Latest / Elite Agent - The Edit / Hope is not a strategy: Chris Hanley on trust, truth and moving stock

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Hope is not a strategy: Chris Hanley on trust, truth and moving stock · Elite Agent - The Edit

• 0:00
  This market's not about charm, it's not about swagger, not about charisma, it's not about any of those types of things.
• 0:07
  That of itself is not going to get you what you want.
• 0:10
  And what you want is to be able to educate a seller, interpret the market, to be focused on the data, to use your skills, and it's also a market to learn,
• 0:20
  We're used to talking at people.
• 0:22
  When you're in a period like this, it's about asking questions.
• 0:26
  It isn't about making statements.
• 0:28
  There's no growth in the comfort zone.
• 0:30
  You'll get more growth, some of you, in the next year than you've had in the last five years.
• 0:43
  Real estate is very good at talking about the market when the market is good.
• 0:47
  We talk about growth, we talk about records, and we talk about awards that work, usually with the benefit of hindsight.
• 0:54
  But what we're less comfortable talking about is honesty when the market gets hard, when volumes tighten, when vendors get anxious, good agents sometimes struggle, and leaders find out whether the operating rhythm in their business is actually any good.
• 1:15
  So welcome to The Edit, a new podcast from Elite Agent.
• 1:18
  I'm Samantha McLean, of course, and every episode of this series will begin with one hard question facing agents and principals right now.
• 1:27
  We'll put it to the people who have actually done the work and we'll stay with it long enough to get past the easy answer.
• 1:35
  The conversations here will be practical, honest, and at times maybe even a little uncomfortable.
• 1:41
  And across this series one, I'll be joined by some of my favorite industry people as co-hosts.
• 1:47
  Today, I'd like to introduce you to the first of them.
• 1:51
  Someone who's podcasted with me many times before is an industry favorite.
• 1:55
  In fact, I call him the wise man of the industry, and that's Chris Hanley.
• 2:00
  So Chris is with me for this opening episode.
• 2:02
  He spent more than four decades in real estate, worked through some genuinely hard cycles, and at a time when some very good and well-known agents might be struggling a little bit, his first national Byron Bay business has just had its best year.
• 2:16
  So Chris, welcome to the edit.
• 2:18
  Yeah.
• 2:18
  And thank you as always.
• 2:19
  I always enjoy our chats.
• 2:21
  We've had some interesting ones over the years.
• 2:23
  And yes, First National Buyer has just had its biggest year in a difficult, challenging market since our COVID years some time ago.
• 2:32
  So thank you for having me on.
• 2:34
  Well, before we unpack that, I actually just genuinely want to thank you for being here today, Chris.
• 2:38
  I feel very lucky that I managed to persuade you.
• 2:42
  to be my co-host for half of the series.
• 2:44
  So like I said, you've podcasted with me many times before.
• 2:47
  You understand the industry.
• 2:49
  You know how to have the kind, honest ad-lib conversations that I wanted this show to create.
• 2:54
  But, you know, first of all, you better tell everyone, how did I get you to agree to do it?
• 2:59
  Am I wasted here?
• 2:59
  Should I be in real estate sales?
• 3:01
  Absolutely.
• 3:01
  Yeah, no, I think maybe even you should aspire higher than that, maybe political office or something.
• 3:08
  But if we're both being frank here, as we usually are when we chat, you didn't need to persuade me a great deal.
• 3:15
  I guess in a roundabout way I'm here because we've had a couple of conversations about topics like what happens if you're working in an office where a lot of people,
• 3:28
  don't have experience in a new, more challenging market.
• 3:32
  For example, we've had lots of conversations around the education piece.
• 3:36
  Where do you get the wisdom and the processes and so on from?
• 3:40
  So we're here probably because we're in part trying to help those people out there, bosses as well as salespeople who don't have a blueprint for what's going on at the moment.
• 3:53
  And so speaking of blueprints, like I've sort of laid out what my vision is for this show, but let's get a few ground rules in place that, you know, from your perspective.
• 4:05
  On this show, what should we refuse to do?
• 4:07
  I think we should – that's a very good question.
• 4:11
  I think we should refuse to walk past behaviour, attitudes, myths,
• 4:19
  that we all know exists but nobody wants to talk about.
• 4:23
  So I think if we do that, that's a good start.
• 4:25
  I think we should also be in many ways influenced by data in these conversations.
• 4:33
  I think we should focus on the reality, and the reality for most people at the moment is things are hard, and hard is hard.
• 4:42
  I think another important thing at the moment is to understand that
• 4:46
  that good things end, bad things end, but the only way in these circumstances that we're all in together, that we're all facing together, it doesn't matter which part of the country you're in, is to understand the central principle of our businesses.
• 5:03
  And that is that you have to list, educate,
• 5:08
  and then move your stock through your business if you're a single salesperson or if you're a leader listening to this.
• 5:15
  A new hope is not a strategy.
• 5:19
  And in this marketplace, there is ways to do that.
• 5:22
  But you have to be focused on, Sam, every day, every hour of every day, you have to be focused on moving stock through the front door of your business out the back door.
• 5:33
  What do you feel like the industry is talking around at the moment rather than really having the conversation about?
• 5:39
  That's a very good question.
• 5:41
  We talk around the realities.
• 5:44
  There's three types of markets.
• 5:46
  People have heard me speak over the years, have heard this many times, but there's three markets.
• 5:51
  Headwind, tailwind, no wind.
• 5:54
  There are three markets.
• 5:55
  You can talk about real estate in all myriad of other ways, but that's the world.
• 6:00
  Now, we certainly don't have a tailwind at the moment.
• 6:03
  We're certainly not becalmed with no wind.
• 6:05
  We're into a headwind.
• 6:06
  For those of you out there who don't know me or where I'm from, I have a business in northern New South Wales in Byron Bay that operates across three or four main postcodes.
• 6:16
  But the one I'm, I guess, more well known for is the Byron Bay Postcode 2481.
• 6:21
  Our postcode is like a bellwether postcode in elections.
• 6:26
  There's bellwether seats.
• 6:27
  Well, there's postcodes.
• 6:29
  that you can learn a lot from for a couple of different reasons.
• 6:33
  In an election, they give you an indication of how the overall election is going to go.
• 6:39
  Our postcode, 2481, is a great indication of the entire country because historically, and I've been here a long time, historically, we're one of the first postcodes to head down or into a changing market, and we're usually one of the first to head out at the other end of that.
• 6:57
  And our reality here is our market here has been challenging for over a year.
• 7:01
  So I'm talking to you not as a principal and a team member of somewhere in the last few months where the market has changed.
• 7:10
  We've been into a headwind for well over a year, probably 13, 14 months now.
• 7:14
  The things that we're ignoring, I think, at the moment, other than data, which a lot of people don't even have, they're not lucky enough to work in a business with the good data, is I think that we're ignoring the fact we are still having conversations.
• 7:28
  This is it in a sentence.
• 7:30
  We are still having conversations as though we're in some tailwind market or where just listing and waiting is going to push your stock through and allow people to move.
• 7:43
  It's not.
• 7:44
  So we're ignoring hard, difficult conversations is one of the things that we're not doing at the moment.
• 7:50
  And we're expecting for some reason or other that other things will intervene, like some mystery will appear and it will produce buyers.
• 8:00
  If the price isn't right and you're running open homes, there's a reason why.
• 8:05
  No one's turning up.
• 8:07
  And there's all these facts that are evidence that you can point to to help educate your sellers so that they can move.
• 8:15
  We're going to unpack that a little bit more with you at the moment.
• 8:18
  But before we do, I just wanted to give you actually have your own podcast.
• 8:22
  So I wanted to give that a bit of a plug.
• 8:25
  And you also said that you love the ad lib nature of podcasting and the gifts that sometimes arrive in the interviews.
• 8:33
  What do you feel like, you know, because I'm going to hand you the mic throughout some of these episodes as well, you're going to be able to ask the questions.
• 8:41
  What do you feel like makes someone give you the real answer instead of their conference stage answer?
• 8:47
  Trust.
• 8:48
  It's real simple, trust.
• 8:50
  And the interesting parallel, this is a very good question, right?
• 8:54
  The interesting parallel between a podcast and a listing presentation or a meeting with a seller, for example, to talk about price adjustment so people can move is very simply trust.
• 9:07
  And in real estate at the moment, our trust levels are the lowest they've been in the 40 years I've been in the industry.
• 9:12
  They're about 5%, right?
• 9:14
  Now, trust, trust is information well explained.
• 9:18
  Trust is our currency.
• 9:20
  Trust is the oil within the relationship that allows people to communicate with other people and sometimes very quickly
• 9:29
  Right?
• 9:30
  There's a belief by some people that you only win people's trust by having these long-term relationships.
• 9:36
  That's not the case at all.
• 9:38
  I believe, and when I do podcasts, and I have got a podcast called Our Byron Community, and I've had it for four years, and it's part of, if you like,
• 9:47
  our commitment to the community of the Northern Rivers where our business is based.
• 9:52
  And I interview all of these people from all walks of life.
• 9:56
  I've been doing it for four years.
• 9:57
  There's about 100 back episodes now.
• 10:00
  I get to talk to billionaires and school teachers and people.
• 10:04
  But here's the thing, and this is why your question is good.
• 10:07
  The parallel between doing a podcast and
• 10:10
  And meeting someone in an open home or meeting someone in a lounge room is real simple.
• 10:16
  That if there's no trust, there's no connection, and they will not, they will not make the right decisions, those people, because they do not trust you.
• 10:27
  Our profession seems to be headed nearly deliberately.
• 10:32
  There's a phrase called willful blindness that I saw on a book title years ago.
• 10:38
  It is willful blindness as a real estate agent to practice your profession without understanding how trust works.
• 10:49
  And if there's no trust, it's a little bit like an engine without oil.
• 10:53
  Your relationship will seize up.
• 10:55
  If they don't trust you and you're not able to build trust, and you know what happens, Sam, you've done podcasts sometimes with people, there's no trust.
• 11:04
  They close up.
• 11:05
  They don't answer your good questions.
• 11:07
  But if there is trust, I've had people tell me the most extraordinary things on my podcast about...
• 11:14
  I had a very well-known person's wife come up to me in the street after I did a podcast with them once and said, how did you get him to tell you that?
• 11:22
  He never told me that, right?
• 11:25
  So it's the same as a real estate salesperson.
• 11:28
  Trust is everything.
• 11:31
  It's interesting.
• 11:31
  We're seeing that play out at the moment.
• 11:33
  I think the relationship between the real estate industry and the government has blown up in two states.
• 11:40
  So in two of the biggest states, being New South Wales and Victoria, it feels a bit like war between the real estate industry and the government that too...
• 11:54
  To me, it feels like a lack of trust.
• 11:56
  There's a lot of people in our profession, in the REIs and on the CEOs of the major companies, I know most of them, some of them I know very, very well.
• 12:05
  They're all like hardworking, really well-meaning human beings, right?
• 12:10
  The but is that the politicians and the community at large do not respect us.
• 12:16
  5% is our general trust level.
• 12:18
  There's no one lower on the scale that I'm aware of, right?
• 12:21
  The last three or four years in Australia, the biggest unsolved political issue remains, in my view, housing.
• 12:29
  We are not invited to or listened to on a topic
• 12:34
  Imagine if it was medical, hospitals for example, and you were having a major Australian debate about how to build more hospitals or whatever.
• 12:43
  You'd imagine the doctors would be present at those conversations.
• 12:47
  What we have done as a profession over the years, sadly, is focus on transactions.
• 12:53
  and not focused on doing things as a profession to build trust.
• 12:58
  Trust is information well explained.
• 13:01
  I'm a bore with that.
• 13:02
  I'll say it over and over on this podcast.
• 13:04
  But here's the thing.
• 13:06
  The reason we're at loggerheads also, we're always anti-government, as far as I can see, or that's what I say.
• 13:13
  I don't go on social much.
• 13:15
  What we should be doing is sitting down with government in New South Wales and Victoria and all over the country,
• 13:20
  And I know there'll be people listening to this say, yeah, we do it, we do it.
• 13:23
  But if we do it, then why aren't we at any of the tables on the National Housing Challenge?
• 13:30
  We are not.
• 13:31
  We're not at any of them.
• 13:32
  And have a look at the media in the last couple of years.
• 13:35
  Go in, if you've got to use AI, use whatever method you like and see how many real estate people who were in the field every day, who know the market and their communities,
• 13:46
  Here's the weirdest part of this.
• 13:49
  If you picked a profession in Australia, a specific profession, and wanted to understand the rhythm of...
• 13:59
  of a particular community.
• 14:00
  So you go around the country, just pick a postcode at random and put your finger on that postcode.
• 14:05
  If you want to get an overview of that postcode, the schools, everything about it that's earthy and good, which profession can give you an overview better than any other?
• 14:16
  It's ours.
• 14:17
  It's ours.
• 14:19
  We know everything about that stuff because everybody talks to us, right?
• 14:23
  We should be the first people involved in local, regional and state decisions about housing because we know how it works, but we're not there.
• 14:34
  So,
• 14:35
  You're right.
• 14:36
  We're in confrontation again with the state government and over issues, and I'm not making comment on the specific issues.
• 14:43
  I just wish after all my years that our profession had found a way to be at the table.
• 14:50
  We might have tried, but we haven't tried hard enough.
• 14:52
  Hopefully with some of the people that we're going to be talking to over the next eight weeks or so, hopefully we can come up with a few decent answers.
• 15:01
  But we've already stripped away some of the polite language here, you and I, because that's what kind of happens when we start chatting.
• 15:10
  You've told me a number of times it's not pretty.
• 15:13
  What do you think is actually happening inside real estate businesses right now?
• 15:17
  Fear is the predominant and chaos.
• 15:20
  And I don't mean chaos in the way that, but I mean fear and maybe a lack of understanding about what to do.
• 15:32
  I certainly think in a lot of offices, the language that is being used.
• 15:38
  I know someone from another office, not my own, told my staff recently that in essence, they'd been in real estate a little while and they weren't so much a newbie.
• 15:50
  but they certainly went around back in the GFC.
• 15:53
  It's the language they, and then when people get off the phones after having conversations with sellers, for example, where they don't really know what to say, we're used to talking at people.
• 16:06
  And this period, when you're in a period like this, it's about asking questions.
• 16:11
  It isn't about making statements.
• 16:13
  And if you've come into real estate, Sam, and you're in an office of people who do very well and they've got great scripts and dialogues and they're really good at all that stuff, don't get me wrong, that works very well for people.
• 16:25
  But this market's not about charm.
• 16:29
  It's not about swagger.
• 16:30
  It is not about charisma.
• 16:32
  It's not about any of those types of things in the sense that that of itself is not going to get you what you want.
• 16:39
  And what you want is to be able to educate a seller truthfully,
• 16:43
  to explain, interpret is a better word, interpret the market, to be focused on the data, to use your skills, and it's also, by the way, a market to learn.
• 16:54
  There's a very good agent in my area called Nick Dunn who works not in my business, he used to, who came into our business, I remember vividly during GFC.
• 17:04
  And I trained only a few agents during that period because it was hard.
• 17:08
  To put everyone in perspective here for a little bit of history, GFC started in January 2008, and the GFC in our area lasted four and a half years.
• 17:19
  not four and a half months, four and a half years.
• 17:22
  The last year of good sales before the GFC, in one of our postcodes, there was 472 sales.
• 17:31
  That was 2007.
• 17:32
  It hit a brick wall late November or early December of that year.
• 17:36
  The next year, there was 225 sales from 472.
• 17:40
  Now, some people are out in marketplaces, and I don't want to scare everybody, but some of you are out in marketplaces, you're gonna have exactly the same situation we had.
• 17:49
  And we had to work out a way as a little business, the same as everybody else, retail, real estate office, to keep our numbers up.
• 17:57
  And we did the same number of sales in 2008, the same number of sales in 2008 in that business that we did in 2007, even though half the market had disappeared.
• 18:08
  The way forward, if you're a boss, there is a series of vital, important steps that you've got to do now.
• 18:16
  And those vital steps are about attitude.
• 18:21
  They're about a process to follow.
• 18:25
  They are about a series of questions.
• 18:27
  My staff take the piss out of me all the time, right?
• 18:30
  Because when the market gets hard, and they did it two weeks ago, they're...
• 18:34
  When the market gets hard, I produced 11 questions to ask a seller.
• 18:40
  Nothing I ever produced, Sam, is very sophisticated.
• 18:43
  But I realized when they were taking the piss out of me two weeks ago, they rolled this as 11 questions to ask a seller in a difficult market.
• 18:51
  And they rolled it out.
• 18:52
  And one of the leading agents in our business recited them off every question, one after the other, verbatim.
• 18:59
  Now, they're tattered in their brains, but they're questions like, why would you contract me to sell my house and not listen to me?
• 19:08
  And there's a lot of stuff that's old that works.
• 19:11
  So fear, the answer to your question inside a lot of offices at the moment is fear.
• 19:16
  People are keen and want to follow.
• 19:19
  They want to be led.
• 19:20
  They want to be informed.
• 19:21
  They want to know what they can do.
• 19:23
  But if you're in a place and there's nobody there to show you, it's pretty hard.
• 19:27
  So fear is the overriding.
• 19:30
  And I was talking to one of Sydney's top agents in one of the best suburbs down there a couple of weeks ago.
• 19:36
  And I said, what are you doing?
• 19:38
  She said, I'm taking notes, right?
• 19:40
  And I've been talking to her for a little while and whatever else.
• 19:43
  You think when you're old like me and you've been around in the industry for a long time, or you worry that your message or your information is not relevant anymore, or that people don't want to listen to it, right?
• 19:54
  I get that, right, as you move through.
• 19:57
  But I can tell anyone listening to this,
• 20:00
  that this topic is the most important topic for your future for two reasons.
• 20:07
  You'll move your stock and keep your numbers up now, but more importantly, you will learn more in the next
• 20:15
  four, five, six months than you'll learn in four, five, six years.
• 20:19
  And here's the thing.
• 20:20
  There's no growth in the comfort zone.
• 20:23
  There's no growth in the comfort zone.
• 20:25
  You'll get more growth, some of you, in the next year than you've had in the last five years.
• 20:31
  Just going back to that bit at the top where, you know, I told everyone that your business has just had its best year ever and some of the conversations we've had, you know, you said you started preparing for this like 14 or 15 months ago.
• 20:46
  So take me inside a little bit, the operating rhythm, like what has changed or what changed for you 14 or 15 months ago?
• 20:54
  Like what are your people doing now that they perhaps, that I wouldn't have seen them doing 18 months ago?
• 21:00
  Whenever things are going very, very well and you're running a real estate business,
• 21:05
  You know when they're really doing well.
• 21:09
  You know that change isn't that far away because it works on cycles.
• 21:13
  So you start talking to them long before things happen about needing to change dialogue, questions.
• 21:23
  We do 11,000 hours at school.
• 21:26
  On average, all the people listening to this, on average, will do 11,000 hours at school.
• 21:31
  No one teaches you how to talk, how to ask questions, or how to listen.
• 21:36
  There's no subjects at school called listening, talking, or asking questions.
• 21:43
  If you said to me, what are the three most important characteristics, skills, for a real estate agent, it's talking, listening, and asking questions.
• 21:53
  So no one's taught these.
• 21:56
  So I start boring my stuff.
• 21:58
  The ones who've been with me a long time know it.
• 22:01
  The newer ones maybe think, what's he talking about?
• 22:03
  But in the end of the day, I focus on those things, asking better questions.
• 22:09
  I focus on listening better.
• 22:12
  I tell them little stories about the power of listening.
• 22:15
  I talk to people.
• 22:17
  If you went in, Sam, to a lot of real estate agents' listing presentations or their vendor meetings, and hopefully they're having them face-to-face in this market, but if you went into them and you had a camera and a clock, a lot of agents will talk 80% of the time and the seller will talk 20% of the time, 80-20.
• 22:35
  In a market like this, it should be complete reverse of that.
• 22:39
  that you should be asking questions.
• 22:41
  You let silence do the heavy listing.
• 22:42
  Most real estate agents are scared shitless of silence.
• 22:46
  If it's too silent, they talk to fill the gap.
• 22:48
  When those of you out there who don't know this piece, silence is your friend, it's your ally.
• 22:55
  Most agents also in a market like this don't understand, I don't think that you've got to have a partnership with your seller.
• 23:02
  And instead, many of the underlying principles of our profession
• 23:09
  whereas that's not going to work in this thing.
• 23:11
  I remember Peter Gilchrist, who your listeners will know, I remember him saying years and years ago, we've done a lot of work with Peter over the years, he's a guy I like and he's a thinker and whatever else.
• 23:22
  I remember a phrase he used to, just tell them how it is.
• 23:26
  Just tell them the truth.
• 23:29
  Now, no offence, I think our profession, the truth is a problem for us to use or to know how to use because we think people are going to be scared off or don't want the truth.
• 23:40
  Well, here's the most important thing I'll say.
• 23:43
  Anyone who's got a property listed in this market is the biggest realist in the world.
• 23:49
  The only reason, if you've got a house on the market or an apartment on the market, it doesn't matter which market you're in at the moment,
• 23:55
  Based on all of the data and the information, the newspaper articles and the television and social media, you're a realist.
• 24:03
  If we're up to the job, producing the facts and the skills, we'll be able to help people put their property at the right price so they can move.
• 24:12
  What does a really great agent do?
• 24:17
  With a realistic vendor, I'm glad you said that because I was about to ask you about that because I guess nobody who has the choice of selling or not selling is going to sell right now.
• 24:29
  Like, you know, it's going to be always the people that kind of have to sell.
• 24:33
  I don't agree with you.
• 24:35
  No?
• 24:35
  Okay.
• 24:36
  And I'll tell you why I don't agree with you.
• 24:38
  Sorry, I agree with what you've said, but they're not the only ones that are going to sell.
• 24:44
  And I'll put this to you.
• 24:46
  Really good properties sell in any market.
• 24:48
  And there's a lot of people around at the moment who are sensing this market is also an opportunity.
• 24:55
  And they've got plenty of money.
• 24:56
  It's not as if people have got less wealthy in our country and I'm in a high-end market or I'm in a strange market where I've got modestly priced properties and very high-end properties.
• 25:07
  Both types of properties.
• 25:09
  The high end at the moment is a place where the number of sales absolutely will go down.
• 25:15
  And the high end of the eastern suburbs of Sydney, for example, and other areas I know are a different market now to a year ago.
• 25:21
  But you're still transacting on some of these high end properties and people mightn't get as much.
• 25:27
  I took someone on a car tour yesterday and showed them a property, and it doesn't matter which property it is, and it doesn't matter the street or whatever, but this house was just sold at a reduced price, but it was still sold for a hell of a lot more money than it was bought for six or seven years ago, right?
• 25:43
  Because our market has been very good in that period of time.
• 25:46
  There's all sorts of reasons people transact.
• 25:49
  And let's go back.
• 25:51
  If you're in an office and there's nothing being sold, you're looking around, you don't know what you're doing, understand this.
• 25:56
  In your market, no matter what, whatever your postcode is, every month there'll be X amount of transactions.
• 26:02
  Whether you're making them or someone down the road is making them, they're going to be made.
• 26:06
  People die.
• 26:07
  People get married.
• 26:09
  People get divorced.
• 26:11
  Upsell, dance, all that stuff.
• 26:12
  What I'm getting at is I remember years ago in the GFC sitting down, and this is how it works.
• 26:19
  This will be an old metaphor, and some people might go, what's he talking about?
• 26:23
  But think of a milk can, right?
• 26:25
  Think of a milk can, and think of the cream on the top of the milk can.
• 26:29
  Any suburb here, it doesn't matter whether you're in a beautiful suburb in Melbourne or you're in North Queensland, it works this way.
• 26:34
  There will be X transactions in your area each month.
• 26:38
  The cream are the sellers who you are able to truthfully persuade they need to adjust their price so they can move.
• 26:45
  They rise up here and they get transacted each month.
• 26:48
  It is not as if the world stops and nothing gets sold.
• 26:52
  So if you can truthfully persuade with facts your seller to put their property in the right price range so that theirs is one of the cream that gets sold each month, it isn't rocket science.
• 27:05
  And here's the other weird thing.
• 27:07
  We're not doctors or engineers or architects.
• 27:09
  We're not.
• 27:10
  But there's a science as far as I'm concerned about this.
• 27:15
  You know, I know some of your future guests, one of who I call the professor on this topic in our profession.
• 27:22
  But there's a bunch of people who operate in real estate who have the equivalent of PhDs in this area of educating sellers, adjusting prices so that people can move.
• 27:34
  So it's a science.
• 27:36
  If you sit down there thinking, what's this guy talking about?
• 27:38
  It can be learned and it can be taught.
• 27:41
  Let's sort of wrap this one up here because we've got a whole lot of stuff coming up for everybody.
• 27:47
  But let's say I'm a principal listening to this out there and I'm listening to this thinking, you're going to stroke me.
• 27:55
  I wish I had started having these conversations 12 months ago.
• 27:59
  Three things you think they should do in the next 90 days.
• 28:04
  The first is reattach themselves to their business.
• 28:07
  Now, I don't want to be rude and prod your bosses out there, but a lot of bosses in a good market, they're not that attached to their business really because the business is going well.
• 28:16
  For a lot of us who run businesses for years, it's weird.
• 28:20
  Some people are less attached when they're doing well because you don't have to be.
• 28:24
  So the first thing is to reattach yourself properly.
• 28:26
  Get yourself a screen with all of the data.
• 28:30
  If your CRM or whatever tech you're using doesn't give you a screen with all the gauges on it so you can watch.
• 28:38
  The second thing is don't do what a lot of people do and ease off.
• 28:42
  The answer to every question in real estate is prospecting.
• 28:45
  What happens in this market is people get depressed.
• 28:48
  The data market go up.
• 28:49
  They don't prospect because in essence, subliminally they don't want any more stock.
• 28:53
  That is a classic, crazy mistake.
• 28:56
  So if you're an owner of a business, you should be monitoring the appraisals in your business and which come obviously from the prospecting.
• 29:04
  So the second thing you do, get all your gauges and your data right.
• 29:07
  So reattach to your business.
• 29:09
  Get all your gauges and your data right, and you'll be getting that data daily, weekly, and in reports so you can watch it.
• 29:15
  I think the third thing you've got to do is sit down and do a strange thing, get everybody in the room, put their phone somewhere else, and have an honest conversation with people who work for you.
• 29:27
  Hard is hard.
• 29:30
  This isn't going to change.
• 29:32
  Hard talk is normal, right?
• 29:35
  Hard talk is normal.
• 29:37
  And the single thing that goes with all of this, Sam, the single most important thing, both for your sellers and for your agents and for you as a boss,
• 29:46
  is to understand that your emotional, your ability to manage your emotions as a boss, will help you manage the emotions of your staff.
• 29:54
  Because it's a roller coaster.
• 29:56
  We're all strapped in.
• 29:57
  I remember years ago learning about turbulence in an aeroplane.
• 30:02
  And I read this thing.
• 30:03
  I used to be worried the planes were going to fall out of the sky.
• 30:06
  So when I flew, I wasn't always relaxed.
• 30:09
  And I remember reading this piece in a handbook that basically said that turbulence is normal, that in an aeroplane it's normal, and they're engineered aeroplanes about for five or six times the structural shaking they actually get up in the air.
• 30:27
  And reading that one thing on a page changed my whole attitude to flying.
• 30:32
  Now, I'm saying to any boss out there or any salesperson, listen to this.
• 30:36
  If you started a month ago, whatever, it'll be okay, right?
• 30:40
  There's a way through this.
• 30:42
  You can get good at all these things.
• 30:44
  You'll learn more than ever.
• 30:45
  But you've got to understand that in this emotional time when people are often selling a house for less money they bought or less money than it was worth six months ago, it's
• 30:55
  You're going to be really emotional about that, right?
• 30:58
  You've got to help manage their emotions.
• 31:00
  I heard a great metaphor years ago, and I'll pinch it.
• 31:05
  It was someone else, a great person who said, we're like wet exes.
• 31:09
  You know, we're there to soak up all the stuff.
• 31:11
  And I think in this market now, that's what we need to do.
• 31:16
  Yeah, amazing.
• 31:17
  Chris Hanley, thank you for joining me today.
• 31:21
  As I mentioned earlier at the top of the episode, Chris will be joining me for a number of these episodes.
• 31:28
  In our next episode, we're going to answer a question with none other than Fiona Blaning on when a hard market exposes the gaps inside your team,
• 31:38
  who is responsible for making these teams better.
• 31:42
  So I'm looking forward to that, Chris.
• 31:44
  How about you?
• 31:44
  Me too.
• 31:46
  As we both know, Fiona Blaney is one of my favourite people in real estate and she has a fantastic conference coming up in September, I think, which we'll probably talk about.
• 31:55
  Thanks for having me, Sam.
• 31:57
  See you soon.
• 31:58
  Bye-bye.