Every agent has a vision.
They have a view of what their career will look like and the lifestyle it will enable them to embrace.
What motivates each agent to strive towards that vision is just as individual.
For some agents it’s writing millions in gross commission income (GCI), while others seek the time to pick the kids up from school.
Some agents long to have the freedom to run their own business their own way, and some believe in continual personal and business growth, irrespective of where they started.
It can be difficult to find a real estate network that caters to such a diverse range of drivers, but for agents at The Agency and, and every, vision is achievable.
For Property Partner Clint Harris, joining The Agency in 2023 allowed him to consolidate and build on his four-day working week.
He’s grown his business and his GCI substantially, but the Central Coast agent says what is most important is the extra time he has been able to spend with his family.
“I’ve been able to wear one hat, which is focusing on my team, and that’s allowed me to have more hours in my day and spend that with my wife and with my kids and be more present for them.
“I’ve got a four-year-old and a six-year-old that keep me busy, and I like to spend a lot of quality time with my wife as well.
“Here, at The Agency, it’s allowed me to have extra time to focus on them.”
Clint says when he was weighing up which model to select to build his business with, The Agency stood out for the backend support it provides in all elements of business, but particularly human resources, finance and marketing.
He says the leadership team, including CEO of Real Estate Matt Lahood and Managing Director and Group CEO Geoff Lucas, didn’t only support his vision for the future, they encouraged him to broaden it.
“The big one I grabbed onto when I joined was the leadership team and their understanding of what high performance, highly ambitious teams have gone through in the past in order to scale their businesses,” Clint says.
“Matt Lahood’s like an architect for taking agents from $1 million to $3 million in GCI.
“So that attracted me too.”
Clint says his business now is much more efficient and he’s been able to take onboard new skills, strategies and formulas and apply them in his business in his own way.
Importantly, he’s enjoying the journey.
“Once you learn these skills, ideas and formulas, you can very much make that about you, how you want to live and how you want to experience it,” Clint notes.
“For me, that hasn’t been to go, ‘Let’s work seven days a week and go create the biggest business I possibly can’.
“It’s been about really enjoying the journey, still creating growth, but doing it in a very efficient way where I’m going to be around a long time.
“I’ve got time for my kids, I’ve got time for my family and I’m not exhausted when I get home.”
The faces of The Agency
Clint is one of several Property Partners to feature in The Agency’s new marketing campaign, The Faces of The Agency, which Real Estate CEO Matt Lahood says has a dual purpose.
Not only does the campaign inform the wider community about the brand, it also, critically, highlights to other agents the ethos that underpins The Agency.
“The word that keeps coming through (in the campaign) is ‘freedom’,” Matt says.
“And it’s exciting for me to hear the agents say that, because that’s why I set The Agency up.
“I wanted to make sure that, with this business, there were zero roadblocks on an agent’s way to success.”
Matt says when he created The Agency model eight years ago, he liaised with top agents to ask them what they didn’t like about the varying business models they worked under.
He then eliminated those “roadblocks” from The Agency model, including things like postcode restrictions and the ‘middle man’, which allows agents to run their own business as they see fit.
There’s also no ceiling on how large they can grow and commission splits start at 70 per cent and range up to 85 per cent.
But, importantly, it’s not just the agents that write the most commission or build the biggest teams that are deemed successful.
“Today, The Agency is full of people that have all got different hopes, aspirations and dreams,” Matt says.
“I just want agents to be happy.”
But The Agency’s approach to real estate is perhaps best summed up by one of Matt’s favourite sayings.
“Money never leads, it follows,” he says.
“What I mean by that is, if the people are right, the clients are happy, then the customers and clients will get six-star service.
“If the agents are happy in their life professionally and personally, the money will follow.”
All you need is a vision
To be a part of The Agency, Matt says all an agent needs is a vision and then the brand will provide the pathway to achieve it.
He says agents often don’t fully understand their value or earnings potential and it was The Agency’s role, through its hands-on leadership team, internal coaches and mentors such as Luke Evans and Joe Abboud and independent coaches such as Claudio Encina, to work with agents to pave their pathway forward.
“Luke and Joe have worked very closely with Clint (Harris) to help him with his vision,” Matt says.
“When he came to us he was thinking big, but not as big as we were thinking.
“So, we tested his boundaries and he’s pretty much well on his way to achieving that.”
Another agent well on the way to reaching their goals is Maitland’s Tori Lund.
When Tori started with The Agency, she was part of her mother, Charlie Lund’s, team.
Now she’s a standalone agent running her own business while still working alongside Charlie.
“Tori has grown into an individual agent,” Charlie declares proudly as part of the video campaign.
“So we want to expand on that now and, with the resources that The Agency has given us, we now can bring other agents into our team.
“Tori can grow her own team individually, all under the umbrella of The Agency.”
Charlie also notes that when she and Tori joined The Agency, they hadn’t dreamt of the success they would achieve.
“What we’ve noticed with The Agency is our image has changed, our average sale price has increased, our commissions have increased and our personal growth has increased,” she says.
Tori also notes that she sat down with Matt and Claudio about a year ago to outline what her transition to becoming a solo agent would look like.
“The leadership they provided, they really helped me with the pathway to get there,” she says.
“The support, the encouragement and the confidence they instil in you is amazing.
“They really back you.”
Propelling agents forward
For Sydney-based agents Davide Talone and Jack Wimpey, joining The Agency has seen their personal growth skyrocket.
“I think you’re choosing The Agency over another brand purely based on its authenticity and the brand allowing you to be who you are,” Davide says.
“The Agency model has definitely helped me personally, purely based on being with others in our company that have great experience, that have been through different markets.
“Not everyone has the same skill or strategy, and so you pick up little bits and pieces here and there and you can create who you are with what works best for you.”
For Jack, The Agency has helped him progress as an agent, and as a person, quickly.
“The way I can articulate myself to buyers, vendors, clients, sellers and even just people of the public, it’s definitely fast-forwarded my life,” he says.
For Sunny Gandhi, as well as being able to narrow his focus to his clients, one of the greatest benefits are the friends he has made within the company.
“I have made so many friends within the company and these relationships have actually formed into referrals,” he says.
“That has been absolutely amazing and I don’t think any other network would work so cohesively as our own network.
Creating freedom
For fellow Sydney agent, Catherine Murphy, The Agency provides her a sense of freedom she hasn’t felt before.
“I have two little kids and I like to be very involved in their lives,” she says.
“So a few non-negotiables for me is that I drop them off in the morning and then I pick them up in the afternoons.
“My work revolves around that. My work is certainly very, very important, but it’s not the most important thing in my life.”
Catherine also points out that she’s able to run her business her way, with The Agency providing a lot of marketing and trust accounting support, so that she can focus on listings and selling.
“I don’t think working with any other model, apart from The Agency, would allow me the freedom to run my business the way I want to run it,” she says.
For the Sunshine Coast’s Dan Smith, joining The Agency simply felt like a “good fit”.
“I joined The Agency because I came out of a large network and I wanted to work as part of a big network that was well resourced and well backed,” he says.
“The Agency model appealed to me more… I think it’s a better fit for the current real estate environment of today.”
Dan says flexibility was one of the key attributes that drew him to The Agency model.
“I’ve been able to set up my own business, have had plenty of time to really maximise my time with buyers and sellers, recruiting staff, speaking to other agents, as well as setting up a rent roll,” he says.
“Using the resources of the business has saved me a lot of time… so I can focus on the things that are important.”
Going forward, Matt says the ethos at The Agency will remain steadfastly focused on putting agents’ needs first.
“When I sit down with potential recruits I always stress The Agency is the place where you can test how good you really are,” he says.
