Mauricio Umansky, founder and CEO of the Agency, didn’t sleep much the night before he took the stage at Inman Connect New York on Tuesday. Food poisoning will do that to you. But as he spoke on the theme of reframing success, his determination to speak despite illness fit what he was trying to say: This industry isn’t always about polish. It’s about endurance.
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“You have to change your mindset from success to passion,” Umansky said. “Passion is a completely different way to orient yourself. It’s what keeps you going.”
Umanksy got his real estate license in 1996, after being fired from a previous job and with three kids at home. Like most agents, he started with success-driven goals. He wanted to sell luxury real estate. In his first year, he said he made $183,000.
“At the time, that felt like everything,” Umansky said. “It felt like I’d made it.”
So he set a rule for himself: Every year had to be better than the last. And for a long time, it was. But over time, his motivation shifted.
“I realized I wasn’t actually chasing the numbers,” he said. “I was chasing the feeling of building something.”
That distinction became clear after one of the biggest deals of his career: selling the Playboy Mansion, the first $100 million home sale in Los Angeles, while Hugh Hefner was still alive. “That was a lot of fun,” he quipped, drawing a few laughs.
For many agents, that would have been a career peak. The next day, Umansky walked into the office, and his colleagues asked why he wasn’t on vacation.
“I told them, ‘That already happened. It’s over,” he said.
The experience forced a mindset shift. Success, he realized, creates finish lines. Passion creates momentum.
“If your identity is built on achievements, you’ll feel empty as soon as you hit them,” he said. “But passion doesn’t end. You don’t need a trophy to keep going.”
That philosophy shaped The Agency, which Umansky founded in 2011 with the goal of building a global brokerage. Today, the firm operates in multiple countries, but the path hasn’t been smooth, especially in the slower market of the past three years.
“The last three years have been incredibly hard for real estate,” Umansky said. “The question is, how do we continue? You have to change your mindset. When you can see yourself in the future, you start to envision it through passion.”
To sustain his energy, Umansky relies on daily habits to keep his mind sharp. He meditates daily, even if it’s only for 10 or 15 minutes.
“Your brain is the most powerful asset you have,” he said. “Your habits shape everything.”
He has also learned that growth requires vulnerability.
“To be great, you have to allow yourself to be bad,” Umansky said. “To be authentic. To stop performing success and start living the work.”
In a business obsessed with metrics, rankings and milestones, the deeper challenge for Umansky is reframing what success actually means.
“Success ends,” he said. “Passion keeps going.”
