Ryan Serhant made $9,000 in his first year as a real estate agent. That was a little over ten years ago. Today Serhant enjoys commissions that have made him a multi-millionaire.
According to this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Serhant represented the buyer of a $122 million house in Palm Beach. The beachfront mansion set a new price record for residential real estate in Palm Beach.
I spoke to Serhant recently about his extraordinary career, which took him from a struggling actor to the star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York and one of America’s top real estate brokers.
The theme that struck me from our conversation is that successful entrepreneurs and leaders act like the people they imagine themselves to be—and they do so before making their wealth. “When you can’t change your circumstances, there’s one thing you can change: your energy,” says Serhant.
When Serhant auditioned for a Bravo show looking for successful real estate agents in New York City, he felt insecure because he had only been in the real-estate business for a year-and-a-half. However, just before he entered the audition room, Serhant decided to act like a million-dollar listing agent. He brought high energy, a big smile, confident gestures, and strong eye contact.
Many people who struggle with public speaking should take a lesson from Serhant and other successful entrepreneurs who overcome their feelings of inferiority by acting like the leaders they expect to be in the future. Don’t focus on your insecurities; amplify your strengths.
Think about it. If you are ultimately successful in your dream to start a company, become a manager or CEO, or become a recognized expert in your field, you’ll exude far more confidence than you do now. So why not start today?
When I work on public speaking skills with recent graduates, business students, or aspiring leaders, they often acknowledge their fear of speaking publicly. They haven’t built the confidence that comes with accomplishment. Unfortunately, their body language reflects their insecurity. They look down a lot, fail to make eye contact, nervously fiddle with their hair and hands, and use filler words like ‘um’ ‘uh,’ and ‘you know.’
“Let’s try something different,” I gently suggest.
“I’d like you to try the presentation again. Except for this time, show me how you would speak if you’re the founder or CEO of the company.”
If the students see before-and-after videos of themselves, they often can’t believe the difference. The only difference among the two presentations is the person they imagine themselves to be.
Serhant adds one crucial caveat to this technique: Don’t overstate your skills or embellish your experience. Imagining your future self simply means exuding the confidence of the leader you expect to be.
For example, pretend you’re in a job interview, and you don’t know the answer to a question. An insecure person would try to answer anyway, exposing their lack of knowledge. A confident leader would admit they don’t have the answer, but they have a plan to find the solution.
Serhant suggests that you fill your mind with positive thoughts and the image of the ‘future you’ for at least ten seconds before meeting someone. “If your head is in a good place, you’ll exude positivity and confidence, and it will set the tone for the meeting,” he says.
The ‘tone’ for a presentation or a meeting is set in your head before you begin speaking. You can’t control the outcome of a presentation, but you can control how you think about it.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
