We Are Selling with Lee Woodward

148 Business Energy - Joel Hood

• Lee Woodward • Season 1 • Episode 148

Share episode
Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling this week. We're going to have a focus on working with passion and getting stuck into that role that makes us the absolute best real estate professional. Now I've had a goal to do this topic for a while. As many people will tell me, it's different in our area. You don't understand in this state, Lee, and after a while you think what if I just picked you up, took you somewhere else, made you start from scratch? How would you go? Would you have the same objections? Thinking so, today's story is perfect. A person from my own heart, from the original plumbing world, please welcome to our airways, mr Joel Hood. Thanks for having me, lee. Now, joel, you were a plumber before real estate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 10 years of plumbing or just under it sort of got to that point where it was start your own business and that would be a sort of journey for the rest of your life or make a change. It was around the time of the GFC. Work had definitely slowed up. The type of work that I enjoyed doing was the large sort of civil work. I was on the excavator a lot the bobcat, that sort of dried up and sort of became maintenance plumbing and it was time for a change and transitioned after that 10-year mark to real estate in 2013. And it's been a fantastic ride since then.

Speaker 1:

Now, joel, today your whole big story is you moved from Victoria to Queensland and we're going to get into that part of our story because what you did in a cold start in an area where you are not brought up, and what you did is a great lesson for anyone listening to this audio today who's about to hit reset. And one thing I say on this program a lot is every day you wake up you're either whinging or winning, and today we're going to hear a winning story. But I'm going to go back in time. How did you actually get into real estate before we get into the full story?

Speaker 2:

Yes, obviously, as I was saying that the GFC hit and sort of.

Speaker 2:

You know, I was starting to do some fly-in fly-out work and I was recently married with a child and I'd purchased a property. So I had a mortgage and I think just looking at the long-term future, just doing the fly and fly, wasn't ideal for my family in the long term and my aunt and uncle owned a real estate agency and I was very fortunate that they gave me an opportunity to start. I did resist it because I think that stereotypical salesperson was not me with my experiences through purchasing cars and whatnot, and I was taught that it was very much just the client has a problem and help them find a solution, and that obviously is how it kicked off. I started with them for about 18 months and I met a brilliant agent within the area that was heading in the direction of marketing and negotiation and a background of sales around psychology, and his name was Jarrod Carman and I jumped into his space and had a fantastic five or six years with him before making the move to Queensland.

Speaker 1:

So when you went to move to Queensland, though, you didn't just continue on into real estate, you took a gig in corporate for agents' agency. Take us into that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we ran at a pretty fast pace in dick in real estate it's a brew and evu and myself and my three team members, um, we were doing about 120 deals a year and we ran really hard and we had a.

Speaker 2:

We had strong growth within a short period of time and when the move to queensland came, it came for a few reasons, but one of them was diagnosis of my daughter, um, which wasn't a great one, and we thought the move was going to be better for her health, which it has been and it was also to create some memories and do the things that we thought we'd do long term but do it sooner, and came up, decided to go into corporate just to get away from the Saturdays and, as everyone knows, in real estate it is very much 24-7.

Speaker 2:

So I jumped into corporate in Queensland and agents agency expanded in Queensland and that role was to bring on officers and obviously just to assist them with growing their businesses, make sure they were the right fit for our business and vice versa, and I enjoyed that for 18 months. It was really good. But, as I said to you prior to this that real estate agents are an interesting breed and my passion was very much with clients listing and selling. It was a brilliant 18-month period, but my long-term future is very much in selling real estate.

Speaker 1:

So so much going on here in this interview. I just love it. Firstly, congratulations. In your corporate role you went from three to 22 offices, so that's an amazing effort to go into recruitment and get people to back themselves and do what you did with that particular model In that time in corporate and you're a very interesting tinkering brain type person. What did you observe of the agents trying to do what they do and also what did you learn from seeing the back end of business?

Speaker 2:

It was interesting because it was a time where a lot of tech came into the space and I feel like it was with a lot of distractions, and I think there was a lot of emphasis from the agents I was working with on looking for that magic bullet and then looking at these distractions thinking that they were going to be the things that were going to solve their ongoing problems. But the honest truth was the basics that I was sort of brought up on with and had great success with were the very things that were going to get into the destination. So I learned about a lot of new software and tech and what was coming in. There were certainly things that could fast-track agents and assist them with the day-to-day, but it just didn't take away from the basics. That is our industry face-to-faces, cold calls and obviously getting in the door to speak to clients.

Speaker 2:

So it was an interesting one in that I sort of rode the highs and lows with team members starting businesses, growing businesses, having issues with staff and trying to overcome that. But at the same time it was very fortunate for myself because what it did was give me an opportunity to prepare for my own restart and obviously in a different state. There is different legislation, there's different rules. Buyer behaviour is very different here, conveyances are very different and, as I said, it just gave me a little bit of a look behind the curtain as to what would be a good way to start Joltwood Property, mark 2.

Speaker 1:

So Joel Hood Property Mark 2 launches. Where did you select and why so?

Speaker 2:

I live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I'm married with three children. They go to the local schools and play a sport at the local clubs and I think I'm a big believer in listening and telling where you live. You know some people like to separate that and I believe in the past maybe I sort of thought that was something that you could do, but I just genuinely believe that if you come from the right place and you're at the coffee shop and you're at the school and you're integrating with local community I personally coach my daughter's netball team All of these things are business generators.

Speaker 2:

I don't have to necessarily be wearing my logo on my shirt and whatnot, but just being a good member of the community is going to win your business in this industry. We also sponsor a lot of these clubs, so obviously, yes, the branding goes up there, but they're seeing face-to-face involved, helping their kids and helping the community. We selected, obviously, the location in Coolum Beach where we currently live and we now have our office and we work at Postcode as such, and it was a matter of obviously looking at those that were already in the area and the opportunities and we selected core areas within that postcode that we felt the most opportunity sat for taking market share quickly.

Speaker 1:

So let's get a snapshot. Where are we today with Joel Hood Property? We have an office. How many staff.

Speaker 2:

So Joel Hood Property started August 2022, and it was myself and an assistant within that first six months. And there is now. We've got a rent roll with 240 managements. We've got four and that was a purchase rent roll, so I don't want to make it sound like I've had organic management. It was an opportunity that arose from a previous relationship with the agent that used to manage my properties in Queensland when I lived in Victoria. I reached out and it was just not a planned move, but it was an opportunity and it came with a shop front, so we now have three offices. We settled on our third today, so basically, three offices that we've busted down walls to work between. So we've got 210 square meters. We've got four in property management and we've got 16 team members in total, so 12 in sales and administration. So I run an EBU with a team of five and the others are stand-alone agents or administrations. It's happened very quickly.

Speaker 1:

Very quickly. And, Joel, I want you to go back to this first year, because for a lot of our listeners right now they're going to go. What happened when you went to an area that you didn't grow up in? You've just landed on the beaches. No one knows who you are, what did you do and what were the numbers in that first year for you?

Speaker 2:

I think for me, the drive really came from people telling me oh, it's very clicky here, you're going to struggle to get in the suburb. Numbers are lower. Things are different. I got told consistently from corporate team members within our business when I was in corporate that Queensland's different, joel, this marketplace is different. And my thought process was well, people have properties, People need to sell properties. It can't be that different. It's just a matter of getting in front of them and obviously working with them, assisting them and getting the deal done as such.

Speaker 2:

So to me, I just looked behind the scenes and obviously, with your training lead, it was nowhere near as in-depth as what you train, but it was looking at a heap of different lead fields, reverse engineering, and saying this is the number of listings and sales I want to do, so this is the number of appraisers I need. Now, how do I get into those doors? Because the issue when you start cold is yes, we had no data. We had no contacts, no past clients, no referrals. We had a few friends, no family. So it was trying to hit the ground running as quickly as possible friends and no family. So I was trying to hit the ground running as quickly as possible. I chose a saturation letterbox strategy cold calling, I did a purchase of some data and then we just had presence in all the other fields. We took out a billboard, we went into the local paper, we put pointer boards out obviously quite religiously, and we had presence on social media. But we didn't sponsor, we just wanted to. We did email sponsor, we just wanted to. We did email marketing, we just wanted to be present in all of the spaces. But our main focus for getting indoors was cold callers ringing to get in for appraisals and letterbox drops, information, one fortnight price drive or requesting an appraisal, the following and within the. So it started August 2022,. I literally just walked for two days straight dropping and I got my first call for an appraisal, the following and within the. So it started August 2022. I literally just walked for two days straight dropping and I got my first call for an appraisal on the second day, listed my first property in the first week. Love it. Yeah, we were off very quickly, so it can happen quickly and it's amazing when you're really desperate just how well you can perform. Because I knew I was in the back of that particular listing. They bought it many months ago from the local agent that was the leader in the marketplace, with an office about 300 meters from their property and essentially he had complacency sent them basically the information, barely spent time sitting with them. I ensured that both stakeholders were at the property and I think they could just feel the energy of how much I wanted to work with them, needed to work with them and the service I was going to deliver. So I think when you go to a new marketplace you just have to pretty much almost desperation, but at the same time making sure that you are working for the client and they can just see that you're the right person to be in the best interest to sell the property.

Speaker 1:

Joel, I just absolutely love that after all these years, the price driver still gets people indoors and I absolutely love that business. Energy trumps any brand, any profile in the world, because people can sense that hunger of you, really want this and they think they're just going to get it. And I still love today. You don't have to be that good to be that good in the way of not so much in knowledge. It's like fees If your energy's low, your fees are low. If your energy's up, your fees are up. Your chances are up when your energy's up. Did they ask you the question of Joel, have you sold any houses here? We don't know who you are. What was going on there?

Speaker 2:

They didn't have to ask me. They did, but even the other agents were telling them. So the reality is it was amplified and I actually addressed it. I addressed it. I thought there's no point in sugarcoating it, I'm just going to get to the point and raise the objection and get to the point and just explain though and this is the thing for those that are moving to a new area, that have done it before it's a little bit different to someone who's starting completely cold. So the number one thing I'm pushing to any agent I speak to now is get trained up as quickly as you possibly can, because if you go to a new area or something changes the knowledge you have never does, and that's the thing I found that I've gone into a marketplace obviously completely cold, but the skill set, um, was there to understand the psychology of sales and how to execute as quickly as possible, and I think to me that's, just as I said, something that just doesn't get taken from you, and when I sat with the clients and I simply said guys, I understand your concerns and objections that obviously I haven't sold a property locally or after the first couple, I've only sold a couple of properties locally. What I want to talk to you about is my history. But also I want to talk to you about is what I want to do for you and your property and how I'd like to handle the sale.

Speaker 2:

And we got through that really quickly and I found, you know, we kicked off. So you asked for numbers. We went August 2022 to the end. We wrote 300K or just under in that time, so roughly I think about 15 to 18 sales in that first sort of six-month period. Then we had great momentum going into 2023. So we just missed the million mark. We wrote 994. So I think somewhere in the vicinity of 40 to 50 sales in that calendar year and this year, very excited We've just literally cracked the 2 million mark. So I think we've done about 80-odd sales, or 75, somewhere in that sort of realm, and we've still got a few to do this side of Christmas and next year we're going for three. So you know, I guess, to give people context, it happens very quickly, but it's really just been off the back of doing the basics and doing them well.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely brilliant, and just for our listener, you were using a cold calling service. Explain that to us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so essentially my focus was leveraging leads as quickly as possible. So I'm all for picking up the phone, I'm all for knocking on doors, I'm all for doing letterbox drops. I will do the work, but if I can get someone else to help me, I'm going to increase my business by 50%. I'm going to do it a whole lot quicker. So I purchased data, clean data in the area, and I was making sure that I did a letterbox drop around an area and then there would cold call around that area. So it was amplifying. And then I had an appraisals industry pointer board as well. So I was visual.

Speaker 2:

So I was just trying to get that recency effect of being present everywhere. I'm not a pusher. My feedback to the cold caller on my behalf was to ensure that the Joel Hood Property brand came across, friendly information was being given and that if they wanted an update then I'm more than happy to pop in. And I don't care if I'm sipping coffee with Nana. I just want to start generating relationships in the area and I think in that first six-month window, 30% of my appraisals came from letterbox drops, 30% came from cold calling and the final third were literally just open homes, a little bit of market presence, the odd referral here or there, catching people on the street, local community and whatnot, but the 60%, just pretty much around the two-thirds, was cold calling and letterbox drops.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely fantastic and just love how you've shared your story with transparency to the consumer, considering okay, what's your story? You don't have to be in the area for a hundred years to be known and I think more than ever now people want to know you, that you are capable, and as you interview the owner, they get to know who you are, based on how good you are at interviewing them to find out. And, as you said before, what are you fixing? Every person we represent in a marketplace has a current situation and that current situation is whatever that reason is for that owner. And then you're not from Queensland, but you are from real estate, the certain skills that the Melbourne market has that the Queensland market doesn't, especially in the area of accelerated sales.

Speaker 2:

Joel, what do you think those initial 50 listings listed with you Energy and passion? There's no doubt and I do say to team members that there's no point in being 60% productive for 52 weeks of the year. You're better off taking body holidays and I need one at the moment and we're very close to having one. But I made this decision obviously when I took my holidays early in the year and we've grown quickly. But I'd rather be 100% productive for 46 weeks of the year.

Speaker 2:

So I think the clients picked up on that energy and we do live a pretty healthy lifestyle. I mean, zane, we're up early, I'm in the surf, so the energy is obviously through the lifestyle that we live. But they could feel that the other thing is very much just around, I believe, being present with the client and asking questions. So all of my business is question asking and good questions that maybe there was a point of difference instead of selling the agency or the agent and asking the client situation and then basically diagnosing the best move forward from there. I think maybe it was a slight point of difference and again, just very fortunate with the people that I worked with in Vic and the training that I did receive there. But I feel like maybe that was the point of difference and you've got to look at your strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 2:

And some people would think I'm from another state and I'm not local and I didn't go to the local school. Well, maybe turn it on its head and say, okay, well, what are the advantages of that? And for me it was that I worked in a very professional, competitive marketplace and we do have a lot of Victorian purchases here in Queensland. I can relate to them. So, okay, let's talk about how I can relate. What are their expectations? What am I going to prepare for them? Because a lot of Queensland sellers want to sell to a Victorian buyer because the premise is that they will be in a good financial position to pay the best price for their property. So I think it's just looking and going okay. Well, what are the negatives? What are the weaknesses? Well, what's actually the strength that comes out of that? And that's what I put forward to the client in the lounge room.

Speaker 1:

Love it as we listen to this as humans. There is so many people that buy into the fact that I'm not from Queensland, I didn't grow up here, and they actually make that the problem themselves, and I'll have people explain that to me and I'll go yeah, how's that serving you? They go what what you've just said 14 times in a row to me? How's that serving you? The one that brings it up all the time is you. Why does that matter? I've got to ask you this question Were you scared, opening up what was going through your mind?

Speaker 2:

No, I think if I hadn't had a completely start the transition directly from Victoria and up to here then maybe there would have been a bit more hesitation and maybe it wouldn't have been as organised to get going from the beginning. I think, working in that corporate role and meeting with Queensland agents and understanding the differences in legislation and the differences in the way the rules are around listing and selling property in Queensland because there are definitely differences Coupons that in Vic auction must give a price guide. In Queensland it's the polar opposite. You are not allowed to give a price guide and I work from a place of transparency with my negotiations and conversations with buyers and sellers. So that was a little bit foreign and difficult. But that time in corporate gave me that flexibility to that time to sort of adapt to how I was going to go about it. I didn't have nerves.

Speaker 2:

I think this is again the big thing. I sort of push people. You've got to be on the border of confidence and arrogance. You definitely don't want to be stepping into the arrogant side but you absolutely have to have confidence because the sellers want to work with you if they're like you.

Speaker 2:

But I also want to know can you handle their biggest asset and because you look at people in your marketplace and you think that's not a nice person, why are they selecting that person? Well, that person has confidence that they're going to deliver a brilliant result and ultimately, this client is relying on every cent from the sale for their next move in some way. So you know we sit right on that line and make sure we don't go across it, but we're there showing the client that we're confident we're going to get it across the line. And also, if you're really confident in your skill set and your training and this is what I do push a lot of people is, if you have hesitation, there's two things you don't have great product knowledge or you just don't have the right skill set, and that can be improved.

Speaker 2:

So I was going in really confident with my experiences going through other agencies' open homes and seeing what they were delivering campaigns, days on market and how they were speaking to clients that I was going to be able to exit inroads. And I think, again, focus should be solely on yourself. I am always focused on what we're doing. Of course, you keep an eye on the competition and you do a little bit of a review, but you shouldn't be focused on what everybody else is doing. You really should be focused on your path and, obviously, what your goals are.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely amazing. You would have hit the fork in the road also of do I stay Joel Hood solo agent with two leverage agents and assistants meaning, sorry, essential services from agent's agency or do I grow into a full-blown real estate office? Was that a decision from the beginning or was it naturally the fork in the road? No, it was just organic growth.

Speaker 2:

I definitely did not have this vision that within two years we would have three offices and 15, 16 team members. That was not the goal. But I think we had people that were. There's a few that we did obviously reach out to hire, but they and I needed because we had gaps we needed to fill very quickly. We'd gotten to a point and we definitely needed that extra level of support. So we thought, well, we're not just going to all run at 120% here, we're going to bring people in to help us and have a life still, but organically, we had team members reach out and that was just no different to myself reaching out to Jared in Victoria.

Speaker 2:

I saw what he was doing, I believed in his vision and his path and obviously the feedback he was getting from clients in the marketplace and I wanted to be a part of that. And I think we've sort of attracted and the great part about that is because we've attracted those sorts of people. They're very similar to us. The Christmas party we recently had was an absolute ball because the people in the office and their partners were all very similar and like-minded. So it was organic growth and for me personally, I'm confident, if you call me in a couple of years' time. Our business won't expand too far beyond where we're currently at. You have to know your limits and I can tell. For me, it's always been about listing and selling property. I want to be a selling principal, I want to be involved with my clients on the ground and this is a size where I think we can service our clients well without becoming too big, beautiful Final question For anyone out there listening to this right now who's thinking about doing what you've done.

Speaker 1:

What would be your advice?

Speaker 2:

I mean, at the end of the day, I think a lot of people don't move on the basis like we were making exceptional money in Victoria and the accountant sort of said Joel, don't do this because essentially you'll be in a good position in five to 10 years. Do it down the track. But for me and for the family, we just settled where we were and this is where we knew we wanted to be, and there was personal reasons as well as to why we wanted to make it happen sooner. So we were doing it for the right reasons. I think that the fear of doing things out, of trying to step away from obviously and not obviously wanting to go on the basis that we were making so much money, was not the right reasons.

Speaker 2:

It's really just come down to passion. So the passion obviously led us to come up here and then the passion brought us back into the industry and the growth and the success we've had is because we were coming from a place that we really wanted to work in this field. We really wanted to work with this particular community and we felt like we could make a difference. So I think the thing is that people that are listening kind of go okay, is this the right move for me? They shouldn't be thinking financial. They should be thinking where do I want to be in 10 and 20 years time? And one day you'll be laying in the lounge room. You'll probably have an agent come in, you'll be in your mid 80s looking to sell your final asset and you'll be ready for life to be over and you want to look back and go geez, we had a great trip and we did what we wanted to.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's for me now, I guess, is exactly where we're supposed to be, and I'm in for a great 50 years hopefully 60 years before it's my time Amazing. Well, Joel, we are very looking forward to seeing you at the Complete Salesperson course. You've got yourself and nine of your staff coming along, which is going to be wonderful. The Queensland marketplace is always an exciting group of agents that turn up. I want to thank you for appearing on we Are Selling with your unique and brilliant story. Congratulations, and we'll see you in 2025. Thanks, Lee.

Speaker 2:

Looking forward to it next year.