Success by Design with Scott Aggett

Speaker A: Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Finovator with me, Stuart Bell, business coach and founder of our dairy Coaching consulting where uh, we uncover the real stories behind business stories, breakthroughs and most importantly, we get to know the people behind them. Then today's episode is another one that you won't want to miss because I'm joined by Scott Agate. Scott is one of Australia's leading negotiators. He's an entrepreneur. He has had a long and very successful career in real estate. Uh, he's also an incredible networker and as I like to say, is living proof that nice guys don't finish last in business. Scott's journey reads almost like a masterclass of drive, reinvention and resilience. He started out as a 15 year old doing work experience at a real estate agent and after that fast climbed the ranks to co own three major agencies in Sydney's eastern suburbs. But it's what happened next that makes this episode in this story really, really special. After a hard earned and a really hard fought exit and a bit of a personal reset which was prompted by the loss of his father and also a desire to shift from a type of success that wasn't fulfilling him to something a little bit more authentic and grounded, Scott traded in the uh, flashy world of high end eastern suburbs real estate for more barefoot beach time with the family on the Gold coast and retired at 38. However, unlike a lot of people in this situation, he started again. He saw a gap in the market where others didn't, helping buyers at it in a different way, helping them to master the art of negotiation without the smoke and the mirrors that are so common in the real estate industry. And he built and sold the innovative hello house business and along the way learned some priceless lessons about pricing, about trusting your gut and also what to do when your entrepreneurial journey doesn't go to plan. Which his definitely did not go to plan and he's not finished. His latest project is already 5x in growth and really redefining again how Australians buy property. Along the way, Scott's going to share stories about losing $45,000 in revenue in a single day to do the right thing by clients, uh, building ironclad networks

Speaker B: from the ground up. And he has incredible social network and

Speaker A: professional network and why transparent values driven business is what he considers his ultimate advantage. So whether you're looking to work out how to build a life by design, uh, whether you want to negotiate what you're worth or you just want to find inspiration to Bounce back after a setback. This conversation is full of very raw and really practical insights. Scott's story to me proves that success isn't a straight line and that the real flex is building a business and most importantly, a life that fits you. So grab a notebook because you'll want to jot down more than a few tactics and frameworks from this discussion and also stick around to the end. Scott is going to share some wisdom about business, about negotiation, and about life that you will not hear from other people. And if this conversation sparks something in you, please hit subscribe and leave us a review as it helps incredible stories like Scott's to get discovered by more people just like you. Let's get stuck in.

Speaker B: G', day, everybody. Welcome to today's masterclass. I hope you've had a great week and, uh, wherever you're watching this, whatever time of day. Alternatively, I hope the week is good. Today's masterclass is with Scott Agate of many different places, but most Recently Scott Scott agar.com Scott is a negotiation expert. But to be really frank, describing Scott as a negotiation expert is a bit like describing Lewis and Hamilton as being quite good at pit stops. Because, uh, what we're going to go through today is a story that kind of has a few different chapters. Scott has a huge m background in real estate and probably knows more about real estate, the movements of the markets than anybody I've spoken to. He obviously started in real estate agencies, owned two major agencies in the eastern suburbs, as you'd imagine. Really got a flavor for the high end of town. Then came a bit of a lifestyle change. He moved up to the Gold coast where after a period of time, I guess you'd call it flipping houses, picking really good ones. In actual fact, there was a time he pointed out a really good property to me and as he quite well should, jumped in and grabbed himself and then decided he had an idea for spotting a gap in the market. Which was ultimately the fact that whilst we had buyer's agents and all this sort of stuff going on, he thought there was a real place for someone who could come in once somebody identified the property and just master the negotiation. I first sat down with Scotty to hear about the idea and I just thought it was fantastic. So much so that when I came to buy this place, the property, he was the first person I called. And to give you an idea of the quality of what he does at the time, there was competition in the sales process. In other words, people were willing to literally pay and buy the property. Immediately still manages to acquire, I think it was about a $15,000 discount. He just speaks the language not only of agents, but of negotiations. So today, the conversation's gonna go through a few phases. We're gonn how he got into what he does, how he developed these skill sets, the relationship he's built all the way through founding hello House and where he's at now, which is founding his next company. One thing you should mention about Scott is he's not. He's also an incredible negotiator, networker. Uh, he's created this group of people around him who are, ah, really impressive. But also the relationships he's built are very strong. And as I said in the. In the intro that went out, if you've ever heard that mantra that nice guys finish last in business, this is going to blow that out the water because Scott is one of the most personable, pleasant, lovely to deal with, and just has all his morals in the right place and yet has been incredibly successful and will continue to be in the future. And if you stick around to the end, we'll tell you more about how what he does may be able to help your clients. Or alternatively, if you're looking to get involved in the property market and you want to make sure you get the best possible deal, how you can leverage what he does. That being said, let's get the show on the road. Scott, are you there, man?

Speaker C: I am. How are you, Stewie?

Speaker B: I'm really well, mate. I wanted to keep it good, so I avoided mentioning that you're an Arsenal fan. But to be fair, out of all of the Arsenal fans I know, you're the one that would almost make me enjoy watching Arsenal take that as a mate.

Speaker C: Didn't we finish 15 places ahead of you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you did, but we won a trophy, so I think that's. That kind of ends that conversation, mate. How's it going? How's your week been so far? Really good.

Speaker C: Really good, yeah. I'm super pumped. Working on a new project that, you know, about five to six months in and pre launch about six to eight weeks away. So teams growing fast, lots of transactions. There's a whole heap of sort of new energy with that and lots of networking as per usual. So I'm having a good time. The sun's shining, business is good.

Speaker B: I'm glad the sun's shining where you are. It is literally like Noah's Ark here. There was so much rain coming down, it's ridiculous. I can't wait to dive into that piece as well, because I know when you launch hello House, it was such a great idea and you come out of that and then you just picked up and run again. But I think you shared a post the other day on LinkedIn was blurred out where you shared your pipe drive. I think it's part driver. I sort of checked out funnel and it just gave me real insight into how methodical you are about managing things. Also the way you brought people on board and grown businesses. It's also been very methodical and I get a feeling that when we dive into some of what you do from a business perspective, there is a great deal of systemization and method to it. I could be wrong, but yeah, I

Speaker C: hope you can find the answers because for me, like I'm calm above the water and paddling hell underneath and sticky taping all my systems and processes together. No, I only joke. I've got a pretty good idea of how it should all work. Uh, but it's always a work in progress.

Speaker B: Let's start at the beginning, man. Let's start at first of all, how did you get involved in real estate? How did you get involved in the property game? Is it something you always wanted to do or is it something that was thrust upon you, so to speak?

Speaker C: I wasn't very good at school and my, my passion was always talking to people and connecting with people. But I wasn't great in my studying and I wasn't very disciplined and I just really disconnected with school. But I wanted a role in sales and we did school work experience in Australia back in the day. I'm not sure if the kids still do it now, so I think it was in year nine or 10, probably year 10. So I would have been about 15. I chose to go and do a sales role for my two week work experience and I actually worked with a family member at ah, Ray White in Bankstown with Peter Matthews, who's actually been the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales president for the last few years. And Pete very kindly, he was about five years ahead of me at school and he was out doing his first job and I worked with him and loved it for two weeks. And that was me stuck on that idea of wanting to be a real estate agent and starting out in sales.

Speaker B: And this was. You were 15, is that right?

Speaker C: 15.

Speaker B: How old?

Speaker C: 15, yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, 15. Wow. Okay, cool. And um, what was it that really, what grabbed you about real estate? What was it that you loved?

Speaker C: I think it was the ability to earn uncapped amounts of money. If you were to put the Hard yards in and do it right. For me that was great because at school I just wasn't performing very well. I just saw this as an avenue where I didn't have capped earnings. I could go and create my own life by design. And yeah, I just felt that it was really exciting because it was just massive opportunity.

Speaker B: Okay, so where'd you go from there? Like how did you go from Ray White Bankstown? Can we mention the property agencies that you owned back in the day or should we leave the name out?

Speaker C: You can talk about it openly. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, so it was Bell property, Potts,

Speaker C: uh, Point Bell property at Potts Point, Bell property, Walsh Bay, Bell property, Surry Hills.

Speaker B: There was three.

Speaker C: Okay, I beg your pardon, three franchises. Yeah. Help co founded and set those up. As one of the lead sales agents and the founder of those three offices.

Speaker B: Uh, how did you get from Ray White to Bell property times three?

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, I mean there's a lot in between there. There's a lot of water under that bridge. I guess the short version of that is finished school did what you could do at that time, which was either evaluation degree at university, which I didn't have the marks for, or a TAFE certificate for property agency, which is a one year full time course to become a licensed New South Wales. So I did that and finished that the year after school. And then I got into real estate and I worked across three different roles at Ray White. It was a director of Ray White at that point in New South Wales and was one of their chief auctioneers. So he was very kind and moved me around to get different experiences. So first I worked at Ray White at Linfield in a property management and new business role and a bit of sales. I uh, worked at Ray White at DY on the northern beaches. So these were good operators that were highly successful in the Ray White business network. I was learning off those guys on the run. And then I did head office and the head office was great because they had me in charge of setting up the auction rooms, capturing all of the officers results every month. So it's pretty basic as an 18 year old, but what I saw was what all the agents were writing in gross commission, what the officers were writing in their numbers. And I was telling all that up and it was really exciting to me because you could see where the opportunity was, right? Like you get to see how much money these offices were making including places like Surface paradise and Double Bay. And they were absolutely killing it in terms of revenue. So that was exciting. I did that and then I Left and went. I had a season in Colorado as a snowboard instructor. Uh, wanted to go to play rugby in London. I, uh, was playing rugby in Sydney. My friends had already gone to London, but I wrapped myself around a tree on Australia Day in 1999 in Colorado, came home, had surgery and then thought, I don't have a job. My friends have gone to London already. I'm going to go to London. So I ended up there for five years. Worked in real estate the whole time. Went on a one year work visa, uh, backpacking visa, uh, ended up getting sponsored twice for five years each. Stayed for the total of five years and then left and came back. And the first and only interview I went for was Bell Property when they were head office owned. Had, uh, an interview there and then within a year or so was going out and taking that first franchise and started from there.

Speaker B: I had no idea. I can't remember. This is a conversation we've had and possibly forgotten that you were a rugby player. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: What position do you play at?

Speaker C: Football?

Speaker B: No. Yeah, rugby.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, rugby. I was a fullback. Yeah. Rugby for Eastwood and I played club rugby for Gordon and then.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker C: Yeah. And then I, uh, never played again after I busted up my knees and wrist and shoulder and all that and snowboard crash.

Speaker B: I played youth rugby in Beecroft, which is I think part of the Eastwood district as well. So we used to play at the pitch for the grand finals there and everything, which was cool.

Speaker C: I played in the same competition as you because I went to effing boys and grew up there. So I was.

Speaker B: You're a bit younger than me, right?

Speaker C: I think I'm 47.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're a couple of years younger. It's funny enough, one of the. One of the clients I work with, Matt, if you're watching this, I actually discovered that his brother, we actually played youth rugby together. And his brother said, when you say hi to Stu, say, I'm say sorry because I was a bit of an asshole. And sure enough, he was spot on. At least he was aware he was an asshole back in the day. But yeah, so talk to me about getting a franchise in place because I know there's a lot of property franchises around. Are they expensive to buy?

Speaker C: This is an interesting story actually. And I really stumbled into this. It was not a business by design or business move by design. So head office at that time was owned by a Kiwi guy that was one of the co founders and a, uh, Sydney property developer. And they had some grand ambitions to be Property developers as well as these premium real estate agents.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker C: And they got part of it. But they tried to grow too quickly. It didn't work. They got stuck in a massive development in Port Douglas which nearly sent them bankruptcy. And what ended up happening was they couldn't pay our superannuation. They owed us a lot of superannuation and they were struggling so they were looking at ways of doing it. So my sales manager at the time and then one of my colleagues, one of my peers, Richard Shalhoub and Mark Murphy, we decided to uh, go to them and say, okay, great, we'll take the first franchise if you'll give us a franchise and we'll trade off our super that you owe us to do that. So it did cost us money but effectively there was no change of hands of any cash that set us off on that, that direction. And then from there we did Walsh Bay and Potts Point. Walsh Bay was okay, but it was just very difficult to man that in terms of fine. That was just a market that was just settling, it was just being developed out. And ah, we just decided that we would focus on Potts Point. And then that kind of led me to the opportunity of doing Surrey Hill. So I sold the Pots Point franchise and then went down the road and did another four years with another business, business partner at Surry Hills office, which was very fruitful.

Speaker B: I'm um, trying to work out because Surrey Hills obviously now is very high end as is Potts Point. To be fair, when you join, was it already going there or was it already where it is now?

Speaker C: I think it was already there. Yeah, there was a little bit of edginess to Surry Hills but it was already very expensive. And areas like Waterloo and Redfern have further gentrified from when I was selling there back in the day. But they were already well and truly popular and on the up and very expensive. And Pots Point's always been like Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point, Rush Cutters Bay, Waterloo. They were always blue chip suburbs. And I was selling premium properties in those locations as well. I was selling one bedroom apartments back in the day at 700 grand, which are probably one apartments at uh, nearly $2 million now. So that type of, type of property

Speaker B: I remember we were looking at, we were living in Kujiba, looking at a property that was literally just one back from the street. And it was one bedroom, tiny, it had a car space, 600 grand. I look at that now and I'm like, Jesus, if I'd have bought that back in the day yeah, I'd be smiling.

Speaker C: But there was a lot of that. It was a great experience because I got to work with a lot of sort of CEO level business owners. I remember one of them in particular was like the head of McDonald's in Australia. One of them was the owner of Space Furniture and you got to see their unbelievable apartments, the beautiful interior design, worked with top tier architects. It was a really good job in terms of being able to um, hone my love of architecture and design and things as well.

Speaker B: Like, I know a lot of people have built up really strong networks and you ask them where it came from and they'll say, oh, uh, I went to school with a bunch of people that you know. But what would you. You've got a very strong network and you seem to be very good at forming these really strong personal relationships with people. And I don't think, I'm not even sure you do it deliberately. I think it's just natural. Like where do you, what do you attribute that down to? Because it's not a skill everybody has

Speaker C: probably wanting to be liked. I don't know. Really, I don't know what's at the bottom of that. No, I just like doing nice things for people. I'm um, like that with my wife and my kids, as everyone should be. And I'm like that with all my close friends and business contacts as well. So I love networking. Like I had a 11 person CEO lunch yesterday on the Gold coast, putting people in touch then to tee them up on friends, podcasts and TV appearances, things like that already. So I try to go out of my way there and that served me very well. You mentioned before my pipe drive and the post that I did on LinkedIn. I'm pre launch of my business and I've got M84 direct referrals from top tier mortgage brokers, financial planners and past customers and family and friends already that are sitting there in the system at 15 grand a pop leads. So uh, it's a really good position to be in from a revenue perspective and give me confidence to act. But that comes off having all of those relationships and working hard and being generous with my time and it served me very well over a long period.

Speaker B: Do you actively set aside time every week to reach out and just connect with people or does it just happen naturally now or is it something you start? I'm just trying to understand the mechanics behind it a little bit.

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think it's as deliberate as that, but I do if there's an opportunity to do it. And I feel like there's value that I can add or value that I can gain from it, then I'll definitely do it. Had the CEO, uh, lunch yesterday. I went for a walk with the founder of IT that organized that meeting for an hour and a half at 6am this morning at the beach at the Dog for a walk. And I just thought I'd get him one on one. So I went and did that and that was awesome. That's a mate of mine from when I was 18, 19 playing rugby at Gordon again. So there's connections there like that that I've kept through, through my entire adult life. I've had two walks this week. One with coffee walk with a mate of mine that's really prominent commercial buyer's agent and another one, um, that I've got tomorrow morning at 6am with another really prominent commercial buyer's agent. I don't do anything really in the commercial space, but these are people that refer me business. I refer them business. Yeah, they're both really great from a business mentor perspective. I learn things from these people and I pick up different ideas and it just reframes my thinking. And I think that's a, it's just a really good mindset to have, you know, to be open to those, those changes or those positive impacts people can bring. And then I'm constantly interested in business podcasts and in particularly my favorite one, I've probably spoken to you about it before, is my first million Terrible. It's not necessarily about my first million, but it's very much about business mindset, niches, what people are doing. They're really interesting in these tiny little gaps that are building billion dollar businesses and people that have got just great cash flow businesses. That's really interesting for me. So I'm um, heavily into that space and love seeing those success stories and following those founders.

Speaker B: Do you listen? Well, I'm presuming you listen while you're walking by the sounds of it.

Speaker C: I tend to, yeah. I used to do it a lot more when I was driving a lot for work. Like I've been traveling a lot for work, but I just don't do that anymore because I'm at home. So I don't get as much opportunity to sit down and watch something on YouTube or watch a podcast, which is a bit of a shame. And same with audiobooks.

Speaker B: Yeah, I used to drive down to Canberra at least once a month. I drive down south or so do a lot more in person and it was great because you get an hour well, Canberra is great. Six hours, you get through a lot. But, uh, that's one thing. Like having the office so close to home. That doesn't happen anymore. It's a bit of a challenge.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a challenge for lots of people. I've spoken to a fair few friends that say the same thing.

Speaker B: Yeah. Meanwhile, I've got people I know who live up on the Central coast, and they get a lot of times to do it. So obviously, you're building up this really great network. You're learning a lot. We could talk about just what you learned in building Bell property, because I imagine, I've always imagined real estate is quite cutthroat. It's either you sink or swim. There's probably a lot of egos floating around it. Probably a bit like personal training in there. But obviously at some point you decided you were quite young when you were like, I'm done with that type, that side of the game, and you made a move up to the Gold Coast. Do you want to talk a bit about what motivated M that or looking back on it, what do you think were the best parts of making that shift?

Speaker C: Yeah, I got the first franchise I did at age 29, and I was really stoked that I was able to do that at that age and then set myself up financially from there. And, yeah, I exited at 38 and jokingly probably told you that that was me retired and I'm out until I had, I think, three years with no work deliberately, uh, and then chewed through lots of my savings and then had to go back out and recreate myself. But really what drove that for me is there's a few things, really, if you get into the bottom of it. My dad passed away with Parkinson's and he had that for 36 years or something, basically my entire life at that point. And, uh, I wanted to spend a lot more time sort of being around him and with my sisters and things as well. When he passed, I knew that was the very end of his kind of days. He was pretty sick and passed when he was 75. So there was just a bit more meaning to it all than me than just chasing the money and doing those things. It was a bit more real that we just had our first baby and then, yeah, ah, dad had gone. So that was one thing. And I think I was just burnt by it all as well. Like the last two years, really. I've said this multiple times before. I should never have done the Surry Hills franchise. I purely did it for money. It was fun Actually a really good decision, but it was mentally a terrible decision. And the reason was, is I was already over it in terms of the industry before I made the decision to do that office. I just didn't back myself that I could go do something else and I didn't have a vision of what that might have even looked like. So I, I took what the opportunity was or drove that opportunity to create it with the head franchisor at Bell and I knew I was going to be a money maker and it was, we did really well out of it in a short time. But I, I wasn't myself. I didn't enjoy it, I didn't want to be there. And you never get the best out of yourself when you're in that relationship with business partners and with staff and things like that as well. So I found it very challenging and I was over it because I just couldn't stand having to lie all day to win. And I felt that you had to lie to sellers to over, over promise the result and then list that property and then lie to all the buyers to underquote to get them there. And I just felt like everybody in the game was playing the same Russian roulette and I didn't enjoy it. It didn't sit well with me morally and I was just really tired and bored of that process. And the egos is a big thing as well. As you mentioned before, lots of industry and I didn't like who I was becoming. That was probably the thing is I was probably full of ego, full of bravado, earning lots of money at a young age and pretty arrogant probably and didn't sit well with me either. And I wanted to change that and go to where I knew I would be in a better place. And yeah, thankfully met my wife during that period who's just incredibly down to earth. Yes, social media, very small network of friends, but just deep connections with people rather than surface level connection. No affiliation with Sydney whatsoever. She's from Christchurch. Didn't like the social climbing in the eastern suburbs and egos doesn't like all the flash things like that. And that was just really brought me down to earth and where I needed to be. And then I was really in uh, a in a confident position to go and do something else that I was passionate about.

Speaker B: It's interesting because I've known you for a long period of time and although you absolutely there was a lifestyle aspect that you really enjoyed, I never got a sense of you as being someone who there was any fake veneer. You were very Genuine. You were very personable and I never saw this sort of. Remember, I just wasn't close enough to you at the time. But I didn't see you change specifically. But maybe you were very good at delineating between work and home life. Maybe that was the.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think I was in a pretty bad relationship. Like it all looked good on the surface with my long term partner before I got married, but I was actively trying to get out of that relationship for quite a while. And that relationship was the complete opposite of my marriage. It was all about being seen at every bar and restaurant opening and staying at all the nicest hotels and traveling it all on social media and all those toxic things like that. Actually when you get older or smarter, you realize actually have no real benefit in your life can be fun at the time. So uh, yeah, it was about getting real for me. And then when I got real it was like, okay, then where's the switch to turn on and find that passion project? And yeah, that really what drove me back to building hello House, that was the start of it. And Hollow House was an idea that I had for probably 10 years before I actually did it. It was lacking the confidence to do it, not understanding how it could be done, probably way, way too early for the market to actually realized that there was an opportunity there. Perhaps, maybe not. But I uh, was definitely really early to that thought. And yeah, and I've realized this with a few things. Like I remember with a mutual friend of ours, Mark, sitting in probably 2007, 2008 with an app designer, uh, trying to come up with a way of building this investment property platform of which Fast forward to 2025 and there's two or three of these that have just come out in the last two to three to five years and is the future of how everyone's buying property. So I've had those kind of ideas. I just didn't have the execution or the skill set or the confidence to go and do that. Yeah, that was really interesting looking back as well.

Speaker B: It's funny looking back because there's. I've still got access to the page on LinkedIn. I pitched to start mate an idea with Dre, actually Dre from in the mix. Yeah, he was going to do developing and we pitched an idea called Advice Angel. And the idea uh, was a directory, online directory where people go and make reviews of advisors. And a friend of mine actually shared some of the feedback from some of the angels and they were like, yeah, I really like the team, but I hate the industry. I Hate the financial services industry. And this was when Fintech just wasn't getting traction. And it's ironic, now one of the most fastest growing, I guess data sources on, on, on that is, is Advisor Ratings, which is essentially the same idea. So sometimes it's not the right, it's maybe the right idea, but it's not in the right time. Or alternatively, you got the right idea but you just, you're not the person to implement it. But it's really interesting how often you can look back and go, oh, uh, yeah, that idea, I heard that before. But it just all comes together at a certain point in time. So we're now into the beginning of hello House. Because you went up to the Gold coast, you obviously did what you do well, which is go out and spot, right, I'm going to invest in that house and, and flip it. Essentially what you were doing. But I remember you saying, I'm, um, kind of retired. I've seen it so many times. I've seen clients who have clients who retire and they say the same thing, particularly the entrepreneur, yeah, I'm done, I'm finished. And then, and it's three years later, they go on board crapless. Or so you've suddenly decided, I'm going to start this thing called hello House. Talk to me about how you go from, yeah, it's a good idea to screw it, I'm going to do it. And then suddenly, next thing you know, a year down the track, it's up and running. Give us the timeline.

Speaker C: I had probably three years, give or take off, and we raised the family and I had the time of my life, like just chilled at home, bare feet and really doing not much, just traveling lots and being part of the family. And that was the reset mentally that I needed after going through the four years before that. So I don't know if it was like a, uh, midlife crisis, a mental breakdown, whatever. It wasn't quite as harsh as that or as heavy as that, but it was some sort of major reset in my life that my body just didn't want to be working and wanted to do something different. But what happened was I kept getting clients or friends and family ringing me, asking for advice nonstop on property and keep asking me to, could you do this for me or could you do that for me? And I just find myself back in this position where what I realize they need is most people don't have a clue about the strategy of buying a property and being honest with themselves about what that's got to look like for them. To buy something in a reasonable timeframe. Not many people really like the confrontation of, um, negotiation and they lack that skill set. So there's a real need for it. So I think I just got to a point where I'm like, this is just. It keeps repeating itself. Everyone is going through this cycle and when they do, they reach out to me because they perceive me as an expert in that space. So I really just need to take confidence from that and say, there's absolutely a need for this. How can I package it up to. To. To make it work commercially? And if I go back to being an estate agent, I was, I guess, for this journey, I was lucky that it was the rise of the buyer's agents in Sydney. Yeah, Was still a sales agent. And what I saw was people like yourself, and this isn't directed at you, but people like yourself that would be looking for their home. They'd be looking for months and months. We'd have great rapport. I'd see you at the open for inspections, I'd call you at listing opportunities, blah, blah, blah. But you weren't able to secure a property for right or wrong. Uh, then I would see you turn up with a buyer's agent and I. And your perception of that would have been, I haven't been able to do this successfully myself. So I'm going to pay for an expert help. This is a luxury item and they're going to get the job done. But what I saw on the other side of that fence was the buyer's agents were in an absolute rush, like a bull in a china shop, just to knock the deal over as quickly as possible. They were incredibly transactional. All they wanted to do was get to these properties before anyone else and they would pay an absolute premium with a cherry on top for the luxury item of no competition or little competition. So I looked at that and I thought, wow, this is interesting because all I want to do is negotiate all day. That's my dream job when I was being in a state agent. I hate the rest of the game. And I'm seeing these buyers, agents which are affecting effectively doing negotiation, but they're doing a really average job of it. And they're making a lot of money. And it's weird that the buyer is handballing it down the road to this perceived expert. Um, expert is just rushing to spend all their money. And some. And I know that from working inside that game that it's really easy to fudge the numbers for properties worth 2 million bucks. And you've got 2 million 20. I can get you to 2 million 50 or 2.1 million very easily by just tweaking the comparable sales that I choose to show you or whatever it might be. It's very easy to manipulate that from both sides of the game. But whether I'm representing you as a buyer's agent or, uh, as the selling agent, of course I fight against that. My whole business is built around transparency and trust and not doing that. And I can give you some really raw examples from yesterday where I lost $45,000 in revenue because I talked three clients out that were at the finish line from not buying it because there was no value there, even though it was within their budget to do. It was very easy for me to tweak the numbers, give them the confidence to get it done. But I pulled back and took their money off the table and didn't buy it. So I've got to do all the rework on those again. And I lost 45 grand yesterday. But that's why those customers will refer me, their family and friends, because they know, because I can highlight to them, this is where I could have pushed you and where another buyer's agent would have to get that deal done. But there's better value out there. And now let me go and find that for you. And people go, wow, okay, well, that would have been really easy for you. Job done. But you can go the long way around now and do it way. The right. The right advice. And I think that's just so important. So I watched the buyer's agents do that and I thought, okay, there's an opportunity where I can do something different. But how am I going to compete against these guys? So one was cost. So I wanted to make it more cost effective. Two was I needed to make it performance driven. Not. And it still isn't today. And I needed to. I wanted to build the only or my dream at the time, and I said this out loud lots of times to different people in the media and things. I wanted to build the first transparent real estate business of its kind globally. Because my industry is full of smoke and mirrors. Everyone lying to everyone. There's no accountability, there's very limited trust. I wanted to build something that was completely transparent so I could show you and quantify the savings that I made. So I launched Australia's first or global first, no win, no fee negotiation service. It was completely transparent. You found the property.

Speaker B: I did.

Speaker C: You set the target price based on my analysis, and I support whatever that decision is. And then I take a performance cut of the savings that I make you and that got great traction in the media, was really well received by my clients and that was the start of it. It was a terrible start. And I'll tell you those reasons why. But that was the start of it. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's interesting that you'd be familiar with Alex Mosey stuff.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: The proposal is very similar. It's. I'm going to come in, I'm going to do something for him. It's only going to work if it's value driven. But. But it's also backed by the fact that you're very good at doing this. It's interesting. A lot of people try and mimic the Alex Hormozi thing, but the thing you don't talk about is gym launch was very good at filling gyms. That's what it. Yeah. Without that, it doesn't work. Uh, this translates really well to advice as well because obviously with most good advisors, they want to do the right thing by their clients. I think the same is true of good mortgage brokers and definitely good accountants as well. But the challenge in it is cost effective. Performance driven is an interesting one because actually, let's dive into performance driven. Like how can you make the promise that you're going to get a better deal than. Than they would? And is it because it's transactional? Could you do it if it was more of an ongoing relationship? Yeah. That's a difficult one. It's a good question, right?

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think the best thing to say is no one can guarantee you anything when you buy a property because there's. It's not an exact science and it's very difficult to price emotion. Right. So when you're competing against other buyers, the other buyers don't have a clue. They're misled by and influenced by the agent who's manipulating the price on behalf of the seller and they're easily misled. So it's very difficult when you're competing against those people, which is why a lot of what we do is coaching people or actually doing it for them is to get the customer at an earlier stage to these properties to reduce the buyer competition, have greater choice in terms of the assets, meet more motivated sellers, which creates more favorable negotiation outcomes. So that's really important. But in terms of your question, really, for me, the way that I did it, and I'll give you the stats that I had for the last seven years of hello House before I exited, is our average purchase price was 1.3 million across the country. Our, uh, average analysis when you put a property forward to us within three hours, we would have a written analysis, a full deep dive, and we could price properties within 2% of the eventual sale price on the conservative side. And we did that by tracking every analysis we do versus the eventual sale price. And we got it wildly wrong on multiple occasions because of the reasons that I just said. But over time, we were within 2% and we're on the low side because we were conservative by nature. So that gave our clients a lot of confidence. So we could really quantify the value by looking at comparable sales evidence, competing listings, understanding consumer sentiment and confidence levels in the market and how difficult it is to replace that asset. What's your fear of loss? And I think most m people in that aren't in property don't get that. And that's really key to understanding where value sits, is what's your fear of loss in terms of this? If I miss this property today, take me six months to replicate that asset in a rising market. Or is there another one around the corner? There's another bus coming in 10 minutes time.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's something you said to me. You're like. Because obviously I was coming into this probably more, way more emotionally when I bought this place than you were. But you did say to me there was a factor in your consideration. You looked at, uh, and go, is this a unique property? Yeah, uh, it's unique. Which means you're going to be able to utilize it because not many like it. And that was real insight into a different way of thinking. But that's really interesting because metrics. Yeah. It hadn't struck me before how important tracking the actual metrics would be to being able to go, yes or no?

Speaker C: Well, no one does it because it's. It doesn't suit their narrative in my industry. So no one talks about it from accountability and accuracy because it just. There's no value in that. Signing on and giving people confidence to work with them. And it's a lot of bloody work. It takes a huge amount of work. It really is pulling the curtains, uh, apart and letting people into the system right behind you, public, basically. And it's quite risky. So I tracked that. So there are two of the metrics and then the third one, it's really important. And this is really where the business was built, was around how much money we saved you and we could quantify that. So after we did that accurate analysis, I then said, okay, great. Stuart. 12 Smith street in, in Piedmont that you want to buy. Here's all the reasons why you should pay 1.2 million for it. I'll support whatever your decision is. What's your final walk away number before I start those negotiations? And hypothetically, let's just say it's 1.2 million. Let's talk about 1.3. Because that was our average purchase price, Our average saving below the client's target price was $41,000. So we could work out what they set us and then what we bought it at and then we had a clear number in terms of how we were adding value. Now that was an average. Obviously the more we spent, the more we saved, the lower, the lower the savings. But all we could do is work with those clean numbers and we built our marketing campaign around that. And that really resonated with our customers because they could see the value proposition, okay, you're charging me seven grand and on average I'm going to be $41,000 ahead and you're going to do for me and take away or alleviate all the agent game playing, bring me certainty around price, reduce my stress and the time I invest in the process. Job done.

Speaker B: Interesting because I'm just listening to talk. There's something a lot of financial plans my clients talk about. They say the fact that knowledge of mathematics and knowledge of how money works there, they look like they're thing and they're not. And I listen to you talk. I don't know whether you were good at maths at school, but you really know your numbers when it comes to the figures. Right?

Speaker C: I'm just, I'm dialed in on these things because these were core business marketing points that we needed to hit and we needed to focus on. And I was the front end of the business explaining that to people and how it worked to give them confidence to work with us. Very real in my brain.

Speaker B: Yeah, I can tell. So you start off and the first thing I've written down is you, you had a really strong offer, had a kind of no brainer offer, uh, and you also had the capability in behind it. So you get traction, you start to get lead flow. What was the next problem you hit? Must have been capacity or was it something else first?

Speaker C: There's two deal flows. One which I think is most people's issue is how to find those leads and that leads into how to market yourself. And I did a poor job of that I think in general. But one of the key things is probably a little bit later than that. You and I having a really good chat. I vividly remember where I was sitting or standing while we were talking at A particular house where we had a long chat about pricing and value. And that that kind of reset my thinking about my worth. And to be honest, you were so on the money that I didn't take enough of your advice. And if I actually went the whole hog and back myself, we would be looking at a very different conversation today versus where it was because I've gone into doing this myself. We've been jumping around a little bit now into the business that I'm doing now, and I'm charging effectively double what I charge then, and I'm getting. It's an easier yes to work with me than it was before. Like, people really understand the value proposition and it was just charging more for it and being a quality service. I think it was looked at the Mickey Mouse business before because there wasn't enough hurt money from the client to invest in that process. And they were looking at us versus a full service buyer's agent. And they were like, what can you do for me for seven grand? The guy charging me 60 grand is not going to do. This is ridiculous. I don't believe you. That you can do that for. For seven grand. And they'd go and sign for the 60 grand and overpay by another 50 grand. And it's. You can lead a horse to water. But I was just doing a bad job of marketing at that point.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, mate. M. When you did it for me and you put the fee and you even discounted the fee for me, which was completely unnecessary because you put more work into it because we were friends. But I honestly think I got away with an absolute steal.

Speaker C: Well, that's good. Maybe that's why I get lots of referrals.

Speaker B: Look, we can keep talking about house because obviously after you got your pricing, your value, that's where you take, okay, I've got something and I know how to do it. And then you put the frame around it, which is okay, but how do I price it so it's profitable? How do I get the value proposition so it's not just me? And then you come into the staffing piece. But we could maybe fast track a little bit and we can talk. Uh, did you want to talk about how you've evolved your thinking? Maybe it's about now you've got this new business. What are the things that you're doing better, faster and more easily in building this business? Because you. I'm, um, presuming the growth on the new business is probably outpacing.

Speaker A: Hello, House at this stage, Massively.

Speaker C: Massively. Yeah. I mean, we 5x hello house in the last 14 months before the acquisition. So we really quickly. That was going to be a uh, behemoth of a business I think. And obviously LENDI and Aussie Home Loans bought that and will do what they want with it. That's probably a conversation we can get to later on into it. But I think that to finish off on that start bit of hello House, the biggest mistake that I made was no win, no fee because all I attracted was bottom feeders not wanting to pay so aiming at the wrong customer and just had all those messages mixed up. And it wasn't until I put a retainer put plus a performance fee into play that was that it, it took off a little bit more and you could see there was a business there. And then when it eventually was acquired by listing loop in August 2023, the first thing they did, and rightly so because I think it was a very smart move, was say, okay, it's just a bit hard to market this performance fee aspect. People I think will resonate more with certainty of the cost so they can draw that value proposition easily in their mind. So they made it a flat fee and when we made it a flat fee and we had obviously more leases flow, the business then took off. It was quite easy to sell that it was a flat fee or whatever it was. We moved it like five times in the last 14 months. It went up and up and up and up and was probably due to go up to about 10 grand. And I left it was at 7200.

Speaker B: I think one of the strategies I've seen works really well and you don't really need to do it if you're confident. But if you've got one model which is a no brainer, uh, no win, no fee, and you've got another model which is a flat fee, you can offer them side by side.

Speaker C: Yeah, split test it.

Speaker B: Yeah, you split test it. But you make the upside of the no. Like it's no win, no fee. But if there is a win, the fees big versus flat fee guaranteed. That's a really good way of testing whether or not people get there.

Speaker C: Is it too late to go back to that performance fee to sting you for a bit more cash on your one?

Speaker B: But I'm pretty sure next time I buy the next property, you'll, you'll make it up. You should do anyway. I still haven't had a leak fix by the way, but there we go. That's another thing that, no, that's really useful because one of the things Whenever I'm doing pricing and you're budding and look, to be honest, I think everyone wants to be able to offer something where there is going to be a win, win of value. Because if you're getting more, more than if you're a real estate agent and you're expecting the client to reduce their fee by a massive amount but you still want to get your 2% or whatever the hell it is these days, that's not a value, it's, you've got to reduce. But on the flip side if you're, if you're doing all the work and not getting, you're not getting the value, that's not going to work either. And I think a lot of people get nervous about charging when, if you got, if you got something that's proven and you should charge premium, if you've got a premium offer, charge premium fees.

Speaker C: Because it's not a mosey thing as well, isn't it? It's charged three or four times more than what you think it's you can get. And I'm not at that uh, point yet because I, and this is probably a personality order of mine or fault of mine, but I really struggle unless I feel like I'm creating value for the customer and I feel like I'm taking the piss if I'm charging too much money or not delivering on that high level quality service and the rest of it. So I struggle with that part of it. And it's probably just me that's in my own way but even just going from the seven or 7200 up to 15 grand now and then when I launch the business in July I'll go to 20. It's just about having that level of confidence. And I took a lot of confidence from exiting hello House and what happened next. I had two months of people and chasing me, following me up, offering me equity positions in businesses, talking to me about different prop tech things that they were building and wanting my commentary on it and feedback on it. And I realized that there was a huge amount of people watching what I was doing at hello House even though I was getting feedback at all, all from the market, um, from the industry. But I had some really high profile people in Australia, including the co founders of Lendi. It's probably two to three billion dollars business ringing me directly saying hey, we were watching what you were doing and what you were doing is the future of how Australians are going to transact property and we'd love to talk. So that was like I took a huge amount of confidence from that because I'm like, okay, this is good. Now I know I absolutely was on the right track. I was underselling myself. Let's pull apart really where the value is and hone in on those things. And that's worked well for me since

Speaker B: I always feel this is one of the lonely parts of building smaller businesses. And uh, if you even stay small is you can be doing something and working really hard and at times you won't know whether it's just not happening. You get results for people. You don't know whether it's registering at a higher level and you don't know whether it's because you're not really doing anything new or alternatively people aren't just telling you. And that's one of the challenges, right? You've got to make every day, you've got to come in and trust your own judgment, maybe get a bit of feedback here and there, but you don't have the feedback loops that potentially you'd have if you're part of a larger organization.

Speaker C: Uh, that is a challenge for me. And I probably think that's part of the reason that you hit on in terms of the networking is because I'm looking for that, not of approval. I'm looking for ideas. I'm um, bouncing things off people to close down rabbit holes that I might have gone down. And yeah, even just doing it solo now. I mean, I've got a team working with me who are fantastic so far, but I haven't got a business partner as such. Previously with, with Drew at Hollow House. Drew and I would just pull the whiteboard out, right? And we'd go have a beer or whatever and we'd sit there and go, okay, what do we do here? We've got a problem here. Or we, or there's an opportunity there. How do we go about it? And Drew was so good at being able to pull things apart and the pros and cons of both and we just talk it out and often we would talk it out in 10 minutes or 20 minutes and be done. Yeah, you go round and round in circles as a solo, uh, operator. Often if you're not crystal clear on

Speaker B: those decision making, yeah, you absolutely do it. It's a double edged sword because I know having worked with a lot of businesses, it can be going really well and then it's not and the partnership destroys the business. But if it goes really well. Yeah, uh, three people really focused on building a business will outperform one most of the time until they don't. So to speak. Let's bring it forward. Let's talk about. Do you want to talk a bit about the exit? Because there's, I know there's a lot of business I've worked with where they have either had taken equity investment either from another firm or equity investor and sometimes it works out, but a lot of the time, a lot of the time it doesn't.

Speaker C: Yeah, mine's a story of it doesn't. And mine was a story of it does until it didn't. And I don't know if that's true a lot with some of the stories that you've seen as well. But if you go back to August 2023 or February 2023, I had my son, started at kindergarten and I met one of the dads. Never spoken to him before. Turns out he, he was entrepreneurial, had a few things in common, started chatting, had a coffee. Uh, I connected him with one of my friends who then went on to I think, um, invest a million dollars in his startup. And he connected me with um, a guy, another startup, um, entrepreneur in Melbourne, who ended up acquiring my business like from one coffee. We ended up doing a lot of business, which is why networking can be really powerful. But that relationship looked great on paper. I just was really naive. So I've learned a huge amount since then, both in terms of how to structure those deals, red flags backing my better judgment and my gut feel and underselling my true value. That underselling the true value thing has repeated itself so many times in the last eight months, which has been great because once you make that mental switch to I'm a high performer, I'm worth it, uh, you need me, or whatever that looks like into wherever you need to apply it. It changes your whole outlook, I think in life and is very powerful. That's been a big shift for me. A big, powerful shift. In February 2023, leading up to the August acquisition, I had a business that was performing okay. It was a small business. We didn't have really any marketing. We hadn't, we had some sort of product market fit in terms of the customers that we were working with. We were getting great results and they were referring their customers. But it was very small data sample and it wasn't sustainable to have that many people in the business. It was a great one person business. It was a decent two person business. But when we were four or five, we just couldn't kick on beyond that without any sort of marketing. And they approached us, this is listing loop. And they had the opposite problem. They had 4,000, this is their words, 4,000 of my ideal customer. But no monetize them. 4,000amonth. So they built a, for lack of a better term, a great mousetrap in terms of capturing these people online that would come through and register, register as a user on the Listing Loop platform which was an off market version of realestate.com but then they had no way of selling them anything and actually transacting and really making any real money. So they saw as a perfect fit there to offer those services to help those customers secure their, the property that they wanted. So on paper that was really good match because it looks so good and the numbers look so great. I didn't really push as hard as I probably could for the value of our business. We didn't get a seat on the board. We ended up being the third biggest shareholder. There was two billionaires I think on the board as well. We were just outmuscled, outgunned, outsmarted by bigger fish. And grossly, I'll say this with a disclaimer because I don't want to get sued, but my belief is that I was grossly misled in terms of them acquiring my business. But that's a conversation for a different day. Like it's water under the bridge. They'll argue differently. But anyway, we worked together for 14 months. We all did our best work and tried as hard as we could. We 5x Tyler house in that timeframe, which was great. The business wasn't. The relationship wasn't great with the founder of the Listing Loop and the board. We've had a bit of a Mexican standoff in terms of the direction that they were going and what we wanted to do and how we wanted to run our business and do the job. And then they basically offered us a parachute. Here's the last tranche of your shares. You guys could probably disappear now if you want. And we were like, that's a really good outcome. We're out and parachuted out of there. And then I think 17 days later, unbeknownst to us, they went into voluntary administration. So really they, I feel like we were handballed out of there because it saved them any future legal costs and issues. And I, it's my understanding of my guests that they knew what was coming. They must have bought.

Speaker B: Yeah, they must have.

Speaker C: And we didn't and we weren't told anything about that. And. And then LENDI came in and acquired the business out of. They acquired the hello House business and they bought the tech stack of listing loop out of the voluntary administration process. What was a business that should have been worth? Even just my business should have been worth somewhere between 7 to 10 million. That's the lot for the value of the debt, like for a couple hundred, however much debt they had in terms of what Lindy took out. So it was very sad to watch that happen. And you realize what people do when they're under stress and what comes out of that. Really eye opening and disappointing to see how some people act.

Speaker B: I was talking to Rach about this because she's been in a situation recently where people behave poorly. And there's at least three situations in the last month where I uh, you look at it and go, that's not right. Values are a difficult thing because they're personal. Right. And my version of that's not right is not going to be the same as your version. But there's a point at which you go, that's the kind of behavior that you shouldn't. At one point, at some point, somebody with a little bit of a self conscience or whatever is gonna look in the mirror and go, uh, I might have done the wrong thing there. And it happens to so often. And I sometimes feel like people justify it by saying that's business. As if just because it's business, it. You can screw people over left and center. And it's a sad, it's a sad reality of that side. But to put a context on it, I've just found that when it's happened to me or you've got to reach a point where you go, you know what, I'm going to move on, I'm going to put it behind me. It was probably, it was meant to be if they get theirs, if they'll get theirs. But for the time being I'm just going to put down a learning experience and next.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's the only thing you can do if you're a positive person with that mindset. And that's of course what I did. But yeah, there's definitely a period of grief that you go through to watch seven years of your baby effectively burnt in one fire. Very frustrating for me because you spend so much time working on projects like that to finally start to see that it's working and going in the right direction and there's the potential there for that to be a really big business business if it was handled right. But just, yeah, I think egos, management styles, there's just a whole heap of different things that humans do to each other that, that yeah. Are inadvisable.

Speaker B: There was A dead mouse song with the lyric, then watch it burn. And that was my theme for a long time after. I just listened to that and go and get my own. But even revenge fades away in the end.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think I just, I can't live in that headspace either for very long. So I just looked at it and go, okay, great, then that's happened. That's fucked up. What do we do about it? I'm going to rebuild. How am I going to rebuild? I'm, um, once bitten, twice shy. About business partners, about trusting other people. I'm going to be very low key, but very about what I do next. And I'm going to pick at the carcass of what I built with hello House. And I'm going to rewrite the next business plan and take out all the negatives and all the mistakes that we made previously, which were they're small things that made a big impact. It was things like Price, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Things like we gave the customers a one year contract, which meant we attracted people that didn't really want to make a decision anytime soon, which meant we just did huge amounts of. Then the contract I changed to three months and I put a certain amount of hits or you've got to repay. And then when you do that, when you talk like that to customers up front, when you're attracting the right people, they resonate with that and they're not put off by that because they're the ones that actually want to transact quick. They want to transact in a reasonable time frame. So I'm six months, five months in now, doing this behind the scenes before I launch. And I haven't had anyone beyond, I think it takes about one to three weeks for me to find a property for someone. And the average time in Australian takes is 10.1 months going, wow, once you get the strategy part, once you get the language right, that they're on board with you. It's not about rushing. If it takes three months, it takes three months. But you really. I really get people dialed in quickly to where the value pockets are in their target market and get them reset in terms of what their dollars will afford them and then deliver on it. And of course, when you're an expert negotiator, you significantly increase the percentage chance you're going to win that property in buyer competition. That's the other thing that they just overlook when they go it alone is that they might be able to create these opportunities, but they just keep losing. And the average Australian loses five times before they typically compromise and overpay on the sixth property. And that leads to 45% of Australians reporting to have buyer's remorse because they bought the wrong property, overpaid or a combination of the the two, which isn't good for it.

Speaker B: It's not good for an industry like in coaching. That's one of the issues. Like, yeah, uh, people buy coaching programs, eventually they get stiffed by so many coaches are really good at marketing and really crappy at coaching. They just view this. Coaches are all made of the same stuff and it's. Yeah, it's a shame. Tell me about the new business. Tell me about it's. Is it officially called Scott agate.com or is it something else?

Speaker C: The scottaget.com there's a long story here. I'll do the shorter version and we can unpack anything you want. But the short version is I did nothing in November and December and in January I was sitting there watching the cricket and I'm like, there's no way of, uh, people being able to find me. I'm sitting on the sofa, none of my clients can find me because everything online for the last seven years has been about hello house. So I can't that email, that website, anything else and to find me. So I thought I'll just spin out scottagot.com and do a very basic version of this so you can grab me. That worked fantastic. And the reason I did that is because I, uh, think it might have been even the guys, the co founders of Lendi told me that there's 75 people a month that Google your name. And I was like, okay, great. My own spotager.com, i might as well put a website there and do something about it. That number I asked yesterday, my web developer is over 500 people a month currently five months later or four and a half months later. So clearly this is working and resonating with people. What I did is I really focused on building a negotiation service. So I spent time to define the ultimate kind of done with you service that was, I guess a Hollow House 2.0, but really focused on owner occupiers because that TAM is massive. There's a huge opportunity there. Clearly Lendi have, uh, changed their business model from being a company that writes home loans to a property company that does home loans as well. And they want to capture all of the business inside their app, start to finish on that customer journey. They identified that what I had created was, as I said earlier, the future of how people are going to buy. So I knew that there's a big market to go after and that at some point if lendi get it right, which they will because they're incredibly smart and diligent operators, then they'll open the door for Comm Bank, Macquarie, everyone else doing the same thing, right? They'll all want a piece of collecting more of the money, settling more loans faster, uh, keeping their customer all in one place, increasing the quality of the customer journey and they're more likely to trade again. And also then they can understand and track where their equity is in those properties, tap them on the shoulder when it's the right time to buy in their super fund or, or how to buy an investment property or what it might be. So I designed this negotiation business. I did some work with a marketer and Tony said to me, you want the shortest possible name that you know, a.com address. So I went overseas online and bought propertynegotiators.com and I was pretty happy with myself because I'm like, that does what it says on the pack. There could not be a better domain name globally for me than that for SEO and the rest of it. So I have got that in the background ready to build. But the story is that, and this is the interesting thing for me is that since January and since I just started talking to all my referring partners like mortgage brokers and people like yourself, what's come is just this huge wave of property investors and it's this non stop investor investor. So I'm like, I'm swimming against the tide here. Like I'm looking at building another niche service in a market in an area where I've almost got to go and create that market. Australians, uh, aren't aware that there's a negotiation service they could use. 97% of Australians go it alone. So that's going to take marketing. There's some risks still involved. I have done that before with hello House, but this is almost starting again from scratch and having to educate the market. Now LENDI have got the ability, uh, to do this because they've got 8,000 new loans a month that they write. They've got a juggernaut of customers. They've got, they're talking to five and a half million or more on their database of Australians that own a property or looking to buy. They've got the ability to throw multimillion dollars worth of marketing dollars out there to show them that there's a new way of buying property. I don't. So I'm looking at that going, there's, it's great that LENDI are doing that because they're going to put a big song and dance around this in the market and educate people that exists and there's an opportunity there. So there's scope for other people to build businesses in that space. However, it's riskier. I always fought being a buyer's agent and doing the whole investor thing because my skill set has always been expert negotiator. So I really wanted to differentiate it. There is the negotiation skill but I just kept feeling like I'm just fighting, I'm swimming against the tide. Why don't I just run with it and be open minded and really focus on investors for a little while. That's turned into that pipe drive that you've seen by just getting great results for my customers and going above and beyond. And I've been. I really changed the language that I use in from January or February on and I really spoke about something that I'm passionate about which is my philosophy for investing in property is to use the data to get to these markets at an earlier stage. So I'm looking at getting six to eight months ahead of the market. And there's some fantastic tools that are in the marketplace like HTAG that can give you the ability to analyze that high level data and to choose these locations that are going to go from cold markets to warm markets and warm markets to hot. And the language that I use when I was talking to my customers was it's green shoot investing. Ah, it's getting to these stages. So you're either option a buyer and you're looking for the ego boost of quick capital growth. You need that sugar hit, you need it to be performing tomorrow. And for some customers they do need that. And still right now I buy in hotspot locations if the customer needs that. But when I gave them option B, 99% of people resonate with I want to see the full growth cycle and I want to get to these areas with less competition, more choice, more motivated sellers and the ability to create more favorable negotiation outcomes. And I want to hold it long term. So I went and I thought I'm not going to fight this either. So I went and registered Green shoots investing greenshoots property.com and everything around Green Shoots. And what I'm launching in July is going to be greenshoots property.com and the language shift has been really interesting with my clients. Is it they just get it. It just makes sense straight away and hopefully that will resonate with the general public when we launch Green Shoots in The coming month or so.

Speaker B: I like, I really like the name. I really do. It's got so much going for it. Green, which is good. Well, green, it's good shoots because it's. Yeah, no, thank you for. Absolutely nailed it on that one. Property negotiate is good but this is more. Property negotiation is very like bang. This is what we do. Green shoots has got a bit of personality to it.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think there's a time and a place for both of them. But I see green shoots like if I can talk from a business perspective now rather than working for the customer, the business. The view I've got of Green shoots is this is going to be a really good cash flow business. Right. It's going to be a safe cash flow business where I can build up, uh, really great take home pay every month and build a sustainable business like that that I can automate a lot of that, that process and put really good people around me to do much of that work. Property negotiators is going to need me to lead from the front. It's m going to be all about me in the interim because that's my kind of skill set and my profile in the media, online and I'm going to have to drive that really hard myself. So it's going to take a lot more of me if you like. And I see that as let's build the cash flow business first and then we're in a position where we're not really taking any risks. We can afford to go and have a swing at property negotiators if I want to do that in whatever 6 months, 12 months, 2 years time. But I feel like there's no rush and I've really changed my mentality from hanging around with mates like Jordan De Jong who came and stayed at the ski lodge in February with me and we spent a lot of time up and down ski lifts in regional Japan just chatting together. And he's a guy that's built a fantastic SaaS business. He works out of the ice bath and the sauna place which he goes to every, every day. Spends lots of time with his daughter and his wife. And he's also got an unbelievably high profit business that he's basically got on, on a lot of it, on automation. He really does work hard and smart when he needs to, but he's built a very enviable business. And one of the things that I loved watching Jordy is that his focus is not on making money. His focus is on lifestyle. How do I build a Business that's safe. How do I build a business that's adding value to my customers? How do I build a business that's highly profitable and how do I automate that process to giving me my time back? Because time is the luxury, time is the flex. When I look at all the competitors, a lot of my competitors are in that buyer's agent space doing that investor, uh, work. You just see everyone rushing for 50, 80, 100amonth. It's a sausage factory. It's cookie cutter advice. You have seen this in the finance world, I'm sure as well. It's a race to the bottom. It's a race to how fast the buyer's agent can buy a Lamborghini and build 80 investment properties of their own portfolio. I see it all day, I see it all through the feed on LinkedIn and Facebook. There's all the talk is about how much money you can make. It's not about actually giving any value to the customer. And I look at it now differently and I'm like, actually, I don't necessarily even want to scale a business. I want to build a business that gets to X and X gives me this lifestyle and this many man hours back and a fantastic family life. That is the flex for me. So I'm looking at it going, okay, we can write this business plan on the back of an envelope. It's if we do this for these people and we're going to do this many a month and it's going to print me that, that's it, really. You buy into that or not?

Speaker B: To my team, you honestly, it's been such a reminder. The reason I left corporate is I was walking through an airport in Mel on the way to Melbourne and I grabbed a copy of 74 Hour Work Week and I read that and that was the moment I went, um, I was in corporate. I'm doing it wrong. This is all wrong. And that had been my man, you

Speaker C: and every other male of our age at that point, which we all read

Speaker B: three times, absolutely balloon and sitting out there. And that was so much of what was in there. You look back at it and now that was piecing together offshoring and. Or it's now almost driving, shipping and everything.

Speaker C: He was doing, wasn't he?

Speaker A: I know he was doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, he was doing all of that, selling vitamins and all the rest of it. But I think sometimes, particularly when you get older, you sometimes. And particularly with all the noise around social media, you see it particularly on LinkedIn, which is everybody putting their best, you sometimes Forget exactly why you set out to do things. And it's spot on. It's like it was never for me about buying a Lamborghini or having this. It was always about being able to do stuff I wanted to do with the people. I wanted to do it and have enough money, but not. I was never trying to take over the world. And I feel like that's, uh, exactly the essence of what you're talking about, which is shit. Yeah. Having a successful business, make a lot of money, but make enough money. Don't just m. Collect it for the sake of collecting it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I'm tired of the whole look of my life online as well in that regard. You have to play that game to a certain degree to fill the feed in the algorithm. I'm trying to do it in a way with my content. That is, I watch intently with what my competitors are doing. And it's a lot about, look at this success. Look at this property we bought. Look at that, uh, look at all the growth rates and all the rest of it. But there's not a lot of. There's some element of skill in that and. But I. Not trying to go that way necessarily. Mine's more about the skill set. And our superpower is negotiation. Let me break down the psychology of the buying process and let me show you that I absolutely am a master of my client and my craft. That's going to give you a great deal of confidence that you're dealing with someone that knows what they're doing and takes it deeply personal and is passionate. I often say to my clients on the first call and in these words, because this is how I took at home and this is how I talk in life, I also say, I fucking love it. Negotiation for me. And you've seen this in real life, Stu, buying your place. I fucking love it. It's a contact sport and I just cannot get enough of it. And when we get to that point, that's when you're going to see me wagging my tail. Because I am so excited when I get to the negotiation because I just love putting the gloves on and start swinging. That's my favorite part of the day. Yeah.

Speaker B: I've never seen you in negotiation, but I've seen you talk about negotiation and you've advised me how to do it. And the one thing that strikes me about the way you do it, it is, uh, you. It's like you do it in such a way that isn't aggressive, it's not nasty, it's just matter of fact. It's almost put the pistols on the table. Let's have a conversation. And it's their tricks. They know you know their tricks and therefore you don't even have to point it out. It's just, let's you cuts the chase. But without it being who's got the, who's got the more expensive watch or the bigger dick or whatever it is, it's a thing of beauty. It really is.

Speaker C: And it's fun to, uh. I think the most I learned around this, which I think is really important, I had, this is a chat I had actually to my friend, the CEO, the CEO, uh, organizer yesterday for the event. When I went for the walk this morning with him, he did a really good post about what he did yesterday and, uh, LinkedIn and brought that group together. And I said to him, that's a great post. I would have probably done the same thing. But really, you're not sharing any value there. You're just explaining that you're in the room or you created the room, but you had 11 people there that have got 11 really interesting stories. And you've already taught me something on this wall talk that I didn't know and that I'm going to benefit from. What were the other 11 stories that got you to that meeting yesterday or that you had over a beer at lunch? Because they're the stories you should be telling because you're struggling for content. So you put up a photo and tag everyone, but you've actually got two weeks or two months worth of content from the 11 people you were speaking to. And he's, oh, my God. I'm just looking at this whole, I'm playing the whole game wrong. I'm like, okay, it's as simple as an easy tweak because you can capture all of that. It's about storytelling, isn't it? And you find all that gold. And the best thing that I did last year, at the start of the year, I was like, you know what? I need to challenge myself to be a better writer. I am going to challenge myself to write every day on LinkedIn. And to do that, I'm going to have to come up with something smart to talk about. Otherwise it's going to be really boring for me and really boring for the audience. So what I started to do is instead of talking in all the sales meetings when I was coaching my six negotiators at hello House, I would ask them questions and tell me about, uh, okay, Stuart, why did you lose that deal? What did you say to them? What did they say to you, what did the client do when you said that? How did you win that deal? What happened? Pull it apart. And they would talk about it. And then it became like a counseling session. So I would be pulling apart. It's like, okay, great. Then in that instance, I may have said this, and this was the result I would get or I'd expect if I did that. When I did that, I would then go away. Normally, my team used to laugh because I'd sit there and I'd write two pages of notes on these one hour sales calls once a week or twice a week. And they were all my content ideas. And I go away, I just pick up little things that you said, just a tiny thing you said. I just, I write it down while you're still talking. And then I'd go away and I'd sit by myself and I'd go, okay, Marcia said this and then the agent did that. Uh, why? And then I'd like, okay, if I was the agent, I would have known that Marcia was going to say that. So I would have said this because that's the highest percentage chance that I'd get Marcia to do what I wanted to do, right? I break it all down like that. And then all my content just started flowing. And then I was writing every day and my staff was saying, this is unbelievable. Now we've got like this. What? You couldn't convey this stuff face to face. I struggled to coach like this. But then when I went and broke it down and I wrote about it, the staff are like, oh my God, I totally get it. Uh, I should have said that in that example. That makes perfect sense why I did that and why it worked. And then all of a sudden they're just, they're game lifted. And it was like, okay, this is. I've got to do this better. And that's really helped me tons to break it apart. The psychology of it.

Speaker B: I was about to recommend a tool that I use, so I do the same kind of content like this, but then I dictate it into an app and then it uses prompts to put it into a version which I can rewrite. But I just keep doing what you're doing because it's really working for you. Don't mess around with it.

Speaker C: I just wake up with those ideas. Like at 4 o' clock this morning, I woke up and I sent myself an email and it was too long lines. One of them was, if you were me, what would you pay for this house? And I was like, that's a Question that I ask real estate agents and everyone would go, why would you ask that? Because I turn it around on them and I say, okay, Stuart, this looks like a really good house. I'd love to buy it for the client. But put me, put yourself in my shoes. What should I pay for this house? Yeah. So often we think they're going to anchor us to a high price and they tell us a number way below where we were thinking where the comparable sales is. Because they know their clients motivated or whatever else like that. Not all the time, but very often. And saved my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's like I need to write about that because these are the little things that I do every day that I just never think of. Not to mention the fact, yeah, they're

Speaker B: not expecting that question. That is not, that's. It's a chess. I don't know whether you play chess, but if you haven't, you probably should because you'd be really good at it. But it's like they're not expecting that. And therefore when you get an answer, they ask question like that, the answer is probably going to be relatively raw and honest.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's all those types of conversations. There's two really good questions that I ask that I train all my team too. The first one is when I ring you up on the, the first call, I'm going to say to you, what buys it? And then I'm not going to talk and you're going to tell me this long winded bullshit story and I know you're lying or you're going to tell me exactly the number or very close to what I need to do. But that one question does an immense amount of time saving and heavy lifting for me. What buys it? And then I shut up. Yeah. And there's other questions like that and what most buyers do in Sydney, for example, it's different in every state, but in New South Wales people will go, when I was an 8 agent and they would come to the door and say, how many contracts have you got out? And the joke in the real estate industry is that the answer is always three or four. Because it's not too many that it scares you off, but it's enough to create competition against you. So you ask a question like that, you're asking to be set up against you. So rather than ask that question, I ask what buys it? Or I say, Stuart, what's the highest offer you've rejected? And I don't say anything. And then you see, they squirm or they tell you. And then you cut through this whole what's the. The guide price, all the rest of it. It's questions like that, where do I need to position my client by this? And it's the question questions that have really moved the needle for me in the last few years. Thinking about it.

Speaker B: I love that what buys it because it almost communicates the opportunity to close it really quickly, which is what they want. Yeah, we could keep going. This is incredible. No, I'm mindful of your time, to be honest. More than anything else. I'm. Presumably you will one day write a book on negotiation. You've obviously thought about that and you're going to do it sooner rather than later. I don't know, maybe want to ask a couple of questions and then I'll let you go about your day because now you've got stuff to do. If you were recommending somebody who does not want to build a massive business, but they want to, they want to be able to build something that gives them enjoyment in what they're doing. They want to be able to do the right thing, have a business model that enables them to do the right thing by people and they want to make enough money so they don't have to be restricted. They don't have to look at the bank account and wonder where the money. What are five bits of advice you would tell them to focus on as they, they start out, as they grow the business things that you would suggest doing versus not doing. That makes sense.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think you need to craft a high level of skill in one genre. So I think that's really important that you either you're a great hairdresser or you're a great accountant or whatever it might be in small business for me that was negotiation or it might be a high level of communication, but that's probably another one. So obviously find you and your craft. I think the second one for me would be real high level communicator that served, uh, me very well in every facet of life.

Speaker B: By high level you mean being able to articulate complex things, uh, in a way that makes sense.

Speaker C: I would even dumb it down and just say someone that can be really clear in terms of the messaging that they, what they do and how they do it and what the value proposition is. And great in terms of following up and really clearly getting people to action and take decisive action. So one of the things that I see a lot in terms of my job with real estate agents is they're great on the ego stuff like really Pointing out all the positives and the rest of it. They're poor on delivery in terms of positioning the customer to take decisive action and following through and doing what they told them they were going to do. So if I say to you Stuart, what buys it? And you say 960,000. Great. Stuart, I need to do a building and pest inspection. I need to get the contract reviewed and I'm going to come back to you by 4:00 this afternoon with an offer on contract. Are you okay with that? Yes. Okay, great. Then there's no gray area. I've just, I've set the ground rules. I've been really clear on my communication and then I follow up and do it. So it's that type of really decisive language I think is good. So yeah, clear communication. And then I think what we just talked about, storytelling is everything. It may just be in my type of service based industry, but you do see it everywhere, E commerce, everywhere storytelling is, it's compelling in terms of the impact that it'll have on your business. So you've got got to be good at finding those stories and conveying that to your audience to build trust, I think and show value.

Speaker B: The other one that's coming out of me telling it's wrong and maybe you got another one I've taken from this is know your numbers and know how

Speaker C: the numbers works and I think a lot of what we've just spoken about was self doubt and positive mindset, isn't it? So overcoming that. Be confident but not arrogant and, and, and yeah, and stay humble.

Speaker B: I love that as a T shirt, a running T shirt. Stay humble. I think that's humble personally.

Speaker C: There's 5, 6, 7 or 10.

Speaker B: Yeah, loads. We keep going. There's a book in this. Uh, honestly I could keep going on this but one of the reasons I want to put in front because I actually think what you do, you've got the opportunity to add value for a bunch of people. But I also know a lot of the clients I work with who are advisors, brokers most definitely. And I think accountants often have conversations with their clients about investment and buying offices and things like that. If somebody wanted to reach out and connect with you and potentially talk about how you could help them to help clients. What is that? Is that something conversation you'd like to have and if so, what's the best way of doing it?

Speaker C: Yeah, always it's all referral based so a lot of it is B2B. LinkedIn is really easy to find me otherwise they can go to the Scottagt.com website that will stay live no matter what I do next. In terms of the green shoot stuff that we've discussed.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: But LinkedIn's an easy one to get me and I'm the easiest human to find in the world like any agent or buyer's agent because my mobile phone is everywhere online. Yeah.

Speaker B: And from an engagement point of view you'll jump on, you have a conversation, the referral comes through. There's a structure and a pricing to it and you go from there.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I've found that I've actually never paid for a B2B referral in my life. I offer to pay a commission to grease that wheel and to make it worthwhile for the referral but no one ever wants it, which is quite admirable. Certainly the type of people that I attract don't want it. So that's top tier mortgage brokers and things. They want their customer to get the best outcome and they're not interested in taking any monetary return. So I send as many customers as I can back to people that refer me business. By the nature of what I do though, most of the customers either come to me through a uh, broker already or they've already got a conditional approval in place. I don't get huge amounts of return referrals. I spend a lot of my time working with great people that are got customers that are in that sweet spot for me.

Speaker B: And just to uh, hit it back one more time I think you mentioned and make sure I got this right. The average person you work with will basically, once they've identified the property they can close the deal in three weeks. And the industry averages do you say 10 months?

Speaker C: 10.1 months is the average time it takes for an Australian to buy a property. And my customers after the strategy session are typically transacting in one to three weeks. But that's not a badge of honor for me and it's not something that I would actually actively market as the reason why you should work with me. What it does say though is it gives you complete confidence that we know what we're doing and that we can get our customer to the finish line in a quick time frame because they've got the absolute confidence to act. So I think that's a real positive. But I don't want it to be seen as we're rushing customers through the door to get them out. It's just that we have them so dialed in that they're in a very confident decision making mode probably faster than most businesses. And because I only work with a select amount of people, we're not over, uh, subscribed. We're not trying to do 50 or 100 of these a month. So we can give people the time, we can focus on their bespoke needs and we can find those assets quickly. And we've got great tools to do that as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I wasn't even suggesting for a second it's about rushing through it. But the thing is, the reason why people stall is because they're just not sure. They're not comfortable. Procrastination kicks in, all the rest of it. And then, you know, it's not necessarily that they rush to do it in 13 weeks. It's just they're much more confident making decisions more quickly. And that's, that's, that's what makes it easy, mate. This has been absolutely. I could keep going. I've learned so much from this, both in terms of where you started, I think the negotiation, seriously, you could spend.

Speaker C: Um.

Speaker B: I know you've coached other people on negotiations, so I know you know this stuff really well, but there's a lot I didn't know about the journey you've been on. There's a lot of did, and I don't know how often you've told this story, but it's. It's really good to hear it. Any final thoughts? Anything else you want to put out?

Speaker C: No, uh, that was good. It was. It's good for me to work through all those things and. Yeah. And look back at those learnings as well, because there's just. It's ever evolving, isn't it? And it's never a linear kind of process. There's just so many chops and changes, lots of ups and downs, but you've got to go through all of that to get to where you are today. It makes you bigger and stronger. So it's good to look back and go through those things as well. Thank you.

Speaker B: My dad said if everything turns out all right in the end. So if it's not all right, it's not the end.

Speaker C: Yeah. If Arsenal win a trophy this season, that'll turn out better for me.

Speaker B: But I think it's not over. Yeah, it's not going to happen this year. But. But Alicia, you're in Champions League. That's the main thing. Mate. What have you got on for the rest of the day? Anything good?

Speaker C: Hopefully buying a few houses for clients. Yeah, I'm pretty busy doing that. Oh, actually, no. I have my 6 year old playing Oz Kick his second game so I'm arguably more excited every week than he is. I told him that my favorite noise is the, the click clack of football boots on call. For me, that's like game time, baby. We're on, we're on. We're running out of the sheds with my mates and we're about to. To play footy. And I was like, m. My absolute ride or die moment. I love it. So, yeah, he knows that now and I've taught him the, my one rule of life on the football field is that they, they can't run without a head. So he's pumped. Just a tap sound of the click

Speaker B: clack and the smell of danker rub. That's, that's that. That gets me every single time.

Speaker C: Their blood.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that too. That's it, mate. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for your time. Catch up soon. Bye bye.

Speaker A: Well, what an episode.

Speaker B: Now, today we unpack Scott Agates really

Speaker A: insightful, remarkable journey from his early days in real estate to founding multiple successful agencies. Uh, how he pivoted to a new lifestyle, ultimately took his version of redefining the property negotiation game with hello House and now Green shoots property as well. Scott shared a lot in there. He shared the nitty gritty of negotiating with agents in a way that makes it just seem so resembled. Uh, he shared little bit about how to build really powerful networks. He talked a lot about the highs and also the lows of business exits and a lot of those lessons learned along the way, which he just has absorbed and moved on from in a way that shows resilience that I sometimes wish I was born with. If you're curious about Scott's new venture or you want support for you and your clients in getting the best possible deal in the property market, be sure to find him@scottagatt.com that is two T's, uh, two G and two T's or on LinkedIn. He's always keen to connect and will respond very quickly indeed, unless he's spending time with the family. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider

Speaker B: subscribing or leaving us a review.

Speaker A: It really helps us to reach more listeners and bring even more inspiring stories and actionable strategies to your ears. And if you'd like to get access to the full catalog of master past episodes with the video, plus a treasure trip proof of resources to help you grow, scale and systemize your practices, do come and join us at the Alderray Practice Success Community and hub@success.audere.com au that's a U D E R E. Thanks again for being a listener, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Finovator.