From teacher to top agent

Transcript

Peter Fletcher

[00:00:00] Peter Fletcher: Welcome to the WA Property Q& A, the podcast where I explore the ins and outs of buying property in Western Australia. I’m your host Peter Fletcher and each week I interview local property experts to help you to develop a deep understanding of the nuances of buying property in WA. From market trends to legal considerations, no topic is off limits.

But before we dive in, a friendly reminder. While we provide valuable information, it’s important to note that nothing discussed in this podcast should be construed as personal investment advice. Always remember to seek the appropriate professional advice for your specific circumstances. Now, let’s get started and unlock the secrets to successful property buying in WA.

Welcome to another episode of the WA Property Q& A podcast and with me once again.

[00:00:52] Davide Palermo: Back again.

[00:00:52] Peter Fletcher: David Palermo dressed very much as he was in the last episode, which we recorded about 10 minutes ago. Dave, good to have you back.

[00:01:01] Davide Palermo: This is the uniform. This is the real estate uniform. Black pants, white shirt.

Can’t go wrong.

[00:01:05] Peter Fletcher: Oh my God.

That’s triggering me. Dave good to have you , on the show again. This time just give us a quick intro of who you are and where you come from, just in case people didn’t listen to the last episode and yet they’ve got the full version.

[00:01:19] Davide Palermo: Okay. Where I come from, a little Italian.

Suburb called Victoria Park is where I come from. Born and bred in the area.

[00:01:27] Peter Fletcher: Did you have the white lions and the white bulls and the bric a

[00:01:32] Davide Palermo: pavers? Surprisingly, no lions involved.

[00:01:34] Peter Fletcher: Wow.

[00:01:35] Davide Palermo: Yeah, I really feel Are you even

[00:01:36] Peter Fletcher: Italian?

[00:01:37] Davide Palermo: Well, I sometimes wonder about that because I really feel that these Belcata Italians have got one over us with these white lions and the gargoyles on the room.

So, yeah, I’m not quite sure where that’s come from, but no lions involved.

[00:01:51] Peter Fletcher: So, local real estate.

[00:01:54] Davide Palermo: What else? Yeah, look, being involved in property for all my life, we joke about the Italian sort of culture of property, but yeah, Dad was in the building industry, he was a carpenter I’ve sort of grown up, grown up in that space of Falling in love with property and homes and, and doing stuff and have my own property services business, which we won’t talk about today, but sort of, love that industry and sort of did a lot of developing with my family, my brother and my dad and, and by developing, I mean, three unit sites and doing renovations and stuff like that.

So really fell in love with that, that aspect of it, which I think comes in handy, handy today. And so that’s the, that’s what I grew up with. But. Also, I got talked out of getting into the building industry from a very young age and, go to uni and go do this and went into teaching and got a teaching degree which met my wife at uni and the rest is history, that sort of stuff, and really still feel now in my roles that I do that, that education degree which sits in the background is still very important in, in what I do and, and how I sort of, train and mentor some of my team and, but also remembering that, When we meet first home buyers and sellers, they’re doing this for the first time, so there’s a little bit of that education element of, helping them out with that process as well.

[00:03:02] Peter Fletcher: Did you ever

[00:03:03] Davide Palermo: actually become a teacher? Yes, I did. Yeah.

[00:03:06] Peter Fletcher: How long were you teaching for?

[00:03:07] Davide Palermo: I think I taught on and off for about three, four years. And then I sort of realized I could actually be doing some teaching and relief teaching and stuff like that while getting into the property development space.

And I’m old enough now that some of those people I’ve taught have come through the ranks as property managers come through the ranks of Buying and owning property in my patch areas going, you look really familiar, and then I’ll be going Yeah, I think I might have taught you back at X school and stuff like that.

So I did teach for a little while But yeah, I mentioned the names at the moment. Yeah,

[00:03:37] Peter Fletcher: you look really familiar. Yeah, you so do you I’m actually surprised that you got this far in life

[00:03:44] Davide Palermo: You’re a homeowner. Congratulations. Yeah,

[00:03:46] Peter Fletcher: and you’ve been in real estate now for

[00:03:49] Davide Palermo: I always I’m of that age now where I’ve got kids and we always joke that people remember things based on when did we get the kid and when did we get the dog and when was that one born.

So my youngest she just turned 14 and I remember getting my license sort of and studying for the license when she was born. So about 13 years, although not full time straight away into real estate, yeah.

[00:04:11] Peter Fletcher: When you started in real estate, how, what was your first job in real estate?

[00:04:16] Davide Palermo: I jumped straight into begging and pleading someone to give me a job and that was someone that I had done some property development work with.
So, the team at Professionals in East Vic Park sort of took me on back then.

[00:04:29] Peter Fletcher: And Did you or my Pasta Sauce Together, like, at crushing up grape tomatoes and stuff.

[00:04:34] Davide Palermo: No, no, no, no sort of crossover in the Italian community. No, definitely not. Although there was someone working there that we knew through family, so that probably got us an in there, but that was sort of what it was like back then, I guess, for any salesperson was you’d have to convince someone to give you a job.

And I guess they’re all commission only jobs back then. There was. So you

[00:04:51] Peter Fletcher: started as commission only. Yeah, I

[00:04:52] Davide Palermo: started as commission only. So, which would be, I guess, no different To you all. Your journey, I guess, maybe? Oh, I was commission

[00:04:59] Peter Fletcher: only. Yeah. Always.

[00:05:01] Davide Palermo: So that whole mentality of my upbringing of, the family running their own business and stuff like that was pretty much the same in real estate.
You’re an employee, but the reality is you’re running your own business. You’re running your own brands. You have to be committed to your own success. And that’s what the commission only sort of structure taught me when I first started.

[00:05:20] Peter Fletcher: It was very much a business within a business, wasn’t it?

[00:05:23] Davide Palermo: Oh, definitely. Definitely. I think it still has to be. I really believe you have to have that mindset that yes, you might work for a brand or a franchise, but you’re really doing your own thing. You have to put in the effort to making your business work and your business is you. You are the service that you’re providing.

[00:05:46] Peter Fletcher: How would a 2024 version of De Palermo get into real estate? What would be your trajectory now?

[00:05:57] Davide Palermo: It’s a tough one now. It’s a tough one now. There’s so much more involved in real estate. What you need to be doing. Social media is a huge thing that you need to be playing a part in. I think, back when you and I first met.

[00:06:11] Peter Fletcher: Well, what would your first job be, is what I’m saying. What should it be? Well, if you were wanting to start out in real estate today, as a fresh faced 19 year old, what would be your first job? And you wanted to get into sales. You wanted to become the next Gavin Rubenstein. Like. What would be your first job in property?

[00:06:34] Davide Palermo: I think if you were going into it now as a young person or even a young person in the industry, you need to be looking very carefully at who you choose to partner up with. So what is that company that you’re going to and who are those people that are going to be mentoring you and training you?

So you really need to be looking for someone that you can learn from. And they leave clues. So, I do a lot of recruiting in my role and we spoke last time about the academy and things like that. And I refer to this thing called PTSD. Now, not the PTSD that we’re familiar with traumatic, issues and stuff like that.

But you’re really looking at, what’s the personality of the company. What’s their brand look like? Who’s their leader? Who’s their sales leader? The T part is the training that they do. What successes do they have? Do they have any success? Do they talk about their success? It’s 2024 now.

Is their success from 2009 that they’re still banging on that they were the number one agent? Because there’s a big gap in between there. So really looking at this PTSD thing and the last part of that is development. Are they going to develop me? As an agent, are they going to train me?

And what’s the growth path look like? So if I start off as an assistant, sales assistant or something like that, what’s the growth path? And you have to be very careful with this part because real estate has some serious egos in it. We’ve got some selling principals who are very competitive and don’t want to see the new people outperforming them.

Or, You might be entering what you think is a successful business, but their daughter’s now turned 21 and got their real estate license, or their son’s in the industry now. And you’re now the young person coming into that same office. Are you going to be treated equally? Where are they going to push the leads to?

So it’s a very difficult thing, but you have to be as an agent. If you’re a young agent out there looking to get in, you really have to be recruiting. The agency you want to go to, not the other way around. And I think in the past, agents were just happy to go, Oh, I got a phone call and so wants to hire me.

And they were happy with that and they would shuffle off and move off to that agency. So I think if you’re looking for somewhere to go, you really have to do the research on where you land.

[00:08:40] Peter Fletcher: So to come back to that question, what is the first job that people get in real estate? Is it back when I was coming through the system and yourself, your first job was a Had different names, but that’s what you were, a sales rep.

Correct. What are they doing now? Do they, does anyone come straight into the business and become a sales rep right from the start? Or do they come in as a sales assistant or buyer manager? What are they?

[00:09:12] Davide Palermo: A lot of people try to come in. Straight off the bat and try and get into the industry and it’s such a hard thing to do.

You look at Perth as a suburb, for example, there’s so many different communities in different suburbs that make it difficult to, to be known.

I talk a lot about your recruits and reminding them that no one knows who you are. Just because you’re in real estate and you’re telling the world you’re in real estate, nobody knows who you are.

And that process can take anywhere from nine months to 18 months before people start to recognize who you are in the industry. So trying to come into it as a sales rep off the bat with no experience is quite difficult. And that’s where You need to be having some mentors or going into a sales assistant role or a personal assistant role to a high performing.

[00:09:58] Peter Fletcher: Is that common? The sales assistant, personal assistant, buyer manager role? Is that common? Not really.

[00:10:04] Davide Palermo: No, I don’t think it is common. And I think what becomes difficult in this industry is that the salespeople and real estate salespeople can actually be very good at what they do. They’re very good salespeople,

[00:10:17] Peter Fletcher: but

[00:10:17] Davide Palermo: they are terrible trainers.

They’re terrible mentors. They bring someone on thinking, Oh, they’re going to know what to do. And don’t have enough time to train them or mentor them or even show them some basics of onboarding into a company or into a business. So, so those roles we, we see people fail in those roles all the time.

They’ll get a personal assistant. Oh, they were no good. And it’s like, well, they’re no good because you don’t have time to tell them what to do and there’s no template around. What a rookie might need we talked last episode about the academy program that we ran at the agency, sort of, started about four years ago with different intakes, and we had to build a model around what do they need to know, how can they be of use to other agents, and how can they find their own, Footing in the industry and give them as many tools as possible to do that.

So it’s difficult one, but if you can find a real estate agent that is willing to take you on and learn from, that’s the key. The key thing to succeed is having that experience.

[00:11:15] Peter Fletcher: I, a good mate of mine owns an office south of the river office, has been relatively successful for quite some time and has an office that is his model has always been six sales reps three hundred, three hundred managements.

I, I think that It’s a model that is outdated and broken.

[00:11:42] Davide Palermo: Outdated?

[00:11:43] Peter Fletcher: Yeah and I think that what he’s become, and he’s one of those really good mentors, and it’s all going down to the benefit of the agency where it gets them up to speed, and because his commission model is, that traditional sort of around the 60 40 split Once they get up and about, they’re going, see you

[00:12:06] Davide Palermo: later.

It becomes a step ladder into another position. Yeah. And that’s difficult, and I think that’s where in this industry, I believe you have to be self aware. So as a business leader that he might be, he has to be looking at why are they not staying on. Where is, where’s the growth for them?

Is it just commission? Do we need to change the structure around the more they bring in, the more they get? Or is it that other part? Is it the development and the growth, do they want to be business owners and buy into that business? Succession plans and stuff like that. So we say that in reverse.

So in your example, your friend is possibly doing a great job trying to mentor and bring them up to speed. But we also see agents come into this industry and they. Go to someone that just takes them because they’re the ones spending the most money on seek ads, and they’re advertising. We have roles and they end up in these positions at companies that Just throw it at the wall.

Like, okay, if we recruit enough reps, we’ll eventually find a good one, but they don’t provide any training, any support, any mentorship at all. They just go, here you go. Here’s a hot desk for you to work from. Go out and get listings. There’s nothing. And then unfortunately, those people don’t know any better.

And they sit around at that agency for six to 12 months, and they might get the opportunity to do one home open. That does nothing to build your skills. Doing one home open on your own. And it’s probably overpriced, it doesn’t sell, it is not a great sort of incubator for your career to be in that environment.

So I’ll go back to looking for Who’s successful in that agency, how many reps they actually have and how many are being turned over and things like that. So unfortunately, you don’t know what you don’t know. As a rookie, you don’t know who to look for and which is a good agency and what’s a bad agency.

And, and quite often rookies will lean towards a franchise because the franchise has a brand. And some systems. And has, supposedly has systems. The downside to franchises is that sometimes those business owners just bolt themselves onto a franchise to have that branding and have that sort of perception for real estate clients, not for the rookies, but they end up picking up people and not really being able to do much with them.

[00:14:13] Peter Fletcher: Where are people exiting the industry now?

[00:14:17] Davide Palermo: Where are they exiting? I think Where and why? I think as rookies they’re exiting pretty quickly. There’s a lot of failure in this industry. If you’re not getting sort of paid correctly and

[00:14:28] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, go on. If

[00:14:29] Davide Palermo: they’re not getting paid correctly, they can’t last in the industry.

So sometimes, people are leaving after 12 months. We’re also seeing now the exit of people just not being able to get listings and not being able to make, a living wage out of the industry. And they’re exiting. I don’t know the exact numbers, but we do know agent numbers are becoming less and less every month.

So in terms of, unplanned exits, it’s probably a financial one. But in terms of, some sort of succession plan and exiting as a business owner, I guess people want to try and build rent rolls and sell them and things like that potentially, yeah.

[00:15:03] Peter Fletcher: Do you guys have to pay a, an award wage?

Do you have to pay a salary to these guys, these newbies? do. Yeah.

[00:15:10] Davide Palermo: Yeah, and I say of course you do because there are a lot of people that aren’t paying it and aren’t getting paid. But I think it was 2020, there was a massive change to. I’ll say the real estate industry, but it was the sales industry, so anyone that was commission only, car sales people, real estate people, where for some reason someone sitting much higher up than us decided that it’s best to have this minimum income paid, and I think it’s around about 58, 000, but that changed the dynamic of real estate agencies.

I won’t say overnight, but that changed the method of, you’re a young person that wants to get in industry, come and join us and we’ll see if it works for you as a commission only, no commitment. Whereas now as a small business owner, if you’ve got an office with six people and you want to bring on a new rookie, you’re looking at 60, 000 that you have to commit.

So would you as a business owner commit that money and then not provide the training and support and the time to develop them? So yeah, you should be paying. And you must be paying, if you’ve got a registered company as your entity, the minimum income to rookies, or to people that are new to the industry.

[00:16:17] Peter Fletcher: Back in my day, and probably in yours came through the front door, and you were probably There was a, there was some training and development done, no question about that, but by and large we were on our own. It was just, you were out on your own. Has that changed with the advent of the minimum wage?

Is there more direction given by principals and well if I’m going to pay you, therefore you have to turn up at 8. 30 and don’t leave before 5. 30 and those sorts of things. Here’s a list of people to call.

[00:16:53] Davide Palermo: I think it’s changed for most of them. And I, I would say most of the business owners are doing the right thing.

Most of, a little bit like society. Most of the people do the right thing. And I think they’ve taken this rather than the spray and pray approach of let’s hire six of them and see which work out. You have to be a lot more strategic with your recruiting because you do have to put the financial resources into it as well as the time.

So I think, yeah, people are. Paying and are trying to develop new people, but again, I’ll go back to my comment about not everyone is a great trainer. Not everyone has the time to put into to new people and it is a skill that you need to have and you need to have some resources to do that. But I think, the, the shadowing and the mentoring that is something that needs to happen for new people to learn what to do.

And like you said, here’s a list of numbers. Go call them, what did they say? Who’s going to tell them what to say? Where’s some templates? What can they learn from you as their boss? You need to be taking on these people with a responsibility that you’re going to develop them and train them.

[00:17:53] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. And so you’ve got a small team. I think there Was it six or seven yesterday?

[00:18:01] Davide Palermo: Ah, yesterday we were around six to eight that sort of flew in and out of the office, yeah.

[00:18:06] Peter Fletcher: How long will they be with you as a, in that sort of mentoring role? And I saw Charlie Bellow there and he’s been around for quite a while and I would have thought that he’s probably doesn’t need all that much mentoring, but there he was.

How long do these guys hang around in that academy? And that’s what you’re calling it? Yeah, the Academy

[00:18:26] Davide Palermo: was the original program that we’ve had. We’ve had sort of two iterations of that. They’re all sort of at the end of that Academy process. They’re all, they’re a real agent now. They’ve gone out and they’ve got their agent wings and off they go.

So I think the role now, and Charlie’s probably not an example of that. He’s a fully fledged agent, does very well for himself. But Again, not much has changed, just because you’ve, your experience doesn’t mean you know everything. So I think we really relish the opportunity to be part of a team in what is a, you’re a solo entrepreneur, really, at the end of the day, but we can all help each other out.

So a lot of the team that you’ve met have been in it now So they’ve, they’re coming through that apprenticeship stage, I guess. They’re still making lots of mistakes. They still need a lot of guidance and that’s where we’ve gone back to having our own offsite office and our own sort of little team culture where yeah, I’m the old, I’m not the oldest one there, but I’m the oldest one there.

But yeah, my philosophy is to try and keep helping them and training them and supporting them in, in what they’re doing. But now they’re doing it in real time. Now they’re doing it with stock, with property, with buyers. And, as a settlement agency and things like that, that you look at, we’re trying to make sure the contracts are perfect.

And there’s so many elements to what we do as real estate agents that I don’t think that training ever stops. And

[00:19:44] Peter Fletcher: thank God for that because some of the questions yesterday were, or statements were yeah, there’s, and I think this is just a generally across the industry. There’s a lot of. A lot of upskilling required to get people to a point where you could say, well, you could leave them in a corner with a buyer or a seller and, they’ll be taken care of perfectly.

[00:20:10] Davide Palermo: I think your question before of, when do people exit the industry, I think if you’re an agent and you think you pretty much know everything and you can’t learn anymore, that’s probably your time to exit. When you think you’ve known everything about this industry, there’s something changing that you’re not aware of and that should be your exit.

So there were a lot of questions yesterday and, the fact that someone might be having a difficulty with a certain part of a transaction in a group of 10 people, there’s probably nine others that have experienced that, but never actually had the guts to tell, I’m not their boss.

And I think that this is what makes our environment as real estate agents really interesting. We don’t have anything to sell. We’re not car dealers and car sales people that can walk out to the showroom and go, there’s my stock. We are this quasi mix of where service providers, but we’re selling homes, which we don’t own, but we’re selling them and we’re providing a service.

So it becomes really difficult to continue developing our reps in a unique sales environment. It’s, it’s, tell me any other businesses. That is like that. That has a sales team that doesn’t have anything to sell and you have to go out and find it.

[00:21:17] Peter Fletcher: What’s the biggest challenge for new people at the moment?

[00:21:21] Davide Palermo: Biggest challenge for new people will always be getting homes to sell, but that’s the end goal. So the biggest challenge is actually finding people to talk to and helping them. We’ve had a lot of people come through the industry that have come from quite physical jobs. They might be bricklayers or laborers that, don’t want to do that role anymore.

And, these are people that are physically strong and can handle some extreme circumstances. If you ask them to pick up the phone and make a phone call, it’s physically impossible for them to do that. So the biggest challenge is for people, for young agents, is to find people to talk to, find people that want to listen to them about real estate.

[00:21:59] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, so, in that conversation yesterday, it reminded me of many of the conversations that I, I had with sales, new sales people back in the day. And there was this, I remember one guy, like we, we had our our telephone canvassing nights on, I think it was Monday, Monday and Wednesday or Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday or something like that.

[00:22:24] Davide Palermo: You had to be in the office because those telephones had cords.

[00:22:27] Peter Fletcher: Yes. Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. They actually had cords. Yes. And this guy was always making excuses as to, well, he had a sick dog. He had to go home and take care of his kid that he didn’t have. He, like he was doing an appraisal. It’d be just, it’d be Any number of excuses as to why he couldn’t telephone Canvas and the fact was that he was just shit scared of cold calling and a lot of new sales reps They had even more frightened of doorknocking that like they’ll say well, it’s a waste of time But actually they say is waste of time because they just they’re just frightened of somebody actually Answering the door

[00:23:16] Davide Palermo: you look at who is in the industry now as young people.

Let’s focus on the young people In the industry, there are different generations of you and I. Have they ever actually dialed a number on their phone? Or has it just been a Snapchat message or a text message and something like that? So they need to accept that while their communication with their friends and their family can be via texting and things like that, at some point in their career, they need to actually have a conversation.

And your version of a conversation, my version of conversation is talk to people.

[00:23:47] Peter Fletcher: But is, is that where the Industry is going. Will it be that there’ll be deals done the way they’re communicating now? Like it’ll be all just done via snaps and DMs and like just these you know just sitting there doing these ones that you know like.

[00:24:04] Davide Palermo: Oh potentially it will be but I think if you look at where You know, where it’s aged up, so the people who own the properties are potentially a couple generations older than the sales rep, so the communication skill that’s needed. is to be an actual phone call or is to be an actual face to face door knock type of conversation.

So they have to be adaptable to do both. You can’t rely on just technological skills and, hey, I’m great on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. You have to be able to adapt and actually pick up the phone and make that phone call because there’s some things that just can’t be done via email and via text. It gets lost in translation and they need to be adaptable to do that.

So yeah, the future might be that it’s a Snapchat message. Yes, please proceed with the contract. And you push a button through Snapchat, which goes to DocuSign. Who knows what we’ve got sort of coming in. But the communication is really important. And a lot of the issues and problems you have with contracts and things going back and forth and building inspections.

And is this miscommunication? Or is this, the buyer has an expectation around What should be happening with that report? And the seller has a different one. You can’t fix that via text. You have to have a conversation and set the record straight on what the expectations are. So they need to be able to talk.

They need to be able to communicate.

[00:25:19] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. So, there’s a guy that you would know, Corey Adamson. He’s got I think 85, 000 followers on TikTok.

[00:25:34] Davide Palermo: I’m one of them.

[00:25:35] Peter Fletcher: So am I.

[00:25:37] Davide Palermo: I like

[00:25:37] Peter Fletcher: his videos.

[00:25:38] Davide Palermo: Yeah,

[00:25:39] Peter Fletcher: they’re

[00:25:40] Davide Palermo: good.

[00:25:42] Peter Fletcher: He’s developed this massive following and he’s has, he’s asked my, asked me anything, questions that he, that he promotes, and God, he’s, he’s good.

[00:25:52] Davide Palermo: Yeah,

[00:25:53] Peter Fletcher: great following. New breed of real estate agent, I suggest.

[00:25:57] Davide Palermo: He is a new breed. Yeah, definitely. He’s Hey, look, let’s go back a few steps. He’s a good looking chap.

[00:26:03] Peter Fletcher: He’s, he, he is a fairly good looking chap, an athlete. Athlete.

[00:26:06] Davide Palermo: He’s he is tall, blonde, blue eyed, all the rest of it. He’s got that

[00:26:10] Peter Fletcher: Doesn’t hold the candle to you, David.

[00:26:11] Davide Palermo: He, he’s got the background of sport. He, I think he might’ve been a west coast eagle for a day, I think. I can’t remember the exact thing. He was, he’s gone through all that stuff. So he’s very successful on TikTok and. He’s built a great following and he’s probably someone that new agents can look up to in terms of what he’s doing on TikTok.

So, regardless of the social media platform, what is he actually doing? And you just mentioned it, he’s got the ask me anything type Advice that he’s providing. He’s not asking people, do you want to sell your home on TikTok? And here’s a funny dance. That’s not what he’s doing. Maybe he’s done a dance.

Yeah. Oh God. I cringe at those things. But what he’s doing is what we used to talk about 10 years ago, back in the old days of writing blogs and stuff like that was providing value, providing information. He’s doing it in a different format.

He’s found the new thing. He’s, he’s done the Gary V thing of, finding an audience and Doing the, the jab, jab, jab type stuff of actually giving that audience information that’s relevant, and he’s doing it in a, in a TikTok format with video responses to questions and things like that.

He cops a little bit of flack for some of what he does, but who cares? That’s

[00:27:16] Peter Fletcher: Who gives him shit about that? Oh,

[00:27:17] Davide Palermo: he’s got something out there at the moment, saying, it’s the usual real estate crap that we, we cop, you know, but he handles that quite well. He responds to people.

So he’s a great example for new people entering the industry.

[00:27:27] Peter Fletcher: There’s a guy out there who’s just anti real estate agents, anti like just anti the industry. He claims that he’s some sort of ex real estate agent, like, he’s on a. industry.

[00:27:41] Davide Palermo: There’s always an ex real estate agent floating around, isn’t there?

There’s

[00:27:46] Peter Fletcher: Corey to, to task and I sent it to Corey and I said, well, congratulations, you’ve got yourself a troll. Yeah.

[00:27:52] Davide Palermo: Is that when you know you’ve made it? Is that the barometer of success now when you’ve got that? Yeah. But look, I think he is a great example for new people or even existing people in the industry of how you can actually reach an audience and provide advice and provide them with something other than picking up the phone.

Do you want to sell your house right now? Oh, okay. See ya. Hang up. Like I think those days. are gone. You have to be Providing value to clients you haven’t met yet. Providing value to people that might not ever do business with you until 10 years. And that’s a hard thing. You’re a rookie and they’ve told you, Oh, I’m not selling for another eight years.

And you’re like, okay, I’ll call you back in eight years time. How do you survive in that sort of industry? And social media is, Really important in, in this game. I think it’s a little bit harder now because there’s so many platforms. I think when I started, we were probably the first to jump on Facebook in our, in our little area.

And we sort of figured out Facebook and pages and, trying to build local communities. And, and that sort of, that’s changed. Landsat has changed a little bit in that sort of area. But you know, Facebook’s aged up. And what I mean by that is, 10 years ago, whenever it was brought out, the, the average age was a lot lower as now, probably my seller demographic is probably on Facebook.

They are probably that 40 plus age group that live in the area, whereas, my TikTok sort of stuff in my area might not be the age group for my sellers, it might not really be there. So it’s important to embrace the technology, but you have to do it in an authentic way. You can’t just.

Stand in front of Facebook and do the same boring crap of here’s my house. Let’s have a look. It has a bedroom. It has a toilet. Like you have to come up with sort of some different ways of presenting your content and making it, not appear boring, I guess.

[00:29:38] Peter Fletcher: So what are you saying to your young recruits around social media?

What’s your playbook and what’s the playbook that you’re telling them to run with?

[00:29:47] Davide Palermo: This might be Something you’re not aware of, but they are shit scared of it. Yes, yes. They are. So I think, there’s the social media aspect. Putting

[00:29:56] Peter Fletcher: themselves in front of a camera.

[00:29:58] Davide Palermo: Hell yeah. So I think the social media aspects have changed over the years where people sort of, with Facebook, it’s open.

Everyone gets to see everything. Snapchat comes along and it closes. It’s all private messaging. And then our Instagram comes back into vogue and people are involved in it. The generations that I’m seeing, and if you talk about real estate, we’ve got a couple that are under the age of 20 who are sort of in those assistant roles, but the majority of them are between 20 and 30.

Trying to get them to do anything in front of a camera is not happening. They are so scared of putting themselves out there, and maybe it’s because of the ridicule and the trolling and stuff like that. And it’s taking a lot of effort to get them to put out content. So these are people that you would think that would natively go, Oh, we know how to use this.

We know how to do this. You know how to use it as a user. They don’t know how to use it as a content creator to talk to audiences and have that ability to give out info.

[00:30:52] Peter Fletcher: You’re very good on camera. Like you’ve got this, like you spent some time in the media, didn’t you? You didn’t, or no, you’ve got a relative that.

[00:31:04] Davide Palermo: We’ve got some family that’s a camera people and director’s assistants, but no, I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s that. I think I go back to my journey and, being forced to stand up, as a young learning teacher, you’re in uni for, first year uni, they send you out on a prac and you’re potentially 18, 19 in front of 17 year olds, you probably know some of them.

And you have to present. You have to present for 30 to 40 minutes. You have to be prepared

[00:31:28] Peter Fletcher: to

[00:31:28] Davide Palermo: do that. So I think some of those skills, the way you regulate your voice, the tone, the speed, I tend to talk a lot quicker than you do. I’m trying to lift you up a little bit here. Come on, the clock’s ticking.

I think it comes from that. I don’t think there’s sort of, there’s no media training that’s going on, but I guess for me, Being in front of a camera or whatever it might be, is that, yeah, I was pretty shit scared of it when I started doing these Gary V inspired David P. show. Let me talk to you about stuff.

And we weren’t doing it on a phone. I think I had a Handycam that was doing it and somehow uploading But the hardest video to do What’s that first one?

[00:32:06] Peter Fletcher: Yeah,

[00:32:06] Davide Palermo: It’s the hardest step to take when you go for a run. I’m not a runner. It’s is that first one, and we talk about these sporting analogies and stuff all the time.

You just have to do it. Yeah, just do it. Get it out there. It’s going to be crap for the first couple. Your first blog post will be terrible. Your first video is going to be terrible. You just have to keep doing it.

[00:32:24] Peter Fletcher: So I was, before I started this podcast, I was doing some videos and I had this set up in the office and it was quite elaborate, it was.

Studio Quality. Close. Anyway, I found them incredibly hard. Just to stare down the, this, the camera, this unblinking, unresponsive camera and talk and I got I can talk, but I found it really difficult. And then, I come across this where I can record stuff where I’m not even aware that it’s being recorded.

And I just wonder whether that’s a possibility for your guys where you sort of take the focus off them and just sort of have it almost like fly on the wall kind of

[00:33:14] Davide Palermo: content. We’ve just come back from some filming today before we Doing this podcast, we were filming and yeah, it took a lot of them quite a few takes to get potentially what is five to ten seconds worth of them talking.

So it’s an experience thing. I think the question and answer format that we’ve got going on here is, is a lot better. Then trying to memorize something. Yeah. I think when you try and memorize a script, it’s very, very unnatural. So, but again, it’s an experience thing. I was impressed today with some of the people doing what they were doing.
Cause I know they were stepping out of their comfort zone and they’re in their safe space today. They’re in our office with our video team and doing all that stuff. And people are asking them questions. But again, it’s just that experience of just giving it a go and just trying it and seeing what works.

Unfortunately, like you’re saying, if you’re doing something in video format and you’re talking to a camera or you’re on your own, you don’t get that feedback coming back to you. I talk about being self aware and stuff like that. How do you know it’s a good video? Because you’re potentially not putting it out for another week.

You don’t get any likes on it. It sits on YouTube. You do five podcasts and you go, no, this doesn’t work. But the reality is the, the reward isn’t there straight away. The reward could be 12 to 18 months later that someone responds to something through a Google search and they find you and you’ve answered their questions.

So you’ve just got to put it out there.

[00:34:34] Peter Fletcher: So I was on this subject of sort of delayed Like, rewards, shall we say? I was talking to a business associate on Wednesday, and I catch up with him regularly. And he said, oh, Pete, I listened. I watched your podcast where you interviewed Joel Stark and Joel’s the little a wills an estate lawyer.

And he said, it was fascinating what you guys were talking about. And I hadn’t actually thought about my will because it was all about like, I’m in my second marriage and I’ve got kids and like, I hadn’t actually thought about that. And so thanks very much. And I, and it’s been conversations like that where I’m really, really happy that I’ve started this podcast because it’s like, it took months and then suddenly you’ve got people just saying stuff that.

You’ve helped them with just out of the blue and you think, wow, this is good. It’s working and it’s valuable to people. So, that stuff around getting those kids out of their comfort zone and maybe finding a way around their comfort around, like Turning it into a non threatening creation experience.

I don’t know how you’d say that.

[00:35:54] Davide Palermo: Yeah. And I think in your example there, you’ve provided some value to someone without you saying, I want to help you in real estate. Can I sell something for you? Can I sell it? Like you’re not being salesy. You are actually providing help and advice. And I think that’s the change.

Well, I hope that’s a change in real estate agents. Yeah. I think the good ones that are around now are not. The, I don’t want to say it, I’m going to say it, not the old stereotype of the used car salesman. They’re not the desperation. I think you have to be putting out content. If you’re not visibly putting out content, I know plenty of agents who are at community events, they’re helping out, they’re volunteering in the community.

You have to sort of be that person to give, you have to give first without the expectation that it’s going to come back. And that giving can look very different in different suburbs and for different agents. So it might be providing advice. on something in the community. If we look at, the Vic Park example for, for instance, as real estate agents, we’re generally at the cutting edge of meeting a lot of people and knowing what’s happening in the community before the general public know about it.

You look at The current train line situation that’s going on through the Armadale train line where they’ve shut the train lines down. They’ve been talking about that for a long, long time, but most of the community didn’t know about it. So most of the community found out about it from real estate pages that we might’ve run years and years ago and putting that out there.

And now I think, the councils and these sort of places have picked up on, hang on a minute, why are the agents, the ones that are getting all this It should be our job to control the narrative of what information is going out and stuff like that. But it gives an opportunity for, an agent to be the little mini news reporter for their area.
And I say area as in a community, as in a location, but that area could be your community.

[00:37:45] Peter Fletcher: Yeah. Yeah. And the, their community is no longer a, necessarily a geographic patch. It’s a, it might be a community that spans like the length and breadth of Perth. But you know, they all share a common thread, a common theme.

[00:38:04] Davide Palermo: It could be a cultural community. It could be, I talk about this a lot again with our team that some of them We are living here, born in India, speak the variety of different languages that are spoken in India. I’m not going to rattle them off. But they are so scared of putting out content and I’m saying to them, put out the same boring content I’m putting out, but do it in your, do it in your native language because I don’t know what you’re talking about.

But your community does know and how would you be as an immigrant in this country going? I want to get into real estate, but I don’t know what to do. They all speak English I’m not quite as strong in English reading a contracts and things like that and all of a sudden you have someone speaking your language Yeah, helping you hundred percent.

Would you not use them?

[00:38:46] Peter Fletcher: Yeah And I know for a fact they do. So we have a Nepalese lady working for us and Indira is one of our biggest sources of business. And I did not expect it when she joined. I thought, she’s going to be a lovely person and she’s, yeah, right. And just. She’s a business development machine and they’re all people from the Nepalese community want to talk to somebody who speaks fluent Nepali and they love her.

[00:39:14] Davide Palermo: And, where we’re shooting today, we’re very close to Curtin University, which means our area does have a high Asian population in here which is a great thing, and I say Asian because it sort of, It goes across a lot of different countries. If you’ve got a real estate agency, or a settlement agency, or anyone that can speak anything other than English, that is a bonus.

You should be leaning into that and using that as much as you can. And quite often, I’ve got people sending me messages through Google Translate about properties, and yeah, some things get lost in translation, but trust me, everyone understands what 900, 000 looks like in writing, and they understand those key parts, and we’re using Google Translate to go back and forth, and you know that if you can help them by pointing them to someone that can speak The language, that person is going to be their Sherpa.

Is Sherpa a Nepalese thing? I’m not quite sure. I think so. Right. They can be their Sherpa through that real estate transaction. And we need to just accept, okay, we’re just going

[00:40:11] Peter Fletcher: to,

[00:40:12] Davide Palermo: we’re going to facilitate part of it, but we need to get the people that help them with their language to do that. So there’s always ways that you can give to your community, whether it’s physical, whether it’s cultural, whether it’s, You might be the expert in helping people through divorces in real estate because, hey, you might have just gone through that yourself.

Life changes can be really, really important. We’re getting to an age now where perhaps parents are getting ill and I’m seeing lots of, friends and family that lost parents recently. Navigating that process of probate, and wills, and things is really important.

You shouldn’t be going, Oh, your mom and dad have passed away. Do you want to sell the house? That’s not the avenue you should be going down. It should be, Hey, are you comfortable with the process? Do you understand what’s next and providing that advice? Now that might not be something a 24 year old real estate agent can help with because maybe they haven’t had that life experience.

But whereas someone that has gone through that, they might be able to provide that advice and might be the niche that they can sort of help with over a certain period of time because. That’s what’s happening in their environment and in their world. So really need to lean into your community, whatever it might be.

The Vic Park example, again, massive push in the community right now for basketball courts to be built in the area and they’re seeking a petition and things like that.

Previously, there’s this uproar.

[00:41:26] Peter Fletcher: David, they, they just took them away over in Carlisle. My God.

[00:41:31] Davide Palermo: Oh, let’s not talk about that.

But this community. So what is your community? So as a real estate agent, what is your community? Are you a car person? Are you into cars? That could be your community that you lean into. Hey, I’m real estate and cars. Are you a basketball dad or mom? I feel sorry for these basketball people.

I still can’t get my head around domestic season, wobble, which season, because it seems to be 24 seven. And, whereas good old, the old footy and cricket days, not that I ever played any of those, but it was, you knew when your seasons were, but these are communities. These are people that are spending a lot of time.

With that basketball folk, all the netball people and whatever it might be, lean into that community that you’re involved in which gets me back to real estate, rookies and stuff like that. They all have these ideas of, Oh, I’m going to sponsor this company and this event and do this and do that.

And you should only be doing it if it’s part of your community.

[00:42:20] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So, you’d say, well, I’ve been involved with the Victoria Park Soccer Club since the, since it started. I think I did a video for you. Yes, you did. Yeah. In 2014, so it’s been going for 10 years now. And I would say to any sponsor, don’t sponsor it just to, to throw money at it.

Sponsor it because you’re going to come down and drink at the bar and watch a few games and and, be part of that community. And really, if you’re not part of the community you’re probably going to waste your money. So, Dave, I think that at about that stage, it’s about time to wrap up.

It’s been awesome. I think it’s been great. We’ve gone for about 45 minutes and it felt about like two minutes. It’s been really good. Again, if people want to get a hold of you, can they call you a mobile direct? Are they allowed to? Or do you want, or is that no longer a thing? What, where would you prefer people to talk to you?

[00:43:16] Davide Palermo: They can call me, they can text me, they can, find me on social media. Yeah. There’s a TikTok page out there. Much to the cringe factor of my children. They do approve everything I do. So you can find me there. Send me something. I’m happy to respond.

[00:43:29] Peter Fletcher: TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Just because

[00:43:32] Davide Palermo: I do it, doesn’t mean I’m any good.

Good at it. Okay. It’s there. It’s developing. It’s a work in progress.

[00:43:37] Peter Fletcher: Get in there, folks, and give him some encouragement. Dave, been great. Thank you so much. And this has been another episode of the WA Property Q& A Podcast. And that wraps up another episode of the WA Property Q& A. We hope you found our discussion valuable and gained some valuable insights.

Welcome to the World of Property Buying in Western Australia. Remember, while we strive to provide useful information, it’s crucial to consult with the appropriate professionals before making any investment decisions. Don’t forget to tune in next week for another exciting episode where we continue to unravel the mysteries of the WA property market.

If you have any questions or topic suggestions, feel free to reach out to us. Until then, happy property hunting, and remember to seek the right advice for your personal circumstances.

Thank you for listening.