What would you give to 5X your real estate business in 2024?
What if it could be easy and meant that you could have more time and more income?
In our year-end episode, John McGrath, Tom Panos & Troy Malcolm revel practical strategies on resetting for the new year.
We delve into the power of a positive mindset, the law of attraction, and the impact of consistent calling.
We also share actionable tips to help you wrap-up 2023 sucessfully, secure listings for the new year, and why launching listings early can be a game-changer.
As we bid farewell to this year, we express our deepest gratitude to you, our listeners, for your unwavering support.
We anticipate an exciting new year, bursting with enlightening content and a brand-new podcast studio!
See you soon and let's make 2024 your best year ever!
What would you give to 5X your real estate business in 2024?
What if it could be easy and meant that you could have more time and more income?
In our year-end episode, John McGrath, Tom Panos & Troy Malcolm revel practical strategies on resetting for the new year.
We delve into the power of a positive mindset, the law of attraction, and the impact of consistent calling.
We also share actionable tips to help you wrap-up 2023 sucessfully, secure listings for the new year, and why launching listings early can be a game-changer.
As we bid farewell to this year, we express our deepest gratitude to you, our listeners, for your unwavering support.
We anticipate an exciting new year, bursting with enlightening content and a brand-new podcast studio!
See you soon and let's make 2024 your best year ever!
Tom Panos, john McGrath, troy Malcolm. It is the finish line. It is Grand Final Day, the last and final episode, not forever, but for 2023. Troy John, how are you going? Good, very good, thank you very much, troy.
John McGrath:Good yeah, like I think, just to let our listeners know this is going to be our last podcast for this calendar year. I think a lot of our listeners, an audience and the gym members of Tommy and Susan are heading off over the next week or two. We thought we'll finish strong while we've still got a full house. We'll talk about a few things today, troy. I think we're going to kick off a little bit. We've been having a lot of our own internal discussions about how do you reset for the new year. I like that word, tommy reset. It's kind of like reset back to zero. I mean, what are you going to do for next year? I was talking Troy and I went up to in our new Lennox head office, tommy, which is a pretty beautiful place and a beautiful office.
John McGrath:To be quite frank, I was talking to them a couple of days ago. One of the things I said that seemed to get their attention. I said are you interested in five-acting your business? People kind of glaze over a bit. Yeah, but it's not going to happen. I don't want to work that hard. I don't need that much stress. I said what if it was no more time, if it was less stress and no more time, maybe even less time. They said, yeah, what's the formula? I said, well, the average agent, probably average agent. I'm not saying Matt Steinmeier, I'm saying average agent probably attends 10 listing appointments a month. Yes, I said how many you're winning? Some of the audience says, oh, maybe three, maybe four. I said, yeah, let's call it one out of three 33%. I said how do we get you to five X, if next year you start turning up to the same 10, no extra time, no extra hours, but you're turning up a better version of yourself, sharper, better dialogue, better presentation, better closing skills all the things that we talk about throughout the year. You turn up and instead of getting three out of 10, we can help you through skills, get to seven out of 10. Not only are those extra four sales going to be an immediate and tangible doubling effect, it's the spin-off business, tommy, and you've talked about it for years. It's the spin-off business that everyone's going to get, because, with those extra four boards in the market and extra four properties on REA and extra four vendors to create raving fans, and each one's going to have 30 people come through the campaign. So you've got another 120 buyers to delight, and then four people are going to buy the properties. So you've got another four people you can list and sell. So the effect is not of going from 33% to 66%. It's not a doubling effect in terms of the success of your listing presentation. It probably, over the next two or three years, is a four or five times.
John McGrath:And we look at Alex Jordan and I shared his numbers with you privately, tommy, and I won't disclose him here. It's his business, but this guy is writing telephone numbers every month and a few short years ago he was writing $380,000 a year after 12 years in the business. So what did he do? And it's probably the question I get asked most, tommy, is he just tightened up a few areas of his business? He put laser focus on a particular part of his market. He was always good at servicing clients, but he got better and he did a number of things.
John McGrath:And then what we saw is you've seen in the Cartoon Troid the snowball that starts at the top of the hill and it's little and they roll it down the hill and halfway down it's bigger and better and stronger and faster, but Tommy gets to the bottom, it's a wrecking ball and that's what happens, and we call it Tommy off of the tipping point.
John McGrath:You get to a certain stage and Tesla's there and Alex Jordan's there, and Matt Steinmaid's been there, and Tostavon's been there and Phil Harris has been there you get to a stage in your career where you're actually growing faster with less effort, because you've become an attraction agent. So I just want people to remember as they contemplate over Christmas. You know, just, you know, remember, alex Jordan was in real estate for 12 years and his best year was 380, and the guy's now riding over a minion a month and he's having a ball and he's assembled a great team around him, and that can happen to anyone that's listening here today, and the same story to Matty Stymie and many others that we talk about. So I really want people over the break, tommy, to sit down and think about what is holding them back. I don't know if you guys ever listen to Esther Hicks. Do you ever listen to Esther Hicks?
Tom Panos:Matty Stymie put me on to her and it was a period. Mat said he only was listening to her and no one else. But go on, she's a great, she's brilliant.
John McGrath:She's at the esoteric end of the scale, troy, as you know. So some people switch off and I really disappoints me because if you listen to it it's actually scientific and it's brilliant, but it might sound to the uninitiated at the spiritual end of the scale. But she talks about if you get your vibration on alignment and she talks about everything is just about energy. And anyone that missed Mat Stymie's fairly recent TikTok about energy, where he's talking in the car to Jordan Bulma and Jordy rings him up and he said I'm hitting his flat spot and I'm a bit tired at the end of the year. Mat just talks him through it. It's a five minute piece of gold. I think I sent it to you, tommy. I think you listen to him anyway, and just, it's all about tweaking the things to get yourself aligned.
John McGrath:And she talks a lot, troy, about removing the resistance and friction that you are yourself creating in your life. So she says you know, you don't actually have to go out there and get too much more in terms of skills and effort in your life, in your business. What you got to do is get rid of the stuff, and it's usually around energy and beliefs that's holding it back. You know that little inner voice that talks you out of doing things and that little lazy conversation you have with yourself and all those sort of things. So I just think what a great time between now and when people get running 100% next year, which might be a few weeks time what a great time to be resetting and being honest with yourself and saying what do I have to change to be the best version of myself? And don't be embarrassed about the answer, because if it's your, you hate rejection. Well, guess what? Welcome to the human race. Each and every one of us hates rejection. The only difference, tommy, is the people that actually get ahead, they hate it, but they don't let it stop them, whereas the people that don't get it, they hate it and they therefore go and find something else to do and then invent an excuse. So you know, I'm really when I'm talking with our team, it's just about doing a reality check, being honest with yourself, taking extreme ownership, just not not laying blame anywhere.
John McGrath:I mean, how many times true do we hear, even in our company and I think we've got a very strong cultural mindset but people blaming competitors? I heard it the other day. Someone is at one of our offices I think we'll go down in Melbourne and they said, oh, you don't understand. The competition is charging half a percent and paying for marketing. So in essence they're saying they're doing it for free. And I said you know, that's not stopping you, that's not stopping you.
John McGrath:There's a conversation and have with a vendor that makes that sound ridiculous. To want to entertain engaging someone for the most valuable mandate of your life, most valuable appointment you're going to have in a business sense, and you're putting on someone that's prepared to do it for free because they're that desperate and because they've got no other option, I mean just doesn't make any sense. So I would do that. The other thing, tommy, just to mention, there's a guy, as I said to Troy this morning, his name is Honda and ironically he started Honda. Anyway, he's renowned for a number of quotes and sayings, but the one that struck me that I heard recently on a podcast was 90 success is 99% failure, and I thought that's so right.
John McGrath:You know you make the hundred calls. You may only get one listing, but I've got to tell you that listing is a beautiful outcome for that week's calls or that day's calls, and it's turning up. It's you know you show 100 buyers through a property, you've only need one of the hundred to buy it and that's another great outcome and another raving fan and another sale and another new customer. But you've got to get through the 99 that say no and often slag the property office. Not just no thanks, it's no thanks. This is terrible. I wouldn't buy it if you gave it to me. So there's often a bit of negativity thrown around for the people that don't want to do business with you. And I get it. It's hard to go to six listings and miss five and turn up to the six, but that's the deal, you just got to do it. You got to do it.
Troy Malcolm:I was going to say there's no doubt Go Sorry, John.
John McGrath:What are your insights? You look back on the other. That's just for me. It's my let's 5X the business. Work no extra hours, have less stress, have more fun in 2024, forget the market. It's irrelevant to you. Forget the competition, they're irrelevant. Take ownership. So that's kind of where I'm seeing things. What about you as you reflect on 20th?
Troy Malcolm:No, doubt, john, mine are going to sound very similar to yours in many ways, because I think we have a very similar view on what we can control and what we can't. We talk about the inner market and the outer market so often. What can we and what do we know to be true in 2024? Market conditions are going to change up down, better, worse. We know they're going to change at some point in time during the course of the next 12 months, the same way that if we had this conversation 12 months ago, we would have said the same thing. So market conditions are going to change. What we can understand and what we do know as agents is that we could adapt to that change and we can see the new market, because we've seen that translate in so many cases this year where we've seen agents have better years than they've ever had. Why? Because they've had the ability to understand where the market is going, adapt to change, adapt their pricing strategy and make sure that they're consistent with all of the things that we know make a successful real estate agent Communication, educating themselves, training, setting expectations, making sure they're delivering world-class, open for inspections.
Troy Malcolm:So anyone that's listening to this podcast in particular, I take 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, and sit down at the end of this or when you get a quiet moment over the next couple of weeks leading into Christmas and work out how did you perform, prospect least, negotiate, sell.
Troy Malcolm:Give yourself an honest score out of 10. If you're three or four out of prospecting, what do you have to do over the break to make yourself an eight or nine out of 10? It's probably only a few little incremental changes that's going to have a significant impact on your business in 2024. That, along with a really positive mindset and I think that that's going to be a huge player in the game next year is having the right mindset to allow you to create a great business and then making sure you are consistent, turning up and making sure you're doing those calls. John, so you get through 99 and you get that one that's going to get a listing that's going to lead to another three listings. It's actually a really simple opportunity for anyone that's listening to take their business and five exit over the next 12 months if they implement and stay focused on the simple strategy of making sure they're creating revenue fans.
John McGrath:Tommy, what are you seeing from the people you're coaching and the traction and your own personal insights about what success is going to require in 2024 for people to go on and play over the next? Well, during the break.
Tom Panos:Well, I think I interviewed Thomas McGlynn on one of my real estate gym interviews and he said that many real estate agents are focused on everything else but volume, that in reality, we're a volume-based business and we're probably going into a marketplace, and Louis Christopher has also confirmed that yesterday. He's from SQM Research, so I had someone that's got data there. Vendors are selling and buyers are buying and it doesn't matter whether they're going at high prices or they're going at low prices, and I understand there are two markets. There's the mortgage market people that got mortgages and there's also an un-mortgage market. Now, I accept that 5, 10, 15, 20 million people go to Peksa and they settle with cash and they're unaffected by interest rates. I understand that. But the great news is we're not like people in crypto or managed funds or shares. People are always buying and selling because of health reasons, divorces, marriages, schools, size of families, needing to be bigger houses, smaller houses, relocations, and that's a great story. We don't care whether the RBA puts it to 15 rate rises or to 5 rate rises. So I agree with you. I think we're going to have a great year and I think what would be good to finish off on this podcast is we've still got 10 days left.
Tom Panos:There are practical things that you can be doing to finish your year that can help you. As John and Troy, we've used this term every year Park your car on the top of the hill with a handbrake on and come back and effortlessly just let it go and fly, and you can do stuff right now to actually allow that to happen. You guys can't see it, but up on the screen. What I've got here is some of the things that I think you can be doing in the last 10 days. Well, we've got 20 days left, but let's say 10 real days that you can be doing End of year summary calls. I think it's a great thing to do. I think calling someone and saying, hey, this is what happened this year. I want to wish you and your family all the best over the festive season, and I think you've got to be also very mindful that not all cultures celebrate Christmas, so be careful with the language and dialogue that you use.
Tom Panos:In this diverse country that we have holiday, festive season, pocketbook listings. I think that's a really good thing that you should be doing right now, which is signing up stuff and not launching it. Listing it now, but launching it later. I think there's a lot of vendors that say to an agent, let's catch up early in the new year and talk about our plan. And often that phone call never comes. It goes to another agent. And I think you can reduce the probability of that happening by getting things up and rolling. John and Troy. What could you say to a vendor to maybe get them to list now and get stuff ready so you can launch early in the new year and that way both you and the vendor can move away with closure knowing there's a plan in place. What do you say to the vendor that says, hey, let's catch up next year, we'll talk about it then.
John McGrath:Well, I think the first thing is, if we get prepared right here, right now, we can do it and select the best times and the best days to get ourselves organised, get our photography, get our drone shots, get our videos. But the interesting thing, tom, is that we find that while some selection of the community go on holidays, for sure, and some will go away, there's a lot of people that are coming into Sydney, including expats, and at the moment the Australian dollar is at close to record lows. There's a lot of people. If you'd allow me to pop your board up and put you on realstatecomau, I think that there's a pretty strong chance we could generate some highly qualified inquiry. So I would be. And that's true. We know that REA's stat tells us that I think it's Boxing Day, troy that they say is the number one traffic for the year, and if it's not, it's one of the top few traffic days of the year. And it's not a story to get someone listed. It's a real story that expats that have a base in Sydney or are going to be returning to Sydney and have family here are going to be coming back. So my view is always, as you guys know, my view is you never give anyone a recommendation to do something that's not in their interest, but I think genuinely it's in the interest of a seller. If you're going to put a board up on the 15th of January, your mares will get it up on the 15th of December and you might say to me well, look, I'd rather people don't come through over that Christmas New Year week. You can exclude time to show it, but just exposing it to people and being able to have a conversation with highly qualified people that have got pretty big checkbooks, the expats at the moment coming back buying at the sort of Aussie dollar low levels, so I'd just be working on that.
John McGrath:You said something before, tommy, which I think is a good point, that there are a lot of agents that list properly and put boards up on Christmas Eve and then go away themselves for three weeks and they don't make any arrangements and so forth. Please make sure that if you are going away and if you don't want to take business calls which is your prerogative you either have a clear message or you have someone on your behalf answering and maybe even showing the properties, because there will be opportunities to sell over the Christmas new year break and if your vendors are open to it and if you're open to finding a solution, if you're not going to be here, I would definitely do that. The other thing, tommy, is have a look at all of the. I mean, there are going to be people that are going to take unsold stock to Christmas, something that might have passed in a few weeks ago and I've been watching your terrific TikToks, you know, and they're so honest and raw and, as you say, most things are selling. But it's got harder. We don't have six and eight people at auctions. Usually we've got one or two and instead of selling 11 out of 12, you might be selling seven out of 12. So there are. There is more expired unsold stock right now than there has been throughout most of the year in those markets.
John McGrath:You've got to have a plan for those vendors. Are you going to relaunch it, whether it's another auction or just relaunch campaign, you need to keep people engaged because if someone's listed, let's say, second week in November, and they went to auction around now and they haven't sold, if the next time you start talking to them about what are you going to do is the third week of January, they could have clocked out, they could have met another agent over the break. Someone else might be chasing an expired and getting under you. So I think you've got to give everyone a plan. We know that prices are the number one reason things don't sell, so you might want to have some pricing conversation with people. But there's plenty of things you can do.
John McGrath:I mean, I was coaching someone yesterday, troy from our Canola business, and you know I was just saying you could, you should in fact you know speak to at least 25 to 30 of your clients, people on your database, and they don't all have to be pipeline sellers. They could be past clients, they could be influencers. I saw on your slide, tommy. He said shot callers, which is great. Just get on the phone. 25, 30 a day, that's 150 a week, because over the next two weeks you could speak to 300 people. We know statistically that 6% of those people are going to be sellers next year sometime. And you just say Tom just wanted to. You know, wish you and Sulu all the best for Christmas and New Year.
John McGrath:Obviously, just to let you know I'm still around and I'm here to help if you need me. I'm just trying to get all my VIP clients through and speak to them all just to check if anyone's thinking of either buying a property, a new property, an investment property next year or even contemplating selling a home. Because I want to make sure I'm geared up to help them. You have that conversation to 300 people. I got to tell you you're going to double, you're going to have 10 or 20 pipeline sellers.
John McGrath:People say, well, we're not sure we're going to talk about over Christmas. But yeah, look, we definitely be interested in talking to you, I think come January. But you've got to be top of mind, you've got to be in front of them. A lot of people's business has slowed down a little bit. The buyer and cry might have slowed down. They might have even sold all their stock even better problem to have. But yeah, just get on the phone. Unless you're going to take your holidays from now, which is fine, but if you're going to work through till the 18th or whatever date it might be, troy, just get on the phone and just keep extending out and talking to people.
Tom Panos:Yeah, troy, I'm expecting from conversations I'm having with agents, I'm expecting a fair few properties to be passed in on the ninth and the 16th Stock levels have been building up. There are a few agents of mine that are saying what they're going to do is Take the properties off the market and quickly relaunch them early in the new year when there's no other stock. Make it look like a new listing, new photos, new images. There's all these arrangements that RIA has got with the unsolved stock in there. What do you think, troy? Is that a worthwhile strategy than just going to auction and passing it in with no bids?
Troy Malcolm:Only if you exhaust all the buyers and inquiries on that's come through in the previous six weeks regarding that.
Troy Malcolm:If you've exhausted all of those avenues and you've reeducated the market about the position, the property, the pricing strategy and the expectations of the owners, then that is an option.
Troy Malcolm:We're encouraging all of our team to use a staged approach and, if the property does pass in those buyers or those inquiries that have been made throughout the course of the campaign, to rearrange and get a second inspection or third inspection back at the property, have those crucial conversations with the owners and see if there's a deal to be done. The chances are if someone's on the market right now, or someone's buying in the market right now, or an active bidder, they want to buy before Christmas. That's the reality. There's an opportunity out there to still get an agreement in price and reset the expectations, but it is a strategy that can work in markets when you're reshooting properties and launching them. I would launch quite big, though, and I'd have a social media campaign that backs that, to make sure you're exposing it to a new pool of buyers and you're not just hitting the same pool that's already seen it less than six weeks ago.
Tom Panos:Paul said team next year at some point, probably the first quarter MDA podcast is going to go up a level in production value. There's going to be a diet.
Troy Malcolm:Is it not high enough?
Tom Panos:We've been using Zoom and it serves a very good purpose, but we're going to be doing the podcast in a studio, we're going to be doing short reels on social and we're also going to be doing what a lot of podcasters do, which is have the content both on podcast platforms like Spotify, but also on YouTube. That allows people to consume the YouTube version, or when they're driving, the audio version. Last thing I want to leave. These are eight questions I look at in December every year, eight game changing questions that are worth asking yourself. These are crucial conversations to have with yourself.
Tom Panos:Number one what were your highlights of this year? A really good thing to do there everyone is get your mobile phone and look at your camera roll. Your camera roll is basically a summary of the highlights that you felt. Hey, I'm taking a photo of that. What were the highlights of this year?
Tom Panos:Number two what did you learn about yourself that surprised you? That's a good question. You get insight where you sometimes underestimate yourself or some of the beliefs and stories and narratives you have about things were inaccurate and you've come to realise they're not serving you. Number three what was the hardest aspect of this year? Number four what lesson did you learn that you're going to take into next year. Number five what's one thing you'll commit to not going back to? Number six? What's one thing you started this year that you want to keep doing? Number seven in what ways are you stronger than what you were last year? What wisdoms are you bringing into 2024? Number eight what are the most proud things that happened for you this year? What are you most proud of what happened in the last 12 months? Good questions to reflect as you plan 2024.
Tom Panos:John and Troy, thank you again. We've been doing this close to a decade. I want to thank all our audience for the time that they give us their attention. I know you've got lots of options out there. Troy and John and I come together most weeks just jabbering away, having an informal conversation and keeping a friendship with all our real estate community, mainly in Australia and New Zealand. Gentlemen, stay well, stay healthy. Hey can.
John McGrath:I ask Thanks to Susan. Thanks to Susan too, Tommy, because she does an enormous amount for this enterprise, can we call it? She's probably not listening today because I know she's been tidying up some stuff at News Limited that we were involved with earlier today. Thank you to Susan for doing such an amazing job. Long-term Troy, what were you going to say? No, Tom Troy.
Tom Panos:Tom, what are you doing Gentlemen? Too good year for you average year. What was the year like Troy? Good year, bad year, average year, you remember?
Troy Malcolm:Tom, every year is a good year Challenges the highs, the lows. I think there's always a lesson on its life. It's one of those exciting things while we're here and why we get to enjoy it. I think there's so many examples where we have seen friends and family members go through some hard times over the past 12 months to be in this lucky country. Everything's figureoutable. The support networks we put around ourselves allow us to get up every day and smile. I'm grateful. We've got a huge amount of gratitude for this year and there's some really valuable lessons and there's some really valuable opportunities that I know 24 will bring. I'm excited. Please come back 20, good year—.
John McGrath:Oh, look very good. You tell me many people would remember we lost our dearly beloved Steve McWire, which was a very sad personal thing for all of our company and our friends, and I know you guys were both very close to Steve. That was the dark, sad part of the year, for sure. Having said that, there's many other great things that have happened in and around our various communities and, as Troy said, you've just got you know. Look, the things that aren't perfect, you know, in this country most of them are pretty much first world problems. We're not dealing with some of the stuff that's happening in Europe and the Middle East and so forth, which are tragedies when people have got bombs whistling over their heads. So, you know, other than the serious health illness or the loss of a loved one, I think our problems are insignificant compared with most of the world. So I think you've got to be grateful for that which we are.
John McGrath:So no, it's been fun. Thank you both, not only for this opportunity but also for your friendship, each and every one of the Tom's Gym members and our listeners out there. You know. Have a great and safe Christmas. Relax, refresh, but also reset, if you will, because we're going to be coming at your heart from middle of January from our brand new shiny, bright podcast studio. So lots to look forward to. But, tommy and Troy, I'll see you guys many times between now and Christmas, but for everyone else, we'll see you in 24.
Tom Panos:See you in 24. Sign off. Thank you for everything. See you, Thane.