Matt Lancashire Almost Quit Real Estate Because of Social Media Trolls

Why would one of the most successful agents in Australia want to leave the industry?

Matt Lancashire is widely recognised as one of Australia’s leading real estate agents. He is the Principal at Ray White New Farm, and his team consistently sells over $275 million worth of property each year.

But his mental health battle with social media trolls made him consider quitting real estate. It wasn't until he realised this important insight...

In this interview, Matt reveals the advice he received from a psychologist to overcome this adversity and rekindle his passion for real estate.

If you’re battling social media trolls, apply this advice to build mental resilience.

October is Mental Health Month. If you or an agent you know you know is struggling with mental health, please seek professional help.

The full interview is only in the Real Estate Gym

Transcript

Matt Lancashire: 0:00

I had a really interesting moment last year where I literally rang Hayes, my business partner, and I said I want to get out of real estate, I'm over it, done, just going to buy my shares out, and it was purely based on I was getting trolled a bit. You just get fuckheads that literally just you go. I'm just trying to make a living right and you do things like you post sales. You do these things and people just want to like Australia's really bad for it, like tall poppy syndrome, and they just chop your legs out, like you know, if you're successful, oh that's shit.

Matt Lancashire: 0:33

Why would you be successful? You're a real estate agent, you're not tertiary educated, all these sorts of things, and I really struggled with it. So I went for a bit where I just went bugger it, I can't even be bothered with it. But Mariana, who's my EA, who's amazing she said I just want to remind you of something we look at where every lead comes from, so whether they come from seller leads and also buyer leads, but only from our seller leads. She goes I just want to remind you we've sold $2 million worth of GCI last year straight leads from Instagram, and I was like that's a really good point, so I've got to step it up again.

Tom Panos: 1:10

Have you ever met a hater that's doing better than the person that they're hating? No, not really. No doesn't happen, right. So you've got to think about that from the outset, right. The second thing is you've got to analyse the behaviour of someone that has a go on you on social. It didn't happen 20 years ago, because 20 years ago, if someone said that that person risked getting a punch in the face, but anonymously on social media, I can do things and I'm not accountable for it, but if that person wins, he loses $2 million worth of fees. That's the issue. It's interesting, though.

Matt Lancashire: 1:47

Like I literally was ready to get out. I'd had enough. I'd been outward facing, going to open homes and the funny thing is most people that go to opens that see real estate agents, they want to hate you before they know you right. And so I started to get a bit sick of trying to show people that I'm not a bad person and just and you know that's quite taxing and it was. It was funny.

Matt Lancashire: 2:13

For the first time in my life I went to a psychologist last year and she was like epic and what she basically said to me was she goes, you, you're just thinking about this real estate as a bad industry. Every industry has that. And she went through these examples. She's like are there bad priests out there? And I was like, yeah, good point. Are there bad lawyers out there? Are there bad doctors out there? It's just every industry. Just do your best. And who cares? If people are judging you before they even know you, that's on them, not on you, and you should actually feel sorry for them. And so, genuinely, now I've trained my brain to go geez, I feel sorry for you. Like if they're really rude or something at an open home, I kill them with kindness now and go. I wonder what must be going through their life right now to have to be acting like that to someone they don't know. And that's given me this clarity, and I've fallen back in love with real estate again after that.

Tom Panos: 3:07

And thank you for being so honest and sharing that, because on the surface I would think the majority of the real estate industry across Australia think you're a rock star, right, that's what they would think. Right, you know nice properties, you know nice everything, even your social is nice. And then you get a few people, uh, online often you'll find particularly the tiktok, because the way tiktok works is you don't actually really get a following, you get tourists that like a post and move on, whereas with the others you do actually form a little bit of a community. But I think, uh, welcome to teflon, the teflon club. You. I think Teflon's good, I think Velcro's bad.

Matt Lancashire: 3:45

But back to social. So I spend. Vpa is $5,000 per property for leads and the amount of leads we're getting at the moment it almost becomes too hard to follow up. So the only way to do it is through data, right? So I use a company called Teflon so I can now go. It's pretty wild, so we can. I've imported all of my data in through Facebook, through Meta. We've got a 75% connection rate to all people's social media accounts. That's filtered through my database. So we're now doing it with sellers and Attention staff.

Tom Panos: 4:19

The social club has a sausage sizzle.

Matt Lancashire: 4:24

How good Food is available here. Thank you, Welcome. There you go, Mate. Things have moved up. You're doing good mate.

Tom Panos: 4:32

Conditions are better here. It wasn't like that when I was here. I want to let you know, we bought our own food.

Matt Lancashire: 4:40

And yeah, so every property we list. Now I can go and get all of the data from the last year per price specific and area specific. Put it straight into Facebook, which goes into my Instagram, and on realestatecom domaincom across every property. I'm probably getting anywhere between 20 and 40 leads per campaign. Through my social medias I'm getting between 100 and 300 leads Goals.

Tom Panos: 5:04

So, mate, that's given you a test ride of the real estate gym. In the real estate gym, we've got all the information you need to succeed, whether it's prospecting, listing, presentations, scripts, dialogues, how to actually have the best templates and have a process-driven business. You can join the real estate gym. The doors are open now, and it is less than one.