Million Dollar Agent
Million Dollar Agent
Real Estate Black Belt
"Real Estate Black Belt" framework — a comprehensive guide showing agents what to focus on at each career stage from earning $150k to $2M+ in commission.
You will gain invaluable insights, including:
- The critical role of product knowledge mastery in building a strong foundation.
- How strategic team building can free agents from non-dollar productive tasks and amplify efficiency.
- Tips for managing time and energy in the early phases of a real estate career.
- The evolution of sales techniques and client relationships that drive long-term success.
- The importance of leadership and mindset shifts for those aiming to reach the top.
Join us at AREC 2025 on May 25-26 at Gold Coast Convention Centre. Tickets available now at arecconference.com.au
Be a Real Estate Gym member and save $100 on your AREC ticket! https://www.realestategym.com.au/
Tom Panos, john McGrath and Troy Malcolm back together for Million Dollar Agent, the podcast. We're about four weeks. Isn't it weird? It only felt like Christmas was a few weeks ago. Yet people are saying to me today Tom, we've got, four weeks before Easter, got a clean run, got to move in. So much happening. Good to see you John, good to see you Troy. How have you both been?
John McGrath:Good, tommy, good, well done. The Tigers. On the weekend, south Sydney have thank God, south. I was worried after they'd won two games because they've been playing so pathetically. Now they're back to their normal state. They got thrashed by Cronulla on the weekend, but the Tigers the Tigers are the team to beat this year. I reckon you guys are the dark horse, so I'm very, very excited for you and all Tigers, players and supporters.
Tom Panos:Yeah, well, I've got to say, john, it's been a long time that I haven't been this enthusiastic, don't get me wrong. I've been enthusiastic every start of every season, right, and then I've become unenthusiastic by round 10. But it's a great start. I know, john, you're a big fan of Benji Marshall. You like him, you like his philosophy and I really hope he goes well. Troy the Roosters, did they play this week?
Troy Malcolm:They did, they did, they lost in New Zealand Tom to the Warriors.
Tom Panos:So that Penrith win was a one-off? Is it Troy?
Troy Malcolm:Yeah, well, I mean, the good thing is, Tom, that you don't win the comp in March, so we're going to wait and see how it all plays out.
John McGrath:Every year house people in head office say to me it's early days, john.
Troy Malcolm:It's early days, it's normally the Tigers that are saying that, isn't it?
John McGrath:I see these texts on a Friday night and a Saturday night to Shannon Donato and some of the guys at head office. What's this rubbish? Oh, it's early days, john, don't worry about it. The real estate front. I've got to shout out two things and I'm very proud of them Luke Hogan and Will Manning, who, as you know, operate as a team from our double-way office. They did a $100 million week last week. Four transactions. One was $50 million, the other three equated to another $50 million, and I'm just so proud of them. They're just two young guys having a crack, brilliant at what they do, and a $100 million a week anywhere in the world is a world record, I reckon, for that week anyway. So that is exciting. And also this is one, tommy, and you're in my area, the beautiful inner west of Sydney. Did you know that Tarun Sethi last weekend did a duplex at $6.6 million in Warimba? A duplex, extraordinary sale price.
Tom Panos:Well, that's got to be. If that is a duplex, john, and that is the price I can't see a higher price duplex in the inner west I'd go out arguably and say it'd be. I mean, obviously the eastern suburbs and certain parts of of the north um to achieve that sort of level, but that's an extraordinary number. It's funny we're talking about uh toroon, because I was uh online on realestatecom having a look because someone asked me about a strathfield agent and they said, oh, who sells the most? I said, well, if you want to make a decision on who sells the most, I said it's not a difficult thing to do. You just go on to realestatecom and I had a look and this was only on Saturday night, so it's fresh in my mind. He's 100 deals a year at an average price of $3 million to $4 million. That's a serious producer of real estate. That's a serious producer of real estate and he's a producer of real estate.
John McGrath:And you know he's just a terrific agent. So we're so proud of him and you're right, that would be. I'm sure, and you know Dave Chidiak might be listening and he might call us and say, no, he's done a better one. But I think 6.6 in the inner west for a duplex is extraordinary. So anyway, that's enough for us. But I'm just very, very proud of all those guys. But, yeah, but I'm just very, very proud of all those guys. But today we're going to help all of our listeners go to the next level on the Black Belt.
Tom Panos:So, troy and John our listeners obviously can't see the slide I'm showing, though many of them would have seen me show it at training conferences, and that is real estate Black Belt. I love models. I love being able to show one table or one image that actually says a thousand words. Actually, this one says 10,000 words. You could write a book on it, because I often find that I'm dealing with an agent who's an emerging agent, who might be in real estate for less than two years, and they'll say to me hey, listen, I want to go up and meet Matt Steinway, I want to go and see exactly what his prospecting strategy is. And I always say to them listen, what you should do is ask him not what his prospecting strategy is in 2025, ask him what his prospecting strategy was in 1995, because that's going to be a far better thing for you to look at. Don't time travel too far ahead.
Tom Panos:So the slide I've got is called Real Estate Black Dog and it basically shows white, yellow, green, blue, red and black and essentially what we're saying is what it takes an agent to go from 150 GCI to 2 million plus, and there are many people in real estate that actually do $10 million plus and $15 million plus actually these days. But I just want to talk about at the various levels of real estate. What should the focus be? What should you really be looking at majoring? Because obviously, if you're writing $2 million and over, you've probably got a team, you've got an associate, you've got a leverage agent, but in the early stages you probably are on your own. So let's talk about yellow and white belts. So these are people that are 300 GCI and under John and Troy. What do you think should be the major focus of agents that are doing 300 GCI and under, probably in their first year or two in real estate?
John McGrath:Yeah, look, troys, I'll kick it off. I know you do a lot of coaching around this space. You know lifting agents to the next level. I think in the early stages, tom, it's about product knowledge, personal characteristics, growing yourself as an individual, because real estate, once you've got self-mastery happening, the real estate black belt mastery, is just the next level. So I think in the early stages you have to really build some strong product knowledge, because that, to me, is the foundation of any real estate career and if you don't have strong product knowledge, you're building it on a layer of quicksand. So I think that's really, really critical and I think this is the time, troy, for you to get to know yourself and be honest about yourself, because a lot of people, you know they don't like looking in the dark, they don't like looking at the parts of their personality that need the work, so they kind of pretend that their personality is flawless, which none of us are. But I think you've really got to have a look again, because real estate is generally a mirror of your own personal evolution. You know, if you have a fear of rejection, you're never going to get beyond. You know white belt, or perhaps gold, or maybe green if you're lucky and you fluke a few more deals. But those are the things.
John McGrath:And I think, troy, at this level, early on, this is where you build your personal identity, this is where you build self-confidence. This is where you build your personal identity. This is where you build self-confidence. And for those that attended Eric I think it was last year or the year before and Ryan Serhan talked about, you know you have to have the future, your future self-projected, out there, because you haven't got many transactions yet to speak of and you can't compete with the people that are doing 40, 50 or 140 transactions in the early days. So what you need to do is start, you know future pacing, where are you going to be, and sort of taking on your future persona. I reckon that's the early days, troy, because at that point you haven't got any leverage and you haven't justified the need for a team. You're not doing enough volume. You can't afford it. What do you think of the first couple of stages, troy?
Troy Malcolm:Yeah, john and Tom, the biggest one here is actually managing their time and energy. So really be focused on where you're spending your time and energy and creating, like you said, john, that core value proposition and really developing that deep market knowledge and then keeping yourself accountable will get you to the next level faster. We do see a lot of agents struggle with that basic market knowledge and understanding the listing process and then developing their core prospecting activities to really build momentum. And that's where a lot of people, when they start to grow, they get above that 30 transactions. That's when they start to get more focused on handling objections and developing system management. But if you're managing time and energy in that first area that zero to 300,000, you're well and truly on the way to building a great real estate career.
John McGrath:Interesting, tommy. I'll just interject there with what Troy said. I was just talking to a vendor who we've just listed their beautiful duplex up in Newcastle through one of our agents there, tammy Hawkins, and I rang up these are wonderful people, they're starting to do some really greatkins. And I rang up these are wonderful people, they're starting to do some really great work. And I rang them up to thank them for selecting us and I said why did you choose Tammy? You know, they said, look, without being rude, we think the places are that good they're going to sell themselves to a large degree. So we really wanted someone we felt people would trust and feel good around. And we trusted her and felt good around her.
John McGrath:And she said which is what Matt Steinway said to me a long time ago she said, interestingly, she had a combination of excitement and calm. And a lot of people think, oh, you can't be excited and calm at the same time. But Matt Steinway always talks about the importance of being excited and calm at the same time. So, yeah, just interesting, and I think in the early stage of your career time. So, yeah, just interesting, and I think in the early stage of your career, you know, it's about excitement, energy, enthusiasm. And then, once you get to that stage, tommy, I think at some point and it's probably when you're starting to get a little bit of momentum so it's probably 30, 40 deals a year, or three or four a month I think at some point you've really got to now say well, you know Troy talked about prioritisation of energy and time management At some point, when you're starting to get busy, you need someone else to do the $30 an hour jobs while you do the $300 an hour jobs, which is prospecting, listing and selling.
John McGrath:So I think, troy, you know, we usually say to people we think you can do your own paperwork at 20 to 30 sales, maybe 40 sales, but once you get beyond that four plus sales a month we think that hiring an assistant, whether it's part-time or full-time, makes total sense to free you up, to go to the next level. So I'd say the next level, tommy, is around team leverage and also networking. You know, now you've got a bit of confidence, you've got a few runs on the board, you've got a little bit of momentum. Now you've got to go out and meet more people, go to events, go to business events, start networking with people in the business community, or just in the community in general. So I reckon, troy, that once you're starting to get, you know, your nose off the tarmac and you're starting to take off with a bit of acceleration, I think that's probably it. It's building a team to leverage yourself at the next level. What say you?
Troy Malcolm:Yeah, building the business, john, around the numbers and then tracking everything is going to definitely help at that time. So what does that look like? It's understanding where are the majority of your leads coming from? What is that lead listing source you've got? How are you handling those objections and then making sure that everyone in the team is very much focused on what they're doing to make the team more productive? Because what we do see is when agents fall away in that second phase, is that a lot of the team members that come in they're not effective in their role and it actually distracts the agent away from what they do very good to make the income continue to grow. So, mastering that lead generation, having that prospector all rounder focused on that, but going deep on tracking everything, is the strategy to success for that next group of level and growth.
Tom Panos:Okay. So I'm going to touch on very briefly on that product knowledge that you spoke about in the early phases, troy, or I think it was John. On Saturday, an auction in the Canterbury-Bankstown area. I asked an agent when I got there what sort of money do you think this is going to sort of fetch, do you think this is going to sort of fetch? And he turned around and he said I'm not sure. I haven't been working on this. And then I said to him well, what do you think it's worth roughly? And he says not sure. I said but you work this area, you've got to have a rough idea. And he goes oh, you haven't really been involved in it. And then I said to him look, I find that really surprising because if you can't get into your car, drive around with realestatecom, open and look at every property that has sold in the last six weeks and then also look at everyone that's on the market. You'll become the area's best value. It's easier than ever to become the area's best product knowledge person. It's all there, they're just sold information. All you've got to do is drive in the car.
Tom Panos:But I just, troy and John, I can't get over even people in that early stage. Sometimes you open up a contract and they feel like they don't understand. They don't know what they're looking for. And I think to myself, when they're opening, going through a contract with a buyer, they must actually look quite amateurish when the buyer's saying oh, can you show me where the sewer line is, or the 149, or whatever they're talking about. So I noticed that. That came to my mind when you were both talking. But I just want to ask you both, because you started talking about you can't do everything and you're going to look to put an assistant on. At what point do you look at investing money to put an assistant on? At what point do you do that?
John McGrath:Yeah, again, I think it's probably four sales a month or more, and it depends on the area, because your average sale price, to be fair, could be $200,000 or it could be $2 million. But for most agents around Australia, if you're doing four to five sales a month or 40 to 50 sales a year, you're probably bringing in, you know, five $600,000 or more, in some cases a lot more, and so, again, it's got to be a matter of A I can afford it, because there's nothing worse than bringing on someone prematurely, tom, when you can't afford them, and all it becomes is a stress and a burden and it doesn't work out. So I think you've got to be able to afford it and your business needs to warrant it, which means you have to be involved in enough transactions. Now, by the way, the first associate or assistant I always believe you should ring on board is someone to handle all the non-dollar productive activities. These are often marketing-based, they're administrative-based, they're paperwork, they're letting valuers in. They can also give you a bit of a hand in the field, of course, at open homes, taking names and numbers and so forth. But I think the first thing is you want to make sure that you're focusing on the real dollar productive activities. So I think that's it. So I'd say you know, three or four sales a month in most areas starts to look at warranting a team to be built, because really what we want to do is you bring someone on when you're doing four a month and it helps you get to seven or eight a month. That's the whole goal, not just to lessen your load but to allow you to focus on things that are going to increase your volume. So I usually say to people that sort of volume, how do we double the business, get to seven or eight a month? It's with your first assistant.
John McGrath:Now the second one, I think, which comes to the next level, tommy, as we're starting to get towards Black Belt, is I think you really want to start targeting a lot better qualities. Normally in the early stages of your career, the first few belts, as the metaphor goes you want to. You know you're probably dealing in more of the lower and middle end homes in an area because you're new to the suburb and the gun agents are probably focused on more of the top end stuff. So I think as you start to go up the food chain and build momentum and confidence and reputation, I think you need to start looking at how can you build into that top end of the market. What are the homes, what are the streets in the area or the suburbs if you're handling multiple suburbs that you're going to be able to get into and really help grow there through the top end. And then I think, troy, you're looking at, once you've got to that six, seven, eight sales a month, you really want to bring on your second assistant, which is going to be someone in the field helping you prospect and work with buyers.
John McGrath:Buyer servicing Tom is still today the most neglected part of our business. There are a lot of agents who you know through Aric and podcasts and Real Estate Gym have got pretty good at listing and they get listings but they're still lazy. They wait for the buyers to come to them. You have to be on the front foot with buyers and that's where you're going to build an extraordinary reputation. So I think, once you've got a little bit of volume six, seven, eight sales a month, so we're now into the 50, 60, 70, perhaps I think that's when you start looking for someone to help you servicing the buyers, because you should be dealing with 100, 200 buyers a month really with that sort of volume and you want to stay on top because they're the buyers that are going to end up being your next sellers.
Troy Malcolm:Troy John, we're seeing the very best.
Tom Panos:I've got a slide, troy. I've put up a slide which you should be able to see, which is a slide that you presented at MDA Boot Camp in 2016,. I think it was yeah, does that ring? And if you look at it, it's talking about what John was talking about, and I know that you, for a period of time at McGrath, had the metaphor red and blue red being admin base, blue being sales-based, blue being the second person that John said you'd put on would be focusing on prospecting OFIs, buyer appointments, and the red one being more the low-dollar productive activity email marketing database admin. Do you remember this?
Troy Malcolm:slide. Troy yeah, absolutely. And Tom and John. One of the key things, john, that we've seen the very best in our business around that blue associate role is they're dealing with buyers, that on their little black book of buyers they've got potentially 50 people that they can call at any given point in day and get them through a property that's just listed. So while they're working with 100, 200 buyers across the business, they actually do have that really few select 20, 30, 40, 50 that they know that are ready to go. They've got their finances in place. They may have missed out on a property that they went to auction last weekend and they're really proactively trying to place them in the market.
Troy Malcolm:But, tom, this slide itself the roles of the EBU not much has changed. It's actually surprising. I'm just reading through it now Not a lot has really varied from 2016 to where we are now. It's more about the execution of this plan and it's quite a simple plan. I'm sure most of your real estate gym members have it, but it just covers off what are the core activities for each one of those individuals to really grow an amazing business and allow the agent to do what they do best.
John McGrath:Yeah, I agree, tommy. You should put that back up on your website or wherever your members can get access, because that is a really good slide.
Tom Panos:Okay, finally, I want to ask you you know, when we start looking at the agents, that are those pinnacle agents, you know the ones that are riding 2 million, 3 million, 4 million. When you think of those agents, what are the skills, attitudes and habits that separate those? They obviously have got the ability to manage a team, because if you've got two, three, four, five people right, that's different to being the solo deal maker listing, selling, prospecting. You've got lots of people you've got to keep accountable. What are some of the things that you think separate the four million dollar agents to the one million dollar agents?
John McGrath:I think you've just nailed the first one, tommy. It's team management, because most agents or many agents, in fact, most agents don't have leadership experience behind them, so they kind of stumble on their first assistant, then they do well and they get a second assistant, but you know a lot of the teams now that are doing multi-seven figures. You know five, two, five, 10 million. You know they might have a team of six, and so you do. At that point you need to be able to build your own internal culture within your team. You also want to retain your team for the long term. That's one of the issues is I've seen a lot of agents held back because they have this revolving tour of team members, because they don't manage them right, they don't build the right internal culture. So I think you need to start thinking of yourself as a business more than a sales agent, and you have a team of people, your employees. So I think that's critical.
John McGrath:The other thing, though, as I've seen over the years, tom, at some point the light switch goes on and they actually realise they're bloody good at this and there's no reason why they can't double their business, then double it again. So there's almost this level, troy, of self-confidence. You see the light globe go on. We saw it with Alex Jordan, we've seen it with Pete Chauncey and Matt Steinway and so many of our greats where it almost becomes effortless effort, as they call it, or as it's called, where they do more with more success, but almost by doing less because they're in flow. You know, you look at Usain Bolt, you know, and what a great athlete, but he looks like he's not even trying half the time because he's in that effortless effort state. So I think you know the penny drops. They realize that this actually is no reason why they can't be best on planet, best in the market, best in Australia. They get better at managing their team and they leverage their team to get great results and I think it's really getting out of your own way, Troy.
John McGrath:It's getting rid of the ego, and not all of them do, by the way. There's plenty of seven-figure agents with too much ego, but my theory is they'd be doing twice as well if they didn't have the ego. But sometimes, sadly, the ego is attached to the big results, not the people I've just mentioned, but many other people in the industry. So I think team leadership, leveraging that it's also, tom, about raving fans because I think if you're doing the big numbers every time, you're going to be getting your next 10 listings for next month through your current activities, or what we call in-campaign marketing, through your past clients, people that are on your database you've dealt with before, people that you sold for last week that told all their friends what a great job you do.
John McGrath:So I think once you're starting in, that massive I mean raving fans is important from day dot. So I'm not saying, start focusing on it when you're in massive momentum, but that really should be once you're in momentum. The old thing of door knocking and so forth and lots and lots of letterbox dropping is nowhere near as important at that point, as just every single person you touch is a raving fan. Troy, what say you?
Troy Malcolm:I think you hit the nail on the head, john. I think most of the businesses that are writing two, three, four, five, $10 million, they treat it as a business and they have a professional management team in place. You know, I think of Alex and Prue, I think of some of the relationships that we see within our business and our direct teams, and it's a professional unit. They create I guess what we would call capacity plans to make sure that you guess what we would call capacity plans, to make sure that you know, out of the requirements, they know that the certain number of activities that they do each month, each quarter, each, you know, six months, that's creating the opportunity then to bring new team members in and then have them have their career progression continue to grow.
Troy Malcolm:Again, you look at some of the very best. Alex Jordan and he's got Nathanathan working directly with him is, you know that's grown um substantially over the most recent times. Um, I look down in sydney and I see some of the partners that we have. We have in our business, but also the competitors that we see out there, the very best teams, and they are all growing, but every single person in their team has normally been there for an extended period of time because they have had that career progression. So removing that revolving door and making sure that it is a professional business unit really does make the difference at that level.
John McGrath:I think the thing, tom, about what we've been talking about today is for everyone listening, and everyone listening is probably going to be at one stage I think most of our listeners are real estate and they're going to be white belt, black belt, green belt, yellow belt who knows? Realise there is a progression at each stage of the progression, or each stage or each belt, if you will. There probably are some new skills you need to pick up and there may well be some activities you need to leave behind. A lot of agents I've seen, tom, they fail to get the black belt because they fail to delegate, because they're perfectionists and you know, own up to it, I'm one of them that you know struggles not being a perfectionist. But I also realise I have constant awareness that you know I need to be delegating more and I need to even get better and better at delegating. So I think, just realise that the beauty of real estate is you can never, you never have to stop getting better. I've been in it 40 years and I still reckon I'm at four out of 10 on where I could be and want to be. So I think that's really important.
John McGrath:Matt Steinway he's a classic example of someone that never stops learning, never stops growing, and yet he's one of the best agents the country's ever seen. So James Tostevin, the same. There's so many great markets All the greats they just never stop learning. Many great markets, all the greats they just never stop learning. So I think that's exciting thing. If you're listening to this and you're doing 200 and you want to get to the top and you're, you know, in the early stage of your career, you have got an incredible opportunity and an unlimited runway of success.
John McGrath:But just, you know, take on board some of what we've spoken about today. Realise that each phase of growth requires some new skills and to leave behind some old activities and keep us updated. Let us know, we love hearing the success stories. Tommy, before we go, eric, we're about to start launching the speakers and you and I and Troy are extremely excited because you know we say it every year, but Jesus bloody true, every year. But without doubt, this year we have the most jam-packed array of extraordinary speakers and we'll announce our keynote speaker, our major speaker, in the next 48 hours and she is phenomenal, a world leader of incredible talent. So we'll tell you more about her shortly, but yeah, that's just a great example of you know, there's so much great training in this country, and your real estate gym is a great example of it. Just go out there and if you want to be a black belt, be a black belt.
Tom Panos:Okay, while we're at it, john, let me just say ARIC 2025, just the basic things you need to know. 25th and 26th of May, gold Coast Convention Centre. You can buy tickets right now. So, even though you don't know who that keynote speaker is, you'll have to base it on history that the product never fails to deliver and I'm letting you know never fails to deliver. And I'm letting you know you can go get your tickets now. They're $9.95. If you're a real estate gym member, you get that discount.
Tom Panos:Go buy your tickets now and book your flights now, because if you know you're going to be there, you might as well get it at the lowest possible price, including making sure that you can get accommodation close to it. But in the next two to three weeks, I anticipate you're going to have a brochure, but you go to aricconferencecomau aricconferencecomau to buy your ticket now. And with that being said out of the way and I just got to say something that I said to someone before I jumped on he said to me Tom, but I don't want to work twice as hard to go to the next level. I said, mate, you can't work twice as hard. The mass doesn't stack up, because you've told me you're working from eight till six. It's impossible. You can work twice as hard.
Tom Panos:What I'm saying is make your listing presentation twice as good, make your prospecting twice as good, make your vendor management twice as good. Build a team that's double the size. I'm not saying work twice as hard. The mass doesn't stack up. You don't have to work twice as hard. Anyway, john Troy, signing off, see you next week, see you everybody. See you John.