00:00:00

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Next Level Business podcast, this is your host, Tony Kane, holding up OK out there at the moment. They're extremely tough times for a lot of us. And I hope that today's podcast just gives you a little bit of inspiration to keep going to know that there are better times, hopefully just around the corner. So today, I'm really excited. I'm interviewing two guys that I've known for a really long time, and they've been a huge inspiration to me. And it's been amazing to watch how the business partnership has grown and grown. And that created a hugely successful real estate agency in Sydney. And as you can tell from listening to this podcast, their success hasn't been based on luck. They've worked extremely hard to build an amazing business. Thanks for joining us. I hope you really enjoy today's chat. Matthew King and Kieran Bresnahan from a real estate agent. James, thanks so much for joining us tonight. Savoy's to kick things off.

00:00:46

Speaker 1: I know your story. But for to listeners, can you talk us through the journey of how it came to be that you've gone on to build and operate one of the city's most successful real estate agencies?

00:00:56

Speaker 1: Thanks. Thanks, Tom. Lovely introduction. And obviously, we all started as a real estate agent, as a 32 year old, Clifford McGrath.

00:01:07

Speaker 1: Long story short, I convinced John to open the garage kanala we that that eventually happened and we put imatinib. We put a bit of editorial in the paper and here and read it, contacted John Time and joined us while we were still in Edgecliff and we started working across from each other. And the rest is history. We he made me laugh, so I thought I'd give the key to give you a bit of a start.

00:01:33

Speaker 1: And how many years, how many years is the acking?

00:01:36

Speaker 1: That was about 18 years ago, 17 years ago, somewhere in that vicinity in January 2003.

00:01:45

Speaker 1: So if you guys are bringing business together for 18 years, starting off right, sitting across from each other, did you ever imagine that you do it up the size of company that you have now? You know, now that you've done it, would you have done would you have done much differently?

00:02:02

Speaker 2: Would we have done things differently? And I think so now, looking at how it's and of course, big picture now, I wouldn't have done anything different. Of course, we made mistakes along the way. Some heavy mistakes. It's cost us a lot financially and culturally, but I don't know. What do you think? Oh, I think I'll do anything different.

00:02:26

Speaker 1: I don't think we do anything differently, Tom. And I think we have made mistakes. But we've made a hell of a lot more good decisions of this because they have cost us money. But we've also made decisions that have made us money at the same time. And that's what Julia was talk about, is no catch. There's no party in business. So we've we've managed to run a tight ship and run a successfully profitable business. But we have we have also torn up some money and made some mistakes. But I reckon the biggest thing is this, is that when I say this is a lot of young people that work for us today, that when Karen and I started it, really our vision was to be the best we could be as agents. And because we focused on that and being being good at what we did and we naturally were interested in the people around us because we're both quite old and we now have important time so we can about the people working around us that but there was no other vision other than just plain, really good agents that did the great job and hopefully made it a good time for our families. And then I think what happens off the back of that is opportunities arise. And when we started it, we thought we'd have one little shop and, you know, that was going to be for us and we were going to be very happy with that. And then as time progressed again, we did a good job...