Not all growth is good. If you grow to quickly and without proper planning it can be disastrous.

Topic – The best and worst of growth

Mentor – Megan Jaffe

• Slow and enduring growth
• It needs to be sustainable
• 20 mile march

Marketing Monday – What does your logo say about you?

Transcript:

Kevin:   Okay, well we’re going to talk about growth this week. Not all growth is good. That may sound a little bit crazy as a statement, but in reality if you grow too quickly and don’t control the ego that flows from that growth, then you may just come unstuck. To learn about the best and worst of growth, I’ve invited Megan Jaffe to join us this week to tap into her experiences of growth that she has masterminded in her business at Ray White Remuera in New Zealand. For those of you who follow the show, we’ve spoken to Megan in the past. I know many agents from this part of the Tasman, Australia, have been to Remuera to visit Megan’s office, and they’ve all come back gobsmacked.

Kevin:   She joins us this week and I’m delighted to have her on the show. Megan, hello and welcome. Thanks for your time.

Megan:   Thank you for having me back, Kevin. It’s a delight to be with you.

Kevin:   Yeah I always enjoy my time with you, too, and I enjoyed when I was over there and you gave me the time to take me through your office. I wonder, Megan, by way of introduction if you can just give us a brief overview of your office as it is today, and as it was before you developed the systems that took you into the growth journey?

Megan:   Certainly. So I’ve owned this office for 11 years now, and it’s very different today from how it was when we first began, and thank goodness it’s so much better today. Number one is because of the fabulous people I get to work with everyday, as we deliver the service to our customer and clients. But today, Kevin, we define growth around sustainable growth, for us to collectively endure and thrive throughout the changing market conditions. The change is quite rapid at the moment. But we are independent of those changing market conditions with the way we put the business together today. We’ve got a really defined strategy inside this company, and we’re on a 20 mile march towards our company’s overall vision. Our 20 mile march is slow and enduring growth. So we only want to have 10% growth per annum so that it is sustainable and it’s achievable for everybody, because it’s the collective growth that we measure and that we actually reward, acknowledge, and celebrate.

Kevin:   Just to come in there, you talk about slow and enduring growth. You’re looking at 10%. 10% growth, effectively in three to five years is going to double itself. I mean, 10% growth compounded means you’re going to double your turnover in about four years?

Megan:   Well, that is the goal. However, it’s not really about the money. It’s about the quality of the service delivery for us. So the byproduct of everybody’s winning financially, but the focus isn’t on that. It’s very much on service quality. To do that, Kevin, we’ve become a very process and systems driven company. What we’ve found is by having really effective process in place, it keeps people free so their time is freed up. They’re very busy, they’re very good at what they do, but it’s our role, my role, to help them leverage their time best, leverage their energy best, delivering that great service to the customers. But also freeing up time so they can get back to family, get back to friends, and the other interests they have in their lives.

Kevin:   Is this what you mean by sustainable growth? In other words, you’re preparing everyone and you’re getting them … So that growth can continue, those processes you talk about?

Megan:   Yes, because any sales person who joins, for example, they all have strong ambition. They usually say some numbers they’d like to achieve. What we have to do is put a platform in place so there’s a solid foundation so that they can deliver consistency to their customers and clients with what they’re doing every day. So it’s very much around that platform. They’d all love to do it in their first year of arriving, but what we’ve learnt is that sustainable and consistent growth over time is something that firstly is achievable, and secondly it’s sustainable. Because there’s something called grow bust that is not good growth, that’s very bad growth because not only does it usually come through poor health, but it impacts and takes the families and relationships, when they just work so hard that they structurally aren’t supported well enough to hold that in place for the medium to longer term. Sadly, a lot of these ambitious guys I see them coming through, they want to build fast, but I see it as part of my role and the guys I work with to have that so that it’s enduring business for them.

Kevin:   So Megan, where do you see the business now in going forward? If you could just describe that to me?

Megan:   Well sure, today we measure and support the individual salesperson plus the growth aspirations of that admin support team. Because the evolution of teams is very necessary to deliver service to clients. So it isn’t just the salesperson, it’s the team they build around them. So it’s everyone’s ambition and growth aspirations that are supported here. So every person that joins our team, whatever their role, they deserve a growth pathway.

Megan:   We don’t see any person’s job as a job, because honestly it should be a career or a calling for people. There are so many people that join the company that are deeply committed, we really do have a lot of people who are building careers and callings in here. So we now hire on value alignment, on the energy and ambition, and the alignment with us. We’re getting much better around what the agreement is between the person joining and the company, and not just the formal agreement but the underlying agreement which relates to how we conduct ourselves with one another based on the values of the company. It’s very much become part of the DNA of our company.

Megan:   But you know, Kevin, the tough bit for us is actually staying where we are. Because it was tough at the beginning, it’s great right now, and honestly to have 10% growth last year, we actually had to get the growth to stay in the same spot, because our market went backwards. But the tough bit is really staying where we are and staying on that path to growth, because our competitors are being so harsh on us, and they’re copying what it is that we do, which is cool. So we have to keep innovating, we have to improve our service quality, we have to be timely, we have to just be so reliable with what we do, just to incrementally get ahead. Because everybody’s getting better, and the good ones are getting really good. The changing market conditions are creating the opportunity for fewer to absolutely thrive and flourish.

Kevin:   That’s the thing I’ve picked up out this morning, all about sustainable growth. Megan Jaffe will be back again tomorrow. We’ll talk about growth, good and bad. The good and bad that comes from it, Megan we’ll talk to you again tomorrow morning. Thanks for you time.

Megan:   Pleasure, thank you very much.