4 minute read
INTRODUCING SIYUAN GUO - 10 & 10 in 10
10 & 10 IN 10
INTRODUCING SIYUAN GUO
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Getting one of our busy team to sit still can be difficult, so we bribe them with coffee to spend 10 minutes with us. This week we pulled Siyuan Guo from Black Group Realty aside to ask him 10 personal, and 10 professional questions.
PERSONAL
1. What’s your coffee order? Flat White
2. What song is on repeat on your playlist at the moment? Studio Ghibli Scores
3. Which App do you spend the most time on? WeChat (70%), WhatsApp (20%), KakaoTalk (5%), Line (5%)
4. Where do you think New Zealand’s best-kept secret is? A lot of the smaller towns are amazing places to spend one or two nights, many are easy to drive past when you have a main city destination in mind. For myself Paihia will definitely get a revisit soon
5. How do you start each morning? Glacially with great aplomb.
6. If you could have coffee with anyone in the world, who would it be? David Attenborough
7. It’s date night - where are you making a reservation for dinner? Through experience I have learned to first subtly ask my wife about where she would like to eat at again, or a new place she has heard of over several days. Then I book the place that has repeatedly come up. Works every time. What’s your go to ice cream flavour? French Vanilla
8. If you were to win a reality TV show, which one would you have the best shot at winning? Survivor, the one where a group of people is essentially left on a uninhabited island to fend for themselves. Not because I think I would win, just because I think it combines the best parts of an real life adventure, detox from technology, and diet programme.
9. What was the last book you read? I have been catching up on the Wandering Inn, by Pirateaba (Fantasy/Adventure). Essentially about normal people tossed into a (more) fantasy Game of Thrones world with magic usage being common and mundane for most people..
10. Where in the world do you wish you could head to for a holiday? The International Space Station. I believe tickets are $55m each.
PROFESSIONAL
1. What was your first job? TAB Sales Rep
2. What did you want to be when you grew up? Archaeologist (a la Indiana Jones)
3. Tell us the thing you love the most about working in real estate? Every single property is unique, so every client brings along that fresh sense of excitement and opportunity.
4. Give us some advice to pass on to someone thinking about joining the industry? Join an office where you have a friend/mentor to provide advice and guidance, especially for your first 6 months. My first experience joining an office was being lead to a cubicle, given my company land line phone number, and a ‘good luck’. The industry is still mostly the same for new agents just entering an office.
5. What would you consider to be your greatest achievement? I closed a sale so well, the vendor actually visited my office and told my boss he would like to pay an increased 0.5% on the agreed upon commission rate. I only found out later when my boss called me.
6. What motivates you? The joy my work brings out in others.
7. Share with us your property must-have? Garaging or at least off street parking. Higher density city means parking spaces are more valuable than living spaces already. Trend will only exacerbate with continued development.
8. What do you wish you’d known before you started out in your career? Almost no one reads the heading part of property adverts, so have fun being creative with headings, with puns, metaphors, jokes, etc.
9. Tell us someone who inspires you? Socrates, for the Socratic method of learning and critical thinking.
10. Million dollar question - how’s the market at the moment? Good time to buy up heavily discounted investment properties and land-banking development land. Great time to be building new property to catch the cyclical rebound in 12 to 24 months.
