How to Become an Elite Estate Agent: Lessons from Perry Power

In this episode of the Elite Agent Masterclass, James hosts Perry Power, a well-known figure in the estate agency industry. 

1. Perry's Background:
   • Perry Power is a seasoned estate agent with over a decade of experience.
   • He founded Power Bespoke in 2014 after parting ways with his previous business partner.
   • Perry’s obsessive and structured approach has been key to his success.
2. Importance of Mindset:
   • Perry emphasizes the significance of mindset in estate agency.
   • He believes that focus, consistency, structure, and discipline are crucial to becoming an elite agent.
   • Perry openly shares his personal struggles, including a diagnosed mental breakdown in 2022, highlighting the importance of mental health awareness and proactive management.
3. The Value of Mentorship:
   • Perry discusses the pivotal role of mentorship in his career, particularly the impact of Royston Guest’s guidance.
   • Surrounding yourself with mentors and coaches who can guide you through both business and personal challenges is essential for growth.
4. Estate Agency Insights:
   • Perry is a strong advocate for tech-enabled experts in the estate agency industry.
   • He predicts that the future will favor agents who effectively leverage technology to enhance their expertise and client service.
   • Perry also highlights the importance of offering buyer representation services, noting that it can be more profitable than traditional sales.
5. Lessons from Hardship:
   • Perry shares candidly about the difficulties he faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and the toll it took on his business and mental health.
   • He underscores the value of resilience and the necessity of pushing through tough times to achieve long-term success.
6. Future of Estate Agency:
   • Perry sees the future of estate agency as one dominated by better-quality agents who are supported by technology.
   • He advocates for a shift in mindset from seeing other agents as competition to viewing them as colleagues and allies.

Notable Quotes:

• "Nothing breeds failure like success. Marginal corrosion is just as important as marginal gains."
• "Focus, consistency, structure, and discipline are the four pillars of becoming an elite agen

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Transcript

So welcome to another episode of the Elite Agent Masterclass. Today, I have got the great pleasure of having Mr. Perry Power joining us on the pod. Perry has got a long history in the industry. He's a very, very well-known name. For anyone that doesn't know of him, you need to get out from underneath your rock. This guy is very prominent, shares so much gold and value with the industry, which is one topic I want to pick up with you, Perry. But first off, welcome to the pod. Thank you. I was worried what you were going to say then after the word long. He's got a really long, and then luckily it was something to do with state agency. Because there's nothing else to do with me that you could associate with long, I can assure you. And excuse the state of me, because I've literally, as I just said off air, I've just come off of an absolute spanking on the tennis court. here we are but here we are and like we're talking about offline you love your tennis and you played well and receiving a spanking when you're playing well ain't such a bad thing so here's the thing right let's link it back to estate agency which I always do it's like when you lose that listing but you possibly but you know you couldn't have done anything more to try and win it I say to our guys Did you, deep down, do you know you've done everything? Did you touch them three times before you knocked on the door? That's one of my rules, right? Touch is a bit extreme, but you get what I mean. Let's not get arrested. And they're like, I didn't. I didn't touch base with them the night before, the morning of. And I'm like, then you've lost. You've been beat. You're lost. Take the L, move on. So, yeah. Same with tennis. I was playing well. I lost. Better man beat me. High five to him. Moving on. Moving on. Lessons learned. Lots to take away for the next match. Have you watched the Roger Federer address at the university? Yes, I have. Dude, that's life lessons for everybody, not just tennis players, but estate agency and everything. Unreal. Absolutely unreal. Different level of character and calibre. And what was he shared in that? This is, again, relevant back to estate agency in so much as he is deemed one of the best players in history. And yet, if you actually look at his performance in terms of points won, it was something like, what, fifty two to fifty four percent in his career of the points that he actually won. I think it's fifty one percent. Right. OK, so marginal gains like the little one percent. So you've already in less than two minutes of us hitting record, got an absolute piece of gold there for people that are listening in those your free touchpoint rule. And some and so they have a little one percent, aren't they? They're the bits that are going to make a significant difference in the bigger picture. I mean, sending a message the night before in isolation is a nice touch. But you combine that with the other touch points that you place there and then the journey they go through when you're meeting with them. All of a sudden, you're not just one percent ahead. You're about twenty five, thirty percent ahead. Yeah. So something I'm really hot about with with. So let's, I guess, rewind a little bit. Like, um, I set up how bespoke my own estate agency in twenty ten. That was fourteen years ago. Um, I've got a fifteen year old son, a twelve year old son, a six year old son and a three year old daughter. But when my, when my son was born, my fifteen year old, like I've got an extremely obsessive, addictive personality. And before he was born, what was I? Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one. it was all about you know working for an estate agency but also equally as enjoying my social time and drinking drugs and girls and clubbing and partying and stuff like that and and when he was born I had to really switch my obsession somewhere else and my and my um my focus so I decided just to start an estate agency why not that sounds good um and so whatever I do I'm extremely structured and organized. I've got a pre-advice meeting checklist that to this day is ten years old. To this day, I go through it every single time. I've been doing it twenty years. But I'm a massive believer as well that nothing breeds failure like success. You think you're the big show and then you start marginal corrosion is just as important as marginal gains. So there's a lot of people that, you know, they marginally improve, but behind the scenes, they're marginally corroding as well. So you've got to keep the levels rising. I'm sure we go deep, but yeah, so that's a bit of a background. And now I'm just obsessed with tennis and estate agency. You've managed to diversify the obsession. Yeah, and I'm obsessed with my wife and my children, obviously, but outside of family stuff, it's all- That goes without saying, Perry. That goes without saying. And as I said earlier, for anyone that doesn't know you, firstly, I would say follow Perry. The one thing I want to, I guess, get out quite early on, you give so much back to the industry. And I appreciate you do bootcamp, which of course returns on its investment. And you've got your online course that people can subscribe to. So I appreciate that you have monetized in areas, but you give so much value for SweetFA. What's the leading driver behind that for you? Because when I was twelve, I committed to improving the industry. So I'm literally trying to improve the industry. I don't think you can say things like you want to do something, you know, talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words. So yeah, you know, deep rooted, twelve years old, single mum. Had a really bad experience with an estate agent. And at that point, I was like, this can't be that hard. I'm going to improve the whole bloody process for people. So I do. And the thing is with the training and the coaching now and the boot camps and the twelve month accelerator programs that we've just started doing in twenty twenty four. It's just pocket money. That's like my holiday fund. It's not my main income. Power bespoke pays my mortgage, feeds my kids, supports my life. That's my main focus. And it's like the little test bed for stuff that I can then share because I'm also a bit of a, I once done the talent dynamics. I'm all interested in disc profiles and that kind of. Love that. Yeah, I really like it. Love it. And I was doing it, and I was like, it was talent dynamics that I'd done, similar to like a wealth dynamics. And I was like, come on, Steve Jobs. Come on. I want to be Steve Jobs. But what actually come out of it was my primary profile was Henry Ford. so innovation yeah take things apart put them back together more of a mechanics and that is so me um I want to improve things just because it can be improved not because it needs to be improved sometimes that's one of my biggest my biggest kind of drawbacks and then my secondary profile was like a henry uh steve jobs kind of thing yeah so that that's a powerful blend that's a powerful blend right because you've got the innovator the the person wants to drive things forward but you've then got then that that charismatic nature you know that that that presenter taught in you that wants to just share amazing things with the world yeah yeah I'm like like people might look at me and think I'm a bit um arrogant cocksure on myself but I genuinely believe that um There are... People are like, what's your nearest competing estate? Like, what's your competition? And I must... I don't know if I'm psycho or something, but I genuinely believe there is no competition for us because... we are us and they're them. So that, and there's enough to go around. Like the client has got, hopefully, if you know who you're trying to serve, not every client you're trying to go after. So that's probably, seventy-five percent of the market ruled out anyway. So why not share it? Ultimately, my mission, my kind of personal mission is to improve the experience for the consumer, for the mover, for the end user. And I do that through our team selling property and helping people move at Power for Spoke. But it's even nicer to know that someone up in Northumberland and Scotland is kind of taking some of the things that we're doing down south and doing it in their business to benefit the client moving that I've never met, touched or spoken to. Yeah. Yeah. So you can inadvertently influence through the delivery of the value you share. And so you started Power Bespoke fourteen years ago. So I had a business partner for the first three years. And so I had a company called Power O'Shea, estate agent. That was me and Paul O'Shea, as in Croydon. Lovely bloke. We just, after three years, we had difference of direction and opinions. He was, we're still in touch now, good mates. He was much later in life than me. Had a couple of kids already. I just had one. Wasn't with my... my mum's, my mum's, my son's mum. So I was just like, when I'm not with him, I'm all in working. He wanted to pull back a little bit. And so I was just like, look, we've had a good run of it, but let's go our own separate ways. So, end of, October, I set up Perry Power Limited, which is now trading as Power Bespoke. Yeah. And we went live first of January, twenty fourteen. So ten years I've been operating Power Bespoke. You've just you've just turned ten and a tenth anniversary. And so back in twenty fourteen, you kicked off with Power Bespoke. You've then gone on a on a journey. And would it be fair to say, Perry, because I know that you we said offline, I said, is there anything that's untouchable in the conversation? And you said, absolutely not. Everything's everything's fair game. So would it be fair then, based on you sharing that, that there have been bumps in the road? There have been moments where, you know, you've hit difficulty or you've struggled or the business might have been in jeopardy? Yeah, so, a good estate agent on his own, you know, uh, twenty seventeen, we were halfway through the year, we almost went bust, we literally were cashless, we were fifty grand loss that year, twenty seventeen, at the six month mark, I was literally, um, fucked really and that's when I I went to um we had a we had a holiday booked to cape verde just me and my then girlfriend um and I had a ring in my bag I just spent five grand on the ring that I didn't really have um and I kind of knew that I'd come back from that lovely holiday in cape verde proposing to my now wife um and the business would probably last of a month or two um that was horrible but what happened is whenever I would I mean we haven't been away since without the kids but whenever we I used to have holidays about children I would always pick up a book with wh smith it's kind of what you got to do when you when you're going on a holiday and I picked up a book called built to grow um and i read it on holiday and I was completely obsessed by it because it was like the e-myth which I loved I'm all about processor systems standard operating procedures turnkey business slot in person in here follow the process proceeds will come don't try and reinvent the wheel and test once you get to a level of success I suppose um and that was written by royston guest so after reading that book I was I was really into it because what it is is it's a business growth framework And I was reading it thinking, well, we do that. We do that. Oh, shit, we're not doing that, though. And we could improve in that area. So got back from Cape Verde, stalked the hell out of him to be like, I need you to mentor and coach me. Anything to do with your obsessive nature? Very likely. Yeah. Back then I was hounding him. I was hounding his PA. Three months of hounding. I was obviously, I sent emails to be like, look, I read your book. It's amazing. I've implemented some of the stuff from it. It's really helping the business. And it was at that point getting me out of some tricky situations. But I want more. I really want to meet you. Can you mentor and coach me? I've got this thing about, you know, I don't like having industry mentors and coaches. hear you yeah um business coaches you know I want I know how to be an estate agent I know how to you can always improve but we collectively as an industry we've got groups like the power agent that we're all in we can all improve of each other I need someone I'm no lord sugar that's my problem I need someone to tell me the business mechanics and and how to run a business not how to get get a listing or get yourself in the living room So then I stalked the hell out of him. I got an email. I've still got it. And I remember it. It dropped in my inbox to say Royston, because Royston is in Jersey. And he used to travel back a few times a week from Jersey to England. And she said he's got thirty minutes in between getting dropped off at the airport and his flight back. Meet you in Costa, South Terminal. Bring a list of things that you want to go through with him. And I had obviously a list that was massive. We didn't get through all of it. But he gave me some loads of advice at the time. I went away like a starstruck. I was like, yeah, I'll do this, Royston. I'm going to go and do this now. I think a month later, I got back to him and said, I've done it all. Here's the results. And he was like, great. Now, he really saw something in Power Bespoke because he's been on executive boards for Countrywide many, many years ago. And he deals with some very big businesses than his little old me. But I think he saw something in that I was trying to feel a real – space you had your purple bricks at the time and you had your sleepy high street agents and we were really early in um one the self-employed model and two that whole no high street kind of hybrid home base whatever you want to call it now which has become very much more acceptable back then it really wasn't eight nine years ago it was still frowned upon kovid helped a lot with that um And it's interesting. I popped up to a viewing today on a one point two million pound house before going to tennis in my tennis gear. And I stripped the guy's hand. I was like, look, excuse the attire. I'm going straight off to tennis after this. And he was like, how well do you play? I was like, I'm pretty good. He was like, I'm winning to tennis. I remember at Reigate Tennis Club, we should play one day. And it's just mad, isn't it? Like you'd never think that's frowned upon. You should be in a suit and all this kind of nonsense. But you make your own decisions. reality I kind of believe in totally totally agree totally agree so you yeah so on that journey I was completely completely um shagged and but and royston really helped me coach me mentored me I was in some low places clawed it back all great big growth big growth twenty nine in came going into twenty twenty I was about to go I think we had about I don't know twelve thirteen agents back then um And then COVID hit. That royally fucked us. I'll explain why in a minute. And in twenty twenty two, I had a diagnosed mental breakdown. Basically, I was our fourth baby had just arrived. Planned, semi-planned, probably not planned to that month. But me and my wife knew we wanted it. have another child we've got a boy and a girl together now we had uh I adopted her son but he's my son yeah um and then I had a fifteen-year-old in previous relationship covid was like you know um I learned the lesson you know don't have a partner agent model during covid um because we we uh We were missing out. We missed out on, you know, self-funded business. No, I own all the company, no business partners, no bank borrowing. And we lost out on about, of a million pounds of equivalent help should have had our agents been employed of course still paying out high revenue fee shares to age fee splits to agents but we were getting no additional prop up help for that money going out so that was it was kind of survival mode through twenty twenty and twenty twenty one as everyone knows and then I think as it started to recover It just all hit me at once and I was just an absolute mess. So a couple of years of treading water. You know, we had a nice, good team. We had a strong letting business. We were just muddling through, not making any massive waves. And then I kind of woke up again, I'd say, start of this year, really. I've said, right, let's put the foot on the gas again now. And that's it. Here we are. It's very noticeable with your output, by the way, that we're putting the foot on the gas, the stuff from the start of this year. Your content is ramped up, the volume, it's all skyrocketed. And so I think one of the big things that people listening in, it's all well and good. Look, we've had a good array of guests on. We've talked about lots of positive stuff on the pod so far. But I think it's really, really important for people to understand the downside. And that's kind of... I knew a little bit of your background. I didn't know that you had the breakdown. And so I'm sorry for someone that I respect that you would have to go through that. But I think it's good for people to understand that for someone that holds the stature that you do in the industry and for someone that a lot of people do look to, Perry, as an inspiration within the industry, that there is always them character flaws, the side of you where it's like, Okay, I may be on the outside robust like an armadillo, but on the inside, I feel like I'm breaking. How did you recognize it? What led you to the point of getting the diagnosis? I hadn't cried since I was probably thirteen years old when my granddad died. died and then yeah I was having a shower one day literally collapsed into a ball of mess in my shower tray pan just couldn't control myself and I was like you know leading up to that I kind of lost my mojo I was I'm not sure I've got the energy for this you know four kids team business growing financial commitments like risk I became very um your your temperament for risk changes a lot when you've got a mortgage a wife and four children I was very much like when it was me and my son that I saw at weekends when he was really young um I was like yeah fine what's the worst that can happen like but when you so it all changed a lot you know we're building the business to a nice size, and I still work a lot because I'm obsessed, a workaholic, but I enjoy what I do. I found myself losing my mojo, found myself kind of having probably two or three months of... I'm not enjoying this no more. And I'm a big fan of if you're not enjoying it, eighty percent of the time, eighty twenty rule has to prevail. Then you need to change what you're doing. And I used to I love every eighty percent of estate agency. And I just wasn't feeling it. I find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. It wasn't. I wouldn't say it was kind of dark, dark depression, but I had serious thoughts of, you know, I'm pretty handy with tech and automation and marketing. And I find that fascinating as well. So I contemplated just knocking it on the edge, to be honest, but pulled myself out of it. Luckily, family and friends supported well, had a therapy. I think, you know, men, Don't talk about things. I didn't really talk about it, but people could see a change in me. And then I got a therapist for a couple of months, dug myself out the hole. And now I'm back to winning. But it's, you know, tennis, you know, having that, I said before, up until just before covid I had no other vocation outside of power bespoke in the state agency no release yeah no release and and now if I don't get my two two hours of tennis you know a week my two hits in then that that even affects me mentally so I think proactive I think it's through what I've kind of learned is there's three stages now with um mental health Um, there's kind of proactive mental health management. There's mental, um, diagnosed mental health. You're mentally unwell, you're mentally ill. I didn't have any medication or nothing like that. It was just dark period. And then there's, um, the middle one, I guess, which is being aware of it, but it all starts like anything with, with better to prepare than recover. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I see it's interesting. You've shared a couple of things here that I just wanted to pull on. One of them is obviously you've referenced Royston and the impact he's had. So having that coaching, that mentorship, then you've talked about, obviously, when you went through this dark phase, but then you sought the help and you got the help and having that therapist, which, again, is having that coaching, that mentoring through a process. Right. And so. It strikes me from what you shared there that you are a believer in surrounding yourself with those types of people, people that can mentor, support, steer and guide you on that journey and being aware enough that it's going to add the value. Yeah. And, you know, it's I guess. Deal with it early. I should have really sought help when I felt myself not feeling myself, if that makes sense. But I let it wane a little bit. I was like, no, get up, get in the office, just kind of push through it. But that's just putting a plaster on it. You need to deal with the root thing. And even that, you know, Royston, for me, he's become a really good friend, but he's more of a life coach, to be honest. I really look up to the life he's built. And he's very... he's very under understated like he's he's not the kind of guy to be sitting there in front of his five million pound house taking pictures of himself you know he's got huge amounts of success and wealth and you wouldn't know it because he doesn't want to flaunt it but he's extremely successful you know he's got a beautiful wife love your children um so he's more of a life look up to in life someone like that he's he's achieved a lot of things um continues to um So yeah, Royce was a big part of it. Therapist, my family, my mum, my wife, my team obviously noticed a very different me for a couple of months, but they rallied around, recognised it and really kind of helped. It's got rid of some dead wood in the business, to be honest. It was probably partly causing it as well. Right, right. Kind of leeches that are just not doing much other than trading on our coattails a little bit. Condense the team down. No team problems, but much less team member things to deal with. Because I guess you're busy to get to a stage where you go from estate agent to estate agent and leader. to generally a hr bloody consultant when your team gets to a certain size and I I was like I can't be doing that I need to be in living rooms I need to be leading from the front so tash took over all of the back end my wife operation we've got head of sales head of lettings uh simon heads up our partner agent side of things so I just really decided to let go and And what happens is, interestingly, because I'm obsessive, I'm a control freak because I also like letting people do their thing. But when you let go, then you really start to grow. Let go to grow. I like that. I like that. Yeah. It's interesting you say that as well, because I would it would be fair to say if you talked to anyone that I'm surrounded by very similar. Once I get my teeth in something, I will go all the way down the rabbit hole, become completely obsessed by things. And the letting go bit is the difficulty I find. And so it's interesting to hear you say that because I read something recently. It's funny, isn't it? When you start really paying attention, I guess it's that whole awareness piece. When you start paying attention to something, it starts to present itself more. So I've really been in that headspace of how do I let go of that? How do I start to just accept that? OK, maybe it can't be done a hundred percent the way I want it, but seventy five to eighty percent is better than a hundred percent of me crashing and burning. And so these little little signals been appearing YouTube videos I've watched and books I'm reading, et cetera, to kind of say, right, just empower the people around you. And they don't need to be a hundred percent because you're going to guide them and you're going to steer them on the journey. So it's interesting to hear you then coin that phrase, let go to grow. Yeah, and I've learned that. And we've gone through stages like the stage you're at right now is that we only taken on kind of director manager level agents, whether it be employed or self employed. So we run both models, and both have got their pros and cons. And I probably, what I really wanted to make work was nurture some inexperienced people to come into industry. But then I realized that my, we might want that for the industry, not bringing their bad habits to the business, but we, that's no good for me personally. So you have to draw the line. There was that yin and yang between, you know, so now we've just got, we've onboarded four new agents in the last month, two months. And yeah, they're all former directors of their own brands um or manager level you know steph is formerly managers of corporate estate agencies and so it's kind of you know you said you know your way around the living room we're going to help you get your fees up here's how we do it here so our what we call a climatization period is is what most will call like an onboarding um we're literally the first month is just because andrew's just come in last week monday week he started great guy everything we stand for been an agent for years just been battered and beaten up by the wrong leadership behind him um And he's like, well, I know you guys are different because we, and he's on our patch. So he's been seeing us competing with us, I suppose. And he was, I know you guys are different, but I didn't know quite how much. This is, this week just blew my mind. And luckily it was a long weekend. So I was like, look, go and go and recuperate. I'm massively big fan of, If you want to be in the performance zone, you've also got to be in recovery zone as well. So we've got a viewing specialist team that cover our agents diaries for weekends. And so we all had like a nice three day break and it's back at it into the performance zone. Monday to Friday. And he, he's a great example of what we stand for. He's probably. Fifty, maybe hopefully he don't, he don't watch this and I've got this wrong. Genuine care for people. um just got a bit bored of subscribing to market share metrics and that kind of nonsense um and he's really enjoying it and but I'm really enjoying elevating him like his first week he's done his first video tour and he's like oh this is amazing they would never let me do video tours because I'm all about people say to me like why do you promote your agents so much and I said well why wouldn't you promote your fucking agents they're the ones that are going to be sitting in the living room course yeah then high five to them and just by working with me that a big that go down well on their cv so I subscribe to the whole um the whole richard branson stuff about literally about to say train them so well that they can leave but treat them so well they don't want to I want to yeah and that's exactly what I subscribe to and yeah facebook ads for them we're doing videos for them we're obviously marketing them because they're the ones it's not cool power bespoke for an advice meeting you know speak to andrew for advice on moving house yeah um and the whole time is with power bespoke then great Love that. I love that. And that's why we had to get you on the pod, because we've had a few interactions before now, but not to any great length. But I knew there was so much value that you could share. And there's so much in this first portion of what we discussed that's kind of very mindset heavy. And I don't know whether you agree, but I think personally, obviously, Jack and I run a self-employed model. And we've got this real strong belief that the person's mindset is going to dictate their trajectory. So they could have all the talent, they could have the background of years and years and years in the industry, but if their mind, their head isn't in the right space, then they're going to really struggle. From what you've shared on this part of the pod so far, it strikes me that you would agree with that. Yeah, but I do also believe that mindsets can be shaped spiritually. Agree. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had it where and we get it a lot. You know, my my whole kind of for our partner agent model, we only speak to people that are currently with a self-employed partner agency brand and it hasn't gone too well for them. Like that's who I want to speak to for our partner agent model. And that's it. the employed side of the business. People's mindset can be shaped, I believe. So as long as their intentions are right and they're in the industry for the right reasons... I can help them with. Because a lot of mine say, oh, this is too hard. It's not too hard. You're just unstructured. That's all. It's really easy, actually. So they need to be open-minded to the ability to change. I suppose I positioned it in the wrong way. Having self-belief is the start point. But if they're not open to the idea of doing things, especially power bespoke, the way we operate at The Avenue, if they're not open to the idea of doing things differently, if they're not open to the idea that actually you can push these boundaries, that they are glass ceilings that you're worried about, Then there's the struggle. Like Andrew, for example, joined recently and he's like, how'd you get such good fees? I'm like, I just tell him my fee's two percent before I go out there. He's like, what? Don't they cancel? And I was like, some of them do, yeah. but some of them don't. And why waste your time on the ones that cancel? I know. And it's like, fucking hell. And I'm like, this ain't rocket science. It's on our website. This ain't rocket science. It amazes me if a state agency, right, that in a, in a state agency, when you can get an answer to everything in seconds, the only thing you can't get an answer to is what your fees. Oh, let's discuss that when we come round to see you. You know, the range between this and this, depending on how saleable your house is. Like, just put it on your website, mate, and save yourself a lot of ag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Save yourself the hassle. The cheap, the fee merchants won't come to you then. That saves you a lot of time. So you've kind of segued nicely there. So we've talked about the background, Power Bespoke's journey, your personal journey. With twenty twenty four, you can press a button and you get the answer to anything in a moment. What do you see the future of the industry over the next five, six, seven years? What are you thinking? What are you working on? How are you going to innovate within Power Bespoke? Obviously, without giving away too much secret sauce. no there's no secret sauce I think um just just um the same what I've been saying for the last five years the future is owned by tech enabled true experts to succeed like tech and platforms and stuff is there to enable the agent to deliver more their expertise um will it be so I I definitely don't think it would be majority self-employed um I think there'll be a high you know steph is one of our biggest bankers in the business and she doesn't want to be self-employed you know she she wants a nice she's got one a nice tasty salary she wants to bang in probably do close to three hundred grand this year personally and She just likes to get paid well. She's loyal. She's a massive brand advocate. She doesn't want to... She's thirty-something now. She wants to not... The industry is a little bit jumping around in it. She wants to get her feet under the table. So yeah, the future is just owned by... Better quality agents ultimately, I think. So tech enabled experts. That's the phrase you shared. What does that look like to you? What does a really high caliber elite agent that is tech enabled look like? um it means that a lot of their so I guess you look at power bespoke right so we've invested a load of money in in the salesforce crm platform yeah um which automates pretty much every admin mundane task that you can think of leaving the agent to deal with positive feedback from viewings converting offers negotiating negotiating property purchases. Where I do see the future is more people and more agents should and will be offering buyer representation services. We've got a client in Barbados at the minute that's paying us double what the selling agents get in. for us to help him buy it and hold his hand buying it. We're charging two percent of the purchase price to help him buy it. And he's buying here. Buying here. Yeah. And the agent selling it is getting one percent for selling it. I've done no pictures. I've done no floor plans. I've done no viewings. He just wants our expertise. Georgie's handling it in the team. So we're just about to renege. We've had a really poor survey. I'm about to handle the renegotiations. so that's more of the future employed or self-employed doesn't matter I just wish more agents would value the fact that they are experts yeah and they should be charging the adequate amounts of money to sellers and or buyers for that expertise It's an interesting topic, Fred, you pull on, because obviously it's the thing, isn't it, over the pond, America, Australia, et cetera. So I guess one of the questions that people listening into this pod would want to then delve into is, okay, great. I, by the way, completely subscribe to the idea that there should be biorepresentation and that there's some expertise. I was chatting to one of our partner agents this morning who came over to my office, and He's just done a deal for someone. He's got them six grand more than their baseline on what they were expected to sell for. But he's also then helped them with their onward negotiation. They gave him the price they were prepared to pay. He saved them another six grand there. So in total, he's worth twelve grand on top of his fee to that individual. When he sat and we were talking it through, he was like, I hadn't thought about that. From an onward marketing perspective, in terms of portraying his support and expertise to his next client, he would only be thinking about the fact that he was able to agree the sale. Look at the value you've added. And so let's look at the Barbados client, for example. How did that relationship even come about? How did you end up representing him? You wouldn't believe this, right? He follows another estate agent on Twitter. Okay. Right? This guy in Barbados. And the guy in Barbados, the parents live in Barbados. The son lives in my town. Yeah. And the son is a teacher. Never bought a first-time buyer. Parents actually work in real estate in Barbados. But they're the type. perfect client they understand that their expertise has no relevance in in in the uk just like I'd have no idea what I'm doing really with selling property in barbados so they pay for expertise just like you pay an accountant a solicitor maybe a private doctor um so this guy in barbados messages to state agent that you follow saying hey my son's looking to buy a property in the uk can you help he was asked literally he said I'm really sorry but I don't represent buyers this guy Perry Power does though and the rest is history he messaged me signed him up at two percent of purchase price he even found the property we've done a whole off-market property search as part of the service but the property is on right move with another estate agent some went to view it said I liked it and I was like great leave the rest to me And me and Georgie negotiated, obviously, a discount off the asking price with the selling agent. They're using our solicitors, our surveyors, our mortgage advisors. It amazes me, right? Here's the problem with this industry in this country versus over the pond. If you're divorcing, and I hope I never have to, husband and wife go and get separate individual representation, right? It's borderline should be illegal that the same person can represent, I suppose, buyer and seller, juggle the relationship. And it also amazes me, and these are things that I believe and I want to try and change, that buyers have professional advice and expertise at every single stage of the property transaction apart from doing the deal in the first place so you're a lone ranger in this particularly first-time buyers you know I really passionately love helping first-time buyers the fees aren't as great because they're not spending a million quid generally but the value you can deliver is huge um So that little old first-time buyer's got to ring up these estate agents and be given a load of Cobb's wallet from them and a lot of the time lies because we know our industry generally isn't the prettiest in the world. Left their own devices to negotiate against a hopefully quite experienced negotiator. When all that's done, then they instruct a solicitor, then their mortgage advisor cracks on to getting a mortgage, then their surveyor gets a survey done. But up until that point, they're on their own, left to their own devices. So I think that's really poor. And, you know, the service has been around the relocation agents. If you've got a million pound plus budget will be your kind of search agent. But all that poor little old Mary and John has got a two fifty budget company rent in and they're about to have their pants pulled down by a unscrupulous estate agent. No, it's a really fair comment. A really, really fair comment. And it's definitely a route for agents to be thinking about. And it surprises me where you say that this person over in Barbados reached out to this agent on Twitter and they've then referred it on. I literally replied to the guy saying, look, thanks for that. I appreciate you mentioning me, but you best get yourself to boot camp, my man, because you really should be taking that yourself. That is a sound investment. Yeah. What's that going to be? That's going to be, it's a three, seven of your property, six, seven, half grand. And most agents around this area are struggling to get three on a sale. Acting for buyers is way more profitable than sellers because you've got no cost to serve. It's just your time. Exactly. And so therefore you can do a lot more. Yeah, and there's loads of situations where we've helped buyers, and I really enjoy it. So what you can't do is obviously represent both at the same time, but because it ties in with our model, we're power bespoke for a reason. We don't chase market share. We have not a huge property stock in one particular area. We're very geographically spread. We fly under the radar of all agents, really. No one really sees us as... a competition or a problem yeah and you switch your mindset from when you know that at some point you're going to call that agent that you're about to fall out with for potentially one of your buying clients and you need to be on the level with them you need to be have all agents as your colleagues and allies rather than competition there needs to be a mindset shift to that um because your clients are everywhere and you know this whole right move boycott group need to realise that every ten inquiries you get on a house, you've got an opportunity to offer them a search service and a negotiation service and, you know, there's so much more being left on the table. Let's pull on that, Fred. Let's pull on that, Fred. So there's the Rightmove boycott group. I had a chat offline with someone the other day and it made me chuckle because they said exactly the same thing. These people bitch and moan about the cost of Rightmove, but they spend next to no time looking at ways in which they can add value to their own proposition, become more valuable to the client and therefore raise their own income. If someone is quibbling over a four hundred pound a month raise in the Rightmove bill, they've got to look at their business rather than Rightmove. Yeah. Yeah, I love Rightmove. Love it. You and me both. You and me both. There's no greater value. It's just a continual lead source of opportunity, isn't it? And, you know, when I say to them, all right, fine. So you're frustrated that they've kind of got the number one spot of the market. They've got it cornered and they're increasing their fees. If you were the only estate agent in your town, what are you going to do? You're going to drop your fees, are you? Like, it's just business. Get over it, adapt, and maybe knock your lease on the head of that office that's on the high street that you know deep down you don't really need and go upstairs. So, yeah, it's... what you do with the inquiries that you get like yes the right move you know for me everyone goes into an automated process so the minute they inquire about house for sale two weeks later they'll be buying a house with us by then or they're not most likely and then they go into a did you know we can find you something off market and once you're found somewhere Download our nine step four day negotiation strategy for a property purchase. Have a read of this. That will help you. And if you want us to help you more hands on, book a call here. had one last week literally that I've been putting a lot of youtube content out for that particular reason um and he booked in and literally first time buyer missed out on free houses and he's so frustrated himself he he doesn't even want a discount off of the next house he just wants to get the next house he just wants to make sure he gets it yeah yeah so we sometimes charge a percentage of saving potentially in this case we'll be charging a percentage of the purchase price Brilliant. And I think that's one of the big things that anyone that's listening in to the last forty or so minutes of us talking will hear the immense value that you bring and you share a lot of gold. And I think anyone that isn't aware of you needs to head over and make sure they're following because there's so much value that you share that people could implement with great ease. You also obviously have your course that people can work their way through and there's lots of value in there. From your perspective, though, Perry, I don't doubt that you'll see an increase in following off the back of us having this conversation. But from your perspective, what does someone really need to consider to be an elite agent? Four things, focus, consistency, structure and discipline. It's clearly a pre-rehearsed reaction, that. So that's clearly ingrained in you as a person, those four things. Just give us an overview of your feeling on all four of those items then. Focus. So when you're doing something, nothing else exists. And my wife is like, you're a bit special because when I'm in work mode, I haven't got a wife and kids. Like my phones on do not disturb most of the time when I'm in the zone. She's like, what if the kids are, there's an emergency? And I'm like, what would you have done before mobile phones? So, you know, ring nine, nine, nine, don't ring me. So focus. And I'm talking, but this is where I'm, I think I'm wired up a bit differently at times because I can go into deep work, deep, deep work and focus. not come out of it for days it's like the automations though isn't it like I'm going down a bit of a rabbit hole on some automations at the minute and last night I got home from work put the kids to bed literally got the mac out straight away I said hayley look just give me a couple of hours I need to do this because if I don't do it now I'm gonna there's no no point me even being in your presence if I just don't do this now it's like yeah yeah no problem so question for you then um from a focus point of view you obviously have this innate ability to just go deep into whatever it is you're doing and you can kind of get in the zone is there anything you do to get you into that state to get in the zone you know dnd on your phone is one thing but is there anything else you do or do you just sort of if you develop this natural ability to go into like deep flow no so now you've got structure so I structure deep work time So, you know, focus, let's go for it. So focus is that consistency. This industry ain't rocket science. You know, it's do the things that work over and over again. And I keep sharing stuff on socials that I keep seeing because everyone's talking about Facebook ads and all this kind of nonsense. And you're like, well, how many, if you had a hundred buyers through your front door or through your, yeah front door last month how many of those with houses to sell so half of those let's say fifty percent forty percent might be selling your house how many of those got yourself into living room and they're like oh I don't know but there's your first issue because when you look you'll notice you probably only got yourself into five ten percent if you're lucky that needs to be thirty seven and a half percent in my opinion ours is tracking at twenty four twenty seven percent Still ain't good enough, but it's good enough to then move on to the next thing. So forget all the shiny new things. And I've been there. Ten years later, I've wasted a hell of a lot of money on digital ads and stuff. But focus on being a great agent in the first place. You know, socials for show, deals are for dough. It's a bit like that. That's a golf saying, isn't it? Drive for show, pop for dough. And I've taken it for estate agency, obviously. So consistency. And if you saw my structure and calendar, it's just brutal. I put my wake up time and my bedtime in my daily work calendar. I remember when I messaged you saying, do you fancy jumping on the pod? And I said, you know, normally record on a Monday. And you're like, that'd be breaking the rules. Yeah, I can't. That's client day. So every client, every Monday about fail. So it's just and it makes life so much simpler. as well, that level of structure. Yeah. So consistency, do the things that work over and over again. I've got this massive thing. I've got a guide that I'm happy to put on a link to the, if it's gonna go anywhere, but it's the kind of twenty ways to generate high fee quality clients. And I've looked at all of our client acquisition methods in the last twenty four months and I've boiled it down into twenty areas. And I say to our team, consistency, pick three of those things. You can't, I'm a massive fan of the power of three. We've got three core values, you know. um pick three go deep for three months power free and then review at the end of it if one of the things is working really well keep doing it if one of the things is working average keep doing it but improve it and if one of the things is doing replace it with one of the other seventeen on the list and there's no point to reinvent the wheel I love that. Well, if you could ping that over to me, I'll add it into the show notes because this will be on YouTube. It'll be on Spotify, Apple. So if you're happy to share that, then I'm sure people listening in will get great value from it because that's a great share. So we've got focus, we've got structure. Yeah, focus, structure, consistency. Yep. And then organisation. So many estate agents I find, and even ones that have joined our team, I'm like, how have you got through your life, your career as an estate agent being that unorganised? Like, you need organisation. So distill it, because I feel like there's a power of three issue here, because you've got four. Yeah, yeah. Structure and organisation. How are you distilling the difference? So structure for me is knowing what you're going to do when. An organisation is doing what you're doing when. So structure is the strategy, organisation is the tactics. Implementation, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Like, are you allowing yourself enough time with your structure, but also are you organised enough to make sure you do give that client those three touches before you walk through the front door? Yeah. You're like, oh, I didn't get time. Well, your organisation's fucked then. You need to reorganise yourself. You know, time, run out of time isn't an excuse. Yeah. So yeah, there's those four things. And they should be free, but I did try and make them free, but you just can't squeeze them into three. It has to be four. It has to be four. It has to be, especially when you still structure an organization as two separate ones. I did say before we hit record, there's a lot of synergy between the way you run your business, the way you think, the way you act, certainly the way I think, feel and behave. And so we could very easily record so much more. I haven't even touched on one of the things that you and I have a a common love for, which is the automations and the way in which that can revolutionize a business. We haven't touched on that. We'll do another one dedicated to tech and automation. I was going to say, that's where people can get really good for the geeks out there. That's where we can go really deep. But for this one, I think it's been really, really good because you've shared some great mindset pieces. You've shared your journey, which I think is a fantastic one. I think it's a real journey of resilience. You know, you've had periods in time where you could have gone, pop this and thrown in the towel very easily. and you haven't and you know just just to finish on like I I hope no one has to go through that but then at the same time I kind of hope they do as well because I've kind of found my limits and I'm really aware of them now and I'm also expecting to be pushed to those limits again at some point in my in my career because I'm pushing hard and when you push You've got to crack a few eggs to bake an omelette, I think it's the same. And it's unfortunate that one of those eggs ended up being my mind and my brain. But the omelette was made. It's fine. I'm still alive and kicking. I'm still here. There's a lot of things that can go wrong. And my best man at my wedding during that period committed suicide. No one knew how or why. It just happened one day out of the blue. And you just think, Jesus, man, as much as it's horrible that I went through, it weren't as bad as him. So... I kind of know rubber bands. Royston talks about glass balls, rubber balls. You know, some things in life are rubber balls and they'll bounce back, which is, you know, your work, basically. Have a couple of months of shit performance, fine. Get back on the horse, pull it back. But your glass balls are yourself, your family, your kids, your mindset. When you drop that, you're smashed. Yeah. And then it's practically game over or a very, very long recovery of putting it all back together. I think that's really, really important for people to hear because I say anyone that does know you that's listening in, there's a lot of positive energy around you. You're a very positive person. But to hear that someone is positioned as well as you are in the industry and has done as well as you have, that you've also gone through those struggles. I agree with you to suffer hardship. creates resilience and so you've got to go through a little bit of that at times I believe if you do want to push on to the next level and find your true self um and so do you know perry it's been brilliant to have you on I'm sure in a month or two's time we'll we'll have to do a recording of geeking out on tech we'll probably do some screen sharing and all sorts but for now perry it's been an absolute pleasure and until next time take care