Ray White New Zealand kickstarts year with growth and development

The day was opened by Ray White managing director Dan White and Ray White New Zealand chief executive Daniel Coulson who welcomed the group.

Mr White and Mr Coulson reflected on the past year including the wins and the challenges, and discussed what’s in store for the year ahead.

The first keynote speaker for the day was award-winning behavioural scientist Milo Wilkinson who spoke about the brain and mental acuity, as well as behaviour and change.

Ms Wilkinson shared insights into the importance of hydration for mental acuity.

She emphasized drinking approximately 3L of water daily, noting that dehydration can slow brain function by 40 per cent.

She also spoke about the power of visualisation, detailing a Harvard experiment where a group that only imagined working out achieved 8 per cent muscle mass increase, nearly equal to the 9 per cent increase in the group who actually worked out.

"If I can imagine my own excellence, then I will achieve it,” Ms Wilkinson said.

The event was then divided into two breakout sessions, one for sales and one for property management.

The sales breakout sessions included a panel with top performing agents Rachel Berry from Ray White Mt Eden, Jiby Thomas from Ray White Metro, and Victoria Turner from Ray White Matakana, hosted by Daniel Coulson; a NurtureCloud session with Ray White chief strategy officer (real estate) Mark McLeod, and a session with Australian real estate stalwart Mat Steinwede (pictured below).

The property management breakout sessions included a network update from Ray White head of property management Zac Snelling, a session with Joe Shannon from The Efficiency Co on time management and productivity, and a session with the minister of housing Hon Chris Bishop.

The final session for the day saw former All Black Kieran Read take to the stage to discuss what it took to become one of New Zealand’s most revered rugby players.

The session was hosted by former Black Fern and sports journalist Melodie Robinson. The pair discussed leadership, culture, and growth in high performance environments.

Mr Read said talent can only get you so far when it comes to high performance.

“I probably realised talent does only get you so far... if you're thinking about mastery, thinking about getting to the top of your field, whatever that is, you've got to get there through that work ethic,” he said.

He said high performance also required 100 per cent focus.

"If you're focusing on something in the future, if you're focusing on something that's happened in the past, there's no way you can give 100 per cent focus on what you're achieving now,” Mr Read said.

Rosie Harvey from Ray White Taupo said the event was “fabulous”.

“I really enjoyed everything. I loved the speakers,” she said

“I got something out of everything because I just really enjoyed the interaction from all the speakers.

“I think my favourite was Milo’s session this morning. I really relate to all of that, digging deep into people’s personalities and how they all relate to everything.

“That’s really one of my things that I love, so that was fabulous to just go through that with her.”

Ray White Howick’s Anton Huang also highly enjoyed the event.

“I think it was well organised and it really packed through all the goodies without too many breaks. It's really, really good,” Mr Huang said.

“I personally liked Matt’s discussion, certainly with the sharing of the loss he had and with the tough start. Lots of the information was very genuine, very powerful.”