SPEAKER_00 0:10

Love is in the house today. I've got Megan Love now with me. I'm so excited. This is cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

This is woman power.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

We just did a few episodes with George Love. He's your husband. Yep. Lovely man. Yep. But I'm more interested in what you gotta tell me because every successful man, we know there is a woman, and you're sitting right in front of me.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Happy wife, happy life.

unknown 0:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Exactly, exactly. And I think he's figured it out because you seem very happy to me.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I actually am really happy. Everyone always asks me what it's like to work with George, and it's fun. It's really fun most days.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I mean, we work in one of the most stressful occupations, I must say. There's always crises, there's always people ringing, you ringing people, there's always something happening, right? What brought you to real estate? So let's step back completely and tell me about what brought you to the real estate. I know George touched on that, but I want to hear your story.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Okay, well, my story probably starts when I was five years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah. So I was never a little girl who dreamed about getting married to a prince charming. I mean, I got one anyway, so thank goodness. But I wanted at five years old, I wanted a house. And I said to my parents, I want to own my own house. And that was when my passion for homes, homes, really, it's not about property and ownership and things like that. It's about having a home of my own and helping other people have homes of their own. And so I got into banking because I wanted to learn about lending. And that's why I really admire what you do for your job. And I'm always saying to people, I was quite good at my job in banking, but I saw a lot of people who, you know, didn't do it out of passion. And they would go to the pub at five o'clock on a Friday night, regardless of whether the house had settled or not. And, you know, a good mortgage advisor will possibly go the extra mile and arrange insurance and do all of that stuff that makes it so much more enjoyable for the person with the moving truck waiting outside. Yeah. So that's where, you know, my background has been loving being at home. I love my home. I want everyone to have a home. Now I'm a mum. I feel that even more. I just want every family to have a safe, warm, dry space for them to live in.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

So I love that. I love when things come from the heart, from the values, but also from, you know, it's really interesting you mentioned the childhood and being five years old and having this clear vision of this is what you wanted to achieve. So tell me, are you from New Zealand originally?

Banking Lessons For Buyers

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Yes. Yes, I was born here. We we moved homes probably when I was about four, and we moved down from Auckland where my dad worked in when we were in the army base, and we moved into our first home down in Whitby. Um, so that was where I kind of became aware of like the home that I was living in wasn't the home that I continued to live in. And we've been really lucky in our family. We've always had home ownership, but as I grew older, I realized a lot of people don't have that in New Zealand, and it's just something I feel really passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

I love that. So you had career in the banking, so you also know the other side of I guess the real state of what goes on there and how to make the deals go smoother.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Because sometimes that can also, you know, being in the bank or uh seeing the other side of what's going on can either kill the deal or make the deal.

Women, Workflows, And Money Dynamics

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yes, a good advisor, and this is what we say to our buyers all the time you need to go meet your advisor early. Even if you're thinking about buying in a yes time, please meet the advisor yesterday because they can give you tips and tricks. And for a while, the banks were saying, Oh, if you even buy coffee, that's my little advice. If you buy a coffee, we'll penalize you. So I know a good advisor can give that advice early. They can pick up trends before they become, you know, a news item. Feet on the ground is always more valuable. And then, you know, I just love dealing with women as well. I mean, I love I love men, but you know, seeing so much more compassion, caring, and families in like high-level positions, it it just makes sense. Like for a while, I had a female accountant, a female mortgage broker, a female lawyer, and the communication between all of those people just flowed so well. So it was quite exciting. Yeah, I'm happy to deal with men too.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

I know you and I like oh hold on a second. We want to make sure the men also feel the love.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah, yeah.

From Lending To Coaching

SPEAKER_00 4:41

I think I think there is definitely a bit of inequality, right? In New Zealand, especially, we see a lot of families where, for instance, men drive all the finances, they know everything, and women are usually stay home, raise the children, yeah, and then suddenly they realize that the kids are now off to school and they have no career and they have to start from somewhere. So I think we're just naturally drawn a little bit to help our, you know, I don't want to say the weaker link, but you know, we do need to lift the representation of professional female, either real estate or advisors or legal, whatever. However, I have seen men on the other side of it as well. I have seen men that also have chosen to stay home, raise the family, or they've trusted fully to their wives to deal with finances. And then when the separations happen, suddenly men are on the weaker side of it. Yeah, so either way, there's always a party that we need to help. But being in real estate, I want to know. So you followed George, right? He he told us about his hairdressing career, and you were at the bank at the time, and then you guys moved up to Carpeti.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

And then you decided to help him out with real estate.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yes. So I left financial services where I was doing home lending, and then I had my second child, and I thought, oh, try and be a stay-at-home mum for like a little while because COVID was happening. I got bored, and two weeks into her being alive, I started a life coaching business. So I just did it over Zoom at the time. Zoom was really popular, so just like go downstairs, log on, do my clients, help them, usually with career coaching, but a little bit of life coaching too. And then, you know, I could hear the baby crying upstairs, and like towards the end of the hour, I'd be like, okay, there's time to wrap that up. But what it taught me was people don't just want to buy a house. They always want to buy a house because so there's a reason. Like, do you want to be in the school zone? Do you want to have a low maintenance house? But as you're aging, you don't want to be doing weatherboard painting and windowsills and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Or climbing stairs.

Life Stages Behind Every Sale

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Climbing stairs, yeah. And sometimes, you know, we get a call from somebody who wasn't planning to sell ever, and they've been in hospital unexpectedly and they can't come home. So suddenly they need to move into some kind of care, and their families or themselves are trying to manage that possibly remotely, and they're like, What do we do with the house? We need to pay for this care. So excuse me. Yeah, that can get very emotional. Yeah.

Holding Space For Tough Moments

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And and that's what George and I touched on as well. That, you know, we come in at people's most significant milestones in life, significant challenges in life, where they're either excited about just getting married and buying their first home, or they're excited because their family has expanded. Yes. Or they're feeling the sadness because suddenly someone passed away and they have to let go of a family home that they've had for the last 40 years of their lives. And those moments are very, very emotional and they're significant. You know, for we see it every day, right? We deal with hundreds of clients. Yeah. But for that particular client, we are the first person they're seeing. Yes. We might be the second or the third because the first few didn't work out. Because they're not as great as us. Sure. But for them, we are the only one they're dealing with. And we are the container for all of their emotions. And that's what I love about you, that in everyone I spoke to about you, that you treat them like a human. They are in front of you, you in front of them, and you don't treat them like a number.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah. And it's okay. If they need to have a wee cry or if they need to stop a meeting midway through and ask me to come back later, that's fine. If they want to have a support person there, I'd encourage that. So however, they need to work. We had a a lady that had been going through breast cancer, and she said, I can't do the afternoons. So we just kind of set a cutoff point at two o'clock, and we were like, okay, no private viewings, no, the open home had to be in the morning. And we said we will never do a meeting or phone you from two o'clock. So we tried to work around. We also had a 90-year-old man who had an afternoon nap. And I mean, you just schedule stuff to make it suitable for the person if they want to have a yoga class in their living room on a Tuesday morning. We won't do viewings then. We we need them to have a good life while we are working with them in their home, and their home still has to be a safe space for them. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

I love that. I absolutely love that. That's and I think that what makes the difference sometimes between finding the right real estate agent that you want to work with and someone that completely didn't hear you and just calls you at three o'clock as you're trying to have some rest, have a nap, or dealing with children. Yes. I remember one time I was trying to sell a house and I had young kids, and I remember telling the real estate agent, look, I do, you know, I have kids, it's natural. You do school pickups, candy drop-offs, whatever. But that real estate agent would always call me at nine o'clock and three o'clock. It's like, really?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Please don't. They're not gonna get hold of you.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

That's frustrating not to be heard. And that's like the number one rule of customer service is listen, make notes, and do what the client is asking within reason. I mean, if you have to ring them at nine o'clock, I'm so sorry I'm ringing you at nine o'clock, but there is a good reason your house is on fire, maybe. Your house is told. I don't know. I don't know. There has to be a good reason though, right? It can't be like, oh, well, this suits me and this is how I do my work, and you have to fit my pattern in my mold. No, we try and adapt ourselves to the person we're dealing with in their situation as much as possible.

Values, Boundaries, And Staying Humble

SPEAKER_00 10:38

I love that. What's um what's your highest takeaway from being in this industry? Like what's your biggest takeaway apart from molding yourself and working as people?

Helping Without A Paycheck

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I think although we mold ourselves to the situation and we provide the customer service that that person needs, we always have to stay true to ourselves as well and be authentic. There are occasionally people that prefer another way of working. That's fine. But, you know, if if we have to compromise who we are as people, then it's probably not worth it. You know, so like underpinning all of that is our morals and our values. And we kept checking in on ourselves because this industry is huge, it's easy to get carried away. The the rewards for doing a good job are massive. And, you know, it's it's it's very easy to stand on a stage and go, oh wow, I'm amazing, but you've got to stay humble as well. And you've got to keep thinking, well, why am I doing this? And ultimately it's to help people. So that was, you know, when I left school, they were like, What do you want to do with your life? And they were kind of wanting me to name a job, but I'm I've never wanted to do a specific job. My underlying thing is always I want to help people. If I'm not helping people, then I'm probably in the wrong job. But in this job, you get the chance every single day to help people, even if it's just to recommend a builder or a mortgage advisor that can help them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

I love this, you know, and this is something I saved for you. I didn't tell this to George, but this client that you referred to me recently, as I was talking to this client, one thing that she said about you that blew my mind, she was like, Megan has been amazing. You know, she showed us all these different properties, but then, you know, we couldn't buy this one or we weren't interested in this, da-da-da. And then we were interested in this other property that was sold by a completely different agency, not even hard court, completely different agency. And Megan was still helping us. And to us, that was someone that's going above and beyond, she's not earning anything out of it, but she's here to help us, and we truly feel that. So, as I'm saying, I'm getting like teary-eyed because this is so uncommon in our industry, you know, to be helping someone without having an ulterior motive. But that's just because you want to help people. And I think this is where you and I really align because there's so many situations where you know there's so many free hours that we put on into this work, yeah. And sometimes people don't want to refinance, sometimes people don't want to buy a house, sometimes people people's plans change, you know, and we just take that hit, we take that cost. But at night I can sleep well thinking I'm a good person, I've done a good job, and I've helped someone to that. And that feels good because I believe in karma. Yeah, you know, good things will come back. And when I've heard that about you, I was like, this is my person. Yeah, I found her.

Hobbies, Tramping, And Recharging

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah, well, I remember that client, and I was joking. She was like, Why, why are you, you know, why are you giving me advice about this? And I said, Well, you'll sell eventually. I might have to wait 20 years, but you'll sell.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah, and she will remember you, and that's the thing people will remember, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

It was the right thing to do as well. She loved that other house, and I was showing her houses and I was saying, Look, I don't think that they tick all your boxes, but I want you to see them anyway. So she would go in knowing, yes, this garden's a little bit small, or the deck isn't quite right, or I, you know, but if she hadn't looked at them, she would have always wondered. And then she told me she'd found this other house and she was still thinking about it. And I was like, go for it. What do you need to make this happen?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

I love that. Yeah. Because you know, one thing I always come back to time and time again, is people might forget what you said, but people will never forget how you make them feel.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And I think you guys do an exceptional job at leaving people feeling I might don't get emotional on me now. But you do an exceptional job at leaving people feeling amazing and feeling empowered and feeling like they've known a little bit more now than they did before they met you. And I think that's the key to success, honestly. Thank you. Yeah, there you go. You can take this glowing reference and post it all over your social media. So, Megan, before we wrap it up, what are your hobbies? What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Well, my hobbies, I always laugh because I knit. So growing up, I was always called a nana. It's quite funny. I've got children now, they haven't had children yet, but one day I will be a nana. Then I can say, yeah, I knit without laughing. But it it relaxes me. I love knitting. And I've yeah, I've knitted from a very early age when my mum was pregnant with my younger sister, and I just knit for fun. It's an easy hobby. I've actually got it in my handbag right now because I was I was like wondering like how this would work if I was gonna sit in another room while George was recording. And recently I've just got back into tramping as well. So last year I went for my first tramp as like an adult, you know, not with a school group. Yeah. I've got a few friends that are into tramping, so I've just been going and doing some walks outside, and that's been amazing. No cell phone reception, no calls, no emails, and just like a day or two in the bush and good company and um some biscuits.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, it's important, right? It recharges us because although we love what we do so much, it does drain our batteries as well, and we need to recharge them because if we don't recharge them, we're not going to be good humans to help others. So that's so good to hear that you do that for yourselves because as a mum to two beautiful girls that you are running a busy household, and I'm sure you do a lot behind the scenes with George, poor George, and in your business, I think it's really, really important that you take that time out for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, and we've got a few plans for this year as well. Like George hasn't done the escarpment, so I'm planning on doing the escarpment walk with him. Nice. Hopefully, pretty soon this summer. So we're planning a few outdoorsy type adventures, and we want to take the family tramping again because that was really fun when we did that. So yeah, just a whole lot of outdoor activities for us as a couple as well as like as a family.

Haircuts And A Warm Farewell

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Yeah, I loved it. Final question Does George do your hair?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

No, he doesn't. He used to. I used to sit in the chair and I'd I'd just get whatever haircut he thought would be good on the day. Okay. Um, yeah, it was great. I just read my book and like it was awesome. He'd just do his thing, and then now he's too busy. So I've got a really nice lady that does my hair, and yeah, then I have to come home and he inspects it.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

I hope he approves.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yes, he does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Awesome. Megan, it's been so good to get to know you. Thank you so much. And I hope you become a regular guest as well, giving us updates. And this episode is just more about getting to know who you are, and we're gonna dive into the next topic about the real estate stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Amazing. Thank you so much. See ya.