Before Rochelle Adgo had a team around her, 188 settled sales in a year or the title Ray White Group awarded her as its number one salesperson internationally, she had a square piece of paper and a calculation to make.
Sitting in her car Qld’s Arana Hills Shopping Centre, the mother of two was trying to work out how many houses she would need to sell as a commission-only real estate agent to earn $80,000 a year.
Nine years later, the Ray White Mitchelton agent has recorded 188 settled sales in a single year and taken the top salesperson position across Ray White Group’s network of more than 13,000 agents across Australia and New Zealand.
The numbers are vastly different, but some of the thinking that got her there was established at the beginning.
Rochelle entered real estate with a finance background after moving from New Zealand to Brisbane in late 2011, and says she was underwhelmed by what she saw of the industry at the time.
“I was never very impressed with the standard of the industry,” she says.
Rather than simply adopting the methods already being used around her, she began studying them; she looked at other agents’ letterbox drops, open homes and marketing and continually asked herself how she could improve on them.
That extended to testing different marketing formats, moving from DL flyers to A4 double-sided gloss material, while making a decision that would become an important part of her early growth: after every sale, $600 went directly back into marketing.
“I became an attraction agent,” she says, “before anyone even knew what that meant.”
In her first year, she made 44 sales. But Rochelle’s progression since then has been about more than increasing transaction numbers. A central part of the business she operates today is deciding where her own time is most valuable and building a team capable of handling the rest.
“I don’t believe real estate can be done properly without a team,” she says. “Our clients deserve a level of service, and my market knowledge is unparalleled.”
A three-person buyers’ team now works alongside Rochelle, a structure designed to remove much of the work she considers unproductive for a lead agent and allow her to spend more time directly with clients.
It reflects one of the ideas underpinning her business: do more of less, better.
Rather than trying to personally handle every component of a transaction, Rochelle concentrates on the areas where she believes her knowledge and experience can have the greatest impact.
Her approach is also based on treating sellers and buyers as people first and real estate clients second. She talks about helping people transition into the next stage of their lives in “the safest, least risky way”, while focusing on over-delivering rather than over-promising and finding solutions when transactions become difficult.
When emotion begins to influence a decision, she returns to data: “I’m good at taking the emotion out and focusing on the numbers.”
Market reports and other evidence become a way of bringing a nervous seller or buyer back to the facts rather than allowing a decision to be driven entirely by the pressure of the moment.
Finding the right people
The emphasis on team extends well beyond the employees working directly in Rochelle’s business.
Early in her career, she deliberately sought out someone who had already achieved what she wanted to achieve, choosing her principal, Martin Millard, as a mentor because he was already established and successful in the industry.
The relationship continues today, with Martin challenging her to refine the way she operates rather than allowing success to become a reason to stop changing.
It also fits another principle Rochelle has adopted: “who, not how”.
When confronted with a problem, the first question is not necessarily how she can solve it herself, but who is best equipped to help solve it. That can mean her lawyer, accountant, staff or the broader professional network she has built around the business.
For an industry in which high performers can easily become the centre of every part of their operation, Rochelle has gone in the opposite direction; her model depends on recognising which work she should do herself and which work should be entrusted to someone else.
That philosophy has helped take her from calculating an $80,000 income target in a shopping centre car park to 188 settled transactions in a year, but her motivation is also grounded in a strong sense of family and community.
The eldest of five children, Rochelle comes from a family with an extraordinary history.
Her grandparents, Frits and Jo Hakkens, were originally from Amsterdam and later spent 25 years in New Zealand. During World War II, while living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the resistance couple concealed 14-month-old Jewish girl Elli Szanowski in their ceiling, risking their lives to protect her.
Jo and Frits kept Elli hidden despite multiple Nazi raids before they were betrayed by a collaborator neighbour. Elli had already been moved into the care of another Dutch Resistance family, whose identity and location were withheld from the Hakkens so they could not reveal the information if interrogated. Many years later, Elli was eventually traced to Brazil.
Rochelle never met her grandparents, but says family and connection remain important values in her own life and career.
“I am a giver. I always want to give what I can to all my clients and my team and my community. This is an important lesson in real estate.”