Real estate brokerage SERHANT. made public their acquisition of Engineer Influence and the hiring of its founder and CEO, Calvin Hamilton, to serve as the company’s Director of Social Media, in June 2022. Hamilton’s role is to expand SERHANT.’s digital marketing efforts and further establish the company as a frontrunner in social media content creation and dissemination.
Calvin Hamilton is a 23-year-old entrepreneur and marketing expert who lives in New York City’s trendy SoHo neighborhood. When he was a young teen, stemming from his love for video games, he developed his own gaming YouTube channel. A couple of years into his newfound hobby, Hamilton learned that gaming creators could monetize their videos through multi-channel networks (MCNs). However, when he decided to partner with an MCN in the UK, he was disappointed to learn that his first YouTube Ad Revenue payment would only be £4.
Rather than sulk, Hamilton took the initiative to send a Skype message to the CEO of the MCN he was working with. In the message, Hamilton asked if there was an opportunity to get more involved with the company so that he could learn more about the MCN industry on YouTube. Despite being a young teen, he received a favorable response; the CEO invited Hamilton to join the company as a “talent scout,” helping sign new clients to the network.
Hamilton continued to work in the MCN industry throughout high school, getting the opportunity to work with some of YouTube’s biggest gaming content creators and landing a position as the Director of Channel Operations and Optimization at ScaleLab’s gaming division. After receiving his high school diploma, Hamilton got a job working for Gary Vaynerchuk as a social media manager on Team GaryVee at VaynerMedia. He managed to land the gig after sending Vaynerchuk a cold email, offering to help the highly-esteemed entrepreneur manage influencer collaborations for his YouTube channel.
On Team GaryVee, Hamilton gained a wealth of knowledge about the agency business, digital marketing, and personal branding. He had the privilege of working with prestigious Fortune 500 firms and industry-leading executives like Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Tom Bilyeu, Michael Ovitz, and JPMorgan Chase. Although he enjoyed his time at VaynerMedia, after 18 months, Hamilton decided he was ready to pursue his own business endeavors.
In 2019, Hamilton left VaynerMedia and launched Engineer Influence, a performance marketing and executive personal branding agency where Ryan Serhant was one of the firm’s first clients.
Serhant was instantly won over by Hamilton. A year after hiring Engineer Influence, Serhant’s personal brand on Instagram amassed an additional 700,000 followers. Furthermore, Serhant’s digital education platform, “Sell It Like Serhant,” had a wildly successful launch, later evolving into what is now “SERHANT. Ventures.” At the same time, Hamilton and his then business partner, Marvin Sangines, continued scaling the firm, growing their team and kicking off new engagements with industry-leading companies and executives from all across the globe.
It wasn’t until May 2022 that Hamilton says he received a message from Serhant, asking him to visit the brokerage’s new headquarters in SoHo. “It was a Sunday night around 9:00 PM when I got a text from Ryan saying ‘come by this week?’” Hamilton continued, “It was a little vague, so, frankly, I didn’t think much of it. But, a couple of days later, when I arrived at the office, I was immediately pulled into a conference room with SERHANT.’s leadership team and pitched on the idea of joining the company.”
A month later, SERHANT. acquired Engineer Influence, with Hamilton joining the company as the Director of Social Media in July. Today, Hamilton works alongside Cody D’Ambrosio, SERHANT.’s Head of Studios, and is in charge of all social media accounts and platforms for the primary brokerage, LISTED, New Development, and the company’s CEO, Ryan Serhant.
By leveraging a mix of content, community, and education, SERHANT. has become the most-followed real estate brand in the world. Ryan Serhant, CEO and founder of SERHANT. said, “The way we will stay number one is by hiring people like Calvin: creators, social strategists, those who push the boundaries and create new categories, and by creating positions for them where they are free to make a difference.”
