We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
171 - The Operations Backbone - With Nicole Kelly
Send a message directly to Lee ( Include your details )
Nicole Kelly shares her 25-year journey in real estate operations and the behind-the-scenes workings of running a major agency with 18 salespeople and 1,200 property managements. Her insights reveal how operations serves as the backbone of successful real estate businesses through people-focused leadership and systematic problem-solving.
• Started career at Century 21 before joining Presence (formerly part of a franchise group)
• Found natural leadership abilities from being eldest child and always taking captain/coach roles
• Manages daily operations across four office locations in Newcastle, NSW
• Runs daily leadership huddles at 8:08 AM to set intentions and remove roadblocks
• Focuses on three critical metrics: AGCI, new managements, and management losses
• Implements proactive client contact strategies that retain and attract property managements
• Transitioned from traditional policies and procedures to digital systems with multimedia training
• Successfully navigated a public media attack by focusing on client service and team support
• Advocates for treating offshore team members as integral parts of the business family
• Believes operations requires genuine love for people and the ability to peel back layers of issues
If you're interested in learning about real estate operations or developing leadership skills in this industry, this episode provides valuable insights from someone who's mastered both the daily challenges and the long-term vision required for success.
Hosted by Lee Woodward
Proudly brought to you by Lee Woodward Training Systems.
Brought to you by Nexr
Elevate your real estate business with Nexr – the strategic partner that helps you overcome challenges in securing more listings, building better teams, and achieving faster growth. With over 20 years of experience in developing Tier 1 agencies, Nexr provides bespoke solutions tailored to your unique needs. Ready to redefine the future of your business? Visit nexr.com.au today.
Discover more:
Joining us at Complete Leader this year is Nicole Kelly. Nicole has been in operations for many years real estate for many years and we're going to find out exactly what the life of Nicole is like in a very big real estate business called Presence in Newcastle, new South Wales. Nicole, welcome to the program. Thank you, lee. How long have you been in real estate? 25 years, 25 years. And isn't it interesting once you you could write the book what I've Seen? You see a lot in 25 years. How did you come into real estate?
Speaker 2:I literally said that to one of my colleagues yesterday let's write a book. Jeez, we might have to change a few names, though. How did I come into real estate? I was working in Cardiff at the local news agency and I used to have to always put aside the papers for an office there. Century 21, kel Lewis was there and his daughter used to come in and pick up the papers, and I'd been at the news agency for many years. She worked there and I used to always just think, oh, she's such a nice lady. We struck up a friendship. We had lunch together. Many months went past, and then she said that they one lunch. She said we're looking for a receptionist. Would you be interested?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Literally I fell into it.
Speaker 1:So you started your career at Century 21?.
Speaker 2:I did Century 21 at Cardiff, kel Lewis, so you started your career at Century 21?
Speaker 1:I did Century 21 at Cardiff. Kel Lewis, yeah, wow, how did you become part of the Kentwell Enterprises Group?
Speaker 2:I left another office locally and it was just time for a break and I thought I'm going to get out of real estate. Went to all of these recruitment companies and they all just sort of said oh, your skills aren't really that transferable to go anywhere else. I'd been doing it for about 14 years at that time, had got out of sales because I had been in sales, got out of sales and decided I really wanted to be in a leadership role and I was doing that at that business and how did you?
Speaker 1:know that.
Speaker 2:Eldest child, eldest female in the family, also eldest child female. Yeah, and I've always been a netball coach or at Girl Guides or Brownies. I had to always be the captain or the coach or it just felt natural to lead people had plenty of opportunities to do that with two younger siblings. It always just felt natural for me to lead people or to say to people come on, let's do this together.
Speaker 1:That's a brilliant answer and the reason I asked how did you know? A lot of people are in sales or in property management and they look at management and leadership as a promotion or that's my next step and quite often it doesn't go well because they don't understand what that role is. And it's a very demanding role when you've got to bring all these different humans together and right now, a time of recording. So we just heard the first part of your world into real estate and we're about to step into the role you do now and the reason you're speaking at Complete Leader is this role of operations. Nicole, how did you get into operations?
Speaker 2:Good question. So, circling back just quickly, I decided after I left that firm recruitment companies were saying you know, you're not really transferable Skills. Sorry, weren't transferable. I sent out an SMS to a couple of ex-colleagues that I used to work with, just saying I've left, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm off to Paris for two weeks. So it wasn't really.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I had a colleague, an ex-colleague, reach out and say I'd really love you to meet Mark Kentwell. Now Mark had been in business for quite some time at that point, but my career was more Lake Macquarie and Mark was obviously based in Newcastle and I thought, oh well, I'll meet him before I go to Paris. What harm is there to do that? So met with Mark and we had a great chat and he said the only really role we've got is sales, a salesperson. I'd sort of had that small part as a career, a small piece in real estate where I was listing and selling, and I thought, no, I've really forged some skills and I wanted to keep going with the leadership stuff. And then he called me a couple of days later and said I'd really love you to meet Shula Kentwell, our CEO. Could you do it before you go to Paris and I could.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I had that moment where I went home to my partner, reg, and said real estate has a plan for me. I can feel myself getting not sucked back in, but it was like it was too great an opportunity not to meet with Mark and Shula, so had breakfast, had a really good chat about leadership, about operations, about what that would look like with this company. I had a letter of offer a couple of hours later and, very lucky for me, they actually created a position in the business for me to start with, which was out at the late Macquarie office and it was just helping the sales division there and, I guess, operationally in the office, just to have a person on the ground. And yeah, 11 years later, here I am still here.
Speaker 1:And where are we now? How many salespeople, how many property managements, what's this business that you run the operations, general management of today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so about 18 people in sales, 1200 managements, four office locations. People in sales 1,200 managements, four office locations. So yeah, it's a relatively big business and recently, two years ago almost have gone through a brand change which was a significant, I guess, change within the business and a very positive one, that we're still feeling the benefits of that today.
Speaker 1:It was an incredible moment because you were such a prominent, big brand, number one in the country for the network and then to go independent. It was like this brand new moment and fresh and modern and different, and for everyone in the company I know it's a big job, especially from operations. You've got every branding, every label. There's this word everywhere. This font's got to go in. There's links, web books. There's this word everywhere. This font's got to go in. There's links, web books, websites. There's so much to do it. Take us into your role today. Actually, I'll ask you this question what is the commitments or the role of operations from your perspective?
Speaker 2:Very diverse. I see it as just serving the people, and whether that's the people that work for Presence, whether that's the clients that work with Presence, it's a role of service each day. So that could mean reviews with people, that could mean handling if there happens to be a client that's not quite happy with the service at the time. It could be putting out spot fires. I'm licensing in charge, so I was often working with the salespeople in relation to legislation, compliance, those sorts of things. Yeah, so very diverse role and I think that's what I love the most. I know two days are the same and I love that because I like that diversity and all the different people and dealing with both the salespeople and the property managers. I love that too, because they're both very different, very different. They both come with huge challenges daily for both of them, but very different ones, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:In a company of this size. What is the leadership structure?
Speaker 2:So we have Mark as the owner still we'll call him the chief visionary officer Then we have myself licensing in charge and partner, so just running the day-to-day I shouldn't say just running the day-to-day operations for the business. Then we have Brett, our chief performance officer, and then we have Kristen Bengston, who's our chief marketing officer, and then we have Ryan Houston, who is also one of the partners of the business as well.
Speaker 1:So the chief performance manager is the new director of sales, traditional sales manager. Is that what that role is?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say traditional, but definitely has that element to it. Yeah, yeah, has that element to it. He is the director of sales now, so he's he's. I was doing that in conjunction with Mark, but it was too big and we need somebody that's dedicated to that role and to the salespeople and their performance, and there's been, since Brett Stafford has been on board, a significant uplift in that, because he's just that wraparound support for the salespeople.
Speaker 1:Take us into a month of duty, commitment and service of Nicole, and the purpose for this question is a lot of our audience are wondering, you know, if I was to ever consider operations. What are the functions? And I loved how you said it's a service role and anyone can come to you and there'll be a lot of people looking for you all day. Nicole, when is he? You'd run around hiding in cupboards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes I hide in the cupboard.
Speaker 1:But take us like we just had a crazy month with many things going on. What's some of those duties and things in reflection of your role?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I guess, as first up, it's the leadership meeting. We have a leadership huddle every single day at 8.08 and we're just reporting on what our focuses are for the day. So I'm running those meetings and there's an extended leadership team that comes into that meeting. There's about, say, I think, there's about eight or nine of us in that meeting. We all report on what our focus is, if there's any roadblocks, how we're feeling, and then we just get on with our day. Having that meeting every morning really just sets the day for everybody. So you're not sort of running around going I wonder what that person's up to. We've set our intention for the day, then it's just game on, the phone starts ringing. Actually, the phone probably most days starts ringing before that. It could be PM issues, it could be sales. Sometimes it's not issues, they just need to talk through a scenario. And then it's reviews of team members. So if that's performance or it's three months reviews, six months reviews, annual reviews, I'm still doing all of those.
Speaker 2:I'm very much a human leader, so for me it's being in with the people. I want to hear the office banter, I want to hear what's going on. I love that collaboration piece. I feel like I can help people see their way in terms of because most little issues that pop up everybody's got an answer. They just need it to come out. So it's lots of questionings, lots of meetings, but, yeah, it's a lot with the team and a lot with clients. I love to be amongst the people. I get my energy from that, from just being with the people. And then there's obviously anything that's going on from a legal standpoint or just dealing with any of those trying to move roadblocks for everybody in this company to be able to do their job the best.
Speaker 1:So when we say clients, you'll still interface with the purchasers, the vendors, the landlords.
Speaker 2:If needed. Yeah, tenants, yeah, I often have people reaching out wanting to provide feedback. Sometimes it's amazing feedback and they really want to give shout outs to people. Sometimes it's just maybe an area where they think we could improve and I want to hear it. I want to hear all of that. And then, obviously, I report that we all do on the leadership team. We report that every week in our weekly leadership team meeting so that we're collecting data along the way, whether that's client feedback or team feedback. It's important for everybody to hear that in that leadership team meeting, because we're looking for patterns. We're looking for patterns. If there's something reoccurring and there's that pebble in the shoe whether that's for a sales team member we have to know about it, can't ignore it. We've got to remove the pebble, remove that roadblock, so they can just get on with their day and, you know, stressful Sales are stressful enough as it is, without having those little pebbles in the shoe that are so annoying 808, explain that to me 808,.
Speaker 2:Well, the strategy behind that is, if you have it at eight, people will always be late. It's just a weird number gives you a buffer, and eight oh eight has a great ring to it.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:I think. And then the next one that happens is the nine oh nine. So that's Brett meets with a group of salespeople at nine oh nine. So it just has that ring to it Eight oh eight, nine oh nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's the daily huddle and then there's the weekly meeting as well, yep, so enormous measurement going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, there has to be, otherwise we don't have our finger on the pulse. So those meetings are run pretty tight, though, like the daily huddle, it's not time for chit chat. There's no time for extended versions. Your timeframe to chat in the daily huddle is about a minute, if not less so, and keeping MK to that can be sometimes challenging. But you've just got to say you've got to take that offline and you've got to push that to. You've got to take that offline with the person. The weekly ones are just literally reporting on our critical numbers, reporting on our data, reporting on what rocks we're working on in terms of what focuses we've got, and then that's it. So yeah, it has to be that way when you've got a team spread across four offices and that's this big.
Speaker 1:So the huddle's by Zoom Yep.
Speaker 2:It's recorded or not recorded? Yep, yep, it's recorded.
Speaker 1:What happens with the recording? Is there notes being generated out of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, fathom notes come straight out of that. So, whoever, if there's a person that's not on that, they are expected to read the fathom notes straight after, just so they get an idea in case there's anything that somebody else was doing that's going to affect their focus for the day. And the same with the weekly. It's also recorded and there's also fathom notes that come off the back of that.
Speaker 1:And what's been the critical numbers? That? Because a lot of people measure too many things. Some people don't measure anything, but what numbers float this place?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, agci, new managements and any loss managements. So we're focusing on those three things. So, for obvious reasons, yeah, the loss management is Hunter Scott from our property management team. He's in charge of that in terms of if there's any pebbles in the client's shoes. He's doing proactive calls to all of our landlords not with any news just to say how are we going, is there anything you need us to be doing better? How are we going? And often he's then uncovering there could be just that tiny little thing oh, I'm just waiting on, or it could be. No, you guys are great. Why are you calling? Is usually the main one. The landlord says why are you calling? And he's like literally just to check in. And we've already picked up managements from that strategy because they're just like wow, you're calling with there's no repairs, there's nothing wrong.
Speaker 1:The roof's okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the roof's okay, we haven't flooded, everything's good. We're just calling, we're just doing a check-in, just that proactiveness, instead of landlords only hearing from us reactively.
Speaker 1:What's a good month of new managements here 30. And what are we targeting?
Speaker 2:30. Probably 20 is where we're and 30 would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Great to know. And sales. What's a good month of sales?
Speaker 2:Good month of sales. Number-wise, I think it's 35 would be a great number in terms of the amount of properties that we've sold and listing about 50. Yeah, but our aim is obviously a lot more than that, but that would be a good number.
Speaker 1:Now. The biggest challenge in the industry right now is recruitment of new people. Everyone's offering ridiculous deals out there and there's more coming and a lot of them don't even add up. But the stickability is where we win in recruitment is why people stick with you. I've had a lot of agents I've coached over the years that have chosen to bring their career to here and at interesting times to do that. Like right in the middle of a rebrand. One of my top agents moved here and he just felt this is where he wanted to be. What's the attraction of these agents coming in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. I think Mark is a big attraction. He's wanting to and from the day that I first met Mark, I know that he's wanting to leave behind a legacy to make real estate better than what he found it. Wanting to leave behind a legacy to make real estate better than what he found it. So I feel like he's the reason most of our salespeople are here, because he was a great salesperson himself, had a great career when he was listing and selling, now doing more of an R&D role.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I feel like that, plus our presence and that is a play on words our presence in the marketplace, our friendly auctions that we run every fortnight there's just so many good things. I guess people hear about presence and prior to that, as you mentioned, being in a franchise where we were number one office for a number of years. So, yeah, there was a lot of traction there for a lot of those years. It's not so much our focus now, because obviously we're independent. It's more being client obsessed and client focused and taking them on the journey that could lead from listing a property with us selling, then management doing granny flats with us, like the whole journey, that holistic journey that we really want clients to stick with us for a long time and our sales agent to come on the journey with us as well.
Speaker 1:Nicole, we're getting a real good understanding of your role, how the management team work together, who's in the leadership team, the meeting structure. When we talk about projects, it's always going to be thrown at you first. We're looking to do this that could be build a new website. That could be bring in a technology stack and operations sort of get the. You'll get that started. You'll get that done. There's a lot to managing projects. Give us just for time, of recording what's some of the projects you're on at the moment as an example of things that take up operational time.
Speaker 2:Well, there is a new website build coming. I'm not running that project but obviously assisting. I helped Mark build the last one many years ago, but that's not going to be so much for me now. For me now it's working alongside Brett as our CPO. At the time of recording he's been with the company for 12 weeks, so it's really handing over a lot of the knowledge that I have of the business and the sales team and how this all works and fits in that at the moment, working alongside Brett every day is worthwhile. So that's probably my biggest project now and that will run through until the end of this quarter, obviously beyond that, but how focused it is at the moment. That's probably my biggest project is to have our CPO fully across and as knowledgeable as what I am within the business.
Speaker 1:Now, nicole, I think I've known you over 15 years and seen you do many things over that time. One thing that I'd like to ask you a question on is how you managed the transitions. So we had Shula Kentwell herself here as the CEO. Someone like Shula leaves the business. There's a gaping hole there of what did she do A lot, and how was that transition?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm very thankful to Shula because when I first come into the business, her and I had we just we immediately had just such a great working relationship and I felt almost from day one that she was providing me so much coaching, training and support and mentoring to potentially step into a role like this down the track. But to say that it wasn't scary when she left is an understatement because she knew the business so well and she had been in roles similar over a period of time. So, yeah, there was a gaping hole. But I guess after she left and it was her time you know she's living in Tasmania now and doing lots of consultancy work to real estate businesses it was just time for Mark and I to, yeah, I guess, link arms and I've learned a lot in that time after Shula left from MK.
Speaker 1:From Shula. Moving on, transition number two let's take Mark out of the sales pot, which is the jump from lister to leader. Now Mark was probably writing 3.2 million in fees and we're going to not have Mark in the sales team anymore. Just step us through that transition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and again, that was time for him too.
Speaker 2:He had done his time in the lounge rooms, I guess, but he had then provided so much training and support to a lot of our lead agents to be able to then those clients now can still call Mark and Mark can then, you know, hand those clients off.
Speaker 2:He's involved at some level. Sometimes it's at the appraisal level, sometimes it's just the discovery call with the client and then he hands them over to some of our senior agents and we've got a lot of our agents that are five plus years. We've got agents coming up to their 10 year work anniversary very soon. So, yeah, there's plenty of people now that Mark has over the years and it's every single one of them in our sales team that he has bought through this business and they have heard him. They probably go to sleep hearing his voice, as I do, and then wake up hearing it. There's just so much he has to say about real estate and he was a damn good real estate agent still is, but he's now coached the team, like I said, some of these senior agents where he's able to just pass those clients off and know that they're going to get a similar experience to when they were dealing with Mark.
Speaker 1:Who assists you? Do you have direct support that you have for yourself or not?
Speaker 2:I have an offshore team member. I also have Liv Block who works in the office. She looks after all of the events and the day-to-day office stuff. So the ordering, you know, all of that sort of thing. She's obviously I'm hoping, I guess, to do what Shula did for me, for Olivia, because she definitely has what it takes. She has care for the business, care for the people. So, yeah, I've got the direct support of an offshore team member who's amazing and is Alex, and also Liv.
Speaker 1:And what does Alex do? Is Alex?
Speaker 2:and also Liv. And what does Alex do? Alex just does all of my administration, so any HR documents or any documentation that I'm working with. She also looks after my inbox and just takes care of onboarding, offboarding all of that stuff that we just have a checklist now, and she's just been working alongside me for a few years now and I can just, I just give her the instruction to say, here, we've got a new person starting on Monday and she just follows the checklist from A to Z Systems and procedures are the backbone of operations, and you've experienced all different types of systems and procedures that the companies implemented, changed, modified or now even implementing a different way.
Speaker 1:What could you share with our listener about what you've learned from systems and procedures that works well and doesn't work well?
Speaker 2:Over the years we always thought written procedures, you know from A4, typing them up. Realize, no one reads those. You've got to have those alongside videos, lots of Loom videos, because people like to sort of everybody learns differently, as we know. So, yeah, what we've done wrong in the past is have those huge big white folders, policies and procedures, manual, and they get outdated so quickly because they weren't digital. So we've gone fully digital now. So we're on TKO for all of ours and it has version control. It stores all of the signatories in the backend of that, so we know who's signed off and who hasn't, and then, if there's an updated version, what version that is. So for me it's more about having the ability to be able to change things quickly and being able to do that pivot quite quickly, because things change so rapidly and having options where people can watch a video as well as read. So we're covering off on both of those things for people.
Speaker 1:Nicole, let's go into the good, the bad and the ugly of operations, because a lot of people think it's well. People like you make it look easy, and this is where people think, oh, that'd be fun and take us into the mind-blowing expectation of just how much volume you've got to take on.
Speaker 2:I guess for me. I don't know whether I make it look easy, but it does feel easy to me. It's my life now that's probably how I can describe it to people and some of my closest friends have known me for a long time One of them, diana actually, who works in the business. We've worked with each other for, I think, 25 years actually for as long as I've been in real estate. She's been in real estate and we've bounced around at a couple of different offices and we've decided we're retiring. At present that's just what we're going to do together.
Speaker 2:But I guess what does operations look like? It's being that person that anybody in the business can call at any time and they know that I'll answer and that I can hopefully help them with whatever that is, and sometimes, like I said before, it can be putting out spot fires. It also could just be a hand on their back saying you've got this. But it is volume and it does feel easy to me because probably I've been doing it for such a long time and I actually love getting the calls, because I often wonder what's this going to be about, what problem have I got to solve or what's this going to be, and I'm fascinated and curious about that. But you have to. You have to love serving, like I've said before a couple of times, and you've got to be super curious. You've got to be able to peel back the layers of what's going on for someone, whether that's a client or a staff member, but you've got to love the people. You have to love people to do this role, because the operations for me is actually just the people.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the ugly. No one likes removing someone from a business or having to let the person know their time's up, and you're such a happy, positive up person, so take us into what you do in your mind in operations, when I have to let this person go it's a tough one and I'll never enjoy it.
Speaker 2:I'll I never want to enjoy it. Yeah, I'm obviously not happy and cheery. When I'm having those meetings, I do a lot of self-talk that I'm freeing up their future. I'm also doing this, you know, for the greater good, not just of them but the company. But it is really tough and I have had to do that only recently and it wasn't an easy task. But I also knew it was right, it was right for them and it was right for us. Afterwards I'm usually a mess in my head and I've got to do a lot of self-talk around. It's okay, but yeah, I wear my heart on my sleeve, so I'm certain that this office could feel if there's something big like that going on, because I would not be my usual happy, cheery self. But yeah, it's a necessary part of the job. It's one that I'll never enjoy, but it's necessary.
Speaker 1:Going to keep you in this part of the interview. That was a brilliant answer and I love the. I never want to enjoy it Like it's. It doesn't matter who you are, and I've had to let so many people go and they burst into tears and you want to cry as well, but then a week later they're thanking you. It's they needed to go and freeing up someone's future is such a beautiful term because you're freeing them up to do something else.
Speaker 1:But probably one of the biggest moments I've seen you manage through incredibly well and I was really concerned for everyone was the business had a public attack and an unfair public attack. I watched the TV show and I was so disappointed in the bad journalism and just trying to make anything out of anything, which was nothing of normal moments. And regardless of that incident, that happened in the media and this has happened to many clients of mine and it always happens the same way the business you held it together. What was going on behind the scenes with all that going on? From an operations level? That may be once in a lifetime that you have to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Gee, I hope so. Yeah, it was tough to manage all of the emotions and my own. But there was one thing and I was getting calls from family members and like, is everything okay? There was one thing I knew for certain that we had not done anything wrong, there was nothing untoward going on and I just had to keep reinforcing that to myself and the team and the team come on that journey with us. But it was some of the toughest times that I've ever gone through in my career. But and and you know it was just an absolute attack on us.
Speaker 2:But yeah, operationally we just we had clients to serve, we had I had lots of conversation with clients because obviously they were ringing up, going what the? We had landlords, we had vendors, we had purchases. You know everybody's questioning not only the business name but personally, people's integrity. So it was literally just that moment where I had to just wake up every morning and think I don't know what's coming. But I've got to be there for the team and the clients and keep this business running because we will come out of it, particularly because we were innocent and interestingly enough, the local paper has definitely.
Speaker 2:We were front page for weeks. It felt like weeks on end. And then we had a senior investigator look at the matter through Fair Trading and they gave us full clearance on that and we sent that to the local publication for them to maybe do an article and of course it was the tiniest little thing on page 54 or whatever disappointingly. But the team stood by us and that for me, shows so much strength in what we've built here in a really strong team, not just sales but property management. Everybody stood by this team and the message of support that Mark and I received and other team members from people that we hadn't heard from for years was really heartwarming. So we knew that we had some members of the community behind us. Of course there was going to be people that believed it, but yeah, it was a tough time, lee, and one that I hope I never have to go through again. But yeah, I've only got the team to thank for that because they stood by us and really supported us through that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my top agent joined you right in the middle of the explosion.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes, yes, he did.
Speaker 1:It was like oh, that all looks good. Yeah, all looks fine. Have you got a job? Yeah, we did.
Speaker 2:And I guess that spoke volumes. That agent is actually still here and one of our top performing agents. He weathered the storm with us, as did the rest of them.
Speaker 1:So yeah, but I would be lying if I said that that was an easy time. It was definitely not. Oh, it was just so unusual. I've seen it happen many times and when the media wants to go someone, they're going to go someone big. They need to make a big statement and even watching the TV show they were saying things. In the real estate industry, if they refer someone on, there's a 20% referral. That has been normal since real estate started. They thought that was a fact that if I referred Bobby out in the back of regional Australia listing, he says to me thanks, mate, there's 20%, that's because he can get it back one day. It's not a clicker or anything like that. But they even didn't understand the fabric of the industry and just tried to make a consumer explosion. But the big thing is you guys have come out strong and better than ever, far bigger than when you were with a franchise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess we've got the journos to thank for that really and they were staking out our office, some of our houses. They popped up into this office out of the stairwell and just knocked and we opened up the door and there they were with cameras. We're just like this is unbelievable. We don't do this stuff. We didn't know what to do. We were on the phone to lawyers going what do we do? They're like say nothing because we could have said a simple thing and looked guilty. And what they did, like I said, they were hanging out the offices and in front of houses and things it was, it was actually crazy and I I honestly just kept thinking I understand this might be a big deal, but no one's died, no one's going to jail. This is is. Is this as big? Does this need all this?
Speaker 1:All we do is provide people with accommodations.
Speaker 2:Servicing the community with houses Like is this, this big? But yeah, anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, massive lesson and probably an incredible learning time for everyone in the leadership team. If you get through that, you can get through anything, and it has made a better company. There's no doubt about it. Let's look back at these final questions of operations. If I sent you a 26-year-old, bright young lady right now who said I want to learn operations, what would be the sequence of learning? Do you think to work in a real estate setup and there's so many principals and directors who are looking? Everyone's looking for a Nicole. Does anyone have any Nicoles? How does someone learn the role?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even I don't remember how I learned the role. It was over a long period of time. But I guess, referring back to Olivia, how I'm teaching her is let's look at the day-to-day running live of the business and there's going to be a lot of things that come up with that day-to-day running. She's going to hear a lot of feedback and data collection along the way. She's also taking our inbound calls, so she's doing what I like to call discovery calls with clients. So she has landlords calling that want to manage their property. So it's getting her used to real estate. It's getting her used to working in an office environment. It's hearing the sales people.
Speaker 2:She's involved in our auctions. She's running our events for us. So we're about to do an investor event that she's doing that from start to finish. Here's the budget live. You run the investor event. You've got to get the panel of people. So she's learning a lot, I guess, along the way, with my hand on her back and with Mark's as well. But we're teaching her to, I guess, the event side, the auction. I feel like it's an event every fortnight. So she's learning from that along the way and she's studying for her real estate license as well. She probably may not choose to go into sales, but she helps property management out with any issues that come along the way. She's just learning, I guess, organically, every single day.
Speaker 1:I can only liken your role and that was so well explained as a wedding planner. There's so much goes on Wedding and divorce planner actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:So you look at an event. An event's just got every type of organisational skill you need. You've got to find, locate and it's a really good example of operations. And I think another good thing to study or read about I know you don't have to go and do a degree course on it but project management. How does the leadership team manage projects?
Speaker 2:Well, if I can go back to the brand change, that was a huge project management to undertake, so it's about having somebody run the project, having a program.
Speaker 1:In technology. What tech did you use?
Speaker 2:Asana. We used Asana for the brand change and that, to me, was probably one of the biggest projects I've been involved in, apart from the website build a few years back. But this one was bigger because, as you said before, we had been in the franchise for about 18 years, so you can imagine how many things we had to change. And look, we still find the occasional thing that we're like, oh gosh, we've missed that. It'll take a long time for that to filter through, but Asana was the project management tool that we used for that and that enabled us to just have the entire list of tasks and then the person that's responsible for them and the timeframe, and it was just literally daily weekly meetings just to make sure that kept on track During this time of the process and procedures responsible for them and the timeframe, and it was just literally daily weekly meetings just to make sure that kept on track.
Speaker 1:During this time of the process and procedures. So we've gone away from this written format. That made us feel good that we had them, but no one read them. I think everyone's experienced that. You've moved to multimedia, so be it. It's like someone listening to an interview that I've done with Mark Kentwell. You would learn a lot about Mark Kentwell from those interviews. I did one the other day. There was a Nicole meaning an operations person leaving a big business and there was somebody else coming into the business. Everything was all good on the ins and outs, but I did the knowledge transfer where I interviewed the Nicole, everything she does from beginning to end, so that the next person can listen to that interview and that knowledge transfer. I think people underestimate that. Actually, it happened to me here Many, many years ago. There was an incredible receptionist who decided she was going to go caravanning around the country Bloody Sue Harrison, yes, and anyway, I was doing an assignment for Shula and she goes oh, introduce me to me.
Speaker 1:And she's been here for so long and she's going to go caravan. And I said let's get her on the microphones now because you're never going to get another person like this one. But things she was doing that no one may have known about, but someone ringing and saying I'm thinking about putting my property on the market. I want to speak to an agent so I can select the right agent for you. What price bracket would you be in? And her skill was saying that should go to Mark, that should go to Pete, that should go to Helen, that should go to Simon. What a skill. And they all told her because she was reception.
Speaker 2:What a great story. She was the goat? She was definitely the goat. And we still have those questions, even now that people ask because there's no better. They'll tell the receptionist for what they think is a receptionist. It's just a discovery call that they won't tell the agent. I'm not telling you that. That's your job, but it isn't necessarily the receptionist's job to know that. And they just blurt it out without even knowing, without realizing yeah, Magical moment there.
Speaker 1:The new word for reception is discovery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, discovery the call's coming in.
Speaker 1:Let's discover who this goes to. Can I handle it? Not handle it? Yeah, but the traditional reception is no longer there.
Speaker 2:No, no, We've done away with that role in particular, and we don't have any receptionist sitting at our front of house. We have people, we have people in the offices and rather than just having one person sitting there, we've got people obviously answering the phones, but they're not sitting at that traditional front of house staring out the window. I've done that job so I know it's not necessarily needed in the, I guess, the real estate of the new age.
Speaker 1:Final question, and it's about transition. The company went from a completely onshore team to having international team members From an operational level. A lot of people tried and I hate the word outsourcing and failed because they didn't treat them as team members. You've had massive success with this. What was your learn from an operations level, of transitioning from onshore to offshore?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Shula and I actually took the trip over to the Philippines once on our own. The second time it was with your study tour actually, lee, and with Joel For us. I'll never forget that trip. We went over, we hired two people on the spot. They had interviews lined up. This was cloud staff. They had interviews lined up for us.
Speaker 2:And we came back and I remember saying to Shula all right, you have one, I'll take the other, we'll train them up. We wanted them to be an assistant for the executive team but also one for the sales team. An assistant for the executive team but also one for the sales team. So I had gone and given a whole lot of work to this person and within two, three hours I thought that would take them a week and they were done. And I said to Shula we're in trouble, we need more work, we need more work for these people. They're so efficient.
Speaker 2:So we still have an offshore team that supports our property management team and also our sales team, and I think I can talk for everybody in the company. We would be lost without them. But they have to be part of your meetings. They're not just outsource. I don't like to call them the offshore team. They're our international team. There's just some play on words where you can definitely have them feeling like they're working alongside us, treat with full respect like you would anybody that works on shore. So, yeah, they're very much a part of our team. They're a part of our family. They're not just offshore over there. We would know things about them Family members, we've had babies, we've had weddings. Yeah, they're an amazing bunch of people.
Speaker 1:Well, nicole Kelly, an amazing interview. I've got so many young women that I want to listen to this interview as they become a career-based operations manager of the real estate industry, which is such a needed role. There's not a lot of resources to this particular role, unfortunately, but this has just become one, and we're absolutely excited to have you at the Complete Leader Conference this year and we look forward to seeing you there.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Lee.