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The #1 Leadership Mistake Real Estate Agencies Make | Fiona Blayney · Elite Agent - The Edit

• 0:00
  Anyone can call themselves a coach now without actually being under the bonnet like yourself.
• 0:05
  Conflict goes up when you're emailing and texting.
• 0:08
  Conflict goes down real simply if you talk to people.
• 0:11
  I tell everyone these days, deploy the two email rule.
• 0:14
  If it goes any longer than two emails, pick up the phone.
• 0:17
  Most organisations, people are given a new title before they're given any learning knowledge around how to actually perform that new function, that new role.
• 0:27
  Leadership in real estate is a lot like parenting, full stop.
• 0:31
  There's elements of making a person feel good, but not everybody gets a ribbon.
• 0:43
  Welcome back to the edit for principals and agents trying to operate well in a difficult market.
• 0:48
  I'm Samantha McLean and today I'm joined by my co-host again, Chris Hanley.
• 0:52
  Welcome back.
• 0:53
  Welcome, Sam.
• 0:54
  And can I welcome Fiona as well?
• 0:56
  Thank you.
• 0:58
  Well, yes, you can do whatever you like, actually, because you're in the host, Jen.
• 1:02
  I'm going to introduce Fiona so they know that she is, Sam.
• 1:05
  I just jumped in then.
• 1:06
  I was just going to try and introduce Fiona like you guys didn't know each other or something like that.
• 1:11
  But Fi, if you want to jump in, I know you spent 20 years in the industry and you and Chris are no strangers.
• 1:17
  So welcome to the show.
• 1:19
  Thank you so much.
• 1:19
  It's awesome to be here.
• 1:21
  And I'm with two of my favorite people today.
• 1:23
  And if we can keep this podcast, you know, under a movie length, what is it, cinematic session, we'll be lucky, I think.
• 1:31
  I think the way I pitched this to Chris at one point was I just wanted to be like a dinner party that everybody wants to be at.
• 1:40
  I'd be a dinner party with you too.
• 1:41
  That would be easy.
• 1:43
  That would be very easy.
• 1:44
  So today we are asking a question.
• 1:48
  Each episode is a question.
• 1:49
  Today's question is who's actually teaching your people right now?
• 1:52
  So almost every agency that I've ever spoken to say that Development Matters
• 1:58
  Very few have someone inside the business whose actual job is to make the people better.
• 2:02
  And in a market like this one, the gap stops being theoretical, if you like, and starts showing up in the numbers.
• 2:08
  Chris and I unpacked some of that in the first episode.
• 2:11
  So as I said before, Fiona has had more than 20 years inside real estate businesses doing exactly that work.
• 2:17
  She's the founder of Real Plus.
• 2:18
  She's consulted, coached and trained across property management and sales on both sides of the Tasman and beyond.
• 2:24
  And I'm not even going to say how long you and Chris have known each other because, you know, a lady never gives away her age.
• 2:31
  Yeah, Fiona just left school, I think, when I first met her.
• 2:34
  I know, right?
• 2:35
  Yeah, we've known each other a very long time.
• 2:37
  I will also add one other thing to her intro here.
• 2:40
  She's also been under the bonnet of all of these businesses and met the leaders of business.
• 2:46
  virtually every good business in the country.
• 2:49
  And osmotically, you learn things, both by observation.
• 2:54
  So I think we have a problem when we put sales and property management in different boxes and different slots.
• 3:00
  They're so not.
• 3:01
  They say not, though we view them that way.
• 3:04
  But I want to add that because Fiona's had this great advantage over the years of being inside under the bonnet of all these different types of businesses and seeing the good, the bad and the ugly, haven't you?
• 3:16
  Yeah, that's actually, it's a really interesting statement because I get put in a box too, right?
• 3:21
  Yeah.
• 3:22
  And, you know, definitely for many years, and it's almost a quarter of a century now that I've been doing this type of work.
• 3:29
  And there's definitely been periods of time where, like the property managers themselves get put into a box.
• 3:36
  I've...
• 3:37
  I can be in conversations put into that, into a similar box, right?
• 3:41
  The property management girl.
• 3:42
  But Chris, you're right.
• 3:43
  Most of my work is certainly for the last 15 years has been working with the business owners, right?
• 3:50
  So CEOs, GMs, directors, new starters right through to businesses around the globe, actually, that own not just multiple businesses, but they might be also owning multiple brands within companies.
• 4:03
  Same locations are quite varied.
• 4:05
  And the one thing that we look at is looking at their business and try to learn.
• 4:11
  For me, I've got to learn their business.
• 4:13
  So I'm not just learning about their property management team.
• 4:16
  I've got to learn the entire business.
• 4:19
  And we could go down a whole route of the fish rods from the hand as my number one learning.
• 4:23
  But you have to encapsulate what is happening across an entire business when I walk into it, not just what's happening in property management because they're all interlinked across all of the different business units and divisions.
• 4:37
  So, yeah, I have quite an interesting perspective of the industry, that's for sure.
• 4:41
  I often pick your brain about leaders when we've had our sometimes very long conversations that range all over the place.
• 4:49
  But you've also got a very, very interesting read on leadership in general.
• 4:55
  Can I go back to Sam's question?
• 4:57
  Because I think your question is the most important question in all the organizations at the moment.
• 5:02
  Who's teaching your people?
• 5:03
  Who's coaching your people?
• 5:04
  I want to ask you a question, Fiona.
• 5:06
  Because you go and meet all these people and you go into all of these businesses, in a property management space, and if you want to say also in the sales space, in the businesses that you're interacting with, working with, helping at the moment, who within the business is helping the staff, particularly the newer staff, in the marketplace sector?
• 5:26
  that operates today, who in the business is actually coaching the staff inside the business?
• 5:32
  We'll talk about, I know you come in and help them, but who inside generally is doing the coaching at the moment?
• 5:38
  I'll put to the side the context of what is coaching, right?
• 5:41
  Because I think that's part of the fundamental challenge.
• 5:44
  So as a qualified coach, trainer, educator, how people define things is my first challenge.
• 5:52
  point of reference, but let's come back to that.
• 5:54
  Who do people think is coaching?
• 5:56
  I think in most businesses, there's nobody formally given that title, right?
• 6:02
  There's nobody formally who's taken the responsibility.
• 6:05
  It is my job.
• 6:06
  I have accountability, responsibility.
• 6:09
  I have framework.
• 6:10
  I have process.
• 6:12
  I have bottom line, you know, just responsibility in order to
• 6:16
  develop the coaching program to deliver the coaching program.
• 6:21
  And most of it happens, used a word earlier, osmosis.
• 6:23
  Most of it actually happens by osmosis.
• 6:26
  And we think we're doing it, right?
• 6:28
  So for the percentages of businesses that, you know, just heard what I said and, you know, kind of wanted to jump down their audio equipment and say, well, that's not happening in my office.
• 6:39
  Those businesses, they think that they're doing it and they have an intention to do it.
• 6:45
  But again, it's not done with real strong strategic planning around what is the outcome we're trying to achieve?
• 6:54
  Who is the person that's sitting in front of us?
• 6:56
  What are the gaps between those two?
• 6:58
  And then what's the pathway that we're going to take that individual on with the
• 7:01
  appropriate check-in processes and so forth.
• 7:04
  So it's either then, you know, who's bearing the title.
• 7:07
  It's either business owner, a team leader, the person sitting next to them in the chair, a colleague or somebody else across the team who's in inverted commas coaching them.
• 7:18
  So when you walk into an agency, Fiona, how quickly can you tell whether it's people are being developed or just managed and what gives it away?
• 7:26
  I'm sitting with someone yesterday and within 15 minutes, almost within the first four questions I'm asking, I'm not going to be able to do that.
• 7:35
  I can immediately see that we have a development issue.
• 7:41
  You know, we've got people that are moving into new roles, right?
• 7:45
  In a particular organization, we've got people that are transitioning across various roles, right?
• 7:49
  So whether that be the receptionist moving into PM, the PM moving into leadership or team leader, the leader moving in department head, directorship, you know, there's a whole range of different things that happen across a business.
• 7:59
  And within a couple of minutes, I can see that in most organizations, people are given
• 8:05
  before they're given any learning knowledge around how to actually perform that new function, that new role.
• 8:11
  They don't have it.
• 8:12
  So that's, yeah, first, I would say the first four questions I ask.
• 8:16
  You know, thinking about this a little bit more, like, and you and I have had some interesting chats over the last 12 months as well.
• 8:23
  The area of coaching and what is a coach, like, I'll ask you that question directly.
• 8:28
  But what it seems to me is there's been an information explosion.
• 8:32
  Like, I have watched it over the last 10 years.
• 8:35
  And with the information explosion, there's also a coach explosion.
• 8:39
  Like anyone can call themselves a coach now without actually being under the bonnet like yourself or anything like that.
• 8:46
  So define what you feel coaching is and what sort of a role does it have in a modern real estate agency?
• 8:55
  Like many things.
• 8:57
  So if you take relationships or communication, sales, you know, there are, and if we just take communication, because it's one that we've all, you know, if I said to you, what's a communicator or what's a leader, as to Chris's comment earlier, his key favourite topic.
• 9:15
  So if I said, what's a leader?
• 9:18
  And it's really important that we think about this, right?
• 9:20
  Because I do a leadership program.
• 9:23
  And one of the things that I do in that leadership program is I get people, I say, right, what is leadership?
• 9:28
  And they'll all start to give me a description of what I would call good leadership.
• 9:33
  But leadership is just somebody that people follow.
• 9:36
  That's
• 9:40
  That's a completely different concept.
• 9:41
  So what is a coach, right?
• 9:44
  I coach a netball team and I've coached many netball teams.
• 9:47
  Do I think I am a good coach of a netball team?
• 9:50
  No, I do not.
• 9:53
  Am I there?
• 9:54
  Yes.
• 9:55
  Am I the person who has the jacket and the hat?
• 9:58
  Yes.
• 9:58
  Do the under eights listen to me?
• 10:00
  Do they have fun?
• 10:02
  Is it entertaining?
• 10:03
  Yes.
• 10:04
  They all enjoy themselves.
• 10:10
  these kids from the day that they've started with me in this particular nine-year-old group.
• 10:15
  I started with them last year.
• 10:17
  You know, have they gone to the great dizzy heights of their own capabilities of netball from last year to where we are today?
• 10:26
  No, they haven't reached their potential.
• 10:28
  Why?
• 10:29
  Because I'm not a good coach, right?
• 10:32
  That's not my thing.
• 10:34
  If I come back to business, I come back to property management, to sales, to leadership.
• 10:41
  Right.
• 10:42
  What takes a good coach?
• 10:43
  A good coach, first of all, knows the outcome that we are wanting to achieve through this particular coaching program model, right?
• 10:53
  It's very clear on where we're going.
• 10:57
  The next part is they then have to come back and identify goals.
• 11:01
  where that particular coachee, the person that we're working with, where is that person right now in the scheme of that trajectory of outcome?
• 11:10
  So, you know, it's kind of like future position, current position.
• 11:14
  And then we're mapping out between those two spaces, what is it actually going to take in order to move that individual from current position to future position?
• 11:25
  And we have this whole kaleidoscope of elements that make up not just that journey, but the probability that that person is going to actually move between those two points.
• 11:41
  Not only will they ever get there, but in the timeframe that they're set for themselves with their own internal motivations, external motivations.
• 11:51
  And then what knowledge and skills and attitudes do I need to bring?
• 11:54
  What do they need to bring?
• 11:56
  Then you're looking at methods and velocities and rhythms and timeframes.
• 12:00
  And so there's a lot that goes into it.
• 12:03
  What we have to bring into that or be aware of with that, with all this different learning now, is coaching is not entertainment.
• 12:10
  There's elements of making a person feel good.
• 12:13
  But not everybody gets a ribbon.
• 12:16
  And you don't get a ribbon at the end of every 30-minute session or 60-minute session or whatever it might be.
• 12:20
  And I think that there's this entertainment overlay and a real misconception of what coaching is now.
• 12:27
  Coaching is moving somebody from the current position to the future position, doing so one-on-one, but with a very strong program that runs behind it as to how we're actually going to move those two people.
• 12:37
  And then what defines a great coach, that's whether or not that person can actually do that.
• 12:42
  I would have said that, you know, like that under nines netball team, like from a Ted Lusso point of view, I see you out there holding up the believe sign and I think they are destined for greatness.
• 12:53
  Oh, look, I think, again, you know, it's a funny analogy, right?
• 12:58
  But...
• 13:00
  And in fact, my middle daughter, I thought it was a great idea that she come and help me coach the team.
• 13:06
  So she came along and I think it was really interesting to see.
• 13:09
  And I see this with a lot of coaches even that come into our space, right?
• 13:12
  So it's not just the 12-year-old daughter that turns up, but it's like...
• 13:16
  What is your perception of what your role is here?
• 13:19
  And the role of a coach is different with every different circumstance, group, individual, business, et cetera.
• 13:25
  And you have to kind of chameleonize yourself in order to be able to support the person that's right in front of you.
• 13:30
  It's not what I want for them.
• 13:31
  It's what they want for them.
• 13:33
  And then what's expected and required of me as a coach is different because of the person that's sitting in front of me and what they're wanting.
• 13:42
  To be fair, when I'm working with a business, my model, I've devised my own model, which is a blend of coaching and consulting.
• 13:50
  So I call it consultative coaching that people engage me for because when I'm in the business, I'm coming with an enormous swag, as you've mentioned, of 25 years of experience of what others have done before and a true coach in some coaching models.
• 14:09
  would be, and tell me about that.
• 14:11
  And what do you think about that?
• 14:13
  And how would you do that differently?
• 14:14
  And it's very question-based.
• 14:16
  Whereas my role is also quite consultative-based because they actually want Fiona Blaney's opinion on three different things that they could do.
• 14:24
  And then they're actually really delving into which one will Fiona suggest and then which one should they choose.
• 14:30
  And those answers might be different, but they do want my consultation in it.
• 14:34
  With Netball, it's really just here's the skills and how can I help you develop that
• 14:39
  So I want to let you two test each other because, you know, like I think this is an opportunity that, you know, should not be missed.
• 14:47
  Chris, you know, you've often said culture is caught, not taught.
• 14:52
  Fiona's a coach.
• 14:54
  Can she teach culture?
• 14:57
  Yeah, you've only got to spend five minutes with her.
• 15:00
  And the example is leadership.
• 15:02
  And when you meet her, you know she's a good human.
• 15:06
  So she teaches culture in the first five minutes she talks with her.
• 15:10
  So yeah, yeah, you absolutely can.
• 15:12
  I just want to say one other thing about the coaching thing.
• 15:14
  One of the best coaches in our industry is on the podcast with us today.
• 15:19
  I know all the coaches and the strange thing about a professional like ours with a hundred thousand odd people.
• 15:24
  My view is for that number of people, we've only got a small pond of really good coaches.
• 15:31
  And I'll repeat, one of them is here with us today.
• 15:33
  The second part of coaching I want to talk about is that coaching is made up of two different components.
• 15:40
  One is really easy, that's information, but the second part, technique, is really hard to teach.
• 15:47
  And most of the coaches in our industry, in my view, do not teach technique.
• 15:53
  They don't because it's bloody hard to teach technique.
• 15:56
  Fiona had me speak at a conference last year, and as a result, people approached me.
• 16:00
  They wanted me to come and talk to them about the topic I spoke to, which was basically communicating, talking to people, and giving examples of how you use techniques, different techniques.
• 16:10
  I just want to say this.
• 16:12
  If you're out there and you want to decide which...
• 16:15
  person you're going to use for your business and you want to move the needle the most, then the thing to focus on is technique as well as information.
• 16:23
  Scripts and dialogues, give them to them, no worries, all good.
• 16:26
  But at the end of the day, you can verbatim recite every script and dialogue in the world, property management or sales, and it's a complete waste of time if you wouldn't or don't know how to communicate it to somebody.
• 16:38
  Let's go back to culture, which is why Fiona has this unique view too, because if you're going to describe a perfect real estate business, it's one where you've got one culture or as close as you can get to one culture, not two.
• 16:52
  And Fiona, this is a question to you.
• 16:55
  Many of the real estate businesses I've seen have two cultures.
• 16:58
  There's the property management culture and the sales culture.
• 17:00
  They're not necessarily the same type of culture.
• 17:03
  Have you seen businesses where the culture of the property management team and the sales team are all first class, where the leaders of those businesses have been able to align the values of both groups and they're respectful to each other and they work in harmony?
• 17:18
  Have you seen businesses like that?
• 17:20
  Yes, I have.
• 17:21
  What have they got in common?
• 17:22
  That the business owner, it's a statement that is straight up, right?
• 17:27
  The fish rolls from the head.
• 17:28
  Yeah.
• 17:29
  The culture of how we feel about each other, the respect that we have for each other, has to start with the business owner having that same level of respect and value for all of the parts of the business and then for them to convey that to the...
• 17:49
  to that group whilst they're in that space.
• 17:53
  I'm not going to say it's not challenging to do, right, because it is.
• 17:57
  And quite often parts of the business, depending on the size of that organisation and the revenue generation from that organisation and the different levers that organisation is pushing and pulling from a commercial sense, right?
• 18:10
  in order to improve performance and maintain activities and so forth, financially makes it challenging to reward and recognize in the same way with financial elements.
• 18:21
  But we have to, as a family, which is what a business is, even though it's a tribe,
• 18:28
  So whether you've got a small family business, you've got a major corporate, it's a tribe.
• 18:32
  And we have to demonstrate to all of the tribe members that everybody in that tribe is just as important, irrelevant of what your role is.
• 18:41
  So yes, people do do it.
• 18:42
  How?
• 18:43
  It starts from the top.
• 18:44
  If the head of the tribe isn't demonstrating that, nobody will.
• 18:49
  And sometimes we don't realize that we're favoring one over the other until the coach comes in, the consultant comes in and holds the mirror up.
• 18:57
  And that's part of a coach's job to do that or a consultant's job.
• 19:02
  I know some people will probably bristle this term, but I used it in my own business yesterday.
• 19:08
  Leadership in real estate is a lot like parenting, full stop.
• 19:13
  Like you can piss around with all the lovely words that you get at Harvard, but real estate businesses, maybe other corporate entities are much more sophisticated than ours.
• 19:25
  Maybe they're less like parents, but running a real estate business, property management, sales.
• 19:29
  Here's the thing going back to the coaching thing.
• 19:32
  How do you get a message across when you're a parent?
• 19:35
  Repetition, repetition, repetition.
• 19:37
  Yeah.
• 19:37
  And I'm guessing the same principle operates in sales and property management.
• 19:42
  It's always ironic at the end of real estate careers when people want to retire that it's a place that the team, the property management, manage property is this.
• 19:53
  component where their wealth is set, where they can move off into the sunlight and go sailing or do whatever they do, that their real wealth that they take out of that business at the end of the day comes from the property management component and the properties that they've listed and looked after all those years.
• 20:09
  Like it's weird when you think about how our whole profession works, isn't it?
• 20:14
  That at the end there, this thing that some bosses neglect, reject, ignore, or are scared of.
• 20:22
  A lot of real estate principals, in my view, are scared of profit management because –
• 20:27
  They don't really know that much about it, right?
• 20:29
  And it's a specialised area, highly specialised.
• 20:32
  Here's the weirdest part about property management.
• 20:35
  I can talk about property management to a cows come.
• 20:37
  Here's the weirdest part about it.
• 20:38
  In the last 10 or 15 years, if you look at all the extra things, the layers, the rules,
• 20:45
  The fact that political parties come and go and change and it moves more to the tenant, more to the landlord, all this stuff.
• 20:51
  Like all of the things you've got to take into account is so much more detailed than it used to be.
• 20:57
  And this is how old I am, you know, to blame me.
• 20:59
  When I got into real estate more than 40 years ago, it was 7%, right?
• 21:03
  Like...
• 21:04
  How can we be asked, professional property managers be asked and businesses to do all this extra stuff when the fees are less than they were 40 years ago?
• 21:16
  It makes no sense to me.
• 21:18
  Okay, look, you get me started and, I don't know, we'll fill the two-day conference with answers to all of these things, but...
• 21:26
  When is the two days conference on?
• 21:28
  Remind everybody, Fiona, when is your conference on?
• 21:31
  It's on the 13th and 14th of September at the Sydney Hilton.
• 21:35
  We'll be having this dinner party in real life, won't we?
• 21:38
  Yes.
• 21:38
  I know we will.
• 21:39
  Chris, what are you talking about at PM1?
• 21:41
  Fiona, what am I talking about at PM1?
• 21:43
  No, I can't remember.
• 21:44
  Well, one of the big challenges that we've got with teams at the moment, and this is, I suppose, what bears coaching first off, is there's a gap.
• 21:53
  And so the gap that we're working through right now with people is we've got this collision, if you like, of AI, automation, future fear, where are we going?
• 22:04
  And
• 22:06
  I am very passionate with all of my clients that we're very excited about AI.
• 22:13
  We're very excited about the opportunity that it brings.
• 22:18
  But sometimes in and amongst the excitement of something shiny and new, we lose sight of what we're here to do in the first place.
• 22:27
  And that's definitely been a story in the PM space over the last 10 years with this kind of search for efficiencies, right?
• 22:34
  Great.
• 22:34
  Chris and I have had many conversations about it.
• 22:37
  Your big question that Jeff Bezos was asked, you know, where are we going?
• 22:42
  What does the future look like?
• 22:44
  And you're quite passionate about his answer, which is what we're going to unpack for the property management space.
• 22:51
  And that is, that's the wrong question.
• 22:54
  The question is not where are we going because nobody has a crystal ball, right?
• 22:58
  But it is about what do we need to make sure that we're bringing with us?
• 23:02
  What won't change?
• 23:03
  What won't change?
• 23:04
  What won't change.
• 23:05
  So I'm going to talk about what won't change in the future and the importance of all sorts of things, speaking, asking questions, curiosity, connecting to people and a bunch of other stuff.
• 23:17
  So, yeah, that's what I'm going to talk about, what won't change in the future.
• 23:21
  Where do we get our tickets, Fee?
• 23:22
  Oh, yeah, so head on over to pm1.com.au.
• 23:26
  That's pm1.com.au.
• 23:30
  Now, I actually happened to be telling someone a story on stage about my experience in property management and someone mentioned AI.
• 23:38
  So I just have to be part of this conversation.
• 23:41
  Yeah, go for it.
• 23:43
  But this predates AI, right?
• 23:45
  So when we first moved to Queensland, Mark and I were like baby dears, like we didn't know where anything was.
• 23:51
  And we were pretty useless with trying to work things out.
• 23:54
  And being under house arrest for a couple of weeks didn't really help because, or not house arrest, but...
• 24:00
  you know, virtual lockdown because we missed the deadline and, you know, we're law-abiding citizens, so we stayed in the house.
• 24:09
  Anyway, our whole communication with our property manager for a year, and this is like, as I said, before 2023, before AI, we just would get texts and emails and the two communication types were, one, it's
• 24:24
  inspection time.
• 24:25
  Two, here's your rental receipt.
• 24:27
  Three, maybe you can have a dog.
• 24:30
  Like, so they were the three forms of communication delivered via electronic mediums that had zero personality.
• 24:37
  Anyway, over a period of time, and this is my worry for property managers, right, is that over a period of time, those communications made me dislike whoever this person was behind the emails because they were so impersonal and so just...
• 24:54
  like this anyway um over a period of time i was like i just hate receiving these emails and then came the day that um there was someone inside our house dave was wolfing around playing with this girl and i'm like you know to mark who's that
• 25:09
  And he said, oh, that's our property manager.
• 25:12
  And she didn't have three heads.
• 25:14
  She was nice to the dog.
• 25:16
  She was a lovely girl, like all the rest of it.
• 25:19
  But I think that that impersonal communication had been doing her a disservice.
• 25:25
  for all of this time because that communication to us was all we saw.
• 25:32
  I saw this post on LinkedIn the other day, and this is my fear, and this is something I hope you guys will unpack at PM1.
• 25:39
  Like someone saying, our email system did 4,000 AI emails today, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is the beginning of the end because once you combine the automation with AI slop, where is the personal service?
• 25:55
  So I was at an event and the business will remain nameless, but there was an automation system that had come in into this particular software.
• 26:03
  And so first of all, I want to be really clear that I'm not poo-pooing the concept.
• 26:07
  I'm just talking about the reaction of the room.
• 26:10
  And they're demonstrating this automated, new automated system that they have.
• 26:15
  And I turned to the CEO, as anybody that knows me knows, you look at my face, you're doing exactly what I'm thinking.
• 26:23
  And I gave them my look that they knew and they laughed and they went, oh, you don't like this.
• 26:31
  And I said, and I, and I.
• 26:32
  Your face has subtitles.
• 26:34
  Yeah, it has subtitles.
• 26:35
  Sorry, subtitles.
• 26:36
  And anyway, and so I said, we're just laughing.
• 26:39
  I said, just look at your room.
• 26:41
  Look, don't look at the, I'm not, I'm not asking you to talk about the product.
• 26:44
  I just want you to look at your room.
• 26:46
  I was laughing.
• 26:46
  What I don't like is your room.
• 26:48
  And they said to me, what do you mean you don't like the room?
• 26:50
  I said, that was like an Oprah Winfrey show and everybody in your team just got given a car.
• 26:58
  It was like, you don't have to talk to a client.
• 27:00
  You don't have to talk to a client.
• 27:02
  You don't have to talk to a client.
• 27:03
  Everyone was like, yeah, we don't have to talk to a client ever again.
• 27:07
  And what, so two things happened then, right?
• 27:10
  There was a fundamental shift and awareness in the perspective of the people in the room as to what their role is.
• 27:18
  Talking to people, if you can call it that, be that in an email sense, a text sense, an SMS sense, what have you, talking to people is what we do.
• 27:26
  That is part of the process, I believe, of the current model of property management.
• 27:30
  Do I think that there will be a complete 100% tech-only, do-it-yourself, fully automated model?
• 27:35
  Absolutely.
• 27:36
  You'd be stupid to think that they wouldn't, right?
• 27:39
  But will it be the service offering that people want now and will the current service offering go?
• 27:45
  No, it won't because people still, there is a big portion of the world that wants to talk to a human and then there's a portion of the world like online banking, but at some point you still need a banker, right?
• 27:58
  So there's kind of like these hybrids between the two.
• 28:00
  So there's the AI component.
• 28:02
  But the other
• 28:05
  What is it that they're teaching them and what is it that aligns or disaligns with your teachings and your brand promise and your service approach?
• 28:19
  And so I am 100% for people being exposed to everything.
• 28:25
  I don't want people to...
• 28:28
  necessarily say, well, don't go to anything because you don't know what they're going to say.
• 28:32
  Absolutely not.
• 28:33
  That is the wrong approach, right?
• 28:34
  That's like saying, don't let my kids go onto the internet because I want to curate every single thing that they're doing.
• 28:39
  But what I want everyone to have is inside AI, inside any form of learning, even our conference, right?
• 28:47
  Everyone should go out and get the book, right?
• 28:49
  It's like old school book club, except it's conference club or learning club.
• 28:53
  Go out, get the books.
• 28:54
  Hello, right?
• 28:55
  Chris has got them there.
• 28:56
  Go out, get the books, get the websites, get the conferences, get the information, share it, absorb it, and then come back together collaboratively as a family and dissect what I do with my kids if they watch a movie or we look at something online or I've shared with them a podcast.
• 29:12
  Yes, I'd do that.
• 29:13
  And then we come back together at the dinner table and say, righto, what did we think?
• 29:16
  What does that mean for us?
• 29:17
  How would that work in our business?
• 29:19
  Is that something that we need to do or enact or do differently?
• 29:22
  Because AI is going to have a place, but it's how you acquire it or the tech that you want to bring in, what's relevant for you and your clients.
• 29:29
  So we have to go out there and learn, but we need to be aware of what everybody is learning and the products and the services, same thing, because we're learning about those.
• 29:38
  And then what do we want to bring back in?
• 29:40
  into our business that's going to work for us and for our clientele and our market and our brand and where we're going and our growth trajectory because then we'll all be different.
• 29:48
  What's your view on that, Chris?
• 29:50
  My view is that we are missing a few pieces here.
• 29:55
  The first piece we're missing is that communication without visibility reduces the opportunity for the message to land.
• 30:04
  If you get a hierarchy of ways to communicate with another human being face to face, belly to belly, whatever term you want to use, is at the top.
• 30:13
  As you come further and further away from that, where you get down to text messages or emails,
• 30:18
  And remember, about 70% of the message when two people communicate is body language, eye language, facial figures, all that stuff.
• 30:28
  So you're automatically reducing the opportunity for the message to be clear, number one.
• 30:34
  Number two, it is unhealthy for 22, 23, 24 young age people to be spending all day using their thumbs or typing.
• 30:43
  It is unhealthy.
• 30:48
  Number three, if you get good at talking to people, asking them questions and solving stuff, I can guarantee that once you remove the fear around that piece in your work life, and it's fear-based, nearly everything's about fear, they don't like confrontation, right?
• 31:07
  I get that.
• 31:08
  But examples leadership.
• 31:10
  One of the groups I know that works with a very good business, Heritage Real Estate,
• 31:16
  They got a system and other businesses, good PM businesses got a system where the senior PM people bring the young people over and they sit around and listen to them pick up the phone and talk to the landlord or the tenant.
• 31:29
  And remember, everyone's doing it hard now.
• 31:31
  Landlords are doing it hard.
• 31:32
  Tenants are doing it hard.
• 31:33
  But you learn by example by watching someone.
• 31:37
  It's often a wise older woman that's been doing this for years and they're so good on the phone.
• 31:43
  They listen.
• 31:44
  They have a chat.
• 31:45
  They get a connection.
• 31:46
  You can nearly hear the penny drop.
• 31:48
  Penny drops.
• 31:49
  The tenant who was aggro is now all good.
• 31:52
  I'll use an example in my own business.
• 31:54
  There's a woman who was a very good friend of mine.
• 31:57
  We'd sold, managed scores of properties for her and her family And she scared the bejesus out of all the young property managers, right?
• 32:06
  And she's a mean, mean email writer These things have got chapters in them, right?
• 32:12
  So she'd scare the crap out of all the property managers And they came to me one day and they knew she was my friend And they said, this woman's terrorising us, right?
• 32:20
  I said...
• 32:22
  Ring her up.
• 32:22
  20 minutes later, they come back over.
• 32:25
  And you know this weird thing, Fiona, you'll get this?
• 32:27
  They think they've solved the biggest issue in the world themselves, forgotten the conversation they had with me and say, yeah, we nailed it.
• 32:36
  We fixed it.
• 32:37
  She was lovely on the telephone.
• 32:39
  She was really nice, right?
• 32:41
  Here's the thing, and there's one other piece.
• 32:43
  The English language is a difficult language.
• 32:45
  Connotation.
• 32:46
  Connotation is a thing that property managers and salespeople need to understand.
• 32:51
  You send text messages or emails to your landlord or to your seller or your buyer, and English might be their second language, or your grammar skills or your use of words aren't good.
• 33:02
  or you're using predictive text, any of that stuff, a person on the other end reads it, they hate you on site.
• 33:07
  It's often for one word that you get wrong.
• 33:10
  So the last reason not to do this, to pick up a phone, is it'll blow up in your face.
• 33:16
  You compose it, you'll use a thesaurus, you do all these things, you send it out and there's one word in there and they look at that one word.
• 33:23
  They don't even read the rest of the email.
• 33:25
  I could go on about this and talk about it, but...
• 33:27
  Here's the thing, talking to another human being is the single best way to solve conflict but also allows you to have, this is the word, control in your working day.
• 33:38
  You feel better about yourself because you're solving stuff.
• 33:41
  It's a no-brainer.
• 33:42
  Imagine if you're a nurse working in intensive care and the only way you can communicate with your clients or with the sick people or whatever is sending them emails and texts.
• 33:52
  It doesn't work like that.
• 33:53
  So there's a lot of things people could do, I think, to change their work habits that will make the worker happier, the landlord happier and the tenant happier.
• 34:01
  Tim Duggan, who, Sam, I know very well and Chris knows, he's speaking for us at PM1 as well.
• 34:08
  But we've got a whole, he's not simply speaking, we've got a workshop that we're running on day two.
• 34:14
  from his new book.
• 34:15
  It's just being released in October.
• 34:16
  So it would be an advanced, first ever delivered session worldwide at PM1.
• 34:22
  And his book is called Clear Intention.
• 34:26
  So clear intention, play on tension.
• 34:29
  And he's been researching globally this concept of conflict and tension and how we actually can utilize it to power relationships.
• 34:39
  And so that's going to be a really fantastic learning process.
• 34:42
  for everybody.
• 34:43
  Conflict.
• 34:43
  Negotiate.
• 34:44
  What Fiona said, Fiona just said it better than me.
• 34:48
  Conflict goes up when you're emailing and texting.
• 34:51
  Conflict goes down real simply if you talk to people.
• 34:55
  That's a no-brainer.
• 34:56
  That's what I think I tell everyone these days.
• 34:58
  Deploy the two-email rule.
• 35:00
  If it goes any longer than two emails, pick up the phone.
• 35:03
  Yeah, yeah.
• 35:04
  That's a great rule.
• 35:05
  Great rule.
• 35:05
  All right.
• 35:06
  So let's wrap this up.
• 35:07
  So Fiona, Chris, we're going to see you in September at PM1, and we know that everyone can buy their tickets at pm1.com.au.
• 35:17
  Your conferences are always amazing.
• 35:19
  Fiona, I was just saying to Chris off air, I always love your property management conferences way more than any sales conference I ever go to because, you know, like everyone is just so welcoming, no egos, love to learn.
• 35:33
  payback is instant pretty much.
• 35:36
  I was just going to say, just while we're on this topic of conferences and learning, and we do lots of different things.
• 35:44
  We do all of them.
• 35:44
  We do webinars.
• 35:45
  We do one-on-ones.
• 35:46
  We do conferences.
• 35:48
  We do workshops.
• 35:49
  I speak at other things.
• 35:51
  I do podcasts.
• 35:53
  I've got articles that we put out through LinkedIn.
• 35:57
  So personally, I'm
• 35:59
  I'm across all of the different verticals and genres of learning consumption.
• 36:04
  What I will say is that in my 25 years of running conferences, the learning is about being in the room.
• 36:14
  When you are in a room.
• 36:16
  physically with other people.
• 36:18
  And I was reflecting actually on the very first conference that I ever went to, which actually, Chris, was a first national event that I went to.
• 36:29
  And I'd not long been in the industry, probably not even 12 months.
• 36:34
  And I remember Sandy Hodgkins at the time who I was working for as an incredible mentor and leader to me.
• 36:39
  She was amazing.
• 36:40
  enormous on learning.
• 36:41
  And I didn't know anything about it at the time.
• 36:43
  I was probably a 20-year-old about then, was my second job in real estate.
• 36:47
  And everybody, we were constantly in training, all the time.
• 36:51
  And we went to this conference and I remember up at Terrigal and we went up to Crown Plaza at Terrigal and the whole team went.
• 36:59
  And it was a big business back then.
• 37:01
  I'm talking, what was that?
• 37:02
  That was like 1996.
• 37:03
  And we had over 1,200 managements back.
• 37:06
  then, which by today's standards, you know, it's almost like a 10,000 rent roll, right?
• 37:10
  Huge.
• 37:11
  Huge it was.
• 37:11
  It was the biggest in the country almost.
• 37:13
  And so, and we went to this event and it was all about learning and engagement, but it was about the team camaraderie.
• 37:20
  It was, and I remember so many great things from that event and those people I still talk to now.
• 37:26
  And so it's the whole concept of saying, hey Fee, we value you.
• 37:31
  And we want to invest in, I'm still goosebumps with this, we want to invest in you.
• 37:36
  We want you to go to this event and to learn more.
• 37:40
  My whole model of life, learn more, be more, do more, as you know, from Blaney Potential Plus days.
• 37:45
  But it's like sending people and I know I hear people, they'll say to me, oh, Fedia, we asked the team if they want to go.
• 37:53
  And I'm like, you don't walk into a room and say, hey, do you want to go to this?
• 37:57
  You have to, as a business owner, you walk in and a team leader, you say, hey, guys, let's come together.
• 38:03
  I want to invest in you.
• 38:06
  I want to invest in your future.
• 38:08
  I want to help you be better.
• 38:10
  I want to make your life easier.
• 38:13
  I want to support your growth.
• 38:14
  And here's the way we're going to do it.
• 38:16
  And let's go together.
• 38:18
  And when you're there...
• 38:19
  You're going to meet new people.
• 38:21
  You're going to learn new things.
• 38:22
  And not only that, when I go to events all the time, I'm learning every day.
• 38:26
  And I'm sitting in that room.
• 38:27
  If you read my notes from the sessions that I'm in, half my notes are of ideas and other things that get born from being in a creative and learning space.
• 38:40
  And you don't get that in a book.
• 38:43
  You don't get that on a webinar.
• 38:45
  You don't get that in a pre-recorded session.
• 38:49
  And I do all of those things.
• 38:50
  They bring other elements to a room.
• 38:52
  But this, it's different.
• 38:54
  You know, we've already exceeded ticket sales from last year.
• 38:57
  We're way over.
• 38:59
  I'm hopeful that we'll sell out.
• 39:01
  And, you know, I'm not just going to start shoving chairs in to get more people to get more money.
• 39:05
  That's not what it's about.
• 39:06
  It's about protecting the space for all the reasons I've just shared.
• 39:09
  I just want to implore to people that no matter what you're doing, you have to have multi-mode learning because we're multi-mode humans.
• 39:18
  I think we've run out of time, but I'll make my comment on the stage at PM1, which is in September, which I'm looking forward to.
• 39:24
  Sam, you've been a great host today.
• 39:25
  Thank you for inviting Fiona and I onto the program.
• 39:28
  We'll continue our conversation as we have done for 30 years.
• 39:32
  Fiona, have a lovely weekend, both of you.
• 39:35
  Thank you.
• 39:36
  Thanks, V. Thanks, Chris.
• 39:37
  Thank you, everyone.
• 39:38
  Bye-bye.