Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLDBN to put yourself at that high level of selling some of the most incredible homes not just in the US, but in the whole world. So with us, we're going to have Aaron Kirman. There he is, the man, the meat, the legend. Keep talking to me, keep talking to me.
Come on, I'm sure you're used to it, huh? You never get used to it. No, definitely not. How are you?
I give you a couple more compliments throughout the conversation. How about that? Perfect, but this best part of my day, it's already going well. There you go, I love it.
Where are you at the moment? Are you in LA? We are in LA in my office. Wow, you have beautiful views in the background.
I love that. Which is what you do, by the way. You're living the dream and selling the dream. Yes, we try.
We try to live in Ensella, right? You got to do both. Look, let me get started. How in the world you get to list and sell properties that are beyond $100 million.
I mean, for people that are just listening or watching this, there is properties out there that are worth more than $100 million. And you are the man. You are the one that is listing them and selling them. How is that possible?
You know, I ask myself that every single day. You know, I'm the byproduct of my dad was a trucker. My mom was a school teacher. And so I wasn't like born into this world.
And somehow through, you know, hard work, a lot of work, good intelligence, good strategy, we landed here and it didn't happen overnight. And I was telling people success, especially in real estate, takes time and you know, we all have to be willing to do the work. I mean, I'll tell you, I'm not from the US. I'm from Madrid, Spain.
And when I first came to the States and actually when the first time I moved to the LA just for a little bit, I was like, man, those houses right there. They're ridiculous. And I started to look at the price and I was blown away. And I was thinking this is where the celebrities and all these incredible people are leaving.
Who is the guy that opens the door? Who is the guy that is actually transacting this? Because my father comes from architectural. My mother real estate, but in Spain, we don't have those properties.
So just seeing someone like yourself doing that, it makes me wonder, how does somebody get to that level? And you just said something very interesting. You don't come from that luxury. So how does somebody feel to that degree?
You know, I started selling $150,000 houses in the San Fernando Valley. So, you know, we started slow and we were, you know, we just kept in favor of way up. I was never, I'm always chronically unhappy with where I am. I always want to get bigger and better.
And we always want to do more. And so, you know, I took that one 15 and one to two 50 and that's two 50 and that's three 50 and that's three 50 and one to four 50. And over time, you start to, if you're positioned correctly, you start to meet the right people and I always tell people one person can change your life. Like one client can change your life.
And I was really lucky because I started to meet multiple clients that change my life. And I remember, you know, this goes back and I was like, seven, I was like 18. I was selling real estate. I was putting myself to college.
Oh, you started up. Yeah, that early. And I'll never forget at that time we had like four floor calls where you just take random calls and somebody called me and he said, I want a house. And I was like, what kind of house do you want?
And it was very specific. And I was like, oh, fine. Do that house. But I had no idea what he wanted was impossible to find.
Well, I was very short. Couple months later, like a lot of like bad phone calls, bad drives he hated me at the time. I called him and I said, listen, I found your house. He ended up buying that house and he was connected to many, many people in art and fashion and real estate.
And that was kind of my start and that one person changed my life. Wow. Talk about that, right? I mean, is there a series of continuously doing what you're doing?
Is that compound effect that eventually will lead to that one person that will change the whole game? Absolutely. And then no. And then once you have that foundation, once you have that game, you meet the next person.
So I'll never forget one day I met through a friend, a royal family member from Saudi Arabia. And he said to me, he's like, I'm going to buy a house for me one day. And I didn't even believe it. I just thought he was talking and we kept up.
We were friends. You know, I made sure to stay in touch with him four years later, five years later, he bought a $45 million. And he did exactly what he said he was going to do. And that opened the door to a totally different world of royal family members and kings and queens and billionaires.
And so it started to just roll. But you know, it took, it took the foundation and the people that changed your life. And then also from there, organizing like, you know, I always, I always was never the kind of guy that could, I'm not a cold caller. I'm not a door knocker.
I don't even know how to do it. So that's not my thing. I, I, but what I always, what I recognize at a very young age is I want soldiers that have a rolodex that I can attach to because if there's a family office or a business manager that represents 20 of the, you know, multi millionaires or billionaires, that person can be my best advocate. So all I have to do is find that one to get to 20.
That's right. That's smart, by the way, because it's about the leverage that you can get to people. But I mean, look, I got asked you, because it sounds great, right? And it gives people hope that you probably had to develop certain level of skills at a personal level to connect with these individuals.
Was it knowledge? Was it drive? Was it charisma? What made you feel that connection with this individual that opened the doors?
So it wasn't always like this because, you know, I have severe learning disabilities. I couldn't even talk when I was a kid. So I had a lot of challenges. I think because I had those challenges, I'm not good at math.
I'm not good at reading. I'm not great at writing. There's a lot of things I'm not good at. The one thing I, I understood though, was interpersonal relationships, because I was watching them from afar, and I was able to take those interpersonal relationships and really hone in on them.
And so for some weird reason, when I started in the business at a very young age, I was pretty decent at sales before I knew anything. Like I just, I walked the walk, I talked the talk, and it took me a long time to like, get great, because when you don't know what you're doing, you're not great. But once you really like know what you're doing and you legitimately believe that you're the best person for the job, that confidence translates to pure success. And you know, legitimately, when I go into a single point, when there's 100 million, 200 million, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, I legitimately think my systems, my process, my contacts, all my marketing, all makes me the best person for the job.
And I think God, sellers agree. I love that by the way, they confidence, right? Because I think confidence is coming both ways. If you are coming in with confidence, then their person is going to have confidence in you.
And that's what you were able to double down on. Now, what would you suggest for somebody that likes your confidence? What can they do to build a confidence up? Is it acquiring knowledge?
Or what would you say? I think it's two things. First and foremost, authenticity is what I think leads to confidence. Because when you're your authentic self, I think the sky's the limit because everybody has their people and everybody has their place.
And what I notice is people try to not fall into, you know, people try to fall into what they think is right. And that lack of authenticity is what makes people feel uncomfortable. So it's not until you own who you are, what you do. And by the way, it could be anything.
I have agents in my brokerage that go to parties and clubs and they get millions of dollars in commissions from doing that. I am agents that, you know, play on the golf course and get them. So authentically knowing what your skill set is and who you are goes a long way. And then you need to carry it through the knowledge, the intelligence of infrastructure and being at the right place at the right time.
But that knowledge is very important too. And setting up the trend because, you know, selling real estate is like running, I mean, for us, we're running big businesses and anything that massive business does, we need to do from PR, media, television, technology and everything else in the middle. Well, but you know, you started with something very important, authenticity. And you're right.
A lot of people try to be someone that they are not. And it's OK to stay in the lane of authenticity because that's what's going to lead to connecting with people at a higher level. So that's so important. And nowadays, unfortunately, people want to imitate what others are doing, thinking that that's the right path, but that's just going to take you against the wall.
I'm seeing you. I just see you flawlessly thriving through. And of course, now you've been doing this for many years. But if I go back many years, you've always been through to yourself.
I love the way it comes along. Not always, not always. Like that was a skill set. So like everyone else, when you're finding your way, I wasn't always authentic to myself.
And I always looked at other people and was like, God, they're doing it better. They're bigger. They're selling more. They're more knowledgeable.
They have more history. And so that leads to insecurity. And then you go into that insecurity and you watch and study. And I'll never forget.
I went into a lot of listening appointments, a lot of listening appointments at the time in suits and jackets. And I'll never forget I had a $100 million listening appointment. And then I spilled coffee. And it was right before the listening appointment.
And I was left with a white teacher. And I went into this and it was the biggest listening appointment of my life at the time. And I remember thinking, God, this is not good. But for some reason, when I went into that appointment, not having that jacket, not having that suit felt so good to me.
I was in such a good mood because I felt light and I feel like I was working. And I got that $100 million house. And that was the day that I stopped wearing formal clothes. And I'm like, you know what?
If I feel better being casual, I'm going to be. What a great story. And you know, I've always wondered that. And that was a question I was going to ask you because I see a lot of the successful brokers always dressing for success with their tie, with the jacket.
And then here you are, like completely fresh, completely looking, like comfortable and doing your thing. And I wanted to know if you always wear these way. No, no, no, no, I actually it took a coffee to be dropped on your jacket to change the game. They did.
And by the way, it was like a game changer because it helped me to be more authentic to to what I feel good. And I was telling people when you feel good, you will make a lot of money. When you're like, I don't know about you, but for me, when I'm in a good mood, the world just lands on me. Like the best house is the best clients I find.
Kests in my car, like the world rolls, right? And when I'm not in a good mood, it comes crashing down the same way. Like, yeah, stop the deals, fall, but have problems come in. And so a lot of what I teach is take care of yourself, be selfish with your time, be selfish with the way that you are.
Because if you're feeling good and you're treating yourself right, a button and look well, I love that. I mean, you're having that abundance mindset and it all comes from energy, right? The vibration that you're giving out to the world. Because I always say energy is the strongest currency for personal and professional success.
And if you have good energy, you're still attracting. It could be the law of attraction, I mean, if you're staking, whatever you want to call it, but you're right. Good thing start to occur. Exactly.
Well, I think it's good. I think it's energy and I think it's for me, it's gratitude. Because like, you can always look at the world and be like, God, everyone has more. The person's better looking at you, you're smarter or younger or richer or whatever.
Maybe, but for me, I always start with what I have. And when I leave that I try when I leave the day to say to myself, I really don't need anything because I'm good. So any things that come my way are just making me even better. I love that because a lot of people, as you said, you know, they're only thinking, Oh, the grass is greener on the other side, but the grass is greener where you water it.
And that's you. And that's what I wanted to leave these two because you have accomplished such a high level of success. How do you keep watering in that grass? Because a lot of people reach a high level of success and then all the sudden they stop.
They stop and they go straight down. You've been at the top of your game for many years. I'm sure you've had your ups and downs. But how do you stay consistent at the game?
You know, I think it comes from being poor. When I grew up, I grew up poor. And so, you know, you, this is not a good thing, but it's like that poor man's mentality, which is you, I'm never happy. Like I mean, I'm happy in life, but I'm not happy in where I am.
I always want to get really comfortable. I make myself uncomfortable with the next thing because I like to be challenged. I like to grow and with growth comes being uncomfortable. And every time I've, you know, started to just flat line, I started to get anxious.
And that anxiousness led me to thinking, OK, what's my next thing? And how am I going to get to where I want to go to and what changes do I need to get there to be able to feel good again? And I love that because you have been doing this since you were 18 years old. And I'm sure you've seen the evolution of real estate.
And now, hey, you've sold so many homes. You have such a great referral network. You can just do business with what you're doing. But instead, guess what?
It's state dynamics. Tell me about that because now you're starting to go deep down into technology or artificial intelligence. So you're never satisfied that you're also trying to adapt to the new trends. So tell me about that.
Yeah. So I mean, I personally believe technology is the forefront of what we do. Some agents are always worried that technology is going to knock it out. I don't think so.
I think technology only makes it better. And I thought to myself, what would be the best way to get business is to let business get to you, which I formulated with 20 years of selling, 27 years of selling real estate. But what I wanted was a system that was going to like outreach the buyers and outreach the sellers and use intelligence to do so. So we created an AI program that basically gives us intelligence and lets us know who's looking at what and where and why in pattern with a lot of different data.
So by the way, it's out of my pay grade. I'm not an engineer. I'm not a computer buyer. I'm a real estate.
But, you know, I built this program. That's been really fun because it really helps step us up and it helps us identify movements before they actually calls. Because the goal is to get as many buyers and sellers as you can. And the reason I set that up was because I asked myself a couple years ago, I was like, I'm great with negotiation.
I'm great with marketing. I probably know more than a lot. But what really makes me different than any agent in America. And what I landed on is most agents all do the same things.
And while we try to make the brokerage bigger numbers great and marketing at the end of the day, the system goes the same. And I wanted something that set me apart. I love that. No, that's great.
And talking about that, because you're now with this technology front, where do you see, especially California, where do you see the market heading? Yeah, it's an interesting question. Um, you know, California has a lot of problems, obviously, you know, homelessness, crime, tax sanction, a lot of our markets on your market, by the way, you know, a lot of people are like, hey, nothing wrong with me. You know, your numbers are seeing the same numbers.
We're seeing now. So it's definitely a different world out there. And that said, LA is a very established market. And even in its worst market and worst case scenario, it's bigger than almost any luxury market around the globe.
You know, there was a minute when I, you know, I love Miami, by the way, I think it's so beautiful. And going back to that, at some point, we want to, you know, get a place there too. But, you know, I studied the numbers. And while Miami has these incredible sales right now, and a lot of the rich are moving there, it's just a little bit smaller than the mega city that, you know, I'm not going to say LA.
I'm going to say LA and suburbs because it's a 28 million person city with a lot of wealth, more billionaires in LA, more businesses in Southern California than almost anywhere in the world, or, you know, that's New York, LA, but it's up there. When you include Southern California, it's almost at the top. So when you're thinking about all these billionaires and super success individuals that are either selling those mega mansions or buying those mega mansions, what is the number one concern or main trend that you see with these people? Privacy.
Privacy. Everybody, everybody wants privacy. Everybody wants safety. Everybody wants security.
I work with, you know, obviously some of the wealthiest people in the world. But also a lot of famous, I mean, I've done a lot of, a lot of really high profile, most business executives and celebrities in general. And I remember, I, I told a house that somebody super, you know, I remember and this is public, but I told it to Ariana, a house Ariana Grande. I said, don't find this house.
It's not private. You're not going to like it and you're going to be uncomfortable there. Literally four months, you bought it anyway. A lot of clients don't listen to us.
It is what it is. Sometimes they don't. And four months later, she's like, oh, it's just not private enough. I don't feel that.
And so, so that's safety. That's security. That privacy is going to also knowing what you like. They think they really know what they like and they know what they don't like.
And so it helps make our job easy, not by job. And I guess it's the fine line because I was going to ask you how I was working with this individual's like, because sometimes you got to keep it private, as you mentioned, but also you want to build your personal brand. You want to build your Rolodex. So how do you keep that fine line of promoting success versus keeping it private?
You know, I tell people today, I don't care who you are. If you're buying something high profile or you are high profile, it's almost impossible for me to keep it out of the media as much as I would like. And we do our best. The reality is the media is looking at transactions that are closed every single day.
They're looking at type every day and they are very sophisticated in their background and their checks. And it's oftentimes these things become public, even if we don't want them to be public. And I tell people, I'm like, look, there's a real reality that this is going to be public. So you have two options.
You can let the media tell their story or you can let me tell your story and we can manage the story and nine out of 10 times everyone wants to manage the story. Like, well, that's interesting. That's, you know, that's what it is. And you got to go with the flow, right?
Exactly. I always wonder, right? When you look at your 27 plus years of career in real estate, what was, I wouldn't say the most expensive home you sold, but the one that had the most meaning to you and what did you learn from it? The first, the most, the home that had the most meaning was my first house, 100.
And, you know, it was, yeah, it was like, it's just around 200,000. And, um, and the reason that that was the most meaningful to me is because I did it. I sold it and it got me started and I'll never forget once I sold it, I was like, I want five more. So that's then I'm pretty much sold the world's most expensive homes, you know, ranging in price from 150 going up to 300.
Um, and it's funny because I'm very not that connected. I mean, I'm connected to the outcome, but like once I close the deal, I don't even celebrate it. I move on. I'm like, okay, what's next?
What do I do next? Because it's like your only as good as your last fail. So we need to always figure out what our next salad is. I love that.
Well, let me ask you this. I always have the same question to all of our guests. What is luxury to you? Yeah, I think luxury is the most overused word and I actually do not like the word.
I think everybody claims to be a luxury specialist is a luxury specialist or wants to go into luxury. And I'm like, okay, that's overused. That's that if I have to get you a definition for me, luxury is freedom. And I, I, um, probably because of my background, like, I, I said to myself, I don't ever want to think about, can I afford the sinner?
Can I afford this trip? Can I afford this car? Can I afford this house? So it's like scale.
So obviously you have to be relative to the world you live. But I wanted the freedom to live the life that I choose and not have to worry about money and money as a vehicle to be able to do so. Perfectly said my friend. I love that.
I showed up philosophy and I think it's right on, especially for somebody that came from nothing to all this, having everything you need. So I mean, and being grateful for that. I mean, like, you know, you know, every day, I'm super grateful that, that, that I don't, the choices that I make, I just enjoy my life and not necessarily have to wonder where we're going. And you regret?
Yeah. Um, I'm listening from regrets you learn, but I have a hundred regrets. Cause every time you make a mistake, you regret it. You learn, you pick yourself up.
Um, so yeah, I was a country's already got caught. I had so many mistakes that probably cost me so many deals and millions of dollars. And in hindsight, do we wish we didn't have them? Sure.
But that, but hindsight's 50 50. And so, you know, I, I guess from every bad thing I did or every bad decision I made, I learned and I would say the thing that probably got me to where I am is the next day I just got right back on the bike and I started again, no matter how bad I was feeling. That's right. Right.
That consistency, the discipline to keep going. If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be? The one thing I do think I did wrong was I worked really, really, really hard. I just did.
I worked really hard. And I feel like when I was younger, I didn't give myself the freedom of time because I was so focused on getting, I'm wanting to get where I wanted to get to. And, you know, there's a saying, like, enjoy the journey and you'll get to your destination. And I just, and I kind of wish I had spent a little more time.
I don't want to say beyond being young, like, you know, I worked my way through college. I worked my way through life. And so, you know, I think maybe I worked a little hard to be honest. From the outside, I think you paid off, but I love what you just said right there.
Because at the end of the day, everybody has different speeds. It's about just getting through the journey and a lot of opportunities are opening up for you. So I want to know beyond being a coach, I speak running a successful real estate brokerage, having all these different projects. What's next for you?
Yeah. You know, we're growing the brokerage. We went from zero offices to four and a year and a half. Wow.
We went from 60 employees 300 or sorry, 300 agents, 65 agents to 300. You know, I'm obviously never content with my sales. We always want guys to limit. And, you know, on a personal note, we're building more technology.
We're, I'm looking to travel more, you know, some of my objectives are a little bit more personal at this point, you know, possibly starting a family, you know, we're, we're looking at property internationally. I mean, you know, things that are just fun, fun projects. I love that. And listening impossible.
Are we going to see a TV show or something? Yeah. I love those lines soon. You know, I really like doing it.
There's been a lot of companies that have reached out and there have been some talks, but I really, if I did it again and I would do it again, I would want it to be right and I would want it to be under my terms. And so we'll see time, time will tell right now my agenda is building a brokerage, continuing to sell. And, you know, I always tell people, like as a sales person, you will only get so rich, so always invest your commissions. I don't care if you can buy something small, something in a bad area.
Like for me, you always want to invest in real estate because that is how long term we will gain wealth. And, you know, I'm not a huge guy in the stock market and stuff, but I do believe property is how you ultimately can have the ultimate freedom, which is retirement. There we go. I love that.
Well, good piece of advice, fascinating story. And I know you're coming to Miami, November for the real deal. So I want to make sure we're connecting there for those that want to connect with you, whether it's to learn more to the coaching, to buy a home, sell a home. What's the best way to come to you?
Yeah, just Instagram's there in Kerman. So pretty easy and that's probably the easiest way to connect. Love that. Well, congratulations, my friends, for everything you've accomplished and everything that you have to accomplish yet.
And I look forward to doing some exciting things together. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Hey, call me when you're done with this.
I have a quick question for you. We'll do. Bye. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today.
We hope you enjoyed it.