Ryan Serhant Ubiquity – This ubiquity is no accident.
You might recognize the 41-year-old from the past nine seasons New York Million Dollar Listinghis own Netflix series own manhattanor a for-sale sign bearing his name as his real estate empire has expanded to more than a dozen states.
But none of this happened overnight.
When Serhant graduated from college, his ambitions were modest. He had no clear career path or master plan. Instead, he had one goal: move to New York City and figure out the rest.
“It’s not about finding happiness. It’s not about chasing success,” Serhant told us wealth. “At least initially, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.”
To achieve this goal, he used what little money he had saved while working on a ranch in Colorado and took any job he could to make ends meet. These included becoming a hand model for $150 an hour—money he later used to fund his first real estate investment—and handing out as many as 500 Equinox gym flyers a day.
Flyers jobs are not about the paycheck. In exchange, Serhant gets free access to the gym and, more importantly, free access to the gym’s wealthy clients.
It was an early lesson in cyber strategy that he still believes in today. Serhant follows what he calls the “two C’s”: always offer compliments and find common ground.
This mentality goes far beyond the gym and casting. “I never wanted to be beholden to anyone,” Serhant said. “I never wanted a boss who hired me one day and fired me another. I wanted to create something for myself.”
He built something for himself. Today, Serhant is the CEO of SERHANT, a Brokers and media companies The company had more than $6 billion in sales last year and regularly markets nine-figure penthouses to billionaire buyers.
Serhant’s secret to building a national brand—while staying true to your roots
Breaking into real estate is notoriously difficult. Thousands of agents enter the industry every year, Many leave within just a few yearsciting pay inconsistency, cutthroat competition and burnout.
Serhant knew it wasn’t enough to just sell the apartments.
“I even believed early on that a brand would never be about property, it would be about people,” he said.
This philosophy shapes everything about him, from his social media presence to his television career to the way he structures his agency. While many CEOs move away from real work once they reach the top, Sehant sticks to the grind that made him successful in the first place. That’s why he personally still sells properties—even though he has hundreds of agents working for him.
“I think it’s really important for CEOs to never give up on what got them to this point in the first place,” he added.
Just last year, Serhant represented Andy Cohen at Sale Dave Portnoy in his $12 million West Village condo Buy Florida Keys home worth $27.75 million to British investor Sale Palm Beach mansion worth $72 million.
Still, not every day is as easy as it seems to his millions of TV show viewers or social media followers.
“I’ve always had hard days. Every day is hard,” Serhant said. “I don’t want anyone to have the title of ‘CEO’.”
It’s not all the money that keeps him going, which he calls a “moving target,” but the realization that tomorrow is the next opportunity to make changes and achieve his goals. Without the latter, work becomes endless: “Otherwise I feel like I’m running a marathon when I wake up with no end in sight.”
In 2026, Serhant will focus on expanding into new creative sectors while expanding SERHANT into an AI-first agency. He plans to more than triple his state footprint, but he’s still betting on his momentum from handing out gym fliers to landing nine-figure deals.
This story was originally published on wealth network