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David Cohen shares how he built one of San Francisco's top real estate firms, navigating mergers, scaling challenges, and nearly losing it all during the pandemic. In this episode, he reveals the crucial lessons behind growing a business the right way without sacrificing culture or quality.

We cover:
00:00 Intro
00:14 Made Only $8,000 Profit That Year
01:20 Being #1 But Staying "Boutique"
02:11 Why Double Agents Not Agent Count
02:44 One Bad Apple Ruins Everything
03:49 Dating Before Our $35M Merger
05:02 Three Things You Can't Teach Agents
06:49 Why Scale Made Me Lose Money
08:45 Retention Risk Almost Killed Our Deal
11:02 Meeting Every Agent Face-to-Face
12:52 Never Fired Anyone Ever
14:11 Two Steps Back, Three Forward
16:07 Marin Office Keeps Me Up at Night
17:50 Surviving Without Personal Production
19:31 Balancing $100M Sales With 70 Agents
21:40 Answer Every Phone Call Rule
23:24 Excel Spreadsheet Runs $100M Business
24:28 No CRM System Strategy
27:18 Stress Testing 20% Revenue Drops
30:37 First Three Make-or-Break Hires
31:35 Stopped Recruiting $200M Agents
33:05 Coffee Meetings Tell Everything
34:46 Never Talk Splits First
36:56 Family vs Sports Team Leadership
39:07 Ads
40:09 Lifetime Splits Never Go Down
42:18 Why AI Won't Replace SF Agents
44:28 See 40 Properties Weekly
47:40 Five Years Market Data Tracking
50:23 Being Conservative Wins More
52:36 City Raised Me Like Sibling
56:06 $8,000 Year and COVID Survival
57:15 Transparent About Financial Struggles
59:27 Phone Call Rule Changed Everything
1:00:51 Ads
1:01:28 SEO Actually Brings Real Leads
1:02:32 Follow Up Boss CRM Strategy
1:03:42 Reading News Impacts Real Estate
1:04:16 Don't Grow Just to Grow
1:05:00 World Class Leadership Definition

Resources:
David’s links:
Website: https://cityrealestatesf.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cityrealestatesf/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cityrealestate3201

My Links:
📧 Newsletter: www.breakingandbuildingleaders.com/
🎙 Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
🎥 YouTube: / @breakingandbuildingleaders
🐣 Twitter: twitter.com/AndrewBayon
📸 Instagram: www.instagram.com/andrew_bayon/
🕺 TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@andrewbayon

A little about us:
- 10 years ago I made thousands of sales calls
- I was unfulfilled on the rollercoast of referral based sales
- I was overweight
- 7 years ago I spoke on stage at Curaytor about marketing
- I was the marketer for 5 top teams in the US spending several million on paid ads
- We were posting content on social but a little aimlessly
- Now we've generated well over $10 million in GCI directly from YouTube for agents
- Run many of the top YouTube channels from 0 to 50k in real estate
- Scaled the only hyper local newsletters across 50+ markets
- We grew our team at Knwn Local to 45 people
- We believe building a media brand is the new way to grow your business and own your market now. Instead of renting your business with expensive leads, you can own it with an audience.

- Brand is one of the highest leverage things in business that scales your impact beyond you.
- Big visions often don't make sense to small-minded people.

If you want to have a greater impact, you'll have to make greater sacrifices.
My message: Don’t be well known, be Knwn well.
I'm pumped to help you grow & scale your business with this content.

DISCLAIMER:

Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies, and identify any potentials risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success.

Your results may vary. Copyright © Knwn Local 2025

We make these videos to help build the leaders of tomorrow, but also there are a lot of “coaches” and “claims” on social media and hard to cut through the clutter. I post these to build trust with real estate professionals through value and real experience. And if they’re awesome and see the value and need help - we work together.