to need to live somewhere people are still going to want to buy houses and sell houses now we can have a conversation for another hour about affordability right I think there's a strong market place there's strong demand right I think affordability is something that's going to get a little bit easier for at least a short period of time and I just I don't know the whole idea the silver something right where there's going to be all this is that a comment about me and my hair I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think my hair the silver silver Fox the silver servers all the sellers exactly exactly that's all your hair the like 10000 people are turning 65 or something every day and there's this avalanche of all these older people that are going to list their properties or try to sell their properties have you looked at them yes they used to right when they made sense on the flip but these people you know, on a fixed income, where are they gonna go? So I think we're gonna see some more inventory hit the market nationally, but those sellers, right, aren't all plunging into the market tomorrow because just like your buyers, inventories love, what are they gonna do? I think there's a big wealth transfer that's happening between people that are 60 to 80 and transferring down to the people that are in their 20s and 30s. So I think you're gonna see cash come that way. And that's, you know, that's exciting. But listen, all I know is markets go up, markets go down. There's always challenges. Things are always hard. You have to pick your heart, pick your heart, find your opportunity, move forward, pivot when needed. That's it guys, pick your heart. Ryan, thank you so much, bro. I'm gonna see you February 29th. Guys, me and Ryan are gonna be on stage together at Gold Bar Live in New York on Times Square. You can go to goldbarlive.com to get tickets. The tickets are actually selling really fast. And also go to branditlikestarhand.com, share this video, put it on Facebook, text it out, share it out and comment your favorite part of the interview below so I can get you guys these signed copies of this book. Cause I mean, I just learned about the book in the interview. I'm excited about it myself with the interviews you got, the case study, the fitness influencer. So good work, bro. Thanks, man. I'll see you guys later. Thanks, buddy. Bye.