Hello and welcome to Opening Gates to more listings for
estate agents with me, Simon Gates.
I'm delighted to join say by Mr. Tom Panos.
Tom, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you for having me Simon, and in person means a lot.
Do you know, when I started on this journey of transitioning
from estate agency into like the training space half dozen years
ago, I'd written down things I wanted to achieve.
And one of the things was to get you on the podcast, which we did
last last year. You're at top of the list mate
And to now be sat here in person doing it is unbelievable.
You've been my university on wheels for a dozen years.
Listen to $1,000,000 agents. So to do it in person and to
spent last couple of weeks of you across Ireland, Birmingham,
now London. It's been an an absolute
pleasure to know. Thank you.
For listen, it's a it's a pleasure working with you and
you gave me a very important gift.
It was not an expensive gift in terms of price.
It was a beautiful book, the five wealth areas by I think of
the authors called Sahail and I get books all the time and I get
listen to audio books, but that one was a special book.
But yeah, it's a pleasure working with you.
You're easy to work with. You've got great content and
you've got an influence and an audience that love to hear the
stuff that you've got and hopefully we've got some good
information today. We'll, we'll do our best.
Hopefully we've not run out of it over the past couple of
weeks. So like I said, you've been
across Ireland, you've been Birmingham, London, the UK,
you've bought a bit of good weather over from Australia as
well. So thank you for that.
Today's a cracker of a day. It is and we're stuck inside
here recording, correct? Maybe we'll have a drink later.
So what what kind of have you observed of the of real estate
agents across the UK and Ireland and and the market at the moment
from from the last couple of weeks and all these different
agents you've met? Look, real estate agents all
over the world have got a lot of common ingredients that you see.
They're normally people that have got decent people skills,
they're normally hungry, they get driven to work that is
Commission based. So they're the kind that I've
got a bit of entrepreneurship. The one thing that I have
noticed, probably both in Ireland and in the UK, is that
the mindset Simon is, is more that of an employee than an
employer. And that can be really confusing
because it's very easy for an estate agent to actually think,
Oh no, I actually work for that firm.
I think it's important that you understand that if you're in the
Commission based business, if you make a living that is highly
dependent on how much property you sell and how much
commissions you get, you are in fact working for yourself.
And I sometimes think that some of the mindset I see with people
is they think, Oh no, I'm actually an estate agent working
for a company now. It's important that you know
that if you're in real estate, you're working for yourself, you
have income that's coming in, you have expenses, and that
those expenses should either be looking at helping you make
money, build your personal brand.
That would probably be the biggest observation.
The second observation is the list to sell ratio is different,
right? The amount of property that gets
listed versus sold is a lot lower than some of the other
countries I do work with, specifically in Australia where
the list to sell ratio is more like 80 to 90%.
So on that second point, when I hear you, John and Troy, when
you're doing the podcast and you talk about what is it you call
it? Is it would you say sell rate
from options at the weekend? The clearance rate.
Clearance rate. That's it.
Thank you. Clearance rate.
And yeah, here in the numbers you say, Oh yeah, you know,
it's, it was a good one, you know, 80% clearance that weekend
or something like in the UK, you know.
Yeah, 5055. Percent.
So we, we, we, we believe a clearance rate in Australia of
under 60% is a really bad result.
We actually think that under 60% you're moving into a buyers mark
territory, right? Yeah, we much prefer to be
sitting somewhere between 70 and 90% and and unfortunately in the
UK and in Ireland it appears that that number is lower.
But of course we must. So I mean, you know that for all
your listeners, we do have micro markets.
You can't turn around and say, you know, the market in Mayfair
is the same market as it is in Doncaster.
They all have their own unique issues.
So at this present moment in time, my observation is that
we're in a higher interest rate environment compared to the
COVID market. I think you said on the stage
maybe yesterday, in the early 90s in a really tough market
when you set up your business and there were 18% interest
rate. So whatever it was in the
slightly higher interest rate environments, the South of the
country in London perform a lot worse.
In very low interest rate environments, they perform
really, really well. But it's right now, like I said
to you when we're walking over here, Wales, Scotland, Northern
Ireland, Norfolk country, the house price earning ratios are a
lot closer together. So they're actually
outperforming your London's at the moment.
Yeah. So that's the great thing about
real estate markets. They never stay the same.
You know, like you know, you at any one time, Simon, doesn't
matter whether you're in Wales, Scotland, London and in addition
that if you are in London, you've got these micro markets.
Markets fall into one of three buyers market, sellers market or
a balanced market, right. Buyers market is when there's a
lot of stock on the market, which there is at the moment in
lots of parts of the United Kingdom.
A seller's market is what you had during COVID.
They were getting incredible prices.
But there's one market that real estate agents don't like and
that's a transition market. That's a market that's moving,
but there's not enough evidence there that you can demonstrate
to your seller, hey, listen, you're not going to get this
price because they keep saying, but that has sell for that.
And what they're looking at is before it transitioned and
transition markets create a lot of hesitancy because people are
unsure, you know? Yeah.
But the good news is, Simon, transition markets now don't
last for long between because the mobile phone and digital
news comes flying at your phone. Consumers are very educated.
The media does an amazing job to educate consumers.
Yeah, very interesting. I just want to go back to the
first point in terms of employee versus employer to find out
really interesting what what you'd said, because I've only
ever had in my adult life, technically speaking, to
employee jobs. And I treated my job as if it
was a business within a business like my own franchise.
And I think that's what made me successful in those jobs.
And I can't remember the exact study or or science behind it,
but we've got a podcast in the UKA huge podcast called high
Performance podcast and done by Jake Humphrey and professor,
professor Damian Hughes, who I've had on my podcast,
actually, which which was unbelievable.
And in one of their latest books, they talked about how
people, adult people have a job, a career or a calling.
And for me, when a state agency, it's, it's a calling.
So if you're, if it's a job where it's 9:00 to 5:00, you
take an hour's lunch, you take all your holiday sick pay,
whatever, it's just a job. There's some who you know, it's
a career. They want to go up the ladder.
But then for me, it's always been a calling.
I'm this really weird person. If I said to you before I grew
up wanting to be an estate agent, no one in the UK wants to
do that. My parents really tried to not
get me to do I. Want you to be a doctor?
Or what's even funnier, right, I said to you when walking over
here, estate agents don't have a best reputation in this country.
They got me to do work experience at the Royal Families
Law firm and the Houses of Parliament.
Now I don't know how much you see about the Royal family over
in Australia in terms of what goes on there, but their law
firms probably going to be quite busy at most times.
And Houses of Parliament, again, we've had some quite shocking
things that happened in recent years with.
So maybe they're maybe at the end of the day, they're happy
that you became a real estate. Agent, I think they're proud of
me. Now I'm interviewing you, so
yeah, there you. Go Yeah, Nah.
Listen, by the way, that is right around the world.
It's not just the UK thing. Real estate agents reputation is
towards the bottom. We know that part of it is out
of our control, but part of it is within our control too.
So just a touch and a point next.
I do think, and I've been guilty of this over the years, and I
guess we're in this, we're in the UK, America, Australia.
We're in this kind of, let's say, echo chamber where if I'm
listening to the likes of you watching Matt Salvin, to Matt
Steinwade, Lisa Novak, people like Gavin, who you obviously.
Coach, actually all three are being clients of mine long term.
And and we look and go, Oh my God, Australia's amazing.
But then, like in any country, it's going to be great agents.
It's going to be bad agents. I think in, in the UK we can be
guilty of being like, oh, it's all well and good for them
saying that in Australia, because they're all amazing out
there. Like they haven't got cheap fees
or shit agents or overvaluing. But like you say, it's the same
all over the world, doesn't matter what country, and you're
going to get the bad and the good.
I've got to say, Simon, the UK market and the Australian market
are the closest aligned markets, not in terms of economies, but
in terms of the methods that agents use.
We have the same issue like fees going under 1% is a big issue in
Australia. Vendors that wanting more for
their homes than what they're worth.
I mean, to give you an idea right at the moment, you know,
in various parts of Sydney, the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Alex
Phillips is a very good estate agent, said to me.
I interviewed him at Eric two weeks ago and he said to me that
70% of these transactions since 2020 are being sold for lower
than what they paid for. I mean, we have the same issues,
right? The same issues.
Real estate agents have to wake up every morning with a gun
pointing at their head saying list or you won't eat, right?
We have the same issues. We have vendors that think their
home is worth 100,000 more than what it is.
So they're very aligned marketplaces.
So if you're a person in the UK thinking to yourself, hey, if I
was in Australia, it would be different.
The only thing that would be different is that you'd have 300
days of sunshine, right? Everything else is the same,
right? I don't know if I said to you
before, my grandmother is Australian.
She's been, she's been an opera singer out there, well travelled
to Europe singing, met my grandfather who was in the Navy
and they fell madly in love and moved to the UK.
So I need to somehow tap her up to get myself.
Over to Australia, you need to get an Aussie passport.
I do, don't I? Yeah.
So I just want to run through some of the questions I've been
asked. When I put out a post on social
media yesterday saying very fortunate to be interviewing
you, I was inundated. So I've tried to choose some of
the best ones which. We yes, I'd love to.
Run through. So let's have a have a look at
these. So let's start with this one
with AI because AI is again, I don't know what it's like in Oz,
but in UK every conference at the moment is AIAIAII thinking
like it's going to change their life without doing any work.
So the question for you first one is, what's the biggest
mistake you're seeing estate agents make at the moment with
AI? Stopping talking to people and
spending all their time on bleeding edge technology instead
of cutting edge technology. I've seen this story happen
many, many times. Something new happens in real
estate. People think this new shiny
object is going to change everything.
And what happens is they drop what they're doing and focus on
the shiny object. Now let's be clear, this is a
really shiny object, right? So I can't turn around and
compare it to some of the other technologies that even came
through during COVID like virtual online auctions, right?
This is, this is a thing that can actually help an estate
agent list and sell more real estate, gain more time.
But you got to be very careful that you don't become high tech,
low touch. What you want to do is to be the
estate agent that uses technology, in particular AI to
complement them, not to substitute them.
And for me, that basically means is that you will still be making
phone calls, you'll still be creating influence because AI
cannot actually say to the seller, please realign your
price by 5%. AI can say, here is some
information that we should be focused on.
AI does the heading list lifting to source information.
But you still need to have the conversation and say, Mr. and
Mr. Seller, as you can see, this is what my buyers are reading at
the moment. How open minded would you be
that we realign your price by 10%?
AI doesn't do that, you do that. So I think it's estate agents
grappling with what do I stop doing and start doing with AI
and what do I actually keep on doing and don't get sidetracked
and deceived by AI. And for me, there's only three
or four things, Simon, that I have seen AI at the moment that
I can really say it's going to help you make more money in a
state agency. There's only three or four
things, and I can touch on those if you want.
Please do. Right?
Yeah. One of those is before an estate
agent goes and does a listing presentation or a market
appraisal, whatever term you give it, that you get some
psychometric testing done through various Aon platforms
like Humanic, Crystal or Claude. That allows you to analyze the
personality of someone. So when you get to the
presentation, you know their values, what to say, what not to
say. That's powerful.
There are applications like NextGen that if you work in a
cross culture market where you half your audience is speaking
Mandarin, you can have your content within seconds
transcribed and also a sounding like you are actually very
efficient at speaking that language.
And I would probably say that the vendor reporting which is
needed because most owners need to actually start getting
realistic about their price expectations.
I think vendor reports, which are very used in Australia,
which is a weekly written report that analyzes the data from the
portals and then actually finds articles that says here are the
reasons why your property might actually have to be realigned
and putting the vendor reports through AI, they're very useful.
They're to me, the main things. Obviously creating your
advertisements. AI can do advertisements really
good. Obviously, if you're stuck
sometimes legally or what does this mean?
There's great AI and platforms that act like a solicitor.
But for me the biggest mistake Simon is real estate agents stop
using this talking to people because they think that AI is
going to make him the top agent in the UK.
Yeah, on on the phone side of things, Well, two, well, 2, two
and one here. So I think there's a plenty on
social media now where it's seeing AI content and is like
blocking it from actually getting further.
Hence why when you're talking over the past couple of weeks
around the, OR organic authentic content you're recording that
does so well because it stands out so much because everything
else people like, well that's AI, that's AI, that's AI.
And one of the things I said on stage yesterday, if I was to
start in the stage tomorrow, you know, I've got people in this
phone who already know, like and trust me.
Why would be going around trying to do business with people I
don't know when I can send a WhatsApp broadcast list of 256
people and get business from that and have agents all over
the UK implement that strategy and win business off it?
So Simon, it's a wonderful recommendation by the way, and I
heard you talk about that in your great presentation
yesterday in Birmingham. And, and I will say this, people
underestimate the mobile phone as a trusted database.
Most people have got hundreds, some people have got thousands
of names. These people have received texts
from you. These people are people that
you've had belly to belly, voice to voice conversations with.
These are people that you played football with.
These are people that you went to school with.
They already like and trust you. Often just opening up your phone
and ringing up people and saying, hey, it's Tom Panosi
from the real estate. Firstly, I want to apologize.
I should have been in touch earlier.
Secondly, how's this changing market impacted your plans?
That could be a simple step people could do today to
reconnect with their client base.
Yeah, such powerful words. You, you use that.
Nothing you made me think for saying, you know, relationships
will transcend all market conditions.
But you've seen instant, you've seen the rise of the Internet.
You've then seen AI, you've seen so many different markets.
But which agents have performed the best over your decades in
the market? They want to continuously
maintain those relationships. I think there's a saying, I
don't know who came up with this.
Transactions don't compound, relationships do.
That's another beautiful sentence.
That's one I'm going to plagiarize as well because you
know, Simon, we've got to accept that.
Look, it doesn't matter what's going on in the world and it
doesn't matter where it's a buyers market, a sellers market,
whether this new shiny object is got everyone's attention.
At the end of the day, we've got people that are getting
divorced. We've got people that want a
bigger house. We've got people that want a
smaller house. We've got people that want to
actually leave 1 suburb and go live in the countryside.
And then we've got people that have gone to the countryside,
Zoom life's not working for them and they want to come back into
the city. We've got people that want to go
live in another country. At the end of the day, I've got
good news for everyone. It doesn't matter what the
markets doing, what's going out in the world.
I'm letting you know that the majority of the people that
transact in real estate are transacting because of a
lifestyle purpose. So if you're a good estate
agent, it doesn't matter what's going on, good, bad market.
If you're a deal maker and you're a good estate agent,
you're always making money. 100% so over the last 50 years in the
UK we've averaged about 1.2 million transactions.
So give or take, it's about 5% of your marketplace moves every
year. I don't know how that would
compared to Australia. Yeah, so it's like, okay, so if
it's 100 houses on this estate, I know 5 and these 100 are going
to move in the next 12 months. Law of averages.
So I said to a lot of the agents, OK, so we know how many
properties sell in your marketplace each year.
So we just reverse engineer it, right?
Well, we know it's going to be 100 transactions.
What's your average fee? OK, how many doors we need to
not letters, we need to send videos, produced social media
posts, etcetera. Like 50 years of data has told
you, we know there's going to be 5% of people transact.
When it was a recession, I think it went down to like 700,000.
So we know when the the market is absolutely screwed, still
going to get 3/4 of a million people in this country.
When the world was ending, people still moved.
And then when we had the boom market with COVID, when money
was just being chucked at people and people went, oh, I don't
want to be in London anymore. Guts the countryside.
Like you said, I think we went up to maybe a 1.4 million mark.
So you know that when times are really, really good, you're
maybe going to get a few 100,000 more transaction.
And when times are not great, it goes down by a few 100,000, but
over a 50 year average, OK. So you've just nailed something
that everyone that's watching this should become totally
focused on. If 5% of people are selling, get
yourself a database of 1000 people.
Mathematics doesn't lie. 5% of 1000 is.
Those fifty are transacting on the law of averages.
So what you're doing, and you spoke about it in your
presentation yesterday, you're just not focusing on the 5%
because if you focus on the 5%, you've got a strategy, which is
the catch and kill strategy. You're trying to get what
everyone else is getting. Now, because everyone is
fighting over the same stuff. What actually happens is your
fee comes down. What smart people do is they
play the long game. They get a tribe that's got
their vibe. Let's call it 1000, people.
You might turn around and say to yourself, no man, I'm hungrier
than that. I want 2000 people, right?
Or you might turn around and say, I want 5000 people, but
let's just use 1000 because mathematics will be easier. 5%
of 1000 is 50 transactions. You know, every year that 50% of
50 of those people are transacting.
That doesn't include the uncle, the neighbor, the stuff that
just listed. This is repeatable, predictable
business, like a subscription based business.
It's money that's coming in, right?
And all you've got to do is begin to realize my job is to
get a tribe that's got my vibe and to become their agent before
they need an agent. So when they need an agent,
they've got an agent. That's your formula for success.
I love that. I've never, I've never thought
of it in a way you said it's like a a delayed subscription
service where the aunt, the uncle, the cousin, the brother,
the sister, you're going to get business from them, but it might
be in 5-10 years. So rather than it being £30 a
month, you're getting that £5000 a month in in.
So, so I want you to know, I look at my whole life as a
subscription business, right? I look at my life and I'll sit
there with the client and I'll say to them, listen, probably I
wouldn't make that decision right now.
And I'll say, but Tom, I'm surprised you'll, you'll benefit
of me making that decision. I'll say I'm still benefiting,
but I'll benefit at a later time because the right time for you
is not now. And let me tell you, clients
love that. They hate Commission breath.
They hate being bullied and ambushed and all that.
Oh no, do it now. You'll regret it if you don't.
No man, don't get me wrong. If I believe that I will say
that, I'll say to them, hey, listen, it's your money and I'm
only recommending to you what I do myself.
How would you feel in two months time if you're getting 10% less,
how would that make you feel? If I think it's right for them,
I'll use influence. And I think influence is really
important because a con man and a good person, the only
difference is their intent. They both use influence.
Yeah, very interesting You've in terms of the relationships and
subscription, Something I say to a lot of agents is for if
they're in that, what am I going to try and say here?
Transactional mindset. Let's say I come to see you and
30 minutes go by and you go. Simon, thank you so much for
being really helpful. We're not moving, you know, most
agents. OK, wasted time, see you later.
I'm out the door. Or as I'm saying, well if you
just said to me, thank you Tom, could you do me a small favour?
And there's 2 answers to that. Yes, it depends what it is.
Would you be kind enough to scan this QR code and leave me review
on Google? And because you've said yes,
sorry, you've said that I've been helpful, you're going to do
that. Secondly, Tom, who's one of a
person you know right now that needs help moving home in 2026,
can you introduce me? Absolutely beautiful.
And then the last one you're going to love, right, is Tom.
I'm curious, who do you think will be the next person on your
street to move home? And what's powerful about that
is the way you phrased the question, not do you know anyone
who. Yeah, essentially you're forcing
them to from a cognitive level to actually think, not to
automatically just say, Oh no, I don't know, no one.
So and 100%, I mean, I like that concept.
And I also, I've got to tell you, if you're not dealing with
someone and doing business with them, then but you're playing
the long game along the lines of this subscription metaphor that
we're talking about, you should also make it your business
because in real estate we've got this obsession.
Put them in the database, the CRM system.
I get that and it's important, but social media is a CRM
system, right? So one thing you got to do is
when you leave that house, say listen, let's connect on social
because that jab, every time you post that they see that story.
That post is another touch point and frequency is building trust.
You want to enable all trust things as much as you can.
On that social media side of things and kind of got like I
said two way CRM there you know one of the first things I'm
taught when I'm an estate agent wet behind the ears, young,
naive, 16 years old, couldn't grow a beard.
My suit was too big. I looked like I should still be
in school but I was taught when someone walks through the door
of your High Street office, which wouldn't happen as much
these days, you stand up you walk in front of the desk.
Hello I'm Simon. How can I help you stay
something along those lines? Yet today in the world we live
in, your digital version of that High Street shop is social
media. So, so if an estate agent
follows me on social media right now, I should be messaging and
saying, hey, Tom, thank you so much for following me.
Can I ask what's brought you to my page?
Are you looking for, you know, help growing your estate
industry business or are you just out here curious to see
what's going on? Like it's a digital version of
that of of that High Street, right?
Absolutely. It is the equivalent of like
we've got to accept it in the old days and I don't know what
the culture is like in the UK, but in the summer months in
Australia we have a lot of barbecues.
We have terrible barbecues for a lot of rain.
We have terrible barbecues or let's call it a dinner party or
let's call it a drinks at the pub because you do plenty of
that here. But during those conversations,
often people would say, how'd the sale of your place go?
And they turn to us. Oh, mate, it was really good.
You know, we gave it to Simon. It was all right.
He was a decent fella in 2026. That conversation is not done at
a dinner table. That conversation is done on
social media and it's recommendation on steroids.
And it's not one person at the dinner table.
It's maybe 1383 friends that hear of it.
Which is another reason why I totally encourage estate agents
to do a insta live with a vendor once they've sold.
Even if it's a 2-3 minute conversation where I interview
you as a vendor and I say, what was the experience like dealing
with us and what was the most stressful thing and were you
happy with the result? And you make sure that it's a
positive conversation and they wouldn't be on there if it
wasn't positive. But the value is, Simon, when
your vendor jumps on live, all their friends and family are
notified that you're on live and all all of a sudden you're in
the frame, the estate agent meeting their friends and
family. It's all about breaking into new
communities. So.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here on what you said
there. And we talked about the
difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset when we're on
the train over here. But Tom, like my clients don't
want to be on camera. I'm never going to get them to
go on a live and say what an amazing job I did.
What would you say to an estate agent saying that?
Some people that would be the case.
Most people, if they're happy. And most importantly, the timing
of the request. If you actually ask it, two
months after there's been an offer and acceptance, emotions
have gone down. They're looking at the new home,
they're buying, they're getting ready to pack or whatever.
Life is different, but if I had just had an offer, an acceptance
sold by goes up and you're happy, the timing is critical,
right? So I can tell you that often I
have estate agents that say, Tom, my vendors wouldn't do it.
I say you're probably right if they're not happy with the
service that you did and that you're asking them why after
their emotional levels were at their highest.
But if your client is happy and the timing of the request is
there, you've got a more than a 50% chance of getting him to
come on, Especially if you just say, I'm just going to ask you
one question because I have a lot of prospective clients who
often get confused that it's gonna be a very stressful
experience. Just your version of how it
went, you know. Yeah, love that.
And you take me back to something you said earlier at
the presentation. You're doing what gets scheduled
gets done because how many agents wouldn't write that down?
So I'm just thinking of like a playbook or a manual and going,
OK, so when we know that we've handed the keys over and they're
really happy and they're buzzing, right?
Is it in the manual that when you've handed the keys, you're
then going to make that request because you haven't written it
down. Then in two months you go, never
forgot to ask them that and then you ring them.
It's like I've kind of moved on with my life now, like you said.
Yeah. So what gets schedule gets done
is probably the single one liner that no matter I'm talking to a
big group of agents or a small workshop like this morning with
Keller Williams or even when I'm speaking at Eric to thousands,
what gets scheduled gets done always comes up.
And the reason why is if you schedule your prospecting, it
gets done. If you schedule your vendor
meeting, it gets done. If you schedule your sales
meeting, it gets done. If you schedule a viewing, it
gets done. The number one hair salon in the
world said that there's simple strategy that helped them become
the highest income producing salon is that no customer leaves
the salon without the next appointment being scheduled.
It's again subscription based business.
So again, someone comes in and what what we'd say with the 19th
of June comes in and collects the keys.
Mr. Panos, I've got it in the diary for 19th of June 2027, but
we're going to be coming out to see you, to see how everything's
going. Correct.
And everyone should incorporate that strategy that you just
mentioned, which is when you sell a property at settlement,
you show up and you let that client know.
I'm letting you know you've been a buyer while I've been working
with you. Congratulations, you have now
entered my VIP club. You are a very important person
and as a very important person, you're getting a one year health
update on your asset. What gets scheduled gets done.
Let's put it in the system. Think about that as a strategy.
50 sales a year, year one, 50 appraisals the next year, year
to another 50 that layers on the other 50.
You've got 100 by Year 5, we're talking 50A1015020250.
You wake up on January the 1st and you know you've got 250
appraisals. I know they're not selling right
there and then, they're probably price updates, but their
relationship appointments And during these meetings, they say
to you, Simon, do you handle Surrey?
My sister's getting divorced. Yeah, right.
That's what happens when you're eyeball to eyeball with your
past clients. The secret, my friends, is to
create raving fans and not have to wake up on January 1 every
year looking for another thousand clients.
Get a client and make him a client for life.
Love that you, you've reminded me.
I'm sure I've heard it numerous times over the years.
On $1,000,000 Agent where you'd say something along the lines of
Christmas dinner will taste a lot better when you know you've
got those appointments in the diary for next year.
We have a saying at Christmas, when you leave on the 23rd of
December, you park your car on the top of the hill.
Yeah. So when you come back middle of
January, you let go of the handbrake and you're flying with
momentum and that's how you build an effortless, lucrative
fun life. You're always thinking ahead.
You're always thinking about that 30 day rule.
What I do in this 30 days affects the next 90 days.
You're planning ahead? Love that right.
I should better better get back to my questions I'm supposed to
be asked. We've only done one, but we're
the conversation is flowing. So right.
Second question, what's 1 practical thing UK agents can
learn from Australian agents that would help move their
business forward? The pilot doesn't serve drinks
on the plane. Real estate agents in Australia
have worked out that the highest and best use of an estate agent
is to list, sell, negotiate, build their personal brand, work
bias, deal making. They're the highest dollar
value. In addition to that, an estate
agent still needs to do their marketing, their administration,
cleaning out their database, all these other things that are
often £15 an hour jobs. Right when I get on an airplane
to go to my next destination, there'll be a pilot and there'll
be the crew, the flight attendants, and when they start
serving coffee, tea, Coke 0, what will happen is the pilot
does not leave the cockpit. The pilot keeps flying the plane
and the real estate agent must continue prospecting, must
continue listing, must continue servicing their car inventors
must continue putting deals together.
They can't leave that to sit in front of their computer spending
hours doing database work that others can do.
So I say probably the ability to delegate and to actually employ
often a remote professional, virtual assistants at a fraction
of the cost that what you'd pay on shore.
So I think Aussie agents have built a model that helps them
being efficient to do business at scale.
The second thing is they probably have been a lot better
at understanding brand building, building a personal brand as we
move into an environment where calls are being screened a lot
more. Simon Yeah.
You know that that you ring someone, it says what's your
name and what's the purpose of the call?
Nelly didn't answer your call when you rang me.
Well, well, there you go. I mean, I have real estate
agents that sometimes have difficulty calling their own
vendors to give them news and offers because of the call
screening. Think about it.
This is a client you've already been dealing with and it's
getting intercepted. So I think if you're in the UK,
you better accept that both AI, which is allowing a client to
now go to ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and say I want to sell my
house in Mayfair. Who are the agents I should call
out? Right.
You need to accept that that's happening.
You need to accept that your calls are being screened.
And you need to accept that the single one thing that is the
best business strategy, the safest strategy, the insurance
policy of your real estate career is to build a personal
brand. Because it's not who you know,
it's who knows you. And what you've got to do is
understand that you've got to become a magnet that gets people
to come to you. And Aussie and New Zealand
agents have learnt that you've got to build a personal brand
and the way that you do it. And brand, by the way, is what
people say about you when you're not in your room, in the room.
That's what brand is. And the way that they build it
is through video, through social, through immersing
themselves in the communities, through banners, through
sponsorships. There's lots of ways I think
that Aussie agents do that a lot better than the agents here.
Best known beats best. Correct.
So in terms of the people you surround yourself like friends,
people you go into business with, clients you work with,
what are the three non negotiables of those people?
So #1 if they're a person that sees life as being scarce, if
they're a person that sees life as being evil, if they're a
person that looks at life as things might go wrong.
I don't Simon say I, I say to them, I don't want to have
nothing to do with you. But I lean away, right?
Because I don't think it's helpful.
So they're the first. The second is anyone that I've
caught lying, right? Because they could have spent 10
years building a relationship, but a lie gets rid of those 10
years because it says to me, if they lied about that, what else
have they lied about? So that would be the second
thing. And I like dealing with nice
people. You're a nice person.
You said, yeah, you're a nice person.
Like you're not hard and, you know, making things difficult,
right? You know, you like.
So I don't like people that you have a conversation with them
and then you actually walk away and you think I feel less.
I feel like there's been a diminishing of energy.
So I normally lean into more people that are illuminators,
that are energizers, that when you finish the conversation, you
actually feel better, right? Yeah.
Are you a drain or a radiator? I like that, yeah.
Bringing energy to it or you sucking energy would say mood
hoovers. Like there's you know, you know,
it's like you get someone walk into the office.
Yeah, morning. And he's like, oh great, that's
a mood Hoover. It's going to bring everyone
down and there's AI. Don't know if I've said this
before. It's a brilliant quote from Alex
for Mosey and I heard it a few months ago.
It's really, really stuck with me.
And the quote was if you can wake up in a bad mood for no
reason, you can wake up in a good mood for no reason.
OK, I like that because I think mood is a choice.
It's a button, right? And even even when you wake up
and you had a fight the night before and it's raining and you
look at your diary and your first appointment is with
someone, that it's not going to go well.
Even with all of that, I accept that that it might not be the
perfect morning to wake up, but I think that things could always
be worse. So it's a question I wanted to
ask you, considering everything you've gone through in your
life. And I'm really hope I I say the
question, right? If you were to write down your
biggest problem on a piece of paper and you put it into a hat.
Yeah. Along with all the billions of
other people in the world who put their problems in the hat.
Yeah. Would you put your biggest
problem in and then take someone else's problem out?
Or would you go, do you know what?
I'll stay with my problem. That is a top question.
I can live with my own biggest problem because I've lived with
it. Yeah, I've experienced it and I
know it's doable, but I'm not quite sure if the one I pulled
out is something I could handle. I'm not quite sure.
I don't know. I can handle cancer.
I can handle having another relapse.
I don't know if I could handle one of my child dying.
I don't know. I don't know if I could handle a
suicide of a family member. I don't know.
So I'm happy to take what I've got.
It really, it really reframes it, doesn't it?
I only heard of that recently and I was like, yeah, next time
I'm thinking I've got a shit problem.
Would would I? Would I play roulette and put my
problem in in the hat? I mean, you're going to think
I'm crazy and corny, but I have a strategy that gets me from
stuck to UN stuck, gets me from sad to reasonably OK, not
necessarily exhilarated, but gets me moving forward.
And that is when the shit's gone down, When something's not going
right. I hop into my car, I press RPA,
chemotherapy ward. I go there.
I walk in casually for one minute.
I speak to no one. And I get perspective because
I've sat in that room and I've sat there and I've looked out
the window where normal healthy people are walking outside.
And I've sat there pray to God, saying God, if you save me from
dying and Get Me Out of this place healthy, I promise I won't
complain. I won't winch, I won't sweat the
small stuff. And when I start sweating the
small stuff, I automatically drive back to the chemo ward
because it reminds me of the commitment I made at that time.
And nearly every time I've walked back with a new lease of
energy thinking it could be worse.
I just saw a 35 year old young female wearing a wig.
She's got jauntus, she's about 30 kilos and to me it's not
looking good. And when I walk out of there, I
think Tom, stop fucking complaining.
It could be worse. Some of the person is waking up
this morning and they're going to have their last breath of
life. So I focus on that and that is
something that everyone should and that is to be grateful.
Now, don't get me wrong, I know that a lot of people that are
going to be listening to this are going to say, but Tommy, you
don't get it. The UK life is hard.
You don't understand how hard it is.
Listen, it could be worse. You could be waking up today
like a young girl is woken up with HIV in Ethiopia.
Why should you have won the birth lottery and she hasn't?
We got to be mindful and cognizant of that, Simon.
Yeah, I was literally just before you said the words birth
lottery. That's exactly what was going
through my head. I I say my say to myself
constantly remember how lucky you are that you've won the
birth lottery. I'm a a white man born in
England. Like don't get much luckier than
that. A. 100% And we've got to accept
that. I mean, there's someone this
morning that's waking up and seeing missiles either landing
or being intercepted above them. There's someone waking up this
morning that actually he's sitting there looking at photos
of their kid that's committed suicide, right?
I mean, these are things that I've been impacted.
I mean, I've had close. Matt Steinway is a very close
friend of mine. I've known him for 35 years and
he's a client of mine. We're very close.
In fact, when I got sick, you know, Simon, the first person
that showed up in my life was Matt Steinway.
That said, Tom, I'm taking over the real estate gym.
You're going to get better and I don't want any money for it.
That's what's Matt Steinway, right?
And many of, I mean, you obviously know Simon because
you've had him as a guest. He's lost his son right through
one of the incidents that we've just been speaking about.
So I'm, you know, I'm, I, I talked to people in real estate,
but I also know, like I did this morning, we were talking to
Keller Williams. We were there together, you
know, They might be smiling, but I also know that someone is
living a quiet life of private desperation sometimes.
I understand that. Yeah, and the same it comes to
mind. There is in a world where you
can be anything, always be kind. You never know what people are
going through. It's free.
I mean, I signing up, I mean, the last time I remember that
this impacted to me about stopping someone was I was
walking through a shopping centre like a Costco in
Australia. We called it Woolies.
And I had a trolley and I'm walking through on a Tuesday
night. I remember it and there's a lady
wearing a business outfit and she's walking towards me with
her trolley and she just breaks down crying.
She was crying uncontrollably as she's going through on an aisle.
Not many people on the aisle. And I just thought, do I say
something here? And I said, excuse me, are you
OK? And she stops crying for one
instant and she goes, no, I'm not, but thank you for asking.
And started crying again and walked away.
So like, it's free to be nice, you know?
Right, coming towards the end. Now let's try and get one more
estate agency impression to you. Because I know all they want to
do make money here, isn't it I? Don't know about that.
It's funny you say that because I go through this, I have a real
split in terms of being a capitalist is I want to go grow
a really big business and be like really, really successful
from a financial point of view. And then some days I wake up
very stoic and I read the Daily Stoic and stuff by Ryan Hood,
and I go, do you know what? As long as I'm healthy, you
know, my family are all healthy. I've got a roof over my head.
I can walk my dogs each day and play a bit of golf.
I'm doing all right. Listen, I actually put a post up
today. I'm torn between two truths as
well. The truth of understanding that
there's a cohort of people that need help and support and life
is hard. But I'm also got another truth,
and that is we've got to be a progressive, innovative,
aggressive person because if you're not, there won't be
growth and there won't be profits.
And if there's no profits, you can't actually afford to help
and support that cohort of people.
So I totally get the concept of one minute, I'm going to change
the world. The next minute, man, be happy.
Have you ever heard the parable of a Mexican fisherman?
No, I haven't. Right.
I have to tell you this quickly. I'm going to get it so, so bad.
But go with me. You, you will.
You'll read up on this and you'll tell it beautifully.
So I first heard Sahil Bloom, the author of the five times as
well, to speak about it. And Long story short, he
basically, let's say he's an investment banker in America and
he's holidaying in Mexico and he goes past this or sleepy Mexican
man in a fishing village and he's got some fish in a bucket
and the American investment bank goes, oh, caught some fish.
Have you went? Yeah, yeah, I've caught some
fish. Amazing.
How long did that take you? I've, you know, the afternoon.
Oh, brilliant. What's, what's your plan for the
rest of the day? I go home, cook some dinner,
just like spend time with my loved ones, go into the town and
have a, you know, a glass of wine, have a sing song, have a
dance, and I'll go home. Oh, OK.
Nice. And what about tomorrow?
I'll do it all over again. Investment bank goes.
You're pretty good at this fishing stuff.
Couldn't you like you could fish a lot more and then you could
have a stall and you could sell them make make money?
Why? Why would I do that?
The the fisherman says, he says, well so then you get a really
big shop and you can employ loads of people and you make
even more money. Again the fisherman says, why
would I do that? Because then you go to America
and you go on the Stock Exchange and you sell for billions of
pounds. And again the fisherman goes,
why would I do that? And he says, well then you can
retire and be free and do anything you want.
What would you do? I think I'll just fish.
Listen, that is absolutely gold, absolutely gold.
And it actually says to me what we've always known.
And that is that. And chances are you've got
everything that you want in your life right now.
Yeah. And you don't know it.
Yeah. But you're sitting there
thinking to yourself, if this happens, I'll be happy.
Listen, in Byron Bay, when I'm staying at my house in Byron
Bay, which is the beachside area in in Australia that I stay at,
I've got a guy that lives a few doors up who's a surfer, right?
He wakes up and he lives that same life there.
And he just says to me, Tommy wins right direction, Suns out,
guns out. It's going to be a cracker of a
day. He has created a set of
happiness expectations to be achievable without not too much
money, right? Turns out, and I covered it
yesterday when we were talking in Birmingham, turns out the
research of people thinking that they've got to, you know, be a
billionaire to be happy, No man, just above the poverty line
means that you're going to be able to have the food that you
can eat, sleep in only one bed that you can have, have the
people around you that matter. That's not a money thing.
So if you think to yourself I'm going to end up becoming happy
when I start making £1,000,000 in real estate, let me tell you,
if you're not happy now, you won't be happy then.
So to try and give you quickly a, a, a real life example of
that, I've I've heard it called the hedonic treadmill.
And there's a story of someone's sold their company for proper
fuck you money, like millions and billions of pounds.
And he's on his private yacht. He pops open the champagne and
he's like pouring a glass champagne to his friend and all
their friends and family there. He's like, I've made it.
I'm on this yacht. And the friend takes the
champagne and goes, thanks, Tom, but that yacht's a lot bigger
next door to yours, isn't it? And he's like, fuck, now I need
to get back on that hedonic tremor.
I need to go again, build a business.
And when I came, this funny story I've not told, I wanted to
tell us on stage, yes. Now I forgot to when I came off
stage last year at Sean's event. And I was driving home and I'd
opened up and you'd been the headline speaker.
And I drove home. Felt like 1,000,000 bucks, like
music, full blast, window down, Suns out, guns out.
I was loving life. I was like, this is absolutely
unbelievable. But then part of me was like,
how am I ever going to exceed that?
How do I go again? Like I said to you about
speaking at Wembley, how do you go speaking on big stage
Wembley? And what was really funny was I
got home and I take my phone out the charger in my car and I look
at it and it's Louise, my missus saying the dog's got diarrhea,
wipe its arse when you get through the door.
And I went, I've gone from being on stage, but.
From here with. Tom Paz from here and the
heights of exhilaration to the depths of depression like that
and it just made me switch going.
You got to enjoy the ride of getting there and not get too
sucked up in in the moment like it's it's really great getting
to the top of the. Hill Look, I got to tell you
that beautiful story that you just said, the fisherman.
So I have a view that you can have an impact and make an
income, and that whilst money won't get rid of your problems,
it'll help get to your problems with style.
And that you shouldn't have this aversion to say that, oh, I've
chosen that I won't participate in working hard because I want
to be happy. Why does it have to be binary?
Like, why can't you have both, right?
So I've had often have people. I've been married for 35 years,
36 years. I've got two kids.
And a lot of people say to me, but Tom, I don't want to work
that hard because I want to keep my marriage.
Well, I work hard and I've kept my marriage.
It doesn't have to be binary. You probably have to make some
compromises. And those compromises are, you
know what? I won't sit on TikTok for two
hours a day or I won't go out having pints of beer during the
week or whatever it is. You can have it.
I think it's important that people don't turn around and
say, oh, if I do that, I can't have that.
So yeah, I think you shouldn't have a self limited thinking and
have what you talked about that great book by Martin Seligman
where he talked about fixed and growth mindsets.
Learned optimism is actually the name of the book.
He was he was the actually the architect of personal
development and positive thinking in the 60s.
He was a Canadian professor. He was the first person that
really actually studied and identified right.
You can change the trajectory of your life by the way that you
think. Like, you know, back in the old
days, a lot of the people used to think, well, this is the
family I was brought up in, I'm not born into royalty, This is
my life. But we learnt in the 60s and
70s, you can change the trajectory of your life.
You're not a tree. If you're not happy, you can
dare move, you know? Love that right coming towards
the end now I'm going to try something a bit new so my
girlfriend came home the other day with this little game of
cards called impossible decisions, the little game of
big choices. We're going to quickly run
through two or three of these at random.
If I can open I'm. Getting uncomfortable?
So would you rather be constantly gossiped about or
never talked about at all? Gossiped about.
OK, would you rather have nosy neighbors or noisy neighbors?
I want to buy one of these things.
By the way, where'd you get? These I don't know.
I'll send you a pack. These are great.
The answer is listen. In Byron Bay, the house next
doors in Airbnb, and we're there holidaying for two months.
All the time. When they drink alcohol, they're
loud. When they come over and get
stoned with marijuana, they're quiet.
We sleep better when they're stoned.
I'd pick the quiet. Right.
OK. Do a couple more before the
final question. OK, this is a proper random one.
Would you rather have a unicorn's horn or a mermaid's
tail? Indifferent.
More towards a mermaid's tail. OK, right.
Would you rather eat a tin of dog food or never be able to eat
your favorite food again? Never to be able to eat my
favorite food again. Because I've got to tell you,
I'm not overly favorite with foods.
I eat the same thing, some protein, some vegetables, that's
it. So if you turn around and say
you can't have that, I'll go find another protein.
But I'm not interested in eating any other crap that dogs eat.
Right. Final question for you.
I'm pretty sure I would have done this when you came on the
podcast over Zoom a year ago, but you had Stephen Bartlett
speak at Eric. Correct.
Not this year, last. Year last year and he does these
things where they're called conversation cards.
Do you remember this? I don't know if I would have
done it. I.
Do but I've forgotten. So basically I do remember it
but. What he what I one of the things
I really love about his podcast is at the end he gets the guest
to write a question for the next guest, not knowing who they are.
And then the next guest comes on, they have to answer.
Oh. Right.
Correct. Yes, Yes, I've heard him say
that. And then Stephen has monetized
it into these little things. So they have different levels.
Some level 1 is like quite chilled, like a mermaid Unicorn
question. And Level 3 is quite deep.
And we've got a Level 3 here. It was answered by Boris
Johnson, right? So get me, can I confirm what
are we doing? I'm going.
You're giving me a. Question.
You're going to answer the question.
OK, Yeah. So I should have explained that
and it was asked by Trevor Noah. I don't know who Trevor Noah.
Trevor Noah is a brilliant South African comedian.
OK, big Liverpool fan. OK, as am I.
We have a Greek Scouser, Costa Simacas.
Well. He's he's known as the Greek
Scouser. What do you mean a Scouser like?
Scouser people from Liverpool are scous Scousers.
Really. Yeah, it's funny.
We're having this conversation. I got a text message from
someone this morning in Australia who said could you
please buy me a Liverpool jersey while you're there?
And I replied back. They sell them in Australia,
mate. Fair enough, right.
The question I want you to answer, Tom, to end this, end,
this fantastic conversation, is success often comes at a price
and one of those is the relationships we lose along the
way. Which relationship or person did
you lose in the pursuit of your success?
A lot of them, and I don't mind them, and I'll tell you why,
because Simon, I need you to know is if you're going down a
path and that path is your path and that path is your soul, is
your psychological fingerprint. And you've got people in your
life who might be considered as friends who don't understand
that path and can't work with that path and actually maybe
even judge that path and means that you go distant ways, it's
probably good for both parties. So to answer that question is
there's probably been people that couldn't see where I was
heading and why, you know, achieving certain goals matter
to me. And for some of these people,
they got upset that Tommy's not drinking pints with us on a
Tuesday, Wednesday. He's not one of the boys.
So with relationships like that, sometimes you accept that
they're expired, like milk and cheese and bread.
They serve the purpose one day. And there comes a day where the
use bite says best. Before that dates gone.
Love that. Well, it's been an absolute
pleasure having this conversation with you.
Tom. This sounds so cringy.
I can't believe I'm saying it out loud.
But they say never meet your heroes.
You've been a hero of mine throughout my stage career and
I've, I owe you so much to you for everything I've learnt from
you over the past dozen years. So it's been an absolute.
Pleasure. I'd love to listen.
I'd love to do it again, whether it's one of the two or three
times, I mean the UK or whether you want to jump on on a Zoom.
I enjoy these conversations. So till next time, thank you.
Brilliant. And for everyone watching or
listening at home, remember to like, review, subscribe, follow,
share and I'll see you next time.