Andi Kovalcek (00:01):
Welcome to episode number one of the Don't Think Just Do Podcast. My name is Andi K. And with me I have Robbie Lofaro. Look, I suppose we should probably introduce ourselves first just quickly and tell you what this podcast is all about. So, Robbie, who are you?
Robbie Lofaro (00:16):
Well, my name's Robbie Lofaro. I am a real estate business owner. I own Harcourts Connections here in Stafford. I've had it now for, what, three years, I think. Three years this month actually.
Andi Kovalcek (00:29):
Awesome. My name's Andi, as I said. Actually, I work for Robbie. I'm a sales agent here at Harcourts Connections. But look, we don't want this podcast to be all about real estate. We know there's a lot of real estate podcasts out there. Obviously we will be talking to lots of real estate agents and people in the industry because they're some of the only people we know. Isn't that right?
Robbie Lofaro (00:49):
Yeah.
Andi Kovalcek (00:49):
But the stories won't revolve around property and sales primarily. We actually wrote something down the other day that really resonated with us that we kind of wanted to be the theme of the podcast. Here it is. We wrote down that we all have something to share with the world. We're just not sure what it is yet. We will figure it out along the way if we don't think, just do. So these will be the stories of ours and people we meet along the way, including people we already know, about sort of how we all took action and then saw some forms of success from taking those actions. So Robbie, look, you obviously make some pretty big decisions every day. Would you say that a lot of the time you just have to act, kind of jump in the deep end and. figure it out and do the thinking along the way?
Robbie Lofaro (01:32):
Yeah, that's literally all it is. I literally just did a training session this morning about this.
Andi Kovalcek (01:37):
Tell us.
Robbie Lofaro (01:37):
Partly because we had spoken about doing this podcast yesterday. I said to all of our newest agents and our associates, and I just said, "You can't plan things. You can't just spend your whole life overthinking, over planning, over analyzing to get where you want to be." I said, "Who here wants to be successful?" Then I said, "Who wants to be rich?" Obviously everyone put their hand up. I said, "But what is rich? What does that even mean? How do you know when you're rich? At what point do you say, okay, now I've made X amount of dollars, I'm officially rich?"
Andi Kovalcek (02:13):
Yeah, right.
Robbie Lofaro (02:14):
There is no thing, it just doesn't exist. I said to the team, "If you want to be rich, it's a mindset. You have to think like you're rich." Rich is a mindset. Poor is a mindset. Obviously in real estate there's an opportunity to make a lot of money, but there's also an opportunity to not make a lot of money. There are a lot of real estate agents that don't and we have those in our business. So the relevance of the session today to my team was you just need to take action. I think it's relevant in most industries where if you want to succeed, you just have to do, you take the risk, get out there and make it happen.
Andi Kovalcek (02:50):
Yeah. Awesome. That's a really, really good thought. I suppose I also wanted to kind of see with Robbie, I know Robbie, as you said, we literally took action on this yesterday. We decided we wanted to do a podcast, and here we are with all the equipment ready to go. But what else, mate, do you want to talk about on the podcast going forward? What sort of themes? I know you had a bunch of ideas last night. You were messaging me at 1 in the morning saying, "Hey, I've written down all these things I want to talk about on the podcast." What are some of those things?
Robbie Lofaro (03:14):
So I want to talk about business ownership. I feel like starting a business is something that a lot of people want to do, and often it's not necessarily that it's hard to start, it's hard to just take that leap of faith and just jump in and do it. So I think business ownership is a big thing, which ties into entrepreneurialism and whatnot, changing careers. Like for you, Andi, you went from a pretty high paying job in corporate banking to real estate, and you took a huge risk doing that. I think now obviously it's paid off, but at the time, that was a massive pay cut, it was a massive risk. But you didn't think about it, you just did it.
Andi Kovalcek (03:48):
Huge.
Robbie Lofaro (03:49):
So I think that's something definitely to talk about, but it even extends to relationships, dating, all that sort of thing as well.
Andi Kovalcek (03:56):
Yeah, absolutely.
Robbie Lofaro (03:57):
Yeah, so that's kind of where I wanted to take it.
Andi Kovalcek (04:00):
Yeah, I think that's really cool. Obviously guys, Robbie and I had the idea of doing this podcast yesterday, but we'd been talking about having something to share with the world, just not knowing what it is yet. We figured, hey, if we talk about it enough or talk about things enough, we'll figure it out, right? If we just jump in, start recording, which is literally what we just did, we'll figure out something cool along the way. I think from what we were talking about last night on the phone, a lot of people are in the same boat as us.
(04:29):
Regardless of if you've started something, if you've taken action or not, or if you're still in the thinking stage of doing something with your life, if you've actually made millions of dollars, whatever it is, everyone always keeps talking about there's more, there's better. I have to be better there. There's always more out there. I'm not at my peak, I'm not at my potential. We're all on the same journey, just at different stages of our journey. So relatability is going to be a huge thing going forward with this podcast, us relating to... That's what we want is what I'm trying to say. We're wanting everyone that listens to be able to relate, and the people that we talk to really going, "Wow, I understand what these guys are trying to do with this podcast."
Robbie Lofaro (05:07):
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping too. So time will tell.
Andi Kovalcek (05:10):
Yeah, absolutely. So look, I mean, I don't really have too much more that I want to talk about on the first podcast. Well guys, we look forward to chatting more with you, and yeah, stay tuned.