[Music] welcome to Assembly today we are kickstarting our new master class which is the niche positioning series and if this is your first time joining us I want to welcome you to the school of real estate now Assembly is being formulated with three different schools the school of real estate the school of creative media as well as the school of business and of course you have signed up today for our first masterclass series which is I think in my opinion one of the most important series for any realtors that is very serious about the real estate business now this series is being formulated into three different modules allow me to introduce to you the three different modules and I think anybody that's serious about the real estate business whether you are in your first year in real estate your third year your fifth 8th or even your 15th year in real estate I think this series is going to be one of the most important anchor points that you can have in order to accelerate your business create success for yourself and your family and most importantly create consistency in lead generation in building a foundation that is so strong that your business has longevity into the long game now allow me to introduce the three different modules and why are this important now the build module and I think once you have mastered the build module you are good to go to build a very solid foundation because on top of the build module you have the market module as well as the manage mod so what are these three modules about now the build module is all about how do you build a niche positioning foundation for your entire real estate business now a lot of times realtors go into the market and they start off their business by knocking on walls u and really learning from the school of hard knocks which is definitely good because hard work pays off but hard work pays off in a sense that if you do not have the correct methodology and framework you might be knocking on um hard walls for a period of 3 to 5 years without knowing what is actually wrong in your real estate business because this business sometimes can be anxious this business can has a lot of inconsistencies you might see months where your incomes goes up and then it comes down for certain months and of course one of the key worries that a lot of realtors have is that they're not sure whether next month will there be leads coming in and once there are no leads coming for a consecutive one to two month we all know that this accelerates into a fifth to six month kind of like a dry season because every transaction takes at least 3 to four months to complete and if you are serious in your business you want to build a good foundation and building a niche is extremely important for the real estate business now what about market market is the art of selling it's about art of selling new launch projects is about the art of selling resale properties and most importantly how to have a longevity business in getting your pitch correct signing exclusives and then doing correct pricing strategy and most importantly how do you market the place for your home seller in the sense that you get this property priced correctly and feeding it with the right exposure to the right audience because if you cannot help your client to move their properties basically they are stuck your entire business pipeline is also stuck and what about manage manage is the third module in this entire series and this series at the last portion here is extremely important in the sense that this helps you to 10x your time it 10x your leverage and most importantly it feeds you with the correct tools the correct kind of mindset in order to accelerate your business and sometimes we think that why is it that when we compare realtor A and realtor B why is it that realtor A and realtor B having the same 24 hours having the same time being in the right com being the same company having all the same tools but why is it that realtor A can have 10x success compared to realtor B is it that they have some things that are different is it because they have the different mindset is it because they have a different kind of methodology and we're going to talk about that in the third module so allow me to share with you the 11 different chapters which we have in the first module which is under the built module so this is our masterclass series of module and of course within each module there are different chapters this 11 chapters over here are not things that are just being taught for fun and um assembly is also not a school whereby we bring in um frameworks and methodologies from everywhere and then we consolidate here and then we teach you no this is not the case assembly school is being formulated with all practitioners and trainers and we only train what we are using and I'm still a practitioner in the market i've been invested for 16 years and these are the things that have been proven tested and workable over the years and it is still working now this is the market module there are a total of 10 chapters over here and I will not go in depth into them because these are of a different module series that uh later on we'll cover and of course for the third module which is the manage module there are also 10 different chapters so I'm going to move straight on to the first chapter which is on survival so there are total of 11 chapters and the first chapter is extremely important for you to understand because when you understand align your mindset in accordance to the business and the core fundamental principles the rate of having success is going to be higher so let's have a look survival survival is all about understanding the why and then later on we'll move on to transition paradigm skill set time alpha income business IFDs hexagon and goal and if you notice there's also huge long red bars over here because these first three chapters here are under the spectrum of ultimate niche positioning the fourth fifth 6th 7 8 is under the ultimate business model and of course the last three chapters are going to be under the ultimate leverage hexagon so let's talk about the first one which is survival now this was an article by one of the real estate veteran uh crack proctor um he was one of the first um veterans that I read uh his book when I started real estate about 16 years back and back then when I read his book on the very first page of his book it came out with this trend this was 16 years ago when I read it and of course when he wrote it I think it was even way back it was even like 10 years ago so in totality is about probably about 25 26 years ago and whatever he has written here if you are with me take a look at this screen i would like you to of course um as we go through this entire series have your pen and notebooks ready and of course for every chapters there are also going to be worksheets that you can download and as we move along please refer to your worksheets because there are certain things over here that I will need you to pan it down now when you look at this entire list I would like you to go through with me together and take off the things that has already happened in Singapore of course this is US-based but whatever is happening in US is also happening in Singapore because real estate trends tend to move globally in sync together although we're a little bit behind US in terms of technology but I think we're getting there so take off the things that you think has already happened in the real estate market and I'll give you probably a couple of minutes um a couple of seconds to do so as I move on and recently I was also conducting um a master class in PRB itself and I was sharing with um all our PRB consultants I was telling them look at the friend look at your colleagues that's sitting on the left and right hand side beside you in this master class because in about 3 to 5 years time your friend could very likely not be in the real estate business and this is of course um a very sad truth but it's also a very important reality that we all have to face why is that so if you were to look at the amount of realtors that has license as of today the amount of uh the amount of realtor sorry has increased in the past it was about 20 over,000 all the way to 30 now we're at 35,000 of course over the years every time in my past 16 years every time when we hit into a bull market and the market is doing well a lot of people want to do real estate i still remember back then uh there was this particular season where there was a bull market um all the news are talking about how new launches are selling out how real estate prices are increasing how property agents are earning a lot and a lot of people wants to become property agents but then when the market start to slum a lot of people then parked their license became a dominant agent so this of course has rose because of the pandemic i mean after 2020 after basically um the covid season prices start to move up very drastically in Singapore from 2020 until now we see a uptail about 25 to 30% for prior properties as well as landed properties as well as HDB properties as well that has increased the amount of people that is being attracted into real estate market but take note of what is being shown on the next screen is that 90% close to 90% of agents exit after their first year and they will just park their license why because when we look at the actual statistics of active realtors at the market that's only plus minus about 11,000 in fact I think that could be a little bit lesser because if we look at the amount of people with a H prop account is about 6,000 the amount of people with a property guru account that have listings is about 11,000 account mind you if you do not have a property guru account technically you are not active agent you're just parking your license why because that's the bare minimum portal that your consumer require of you to have to sell their property so if they want to give you an exclusive but they go online and they Google they look at Property Guru they try to search for your name they couldn't even find a listing that you have your name against and that shows that you're not active in the business because if you cannot even invest in a property grow account that cost anything between $6,000 to $20,000 a year that means that you do not have the seriousness to run this business because seriousness comes from investment when you invest in your business that shows that you're serious in your business and of course consumers they all want full-time serious realtors they do not want to give their listings to a part-time realtor and they they want somebody that is professional serious and full-time in the business to handle their home because they only have this home that they want to market it and everybody wants to sell for a good price so imagine let's say you are a home seller now and you're talking to five different realtors and you are interviewing them and thinking about hey who should I give this listing to would you want to give your listing to a part-time agent which you detected after meeting them or do you want to give to somebody that is like a veteran 10 years in the business or maybe 5 years or maybe even just two years in the business but extremely serious have good branding good exposure because when you go when you go to their YouTube channel you go to their social media go to their to their property guru they have like 50 over listings they have a lot of home tours under their belt and they have experience in the market and uh which bird do you want to give your exclusive listing thing too definitely you will choose somebody with experience and seriousness so this of course I think is one of the results and one of the the underlying factors I would say um in terms of why we have 34,000 licensed agent but only 11,000 active agents because this fear this all these fears these six things that I listed here are things that are going through the minds of realtors in and out of their minds every single day everybody is worried about not enough leads for next month or even next year because sometimes you might have a good month you might have a month that you have clocked like maybe four deals you have somebody that you have brought to the new launch and you close it there's somebody that you have successfully sold off their landed you have somebody that you have just closed about two rentals for your landlords and you might be having an extremely good month your commission probably is about 30,000 40 50 all the way up to 80,000 this month although the money has not come in but you are feeling good but immediately sometimes and I understand it totally because I've been running uh as a realtor oneman show agent for about 10 years my next four years was as a superstar rain maker millionaire realtor before I started PLB in 2022 and sometimes after you sign the deal you sign the OTP that very night when you hit home you instantly feel a sense of loss because you instantly start to worry Hey will I be able to repeat this success next month what if next month my phone doesn't ring what if next month I have no leads at all what if next month nobody wants to give me exclusive what if next month I cannot even sell a single listing that I have right now so assuming you have 20 listings now you're running ads the costs are turnurning up but you cannot even sell one next month or what if the five buyers you have been showing next month don't want to make a decision or what if there's a catalyst event that happens in the economy there's recession there's interest rates movement you just can't sell for the next one month two month or three month and this kind of lingering thoughts will start to creep in and also we are also facing market disruption disruption in the sense that disruption from tech from AI but most importantly is that consumers are of course getting more and more savvy they are more research based they want more value from realtors they do not want all of us to be just transactors they want us to be an analytical based they want people with their sense of opinion advice and most importantly is to use charts trends data to advise them and not just opening the doors not just showing a listing not just posting a a listing on property guru and all these things i think the most important thing is this is that a lot of realtors find that it's very hard to stand out from the market and I would say that this is one of the key reasons why you are already here is that you want to think about and you want to find out what is the right framework to build your niche so that you can stand out in the market and if you fail to stand on the market basically in a few years time you will be gone because nobody would know who you are even though how good you are so sometimes we are very good at what we do but the very fact is that nobody knows who we are because we we can be extremely good at property investing we can be extremely good at marketing a property you can be an extremely good speaker maybe if I were to bring a buyer to view your property you can present in a very in in a superb fashion that the buyers will just fall in love with you or you can sell homes that basically you market physically but if nobody knows who you are technically speaking you cannot attract new customers that would love to work with you so sometimes a lot of realtors are very good at their job and very good at their business but nobody knows that they exist and this is one of the biggest pain point and on top of that just by the very fact of us joining the business the very fact that if you are first year in your business you already have sacrificed three things to come into the business you already have sacrificed your full-time monthly salary because this is consistent salary on the first of every month or the 10 of every month with CPF with medical benefits with insurance benefits with a lot of staff benefits with leave with off days but the moment you come to the real estate industry your whole calendar is flip-flopped your weekends are burnt your night time You work technically throughout you can cannot even have a proper meal with your family or your friends because sometimes you are in the midst of a negotiation it's 8:30 you're just sipping red wine with your your your girlfriend or boyfriend but then your phone call comes you need to go and collect a check and uh nobody will really understand the pains of realtors unless you come into the business and you're already forgoing your consistent income your time and effort because sometimes a lot of people think that coming to real estate industry is a simpler job but actually your time spent your effort spent and your brain power that's being spent accelerates and you're also using your savings to invest in your business you need to get a car you need to pay for petrol your phone bills increase you need to invest in a laptop a iPad you need to invest in tools you need to invest in a lot of things portal subscription research tools and all these things are hidden cost within the business and the cost of running bis this business has a second tier because once you start to get serious into the business and uh I think this is a very real thing because sometimes people will call me and say that hey Melvin of course these are my friends in the industry and sometimes they're young um they're not in profit brothers but we maintain friendship basically they just need my advice at times and then there was this particular friend that called me and said hey Melvin I clocked 270,000 last year why is it that I cannot see profit why is it that I cannot see profit where has all my money gone to and if you broke it down basically I start to break it down for for this particular friend and you realize that at the end after minusing off all the business cost per month the cost per month translating to cost perom basically resulted in a net net profit of approximately about half or I think it's about less than half of the gross revenue so even though on paper 270,000 you can uh post on social media basically you are getting like you know um pertaining award or maybe like uh a very good award every single month but nobody knows the pain of running a business in the sense that there's so much operating expenses on a singular level and I'm talking about a single realtor who who is serious about this business because if you don't do videos you have no content you don't have an admit assistant you cannot have time being accelerated because you are always in the back office filling out your forms doing up um all your different C particular forms submitting and then if you're spending so much time on all this paper administration work basically you cannot go out there to find new customers and you cannot even go out there to market your listings for your customers your office space your Facebook ads uh I have not even factor in YouTube Instagram landing pages property grew account sometimes you spend a bit of money on homestaging beautifying the place because the listing just can't move because is too dilapitated in terms of this outlook and maybe a lot of buyers that come in do not want to make offers and all this costing and I have not even added in your phone bills your petrol costing and things like that and net net 124,300 which is about half of what uh your grossing and that has been of course where the money has went to so sometimes I think a lot of people fail to see that this is actually not really like you know a salesperson job because this is not a job this is a business this is a business in the sense that a lot of people fail to see it that their sales revenue you need to less off your costing and there again at the end then you see your profit so coming back to the biggest fear no leads next month no closing inconsistent leads resulting in inconsistent closing and not forgetting the fact that a lot of times all these costing are fixed and if this is inconsistent what is going to happen to your profit your profit is going to be inconsistent as well so sometimes on the surface a lot of realtors can look good but behind the scenes they are suffering and I think the most important thing is that we want to decipher the right method to make this as consistent as possible to keep this under control so that your profit has longevity let's move on all right so this is the time to bring out your worksheets and um let's think back for over the last 24 to 36 months provided of course you have been industry for that amount of time if this is your first year in the industry over the last 6 to 12 months you can also do the exercise together with us as well and uh I would like you to think back in terms of um your transactions so you can of course refer back to your your company's dashboard they there should be like a host of transactions uh over the last 24 to 36 months i would like you to chart out find a page of course find a page in the worksheet with this graph chart out over 2022 2023 and of course 2024 this time that you are watching this particular series chart out the months that you have picked in your income levels as well as the drought season in your income levels and uh as you chart it out put in the figure as well so if this is the month that you cro like 50,000 this is the month that you caught 40,000 this is the month that you only c like $3,000 because you only close a rental and maybe this month you crop like maybe$25,000 or 100,000 chart it out and of course um along the way let's say for example there's certain students that you're climbing in terms of income in May or mid of May or maybe June put the number in as well you should be able to put in 12 numbers and uh why do we want to do that is because we want to understand on a personal basis because you are running your own business you want to know what were the causation effects of that drop and divid income now let me give you a preview sometimes as a seasons of uh my days being a oneman show realtor certain months I accumulated so many listings and maybe I have so many listings that I've signed and I became so busy at marketing the listings because there's so many arrangement and coordination valuation bank valuation research and uh I need to like prep the paper exclusive prep the home market film the home tour uh take photographs virtual tours and stuff and then there are so many viewings over the weekends evenings and then because I need to now shift from the build to the market mode because remember there are three modes i talked about the fact that when you build is associated with lead gen market is associated with being responsible and being effective and being excellent to sell the properties for your clients and to invest in the properties for your buyers so this is the portion that is market which is doing the business this is getting the business this doing the business of course the third part is managing the business so sometimes we become so busy to market the properties to serve our buyers that you do not have time to acquire new business now when that happens you fall into a vicious cycle why because we only have a limited amount of time of course we can do our best to accelerate to scale up our effectiveness and productivity but you you definitely will know for sure you only have a set amount of time over a weekend and weekends are your golden hours the amount of time that you have over weekends are limited and you definitely need to have a system and structure under the build module if you don't have that what's going to happen is that this is going to be very seasonal your business is going to be very seasonal and it creates a lot of anxiousness and fear and you pull back from your business so at times when you have dropped you tend to have a pullback because your mindset is that hey this is a drought season now I need to cut back on my investment in my business i need to stop investing in ads i need to stop creating content i need to stop running ads for my home tools i need to stop running ads for my lead gen and I need to cut back and I need to go back into what we call a zero marketing and advertising kind of mode which is called prospecting and then you start to do like onetoone you start to do road show start to do knocking you start to do things that doesn't cost you money but sometimes we all know that that by doing that in the long run is not going to help your business why because time is a more precious commodity than money time is something you cannot buy The time that you spend on the ground though that can be effective but sometimes we all know that it comparison to one to many kind of marketing attraction marketing versus prospecting is vastly different the results are vastly different one to many kind of marketing is always a more powerful kind of marketing it attracts customers to you when you go and do a door knock it can be effective maybe one out of 10 you get the exclusive but we all know that that is a different kind of persona because you are going to get the business is not the customer coming to you so the feeling that customer gets is very different the authority level is different so in order to reduce this we have to build the business and that is extremely important over here now most of the agents also feel that they are one out of many in their company you could be in a company with 10,000 people 5,000 people 1,000 people or maybe 500 or even just 50 people but many agents feels that they are just one out of many and um many agents also feel that they are one of many in the whole industry and differentiation is always the missing ingredient and if you have this thing that you already have recognized over the past two years and maybe you have you have told yourself a couple of times hey I really need to make this year the year that I built my niche i built my brand i built my differentiation but sometimes we're just so busy we don't have the right system and tools and methods for us to do that we just procrastinate and procrastinate and now I think by investing in this series I think you're doing the right decision for your own business let's have a look at this there's one more thing as well is that real estate agents tend to always look at the wrong thing what is the wrong thing that we always look at we always look at you know all these things we always look at hey you know this year there's got a cooling measure i think the market is going to be bad oh um I don't have a personal brand i don't do things on my social media because I do already also nobody seen uh why should I post why should I do a home tour why should I do a video why should I do content strategy i think yeah don't do that just go back to the usual stuff yeah my company is not giving me enough training my division is not giving me enough attention my teammates are not cooperative with me uh there's disruption happening in the market you see that company is doing this see that company is cutting their their commission see that company is innovating oh my competitors are too strong uh all of my competitors are doing this particular marketing method i better not participate i better not not compete with them not enough training for my team leaders my team manager is also not giving me enough attention oh there's a recession happening this year and I think because of this I think business is going to be bad and uh let me share with you if we are constantly looking at all these things these are the things that is not going to help our business they can be very important of course these are important items but the most important thing that we should always be looking at is that we should always be looking at a customer because you are running your own business you are not doing a job in a company why do you draw a salary and do you draw CPF do you have many save no you're running your own business as a realtor and this is a realtor business this is what we call a real estate business unless you are in certain kind of real estate structure whereby you draw a salary plus commission that is a vastly different thing but if you're running your real estate business you are the main owner of your business even though you are one person and if you if you don't shift that mindset if you don't have that new paradigm shift and if you don't look at what your customer needs and how do you get better with your customer then your business is going to suffer so I would like you to write this down if you really want to change your business look at the screen now find a method allocate time to build consistent lead flow to build a consistent income producing business and use this concept called the domino effect to build a business and be patient because a 1% every day if you have read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear if you have read the one thing by Jay Patterson as well as Gary Keller these two books are the key foundational concept books that talks about domino building effect and sometimes it only takes 1% each i mean even for myself every day when I film something is a 1% increment not just in my skill set in the way that I speak but also in the content that I produce in the business that I'm bringing for my company in the value adding that I'm bringing to my business as well as my customers so a domino building effect is one of the most powerful thing that you can do on a consistent daily basis now what is this a lot of realtors also do a lot of things other than looking at the wrong things they do so many things that things that do not really build them up to be an authority expert in the market so if you look at this a lot of realtors they do room rentals HGB rental industrial property commercial property serve buyers over the weekend serve lendered buyers serve lender sellers then they start to do a little bit of co-l livingiving as well office rental CTR condos new launch now the problem is this when you do this me as a consumer what is my perception of you are you like a jack of all trades or are you an expert in a key area because if I have a landed property and I want to sell I only want to find the expert in selling landed property if I want to invest in condos for rental or as well as capital investment let's say I already have own state property I want to buy one more for capital uptake i only want to find a person with frameworks that can help me with my investment journey that can help me identify the right condo that can appreciate in the fastest time in the next three to five years i don't want to find somebody that does like HGB rental or office rental because maybe I think that they are they don't have time to really study about investments if I want to rent out my office I want to only want to find the best person there are so many connections with tenants MNC's that can rent my office so people are always hunting for experts and of course if you always do so many things people are going to be confused consumers are going to be confused about who you are what you stand for and what is your niche and if we look at this we do so many things except the most important what is the most important thing and I'm going to share with you the most important thing is your niche your most important asset is your niche an identifier niche that is so clear that the moment I'm hunting for a particular expert authority in the real estate market I know that this is the person I need to go for when I want to sell my condo in this particular region I know that this is the expert that I need to hunt for let me talk about the eight deadly scenes and of course after this we'll wrap up chapter number one what are the eight deadly scenes of a real estate salesperson number one they thought that they're here to get a job we already talked about this previously is that if you do not shift from a salesperson mindset to a business owner mindset to a business realtor mindset this is going to be one of the key deadly sins that you will experience in your career and this is the part that you will walk one step forward and have two step backwards number two is that they thought that they're really here to be a salesperson because sometimes once you sign up with an agency especially if it is your first first year in the business you pass your exams you waited like one and a half years to get an exam slot study for for the CA test and then go for the exam and you fail one time two times and then repeat you finally get your license you get your license agency cut and then you step into the office you realize that hey why is it the office got nobody because everybody is not here in the office to work they're really here to like submit case collaborate have meetings learn train and uh sometimes they might go to office to work because you realize that most real estate agents in Singapore they operate a little bit like a co-working space there's a there's a freedom in you coming in and out and most importantly is that if you think that you're there to clock in hours to do a job then you are wrong why because the business is out there it's not in the office office is for collaboration it's for submission it's for training but the business is out there and this is the key difference that you need to have number three they see sales revenue as profit and uh this by far I think is also one of the very detrimental mindset that a lot of sales people have sometimes going into your second and third year and you start to have a little bit of results maybe on a certain month you clock like a 80,000 kind of a commission and just by thinking that hey you know I just clocked 80,000 last month but the commission is only coming three to four months later and just by thinking about that amount that you clock which is your sales revenue that doesn't equate to your profit yet because you haven't leveled off your costing you haven't really seen the money in your bank but a lot of realtors go ahead and chase a new car sign a new loan and then get theel into a level of debt that then eats into anxiousness again because they now have this new installment they have to pay they have already announced on social media they change a new car and now they have a new heavier lifestyle that they have maintained and they haven't realized that this is not profit yet and I talk about this as well take care of your costing because if you don't take care of your costing you don't see that your costing has three components revenue cost as well as profit and you overspend this is going to be detrimental to your business in the long run build your business first and once you see that consistency in terms of revenue and profit then you start to spend then you start to have a better lifestyle but I think in the initial years especially your first second third year the foundation is extremely important stay humble go for a secondhand car there's no need to to flaunt your wealth to to flaunt not your income because consumers don't care about what car you're driving technically speaking so most consumers they don't technically care about what car you're driving they don't care whether it's a brand new or secondhand car they just want to know that you're serious in your business you have a vehicle to fetch them for viewings to make sure that you have that time productivity to go and sell their properties i think that's good enough and basically if you fail to see this as a business and you spend before collecting and you don't manage your cost and uh you don't build a lead gen machine I think the entire business is going to face a lot of inconsistency over the years last but not least is that if you don't build a niche branding I think it's going to be detrimental you're going to feel it in your second third and fourth year and then you will go to a stage that you are in your seventh and eth year and then you just tell yourself hey it's too late to build a brand i'll just continue to do my rest business and be a transactor and and and things like that now I talked about this previously and this is a very hard truth you can be 10 year in the business you're very good at a certain area certain craft but if you don't do a niche branding you don't market yourself you don't do advertising basically people don't know who you are they don't know what you do they don't know what you're good at and if they don't know what you're good at basically it is unfair for your customers why do I say that just imagine somebody who is not very good at their job somebody who is not very good at maybe selling a particular condo uh enclave maybe 9 10 11 you are somebody that is very good you have the network you have basically the right tools you really do your best you don't miss a viewing you really market extensively but somebody is always doing a haphazardous job or maybe they ask buyers to sell view they are not ethical they do unethical negotiations but they are so good at marketing themselves that all the buyers and and sellers are attracted to them to the unethical agent you are technically doing your future customers a disfavor because you being an ethical agent you're supposed to attract good customers to you but end up because they don't even know your existence they're being attracted to the unethical agent do you get you get what I'm where I'm going at is that if you are good at your job you should be the best at marketing yourself because the customers should come to you they should come to the ethical agent why should they be be be attracted to the unethical agent and the reason they're attracted there is because that other ethical agent has has good marketing they know how to attract people there but you should get the business and I think if you're not doing your niche branding marketing advertising you're doing your future customers a disfavor and that is why when somebody wants to do good work they want to do work with integrity they should be the best marketers it should be marketed in the sense that customers are attracted to them rather than than analytical one and the second thing is this remember as you age in this business your customers age with you your customers are going to grow old your customers are going to grow old in the sense that as they grow older in their 40s 50s 60s they are buying power is going to drop because they're going into a defensive stage of real estate investing and real estate investing has has a longevity some somebody buys a property stay for 9 years they don't sell and buy after 9 years and if you don't create a brand to attract new customers and you don't constantly recreate yourself with value and innovation you're going to be phased out in the business even though how good you are at your work and just have a look at the investing cycle of a customer in typically I would like you to draw it out on your worksheet as well somebody starts purchasing at maybe 20 over years or maybe 28 to 30 if somebody with a with maybe very accelerated start they start purchasing at 25 26 which we know is rare but sometimes with the help of their parents they could could do so or maybe they really start off with a young as a young professional they have the capability but let's just take at at 30 years old they buy their first property maybe they would transact again at 35 and then they go towards like maybe 40 45 and then once they go towards 55 we all know that that's the defensive stage maybe that will be the last move that they have they sell before the CPF gets locked up and then they move into a retirement home so technically speaking you only got one two and maybe three and maybe at most four lifetime over 25 years with a client and if you do not keep attracting new and younger customers into your business cycle basically what's going to happen is that your business is going to go towards a more defensive stage together with your customer's life cycle so understanding your life cycle your customer is extremely important in this business and that is why you need to create a niche brand to attract new and younger customers so the objective of build for this entire series is basically these three things what we're going to cover in this entire 11 chapters the first couple of chapters we're going to talk about niche positioning we already covered chapter one today we're going to then going to talk about the ultimate business model and this is extremely important once he grabs this I can share with you confidently that your business is off to a great start towards success and of course how do you create an automated lead generation hexagon and we're going to cover these three main things in this entire series so at this point in time if you are still thinking that maybe I don't have to take action today let me just procrastinate let me just think about I'll just do it next year i just want to share with you what is going on behind the scenes what are what are the undercurrens from the consumer's point of view as a consumer today I can subscribe to any platform all these platforms are available i can subscribe to Squareoot i just want to pay $2 $300 a year i can subscribe to 99.co i can subscribe um even to a couple of research platforms that a lot of don't even spend money to subscribe as a consumer I can already see what are the transactions trends unit numbers the price point profit that people are making i can make my own decisions and plus if we do not innovate and change then I think we are really going to be disrupted out of the business agents that remain as a transactor you will find yourself losing more and more confidence each and single day and change is needed now consumers definitely are getting more savvy what they want are not transactors so just imagine you're a home seller home buyer take a step back do you want somebody that is just opening doors for you and then they they they technically don't have any opinions no research no nothing and um just come open show the house and they they don't even talk about why this home is good the pros and cons they don't even analyze it to the potential buyers for you as a home seller you definitely will get very anxious and of course you want to micromanage and say "Hey you know you should have said this you should have said that you know there's a master plan coming up there's a new plot coming up you know what they do brings it up to the buyer and then you your property just sits there for months with no offers naturally you get get anxious and then you want to switch agent and so what are what are consumers thinking about and I think as a real real estate business person you need to reverse engineer and think about the point of view of your potential customers what they really want they want somebody with analysis professionalism they want a consultant level person they want somebody with advice research charts trends frameworks and and somebody that is a great marketer can articulate well talk about pros and cons really about selling it in the sense of selling as non-elling and they to master the art of selling you need to know how to sell without being salesy without being pushy and that is the art of being a consultant level of realtor so do you think you'll be happier if you were to do nothing for the next 5 10 15 years so this is the time to take out your worksheet and um on this page of your worksheet try to visualize if you don't do something today what's going to happen to your business in five years time just write it down just write it down on whether your business will be consistent in 5 years time whether have you really built like a strong brand for yourself for your niche do people know what you do and I was just reading this book the other time and um there was this particular sentence that stands out to me it says If you were to go for a gathering this weekend with your school friends you go to a gathering there's 10 people over there and if your friends don't even know what you're doing now you technically don't have a business if they don't even know what you're doing now because they they don't they don't know what business you're in what you're good at you technically are just a secret agent you're just a secret realtor that is a realtor but nobody knows because real estate is a relationship business it is a branding business you are like your walking brand you're somebody that walks around as a consultant and if you're really doing well in terms of marketing in terms of letting people know what you're good at once you head on to a gathering people instantly will know what you're doing what you're good at the the question that that first comes out from their mouth is that hey can you show me a little bit how's the market uh think about investing yeah I saw that recently you just uh appear on this news uh on this article on this uh radio interview on this on this uh video hey uh that was a very interesting how much is that they will straight away talk about all these topics and but if let's say nobody knows what you're doing technically you're just a secret agent and I think importantly what will happen in fire if you continue down that route and how about 10 years how about 15 years will you grow tired because if you continue to do what you're doing now will your business even last will your referrals start to dwindle will customers start to age and what about 20 years time will you be happy at the end of 20 years that maybe when you look back hey you know there was this year 2024 that I heard Melvin talk about this i bought this uh purchase this niche positioning series and Melvin actually advised and motivated us to do something right now but I didn't take action back then because at the end of the day even though I share with you all the methods and frameworks but if you don't take action nothing is going to happen and I just want to encourage you to take action to really think about taking action today after you have learned this when you're driving listen to this when you are have free time we call this using your fragmented time when you're doing your you are cooking at home as well just listen to this just listen to what we have been discussing today let this go into your subconscious mind let this go into your mind that constantly remind you positively because I just want to encourage you in this business that if you take action today something's going to change something good is going to change something positive is going to change and do you want to only open doors i need to apologize if I'm a little bit too straightforward but I need to be straightforward with you because if I'm not straightforward with you and you fail to take action I'm going to feel bad because why when I meet you someday down the road 1 2 3 years later I want to see somebody that is enjoying the business that is really enjoying and building your business do you want to only be a transactor that open doors in 20 years then what about your energy level have you missed out on your children's childhood have you not have enough time to travel the world with your family with your wife with your husband will your relationships be affected because you're constantly weekends nighttime being burned will it be affected these are the questions that you need to think about as a realtor running a business and let's have a look at the listing cycle because technically all we're doing now we're just talking about this first part we have not even moved to any other things yet and you don't solve this first part we don't need to talk about closing and completion and let me just share with you based on all the efforts that we have put in at ProLim Brothers and what has been the key results that we have had so far as a team as a company because sometimes when when people look at the things that we're doing back in 2018 and 2019 people are just saying that we're crazy because like we're spending so much time doing homestaging filming the home tour buying so many equipments having our media team now our media is a creative agency and why do we want to invest so much consistently year on year and we are still not stopping we are not resting our laurels we just want to innovate our main core product to be 2.0 3.0 4.0 up to 10 15 20.0 version and our core product of course is our niche in our signature hotel let's have a look at what we have done welcome hi there welcome to Fun Sang today we're taking a look at a four room apartment in block 445B come on in hi we're excited to show you a free hole to place two bedroom penthouse at East Village today come on in [Music] melvin property brothers always happy to show the [Music] [Applause] gigantic master room level two hey how's opening what should I say so back then in 2016 home tours uh was a very new thing in Singapore nobody has done home tours the only mode of marketing back then was only photographs back then I was thinking how can we position homes differently because every property is so unique there different renovations of different homes there's different kinds of views from different properties [Music] we should really be highlighting all the unique features and benefits of each property very very differently and I think video is one of the best way to do it firstly nobody believes in home tours second thing was that the prep of the home really takes a lot of effort of course the third thing is that how can we articulate and how can we film in a fashion that really makes the home tour exciting i would say that in terms of the number of issues that we face is like I don't know 101 issues in the very first season the boot house residences were just we're happy to show you the place confirmed is less than 5 minutes the key idea back then was really how can we do this so that home buyers at the comfort of their homes can just sit on their couch and watch every single detail of the properties before they even come for a physical view so we kept on pushing firstly we need to figure out what is the right camera to [Music] use if there's a product we want to put it in as best possible and gems how can we go to a stage where we can just speak normally brothers right now we are at the highly sought after 99 years later we're in district 9 today we are bringing you to this amazing semi detach home that you wouldn't want to miss if you're ready let's go check it out can we also show the exterior of the condo project of the land and cave we were thinking what if we can't do physical staging can we do virtual 3D staging [Applause] maximize the potential and value of everyone to attend and create what about investment units how can we use motion graphics so that can visualize better we can look at numbers better location maps better bring on the floor plans how to select a home in terms of frameworks and solutions solutions logos will change watermarks will change show the buyers in the comfort of their home how can we bring out the best points of their properties this is the evolution of PLV home tours okay last take last take [Music] career of course based on what you have seen all this are the results of us constantly adding on innovation to our core niche and that's what I call niche positioning so whether as a business whether as a one-man realtor you can build your niche for us I started off as a oneman realtor building my niche all the way transiting into a team and of course now a company and of course as a company level but still building a niche and of course this year onwards I'm helping all my consultants to build their own niches as well within the PLB structure so that is the core component of niche positioning series and all this results from consistency we are pumping out content every single day and we're not letting the quality be affected but most importantly is that we want to be consistency because we all have to remember with excellence at the front at the core bottom is actually consistency if there's no consistency there's no excellence so action can only be taken if let's say you have consistency at the back of your mind that you force yourself to be consistent every single day that you know you just want to show up be accountable and be consistent to your results and you have to be patient for this consistency to result in actionable success in future so all this I mean all the channels that we've created over the last few years whether it's NOTGP insights um our banter series uh our interview series of course with our editorial team as well uh a lot of all these things has been because of our team effort consistency and our core principle of building our niche rising from version 1.0 zero as you can see back in 2017 all the way until now 2024 we constantly improve and innovate on our home tours as well as our core content and uh this has also been our lead gen system that we consistently build in more and more lead gen structure in order to create and enhance lead genen machine so that we can attract customers for us to serve because we are good at our work we want to attract customers so that we can help them and if we do not know how to do our work then technically we don't deserve to serve new customers but because we are excellent in our core work we have investment frameworks we know what to do we know how to market each property to its fullest potential we want to attract customer we want to help more people and this has been of course our leverage platforms that we have built over the years as well and let's come back to listing cycle because the next series that we're going to talk about basically in the market series is the lead conversion series and then further on from the lead conversion series as you will notice lead conversion is also an art and a science just for lead conversion before you can before you can even serve a customer if you cannot convert the lead into an appointment you have no chance to talk to the customer and the market market module sorry the module the second module we're going to talk about is basically about conversion as well as the art of selling so we're going to share with you how do you convert your lead to an appointment we're going to share with you how do you get solid genuine leads we're going to share with you how do you get solid genuine reviews so that that become like a vicious loop to get new business as well we're also going to share with you and after the market series we're going to talk about the manage series because the manage series is the key to automation of an entire business model so let's do a quick recap over here build market manage niche is right in the middle and that is what we're going to learn from these three modules under the entire niche positioning series last but not least I would like to share with everybody a paradigm shift and um perhaps this might be your first time that uh has heard about this particular story from me and uh maybe you have already seen some of our home tours and that's the reason why you've decided to invest in this niche positioning series maybe you might be wondering hey Melvin you're running a business now you have PB Media a creative agency you have uh PB Realy you're running an existing running business why are you building a school why are you building assembly what is your intent what is your end goal what is your hope and passion why do you want even want to invest time to do this with your team so I myself have been in the real estate industry for 16 years since 2007 and uh consecutively 2020 2021 2022 three times millionaire realtor award in my previous company of course I co-founded the property brothers media company first 2018 while I was still a realtor and then in 2022 I stepped out of sales and started PRB realy and of course now I'm the co-founder and CEO I run the business I do not engage directly in sales but I'm very active in building platforms webinars seminars one to many marketing running the organization structure building our leaders bring in leads for the company so now I run the structure as a rain maker and uh personally I still do a lot of home tours i do a lot of video contents i still do a lot of NOTG filming at show flats and stuff like because I I love to create content i love real estate i love to understand about investments personally I've sold more than I think close to,800 homes until today and uh this was my previous photo um this was while I was dating my wife back then this was the transform me after I married my wife back then from a very young age I real I realized there was this very fundamental important lesson in my season is that when my wife brought me to meet her grandma instantly after we left my her grandma's home the grandma text her and say hey don't go out with this guy you know he looks like somebody that is not serious because of his hair and uh that was the very first time I understand that first impression means so much because I I want to get married with this lady I want to start a family with her I have four kids Well but then just because of a wrong impression I do not get the chance to do that so do you realize that in your business as well sometimes you really have the ability to help this home seller to sell the maximum price to have them exit to the next property but then because of some words that you say wrongly during the pitch because of a lack of marketing they don't even contact you because of maybe a wrong sequence that you do in terms of advising them on investment framework they're not comfortable and you lost the chance to really serve them and that was exactly what happened to me thankfully I changed my image and then I get to marry my wife and of course now I have a happy family four kids and a dog and uh with that I think over the years I really learned about the art of marketing and being good at what I do but also being able to articulate what I do so this was my story i started off 26 years old as a realtor 32 years old i almost went bankrupt and uh and I went into a drought season for 4 years 36 years old so I'm a late boomer so if you're same age as me now I'm in my 40s you're not too late if you're in your 30s you're also not too late if you're in your 20s you're well ahead of time but the most important is to take action and we are never too old to take action i just want to encourage you on that and of course 41 years old I started PB Realy so I just completed an interview with Aken uh that was a part that I shared about the story of me almost being bankrupt and how really God helped me to rise back and then kickstart the real estate business with integrity and that was how our tech and PLB started real estate with integrity and um this was my history so if some of you are thinking hey Melvin you're such a good speaker that's why you can do a lot of content that's not true because back then in primary school all my report books P1 to P6 all says that Melvin is a quiet boy and I don't know how to speak i don't know how to speak in secondary school there was a there was an instance that you know I was doing a presentation in front of my class and I was sweating i was literally sweating my whole shirt was wet because I was so nervous presenting a science project to my whole class everybody was mocking and laughing at me my change started after I started doing and I I started to challenge myself constantly i started to tell myself that hey I need courage to do it let me just try if you have seen some my home tours back in 2016 17 18 I cringe at looking at myself because I speak so poorly I speak like you know um you know there's no training at all but I think it's through the years of just constantly humbling myself and learning reading practicing and of course just keep doing it in the right method and of course just learning about more and more frameworks that I really force myself to recreate myself and I think it's really through the years over all these different seasons where I follow the raw mentor drought season and I tell myself that hey from now on at age 36 I want to do my real estate business with integrity i want to be able to sleep soundly i want to be able to help people to invest their hardearned money in the right manner and I want to do good work for the market and we tried everything before so if you have thought about this objection in your mind as well hey Melvin I don't want to do videos you know it's so painful i don't want to go back to this i've done it before i've seen it done it i've paid a lot of money doing it i'm not saying that it doesn't work now it still work today but the ROI has dropped to a very very low level because what are the chances of the actual home owner really picking up this flyer maybe by the time they got home their helper has already thrown it in the in the dust bin their grandparents has thrown in a dust bin and most of the time when we see this we have the association that this is like a traditional old mode of marketing and we're hunting for as home owners we're hunting for somebody with a wider reach a video reach a social media platform reach uh I started everything from scratch just with a tripod just with a camera and they're all secondhand items with our first media thing I studied every day at home on how to create content how to run ads i was running ads myself and when we started off our first few social media platforms with just three to six of our first few media teammates our likes was only 436 this was our original property brothers Facebook page that we're still using today and uh we started everything from scratch we didn't buy likes we didn't do any form of shortcuts we just really built content on a day-to-day basis this was our first uh media teammates in our team and of course we gradually grew with a sales team in 2019 2022 we launched our own realy and of course today in 2024 we have a total uh team st of 135 uh people in our team that's made out of 65 creatives that has about 60 plus uh realtor sorry creative is about 70 already so recently of course after setting up PB um realy we also won five awards last year of course a couple of us are top transctors in landed as well and uh up to date of course in terms of the things that we have now is all because of consistent building into our niche now I just want to share with you very quickly this has of course given me a lot of chance to impart uh back to the consumers market through a lot of speaking engagements through a lot of talks seminars webinars as well because recently uh we have also collaborated with a lot of banks uh insurance companies a lot of big brands in terms of speaking at their events and platforms and uh this was some of the speaking engagements that we've done nco chops singtel uh recently I came from a Sydney event as well and I think the key paradigm shift personally for myself is that sometimes things only start to kick off through a domino effect all these speaking engagements wouldn't have came about if I have not started to do the first home tour until today and I think it's because of this patience in building a domino effect that's given me more opportunities to bring all this to my team to bring all this to my company to bring all this to my consultants and this is one of the key fundamental book that I think everybody should read which is the one thing by Gary Keller as well as Jay Pepson this is the book that I think once you start to go into the concepts you'll start to understand a little bit more about what I meant by domino effect And last but not least this is the question I want to answer because perhaps this is in your mind is that why do we want to launch assembly why do we want to launch the school of real estate and the school of real estate is meant for realtors it's also meant for property investors the school of media is meant for creatives the school of business is meant for any business people that wants to build leverage systems structures organization culture teamwork hiring practices into their core business and why do you want to build all this is because this was my journey as a traditional oneman agent all the way until the very first home tour started the first company started the second company of course this is where we are now and back then in 2018 during this particular season over here when I started PLB media I also concurrently started another company with another of my co-founder which is Affinity Motions and I sold the business in the year 2022 and many people back then when I started this business they were asking me hey Bin why do you want to start a business to service real estate agents to become your competitors why do you want to even do that because back then when I started PLB media that was the inception of PLB and then I started another company called Affinity Motions and I sold it off before I started PB realy because I want to focus on a new business and I think people felt very strange that you're just creating a new platform to help other realtors do home tours why do you even want to do that and I think this is something that is really in my blood is that firstly I like to to build new things i like to do new things but I think the core fundamental reason was because I always feel a need to impact the industry and anything that is good I don't see things that other people are doing as being my competitor I look at it as a more long game kind of approach is that anyway when we start doing people are already going to start doing as well but I think if let's say we can do something in parallel at any point in our journey I think is that is going to impact more people and that's going to create a more professional kind of approach in the entire industry just look at where we are now compared to 2018 the entire real estate industry has shifted but it has not affected our core business at all in fact property in just got stronger and even though we are creating content for some of the other real estate professionals I think overall is moving everybody upwards to a more professional level so after 2022 basically um now I run the role as a business owner leader trainer mentor and love to build the next generation my first era as a superstar ring maker millionaire realtor back then was really a great season for me because when I started in 2010 to 2013 as a oneman show agent you can just have a look at the amount of awards that I won at propex 2010 2013 is just in one page but then 2014 2017 is similar results inconsistent anxiousness but the shift came in 2018 where everything starts to shift once I built my niche as a singular rain maker top producer agent together with my business partner and 2019 was the year that we started to see Platanium Platanium Planium um top individual awards top transctors these were the whole list of awards basically and overall 2019 we got top exclusive listed as top individual producer 2020 millionaire realtor status of course the amount awards keep increasing 2021 millionaire status as well and then 2022 millionaire status as well and that was because we started building our niche and once of course we accumulated this that was also the time that we started PRB royalty in 2022 so back then we also had some master classes um and I felt that this year in the year 2024 is the correct year for us to launch assembly and uh with all these achievements uh back then I think we are in the right season to create more positive impact for the industry which is why we want to started we want to start a real estate school in parallel with our real estate company at PLB as well as our creative agency in PLB media so I hope that that gives you a good introduction on our key goal over here because our key goal is really to build and create a true authentic business school for passionate real estate business people real estate investors and creatives in media with the right frameworks that has been tested and proven and we only want to impart things that we are doing that is working we only want to teach things that are working we don't want to teach things that has not been tested before that we have not used them before and as we grow the business as we go along in our journey we want to teach alongside our own successes and uh I was actually contemplating this like should I do this at 50 years old should I do this at 55 years old but I think it is time that we do this because I at the same time also want to create a platform with our trainers and teachers and mentors in PRB as well where so many good trainers over here we have so many good trainers in our creative agency that can really impart knowledge as they grow the business together and I think this is just a journey we don't want to wait till we are oh and then we start to teach this because by then certain things might not be working things that are working now we want to impart and I think we want to bring you alongside this journey together with us at assembly and I hope that we have a wonderful journey building our businesses together so that I can see you at the top and uh let's move on to chapter two next i hope that you have a good chapter one together and our niche positioning series under the build module and uh my name is Melville hope to see you on chapter 2 take care [Music]