Kylie Davis:

Hello and welcome to the Proptech podcast. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host for the second season as we continue to explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. It's so great to have you here and to share more stories of innovation and opportunity across real estate, property, and building services and technology. Now, as you probably know by now, the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent, and invest in property and all of the associated behaviour around that. Now, none of this would be possible without our sponsors. So, a big shout out to David Holman and Belinda Seers at the Direct Connect team, David and Anita at Dynamic Methods, the innovators behind Forms Live and Realworks forms, and the crew at the Proptech Association. Thank you for all your support of the podcast.

Kylie Davis:

My guest this week is a legend of Australian and New Zealand real estate. The very wonderful, Chris Hanley. The principle of First National Byron and a renowned leader whose views on leadership and building businesses that are sustainable, ethical, equitable, and community focused are highly sought after across the industry. Chris holds a medal for the Order of Australia for his services to literature and the community. As he is also the founder of the Byron Writers Festival and a life of service is at the core of everything Chris stands for. It's one of the things that motivated him to become the founder of the Rise Initiative, a group of real estate agents initially brought together by a desire to help after the terrible Christchurch mosque massacre. The first Rise event demonstrated how powerful and how much good can be done when agents come together and are united around a common cause rather than dividing along franchise or company lines in competition. Buoyed by the spirit of the Christchurch event, the Rise Initiative turned its focus to mental health in real estate after becoming aware of the terrible statistics around agent and property managers' stress, anxiety, depression, and even suicide.

Kylie Davis:

But the initiative launched the Real Care app, an app to put mental health support into the hands of every agent late last year. And the app already has more than 2,000 downloads and is growing steadily. So, here to tell us all about it, Chris Hanley, welcome to the Proptech podcast.

Chris Hanley:

Kylie, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to speak with you today.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Now, look, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So, Chris, I would like to know what the Real Care elevator pitch is. When you're telling people what it is, bust it out.

Chris Hanley:

It's a piece of tech to keep you fit, Kylie. What it's got inside it is a series of steps or processes you can quickly follow. Rapid relief comes to mind. A lot of us lose it sometimes, myself included. We stop breathing, we get anxious, we get stunned. Sometimes in this business of ours, we lose, which happens all the time. Real estate, by the way, Kylie, is as much about learning to lose as it is learning to win, but I think the Real Care app is in short using magnificent technology to help you maintain your fitness, your mental fitness, or your sleeping fitness, and your financial fitness and a series of other things. That's what it is. Something to keep you fit.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. So, why do we need it? What's going on in real estate that means that we need an app to keep us sort of mentally and physically fit?

Chris Hanley:

It's not just real estate. I suspect if you went around, Kylie, to most professions in the last couple of years, they'd say to you that anxiety and fear, and loneliness, isolation, we're all exacerbating situations and tendencies that already existed. I think real estate before the pandemic was a profession where people got their self-esteem from their results and that's a perilous and very difficult place to be as a profession, but I think what has happened is because the COVID pandemic and all of the ancillary things around it have exploded, I think what they've done is make what was a difficult situation much more difficult like put a lot more people at home in isolation. Technology's never, ever, ever been able to master touch. And I think a lot of people have felt isolated during the last couple of years.

Chris Hanley:

So, why do we need an app? I think we need an app not to replace touch, not to replace human connection, but certainly we need it to allow people to get relief and to manage their daily lives so that they can keep level, and so they can be productive. Mental health, mental wellness, and culture, for example, are inexorably linked. They are the same thing even though I'm not sure in our profession we get that, but if you've got a great culture and you've got some form of technology that allows people to maintain their wellness, the two things go together and they boost productivity, they boost engagement and they boost, most of all, job satisfaction.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, fantastic. So, look, let's just... It's not every business though in real estate that has that connection of culture and connection. Let's just have a look at some of the statistics about why the Real Care app is sort of something that's so important. What are some of the stats around mental health in real estate?

Chris Hanley:

I've watched these during the last few years and Jed [Xavier 00:05:58] and [inaudible 00:05:59] Sarah Bell have contributed a great deal of personal work to this, and should be given wonderful credit for the work, but my memory of these stats, and I think I'm pretty close, is about half of the real estate people. This is probably management, salespeople, admin people who have been surveyed about half. Just under, I think, are anxious in their workplace. Now, that's a pretty staggering statistic. I think it's 47 or 48%. It's a staggering statistic. I think 12% of us as a profession, which is one in eight, as an old fashioned fraction, don't have anybody to talk to about their profession, about their loneliness, about their isolation, about their self-esteem issues and the challenges at work. That's a pretty big number as well. I think also though, and the biggest number here that I saw on the stats, it's always surprised me is that about 60%, which is nearly two out of three, Kylie, suggested they failed the whole work-life balance challenge.

Chris Hanley:

And I think when you've got stats that are that high, work-life balance [inaudible 00:07:13] 60%, I think then you've got some challenges that all business owners in every different organisation need to do something about. I think the other statistic in there that there's... And for those... I had one of these in the last couple of weeks from someone I knew in Melbourne. Suicide is and remains high in our profession. I'm not sure and I'm not a psychologist or a scientist, but all of the reasons that people take their own lives in our profession relate to our profession, but what I am sure of is that if there was a tool that was available to allow people to maintain good mental health, then I think that is a wonderful thing to have into as many places and businesses as we can and that's what we're trying to do.

Kylie Davis:

So, they're all pretty damning statistics and they were all done before COVID made us even more anxious. Why do you think, as an industry, we do experience such crisis? You mentioned before about that we judge our success on our results.

Chris Hanley:

I believe that we have not as a profession... There's 100,000 of us, ish. I think there's only 40,000 in New South Wales alone. I don't think we've ever studied our workplaces. Lots of other professions have. Medical profession, they study ICU units. They study doctors' surgeries. And I think in other professions, they do that. There hasn't been much scientific research done into our workplaces. So, that's the first reason.

Chris Hanley:

The second thing is that we also don't and haven't focused on building resilient health or responsive caring cultures. I think with all my decades, which is more than four decades now, have had a model, a one size fits all model and it doesn't, but we've suggested that it does. And that model pretty well called survival of the fittest, and survival of the fittest doesn't work anywhere else, but we've as dinosaurs believed that it was going to work in ours. Caring cultures are more productive. Caring cultures that look after every part of people. I saw a great quote during COVID, Kylie, and it said when you employ me, you get all of me. When you employ me, you get all of me. And I don't think we in our profession, because we're lots of little businesses, I don't think we ever sat down and thought about how and what can we do within our workplaces to look after people's mental well-being, their physical wellbeing.

Chris Hanley:

I remember years ago, 20 years ago, in my own business, we're all addicted to sugar in those days. And unbelievable amounts of sugar used to get consumed. We used to buy those giant packets of [inaudible 00:10:36], but I don't mean this big, I mean they were in hundreds of them and everyone had them in their drawers all day. And what's changed today is that instead of sugar being something that's driving us all in which it did in those days, people are a lot fitter and a lot more focused on good food. Now, I think we're in an evolution stage now where issues like mental health instead of being separate from or special or not spoken of, I think what's going to happen in the next few years within organisational cultures in all professions, but particularly in real estate, we're going to work out finally that if you look after all of people's fitness, including their mental fitness, then they'll be [inaudible 00:11:24] productive, they'll stay longer, your culture will be better, everyone will be happier, and it'll be win-win. So, that's what I think the future is going to be.

Kylie Davis:

Let's just take a short break and hear a quick word from our sponsors.

Kylie Davis:

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Kylie Davis:

What do you think the outcomes from COVID are going to be on the real estate industry? Do you think it's helped us kind of look at our businesses and think, "Well, some of the old ways of working when working didn't really work. They fell over pretty quick."

Chris Hanley:

I'm in two minds about this. I think if COVID had come along and we weren't in the middle of the biggest property boom we've ever seen, including where my own business is in Byron Bay, I think the lessons would have been better. I think they would've given us more time to ingest the lessons, the adaptions, the changes. Early in COVID I saw a quote that said we're not going back to normal because normal was the problem.

Kylie Davis:

That's a great quote.

Chris Hanley:

It is a great quote. But in real estate, I'm not sure that we completely get that. I think because the tsunami of a property boom came over the top of us in the middle of COVID, and I know it did in regional Australia, I think a lot of the issues brought up by COVID, hybrid workplaces, for example, and [inaudible 00:13:32], I think a lot of those things were submerged under the need to just list and sell. I tend to think when the market slows down a little bit as inevitably will be, but it [inaudible 00:13:42] for 12 or 18 months, then I think that what's more likely to happen then is we'll look at some of these changes. My own business is I've had people working remotely as I'm sure everybody else has. Now, that's a good change. Our productivity hasn't gone down, it's gone up. And the staff are happy. I see people wandering around and also to the [inaudible 00:14:05] now when they need to go and do their listing presentations, [inaudible 00:14:09] fantastic. But in other times, they come and go and in my town, that's pretty cool. It works out okay.

Chris Hanley:

So, I think the... I've got people with dogs and people with kids. There's a lot of people with kids in my business, for example. And young kids. And for them, it's been better and sometimes. So, I think as long as we... What I think we should do as a profession, now the real estate profession, is study and sit down and work out the changes like Zoom. You and I, I've had hundreds of these things and whilst I'd still rather sit and talk to someone, it is still better than a phone.

Chris Hanley:

So, I think for a lot of us... At our sales meeting this morning, our sales manager, [inaudible 00:14:55], was telling the staff to make sure with the listing presentations that they're doing to do something distinctively different to our competition and make sure they're doing them all on Zoom because [inaudible 00:15:11] we found out most of our competitors aren't. Now, you wouldn't have made that call even six months ago, but that piece of tech, using Zoom or Google Meet or all those things. So, I think there's a lot of good things, but I think the real estate, the effervescence in the market, the Zoom in the market and selling has submerged some, but to me it's more likely to be the next 12 or 18 months that these changes will sink in. And the good ones I hope, Kylie, will be adapted into all of our businesses.

Kylie Davis:

So, in this instance then, the normal that is the problem is that kind of rollercoaster of feast and famine, isn't it? But do we need to kind of work out a way to even it out or calm our work behaviour down so that we're not one minute for long and then the next minute wondering where [inaudible 00:16:05] is coming from?

Chris Hanley:

Yeah, therein lies a challenge. Our business, as I said, was based on sugar before. What I should've said, it's based on adrenaline.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah.

Chris Hanley:

You've asked a good question there. Some people like to be tense. Some people like to move really fast. Some people believe that they want to go to sleep at night with nothing left in their tank. Not everyone believes, and this is their choice that being calm is more productive. Real estate is a profession that attracts certain personalities. And within my own sales team I've got some and I've, as you know, [inaudible 00:16:48] I've met pretty well every top salesperson in the country over the years. I know I'm old. A lot of them are people who are very, very, very high earning and high energy and highly productive. So, I think what happens in a lot of businesses, that model, that type of model that succeeds so well is looked at by people as the only model. I think what we all need is more models or types of people that come forward at conferences and training and coaching who what I'm going to call calm at their core. And they're around, I've met them too. Highly productive, they got balance in their life.

Chris Hanley:

Tilda Swinton, the great American actress has a great quote and the quote goes something like, I don't have a career, I have a life. I don't have a career, I have a life. And I think within real estate, there's a bunch of who do really well, who have good control in their life. They're healthy, they've got a balance, but they're not the same as the traditional model. So, I think that the more of those people that we get to see... My view, Kylie, is a lot of the women that I've witnessed in the profession in recent years who have often more challenges than the men and [inaudible 00:18:17] family and kids, which they still have so much extra responsibility for, I think as we grow in the next decade, I think we're going to see a lot of exemplars in that area where I think those type of people are going to give examples to people of "Let's call it a second or an alternative way to be successful in real estate." And I think mental health and mental wellness will play a big role in that.

Kylie Davis:

So, this is kind of a part of a bigger shakeup in real estate that we move from being a single model of what success looks like to recognising that there are lots of different ways to be successful. And that being sort of robustly mentally well is part of those alternative models.

Chris Hanley:

Unequivocably. I think if we as a profession... And the Real Care app is one aspect of radical workplace change that needs to take place, not just in real estate, everywhere. And the Real Care app is one aspect. The second, in my own view, is that we have to recognise that culture is the only thing that your competitors can't copy is the most powerful multiplier in your business. And mental health, mental wellness, and culture go together. So, yes. Yes. Unequivocably what I think will happen in the next few years is wellness is in every profession now. A focus on wellness in all over the world now is everywhere. High-powered lawyers, the tech world, it's everywhere.

Chris Hanley:

In our instance, we play with it. We pretended not to and whatever else, but I don't know that it's woven. Mental wellness and wellness in general is woven as deeply and as broadly as it needs to be through the fabric of our profession. I think if some of the big networks, for example, could turn it into something that significantly and through [inaudible 00:20:29] people that having great culture, which includes great mental wellness and protecting your people and caring for them and having an opportunity for people to maintain their wellness every day, but also to focus on their numbers and their statistics and their prospecting and all of the other things. I think that the organisations that can drive all these things together, bring them all together, which will lead to happier workplaces and higher retention of staff. What everyone doesn't understand is that mental wellness means people stay. It means you spend less money on training. It means that your business, your culture becomes an attraction business, right? And that people come to you.

Chris Hanley:

The upsides of focus on mental wellness means your recruitment is much easier. There's a list of advantages and all of the organisations of different professions and have a focus on wellness do better than those that don't. It's that simple.

Kylie Davis:

Let's just take a short break and hear a quick word from our sponsors.

Kylie Davis:

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Kylie Davis:

So, tell me a little bit about the Rise Initiative because Rise Initiative are sort of the funders or the guys that had the idea for the app. Who is the Rise Initiative?

Chris Hanley:

Well, the Rise Initiative, Kylie, are people like you who were in my phone a couple of years ago and couldn't really get away from me on a wet, horrible weekend after the shootings in Christchurch. In order to do big things and good things in all our lives, it just involves usually a few crazy people who get an idea and then they start doing things and then they attract other people and then when people can't work out a reason, it won't work. They start to believe it will work and that's where Rise started. We talk a bunch of us. 42 days, we had a bunch of us including our friends of mine like Phil Harris, Sarah Bell, Josh Cobb, Shannan Whitney, Mark McLeod-

Kylie Davis:

Megan Jaffe.

Chris Hanley:

... and people from... Huh?

Kylie Davis:

Megan?

Chris Hanley:

Megan Jaffe and her wonderful team from Remuera in Auckland, in New Zealand. And in 42 days, we went across and did an extraordinary thing. We had no idea what we were doing for the whole of the 42 days, but all these people from Christchurch turned up including the first responders to the Christchurch massacre. They filled up the room. At the end of the day in their police uniforms and outfits, they went to the mosque where all those things. We had a speaker at the event who was actually at the shooting, which is amazing. A man turned up and then opened the conference and blew us all away, but that was where I started. It just started in my head and then it went via a text message to guys like Mike Green from Harcourts and [inaudible 00:24:05], my good friend on the Gold Coast who played a very big role both in giving us the name. Rise came out of his head and being one of the speakers and one of the important people that brought it all together. So many good people. Tommy Hector. We all went over there and we had my good friend, John Cunningham, Craig [inaudible 00:24:24]. All these people helped.

Chris Hanley:

And then we thought that this felt really good. This coming together, this purpose, this non-real estate activity by using our real estate skills was maybe not a bad idea. And then we came back and decided we'd do some more conferences and we've now had RiseX, which had about 2,000 people doing COVID on a virtual conference, which was amazing. And then as you and I both know we had the extraordinary Rise this year just before the whole country went back into lockdown. Was it the 5th of May, Kylie? I can't remember.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, fourth or the fifth. Yeah.

Chris Hanley:

Fourth or the fifth in Melbourne which was extraordinary. My favourite ever conference. I'm a little biassed, but we had a conference there. But in the last year, what happened is we started to raise money. We've got wonderful partners. Domain, in particular. Jason Pellegrino is a particularly wonderful guy who's joined up and being part of the Real Care app and the whole Rise. [inaudible 00:25:29] in the last couple of years.

Chris Hanley:

And in partnership with a wonderful guy called David Stanley and his company called Utility Creative, we built the Real Care app. When I say we build it, the profession did with this amazing tech company. We travelled to New Zealand. He travelled with his group all over Australia. We did focus groups. We collected information and data from real estate agents, probably managers, admin people, younger, older, all sorts of experienced people. And we made the app. The app has now been adapted a bunch of times and it keeps getting upgraded and adapted with more to come, including Domain generously adding an employee assistance programme recently to the app, which allows people to make phone calls, emergency phone calls and we're at the place now, Kylie, as we both know we've got a couple of thousand people using it, and we're rolling it out and have plans over the next 12 months to roll it out in most virtually all major networks.

Chris Hanley:

And someone has cautioned me about saying there's no cost. So, everybody can download this. If your list is a listing now, they can go into the app store and they can download this app and use it from today from this minute. And there is no cost to them individually or to the network. And that was the main aim. We've paid for this. We built it. It did cost a lot of money, but it's a wonderful group of professionals from the industry who come together to do this, and it's step one in a programme to improve the mental wellness within our entire profession.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. That's fantastic. And look, Utility Creative have an awesome reputation because they've done a whole lot of mental wellness and mental health work with the police all around the country, haven't they?

Chris Hanley:

Yeah, they did, I think, the Victorian police. I think they did the New Zealand police and I think they did the Canadian police. And they've just, I must say, copied our app, but I understand the mining industry. The mining industry has just built an industry wide app as well, which is wonderful. I had meetings with and conversations with the Victoria and the New South Wales government. And I think if all the professions did something like this, I think that would be a great exemplar and a path forward. Governments are very supportive of this because we have the best mental health support service in the world. The government phone calls, Lifeline, and Beyondblue and all of those things. Our public health support system is fantastic. So, what this is, is an adjunct to what already exists.

Chris Hanley:

Can I just go back to something you asked me about 15 minutes ago? You asked me about what real estate is about, and how did we end up in this situation? And we get our self-esteem from our results. Part of the reason that happens, and it's no one's fault, but part of the reason is that we pretend in our profession. We pretend. And I get why we pretend. We all pretend. We pretend to be strong, we pretend to be cool, we pretend to be successful, and I get it. And my generation's the worst. If you're a male of my [inaudible 00:28:59], you pretend a lot because that's how you're brought up.

Kylie Davis:

It's worse in real estate, isn't it? Because you're selling the perfect lifestyle with the perfect house. Yeah.

Chris Hanley:

That's exactly what I was going to say. So, we've learned to pretend about just about everything. And sadly, but more importantly, we shouldn't pretend about the importance of getting our mental wellbeing in place and under control. And to circle back to the app, the app is a way through the rapid testing, through the breathing exercises, through the sleep, monitoring of your sleep and all of the other areas that it's got to help you. It's a way of getting control back because the worst thing about anxiety and fear is that if you've got no control in things like your breathing, for example, it's really, really, really, really... Once that happens and you lose control, it exacerbates it.

Chris Hanley:

Well, the app is not the panacea for everything, but it certainly is an attempt to give you a way to control your vital signs, your vital signals, your breathing because I've learned over the years and I'm sure your listeners have, breathing is everything. At the end of the day, it is the single most important thing. You read all the books. Buried in there somewhere is meditation and breathing, right? So, what we've done is incorporate some of those into the Real Care app.

Kylie Davis:

And can attest to them because I do very clearly remember the day before the Rise Conference when I was quite high on adrenaline and deeply anxious. I do remember lying on the floor with my legs up the wall and doing the couple of the breathing exercises, and they worked a treat.

Chris Hanley:

It's funny that you say that. [inaudible 00:30:49] one of the speakers who remain nameless. I think there's [inaudible 00:30:54]. I think there's a perception out there which is wrong and said that successful people don't get anxious, for example. That's not correct. Or there's another perception that as you get successful, your anxiety go away. That's not correct either. At the end of the day, I know one of the top people in the country who is using the Real Care app full time, right. And just [inaudible 00:31:19] by it and tells me how fantastic it is. At the end of the day, try it. Just go and play with it and do what Kylie did. Lie down, put your feet up against the wall, do the breathing exercises.

Kylie Davis:

They do work a treat. I can absolutely [inaudible 00:31:32]. So, Chris, if I've been listening to today's podcast and I want to roll this out across my team because I mean it works for technology businesses as well. I mean, anyone in the proptech space as well as real estate agents, how can I roll it out across my team or what can I do to spread the word?

Chris Hanley:

That's a great question. Firstly, you can contact Kylie and myself. We're happy to talk to groups. We've got a fantastic board of people. Kate Strickland is part of that board who's a great speaker. And being with us, involved in all this process. Now, there's a lot of really good people here. John Cunningham, who's a fantastic speaker and been involved with me since the get-go of Rise and going to Christchurch with the app. And we've got a wonderful team, Cunninghams, Sarah Bell.

Chris Hanley:

So, contact any of those names that... Come to Kylie and I, that's the first thing. Kylie did a great role at recently with one of Melbourne's historically well-known companies down there. And we got a monstrous number of downloads and uses from that group. All you've got to do is introduce your group to it and you want to do it through a Zoom call. What we found is they nearly all download it. And then a whole bunch of them use it. It's a no brainer. There's no strings attached. There's no reason not to use this. The opposite is the case, but in essence, come and contact us and we'll give you a way to facilitate and help you roll it out within your network or in your own office, but having said all that, go to the app store. Go to the app store. It's free. We haven't told everybody that yet, but it's free. You can download Real Care. We own it, use our product, go in there and fiddle around with it. Just go in and play with it. Once you download it, I suspect you'll start using it like everybody else has.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. And so, look, I think what I'd really like to get your thoughts too on what you think the next five years holds for real estate because we have seen... During COVID, this whole idea that real estate agents are perfect and that you get less anxious the more successful you get, and all of those big contradictions... Well, all those urban myths starting to fall. That's kind of been the gift of COVID, hasn't that been? That we all actually have had this time to see ourselves in our gym gear or without makeup and actually getting really real. What do you therefore think the next five years is going to be like in real estate? Do you think it's going to be around getting more real about what we're really like and what really works?

Chris Hanley:

Yes.

Kylie Davis:

That was a complicated question. Sorry about that.

Chris Hanley:

No, it wasn't, but it can go a couple of different directions. So, I'm going to take a minute for this. It's a good question. I've thought for a lot of my decades in real estate that I was in a separate line. Not a better line, not a different line, just a separate line. For example, in my instance, I've always believed the single most important thing in a business is culture. And I've never changed that, but I must say you can't learn it, it's not taught at TAFE. I've never seen in any of the franchise agreements, any focus on it. It's neglected, rejected, ignored.

Chris Hanley:

And I wrote a piece last week. I'm going to circle back to your question. I wrote a piece last week. Those people who might know I write, post sometimes and stick them in places. I'm not always sure where they go, but [inaudible 00:35:11] stick them up. And I had one last week that has completely changed my view of the direction of our profession in the next few years. It's changed my view because 16,000 people have read this thing from all over the world in five days. Now, the piece was about culture. And what I think has happened, which [inaudible 00:35:36] come back and answer your question, I think people are going to completely change the way they run their business because businesses like mine that are blessed with a wonderful culture, they realise that culture is everything. It's not just important, it's everything because culture is what allowed most businesses to get through COVID. If you had a good culture coming into COVID, you've prospered. If you had a shocker coming into COVID, you've struggled because there's no trust there with your staff at home because all of these things have gone wrong, and productivity went down.

Chris Hanley:

And my view is the next few years, the significant change in real estate is, and I hope I'm right, the culture instead of being ignored, sidetracked, thought of as not important, will be focused on as the single most important thing in productivity and wellness within an organisation. And secondly, that mental health and the culture will be understood to be the same thing, not separate things. And I watched my team, there's only 40 of us here, I watched them for 18 months care for each other. And to say I was proud is an understatement.

Chris Hanley:

So, my first answer to your question is that culture will become in many offices, the single most important thing to focus on. The second thing, in my view, that will happen in the next five years is I think that real estate groups, whether they're franchises or marketing groups or whatever, I think will start to focus on some different training and coaching. I think what COVID has taught us is that scripts and dialogues are important. Don't get me wrong. Very important. But I think the most important thing, Kylie, is [inaudible 00:37:31], communication. Talking to people, connecting, listening. And I think our profession in the next couple of years will focus on a different form of coaching and training, connecting. Building of trust through conversations and listening.

Chris Hanley:

I think at the end of the day those two things will mean we're better communicators, and then our workplaces will be better. And I think the offices that embrace both of those are focused on culture and are focused on wonderful communication. They'll blossom and thrive. I think the ones that don't will struggle because I think their businesses will be revolving doors. I think people will go and work in other places. That's what I think will happen.

Kylie Davis:

I love that because I mean this being the Proptech podcast, we're always talking about tech and until now I had always thought... Well, I had my rear view vision on COVID had been that the companies that had their technology strategy down, nailed down the tightest were the ones that had succeeded through COVID the best, but actually we all know that technology and your ability to adopt technology is really related to culture because it means that you're good at being adaptive and flexible and incapable of understanding how to roll out change or to deal with change. So, there's a real link there, but I think you're right. I think culture is probably the dominant one and then technology hangs off the back of that because cultures are able to understand it better.

Chris Hanley:

I think that's an interesting thing you brought up there. Culture is like an oil, like a lubricant in an engine. A business is an engine. An organisation in an engine. What culture is, is a lubricant in there that makes it all work properly. So, tech, exactly as you've said, new tech... We were having this conversation at the sales meeting this morning. There's a couple of new things we're going to roll out soon in our business. It's your culture that actually allows you to roll out stuff. It's your culture that allows you to absorb stress. It's your culture that allows you to tell everyone the truth in tough times. It's your culture... Here's our culture. Culture is care, right? If you're a leader, listen to this, you care for them and they care for you. That's your staff. You care for them, your staff, and they care for each other. And you care for them as a leader, your staff, and they care for your customers and clients.

Chris Hanley:

Culture is everything. I keep repeating. It's not important. It affects every aspect, but particularly tech. If you haven't got a good culture and you bring wonderful tech into a business, Kylie, wonderful, innovative tech that'll make lots of people be cynics in there, be negative people, be people who don't join up to the positive culture, they'll be your biggest problem. But if you've got a good culture, everyone just says, "Yep, let's do it." And that's what happens.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. Well, Chris, I love that. Let's end on that because I think that's a great way to wrap it up. That link between culture and personal caring and being real and embracing technology. I think that's ideal for the Proptech podcast. So, obviously, we've encouraged everyone to download the Real Care app and get it onto your phone. You can use it whenever you need to, but Chris Hanley, thank you so much for being with me on the Proptech podcast.

Chris Hanley:

I've enjoyed talking with you, Kylie. We always [crosstalk 00:41:14] conversations. I look forward to talking to you again.

Kylie Davis:

So, wasn't that an awesome interview? I was really honoured to be invited to work with Chris and the Rise Initiative board about 10 months ago to help build awareness of the app and to promote the Rise Conference that was held back in May, and we have another event next year. The board includes some giants in real estate, including Nick Dowling from Jellis Craig, Sarah Bell from Aire, John Cunningham from Cunninghams, James Keenan from Nelson Alexander, and Kate Strickland and James Redfern from Marshall White.

Kylie Davis:

What is most striking about the Rise Initiative though is the complete lack of ego that exists amongst the board and their genuine desire to make real estate a better industry. The Real Care app is a powerful tool that can save lives, but for it truly to work, we need to all get real about the issue of mental wellness and to stop seeing those times when we need to ask for help as weakness. The statistics for suicide in real estate are truly awful. 13 out of 100,000 on average a year. Our industry has too many stories of people who have given up hope or felt that they failed. And if you find this part of our conversation distressing or triggering, please know that you are not alone and do download the Real Care app and use the call backup functions to get some help.

Kylie Davis:

The statistics are the outcomes of the flaws in real estate. We need to get real about the failings of the business model with our one-legged revenue structure of commission and our working conditions for property managers that are based on never ending to-do lists. And we need to embrace the tech solutions out there that can genuinely make those things easier. My favourite part of this interview with Chris was the conversation about culture. He is so right. And it is something that every proptech can learn from. If you want to understand if a company is going to be a good client for your proptech, especially at startup phase, and how they're going to approach your technology, then take a look at their culture. So, please, regardless of whether you're a real estate agent, a property manager, someone who works in proptech or property, download the Real Care app. It is free to use and completely private, and it's got some great exercises and steps to help you reduce stress and improve your mental and physical health. And I'm serious about those breathing exercises. They are really awesome.

Kylie Davis:

Now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the Proptech podcast, I'd love you to tell all your friends. Check out all our episodes on the proptechpodcast.com or drop me a line either via email, LinkedIn, or Facebook. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and [inaudible 00:43:49] Apple iTunes or anywhere good podcasts are heard.

Kylie Davis:

I'd like to thank my podcast producer, Charlie Hollins, and the fabulous Jill [Escudero 00:43:56]. And our sponsors, Direct Connect, making moving easy. Dynamic Methods, the name behind Forms Live, REI Forms Live and Real Works. And the Proptech Association of Australia, Australia's industry body supporting the flourishing proptech community. And if you're an Australian or New Zealand proptech who would like to be on the show, drop me a line by LinkedIn or kylie@proptechassociation.com.au. Thanks everyone. Until next time, keep on propteching.