Since he started in real estate in 2008, Hudson Dale from Raine & Horne Commercial in Brisbane has picked up multiple awards, sealed deals on amazing properties – and learned a lot. These are the six biggest lessons he says he has learned to date:
1. Turn up and work hard. I’ve always believed that if you’re a hard worker you never have to ask the boss for a raise. All the boss needs is someone that’s going to do what they’re told, work hard, turn up and not do the wrong thing.
2. Tell the truth. Before my career in commercial real estate, I worked in retail sales and management for a big household goods retailer. I can tell you that the principles for selling a toaster or a fridge are the same as for selling a multi-million dollar property – with one key difference. Someone might buy a toaster from a salesperson they don’t trust; they might even buy a fridge so long as they trust the brand. But in real estate, buyers aren’t dumb. They will judge you very quickly based on your tone and presentation.And because it’s hard to remember your lies if you habitually lie, you will get caught. Clients quote back to me things I said to them years before. I can reply with confidence, “Well, at the time that was probably true, and the market hasn’t changed since then, so I’d probably stand by it again today.”
3. Sometimes, the less you know, the better. When you’re fresh to the real estate industry, you are a little naïve. You might present offers that are so bad a more experienced agent might not present them at all. So, as a newbie, you may end up getting a few deals over the line simply because you don’t know any different.
4. Be trusted with the small, and you’ll be trusted with the big. If you’re not afraid to get out there and cut your teeth on small deals, you will get trusted with bigger deals in time. A classic example for me was the sale [or leasing?] of 900 square metres of basement-floor office space in a shopping centre. When the deal was complete, which took more than 3 years, the whole centre was fully occupied, and my colleagues and I were then trusted with the sale of the whole shopping centre, which went for $4.2 million.
5. There are no secrets of the rich. Any successful person you show interest in will tell you most of what they know. The beautiful thing about all the big dogs you meet in this industry is that they became successful because they value things other than just money.
6. It’s good to be the purple cow. As marketing guru Seth Godin noted in his book Purple Cow, if you’re in a field of cows and you paint one purple, it’s the one that’s going to stand out. In a world of real estate agents that all look the same, all have the same egos and all drive the same type of car, it’s an advantage to stand out. To be a purple cow, I simply be myself. I’m a happy-clappy Born Again, and I don’t shy away from that. I also don’t corporate it up. I’m rather loose, and even a bit rough around the edges. In eight-and-a-half years, it’s only turned off about four people out of the thousands I have dealt with.
So there you have it, the principles that guide me in my work. I hope they can help you on the way to building your own successful career in real estate.
Hudson Dale is an Associate Director for Raine & Horne Commercial in Brisbane North.
