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It’s very easy to get caught up working within your business, rather than on it — but the changing marketplace is the perfect time to prioritise strategy and direction, according to this business leader.
Speaking on a recent episode of REB’s Secrets of the Top 100 Agents, the chief executive of BresicWhitney, Thomas McGlynn, was reflecting on the current marketplace when he said that it offers the real estate industry the chance to “have a little bit more time to work on the business”.
Clarifying that spending time working “on” the business is different to spending time working “in” the business, Mr McGlynn professed the belief that “it’s a great time” for people to be working “on” the business.
“From a business point of view, from a leadership point of view of a business, when things become a little bit more unsettling, it is a great time to be able to get focused and actually have a clear message about what you are doing,” Mr McGlynn said.
From his perspective, when a business has a clear vision about its future direction, “people want to buy into that”.
“And when things get tough, from my experience, people like to latch onto something that they feel passionate about,” he said.
Not only does it boost the morale of those already working within the business — but it also acts as a way to “attract great people that want to buy into it too”.
While Mr McGlynn does take this approach from a business leadership perspective, he believes this attitude to growth should be “no different for sales agents”.
“I think that the best time for sales agents to do things in their business that they’ve always wanted to do and implement is when the market becomes a little bit more unstable and you have a little bit more time to work on the business, as I said earlier, rather than in the business,” he outlined.
But talking the talk is no use if you aren’t walking the walk.
The CEO acknowledges an issue that many businesses have is that “they have so many opportunities come in, and they don’t have a framework to work through it — and they actually never really achieve anything”.
“They might get bigger, but have they got better?” he said.
“It has been a big trend, I don’t think just in real estate, I think in a lot of different industries, but in particular the real estate industry where people have been solely focused on becoming the biggest and wanting to become the biggest.”
Touching on the trend for real estate groups to have visions of growth across the country and beyond that’s been pervasive for the last decade or so, Mr McGlynn is looking to buck the trend with respect to the continued expansion of BresicWhitney.
“One of the great things about our business in the last 20 years, we’ve helped shape a lot of the things that real estate agents do within the Sydney marketplace. I like to say that we’re quintessentially Sydney … and so a big thing for me was to be passionate about, while everyone’s thinking about being the biggest, we want to focus in about being the best and actually get really, really laser-focused on the geographical area that we want to focus on, so we don’t have opportunity bloating,” he said.
“That’s what we’ve been really passionate about, is actually focusing in on going, ‘You know what? Let’s be Sydney’s estate agent’.”
Professing the agency’s plan to “be the market leaders within 10 kilometres of the Sydney CBD”, Mr McGlynn outlined that the group sees it as “a great ambition for us to have”.
“That’s something that we are really passionate about, which does, I think, buck the trend of what has been happening in the industry over the course of the past 10 years,” he said.
Listen to the full conversation with Thomas McGlynn here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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