Peter Schravemade: g'day folks. My name is Peter Shravemaid. This is another episode of Before the Weekend. obviously our podcast that we like doing, which talks about a a lot of things to do with real estate matters. And today I am joined by yet another Peter. we've had a bit of a laugh about that. There seems to be an excess of Peters in the industry, but as I would say, Peter Hutton, I think we're better for it. welcome to the Before the Weekend podcast.
Peter Hutton: Yeah. Well thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me. This is I'm looking forward to seeing what we talk about.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And for those of you listening, Peter Peter's come in blind. We have not had more than a thirty to minute 30 second to minute discussion about this. So if this goes aright, you can blame Peter one or am I Peter two? I don't know. We'll fight about that later. But look, I I became aware of you through a mutual friend of ours and I've been following your LinkedIn profile. and There there are certain things that I I gain or have come to understand not knowing about you, but just doing a a brief profile check on you. Obviously you were part of Hutton and Hutton and which was in my opinion at the time a successful real estate agency. Is that is that the way you'd phrase that?
Peter Hutton: Mine too. it was very successful until it wasn't. and I I think that's that line is my my line these days. It was successful until it wasn't. But yeah, no, it was it it grew from just Karen and I sitting at our dining table at home, my wife Karen, and I'd had some time between another agency that we'd we'd sold the rent roll and closed down, moved to Byron Bay and we were talking earlier about success and failure. Well that the trip the first time in Byron was a bit of a failure. We lasted a year and we came back to Brisbane. And anyway, long story short, I ended up working for Peter Hanscombe, the CEO of Bell. And that's another Peter. Yeah, that was another Peter. In the early days of Bell when they had about forty officers and my my my task was to help grow Queensland but also coach the team and also help Peter with the IP of Bell property, which I did. And but slowly but surely I got the hankering to get back into real estate and one day over a a coffee, Karen and I decided let's let's open up an agency and we we thought well let's call ourselves Hutton and Hutton given that we're both Hutton married. yeah so that's how we started there and and we grew it from that that start and over a ten year period to three officers. And as I said, it was from our account, it was successful and profitable and growing and we had plans to open up two more offices and over twelve months and I'd started talking to people about that and and then and then very quickly it all unraveled very quickly.
Peter Schravemade: Before we get into that, one question I have for you as somebody who has worked with his wife on and off for the past twenty years. Yes longer actually, she'll correct me on that and I'll get into trouble for that later. How d how is it working with your wife?
Peter Hutton: it's tremendous. look, you have times and our morning walks back in the day, we would we'd be talking about business and we'd get to a point one of us would turn to the other and say, Let's stop, you know, talking about work. We've got all day to talk about work, let's just enjoy the morning out. So, you know, you gotta learn to switch off. But we've been we'd really started working together around Probably two thousand and one is when we we started working together. So a long you know, a long time. and now Karen still does copywriting for real estate agents. So she's been running a
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, it's totally
Peter Hutton: for a long time and she she writes for some really top agents. you know, and even with AI now a lot of people go, you just got AI, but it it's you know, it's quite chalk and cheese when you see a human right proper. copy and AI right. it's like grey copy versus colourful copy, you know what I mean? So
Peter Schravemade: there's a lot of lot of questions I have for you, but I I think at the crux of it, how long ago were we talking about that Hutton and Hutton fell over?
Peter Hutton: the longer I go away from that point, I have to try and remember the dates.
Peter Schravemade: Talk to that.
Peter Hutton: Yeah, yeah. in 2022, we in the middle of 2022, I signed a lease on a 300 square meter heritage listed building on Brook Street, around the corner from place on James Street in Fortitude Valley. And the great thing about that was in my mind was that if you were traveling from that western suburbs to Fort Chavalli, you had to go down Brook Street so you'd see my pro, you know, see our beautiful, beautiful building, two story federation brick on an acre of lawn area and with our signage out the front, which I spent a lot of money on. So that was that was middle of 2022. we had our we fitted it out, we moved in, October. July, August, September sometime. And we had our opening party in November. and our all of our three officers attended with all the staff. So it was about 30 Hutton and Hutton team members there that worked in the business locally. We had some re remote as well. and we had a big big party maybe a hundred and fifty, hundred and seventy people at it and and some you know some well known people came to that and and then in the first week of December the first resignation notice came through from the principal of one of our offices and unfortunately my contract s that I'd drawn up thinking I knew a thing about contracts and law and stuff. And I used a lawyer to check it over and help me with it, but he had not a lot of knowledge around that kind of commercial law. He was a friend and it had a 30-day no dispute termination clause that one party could terminate for whatever reason. And that's what he chose to do. There wasn't a dispute. We were actually getting on like a house on fire and Things were going very, very well. And so he r resigned, didn't say why, just said that there was an another opportunity he wanted to pursue pursue and later explained why. And then 2023, within six weeks of that, the second office resigned. So we lost about 70% of our revenue over an eight-week period. which was a massive hit. And, you know, you'd think about a your your corner fruit and veg shop. If they lost seventy percent of their clients over a six week period, they just close the door straight away. There's no way you can keep going when you lose that much revenue. I'm sure you can appreciate that. And we kept we kept going, but then our team in in Fortitude Valley at the Brook Street office all freaked out. Every headhunter in Brisbane was calling them all. My daughter got called who worked with us Paris. She got an offer, fifty thousand dollars more than I was paying her. I told her you should take that offer up. There's no future here now. And she wouldn't take it up out of, you know, love for her dad and mother and loyalty. And and we battled on for a year, and in that period of 2023, we said if we can bring in at least a small nucleus of a team. recruit, then and and I got back on the tools. We'll make a fist of it, we'll get going, we'll rebuild. we just couldn't recruit. Nobody would touch us with the barge pole because the word had got out there the recruiters wouldn't help. they saw us as dead men walking and I could see that too. i yeah, I'll tell you a thing or two about depression at that point if If you're interested, but so you know it's
Peter Schravemade: Well let's let's get let's get to that. I do have questions around that. Do you do you think like everyone looks back on you know periods where the the world considers you as a failure or or things that you've done wrong? Are there are there things that you would you would have done differently in that? Like is it is it about the contract? You wouldn't have had a thirty day release in there. Whether are there other things that that you could have done in retrospect that you do differently now?
Peter Hutton: totally. in fact, I did write a book this year which I I published and called How to Keep 100% of what you earn and and in that book I wrote the book first and I went this this ain't honest. I mean, I I thought to myself, if anybody reads this book, they're gonna go, Well, who who you know, why should I even believe Peter Hutton? Because his business is had failed. And it's true. And so I went back and I spent months and months and months just peeling the whole business back again in my head. I'd done that for two years anyway. but this time I really went, okay, from a structural point of view, what went wrong? You know, where did where did I go wrong as as a as a principal and as a founder and as a dire as CEO of the business? And And I actually found six things and and one of them was the contract, that was one. red flags. There were red flags that I ignored with people that I could have acted upon sooner, like I could have acted upon it legally sooner, I could have acted upon it just from a leadership point of view sooner. there was definitely red flags. when I I I I made a big mistake in in thinking optimism outweighs risk mitigation. so I'm an optimistic person. I'm a very creative person. I mean, you can sit behind me is art that I've painted. I've been an artist for 30 years and you know, won a big award and sold like sold about 80 paintings last year. So, you know, like I'm an artist, I'm a creator. I just keep creating. So I'm very optimistic in my ability. To learn and create something and keep rolling forward. but that's all very well. That that's takes you so far as I learned. And I think like anybody, you can do a job and you can do it too, and it doesn't matter how highly skilled you are, there is a ceiling to your experience and your knowledge, your skill set, your ability, there is a ceiling to everybody. some people haven't found it yet. Maybe Elon Musk hasn't found his. But the ri but for most human beings, there is a ceiling. And and I found mine. And once the business got to the three officers, I was perpetually stressed with people. And very stressed with everybody. Everybody just stressed me out like, you know, the the the the the the there there's a kind of thinking process that we all do. And I have a my own particular style of thinking process that works for me and and I can think through a problem, but I can't think through other people's problems. And I and there comes a point where, you know, like I can't hold their hands through that problem. They're on their own. And and I think that's partly where the wheels started falling off also. But there were things like that optimism meant I I opted into a big lease. When I shouldn't have. I should have paused back at the other office a bit longer. And one of the things I learned was really building up my own base first before the other two officers. I spent a lot of time helping the other two build up their businesses. And I I probably the third office, I should have probably delayed that a little bit. In fact, it's so hilarious because I just laugh at myself because there was a meeting I had before I opened that third office where I said to that person that ordinarily I shouldn't be doing this because you know we haven't got to know each other long enough. And I had this had this rule where, you know, let's you walk first with somebody before you run, and you get to know them what they're like at walking as a metaphor. And I hadn't done that with this person long enough. And and that not that they were bad or anything, they were excellent, like all my people. we're pretty much excellent agents. th that was the other issue. When you're small and you build up a brand that's got profile quickly and can take on, can compete relatively well with Place and Ray White and even myself, I pl I often was up against Matt Lancashire or somebody else, you know, Sarah Hackett or somebody and you know, you th that that's that's a pretty good thing. But you also you end up on the spotlight, you know, like people s know you're around, recruiters know you're around, and recruiters look very closely and and the growth people the in in these larger businesses where they have a role as the the person to grow those businesses target you know good good people and our people were targeted and one of our people in particular was targeted and He didn't go easily, but they just kept going back and back and back and back. And from my understanding is they got to a point where they're just like, here's some more, here's some more, here's some more, here's another reason, here's another reason. And sooner or later that reason came around. That becomes too difficult, yeah. Yeah, but I think the Peter, the big one of the big lessons for me personally is that you're only defeated when you say you're defeated. And I listened to everybody else about how we were defeated. And everybody was saying we were defeated w in the Started 2023. And I bought into that. And that's where the stress and the depression really kicked in because I felt it. And by one o'clock in the afternoon, I could not keep my eyes open. I was mentally exhausted. So I would lock my door at my office, I had a private office, and I had a 200-year-old French desk. made in Paris, that I'd collected at beautiful desk. People used to laugh and say that's Napoleon's desk. I told my kids it was Napoleon's desk and they believed me. but I used to sleep underneath that desk in that year at one o'clock in the afternoon for at least an hour, sometimes two hours, and from my mental exhaustion and you know that's that That that's that's because I thought I was defeated and twelve months later I'd drawn a within that year I'd drawn a line in the sand and you know, we said if we get to the sixth of January and these things hadn't happened, I would call the liquidators up and s and s tell them to send over the paperwork, which they did that day and I signed it and the relief was incredibly huge. Like the relief to me was just I I can't tell you how much it lifted off me for that moment. For for a moment.
Peter Schravemade: How how how important would you place? Well, one of my observations in the industry and around the industry, and it it could we can be talking about property technology where I I delve quite a lot, but I, you know, I've seen this happen and it's not not local to Australia. it's it's in America as well. It's in almost every property circle. How important is it for the the largest stakeholder, whether that be the CEO, the principal, whoever it may be, of a real estate office, to surround themselves with people who can take the slack off that principal at or or the CEO at various times. Like I understand the buck stops with the CEO. But even, you know, you raised Elon Elon Musk before. Elon Musk can surround himself with some of the smartest people in the world, and I believe he does. I I think, you know, he would be an excellent example of somebody who has carved out this is my expertise and this is where where I'm going at it. But what one of the things that I have noticed from when things fall over is generally we've been taken away from the the area of operation that we do the best in and we've been forced into being something that probably sits outside what is comfortable at least. Is that a real thing? Would you say that that's that's that's happened in this instance?
Peter Hutton: It's a great question. look, it did happen at Hutton and Hutton. We well me, there and I was saying earlier about, you know, hitting that ceiling. I I I'm really good at creating the vision and I'm really good at putting seeing patterns and seeing opportunity. I'm also very good at taking action and putting structure in place. particularly good at that, I think. And and it's it it it's why people have said to me over the years, so outside of Hutton and Hutton, who are in different businesses, they've looked at my business and gone. Wow, you you know, you had so much assets to that business and so much structure and procedure manuals and things that actually work. But what I wasn't good at was actually probably managing people. And and I'm not, you know, like it's not my thing. I get frustrated with people. I have high expectations. I have super high expectations only because like I'm about how do you execute something when you ex when you when you decide you're gonna do something. I don't I I don't want to do it half-assed. I want to do it really, really well. And I I I hold myself accountable to that. And then if if we've got an appr a procedure in place, I follow those procedures. I'm very OCD about it. Now I I can learn out of a procedure and learn a better procedure. I don't get stuck and I'm not fixated because I'm creative. That's that's the other benefit of that. But but I I'm very good at following a procedure. And it's why I think I was I've been a you know, like I hate saying it sounds like a brag, but I've been an extremely good salesperson my whole life. And if even well before I was in real estate, I was selling wool all around the world and I went from sweeping floors in the wool industry at an early age to running a hundred and seventy million dollar business by the time I was about twenty-eight years of age, traveling the world business class to New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, places like that. Clients in Russia, Germany selling wool mostly over the phone to these people, many containers of wool. And I think in the best year when I was 28 or 29, I made I worked for Dalgetti International Trading and I made them a million dollars net profit, just my trades alone. Now that's equivalent to many hundreds of millions of dollars today. In you know, I'm talking about 1993. That's you know, long that a million bucks was a lot of money and for one individual. And and I did it relatively with no risk. but yeah, I I just think like I can sell. I can sell. I was very good at recruiting because I can sell. I can sell a vision, I can explain a problem and and articulate how to move through that problem. And outside the art, we were talking about our Creative streaks. My my probably my greatest strength is I'm a wordsmith. I'm a I'm very good at writing. I'm I'm good at talking, explaining things. I'd be just happy to do that. You know? But when it comes to people, not great. And maybe I don't know, maybe I'm a bit on the spectrum or something and find a
Peter Schravemade: Well, who knows? Like, you know, in all the all the people I've met, Pete, the yeah, we're not all good at everything. and and I and I I think I think, you know, w I'll come back to this, but I think part of failing at something is actually learning the lesson from it and going, you know, if that was ever to happen again, this is what this is what I do. So yeah, you know, we'll I'll come to your takeaways. What I what I wanna ask, you know, I don't I don't particularly want to dwell for a great length on on the mental health issue. I actually think we're in a society today where it's it's not like it's not a a a bad word. I grew up in a family where to have a mental health episode could actually have been attributed to some kind of you're not strong enough in Jesus. so you know which is like a which is which is almost next level it it's not just you don't want to say it, but you are not holy enough if that if that happens. So that that was really the environment I I got into. And but but life wasn't like that. I I see people all the time who are struggling. One of one of one of the issues I have, and I've spoken to other people about this, and I you know I don't know you very well, but I'm going to guess that you went through the ringer on this one. And the the the issue I have is what is the best approach For people around you when they see you drowning.
Peter Hutton: Man, they've got to reach out to you and you
Peter Schravemade: Is it just a case of reaching out though? Like, you know, is it like phone calls forcing themselves into your life? Where you know, what what what would have what would have changed the outcome for you?
Peter Hutton: I have a very good friend. I have a very good friend. My wife and I have a very good friend, Shelly. And and Shelly's a you know, she's she was on the Olympic committee. She's she worked with one of the world's biggest business management consultancy groups, very, very intelligent woman, but she went through something incredibly shockingly hard and for herself during those business years. And she had the wherewithal. Well, firstly when when I on my worst day, Karen called Shelly and and and Shelly really helped me, you know, like I really owe her a debt of gratitude. what I did learn and and what is I I guess a bit disappointing is your closest friends don't know what to do. And it's not it's not because they're not good people, they just don't know what to do. And the first thing the f their first instinct I think is to say nothing because they don't want to highlight the fact that you're going through something. They don't know what they don't actually know how bad it is. That's the truth of it, I think. So I have a lot of my closest friends have never said they've said zero and about and and act like everything's normal. And you know, really once you Once you build something that you're really proud of and you love and you put a lot of energy in and you put a lot of money into it and you put all your money into it like we did, in the early days, you know, we spent a lot of money and all my commissions, you know, I was earning in commissions upwards of early one million mark. And that was just I was taking a very small amount for myself, but the rest stayed in the business just to keep growing the business and injecting training and technology and all of that and building shit. you know, when you when you go through that kind of loss, you you lose who you are, you know, you forget who you are. You just just it's very hard to to know you you you there's so much cortisol in your body and everything like that that you just don't think straight. And you do need somebody outside of that to actually help you start thinking straight. And I did have that fortunately. my wife was as much affected as I was, she was affected differently. and we're now at about six hundred and twenty-four days since that event. And it has definitely got way better, but there are why it's got better is because it's it's deaf you know, it's it's a It's definition. It's how you define something. It's the meaning you place on it, the meaning you place on yourself. And I just changed the meaning and the definition. And and it it's a bit of a trick of the mind. And but also I found a different purpose. I found something else to go on to. And and so now I just go, Well, that was that was a creation that fell apart. you know, like you're you're a muso, you can write a piece of music and it can fall apart and be no good. You can spend a week, a month on it thinking it's gonna be something and it's not. And I'm the same with I paint. I could paint something in the I'm painting, painting, it's getting really good. And next minute it's getting really bad. And next minute it's completely beyond saving. as a creative, you learn to let go and learn, take what you can from that experience and take it into the next thing. But when you build a big business, it's hard just to go, okay, I'm letting go of that and I'm just going on to the next thing. It doesn't really work as neatly as that, but it can.
Peter Schravemade: The the I mean, I think there's a few there's a few questions out of that. But one one of the things that I've come to accept about about being a musician, particularly you know, in the performance aspect, and I I I actually think this is different for visual art, you might be able to tell me, but there is an acceptance that you are going to make a mistake in a performance.
Peter Hutton: Mistake in a performance. You're right.
Peter Schravemade: pretty much even the best musos do it. And it it's not the mistake that counts, it's how you recover from that. Yes. And a lot of the people who went through university with me as as musicians, the perfectionist side of of that really struggled because a mistake in a performance could be catastrophic. But those who are watching were never necessarily judging you on that. Yeah, they'd notice it. A lot of these people were way better at at at that given instrument than I was. They would notice it. But they that's not what they were looking for. And It it it makes me wonder how much of the pressure that you felt is the expectation that you think others place on it as opposed to or is it your own expectation? Is it a combination of both?
Peter Hutton: primarily it was my own view of myself. And you know, I'm sixty-three now and it there you it's obviously easy to recover when you're younger when you something happens because you've got time on your hand, but you get to sixty three and you think, or six when it was me it was just after sixty. it's like, wow, I'm I'm really screwed.
Peter Schravemade: have to go and rebuild all of that in all the time.
Peter Hutton: How do I like that took me ten years? How do I rebuild all of that in ten years with no money down? And and then I'll be seventy. And the, you know, the truth is your energy levels change as you get older, you operate differently. but you know, at at the end of the day I've gone, well, I've got a life to live. I can't be worried about how long things are gonna take me. And you know, you you just keep going. I will say this about that idea of perfection and and how it how it really does people over. People have said to me I'm a perfectionist, but I I accept they'll say that and I I accept where they're coming from, but I'm not a perfectionist. I have a different view on perfection. Perfection is where you have a vision in your mind of what is perfect and you can't get there and it stops you because you go, there's no point because if that's perfect and I'm here, I can't get to there. I I I'm more into executing at a high level as best I can. That's all I'm interested in. So if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it really well. If I if if there is no possibility of being able to do it well, I either go and learn how to do it or choose something that I feel that I can do. And you know, like I'm writing another book at the moment, Peter, and and it's And I won't get into it what it is, but it's a it's a f a fictional book. I've never written a bit fictional book. It's a completely different thing, beast. I've written lots and lots and lots and lots of non-fiction about real estate and on sales. And yeah, so I have had many a time doing this, going, I can't do this. This is beyond my my my experience. But what I keep coming back to is stop looking at the mountain complete. Stop worrying about that. I'm just looking at one sentence at a time. I just need to get one sentence right. Get that down and then move to the next sentence. And then move to the next sentence. And slowly but surely, I only started writing this book a week ago and I've I've put down about six thousand words already and I've already the first 5,000 have already done one edit to that as well. So I've tidied it up to a point where a professional editor will be able to move it forward a lot quicker. But I'm like, okay, maybe I can do this. I'm just digging forward, you know. And I think that's that's the key in real estate as well. It's like you, you know, you look at the in Brisbane, the Matt Lancashire's and you go, Man, I'm never gonna be like that guy. That guy is amazing, or or you know, the the all the others that are fantastic out there, I say Matt because he was, you know, local to me, but there's so many great real estate agents around. and you can easily compare yourself and or or if you're a small business owner, compare yourself to to a place or a to a you know a Ray White or whatever and go, I'll never get there. But that's not the point. The point is to go, what am I capable of? What can I test and how can I how can I execute as best I can and deliver something to people that people want. And and don't make it about yourself so much, you know.
Peter Schravemade: Well, so one of one of the reasons that I reached out to you was a result of your your LinkedIn post. And one of the things that has occurred to me, so not actually not here, the first time I became aware of let's say the plight of the real estate agents businesses businesses was in America. I was working, actually I got an offer after my career at Box Brownie. I got an offer to go and work for a company over in the US. I'll it was actually Quite a lot of money. and it was very tempting to to go and do it. And one of the things that their business was founded on was the the statistic over in the US that seventy-six percent of new real estate businesses would fail. they would fall over. That was a a pretty defined stat. They had great stats on that over there. 76% of new real estate businesses would fail. that's you know, wh what are we talking? 20 24% success rate, which is super low. And not not a lot of us realize that. And I don't know if that stat translates directly here to Australia because the the way real estate the real estate market works in the US is is very different. But one of the things that the company that I was I was going to position myself and work for, one of the things that that realized is that quite a lot of real estate agents were excellent at at selling. But when it came to the running of the business and everything with that, they They were not necessarily wonderful at that. And so this company would run the business for them while they continued on in their in their pattern of selling. yes, they would have final say. They it would almost be like this is your this is your GM running your business and you are the CEO and you you have everything there, and you would just pay a fee for this general manager to be in there. It was an excellent business model, and the stats that that this particular company had were were excellent. you know, they had a a stat I can't remember what it was, but that they had a very, very low fallover rate of people who actively engaged them. so, you know, long way around saying when you when I saw your LinkedIn post, which spoke about the fact that in Australia, and I think it is a fact, we don't talk about we don't talk about the businesses who didn't make it. We don't we don't actually learn from that. We don't and and you'll notice that I don't use the word failure. I think a lot of us do. Yeah. We talk about failure. But the businesses who didn't make it and and off air before, I spoke to you about the h the fact that the my entire life has been built on mistakes. and what I've learned what I've learned from them, you know, my venture into the property technology industry, my time as you know, in the hotel franchises, my my time in real estate was built from that. Mate, I've even worked for four people who've been bankrupt before. And so and and and And helped forge them successful careers further on down the track. So I I I tend to be the antithesis of that. I have a very strong belief that if we learn from those mistakes, we move forward. Now, what what are you doing now and how are you positioning yourself to help the industry sort of moving forward from that? What would you say to people who are in similar scenarios?
Peter Hutton: well if if they've if they've gone bankrupt, are you talking about if they've gone bankrupt or
Peter Schravemade: That could be in the th they could be in the throes of it. Let's deal with the ones that we can save first, Pete.
Peter Hutton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, firstly, you said, you know, we don't we should learn from these these collapses, these the thing when things don't work or whatever, and I totally agree with that. And there's a in World War II, when the the planes used to fly home, you know, across the the the channel to England and the ones that made it home, they would just start riveting up the holes and putting extra metal onto the planes to stop, you know, a shrapnel and stuff like that going peaceing through them and it wasn't wasn't really working. They were still losing the same amount of planes. And they somebody consulted a mathematician, he said, Well you're looking at it all the wrong way. He said, The planes that come home tell you nothing. It's the planes that don't come home
Peter Schravemade: Didn't come home. Yeah.
Peter Hutton: teach you everything. And so they changed their thinking and they they they went, Well, why aren't they coming home? Well, where are the where's the shrapnel landing? And they worked that out. And then on these planes that they were manufacturing and also repairing, they they used that that prediction model and put extra plates of armor. And that reduced the amount of planes that they lost. So they they didn't study the successful ones at all. They studied the the failures. That was the guide. And I would say this to anybody who's running a small business now, real estate agency, yes, keep learning from the success ones. Go to Aric because that's all going to be about the success. But you will learn a lot more talking to somebody who's actually crashed and burned. You will learn a lot more, especially if they're open about it and they've got clarity about it. If they've got And and that and that's not always the case either. Like if they had somebody asked me two years ago about that, I pr I wouldn't have had the clarity, but I do now. And I think that's that's the trick is to seek out not just the the successful models to to to learn from and to and not copy but you know to emulate, but also the ones that didn't succeed and why didn't they succeed? And especially the ones that had a had a a larger mission. Like, you know, if somebody just set out to be a two-man business and it and it and they never wanted to go past that and it didn't succeed, well, that that mightn't be a great one to learn from. But if somebody set out to like me, like set up three, four offices and got so far but didn't go beyond that, the the what that that that section of what it did, what happened, what I came up, that wall that I came up against is very eye-opening. And And you ask me what am I doing now? Well, I have written a book a book about how to open up a small independent agency yourself and the technology to use. And I I list about 90 pieces of technology, which you can select about nine from and you'll run your agency, no problem. But what I do put in there is a lot about what happened to me and and and and and what the decisions I made that it eventually you know it caused at the end that. catastrophe of a you know with H and H. but you you could do that, you know, like you can just sort p s find people like me that's gone through this and speak to them and I'm sure they'll they'll be more than happy to to share their experiences. but the other thing too is like for me now it's like I'm still finding my way, you know, like Peter, I I haven't absolutely settled. Karen and I are doing some branding for agencies and we've We've been we we just built an agency for somebody from the ground up and because they knew what happened to me and to our business and they still wanted that knowledge of how we got started at least and we've done that. But I don't know I'm not sure if that's something I'll do forever. Who knows?
Peter Schravemade: Well, I mean, at the end of this I'll I'll get the details where people can reach out to you and also where they can buy that book from. because you know, that that would be very important I I think for somebody going through this at that at the particular time. if you t to date, like one of the things that I am aware of when I speak to people who have been through scenarios where an administrator's been involved is there there tends to be a large feeling of guilt. and the guilt is around generally the staff that are left in the lurch or or something to do with, you know, the the fact that there there are people that you've let down. Are there are there people today that as would still say I've been totally let down by Peter?
Peter Hutton: sure there are. I I actually we it was it was a little bit different with us because an opportunity was given to somebody they collected rallied the troops or the troops followed them whatever however that happened I'll never know but what ended up happening was two officers went to that new brand and the whole officers went over. so I didn't have that issue with them because they all walked over there you know when they were ready to because they resigned you know at a time that suited them. the the people that were left in my office and and we had many meetings around that time with our team to try and shore up their morale but it wasn't enough and so one by one they resigned and that all that they all had their super and everything like that. So nobody so nobody missed out in that in that sense. They all been paid and everything. That just left four of us, my wife, Karen Our youngest daughter Paris, who was our operations manager across our three offices, because we ran a centralized operating system, much like White Fox does today. We we were doing that well now 14 years ago, we started that. And it was something that I came up with in my head that that this would be a smart way to do, have a centralized operating system, why duplicate these resources and just centralize it? So it worked particularly well. And So Paris ran that. And then we had one agent, Allie, and such a loyal lady and such a great agent. And she stuck stuck with us right up to the end. She did ask me if something was gonna happen, if I knew something was going to happen to tell her. I could only t tell her the day it happened. And she s she wasn't rightfully so, you know, upset that I didn't give her notice and I I just couldn't give a notice because I hadn't made up my own mind. I was just trying to battle on until I couldn't battle on any further. And that that actually happened in in a period of a few hours. You know, it wasn't like in two weeks' time I'm pulling the pin. If I was gonna do that, I would have pulled the pin straight away. I I was living in hope after Christmas that these two people that I recruited would start, but they didn't, and they didn't show. And at that point, they'd already delayed their start six times over three months. and I we we said if these two people don't start on the 6th of January, we are now, I think effectively at the end of December, we were technically insolvent in December. At the end of December, I said, we we we just legally can't keep going. Our accountant told us that, our lawyers told us that. And So at that point, and I I mentally couldn't keep it going at that point, you know. Yeah. But yeah, so no, everybody that was that was fine, but you know, everybody's gonna have their own version. And all I know is before the resignation started, there was no complaints, there was nobody coming to me saying we should be doing something differently. if anybody did have an idea, we took it on board pretty quickly, and we had a leadership team of the three officers and Karen. and and Paris so the five of us and we would we were very quick to respond to to any concerns but those concerns never really happened until it was too late and you know and that was it.
Peter Schravemade: Do you do you think at all there is well, number one, I I'm I'm pretty sure there is a stigma with around failure when it comes to real estate offices or or
Peter Hutton: There totally is. Yeah, yeah.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, so definitely is. So I I accept that. I think all of our listeners will agree with that. There's a stigma around failure. I I feel as though one of the problems the one of the things about real estate agents is we're very public beasts. Yeah. however you want to phrase it. we have to be seen as public. Our our pictures are everywhere. People we've never even met know who you are because you've had a foresale sign with your photo on it. You're likely to be recognized at the supermarket. Yeah. you know, there is this there is this thing around real estate agents where their lives are more public than other people in the industry. I'd even go, you know, to an extent more than some of your radio DJ jockeys or or or show hosts because they are voices, not necessarily You know, it's not a visual thing. But once once there is bad news around a particular person, how much of the blood in the water stops any kind of ability to come back there? Cause like you you spoke several times about people who once the principal had gone, it might have been hard to recruit or or something along those lines. How how much of that do you think plays a part in real estate businesses? lack of success or an inability to climb back.
Peter Hutton: I I I think it's a a pretty big part because you know, there's gonna be a question mark over you. Like if I opened up an office again, I it's it's not the reason why I'm not opening up an office again, but if I opened up an office again, I'm sure there would be that challenge of this happened to you, especially right now, it's because the it's not that long ago. I'm sure that people be concerned about that to some degree, and it would prevent the better players from joining you. and and really that's what it's all about is when you're recruiting, you want to recruit really good agents and so I'm sure that would go against you. I I had a double whammy in that one creditor, their name I I won't mention, but one creditor, when I liquidated he was affected. His business. It was a smaller business, but he was affected. And he put up a website about me. yeah. And it said across the top, Hutton and Hutton in liquidation. And then it said, Do you know where Peter Hutton is? He's on the run and he's in hiding. Now, the truth is. I we when we went into liquidation within a couple of weeks, we quickly chose to put a tenant in to our home because we thought that was a smart way to at least bring some cash flow in and keep paying the mortgage. And we moved to Karen's mom's place and we slept in their spare bedroom for four weeks. And in that time frame, You know, it was pretty awful, obviously. we went I'd I'd been speaking to a doctor and there was this recommendation to have go and have a break. Go somewhere, have a break. Karen had a little bit of money in her account and We went, Bucket, let's go to India. We'd been to India a few times before, so we hopped on a plane. I spoke to my lawyer. I spoke to my liquidate the liquidator. I told them where I was going. I gave them my contact details. N you know, everybody knew how to find me. But this guy, he decided that he would make a make an example of me. And it really did affect me because mentally it affected me, but also just just I tried to get a job, people had seen it, seen it. It just I I was unemployable for a year. What happened then was we returned home to Australia. We moved to Byron Bay. We then updated our address. He had the address and he served me. That's all he wanted to do was serve me. Then he served me. Then he left the website up for another 12 months. So you see, when you go through this stuff, you don't know what's gonna happen. I never anticipated anybody would do that because I'd never had a bad relationship with anybody before and always paid my bills on time and and even that creditor always paid them on time. always. And in the end, he not only got his money back, he got all the interests and all his legal bills and everything paid. And his legal bills were j were nearly as much as the the debt in itself. And I had no control over that. And I paid him out of my sale of my property. And and he was he was one of the creditors who got paid first, you know, but and then then the website came down. You know, so he was just after his money and he got his money and I'm glad he did. And I and I had a conversation with him. I said to him, look, I hope you get your money. it's out of my control. I have no control over it. You know, whatever's mine's yours, I said. If you you know, please take the site down because I said it's stopping me from getting a job.
Peter Schravemade: One of the things that always comes up on this particular podcast is the way other agents respond to other agents' indiscretions. and I'll give you an example. We had a very prominent New South Wales agent, and and I don't mention them, I just don't want to give it wind. Because I I feel like as an industry we're worse off every single time we smash someone into the ground. Yes. But but it it seems to me to be a leveraging tool for other agents. Like if you're in if you're in the same suburb as somebody else and you're you know, there's a sign of blood in the water, the other person's wounded, they've done something they shouldn't have done. I, you know, I followed one a while back where some guy made a comment about a Gym gear made in China, referring to the quality control mechanism that came through. And one of his competitors sturred up so much Asian racial hatred over his comments about an Asian gym gear that that he, you know, he basically got thinking got terminated. I'm not r really sure, but he eventually had to leave that area and go and practice in another area. And one of the one of the things I wonder is whether we as an industry not only don't help ourselves, because it's our reputation. We, you know, we wonder why we're in a deficit of trust, but we we also contribute in a big way to the way that the public sees us because it's almost like we celebrate the failures of others. How much of your experience is centered around that?
Peter Hutton: it that was happening to us well before
Peter Schravemade: And it before it even fell over.
Peter Hutton: Well before. In fact, when we were when we opened up our third office just around that time, a rumor started in New Farm that the Hutton family were a a drug dealing family and were money launderers. And they got around all and New Farm's a small place, right? And we found out about that because Karen was at the hairdressers one day and women were talking about it. And and that We know who said it. We actually know the agent. And I I will never take them to task on it, but we know who said it. We know which agency it was. It the owner of that agency would be horrified because I know that owner. But that person just spread that rumour and it went and people just accepted it because real estate agents are, you know, already, you know, they've got a smell about us, you know, unfortunately. Now, anybody that knows my family and me know. That could it be that would be we'd have to be in a different universe, a parallel universe, an evil parallel universe for us to be like that. And but yet that's what happened. And then it got perpetuated because we had a it was the funniest thing. I'm gonna have to write about this one day. we had this tenant who was a con man, that stop paying his rent and anyway, long story short, we got the marshal we got the you know we got him out and the marshals went there and got him out and with the marshal we had to get two security guards and three German shepherds because he was a gangster and we got him out of this luxury property and all good, all happy. But within two weeks of him being removed and he got getting very angry at myself and my f and my family, we received an envelope full of white powder that came through to our office and was and my daughter started to open it and it was full of white powder. So she called the police. The police arrived, they evacuated us, but we had to sit out on the footpath on the corner of Brunswick Street and Moray Street, Newfoundland, the busiest street in one of the busiest streets in Brisbane. And they they closed the There's a whole corner down and a hazmat team came and we sat out there on the footpath for six hours. My fa my whole family. And the police officers were hilarious. At one stage he said, So I hear you guys are the you're the Hutton family, you're the you're the crime family of Newfarmer. And we all just laughed. And and yeah, and it turned out to be cocaine that was sent through the mail. And And somebody, and we think it was Zach person, did it as a bit of payback and for some reason, I don't know why, but or or said I don't know, we never worked that out. but you know, that's what happened. And and then that just perpetuated the whole the whole thing. It just it it went from rumor to there's the there, you know, there's there's some truth about it. But we still listed people who love their business and we had great clients. And I was dealing with one of Brisbane's best known architects at the time and selling his apartments at New Farm and I sold one of his apartments for five point seven million dollars a record, non riverfront, no no river views. it's a record to this day and I'm proud of that and have a great relationship with them and they they didn't care. They didn't buy into any of that 'cause they knew me. but yeah. People agents can be ruthless. And I f I we actually took it as a a sign that we were doing the right thing. We we just took it as we rocking the boat. You know, here's a little boutique agency that's come from a a two-man band working around a a you know, kitchen bench to four years later having an office of and and turning over you know many, many, many millions of dollars, you know, and it's across our three offices. So It was like, you know, happy days. People are upset at us and and their competitors. But yeah, I I can see it being a t it's a terrible thing because, you know, like it didn't didn't it it didn't upset me, it made me laugh. But but Peter, that's just me. Another person might have done something terrible to themselves in you know because shame and the embarrassment and you know
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, I just I just get the feeling that sometimes if we didn't if we didn't unnecessarily shoot arrows, you know, we wouldn't be such a dog eat dog industry. But then you know, then
Peter Hutton: That's a hundred percent right. You know.
Peter Schravemade: Then I go to some conferences, you know, and you've mentioned one of them where you know the I I wouldn't say they encourage that, but it's very much a hustle environment where, you know, how am I going to get ahead and how am I going to be the best agent? And the reality is the best agents I've ever met, they're they're not the guys that are sitting in front of Lamborghinis showing their Rolex watches, taking photos. They're they're the practitioners who've been in the industry for ten years longer and You know, I I I th I think we sometimes miss that. And they're also the people who are unlikely to be throwing stones at you. They're just gonna be focusing on their own business.
Peter Hutton: That's it. I started real estate in nineteen ninety four and it's not like that at all. And in fact, when I started, I was thirty years, thirty-one years of age, and I was the youngest real estate agent other than one other agent from Ray White, who was my competitor, who he and I became best friends. Yeah. And and we're still great friends to this day, really great friends. And it was not like that back in those days. We all knocked around together, all the different agencies. We all knew each other. We all were polite. We had friends. And even when I was had my agency, the principals of the officers in the area, we were all, you know, friendly and but then there's just always some agents. And I, you know, I've been I've been copped this before where I've described their behavior, not them as a person, but their behavior is the behavior of a shark where they circle. For blood and I've got into trouble for that. but you know, I it's unnecessary and I I I feel like the I don't know how you train that into a person. I I I think that was trained into me in the wool industry to be be professional, to to that your competitors could also be your mates. That's what the wool industry was like. You know, we were all mates. We all covered.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, there are portion there are portions of the real estate industry that operate like that too as well. I I'd like to think it's an isolated, not isolated, but it there's there's a there's a minority bunch who who really Yeah, really upset the Apple card. And you know, I think it starts when on entry. but we we could talk about this for a while, but and and I'm aware that we've gone for a long time as we are, but you know, if if you're getting into the industry for i in an aspect of greed or you're you're in it to make money quickly. Generally those operators are the ones that I've come across that are the ones that I'm not saying all of them. some of them are just, you know, keen to be professional and make money. But there there is an element there in in the industry where it's a dog eat dog world. We're happy to tear our competitors down for our own professional gain. And it's it's really interesting because you you know you wouldn't see that if if you're a cardio surgeon. You wouldn't be you know, you're not going to be throwing a barb at the guy that is operating in the next room because together you're saving lives.
Peter Hutton: That's right.
Peter Schravemade: yeah. So yeah, I I f I think there's a real element of this conversation and and built in around businesses that haven't made it, where we need to be more professional in our in our approach to to the failure of businesses because that could be us. we're only mark one market turn away from from that happening. And I I think I think we're going to see a bit of it now. Actually, Peter, I think I think the real really good operators in this market will do really well. But there are s a lot of flyby nighters and probably not the people who would be interested in this kind of podcast. No. But you know, there there's gonna be a lot of those who who don't make it out of this next phase of the industry because it's the hard work, it's the consistency that you need to keep executing at that that that make you who you are and make you a professional in your business. But Look, I I want to round this out. And number one, thank you for thank you for jumping on with me today and having a discussion.
Peter Hutton: Pleasure.
Peter Schravemade: it it is it is rare we would get we would get the ability to talk about this. So I genuinely appreciate that and and there's a couple of things. So if you've made it through all the way to here and you're listening to this and you're in a scenario where your mental health is probably not where it is and you want to do something about it, can I encourage you? We actually have The industry wide has an app now. It's called Rise Care. you can download it. It's it's the Rise Initiative.org.au. And as part of that, they'll actually give you free sessions with psychologists or psychiatrists. I can't remember which one it is, but it it it is specifically designed to to put a stop to mental health issues as they're emerging. So don't feel that you're on your own. Don't feel that there's nothing that you can you you can do about it, don't feel like there's no one listening. That that app is a free app and it's available and and and as a as a freebie from the rise initiative, which is one of the the really amazing legacy things that they've listened. So if if you've heard this today and you feel like you're in a scenario like that, don't, don't wait to do something about it because things don't get any better and you you are the you know the the s the weakest link in your business is the one that that could lead to the failure. And if that's you today, then it might you might be just a holiday away from it. You might be, you know, a general manager away from doing something about it. So, you know, I think from from my my other Pete here, I won't say we're twinning because he's way better looking than I am. But from the two Pete's here, do something about it. Don't leave yourself in the lurch. Go and go and actively do something there. And look, Pete, if people want to read your book, where can they find it? What can they do? Where can they go to get it?
Peter Hutton: Go to keep one hundred with with numerals one zero zero dot au, not dot com da dot au just dot au so keep one hundred dot au or to our other website which is flaunt flo r n t dot com dot au flaunt dot com dot au.
Peter Schravemade: Okay, great. And I'll I'll put those up at the bottom of this podcast when we release it. But but Pete from me to you, keep keep doing your thing. Thank you so much for sharing today. And if people want to get in contact with you, I'm guessing they can go to that second website and they can find you there.
Peter Hutton: Totally. Yeah.
Peter Schravemade: Really appreciate really appreciate your time, mate. and what a what an amazing story. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next.
Peter Hutton: Thanks, Mate. Thanks, Peter.
Peter Hutton: Yeah. Well thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me. This is I'm looking forward to seeing what we talk about.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And for those of you listening, Peter Peter's come in blind. We have not had more than a thirty to minute 30 second to minute discussion about this. So if this goes aright, you can blame Peter one or am I Peter two? I don't know. We'll fight about that later. But look, I I became aware of you through a mutual friend of ours and I've been following your LinkedIn profile. and There there are certain things that I I gain or have come to understand not knowing about you, but just doing a a brief profile check on you. Obviously you were part of Hutton and Hutton and which was in my opinion at the time a successful real estate agency. Is that is that the way you'd phrase that?
Peter Hutton: Mine too. it was very successful until it wasn't. and I I think that's that line is my my line these days. It was successful until it wasn't. But yeah, no, it was it it grew from just Karen and I sitting at our dining table at home, my wife Karen, and I'd had some time between another agency that we'd we'd sold the rent roll and closed down, moved to Byron Bay and we were talking earlier about success and failure. Well that the trip the first time in Byron was a bit of a failure. We lasted a year and we came back to Brisbane. And anyway, long story short, I ended up working for Peter Hanscombe, the CEO of Bell. And that's another Peter. Yeah, that was another Peter. In the early days of Bell when they had about forty officers and my my my task was to help grow Queensland but also coach the team and also help Peter with the IP of Bell property, which I did. And but slowly but surely I got the hankering to get back into real estate and one day over a a coffee, Karen and I decided let's let's open up an agency and we we thought well let's call ourselves Hutton and Hutton given that we're both Hutton married. yeah so that's how we started there and and we grew it from that that start and over a ten year period to three officers. And as I said, it was from our account, it was successful and profitable and growing and we had plans to open up two more offices and over twelve months and I'd started talking to people about that and and then and then very quickly it all unraveled very quickly.
Peter Schravemade: Before we get into that, one question I have for you as somebody who has worked with his wife on and off for the past twenty years. Yes longer actually, she'll correct me on that and I'll get into trouble for that later. How d how is it working with your wife?
Peter Hutton: it's tremendous. look, you have times and our morning walks back in the day, we would we'd be talking about business and we'd get to a point one of us would turn to the other and say, Let's stop, you know, talking about work. We've got all day to talk about work, let's just enjoy the morning out. So, you know, you gotta learn to switch off. But we've been we'd really started working together around Probably two thousand and one is when we we started working together. So a long you know, a long time. and now Karen still does copywriting for real estate agents. So she's been running a
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, it's totally
Peter Hutton: for a long time and she she writes for some really top agents. you know, and even with AI now a lot of people go, you just got AI, but it it's you know, it's quite chalk and cheese when you see a human right proper. copy and AI right. it's like grey copy versus colourful copy, you know what I mean? So
Peter Schravemade: there's a lot of lot of questions I have for you, but I I think at the crux of it, how long ago were we talking about that Hutton and Hutton fell over?
Peter Hutton: the longer I go away from that point, I have to try and remember the dates.
Peter Schravemade: Talk to that.
Peter Hutton: Yeah, yeah. in 2022, we in the middle of 2022, I signed a lease on a 300 square meter heritage listed building on Brook Street, around the corner from place on James Street in Fortitude Valley. And the great thing about that was in my mind was that if you were traveling from that western suburbs to Fort Chavalli, you had to go down Brook Street so you'd see my pro, you know, see our beautiful, beautiful building, two story federation brick on an acre of lawn area and with our signage out the front, which I spent a lot of money on. So that was that was middle of 2022. we had our we fitted it out, we moved in, October. July, August, September sometime. And we had our opening party in November. and our all of our three officers attended with all the staff. So it was about 30 Hutton and Hutton team members there that worked in the business locally. We had some re remote as well. and we had a big big party maybe a hundred and fifty, hundred and seventy people at it and and some you know some well known people came to that and and then in the first week of December the first resignation notice came through from the principal of one of our offices and unfortunately my contract s that I'd drawn up thinking I knew a thing about contracts and law and stuff. And I used a lawyer to check it over and help me with it, but he had not a lot of knowledge around that kind of commercial law. He was a friend and it had a 30-day no dispute termination clause that one party could terminate for whatever reason. And that's what he chose to do. There wasn't a dispute. We were actually getting on like a house on fire and Things were going very, very well. And so he r resigned, didn't say why, just said that there was an another opportunity he wanted to pursue pursue and later explained why. And then 2023, within six weeks of that, the second office resigned. So we lost about 70% of our revenue over an eight-week period. which was a massive hit. And, you know, you'd think about a your your corner fruit and veg shop. If they lost seventy percent of their clients over a six week period, they just close the door straight away. There's no way you can keep going when you lose that much revenue. I'm sure you can appreciate that. And we kept we kept going, but then our team in in Fortitude Valley at the Brook Street office all freaked out. Every headhunter in Brisbane was calling them all. My daughter got called who worked with us Paris. She got an offer, fifty thousand dollars more than I was paying her. I told her you should take that offer up. There's no future here now. And she wouldn't take it up out of, you know, love for her dad and mother and loyalty. And and we battled on for a year, and in that period of 2023, we said if we can bring in at least a small nucleus of a team. recruit, then and and I got back on the tools. We'll make a fist of it, we'll get going, we'll rebuild. we just couldn't recruit. Nobody would touch us with the barge pole because the word had got out there the recruiters wouldn't help. they saw us as dead men walking and I could see that too. i yeah, I'll tell you a thing or two about depression at that point if If you're interested, but so you know it's
Peter Schravemade: Well let's let's get let's get to that. I do have questions around that. Do you do you think like everyone looks back on you know periods where the the world considers you as a failure or or things that you've done wrong? Are there are there things that you would you would have done differently in that? Like is it is it about the contract? You wouldn't have had a thirty day release in there. Whether are there other things that that you could have done in retrospect that you do differently now?
Peter Hutton: totally. in fact, I did write a book this year which I I published and called How to Keep 100% of what you earn and and in that book I wrote the book first and I went this this ain't honest. I mean, I I thought to myself, if anybody reads this book, they're gonna go, Well, who who you know, why should I even believe Peter Hutton? Because his business is had failed. And it's true. And so I went back and I spent months and months and months just peeling the whole business back again in my head. I'd done that for two years anyway. but this time I really went, okay, from a structural point of view, what went wrong? You know, where did where did I go wrong as as a as a principal and as a founder and as a dire as CEO of the business? And And I actually found six things and and one of them was the contract, that was one. red flags. There were red flags that I ignored with people that I could have acted upon sooner, like I could have acted upon it legally sooner, I could have acted upon it just from a leadership point of view sooner. there was definitely red flags. when I I I I made a big mistake in in thinking optimism outweighs risk mitigation. so I'm an optimistic person. I'm a very creative person. I mean, you can sit behind me is art that I've painted. I've been an artist for 30 years and you know, won a big award and sold like sold about 80 paintings last year. So, you know, like I'm an artist, I'm a creator. I just keep creating. So I'm very optimistic in my ability. To learn and create something and keep rolling forward. but that's all very well. That that's takes you so far as I learned. And I think like anybody, you can do a job and you can do it too, and it doesn't matter how highly skilled you are, there is a ceiling to your experience and your knowledge, your skill set, your ability, there is a ceiling to everybody. some people haven't found it yet. Maybe Elon Musk hasn't found his. But the ri but for most human beings, there is a ceiling. And and I found mine. And once the business got to the three officers, I was perpetually stressed with people. And very stressed with everybody. Everybody just stressed me out like, you know, the the the the the the there there's a kind of thinking process that we all do. And I have a my own particular style of thinking process that works for me and and I can think through a problem, but I can't think through other people's problems. And I and there comes a point where, you know, like I can't hold their hands through that problem. They're on their own. And and I think that's partly where the wheels started falling off also. But there were things like that optimism meant I I opted into a big lease. When I shouldn't have. I should have paused back at the other office a bit longer. And one of the things I learned was really building up my own base first before the other two officers. I spent a lot of time helping the other two build up their businesses. And I I probably the third office, I should have probably delayed that a little bit. In fact, it's so hilarious because I just laugh at myself because there was a meeting I had before I opened that third office where I said to that person that ordinarily I shouldn't be doing this because you know we haven't got to know each other long enough. And I had this had this rule where, you know, let's you walk first with somebody before you run, and you get to know them what they're like at walking as a metaphor. And I hadn't done that with this person long enough. And and that not that they were bad or anything, they were excellent, like all my people. we're pretty much excellent agents. th that was the other issue. When you're small and you build up a brand that's got profile quickly and can take on, can compete relatively well with Place and Ray White and even myself, I pl I often was up against Matt Lancashire or somebody else, you know, Sarah Hackett or somebody and you know, you th that that's that's a pretty good thing. But you also you end up on the spotlight, you know, like people s know you're around, recruiters know you're around, and recruiters look very closely and and the growth people the in in these larger businesses where they have a role as the the person to grow those businesses target you know good good people and our people were targeted and one of our people in particular was targeted and He didn't go easily, but they just kept going back and back and back and back. And from my understanding is they got to a point where they're just like, here's some more, here's some more, here's some more, here's another reason, here's another reason. And sooner or later that reason came around. That becomes too difficult, yeah. Yeah, but I think the Peter, the big one of the big lessons for me personally is that you're only defeated when you say you're defeated. And I listened to everybody else about how we were defeated. And everybody was saying we were defeated w in the Started 2023. And I bought into that. And that's where the stress and the depression really kicked in because I felt it. And by one o'clock in the afternoon, I could not keep my eyes open. I was mentally exhausted. So I would lock my door at my office, I had a private office, and I had a 200-year-old French desk. made in Paris, that I'd collected at beautiful desk. People used to laugh and say that's Napoleon's desk. I told my kids it was Napoleon's desk and they believed me. but I used to sleep underneath that desk in that year at one o'clock in the afternoon for at least an hour, sometimes two hours, and from my mental exhaustion and you know that's that That that's that's because I thought I was defeated and twelve months later I'd drawn a within that year I'd drawn a line in the sand and you know, we said if we get to the sixth of January and these things hadn't happened, I would call the liquidators up and s and s tell them to send over the paperwork, which they did that day and I signed it and the relief was incredibly huge. Like the relief to me was just I I can't tell you how much it lifted off me for that moment. For for a moment.
Peter Schravemade: How how how important would you place? Well, one of my observations in the industry and around the industry, and it it could we can be talking about property technology where I I delve quite a lot, but I, you know, I've seen this happen and it's not not local to Australia. it's it's in America as well. It's in almost every property circle. How important is it for the the largest stakeholder, whether that be the CEO, the principal, whoever it may be, of a real estate office, to surround themselves with people who can take the slack off that principal at or or the CEO at various times. Like I understand the buck stops with the CEO. But even, you know, you raised Elon Elon Musk before. Elon Musk can surround himself with some of the smartest people in the world, and I believe he does. I I think, you know, he would be an excellent example of somebody who has carved out this is my expertise and this is where where I'm going at it. But what one of the things that I have noticed from when things fall over is generally we've been taken away from the the area of operation that we do the best in and we've been forced into being something that probably sits outside what is comfortable at least. Is that a real thing? Would you say that that's that's that's happened in this instance?
Peter Hutton: It's a great question. look, it did happen at Hutton and Hutton. We well me, there and I was saying earlier about, you know, hitting that ceiling. I I I'm really good at creating the vision and I'm really good at putting seeing patterns and seeing opportunity. I'm also very good at taking action and putting structure in place. particularly good at that, I think. And and it's it it it's why people have said to me over the years, so outside of Hutton and Hutton, who are in different businesses, they've looked at my business and gone. Wow, you you know, you had so much assets to that business and so much structure and procedure manuals and things that actually work. But what I wasn't good at was actually probably managing people. And and I'm not, you know, like it's not my thing. I get frustrated with people. I have high expectations. I have super high expectations only because like I'm about how do you execute something when you ex when you when you decide you're gonna do something. I don't I I don't want to do it half-assed. I want to do it really, really well. And I I I hold myself accountable to that. And then if if we've got an appr a procedure in place, I follow those procedures. I'm very OCD about it. Now I I can learn out of a procedure and learn a better procedure. I don't get stuck and I'm not fixated because I'm creative. That's that's the other benefit of that. But but I I'm very good at following a procedure. And it's why I think I was I've been a you know, like I hate saying it sounds like a brag, but I've been an extremely good salesperson my whole life. And if even well before I was in real estate, I was selling wool all around the world and I went from sweeping floors in the wool industry at an early age to running a hundred and seventy million dollar business by the time I was about twenty-eight years of age, traveling the world business class to New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, places like that. Clients in Russia, Germany selling wool mostly over the phone to these people, many containers of wool. And I think in the best year when I was 28 or 29, I made I worked for Dalgetti International Trading and I made them a million dollars net profit, just my trades alone. Now that's equivalent to many hundreds of millions of dollars today. In you know, I'm talking about 1993. That's you know, long that a million bucks was a lot of money and for one individual. And and I did it relatively with no risk. but yeah, I I just think like I can sell. I can sell. I was very good at recruiting because I can sell. I can sell a vision, I can explain a problem and and articulate how to move through that problem. And outside the art, we were talking about our Creative streaks. My my probably my greatest strength is I'm a wordsmith. I'm a I'm very good at writing. I'm I'm good at talking, explaining things. I'd be just happy to do that. You know? But when it comes to people, not great. And maybe I don't know, maybe I'm a bit on the spectrum or something and find a
Peter Schravemade: Well, who knows? Like, you know, in all the all the people I've met, Pete, the yeah, we're not all good at everything. and and I and I I think I think, you know, w I'll come back to this, but I think part of failing at something is actually learning the lesson from it and going, you know, if that was ever to happen again, this is what this is what I do. So yeah, you know, we'll I'll come to your takeaways. What I what I wanna ask, you know, I don't I don't particularly want to dwell for a great length on on the mental health issue. I actually think we're in a society today where it's it's not like it's not a a a bad word. I grew up in a family where to have a mental health episode could actually have been attributed to some kind of you're not strong enough in Jesus. so you know which is like a which is which is almost next level it it's not just you don't want to say it, but you are not holy enough if that if that happens. So that that was really the environment I I got into. And but but life wasn't like that. I I see people all the time who are struggling. One of one of one of the issues I have, and I've spoken to other people about this, and I you know I don't know you very well, but I'm going to guess that you went through the ringer on this one. And the the the issue I have is what is the best approach For people around you when they see you drowning.
Peter Hutton: Man, they've got to reach out to you and you
Peter Schravemade: Is it just a case of reaching out though? Like, you know, is it like phone calls forcing themselves into your life? Where you know, what what what would have what would have changed the outcome for you?
Peter Hutton: I have a very good friend. I have a very good friend. My wife and I have a very good friend, Shelly. And and Shelly's a you know, she's she was on the Olympic committee. She's she worked with one of the world's biggest business management consultancy groups, very, very intelligent woman, but she went through something incredibly shockingly hard and for herself during those business years. And she had the wherewithal. Well, firstly when when I on my worst day, Karen called Shelly and and and Shelly really helped me, you know, like I really owe her a debt of gratitude. what I did learn and and what is I I guess a bit disappointing is your closest friends don't know what to do. And it's not it's not because they're not good people, they just don't know what to do. And the first thing the f their first instinct I think is to say nothing because they don't want to highlight the fact that you're going through something. They don't know what they don't actually know how bad it is. That's the truth of it, I think. So I have a lot of my closest friends have never said they've said zero and about and and act like everything's normal. And you know, really once you Once you build something that you're really proud of and you love and you put a lot of energy in and you put a lot of money into it and you put all your money into it like we did, in the early days, you know, we spent a lot of money and all my commissions, you know, I was earning in commissions upwards of early one million mark. And that was just I was taking a very small amount for myself, but the rest stayed in the business just to keep growing the business and injecting training and technology and all of that and building shit. you know, when you when you go through that kind of loss, you you lose who you are, you know, you forget who you are. You just just it's very hard to to know you you you there's so much cortisol in your body and everything like that that you just don't think straight. And you do need somebody outside of that to actually help you start thinking straight. And I did have that fortunately. my wife was as much affected as I was, she was affected differently. and we're now at about six hundred and twenty-four days since that event. And it has definitely got way better, but there are why it's got better is because it's it's deaf you know, it's it's a It's definition. It's how you define something. It's the meaning you place on it, the meaning you place on yourself. And I just changed the meaning and the definition. And and it it's a bit of a trick of the mind. And but also I found a different purpose. I found something else to go on to. And and so now I just go, Well, that was that was a creation that fell apart. you know, like you're you're a muso, you can write a piece of music and it can fall apart and be no good. You can spend a week, a month on it thinking it's gonna be something and it's not. And I'm the same with I paint. I could paint something in the I'm painting, painting, it's getting really good. And next minute it's getting really bad. And next minute it's completely beyond saving. as a creative, you learn to let go and learn, take what you can from that experience and take it into the next thing. But when you build a big business, it's hard just to go, okay, I'm letting go of that and I'm just going on to the next thing. It doesn't really work as neatly as that, but it can.
Peter Schravemade: The the I mean, I think there's a few there's a few questions out of that. But one one of the things that I've come to accept about about being a musician, particularly you know, in the performance aspect, and I I I actually think this is different for visual art, you might be able to tell me, but there is an acceptance that you are going to make a mistake in a performance.
Peter Hutton: Mistake in a performance. You're right.
Peter Schravemade: pretty much even the best musos do it. And it it's not the mistake that counts, it's how you recover from that. Yes. And a lot of the people who went through university with me as as musicians, the perfectionist side of of that really struggled because a mistake in a performance could be catastrophic. But those who are watching were never necessarily judging you on that. Yeah, they'd notice it. A lot of these people were way better at at at that given instrument than I was. They would notice it. But they that's not what they were looking for. And It it it makes me wonder how much of the pressure that you felt is the expectation that you think others place on it as opposed to or is it your own expectation? Is it a combination of both?
Peter Hutton: primarily it was my own view of myself. And you know, I'm sixty-three now and it there you it's obviously easy to recover when you're younger when you something happens because you've got time on your hand, but you get to sixty three and you think, or six when it was me it was just after sixty. it's like, wow, I'm I'm really screwed.
Peter Schravemade: have to go and rebuild all of that in all the time.
Peter Hutton: How do I like that took me ten years? How do I rebuild all of that in ten years with no money down? And and then I'll be seventy. And the, you know, the truth is your energy levels change as you get older, you operate differently. but you know, at at the end of the day I've gone, well, I've got a life to live. I can't be worried about how long things are gonna take me. And you know, you you just keep going. I will say this about that idea of perfection and and how it how it really does people over. People have said to me I'm a perfectionist, but I I accept they'll say that and I I accept where they're coming from, but I'm not a perfectionist. I have a different view on perfection. Perfection is where you have a vision in your mind of what is perfect and you can't get there and it stops you because you go, there's no point because if that's perfect and I'm here, I can't get to there. I I I'm more into executing at a high level as best I can. That's all I'm interested in. So if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it really well. If I if if there is no possibility of being able to do it well, I either go and learn how to do it or choose something that I feel that I can do. And you know, like I'm writing another book at the moment, Peter, and and it's And I won't get into it what it is, but it's a it's a f a fictional book. I've never written a bit fictional book. It's a completely different thing, beast. I've written lots and lots and lots and lots of non-fiction about real estate and on sales. And yeah, so I have had many a time doing this, going, I can't do this. This is beyond my my my experience. But what I keep coming back to is stop looking at the mountain complete. Stop worrying about that. I'm just looking at one sentence at a time. I just need to get one sentence right. Get that down and then move to the next sentence. And then move to the next sentence. And slowly but surely, I only started writing this book a week ago and I've I've put down about six thousand words already and I've already the first 5,000 have already done one edit to that as well. So I've tidied it up to a point where a professional editor will be able to move it forward a lot quicker. But I'm like, okay, maybe I can do this. I'm just digging forward, you know. And I think that's that's the key in real estate as well. It's like you, you know, you look at the in Brisbane, the Matt Lancashire's and you go, Man, I'm never gonna be like that guy. That guy is amazing, or or you know, the the all the others that are fantastic out there, I say Matt because he was, you know, local to me, but there's so many great real estate agents around. and you can easily compare yourself and or or if you're a small business owner, compare yourself to to a place or a to a you know a Ray White or whatever and go, I'll never get there. But that's not the point. The point is to go, what am I capable of? What can I test and how can I how can I execute as best I can and deliver something to people that people want. And and don't make it about yourself so much, you know.
Peter Schravemade: Well, so one of one of the reasons that I reached out to you was a result of your your LinkedIn post. And one of the things that has occurred to me, so not actually not here, the first time I became aware of let's say the plight of the real estate agents businesses businesses was in America. I was working, actually I got an offer after my career at Box Brownie. I got an offer to go and work for a company over in the US. I'll it was actually Quite a lot of money. and it was very tempting to to go and do it. And one of the things that their business was founded on was the the statistic over in the US that seventy-six percent of new real estate businesses would fail. they would fall over. That was a a pretty defined stat. They had great stats on that over there. 76% of new real estate businesses would fail. that's you know, wh what are we talking? 20 24% success rate, which is super low. And not not a lot of us realize that. And I don't know if that stat translates directly here to Australia because the the way real estate the real estate market works in the US is is very different. But one of the things that the company that I was I was going to position myself and work for, one of the things that that realized is that quite a lot of real estate agents were excellent at at selling. But when it came to the running of the business and everything with that, they They were not necessarily wonderful at that. And so this company would run the business for them while they continued on in their in their pattern of selling. yes, they would have final say. They it would almost be like this is your this is your GM running your business and you are the CEO and you you have everything there, and you would just pay a fee for this general manager to be in there. It was an excellent business model, and the stats that that this particular company had were were excellent. you know, they had a a stat I can't remember what it was, but that they had a very, very low fallover rate of people who actively engaged them. so, you know, long way around saying when you when I saw your LinkedIn post, which spoke about the fact that in Australia, and I think it is a fact, we don't talk about we don't talk about the businesses who didn't make it. We don't we don't actually learn from that. We don't and and you'll notice that I don't use the word failure. I think a lot of us do. Yeah. We talk about failure. But the businesses who didn't make it and and off air before, I spoke to you about the h the fact that the my entire life has been built on mistakes. and what I've learned what I've learned from them, you know, my venture into the property technology industry, my time as you know, in the hotel franchises, my my time in real estate was built from that. Mate, I've even worked for four people who've been bankrupt before. And so and and and And helped forge them successful careers further on down the track. So I I I tend to be the antithesis of that. I have a very strong belief that if we learn from those mistakes, we move forward. Now, what what are you doing now and how are you positioning yourself to help the industry sort of moving forward from that? What would you say to people who are in similar scenarios?
Peter Hutton: well if if they've if they've gone bankrupt, are you talking about if they've gone bankrupt or
Peter Schravemade: That could be in the th they could be in the throes of it. Let's deal with the ones that we can save first, Pete.
Peter Hutton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, firstly, you said, you know, we don't we should learn from these these collapses, these the thing when things don't work or whatever, and I totally agree with that. And there's a in World War II, when the the planes used to fly home, you know, across the the the channel to England and the ones that made it home, they would just start riveting up the holes and putting extra metal onto the planes to stop, you know, a shrapnel and stuff like that going peaceing through them and it wasn't wasn't really working. They were still losing the same amount of planes. And they somebody consulted a mathematician, he said, Well you're looking at it all the wrong way. He said, The planes that come home tell you nothing. It's the planes that don't come home
Peter Schravemade: Didn't come home. Yeah.
Peter Hutton: teach you everything. And so they changed their thinking and they they they went, Well, why aren't they coming home? Well, where are the where's the shrapnel landing? And they worked that out. And then on these planes that they were manufacturing and also repairing, they they used that that prediction model and put extra plates of armor. And that reduced the amount of planes that they lost. So they they didn't study the successful ones at all. They studied the the failures. That was the guide. And I would say this to anybody who's running a small business now, real estate agency, yes, keep learning from the success ones. Go to Aric because that's all going to be about the success. But you will learn a lot more talking to somebody who's actually crashed and burned. You will learn a lot more, especially if they're open about it and they've got clarity about it. If they've got And and that and that's not always the case either. Like if they had somebody asked me two years ago about that, I pr I wouldn't have had the clarity, but I do now. And I think that's that's the trick is to seek out not just the the successful models to to to learn from and to and not copy but you know to emulate, but also the ones that didn't succeed and why didn't they succeed? And especially the ones that had a had a a larger mission. Like, you know, if somebody just set out to be a two-man business and it and it and they never wanted to go past that and it didn't succeed, well, that that mightn't be a great one to learn from. But if somebody set out to like me, like set up three, four offices and got so far but didn't go beyond that, the the what that that that section of what it did, what happened, what I came up, that wall that I came up against is very eye-opening. And And you ask me what am I doing now? Well, I have written a book a book about how to open up a small independent agency yourself and the technology to use. And I I list about 90 pieces of technology, which you can select about nine from and you'll run your agency, no problem. But what I do put in there is a lot about what happened to me and and and and and what the decisions I made that it eventually you know it caused at the end that. catastrophe of a you know with H and H. but you you could do that, you know, like you can just sort p s find people like me that's gone through this and speak to them and I'm sure they'll they'll be more than happy to to share their experiences. but the other thing too is like for me now it's like I'm still finding my way, you know, like Peter, I I haven't absolutely settled. Karen and I are doing some branding for agencies and we've We've been we we just built an agency for somebody from the ground up and because they knew what happened to me and to our business and they still wanted that knowledge of how we got started at least and we've done that. But I don't know I'm not sure if that's something I'll do forever. Who knows?
Peter Schravemade: Well, I mean, at the end of this I'll I'll get the details where people can reach out to you and also where they can buy that book from. because you know, that that would be very important I I think for somebody going through this at that at the particular time. if you t to date, like one of the things that I am aware of when I speak to people who have been through scenarios where an administrator's been involved is there there tends to be a large feeling of guilt. and the guilt is around generally the staff that are left in the lurch or or something to do with, you know, the the fact that there there are people that you've let down. Are there are there people today that as would still say I've been totally let down by Peter?
Peter Hutton: sure there are. I I actually we it was it was a little bit different with us because an opportunity was given to somebody they collected rallied the troops or the troops followed them whatever however that happened I'll never know but what ended up happening was two officers went to that new brand and the whole officers went over. so I didn't have that issue with them because they all walked over there you know when they were ready to because they resigned you know at a time that suited them. the the people that were left in my office and and we had many meetings around that time with our team to try and shore up their morale but it wasn't enough and so one by one they resigned and that all that they all had their super and everything like that. So nobody so nobody missed out in that in that sense. They all been paid and everything. That just left four of us, my wife, Karen Our youngest daughter Paris, who was our operations manager across our three offices, because we ran a centralized operating system, much like White Fox does today. We we were doing that well now 14 years ago, we started that. And it was something that I came up with in my head that that this would be a smart way to do, have a centralized operating system, why duplicate these resources and just centralize it? So it worked particularly well. And So Paris ran that. And then we had one agent, Allie, and such a loyal lady and such a great agent. And she stuck stuck with us right up to the end. She did ask me if something was gonna happen, if I knew something was going to happen to tell her. I could only t tell her the day it happened. And she s she wasn't rightfully so, you know, upset that I didn't give her notice and I I just couldn't give a notice because I hadn't made up my own mind. I was just trying to battle on until I couldn't battle on any further. And that that actually happened in in a period of a few hours. You know, it wasn't like in two weeks' time I'm pulling the pin. If I was gonna do that, I would have pulled the pin straight away. I I was living in hope after Christmas that these two people that I recruited would start, but they didn't, and they didn't show. And at that point, they'd already delayed their start six times over three months. and I we we said if these two people don't start on the 6th of January, we are now, I think effectively at the end of December, we were technically insolvent in December. At the end of December, I said, we we we just legally can't keep going. Our accountant told us that, our lawyers told us that. And So at that point, and I I mentally couldn't keep it going at that point, you know. Yeah. But yeah, so no, everybody that was that was fine, but you know, everybody's gonna have their own version. And all I know is before the resignation started, there was no complaints, there was nobody coming to me saying we should be doing something differently. if anybody did have an idea, we took it on board pretty quickly, and we had a leadership team of the three officers and Karen. and and Paris so the five of us and we would we were very quick to respond to to any concerns but those concerns never really happened until it was too late and you know and that was it.
Peter Schravemade: Do you do you think at all there is well, number one, I I'm I'm pretty sure there is a stigma with around failure when it comes to real estate offices or or
Peter Hutton: There totally is. Yeah, yeah.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, so definitely is. So I I accept that. I think all of our listeners will agree with that. There's a stigma around failure. I I feel as though one of the problems the one of the things about real estate agents is we're very public beasts. Yeah. however you want to phrase it. we have to be seen as public. Our our pictures are everywhere. People we've never even met know who you are because you've had a foresale sign with your photo on it. You're likely to be recognized at the supermarket. Yeah. you know, there is this there is this thing around real estate agents where their lives are more public than other people in the industry. I'd even go, you know, to an extent more than some of your radio DJ jockeys or or or show hosts because they are voices, not necessarily You know, it's not a visual thing. But once once there is bad news around a particular person, how much of the blood in the water stops any kind of ability to come back there? Cause like you you spoke several times about people who once the principal had gone, it might have been hard to recruit or or something along those lines. How how much of that do you think plays a part in real estate businesses? lack of success or an inability to climb back.
Peter Hutton: I I I think it's a a pretty big part because you know, there's gonna be a question mark over you. Like if I opened up an office again, I it's it's not the reason why I'm not opening up an office again, but if I opened up an office again, I'm sure there would be that challenge of this happened to you, especially right now, it's because the it's not that long ago. I'm sure that people be concerned about that to some degree, and it would prevent the better players from joining you. and and really that's what it's all about is when you're recruiting, you want to recruit really good agents and so I'm sure that would go against you. I I had a double whammy in that one creditor, their name I I won't mention, but one creditor, when I liquidated he was affected. His business. It was a smaller business, but he was affected. And he put up a website about me. yeah. And it said across the top, Hutton and Hutton in liquidation. And then it said, Do you know where Peter Hutton is? He's on the run and he's in hiding. Now, the truth is. I we when we went into liquidation within a couple of weeks, we quickly chose to put a tenant in to our home because we thought that was a smart way to at least bring some cash flow in and keep paying the mortgage. And we moved to Karen's mom's place and we slept in their spare bedroom for four weeks. And in that time frame, You know, it was pretty awful, obviously. we went I'd I'd been speaking to a doctor and there was this recommendation to have go and have a break. Go somewhere, have a break. Karen had a little bit of money in her account and We went, Bucket, let's go to India. We'd been to India a few times before, so we hopped on a plane. I spoke to my lawyer. I spoke to my liquidate the liquidator. I told them where I was going. I gave them my contact details. N you know, everybody knew how to find me. But this guy, he decided that he would make a make an example of me. And it really did affect me because mentally it affected me, but also just just I tried to get a job, people had seen it, seen it. It just I I was unemployable for a year. What happened then was we returned home to Australia. We moved to Byron Bay. We then updated our address. He had the address and he served me. That's all he wanted to do was serve me. Then he served me. Then he left the website up for another 12 months. So you see, when you go through this stuff, you don't know what's gonna happen. I never anticipated anybody would do that because I'd never had a bad relationship with anybody before and always paid my bills on time and and even that creditor always paid them on time. always. And in the end, he not only got his money back, he got all the interests and all his legal bills and everything paid. And his legal bills were j were nearly as much as the the debt in itself. And I had no control over that. And I paid him out of my sale of my property. And and he was he was one of the creditors who got paid first, you know, but and then then the website came down. You know, so he was just after his money and he got his money and I'm glad he did. And I and I had a conversation with him. I said to him, look, I hope you get your money. it's out of my control. I have no control over it. You know, whatever's mine's yours, I said. If you you know, please take the site down because I said it's stopping me from getting a job.
Peter Schravemade: One of the things that always comes up on this particular podcast is the way other agents respond to other agents' indiscretions. and I'll give you an example. We had a very prominent New South Wales agent, and and I don't mention them, I just don't want to give it wind. Because I I feel like as an industry we're worse off every single time we smash someone into the ground. Yes. But but it it seems to me to be a leveraging tool for other agents. Like if you're in if you're in the same suburb as somebody else and you're you know, there's a sign of blood in the water, the other person's wounded, they've done something they shouldn't have done. I, you know, I followed one a while back where some guy made a comment about a Gym gear made in China, referring to the quality control mechanism that came through. And one of his competitors sturred up so much Asian racial hatred over his comments about an Asian gym gear that that he, you know, he basically got thinking got terminated. I'm not r really sure, but he eventually had to leave that area and go and practice in another area. And one of the one of the things I wonder is whether we as an industry not only don't help ourselves, because it's our reputation. We, you know, we wonder why we're in a deficit of trust, but we we also contribute in a big way to the way that the public sees us because it's almost like we celebrate the failures of others. How much of your experience is centered around that?
Peter Hutton: it that was happening to us well before
Peter Schravemade: And it before it even fell over.
Peter Hutton: Well before. In fact, when we were when we opened up our third office just around that time, a rumor started in New Farm that the Hutton family were a a drug dealing family and were money launderers. And they got around all and New Farm's a small place, right? And we found out about that because Karen was at the hairdressers one day and women were talking about it. And and that We know who said it. We actually know the agent. And I I will never take them to task on it, but we know who said it. We know which agency it was. It the owner of that agency would be horrified because I know that owner. But that person just spread that rumour and it went and people just accepted it because real estate agents are, you know, already, you know, they've got a smell about us, you know, unfortunately. Now, anybody that knows my family and me know. That could it be that would be we'd have to be in a different universe, a parallel universe, an evil parallel universe for us to be like that. And but yet that's what happened. And then it got perpetuated because we had a it was the funniest thing. I'm gonna have to write about this one day. we had this tenant who was a con man, that stop paying his rent and anyway, long story short, we got the marshal we got the you know we got him out and the marshals went there and got him out and with the marshal we had to get two security guards and three German shepherds because he was a gangster and we got him out of this luxury property and all good, all happy. But within two weeks of him being removed and he got getting very angry at myself and my f and my family, we received an envelope full of white powder that came through to our office and was and my daughter started to open it and it was full of white powder. So she called the police. The police arrived, they evacuated us, but we had to sit out on the footpath on the corner of Brunswick Street and Moray Street, Newfoundland, the busiest street in one of the busiest streets in Brisbane. And they they closed the There's a whole corner down and a hazmat team came and we sat out there on the footpath for six hours. My fa my whole family. And the police officers were hilarious. At one stage he said, So I hear you guys are the you're the Hutton family, you're the you're the crime family of Newfarmer. And we all just laughed. And and yeah, and it turned out to be cocaine that was sent through the mail. And And somebody, and we think it was Zach person, did it as a bit of payback and for some reason, I don't know why, but or or said I don't know, we never worked that out. but you know, that's what happened. And and then that just perpetuated the whole the whole thing. It just it it went from rumor to there's the there, you know, there's there's some truth about it. But we still listed people who love their business and we had great clients. And I was dealing with one of Brisbane's best known architects at the time and selling his apartments at New Farm and I sold one of his apartments for five point seven million dollars a record, non riverfront, no no river views. it's a record to this day and I'm proud of that and have a great relationship with them and they they didn't care. They didn't buy into any of that 'cause they knew me. but yeah. People agents can be ruthless. And I f I we actually took it as a a sign that we were doing the right thing. We we just took it as we rocking the boat. You know, here's a little boutique agency that's come from a a two-man band working around a a you know, kitchen bench to four years later having an office of and and turning over you know many, many, many millions of dollars, you know, and it's across our three offices. So It was like, you know, happy days. People are upset at us and and their competitors. But yeah, I I can see it being a t it's a terrible thing because, you know, like it didn't didn't it it didn't upset me, it made me laugh. But but Peter, that's just me. Another person might have done something terrible to themselves in you know because shame and the embarrassment and you know
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, I just I just get the feeling that sometimes if we didn't if we didn't unnecessarily shoot arrows, you know, we wouldn't be such a dog eat dog industry. But then you know, then
Peter Hutton: That's a hundred percent right. You know.
Peter Schravemade: Then I go to some conferences, you know, and you've mentioned one of them where you know the I I wouldn't say they encourage that, but it's very much a hustle environment where, you know, how am I going to get ahead and how am I going to be the best agent? And the reality is the best agents I've ever met, they're they're not the guys that are sitting in front of Lamborghinis showing their Rolex watches, taking photos. They're they're the practitioners who've been in the industry for ten years longer and You know, I I I th I think we sometimes miss that. And they're also the people who are unlikely to be throwing stones at you. They're just gonna be focusing on their own business.
Peter Hutton: That's it. I started real estate in nineteen ninety four and it's not like that at all. And in fact, when I started, I was thirty years, thirty-one years of age, and I was the youngest real estate agent other than one other agent from Ray White, who was my competitor, who he and I became best friends. Yeah. And and we're still great friends to this day, really great friends. And it was not like that back in those days. We all knocked around together, all the different agencies. We all knew each other. We all were polite. We had friends. And even when I was had my agency, the principals of the officers in the area, we were all, you know, friendly and but then there's just always some agents. And I, you know, I've been I've been copped this before where I've described their behavior, not them as a person, but their behavior is the behavior of a shark where they circle. For blood and I've got into trouble for that. but you know, I it's unnecessary and I I I feel like the I don't know how you train that into a person. I I I think that was trained into me in the wool industry to be be professional, to to that your competitors could also be your mates. That's what the wool industry was like. You know, we were all mates. We all covered.
Peter Schravemade: Yeah, there are portion there are portions of the real estate industry that operate like that too as well. I I'd like to think it's an isolated, not isolated, but it there's there's a there's a minority bunch who who really Yeah, really upset the Apple card. And you know, I think it starts when on entry. but we we could talk about this for a while, but and and I'm aware that we've gone for a long time as we are, but you know, if if you're getting into the industry for i in an aspect of greed or you're you're in it to make money quickly. Generally those operators are the ones that I've come across that are the ones that I'm not saying all of them. some of them are just, you know, keen to be professional and make money. But there there is an element there in in the industry where it's a dog eat dog world. We're happy to tear our competitors down for our own professional gain. And it's it's really interesting because you you know you wouldn't see that if if you're a cardio surgeon. You wouldn't be you know, you're not going to be throwing a barb at the guy that is operating in the next room because together you're saving lives.
Peter Hutton: That's right.
Peter Schravemade: yeah. So yeah, I I f I think there's a real element of this conversation and and built in around businesses that haven't made it, where we need to be more professional in our in our approach to to the failure of businesses because that could be us. we're only mark one market turn away from from that happening. And I I think I think we're going to see a bit of it now. Actually, Peter, I think I think the real really good operators in this market will do really well. But there are s a lot of flyby nighters and probably not the people who would be interested in this kind of podcast. No. But you know, there there's gonna be a lot of those who who don't make it out of this next phase of the industry because it's the hard work, it's the consistency that you need to keep executing at that that that make you who you are and make you a professional in your business. But Look, I I want to round this out. And number one, thank you for thank you for jumping on with me today and having a discussion.
Peter Hutton: Pleasure.
Peter Schravemade: it it is it is rare we would get we would get the ability to talk about this. So I genuinely appreciate that and and there's a couple of things. So if you've made it through all the way to here and you're listening to this and you're in a scenario where your mental health is probably not where it is and you want to do something about it, can I encourage you? We actually have The industry wide has an app now. It's called Rise Care. you can download it. It's it's the Rise Initiative.org.au. And as part of that, they'll actually give you free sessions with psychologists or psychiatrists. I can't remember which one it is, but it it it is specifically designed to to put a stop to mental health issues as they're emerging. So don't feel that you're on your own. Don't feel that there's nothing that you can you you can do about it, don't feel like there's no one listening. That that app is a free app and it's available and and and as a as a freebie from the rise initiative, which is one of the the really amazing legacy things that they've listened. So if if you've heard this today and you feel like you're in a scenario like that, don't, don't wait to do something about it because things don't get any better and you you are the you know the the s the weakest link in your business is the one that that could lead to the failure. And if that's you today, then it might you might be just a holiday away from it. You might be, you know, a general manager away from doing something about it. So, you know, I think from from my my other Pete here, I won't say we're twinning because he's way better looking than I am. But from the two Pete's here, do something about it. Don't leave yourself in the lurch. Go and go and actively do something there. And look, Pete, if people want to read your book, where can they find it? What can they do? Where can they go to get it?
Peter Hutton: Go to keep one hundred with with numerals one zero zero dot au, not dot com da dot au just dot au so keep one hundred dot au or to our other website which is flaunt flo r n t dot com dot au flaunt dot com dot au.
Peter Schravemade: Okay, great. And I'll I'll put those up at the bottom of this podcast when we release it. But but Pete from me to you, keep keep doing your thing. Thank you so much for sharing today. And if people want to get in contact with you, I'm guessing they can go to that second website and they can find you there.
Peter Hutton: Totally. Yeah.
Peter Schravemade: Really appreciate really appreciate your time, mate. and what a what an amazing story. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next.
Peter Hutton: Thanks, Mate. Thanks, Peter.
