Alex Hezari

How does a passion for serving others become so deeply etched into the persona? After hearing Alex Hezari’s stories of war-torn beginnings and family migration it’s easy to understand why he regards his adopted home as a lifelong blessing he constantly wants to pay back. Continued learning through his own and others’ experiences are what drives Alex’s success.

This extreme gratitude is evident when discussing Alex’s sporting ambitions, his business aspirations and even in the unique opportunity he has to serve his commercial property clients.

Perception: the way in which something is regarded or understood. Is the glass half full or half empty? It all depends on your perception.

What about that negative voice inside your head shouting loudly that you can’t do something? Is it really saying you can’t? There’s a reason this is generally called a negative voice.

Alex believes even that negative voice – the one which holds us back so many times – is really about your perception. “I think that negative voice in your head exists to push you, not to stop you,” he says.

Imagine how many decisions you would have made differently if that was your perception. Consider how different your life, your relationships or even your bank account might look, if you had decided to push on, rather than stop. Alex has spent most of his young adult life pushing on and believes it’s a major reason for the success he’s attained.

He attributes the lessons he learned chasing a dream to play soccer for Australia for creating the foundations of his attitude towards life.

As Alex recounts, “when I share my story about wanting to play for the Socceroos and the difficulties I encountered, the first response from a lot of people is, ‘you must be disappointed?’, but I’m not. I’m actually thankful, because soccer introduced me to a lot of different people and cultures and, most importantly, the value of the team dynamic.

“At the time I probably thought I was inadequate and just didn’t have enough talent or didn’t have what it takes to succeed, so my mental strength to be a professional athlete was very poor. That was something I learnt to work on and continue to work on. I had many good coaches, who were actually mentors, and who were more about what it takes to be a team member and then a leader, as opposed to the technical ability of players.”

This was when Alex began to use that negative voice in his head as a positive; every time it said, ‘hold on, you can’t do that’, he would challenge it and use it as motivation to move ahead.

Alex recites a favourite quote as follows; “The actor Will Smith once said, ‘in life if you want to succeed you need to be able to do two things; read and run’. His argument is that you read to learn how to overcome tough situations because there’s no problem you encounter that someone else hasn’t already encountered and you run because you learn to ignore that negative voice in your head that says you can’t do it.”

Time with Alex is probably one of the best motivational seminars you’ll experience. His family migrated to Australia from Iran in the early nineties and from his very first day at school Alex knew he was where he was supposed to be.

Alex learnt English as a second language when “I arrived at Marsden High School and I vividly remember crying all the way to school on the first day because I didn’t want to go. Then I cried all the way home because I didn’t want to leave.

“For me, assimilation into Australia took just one day. I was surrounded by people who welcomed me with open arms. I remember my teacher spending quite a bit of time with me trying to explain I would need a permission note from my parents before I could go on an excursion. The language barrier was a problem, but the time she took to help me was very different to what I had experienced back in Iran.”

Alex’s older brother had moved to Australia a few years earlier and then Alex followed, together with his parents and two sisters, looking for a better life.

Memories of Iran go back to “when I was about five and running across the road to a friend’s house when the sirens sounded. They had a small bomb shelter under their house, but to be honest I didn’t really understand the extent of the risks. For us, it was an opportunity to get together under this one dark roof for an hour, then race outside and play in the streets when the sirens came back on.”

While the risks of living in a war torn country might have been lost on a young Alex Hezari, the need to make money wasn’t. The idea of making money was a lesson he learned as a ten year old.

As he describes it, “just before we came to Australia, we spent about three months in Turkey and you could make money by collecting and recycling bottles. A few of us were doing it and it was great to have some money. What I didn’t like was when the shopkeepers wouldn’t pay us.

“I had set myself a target to buy this toy before we left and because of the problem with some of the shopkeepers I made a deal with the other kids to buy bottles from them at a discount price. They were happy because they were guaranteed to be paid and I found an honest shopkeeper. So that was my first business. What was the toy? I can’t remember,” he now adds.

But the lesson hadn’t been forgotten. While the toy might have been the motivating goal for Alex, in hindsight the lesson was about giving others what they wanted. It’s not something a ten year old would necessarily comprehend.

What Alex believes he was doing was following his father’s lead. “My Dad was a diesel mechanic with Iran Air, but in his spare time he was a taxi driver, almost an Uber driver before there was Uber. It was common for people to use their private car as a taxi. He had an amazing work ethic, he’d been working since he was seven, after his father died.

“One night he walked in and was really stressed – he was often tired, but never stressed. A customer he’d picked up had left a large amount of cash in the car and Dad had no way of finding him.” For the millennials, this was well before mobile phones and social media.

“So Dad drove back to where he’d dropped off the man, which wasn’t his house, and just drove around talking to people looking for the man. The community grapevine kicked in – the 1970s version of social media – and Dad eventually found the man and returned all his money.”

Honesty and integrity were instilled in Alex as a young boy simply through observing his father, and they’re traits he still focuses on today. The young Alex wasn’t aware he was learning, the older Alex is well aware. It’s clear he’s also a teller of very powerful stories.

“Because I take every opportunity to learn from people I meet every day, sometimes I think I should ask permission before I do that,” Alex comments. “Being in commercial real estate, you meet successful people on a daily basis and you can take a bit away from each of them, and after a while you realise you’ve learnt a lot and it hasn’t been in a formal setting.”

Very early on in his sales career, Alex recalls an evening where he rang “this particular client trying to put the finishing touches to the deal and he said, ‘Alex my boy’, (he always called me boy) ‘what are you doing in the office this late?’ I said I felt indebted to him because he’d been so good to us and I just wanted to put it all together.

“He said, ‘my boy I’ll accept whatever you put forward but let me tell you something, I spent all my youth trying to get to where I am today and I’d give it away to get to where you are.’ He was referring to my age; I was about twenty-two or twenty-three at the time and those words have stuck with me.”

Everyone Alex meets is potential mentor and he believes we all have a story to tell. According to him, “if you’re prepared to put your ego away and listen, you can learn a tremendous amount about life, business, leadership and relationships.”

Alex credits learning this from “a person I was prepared to listen to who said to me ‘you can either feed your family or your ego, you can’t feed both.’ Again it stuck with me and it’s true. Ego gets in the way of you really connecting with others; it gets in the way of understanding a situation from the other person’s perspective.”

The crux of this is that “if you’re so busy being in your own shoes you can’t see another’s point of view, it’s very difficult to have any sort of meaningful conversation.”

One of the best pieces of advice Alex received was from his brother’s boss who was selling real estate in a really tough and extremely challenging multicultural market. “Most would be at breaking-point but he wasn’t – he was always calm.”

Alex asked him how he stayed so calm. “He said, ‘What do you think we do in this business?’ I thought, ‘well you sell real estate’. He said, ‘No Alex I don’t; I help people. Selling is a by-product so when you go out there, go out to help people, don’t worry about the sale.’

“Again it’s a lesson which has stayed with me and I apply it on a daily basis. Selling commercial real estate isn’t about me or about this company – it’s about the person who has come to us for help.”

So if selling is about the person, then the first part of the selling process is to get to know the person. It means ditching the ego and opening the ears. Alex firmly believes it’s all about hearing their stories.

“In order to hear their story you’ve got to spend time with them” Alex adds, “because every story is different. Just like every fingerprint is different, so are each of our stories. The key qualities I appreciate in people I meet are being genuine and authentic, so it’s important I display them as well.”

The danger Alex sees for many though, is they try to copy their mentor rather than taking the bits they need and moulding them. “I think it’s great to have role models, but every person has the ability to be their own version of that,” he comments.

“So while you’re learning from others, don’t drop the focus on who you are. I stress that with my team and I’m working with them continually to see the talent in themselves that I see: the abilities I see in them that sometimes they might not see.”

Alex believes he might never have made into the real estate business if it hadn’t been for an office manager who saw something in him.

Whilst at University, “I never got the chance to gain work experience in the industry as I was working in retail and that held me back a little. One day I saw an ad in the local paper but it said you need at least two years’ experience.

Alex candidly says “I still don’t know what motivated me, but I picked up the phone to apply. A lady took the call, and I said ‘look, I would love to do the job but to be honest I don’t have the experience, but it’s not rocket science and I’m willing to work for free’. After a short pause, which seemed to go on forever she said, why don’t you come in for an interview’?”

The interview took place the following Monday at nine o’clock and by Wednesday Alex had his first professional job in real estate. As he gratefully notes, “That lady was the office manager and she saw something in me.”

Putting people first and being prepared to listen to their story was the spark that ignited Alex’s career and the flame is as bright now as it was then. He keeps the flame burning by being prepared to work on himself every day.

“I work on being the best I can be every day, the only person I compete with is the guy I was yesterday.”

ADVICE
It probably comes as no surprise that Alex Hezari would tell a mentoring story as a way of offering advice on being successful.

Alex relates the story as “success comes down to your own definition of it, and it is different for everyone. I’ll never forget meeting a person I thought to be extremely successful in business. He was in BRW Magazine’s Top 200 business people of Australia when I met him and it was a humbling experience to walk around a site and watch him picking up rubbish, making the effort to ensure his property was clean and tidy.”

The lesson that day was “that humility is a key ingredient in any definition of success. So for me, business – or whatever sphere you’re in – is your opportunity to make a difference. Every time you meet someone there’s another opportunity.”

If you’re in the real estate game, or any field where clients are relying on you for advice, Alex’s tip is pretty simple: “make sure you’re telling them what they need to hear.” He admits that can be difficult at times, because sometimes what they need to hear is not necessarily what they want to hear.

As he says, “a doctor doesn’t hide bad news from you, neither should we. Don’t be worried about how the client might respond; be confident in knowing what you know. You can only do that if you equip yourself with the right tools. You need to continue to develop yourself as an individual, as an advisor.”