Ryan Serhant says he has a list of all the billionaires he’s met—all 101 of them. For the real estate mogul whose brokerage, Serhant, is on track to close $6 billion in sales this year, building relationships with the ultrawealthy is his “number one job.”
Serhant transformed himself from a struggling actor who only earned about $9,000 from his first year in real estate—in 2008, the week Lehman Brothers collapsed—into one of America’s most successful brokers. He’s closed more than $15 billion in real estate over his career, built a brokerage with more than 1,100 agents across 14 states, and parlayed his work into a Netflix series, Owning Manhattan. His estimated net worth is around $40 million. And at 41, he continues to set records: In the first 35 days of 2025 alone, his brokerage, Serhant, surpassed $1 billion in closed and in-contract sales.
In a recent TikTok interview with the School of Hard Knocks, Serhant revealed the deceptively simple networking approach that has fueled his rise from struggling actor to one of the most successful real estate brokers in the world: “Every room I go into, I use the two C’s.”
The formula? “You give someone a compliment, and you find something in common.”
