Peter Zaitzeff Sales Director for New Development at SERHANT. and Reality TV Star on Staying Calm Under Pressure and Turning Discomfort Into Growth | Co-Talks Podcast
High-stakes real estate deals rarely fall apart over price. They fall apart over ego, and over who stays composed when the pressure is highest. On this episode of Co-Talks, hosts Stacey Ross Cohen and Jess Lyon sit down with Peter Zaitzeff, a top luxury real estate broker at SERHANT. known for representing some of Manhattan’s most iconic properties, and for his role on Netflix’s Owning Manhattan.
Peter’s story starts on camera, and not comfortably. He’d never acted a day in his life, and when reality TV cameras showed up, staying calm under pressure wasn’t something he could fake his way through. It’s the same skill that took him from unpaid intern to top luxury broker, fifteen years before the show ever existed.
Peter speaks candidly about:
- How stepping in front of the cameras for Owning Manhattan pushed Peter out of his comfort zone, and why he sought that discomfort out on purpose after feeling too complacent in his career
- Why the deals that fall apart rarely do so over price. It’s ego, a light fixture, a flat-screen TV, the nuances no 45-minute episode can ever capture
- What today’s luxury buyers actually want in a home now: less pure efficiency, more livable, wellness-driven space
- Where AI is already changing how clients find him, and why the human, relationship-driven side of real estate can never be automated away
- Building a business and a team from the ground up, from unpaid intern to a top-producing broker now managing a growing team
- Why he ran 150 miles across the Sahara Desert on the Marathon des Sables, just to see if he could
- His advice for brokers just starting out: put yourself out of your comfort zone, do things differently, speak up
If you work in real estate, luxury services, or build trust for a living, this episode makes the case that staying calm is a business strategy, not just a personality trait.
Listen now on Co-Talks, the Voice of Business.
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