Episode Transcript
Austin: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market Podcast. This week, we have Lisa Lippman, the number one real estate broker at Brown Harris Stevens for seven years straight. Lisa has been consistently ranked in the top 50 brokers in the US. She's one of the top seven brokers in Manhattan and has transacted almost $2 billion worth of real estate in her career. If you're looking to buy or sell high end real estate in New York City, Lisa's your gal. Lisa, welcome to the podcast.
Lisa: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Austin: Yeah. So tell us about how you get into real estate. I know you did a little bit of practicing legal law. Then you became a realtor and maybe talk about how you got into real estate and how you decided, this was the thing you wanted to focus the rest of your life on.
Lisa: Okay, well, I'm not sure that it was planned that much, but basically what happened was is I was a practicing lawyer I did civil litigation. I had my first child who's now turning 30 and Um, I tried to do it part-time while he was a baby and then right before I had him My second child who just turned 27. Um, I just I was very frustrated with trying to be a lawyer part-time, especially a litigator So I stopped working for about six months and that didn't really suit my personality being a full time mother, and so I had just bought an apartment at the time with my now ex-husband And I was kind of curious about the process and in New York. You're automatically licensed as a broker if you've gone to law school Or if you're a lawyer, so I got I you know, I all I had to do was apply for the license I didn't have to take a test So I got the license and I walked into an office a real estate office and I said hi, you know I'm a lawyer.
I want to do this part-time. And they said, you're hired. So I said, great. Um, and I started and you know, the beginning I, I sat, we had a storefront office. I sat in the front and people would come in and, you know, they might be looking for a broker. They might be looking to sell their place. The first few deals I got were from people who walked in and I, I guess I intended to do a part time.
I don't think I ever really did it part-time. So I started working a lot and I really loved it. So I, I just worked more and I worked on Sundays and I worked on Saturdays and I took on more and more and, you know, I quickly rose to the top of my field from all of that hard work.
Austin: So take us back to that first deal. I know it had something to do with your, uh, your kid's school. Is that right? And then your friend, Bob.
Lisa: So my first deal was before I even joined a company, I just got my license and I was talking to a fellow parent in my 3-year-olds class and I mentioned I just got my license and they said, Oh, you know, that's interesting. We're looking for an apartment near the school. And I said, really, I think my friend's trying to sell his apartment.
So I called my friend who had a broker and I said, what's going on with your apartment? He said, well, you know, my broker can't seem to sell it. If you know somebody who wants to buy it, you know, bring them and I'll pay you a commission. So I said, great. So I brought the family over and they fell in love with the apartment and they bought it.
And I thought, wow, this is the easiest job in the whole world. Uh, famous last words. Then I joined a company and after that, my first couple of deals were like a one bedroom apartment a rental. And those were from people. who Walked in off the street and then I got a bigger deal. It was a two bedroom and that was from going to a fundraiser and meeting somebody and telling them I was new in the business.
They said maybe they'd be buying, maybe they didn't, wouldn't be buying, but they didn't want to waste my time. And I said, you know what? It's okay to waste my time. I need to learn. So I dragged them around and they did buy an apartment and years later they bought another apartment from me. And that's how it all started.
Austin: So you found some early success. You, uh, catalyze that success to find another piece of success. And eventually, you hit your stride to talk to us about it. your strategy early on for scaling your business? Did you take the wide net approach taking everything and anything you can get your hands on? Did you try to be very specific and represent specific people in specific neighborhoods and areas? Like what was your strategy for growing your business?
Lisa: So, um, so remember that when I went into the business in 1997 email was really new. Most people weren't using it. The internet was really new and I was actually the first person, believe it or not, at my company, which back then was the Corcoran group to get a BlackBerry. Um, and I, I think that was like in 1999, so, You know, my strategy was just to work as much as possible. So I got the BlackBerry and that automatically gave me a leg up because I was getting back to people, people quicker. I mean, back then there were still brokers who would say, I'll get back to you the next time I'm at a payphone Um, like it was that bad.
So that was, that was one strategy was just to work a lot. And I would say that I cast a wide net and I would tell anybody starting out, you need experience and you don't know where you're going to meet people. So I think you do yourself a really Big disservice if you tell yourself, you know, you're only going to do one neighborhood or one, price point.
I have a lot of young new brokers, young brokers who come up to me and say, you know, how'd you start selling 20 million apartments? And I, I, you know, I say to them nicely, like, you're not going to start by selling a 20 million apartment. Like if you owned a 20 million apartment, would you give it to somebody who just started?
Um, so, you know, you need to have a track record. And I think maybe even in the sort of The old days, sometimes people did start off by selling 20 million apartments because they were connected, socially connected. But nowadays, people are too smart about everything and it's a very large asset, their real estate, no matter how much they're spending.
It's usually a very large portion of their, of their, um, net worth. And they want, they want a true professional helping them.
Yeah, and obviously a fresh grad, you probably, in the same length that you wouldn't want a first-year resident working on heart surgery, you probably don't want that person selling your 20 million dollar apartment.
Austin: So, um, you started to cast a Wide Net, you saw some early success. And then ultimately you go on to become one of the top brokers in New York.
And I think we already know the answer to this, but what did that process look like? Obviously there were lots of things that you learned along the way. Lots of missteps I'm sure as everybody has in their careers, but what, what did that process actually look like and what did it actually take? What sacrifices did you have to make to get to where you are today?
Lisa: So I'll tell you, I think it was slow and steady, which is the way I think that most true success is won. And that's why I think, you know, consistently I've been a busy broker. You know, you sometimes see these people who are, you know, instant success really quickly, but it's a year or two and it was an anomaly.
That's not what happened with me. I would say, if you would, were to look at the size of my deals, they have grown slowly, but consistently over time. And, that's really how the business should be built. Because if you think about it on a trajectory, you start off by doing smaller things. Eventually those people may come back to you when they're buying something bigger, right?
That's one way. And then the bigger you sell, then more people know you sell bigger things, then more people contact you about selling bigger things. But that's really, again, like I think the reason why I haven't ever gone backwards is because it's been slow and steady. Um, and then what I would just say is you can never get complacent or cocky.
I'll never forget something that Barbara Corcoran, who, you know, many years ago I worked for her, said, we were sitting, we used to have our annual meeting in the, in the beginning of January, and we're all sitting in a big room, and she starts off by saying, you know, all of you people in this room, Who are nervous about the coming year and whether you're going to make any money and do any deals.
And I'm thinking, Oh my God, that's me. You are going to be the successful ones. And I thought, Oh, phew. And she said, basically you need that. You need that fire in your belly. And. You know, it's sales and, , that's the way you get up every morning and say, I'm going to do it. So I continued to do that and I've been doing it for 26 years.
Um, I don't think you can do this part time. I don't think you can do really any job part time anymore. Just the way the world is. I think people. realize that post-COVID now, even people who used to, you know, go home and not work anymore. Now people just sort of work all the time. and then, you know, I've just continued to be a friendly person.
I don't walk around handing out my cards. But I'm open to people. I talk to people very often. I'll be talking to somebody for 20 minutes, someplace like at a dinner or something, and after a while it comes up, that I'm a broker and I sometimes get business that way, but I think people appreciate the fact that I haven't walked into the conversation saying, Hey, I'm a real estate broker, by the way, you know? Um, so that's my style.
Austin: I love it. It's a very unique style and some people like to be. Very nonchalant about it. And I think that's the much more successful plot. I think it's similar here to what we're building. It's like you tell people, Oh, we're building in startups. And then it's, Oh, wow. Okay. Well here, let me tell you about 12 other things I got for sale.
Right. Um, versus the people that seem to be the most successful are super nonchalant about it, like, Oh, what do you do real estate? And, and then the conversation naturally, Oh, my friend, they know that they want to sell their apartment or they want to sell their house or like, Oh, you should chat with this guy.
I know everybody. Yeah, so yeah, I think that's, that's the right approach. What are some of the key lessons you learned along the way, maybe from things that either went really well or things that didn't go so
Lisa: Um, I would say that one of my, my Achilles heel has probably my whole life been taking things too personally. And I think you have to learn not to take things personally. So, people act very differently when they're buying or selling property, real estate than they do when they're buying or selling like stocks because it's where they live.
And very often it's where they're going to live for a long time or they're selling something that they lived in for a long time and they feel that they've created it or raised a family there. And so people can get. strange, they can get nasty. And I think the thing that I've learned over the years, and it has not been easy, but I think I'm finally much better at it, is to not take it personally and to just say, okay, they not having a good day and, you know, try to keep the people on track to remind them that they shouldn't take it personally, that this is business like anything else.
So that's been, you know, something that I've definitely learned along the way. And, um, And the other thing I've learned along the way, which I think people have to know in every industry, is that we're all going to continue to make mistakes and you have to take your mistakes, be honest about them, admit them, and remember not to do it again the next time.
That's right, it's learning from the things that might not have gone so well or went really well, and now you're going to do it again and again and again. Um, so if you were to sit down with a group of new agents and you could share some tips and strategies or, or advice from, from your career, what are some of the things that you would tell them?
I feel like it's going to be something around grit and hard work and showing up, but maybe you can tell us, like, what are those tips that you give to people that are just starting out in their career?
Well, so I do think, you know, there's a great Ted talk about this, um, about what's the thing that is the greatest indicator of whether someone's going to be successful in any industry and it's grit, right? So you know, we all know a lot of very well educated. People with very high IQs who never have really been able to make a living.
Um, and then we all know people who probably didn't do so well in school who've been hugely successful. , so it's grit, it's working hard. It's taking responsibility for what you do. In my industry, I would say, make sure you walk through enough doors every week. So if you're a new agent Go to broker'S open houses, go see properties, educate yourself on what you're doing. Never sit around waiting for the phone to ring. That is not how you're going to learn. That is not how you're going to get busy.
First of all, we don't need to sit by a landline anymore. So take your phone with you. , but go through lots of doors, see as much real estate as you possibly can. And going back to one of your first questions, you know, cast a wide net, be open to everything. In the beginning, you should sell anything that moves small, far, , hard to sell.
You're going to learn a lot from every single transaction and it's, it's building blocks. So get out there. You know, Join, get involved with the charity, play sports on the weekends in a, you know, a club, go to a gym, be out there. This is a people business. The CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, Bess Friedman, always likes to say this is a people business.
And so you need to connect to people, you need to be nice to people, you need to help colleagues. That's going to be the way you're going to become successful.
Austin: And talk to us about the importance. I think you just touched on it by putting that customer at the center of your universe, right? Sometimes it means showing up for them at six o'clock in the morning. Sometimes it means answering an email at 11 o'clock at night. Sometimes it means telling them, Hey, I know you want this property, but I honestly don't think it's the best fit for you. What are some of those? Things that you've done to try to put the customer at the center of your universe and everything you do.
Lisa: Well, if you'd ask my husband and my kids, they'll tell you that I've not taken a vacation where I haven't worked in 26 years. So that's one thing. One thing is to sort of let people know, you know, it's the weekend I'm gone or I'm away, but if you need me, I'm here. Make sure that they know you have coverage with somebody staying back, that.
That you're not just letting them go. , I think what you've touched on is super important. My husband used to laugh at all the people he would hear overhear me on the phone Telling them not to buy something because I didn't think it was right for them or the price was getting too heated in a bidding war don't be Don't be impatient to make the money this second.
Go for the long, be in it for the long ride. If you show people that you work hard, and that you're really out for their best interest, they'll stick with you, and in the end, it works out much better.
Austin: And my favorite question of all, which is let's say you have 5 minutes with your younger self and you can tell her anything that you want. You're just starting out in your career. You can tell her a story and you can tell her something you've learned. You can tell her something to avoid or something that she should know about.
What does that conversation look like? And what are some of the things that you tell your younger self?
Lisa: Well, you know, the world is different now, and I think if you start off as a real estate broker now, as a younger person, you probably should find a mentor, somebody who's been doing it longer and shadow them and work for them on their team. I think that's super important. Now. It's really hard to start out on your own.
And just the other things that I've been saying is, you know, get involved in your community. Be open minded, get up early, work hard, be expect to work on weekends, walk through as many doors as, as you possibly can. And the reason for this is like every, every place in the country has like broker's open houses.
The more properties you go see, you never know who you're going to be sitting next to in a week, in two weeks, whatever, where somebody says, Oh, I've been looking for XYZ And if you can actually say, Oh, I saw something. It's a lot more meaningful than if you say, Oh, let me look if there's anything out there.
So people really appreciate the fact that you've had boots on the ground. And I will say one of the reasons why people hire me is because I very often have seen everything out there or something like it, and that is much more meaningful, especially in this day and age where people seem to rely on the internet for everything and websites.
Being able to say, I walked through the door of that property is really important.
Austin: I agree. Especially in, uh, In a physical product space, like real estate, where sometimes you just have to feel the home. You have to feel what's going on in the character of the home and pictures don't usually do it justice.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Lisa, and I hope you have a great day.
Lisa: Thank you. Nice to meet you. Take care. Bye.
