PHOTO: UK agent Daniel Daggers, aka Mr Super Prime, and friends in Miami, 2018 © Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
A new breed blurs the line between the personal and professional
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Fredrik Eklund, a property entrepreneur and real-estate TV star, was at his local grocery store a few weeks ago. Wearing a face mask and protective gloves, he fired up “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, then danced — while pushing his trolley past the fruit stand and gyrating in the jam aisle.
The video was uploaded to his Instagram account, which has 1.2m followers. It attracted more than 1m views and 14,000 comments. “People want a fun broker,” says the 43-year-old co-founder of luxury real estate brokerage Eklund Gomes Team, who lives in Los Angeles and is author of a book called The Sell: the Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone.
Many comments beneath his post were appreciative; others criticised him for endangering public health with his elbow bumps. “I remember my heart beating as I pushed the button,” says Eklund, who is also a star of Bravo’s reality-TV show Million Dollar Listing. “I thought, this will make or break me.
I have had some criticism — people feel it is tone deaf. That is OK — you can’t please everyone.” Dancing videos are a trademark flourish to Eklund’s larger-than-life public persona. A previous post was set in a $29.9m house with eight bathrooms. Despite his fear of alienating clients by being playful in a pandemic, he posted it anyway. “In the competitive landscape of real estate, it’s all about being relevant and top-of-mind — as long as you can back it up with real results and knowledge,” he says.
READ MORE VIA FT
