John Cassimatis: longevity, leadership and lessons from 25+ years in property

John Cassimatis: longevity, leadership and lessons from 25+ years in property

On episode 12 of Raising the Bar, we sit down with John Cassimatis from Belle Property Coorparoo and West End, a Brisbane real estate veteran with  25+ years in the QLD property game 🏡
 
From humble beginnings to leading two high performing offices with 30+ staff, John’s built his career the same way great deals get done: do the right thing, do it consistently and play the long game ✅
 
We cover:
Longevity without burnout: why reputation, consistency and values-based selling keep you in the Brisbane real estate market for decades, plus how coaching and goal-setting sharpen the edge 🔥

Systems that scale (incl. Form 2 done right): how Belle Coorparoo and West End invested in people and process to make Form 2 Seller’s Disclosure and admin genuinely smooth - collaborative ops, proactive planning and zero drama for vendors and buyers 😎

Culture, partners and area specialisation: choosing the right business partner, hiring for fit, “fewer, better people,” and the Belle model of becoming the area specialist to win trust and market share 🤝
 
John shows what trust, longevity and genuine leadership look like in the QLD property market 🎯

Contact John: https://www.belleproperty.com/west-end/john-cassimatis
Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empirelegal/
More podcast episodes: https://empirelegal.com.au/podcast/
Check out our blogs: https://blog.empirelegal.com.au
Website: https://empirelegal.com.au

Transcript

Alright. Hey guys. Welcome back to season two of the Raising the Bar podcast. I've got a special guest today, Mr. John Cassimatis from Belle Coorparoo, and West End. 

Hey George, how you going? 

Thanks for coming on the show. 

My pleasure mate. Love to be here. 

Mate, I'm going to kick off with a fun fact. So as I understand, when you were moving from Sydney to Brisbane, you were on a plane when 9/11 happened, is that correct?

Welcome to the Raising the Bar podcast, where we story tell excellence in Queensland Property. I'm your host, George Sourris from Empire Legal. 

Yes, mate.

Yes. Well, I was, I was sort of going overseas for a short while, short stint on my way home and flying through Hong Kong as the connecting city. And then back to Sydney where I was living. And got to Sydney Airport and saw the monitors up on the top of the airport, all showing the devastation.

It was 9/11. That sat with me, obviously, and with a lot of other people. That's the day before I started my real estate career. Wow. Wow. Grounds me and sort of says, well, you know, I'm, I'm glad I'm here.

And I'm glad I've got, had a nice, long 

real estate career. Mate, we're glad you're here too. Raising the Bar - the whole point is to story tell excellence in Queensland property. So mate, we think you're pretty excellent. Got some pretty cool topics to unpack today. I reckon we just kick straight off with the first one.

You've been in the game now for about 25 years across multiple markets. How have you stayed on the path, knowing there's a huge burnout rate in this industry for real estate agents? You've been in the game a long time. Yeah. And you're still here. Yeah. And mate, also being a father, a husband, a business owner, and a mentor to a team. What tips do you have for people in the industry to not burn out and to still be charging strong after decades of doing it? 

Yeah, well, look luckily, I, I started my real estate career in sort of very humble beginnings. I, I actually got a job with my father-in-law.

My father-in-law was a real estate agent in the Redlands. And I worked under him for a, a fair few years. And he taught me basics about real estate and about how, how to be a, a good real estate agent. And he always said to me, John, you can come into this industry and, to do the right thing, you just got to make sure that you play the long game. You build up a really good customer base, you build up a good reputation.

And after that, things all sort of happen to fall into place. And I, I really took that on board and I thought, my reputation is the most important thing to me. I want to make sure that I do the right thing at every turn, even though, maybe that that will be at the expense of the, the deal at hand or, or what, what's happening next in my real estate career.

But I know that in the long run, I'll come out on top. 

Here's a perfect testament to that. We were just talking with the team here behind the scenes before you rocked up and they said, oh, who's coming in today? I said, I've got John. John Cassimatis coming in, and they said, oh, what's his deal?

And I said, he's trustworthy, he's honest, and you can't not like the guy. And I think that's a testament to playing the long game, right? Yeah. Is when you don't rip anybody off, and I've said this on other episodes, and you do the right thing by the person in front of you, yes, you may not have the quick win, but in perpetuity, you will win.

Yeah. And that's all it is. I've been a standalone agent for a few years and worked in a team as well. And I know a lot of people have sort of asked me the question about, you know, what should you do to be a really successful agent?

And I say, well, look, you go each day, you put one foot in front of the other, you give a consistent effort, and then, lo and behold, the luck starts to come. The harder work, they say, the luckier you get. 

My dad says that one.

And it's so true, mate. It's so 

true. Oh, totally. I had the privilege, I'm now incumbent in the Belle Property Network. We're a great organisation, over 200 offices around Australia, and we are lucky to have a couple of businesses in the central Brisbane, south side - Coorparoo and West End.

They're quite competitive markets, as you probably know. My business partner Jonathan and I started off working together at another office. Not the offices that we have now, but a separate office. We were two standalone agents working together in a team.

Not as a team together, but just loosely helping each other out. We would just go to work every day, do what we needed to do. From that, a couple of years later, an opportunity came along. Jonathan and I looked at each other and we sort of eyed each other off and we knew that we had similar values.

He's got a family, I've got a family. We knew that if we did what we were doing over the last two years without knowing we're on a what we would call a, a job interview. We, we were both job interviewing each other. We knew that if we kept going the way we were, and having the same values, that if we went into partnership together, that would work out pretty well.

So that's what we did. About 2014, we started Belle Property Coorparoo, and then from there, we acquired two other businesses and so now we have a staff in excess of 30 people. 

So 30 people across 

the two 

offices? 

That's right. Yeah. 

Yeah. Nice. And that was 11 years ago it started. Yep. Yep, that's right.

Yeah, mate. Let's, let's chat a little bit more about what you just said there about picking a business partner. This is totally off script. Yeah. But I think this is a really cool point. I think about, over the years we've had solicitors in our business that have written a crazy amount of revenue for our firm.

But, 

they haven't been the right people to come in as partners. So my business partner, Abi and I, we worked together at a separate firm before we started Empire. I guess we got to try, before you buy, we got to know each other and make friends and then go, yep, we want to do this together.

Best decision I've ever made is having Abi.

I guess picking the right business partner. You got to spend time with John, not necessarily in the same team, you or your individual agents. Yeah. But you got to understand the core values line up. The vision aligns. 

Yeah. Yeah. And the core values are so, so important when it comes to being in business with another person. You got to trust that person implicitly, almost like they're your family member. And sometimes you probably trust them more than some of your family members. You know what I mean?

We knew that all we needed to do was to do the same thing over and over again. It's not sexy. Sometimes people think real estate's a sexy industry. It's really not. It's about just getting in there, giving your best all every day of the week, and just doing the right thing by everybody that's around you.

Jonathan and I, we've got the similar values. He's a family man like me. We're still with our original wives, which is almost unheard of. Well, in the real estate industry, you know, truly though. It is. Oh yeah. Well, yeah. That is rare. Yeah, exactly. I've been married 25 plus years.

And so has Jonathan. Where, he's from England originally. My parents are from Greece. Similar location for from where your parentage is from, just down the road, the next village. Yeah, that's right. We're, we're, we're countrymen. But what I've noticed is that, people from the immigrant background tend to like to give a good effort.

And I'm really pleased that my parents have instilled in, in those sorts of values in us. And that's really translated into my real estate career. 

Yep. And even the fact you said both family people, those values are important. I think about again, these other solicitors we've had over the time and, you know, if we were to grow or open a new office, if we were to clip in a partner or anything like that.

And if those values don't align, it's not even on the cards in my opinion, because that's when the ship starts to rock and it becomes uns(table) shaky, and then you've got two against one and all this other stuff. It's just, if you're on the same page and it just works, yeah, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

You chug along. Look. 

That's right. 

You have your holidays, you go away your family, and you feel safe knowing that the other John has has got the businesses' back, and everythings under control. 

Exactly. Yeah. So it's, it's been a bit of a growth spurt over the last few years, after acquriing a couple of businesses.

And we've been lucky enough to actually be able to really solidify our market share, and also to invest in a good team, and a good system, and make sure that our people in the office, the sales agents particularly, they're supported 100%. We obviously think that's really important for us to offer them, as Principals of the offices.

Yes. And we will talk a bit more about systems actually in, in a tick. Because I, again, we were talking off camera about a strong point, and I believe that your office has amazing systems. 

Mm-hmm. And 

I'm not just saying that because you're sitting here. We deal with a lot of real estate agents and it's always a smooth transaction with you guys.

You've really ironed out the way you onboard the client, the way you introduce them to the solicitors, all of that stuff. It seems effortless. Because you guys have invested time into a process there. 

Well that's true. I mean, look. We've been able to recruit good quality people.

We've actually asked them to, to come up with some good systems, that they came up with. So what I'm saying is, what we've got is some really good people in our team who have come up with some systems on their own.

We've given them that autonomy and they've been able to really come out and, and deliver the goods and, and that's transferred into how well the business is run. It's with guidance that they've been able to do that. Rather than us sort of dictating everything. We want to be collaborative in our management style and make sure that people can also contribute to what we do.

Your guys that are championing that admin journey. You're letting them build it. You're not trying to micromanage it. It's not right. 

No, we're not about that. Let's work 

together, but this is your area. We want you to create a good process. 

That's it, 

mate. You can't do everything, can you?

My admins are, but geez, like, I wouldn't even try to tell them how to, how to make their job better. I mean, they do the job all day. They're smart people. They can work out how to make it more efficient for them, and a better experience for the client. 

Exactly. 

Yeah, 

exactly. So that's, that's kind of what, what's happened over the last probably the last three years I've noticed that there's been a huge development in that space.

Just people growing within the business, not just us sort of dictating everything. We just want people to grow on their own pace. I think really good key thing to be as a business owner, is to let people shine. Let them really show you what they've got. Do you agree? 

Yes, I say it's like, like "caging" someone.

You know, if you put a bird in a cage, it sits all caged up. Let the bird be free. It's like people, people are smart. 

Yeah. Say, 

I need you to work out this problem. Don't breathe down their necks. And almost always they'll produce an amazing result.

Or at least they'll be right on the path and say, hey, I'm thinking about this, what do you reckon? And then you work together. And you nail it. 

Yeah. Exactly. And it's also the fact that we've invested heavily back into the admin side of things. I think that's really important. We want to make sure that as a brand, we offer top quality service and, and that doesn't come cheaply.

We obviously want to offer the best in standard in the industry. Yes. And I think that's what we're trying to deliver at the moment, which is fantastic. 

Well, let's spend another minute on that then. We were talking offline about the Form 2 process. Obviously this is a new process for Queensland, only rolled out a couple of months ago.

Your office is right up there. It's, there's never problems. It's always smooth and it was literally one of my questions to ask you down the track, but let's just quickly talk about it now. What did you guys do? Or what have you done to make that seamless? Because, mate, we deal with hundreds of agents, hundreds of offices, and it's a bit all over the shop from the vast majority of them.

Yeah. And it doesn't matter if it's you or John or someone else from your team, it seems to be consistent and smooth. Yeah. And on our side of things, we're never getting the hurry along from you. Yeah. Because you've got a process down pat. 

Yeah. Well, in our management team, we've also alongside Jonathan and myself, we've got Scott and we've got Lindel and our management team.

So we've got a lot of management people that we can go to and get suggestions from. Scott's running our property management department. He's our head of PM and he's very much a systems orientated kind of individual. We went to him, we went to Lindel, who's also had high positions in large corporate businesses.

And we asked for their opinion, and what we should be doing. And they came up with something quite simple and quite straightforward alongside with our two administrators. And together they came up with it very, very easily. And we just, but you built 

it. You the time and the resources. These four people you're talking about, they're all resources. They're people. People cost money in professional services. Correct. The most expensive part of the game. So you've invested into that. 

Yeah. 

And then said, alright, we need to build a process. Even to the point, I know I came along to your office and we sat down and we spoke about, you know, what's Form 2 going to look like before it rolled out.

Mm-hmm. And then you guys obviously took that, built a process for it. So when Go Live happened, or even before Go Live, I know you had a plan. 

Yeah. 

From our side looking in, it was smooth as, it's great. 

Yeah. It doesn't have to be that difficult, hey, it's just as everyone's working together, doing what they're supposed to be doing when they're supposed to be doing it and look, it just happens quite nicely.

And I mean, I was really happy that Empire Legal came to us early in the piece and really educated our team, making sure that, you know, they're across it. It wasn't this big scary thing, it didn't have to be, and now it just feels fairly natural. Like it's just, just one of the things we do.

Quite. Yeah, now it does. It sure does. But you 

know what, it was quite scary, and yes, I'm glad we got onto it early. I think that was the piece. Looking down the path going, okay, we've only got three months before this goes live. We need to work out a plan. Not, oh my God, it's happening next week.

Yeah. Which 

is how I think a lot of operators operate. 

Yeah. That's reactive rather than proactive. So I think, you know, we've always tried to be as proactive as possible. Sometimes you can't, sometimes you don't get a lot of notice. And things change. And I'm sure there'll be changes around the corner with with the way the industry's going, all other industries are going.

I think when you've got a few more heads in the game in terms of our leadership team, it makes it the job a little bit easier. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. And mate, I guess the tenure of yourself and Jonathan as well. The fact that you guys have been in the game for a while, you've probably been through a few different legal rollouts, changes, et cetera.

It's not your first rodeo, right? No. Like, oh, we've seen this before. Let's get ahead of this. Yeah, let's just get it 

right. 

Yeah, 

exactly. And it doesn't have to be scary. I think that's really good for our clients. We want to make sure that they feel confident in our ability to handle what they don't know about this sort of stuff.

And we'll take it off their hands and make them feel comfortable. And that's a great experience for them. And hopefully they find that experience is good enough to, to talk about it to other people that they know. 

And that's word of mouth. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. We all know how that works. Yeah.

That's how we built this business. That's how you built your business. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Your clients tell their families and friends, and that's how, that's how we do our work. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Well, mate, I'm just going to look at my little cheat sheet here. Keep us moving along. 

Mm-hmm. 

You've been ranked in the top 10 Belle property Queensland for real estate agents.

Congratulations. Thanks, mate. If you had to start over, what would you keep doing and what would you stop? This is just a quick fire round, what comes to mind? 

There's so many things in real estate, there's so many aspects of it. I suppose, if you ask me, if you're a young agent just starting out in your first year in real estate, what, what would you do first?

And I think, our Belle property model is where we want a person to come into the office and, and know about an area. And be an area specialist and really get to know that area, like the back of their hand, and get to make new connections in that area as quickly as possible.

Because what happens is then, then you become the expert in that area. When I ask people why did they choose an agent? Invariably, they say, oh, because they sell a lot in the area. That's their point of the difference. That's really important. And that's, that's the philosophy behind Belle.

So what we do is encourage agents to come into the industry like that, and just carve out a patch, get to know it, get to know the people in there. You might not sell their property in the next five months or six months, or 12 months, whatever it is, but play the long game. Contact, and then, you'll find that the results will come.

It's a very competitive market. There's a lot of good agents out there with high profiles. And what we try and do now is to try and get a new person into our office, train them up properly, put them into a team, get some experience, before they then get let loose into the, the big wide world. We find that that's the best chance for them to actually thrive in the, in the industry. 

It's how you learn as well, right? You're doing your apprenticeship basically. Exactly. You're be with a seasoned person that's seen it all before and that's how you as a junior, learn. I think that's great. Same with our file handlers here. We don't just hire someone and say, all right, you're running deals now. They'd get eaten alive. You're with a senior person, you're going to shadow, you're going to be their assistant first. Then you're going to slowly, slowly over time, do one deal, then do a second deal, and then eventually you're running 30 deals a month.

Exactly. Yeah. 

If you throw them in the deep end, sink or swim may have worked years ago. I don't think it's a, a philosophy that should be adopted anymore. 

Our staff turnover's relatively low compared to the industry. What I've noticed is that people stay around a lot longer than other offices and I think that's a testament to the fact that we try and give everyone a really good hard crack at the, an opportunity.

We don't hire very quickly. So we try and make sure that the people that we get are, are the right fit, and then from there we know that they're going to succeed and get on with it. 

Culture. 

Yeah, culture. 

Literally. I, I am picking up exactly what you're putting down, John. We have a, a role open at the moment and we, we haven't been able to fill it.

It's been a couple of months because we haven't found the right person. 

Yeah. 

And when I come to your office to visit every now and again, it's usually the same faces or at least a lot of familiar faces. Yeah. Which means you must be doing something right, mate, to retain staff is a tricky, tricky thing within itself.

Yes. You must be looking after them and you know, doing all the right stuff, otherwise people won't stick around. 

That's right. 

Yep. 

And I suppose the thing, what we want to try and do is want to try and create a culture of teamwork. People having  the ability to build their brand within their area.

We give an agent an area that they can really focus on. They can door knock it, they can letter box drop it, they can really build their database in it and not have other people within their office then having to come in over the top of them and try and steal their business from them, or steal that area from them.

So I think that's a really good point of difference. And I think that's why a lot of the agents within the Belle network have been market leaders in their areas, because they really, really know how to focus. 

Okay. So for example, you, you've got a certain area, say it's Coorparoo. What you're saying is, you won't have other Belle agents in Coorparoo all trying to feed out of the same. That's right.

Someone else might have the next suburb over. That's right. And that way you've got your own sort of area. That's right. We can become that expert and yeah. What a great idea. 

Yeah. Well, a hundred percent. And that's the philosophy. Because our whole adage is, in Belle property, we want fewer, better people.

We'd rather persons in our office all doing really, really well, rather than having a whole office full of people that are doing hardly anything.

At the end of the day, this business is not an easy business. It's a six day a week business. There's no point being in real estate and earning the same income that you could earn at Maccas.

And that's what happens unfortunately. There's a lot of people there that don't earn a lot of income, and you know, I've sacrificed a lot of my time over the years, you know, I've, I've missed kids' sports. My girls have all played netball. I've probably seen, seen like two or three games a year max because, well, every Saturday's offline for you, isn't it?

Yeah. You're never ever going to be 

able to get away on a Saturday. 

Exactly. Yeah. But, I've made those decisions because, luckily I've had the support of my wife who's been able to be there for my girls. And I know that a lot of people in real estate, they need someone behind them to make sure that they can still do what they got to do because they know that it's not a nine to five job.

And so I've been lucky, I've been blessed with my wife of over 27 years that she's been there to be the backbone of our family. And to make sure that my kids turn out okay. Mate rock on. Rock on. That's 

very, that's very evident. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. We all need good women behind us.

Yeah, we do. We really do. Exactly. 

And I mean, you know, I don't say that lightly. She's, she's fantastic and you know, I'm blessed. But in terms of going back to what else I would do if I was a young and up and coming agent, I suppose being humble being hungry. And being really, really driven is, the other thing as well, because it's easy to do it for five minutes or five months. Real estate's an easy job to do for a few months, but it does get a bit challenging over time. Not 

25 years. And it does.

And that's, that's why you're in this chair, right? Yeah. You think about the, you watch Selling Sunset and all that jazz. I think people watch it and go, oh, I'm going to be a real estate agent. Yeah. I saw through COVID, people I personally know, one girl was a model, another guy's a sparky. They came in, ugh, two months later, not even, like one month later, they're gone.

25 years is a long time to be getting up, coming to work six days a week. Game day Saturday, every week, year in, year out. Which look, that leads us straight into the next point, which I reckon we jump into. Okay, go ahead. Which is just on the back of that, is just talking about your journey now, not only as a selling agent, but also as a principal.

So as I understand, you and Jonathan are both principals of the office. Yeah. And you both sell. Because I know some agents, some principals stop selling and focus on development solely. Yeah. Whereas you are doing both. So we are, yeah. What's that look like? You're trying to hunt and you're trying to mentor, and I imagine it's a bit of a new journey for you.

It is. If my audience is, there's some new principals out there and they're in a similar boat where they're trying to be a principal and they're trying to sell. In the early days, it was really, really challenging. Because we didn't have people working for us. It was just Jonathan, myself, and a PA.

And at that point, I did do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of admin. And there was no one else really to do that kind of business management. It fell on my shoulders. And then over years, we've been able to build the business up slowly, build up the revenue.

We employed another manager, we pulled a second manager. Now we've got it to a point where we go, okay, we now can really focus more on our sales career. And I think it's really important as a sales selling principal to be an example to your team. I think your team will look up to you to say, okay, what, what will, what would John do?

What would Jonathan do? That's really important because they see you as being the person that they want to be like.

Back in the day, the Romans and the Greeks and all those guys, they'd be in battle and they'd be at the front. Those guys would be at the front. And that gets the respect of the team.

It gets buy-in. That's right. That's right. You can take your juniors and say, hey, come with me this listing appraisal and I'll show you how to do it. Yeah, I think that goes a long, long, long way. 

I think so. And they know that you are in the trenches as much as they are, and you are doing it day in, day out, and I think that builds a bit of respect from them too, and and gives them that confidence that they can do what you do, you know?

Because you've already forged the path. So, in terms of that, that's really key. If you're an up and coming agent, or an up and coming principal, keep grinding it out.

It's, it's a bit of a grind. It's it, it is. You've got to have that resilience. You got to be able to take the no's as well as the yes'. You got to be able to say, okay, well today's not a great day. It happens. Let's have a clean slate tomorrow and let's move forward and, and always have a goal in mind.

I know a lot of people, they say to me, John, what do you do? And I say, well, look, I've always got something to look forward to. I always got an something ahead of me to try and motivate me. Because even when you get to a stage of being comfortable, you're earning a good income, it's really easy to sit on your laurels and basically just take a cruise control.

For me, I've always wanted to just up the ante every now and then and, and make sure that I can achieve what I want to achieve, and get to where I want to be.

What's important to you? Write it down.

Have your goals in front of you. And keep yourself top of mind with what you're doing. 

You literally just took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say, do you still regularly goal set, like you say, all right, hundred percent this year I want to achieve X, or the next, next quarter I want to achieve X. A hundred percent.

Yeah. And then you've got something to work towards, right? 

Oh look, I mean, it's so easy. Let's face it, when you get to a stage of my career when, when business sort of , luckily I've been blessed with being able to have business come back to me over the years. And 

the harder you work, the lucky you get, mate.

Yeah. I don't think it's luck. Well, you moved to this city with basically no contacts, right? That's right. Started again. So you built 

all this 

up. Yeah, so, 

and I've moved areas as well. Like I haven't just stayed in, in the Redlands, I told you I started my career there. But 10 years off after I was there, I moved to Bulimba.

And started working in that area and then went to Coorparoo, worked that area. Now I'm working in West End. And I tend to find that I can sell anywhere in Brisbane, which is fantastic. If I had my time over again, 'cause we can't turn back time. I can only do what I can do, but I would've said, okay, let's pick one area and just stick at it, and just don't give up.

Don't ever give up. Doesn't matter if there's a, a person doing 80% of the deals, some crazy killer because something 

might happen or you never know, they'll leave or they'll get, 

well look, every month and every year it's a new year. That agent has to start again. Like literally most of the time. I mean, of course we get referrals, but you know, they still have to prospect.

They still have to, you have to show up, otherwise someone else will come and take the market share. That's right. Market share can come and go as easily as you've got it. Yeah. So, don't, don't be disheartened. Get out there, give it a good hard crack. Just keep learning. I mean, I've got things playing in my car 24/7.

Stuff to keep my mind fresh. Keep the knife or the axe sharp. I just want to keep getting better and better in my career. Yeah. Self, 

self-development. That's it. And you know what, it's mentorship. It doesn't matter if you're listening to, you know, an Elon Musk or a Gary Vee or whoever you, you find, or you know, some killer agent who's top of the world, whatever.

They're all still skills that make the axe sharper isn't it? I do the same thing. I do a lot of commuting between offices and home, and I listen to a lot of that stuff and I love it. I actually really enjoy, I'd rather listen to that than music. Almost every time. I 

stopped listening to the radio about.

Three or four years ago. Yeah. I said, no, not having that, that's just rubbish. And as soon as I did that, I just watched my career just skyrocket. That was 20 odd years into the industry, and I was still kind of like, yeah, how cool. Improve myself. And then even last year, in the office, I was able to increase my, my GCI percentage by the highest out of anyone in the office.

Which really surprised me because I, I was just kind of doing what I do, you know, and, and it all sort of happened just sort of without me knowing it, you know? And, and it was, it was a great sort of feeling to, to say, oh, that's nice, I can, I can still cut it with the, with young, with the young fellas.

Keep up with the younguns, eh?

But you know what? You can't teach experience. I think that's a really, really important lesson. And that's something I truly, truly believe in. And you grab 2% here and 2% there, and 2% there, and all of a sudden you've got a noticeable improvement.

Even now I've got a coach, and people say to me, well, what have you got a coach for you? You've been in the industry for so long. What do you need a coach? You should know everything. I said, well, yeah, I do know a lot about real estate, don't get me wrong. But you need someone else sometimes.

You know, when you're at the gym, you never work as hard unless you've got the PT there, right? It's just that little bit of an accountability thing. If you talk to a lot of seasoned writers in the industry, they all still have someone that mentors them, that shapes them, and then keeps them on track.

And I do too. And I think it's invaluable. Same, same. 

You're talking, there's two different hats. You've got your business owner hat, and then you've got your selling agent hat. They're both very different skills. You might be great on the selling agent side and you want to learn more about running the business or growing a team.

Or staff retention or whatever it  📍 might be. People that think they know everything need to eat a bit of humble pie. Truly though. Truly, right? I've got mentors, and I'm right at the start of my journey.

Yeah. There's still so much to learn. Yeah and I can't imagine a world where I'm sitting going, oh, I know everything. No way. It's man, AI. Next week it'll be different. And if you want to keep ahead of the curve, you've got to do stuff like that to keep playing the game. 

A hundred percent. Yep. It'd be interesting to see what happens in that AI space, my friend.

Oh yeah. That's a, that's a whole nother battle for a whole nother, whole nother day. That's right.

Wrapping up that section then - goal setting, I reckon goal setting is a very important point, and that's, that's off script, but for me, I know myself, I have work goals, of what we, what we want to hit and, you know, amount of people we want to help and all that sort of stuff.

I've got personal goals too. Just to the audience out there listening, maybe stop and refine those, and you got to have your big goals. And I do yearly, quarterly, weekly, and even down to daily. There's certain things I do every day when I'm learning a new skill that I put in my calendar.

My wife thinks I'm a bit of a psycho because my calendar's crazy. My calendar's crazy. But I forget. I'm doing 50 things at once, right? You know, I'm sure you are as well. Oh, it's got so much on your plate.

For me it might be like, mindfulness, or remember to do this, and you put that in the calendar every day, and then after about a month or two, it starts to become normal.

I go, right, I got that one sorted. I can remove that out of there. So yeah, if you're listening out there, maybe try some goal setting. I really, really rate it. And then when Christmas breaks up, you have a look and you go, oh, what did I hit this year? And it feels pretty good, especially when you tick a few of them off.

You're like, oh man, A year ago I dreamed this and I did it. 

Yeah. It feels pretty good. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Goal setting is one thing. Making sure that you keep focus on those as well. Don't just set the goal. You need to really review them. I would say ideally daily. Ideally daily, but I mean, I know a lot of people don't do it daily, I would say, at the minimum weekly, that's what you need to do to stay focused and, and be on track.

I've got personal goals. I like to keep myself fit. I'm well into my fifties now and I still exercise religiously, five to six times a week. I'm always tracking my development in that space. And that keeps me motivated. It gets me out of bed at five o'clock in the morning.

It really is important - focus, focus, focus and, and anything you do in life, if you can just focus on it, you'll do it. 

Yeah. For me it's Sunday night. I look at Sunday night, before the new week starts, because Monday's our busiest day of the week by a mile. We get absolutely smashed on Mondays from all the contracts coming in over the weekend.

Yeah. 

So my little Sunday night block is, alright, what's this week look like? Setting the week up for success. And yes, whatever you give focus on, it's crazy how that works. You get results, don't you? It's actually that simple. Yeah.

Last main point I have is how do you and your business partner Jonathan manage the logistics of two offices?

Had you always had two, or did West End come later? What was that journey like? 

We really didn't have, going backwards on what I've just said to you now, when we first started the business 11 years ago, we didn't sort of go, okay, well at year five we'll do this, at year 10, we'll do this at year 15, we'll do this. We, we didn't do any of that. No. It's trial by fire, isn't it? That's right. It's one thing now, all these years down the line to look at how 

we plan, but it's chaos at the start. It, it's absolute chaos. 

Sink or swim. I mean, let's face it, we were new business owners. Even though we'd been in the business for a number of years. What year was it again? 2014. I'd been in real estate for about 13 years, I was pretty experienced, so I kind of knew how to, to do deals. But running a business was a whole, whole new thing. And so I, I had my L plates on, and I had to learn quick.

Which I did. I'm happy to say that that part of it, I think I did reasonably well until I found someone else that could do it better, which is what's happened now, which is fantastic. So I guess from my perspective is, we acquired the second business about four years in. It was one of those things that wasn't planned.

An opportunity came along, and we just said. What do you reckon? Looked at each other and said, let's do it. 

Let's rock and roll. Take it on. Let and roll. Yep, let's 

take it on. We took it on, and luckily out of that acquisition, we acquired a really valued member of the staff, which I mentioned to you earlier, Scotty. He came as, as part of that. With him and, and the two of us, it's taken our business to the next level, to the next gear.

And then a few years later, we acquired, a second office which was in Coorparoo. And then again, we had another gear shift there, which was fantastic.

And that really created, I suppose a business that is now almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jonathan and I don't have to be involved in it necessarily on a daily basis. It affords us to have people who are better at doing that kind of work, looking after things on a day-to-day basis and managing the mechanics of it.

But you put resources into that. That's right. But mate, that's 

the same as us. Our practice manager, Chanel, Cathy, that does the HR, and wears a few other hats, without them in those core roles, Abi and I would do all of that. That's right. But then if, if we are doing that, I would never, ever be able to sit and do something like this.

No, I wouldn't be able, not even for 10 minutes. You'd be go, go, go, go, go. Whereas you build these systems and, is it fair to say, with the growth journey, it goes like this. Like it's, it's quite steep. Mm-hmm. And then you sort of plateau and you, you level things out and then you go steep again and then you plateau.

And I feel like that's been the journey for us. Totally. Exactly. Does, does it feel similar for you guys? Exactly. You stabilize and then you grow, and you stabilize, and you grow. 

Yeah, exactly. And, we're probably due for another growth spurt. We've built capacity in our business now because, so, feeling stable, you feel?

Yeah. Feeling stable. Feeling really stable. Yeah. So things are good, like you've invested in that. Yeah. The team's stable. The culture's really stable. Everyone gets on really, really well. We don't have any bad eggs in the business and we won't tolerate them. That's a 

hard 

job. 

Let's just talk about that for a sec.

Okay. That, is probably one of the hardest parts of professional services isn't it? Is getting a team that's high performing, that gets along, bit of kumbaya, that's very hard to develop. So mate, testament to you guys that you feel that in your business, because when you have that one person in the business, or more than one, and it's not right, not only do you and your business partner feel it, your practice manager feels it, your staff feel it, and it's, it's not a good feeling, is it? No. Walking around on eggshells.

Well, can I just say one thing? It's funny because you say that it's hard, but realistically, if you have a set of values, and you live by those religiously, the answer comes from that. The the problem is we don't know exactly what we're going to do when we're going to do it, because we don't know what we don't know. So, even though we kind of know what the answer is, we are never really a hundred percent sure whether or not what we're going to do next is going to be a good decision.

So what I'm getting at, is getting back to the culture piece. If we have a person in our office who is not good for our culture, yet we're worried about losing the revenue that they attribute to the business, what we're doing is we're compromising our values. Yes.

And once you say, yes, this is great. Yes. Once you say to yourself, well, there is no compromise. There is no gray area. There's a black and white line in the sand, and you go, okay, yes, that person fits. No, that person doesn't fit. Then the decision is easy, based on that. It's easier to have that muddied by the fact that there's an income stream coming from that person, and that we've done that in the past. It never works out, does it? It doesn't work out. You end up 

going, we knew the red flags were there. We knew we held on for a year longer than we should have. Why did we do that? But then you learn. You do learn. 

And I mean, look, it doesn't happen all that often, I'll be honest with you. But, we know that from our experiences that we don't compromise on our values anymore, and we won't love that. Yeah, love that. 

That's important, because in the industry, I'm guessing real estate, law, it's probably the same. A lot of operators would go, oh yeah, but he writes all this money.

Yeah. So we'll just keep him or her around because they write all this money. But if that's at the expense of culture and other good staff being disgruntled because this person's getting special treatment or getting away with murder, it's not a good recipe long term. 

No, 

it's not. It's a short win.

Yes. And it might be a, an okay short win, but in the long term it, it will almost always not work out. 

That's it. That's exactly right. It's a bit like that in business and probably in your business where, sometimes you go two steps forward, and maybe half a step back. That's where the learning is, that's where the growth is. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Mate, that's all awesome insights. The audience, I'm sure they're going, yep. There's some pretty good things I can take away here. I've got one more thing for you. So, we call this the Golden Nugget. If you have seen any other episodes, you may know about it. If not, here it is. It's one piece of advice that you want to give to whoever's listening about, not necessarily real estate or business, just anything in John's world.

One main thing that you want to give to the people to say, hey, this is my golden nugget of advice to you. And if you need a few seconds to think, mate, that's okay. But when you're ready, I'll leave it at that and you fire away. 

Well, it's pretty easy, mate. I think I've said a few times today. You just got to do the right thing.

Do the right thing by people. Be consistent. Turn up every day, and then the business will look after itself. And that's it. Simple. 

You've been in the game a while and mate, you still show up happy. I've been to your office more times than I can count on my hands and I've never seen John in a bad mood.

You're always happy. It's the same heads floating around. It just seems like you've got stability and you found your groove, so yeah, it's not overcomplicating it, right? It's simple as that. 

That's it. 

George, thanks so much for having me. Thanks. I'll pop all the info in the show notes guys, so that whoever's listening out there, if you want to find John on socials, and website and all that jazz, we'll pop that in there.

If you're around anywhere in Brisbane but in particular Coorparoo, West End, that's where you guys are based. If you need a hand, I'm sure they're happy to help and have a conversation. 

Sounds good mate. Thanks for your time. Thank you George.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Beauty. Cheers mate.