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" Danielle Lacko has been a dancer on MTV&amp;#039;s The Grind, a singer, and a model. Now, however, the blonde bombshell is senior agent with one of New York City&amp;#039;s leading nightlife real estate brokerages, as seen in the new Esquire Network original series Risky Listing, which premieres tonight at 9/8C (watch a preview here). We caught up with her to talk about how she wound up where she is, and how she thrives in such a male-dominated, cutthroat industry. ESQUIRE.COM: So how do you beat a man at his own game? DANIELLE LACKO: For me it&amp;#039;s not backing down. It&amp;#039;s a simple concept: Men are alphas, they&amp;#039;re very dominating. If you show that you have a strong personality and never let them see a sign of weakness, then eventually they&amp;#039;ll respect you on the same level as their male counterparts. It goes back to science, if that makes any sense. It doesn&amp;#039;t mean be bitchy or super-aggressive, it just means, as it is in the wild, you can&amp;#039;t let anybody see any signs of weakness; you hold your ground firm. ESQ: So you&amp;#039;d say being in real estate in New York is a lot like being in the wild? DL: Yeah, definitely. It is! It&amp;#039;s a very competitive world, and it&amp;#039;s feast or famine, so to speak. Everyday you&amp;#039;ve got to keep up on your game. The second that you slip, or you let something slide through your fingers, it will slide into the hands of someone else. ESQ: You&amp;#039;ve been a dancer, a singer... How&amp;#039;d you wind up in real estate? DL: It started as a temporary situation. A friend of mine moved to New York and started a firm. I was in a transition where I wanted to do something that was flexible, where I could make enough money to support myself while I was still in the arts. People think real estate is a flexible thing for people to do, and it never is. If you really want to succeed and make money, it becomes more than a full-time thing. It becomes your whole life.  ESQ: So how did you find yourself specializing in nightlife locations? DL: I worked for a few restaurateurs when I was ending college, and after college I did the mixology program. I opened some hot-spot nightclubs, and basically all of my boyfriends have been restaurateurs or chefs, so I had a critical connection with the nightlife and culinary industry. After I got into real estate, I had friends that were in the industry asking me if I could sell or lease their bars since I had connections. It just kinda led into that. I had all of the prospects, but I didn&amp;#039;t have the market for the product, and that&amp;#039;s when I went to Alex [Picken, owner of her firm]. ESQ: How do you find that your past careers have helped you in the real estate world? DL: It definitely has helped in my delivery. You&amp;#039;re meeting different people every day, you&amp;#039;re on the spot, and you have to be able to communicate with people on many different levels, and my past has helped me do that. It&amp;#039;s helped me to be on stage every day, and helped me to perform in stressful and last-minute situations. To be able to roll with the punches, and also not get too disappointed by something falling apart, like a deal you&amp;#039;ve been working on for six months. ESQ: Do you find that being an attractive woman gives you an edge when you&amp;#039;re negotiating with or against a man? DL: No, it doesn&amp;#039;t. When it comes to that point, it doesn&amp;#039;t matter if you&amp;#039;re male or a female. In real estate, being an attractive female gets you in the door, it gets you listings. Especially in this business, restaurant owners, nightclub owners, they want attractive women to be at their places, so to have an attractive real estate broker representing them, I find it to be something my clients like. But when it comes down to the actual negotiations, you definitely have to have the experience, the knowledge, and the facts. You&amp;#039;re going head-to-head with some of New York City&amp;#039;s most powerful real estate people. So the looks part of me I have to put on the back burner, and I&amp;#039;m the type of woman who can do that. ESQ: How do you negotiate a winning deal, man or woman?  DL: Experience. And persistence. You find every little element in the deal structure and try to break those elements down to the very necessary elements that will make a customer or buyer or seller feel confident in what you have brought to the table. You really don&amp;#039;t give them a chance not to agree to the terms \u2014 you make the deal make sense for both parties, to where it makes it easy for them to agree. ESQ: What&amp;#039;s the biggest real estate steal you&amp;#039;ve ever pulled off? DL: I was doing a turnkey situation on a bar that was for sale. The tenant, the seller, he was basically negotiating with people behind my back. So I quit the contract with him, got ahold of the landlord, and negotiated a great deal. Recognizing it wasn&amp;#039;t going to be a great situation for me, I told the landlord, &amp;quot;Listen, this is what&amp;#039;s going on. I know he&amp;#039;s in default. He was circumventing me. I have a great qualified tenant, so I&amp;#039;d like to come directly to you and make this deal happen so your place doesn&amp;#039;t sit on the market for months.&amp;quot; He agreed to it, gave me the listing, and now we&amp;#039;re getting four times the commission.  ESQ: What&amp;#039;s the craziest thing you&amp;#039;ve ever had happen when walking into a listing? DL: One of my 80-year-old clients actually thought that our dinner meeting was potentially a first date, and uh, that was crazy. Of course, I dealt with it eloquently. But yeah, he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. Other than that, just the typical things. Going into one of my listings and it&amp;#039;s supposed to be a nightclub, and I walk in and there&amp;#039;s all these little curtains. I ask why the whole floor was closed off, and he said because they&amp;#039;re set up for private lap dance bikini parties. Maybe I should have told my 80-year-old client, &amp;quot;Listen, I&amp;#039;m not the right girl for you, but if you want I can bring you back to this nightclub that I&amp;#039;m selling. They&amp;#039;re having bikini parties there.&amp;quot; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/how-to/a26028/risky-listing-danielle-lacko/>