The secret to working smarter not harder with Your Empire’s Chris Gray | #409

Chris

Yeah I’ve thought about it years ago because a lot of people take Thursday and Friday off and I thought that’s not mega, let’s just clear mornings. So basically, seven to eight is just clear the mail so all those kind of disappear and that’s set up for the day. Eight to nine is actually trying to play with my kids and actually do ball games. I’m not a natural dad so I need to sit myself down and actually physically do something with them.

Tim

The massive assumption there’s that kids want to play board games at eight o’clock in the morning.

Chris

Yeah I know. And so my daughters probably still sleeping so she doesn’t read it but I’m just trying to spend some time with my son and we play Monopoly and things like that which he loves. Drop him at school at 9, do the gym from 9:00 till 10, 10:30 and then do stretching or massage class from 10:30 to 11:30 and then go home and then set up for 12 o’clock and it’s done for lunch. And probably have a couple of meetings in the afternoon and then most evenings I’m out. Monday are the Sky News, and then Tuesday to Thursday and Friday generally some kind of networking or event that I might be speaking out or going along to and then on a Saturday and Sunday with the family. So is just variety really.

Tim

Yeah. So you’re starting work at midday or shortly thereafter but you’re working into the night. So you might be taking mornings off. But Are you still working relatively normal eight, nine-hour day? Doing what you love.

Chris

Yes for all the small businesses we all know it’s 24/7.  You’ve got your own business. There is no on and off you’re always thinking about the business. And so it’s more just to try and set aside time to get fit because I drink a lot. I’m out a lot I’m entertaining and I don’t love fitness I’ve got to force myself to do it. And so most of the time, even if I’m down the gym technically I’m networking like my cars are plastered with advertising all over it so I’m almost a walking billboard 24/7 anyway. So you are, caught off and if you ask my wife she’ll say you work 24/7. If you ask my friends they’ll say he never works and if you ask the tax man then maybe it’s 50/50.

Tim

Well you’ve certainly built a business that you love. So with the idea for Your Empire come from?

Chris

So I’m an accountant by trade. I’m not a great accountant. So exactly, but I’m sure I was just good naturally with numbers. So basically at 22 I worked out, I couldn’t afford a one-bedroom unit because it would take all my wages to pay the mortgage, but I couldn’t afford a three-bedroom house because I could rent two rooms out. And even though the mortgage was more than my wages I could live for free. So that’s my skill base. So basically, I gave up work at 31 out of Deloitte. I tried a salary sacrifice a Ferrari and they worked out the Fringe Benefits Tax was more than my wages. So they knew something was wrong there. But basically, I was paying it out of property profits and so I basically didn’t work for a few years and everyone said well, how come you’re not working, you’ve got your drive Ferraris, you’ve got a boat, you live on the beach and not working. So I started telling people my story and people believe me because I didn’t have any vested interest. So I didn’t sell the mortgages or houses because I had no job. And so from there then I started doing courses because people said well can you teach us a bit more. And then from doing the courses, then the CEO just said to me Look, I don’t want to learn how to do the stuff I don’t wanna deal with the agents, can I pay you, will you do it for me. And that’s really where a business started. So it came out a demand.

Tim

That sounded so incredibly easy, just going back, at 22. You were in Australia or England?

Chris

In the U.K.

Tim

In the U.K. So at 22 you want to get your own home, you go, well I can’t afford to just have one that I only live in. But the idea of having one with two extra bedrooms that generate revenue through getting tenants in and I live for free. So you get your own first home. That makes sense. You’re at Deloitte for the next nine years you are trapped in a cubicle working for the man but you are continuing to buy property yourself?

Chris

Yeah. So I bought basically six over that time. And so this was the clever thing. So Deloitte is normally at six hour kind of, recording the six minute intervals not that we ever did that but I basically had a really cool boss. Deborah, I’ll give her a plug. She a good boss and we basically had an agreement that if I got my work done I could do my property investing on the site

Tim

What a cool boss

Chris

So I became the most efficient person around Deloitte. Because I knew if anyone ever complained that I had done my work, I’d lose that privilege. And I said you don’t need to pay me bonuses, you don’t need to try and motivate me. I’m self-motivated, I’m going to be so out there. So I wasn’t on email, I wasn’t on Facebook doing all that kind of stuff sitting around chatting because I’m trying to get my work done in 20 hours so I could then be out with the listers looking at properties and doing everything else. And so that’s basically the mentality I had.

Tim

What do you think about that mentality that Deborah saw very courageously and probably pretty smartly?  Say you know you do get your work done here and then do whatever you want to.

Chris

But also, she don’t have any choice.

Tim

Yeah right, she’s going to lose you

Chris

Because the other thing was is with staff bonuses, she says we pay someone five grand for working hard all year, we change their life. You can buy another set of tires on the Ferrari because at the time I was earning eighty grand a year which is 60 grand after tax. Same time from this was early 2000s the property market was growing. I was making six hundred grand a year capital gains so I wasn’t paying tax because I wasn’t selling. So you earn 60 grand for working or 600 for doing nothing. And that’s the reality. So it is very hard for them to motivate an employee that doesn’t need money because everyone else you either threaten to sack the more you give them the carrot of a bonus. And this is what I’m kind of against with say a normal employee relationship or when small business has staff. There’s no incentive for that person to really work any harder. Whereas I was the most kind of energetic person there because I had a reason to do something that it wasn’t getting a little bonus it was making hundreds and hundreds of thousands from property investing.

Tim

How many staff have you got now.?

Chris

So technically none. And I’ve got no office but we effectively all work from home because I don’t want to come into the city every day. I work in or I live in Darling Point. We’ve got 360-degree views around Sydney so we are in a round building, whole floor. This is a home rented home and so why would I ever want to go and have an office. And then staff I learned from Deloitte says first of all you’ve got to pay them, then you’ve got to hope that they do some work, then you hope that they don’t sue you or leave or do nick all your customers. And so in real estate it’s quite different anyway as effectively everyone runs their own business. But under my banner or under my logos and they are all effectively self-employed. So if they want to earn money they can earn a million dollars if they want but I don’t care if they work 100 hours or 1000 hours or two hours it’s all about you put money in the bank and we all split it. And if you’re super-efficient and you can generate more money and less time, you get paid more money per hour. And so it’s just like running a business. If you’ve got a great business, you earn lots of money. If you go in and do 80 hours a week but you don’t actually generate any business, you don’t get paid.

Tim

So at 31 you’ve got six properties under your belt. It’s time to leave Deloitte. What was that decision, was that just like you know what I don’t need Deloitte anymore and you know it’s time to do my own thing?

Chris

So it was actually a really hard decision because I’d been brought up, my dad was a doctor my Mum’s a nurse. I was brought up as a job for life and I actually need a life coach and life coach is running just invented back in early 2000s and I still think that the life coach I had still doesn’t know what I did. But it was her mentality that got me over the mindset of leaving work. So I thought I earned 60 grand a year, five grand a month. If I go and Perth say 60 grand in a bank account and pay myself five grand a month that’s the same as having a job, but not turning up. And it was that mentality that I needed to leave the workforce. Because everyone’s reaction when I email from Deloitte saying I’ve retired, it’s you can’t do that you need a job like there’s all the negativity and I know you’re doing the wrong thing. But the mentality was well if I’m getting five grand a month, who cares whether I turn up to an office. And one year led to two to three and then suddenly 15 years later still haven’t had a proper job.

Tim

Unemployable probably.  So you leave Deloitte, how long you, didn’t have the idea for Your Empire the business at that point in time.

Chris

No so what I did is, a mate of mine was trying to get into film making and he started doing extras work. You know hanging out on film sets and movies. And I turned up and I think you get to pay 200 bucks for your pictures or something and I said look I don’t want to be on TV. I don’t want to act. I’m not an actor I don’t want to say anything. I just want to see how you make a movie or an advert or something like that and you spend all this time kind of hanging out and you’re just talking to people. And I used to give my free property advice as always, always do. And one of the guys found a lead through his agency that Channel Nine were after a property expert to go on a show called my home TV at a packer thing. And in short, I basically got the job a few years later and we did I think 37 shows on Saturday mornings, a lifestyle show. So we go up to Queensland they put a house on a back of a truck and move it somewhere else. We do all these amazing things and so I just built the reputation of being the independent expert because I didn’t have a barrow to push. And that that’s the big thing because everyone has got a barrier to push, everyone’s got a vested interest in giving you certain advice. So I guess I always wanted to be that corporate speaker rather than I guess the sprucier and my market always was high income earners rather than I guess your average Aussie in a way. And so I just built it up from being a TV expert.

Tim

You literally just living a luxurious life of not working at this point in time. The TV opportunity comes along and you take it at that point where there was some enough people were asking for advice. How do you do what you do, think you know want turn this into a business.

Chris

And also, the same thing is so I had about three and a half million of property then that was going up at a 10,20 percent a year so I was making that 600 but I knew that 600 wasn’t than the last. And suddenly if you don’t work, you’ve then got 24/7 to spend and suddenly your expenses go up. And so I just could see that look, maybe I need a bigger portfolio than three and a half million to retire on.

Tim

Because it was one of the things, looking at your business I go why go and show other people how to do it when you could just continue to do it yourself, enjoy the fruits of that and not have clients and businesses to worry about or you know contractors?

Chris

So in the early days you go through the tough times whereas now because I’ve been in it for 10 years, I’ve got the easy side. So I don’t deal with most of the stuff now which is great. But the reality is with property is two things.  First of all is if I’m building the relationship with the agents to try and get off market deals, it’s a lot of work. Just even I can only buy one or two a year at the most. So if I’m investing that much time in a relationship I may as well be buying 50 or 100 for that same relationship effectively. And it’s easier to get better deals if I’m buying in bulk 50 or 100 properties than I am just buying one. So that part of it. The second part of it is in the good old days of 2000s you could get no doc or low doc loans. Tick the box you can get an 80 percent loan. Now the banks an absolute nightmare because of APRA. And so now you’ve got to have an income. So even if you’ve got a million-dollar debt free property you still need an income to pull the mortgage out. So effectively the business is the income side of my business and that pays all my expenses my travel all that kind of stuff. But the real money comes from the property investing.

Tim

So explain your empire now how it works.

Chris

So effectively what we do is we help people create wealth from property and typically we’re dealing with high income earners that want to buy the blue chips suburbs. So we’re not trying to find the latest greatest thing. We’re not trying to suddenly do granny flat or subdivide or take massive risks because quite often hotspots don’t turn into a hotspot. They crash like the mining towns. So we’re trying to buy that. Bondi Beach, the St Kilda Paran type thing and we’re trying to say we’re buying it today for half a million or a million bucks and we think in 17 years it’s going to be worth 2 million. But you’ve got to auction there’s 20 or 30 people over it. It’ll go for one point one rather than a million dollars. We can get it for a million dollars and buy it before it comes on the market.

Tim

How. This is your secret source?

Chris

So it’s not a secret. It’s basically having that relationship. So our biggest thing is we’re ethical honest and we do what we say we’re going to do. So say you’ve bought a, so you’re a vendor. So you own your own home cost you 500 it’s now worth a million and an agent says I could sell it to you for one point one at auction. Which is great, sell it for you at one point one. But you’ve suddenly seen your dream property or your partner has and it goes to auction in one or two weeks and you don’t want people coming through the house and you want that certainty. If I come up and say I’ll give you a million dollars now, it’s guaranteed. Now sure you might get one point one at auction but if you only get 999, you’re gonna lose your dream home. What do you want to do?

Tim

How are you approaching vendor?

Chris

Through the agents effectively. And so we’re saying the same thing to the agents, it’s your super busy up you’re selling 20 properties. Whether you sell it for one or one point one you get the same commission And so it really doesn’t make any difference. So we’re the guarantee. And so the easy analogy is when you sell a second hand car, do most people do it themselves or do they trade it in. What do they do because they hate dealing with talkers. Do you get the best price it trades in? No, you don’t. It’s a guaranteed deal. That’s what we are.  So everyone thinks that everyone’s after the highest dollar or the cheapest kind of thing. It’s never the case.  Never but pretty much.

Tim

Not every vendor has got a dream property mine that’s going to auction in two weeks so you should come in and be…

Chris

But a lot of people don’t want the neighbors to find out. They might go through divorce, they just don’t want the grief. They don’t want to deal with agents. They might come to us direct. There’s a whole host of different reasons of why you just don’t want the grief. And it’s like the same for employees. Does every employee go for the highest paying job? No, not necessarily. Sometimes they just want to work at Google or where it’s a better lifestyle living. So this is the whole thing about any kind of sales or marketing is you’re tryna go for something that, it’s not all price if you’re selling on price, you’ve got a pretty screwed up business.

Tim

Well it’s a one-way street really isn’t it.

Chris

Yeah. Unless you’re big or something like that and you making millions.

Tim

So okay so right now your empire, you’re out there, you’re finding sourcing properties, off the plant talking to developers, going to vendors.

Chris

No so most of time we’re just buying second hand. So again, we’re not even taking the punt on brand new and taking the risk that it will be built because we think most of the good areas are already fully built up. So they can only build in the secondary areas. We know what to buy in the secondary areas, we want the blue chips. And if you combine the blue chips that sell it for 2 million which is then hasn’t got a great yield. So we’re not buying the super sexy gorgeous stuff that every other person buys. And loses money on, we buy the ugly duckling that can then be renovated

Tim

And you guys do that as well right? You make it a property like landlord type set up as well.

Chris

So basically, people come to us and they don’t want to do anything to do with it. So if they’ve already got their team, they can do that otherwise we can get the mortgage brokers, bank bankers, financial planners, we can take it through council, so whatever they need to do around residential property effectively we can help them.

Tim

What do you love about it?

Chris

I just love talking probably. So, I can talk underwater, I can talk at three in the morning. It’s just my normal language in a way and I’ve got a passion and when people see on video then they just see my eyes light up and my face. And not say 90 percent of what I do these days is for free. So I’m not charging for my time, effectively it’s marketing but my TV shows these kind of shows, a lot of my travel overseas, I’m speaking for free. And I honestly don’t care if people want to go off and do it themselves like my books, we’ve produced I don’t know 60-70,000 books never sold one. All away for free. And some idea is to teach the average population go off and do it yourselves. You’re not going to be my client anyway. I’d rather deal with the high-income earners that have already got the money. They just need to be shown how to do it. Whereas if someone has got no money no job no nothing. I’m not a genius, I’m not God, I can’t create money from nothing. Other people can apparently but I definitely know I can’t.

Tim

How do you weed them out? So you giving away a lot for free. A lot of business I struggle with that I mean my whole concept in the boomerang effect; my book is around helpful marketing. Which is basically understand your prospect, what problems and blockages they have, and help them solve it through giving them information via a podcast or a video or speaking from stage or whatever it is. And it’s a sign of struggle with that because I feel as though they’re giving away their IP, their point of difference right. Clearly you and I both agree that’s not the case and giving away things for free. Your free is interesting, yours is twofold. One is, you’re giving it away to people who you know just aren’t going to be able to afford to be a client of your empire. But you’re also doing it to build a personal brand, and an awareness around. If I do want to buy property and I do have the money then Chris is the guy to speak to.

Chris

Yeah. Because if you’re in there for the long term, then you’re not after that dollar today. So one of the really big speakers, one of the highest paid speakers in Australia is Craig Respin who is a futurist. He goes and speaks to all the PAs because the PAs ,  they’re the ones that actually Book him. And so even if I help all their I guess the general nation and they’re not my direct customers, they’re still speaking to other people that suddenly have got the money. And if my reputation around town is Chris is great, he gives everything away for free. He helped me and I get people coming in off the street saying hey I hope you’ve seen me 10 years ago, I bought four properties in the middle of places I haven’t even heard of. And there’s no better thing in the world than having some thank you. And so, I’m sure reciprocity was the hard word to say. What comes around goes around. And I still want to go to heaven so all the bad things I do in life hopefully it balances the karma out.

Tim

What you love about it you said you just love property. Is that really the truth or is property the vehicle that’s given you the opportunity to live the lifestyle that you love? Is the lifestyle that you love or is it property?

Chris

So, kind of half property half numbers.

Tim

No lifestyle?

Chris

Lifestyle is given. That’s the thing. So my very first speech was to CPA Australia, the accounting body. And it was back in the early 2000s and I had about 700 people so my first speech ever was to like 700 people.

Tim

How? Through Deloitte?

Chris

No actually through luck and networking kind of group

Tim

You’ve been doing a bit of TV and had a bit of-.

Chris

Yes, I’ve done TV but I’d never actually spoken before as in doing live speech. And the first question I asked him is who thinks you should pay off your home loan? And of course, he can’t and so put two hands up in the air and to spend the next hour trying to convince them that there’s an argument not to buy your own home, that the mathematics actually make sense to rent it instead. I love that mental challenge to trying get super clever people to, not necessarily change their opinions but to think hey maybe there’s a different way of thinking about things. And we deal with people from school kids up to people worth half a billion, a billion dollars. And again, I’ve got one thing that I can talk to them that they don’t necessarily know or it’s a different argument they haven’t heard before. And I haven’t created anything new and I’ve just got my own way of doing it. I love having those debates and yeah telling clever people that half a million, a million dollars that a work in their backsides. And I’m doing pretty much nothing, with a better lifestyle to say well, working harder actually isn’t the way to go.

Tim

Oh you are playing Monopoly at eight o’clock in the morning. That’s really hard work. Goodness, mate.

Chris

This is kid’s monopoly though.

Tim

There you go. Are you a brutal dad? It’s like you’re not going to win mate.

Chris

I mean you know it’s I play hard to get and yeah, it’s 50/50 he’s good as well.

Tim

We’re chatting with Chris Gray who is the founder of Your Empire. I don’t even know how to pigeonhole your property.

Chris

It’s a kind of an agent, bar expert. Yeah whatever

Tim

Empire, you happy with that name? Every time I say it I feel like I have to qualify it saying, I’m not talking about your empire I’m talking about the business.

Chris

Yeah. Because originally, so I don’t know anything about marketing. I don’t believe I do. So, when we came up with the name originally, that’s when the TV show was called my home and the agency came up with your empire and I said no it shouldn’t be your empire, it should be my empire. But I guess it depends if I’m talking to you then I’m saying your empire then I’m talking about you. So anyway, I just said look, if you think that’s the right word then go and do it. I thought it was a bit elitist building your own castle in the UK, I didn’t think he’d go down well. But a lot of people seem to love it, so yeah happy to go with the flow.

Tim

Tell me I want to talk about marketing and how you’ve built this brand but you do travel a lot. You travel, what do you say 15 times a year?

Chris

Roughly 10 to 15 times a year with my wife’s permission. We’ve got an agreement, for 15 trips is okay.

Tim

She tags along?

Chris

On some of them yeah. Some of them with my wife, some with the kids, some of them just the lads, and then a whole bunch for business and education and learning as well.

Tim

You travel at the pointy end of the plane. Yeah. And how do you do that?

Chris

And I haven’t paid for a ticket in five-six years.

Tim

Yeah, it’s right, it’s free.

Chris

Now because you actually rang me before this interview a few days ago and it was I think 6:00 in the morning, I was in the Wadi Rum in Jordan and just about to get on a camel and have my earpiece on and I mentioned well it’s all through Amex points and he said we don’t need to mention Amex and I said I completely forgot Amex was a sponsor of the show. But this is what I firmly believe is, I met a guy called Steve Hui from I fly flats. And I think I was one of his fourth or fifth customers and I just got it because I used to get a hundred thousand points on my Amex and convert it to a thousand dollars of my’s vouchers and give it to my wife. So I got no pleasure. Then lots of people said they were flying business in first class and I try to go on the sites and I just couldn’t work out how the hell it all worked. And so that’s what Steve’s business does. Steve tells you what credit cards to get and typically it’s Amex because that gives you the most points. He then can work the airline systems to know what routes that you want to take and sometimes he’ll even search for six months to try and find you that flight. And I’m trying to book six to 12 months in advance because I want to get these the right kind of flight. And so he then teaches me how to get more points out of my business. And so effectively I generate one or two million points a year. So my 10 or 15 flights and with my wife as well. Then we fly business or first. I flew first to Jordan and back which was a 15 hour and a three-hour flight.

Tim

So, what you’re doing is putting all your expenses, I mean every single business expense you can on Amex?

Chris

So again, my staff that aren’t staff, they’re contractors effectively I pay them through American Express as well, plus the ATO, plus my rental home, plus all my taxes. And so let some of those points you’ve got to pay for. Some people do give you a surcharge so it’s not completely free and you still got to pay for your right taxes on the airlines but in reality, is I wouldn’t pay 10 or 20 grands for a first-class flight. But I don’t mind taking one.

Tim

I love it. Let’s talk marketing. You said the other day as you are boarding a camel in Jordan, you said something just off the cuff. Marketing should be fun. I totally agree. I would hope most people listening to this show think it is fun because that’s why they’re listening. But many business owners struggle with it. What do you mean about marketing being fun? This is serious business.

Chris

And I don’t think it is just marketing. I think it’s business. And look I’m not sure who I learnt it off but I think there’s plenty of mentors out there like the big kind of US kind of guys that would say make stuff fun. Probably one of my earliest jobs, I actually did recruiting before I joined Deloitte and we had to make I think 10 connections on the phone every morning and 10 in the afternoon, so 20 a day and that meant you probably had to ring 50 people to get connected to that 20. And it’s like make it fun, take the phone down to the beach, or go on a boat or go to wherever.

Tim

I had a guest. Years ago, Brad Smith who is very big on outbound cold calling. Clearly a lot of people don’t like that but what he did with his team was say, come in dress up today’s outbound cold calling day. So, guys come in with mullet wigs and Ray Ban sunglasses and completely get out of their own heads and be a character and yeah I’ve had a real laugh doing it.

Chris

But the thing is that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to try and turn it into something fun because then ideally there’s no difference between work and play. So that’s where the earlier comment of my wife might say works 60 or 80 hours a week or 24/7. My friends will say I’m doing nothing, but technically as I’m trying to attract high income earners to my business and either get it or they don’t. I’m not going to get those guys by picking up the phone saying hey you want to buy a property. But if I’m out at the racetrack or I’m overseas or I’m travelling all the time and people say Chris every time I look at Facebook you’re travelling, or you’re on a boat or you’re in a car or you’re doing something and I say Yeah well, that’s how it works. We do lots of events on boats. So I’ve got a boat syndicate that I’m part of and again like the I fly flatties, don’t pay for a whole boat yourself. You pay for an eighth of it because even me I use it a lot and I can’t use my forty-three days of the year. And so we then go and take- So I take say 20 people out on a boat and I might take a mortgage broker and say hey you have your Christmas party on my boat. I can get to meet 10, 15, 20 new people and I say, if you go out for coffee with someone for an hour you build a certain relationship. You go and spend four hours playing golf with them, you get an even better relationship and you break down a lot of barriers. You go drinking for 10 or 12 hours on a boat you break down a lot of barriers and again it’s not to try and force people but people often say well I hear you rent your boat or your syndicate you boat, I hear you rent your house, I hear you’ve got cars that appreciate in value rather than depreciate. I get the fly for free and so I want to be known as the person that’s got I guess all these hacks for all these things to have the million-dollar lifestyle without being the millionaire and the by products’ property.

Tim

You know what you do very well and you probably know this is that you seed things along the way. So in conversation, you just you just drop and people go to Wanka and I’m sure you’ve been accused of the that.

Chris

Yeah. With the Lamborghini the engine noise is so, so loud that when people shout, you don’t know if there’s a great car or you’re an absolute tosser.

Tim

He’s a wanka guys. I take that back. So but you’re very good and I think we can all learn from this, is just to see those interesting points about either yourself or your business in conversations with prospects. You know so yeah you just was in Jordan last week and hopped on a camel and then you move on and but do you that in a calculated way, maybe you used to, now it feels like –  But what it’s doing is in every conversation you must have, people go –  Tell me about that camel or tell me how you got a house with 360 degree views. You’re just dropping these little nuggets along the way that people attach themselves.

Chris

And that’s what excites me because you see my eyes will suddenly brighten up even on a hangover or something like that because I just love teach, like I can never understand that school why anyone wouldn’t want to be a teacher. It’s got to be the worst job in the world. Whereas now effectively I am a teacher and I love it.

Tim

It’s interesting I had that discovery a few years ago. It’s a major reason why I do this, this show is teaching. I mean there is something very honorable about it and it’s lovely to see other people’s eyes light up and you know

Chris

But most people’s question is exactly what you said a while ago is why you would let your secret’s out. And why would you give it away for free if you make so much money from property investing why would you go and do this. And if one is skeptical and look I was an accountant I’m skeptical of most things but the reality is that people do love doing stuff and they do love doing stuff for other people for charities and things like that. So that is the reality if people believe it or not. But talking about the seeding thing and the marketing, my wife is a trainer for sales and every time she hears me having a conversation with a client, she almost throws herself with 10 stories up, almost throws herself off the balcony and Deloitte, my accountant says the same thing because in sales you’re supposed to ask questions. And your space to explore the client. I don’t. I’m a teller. And I just say this is what I do. This is what I got to offer. You either like it or you don’t and that’s it.

Tim

Is that because what you do and what you have to offer is very interesting to most people?

Chris

I don’t like selling and I’m scared of selling.

Tim

I don’t believe that.

Chris

But unless that’s a funny thing. But I love it when it goes right but I don’t want to- So I love selling or leading people that want to be lead and want to be sell to but I can’t stand pushing people when they don’t want to. So I do a lot of things and I organised lots of events and I’m great if people want to come, but I’m the worst one if you can’t fill a room and for whatever reason it’s not going, I’m no good at getting a crowd from one room and putting them in the next room. But if like people want to be sheep and they want a leader, then I can be great at that.

Tim

You’re the man. So talking about best marketing you probably answered it Chris, in terms of the marketing that you do is you tell stories and your great network. You’re always looking, no matter where you are, you’re looking for that opportunity to strike a conversation.

Chris

But a with the I’m actually fairly introverted which again most people wouldn’t believe but look at home I’m very, very quiet.

Tim

I get that I am too. But a lot of people wouldn’t believe it either but I get that your kind of you when you’re forming.

Chris

Yeah, you’re out performing effectively. And so we’re all go into a room. My wife will hit 98 out of 100 people, I hit two but I have good conversations with them. And that’s the thing, it is sure I can network, but our only network were people I like. So if I don’t really like a person, I’m not going to network and build a relationship with them just because I can get business out of it or I can see they can do something for me. I haven’t got the time I’ve got no interest and I’m almost like I’ll go out there, put myself out there say all my stuff and be completely open so I’ll tell them about my personal finances, the rest of it I don’t hide anything and I’ll just hang with the people that are a naturally attractive. Kind of low hanging fruit in a way.

Tim

Yeah okay it makes sense. Two good conversations better than 98. If we visited your social media you touched on it earlier, are we going to see just whole lifestyle pics, behind the scenes, you know.

Chris

Yeah pretty much. We haven’t been great as a business doing social media. A mate of mine’s Curwen Ray, I don’t know if you know. He’s got a big marketing guy who’s doing a social media thing and he was talking about all the hashtags and how that works on Instagram. And I’ve been using for few years I’ve never used hashtag. I just can’t be bothered. But he said that’s how people sort through the rest. So, I start to try to put two or three in there. But I’m just it’s not my thing. I get on with Facebook and yep it’s putting car pictures and experiences, hanging out with mates and doing some fun stuff. But yeah, I don’t think that’s my school base.

Tim

You said you’re pretty open with your numbers. Can you wrap some numbers around where your empires at 2018?

Chris

So, the biggest thing is the portfolio. So my portfolio is around 15-16 million.

Tim

Your personal one?

Chris

My white property portfolio. Yes, I’ve got about 13 or 14 properties over a million each.  Probably about 60 percent a year or so. So about say 10 million of debt. And so my philosophy is I believe the market will rise at 5 or 10 percent over the long term. So, I’m banking on making 750 to one and a half million a year and not paying tax because I’m not selling it. So that’s where my real money is. In terms of the business, we turn over roughly one half two million dollars. We might make anywhere from naught to a half million dollars profit depending on the marketing spend which a lot of it is travel and entertaining. Not that it’s deductible unfortunately. So I really run that business more as look, happy to do it, gets me out there. It pays for all my living lifestyle property, all that kind of stuff. And so I had a new guy come in the business that’s almost like a CEO now. And originally when he came in two years ago, he said right let’s build it up to five or 10 million. And we went through all the numbers, went through all the marketing and all those things. But two years it’s come around, he’s actually said well no because even for him the money isn’t in the business. It’s again for him is to extract wages or income out of it to then turn that into property portfolios. Because the business isn’t necessarily be that scalable. It’s not necessarily saleable because there’s no recurring revenue and so suddenly he’s seen how much class properties have grown in that time and you think well it doesn’t make sense and there’s nothing better than having someone that really pulls your business apart and comes around to the same conclusion that you’ve got as well.

Tim

Property prices in Australia certainly Melbourne and Sydney but I think nationally have gone nuts over the last few years. Has that impacted your business because it’s just not as many sellers and people are holding on knowing that they’ve got to get back into the market if they sell?

Chris

Sure. So normally we would have about 10 or 20 customers anyone or any one time that are pre-approved ready to buy, effectively a que. The last three or four years we’ve had 50 or 60. It’s been a nightmare. So you think it’s great, like you’ve got three times as many clients but because we’re so selective, so plenty of other of the competition were by any old property at any old price as we’re very strict in terms that will only bumble cheap suburbs, we’ll buy it based on the bank valuation which is super conservative and we can’t go off that. So we’re making our job 10 times as hard as it would be. But I know I can sleep well because I know every single property we bought in 10 years has been on bank valuation every single chance I make money. So there’s nothing better than walking down the street like that.

Tim

When is number 60 in that list going to get a property?

Chris

And that’s the problem. And so you then have the conversation with the client to say look the market is rising at 10 grand a month and we want to find you a good property but at the same time we don’t wanna a rush. And all the clients did actually come back and say we’re not in a rush, we don’t want to jump in, we don’t want to overpay.  Now, some of them didn’t end up buying and they get a refund. So they pay some of the fees upfront and we refund 100 percent of they don’t buy. So at least we’d never overpaid for a property. Because if you go pay 50 or 100 grand over and the market suddenly stops or it does drop five or 10 percent, suddenly you’ve got a client has lost a hundred grand. I’d rather not satisfy them and maybe they’re pissed off that we didn’t buy, but they didn’t lose 100 grand. They didn’t lose underground because I couldn’t stand walking down the street saying that guys ripped me off or there’s a bad online report or something like that. If the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone is not buy a property then I can live. I can live with that.

Tim

What do you say and there’s many listening, to business owners who are doing the 80-hour week, who are working their rings off, who are just plain busy and miserable?

Chris

So I think it depends. There’s times that you do have to work hard. And I’ve certainly done it through. You look at my lifestyle, you look at all the properties, all looks really cold and easy. It’s not having 10 million dollars’ worth of debt over you and I’ve been in debt since I was 18 years hence my haircut. Well it’s not too much. And I say to my wife is that I might not work the biggest hours and I might not work and do millions of calls but I’ve got a big weight on my shoulders. I’ve still got 10 million dollars’ worth of debt that even though cash flow neutral now and I’ve got money in the bank, it’s still a weight on my shoulders and that’s effectively what I get paid for. And so, I think at times in my business is I’ve got back to things so bad that I’ve tried to will on a heart attack because I’m highly insured so I get a good payout. But that was almost my only get out of jail free cards.

Tim

Is that true? Tell me about the lowest point.

Chris

So that was pretty much it. So I probably had two or three times that the property doesn’t always go out consistently and you get periods that goes flat for three or four years and you get periods where the banks aren’t lending any money and it’s really, really tough. Business as we all know like I was doubling my turn over every year but my first turnover was eight grands. So then you got to 26 and then you got a fifty and a hundred. So doubling turnover but you’re investing more and more money in the business all the time. So most people in business, it’s worse than having a job, it’s a bloody liability. And I make jokes about it in the seminars I do is like when you ever make any money for business and people laugh and you know straight away who’s in business. Because it’s tough, business is tough. And you’ve got to work hard and there’s no option. And so I almost need this so I go from feast or famine in a way. And so I suddenly have lots of money, I go and invest in property and I overbuy too much. So suddenly I’ve got no money, then I feel poor, then I’ve got to get on the phones and do some decent work and then I go feast a farmer which I’m kind of over that now. And so now I’m trying to build my buffer to say I want 10 years money in the bank so that I don’t have to worry about it again. But business is always tough. Even the biggest businesses around town has its ups and downs. If you’re not on the ball all the time and you get too cocky, something changes.

Tim

When are you going to retire? Like literally like take the foot off the pedal and just enjoy what you created.

Chris

Yes, this year’s been a big change. So I’ve got a guy Lewis in there now, he’s pretty much running the show. So this is where both said, right let’s cancel mornings. And it really is I’m only doing stuff if I want it. So we only have clients if we like them, if we don’t like them we’re not going to take them on.

Tim

How do you establish whether you like an immediate kind of second intuition or-?

Chris

I think generally you do if clients say become a pain up the backside, sorry if there’s any clients out there. We have an honest conversation. If they’re wanting a million-dollar property for eight hundred grand and they want it within a few days, we won’t even take them on in the first place. We’ll say look it’s not going to happen. We don’t buy properties half price, in Bondi, St Kilda Faran, all those areas because it just doesn’t exist. And so I think we know because most people when they’re selling clients, they say oh I’ll you there for half price and all will go up at 20 percent a year and it’ll be amazing. We’ll most undersell what we do. So then people are saying, Nah I still want it. I think that that’s a way.

Tim

You had a book you’ve got a book called The effortless empire. You wrote that a number of years ago, you said you’ve given away 60 to 70000 copies. We’ve had a number of self-publishers on this show and I say to anyone who listens I write a book. It’s a glorified business card and if you give it away, give it away because what’s it done for your business, giving away that many copies?

Chris

So when I first got into TV then I got published. So were going to do a TV show and the TV show come off with the book Dead and so I was in demo some David Jones took all the photos for Malm, amazing experience. I don’t think I ever got a royalty check. I’m not sure how many got sold and that was the whole thing is the kudos of being published. Yes, but then I met an amazing girl Lisa messenger who’s pretty well known around town and she came up with the concept of do you want to sell a 25-dollar Book or a 25-grand client. And so it was exactly as you say it’s a basically a brochure. Everyone will throw a brochure in the bin but not many people will throw it. They’ll take it to the charity store or something like that or they give it to a friend or they keep it on the bookshelf for five years.

Tim

They might read, they might.

Chris

And we do get people that say I’ve had it on my bookshelf for five years, moved house, I should have read it when you gave it to me. Well I gave it there’s that’s a lot more I could do. But it’s great because it puts it out there. And the way we wrote the book was the marketing company listened in to 20 clunk conversations and every time the client asked a question or I made a point, they wrote down a post it note. They put them in order for designing the website to say this is the journey we take them down. And I said well that’s a book in that. So we actually wrote the book in four hours because it was recorded and we literally haven’t changed a word in 10 years apart from the average property price. I think 10 years ago was five hundred grand. Now it’s a million. So we change that, price is doubling every seven to 10 years. And it’s the best thing because people come to me and I don’t want to spend two or three hours with every single person who wants free advice. So I say if you want a meeting, read the book, that’s going to answer 98 percent of your questions. Then if you still want a meeting with me, we can concentrate on the two or three questions that you didn’t really understand or the few concepts. So there’s a reason for them to do it. So now I don’t get 100 emails a day or thousand phone calls because most of the people will take the book and say thanks I’ll go off and read it and go and do it. The other people won’t even read the book. And then the ones that do want to meeting have generally read the book or it’s been by referral and so they’ve probably got a 50 to 80 percent chance of converting.

Tim

Genius. Chris I’ve got to get back to work but I know you’ve got to go and check the ice in the boats being delivered. Thanks for sharing. It’s a great story and half of me hates you, half of me love you.

Chris

Wonderful, thanks very much.

Tim

Good on you buddy, I really appreciate it. A great story.