Sometimes we have to turn things upside down to achieve the greatest results.
Paula Taylor (or Rocking Paula as she is known around the inlets and beaches of NSW’s Central Coast) is not a typical real estate agent with a sign hanging above her office door.
You won’t find a shopfront for One Agency Paula Taylor in Erina or Green Point because Paula works from home and her office is the streets and suburbs of her farm area.
Paula believes that not being chained in an office actually is an advantage because it means that she is working her farm area all the time. She says, “You’re networking, you’re meeting people, and that brings listings. I haven’t got any other distractions, except for real estate.” Her autonomy and ability to be flexible allows her to look after her people, to nurture her buyers and sellers, which creates a domino effect. She says, “I am getting buyers, and I’m finding them a home. Next thing you know I’m finding the seller somewhere to go, and so on, and so on, and so on.”
Paula’s office may be mobile but she has a team of people who work with her who make the wheels of the business go around.
Paula focuses on what she does best - listing and selling and nurturing new clients. She says, “I don’t do any administration at all. I don’t really touch the computer unless I have to. My forte is to list and to sell and to work hard with my buyers.”
Paula’s day starts with phone calls to her vendors from 7:30am. She says. “From 7:30 through to 8:30am, I ring all my vendors. And I actually ring some conveyancers and solicitors before the 9am rush.” She finds that at that time, people are ready to take her calls and it doesn’t interfere with their days. She then hits the gym and showers so she is ready to hit the road after 9.30am.
Paula also has another licensed agent who works with her, Sharron Tucker. Sharron has her own farm area and also works from home. Paula says, “We speak numerous times through the day; and we work very, very closely together. We complement each other. Sharron and I are very like-minded people. She is a real caring person, exactly like myself, and we worry about our clients; it’s just built in us. And I think hand in hand together, it has made my brand stronger.”
Paula continues, “If Sharron goes on holidays, I can look after her listings, same as if I go on holiday, Sharron knows all my vendors. It’s a very close-knit team. We work closely and we get great results from that.”
The other critical person in her team is her assistant, Susan Ajala. Susan handles all the administration of the business. Susan also works from her own home five days a week. Paula explains, “She starts her emailing early, sometimes at 6 to 6:30am. She then breaks between 8 to 8:30am to get her children off to school. She then comes back online. So both of us are well and truly up and running to our full potential, say by 9:30 every morning.”
Most people would think, ‘But I’ve got to go back to the office; do this email, send this contract’. Paula’s assistant however handles all the paperwork, emails and administration. Paula says, “If anything needs to be done, I just make a phone call to my assistant and ask ‘Could you please email so and so?’.”
Susan handles agency agreements, coordinates all the photo shoots and the creative writing and keeps Paula on track. Paula says that Susan will also, “come to the photo shoots with me because I like my team to feel part of the process and I like my clients to know that we are all a team working together, so that if they then get a phone call from Susan, they’ll know who she is. She has that relationship with them as well.”
Susan and Paula talk constantly and meet regularly. They meet weekly and when they need to find a half way spot to hand over paperwork and the like. Paula says, “Sometimes we’ll have some lunch because it is nice just to have a little bit of time out together on a personal note too.”
Paula loves the business model, in part because of the autonomy it affords herself and her staff. She says, “Susan has got a couple of children. It allows her to be there for her children, it allows her to pick her kids up from school, drop them off to wherever they need be. She takes her phone with her; the computer is with her at all times. So even if she wants to take them down the beach for a swim for an hour, she’ll say to me, ‘Paula, can I have an hour and go down and take the kids for a swim?’. I say, ‘By all means’. It offers that culture where I think everybody just feels comfortable, and we have a great trust, and a great working relationship. And again I think that just comes out in what we do, in the way we love our job. And I think it attracts people to the business because of that.”
The other lynchpin in their success, Paula believes is the tight bond between the One Agency Principals on the Central Coast. Paula says that the tight relationship between the principals is fantastic. She says, “We’re very, very fortunate. There are seven principals on the Central Coast. The whole lot of us are very like-minded. We have regular meetings; we all talk each week in regards to what ads we’ve got. So we all formalise our paper together, we share our ideas. So really, each principal’s office knows what the other principals are doing so to speak, so we’re very, very close. And hence, we are a network of principals that do work closely together, and we are quite a strong brand because of that.”
Principals who work together can be quite unusual in the real estate industry. Paula remembers that when she went on holidays before she took on Sharron, “Mathew Kidd over at Bensville office would just step into my role. If he’d go on holidays, I would step into his role. Again, that network all worked together, and again, it just didn’t stop any business functioning, or any client being let down. The business just kept rolling on as normal.”
For Rocking Paula, breaking the mould has yielded the best results.