Ryan Serhant

Jessica was a twenty-something who responded to my ad on Craigslist. That’s how new brokers like me found clients in 2008. We placed

“Stop being such a little bitch. You’ve been working as a real estate agent for five minutes. Suck it up. If Ben Kennedy can do it, you can too.”

No one will hand you a secret formula for success. You will realize what the formula is only after you’ve created it

I thought about how I could take initiative to move my career forward every day. I asked more experienced brokers if I could shadow them for a day or run one of their open houses. I put more ads on Craigslist. I worked to be less shy

Initiative is like a magical cure-all elixir. Pick up the phone and make a call, send an email, follow up with leads. Do something. Taking initiative is like breathing for a salesperson

Take initiative with everything that is put in front of you, and you will experience success every single day.

As an actor, I wasn’t fazed by rejection, I was good at reading people, and I could quickly memorize things like facts about buildings. My goofy personality and prematurely grey hair actually won some people over

Sales is like a race, except no one is going to tell you what kind of race it is until that gun goes off. As you start to sell more, it becomes clear that success is about how hard you work—it’s about your endurance, it’s about your ability to sustain a lot of balls. The more ads I placed, the more showings I did, the more connections I made—the more I sold.