‘Nowhere to go but forward’: The strategies that propelled this start-up’s survival

Just after two years since its establishment in February 2021, Plus Agency’s founders, Peter Li and Fiona Yang, find themselves at the top of their real estate game.

In addition to boasting over half a billion dollars of exclusive listings, the Sydney-based business has impressively sealed over $180 million in sales. Notably, their agent team has experienced significant growth, expanding from a humble five to a thriving team of 20 professionals.

Adding to the young business’ laurels is Ms Yang being named a finalist for REB’s Awards 2023 Marketing Professional of the Year, alongside Plus Agency’s own nomination for New Office of the Year.

Despite the milestones the company has reached, Ms Yang and Mr Li shared that their journey has been far from smooth sailing.

Mr Li admitted that embarking on the path of entrepreneurship wasn’t his first preference. “I was forced into being an entrepreneur because I just didn’t fit in the big corporate agencies,” he professed.

He revealed that while he always “had a passion for real estate”, he wasn’t content in his prior role at a large corporate agency.

“But the gods don’t throw anything at you that you can’t handle, so Fiona and I decided to start on our own,” he shared.

While becoming a business owner has not been an easy decision, Mr Li now believes “it’s the best thing that ever happened to me”.

“If we weren’t building our own company, I would just be a salary earner at some company. The passion in me would die out, and I would become just average. We had nowhere to go but forward, and it has turned out for the best,” he said.

But getting the business off the ground was easier said than done, with Ms Yang sharing the biggest challenge that they faced when they started out.

“We are still a relatively new agency, and in the beginning, our biggest challenge was not having an established brand name,” she stated.

Although the brand is now boasting a sales volume that is 20 per cent higher than last year and 167 per cent higher than the year before, she revealed some clients had doubts they would even manage to get through the first year.

“Developers didn’t give us their jobs because we didn’t have a brand. It was hard to recruit for the same reason.

“One developer told me he didn’t hire us in that first year because he didn’t think we would survive,” she recalled.

But the business leaders refused to let the comment get in their way, choosing to focus on building their team instead in the first 100 days of the business.

“At the very beginning, the first thing we did was assemble our team. Real estate is a people business, so your team is your most important asset. We set up marketing, admin, sales and accounting, and made sure each individual department had a leader,” she explained.

Sharing a behind-the-scenes look at what the process involved, she admitted the biggest challenge was on the admin side.

“Admin seems supplementary but is actually the core of the business. It’s like the television in your living room; all the other furniture is arranged around it,” she explained.

Ms Yang explained this is also where their “golden triangle” strategy was created — which involves not letting any party in the transaction feel overlooked or undervalued.

“If you go back to the ‘golden triangle’ metaphor, once we had the people side of the business, we needed to obtain listings,” she stated.

To overcome this, Ms Yang revealed the focus on not just selling their first three projects, but also on “doing it really, really well”.

"We were able to persuade two developers to give us a try. They liked our location and the fact that they could use our office as their display suite. In total, they brought us about 220 listings.”

After clients started to put their faith on them, Ms Yang said they focused on growing the momentum they generated from their early success.

“There are two basic indicators of marketing success. The number of leads and cost per lead. A successful campaign spends as little as possible to achieve as many leads as possible.

“When it comes to conversion rates, digital marketing on social media and the portals delivers about a 2.5 per cent conversion rate. Walk-ins to our showroom and leads from our network of conjunction agents convert about 10 per cent of the time,” she explained.

Now, the company has kiosks in three shopping malls in greater Sydney, and they have found that approximately 10 per cent of the leads generated from these kiosks successfully convert into customers.

Continuing to work in line with their “golden triangle” strategy, they focus on maintaining relationships with past buyers by organising parties, events, and even sending lottery tickets. This approach has proven successful as 20 per cent of their new buyers come from referrals.

For new business owners, Mr Li shared three key pieces of advice.

“My first advice is, don’t expect to make money in the first few years. We are still investing every single dollar we make back into the business. Any entrepreneur out there needs to make sure they have enough cashflow to survive. You have to invest and invest and invest,” he stated.

He said the second key advice is “delegate”, stating that the “if you want to get something done right, you have to do it yourself” rule does not apply to entrepreneurs.

“You have to build a team if you ever want your business to grow beyond a sole proprietorship,” he stated.

Lastly, he also offered a heterodoxical advice, stating business owners should “forget about work-life balance”.

“If you are an entrepreneur, your personal life is gone. It’s all about work, work, work, every day. If you are after work-life balance, don’t do it.”

Given the demands of running a fast-growing business, Mr Li said business owners should instead focus on “things that are important and necessary, and not things that are just urgent”.

He also underlined the importance of having downtime during the day. “It doesn’t matter how busy I am, I always make sure I have at least one hour each day to think. Usually, it is after work and after dinner. I just think about what I did that day, what I can do better, and what I need to do tomorrow,” he stated.

Looking forward, Mr Li shared their future plan of creating “a hybrid of a project marketing company and a traditional agency”.

“I can see 20 Plus Agency locations in the future, all focused on project marketing. Developers will never have to pay for a display again,” he stated.

And the developer that told them they would not make it in the first year?

“Later, he told me that he had realised he had made a mistake,” Ms Yang said.