Thought Leaders – Real Estate Re-imagined (formerly The Elevate Podcast)

“When we sit in a room we are allowed to have a difference of opinion, but when we leave that room we can only have one direction.” – Dean O’Brien Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER When he founded OBrien Real Estate with Darren Hutchins in 2010, Dean O’Brien shared a vision to establish a successful franchise, which incorporated family values, mutuality, realising potential, embracing change and the importance of nurturing health and energy. Six years on, and with multiplying offices across Melbourne’s southeast, Dean is relishing the opportunity to share his vision and success with more than 300 individuals across the O’Brien Real Estate team. As co-director, Dean is passionate about creating a place where people – his staff and all clients – can facilitate their growth. His aim is to foster a professional and outstanding service for those wanting to experience a real difference in real estate. This culture is something Dean works on every day – and in this podcast you’ll understand why it gets him out of bed excited to be in the business he’s in. Download the action guide for this episode with more links and resources at https://eliteagentelevate.com In this episode Samantha and Dean discuss: The key strategy that has allowed OBrien to grow to 27 offices (even in a slow market) 2020 strategy and goals, including the role that investors will play in the market Why ‘transactional’ real estate is out and ‘relationship’ real estate is in The importance of building internal training platforms to become an attraction business and keep the team ahead of the curve How to successfully balance leadership at home and at work What part of the procedures and systems was invented when he ended up ‘stuck’ in an airport with Phil Harris Why a grounding in ‘the now’ is sometimes important than looking for what’s next… Connect with Dean O’Brien Website: www.obrienrealestate.com.au LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/dean-o-brien-77072560 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/obrienarrewarren/   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/obrienrealestate/ Youtube https://www.instagram.com/obrienrealestate/ Twitter https://twitter.com/OBrien_RE Connect with The Elite Agent Team: Twitter: @eliteagentmag Facebook:  Elite Agent Website:  EliteAgent.com Show: The Elevate Podcast YouTube: Elite Agent Magazine LinkedIn: Elite Agent Magazine Instagram: @eliteagentmag Pinterest: Elite Agent Magazine

“Like anything where there’s adversity. I see there’s opportunity. And what I’ve seen a lot of business owners do, including ourselves, has been to go back and audit our business and say, right, well this was a bit of a scare. This was a bit of a shakeup. How are we running business today and what are the things that we could be doing better? – Nancy Youssef Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER Nancy Youssef is an award-winning finance broker, mentor, philanthropist, and founder of Classic Finance and Classic Mentoring. Recognised as a leader, innovator and industry expert, she is an ambassador for change both within the finance industry here in Australia, and in some of the world’s most impoverished communities. Nancy is the author of Fear Money Purpose, which is designed to inspire others – women especially – to step out of their comfort zone and be inspired to achieve more. Download the action guide for this episode with more links and resources at https://eliteagentelevate.com In episode 112 of the Elevate Podcast, Samantha and Nancy discuss: What’s happening in the finance industry post-Royal Commission Nancy’s journey into finance broking The inspiration behind her book Fear Money Purpose The art of delegation and how to recruit safely for the first time Conquering your fears to grow your business and build the life you want Tips for making smart money decisions and next level delegation Why mentoring and helping her competition has helped grow her business overall Giving back to those less fortunate Key Takeaways on making smart financial decisions Connect with Nancy Youseff and resources mentioned: Fear Money Purpose https://www.nancyyoussef.com.au/book The Hunger Project https://thp.org.au/ The Human Kind Project  The Business Chick’s community Connect with Nancy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nancy.youssef.37 Website: www.nancyyoussef.com.au/ www.classicfinance.com.au Books: Fear Money Purpose LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/nyoussef Connect with The Elite Agent Team: Twitter: @eliteagentmag Facebook:  Elite Agent Website:  EliteAgent.com Show: The Elevate Podcast YouTube: Elite Agent Magazine LinkedIn: Elite Agent Magazine Instagram: @eliteagentmag Pinterest: Elite Agent Magazine

“They say, if you squint, most agents look the same. But if you can make a point of difference that even if people are squinting that we don’t look the same, then I want to be that person that people look to for a different process. – Will Ainsworth Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER Download the action guide for this episode with more links and resources at https://eliteagentelevate.com In episode 111 of the Elevate Podcast, Samantha and Will discuss: Becoming a director of McGrath Geelong and how he balances listing with leading a high performing team The importance of building a solid team How to differentiate yourself from other agents in a highly competitive area How Openn Negotiation has significantly changed Will’s key metrics Gaining efficiencies in off-market sales Other technology in the office that has improved productivity How Will demonstrates his worth to vendors in the process Why ‘no’ is one of the most under-used words in real estate Will’s goals for the future. To download a case study on how Will Ainsworth doubled his buyer registrations and halved days on market, click here. Key Takeaways: You have to keep pushing year after year – you can’t just sit back and rest on your laurels and expect to keep moving forward with any type of momentum. Put aside time every single day to do prospecting and sales activities – that is what got you to where you are now and it will continue to help you get further ahead. Make yourself stand out, do something different, make yourself the best in your area in an area nobody else is even considering. Openn Negotiation gives vendors, buyers and the agent more power than they would in a standard auction format. Learn to say “no”. The word is one of the most underutilized in real estate. You must control your destiny and your calendar. Connect with Will Ainsworth and Resources Mentioned: Twitter: @willainsworth  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-ainsworth-b46a8742/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/McGrathGeelong/Openn Negotiation App  and Case StudyWhatsApp   DocuSign      

“Sales shouldn’t be sleazy. Sales shouldn’t be misleading. Sales should not be something where, it’s an argument… and often times when we look at the landscape, when we looked at the scripts that are out there, we found that the outdated techniques that agents were using were both ineffective and didn’t really represent what we felt were the best tactics to use to actually sell appropriately and effectively.” – Jimmy Mackin Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER When it comes to getting better at prospecting, winning more listings, progressing more deals and handling stubborn people – the words you use, and the way you use them can make all the difference. In this episode of the Elevate Podcast, Samantha and Jimmy discuss: The book Jimmy co-wrote with Chris Smith and Phil M Jones – Exactly What to say for real estate agents What are magic words – and how they can help you progress deals like no other ‘scripts or dialogues’ can Why you should audit at the various aspects of your sales and marketing funnel to find opportunities for personal and business growth Why marketing is fundamental to your success when it comes to the result in the living room The other marketing fundamentals to help you succeed in your real estate journey. Key Takeaways from “Exactly what to say” Dialogue for expired listings How to incorporate storytelling into your conversations to build rapport Dialogue for objection handling Dialogue for handling stubborn customers (price, location) Why the person asking the questions is in control Links and resources mentioned:Jimmy’s favourite tools: Curaytor (Jimmy is Curaytor’s CEO) BuzzSumo Twitter / Medium.com Jimmy on Twitter Jimmy on Medium Exactly What to Say: For Real Estate Agents https://www.amazon.com/Exactly-What-Say-Estate-Agents/ Exactly what to say video course – ewts4re.com (https://exactly.thinkific.com/courses/exactly-what-to-say-for-real-estate-agents) use coupon code: eliteagent More links and resources in the action guide for this episode: https://eliteagentelevate.com Connect with The Elite Agent TeamTwitter: @eliteagentmagFacebook:  Elite AgentWebsite:  EliteAgent.comShow: The Elevate PodcastYouTube: Elite Agent MagazineLinkedIn: Elite Agent MagazineInstagram: @eliteagentmagPinterest: Elite Agent Magazine

“If you can find an area that you want to educate somebody about, how you do the job, what happens ‘if’…there’s a lot of things that can go wrong and if you can explain all those in an easy to read way, there’s probably a book in it.” – Geoff Grist Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER In this episode of the Elevate Podcast, Samantha and Geoff discuss: The evolution and accessibility of anyone to write a book to show their expertise. Why he chose to write a book and “give away all his secrets” to best assist those he is serving and why you should write a book in your expertise. Quick tips for agents and consumers from Journey to Sold Valuable advice from his career and experiences. Key Takeaways on book writing People read for entertainment or for education – if you can write in an easy to read manner and teach in the process, all the better. There’s no such thing as writer’s block – you can always write something, even if you put a line through it later. Key Takeaways for a smooth and successful transaction Dialogue for vendor paid marketing Keeping sellers connected to the sale using clever communication Qualifying buyers Connect with Geoff Grist: Facebook: Mosman Neutral Bay RealtyWebsite: WhyChooseGeoff.com.auBooks: Sold Above Market & Journey to Sold & More!LinkedIn: Geoff Grist Connect with The Elite Agent Team:Twitter: @eliteagentmagFacebook:  Elite AgentWebsite:  EliteAgent.comShow: The Elevate PodcastYouTube: Elite Agent MagazineLinkedIn: Elite Agent MagazineInstagram: @eliteagentmagPinterest: Elite Agent Magazine

Tara Bradbury, the Founder of the BDM Academy, has, over many years, being someone who has immensely raised the profile and status of the role of business development manager. In this podcast, she shares not only lessons from her time as a BDM coach, but also now in the role of business owner having this year started a PM business from scratch. Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER Episode Transcript Tara Bradbury has over many years been someone who has immensely raised the profile and status of the role of business development manager. Her major accomplishments have included successfully securing an incredible 268 listings in one financial year and signing 30 new rental listings in one month. She’s also the Founder of the BDM Academy, a training group many of the top BDMs have used around the nation. With more family and less travel a priority, she started her own property management only business in her hometown of Hervey Bay using new tech available and this business is completely paperless. In this episode, we talk about how Tara is setting up from scratch, how she is marketing her new business, the little things that have counted in growing her rent roll from zero and how she is now managing BDM Academy, Active Agents and family life. We didn’t even get around to this episode in talking about the fact that her PM business doesn’t have a trust account, but that could be another chat coming up in the future. As those of you know with Tara, she’s incredibly generous in her knowledge and there are tons of practical and actionable tips that you’d going to make notes on. If you need to catch up on any of our episodes, you can also sign up to our traditional newsletter extra while you’re there and we will send you each and every month all the good stuff, all the tips from all of our show guests, which generally amount to hundreds of ideas and light bulb moments, which can help you take your business to the next level. Go to EliteAgent.com/Extra. — Welcome to the show, Tara Bradbury. Thank you for having me, Sam. It’s awesome to catch up with you again. It’s been a while since we’ve caught up face to face. You’ve done a heap of things over the last few months. First of all, how have you been? It’s probably been pretty obvious on social media. The travels reduced quite significantly. I’ve been able to have a bit more time at home and still working with coaching clients online remotely, but I’m ready for that change. It’s been a few years of having the BDM Academy in operation. It’s probably not surprising to many that you get itchy feet and think, “What’s the next direction for this business or what’s the next direction for me?” The exciting thing for you, in case people aren’t aware, is that you started a rent roll of your own up in Hervey Bay. You referenced the fact that you were traveling a lot and you wanted to stay at home more because you’ve got a couple of kids. How has it been going back on the tools? For me, if I could use one word, it’s that I’m so much more curious compared to when I was previously working back in the industry. I feel the reason for that is that I have got to muck around with them on a level as a trainer. It’s easy to say, “I can see what this can do so that’s what you should do.” It’s great because I feel like there are no excuses for anybody out there. Being back on the tools again, there are still the same problems. There are still times when technology can fail us. I still don’t believe that there’s one perfect program out there. The reason for that is because property management is changing faster than they can keep up with in my opinion. What we have is impressive compared to when I was involved in the industry several years ago. That excited me to see that you have the ability to create. Because the BDM Academy was online, I had the ability to do the same thing with the property management business. There are lots of different steps that got me to seeing Active Agents. It certainly wasn’t an overnight idea. It’s probably twelve to eighteen months of different discussions and things that came together with it. It’s the best year to do it for anyone that’s also out there reading, doing a startup. There is so much opportunity. Tell us a bit more about Active Agents because always there are people reading that are thinking, “I want to start my own business. In property management, it’s a bit of a model that you can be a property manager, you can be anywhere in the world and start a business. Talk me through a little bit of what you were thinking when you started Active Agents and what a model you’re using and why? The first thing I was thinking about was that I’ve received an award in our area for the BDM Academy as an online business. I continue to connect with others in the area that were finalists in that award and were doing similar things. I thought, “It’s time that we could test and see if you can do that in property management.” That’s when I decided that it’s something that I can do. I had to refine the model down. One of the problems is that we do have a lot of great techs that are out there and a lot of it’s all cloud-based. To a point, there was a point of difference there. There certainly is, but it couldn’t be just all about that because I’m in a demographic where sometimes it’s joked around newlyweds and nearly deads. We have quite a diverse demographic where we’ve got a lot of wealth in our retirees here in the area. There are a lot of young professional business people like myself that are successful. They also have investment properties as well. I still remember back to when I was growing up with my parents. It was always, “If you’re going to buy an investment property, buy on the Fraser Coast so you can see it.” It’s very traditional feedback that you were getting. That’s passed on through my generation still. I knew that there was an opportunity there that I could rebuild again on relationships that I’ve had in the past. That process, however, has been very interesting because I haven’t created referral relationships with all of them. I found that some of them have changed and headed in a direction that’s not in line with what I want to do with Active Agents, but there are still quite a few that I’ve made some new ones. I wanted to go back in and heavy on that referral side because of my traditional experience that worked. It’s obvious in my pay package and what I’ve developed in presentation for our marketing and web presence is that we haven’t had anyone effectively push the executive property investment market here in Hervey Bay. It probably seems quite bizarre when we’re over 65,000 in population. When you look online, you can consistently see that the properties for us in our top end, it can go up to as high as $600,000. They’re the properties that I’m focusing on and renting within under three to five days. To be fair, we do have a fantastic vacancy rate, but I saw that was my main focus on the niche in the beginning, was to present myself that way in the marketplace and show them how the marketing can be done so that they can stand out. You’ve niched yourself into an area so that your marketing messages don’t have to appeal to the masses. You’re definitely targeting a certain demographic. Has that made marketing your business and getting you more well-known easier? It has and it hasn’t because I very easily get excited by DSM. I go, “Yes, we’ve put that on Facebook and we’ll go.” My husband is a bit more realistic. He’ll look and go, “I love that idea, but let’s not do that right now. We’ll hold onto it and we’ll reassess.” His help has been fantastic with that because, to be fair, he probably understands Hervey Bay specifically better than I do even though I’ve lived here. He’s worked with his client base since he was out of high school as well. He’s had that ongoing involvement. That’s helped in the way of what we’re doing with the marketing. It was hard in the beginning because there were properties that I missed out on. For us, the fees that we have been charging, we’re getting those fees. I’m not negotiating. I’m not willing to negotiate. I’m out of it on that. I went through many moments like most business owners do, where you think I’ve to grow. I feel like I’m at a stage where there are still moments of ups and downs. Overall, I know the market I want to target and the people that are involved in that market. If I have to wait and if it takes a little bit longer to get growth where I want to, it’ll keep coming in where I need it to. That’s what I’m finding. There’s a wave of, “I’m not getting anything and I’m pushing with my calls.” I’ve got three listings and then two entry condition reports and I’m trying to scrape in time and happened to have to go to Adelaide for the training. It’s still the same. There is still uncertainty and for marketing, it’s testing all the time, especially on social media. I was going to say to you, what has been most successful because again people will be reading and they are thinking about starting up their own business. If you’re going from scratch, what are the marketing methods that you think are best now that you’ve tested them? I have and some of them have taken off more than I had anticipated. With one in particular, I had to turn my notifications off because it was so disruptive. That particular day was a post that we did about Hervey Bay. I got the idea when I was over at the Perth event for our RETG where I saw a radio station that did it and I screenshot it to Shane. I sent it to him and I said, “We should do this for Hervey Bay because everyone will love it.” I knew it would be popular. We gained over close to 12,000 in reach. We had businesses that were connected with some of those posts that shared it on their profiles and they had up to 40 shares on some of them. It made me realize very quickly that I’ve understood my market well. That’s not going to work for everybody. I don’t feel that would probably work in either city. It may or may not. It depends on who’s following you. That works well for the following that we have picked up on. What I recognize very quickly is that we also have a very strong tenant following. We’ve been presenting our properties to market first on social media, which I have seen other real estate businesses do that. I certainly can’t make the claim to fame. I think Lisa Novak, as an example, might be one. I’ve seen her doing in sales and I thought, “That’s it. I’m going to do in rentals now too. Let’s go.” Because I’m doing virtual tours, I have four particular photos, a virtual tour. We put that on there first and I’ve started to build up a good tenant database. I tenant-matched them. There’s one in particular where we still haven’t released that property to the property pools yet. I’ve got two that are ready to inspect it before we even get to that stage because we still got a three-week gap before it becomes available. Where the investors have the ability, I’m encouraging them to test that and they’re loving it and getting great responses. Was it like a quiz or something like that? I’ve heard about these quizzes going viral so that’s what you did. I’ve got a few more so feel free to watch this phase if you want to see the next few that are coming out. Let’s see if they’re as popular. We picked 21 key things that were relevant to those who have lived in Hervey Bay. My husband, Shane, is one of very few that was born in the Point Vernon Hospital. He had that listed on there, were you born in the Point Vernon Hospital? Have you walked the pier? Have you been whale watching? Have you gone to Fraser Island? There were reasonable ones to get. There were silly ones. Some were a bit more strategic as well that you would have had to have been here for the last 50 years. There were some cool things on there. I knew it would be popular, but I didn’t anticipate how many would get involved and want to tell us how happy they are with no prize to share as well. It would have been a week and a half later, we did another post where we would have been lucky to have a quarter of the engagement. We gave away a $100 voucher to one of our restaurants at the Vineyard and we didn’t get the same response. I don’t mind that because it still had engagement. We did have to do a bit of spending to push that one because it didn’t get the engagement we wanted. It’s all trialling and testing. We know that a particular approach wasn’t right for the followers. We’ll go on and test the next one. We all think that we’ve got to do a big spend. We’ve got to put this money into it. That particular post had no incentive for anyone to share it and it didn’t go crazy. It’s a big lesson on social media and we found that too. When someone’s interested in something, it’s a zero-dollar spend. I’m very proud to be part of that community. There are probably areas on the Central Coast where I’m from that would be the same. Did you ever go to the old church at night and scare yourself silly? A true local knows that. I certainly can’t take the credit for it. Shane was a massive contribution to some of the things that he had listed there, but it would’ve been seen the people behind this brand knows the area. That was the winning point. The other thing that you said in the middle of all of that too is that you’re not advertising on the portals initially. You’re putting the property on social and tenant-matching through your database. How does that work? Who does that? I will have the photos done and do edits where required through Box Brownie and utilise them. I’ve done a few virtual staging that was needed as well. I’m trying to find someone to book a photographer here. During the virtual tours, we had Tom and the team from Virtual Tours Creator. I knew straight away that I had to release that with our property management here because we didn’t have anyone in that space. What that’s allowed me to do is that I can put them on social media before they hit the property portals because they can see those select four images that we put in the tile and then it’s got the content about the property as well along with the virtual tour link included in that post so they can have that walk through experience. Based on that, they can say, “I liked this property. When’s it available?” Because we’ve got such a low vacancy rate to the point of even under 1%, most of the time, they can pre-apply, which I’ve had that happen as well. We can have the application processing before the property is vacant. It’s a faster turnaround time for the investors as well. I find it’s more proactive. Now that my CRM is built up because I started with no content at all, the property portals have 100% helped on that side because it’s allowed me to have an agent box, have them automatically go in there. The moment that I have a property, I can still search for a price range there. It brings up the list of those that are tenant-matched to that price range. I connect with them directly. There were ten that I sent out, the property that I’ve got coming up at Crawford Drive. I’ve sent that to them. There are two of them that have responded back and said they’d like to inspect based on the virtual tour. I’ll give them a call and follow up, book that in and do the viewing there. We’ve had one that’s rented before going to the Property Portal. I still love Property Portal because it gets me exposure to my marketplace. At the same time, if I can do it quicker, that’s a better result and a better investment for that landlord as well. They don’t have to have as big a spend. I can see where you’re calling the business Active Agents because what you’re describing they’re proactive. A lot of other people’s heads will be spinning reading this I imagine. Do you think it’s because of the size you are that allows you to pivot and provide such personal service and move so quickly? What are your plans for growth and how will you maintain that personal touch? My target is I should be ready by Christmas time for a team member for two reasons. One, you push yourself harder when you’ve got that person to work alongside that you’ve made that investment and gone, “You’re with me full-time. Let’s go. We’ll keep the growth happening.” Beyond that, I can push the numbers as high as possible. A lot of the programs that I’m using and testing and being curious have allowed me to create a process that’s systemized in protection for the investor, but a great opportunity for all of those people who trust that experience being the landlord, tenant and tradesperson. [bctt tweet=”Marketing through social media is about trial and testing.” via=”no”] When I do secure, the tenant and I confirm and send the response back to say, “Your property is approved,” I’m onto it with the tenancy agreement, all of the attachments that are required and that goes out to them via DocuSign. They can sign that up prior. I go through that process with them from wherever I am. If I happen to be in between appointments, I’ve got the ability to go through that with them while I’m doing that. For me, because I am mobile and I’m working from the home office, I open up the home for them on moving day. I spend that time with them on the property versus having them come and meet me, whether it be at home or at a coffee shop and finding that’s working well too because they’re ready to move in. They want the keys. They want to get started and settled. They have the tenancy handbook that I go through. They’re all set up. They’ve already paid their two weeks’ rent, their bonds are all sorted and they’re ready to go. I remember the days when you had to go to the real estate and pick up the keys. You flipped that on its head as well. That’s an extra service offering that I know it’s getting talked about around town. I want to keep doing those things that allow that conversation to keep happening. The thing that excites me so much about what I’m doing is that I had quite a few different agents that I talked to, not just in Hervey Bay but across other regional locations. They said, “You’ll never get them to fill in an online application.” I just don’t offer it. I’m probably fortunate that we’re in a market that is quite buoyant and moving, but I will send them the message on the phone or show them how to log in and set up that process for them and show them how easy it is. If you want your clients to use the technology and embrace it at the same level that you do, you have to prepare to do short-term pain, long-term gain because you will get the long-term gain out of them. I have them all registering the maintenance through the back of the program. The communication behind it is fantastic and it’s simple. They’re registering maintenance. I challenged and I asked other agents out there to feel free to share their feedback as well as part of the podcast. The tenants are registering maintenance in the evening because that’s when they remember to do it. They don’t have time to think about it during the day. I don’t want them to run the risk of trying to get me on the phone and not because it’s too late from an evening and they don’t lodge that maintenance. I’m finding that a lot of the stuff comes through in the evening. You’re setting it up so you’ve got the tenants at the forefront of your service equation so that they’re going to feel like they’re happy that they’ve been looked after and the cycle then continues. CRMs, you mentioned that you started with zero contacts and a nice fresh database. Somebody with 10,000 contacts might be thinking, “I wish I could go back to zero contacts and set this up well.” I know we’ve probably all been there at one point or another. What’s your advice on setting up a database from scratch? How do you think it is the most efficient way to get data in there so you can get what you need out of there? For me, my primary focus was to make sure I did my launch in three stages. The reason for that was to try and balance out my time between Active Agents, real estate training group and the BDM Academy. It’s allowed me to go into stage three, which is very exciting. In the very beginning, it was just about getting the message out there. I went to as many networking events and opportunities that I could and gauged and decided on where my best value of investment of my time is. I’m probably more savage with that than what I was when I was an active BDM. The main thing I put that around too is that I have a family. I have two daughters and a husband that I can’t be out every night. I’m very selective and very heavily invested in that time for those groups that I’m involved in. That’s the first section. We released the end of April. In May, things were happening. June was the real, “Let’s get it out there now properly.” Every single week there would have been two meetings a day across five days a week, and potentially stuff on the weekend. The coffee that I drank was nuts. That was from builders to developers, project managers, engineers, florists, general people in my community, anyone that wanted to listen or hear about what I had to offer. To be fair, if there was someone that I had met once before or knew of, I went and connected with them and shared whether it be to share a business card or say, “I wanted to update you with what I’m doing.” Tradespeople, that was another successful post that we did where we put a post out to say, “We’re looking for tradespeople.” We had the community going in and tagging trades to connect with me. I filtered them through those first and I’m still coming across things where “I need an air conditioning company or I need a locksmith.” The people that I need along the way. I’m starting to still reconnect with other tradespeople. I’m constantly not panicking about the fact at the beginning of how much new business that I was signing. It was more about making sure it’s designed effectively to take on the growth when it starts pumping in. I feel the growth is steady. With the work that I’m doing, I can say January 2020, it’s going to continue to go gangbusters with the buildup that I’ve had of people getting reviews done, not quite ready to make that change yet. They’re just sitting there in my database to keep connected with. I would suggest to anyone that’s starting from completely from zero, you will feel massive pain and frustration for that first two months very easily. You have to keep pushing through it. Keep telling everyone what you’re doing because you’ll be surprised about the people who will come back to you and say, “Tara is now doing this. She’s doing real estate now.” You have to talk to everyone possible to the point where I’ve changed gyms and I’ve been talking with some of the other people in my class there. One of the ladies has come up to me and she needs to buy a unit. I’m not selling property, but my referral partners do. That’s been a great opportunity. I still put myself out there as a real estate agent and primarily it’s advertised purely property management. Anything that you want to talk about real estate, come to me and I’ll put you in front of the right person. Those messages are going well and it allows me to feel more confident because I am getting referrals in. I have got something to give back to them and that’s been good too. You’ve almost become a human search engine. Instead of people trying to find stuff on Google or whatever, hey can come to Tara and that way you get to build relationships. Even if it’s not about you, it could be about you in the future because they’ll remember that. It’s still Tara real estate. Active Agents is there and people are getting it, but everyone still needs to realize it’s a person to person experience. It’s that relationship. As the team gets bigger, the team members will have that same relationship with certain people that I may not. It doesn’t scare me. I need to empower that and continue to encourage that and find ways to keep that motivation going with them. We’ve had a lot of conversations on the show about the human connection in real estate. Property management does seem to be a place where things are evolving very rapidly. You’re an online outfit or you are dealing with humans and it’s more of high-end experience. How do you see that all playing out in the future? Have you got any ideas on the way where that will go? If I use an example, I know it’s not as popular in Queensland, with our rental applications, there are quite a few that we can choose out there for processing. It means that we can have complete automation from the point of when they apply for the property. References are being processed. I’m personally using tenant options alongside one form and using both of them. Behind the scenes, it’s doing all that work for you. I had six applications on one property, and the one person that was approved, I’ve called to get them confirmed, approved and everything. I’ve got these five other people there that I’ve thought, “My heart broke. I can’t send them a text message. I can’t send them an email.” I’ve called all of them individually and taken that time. It wasn’t very long to say, “I’m sorry that you have missed out. Can you please go through your requirements again because I know that this was an important decision for you?” They were blown away. For some of them, it wasn’t even over 60 seconds of their time. I know that for a few of them they’ve gone and found other properties, but if we don’t do this as agents in the industry and we let the tech keep doing the work, absolutely we’ll let all the private investors websites take us over. That’s a choice as an industry that we’re making. I’m choosing to allow the technology to allow me to be more efficient in what I do, be effective and not miss those things that I know my personality would miss if I was in control of that entire process and use the strengths that I do have to communicate. That’s the risk that I see in the industry. If you are someone that is still finding yourself in the office and hiding behind that screen and not picking up the phone, you are going to do yourself out of a career in property management. I certainly won’t be in my lifetime that I plan to be in it. Who knows when that’s too? I’m several years in, so I’ll wait and see how that goes. Let’s talk a few tactics like some actionable stuff. With a startup, what does your day look like? How are you structuring your day to make sure that you remain productive? I hit the phones straight away in the morning, whether it be that moms come to do pick up and she’s off doing adventures with the girls or if it’s drop off to daycare. I will have at least two or three people that I know that I need to call and I start making those calls before I go into heavy with the emails. I find that for me, it allows me to be more productive with my communication during the day. Otherwise, it’s easy to get stuck and stay trapped in the office and get distracted by doing things, whether it be searching online for opportunities, it’s very easy to get stuck in that space. I always try and make sure that I have a referral partner meeting booked, whether it be that I’m going in to catch up and take them for a cup of coffee or if I’m meeting up with them. I’m still mucking around with my set expectations of KPIs for new business. That’s for me mainly because of the balance of a few businesses. Ultimately, it’s always on top of mind for me. It’s always the biggest fear of what more could I be doing because I do expect that the businesses in my marketplace are already researching and trying to find different ways to be different. I have to continue to develop that. The stuff that you see will continue to change with what we had projected of offerings. You need to be as competitive as possible to the point where your plan of attack, you’re aware of what’s happening out there. I was sitting in a session where he was talking about the traditional way of real estate agents looking through the newspaper and seeing what their competitors had for sale. I get that they’re there. I’m not stalking them. I watch to see what they’re doing so I know what I’m up against, but I don’t give it too much time. That’s lost time that many property managers and especially BDMs in an area need to be careful of. You’re not connecting the first up and consistently throughout the day with people in general. I called 37 builders and have built relationships with three of them. I did not have one of them yell at me on the phone or tell me, “No, I didn’t wish to talk to you.” I went in with the conversation to say, “Who I was, that I’ve started a property management business in Hervey Bay. I wanted to say if you found over the last twelve months that you’ve had a high level of investors purchasing through you for the bills that you’ve been doing.” That was a question of experience and there were so many of them that that wasn’t the path that they were going down. The ones that I found were well worth it. Those calls took me at least half a day to get through all of them by the time I researched everything. Don’t expect that it’s going to be a quick fix answer and you’re going to have everything that you need at your fingertips. You’ve got to look and go, “What was my time investment for the day?” If it’s not connections, especially around a startup business, if it’s not face-to-face and over the phone, you’ve got a big problem. It’s an expression I’ve been using a bit, “Keep your eye on your own paper first,” which is instead of trying to look it up, what other people are doing, keep your eye on the prize and work out what is valuable to you. If something happened in the second half of the day, at least you’d have the good stuff done. What about technology? What are your three favourite productivity tools? What’s on your phone that you’re loving, for example?” [bctt tweet=”Marketing through social media is about trial and testing.” via=”no”] I do most of my property management on the phone or through my iPad. I use Managed. Everything that I connect into that is what I’m using as my main hub for property management. I’m also using Inspection Express. They’re on my phone as well. Agentbox is an app on my phone and Tenant Options, which to be honest, a lot of these things that I’m using, I encourage my competitors to think about using as well because there’s no point in saying, “There’s a mixture of offices in our area that are still server-based.” They need to think about changing into the cloud and not be as fearful of that. They’re ones that I’m very vocal about, I promote and that I use. They allow me to be on the road and be effective. That was the thing that I’m enjoying most and I know that being in a complete role of a property manager isn’t my long journey as such. I love working on projects. I love doing new business and that referral work. I will be certainly adapting that and I’ve made that very clear to my clients that have come on board. I’ll sit outside of the property sometimes. I’m there fifteen minutes early for an appointment. I can go through and do some work. We do have nothing to complain about. We can continue to pass on feedback and encourage opportunities for direction because we’re on the tools. What we have is impressive in property management. We talked about Facebook a bit and you talked about the quizzes. Is there a particular app that you use for the quizzing because there are a few of those viral contests things out there? Before we use Canva like everybody else. You can do searches on there. They bring up different activities and fun things that you can change around and make relevant to your marketplace. A lot of my marketing posts will be done through Canva. I find that for me when I’m picking up on ideas and suggestions to have on as postings of activities, I’m researching through Google and thinking, “What would this crossroad one look like or what would this one look like?” We see what other people have posted as well and trying to create that into more of a space that’s relevant to the marketplace. You talked about Facebook. Is there any other social media liking? Everyone is saying LinkedIn is pretty good. Do you like that one as well? I love LinkedIn. I’m confusing my followers unfortunately because I’ll post stuff about trying and then I’ll post them about being an active real estate agent. It’s probably the one space that for me, I don’t personally feel like I’ve mastered effectively, but I definitely get lead generation from there. Still predominantly on the training side and I haven’t probably gone in as heavily on the real estate side yet, but I do agree that there’s definitely a huge opportunity there. I need to master what Tara Bradbury is going to look like with both titles. I remember some years ago that was a challenge for me as well, running to two careers, which was pretty tricky. Instagram is good. We have over 5,800 followers and over 1,600 on Facebook. I am not all about the followers, but the engagement is quite good. I’m happy with what we have there. On Instagram, I have 320 or 322. It’s probably still one that I’m testing still more so. For me, the main value that I get from Instagram is in the stories because you can see who’s opening the stories and the engagement continues to increase, which is good. One of the highest openings that I had for the Active Agents business was over 100 on one particular story post that I did. I’m happy with that when I can get that value across. I’m still by myself. If you look on to see videos that I’m doing on there, I’m literally using the BIGVU app, which is another app that I use. Teleprompter is another one. I know that I heard about that through you guys with the Elite Transform Program. I put a second 45-second script in there. I know where that strip’s going to finish to the five-second countdown. I try and make sure I’m smiling at the start and at the end and doing quick videos of different snapshots or properties that way. I’ll continue to do that until I have that next person on board to be able to assist or potentially create a budget around that. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting a message out there. It’s fun, effective and encouraging, and not just with engagement in the posts. The posts that you are finding are most effective on Instagram are the videos? Yes, it’s more effective long-term. I’m looking and checking the engagement on them. I’m finding, I might go back to one that was two weeks prior. It may have had over 100 people might’ve viewed the video. I look at it again and it’s over 200. I don’t know if it’s traditional across everyone’s profiles. There are people that when they are going to the wall, they’re watching a few videos and scrolling through and taking in some more video to see what else I’m doing. It’s always about the wall, isn’t it? Making it look pretty. That’s always been my pain point. I’ve designed using the same template from Facebook and then putting that into Canva and you’ll see a big white sticker with a lease over it and it has a story underneath. I don’t share the address location with the post as such. As an example, I had one that least for $550 a week, four-bedroom property with a pool and everything and the word leased is in big text. Underneath that, it says, “Family moving from Canberra. Looking for a lifestyle change and can’t wait to live in Hervey Bay.” That’s what it says in the actual image. People can follow that and go, “That’s exciting.” There have been others where they’ve moved here for work, which I find is an interesting pain point in our area specifically where people feel that there’s not enough work in the area. It’s been quite refreshing to have quite a few tenants that have secured work here and they’re moving to the area. It’s bringing more people here. I try and encourage more positivity to educate other followers, “This is happening and it’s here right now.” People should check out your Active Agents Instagram following by the sounds of it. Feel free to pass on feedback as well. I always love it when people do so. You’ve shared so much with us about setting up a new business. I always love chatting with you about that. If there was one thing that people could remember from this episode whether they’re setting up or whether they’re in an established business, what would you want it to be? We talk about having passion for the industry, loving it and making sure your clients can say that. You can’t feel them if you don’t love them anymore. They’re going to pick up on that quickly. I find that part of the reason I feel that every single person that I talked with and engagement with can see that in me is because I am truly excited and curious about all the stuff that I’m using all the time. I feel like I have to tell everybody about it. Even to the point where I show my husband is sick of when I say, “They’ve done this upgrade. They’re doing this now. How amazing. Now I don’t have to do this step anymore.” Those things excite me. If that was my one piece of advice, whether you’re a startup or you’re an established business, I can’t harp on that enough, the fact that you need to embrace what you are using. If you’re not happy with what you’re using, then start to do some serious research and make that change. If you are happy and you don’t feel you understand it, book that session with whoever the provider is. Yes, some of them may charge you for that, but it will be the best investment that you have made and you will feel more effective. Your team will feel more effective and you will be a better example within your marketplace and your clients will see that within you and within your team as well. That is a problem too. People have all this stuff and they don’t use it to its full advantage and it goes by the wayside. You’ve finished a series of events for property managers. Will you be doing that again? Kasey and I are still very much in discussions as to what it will look like for 2020. The reason why is because we had a fantastic year, but it’s time for a change in what we’re doing in that space and the market needs that change. We want to spend this time and lead up to 2020 to digress and get that feedback from our attendees and also from previous years and make that decision as to what it will look like in 2020. For me, the traditional style, which has been effective over the last few years, even prior to getting the real estate training group together, needs a bit of a shakeup and it’s the same in property management as well. You’ll certainly hear from us when we have that sorted. We know it’s something we want to continue. We’ve got to make sure it’s in balance with what we do. Separate to that business being the real estate training group. I know that people do get it and some that don’t get it, but it is a huge amount of work to put together events. It’s not just about taking tickets sales and there’s an event here. There’s a lot of ideas and thought processes that go around, whether it be speakers, content, competitions and all these different things that come together. We need to make sure that we establish our time effectively. It continues at the same level that we consider a high level as well. I’m sure whatever you do together will be amazing because it always is and you’re going to have so much more to talk about as well, like having set up your own company. I’m still in awe of the fact that you are juggling both. Tara Bradbury, thank you so much. It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sam. Important Links: Tara Bradbury BDM Academy Active Agents EliteAgent.com/extra Box Brownie Virtual Tours Creator Property Portal Managed Inspection Express Agentbox Tenant Options Canva

Perry Marshall is one of the most expensive business strategists in the world. He’s guided clients like FanDuel and InfusionSoft from startups to hundreds of millions of dollars. Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER Not only that, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs uses his 80/20 Curve as a productivity tool. His reinvention of the Pareto Principle is published in Harvard Business Review. His Google book laid the foundations for the $100 billion Pay Per Click industry, and Ultimate Guide to Google Ads is one of the world’s best selling book on digital advertising. Ahead of his Rosetta Stone seminar coming to Sydney in November, we get to do a session of “The Leadership Diaries” like no other as he discusses the 80/20 rule, leveraging time, and the Espresso Machine Principle as it applies to real estate businesses. He also talks about the Tactical Triangle of business and the Network Effect where we can see plenty of applications in real estate. Episode Transcript As some of you know, we’ve been doing a series for some time called The Leadership Diaries. In that series, I always ask whoever I’m interviewing the question, who are you learning from? If anyone has asked me that question in the last several months, the name at the top of my list has been Perry Marshall. A couple of years ago, I had no idea who he even was, but it was a chance conversation with one of our suppliers that led me to read two of Perry’s books. The first one is 80/20 Sales and Marketing and the second one is The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, both of which have helped me greatly in various ways in our business. I’d recommend those books to anyone. I would say without hesitation, they’ve inspired me to think outside the box and probably do some of my best creative work. For me, there have been some massive lessons in productivity, discernment, asking better questions, thinking more strategically plus much more. For those of you that have heard of Perry Marshall, you’ll know he has a massive following from all entrepreneurs in something that they called Planet Perry. With small and large businesses, he attracts some incredible entrepreneurs and is known for inspiring great clarity in amongst all of the leaders that he coaches. Ahead of Perry bringing his Rosetta Stone event to Sydney, which he is doing in November 2019, it’s for all types of businesses. I invited him to the show and I was delighted that he accepted. In this show, we’re doing The Leadership Diaries, but we will also discuss the 80/20 Rule, leveraging time, the Espresso Machine Principle as it applies to real estate agents. His Tactical Triangle of business and how that applies to real estate, how the Network Effect might work for you and against you in real estate and reasons some people are good at selling one way and perhaps not others. Grab a cuppa, sit back, relax and enjoy the chat with Perry Marshall. — Welcome to the show, Perry Marshall. Thank you for having me. It’s an honour. I’m delighted to be here. I’m delighted to be coming to Australia in November. When was the last time you were in Australia? It was 2004. I’m a little embarrassed. I’ve got lots of Australians that have come to my seminars and everything. Maybe my only excuse is I have been to 40 different countries and Australia is one of them and it’s a great place. I love Australia, but it’s a hard place to get to often. I’m looking forward to it. I’m bringing two of my sons and one of my daughters with me. We’re going to make sure we have some fun and everybody will meet them. They will be at the seminar and they will be helping out and everything. I can’t wait. I’ve done a few of your courses. I’ve done 30 Day Reboot. I’ve done Advanced Lead Generation and as soon as you said you were coming to Australia, I signed up immediately for Rosetta Stone. First of all, I can probably guess where the name Rosetta Stone comes from, but can you tell us a little bit about Rosetta Stone and what we’re going to learn there? [bctt tweet=”Everything in marketing comes down to four things: traffic, conversion, economics, and 80/20.” username=””] The original Rosetta Stone, which is in the British Museum, was this big stone tablet that had three different languages: Egyptian, Coptic and maybe it was Greek or something. They figured it out. They used the fact that they were all identical messages in three languages to figure out all three languages. It was a giant breakthrough in understanding hieroglyphs and all of that stuff. I realized that there was a similarity. In 80/20 Sales and Marketing, I teach that. Everything in marketing comes down to four things: traffic, conversion, economics and 80/20. In fact, it is true that we have this thing called the Tactical Triangle and we map every single thing. It’s a cycle and you go around the circle. It starts with traffic, you convert the traffic, you get money from the traffic, then you reinvest the money. That could be a whole seminar all by itself, but that’s one part of the Rosetta Stone. The next part is that there’s a whole set of layers of 80/20 strategies that are above marketing. This is important because a lot of people, what they’re experiencing is, “It is used to be enough. I could write a headline, I could create a Facebook ad, or I can do a Google ad, I’m good to go. I’m getting leads. I’m getting sales. Everything is great.” What people are finding now is that necessary, but absolutely not sufficient. There is a whole level of sophistication. You can spend yourself into oblivion or educate yourself into oblivion mastering marketing techniques and wonder like, “Why am I spinning my wheels?” There’s a whole higher level of strategies which, when you zoom into the Tactical Triangle, especially the 80/20 part of it, you will find, “This business was doomed from the beginning.” My friend, John Mendocha, has a brilliant saying. He says, “Most businesses fail in the first five minutes. It takes three years for most people to find out.” It’s true. There’s this whole other set of strategies of is this a star business? Is this a business that even has the potential to get there? The third layer is the Network Effect. Nobody even used to think about this, but what is Network Effect? The Network Effect is Uber gets more riders, which attracts more drivers, which lowers the wait time, which attracts more riders, which attracts more drivers, which lowers the wait time. You have this virtuous circle where I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, it takes three to eight minutes for an Uber to show up. I go anywhere I want and that’s amazing. Let’s rewind several years ago, two times in the same year I called a taxi. The taxi came to my house. I said, “Midway Airport,” two different times the taxi driver said, “Where’s that?” Midway Airport is six miles from here and it’s one of the biggest airports in the United States and the taxi driver doesn’t know where it is. You got to be kidding. Not so with Uber anymore. They completely elevated. The point is that they’re competition-proof. Other than Lyft, imagine Uber is already in a city, good luck with starting another taxi. 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More When you’re in Sydney, get an Uber, that would be my advice. It’s the same here, but you’ve said many times that the taxi industry was ripe for disruption because the service was terrible. The experience was terrible. It was waiting for someone to come along. Often, people say that about the real estate industry too. I’ve been thinking about your Tactical Triangle and different real estate companies. The traffic conversion economics seeing Purplebricks, who were big in the UK, made a big splash in Australia. They try doing it to the US. They paid a lot of money for traffic, but they didn’t have the conversion and economics. Number one, it’s interesting that the Tactical Triangle applies to all businesses, not only to one or the other. Number two is with real estate being one of these industries where consumers are basically dissatisfied with the length of time it takes them to get a loan or to make an offer or to go and look at a property. If some people are saying the real estate industry is ripe for disruption, what are your thoughts on that? It’s going to get disrupted. Somebody’s going to do it. It’s not going to stay the way it is. As you said, think about the taxis. What happened with taxis? It was an awful experience. I’ve done some research. I’ve found out that the general Uber idea was attempted a number of times and Uber was finally the company that got it to go. It wasn’t exactly an original idea, but most people in the taxi industry were asleep at the wheel. They were completely unaware. I realized that people are going to be at the seminar from all kinds of industries but you’re in real estate, and what’s going to happen is somebody’s going to figure out how to make a loan happen in two hours instead of two weeks. I’ve got a client who did that. In fact, this was one of the reasons I did Rosetta Stone. It was one of the sparks that made this happen. I got this client for a long time, Ed Harycki. He has a company called Swift Capital. In 2011, he came to my house and we did a workshop. I helped him with his Google Ads and stuff. They were making small business loans online and they morphed into, “Let’s do it through your merchant account. You got money coming into your merchant account. Let’s give you a loan through your merchant account then we pay back through the merchant account.” It’s a factoring thing through a merchant account. He came to a seminar I did in 2014. [bctt tweet=”Most businesses get more vulnerable to competition the larger they get.” username=””] At that seminar, he clarified the idea that he has to simplify the loan process ruthlessly. He went to work on that and he said, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but when somebody applies for a loan, we’re checking their credit score and we’re having them fax in all this stuff. We’ve got to get this down to being approved within 30 minutes or an hour. We want to tell you what your rate is online within a few minutes, either wait for the screen to refresh or an email comes a few minutes later.” It’s a totally automated system that will say, “This is your rate. This is your monthly payment.” He chiselled away at this. He dialled it in. He figured that out. He thought, “This part takes too long, but I can replace it with this other method. It’s close enough. It’s not perfect, but the risk is acceptable.” PayPal came and bought them out for a huge ungodly sum of money. It is like FU money. I started seeing that in Planet Perry, these things were happening. WordStream, I knew Larry a long time ago. He built up that company. It’s simplified Google advertising and he sold it to Gannett for $150 million. It’s the company that owns USA Today. This is how Rosetta Stone was born. I realized it was either you own the network or the network owns you. Whether you’re Samantha McClane or John Smith or whoever, you need to own something. What started to emerge was what I called the Network Effect for Mere Mortals. Being Uber is not too realistic for most of us. I’m using it to illustrate the Principle of Network Effect. It’s when you bring buyers and sellers together and it’s exponential when you can do that. I have this term Network Effect for Mere Mortals and what a lot of my students are doing is they are Google ad agencies, they are Facebook ads ad agencies, and they are lead generation consultants. What they are doing is they’re using the fact that their lead generation brings buyers and sellers together and they’re building a network. Finn Peacock in Australia has done this. His company is called SolarQuotes.com.au. Network Effect for Mere Mortals can be obvious. Sometimes it’s not obvious that it’s going on but basically, somewhere in your business there is a virtuous cycle that it gets faster and faster and more effective the bigger your business gets. What happens is most businesses get more vulnerable the larger they get. They get more vulnerable to competition. In Network Effect, you get less vulnerable to competition. I’m the guy who wrote the book on Google advertising. There was a period of about several years where if you could figure out Google Ads, you could totally dominate your industry. Knowing Google Ads could make you the number one real estate agent in Sydney. That era passed because eventually, everybody started figuring out, “This is how these online ads work.” It is no longer an advantage. What happened was I watched a whole bunch of businesses made tons of money and then all of a sudden, they crashed because they didn’t have any barriers to entry. I became uninterested in quick and dirty businesses that could make a lot of money really fast. I became interested in businesses that could last a long time. That’s why I’m doing the Rosetta Stone seminar. We did a similar seminar in Chicago. It was a smashing success, standing ovation, record attendance, and success stories are coming out of that seminar. I’ve never done it in Australia. I’ve learned a lot of things in the last time that I didn’t know then. I’m updating all the material. I’m incorporating some other things and I got a couple of guests. I’ve got Jack Born, who used to work for me. He has a software company called Deadline Funnel. I have Mike Rhodes, who’s my co-author on The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords. He’s going to be talking about traffic and strategy. It’s important to understand either you own the network or the network owns you and there’s not anything in between. It’s binary. That’s something that will resonate with our audience because real estate agents do feel that way with a couple of Network Effects there. I’m sure that they wish they played their cards differently in the beginning. Speaking of books, I own most of your books. The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords was the first one, then the 80/20 Sales and Marketing, which everyone should buy it, read it, put it down and then read it again. I go back and I pick up something new each and every time. In 80/20, you mentioned that when you were talking about the Tactical Triangle a little while ago, 80/20 is something that I tried to resist for the longest time. I have since learned the error of my ways and I’m definitely looking at 80/20 in all sorts of things. As an entrepreneur, where do you think the most important leverage points are in 80/20 if you’re in any small business? I would say there are two things. One of them is what I call the Espresso Machine Principle and the other one is the way that you use your time. The Espresso Machine Principle says that for every 1,000 people who will buy a $5 latte, one person will buy a $2,700 gleaming espresso machine. It’s almost like a Law of Physics. It’s ridiculously reliable how this is. In fact, it gives you a whole different view of human behaviour of being ridiculously predictable on a grand scale. What it says is that money is burning a hole in people’s pockets. People have different itches. They have an itch to buy shoes. They have the itch to drink caffeine. They have an itch to buy a house and whatever it is, and those itches obey very predictable numerical patterns. In the 80/20 Sales and Marketing, I give you tools for saying, “We rented 100 apartments for $1,000 a month. How many units can we rent for $50,000 a month?” If you go look, you’ll find people are renting space for $50,000 a month. It might not be apartments, but it might be commercial space and all the proportions are there. It gives you the ability to say, “There’s this big giant hole. We don’t have a product that costs $700. If we had a product that costs $700, we would sell many of them. If we don’t, it means we’re doing something wrong or we got the wrong sales pitch because that money is there. It wants to jump out of somebody’s wallet into yours.” [bctt tweet=”It’s important to understand how you either own the network or the network owns you and there’s not anything in between.” username=””] That’s the first thing. The second thing is the time. There’s $10 an hour tasks, $100 an hour, $1,000 an hour, $10,000 an hour. If I talked to regular, ordinary people, if I float the idea of making $1,000 an hour, most people are like, “That’s impossible. I don’t have any idea. I make $17 an hour as a waitress. I can’t fathom.” Let’s say that you have a real estate office. Somebody calls and you have a receptionist, Helen. She makes $20 an hour. Helen is busy at the moment and she says, “Can you hold, please?” She puts somebody on hold. They were going to buy a $200,000 house and there was going to be $12,000 of commission. After two minutes of being on hold, they hang up. They call somebody else. Helen just lost $12,000 in two minutes. How many dollars an hour is that? It’s over $1,000. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour. This happens all the time. This doesn’t happen once a year. It happens every day. A dentist’s office, the dentist spends money on advertising and newspapers and Google Ads and Facebook ads. A phone call comes in and it doesn’t get handled right. What that means is that devising a system for making sure that nobody ever gets put on hold, nobody ever gets transferred to the wrong person ends up in a dead-end, that a properly qualified salesperson always intercepts that call. Even if they were doing something else, you devising that system could easily be worth $10,000 an hour. When Ed Harycki designed that system. It took him years to get loan approval from two days down to 60 seconds, but he got it to where you could sit there and go, “There’s your rate and you don’t have to talk to anybody.” PayPal buys it for probably nine figures, I’m guessing. Those meetings where he worked with his team that was $100,000 an hour’s work. Even if that’s way out of your league and you can’t imagine $100,000 an hour. You should make $100,000 an hour for one hour every day, then you can take the rest of the day off. That’s how you should think about your time. 80/20 Sales And Marketing: Every single person is a vector. There’s an arrow of what you should point them at and there’s a backend of what they should be pointed away from. It’s interesting and if I could maybe summarize that for some of the real estate entrepreneurs. I took both of those pieces of advice, the one on leverage. I think about real estate businesses in Australia at the moment, everyone’s worried about their margins and costs being squeezed and consumers wanting more for less. I think what you are saying there is that not enough people are thinking on the right-hand side of the curve, where you could be offering a better service and charging more for it because 20% of your customers will pay for that. The Espresso Machine Principle says that there is a super-deluxe version that a certain percentage of people will easily pay much more money for. Often, it’s the concierge-level service. If you can make this simple and easy, and that’s always a lot of work. One thing about my seminars is I am not attracting the starry-eyed, “I think I’m going to start a business someday,” people. That is not who’s going to come to this. If you’re going to disrupt your industry, it’s going to take some serious effort and some serious focus and concentration. There’s one thing it’s not okay. You may have to hustle your buns, you may have to bust your ass, or you may not. It depends, but you’re going to have to bring fresh thinking and questions that you’re not used to asking and you’re going to have to start asking new questions. That’s the important part. Getting better at production, is it going to do it? A few years from now, you’ll be doing the same thing you’re doing. Your industry may have been disrupted by somebody else and your job that might not even exist. It is about leveraging time and having the time to think. That thinking time, if you’re doing it, which is what we were doing. If you are spending all your time doing and not enough time thinking, not enough time asking the right questions. Gary Keller, a big real estate agent wrote a whole book on The ONE Thing, which was thinking more and doing less. The answer should come to you when you give yourself the time and space to think. That’s what I’m looking forward to most about Rosetta Stone. All of the courses that I’ve done with you make me think. November 11th and 12th, then we have an optional day on the 13th. We’re a much smaller group of people. We’re going to take their businesses apart and put it back together. [bctt tweet=”Money is burning a hole in people’s pockets.” username=””] I have got some questions to ask you that we call The Leadership Diaries. It’s a series of questions that we ask industry leaders about their businesses so that other aspiring leaders can learn from the experienced guys. What was your first job? What did it teach you? My first job was a janitor job. I’ve done the paper route and stuff like that before, but I was sweeping floors in a fire alarm factory. What I learned was I absolutely hated that job. It was lonely. It was 4:30 to 7:00 in the evening every night after school. It killed my social life. What I did, I saved my money. I only made about $3.50 an hour at best, but I saved my money. I started a business building stereo equipment and I bought equipment, inventory and advertising. I got this other little tiny business off the ground. I remember sweeping floors thinking about my business. Every entrepreneur has done that. You’re punching the clock, you’re driving a forklift, whatever you’re doing and thinking. You might not even know what you should be thinking about, but you’re obsessing. Can you name someone that has had a big impact on you as a leader? There are a lot of people, but I’ll pick a guy named Dr Robert Knoll. He was an English professor that I had in college. Those of you familiar with Jordan Peterson, the guy is a lot like Jordan Peterson, except he wasn’t a psychologist, he was an English professor. I remember on the first day of class he said, “A community is a group of people who share the same stories,” and what he proceeded to do, it was called English Authors before 1800. It started with Beowulf, which was written in 780 and then we went to about 1800. We read all of this classic English literature. I came to understand in that class that human beings have been asking the same fundamental questions for thousands of years. There aren’t any new questions and there aren’t any new answers either. I still read a lot of that old literature. I think it’s what makes you wise. He had a huge effect on me. I’m channelling Dr Knoll every time I get on a stage. I hope to be the most provocative person that has talked to you since you can remember that because that’s what he was like. What’s your favourite question to ask somebody in a job interview? What does their answer tell you about the person? I want to know what their strengths and weaknesses are. I have an exercise if you go to PerryMarshall.com/pink-koolaid, I have this set of questions that you email ten of your friends and you ask them, “What do you think is my unique capability?” You combine that with, “What are you not good at?” When I hire somebody, I want to know what they’re good at. I also want to know what they’re not good at so that I give them something different. I think of every single person as a vector. There’s an arrow of what you should point them at and there’s a backend, the tail feathers, of what they should be pointed away from. That’s the key to hiring anybody. I did your Marketing DNA test. It’s a relevant thing for real estate agents to have a look at. I was a nine, six, seven, six and it basically confirmed that I should stay away from numbers and put together pretty pictures, which is in fact what I do. A lot of agents will say, “I hate getting on the phone,” but there are other ways to go about sales and marketing, which are much more in your lane. I can vouch for that as well. What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time? Know thyself. That speaks to everything we said, like the marketing DNA test for example, you should know how you persuade and also the way everybody masters anything. Let’s say that you’re learning to play the guitar. Most people, if they get serious about guitar, got inspired by somebody. They got inspired by Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or somebody. Here’s how the progression works. First, you do a bad rendition of Jimi Hendrix. That’s awful. You then get to a surprisingly respectable imitation of Jimi Hendrix, except that it doesn’t sound like him. You did play the notes, but you still don’t sound like him. The third step is you finally start to sound like yourself and you find your own voice. That is when the real leadership kicks in. When you discover your own voice and you’re confident about who and what that voice is and what it speaks about and who it speaks to. It’s okay to be in that imitation phase. That’s fine. Go ahead and do that, but understand eventually you’re going to detach from that and you’re going to be yourself. [bctt tweet=”If you’re going to disrupt your industry, it’s going to take some serious effort, focus, and concentration.” username=””] Where do good ideas in your business come from? How do you work out what ideas are in and what ideas get tossed? My client, Mark McShurley, has a great saying. He says, “There are few principles, many ideas and few decisions.” I find that the best ideas that I get come from me putting myself in inspiring situations or having space. I get a lot of great ideas when I’m in a high energy room with high energy people. It’s why we do seminars and masterminds because if you have a good enough atmosphere, it will raise up the level of people in their thinking. I also do a surprising amount of travel like riding my bike. I’m doing my hobbies. I’ve had to in the last few years give myself explicit permission, “Perry, if you’re getting excited about one of your hobby projects, you do not need to justify it. You don’t need to rationalize it. Order the parts and build the stuff or buy the plane tickets and put them on the calendar. You don’t need to rationalize the creative space.” A lot of people are like, “Someday when I’m finally successful, then I’ll take that bike ride or I’ll go on a vacation with my family.” It’s almost like they’re punishing themselves. Inspiration never comes when your fists are clenched. You have to relax. I realize that doesn’t even sound right. It’s like, “Please, take a chill pill, do something fun in your life.” That’s where the breakthrough comes from. I’ve got a question here. What does the first hour of your day look like? Are you a 5:00 AM Clubber? The real estate industry is notorious for The 5AM Club. Robin Sharma started it. There are a couple of coaches in the industry that believe in it. I don’t know that term. What is that? 80/20 Sales And Marketing: To learn how to make things that age well is to surround yourself with things that age well. The 5:00 AM Club is you get up at 5:00 AM, you go to the gym, you make 25 calls before 10:00 or 100 calls before 10:00 and hustle. When I started in the real estate industry, I caught that thinking that I had to get up at 5:00, be on the phone, going to the gym and all that stuff. Until I thought about, “What works for me?” I get up at 5:00 AM now and I think the single best habit I picked up from you on is picking up a pen and paper first thing in the morning rather than picking up my phone. I don’t think I’ll ask you that question. I do that. I get up at 5:45 and I journal for a minimum of one hour and sometimes two hours. I do my highest level of creative thinking and creating time. I usually engage with the outside world at 11:30. Most people can’t imagine that. It seems very backward, but what I’m doing is I’m moving the $10,000 an hour work immediately after I’ve had space with my notebook, my thoughts and my cup of tea. That works so much better. I think hustling is very often not most people’s highest value skill. True for some, but not for most entrepreneurs I know. You get into a bit of a vicious circle. You’re thinking, “If I’m not hustling, then I’m not performing.” That is very destructive because it tears apart your relationships, but what it also does is it starts requiring you to hustle more and more. It’s dreadful. Do not start your day on the phone, in an email box, social media or news. Go take a shower, get yourself a cup of coffee, sit down with your notebook and be alone with your thoughts in the morning. “I had a dream. I had an idea in the shower. This is what I’m thinking about doing today. This is what I’m grateful for from yesterday.” You get in that space first, it’s like putting armor on. I can’t explain it. When you do that, your whole day goes so much better. Your energy is different. It’s way better. [bctt tweet=”Life is too short to do the same things over and over again.” username=””] What does leadership at home look like? I’m going to have to confess to some hypocrisy probably, but it’s being present for one thing. I am the classic, believe me. I’m a classic absent-minded professor. I live in my head and I have all of these ideas, but one of the best habits or rituals that I picked up in the last couple of years is I take my kids places when I go. I’m taking my kids to Australia. I can’t bring all of them, but I’m bringing three of them. We will have so much fun. I take them on business trips and whatever. Sometimes it mostly works but we’re in hotels, we’re in restaurants, we’re in cabs, we’re in aeroplanes, we’re talking to each other. That is so cool. Everybody’s different. My kids are getting a little bit older now. They’re teenagers and early twenties and I love adult kids. It is so wonderful. It is so much fun. I hope that’s helpful. We’ve talked about a whole bunch of stuff in terms of things that are going to happen at Rosetta Stone. We’ve talked about Tactical Triangles, 80/20, how to start your day and all of that, which is amazing. You guys that are thinking about coming to Rosetta Stone, please do because it will be amazing. What is one thing that you’d like to leave everyone who’s reading this? Most people are way too overstimulated with too much stuff that’s only important for five seconds. Everybody should read something written before Gutenberg every day. That is the antidote to Twitter. It’s the antidote to Facebook. If something was written before the printing press, it means it was copied by hand, by scribes and hidden in urns, in caves so that when they burned Rome or Alexandria that it still survived. The only stuff we have is the stuff that did survive all that, which means somebody must have thought it was important. Almost anything that old, whatever it’s talking about, it’s important, valuable and relevant. What your friend had sushi for once yesterday isn’t relevant to anybody. Nobody’s going to save that for thousands of years. What does that do for you? That gives you a clear sense of what is going to come and go and what is going to last a long time. I’m into music and there is a lot of music that has not aged well. There is other music that ages very well. The only way I know of to learn how to make things that age well is to surround yourself with things that age well because it’s not like there’s a formula exactly. If you listen to music that ages well, you’ll make music that ages well. If you read literature that ages well, you’ll write blog posts that age well. I have ten-year-old blog posts that are as fresh as the day that they were written. I think all this comes down to a point. Here’s the point, are you going to build things that you have to rebuild next month and rebuild next year and start over? Are you going to build things that last? That is what I’m about. What if you built a business that lasted several years? What if you built a business that lasted many years? What if the way that you do your business by engineering it the right way was very little needed to change in the next several years? You could let that business run and then you can step outside of that business and be a creative person and do whatever is important to you. That’s how I want you to think about your business and about your life because life is too short to do the same over and over again. Important Links: About Rosetta Stone Sydney The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords Perry Marshall SolarQuotes.com.au The ONE Thing PerryMarshall.com/pink-koolaid Marketing DNA The 5AM Club http://EliteAgentElevate.com/ https://www.PerryMarshall.com/elite http://www.perrymarshall.com/eliteagent

Jeff Turner has been a leader in all things digital in the real estate industry for decades – and now he helps tech startups understand and navigate the real estate industry as a part of the NAR Reach incubator program. Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER In this interview with Jeff, we take a deep dive into how technology is changing real estate and how to future proof your real estate business. Convenience as a currency is a trend that’s here to stay. The question is: Where is the convenience going to be placed in the transaction for me? JEFF TURNER Some topics that were discussed include What makes a startup in the real estate industry likely to succeed Where Jeff sees the role of the real estate professional long term Jeff’s thoughts on traditional brokerages vs some of the new startup models The gaps in the iBuyer model and what traditional agents can learn from them (and other potential disintermediators) Fixed/low fee models and why commission is not really the issue for the consumer Some of the current problems with real estate marketing and how they might be solved What are the things real estate agents need to do now to get ready for a world which includes automation and artificial intelligence Jeff’s favourite tech tools What to do now to future proof your business Download the action guide for this episode at https://eliteagentelevate.com Contact Jeff Turner Jeff on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyturner/ Jeff’s website https://www.jeffturner.info/about/ References and Links Mentioned Second Century Ventures http://www.secondcenturyventures.com Real Satisfied https://www.realsatisfied.com.au  Immoviewer https://www.immoviewer.com  DocuSketch https://docusketch.com  Curbio https://www.curbio.com Punk Post https://punkpost.com Krisp.au https://krisp.ai Imre.ca https://imre.ca

Hayley Mitchell started in real estate in 1999 and has worked in all facets of property management. She’s won numerous awards including REIV property manager of the year two times and has twice been named on the Elite Agent industry influencers list in 2017 and 2018. She also recently launched a new business, Geelong Property Managers. Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER In this interview with Hayley, we talk about what to expect at the upcoming PMLR event, how she manages her busy diary, some of the issues that come up over and over again in the Australian Property Manager Community, plus practical tools, new business models and more. “We’ve got a couple of agencies who manage property in our area, but they’re based in Sydney. So we’re going to be the people on the ground doing their routine inspections are leasing appointments and they do all of the admin work. So…we never actually speak to the client, we deal directly with the property management agency based in Sydney, but we do all the running around for them…” Hayley Mitchell Some topics that were discussed include: How Hayley remains productive juggling a training business, a rent roll and moderating the Australian PM Community Why PMs burnout and what to do about it How leaders can be more inclusive of the PM side of the business and improve the culture at the same time What property management in the future looks like Removing the need for a traditional trust account Time management tools Tips for general diary management Tips for dealing with difficult tenants/owners The skills you will need in the future to make PM a career. Contact Hayley Mitchell Mitchell Property Training Geelong Property Managers References and Links Mentioned: Elite Agent Extra Get the Action Guide PMLR – Property Management Learning Retreat Waurn Ponds Estate Mitchell Property Training Geelong Property Managers Trello Microsoft Teams

With a wealth of experience in the real estate industry, Mark McLeod is the Chief of Growth  of the largest real estate group in Australia. Mark’s role focuses in on how agents can grow themselves personally in order to grow the business professionally.  Want more from this episode? Get access to the full episode guide, quick video tips, tools and more by joining our community or becoming a subscriber JOIN COMMUNITY (FREE!) BECOME A SUBSCRIBER In this interview, Mark discusses growth in any market, how the role of the real estate agent needs to evolve both within this market and in the future, how to turn around a stale listing and much more. “Time is the currency in which you deal in. How well you use that time will determine the success of your business.” Mark McLeod Some topics that were discussed include: The concept driving traffic (organic vs proactive) to your stock and how that impacts vendor conversations and reporting How controlling clearance rates and days on market will impact your energy (for better or worse) What is likely to happen once a piece of stock hits 60 days (based on actual data) and why ‘recycling’ can help Where scripts and dialogs fall short as far as your customers are concerned – particularly, for example, when it comes to something like a price reduction Real relationships vs virtual relationships and what you can rely on What is an opportunistic business vs a ‘core’ business and which is most likely to grow What might occur in the real estate office of the future Building an ecosystem Contact Mark McLeod Mark on LinkedInThe Ray White Group References and Links Mentioned: Elite Agent Extra Mark’s first podcast with Elite Agent – The Leadership Diaries Focus on the Opportunities – eBook with all of Marks articles Ray White’s relationship with Harvard University and Professor Groysberg Podcast with Gavin Rubinstein Elite Agent Transform – Building an Ecosystem with Mark McLeod (highlights) Building an Ecosystem with Mark McLeod (Extended Pro Version) Three sales and controlling the conversation in a changed market (Extended Pro Version) The innovators at Ray White: Jason Alford and Kelly Tatlow