Q: Where was your business when we were first introduced? And where is it now? And how have we helped you through that process?
Client: At the time, out of 7 real estates in the area, I was probably sitting about number five and now I’m sitting at number one. I’ve gone through probably the hardest three years of my life. I didn’t see there was any light at the end of the tunnel. We put a plan together, we followed the plan and they told me I’m doing really good.
Q: In terms of that period of time, you didn’t know this at the time that you weren’t benchmarking your business. Now, we’ve just recently done a benchmark. How does it feel to know that your business is now performing as a benchmark – top 20% of business?
Client: Absolutely blew me away yesterday! I knew that we were going well but I didn’t realize how well we were going. I never would have seen this even 12 months ago. It’s been hard. But I have to say, probably the best night’s sleep I’ve had for a long time last night! You really took it far higher than my expectations.
Q: A couple of years ago, the GFC created some problems in the year ago, a flow of problems for your business, in which you lost the support of your bank, for the process. How did you feel? How did we help you get through that process?
Client: That was probably the most devastating thing! Having the bank wanting to know the numbers every single month, and for me to put those numbers together was taking me out of sales. And I knew that the sales are what I needed to keep the business running. So, it was stressful in the fact that I knew I had to get the sales and I knew I had to get the figures for the bank. And that was really hard!
That day you said to me, “I can take all that worry off you, let us do the numbers for you, for the bank”. You said “if I took over the numbers and looked after the bank, would you be able to concentrate on selling?” And I said yes. And you told me you made up a plan. And you said that “if you do this amount of sales every month, we can slowly get you out of the trouble”. So, you put a plan together, I followed the plan, I thought it was going to be a bit tough. But we did it. And we did it in a market where the customers weren’t there, the clients weren’t there, the people weren’t selling houses. So, we had to keep coming up with another plan to bring more business into the office. And we did that.
Q: When we sat down with you, and you were under that enormous financial pressure and we outlined that plan, did you believe what we said would be possible at that stage?
Client: No. My opinion was, if I was to tell you the truth, when you told me how much I would have to pay you to get out of that, I thought “how the hell am I gonna do that?” And then I thought “well, we’ll give it a go”. If I had to do it all over again, I think “you undercharge yourself!”
From where I was, with really no way out, to where I am now, who would have never believed it? And then as you said to me, “Look, you did all the hard work”. Yes, I did all the hard work. but I had you in the background saying “this is what you need to do.”
So, if I hadn’t have followed you, then I would probably not be here today. Even though I thought your expectations might have been a little bit high, I went with it. And yeah, I wouldn’t have put those expectations there. I wouldn’t have said to me “Well, you need to get X amount of sales every month”. But you said it and I thought “well, if this is going to get me out of trouble. Let’s do it”. And look where we are today! I never believed it was possible. And I’m really one of those people that if you told me I can’t do something, I’ll do everything in my power to prove you wrong. And I believed I could get out of it, but I didn’t expect you to tell me just really where we are sitting financially. And that just blew me away. I’m really happy.
Q: Excellent. So where to next, as your business journey coming towards the end of it? We‘ve sat down over the last two days and discussed, what’s possible and what’s not possible. We set a new plan to get you towards an exit, towards retirement. What do you think that journey is going to look like for you?
Client: We put another plan in place. So, again, if I stick to the plan, it’s going to look very, very good for me. It was only 12 months ago, I thought I was going to lose my house. And now we’re talking about paying my house out by the end of the year. That’s pretty good!
The biggest problem for me was what I owed on the house to what I could sell it for, in a bad market – and we’re talking about a really, really bad market that you’ve taken me through, and COVID as well! So, we had every single door slammed in our face, to get where we are now. And you tell me that we can pay my house out! I would never, ever have thought that would happen. And you know for every door that could be slammed, that was slammed, you opened the door, and I just had to follow through, pretty much really.
I highly recommend you! And if anybody looked at going with you at that plan, and thinking, “Gee! your fees is high”, it is nowhere near that. You’re worth whatever the fee is to take somebody from absolute bankruptcy to how much money I’ve got in the bank right now, it’s gold! I’d highly recommended you to anybody.
