“People are no longer afraid of failure because it just seems like that's part of the job, but they're 100,000% afraid of embarrassment. … If you're willing to embarrass yourself, you make more money every time.”
The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish) · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Shane Parrish asked why Serhant still pushes his real estate agents toward improv classes. He says people raised on social media will accept failure but not looking foolish, so they won't talk to 100 people to meet five.
Transcript
…part of my brain from when I was a really, really little kid. The ability to talk to people and complete sentences, the ability to breathe with your diaphragm and not breathe through your throat. There's a lot of those skill sets you learn in theater and theater is just how to create a full human.
Is that why you make your agents still do improv classes?
I used to make them. Now I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. Most people are afraid of their own shadow. And especially today, where people have grown up with social media, like there's this epidemic where people are no longer afraid of failure because it just seems like that's part of the job, but they're 100,000% afraid of embarrassment. And that is really scary. Like they're not willing to go out and take a risk or make a fool of themselves or talk to 100 people and meet five. Like you've got to be okay with being embarrassed. You've got to be okay with people talking poorly about you. You have to be okay with bad comments. Like you should not be okay when people stop talking or stop caring. And so, yeah, improv, you know…
You have a concept that I loved about a thousand minutes a day. Can you walk me through that?
As an independent contractor, you're by yourself every day. You have no boss. You could have coaches and whatever. You have to wake up every day and you have to go make money. And if you don't know what to do with your hours or your minutes, you could use them very, very unwisely. So when I first…
changed in the meetings, for example? Like, so how do you go from having an hour-long meeting to a 15-minute meeting? And like, what is it, the tangible things that you did that changed that? Is it no small talk? Is it just business? Is it like, how did that work? Depends
More from The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish)
