Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello Michael Seymour from Tall Poppy. How are you today?

Speaker 2: 0:32

Pretty good, pretty good, zipanisa, I've just come back from a month away from work for the first time in my life.

Speaker 1: 0:38

A month away from work. Where have you been?

Speaker 2: 0:40

Well, I'm an elderly hockey player. So the first two weeks I was in Auckland for the Bastards Hockey World Cup first time it's ever been in New Zealand and played in that and then I went to a wedding in Thailand. So yeah, I've been in Asia. Just got home.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Nice. That sounds like a really exciting time for someone that owns a company, runs a company, to take away a whole month. Wow.

Speaker 1: 1:05

I envy you. You have to tell me now how can you achieve that in life, to do this? So, for those that are listening, I've got Michael Seymour, the owner of Tall Poppy, in the office with me today. I'm absolutely grateful for this human in my life. You've been an interesting character, I think, in the last 12 to 24 months. How long have we known each other? I think a couple of years, now three years.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Before you started building this house.

Speaker 1: 1:33

That's right. That's right. We're not going to go into that, are we? No, we're not going to share that story yet, but you've been instrumental in terms of me looking at who I am and where I want to go, because you're quite inspirational. I find you very positive and your outlook on life and what you've been through and the wisdom that you shared with me, and I absolutely love your daily stories on Facebook as well, with Sarah Says. That was kind of cool. So, michael, do you want to tell our listeners about your journey, really and where you know, where did you start and what are you doing right now?

Speaker 2: 2:13

Yeah, well, hopefully you can interrupt me because I'm one of those people that can easily talk for a long time. Okay, bring it on. But yeah, look, I found out quite young that I was a business person, in effect, unemployable to others. My journey started as a I guess I'm a little bit of a. I felt I was an aimless young man and I was clever enough but didn't really have any clear places to go. And my mum, who's a beautiful, lovely woman, I think, probably shaped the personality that I've got today, which is generally sort of a very calm disposition and just like to have a good time, you know, but get cool things done. And anyway, I didn't want to do anything as a youngster and I was good at chemistry I could do it without even studying. So my mum enrolled me in the pharmacy school as a young man without telling me. Wow.

Speaker 2: 3:10

And well, kind of you know. It was illegal chemistry right, oh sorry, pharmacy Pharmacy. Long story short. As a young man, I ended up at pharmacy school and became a pharmacist, and off I went to pharmacy school and within literally two months of my internship as a young man, I realised that I was trying to run all the systems. Wow.

Speaker 2: 3:32

And the processes and also the people. And I was also bullish. I was confident in arguing the point when I knew something which would have been a pain in the ass for a lot of people that came across me, but I was also a lot of fun. So, yeah, I managed to get through my internship and in the end I ended up buying into this pharmacy. And, long story short, it wasn't until I was 27 when I went into my first pharmacy and then opportunities came up to go and partner up and do other things with other pharmacies. And long story short, you know, I ended up starting a pharmacy company that ended up with like 44 pharmacies and we changed the shape of corporate ownership in New Zealand.

Speaker 2: 4:12

Wow, you know just literally, from just from being having a bit of a tigress attitude. But I also discovered during that time that I had to own businesses, because if I was working for someone else I wasn't going to listen to a lot of instruction might be the best way to put it, and even I'll tell the story of finishing the pharmacy group.

Speaker 2: 4:36

but when I sold out of the pharmacy group and I was on my own and I had nothing to do, I got approached by a whole lot of recruiters and they were adamant that they were going to stick me into these business CEO roles and all of this sort of thing. And I told them at the beginning it wasn't going to work.

Speaker 2: 4:51

But after, I think, about six months all of them said to me you're unemployable, Unless of course somebody just wanted to give you their business to run, and that might sound a little bit arrogant. But the key thing for me is, once I know something and I believe it, then I'm just going to go and do it, go for it.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Yeah, I go and do it, and the key thing I've learned about all of that is that everything's achievable if you know you can do it and you've got the tenacity. The problem that a lot of people have are that when the barriers get in the way, they don't stand for long enough through the journey, and sometimes it's quite a long one. So yeah, in that regard, and then I can tell you how I stumbled into real estate. But now I'm applying the same thing to real estate because I'm certainly not done with what I want to achieve in real estate.

Speaker 1: 5:37

So let me get it straight. Right for those that are listening, and as I'm listening to you, michael is basically you've got to have that foundation right. You've got to have the right values, the right ethics to work, whether you're working for yourself, whether you're working for someone I mean, not everyone is a bulldozer like you that can just go and work for themselves and build something, but if you're working for someone as well, it's the same fundamentals, really, of having the tenacity to persevere when things get hard, not just throw a towel in and go I'm done, it's too hard.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Yes, and that's got a lot to do with perseverance and tenacity, but I think everything floats to the top in time People just don't wait long enough sometimes. And also values alignment is important. You have to learn not to tolerate things that are unacceptable to you and where boundaries are set, and these days. I'm not saying that in the past anyone was any better at boundaries, but these days I do notice that the people that do set boundaries are often seen as difficult. Right, and it's okay to be difficult sometimes, as long as you're difficult for the right reasons.

Speaker 2: 6:48

And I think that's fair and reasonable. These days, anybody that sort of you know sets himself apart, can often be vilified, especially with social media or I don't know. Society's just moved a little bit differently than when I was a little boy. It seemed a heck of a lot more innocent, you know, and slower paced. But yeah, the advice that I give anybody from my perspective is I'm not the best at anything that I do. I'm not the brightest either, but I'm quite bright, but I'm not the brightest. But if I had to say one thing that I might be up near the top of it's tenacity, because a whole bunch of things that I've prevailed in have been because I was the last man standing when everyone else dropped out and it was hard and I also knew I was doing the right thing. So, yeah, I mean that's not an easy thing to do because people come at you and emotionally draining.

Speaker 1: 7:46

And do you think it's also because you do play professional sport as well? Do you think that also has some relevance to that?

Speaker 2: 7:52

Well, let's clarify that one pretty quickly. I've actually never played professional sport as well. Do you think that also has some relevance to that? Well, let's clarify that one pretty quickly. I've actually never played professional sport.

Speaker 1: 7:57

No.

Speaker 2: 7:58

No, I haven't. I've played sport at a very high level and now I play Masters Hockey for New Zealand, which is not that hard if you're fit and old. It's an attitude, but I'm from a high-performance sports family. There was a lot of discipline around training and whatnot when I was young as a sportsman. But the truth of it, zipaniso, is I probably could have played professional sport and I'm never one of those people that says I could have done anything. But I have the physical assets to play high level of sport.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Sport's not my thing. That's what I learned Because when I didn't train as hard as the others but I had better skills or speed. I'm born for business right and I'm a thinker that doesn't sleep much. That's got a high capacity for achieving and I love people. And coming back to that pharmacy company, even now I can walk down the street in another city and someone will walk up to me who was a young intern back in the day with my pharmacy company and all they talk about is our culture and that's what I. That's the only thing I'll bring to a business or sorry, actually, that's the only business I'll run is something where everybody is in it for each other and looking to improve everyone else's lot.

Speaker 2: 9:13

That's the only business I'll run is something where everybody is in it for each other and looking to improve everyone else's lot, and that's really why I'm still in real estate because, we're doing something a bit different.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Yeah. So let's talk about the real estate, because when I first moved on the coast I got to know about the tall poppy. It was a red sign everywhere Stands out to me because I love red. But recently you went through a whole brand change. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the logic behind changing the whole brand, the color scheme and the vision, the values of where you're going with your brand?

Speaker 2: 9:45

Yep, sure, I mean the Tall Poppy change was a bit different than, say, launching a fresh brand. Change was a bit different than say, launching a fresh brand. I've done a few brand things over time and I had a friend once who had a saying brand is what brand does. So you get all of the people that say, well, the logo is super important and the brand is super important.

Speaker 2: 10:06

But there's some pretty successful ugly brands and ultimately I think what happens is people fundamentally, fundamentally you don't want to have a brand that you can't use to market yourself, for example, um. But if you're so successful or your product's so good or people have learned what your brand is, they'll accept it and start to learn it. So I don't buy into the um, the fact that you can have a shit business with a great brand. You know, um, brand isn't just a logo and a look. Anyway, the thing is with Tall Poppy is that we had cultured a very good business over time. When I came into Tall Poppy it was only really based around Wellington. Well, it expanded a little bit, but it was a $10,000 flat fee business.

Speaker 1: 10:49

That's right, that's what I remember.

Speaker 2: 10:50

And it was getting traction. And it was getting traction because of a few things. One, the markets that it were in were receptive to that offer and at the time that was, then there's a certain segment of the population that are price shoppers, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Yeah, but there's only a certain segment. Everybody else is looking for value right within it. But what I noticed is that people were flocking to the business. And I also noticed another thing. Actually, I'll talk about that later. So let's talk about the brand change first and then we'll go back and talk about the values. So the tool probably had evolved. Its offer had evolved from a $10,000 flat fee To, in my view and I'll be quite bullish about this Offering more value than any other real estate company In New Zealand bar none. So, as a pharmacist, even though I'm a clinical person, I ended up running 44 pharmacies, retail stores, right.

Speaker 1: 11:51

That's insane.

Speaker 2: 11:51

I mean, I only had one shop In my life, never again, so thinking about 44, that's crazy um, in order to so we I went through these recessionary periods right through the 2000s and whatnot right, and the gfc thing hit and all of that. So, you know, we had four pharmacies, we had four of the five pharmacies in Queen Street and a huge amount of our business was to the people coming in on the ships. So they'd come in the ships, the Asian people would come in and buy all the honey, and so we're pharmacies but we're selling buckets of honey and all of these various things. But anyway, the point being is that people need a product to attach to, in my view. And so I come into real estate and there's no product.

Speaker 2: 12:40

Like, people sign up with a real estate agent but they have no idea what they're getting right and even from a fee or cost perspective, they're hidden. You work it out at the time. There's all of this smoke and mirrors, clandestine stuff, and I couldn't quite understand it. And because this company had a $10,000 flat fee, I'm like, okay, well, that's good, that's a starting point, but over time we've added in things.

Speaker 2: 13:02

So the first thing that we changed we changed the $10,000 flat fee to a tiered fee, depending on the house price, for the primary reason that we wanted to grow nationally, right, and I had to have not just an offer for the consumers but I had to have an offer for the agents, right. And if an agent was going to move from another company to me or consider a change in their life, then I had to at least be able to offer them the ability to earn similarly to what they were earning, right. The irony of it is that we changed the tiered pricing for Torpopi and once we increased our pricing and made it visible to the public and the inquiries flooded in, our business went high and the other agents were. Then, comparably, we could go into new areas. So you know, quite often sometimes something looks cheap, people avoid it.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting, because then you think, oh, you know, what am I actually paying for?

Speaker 2: 14:03

That's right. So if you've got two brand new cars sitting on the street right, and one's a Land Rover and one's a hundred thousand, it's suddenly one's 40. Yeah, you question it are you gonna buy the 40 or are you gonna go? Someone's gonna come and knock on my door one day and take this car from me, or you know, humans are weird.

Speaker 2: 14:19

I think they're quite predictable, to be fair, and I've learned a lot through this process. But anyway, coming back to the offer piece, right, so so. So we teared up the fee, and then there was a stat that I read from I think it might have been Tony Alexander one day that said 50% of New Zealanders couldn't settle a $2,000 bill if they got it today. Tomorrow, in other words, they didn't have $2,000 in the bank, right, and the average vendor-funded marketing for selling property was $2,500 at the time, right. And I'm like, hmm, this is a bit of a conundrum for a lot of people and I'm one of those people that just want to normal New Zealand people. Right, I want to look after them. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:59

And so we created a free marketing package that essentially had everything that you could get for that $2,500 average and we researched the best stuff and we created the free marketing package that gave the consumer an obvious brand look with Tool Poppy. And we've done incredibly well from that and we've refined and built on that. And you know, I guess one of the key things is to not be wasteful. So if I look at real estate, you know Harcourt's and Ray White have got 200 offices each around New Zealand and every time you've got an office you've got a cost. You've got administrators, you've got rent, you've got costs and these sorts of things and they have to be paid for somewhere. And that's why the fees in real estate are so high, why the fees in real estate are so high.

Speaker 2: 15:45

But with technology these days, you can have amazingly talented resource and have it permeate out to everybody through technology, and so we built one office here in Kapiti oh, just for the listener's benefit. I was born and bred in Kapiti and left, and I only came back with the real estate company actually. So yeah, so it's nice to be back in the region.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Why Parapirumu? Why the offices in Parapirumu? Back with the real estate company actually.

Speaker 2: 16:10

So yeah, so it's nice to be back in the region. Why Parapirumu? Why the offices in Parapirumu? Well, the business partners that owned Tall Poppy when I came in were either based here or based at Wellington, and the one in Wellington moved out here and my family's here. So, yeah, we bought a building, an old, derelict antique shop, and then converted it into a cool little office.

Speaker 1: 16:29

It is cool. I've been there before and I'm blown away with some of the stuff you have and in love with your whiteboards.

Speaker 2: 16:37

Yeah, well, the thing is going back to that whole central office. Right, you've got 200 offices and you've got to have resources in each of those offices. There's not 200 super talented, amazing marketers in New Zealand to go into those offices and they don't really get run through one central office. So you know, what I've tried to do is to go okay, we're a little company but I'm only servicing one lot of people. So you know, we've got 130, 140 people working around the country and I've got to have enough resource to add value to what they have to offer and to support them. So you know, honestly, in the different categories of people that we have doing things.

Speaker 2: 17:16

I think we've probably got the best in New Zealand and over half of them in our office, and so people just do not know like the grunt that's behind Tall Poppy. And right now we're about to go and launch the next iteration of our offer, which is going to shake the market up, because we've been working on it for two years and it just comes back to that philosophy of what I do behind the scenes is work on the tools to give guys something different for the consumer. And it's not an easy conundrum. It's not an easy thing to crack because you can dream up all sorts of cool things that don't work. I've done so many, but I'm prepared to fail. Honestly, I've had way more failures than I've had successes, but at least I go at it.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And I think that's the key. I think a lot of people these days are scared to take that leap of faith because they're afraid to fail. But you've got to fail sometimes in life in order to learn than to go further and succeed. I mean, that's what I found through my own experiences in life is that you've just got to try. I mean, if you've got an idea and you think it's going to work, just try. And if it doesn't work, well, at least you've tried.

Speaker 2: 18:27

Yeah, well, look, I've done some pretty daft things in this, even in the real estate business you know I came up with. Because we don't have offices. I came up with this stupid idea that I thought was good, and you would have seen this when we had the tiny house cafe down in the car park.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yes, I remember that one.

Speaker 2: 18:45

Okay, well, that was a cool idea but a bit of a debacle. But my idea for that was I could build all of these like little, little tiny mobile cafes with the ability to have like seated meetings and that in them, and wherever we have a franchise around the country, we could have a tall poppy cafe and we could run a tall poppy cafe business and have a little place for little meetings and stuff. It was the dumbest idea I ever had, but I was excited about it.

Speaker 2: 19:10

It's actually cool in the concept, but in execution didn't work out well, you know, I mean the, the custard pie cart, have got a good little mobile cafe now, don't they? But? But yet so many things that was done for all of the right reasons. And in the same way, look, I've employed some really talented people for a job that didn't need to be done. And every now and then, I get the old gun aimed at me for stupid decisions. But ultimately, if I hadn't made the stupid decisions, we wouldn't have got the good ones.

Speaker 2: 19:41

And so what do you do? Make no decisions and just be this dead end type of business that doesn't go anywhere. Because in real estate, what the business is doing in real estate is there's very little innovation. Real estate is smoke and mirrors, and what I find intriguing is that there are no quality standards that a consumer can look at. In real estate, you cannot go to any area and go. Who should I sell my house with to get the best result? Right, because nobody knows. Right, because I'll ask you the question what would give you? What would a good result look like in selling a house?

Speaker 1: 20:19

And that's what ultimately, it comes down to, isn't it Like? Who do you like as a person? I think people will go and sell a house with someone they connect with, but that person may not be necessarily the best person to sell their house.

Speaker 2: 20:30

But even if they are and you're right, so I'll go through what I think the importance are. But you're totally right, and this is why Carl's so successful, because who wouldn't want to sell a house with Carl? Because he's competent, he's articulate, he's funny, right, and he does amazing marketing right. But the thing about it is that there's nowhere to go that would tell you that Carl, or Sold on Carpenter or anyone else, gets better results on selling a house than anyone else, because it's a sector or an industry that operates on. What are they? Fairy dust, what's that out of the Wolf of Wall Street? And maybe it should. Right, but like for me, I'm a tangible person, I'm like what makes? If I was to sell my house, would I go with the person that sells the most houses? How do I find out the person that gets the best value for my house? Right, and and you're, you hit the nail on the head the biggest thing for a consumer is feeling safe, right and well communicated with and feeling that someone's doing a good job for them. Right, whether they know that? You know, because there's debate Like why do all the Auckland people auction?

Speaker 2: 21:40

Why do Auckland companies auction their houses? Why in Wellington do we tender houses, the only place in the country that really does a lot of tender and deadline sales. In other places, some places price houses. Cities don't have different ways of operating right and regions don't, so the way that we sell a house is dictated by the company right. Which method is the best method for selling a house, or are they all the same? Anyway, my point about this is not to be too anally academic. It's to say that there are no stats on this because no one wants anyone to know.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Because if somebody knew everyone would go and do the same thing and it would take away the mystery of it and the need to go and then go and figure out how to do it with. So real estate is dominated by large brands. Large brands say they do all of this stuff and it's all fairy dust, and so what I'm trying to do with Tall Poppy is to create tangible things that people can go. Oh, I understand that, that respect. So I'm into respecting consumers' behavior. So just my favorite thing to talk about is Uber right. Well, just my favorite thing to talk about is Uber right. On last Saturday I went to Dunedin to a Christmas party, right, and have you been to Dunedin?

Speaker 1: 22:56

Yes, I have been to Dunedin and I'm heading there soon again.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Don't get a taxi. Okay $138 from the airport to the hotel.

Speaker 1: 23:06

That's crazy.

Speaker 2: 23:07

And the taxi, but at this point I didn't know that Ubers were in.

Speaker 1: 23:10

It cost me $160 on Uber to go from Wellington to Kapiti. Yeah, okay. Well, how far is the airport to the hotel?

Speaker 2: 23:17

Less than 30 minutes, wow, anyway. And also, the guy that was driving the taxi not that I'm wrong or biased had the window down and my partner, bill, was talking on the phone and it was like and I'm like, hey man, do you mind shutting the window? And he wound it up three quarters of the way and it's you know. And anyway, I'm prejudiced. But the thing is with an Uber, obviously you order an Uber, you know the text, the Uber driver's name, you know his car, his car color, his car quality. There's a star rating.

Speaker 2: 23:53

I was about to say you see the star rating an 8500 drives, 4.95. You go okay. He's, in fact, too many people off at this stage, right, um, he's probably okay, or she? Right? Anyway, the uber drive back, because I found out about the uber, so I got an uber back now and the uber was 90 bucks. No, yeah, 90 versus it's one and a half times the cost. Right Now, people don't necessarily get too drama about money at times, and some do and some don't, but I can tell you this it's safe in the Uber because everything is there for you, you know everything.

Speaker 2: 24:22

You know the time that they're going to drop you off. And it respects me right, it respects me. It says hey, michael, what choices do you want to make when you take this ride? Do you want an extra flash, one for another five bucks? Do you want one with a nice heater? Do you want the driver to not talk to you? Anyway, it's giving me options and it's saying we respect you as a consumer. We're doing these things so that you can make choices about what you want to do. Okay.

Speaker 2: 24:47

In the taxi. They pull up. You get no idea. You jump in the meter's already on about 50 bucks. It feels like right and there's a little sign somewhere, laminated sign that goes you get charged an extra $8.50 when we turn the meter off for some other stupid tax reason. It's all hidden. Yeah, now it's all hidden.

Speaker 2: 25:06

Yeah, I see the point. Okay, emma, you come to real estate and people don't see real estate in this way because you don't sell your house. Often Every five to seven years someone sells a house, right, it's not like going to the groceries. If you had to go and sell your house every week, you'd care about the offer, right, but every five to seven years it's the biggest asset of your life. You're concerned about all sorts of things, but it all happens quite quickly because the day you decide to sell your house, suddenly you've got this rush decision that you have to make and then you've got to go and research and it's the same sort of thing over and over again.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Anyway, my point is that if you go and try to find out the commission rate to sell a house and the process and what's going to happen with a brand, you can't. It's all dependent on the agents, all the Harcourt agents, the Ray White agents. They have their own little thing that they do. And again, I'm not belittling that because there's amazing people in real estate. So I'm certainly not knocking the people right, but it's the system.

Speaker 3: 26:03

The system, the system, the system as a whole, the system.

Speaker 2: 26:06

I find I question everything and I look at the system and I go. I can't find facts in the system, you know, anyway. So I constantly try to do this. So what we've been building for a couple of years now at Torpopi is a way in which we can interact with people. You know we're going to be no Uber and, by the way, real estate is always going to need people. It's allowing the consumers to figure out the best people that will work with them. Right, what I can offer very soon is a technology where we can share the entire journey. So we're basically respecting the consumer to know that when we go and do certain types of marketing, there's a report that's going on all the time, that's visible to them if they want to look at it, that we can talk to. We're sharing information, we're sharing timelines.

Speaker 2: 26:59

They've got control of essentially a portal and a dashboard where they're able to work, question, talk with us, see everything happening, the whole journey, and we're hiding nothing and putting everything on the table because you should, and, to that regard, we're going to give our agents better tools. Now it still comes down to the person and the match with the people, but ultimately, there are really good people driving taxis, right, and there are really good people driving Ubers, and sometimes it could be the same person really driving a taxi and an Uber.

Speaker 2: 27:39

Well, now it is, Now it often is. But get this, there are very. Even a shitty person can drive an Uber, but they have to give a good experience. But a shitty person driving a taxi is just a shitty person doing a shit job if you know what I mean, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Anyway. So it's just trying to lift the bar. I'm not trying to say any earth-shattering things, but the fundamental of our business like my role in our business is to build really cool things that advance the experience of the consumer. Culturally, though, can I just flip to the culture bit? Okay, so we're fortunate.

Speaker 2: 28:19

The reason that I can do this with Tall Poppy and I couldn't have done this if I went and bought a Ray White or either these sorts of things is that the industry operates on a bit of an archaic thing with having sharing buyer-seller parts of listings. Do you understand what I mean with this? Please expand for the listeners. Okay, so most traditional agencies when you list your property with them, if you list your property with Harcourt's here in Kapiti, then you'll be sold the dream that you get the whole Harcourt's team and they're all going to help sell your house. So you don't just get the agent, you get the whole team, the whole team selling your house. Yeah, and that's sold in on the basis that they've got much bigger buyer reach. Right, so you get more buyers because of that.

Speaker 1: 29:02

Makes sense.

Speaker 2: 29:03

It makes sense. It makes sense assuming that buyers operate through agents right Now. And do you know where this came from?

Speaker 1: 29:10

No.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Okay, so again, way before my day, but back in the day, before the internet and before technology became you know like, was it pernicious, perfuse, whatever it is everywhere, you had a situation where people went looking for property in newspapers. It was difficult to find all the properties and, you know, you just didn't have search engines and things right. So what did you do? You went to a real estate agent. They showed you all the properties available and they drove you around and this sort of thing. Right Now back in the day, the very early day, there were no agencies, didn't have their own list. Every listing was general, so every listing could be sold by every company. All right.

Speaker 2: 29:54

So therefore, the whole thing was a bit of a buyer's agent thing right, yeah, okay, and then it moved to you'd list with a company and then they would have their buyer team. So if I'm selling a house and I'm with Harcourts, I sell the house, I get my commission, but if one of my other agents sells that with me, they get part of the commission as well so commission right Now, with money and earning and all of these things.

Speaker 2: 30:20

That creates tension, right. And this is I couldn't understand. When I got into real estate, I couldn't understand why real estate agents and this is a funny thing, it's a stat from 2011 study where real estate agents were ranked one above sex workers for trust.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Whoa Right, just one above.

Speaker 2: 30:39

One above Right, and that's before the sex workers got a lot more kudos. They've probably gone up the ladder, the old sex workers now, and I don't know where real estate agents are now. But I found that really interesting because it's the biggest asset of your life, right. And then there's a lot of information about trust with real estate.

Speaker 2: 30:56

People don't trust real estate agents. In fact, the only car salesman, one below the real estate agents. So real estate agents are put in that same category as car salesmen, one below the real estate agents. So real estate agents are put in that same category as car salesmen. Car salesmen, it's a little bit fluid. You know, 10 grand, 20 grand, whatever, a million-dollar house, biggest asset of your life, not quite the same. You know what I mean. And so it's incongruous to me that such a massive thing, professionalism and the asset, would be diminished to being non-trustworthy. And the funny thing is when I talk to people who have sold their house, they either, if they've got a bad result, they hate their agent, If they've got a good result, they think the agent's good right and they don't say I don't trust my agent, but everybody that was trying to buy that house that missed out, they don't trust the agent.

Speaker 2: 31:46

Everybody that attended an auction where there was a little whispering thing going on in the corner and all this stuff going on. They don't trust any of it, right, and I don't know. It's just, this environment's been created in an area where you're selling the biggest asset of your life. It should be a really trustworthy sort of thing. And so you know, when you've got an open home and you're with a traditional agency, well, you've got an open home with a traditional agency, but you could have somebody come and do a viewing in between, right, who wants to get the viewing in, the person who's not the listing agent, the person that's wanting to get the commission because they've got a buyer. And then it all becomes who's benefiting that, the vendor or the agent?

Speaker 1: 32:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:26

The whole thing becomes a bit clumsy. Who's benefiting that? The vendor or the agent? Yeah, the whole thing becomes a bit clumsy, and because of technology, now people do not search for property with agents.

Speaker 2: 32:33

All right, there's a very clear, linear way that people will start researching and it's online, yep and then they'll go and engage a real estate company or start interviewing agents or going through this sort of process. Every property that's for sale about 1% are online and they're available for scrutiny with a lot of information, so it's not hard to find the properties that are on the market in the realm of you know, with the attributes that you might be interested in right Now. Real estate salespeople they can be very helpful in the process, no question about that, but that's not where it emanates, and so that whole model from way back when is actually still the way that people are paid and these companies sell in today, and it's increasingly heading more towards our model, which is we have a thing called list and sell. So when you list with one of our agents, they run the whole journey.

Speaker 2: 33:25

They're the only ones that get paid. Our other agents still help them right. We still send, we still chuck all our buyers into a pool where we go. You know, if someone else has got a relationship with someone that might be interested, we just share it. We're not sitting there going give me some money for it. We don't have that. And so we've got a vibe within our business where we feel like a big family and coming back to that pharmacy company, they felt like a big family and all the big franchise companies doesn't quite feel like that. So you know we had that difference and they still stop me on the street now and go God, michael, the days of we were called Radius Pharmacy back in the day, but the days of Radius Pharmacy, I wish we still had that. And you know this is the sort of vibe that we've got going with Tall Poppy.

Speaker 1: 34:10

Because it's people first. Right, that's what I'm hearing. It's looking after your people, because then they will do the best job. Looking after their people, who is ultimately the client yeah, 100%, and yes, yes. It's a follow-on effect.

Speaker 2: 34:25

Yeah, well, I mean. But the thing so, because of see, with the list in sale, right, even with my, if I think I'm doing good work, even with my good work, with the culture, right, the culture is not compromised from the outset If I went into that other model with all my values and tried to put them on, I'm immediately in a conflict, right, Because I've got people doing things, driven by their need to earn, that are in conflict with how we'd operate, right, and so there are just so many things where I think there's some amazing brands out there, but they're operating in a model that just isn't fit for purpose in a modern environment, operating in a model that just isn't fit for purpose in a modern environment. And you know, again, I'll get hammered for some of these comments in the wider network, but I totally believe them, I can stand by them and you know, and I can back them up with facts. But, again, Tool Poppy is not the finished product.

Speaker 2: 35:20

We've got so much more to do. We don't have the best people, and you know, we've got great people, but we don't have the best, most talented people to use our tools. So what I'm hoping is that now that we've built this whole new platform, which is just our next version as we tenaciously build to what we'd like to call the ultimate real estate experience. As we do that, what I hope is that and I've been doing this we've been not really actively trying to build our workforce for about two years while we've been trying to get this thing finished and it's finished now, and so now I expect Tall Poppy to go through a really rapid period of growth again for another couple of years. I'd expect we'll easily double in the next two years in size and scope and areas that we're operating in.

Speaker 1: 36:06

What areas are you operating in right now, Michael?

Speaker 2: 36:09

We're very strong in the. We're almost everywhere in the South Island except Little Pockets. We're not on the West Coast, we're not in Kaikoura, we're not in Ashburton.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Are you in Dunedin?

Speaker 2: 36:20

We are and we're growing rapidly. In Dunedin we're very successful and if you look at a place like Central Otago with Alexandra and Cromwell, now building in Wanaka and we'll be pushing more tall poppy business into Queenstown, we're actually the dominant listing and selling agency in that Cromwell Alexandra area. But that's not because of the brand, it's because of good people using our brand. So when really good, competent, down-to-earth people grab our brand and start using it, we smoke everyone in so many areas and if we get people who, they don't quite have that connection and they do it not quite as much but the opportunity's there. So we're really looking to push into those areas I mentioned in the South Island sorry, in Picton, nelson-tasman and Blenheim, depending on which little suburb area that we're in we're normally one or two.

Speaker 2: 37:20

So you know, when you talk about the big 200 office Harcourts, ray White, and you've got Sotheby's in the purportedly higher-end area and you've got those companies and here's a little tall poppy where we don't have offices. Our guys work from home. We use technology. Well, we've got great tools, but we do more business than them and you go. Well, how does that work? But they've only got three agents and they've got 20, you know and it just does because that's just how it works and I'm not into bums on seats for a business.

Speaker 1: 37:58

Just for the sake of the bums on seats we could do that.

Speaker 2: 38:01

We could easily do that, but I don't want to manage the carnage of it you know, and I don't want to manage the carnage of it, you know, and I don't want to manage that. You know, culturally that also isn't that cool. So anyway, but we, yeah, we're about to jump into, we're launching this stuff in the new year, in February, march. So, yeah, I guess everything will change from the perspective of what the consumers are seeing and thinking of Torpopi and we'll start to grow. And you know, we don't operate in the east coast of the North Island, so from Wairarapa up to Gisborne oh, sorry, that's not true One of our salespeople moved from Wellington to Hawke's Bay and then we've got two people in the Hawke's Bay that we support. But we are really looking to push up that side of the island. We are pretty active all the way up to the Waikato. So we're looking to push heavily Waikato and maybe up to about Frankton and the Coromandel this year.

Speaker 1: 38:57

Do you have agents in Auckland?

Speaker 2: 38:58

We want to stay out of Auckland. We'll have little isolated cases, but Auckland is almost like there's almost two countries in New Zealand Auckland and everyone else and Auckland has a different environment. So for me, right, you can fight a war on too many fronts and lose, or you can just focus and chunk out what you're doing and do it really well, and that's what we're going to do. And once we've done that, then we'll go. Okay, let's have a look at Auckland, because, I mean, auckland's the biggest market. You could argue that we should just go there, but Auckland can eat you up and spit you out as well, and also it's much harder to have a pragmatic conversation with someone in Auckland than it is in the regions. In the regions, people are very down to earth and I'm not knocking anybody in Auckland here to earth, and I'm not knocking anybody in Auckland here, but.

Speaker 2: 39:46

Auckland's a rat race, right, and to some degree everyone who sits outside of Auckland goes to Auckland and goes oh, that's an amazing city for a holiday, but they go. It's fast-paced, it's very diverse, it's got so much going for it, but the buzz in Auckland is very much. There's a different sort of thing. It's almost like, I hate to say, but if you're sitting outside of Auckland, you go to Auckland and everyone's trying to keep up with the Joneses, right, and so if you take that whole thing of convincing somebody in Auckland that something is real and a little bit different than they perceive is quite more of a challenge than somebody in Invercargill.

Speaker 1: 40:22

In terms of the buyer on the other side, like obviously you're providing a lot of value for your agents, your people, and therefore they can provide a lot of value for the vendors. Yes, how does that benefit the buyer?

Speaker 2: 40:37

Yes, that's a really good question. And so in the past, tall Poppy itself would have said that we're a very vendor-focused company. We're there to get value for the vendors would have said that we're a very vendor-focused company, we're there to get value for the vendors, right. And I probably spent the first five-odd years really thinking the buyers have to come to us, we manage the system and that sort of thing. I've increasingly developed empathy for the buyers, for obvious reasons. I mean, it's hard to get into the market, and not only that is that the government put enough silly barriers in the way. You know, you guys, they do the triple CFA for all the right reasons and then fuck it up completely and the next thing, you know, you've got a nightmare on your hands, just getting basic, normal people that can afford it one day finance, and the next minute the government are saying they're not because they drink too much coffee. But I've developed a huge empathy. So while we've built this platform that we've built that I was talking about affectionately named my Tall Poppy, that's a transactional platform and that also manages all of the offer, the sale and purchase process right. It's 100% transparent and trustworthy, right. So there's no thing of somebody doing shifty little things.

Speaker 2: 41:51

We've got an online auction process. So I'm a fundamentally anti-auction person, not because I don't like the theatre of auctions I love that. I just don't think they're fair, and not only that, I don't think they get the best value for properties. So, anyway, we've got an online auction process you can't miss. There's no sneaky little conversations going on in corners. You're bidding and it's there, and so we have a 24-hour auction process. Now we don't have that in play at the moment.

Speaker 2: 42:20

We've got it, we've built it and it works and it's going to be available to some of our agents to experiment with shortly, but anyway, coming back to the buyer thing, buyers are able to make offers in an online environment and they're literally coached through it by our system. So, just by example, I didn't think that buyers would want to just make their own offers for properties like full office sale and purchase agreements. Anyway, we've had the system going for a wee while now. There's one example in North Canterbury where we had eight people wanting to make offers. So our agent put out the process and she thought that she'd have to go and sit and coach all of them through the online process. She thought that she'd have to go and sit and coach. All of them through the online process. So she in one day she logged them into the portal for the offers. She had two people that she worked through the offers with. She woke up in the morning she had eight offers Wow.

Speaker 2: 43:17

Six of them had done it, and of the six that had done it, only I think one or two had missed a box in the thing where they probably she needed to advise them about that process.

Speaker 1: 43:29

How cool is that.

Speaker 1: 43:31

Like how streamlined, is that for the buyers Like because I get multiple calls a day from my buyers and I have to coach them through how to put an offer right. I have to help them through and I mean that's not my job. I mean I only know because I've done it for so long. But professionally speaking, I shouldn't be really doing that in a way, and often I would say go speak to your solicitor and go do this, this, that. But how cool is that for the buyers to have that power back, to understand that they can do that themselves and not rely on a lawyer getting back to them because lawyers are so busy and lawyers are not getting back to them on time and they have to put an offer right now.

Speaker 1: 44:08

Like that's just to me, michael, out of everything we spoke about today, I think because I'm so passionate about the buyers like this is gold. This is where you're making history.

Speaker 2: 44:19

Yeah, I think so. And again, yeah, I see the sparkle in your eyes when you talk about that and I agree. And so we are really looking at this process and how we make it, because, with this technology, we actually bought another company called Propi and we've taken their technology and built on it to make it this interactive and they've done an amazing just acknowledge them, they've done an amazing job creating this platform and that struck all of the issues that we had of building a company. But now the combined technology that they've got and then us building on that technology, we've created this thing and but, no, we have a saying what's the? I can't remember which philosopher it is, but but basically, you know, um, we're building that platform, um, for the people in the agents, with the input, so every single day as the platform, so the platform's in play, but we have user groups and the feedback's coming back in and there are changes almost daily and there's a weekly relaunch of that platform, as we've been building for the last few months and having it in play and with the sale and purchase bit. So all of the first part's fully operational with our team now and the sale and purchase bit is being used by the first part's fully operational with our team now and the sale and purchase bit is being used by some and it'll be used by everybody early next year and as we keep building that.

Speaker 2: 45:34

But it's going to get better and better and better and that's the experience I want for the buyers, because what the buyers they need to know that you know, how many times have you had people that have got have paid for, if they haven't already got, lim reports? They've paid for LIM reports, they're building reports and all of these sort of things only to miss out, you know, on multiple offers and the process being you know, and then they have to engage with the agent, right, and they're either doing still doing paper offers of which the agent has to do that drive somewhere else, get a signature, or these days they might scan it into a system and send it with an Adobe thing or whatever, but it's time consuming.

Speaker 2: 46:12

But the thing is it's not just time consuming when they go in doing all of this writing of the contract, the ability for the buyer and this comes back to the Uber thing the ability for the buyer to dial into what on earth it actually means going on On our system. Every disclosure, you read it quickly and you tick the box right. There's a bit where your brain is taking it and do I want this? Do I not want this? We include a whole bunch of things that you have to exclude if you don't want them, as opposed to saying I want finance, right, or these sorts of things. So we make the buyers consider every piece that they might not think of and all of these things which are a little bit like the Uber. It's like it's there for you, right, it's obvious and it's open. And then it takes away the likelihood of a dispute or he said, she said, and it just makes things faster. It makes things a lot easier for the lawyers.

Speaker 2: 47:07

There's going to be a lot less traffic at that end of the transaction. You know, and at the moment the way that the market is now, we've got a lot of people wanting to buy houses but the deals won't go through because there's all sorts of little shitty things in the way, and I'm trying to remove those things from the process, make it much easier for the buyers to buy a house with our guys and also to make the vendors feel way better about the transaction. So we haven't got it sussed, but we are trying hard and I don't see others investing in the same area that we are. But I'm sure there are, but we don't see them.

Speaker 1: 47:44

That's the thing, right, let's start wrapping it up. I've got a couple of last questions for you. Keep it short so you can come back. I feel like we need a few sessions of this to keep it going, all right. Favorite motto in life what do you live by?

Speaker 2: 48:00

Look, I'm a clown, I didn't notice. So look, I do things that I like, right? So my motto is don't lie to people. Yeah, good one. Don't lie to people, be kind but have fun. Yeah, you know, I say to all my family, I say to all my staff that are all stressed out and you know, and going through the, you know, don't lose your inner 12-year-old. You know the day I lose my inner 12-year-old, you know the day.

Speaker 1: 48:29

I lose my inner 12-year-old. I'm out. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2: 48:34

And the final one is what fills your cup? I've got one of those personality types, that sort of acts of service. That's my love language acts of service right. What fills my cup is watching the people I love. You know, happy like, literally happy, and the same with like when someone's stressed out in their workforce. You know how do I fix it. So I'm a fixer. It fills my cup. People I love being happy. It's not success, it's not money, it's got nothing to do with that. It's actually to do with that.

Speaker 1: 49:02

I think and this is where you and I have aligned quite significantly is that we've got that similar um value, where my one is also acts of service and I love doing stuff for people and um, and also, yeah, being kind and having fun yeah yeah, that's awesome. Michael, thank you so much for coming today. It's just been incredible hearing about your journey. Can I have you back and we can talk more about?

Speaker 2: 49:25

if he'll have us back.

Speaker 1: 49:27

If producer Matt allows, awesome Thank you, so so much. Enjoy the rest of your week and speak to you soon.

Speaker 2: 49:35

Thanks, ebony, it's been lovely.