But we've had a look under the bonnet on your numbers, and they're very healthy in a short period of time.

Yeah, I think I was very strategic about how I built this business in terms of what people came on and when, so that I could scale it up, and that's definitely borne out of experience, right, and what we did previously with Hello House.

So y- as you referenced there, I've had some practice in that in terms of making mistakes previously and learning from that and being able to set it up the right way from the beginning.

So in this instance, uh, I hired Tom Selby.

Um, Tom came highly recommended by a mortgage broker that, uh, saw an ad that I'd put on, on LinkedIn for basically a jack-of-all-trades.

And what I wanted was someone that had a different skill set than me, and I think this is a really important place to start, is that, you know, I knew what I could bring to the table, but I also knew what I was missing.

And I...

I think, you know, we ask for mistakes, and so I'm really keen to understand where you approach this and, and the mistakes that you made in trying to identify your market and then identif- and then really honing in what that offer to that market is.

Are you noticing that? And How have you, because you've got a business that's doing investment for people, how have you had to digest it and how have you had to change your marketing and your strategy?

Well, it's had a significant impact on my business.

I'd say not just over the last month, but over the last three months.

So I started with three interest rate rises, a war and a cost of living crisis, and ended with a month's worth of rhetoric from Chalmers and Albanese about what they were going to do before they dropped that hammer blow.

So I don't know how you can hide from the fact that it's going to put people in a position where they're going to retreat and just be a little bit more conservative in terms of their thinking, which I think is a natural thing for a lot of people to do.

And we've still got customers that have got confidence to move forward.

They want to build wealth through property.

You know, it's like a Am I comforted by the fact there's so much information in that report? I don't

So with millions of dollars changing hands every day, how many buyers are leaving money on the table because they negotiate the

wrong way? It's a big one.

Yeah, I mean, this one is really close to my heart, Craig.

I've spent the last 30 years doing over 4,000 property deals and I sat on the agent side for 23 of those years.

Based on my own research, I think Australians are leaving about $50,000 on the table for every $1 million that they spend.

And the reason is it's very simple and easy as an agent to manipulate your emotions to get you to pay that emotional premium, which is what we're employed to do.

Whilst that system remains in play and the motivation is to work on the vendor side, who's your employer, they're going to extract and push and pull as much as they can to get you to pay an extra 10, 20, 30, $50,000 in that instance that I just used as an example.

So what should investors focus on in this changing market in 2026?