Ray White Chairman Brian White, Ray White Managing Director Dan White and Ray White Group & Rural & Livestock Chairman Paul White at The Langham in Sydney for the Chairman’s Elite Leaders Forum 2022.
RAY White’s leading business owners gathered in Sydney for a very special two day conference aimed at elevating and inspiring the best of the best to the next level.Training is at the heart of the leading group which aims to help its owners to thrive and prosper in any environment.Ray White National Director of Special Programs Bianca Denham said the purpose of the conference was to bring together our top business leaders from across the Australian and New Zealand businesses for collaboration, sharing and networking.“We see so much innovation from this group, these are truly great business leaders and it’s wonderful how open they are with each other. These business owners have so much respect for one another and we see a lot of cross-collaboration come out of these events,” she said.Ray White Group Chairman Brian White spoke about the difference between ‘leadership and management’.“My father said “be a good leader” when I took over. I quickly realised that I needed to be overt and communicate on this idea of leadership, as it was something I struggled with initially,” Mr White said.“The reason I would suggest that our company is so strong now across Australia and New Zealand is that we have focussed on this idea of leadership.” He reminded the top business owners to always express what is important to their teams.“I don't know anyone who is a natural born leader but you can become a good leader.
Support each other and always make sure your teams are proud of every single transaction.”
Keynote speaker Gus Balbontin - investor, advisor, adventurer and alternative futurist - engaged Ray White’s top business owners from across Australia and New Zealand in a robust and productive workshop type session. Mr Balbontin is well known for his days at Lonely Planet but he knows how to help entrepreneurs lift and share learnings.
Mr Balbontin hung up his boots as executive director and CTO of Lonely Planet and decided to move back to his entrepreneurial roots, becoming an investor, founder and mentor across the start-up ecosystem in Melbourne. He loves sharing stories, he loves even more knowing those stories make a difference to people and help in their own business and life.By the age of 22, he had dropped out of university, hitchhiked around South America, set up his first business and landed his dream job at Lonely Planet. Fast forward a few years and he was leading the company globally working with companies such as Google X, Nokia and Amazon on the latest technology, creative cultures and high performing teams.
“Tension gives birth to innovation. Firstly everyone needs to work out if you like order, or disorder, which is important to work out the harmony of the team,” Mr Balbontin said.
“When we start implementing new software into a business it’s a challenge to let go of the past but you are all sitting on data and knowledge that has taken decades to build so use it.“I want you all to think big and jump in, and think crazy outside of the box. Order people hate this and it makes them feel uncomfortable but disorder people love crazy ideas. Business as usual is what you do every day. So you need a ‘hop’ which is continuous improvement and a jump is way out there - for example real estate in the metaverse.”Ray White Head of Strategy Mark McLeod said change only comes from better discussions.“We know we have four times better chances to sell the house by getting into the kitchen table but many members are wasting their leads. The answer is Nurture Cloud.”Mr McLeod used the example of an agent who was making zero phone calls to now making 5000 phone calls a week through NurtureCloud’s smart call list. “They actually now know that they make a sale every 175 calls, not an appraisal, a sale.”“The order of your business today is to allow the salespeople the control, while the disorder is we take it away from them with NurtureCloud. The fact is no-one takes responsibility for leads and the lead generation houses are rising every day so we are building our own with NurtureCloud.”
Ray White Managing Director Dan White spoke to the Chairman’s Elite level business owners about ‘disorder ideas’ that needed to be implemented into their businesses.
He said the fact was that many average real estate businesses haven’t changed much in 10 years.”Many leaders are struggling, and then technology gets thrown at the problem to try and solve customer pain points but much of it doesn't help. Proptech wasn’t even a word 5-6-7 years ago but many prop techs are not solving the big picture,” he said.“Leadership, family experience and our network effects are our three biggest competitive advantages. Our tech tools are designed to give more time back to our people, and that's why we’re building out NurtureCloud and it’s only going to get bigger and better as it evolves.”Mr White also said that any business that relied purely on its brand was “a dangerous space to be in”. “While a brand will be relevant, and it helps in certain ways, it's only up to that point. To grow forward requires us to put energy into the network first and their creativity.”“NurtureCloud is essentially a leadership tool to help our owners make better decisions.“Nothing good happens in a real estate business without a good leader. Nothing happens in our company without good leadership, we see that time and time again. The more we use these things the better it gets.”
A highlight of the two day conference was a case study session with renowned Boston-based Professor Boris Groysberg of Harvard Business School. Prof Groysberg teaches courses on talent management and leadership in the school's MBA and Executive Education programs.
Every business needs to know its bottom line but real estate businesses have their own special needs. Many real estate business owners come to ownership from a sales background and learn financial skills along the way through trial and error.Ray White Head of Profit Luke Richardson spoke to the members about their career lifecycle and succession planning. Mr Richardson has more than 26 years experience as an accountant.With the family’s backing, the profit team was born in the GFC and has quickly become one of the fastest growing specialist teams at Ray White ever since. No other group has such a view over its network’s profitability and real time like-for-like office metrics.Ray White agents’ productivity and earnings increased by 30 per cent in 2021, and these excellent market conditions resulted in our business owners achieving an average profit margin of 18 per cent from their sales business (excluding principal sales and property management).“Our chairman’s elite businesses are very valuable but they are not overly liquid so we are here to help you plan to realise the brilliant assets you have built. We want to help you with that,” he said.“We like to think we have helped you grow your businesses and we want you all to realise the asset on the way out.”
Ray White Marsden, Ray White AKG, Ray White Daisy Hill business owner Avi Khan has built very high performing teams in only four years and is committed to his whole team having a growth mindset.
He said he got a lot of value out of the sharing of ideas with his fellow owners at the Chairman’s Elite Business Leaders Forum.
He said that when and if anyone ever chooses to leave him, it will be with a “bouquet of flowers, not a lawsuit”. His staff are welcome to take their database, their listings and he’ll help them open their own business. This generous growth focus was crucial to his success so far.
“The industry looks not just at who joins you but who leaves you. Our team members exit with love. No-one stay more than five to seven years, we talk about that on the way in.”
Meanwhile, Haesley Cush and Matt Lancashire who own Ray White New Farm, Bulimba, East Brisbane, Toowong and Clayfield shared the details of their sales and property management associates program, plus their rookies initiative.
“We've split the business into a few different key areas. We've got elites and emerging elites so people that are premiers into becoming elite agents. And we've also got a group which is our associate program, which we call the wolfpack.
“They run their own little pack, we have training sessions for them too plus a breakfast once a month with them,” Mr Lancashire said.
“They're all competitive and we have races each week, which they will try to beat each other on - like database connections and all of those things. It's creating a really good culture for these rookies to become associates, our future agents.”
Ray White Canberra founders Ben Faulks and Scott Jackson spoke about their group’s ‘culture awards’ which were an integral part of the fabric of the powerhouse business in the capital.
The core metrics are ‘teamwork, customer first, leadership, reliability, humility and success’.
“Our team aspires to always keep their promises, stay hungry but humble. We aim for a lifetime of learning and to always maintain relationships.
“We ask people to nominate each other and everyone is familiar now with the system and it's been good for all of us,” Mr Faulks said.
“The awards have everything to do with being proud of every transaction.
We have always sought to be proud of relationships, rather than transactional and these awards help us to clearly articulate and communicate our values. “
Ray White Ferntree Gully managing director Pat McConnachie said his business was well known for being a fun workplace.
“We make jokes and love having fun, we celebrate a lot, we celebrate birthdays and overall people enjoy coming to work,” he said.
This was important given Mebourne had 111 days of lockdown during the pandemic.
“Culture was hard in the workplace environment during lockdown but we tried hard to keep people together. A lot of people say they work better from home and when they come back to work, they enjoy it more.
“We also concentrate on our people as well and help them build wealth. Many salespeople are poor with the money that they make. So we help them save that money buying houses and building wealth.
“We will direct them to a financial planner where they need to speak to them to do that. We celebrate growth targets for property management. We just try to reward and celebrate everything that we can and avoid tension. It's been phenomenal and our people go into the industry, who have become fans.”
