Regardless of your area of real estate, you may find Scot Fuller’s face familiar.
“I never, ever planned on getting into real estate,” Scot insists, explaining how he was “hounded” into the profession.
“I just never wanted to.”
Despite the protests, real estate runs in Scot’s blood.
His mother, Gail, is a highly respected agent in their hometown of Byron Bay, and Scot grew up watching her work.
However, it wasn’t the career for him.
“I left school and did child care, and was a teacher for a while,” he recalls.
“Then I went down to the snow, had fun, came back – and Mum asked me to work for her office.”
He declined her offer, despite the fact that some of his friends were now working for her.
“She just kept hounding me and hounding me,” he continues.
“Then she asked me to just come in for a day and help on a house, ‘because they were just overworked’.
“Now it’s seven or eight years later, and I’ve got my own agency.
“It’s funny how things work.”
Now, Scot and Gail both run Fuller and Co in Byron Bay, a market that Scot has no plans on leaving.
With, by his estimate, 20 million visitors flooding the town each year, and Hollywood stars sniffing around for holiday piles, his hometown credentials have never been more in demand.
“Byron is such a busy hot spot, and we can branch out anywhere from here,” he explains.
“I think having this as your core base is really important to business.
“This is where everyone wants to be; this is why we’ve seen such a big influx of people moving to the area, and the market going through the roof again.
“It’s always going to be like that.”
Scot explains how Byron Bay agents have a different reputation to city agents; the insular nature of the town makes it a much harder marketplace to survive in.
“There’s a lot of agents, in relation to the amount of property that turns over each year, and there’s a lot of old dogs that have been here for a long time, so their networks are 30 to 40 years strong, compared to someone like myself.
“It is difficult.”
Scot put his hard-earned reputation to the test when he signed up to be in the 2019 season of The Bachelorette.
“The reason I went onto The Bachelorette was the experience,” he explains.
“With so many people wanting to be on the show and given the opportunity, I couldn’t say no.
“I’m a big believer in putting yourself outside your comfort zone and this was definitely that.”
Was he worried it might be detrimental to his career?
“Massively,” he exclaims.
“It could go one way or the other: it could be good, or it could be horribly bad.”
Luckily, Scot escaped the mansion largely unscathed, which he credits to being conscious of how he came across.
“I don’t care about my five minutes of fame. I’m building a business that is going to be my next 20, 30 or 40 years,” he says.
“It’s all good getting your Instagram followers and becoming a walking advert but, at the end of the day, what are you going to get out of that?”
Scot feels the show helped with what he calls “unconscious marketing”, where people recognise his face.
“Already, when you go and meet them on your first appointment, unconsciously, they already feel like they know you,” he explains.
“Even if they don’t immediately link to The Bachelorette, they know your name, they think they’ve seen you around or something – a lot of unconscious marketing.”
He received more direct feedback from some unlikely sources.
“Obviously, growing up here, I know a lot of people in the trades,” he explains.
“And every single builder that I know was watching it.”
Look out for other agents in our agents x reality TV series and find out what they got out of it and how the experience changed them for better or worse.
