The Knowledge Project · 2 min instead of 56 min · Oct 13, 2026
Follow up for years with value, never an ask
Ryan Serhant
Founder, SERHANT.
Shane ParrishHost · Founder, Farnam Street
Former intelligence agency employee; wrote the bestseller Clear Thinking.
About this segment
Serhant describes his three F's and how he followed a wealthy prospect every other week for five years using Google Alerts. That client went on to buy $16M, $73M and $33M properties.
From “Ryan Serhant: The Sales Habits That Closed $1 Billion in a Year”, Oct 13, 2026. Watch the full episode
“you follow up forever until people buy, die, or they bought something and they don't want to, they don't want to work with you”
Takeaways
- Follow up, follow through, follow back
- Send congratulations from alerts without asking for anything
- Persistence is free; most people simply quit
In this episode
Full episode- 12:00Treat your day as 1,000 minutes of money4:00
- 2:10Audition as the person you will become, not a fake3:30
20:40Follow up for years with value, never an ask1:48
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 20:42
Well, listen, you, I don't follow up with people who say stop really. I mean, sometimes, but you have three F's. So it's the art of the three F's follow up, follow through, follow back. So you follow up forever until people buy, die, or they bought something and they don't want to, they don't want to work with you, which is totally fine. You follow through on everything you say you're going to do and you follow back with everybody that decided to work with you.
- 21:07
And you have to have that process and you have to do it. So he was wealthy and was a potential great client. And he never wrote back. But was this like a quarterly email you'd send him? Hey, is now the other time? Personal note every other week about the market, about a new listing, about a new sale, about an alert that I would find. One of the big unlocks for me in this process was when Google created Google Alerts.
- 21:33
So you could set up anyone's name, anyone's company, and you would get an email digest once an hour or half a day or twice a day, whatever you want, with anyone's name, letting them know, which would then be a good key indicator for me of like, oh, they just bought a company or they just did this, they just did that. And I never ask anything, never ask, never do anything, just congrats, crushing it. Super simple. Because at some point in time, maybe if and when they decide that they're going to do something in real estate, my name will be in their brain for sure.
- 22:02
unless they've told me not to. This is not a 100% success ratio, but it is far greater than the not. Yeah, so I followed up with him for five years, then sold him a place for 16 million, then 73 million, then 33 million, and so on and so forth. Do you think that people lack the ability to follow up or they just give up? They give up, man. They give up. No, dude, give up is so easy.