This Hurts Trust & Damages Relationships

Transcript

Roosters Record And Humility

Tom Panos 0:00

Million Dollar Agent, the podcast. Troy Malcolm, John McGrath, and Tom Panos. I put myself in third spot. I've never done that. I always say Tom Panos, John McGrath, Troy Malcolm. But we're going to start off with you today, Troyzy. Thank you. The reason why. The reason why that beautiful Alliance Stadium was uh was that last week when they all ran onto the pitch? Or that was the week before, wasn't it?

Troy Malcolm 0:28

It was last week. The weekend before last, yeah.

Tom Panos 0:30

It was the weekend before last. Fantastic win by the Roosters. I'm convinced that if the crowd hadn't run on, South's had the momentum, but you had to celebrate it. That was a special, that was special, isn't it? Like you think about it. Like, that is like the record in the history of the card. Yeah.

Troy Malcolm 0:47

Amazing.

Ego Online And Industry Trust

Educational Content That Generates Listings

John McGrath 0:47

And also 125 years or something, Troy. No one had ever scored so many trials. Like, was it Tony Lockett or one of the Swans players that scored that goal and then Lockett? Yeah. I mean, it is. Look, it's funny because I had some mixed reactions. Another one of my friends left when that happened. He was offended by it and he said, I I didn't come here to watch this circus. And he left, funnily enough. He was a rooster supporter, so at least they won. But uh no, everyone's different, but it I think it's always nice to have a little celebration of those occasions. So uh well done, Alex Johnson. Now, one of the things we're going to talk a bit about going forward, Tommy, is ego. And we've got to say, Alex Johnson, Troy, I don't know him personally. I I mean I met him when I was a director of South, but I don't know him well beyond just saying good day. But he strikes me as uh he's the most most number of tries ever, and he strikes me as one of the humblest guys you could ever meet. And that's all we talk about. And I just want to raise this, Tommy, because I heard a recent post where I think by the way they were having a crack at you and I. There the reference was commentators or experts. And the criticism of us was um that oh, you know, agents use social media to show their successes, and it's a good thing to promote their business success, and we know we're out of date and we're woke. I just want to state for the record, I've never heard so much crap in all my life. What you and I have always, and Troy, you've been the same, what we've always gone on about is agents that bang on about bought a new Ferrari, had a trip to Greece, made a million last month, did you know, whatever, whatever. That's what I find offensive and is screwing up our industry because guess what? Neither buyers nor sellers nor landlords or tenants have any interest in the fact that last month you made a million dollars. And you shouldn't have any interest in publishing it as well. And uh then this potential, this so-called expert went on to talk about uh how yeah, we were confusing ego with hubris. Now, hubris is a fairly new word to me. I've never heard it in modern day English, but I did look it up and it does refer to uh obscene uh amount of cockiness and confidence. But uh Ego is the enemy is one of Ryan Holiday's best-selling books, and this person also professes to be an expert on uh on stoicism. And I think it's just a bit about time that the idiots that are out here that are doing these posts and are encouraging some of these people are coaches, encouraging these posts, stop it because you are screwing the industry and you are making us all look like buffoons. Well, now let's face it, Troy, most people hate real estate agents to start with. Why? Because the industry had a very bad reputation of not speaking the truth, wasting people's time, you know, sort of lying about certain things. And I'm not talking about the whole industry, probably talking about almost no one on this podcast, because this is predominantly your gym members, Tom, and people that follow our business, Troy. And, you know, these are generally the smart brigade that actually align with our view of radical transparency, integrity, and humility. So they're probably nodding and saying, yeah, yeah, that'll make sense. But please out there, if you're seeing your announcements in the industry, either unfollow them, tell them to pull their head in, because seriously, no one wants to know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you made last month in a public setting. If you say it in in a real estate conference because you're proud you did, you know, Ethan, you know, we're saying in tomorrow time, you know, he's done 250 sales, although he never talks about his GCI. But, you know, if I said in an introduction, you know, GCI did because it's a benchmark, okay. But that's a that's a that's a conference with people that have paid to become more successful and they want to get benchmarks. But in a public setting like Instagram, shouting from the top of the trees how successful and how clever you are. This is a period when most people are having trouble putting petrol in their tank and paying their monthly mortgage. It's gone up twice. And I just think it's about time our industry stopped. And the people that are criticizing us, pull your heads in because it's just obscene. And I know one of the next topics we're going to talk about, Tom, is changes to legislation. Um let's do it properly, let's do it with integrity, let's do it with humility, let's earn great money, let's be comfortable, live comfortable lives, but let's let's not really rub people's noses in it just because he's successful.

Tom Panos 5:50

Johnny Bailey, which you know from 23rd Street, yeah, told me having a conversation with the other day, and he was looking at my stats, he does a bit of work for me, but I'm not one of his biggest customers because if you can have a look through that stat there that I show you, I don't actually, it's I'm showing it on the screen, our listeners can't see it. That's five million views in 30 days with 0.1% spent. I've spent no money. He said to me, Tom, I'd be curious to find out how many listing leads you seem to be getting in. So we actually calculated for that period of time, 39 people contacted us saying we want to sell our house. I send that out to the gym members. It was hundreds more wanting to buy. Bailey said to me, five million views in 30 days is viral for a niche marketer because I'm niche. And I said, Why do you think it is? He goes, it's really simple. Your content is educational, it's nothing else. All you're doing is giving information that a buyer or seller might find useful to make a decision. But he goes, at the same time, that content is so clear and transparent that even an agent uses it. So you're basically bringing in and making it one piece of content for buyers, sellers, and agents, right? And it doesn't, you know, like we said it before, they already hate the real estate industry because there's a housing problem and they hated real estate agents because they felt they were overpaid. The last thing you do if you believe that the market thinks you're overpaid is actually put your group certificate up or tell them how much money you're making. We do not see the plumber, the school teacher, the dentist say, hashtag smashed it, did 143 root canals, build one million dollars for this week. It does not happen. Yet in our English Exactly right.

John McGrath 7:56

It doesn't happen in, but it's not just our industry, is the only one. I can't think of another industry, maybe once upon a time stockbroking back in the 80s. And of course, we saw what happened to that industry. It very quickly, you know, went the way of uh vanishing. But you're right, it we would laugh if anyone else, except a real estate agent, and people laugh at agents for this ridiculous I'll call it hubris true. Not that I'm that, not that I know what it means. Anyway, guys, humility is the way, ego is the enemy. Don't listen to other people.

Price Guides Become The New Normal

Tom Panos 8:31

But great, by the way, I think that's one of the greatest books written by Ryan Holiday. Ego is the enemy. He's the architect of stoicism. And we were, Johnny, we were fortunate enough, and you invited me to your private group of McGrath people about 18 months ago to sit in that room with you. And we had Ryan. Were you there, Troyzy? Yeah, I was. Yeah. We were there, Steinlade was there, they're all there. And we heard it straight from him. But this is actually a perfect segue to go into the other topics. So I've been seeing realestate.com been running their stories on social media about the legislation that's about to go through in New South Wales about price guides. I have already started. We know that it's heading that way. John, I remember in 2014, you rang me up on the weekend and you said to me, You've got to stop. I still remember it, you've got to stop sitting on the fence. You'll get splinters if you do. Do you remember that when you you it was all to do with the price, to do with with price guides like where do we stand? Yeah. I am now absolutely convinced and have been since 2015, that you will get more buyer inquiries if you put a price in. You will get better quality buyers if you put a price in. You will piss less people off. And now that we've seen the marketplace, because of all the reasons, inflation, interest rates, the war, what have you, buyer inquiry levels have dropped. I've had real estate agents say, Tom, we move from our auctions with no price marketing to putting guides in the adverts, and we have seen an instant hike of buyer inquiry. And they go surprises us. I said, Why would it surprise you when if you walk through David Jones and you kept on looking at every item and you saw that there was no price, you'd keep moving. You'd never explore that item any further, right? You'd never explore it. Well, that is exactly what was happening on the portals. That's exactly what happens on real estate ads when there's no price. So I've told my agents, don't wait for the legislation. Start it now. You're going to be doing it. Get first move advantage. Be seen as people that are leaders in it. And learn the skill set that you've got to do to explain to your vendor why you're going to be putting a price guide and how you're going to go about working out what that price guide is. I know, John and Troy, this is not everyone at McGraw does it, but you have had a strong message for a long period of time that this is what we want. Is that right?

John McGrath 11:12

Yeah. And I think Bressics have got a very high cut through. Shannon for years has almost made it mandatory to have a price guide on everything, and we know they're a very successful brand. Um yeah, we've done that. And now, by the way, the irony is if in Queensland the legislation exact opposite, it's illegal, or you're unable to quote any price, and now New South Wales is about to become it's mandatory you have to quote. So I'm not sure who can be right and who could be wrong, but perhaps they could collaborate and find the best way forward. Yeah, no, we we've always been great believers. I use the pub test or the cafe test, sure, if it's like you and me, we're not real drinkers, but you know, the pub test would say if you had a hundred people in a pub and you said, you know, when you're looking for a bloody property, would you like a price guide or would you rather contact agent? A hundred people would say price guide as long as it's honest and transparent and genuine. Not 90%, 100% of people would say they want a price guide. So those who refused to put a price guide up still to this day are going against the 100% trend. It just doesn't make sense. I think REA put a stat out said 72% of people are considered less trustworthy by the consumer. Going back to your There's No Blind Dates comment, Tom, you know. So if people are looking for an agent and you consistently are putting no price guides or contact agent, you're considered less trustworthy. And we know the stats, it's 69%. I think it is just don't even look at the property. Seven out of ten, just keep going because they're sick and tired of chasing agents and not getting calls back and and being told, oh, we don't really know well, it's the first open, what man, just tell them what's the price range that you at this point think it's gonna go for?

Tom Panos 13:07

And that's the solution, don't you think forget about price guides for a moment. Don't you think whenever you ask a question and someone doesn't give you a straight answer but starts with some sort of essay that deflects it, the first thing you think to yourself is, I don't trust this person, right? Why won't you just tell me what I've asked you to? Why are you coming up with some AM way concept to try and get away from it? There must be a reason why, right? So I totally get the concept of no trust. So, team, 100%. Explain it to a vendor, and you probably could have got away with it in a market that was rising when there's no stock, like buyers have no choice, they've got limited stock, so they'll go to it, but not in this market, no.

Troy Malcolm 14:03

And that's the thing, John and Tom, like we're seeing the very best agents, they're using it as a point of difference to really build that trust and rapport with the buyers. Because as we know, in this market, we're coming into and it's coming around in different pockets. Those that have the buyers have the trust and the rapport, and they're doing transactions. So a lot of the very good agents, they're actually sending out not only at the open for inspections, their recent sales that indicate how they came to the price they're quoting, but they're also emailing it now to buyer inquiry. So when they're getting good quality inquiry, they're doing that as a qualification process to say, is this property right for you with the buyer? And it can be anywhere from three to five of those recent sales, and they are pretty much in line with exactly what they've quoted to the owner at the time of listing.

Tom Panos 14:51

Spot on Troyzy. So at your offices, Troy, are price guides on most ads for auctions?

Troy Malcolm 14:57

Yeah, any auction campaign, Tom, that's going live and going through that process. We do. We do do a first phase approach. So when we um have do have a property and we're showing it off market, we do uh let that be contact agent for the first week, but that's only to gain feedback from qualified buyers and buyers agents that we're working with. When we go to full campaign, uh it's strongly encouraged.

John McGrath 15:22

Which, by the way, I still don't agree with. I know people do it and Troy's team and many others too. You what are you quoting the buyers who are the qualified buyers coming through? You've got to be quoting them something. Okay, I'm quoting them two to two point two. Great. Well, put it on the website. And if by chance the weight of feedback is saying it's 1.8 to 2, you're a bit ambitious, and you have that conversation with the owner, you can drop it. You I mean, uh a price guide in this day and age of code where print really doesn't exist much anymore at all online, it's one mouse click to change a price guide. You go to your CRM and it generally changes on all things. So I just think there is no excuse. Um, and most agents do it because they haven't had the honest, open, transparent conversation with the owner of the important, the important to start uh with a price range which is going to be which is going to connect with the buyers. Really important. And before you said, yeah, Tom, if the market tightens, I think you said it, Troy, if the market tightens about buyers, you're 100% right. And let's assume the statistic of REA, which is 69% of buyers don't look at properties. Let's let's harvest. Let's say 34% of buyers go past property. Can you really afford in a market that might be getting more and more challenging as we speak, to have one in three buyers look at your competitors' listing because you couldn't be bothered putting a price guide? Let's get real. You want your every buyer. Now, I've heard this thing, oh, well, I want them to ring me because then if that doesn't suit, I can see something else. Well, guess what? You don't even answer your phone, most people. You know, it's just just put a price guide, do what the consumers want, and you'll you'll never look back.

Market Shift Means Pricing Discipline

Tom Panos 17:08

And the biggest I had one agent say to me, Tom, there was an unintended benefit that I can't believe. And I said, What's that? He said, Believe it or not, one of my problems in running my business was just getting control, certain properties, the amount of inquiry that comes through is unmanageable, and you don't get back to people. And what were they asking all the time? What price is it going to go for? And he goes, that's got rid of that problem, right? Which means that you can spend more time on the key components on high dollar productive activity, and that is building relationships, prospective sellers and your community and buyer management and listing presentations and your seller servicing, because you're not sitting there ever trying to respond to every inquiry to say to them, oh, it's two to 2.2. And you're quite right, John. Not much else happens after that. Like people think, oh, I want the inquiry, I want the inquiry. Yeah, but the they complain that no one's getting back to them. But let's let's talk about a few, before we finish off today, let's talk about the fact that we are seeing a market change in certain parts of Australia. In certain parts, it's well and truly changed. In other parts, particularly in Brisbane and Adelaide, lower price points, they're good. But in many markets, we're moving away from, you know, what was a seller's marketplace to a balanced marketplace. And in some markets, we're moving to a buyer's marketplace. And I've just taken a few notes so we can talk about. In a marketplace like this, that's changed. Have you changed? And some of the key things is you cannot get away in this market overpricing. There is nothing that destroys a campaign more than wrong pricing. Wrong pricing equals a burnt campaign. And quite frankly, overquoting to win business is not a real estate strategy. It is an antique store strategy. All you'll do is collect listings and have them there, and nothing's going to be sold. So your views on pricing in this market, guys.

John McGrath 19:14

Well, look, I think, as I said before, you you know, you have to be as pragmatic as possible based on the evidence, and you do need to understand what the vendor would like to achieve. So I'm not deluding myself that, you know, the evidence is one eight to two that every vendor is going to fall in line with that. But you have the conversation and you say, I understand, Tom, you'd love to get two and a quarter, which would be an extraordinary result. And I will be doing everything I can from the minute you give me the go-ahead, I'll be doing everything I can. However, the comparables that everyone's going to look at, and everyone has access to REA and domain, and many have core logic. They're in the 1.8-2 range. If we go out above that range, we're going to lose interest and won't have the ability to get traction and competitive tension, which is where we'll get the best chance to maximize your price. So that's a fairly simple strategy and a conversation that needs to be had. We had one just recently. It's interesting. And I think you need to have a case study. You know, someone needs to, you can borrow this one if you like, but hopefully you, you know, you have your own. I was coaching a young guy last week, and he was flat. He hadn't sold anything this year so far. He deals in the upper end generally, hadn't sold anything this year. He rang me up because he was a bit worried, hadn't sold anything, and said, you know, and I could tell he was flat on the phone. And I said, you know, your energy, man, you've got to shift your energy up because I I wouldn't list with you today and I wouldn't probably buy through you. So he spoke about that. Anyway, he'd had an offer of seven and a half million on a property. Vendor didn't accept it, and I'm not blaming him. Vendor didn't accept it. This happens a lot. Um Vendor said, Oh, Jesus, that's a good price, but I'd love to see what might happen if we keep going. Anyway, they didn't take it, they've just exchanged on Friday for 6.7. So that's an $800,000 loss in five months. This was late November last year. And again, I'm not blaming him. He's a terrific young fella and a great agent, but we did have the sort of post-mortem discussion about the importance of positioning up front. And this is to your point, Tom, about pricing. You have to have the discussion that says, you know, I'm going to be discussing in detail with every buyer that comes through, whether they like it or not, where they see a position in the market. The problem, Tom, is sometimes the first buyer is the best buyer, sometimes the 10th buyer, and sometimes the 50th buyer, but it's generally in the first few weeks. Um, now that client obviously, and understand we said to him at the time, not blaming him, they're they're raving fans, but said, geez, I should have listened, I should have taken the 7.5. Yeah, correct. We know that. So I think it's just important to have an honest. This is not a time for sales, slippery language. It's a time for upfront, authentic, honest conversation. Now you've listed your home with me. I just want to run through the scenarios. I want to run through how we gauge price. Each time I have a meeting with a with a buyer, I'm going to be talking to them about price and I'm going to feeding, feed you back so we can all be aligned about what a good price looks like. Really important. Price is the only reason your listings aren't selling. It's generally John.

Tom Panos 22:38

I came to your office about 20 years ago. I actually brought it, I brought up the video up here on YouTube. You've got filmed it. It's all our people can't see it. But what I've done is I have deliberately put on YouTube, away from my paywall, so everyone can see it, not in the real estate gym. I've put on three pieces of video content, John, that you did, which many of them had said have been the most perfect way to describe price to a vendor at a listing presentation and still win the business. So I've deliberately have taken them out of the real estate gym. I put them there public on YouTube because I believe the whole real estate industry is going to be better if we've got less Larry the Liars out there that are overpricing. And a lot of people think that you cannot win business unless you overquote it. That is not correct. In fact, I'd go as far as saying if you overquote it in this market, not only are you going to go nowhere with it. Firstly, you're not going to end up selling it, so you're just going to end up wasting your time. So, John, if you to all our listeners, all you've got to do is go to YouTube, put down Tom Panos interviews John McGrath. Three mini courses come up. They're all on the listing presentation. I think the first one's on how you handle price to the vendor. And the people that should watch it the most are the ones that are probably saying to themselves, but there's no way I can do that because I've got another person in my market that's going to go overprice it by a hundred grand. Well, I can tell you after you watch that video, you will see they will have as much certainty that they're going to get as good a result with you, but you're not going to corner yourself by being definitive and telling them you're going to get this price for your property. And there's also one that covers fee, I think, and one that covers marketing. So I'd love to get our listeners to look at that.

John McGrath 24:37

Very good. Oh, that's great. Thank you for that. I'm glad it stood the test of time.

Tom Panos 24:41

Uh I think I filmed that. Yeah, you filmed it, and I just I just looked at myself. I've got an I I look, I was about to say, geez, I look older, but then I realise I am 20 years older, right?

Regulation Is Here So Adapt

John McGrath 24:53

Interesting uh footnote or or finish to that little story is the afternoon he was having an inspection. He actually actually it was actually last Saturday, and he rang me on the Saturday morning and uh before, and he said, and I said, Man, you've got to shift your vibration, you've got to change your energy of flat. I pick up flat vendors, pick up flat buyers, pick up flat. And he said, Okay, shit, I wasn't aware of it, but he said, now you say it, I can see what you're saying. He shifted his energy and he sold the property, or he got the offer that afternoon and he sold it, and he said, It was going away thinking about it, shifted the energy, picked up the phone, rang the guy who eventually bought it, who had been on the on the you know, on the fence whether to do it or not, and he said, Yeah, here's why I think you should buy it. Here's why I think it's going to be great value at the sort of level you're at. And he did it a few days later at exchange. So it's all about mindset. And back to just back briefly, Tommy, to these changes, because Victoria's got some coming in. Obviously, Chris Sands had plenty.

Tom Panos 25:56

But John, Victoria, so people know, Victoria have had the price guides on auctions in the adverts for some time, and it works. It works. But they've also got the potential of the vendor, I think, is going to have to put the, you know, and I'm not saying pest and building inspection, make a pest and building inspection available when they they launch the property.

John McGrath 26:14

Beautiful. And I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any of these, but you have to go with and you have to operate within the legislation. So anything other than accepting them and moving on positively within the framework, you can argue the cows come home about you don't want to put a price guide and I don't believe in them. That's up to you. But if it's legislation, who cares what you think? Just embrace it and say, okay, this is a step towards radical transparency. I'm gonna have to clean up some of my dialogue. I'm gonna have to be more expert on price than I ever have been before, and and move forward in that direction, is my opinion.

Tom Panos 26:52

Well, and and John, we met we met Angus Aberdee before Christmas, and I've got to tell you, he this guy's executing in the last two weeks on my Saturdays. I don't know what it's been like, Troy, they have been out, organized, right? I had one property at Burwood, four of them were there, came over, introduced themselves there. And I've got to tell you, team, I was explaining to the agent, if you're doing nothing wrong, there should not be any feeling of any nervousness, anxiety. So the simple one thing you've got to do is do nothing wrong, and you just keep going ahead with your business, right? So they're out, they're they're out and about. This guy is serious. I think he's, you know, I think what you I think, John, you summed that up about a month ago when you said, I think that probably at some stage last year, they were looking at all the social media and they just turned around and said, you know what, enough of this. Let's just fix this up once and for all. And that's what's probably has been the the fast track to them doing this.

AI Is A Structural Change

John McGrath 27:59

Even when you and I went and saw him, he said they'd been looking at it for a long time, but not doing anything about it. And now they're doing, I mean, they might they'll probably responding to complaints, but they weren't being proactive. So, you know, I think kudos to Angus Aberdeen, whether you agree with him or not, he's moving forward and doing stuff, which is consumer focused, as it should be. Just a final thing, Tommy, before we go, I spoke a little bit, in fact, a couple of hours ago, to a friend of ours, Mark Kentwell. And Mark, as some people might know, you should follow him on social media, by the way. Uh, and I don't know, it's probably just his name. But he's he's shifted into this the AI space. And I don't know, I don't know, by the way, if he's offering any services, but uh he's certainly educating people about it. And when I spoke to him, I just rang him up to say good day, because I really like Mark. And I rang him up and I said, I'd love to have a chat to you when you've got a bit more time. And he said, sure, what do you want to chat about? I said, Well, this whole AI thing, I know it's building like a tsunami if you if you like. And I said, I don't know where to start. We've kind of I I personally use Claude and I'm on it and I use it for bits and bobs. But you know, as a as a corporation and as a as a sales group, I'm not sure exactly where's the best place to start, but I said, it looks to me like you're you're a pretty good place to start because you're an expert. And he said to me this, he said, John, he said, you know that um the internet make a big impact on the world. I said, yeah, for sure. Change the world forever. And he said, in his opinion, AI will be like five times bigger change to the world than going from not having the internet and going to the internet. And he said, in fact, I was at a conference with experts recently, and one of them has sort of referred to it as it was like when you didn't have electricity to when you had electricity and how much your world changed. And he said, I don't know if that's accurate or not, but he said, I don't think it's far off. You know, where do you start? You start watching people like Mark go and subscribe to his Instagram or it was Instagram, I think, or it might have been TikTok too, because I watch a bit of TikTok. Um, you listen to them, you jump onto ChatGPT or Claude, whether it's a freemium or whether you you pay a subscription, you start using it, you go onto YouTube and you punch into it, you know, how ways a real estate agent can benefit from using AI. And you just you start doing this stuff. Yeah, so yeah, I just thought I'd I'd say it was a really good conversation. It was good to chat to Mark again. I hadn't spoken to him for a few years. Uh he spoke with Eric many years ago, gave a great.

ARIC Preview And Execution Plan

Tom Panos 30:35

He did. He covered the friendly, friendly auction system. I remember, I remember that. But John and Troy on AI, I mean, the fact that look, there's no question about it. We've had a number of firms, including um that Brooks guy, I forgot what his surname is, Brooks. It is his surname. They weighed out a thousand people last week, and he said it is purely because AI, there's no other reason. Now, every day we're seeing it. I agree with Mark. I think to me, in my life, John, so I got in real estate in '88. To me, the three biggest changes I've seen. The first one would have seen is the advent of franchising. There was a period of time when real estate was not franchising, it then became franchising or heavily franchising. I think the next big generational change was realestate.com and domain, where we saw portals and uh transparency of information. The consumers became as intelligent as agents. And I believe that the third biggest one is now the AI. I don't think it's I don't think it's like online options that were here during COVID and then left there. This is a permanent structural change to the way agents and buyers and sellers work. I do not think that AI is going to replace real estate agents. I think it will replace real estate agents who don't use AI.

John McGrath 31:56

And talking about Aric. Troy, we are releasing speakers one by one, and we've we've put our first, I think, eight or nine speakers out there. The great Josh Altman and Josh Flagg, two of the great agents in the world and certainly in America, are going to be are they, John, are they virtual or in person? Yeah, they're they're gonna be there, they'll sign autographs, they'll take selfies, I'm sure, with you. And they're gonna be there in the room, which is great.

Tom Panos 32:24

Um and John, you know some of those other names. We're talking about the Australian speakers. If there was ever a time that I thought we could have the all-time record at ARIC, I believe it's 2026. And the reason I say it is there is no bigger time for a thirst of education in the marketplace. And AI is going to be heavily covered at this conference.

John McGrath 32:51

Yeah, oh, for sure. Absolutely.

Tom Panos 32:54

Tim Smith, no, he's not as big as a so, John, you think he's the best agent in the world, is it?

John McGrath 33:00

Tom Ferry told me he is. I rang up Tom Ferry as I do each year, and I say, Who are the best speakers in general around the world? And he said, Man, Tim Smith, he said you had him about 15 years ago. He said he was good then, but he said, mate, he's off the Richter scale now. He said he's by far the top agent in America, and he said, I couldn't fathom anywhere in the world. I think he said he's he he's done 675 million or something um in in sales, uh you know, worth of properties. And if you know, if you layer three or four percent on top of that, that's a hell of a juicy eye. And he's the most lovely fella, Jim. I I texted him and I said, Would you consider coming back?

Tom Panos 33:37

He said he's like an Aussie, you told me. He's not he doesn't have that uh that new New York uh you know he's more all three, all three of them are from Los Angeles and Orange County, and he just said, love to.

John McGrath 33:49

He said, uh, and I said, Why don't you bring your family? We'd love to sort of shout you some extra tickets so your family can come. He said, That sounds amazing. Let me check their school and whether we can take them away for a few days. So Timmy's gonna bring his family down, which is gonna be awesome. We got Holly Ransom coming, she's a dynamic uh Aussie speaker. We got Boris Becker, the great Boris Becker, legend of the tennis circuit, hit a wall, virtually went broke, and he's now coming back strongly. But he speaks openly and honestly and candidly about his success and his failure. Uh, he's coming in via Zoom, but Boris will be extraordinary. So, and we've got a heap of others too, and we're going to start releasing the Australian speakers this week, also, but we're just releasing the um the keynotes sort of initially. So please get up to Aric, be part of a record-breaking Alex Johnson-like record. First, it won't be the first in 130 years, but it'll be the first in 28 years, I think, that we hit the 5,000 mark. Actually, we're a bit less because 5,000, a bit under 5,000 is capacity. But um, we hope to see you all there. It's a fun few days, it's great networking, it's great fun. If you're coming for a few extra days, bring your partner or bring your family. And um, but we'll be back before then. We'll be back.

Tom Panos 35:13

Big uh big tip, big tip to everyone. I would try stay the night on Monday night, wake up on Tuesday, grab your workbook, grab your iPad, grab what other tools you use, and then start putting in action steps of the learnings. Because what I've learned is if you could have a linear line from the event right into execution, you move forward a lot more faster and you don't get so that's what that's what I do. That's what I do, John. And I and I urge people, even if they don't stay there, that they block off their diary on the Tuesday, because I've had some extraordinary comments come from people that said they had the best 30 days of their real estate career because they went into execution mode straight after Arik.

John McGrath 36:08

Look forward to seeing lots of great case studies, Troy. Keep up the good work. Uh, good luck for the Roosters, good luck to the Tigers, Tommy. You know, one conversation, which is good work.

Tom Panos 36:20

One question. One question. You saw the game Tiger South, Troy. Jeez, that was close. And I know that John deep down, because he's in Tiger territory and he loves the yellow, he loves the Tigers, right? He really does, right? So John was a winner, whichever way that game was gonna go, right? But Troy, were you impressed with the tigers? You have you seen Benji Marshall being more aggressive and assertive this year? It's like he's it's like first year learning, second year, okay, fine-tuning, third year, this is who I've got to be.

Troy Malcolm 36:57

Yep. Yeah, he's doing well. I think they're gonna have a good year. I am a little bit nervous about your injuries, though, Tom.

Tom Panos 37:03

Yes, they came through on a text message as we were speaking. But you know what? This time next year, if Tigers have won the grand final at the end of this year, we'll try and get Benji up on the Aric stage. You'll you can't say then no, John. If if the Tigers win the grand final, we'd have to have Benji up there on the stage.

John McGrath 37:19

I'd love to. He's a legend. All right, everybody.

Tom Panos 37:22

Thank you.

John McGrath 37:24

See you again.