THE PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT REVIEW
“28 Norfolk Street, Paddington, was my first sale, and I reckon that sale saved my career... because I got a sale, and then I got a second shortly after, and then a third one. I built momentum.” McGrath consistently refers to “momentum” as one of the chief tenets of his success, and this start in agency is a perfect example of exactly what that means. HE HIRED NON-EXPERIENCED AGENTS TO CREATE A POINT OF DIFFERENT FOR MCGRATH ESTATE AGENTS “At some point – four or five years into my real estate career – I figured I needed to be in an environment that was going to allow me to become the best real estate salesperson I could be.” Years of toiling away under the guidance of older and more experienced agents had led to McGrath developing a desire to go out and prove himself on his lonesome. “I figured I had to go and do it myself... so I went and started from the loungeroom, and then I went to a serviced office a few months later.” “Fortunately, I was naïve enough to not know how much money I should have had to start; how much experience [I lacked], and how many courses I hadn’t done. I just figured that if I was good at selling real estate that’s all I needed.”
“I was trying to do the little things. Still auctioning and selling real estate, but finding little points of difference that were customer advantageous.” HOW MCGRATH MANAGES BIG EGOS. As McGrath Estate Agents experienced growth and more offices were opening up, bigger and better agents were taking their talents to McGrath’s agency. With more established salespeople coming onboard, McGrath was faced with the challenge of taking agents with entrenched views on how to approach particular problems, and helping them adapt to the McGrath‘s framework. “Managing the highest performers is often the most challenging task – whether you’re in a sporting environment or a business environment, people who are elite at what they do... sometimes that comes with big egos, or a sense of entitlement.” “You will find from time-to-time people’s egos get in front of them.” The key to getting past a big ego? “Consistency. Over the years, transparency and consistency [have been instrumental]… We’ve built a framework that people have relied on that is transparent.” For him, communicating with his agents is an integral part of managing an agency. By staying in touch with every member of his organisation, McGrath doesn’t allow anyone to feel alienated or above the business. Every individual represents another spoke on the wheel, necessary to creating a positive working environment, and he makes sure to remind his agents of that fact. “I think you’ve got to be on the phone every day. I would spend two or three hours every day on the phone, often to my top franchisees, top-achieving agents, and just checking in.” AN EVOLVING LEADERSHIP TEAM IS CRUCIAL TO SUCCESS When pressed for advice, McGrath immediately highlights the need for a business to consistently evaluate its leadership team. “A business never outpaces its leader, or leaders. For a business to grow, you need to have a constantly growing, evolving leadership team.” “Sometimes that means some people out, some people in. Hopefully it means the people that are in stay there but they just keep growing.” You can’t just spend your way out of a leadership crisis, says McGrath. Systematic modifications need to be made if progress is to be sustained. “I don’t think you can just spend your way to more success with marketing. I think the leader and leadership team need to keep growing.” With that, comes the ability to take ownership over outcomes. A strong leader possesses accountability for both the successes and the failures of a team or project. “Extreme ownership says you’ve got to own the outcome no matter what, and then you learn and evolve from that.” An organisation’s leader will always want honesty from their employees, and that expectation demands that the leader returns the favour.
McGrath Estate Agents’ office
Sometimes, the inability to see all the qualities and knowledge you lack when starting a business venture is a good thing; you can throw yourself into the industry without being weighed down by expectations and pessimism. For the rest of his team, McGrath wanted to embrace that optimistic ethos entirely. He figured that established agents wouldn’t want to work under a young salesperson who had only just founded their own independent agency, so he reached out to individuals outside of the real estate sphere to fill out his team. “I started going around to people that I knew that I thought had talent that were not in real estate, and I told them to come and do a few Saturdays with me. So the first half a dozen employees were not in real estate.” The benefit of hiring outside of real estate was that McGrath could mould these agents into exactly what he wanted. “I was able to coach them and train them in my way, and they got momentum. And others that were experienced started looking across the garden fence and asking what we were doing.” This was only a single part of what made McGrath Partners (as it was then known) stand out from their competition during their early days. McGrath was always looking for small ways to create a distinct agency that bucks the local trends. “We used to do things very differently; everyone else was putting up photographs and I used to use pencil sketches, cause I thought that it was different. Everyone else was auctioning in a board room or a meeting room and I was auctioning at the property on-site. I introduced floor plans when no one else had used floor plans.”
John McGrath (left), with Danny Grant (centre) and Chris Mourd (right)
October / November 2022 – 7
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