Chris Bockisch (00:05)
So we've got the largest listing of new investment grade properties in Australia and we pay some of the largest commissions in Australia as well.
Anthony (00:12)
today on the Revenue Acceleration Podcast, my guest is
Bockisch. Chris is the Managing Director of a company called Property in a Box. Chris,
yourself and your company and tell us a bit about what you guys do.
Chris (00:24)
Yeah, thanks, Anthony. It's really good to be here. My company, Property in a Box, has been around for 15, 20 years. I say 15 or 20 years because we were kind of called something else for the first five years. And the problem that we solve is basically giving our property trans actors opportunities to transact. So you'd be familiar with the new property space.
So there's a lot of people out there that want to sell property and they can't find the property prior to property in a box being around. And so the problem that we solve is a one-stop shop for those that want to transact in the property space. So we've got the largest listing of new investment grade properties in Australia and we pay some of the largest commissions in Australia as well.
Like I do some coaching and there's two fundamental key elements that you need in a property transaction business. One is lots of properties to sell. The other is lots of clients to talk to. We tick that box of having lots of properties to sell.
Anthony (01:27)
that's really interesting business model. we spoke a little bit before the call about the types of people that actually use your software. And one of them is real estate agents, of course, transacting in properties, they can expand their property portfolio there to offer their clients. But is there any other markets, any other individuals or companies that might use your software?
Chris Bockisch (01:48)
absolutely. So we started off with just targeting finance brokers or mortgage brokers. And the reason we did that was because they understand, number one, that we had a finance sub aggregation business back in 2010, 2005, 2010. So we had a finance sub aggregation business back then.
The GFC hit I think 2007 from memory and there was a lot of challenges there with finance brokers not making as much commission and so on. So what we decided to do when the GFC hit is we just thought well how do we turn this frown upside down? So we ended up creating a property aggregation business and that's when Property in a Box was born from that. So we were originally just targeting finance brokers.
And then over the last 15 years, we've transitioned from still targeting finance brokers to now including accountants and financial planners. And funnily enough, the last demographic of vertical that we targeted was the real estate sector. You would have thought that that would have been the first place to go because they're already selling property, right? But real estate agents typically sell established properties to owner occupiers.
Anthony (02:56)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So.
Chris Bockisch (03:04)
they're not really that's not savvy, it's probably the right word, but they're not wired that way to understand someone's financial situation as much obviously as a finance broker, an accountant or a financial planner is. So we started with the finance brokers, namely because we already had connections in that sector anyway, with our finance aggregation business. And it was sort of the natural first place to go to for this.
Anthony (03:18)
Right.
Chris Bockisch (03:29)
property in a box product that we're launching. And then we went, we evolved from that to accountants and financial planners, which are really trusted demographic. So if you think about what type of person goes to an accountant regularly, what type of person goes to a financial planner regularly, you might see a financial planner at least once to four times a year. What type of person goes to a real estate agent? Well, you might see it by property from that real estate agent, you never see them again.
Anthony(03:38)
Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (03:54)
All right, so there's all these sorts of demographics, all these sorts of dynamics in motion. But finance brokers are really good because they're like a general practitioner of sorts for your finance. They're always looking for another way to interact with their database. So once they've sold a mortgage by now working with property in a box, they can go back to that demographic and say, hey,
Anthony (03:55)
Yeah, that's true. ⁓
Chris Bockisch (04:18)
You remember that mortgage I sold you three or four years ago? Well, rather than you paying that mortgage off until the day you die, why don't I show you a way where I can help you take years off your mortgage? And then that problem solved by providing a positive cashflow property for them. that dealing with finance brokers gave them another opportunity to generate an income or revenue stream from the database that they're probably not going to get.
another transaction from for perhaps another three to five years or even ever. You don't always go back to being a broker, right?
Anthony (04:53)
Yeah, sure, no problem. And
the finance broker or accountants, they earn a commission from selling those properties through property in a box, is that correct?
Chris Bockisch (05:02)
Yeah, yeah, we call it a referral fee. So they earn a fee and basically it's quite interesting because when we started back in 2005 or whenever it was, were charging or not charging, we were paying a referral fee of say typical commission would be $33,000. That's pretty conservative commission. We would pay a $3,000 referral fee to the finance broker.
Anthony (05:04)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bockisch (05:30)
or accountant and then we would keep the 30k and we would do that because we would predominantly be doing the sale but over the last 15 odd years 20 odd years that we've been in business what we've actually transitioned to is charging a subscription for our SaaS software model and paying 30 grand to the transactor and only keeping the three grand so instead of us back in the day initially in our model
paying a 10 % referral fee and keeping a 90 % of it. We've now created a Feed the Greed model where we are now paying 90 % and we're keeping 10%. And we're far more lucrative today than we've ever been because we've got so many people wanting to jump on to our model and pay us a subscription, which by the way is $330 a month. So.
Anthony (06:11)
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, that's
really affordable.
Chris Bockisch (06:21)
Well, it is because they get a lot more than just the software. They get coaching and they get five websites which the software creates. They get AI, they access to the largest listing location, variety of new investment grade properties in Australia, and they've got site plans and floor plans and marketing documentation and pretty much all the information that they need to be able to sell that property to the client.
and obviously all the information that the client needs to be able to make an informed decision when it comes to purchasing that property.
Anthony (06:50)
Right, okay. So the name property in a box really does fit your business model. It's everything they need to sell a property to someone all at their fingertips,
Chris Bockisch (06:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And look, it's interesting because someone's asked me in the past what sort of advice would I give if they were going to start a SaaS business model today. It's a lot easier today than it was back in the day when I did it. And I think it's about trying to find that niche market and asking all the questions before you jump into building a SaaS.
You know, you really need to know what problem are you solving? That's the big thing. Is there a problem? Can people do without you? And yeah, and it was quite interesting because I wouldn't have followed that same advice when I started. I just thought creating a property aggregation model seemed like a pretty common sense thing to do. No one was doing it back then. And we actually coined the term aggregation property.
Anthony (07:23)
Yeah, sure.
Yep. Okay.
All right.
Chris Bockisch (07:46)
aggregation because I had a finance aggregation business. I said, wait a minute, you know, why don't we just do a property aggregation business, follow the same business models as the aggregators back then, which were planned choice, fast, connective, AFG. So these are pretty big aggregation platforms. The aggregation platforms, for those of you that don't understand, it's a conduit, if you like, between all of the finance brokers and the banks and non-bank lenders.
rather than, you know, 50,000 finance brokers going to the ANZ or Westpac or whatever and going directly to them that would have driven those banks just mad. There needed to be some sort of conduit in the middle where they could look at compliance systems and processes and also offer a software platform, which is what all of those finance aggregators did. And so when we started Property in a Box, we knew that we had to provide marketing support.
compliance, sales support, and that one element that was missing was the software. So we did the software because that's what the finance aggregators were doing. And we just thought, well, this is what you do.
Anthony (08:53)
Yep.
right, so the target market of finance brokers, initially that was mainly because of your network and what you were doing, you kind of fell into that and solved that problem kind of unknowingly.
Chris Bockisch (09:05)
Yeah, yeah, because what was happening is that a lot of the finance brokers were losing deals and that money that they were making pre-GFC, they weren't making post-GFC. And so we thought, well, how can we fix this problem? And we thought, well, let's create a property aggregation model. We called it aggregation because the finance brokers, that demographic we were originally targeting, they're aware of that term.
Anthony (09:27)
Yep.
Chris Bockisch (09:29)
So if I
Anthony (09:29)
Right, OK.
Chris Bockisch (09:29)
was targeting real estate agents, probably wouldn't have used property aggregator. I probably would have just used property supply company. So we positioned it specifically, you know, property in a box, Australia's largest property aggregation platform. That was kind of the secondary message that we had. And we targeted the finance brokers. And I was used to recruiting finance brokers to my finance business. I mean, in my finance business,
Anthony (09:34)
Yeah.
Right. Yep.
Chris Bockisch (09:56)
I recruited 120 mortgage brokers and we were writing $70 million a month in home loans, which is pretty good. Yeah, it was pretty good. And I recruited them all myself. then based on all that experience and the propositions that we built within the finance aggregation model, it wasn't that difficult for me to then create a property aggregation model and just glean off some of the...
Anthony (10:03)
Wow, nice. not bad at all.
Chris Bockisch (10:20)
the lessons that I learned in creating a property aggregation model is the finance aggregation model, But yeah, yeah, so it ended up being another income stream mechanism for finance brokers who are talking to people about finance. They are aware of which clients can and cannot afford property, which clients they have should or should not be investing in property. And what we ended up doing is creating this particular model, which was quite...
daring at the time because what we were doing is we're providing our members, our subscribers with websites as well, which position them as property suppliers themselves. I would provide you, for example, Anthony, who owns Anthony's Finance Emporium, a brand that was Anthony's Property Emporium brand, pop it on our property website.
Anthony (10:58)
Right.
All right.
Chris Bockisch (11:09)
And on the website, had all these properties on there as well. And now you could say to your finance clients, here, have a look at my property website. So we kind of extended the brand of the finance companies that we were dealing with to also include a brand that was kind of similar to theirs, but in the property space.
Anthony (11:27)
cool. So they can basically just white label your software and website and brand it as their own.
Chris Bockisch (11:33)
In essence, was in fact, when we first started, it wasn't white labelled. It was all about property in a box. And that was just me being, hey, it's all about me, me, me, my business. I want to grow this business and to, you know, bigger than Google. But then you start to learn, well, you can do that, not make any money or you can provide a white labelled model and make it all about the property transactor.
So it's interesting as I sort of look back on the evolution of property in a box, when we started, it was, we want to make all the money. We want it to be all about us. And it went from that to now 15, 20 years later. It's all about your brand. Don't even mention us. We don't even want you to mention property in a box. And by the way, you get 90 % of the commissions. We only get 10 % of the commissions and we do all these things for you as well. So it's been a...
an evolution and learning for myself. And I hope that some of the wisdom that I've learned will help any of your viewers out there because there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is something I tell you, wisdom is you walk in the walk as well. So you can tell by the grain, here's my wind range for little while. So yeah, I've made a lot of mistakes as well, but I've always tried to fall forward and then...
Anthony (12:39)
Yeah, yeah, so now I think what you said so far is.
Chris Bockisch (12:48)
put in place systems and processes to ensure that we don't make the same mistakes again. One of our mottos was systemize or die. And that really hasn't changed at all.
Anthony (12:56)
Alright, yeah, that's great advice. ⁓
And you were saying that since you kind of went from that initial outlook of, it's all about you and make as much money as possible to then, making it all about the clients, you're actually making more revenue that way anyway, more profits that way, yeah.
Chris Bockisch (13:12)
Yeah, and recurring revenue. So, which is something that I really enjoy making. And I think, you I used to work at World Vision and in the corporate partnerships team in World Vision, I was exposed to a lot of corporates that wanted to raise their profile by, you know, generating an income for the World Vision charity. And some of the business models that I got exposed to,
Anthony (13:14)
Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (13:37)
They really hit me quite hard. thought, wow, this is fantastic. Telecommunications company, they'll sell a product once. They'll get your telephone business. you're a corporate, for example, they'll get your telephone business and they might be making, depends on how big your bill is, but they might be making seven to 10%. So, you know, they could be making two, three, four grand a month, every month, just because they got that one sale. Same with
Anthony (14:01)
Yeah, right. Yep.
Chris Bockisch (14:03)
AGL, the energy telephone, internet, mobile, energy, those four sort of crucial services, they're all recurring revenue streams and they're businesses that everybody wants. So back in the day after I left World Vision and I wanted to start some recurring revenue business models, I started a telephone and internet business and I only 10 % on that and I got to, I think, $10,000 a month.
in income in the first six months. And that's like back in 2005, 2006 as well. So I had a few businesses going in that 2005 to 2010 era. My wife would say too many businesses, but that 10 grand a month today would have been equivalent to about 18 grand a month in generating that in six month period was pretty decent.
Anthony (14:37)
Yeah.
Yeah
Yeah, for sure. that's what got you hooked on the recurring revenue model,
Chris Bockisch (14:58)
Look, it is and it's funny because I work really hard, really long hours. I'm typically up at four o'clock in the morning and I'll go to bed probably, I hit the sack at eight, so earlier to bed, earlier to rise. But there was a time in that 2005 to 2010 era where I'd be going to bed at three in the morning working really hard. And I kind of dawned on me that the reason
My motivation for working really hard was that because at some point I didn't want to work. Right. And so ultimate motivation for working so hard was laziness. I didn't want to work. So I'm going to work really hard. And so it's quite a bit bizarre. But then you get to the point where you do it for so long and you form all these habits. Now I don't know any different. I can't just not work. I think I'd go nuts. Yeah. Yeah. But I enjoy it.
Anthony(15:26)
Right. Yeah.
Working your life, Yeah, yeah.
Chris Bockisch (15:48)
for good sense of thing as well.
Anthony (15:50)
that's the thing. Yeah, you got to enjoy it. That's great. Thanks for sharing all that so far. What I want to touch on is with the finance brokers, you already had a network there. It was easy for you to probably get your first clients there. You then mentioned that you moved into more working with accountants. Did you have any challenges when you started to go into that niche or was that really just
just as easy as the finance brokers because of your network. And if so, is there any other niches that you then moved into or target markets that you really didn't have any connections and that you had to kind of rethink how you were going to get new clients in that area?
Chris Bockisch (16:23)
Yeah, that's interesting. With accountants and financial planners, I sort of put them in that category. You've got, in terms of trust levels between the professional and the purchaser, you've got financial planners and accountants, which are the two most trusted sectors. And then under that, you've got finance brokers. And then you've got...
real estate agents. And that's not to say, you real estate agents aren't trustworthy. It's nothing to do with that. It's got to do with how often that particular demographic sees that particular professional, right? As I think I've touched on before. And the thing with getting on board accountants and financial planners, because they're sort of in that same category, is they have a more trusted relationship with their database. And therefore, they are a lot more protective of that database.
Anthony (16:56)
So, yep. Yep.
Chris Bockisch (17:10)
They could say, the type of lead that we would get from a financial planner is quantum lead ahead of the type of lead. And I'm generalizing here, but it's quantum lead ahead of the type of lead that I would get from a real estate agent or a finance broker. Because you could have a finance financial planner or an accountant say to you, here's a client, I've referred to you this client. They know the client, the client trusts them, they trust the client.
And the client typically, nine times out of 10, is going to buy that property based on that recommendation from the financial planner or the accountant. So the finance brokers were easier to get on because number one, I was used to doing it. Number two, they needed what I had quite significantly. They needed that. And the financial planners and the accountants were harder to get on, but more rewarding once we got them on board.
Anthony (18:02)
Okay.
Chris Bockisch (18:02)
So
for the reasons I mentioned before, yeah. So it's quite interesting. It's definitely worth, from our perspective anyway, working on that audience of financial planners and accountants is such a better yield. But in terms of approaching finance brokers and real estate agents, they're lot easier to get on. So it's really good practice for your pitch.
but they can also be very lucrative as well. So some finance brokers and real estate agents are awesome. Like they're just amazing referral partners. But so I'm kind of just generalizing, of course, you're to get really special ones in there. yeah, so hopefully that answers your question.
Anthony (18:33)
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
And you're still focusing on those markets to grow your business now or are you a plateau with those guys and you're now moving into other areas?
Chris Bockisch (18:47)
No, no, no, it's still focusing on real estate agents. And because I'm focusing on real estate agents, I'm also offering, and I have for probably a few years now, coaching services as well. Because they're not as, and I'm generalizing again, but they're not as sophisticated in terms of understanding what problems.
that need to be solved. When somebody buys a new property, they don't buy a new property for shits and giggles, right? They buy it because they want to solve a problem. They either want to pay less tax or they want to pay their mortgage off quicker or they want to retire comfortably. And I'm talking outside of first home buyers. So finance brokers and accountants and financial planners, that's the type of stuff that they have. They have those sorts of conversations with their clients about
paying less tax, paying more job quicker, retiring comfortably. That's just what they do. A real estate agent doesn't do that. So as a result of me targeting that market, well, hey, there are a market of licensed property trans actors, but they're only operating in this small spectrum of selling property. In other words, they're only really mainly selling established properties to own occupiers and that's it. So they need a bit more hand holding and coaching.
to get them from point A to point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Anthony (19:58)
the added benefit of having the coaching there sounds like it'd go down well when you're actually talking to these guys about coming on board.
Chris Bockisch (20:05)
And it's good for me as well. you know, I mean, I'm getting younger and it's quite easy for me to just go and sit on the balcony and, you know, just watch the world go by. And it's something I did for probably about a year. I didn't like it. And I found that, you know, as you get older, if you don't use it, you lose it. So I thought, well, what else have I got to offer? I just thought I'm going to start doing some coaching.
Anthony (20:13)
Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (20:28)
And I've created six modules and I run those modules every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, nine o'clock in the morning. So my members jump on, they'll sit in my Zoom room and I'll just do some coaching sessions with them. And then on Tuesdays and Thursdays at whatever time they want, I'll do one-on-one coaching sessions. And I use what I call the squeaky wheel model, which you, if you're,
get in touch with me and you book it in, then you've got a one-on-one with me for an hour or so. Some people, I've got one-on-ones at 6.30 every Tuesday morning, for example. Others might do a one-on-one with me once a month and so it just varies as well. it certainly helps my members and it helps me as well because the more I provide coaching, the more I learn, of course, from each and every one of these different types of property transaction professionals.
Anthony (21:18)
Yeah, that's absolutely awesome. Sounds like you got a really cool group there too. I'm sure you guys have a bit of fun when you jump on the group calls. you mentioned there was a success story and it didn't come from an accountant or a financial planner or financial broker was a guy, his name was Vikus. he signed up with you and...
had a really successful outcome. Do you mind talking a little bit about him and what happened with that story?
Chris Bockisch (21:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
So just a backstory of that is just one of the things I do in the one-on-one coaching, I guess, is I want to try and productize this person or this business model, or how can we take your message, put it in a box, close the lid, put a ribbon on it, and then go and sell it, right? To make it palatable. We're all used to buying something for a fee, right? And so with Vickers,
Anthony (22:01)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bockisch (22:07)
He's a little bit older than myself and he's had a lot of success in property in his personal wealth creation journey. so having this conversation with Vikas and, you know, I asked him to tell me a little bit more about himself and he'd never sold property ever, which was...
Anthony (22:23)
But you never solved property before coming and joining your program.
Chris Bockisch (22:26)
Never, never, never. But what he had
Anthony (22:28)
Wow.
Chris Bockisch (22:28)
got, and this is what I want to focus on, is he had about $30 million worth of assets in equity and property. So he was asset rich. And what was interesting was his backstory. He used to live in India, in the slums of India, no hot and cold running water, no electricity, a little bit like Tasmania. And so he's come from the slum areas, had nothing, moved to Australia.
Anthony (22:47)
You
Chris Bockisch (22:53)
Now he's got like 30 million dollars worth of property. What a fantastic story. So I thought, mate, this is the elephant in the room, right? How do we productize this? Well, this is a rags for riches model. This is fantastic. So we need to, I got him to tell me his story, write it down. Let's get that story productized and put it on the website. And basically, it's one of those stories. This is my background. It was pretty grim.
Anthony (22:57)
Wow. Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (23:18)
This is what I have now through a bit of a struggle and I've learned all these lessons and if I can do it, you can do it as well. Let me show you how that type of a package, marketing package, I guess is the story behind Vickers.
Anthony (23:30)
Yeah, right. Okay, cool. And do you have any other stories in regards to the financial planners, real estate agents and stuff that you mind sharing? ⁓ you know, anyone that might have been struggling before coming to you and then was able to explode their business after?
Chris Bockisch (23:36)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yep.
I do coaching every day. I've got, I've got stories where, you know, people have joined and in, I've got one young guy, he's joined us 25 years old. can't believe it. And he's, he'd be doing probably, I think he's been with us for four weeks, maybe five weeks and he's 25 years old and he has got in terms of
commission pipeline, products that have been sold and the commissions are waiting to come in. Quarter of a million dollars worth of commissions ready to come in in four weeks.
Anthony (24:15)
Wow.
Nice. Is he a real estate agent or is he just a guy that just wanted to get involved in property?
Chris Bockisch (24:20)
I don't even
think he's from this planet to be honest with you, but He's a very switched on guy and he's partnered with another guy who'd be probably my vintage So he'd be sort of 60 early 60s. He's a very switched on guy very good at marketing His background was I think marketing for a very large real estate firm I can't remember which one it was right white or something like that And so he was doing marketing for these big real estate firms. He's got his own
really cool marketing models that he can't tell me about. If he does tell me he's going to have to kill me, unfortunately, but it's highly classified. But he's just getting leads in and his young sales agent is just doing sales like pretty much he's gearing up to do one a day. that's insane. That's just insane. Yeah. So there's that. The demographic of people that do really well with us are probably
Anthony (24:54)
Of course.
Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool.
Chris Bockisch (25:12)
finance brokers, accountants, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. Financial planners especially. I've got one finance, financial planner. I've known him for a while. He's probably doing three, four sales a month because he's got a demo, he's got a database of people that trust him. I think he actually sold his financial planning business, I don't know, maybe a year or two ago. And when he sold it, I think if my understanding is right, he had some agreement where
you I'm selling it to you, you do all the financial planning, but I still want to approach them with property. And it was a very smart exit strategy out of the financial planning. And so now he's approaching all these guys and he's kicking some really good goals. And not only that, but he's such a good guy that I've actually got him doing mentoring as well with my members. So if I get members that are quite new and they need a bit of support in packaging up a deal.
Anthony (25:46)
Yeah, definitely. Very cool
Chris Bockisch (26:04)
I'll refer them across to John and John will help package them up. And he might take a clip on the sale, but at least, you know, if your comms are 30 to 40k, well, that's 15 to 20k if you go 50-50 comms on the comms. So they're pretty pleased with that type of arrangement as well. And it gives some of the younger guys that don't have the experience a little bit of learning from John, a bit of mentoring, and then they can start doing their own sales moving forward.
He's a guy and I think I've known John for, I'll be close to 15 years now. So off and on he's been a member, but probably in the last four years, three or four years, he's been a member and just been really active. I think even probably the last three years, that's when he probably sold his real estate, sorry, his financial planning business. And he's just jumped in and done property full time. yeah.
I've got lots of stories like that where we'll get new members in and they're kicking goals. And look, there's the ones that aren't kicking goals are the ones that are in the coaching sessions learning how to kick goals. But, you know, like I keep teaching people that sort of the members that we've got, you just got to break it down.
Anthony (26:55)
I bet
Chris Bockisch (27:10)
There's two really important elements in a property transaction business. One is lots of clients to talk to. The other is lots of properties to sell. And we tick the second box. So you only got to solve that one problem, which is lots of clients to talk to. And if you don't have marketing dollars, because typically you'd be going, okay, well, I've to spend some money on Facebook and Instagram and so on. If you don't have the money for that, which is fine.
then that's okay. We've got an all sing and all dance and turbocharged nitro injected referral partner program, which allows our members to go and approach referral partners like accountants and financial planners and mortgage brokers and offer them their own free wealth creation education, plug and play system. ⁓ our members can, and it's white labeled as well. So if you're a member of property in a box, you can go to a real estate agent.
Anthony (27:51)
I see. Yep.
Chris Bockisch (27:58)
and say to the real estate agent, look, I've got something that's gonna add a lot of value to your clients and to yourself. It'll add clients, add value to your clients by allowing your clients or helping your clients pay less tax, pay mortgage off quicker, retire comfortably and build well through property. And it's also gonna add dollars to your bottom line. And not only that, but I can create a landing page for you. Here's an email campaign to go out. Here's a series of webinars that you can invite your clients to. Here's banners for your website.
Facebook campaigns, here's some templated Canva templates that you can put your own brand on and put that on your Facebook page and on and on and on.
Anthony (28:34)
Wow, that sounds epic. So if someone wanted to get involved, what's the best thing they can do? Just go to propertyinabox.com.au or do you have any other ways you'd like people to get in touch?
Chris Bockisch (28:46)
The easiest way is propertyinthebox.com.au and look on that website. I'm just looking at the website now. I've only seen it a thousand times, but there's a big gray button on the middle that says click here to find out more. Just click on that and then you can go down and book in for a live demo. I don't think anyone's joined Property in the Box without maybe one. One guy, I think about a month ago, joined Property in the Box without sitting in on my demo.
Anthony (29:12)
Yeah, right, okay.
Chris Bockisch (29:13)
I knew but I have a very consultative on boarding approach and I like to meet everybody before they join property box so everyone fully understands who we are what we do how we can work together I can answer all their questions and then from that point if they do want to join there's a big orange become a member button at the top right hand corner of the property box website click on that just follow the bouncing ball
Anthony (29:36)
Chris, you mentioned when we'd spoken earlier that you are starting to implement some AI into the business. It's a big talking point over the last couple of years and particularly in 2025. So what are you doing with AI and how do you think it's going to evolve your business going forward?
Chris Bockisch (29:51)
Yeah, heavily investing in AI. Our software...
I don't think I mentioned, but we're getting a total rebuild of the software starting Monday, actually. So I would just started that. In fact, my next meeting is with my IT team to drill down a little bit more on what we're going to be implementing into the software. So AI is already in our software. I'm a big fan of chat GPT and some of the other large language models out there, but chat GPT is definitely my favorite, I guess, because I use
Anthony (29:59)
All right. Okay.
Chris Bockisch (30:22)
at all the time. And what we've already built into our existing software is we've got an API from OpenAI, which is obviously CHAP GPT. We feed that into our software platform. And basically what it does is it creates a lot of business assets for property transaction businesses. So if you want to create a suite of emails or a suite of social media posts or blogs or ebooks, you could create property reports as well.
build a referral partner program even though we've already got one you could create content for your website and on and on and on so we've got all of these tools and all of these very carefully written prompts that you can just copy paste back into our what we call bot in a box and it will just create those emails those podcats sorry podcasts it will create those emails it will create those business assets ebooks and so on and you're good to go then
Anthony (31:04)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bockisch (31:15)
just a matter of grabbing the e-book, putting it in Canva, putting some nice images on it, and you've got a nice e-book, which is of course Leadbait. And so one of the things that we're doing with the new version...
is we're keeping Bot in a box in there. We're also going to create a GPT creator within that so you can create your own agents. We're also implementing things like VAPI, which is an outbound AI telemarketing model, which is absolutely fantastic. Yeah, vapi.ai. If you haven't seen it, go and have a look at that.
Anthony (31:39)
Yep, same puppy.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Chris Bockisch (31:46)
Yeah, it's also it's amazing and and Createify maybe we could do something like that if Createify have an API. I don't know if they have yet, but I'm going to find that out. Yeah, if they do, I'll probably put something like that in there. But my focus with the new CRM version is going to be heavily built with AI and AI that can be updated regularly because, you know, what six months from now.
Anthony (31:54)
Yeah, not sure.
Chris Bockisch (32:11)
the whole AI landscape, because it's just growing exponentially, is gonna look a lot different or quite a bit different to what it is today. So whatever we decide on putting into the software today, maybe a lot different in six months. So we need to be able to move fairly quickly and have maybe tools like N8n and creating agents to help with the automations and sort of not just be reliant on the old school CRM.
I think one of the things that we have that's going to protect us from AI for a little while is that we do have a team manually uploading the property listings from all of our builders. all the builders don't have an API each that they can provide us. It's just going to stream properties onto our portal. They might have that on Planet Delusional, but they sure as hell don't have it on Planet Earth. So we're still doing that.
Anthony (32:49)
OK.
Yeah, I can't imagine builders
would be at the forefront of technology right now either.
Chris Bockisch (33:06)
Yeah, so one of the other things will be creating a model where we can give our builders a free platform where they can list their own stock and then that will feed it into our portal as well. And then they can use that portal that they're listing their own stock on to make available to other agents outside of Property in a Box. But it solves the problem of us having to list the stock for them. And there'll be a few other...
quite a few other bells and whistles in that model for them to make sure that that's going to be an attractive model for the builders. But it solves a problem for me, partially anyway, of having a team constantly listing stock. I'll probably have more of a team that's more so managing that the builders are listing the stock in a timely fashion. And we probably have a few floaters around there of staff that will...
and be able to list stock for builders in the event they can't list it. So, you know, there's lots of these little things that we're putting into our software platform, but AI is something that's really exciting, I guess, because it's something that you can leverage off. You know, I keep saying them two most important elements in your business is clients to talk to and properties to present. So supply and demand, right? But the other two important elements
time and money. Right? So if you can save yourself some time, you're gonna make some money or you're gonna save yourself some money as well. So if we can save ourselves some time by getting, giving out a really good free service for the builders and their listing of the stock, well, that kind of is like an API of sorts. Yeah.
Anthony (34:33)
Yeah, for sure. That's a good point.
You mentioned about the leverage because, you know, some of the conversations around AI these days is, AI are taking all these jobs and, what are we going to do as AI takes over the world? But I think particularly at this stage, if you look at AI as a leverage tool to be able to, take over some of those mundane tasks, take over some of that manual labor.
and then move people that are doing that into higher leverage positions where they can manage things from a higher perspective rather than down in the trenches So yeah, think AI leverage in the right way won't take jobs. It'll just help people leverage into higher positions and work more on strategy rather than
Chris Bockisch (34:56)
Yeah.
Anthony (35:12)
the day-to-day tasks.
Chris Bockisch (35:13)
Yeah, there's a lot of people still not using it. It's amazing. Like I said, did coaching quite a bit. And I've come across the odd person that says chat GPT, what? Never heard of it. ⁓ So it's like talking to somebody that's never seen Star Wars or never seen a city. And I actually get quite excited because I say, well, if you've not seen it, you better sit down because this is going to blow your socks off.
Anthony (35:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Yeah,
it certainly does once you get started getting involved with it and we can't even imagine where it's going to be at the end of this year is just evolving so fast.
Chris Bockisch (35:45)
Yeah, yeah. And other software platforms like Notebook LM, which can create a podcast. Not as good as this one, of course, but I mean, it creates a fantastic podcast. you know, we use that quite a bit. Like I'll sit down with a member, we'll open up ChatGPT and we'll create a book. Right? So there's another lead magnet and it's actually quite interesting the way that you can use it.
Anthony (35:50)
Yep. ⁓
Chris Bockisch (36:09)
where you can say to chat GPT, I'll say to my member, what do you want to create a book on? And one of them was Lorraine Hollett, who owns a company called Without Boundaries, and it's a property investment business, obviously. And I said, let's write a book. What do you want to the book on? And she said, well, I'm really interested in things like manifestation and books like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. And obviously I'm interested in selling property as well. So is there a way that we could combine those two?
And I said, yeah, sure. So let's jump onto ChatGPT. And I said to ChatGPT, give me the top 10 books ever written on manifestation, similar to books like The Secret. And he gave me the top 10 books. And then I said, now give me the top 10 books ever written on property investment. And he gave me the top 10 books. And I said, now give me the top 10 lessons from each one of those books. And it gave me the 100 lessons. And then I said, now I want you to write this in a book. I want you to...
write it in the form of or in the style of and I gave it an author's name. It was an author's name that Lorraine Pollard wanted to use. can't remember the author. Write it in long form, write it so that it seamlessly ties in together and voila, we wrote a 40,000 word book in less than an hour. And then we have this book. So there's one asset. We've got a book. Now what we did is we got that book, we dragged it into Notebook LM and
Click generate and it just generated a podcast which is a 20 minute long podcast who did that in about maybe five ten minutes and Fantastic podcasts and now you've got two assets. You've got a book that is quite unique in terms of being all about manifestation generating that can-do attitude and believing in yourself a couple with property investment What a powerful book and then we've got a podcast to promote the book as well. And so it's
Anthony (37:51)
I sure
Chris Bockisch (37:55)
Things like that, that I do in the training sessions with my members. I know I did another one on, one of my members wanted to specialise in what we call group homes or multi-dwelling homes. And so that's you've got dual-lock, dual-living, duplex, co-living, rooming homes. So homes that have got more than one income stream. And he wanted to position himself as the expert in that area. So we wrote a book.
differentiating what's the difference between a dual lock and a dual living and a duplex type property and a co-living and a rooming home and so on. And that book was about 2,000 words, 3,000 words, didn't need to be too long. put him down as the author, dragged it into Notebook LM, created a podcast, and now he's got a book and a podcast to promote the book as a great business asset.
Anthony 38:35)
Yeah, for sure. mean,
not only assets for that business, but just that idea itself. That's a business in a box that you could take and start a business with that.
Chris Bockisch (38:42)
Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting
thing. Isn't it? Like with AI, there's so many AI tools out there, but there's a lot resting on your imagination. How can I use that AI tool and that AI tool with that AI tool and combine them together? Yeah. So there's still that human element of creation, being creative and trying to work out, well, how can I use those AI tools in my respective industry?
Anthony (38:57)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (39:09)
to help add value to my members.
Anthony (39:11)
100%. Yeah. And that's where that leverage comes in using the human element to leverage all of those tools together to create something amazing. So yeah, for sure. That's really cool. going back into the property industry itself, what kind of trends are you seeing in 2025 in Australia? And what do you kind of anticipate happening with the elections coming up and then how that may affect your business?
Chris Bockisch (39:34)
look, with the elections, don't even want to get started on that because I don't trust any of them, but that's just my personal opinion. that there's a bonus if interest rates go up, prices go down, if interest rates go down, prices go up. and there's always a reason for someone to buy property at any given time. but look, in terms of, looking at,
Anthony (39:40)
Yeah.
Chris Bockisch (39:53)
different trends. mean, it depends on different trends that's happening in the software world, like a vertical SaaS industry. There's plug and play SaaS tools out there now like Go High Level. You can just use that software and you can attach your own proposition to it and target your own industry and bolt on a few unique selling propositions there. And it's the same within the property world.
There's all sorts of different types of software that's being developed as well. So that's one trend just in that there's another trend in terms of in the real estate world, especially in the new property space where back in the day it used to be an NRAS National Rental Affordability Scheme was a new kid on the block and everyone was selling that. And then the next thing was NDIES, the National Disability
the special disability accommodation. So there was that. That's kind of starting to die off a little bit now, but there's still some people selling those. Now the new kid on the block is more co-living and rooming homes. And so, which is one of the reasons why I've created another business, which is specifically building dual lock, dual living duplex co-living rooming homes.
right throughout Victoria, Central Coast, New South Wales and up to Victoria and only making those properties available to property in the box members. They're the new kid on the block, more than one income per property, positive cash flow property. But the thing that we can do is we can actually build them in a high capital growth corridor. So typically, if it's a low rental return property, it's in a high capital growth corridor. If it's a high rental return property, it's in a low capital growth corridor.
So to have a high rental return property in a high capital growth corridor is quite unique. It's good to be able to get a good positive income and have that property in an area where hopefully the property is going to double in the next seven to 10 years, right? So have your cake and eat it too. So I guess in terms of trends, that's another trend specific to our industry where we're just focusing now on these particular property types.
Anthony (41:52)
that new business you mentioned, that's something that's only going to be available to Property in a Box members.
Chris Bockisch (41:52)
So I've got that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's backed by a couple of the biggest builders in Australia. And so we create the floor plans. We source the land. And then we've got these really good builders that have been around since Noah played fullback for Jerusalem. And they're able to go out there and build these properties for us. But they're only available if you're a property in a box member.
Anthony (42:18)
Alright, okay cool. That's another bonus for anyone looking to sign up for sure.
Chris Bockisch (42:23)
Yeah, yeah, and excellent service too with that because I'm one of the owners of the business. My business partner is a very, very savvy guy. so within that particular business model, what we're doing, which no one else is doing as far as I'm aware, and I deal with 400 odd builders, is that we're actually going to be running webinars every Wednesday at seven o'clock. And so what our members can do is they can talk to their clients, they can encourage their clients to...
find out more about these properties, invite them to the webinar, and then myself and my business partner will be doing these presentations every seven o'clock. And it just helps to create a funnel, I guess, where we have some sort of uniformity in terms of what's being presented to the clients. So my member's job role is to find a client, ensure they have intent and capacity. In other words, they're ready, willing, and able, and then book them into a Zoom webinar every Wednesday at seven o'clock.
and then we can do the presentation, educate them, give them all the information they need, and that's going to help with transactions and help my members close sales as well.
Anthony (43:22)
Wow, that's really cool. Geez, yeah, I think I've got a few friends that want to take a look at property in a box with all that in there for sure.
Chris Bockisch (43:29)
Well, you got my number Anthony, give us a buzz. don't normally deal with clients directly. What I can do is I would refer you to some of my agents that are absolutely guns and the ones that are really client focused. I'd certainly get someone that'll look after
Anthony (43:30)
⁓ So.
Well, Chris, I don't want to take up much more of your time, but just before we leave, you did touch on it earlier right at the start. But could you just leave with your biggest piece of advice for other SaaS founders out there that are in that startup or growth phase? What would you say to them to be able to kind of navigate those early waters and really get some traction with their particular product or service?
Chris Bockisch (44:04)
Make sure you're solving a problem is the big one. Even though that's not what I thought I was doing back in the day, but I've sort of learned a lot. Solve a problem, make sure it's something that people can't do without. Do it better than anybody else. Have, look, for me, have five unique selling propositions that are going to differentiate you from everyone else and make sure you pull them off really, really well. Like, you know,
largest listing location variety of new investment grade properties in Australia. That's a proposition that we've pulled off really well. We've been doing it for very long time. Coaching, no one's doing coaching in this industry in the new property space. So, you know, I coaching every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do one-on-one coaching. Contract management, we're the only one that does contract management. So we do complete end-to-end contract management. And so there's, you know, five websites. So we provide you with five websites.
Wi-Fi, we can have five different marketing propositions to differentiate yourself from other people, but you can also target five different demographics. So can have a first time buyer website, positive cashflow website, an SMSF specialist website, a multi group home website where you're just selling, you know, dual octualline, duplex, et cetera, and so on. So to be able to...
create five unique selling propositions that are going to differentiate you from your opposition is one thing. Creating them, like actually creating them is another thing. But then being able to do that pitch and present it to people and let it roll off the tongue. It's called an elevator pitch for a reason that you can tell somebody what makes you different between floor one and floor two, not floor one and the 22nd floor. Right. You've only got a certain amount of time. So you've got to practice your pitch as well. And I think that's it because the
Anthony (45:38)
So.
Chris Bockisch (45:43)
The plug and play SAS tools are out there. You can create some pretty easy SAS tools. Think about your price points. Make yourself competitive. But honestly, I would rather be charging a little bit more and getting more value add, and offering more value add, than being the cheapest and the nastiest.
Anthony (46:01)
Trying to compete on price.
that's fantastic advice. Thank you very much for sharing all that. Really appreciate your time today. And for anyone watching that's interested in Chris and Property in a Box, just go to propertyinabox.com.au. click on the big gray button in the middle and book in a time to get a demo. I'm sure you'll be absolutely blown away with the stuff that's involved in Property in a Box. So thank you very much, Chris.
Chris Bockisch (46:24)
Thanks, Anthony. Thanks for having me. yeah, I appreciate it. I'll catch you later.
