You’re not the same agent you were when you first picked up this book. Your mentality, your sense of urgency, your approach, your look – it’s now baller. You’re a killer. An animal. Your heart beats for the deal. You are on your way to being “Hollywood” in the Altman sense of the word. So let’s look at the basics, a refresher of the job format – open, work, close.

This is Los Angeles, the home of film and television, the land of scripts. The traditional storytelling and screenplay format – beginning, middle, and end – applies to the work of a real estate agent. You don’t need to be Shakespeare, James Cameron, or even Josh Altman to get this one down. We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re setting up to close in three acts.

For the agent, Act I is the open, the get-the-listing moment when you learn about the owners and the house’s history or the house shopper’s dreams. The open creates opportunity so that action can happen. You enter the scene. You analyze the set-up. You break it all down, considering every angle based on the client: who they are, how they are, what they want, what you can do for them. If it’s the property you engage first, you size that up in the same manner.

You need to prove that you’re the agent for the job. You have to open, to present clients with a course of action. You have to give them what they want. This can be a pain. We humans are demanding creatures. We are skeptical, full of doubt. We constantly think someone is trying to get one over on us, yet we still want what we want. We need to be confident and secure that the superstar agent we have hired has our best interest in mind.

You have to convince and catapult the client into action, to assure them you will fulfill their goal. Opportunity has presented itself because you have presented opportunity.

Another of my favorite films – Scorcese directed this one too – is The Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jordan Belfort in this true story about a closer, a kid from New York who has no money but is desperate to make it. He quickly learns the ropes and acquires the salesman’s golden touch, selling penny stocks. He sees a gap in the market and decides take action, to go for it, setting up his own firm based out of a garage and manipulating others into buying, buying, buying. He finds a partner. The end of Act I is this set-up into action. Belfort and his partner are off and running, hustling, selling.

Cut to Altman action: I meet a mega-rich client, a man who tells me he doesn’t play games. He has little time. He wants a certain property in the Hills. I take aim and go for it. I launch into action, propelling us both into Act II, the meat of the story. The work. The hustle. The middle.

Act II holds the drama. Characters are pounded with challenges they must overcome. In this work phase, I’m constantly learning and adapting, just like a character in a movie. Here’s where you encounter the personalities and ways to approach them.

Take in all the information around you: What are people saying about the house? What are the comps? What leverage can you use to achieve your goal? How does the neighborhood figure? What does the client’s manner tell you? How does this affect what you do? How do you keep refining your work? There are endless negotiations and tiny deals working toward the big close. It’s impossible to give this phase a precise name. So it’s work, negotiation and closing little deals into one final one.

In Wolf, DiCaprio’s character now has his eye on the prize, his goal – money and lots of it. He’s bobbing and weaving to make it happen, cash coming in hand over fist. His business grows. At the midpoint, Belfort reaches a milestone of success – the stunning wife, the mansion, the cars, the yacht. He is winning, but the plot thickens; the game changes.

Here’s a moment when the Wolf analogy departs from the Shark’s game: Belfort was breaking the law to make his money: lying his way to success, ripping people off, selling them stocks that didn’t quite exist. The Feds take notice. Now the goal is to stay out of jail but still make more money, a challenge he thrives on. He finds new angles, learns how to cover his tracks. He moves forward – new strategies, a new business model – into a new plan.

No matter how the game changes for the Altmans, we don’t break the law. But when the plot thickens, we still need a strategy.

My client in the Hills has just chosen his property. I’m in the trenches, fighting for this house. I meet with the sellers. No problem, it’s an easy sale – if he wants only half of the property. In my Act II, I learn that the property my client wants is actually two different lots being sold separately. At the price he desires, he can either have one or the other. This is not an option for him. He wants both.

Now, for Matt and me, the task is to massage this seller into parting with both lots at a reasonable price. Also, our client needs to come up in his price, rethink what he is willing to spend. The seller won’t budge nor will our client.

What we thought we were dealing with no longer exists. Our back is against the wall. If we don’t make a move we lose the deal, we lose our client, we lose money.

I research the people, the property, and the neighborhood. Hard. The more information I have, the more effective I’ll be at the close. This is the phase were I develop strategy all pointed toward the best possible outcome for my client. Now we call other clients. We show this seller what most are willing to pay for each home, the reality of what he will get for one property versus what he could actually get for two and be done with it all, no more nut to carry. It’s not good enough.

If you’ve opened well and understand your client and/or a specific property, you’ll have a good sense of the direction of your work. Remember how I pointed the Million Dollar Listing LA audition? I studied hard and isolated exactly what I was selling: an agent to play off the other on-air agents, throwing heat to attract and build viewership, because that’s what the producers needed.

With any listing you must ask yourself, how will I point this close? How will I conquer this? Do you already know other right buyers or houses for this client? Does it have to be this property? Can I direct this client elsewhere?

What if you need to generate more buzz – to get people talking? Do you leak information to real estate press? On social media? Or through influencers and word of mouth?

Because most of our clients are athletes, entertainers, industry execs and founders, buzz is not hard to generate, though these clients usually insist on extreme privacy. We respect this and uphold their request, usually by signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), but privacy for the famous is often unattainable. The right buzz, the words that get buyers into the house, is part of our refining our work as we go.

An example of this is my work with Kim Kardashian West. Everything she and her husband do generates headlines. From selfies to hip-hop, fashion to television, they are famous as hell. We sold them a house in 2013 and then sold it for $8 million more when they sold it to a Russian billionaire. That owner recently had a child and decided to go for a bigger house, so we’re representing the sale again. We just sold it. It worked out, but in such a personally stylized house, how did we get the right buyers interested in a home that has been for sale twice in eight months?

We find new buttons to push and dangle mysterious transformations they have to see to believe. Let the clients be exclusive, the select few who tour the house in what is sure to be a brief time on the market.

So I picked up the phone and turned on the heat, pitching this house to every lover of modern architecture who could afford it. The “buzz” of this house was what Kim and Kanye West did with it; they oversaw every detail of its transformation. It’s now a monument to minimalism with a huge repositioned outdoor swimming pool, floor to ceiling automatic windows, panoramic city views, white on white lines, and a new entrance into what Kim called “the glam room.” Who wouldn’t want to see that?

I threw down the gauntlet in an interview with a big website by saying, “It’s one of those houses you’re immediately gonna fall in love with, or don’t get at all.” I wanted every house buyer in Los Angeles who loved contemporary design to be intrigued by this house and want to see it. The right person will be inspired by it, as the Russian was, and want to call it home.

The more energy you get swirling around a house, the more action you’ll see on the work side. The more action you create on the work side, the odds are you’ll have a more competitive close, and competitive closes mean multiple offers, hopefully over list. That’s the sweet spot of every real estate deal.

Work comes at you fast and fierce. It’s important to analyze and formulate a strategy that you can revise as you go. If you represent the seller, your work should be pointed at gathering multiple offers to drive the price as high as the market will accept. If you represent the buyer, you want to negotiate the lowest price possible. Some clients have other motivations besides money; they don’t want the house demolished or want a house in a neighborhood that has no inventory. Work is when you have to catch whatever ball is thrown at you.

Now we move into Act III, the resolution, the close, where we hope everyone lives happily ever after. My goal with my buyer in the Hills has changed. I’ve now generated enough buzz around the two homes he wants that I force his hand. The pressure is on, others want the property. Although the client may not be pleased that his dream home(s) are under threat, I have set myself up to win one way or another, but my goal is always to please my client.

To do this, I have to successfully show the seller that his dream of flipping both properties for his desired price is unreasonable. Besides, the other interested parties only want one of the houses, not both, as my original client has demanded. I need to pull the trigger. I need to finish this up. So too does Jordan Belfort.

In Act III of the film, Belfort is no longer able to continue his business. He needs to soften his financial losses. He needs to stay out of jail, but that’s no longer possible. He has to face the hard truth. He needs to take what has happened and cut a new deal, turn it into something positive. For the Wolf that was a memoir and, after prison, a new career as a motivational speaker, sharing stories of success and failure.

So too do my client and the seller of the two properties need to face the truth in Act III. Months have dragged on. Carrying costs have added up. Time for once is on our side. It doesn’t make sense for the seller to only sell one property if he can sell two, even at a loss.

I renegotiate once again, presenting the reality of the situation to both my client and the seller. If they want to salvage something from their dreams, then they will need to find a positive outcome. They need to close. The deal is done. The movie is over.

But is a trigger always necessary? No. In my experience, if someone is going to offer on a house, they offer on a house. What you do with that offer, how you manage it, is the difference between a backseat driving agent and an agent-driver. I get behind the wheel of every close and get everything I can out of it; my clients expect nothing less.

The term for this is “integrative bargaining,” and it’s the gold standard of negotiation as worked out and described by Harvard Law School professor Roger Fisher and his co-author William Ury in the 1991 book Getting to Yes. In my language, this type of negotiation can be summed up with “you’ve got to give to get.” This isn’t haggling over price; this is actual give and take on deal points such as all cash versus loans, type of loans, repairs, and so on.

Negotiation starts from the door, and this often means negotiating your commission time and time again. You think it’s fixed, right? Try telling that to a multimillionaire client who is power-hungry. Not always easy. I usually give up what I don’t care about to get what I do. It’s simple negotiation. What matters more to my client and me. Negotiation is rarely simple and it starts with the open.

As one of my clients likes to say, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” I believe it’s possible to create luck everywhere I go – whatever I do. I’m always looking at real estate, meeting new clients and refining my skills. I study data on neighborhoods and read real estate gossip as the sun rises. The three-act formula is straight up.

Open + Work = Close

I organize ideas and experience into two distinct parts, then move toward the climax, the sale. The moves inside the close are crazy, ever-changing. You never know who is going to throw what at you, and I draw on different skills and knowledge with every new client. Change is the only consistency.

You as an agent on the field need to be prepared to adjust, adapt, and overcome at a moment’s notice, your Dream Team on standby, sharks swarming, ready to attack. Open. Work. Close.

Thump your chest to it. Open. Work. Close. Say it with each thud on your heart, just like you’re Belfort’s mentor, played in the movie by Matthew McConaughey. Open. Work. Close. Open. Work. Close. This is your mantra. This is your being – open, work, close. This is your body and blood. Open, work, close. Boom. Boom. Boom. Open, work, close!