Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The podcast series "Confessions of a Property Investor," hosted by Catherine Andrews, delves into various aspects of property investment in Australia. It aims to demystify the property market, offering insights and practical advice for both novice and experienced investors. The series covers a range of topics, including bank interest rates, property cycles, investment strategies, and market trends. It addresses common fears, misconceptions, and challenges faced by property investors, providing expert opinions and real-world examples. The hosts also discuss the impact of economic factors and lifestyle choices on property investment decisions. The series is designed to educate and empower investors by providing them with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the Australian property market successfully.
(upbeat music)
(...)
Welcome back to Confessions of a Property Investor. Today, the confessions are from the inside, the walls of Chase.(...) As much as we pride ourselves about what we do for our clients outside of these walls, we create wealth, that's what we do. And we create that wealth through property investing. We've created it for hundreds of thousands of clients.
(...)
What we don't talk about very openly is the mistakes that occur inside the walls of Chase Wealth Australia.
(...)
I'm Catherine Andrews, Director of Investments and Managing Director of Chase Wealth Australia. And with me today, I've got Pamela Phillips. Pamela Phillips is our financial controller.(...) Pamela Phillips is also a very, very dear friend of mine outside the walls of Chase. Hi, Pam. - Hi, Catherine. - How are you? - I'm very well, very excited to actually join you on this podcast. - Good. It's gonna be a good one. Look, it's not as light and fluffy as what some of our other ones are. - No. - No. - No. - It's more real. It's basically taking accountability and warning Aussies out there, if not just everyday Australians, property investors in particular,(...) knowing who you've got working for you, knowing who your property manager is,(...) even agencies out there that hire some of these people. So I think it's gonna go on a bit longer today than usual, but I think it's more of a reflection on Chase.
(...)
Yeah.
(...)
So Pamela has been in the property industry. How long now, Pam? - Ooh, that's a really good question. Probably around the 10 year mark. - 10 year mark going on a decade now. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And Pamela's background is essentially compliance and auditing. - Correct. - Correct. - That's right. - Yeah, very compliance based, auditing based,
(...)
role in the past. I know it is a little bit different here with Chase Wealth Australia, but I do have that background and that certainly helps when you want to nut out and uncover things. - Yes. - Within an organization. - Yes. - And that brings us to our topic today. So to be blunt, like we always are at Chase Wealth Australia, we have a confession. And that is that Chase Wealth Australia(...) probably made one of the biggest mistakes in the industry with some of the recruitment that's taken place in this firm.(...) It's general knowledge that it's very hard to recruit the right people.
(...)
You know, some people take work seriously, some people not as much.
(...)
But when it comes to working with people and their futures, I take that down seriously. - Absolutely. - And we try to hire like-minded individuals that will essentially take what we do(...) and work with that same energy, that same pride, that same loyalty, that same honesty, those same principles that we pride ourselves on.
(...)
So I'm gonna take you back to a pretty dark story. And I truly hope that for anyone out there that is an investor or is an employer,
(...)
really looks long at heart at something like this because it fell under, I was under my nose for a long time and I just kept missing it. And I'll take you back, I believe it was 2022, from what was it, 2022 it was.
(...)
There was a,(...) we'll call him a gentleman for now.(...) And essentially I'd known this gentleman for upwards of about 10 years through my personal world.
(...)
He was close with a very good friend of mine.
(...)
He married a very good friend of mine and I knew him on a personal basis per se.
(...)
We're gonna call him, his earliest today will be Giuseppe. - Yes. - All right. And essentially what he did was he worked for a real estate firm in an affluent suburb in Melbourne, semi affluent. And I believe he started there from a young lad and he worked his way through to a senior property manager, seemed great at what he did.
(...)
His wife and I were good friends. I obviously knew the wife before him.
(...)
And as you know, she basically told me how great he is at his job and it was all sunshine and lollipops are what I'd hear about him.(...) And then it turned out that their marriage didn't work out for whatever it may be. So I obtained her position, her permission to potentially approach him for a role in Chase Wealth Australia.(...) And what that role encompassed was essentially it was a business development role and it was entrusting him with a significant amount of staff and gave him almost a two IC role within the Melbourne office of running new business as well as the property management arm of the business. - Yes. - Yes. - He was given a golden opportunity through the company to basically run a whole division. We got him licensed.
(...)
- Yeah, estate agents licensed. - Yes, correct. - Yeah, correct. - So we did and we bought him on and it was very hard to tell in the beginning because he showed some good signs. He showed some good, he tried, it seemed like he was trying. There was a semi-ok performance.
(...)
Unfortunately, what I wasn't seeing and the surface level being up and down between our different offices interstate was that he would, one of the first darker signs he showed was that he would in fact start to trash his ex-wife who's the mother of his children to employees. Now,(...) sign number one, the minute someone starts to trash talk, the mother of their children in the middle of an office of people they don't know, I guess that's the first sign that this guy doesn't have really good ethics, but obviously this hadn't come to us just yet. It was happening behind the scenes.
(...)
Another thing was he was beginning to create an uncomfortable working environment for our female employees
(...)
and it came to my attention months and months later that he was showing them social media stuff and there was some, I believe some interesting pictures.
(...)
(laughing) Yeah, say that. - Yes.
(...)
So what began to happen was he was essentially starting to show within the staff within about four to five month mark, he started to show
(...)
that he was probably not the best advocate for integrity and loyalty and someone that's, to wear the chase name proud on his heart.(...) He just started to show signs when he would refer to his personal world that he probably wasn't(...) in the right frame of mind. So the saying is Pamela started to get wind a little bit then through her auditing skills that he was not performing as well as what he had been making out he had and we bought him in for a massive board meeting and we basically gave him another chance to prove himself. He explained that through this divorce proceedings, his ex-wife was taking him through the ringers. She was taking everything off him. She'd left him for a 22 year old or something like that. She was, what did he say? She goes, he goes, she's old haggard, too much Botox and she's left me for a 22 year old. So of course being his employer, I was like, oh, oh, okay, well, I felt really bad. And I thought, okay, he's going through a tough time. Give him another chance.
(...)
Well, this is where the organization made a mistake. And this is where we really should have stepped in as executives and put a stop to it. He then began to use funds like the organization was funding him to essentially use this platform to increase his own personal welfare, wasn't he? - Yeah, essentially he was. - Yeah, he was growing contacts. So what he would do is he allegedly had taken contacts from his old company and he'd offered them to us. He said, I've got a whole database. If you guys want it, you can have it. We said no.
(...)
He then continued to, we noticed that the atmosphere within head office became a revolving door.
(...)
And I've never seen so many unhappy staff members ever for as long as the operations of Chase Wealth Australia. How bad was it, Pam? - Look, it was a very poisonous environment at one point in time.
(...)
Everybody was down. There was a lot of negativity around.(...) The office felt very uncomfortable. The vibe was totally different to the vibe that we had created, which was a nice, clean, beautiful energy that was all gone. It was wiped. - It was wiped. And we would come down to Melbourne and we'd find that the staff started to wanting to work from home. And we're thinking, well, come on, this COVID's over, why? And none of them had the courage to come to me as their employer or go to Chris, or Pamela Reavan and say, he is making it toxic in here. So they kept it in thinking that if they, because I initially had a personal friendship with him, they thought that if they told me that, that I would fire them.(...) So that wasn't good. And again, being the MD of the company, I was running with many other things at that point.(...) We did ask Pamela at that point to hone in on him and or did she ever. Pamela, please tell our listeners some of the toxic stuff he did to staff, which then resulted in them projecting that onto our clients.
(...)
- Yeah, look, obviously the uncomfortable environment that he created within that, the office out there was first and foremost.
(...)
I do believe that, yeah, the photographs that were shown, all the stories that he would share from his previous workplace made people feel very uncomfortable.(...) People stopped performing basically is what we found. And the customer service just sort of wasn't there anymore. - No, so clients would call and they would call our admin team or get through and they would just feel that Chase potentially had, there was something up with the Melbourne office.
(...)
And clients then it actually escalated its way to me and clients were saying, "Kath, this and this has happened or this and this has happened." And I was in denial, I couldn't put my finger on it. It was almost like my ego would be tarnished if I admitted that it was Giuseppe. - Exactly. - Because I hired him on such, and sacrificed the friendship potentially because his ex-wife got in a frenzy that I'd hired him even though she gave me the okay that we actually, our friendship diminished after that, which was devastating for me.
(...)
And he would just, when he was dragging her name through the mud, but he would really, I didn't wanna believe that it was him that was causing it. And this is where Chase made a mistake.
(...)
The CEO, who is my father, actually sat me down and said, "He's gotta go, he is the poison in here." And I'm like, "No, I don't see any proof. Where's the proof?" Well,(...) Pamela.(...) - Well, look, another thing that does spring to mind there
(...)
is the aggression that sort of came out from this individual after a while. And what we did uncover afterwards is it was due to supplements. So that was another contributing factor
(...)
that was causing a turmoil and a chaos within our environment. It just really affected everybody's performance. - Yeah, it did. So Chase then, the client, who suffered, not only Chase, but the clients of Chase suffered for a good eight months.
(...)
There was deadlines that were missed with things.(...) The team just weren't performing in Melbourne. And by February, 2023, myself and the CEO, basically pulled this individual, Giuseppe, in and put him on a serious notice and started monitoring each and every task he did.
(...)
And then we had the biggest discovery ever.(...) And this is it.
(...)
Giuseppe approached, and this is where I urge all of our listeners and viewers to be very careful that you know who is running with your property management. He was a property manager, okay? Allegedly, 15 years in this semi affluent suburb in Melbourne with his firm, quite a reputable firm. And he did everything for them. And now he approached one of our clients(...) and he said this to them, "I've got a tenant for your property, but they will pay you one year's rent upfront in cash."
(...)
And my client said, "Okay, well, what's the catch? They're a drug dealer."
(...)
This is all happening under, I had no idea this was going on. Thank the Lord that this client and I have a good relationship. He rang me at 10 o'clock at night in turmoil. And he said, "This is what your property manager proposed to me."
(...)
That was it. - Yeah. - That was it. - No, we would absolutely not tolerate any sort of illegal, underhanded behavior.
(...)
We do not operate like that. - No. - And it was a strong chance it wasn't gonna come to our attention. If this landlord hadn't reached out to Chase and said, "Hey, this is what you're seeing your property managers doing." I would have still had no idea.(...) And it takes me to another point, who knows how many people he's done that to in the past? - That's exactly right. We don't know. He's been in the industry for how long? 15 years, however long it was. - I mean, who's your tenant? - Yeah. - Who's your tenant? - That's right. - So you got looking after your property.
(...)
Who is he placing? - Yes. - Is he getting favors on the side? Don't know? - Don't know. And Chase now also got him licensed.(...) And that's something that I deeply regret. So opening up our hearts and our home, which is Chase Wealth Australia to this self promoted individual caused a cancer within the premises and the edifice at the Melbourne office.
(...)
And we then myself and the CEO started now to manage him out.
(...)
It got to the point by June, 2023, where we were so statistically driven and Pamela was just providing us all these statistics and facts and budgets and everything. And that was amazing, Pam, of his performance. And that gave us the ammunition to be able to performance manage him out. And we did. And I loved that day where he walked in and said, I'm leaving and it was music to my ears. I just thought, get the hell out of here. You're done.
(...)
And that was the end of Giuseppe.
(...)
But I do tell you that it took a good six months to clean up the mess he left behind with the staff.(...) He'd actually affected the female staff so much(...) that one of the girls was in tears about him. And that is something that Chase have learnt so much from when it comes to recruitment, when it comes to who's dealing with our staff and who's dealing with our clients.
(...)
Pamela, I don't even know what more to say. It's just from a friend. - From a friend. - And to a foe. - To a foe. And it was a learning experience. Just say, it was a very tough lesson. - It was. - But it was certainly a lesson. - Yeah. And it's funny because someone is your friend allegedly, really he wasn't, I was friends with his wife, like I said, because someone claims to be your friend, doesn't mean they've got your best interests. The same goes with who you bring within your organisation. This is a business and it's Chase Wealth Australia's prime objective is to allow Australians to see another stream of income through property investing. That's got hoops that we have to jump through. That's got cogs that need to turn. If one of those cogs is poisonous or weak or not oil properly, the whole machine can fall over.
(...)
And this is something that we can never undo, but we can definitely learn from. You're right, it was an expensive lesson.(...) - Yes, it was. - It was an expensive lesson. But at the end of the day, I'm sure that he will never be able to have another opportunity like this. My fear is that he's working for another real estate firm
(...)
that he could hurt people with. So if you get people self-promoting themselves that they've done all this work and they've brought in 800 properties for their previous
(...)
BDM role and they've done this and they've done that, it's nine times out of 10 they're bullshitting.(...) - They are, six months later, the proof is in the pudding. There's no results there. Well, - How many properties did he bring in? - Three.
(...)
- There was three, however they were known to him in the past. Those three landlords. And then there was our three clients that he targeted after we told him not to. - That's right.
(...)
- And that was six months worth of work. - Yep. - Okay, yeah, that's it.(...) So yeah, so look, at the end of the day, and I guess the lesson is here with the confession is that we make mistakes too. And it's very easy because we are good people and that doesn't excuse error,(...) but sometimes it's hard to see past the heart.
(...)
And because I do say to all my clients, stop thinking with emotion, think numbers. Well, this is a lesson I had to learn. I'm no longer gonna hire people because they've promoted themselves. They're gonna be hired at Chase Wealth Australia because they've proven themselves.
(...)
So hand on heart now, our recruitment process is absolutely,
(...)
it is, what's the right word, Pam?
(...)
- On point, on point.
(...)
Some people will call it, it's turmoil. It's turmoil getting through our gates at the moment. But the staff we've got now, we've recruited new people,(...) we've removed the old, the toxic people are at a chase and now we've got a great team, a team that share the same morals that we do that allows our team to get your portfolio running the way it should.(...) - Oh yeah, yeah. - And flourish the way it should. - That's right. All right, thanks guys. Thank you, Pamela, for joining us. - Thank you, Katherine, pleasure. - And we look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Take care, see ya. Bye.(...)