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
176 - What happens when you knock on 1,000 doors in your own neighborhood?
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Jacob McKinnon shares his remarkable journey from international marketing entrepreneur to successful real estate agent, generating $1.4 million in GCI within just three years of entering the industry.
• Started his career as a chef before building a direct sales and marketing company in the UK
• Brought his marketing business to Australia, scaling to 12 locations and 123 salespeople
• Pivoted to real estate when COVID decimated his face-to-face marketing business
• Spent first six months without a listing before securing his first sale that set a street record
• Grew from $85K GCI in first year to $300K in second year and $1.4M in third year
• Disrupted the Southern Highlands market by introducing auction campaigns
• Reduced average days on market from 155 days (area average) to just 35 days
• Creates video content for every listing, often cooking meals in vendors' kitchens
• Built success by systematically door-knocking 1,570 homes in his immediate neighborhood
• Currently leads a team including his wife as operations manager and two sales associates
• Targeting $100 million in property sales this year
Click the links in our show notes to learn more about the Complete Salesperson course, the Complete Property Management day, and the Complete Leader Conference coming up this year.
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, your coach and host and the author of the Complete Salesperson course. Each week, our interviews come about in real time. The last three weeks of interviews, it would have been only three, four days out from the release of the podcast and suddenly we have our next new agent going to be joining us, and today is no different. We are joined by a method of introduction. Luke Whitlam, the incredible auctioneer, reached out and told me about a great story down south and he joins me today, jacob McKinnon. Jacob, welcome aboard.
Speaker 2:Lee, thank you for having me Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Now, Jacob, you're a great story because you actually haven't been in real estate a long period of time. How long have you been in real estate?
Speaker 2:We've just clicked over three years, Lee, in this fantastic industry. Yes.
Speaker 1:Now, prior to real estate. It's always a very important question for me. You were doing marketing in the UK, in London. Take us into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I guess my story probably is similar to a lot of young Aussies. I grew up here in Australia and had sort of itchy feet to travel. I did my chef's apprenticeship as a young fella so got to cook lots of food from all over the world and was pretty motivated to see the world. So at 19, I left Australia and did Hong Kong, germany, france, ireland, got to Ireland and loved it and then ended up moving over to London and moving from chefing into sales, direct sales and marketing and I think at that sort of young age it was a real fast-paced industry and I think that people would probably compare it to the Wolf of Wall Street, minus some of the X-rated behavior. And as a young fellow in London it was a lot of fun. I ended up getting in a position to open up a marketing company in London and then started scaling businesses there. I opened one up in Norwich and Leeds and had quite a successful career in the UK and that was, I guess, the beginning of that story.
Speaker 1:Now, direct sales and marketing is exactly what real estate is, and we'll come into your real estate journey in a moment. But in the UK, what were you doing for direct sales and marketing? Take us into that.
Speaker 2:We set up teams across the UK and then now back in Australia where we'd go out and represent a brand and our main brands were actually in food. So we launched a brand called HelloFresh in London and then came back and helped launch their marketing arm here in Australia and then eventually ended up doing a little over $40 million each year for actually their biggest competitor known as Marley Spoon. So that was one of our biggest clients. But I guess in essence of marketing everything from door-to-door sales to kiosks, shopping centers, events, you name it if it's speaking to someone face-to-face on behalf of the brand, that's what we would do.
Speaker 1:And Jacob with a direct sales and marketing company of that size, especially in another country, and then bringing it back to Australia. Covid hit. What happened then?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we were really humming along nicely prior to COVID and I think I finally, after years and years and years of grinding, got myself in a position where I was really working on the business not in the business day-to-day and was really enjoying what I was doing. We had 12 locations around Australia, 123 guys out selling each day, and my job was to travel around and teach, train, motivate and set strategic direction for the business. Covid happened and, as you can imagine, face-to-face sales was not a business that survived during that period. So we sort of went from doing about $20 million a year in revenue down to zero and we were sort of losing. I worked out we were losing about $100,000 a month each month on month, and I sort of saw the writing on the wall that if we don't sort of put an end to this, it's going to be a pretty slow and horrible death.
Speaker 2:So we decided to wrap up that business and gave a very good friend of mine that I grew up with a call. His name's Adam Woods, who's a fantastic agent for McGrath in Nudgee, and he always said to me throughout my career Jacob, if this marketing business ever goes tits up, make sure you give me a call You'd be great at real estate, and I remember calling him. I said, man, I'm making that call that you've said that I should make for many years. And he said, great, let's do this. So I moved to Mudgee for six weeks and did a crash course in real estate and then moved back down to where I was originally from the Southern Highlands. I hadn't lived down here for 20 years but moved back down and started in real estate when I came back to the Southern Highlands.
Speaker 1:Jacob. What an amazing experience, good and bad. You learn many things about yourself and business in those dark moments. Let's go into this solo first year in real estate. How did you go?
Speaker 2:real estate. How did you go? Not greatly. The first six months was definitely difficult in just getting some traction and originally we sort of set up our own brands here in the Southern Highlands and I went out knocking on doors and after about two months I thought there's got to be an easier way to do this. So I decided to reach out to some local agencies and say, hey, would you be interested in letting me contract within your brand and let me sort of go out and pitch and sell that you represent your brand? And, believe it or not, a lot of them said no. They said you don't have the experience and we're not interested. And you know, I wish all the best. One very well-known agency sort of said, yes, let's catch up, and then stood me up for a coffee. So you know, it was very challenging at the beginning. I couldn't even sort of give commission away. But then there was a local brand here, highlands Property that said yeah, yeah, go for it, we're happy for you to do that. So I went literally door to door in the area that I live, knocking on people's doors, applying, I guess, a bit of the Steinway system. So shout out to Matt. I was listening to his system day in, day out and just sort of following that.
Speaker 2:It took me six months to get my first listing. I was sort of fortunate that with sort of the background in sales we sold that within two weeks for a street record and ended up doing okay In that second half. I made no money in the first six months and then in the second half of the year I did $85,000 in GCI in that second half of that first year. So I started to get some traction and I think one thing that we did really well in the early days was sort of not lose the momentum from a sale or the success story from a sale. Made sure that everybody knew about that and we were really following up with all of the neighbors and that old saying that when you do a sale there's one in the area that will sell now and one later. I just thoroughly believed that and made sure that I knocked on every door and had every conversation until I found the one now and one later.
Speaker 1:And Jacob, you're so right and we look at that technique as working in the heat, working in campaign. And when we look at the momentum that comes from anyone living in the street and no one sold in 10 years one goes, five go it's just unbelievable how it stimulates the opportunity and people want to speak to you when the heat's on, not when nothing else is going on in the freezing blizzard of door knocking for no reason versus working off that street, working off that campaign. Now, in the second year, your good wife came in as the ops manager. Yep, you jumped up to 300K. So big jump from 80K to 300K. Where are you today with your results?
Speaker 2:In year three, we just did a tad under $1.4 million in GCI. It's kind of where things are at today. We have my beautiful wife that's our ops manager, and then we have two sales associates that work within the team, eva and Cameron, who are absolutely fantastic. So we're only a small team, but we've got some great goals. Our goal is to do 100 million in property sales this year and we're on track, so it's good.
Speaker 1:And Jacob. There's an amazing connection here from your beginnings to your now very successful, fast-paced career in real estate. But if you look at the original marketing company in the UK, you were representing a brand because brand leverage is important. You are representing a brand because brand leverage is important. Many people will say, you know, does it really matter being for a brand? If a brand's done the right thing in the area for a long period of time, people turn to brands they trust in times of doubt. Yes Now, yes, you can build your name over a long period of time. But even for yourself you started cold and went hang on a minute. I could leverage off a better way of doing it. You were used to contracting to people to be the brand, so taking the brand to the streets to get the results you have. It's very connected. What was your observation from a professional marketer coming into real estate? Did you think it would be easy the same, or what was your observation there?
Speaker 2:I definitely thought is that all I'm saying I sort of overestimated what I could achieve short term and probably underestimated the position I would be in sort of medium to long term and three years is pretty mediumterm considering but I definitely thought I would have 10 listings under my belt in the first three months. That was my goal and after three months and I had zero listings. That was a sort of a bit of a shock to really what you can achieve short-term. So I definitely was probably a little bit off with that. So I definitely was, you know, probably a little bit off with that. What I found is that people sort of wanted to see me succeed and because I'd made the effort to go and build relationships with people within the community and specifically within my farm area, I made a real effort to build relationships with those people. You know, mow the lawns of elderly people. When they couldn't do it, support people in their area. So give people free coffee vouchers and dinner vouchers and all the stuff that we hear on all of these podcasts to do.
Speaker 2:I did all of that with zero return on that investment and if I actually look at what we actually made in year one, we definitely lost money in year one. We put a lot more money into the business than we got out of it. But it was interesting. I just did a sale last week and I knocked on their door three years ago. I said why did you sell with me? They said, well, you made an effort to come and get to know us three years ago and we thought there's no one else we would sell with but you. So I think that the sort of knock-on effect of that early graft and grind, when you don't see the instant return on investment for your effort, it's having a bit of blind faith and it's so difficult, but it's having that. You know, if the people can do it, then I can do it too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely amazing, and Jacob correct me if I'm wrong you're working 1,570 homes. Is that the patch that you've got?
Speaker 2:That's it, Lee. Good memory.
Speaker 1:Very good and you did do something different. Nothing wrong with the Southern Highlands it's a beautiful area but they're not an auction area and you took auction to the market.
Speaker 2:We did thanks to Luke Whitlam, who I was fortunate to meet in the early days. And yeah, down here you sort of mention auction and it's considered a bit of a taboo or a swear word. Yeah, I probably in the early maybe didn't get a few listings because I was the only one talking about auction and what helped with that is again the success story of auction. Where I could actually give them a case study of this is a property and there was a few examples of expired listings where I said, well, this property has been on the market for two years with three other agents. All of them have had the same strategy. Typical strategy is list it really high, don't tell anyone the price and, trust me, one buyer will come along. Generally, what vendors were being told here and I said, well, why don't we do something the opposite? Why don't we sort of list it quite aggressively, probably in and around where the market sees value? Why don't we display the price so that people don't have to try and guess it and we can be pretty open and bring people in? And then why don't we put a deadline on the campaign and get a result?
Speaker 2:We then started to have multiple examples and now we would have at least one example each week of a great example of auction, and what we were able to do is say, hey, we're going to do one of three things, and that is either sell your home prior to auction at a great price, we're going to sell it at auction at a great price, or we're going to sell it after auction at a great price.
Speaker 2:The one thing that is consistent is we're going to sell it at auction at a great price, or we're going to sell it after auction at a great price. The one thing that is consistent is we're going to sell your home at a great price and you've got an option whether you'd like us to sell it within four to six weeks. And that was probably what started to shock people here is the average days on market in the Southern Highlands is 155 days. When we were able to say our average days on market is 35 days, people are like well, I'd rather do 35 days of opens than 155 days of opens and I'd rather get a great price now as opposed to maybe not so great price in six months.
Speaker 1:Absolutely love it. And all these training moments come into audios where we discuss at the Complete Salesperson course the golden rule of real estate. The golden rule of real estate and there's a lot of people driving along right now about to shout it out is the longer your property is on the market, the less the purchasing community expect to pay. And it's such a valid fact of real estate. And auction was designed to be an accelerated marketing program.
Speaker 1:It was never designed to just if it sells on the day, that's a bonus, but it was designed to accelerate a marketing plan where you would say to an owner would you like to sell the property with a ceiling price or a non-ceiling price? Non-ceiling price, excellent. Well, we have an option for that. And would you like to set the date that your property will be sold? Can you do that? We can put a proposed date on it of the 20th of September, which is five weeks away from now, which is the auction date. And people would go man because this guy's got direction. And actually, I must say on air it was a very famous Charles Tarby who brought that to the market where he said would you like to set a date that your property will be sold. And what he was saying is if you listen to me, with the right marketing on that date, it'll be gone. That's the truth of real estate. So I think what you're doing there in that area is absolutely accelerated marketing.
Speaker 2:Take us into your use of video, just taking some notes here, lee, thank you into your use of video. Just taking some notes here, lee, thank you. There you go. I had the pleasure of meeting Charles recently at a property. So yeah, big fan, okay.
Speaker 2:So I guess for us we knew that video in the Southern Highlands again was something that they were only doing on sort of really prestigious properties, that sort of properties that really 5 million area.
Speaker 2:We started doing video on every property, regardless of the property, and if I look at our last financial year, our lowest sale was 390,000 in a little studio and our highest sale was 4 million and every single property would have had some form of video marketing on it and that helped promote the property and also helped promote me and then also bring in vendors because they said you know what we really love, the video that you've done there. And I think that was also a chance for me to sort of connect my personality to what we do. Chance for me to sort of connect my personality to what we do, being from a chef in cooking background and loving cooking. A lot of our videos are of me cooking in a vendor's house. A part of my listing presentation was would you like me to cook you a meal in your kitchen and they'd be like, wow. Well, no other agent said that, so that definitely probably helped get a few across the line.
Speaker 1:Absolutely love it. But what a great thing to do in your property videos that today we're at Sunshine Drive. I've just put on whichever meal you're cooking and we look forward to seeing you on Saturday. The Mad Chef real estate agent is there, but everyone loves cooking, hence MasterChef has such a following. But you've picked on something that's common to everyone and every home's got this incredible kitchen moment if it's got a great kitchen. But I really love in this interview how you've connected the dots from direct sales and marketing in a different country, bringing it into this profession which is direct sales and marketing. A big learning curve there for you. And this becomes my final question, jacob, from someone who is from professionally doing direct sales and marketing and teaching people to do it. If you didn't know you now, but have the experience you've had in real estate and three years to hit 1.4 is just exceptional. What would you tell a brand new agent to do in marketing for real estate, putting your hat back on as a professional direct marketing salesperson? What would you tell them to do?
Speaker 2:Probably not try and make lots and lots of money tomorrow. I would set some realistic targets and goals over the next three to four years, and there's not many trades that you can do now, in less than three years, and be proficient at that trade. I think the real estate industry gives the perception that you can start today and be rich tomorrow. So I would definitely break that thinking, which is probably something I've learned now from going through this process. That's probably number one. But then I guess, answering your question more directly, I would find an area that you're able to connect with people, and I think so often we're like, yeah, but we want to sell the biggest and the most expensive homes. So does everybody else. So you might find that that's the most competitive market for you to try and break into. My suggestion would be where you live is the best place to start. So one thing that people connected a lot with me on is that I live and own a house in the 1,500 homes that I prospect, and my initial pitch on how I started was I went around those 1,500 homes, I just introduced myself. So, step one I went and knocked on everybody's doors and said hey, how are you? My name is Jacob McKinnon. I've actually just moved to Roland Road around the corner. I would explain my house and I'm a real estate agent. And I've actually just moved to Roland Road around the corner. I would explain my house and I'm a real estate agent and I've also just started as a real estate agent. I don't have any experience and I was very open and genuine with that. I say I'm not going to ask you to sell your house today, but I just wanted to let you know who I am and, if it's okay with you, can I keep you updated with any sales in and around our home. So I was really pitching that. I'm from here too and I'm like you and I care about this sort of pocket of barrel. What I found people that disarmed them a little bit, they're like this guy is so sort of genuine and non-threatening because he didn't knock on my door going hey, how are you going? Do you like where you live? Do you want to sell? It was just a hey, how are you? My name is Jacob Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2:So that was sort of step one and then I would provide them a market update and really at the early days it was just giving me something to do each day, because I would go out in the afternoon and knock on everybody's door and then the next morning I would have all of these market updates that I would have to prepare. So I would prepare all these market updates, I would write them a card, a handwritten card. In the card I would put a coffee voucher to the coffee shop in our 1500 homes so it's a coffee shop in the area and I'd say thanks very much for meeting me. Yes, that was lovely to meet you, looking forward to keeping you in the loop. I'd then go back and I wouldn't pitch them again. I would just say hey, lee, we caught up yesterday. I just wanted to pass you your market update. Lee, we caught up yesterday. I just wanted to pass you your market update. And they would be about to say to me Jacob, I'm not selling. So before they could say that I would hand them the market update, and then I would turn around and walk out the drive or start to walk towards the gate, and so they're like, oh, this guy's not even trying to pitch me today, it's like just quickly passing you this market update. So I would do that.
Speaker 2:And then, once I'd done that, I'd then go around again. I know it's a lot of door knocking, but I'd go around again and then I'd chat to people and they'd be like, yeah, great to see you, how's it all going? And they then started to engage in my story. So then I was able to say, oh, I'm really excited, I've actually just listed my first home. Oh, I'm really excited, I've actually just listed my first home. And I remember when I listed my first home I reckon I knocked on a thousand doors to tell them I've listed my first home. One person said to me they said Jacob, you listed a home on Denby Drive. That's a fair way. From here I'm like, I know, but I'm just really excited, I want to let you know I've listed a home. And they were really supportive and engaging. So that was the next thing that I did.
Speaker 2:And then I kept going around knocking on doors, chatting to people, being in the community. I just knew every single day I was sort of you know, if I was staying in the office any longer than two hours in the morning, it wasn't productive and I was getting antsy. So I just had to be out speaking to people. And then I started to do more appraisals and people would say to me hey, you know I don't want to sell, but do you want to come in and just like have a look around? And at that time I mean I knew nothing about how trying to work out the value of a property, right, and I really didn't know anything about homes either, and that's probably important for me to say this very transparently on the call that I didn't know the difference between a skirting board and an architrave, I didn't know corners, I didn't understand homes. But people would take me around and they would tell me what they've done to their home and I would ask them I'd say, since you've purchased it, what have you done to improve the home?
Speaker 2:And they'd be like we did this, we built this studio and we've done a 40 mil Caesarstone benchtop and I would write down 40 mil Caesarstone benchtop. That must be an important thing to know. I started to educate myself on homes and people and what they would do to add value to their home. And then when they were like, well, what do you think my home's worth? I would say that's a great question, but I'm going to need to go back to the office tomorrow morning and have a look at the comparables and really understand your home before I can give you a price. So I would go back and you know I would just jump on RP Data, call Logic, work out what the growth is and what they're suggesting the home is worth.
Speaker 2:And very early in my career I would just go back with whatever RP data said. I had no idea what a home was worth and someone would go well, that sounds pretty good. That's what I thought it was worth and that was how I picked up that first listing and now I've obviously got a good idea of what they're worth. But hopefully that's not a too long answer to that question, but just going out and building a relationship with a small group of people and Simon Sinek always says you're better off to be well-known by a few people than be kind of known by lots of people. So just building a really strong core relationship with just a few people. It doesn't need to be many.
Speaker 1:Absolutely brilliant answer to the question, and one of the themes I love about this and you've just articulated that so well is don't be confident, be competent and to study what you're doing and take the notes you have and be interested in the learning process. And there's one thing about real estate that I passionately love about this industry and it's this one point If we were always right as agents, the market would never go up because everything would still be $199 out there, whereas whenever we get a record price, we're absolutely wrong out there. Whereas whenever we get a record price, we're absolutely wrong, and I love that that we're not here to predict the price. We're here to you know anyone can quote you a price, but it's our job to find out the price and that buyer engagement level from working the property. So let me bring through 10 people who've got X amount of dollars to spend and let's see how they feel about it. And once we've worked out that buyer engagement level, we can then discuss where it's going to go and what the marketing needs to do. But pricing is something you're exploring and if we were right, the market would never go up. That's a great point.
Speaker 1:Well, jacob McKinnon, an absolute brilliant interview. Really enjoyed your story and you and I had a quick chat off air the other day to meet each other via phone due to method of introduction coming in from Luke. We look forward to hearing from you in the future. 1.43 years in is an incredible performance and to your wife and two associates, congratulations and we look forward to hearing from you again.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I appreciate it and it's been great to meet you. The industry talks about you and you're. I appreciate it and it's been great to meet you. The industry talks about you and you're very well known, so it's been an absolute pleasure and thanks so much.
Speaker 1:And that concludes another edition of we Are Selling. In our show notes are the links to next events and we have the complete salesperson course, the complete property management day and also the complete leader Conference for this year. Click on the link and I look forward to seeing you at a live event.