Words of Wisdom – with Recruit RE and Kon Stathopoulos

“This is a fantastic industry - it's incredibly rewarding, incredibly challenging and has so much growth for anyone that's committed to being a professional.”

Almost a decade ago, Kon Stathopoulos was ingrained in a career in the technology sector that had spanned sixteen years. An opportunity to push himself outside his comfort zone and change careers saw him step into a leading sales manager role at McGrath and he hasn’t looked back.

Now, as Owner and Principal at McGrath West, Northwest, The Hills, and Hawkesbury, Kon is building an empire in one of the fastest growing districts in Australia while leading and mentoring his growing team.

Tell us a bit about your career, how long you've been in real estate and the different types of roles you've had.

Prior to Real Estate I was employed in a logistics company that specialised in technology and hardware solutions running operations across Asia Pacific. The similarities around people, leadership and Performance Coaching are identical, it's just the product and the service are very different.

I started out leading John McGrath’s flagship office at Edgecliff as a sales manager and doubled that over two years. Then we took over the rest of the eastern suburbs, the Inner West, and acquired a business while I moved into General Manager of Sales. I became Head of Sales before purchasing my first office at Paramatta two and a half years ago.

We have five offices across the West, Northwest, the Hills, and the Hawkesbury. It makes sense in terms of the buyer and seller migration across that corridor as well as transactional and gross volume. These are the three largest growth corridors in the country, so it enables us to build great foundations for our business, and work towards our goals over the next few years.

What qualifications did you complete to begin in real estate?

I completed the Certificate of Registration and then my licence course. That's now changed, and it's significantly harder to become a licenced agent. I welcome the industry for being brave enough to change that on the pathway to professionalism.

I've attended AREC every year for the last decade, multiple CPD training sessions in addition to REI and any other training where I can continue my professional development along with self-learning. There's so much access to content these days on YouTube and websites, e-newsletters or podcasts and we invest a lot into learning and development for our people.

We are a learning, development and training company that happens to be in real estate. Ultimately, what we're doing is dealing with people's largest assets and the complexities of any transactions. Our theory has always been - if we've got the best people that make the best agents, and train them so well, they're going to do incredible things out in the community.

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