Ryan Serhant: The Sales Habits That Closed $1 Billion in a Year

Summary · 5 min read instead of 56 min

Ryan Serhant is a New York real estate broker who got his license in 2008 to cover $2,000 a month in rent, then spent 10 years on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing New York and now appears on Netflix's Owning Manhattan. His team crossed a billion dollars in sales in 2019. In 2020 he founded the brokerage SERHANT., and he trains salespeople through sellit.com.

Serhant says the best selling involves no visible pitch: build a real connection, help people with something unrelated to you, and earn the right to ask. He credits much of his success to a willingness to be embarrassed, to following up for years, and to treating each day as a bank of 1,000 minutes to spend like money. He rejects "fake it till you make it" because it implies lying, and argues instead for acting now as the person you expect to be in 12 to 24 months. He describes attention and distribution as the real business underneath real estate, built through early Instagram and YouTube. He also says ego kills more deals than anything else, and that his drive to keep growing comes from responsibility to the people who win when he wins.

Minute by minute

1. 2:11

   Act as your future self, not a faker. Serhant rejects "fake it till you make it" because he says it implies lying. He instead behaves now like the person he has written down he will become in 12 to 24 months. Parrish says he gives his kids a similar exercise: imagine a camera crew following an A-plus student, then copy how that student spends the day.

2. 3:22

   How he won the Million Dollar Listing audition. About 3,000 agents came to Bravo's 2010 open call, and Serhant made the last 16. He borrowed a Range Rover, met the LA crew at 5 a.m., had a friend from acting class play a hedge fund client, and asked friends to call him nonstop. When a showing fell through, he walked out on the crew, copying a date who had once left him mid-meal, on the reasoning that people want what they can't have. He made the final four.

3. 9:55

   Improv and comfort with embarrassment. Serhant says theater taught him to memorize information, speak in complete sentences and breathe from the diaphragm. He now strongly recommends improv for agents, arguing that people today fear embarrassment more than failure. In his view, people who are willing to embarrass themselves make more money every time.

4. 12:23

   Treat 1,000 minutes a day like money. Serhant splits his day into finding, keeping and doing business, and says the average person has about 1,000 productive minutes out of 1,440. He argues that people hand the rest of their day to someone who annoyed them for five minutes, which they would never do with cash. Valuing time this way cut his meetings to 15 to 30 minutes. In a rough year he says his team outsold the next team by about $350 million.

5. 16:20

   The best sale has no pitch. Serhant says "the best sell is no sell": people dislike being sold but love shopping. He starts with the two C's, a compliment and something in common, then asks questions that can't be answered with no and lets people talk. His team's close-on-day-one method sets out next steps early, and he argues you sell the dream first and the bed second.

6. 20:00

   Follow up until they buy or die. Serhant says the first thing anyone sells is themselves. He follows a three F's rule: follow up, follow through, follow back. He messaged one prospect every other week from 2012 until the man replied at the end of 2017, then sold him places for 16 million, 73 million and 33 million. He used Google Alerts to send short congratulations notes without asking for anything, and says most people simply give up too easily.

7. 23:07

   An $8.3 million deal that looked like a con. In 2011 a phone buyer agreed to $8.3 million for an Upper West Side apartment, vanished, then wired an $830,000 deposit months later. Others warned Serhant it looked like money laundering. He tracked the buyer to Paris, drank tequila with him, and eventually closed in cash after a trip to JFK to inspect a new plane. The buyer said he did the deal because Serhant would not leave him alone.

8. 31:17

   Ego kills more deals than anything. Serhant says the fix for agent, buyer and seller egos at $20 to $100 million price points is to over-communicate and praise everyone. Outside of sports finals, he argues, you only win in business if the other side wins too. So he plays for the other side to win and keeps his enemies very close.

9. 32:56

   Rock bottom in 2008 led to real estate. Serhant describes his card being declined at a grocery store in summer 2008, crying on the subway, and his parents telling him to come home. A friend, Jason, told him to get a real estate license instead. Two weeks after he made rent, the financial crisis hit and most agents left the business. He says he earned nine grand in his first year and lived by the line "the only way out is through."

10. 38:39

    Distribution is the real asset. After the show aired, the phone didn't ring, but Serhant says he saw the power of "content to commerce" on social media. He leaned into Instagram as a visual medium for homes, then YouTube, building what became Serhant Studio. By 2015 to 2017, sellers and developers were writing his YouTube tours into listing agreements. He argues that social media and PR pull people in, while paid advertising has to push.

11. 43:08

    Hook them, help them, ask them. Dropped into an unfamiliar town, Serhant says he would interview every small business owner and build an alliterative local website optimized for search and LLMs, then turn it into a real estate business. His framework is to hook people with something in common, help them with something unrelated to you, and only then ask. He says sellit.com trains upwards of 60,000 salespeople in 133 countries.

12. 47:42

    Pleased but never satisfied. Parrish raises his wife's comment on Owning Manhattan that he is never satisfied anymore. Serhant argues that businesses must grow or die and that people are wired to want more. After a billion dollars in sales and about $22 million in commissions in 2019, he started his company in 2020 during COVID. His parents told him not to, and he says that pushed him to go harder.

13. 52:18

    Your past explains you, not excuses you. Serhant links his drive to growing up chubby, picked last for sports, and something of an outcast. He says "your past explains you, but it does not excuse you," and calls endurance the advantage as rival firms fold because their economics don't work. He defines success as family and legacy, and calls his ambition "pure, brutal responsibility" to the people who win when he wins.

Published Oct 13, 2026.