Whether it’s putting your best foot forward on a first date or trying to land the next big deal for your company, we all kind of wish we had everything figured out. And even though many of the elite like to turn their noses up at the “self-help” genre, celebrities can’t help but pump them out and offer a little bit of help to those who admire their success.
There’s Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, Kim Catrall’s Sexual Intelligence, and Whoopie Goldberg’s Book Big of Manners.
Now, Fredrik Eklund, the real estate novice turned reality-TV star turned real estate titan, is the most recent celebrity to add to the genre. His book, The Sell, promises to unveil “the secrets of selling anything to anyone.” Not just in real estate, but in any job, on dates, or at home with loved ones and friends.
In Eklund’s eyes, your entire life is full of negotiating or selling. Reading through his book, you do get the image of a confident man who knows exactly what he wants and how to get it.
“My story is evidence that anyone can sell what they’ve got, against all odds, and reach the very top,” Eklund writes in the introduction. “I’ve designed this book to make you the best you can be and to take you to the very top of whatever you can dream.”
His advice is easy to follow. The book reads like Eklund is actually sitting before you high-kicking his advice right into your ear. It may never be a must-read for top executives, but its accessibility is ideal for the beginner looking for direction without taking themselves too seriously.
When Eklund first arrived on the real-estate scene some 10 years ago, he sold $50 million within his first year and received a nomination for Rookie of the Year by the Real Estate Board of New York.
And, for the past two years, he has been ranked the No. 1 real estate broker in New York City. His most recent accomplishment was knocking records for his firm—Douglas Elliman—out of the ballpark by topping $1.1 billion in sales.
He’s sold property for Sarah Jessica Parker, Cameron Diaz, John Legend, and Daniel Craig.
However, meeting face to face, the 6 foot 5 Swedish man with a tan face and a touch of gray comes across a little more bashful than expected. Yes, his perfectly tailored suit, good posture and flawless skin exude the confidence you would expect from the author. He’s friendly and seemingly level-headed, yet he fidgets with his tie, shifts in his seat, and occasionally stumbles over his words.
But who can blame him?
His portrayal on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing: New York, in which he’s starred in since its 2012 debut, has been less than picture perfect.
“I broke every rule I set for myself after the first two weeks,” he tells The Daily Beast of his portrayal on television. “You know, kiss someone, take off my shirt, cry, be humiliated, fight … throw a green tea drink over someone,” he laughs. “But I made a decision—and it goes back to where the book starts—the more myself I am and the less I try to think about what other people might say…the better my business is and the better I feel.”
It’s a lesson he quickly learned after entering the real estate business.
“In the beginning of my career I didn’t really know the language or West Chelsea from Soho,” he recalls. “So instead of being quirky, eccentric Fredrik high-kicking and showing all the colors of my personality and being proud of [myself] I tried to copy other big brokers and other people that were successful.”
“Finding your true voice and really taking a good look in the mirror at what makes you unique and amazing is the number one thing in selling,” he adds. Selling is “all about trust” and above all being “authentic.”
But it’s just one of Eklund’s many “secrets” of selling. He advocates “prioritizing healthy food, working out, and sleep before anything else,” while being “one hour ahead of everyone else and the last to close the gate at the end of the day.”
“The unglamorous truth,” he remembers telling The New York Times, “is to work harder than everyone else.” It’s something he believes the “new generation might need to know. With everything being so quick with social media and instant gratification…it takes a lot of work.”
Still, Eklund makes sure to completely turn off one and a half days a week—“Saturdays always, then half of Sunday.”
It’s an interesting bit of advice coming from a man who has used technology to his advantage his entire career. His early reputation was magnified by his ability to quickly respond to emails when listings were still coming in over fax. He was one of the first in his office to utilize a Blackberry.
Now, he employs social media to inform his fans as well as potential buyers and sellers of his personal and professional day-to-day life.
Scrolling through his Instagram feed, you can tell that the real estate wunderkind plays as hard as he works. There are photos of him relaxing in the Maldives, playing with his pups in Miami and taking helicopter rides of Hawaii—he likes to take a lot of beach trips to keep him balanced from the craziness of New York.
And he’s not shy to self-promote. Mixed within his latest listings and tropical beaches, Eklund isn’t bashful about using a “throwback Thursday” to namedrop celebrity clients (Jennifer Lopez), hype his current book making Barnes & Nobel’s Top 100 list, and editorial photo shoots.
But, hey, in today’s day and age, self-promoting is almost mandatory—so we’re told—for success. And Eklund is constantly thinking about how to keep it all in place—“what’s the next big record, what’s the next big deal, what’s going to keep me happy, how do I stay relevant, how do I reinvent the industry,” he listed as we discussed his current accomplishments.
He’s been doing it his entire life.
Before moving to New York from Sweden in 2005, Eklund had already started a tech company (Humany) that dealt with customer-relations software, founded a small music label and management agency (Cave Entertainment) and published his first novel (Lord of the Fruit Flies), which discussed his brief appearance in the porn industry.
Each endeavor garnered some level of success. Cave Entertainment produced commercial hits, like KinKi Kids Forever, in Japan while his novel was splashed across the cover of Swedish tabloids because of his family’s social status. His grandfather, Bengt Eklund, was a famous actor while his father, Klas, is a high-profile banker.
In 2001 and 2002, Eklund appeared in about six gay porn films, including The Hole—a riff off of the horror film The Ring. His appearance awarded Eklund with an Oscar-like accolade for best solo scene at the 2004 GayVN Awards—which could pose an interesting dynamic when working with the city’s elite.
“The porn was always there,” he says, “and I’ve always been completely open about it.”
“No one has ever cared or brought it up,” he claims, while questioning out loud whether or not he should ask some of his clients what they think of it. “It doesn’t matter here—it’s New York. It was a very short period of my life and I’ve never been proud of it, but it’s there.”
And his spot at the top of the New York broker scene confirms that. The news went public in the U.S. shortly into the first season of Million Dollar Listing: New York.
“It’s been a good mirror because you can see the ugly and the good in yourself. Not only the vanity and the surface, but also personality traits,” Eklund says of being filmed for the past five years. It’s something he has found “therapeutic” in finding what he likes and what he wants to change.
One of the big plotlines of the upcoming season, he promised, was his pursuit of fatherhood with his husband, British artist Derek Kaplan.
During last season, audiences were left wondering where the two stood in their relationship as one of the show’s metastasizing dramas was that of adding a newborn to their life. Kaplan feared Eklund was too focused on his career to care for a child.
“This coming season, I’ve changed a lot,” he assures me, adding that there is, indeed, a date for a baby, but he stayed tight-lipped about the rest.
And as for the future of real estate in New York, Ekland believes “long-term you cannot go wrong in investing. The prices fortunately, or unfortunately, will keep on rising,” he said, adding he can’t comment on the short term.
Recently, however, his firm had to slash prices on their most elite units because no one was willing to pay the high price tags.
“Fredrik and I love, love, love to break records. That’s what we were trying to do here,” Ekland’s partner John Gomes explained to The Daily News. “We were treading new waters and trying to determine the limit for pricing for these one-of-a-kind penthouse apartments. We don’t actually know what the limit is.”
That sort of zeal and hustle—along with a popular reality television show—has given Eklund no small measure of success. So while some may frown upon and dismiss self-help books, his story is unquestionably one that reminds us of the possibility of transformative success.