Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with The Agency Founder and CEO Mauricio Umansky

I recently interviewed Mauricio Umansky on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today as the founder and CEO of one of the most successful real estate brokerages in the country. In addition to leading the agency, Mauricio Umanskyon has personally represented some of the most noteworthy properties in the world. The Playboy Mansion, the first house in LA to sell for more than 100 million dollars, the Walt Disney estate, and residences owned by Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Prince. Mauricio, thank you for joining us.

Mauricio: Adam. Thank you for having me. How are you?

Adam: I'm great. Great to have you. Mauricio, you attended my alma mater USC, but dropped out to start your business career. Can you take us back to the early days of your professional journey, starting with your decision to leave college and shed some light on what you learn from your first years out of school that has really helped you in your success today?

Mauricio: Well, what a great school you're at and that's a lot of fun there even though I did drop out. I stayed having fun and stayed socializing and partying through the, you know, with the rest of my friends so I didn't get it. I didn't lose out on that. But yeah, you know, we got an opportunity that, you know, I had to kind of get to work. My father kind of, to be quite frank, put the hammer down on me and you know, I enjoyed life a little bit too much. I enjoyed partying and I enjoyed going out and I enjoyed all kinds of different things. And so what ended up happening is my father at that time took a little bit of a financial hit. And he was in the textile business and he basically said to me, he said, “Mauricio, you either study and work at school, or I'm not going to pay for you at school and get your ass out of there and get your butt to work.” And I said to my father, I said, “Let me have a couple of days to give you an answer on what I'd like to do.” And I called them back two or three days later, and I said, “You know what? I think that the school is not for me,” and I was ready to get to work and I went to work for my father, which was an extraordinary experience. We were selling these goods in the garment world, fabrics and textiles and fashion. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. The beautiful thing and I would say the main lesson that I took away from there is that, you know, we weren't negotiating out hundreds of thousands of yards on any given order and millions of yards a year. And I would come back to my father and I would say, “Well, I just sold, you know, 80,000 I just got an 80,000 yard order for $2.33 a yard.” and my father would say to me, “Okay, well, I need you to go back and you know, get $2.33 cents,” and I'm like, “That's only two cents,” and he would say to me, “Well go multiply two cents times, you know, 50 million yards and tell me how much money that is. And that's all our profit. So go get me two cents,” and I really got a chance to learn the value of the penny which quite honestly translates to a lot of, you know, my life today because I always say that time is the most valuable factor in the world. And I look at time as the value of the seconds, not by an hour. So when I'm booking appointments, I'm booking them by seconds and minutes and 10 minute intervals. I'm not looking at a full hour to do something and so it's just, you know, kind of taking everything in my life and just breaking it down to the most you know, minor thing.

Adam: Mauricio, what attracted you to the world of real estate and what are your best tips for anyone interested in breaking into the world of real estate or advancing within the real estate business?

Mauricio: So there's a lot of aspects of real estate, you know? I basically got into sales and the reason I got into sales as my primary focus is that it's really in my nature to sell. I've been selling probably since I was a kid, and it becomes second nature to me, and I understand human behavior and people and that's really why I decided to get into sales. The reason I chose real estate is because I love design. I love architecture and I love business. When you're starting in real estate, as a real estate agent, as a salesperson, you kind of get to do everything, all of the aspects of a business, you're running an entire business just in just for yourself. It's a true self employment business. You're doing marketing, design, consultation, selling revenue, expenses. I mean, you're running the entire business for just yourself. And it's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. And, you know, real estate can be an extraordinary career, particularly if somebody doesn't, you know, you don't have money, and you don't have somewhere to start with. There is no other business that I know. Well, sales in particular, but the only way that you can make big money and you know, without having money to start as being in sales, right, because it's all about revenue generating. So what is a bigger ticket item than getting into the high end luxury world of real estate when you're selling hundred million dollar homes? So that was the way that I figured that I could earn the most money while I didn't have any money when I started, so it was the only way I could think of earning money.

Adam: What advice do you have for those interested in breaking into the real estate world? And what advice do you have for those who are currently in the real estate world in trying to move up?

Mauricio: Well, you know, breaking into the real estate world is not an easy task. I think that a couple of pieces of advice that I could give somebody is number one; make sure you have enough money stashed away, because you may not make a sale for six months to a year. I would recommend most people, you know, if you don't have a year's worth of savings, you know, at your minimum number, it’s really not a good idea to get into the business because you're just, you know, it might be six months before you make your first sale. And then it takes, you know, 4560 days, you know, to actually close it, and then collect the money. So, you know, you're eight months before you've made a cent. And so that's number one. But number two- let's just pretend you can get past that. And let's, you know, for the sake of argument, you know, you're in the business, you've decided to go for the business and you're running. The first thing that I can tell you is to know your stuff and have a tremendous amount of knowledge about your product, okay? And your product in this particular case is twofold. Number one is it's your inventory. Your inventory is the houses that are available for sale, right Whether it's your listing or whether it's somebody else's listing, that is the inventory that's on the shelf. And as an expert in the business, make sure you know the inventory really well make sure that there's nobody. And today, it's harder than it was back when I started because today there's a bunch of different portals. Consumers know the inventory and they know what's out there. And they're all surfing the web. And so if you're not a real expert, you're never gonna have an opportunity for the consumer that your client to trust you. So it's all about gaining trust. So knowledge of the inventory for us, number one, number two, is to understand your contracts, understand the legalities, the ins and outs of it, read the contract from A to Z. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making today, the young children and all the people entering into the business is it's become very easy to fill out a form today. There's something called zip forms. You go on there, and you literally just fill in the blanks. The problem with that is that you don't understand what you're filling in. You can't advise and consult your clients properly. And the clients will pick up on that very, very quickly. So an understanding of that is, is critical. So again, to start, just be knowledgeable on the product that you're selling and be knowledgeable on the advice that you can give people. And then from there, you can start growing the business, then it's all about lead generation, give me customer service, trying to fit, you know, think outside the box doing something special from there, it just gets really exciting and really different. But those are the two first things that I would recommend that anybody really dig down deep and before they get into this business.

Adam: How's the agency been so successful? How are you and your team able to rise to the top of such a competitive market? And what did you do differently? How are you able to execute on it?

Mauricio: Okay, that's a great question. I mean, the agency has just been absolute fun. We've been in the business almost nine years now. We've accomplished approximately 26 $27 billion of sales. In those nine years, we currently have 36 offices around the country. in multiple countries. We are located in Mexico, The Caribbean, the U.S. and Canada. And growing. And then I think the secret sauce to the agency is a few items, but number one is when we started, we really analyzed, we really looked at marketing in a completely different fashion. I think we were the first people to sell a home differently. And what I mean by that is that prior to us, you're not gonna believe this, but you know, homes were sold based on how many bedrooms what kind of, you know, four bedrooms, three baths, granite countertops in the kitchen, sub zero refrigerator, and, you know, remodeled three years ago. Well, we took a completely different approach. It was the beginning of social media, the beginning of the Internet, and what we did is we took an approach of selling the lifestyle of a house, right? So your home is located in Santa Monica, for argument's sake. So we didn't sell the four bedrooms, three baths and the granite countertops. We sold the access to the beach, the community, the schools, what you're doing, where you're eating, why do you want to be part of that community and we told an entire story. It was all about storytelling, versus selling and you know, for four bedrooms and a wall and granite countertops. So I think from a marketing perspective, we took a little bit of a different approach. We were born at a very interesting time. Real estate brokerage was a very late adopter of technology. The World Wide Web was up and running and existing for many, many years. And we were still receiving all of the inventory of what was available for sale on a weekly basis and books, print books, and I'm talking like a really late adapter. So all of our competitors when we launched were not upgrading with technology and with tools, and we were one of the first companies to launch, you know, with a full CRM system, a bunch of new technology to make life easier for agents gather of data, and really large with kind of a little bit of a different, you know, approach. There's no question and I'm not gonna lie that, you know, getting the name and the brand out there and the agency out there certainly was helped by my wife and my family being broadcasted on television. We're now 10 years on television with the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You know, later, I made a bunch of appearances on that. And we definitely parlayed that into a lot of television, CNBC, I was the correspondent for Fox News anytime anything had to do with real estate, so we really took advantage of the media. We were kind of one of the first ones to do that. And that's the success of the agency, but then it doesn't stop there. Then you have to continue to perform, you have to continue to innovate, you have to continue to be different, you have to continue to be creative. Because once you start, the problem is that everybody can copy you. And so what we found is that we were starting, and rocking and rolling and feeling great. And all of a sudden, a year and a half into this thing, everybody was copying us, and people were doing the same thing. And we were not ready for that; we were not expecting that. But we adapted, we changed, we continue to innovate. And we realized that our stuff was copyable. But the one thing that cannot be copied, which is the major unique feature of the agency, is the family, the color, the culture of the company. And when we launched with culture. Everybody was forced to read a book called Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, the story of Zappos. He talks about culture. In order to be part of the agency, you had to read that book, you had to understand culture. It was the beginning of the time where we were all learning about culture, the business and the identity and the personality of a business and the agency truly is today a real family, even across its size and its cities and countries. We are a very unique family. We're the only company still to date in real estate that has 100% participation in our CRM system, which is amazing. And the communication and the family is what continues to set us apart that cannot be copied.

Adam: Can you talk a little bit more about how leaders can build a winning organizational culture?

Mauricio: Well, I think they have to start by leading it and living it themselves, right? So a leader cannot go preach something and then not live it, right? So in order to deliver and for people to follow you, you have to be that culture, right? If you talk about ethics, if you talk about sharing and collaboration, if you talk about giving back to the communities through charitable foundations, and if you talk about all of these things, then you have to live that, okay? You have to be that as a leader. You cannot be seen on Instagram doing stuff that you're not preaching. So the leader really has to deliver and understand what the personality of the company takes, the personality of the leadership and that's, you know, a critical path.

Adam: What do you look for in people you hire? What do you think are the keys to hiring successfully within the real estate business and in business in general?

Mauricio: Great question. Number one is from our staff perspective and you know, kind of the people. But there's two different aspects of it. In real estate you have your staff, your creative directors, the people that are employed. And then you have your salespeople who are your independent contractors from the employment. I look for great people; I look for people that could think on their own. I do not look for “yes” people. I look for people that are willing to challenge me. I have no interest in hearing that I'm right. I want to hear why I'm wrong every single time or why you see things different. So I look for the Ying and the Yang. Wven Billy Rose and I, who are partners and the original founders of the company, were very different. And when I called him up, and I said, “Hey, Billy, do you want to do this business with them? With me?” One of the reasons I picked him is because he's very different from me. Yet we have the same morals and we really jive. You know, we're really a gang of eight. So when you start from that- the first two people and then you take that into your staff and you encourage people to doubt you and to challenge you, then you're able to create an extraordinary company. Number two, on that end, is pay for talent. Okay? Hire good talent. Don't be cheap. Okay? Yeah, that's critical. Like, you know, go for it. They're good here and they are worth it. The reason they are more expensive is because they're worth it. Okay? When you go to buy an amazing piece of clothing, Laurel Panda, and you buy a beautiful cashmere gray jacket, that thing's in your closet. I have one in my closet, it cost me a fortune, but it's been there for six years and it's not gone out of style. Okay. And so it's the same concept, right, and people in salespeople and independent contractors, which is really the key to your revenue and the key to your success from the perspective of bringing in revenue. Again, ethical people, collaborators. I don't want anybody that, you know, comes into the company that destroys the culture of the company. What I mean by that is somebody that steals leads, somebody steals clients. You know, I hear the guy next to me talking to a client and talking about Michael Jackson. And all of a sudden, you know, the salesman picks up the phone and he calls up Michael Jackson and says, “Hey, Michael, I've got a great price for you.” We want none of that. That's what we call assholes. Okay. Rule number one in the agency, rule number one at the agency everywhere. It's printed. No assholes. Okay, that's the beginning of our culture. No, assholes. Rule number two; we like to have fun, right? So I think that kind of sets the whole thing up right there. Now then we go into a little bit more, into what the people that are doing business really are. We're small. We're boutique. We're not about numbers. It drives me crazy. When somebody says, “Hey, how's the agency doing?” We're doing great. “But how many agents do you have?” That's somebody I don't even want to talk to. Okay, because that's the wrong question. The question should be, what's your market share? What are you selling? What are you doing? What's your service? So as soon as somebody asks me how many agents I have that’s somebody that's not part of our computer, okay? Or unless they're asking because they don't want it to be too big, right? But then generally speaking, we hire experts in the field; people that have been doing business that understand. We want people that can be very good consultants and advisors, so you know, we look at ourselves as real estate advisors more than real estate salespeople. And so we want people that can really advise their clients from a good perspective, you know? From experience and from good ethics and good morals, etc, etc. If we're hiring somebody new, and if we want to train them and take them through the mentor program and all of that stuff. Again, I want them to think on their feet, and I want them to be people that don't take no for an answer. Okay, so a perfect example is you know, you come out of the theater, you're with your girlfriend, you're on a date. You go to a restaurant and you say, “Hey, can I have a table for two?” And the woman at the reception desk says, “oh, man, I'm so sorry. We're closing at 10. You know, and it's 9:59.” You know, what do you do? I do not want the salesperson that says, “Well, I go look for another restaurant. I'll get on my app. I'll go over here, I'll figure it out.” I want the salesperson that says, “Oh, I got a minute to order. Give me the menu. I'll order within a minute.” Okay, that's the person I want. Right? And so that's what we look for.

Adam: I love that. How have you landed such high profile properties and won over such prominent clients? What advice do you have on how to win new business and how to build winning relationships?

Mauricio: Well, they have confidence, have no fear. You have to be elegant. You cannot be a used car salesman. So it's a very unique balance between elegance, confidence, not having fear. And to do that you go back to what I said to you at the beginning, which is having a tremendous amount of knowledge. Right? And a really good friend of mine and a really good client of mine gave me my first job. His name is George Central Pietro. He gave me my first job delivering pizzas back when I was 16 years old. I just got off the phone with him right now. I'm selling his house right now in Beverly Park for $35 million. I'd been his employee for 34 years. He told me what I got into the business. He says, “Mauricio, do you think it'd be the same amount of work to sell a $10 million house as it would be to sell a $1 million house?” And I looked at him and I go, “I guess.” He goes, “Well, don't you think that the paint on the check on a $10 million house would be a lot bigger than the check on a $1 million house?” And I looked at him and I went, “I guess.” He says, “Well, why don't you just go for the $10 million houses.” And I had just started. I had just been making my calls. So I call him up and I'm like, “Alright, I'm gonna go for the $10 million houses.” So I started from the top, I never worked my way up. And that's just what I always chased. Now, that's not gonna work for everybody. A lot of people in my company say, “Hey, I want to do the same thing.” It's not that easy. I definitely got, you know, a little bit of luck, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's possible and people do break into it. And they do do it. But that's how I did it.

Adam: And I think a big takeaway for listeners is, don't be intimidated. Mauricio, you are not intimidated. You're not a guy who gets intimidated, and you're not going to sell $20 million homes ever. If you're going to be intimidated, let alone selling $20 million homes, or whatever the equivalent is in the business or industry that you're in, without having confidence in who you are and what you do. So I think that's great advice and a great perspective. You've sold More homes for $20 million, or more than anyone, what are your best sales tips? And what are your best negotiation tips?

Mauricio: Great question. So yeah, the best sales tips are market well be present. You know, one of the things that I think I've seen a lot of the mistakes that a lot of people are doing today, and I see this in my company all the time. They come in and they ask me for advice on how to negotiate or how to sell or how to, you know, do something and I always say to them, I go, “Well pick up the phone, call up the client, and say, blah, blah, blah, blah,” whatever, right? They come back into my office, and they look at me and I go, “Well, what did you do?” And she goes, “Yeah, you know, I texted my client. Exactly what you told me.” I go, “Oh, I told you to pick up the phone and call the client.” She goes, “Well, what's the difference?” The youth today is not communicating. Texting and the way somebody can read a text and the way that you can deliver a communication are completely different things. The Art of communication, the art of talking, has been lost. You cannot end that. If you want to be a great salesman and you want to negotiate, it's all in the art of communication. It's all in the art of knowing and listening, hearing, and watching people's reactions. You know, today, people don't want to get in the car with you. I forced clients to get in the car with me because that was the only time I can actually talk to them. Right? Because when I was looking at the houses, I was looking at the house, and then we each got it and then everybody gets into their own individual car. You're never talking to the client. Now you're back to tax, you're back to this, you're back to that. You need to make personal touches. You need to understand your client and you need to be able to read what it is that they want either a buyer or a seller. And then you need to be able to communicate. That art of communication is everything when you want to be a good negotiator.

Adam: Mauricio, you spoke a little bit earlier about differentiation and how the agency was able to really take advantage of unique branding, both in how you were able to brand the agency and how you were able to brand homes differently than other players in the industry were doing before you got into it. What can anyone listening do to enhance their company's brand or better build their personal brand?

Mauricio: Be real with yourself; dissect it, allow yourself to be vulnerable. First, break it down to complete vulnerability and understand who you are, what your mistakes are, what you're doing, be willing to listen to your mistakes and be willing to accept them. Once you're able to dissect the mistakes that your brand is doing, you're going to be able to then rebuild it. Okay, right now during COVID it's been very frustrating because we're very busy. We're running 1000 miles an hour. And I know that the agency has made a lot of mistakes in branding, stuff that nobody sees. We see it internally in some operations. The day that I found out that we were going into COVID and that we were shut down I got on the phone with all of our staff. I did a Zoom call. I did a Zoom meeting with absolutely everybody. I said, “Guys, this is not the time for us to rest or to get down.” I go, “There's gonna be some furloughs, there's gonna be some layoffs, we're gonna have to make some adjustments. But let's take this as the time to relook at our brand, to relook at our operations. Let's be thankful that we actually have this time. The whole world has come to a stop and there's no rat race, and nobody's getting ahead of us. Stop everything, reanalyze every inch, every operation, every transaction, every movement, every ad, every message, our mission statements, absolutely everything. Let's take advantage of this time and let's get on this now because we don't know how much time we're going to have. And that's what we've been doing. So, if you want to and you can't stop, you can never stop. So if you want to look at that, break yourself down, be vulnerable and break yourself down and restart.

Adam: Thank you. That's great. I'm gonna ask one last question, and you alluded to it a little bit earlier; reality TV. Reality TV’s played a prominent role in your personal life and in your professional life as an entrepreneur. How have you cultivated reality TV to your benefit without allowing it to impair your family life and your general well being?

Mauricio: It's very difficult. I have watched a lot of friends get on reality TV. I've watched a lot of my co-stars on reality TV, get their lives destroyed, go through divorce, go through a whole bunch of different things. You know, people see it from an outsider's perspective and they say, “Oh, he's on reality TV. This is easy. Like, obviously the brand's gonna grow.” It doesn't work that way. The one thing that I think that you have to know when you get on reality TV is yes, it's a commercial. And yes, it's an advertisement. But number one, is be prepared to look at yourself on television, and be prepared to not like what you see. You're reflecting. You're actually watching something, okay? You may not like the way you get along with your wife which happens all the time, particularly on my show on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or on The Real Housewives franchise, which is why you've seen so many divorces of reality people because they watch themselves and they realize they don't have a good relationship. If you're going to get onto television, understand your skeletons in your closet. Be prepared for them to know what's gonna happen because they're all going to come out. Okay. Luckily for me, I have an amazing relationship with my wife and my kids. And we actually love each other, we actually enjoy each other, we enjoy our lives. And you know, and we've been able to take advantage of the commercial, which is reality television and take advantage of it for businesses, for particularly for the agency, so it's very difficult, but it can be very beneficial, but it also can come with a lot of sacrifices.

Adam: Mauricio is there anything else you want to share with listeners on how they can be more successful personally or professionally, how they can just live better, happier and healthier lives?

Mauricio: Well, I guess the only thing I could tell listeners, which is something I try to think of every single day when I wake up, is that there's only one thing that you can't control and that's yourself. And that's your mind. Those are your own emotions. You can choose to have a choice every day to wake up. Wake up happy, grumpy, mad, scared, fearful, emotional. It's your choice to decide how you want to wake up and how you want to live every single day of your life, create a routine, be positive. We're going to get thrown many curveballs throughout the day; learn how to deal with them. Be positive, have a vision of where you see yourself, of where you want to be, of what you want to get out of your life and what you want to see. Go through that vision every single day every morning, if you can. If you visualize it, you will make it happen. But that visualization has to become innate. It cannot be, oh, I'd like to be, you know- and then you forget about it for three months. And you're like, oh, man, I visualized that one day. No, visualization has to become part of your life and you have to start visualizing where you want that to be, and you should exercise that on a daily basis.

Adam: Mauricio, thank you for joining us and thank you for all the great advice.

Mauricio: Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation.