All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another instant email. Today I'm going to bring you another interesting and successful guest to talk about luxury, in this case real estate, marketing, and how to build the right partnerships and collaborations around the world to build a successful career. Now for that we're going to have Idina Gama-Jina, she's a successful real estate broker and the founder and owner of First London Property. So for that we're going to have an interesting conversation that touches on those three elements and a little bit about her story on how she's built a successful career in a competitive industry such as luxury real estate in London, which is one of the most incredible cities when it comes to real estate.
So let's get her in and I hope you enjoy it. I'm glad that we're doing this. I'm glad that you're here with us and you are coming live from a very beautiful property in London. Where are you at the moment?
I wanted to showcase you, one of the London's finest addresses in Kensington in this gorgeous luxury fad of four bedrooms and four bathrooms with a really large entertaining space, as you probably can see behind me. Wow, beautiful. Obviously I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. So I've been in London property market for over ten years and I have started my career in Goldman Sachs and I was a banker before.
In 2009 when I graduated, now I'm selling a whole day off, London was at the start of real estate boom. So we had our first big development by Kennedy Brothers and a lot of other developers that realized that London is such a great place to leave but we haven't got any luxurious, lovely apartments that everybody wants to live in. So we started building a lot of luxury developments and I thought it would be fantastic sector to work in. I worked for a few really big real estate companies such as Harrods, Astites, that is a talk of luxury real estate and then about eight years ago I started my own company, that's called First London Proxy.
I realized that there was a lot being afforded myself of somebody who can really take you around and tell you what's best for us and sort of guide you for the process because it's quite difficult and there's lots of under water stones that you aren't aware about like taxes and lawyers and different loopholes and all the rest of it. So what we do for clients, we basically take their hand and walk them around for the process of buying proxy in London. Now one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is how have you transitioned? Because I know you talked about working at some of the biggest brokerages and now starting your own, focusing on the knowledge, the attention to details, the personalized approach, which is something that sometimes it lacks off at these bigger corporations and these bigger companies.
So what is something that you've been able to do to differentiate yourself but also to become the go-to person when it comes to luxury real estate? Well, what we do first of all, we've done work nine to five or ten to five like a lot of estate brokerages in London. So if you need to do viewings on a weekend, we can, if you work for the week and the only time you have at seven p.m. or eight a.m.
we will make sure that we'll get you in at that time or on Sunday when nobody would want to do a viewing on a Sunday and we'll get you in at any time you like. Another very good thing is that we have a very good relationship with a lot of owners over the years, over ten years with relationships with developers, small developers, large developers like Kenji Brothers and small developers which we have special relationships. So when we go to them and there is a flat that they've just done and it's amazing, we can be the first ones to tell our clients about those flats and it's going to be exclusive apartments, top of the market and that our clients can go in first before anyone else on a Sunday afternoon if they want to or on a Monday morning if they want to and they're going to see it first before anyone else before it hits the right move or the Zoopla or the all-port self, our clients will see it before the portals. Another very good thing is that we're basically handheld through the process so we're going to tell you about all the tax loopholes and we provide advice, not personally, but we recommend tax advisors who for example can help you save money on the STEM duty who are very good at what they do and who's going to make sure that you're going to have a very safe transaction that you're not going to lose money because you didn't know you wasn't a UK resident and there is another 3% or 2% tax debae for you or it's not your first property.
We're going to make sure we're going to line up all the specialists, solicitors and tax advisors for you who is going to give you the best advice before you make the purchase you're a well aware of what to expect because remember there are costs and property purchases everywhere and London's not exclusion and you need to know about those. So tell me a little bit about the relationships because that's something that I found it very interesting you've been doing this for many years and you've been working with big brokers, developers, interior designers and all these real estate professionals not just from London but from all over the world. I'm here in Miami, we connect it and we work with the same type of clientele and the fascinating thing is that in order to provide that 360 degree luxury exclusive experience you need to go beyond on what it is just your comfort zone and that's why even yourself came all the way to Miami you brought yourself some clients in here we started to work on something together and we expand together. So tell me a little bit about the importance of taking that extra mile to build those relationships to build that trust and to keep expanding to relationships.
Absolutely, thank you. That's a really good point. I'll virus. So what we start doing is we are working with you now and because obviously we have a very good relationship where we trust you and we bring our clients to you because we know the properties and the service that you offer is excellent and it's on the same level as what we would do for our own clients and it's very important to have partners in all of the countries and especially Miami, you know, I mean, the United States but especially cities like Miami, New York and you know, Paris, London.
So yeah, it's definitely something very important that I think every broker should do because a lot of people, a lot of our clients who are in London but maybe contemplating having a second residence and they work somewhere sunny or they want somewhere different, more busy or less busy, more green, more clean, then we obviously go to our partners like your souls and we basically trust you as our clients because of our relationship to show the best properties what you have in Miami or in the United States. How do you use social media to market yourself or how do you do in general market yourself to accelerate the process? Well, so for basically we are very discreet, very private broker who for years just did world referrals, world of mouth. We didn't look for any clients because our own clients refer us always that we were very happy with the service and so what happened?
So sorry about that. So what happened basically about a year ago. We realized that we, it's very important to be on social media and build a personal brand. As people need to know who you are, you know, if they go online and you don't come out from the search, it doesn't matter who that is instantly you think, oh, that's really strange.
You know, this person is not on LinkedIn, he's not on Instagram. You know, that's very, that's very strange. You know, you want to know who that person is and then you kind of have a degree of luck of trust there basically. So if you are trying to build a personal brand, it's very important to be present on social media, to be present on LinkedIn, to be present on Instagram, you know, TikTok or whatever.
I don't do, I'm really going to, but we start doing it. I feel like TikTok is, you know, what my five year old would do. But now TikTok is huge and you get a lot of leads for younger generation for it. So maybe not our clients, but their kids would definitely bring them back to us because they are going to be on a TikTok.
And so we have a team, but now we have a team of five people who basically run our social media, who do all of our reels, who do our postings, the common film videos about apartments, houses. And we do a lot of very knowledgeable information that we post as well. And I think it's important because then what they get from us is a lot more than like I said, going just with right move for the regular broker because we are very socially present and we give them loads of information that no one else would give them. And you know, if they look for our Instagram, they can learn so many tips.
It's thousands and thousands of legal fees saved for them. And also remember an apartment is always two things. It's either home for a very long time. You're buying home where you leave.
You're thinking about your kids, your legacy, you know, how you're going to pass it on or how you're going to have a cup of coffee and what your grandchildren there in 30 years, or it's an investment that you want to rent out. So you always buy a home within these two particular sets of mine. So listen, I wanted to just mention something because we could be speaking forever about different topics. But one of the questions that I always ask and you're in London.
So that's the city of luxury. It's a word that it comes in so many different shapes and forms. But what is it really luxury to you? What's really luxury to me?
I think a very beautifully designed to do what's best standard you think is your own luxury home because at the end of the day, when you come home to a beautiful house or flat, it could be a very well designed one bedroom, it could be really well designed two bedroom or it could be beautifully designed house. And to me, the luxury is that is that closeness, is that beautiful home that you build for yourself? Beautiful. Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate it. Now, last question for you, Irina, if you have to tell anything to your younger self, your young, but do your younger. Like if you were studying today, again, what would you advise that you could have done differently? Gosh, that's a good one.
Thank you. It's a very good question. Well, what I would advise that if for some reason, your career in whatever particular industry you have for what was designed for you and you dreamt about all your life, but it didn't happen. Like it didn't happen for me at Goldman Sachs.
You still can find your dream job doing something else. Don't beat yourself up for years. You didn't become the one banker. And when I would say to my younger self that, yeah, just be easy on yourself, that there's lots of wonderful jobs and you can really excel at them.
If it didn't work out, keep going and don't beat yourself up. I love that. Well, thank you so much for anybody that is going to be watching this or listening to this later. Where can they find you?
What's the best way to connect with you? So the best way is to come and the easiest way on our Instagram, which is First London Property. You can follow us. You can send me any questions in the DM messages and I will be happy to answer.
And yeah. Well, thank you so much. And I appreciate it. Please make sure to follow her.
Connect with her. She's a superstar, very successful and very knowledgeable when it comes to life through real things. Thanks again, Nina and with each other. Thank you all for having a lovely day.
Bye bye. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.