Game of Homes: Winning in a Tech-Driven Market with Simon Whale

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Right, welcome to today's Viking chat with the shy
retiring guy you've never heardof, Mr.
Simon Whale, and the second mostshy retiring guy you've probably
never heard of.
This room's not big enough.
Me.
So, yeah, so we've got Whaleydown today, and really we're
just going to bounce aroundabout all things prop tech,

(00:22):
which is kind of the...
So literally what we discussevery single day, but you've got
this one on camera.
And everything we've done overthe last hour talking about what
we've got on camera.
Yeah.
So, oh God, dare I say this, butfor those who, I mean, for those
who don't know where Whaley is,where have you been?
But Whaley, if you could do itin as little as that 10, 15

(00:44):
seconds, who are you?
Yeah.
So it's the longest I was bornin Kuwait.
No.
So what am I?
I was, I suppose people wouldknow me.
What's the old Simpsons?
10 or 15

SPEAKER_01 (00:54):
seconds, Whaley.

SPEAKER_00 (00:55):
Oh, elevator pitch.
Oh, okay.
Is I was best known for being inthe CRM game or state agency
software, so people have knownme best probably about my time
at Reapit for the best part of15 years.
What did we do?
We sold the company out sevenyears ago now.
Set up Kefuffle as a way ofhelping agents and suppliers
find each other and have a kindof marketplace backed up by

(01:17):
reviews and everything else tojustify who the best suppliers
are.
Of course, depository doextremely well on that front.
And then I'll pretend it wasstrategically, but we've got a
little group now because eitherthrough brilliance strategy, or
accidentally, we've, yeah, we'vegot a few different companies.
So we've got View Agents, whichhelps out what they call

(01:38):
reputation software, helps youwith reviews on any platform,
Google, you know, Trustpilot,Facebook, whatever.
We have the Relocation AgentNetwork, which is a group of
over 750 agents working togethercollaboratively, earning money
from out-of-area referrals,getting better deals from
suppliers and things like that.
And then finally, because it'squite more rich buying

(01:59):
loss-making proptechs, is we gotUnisuit, which was the global, I
suppose, PropTech provider.
If it scares agents in thiscountry that there's over 1,000
suppliers in the PropTech spacehere, Unisuit has over 10,000 on
it.
So just think about the horrorshow of that.
And so that's all startingtogether.

(02:19):
And actually, although it's beensquare pegs in round holes,
they're all fitting togetherquite nicely and working
together.
Nice.
So, I mean, PropTech...
As we know, some agents willinstantly cringe at the mere
word.
I think fewer now than maybefive, six years ago.
I think COVID definitely helpednudge some of those.

(02:41):
It accelerated it, didn't it?
It nudged those people, didn'tit?
Those who were sat either on thefence or sat in the camp of it
ain't broke, don't fix it kindof thing.
It definitely got some of themoff the fence, didn't it?
It forced a realisation aboutoperating realities when you're
faced with a crisis like that.

(03:03):
And then also, I think by doingthat, it has kind of forced
people to relook at theirbusinesses.
And I know, you know, obviously,kerfuffle, this is your bread
and butter every day.
But, you know, I think what'sbeen refreshing the last few
years is talking to agents whohave been slowly working their
way through their entirebusiness, top to bottom, and
looking at every single thingthat they do and how they do it

(03:26):
and how they go about it and howthey can make that better.
So PropTech, I mean, obviouslyPropTech, a bit of a label that
was put in it, like you said,were part of Repit for about 15
years, sold that, you said,roughly seven years ago.
Yeah, can I just say as well,just on that property thing, it

(03:46):
is hilarious.
So I heard from one, it was amergers and acquisitions expert
that was, you know, when we werejust going through the process,
and they were talking about, youknow, obviously if you put
PropTech on there, you're goingto, you know, get a bit more
attention for the multiplier andeverything else.
So I very cleverly said, youknow, we need to start
relabelling ourselves.
First of all, PropTech, and thensecondly, CRM.
You know, many agents stilldon't really know what it's a

(04:08):
agency software.
And I think I did it at classictiming from my point of view.
I started calling ourselvesPropTech at the point where
agents absolutely started justrolling their eyes as you did
that.
Oh, God, you're not fromPropTech, are you?
One more listing and everythingelse there.
The only thing I would say, andit is justified, the ivory
tower, I've spoken endlesslyabout why what I've termed

(04:29):
PropTech 3.0 works so well.
People like yourself that havebeen frustrated with the fact
that there aren't technicalsolutions out there, so you have
the ability to much more easilythese days to be able to do
that.
But because you know and liveand breathe at the coalface,
that horrible phrase, minimumviable product, is much more
home to be able to get outthere.
That's it.
I think you understand therealities, right?

(04:51):
You understand the complexitiesof it, because I'm sure you've
seen many of these.
I see less of them now, butthinking at the peak of hype,
prop tech term...
I'd regularly have peoplereaching out, and it was that
common story of, and typicallyit was in the rental space for

(05:12):
us, so it would be, oh, I hadthis terrible experience as a
tenant, or I had this terribleexperience as a landlord, and I
felt it was completely broken,so I've gone out and I've fixed
it.
And either that fix meant tryingto remove agents entirely from
the process, which was quiteoften a theme on a first attempt
cycle with a product, or it was,yeah, we're going to plug this

(05:33):
in, and we're going to totallytransform your business.
But we've never worked in yourindustry and we've never worked
in your business and we don'tactually understand anything
that you have to do or themachinations of that.
But I'm sure it'll be fine.
But I'm sure it'll be absolutelyfine.
And you'd be presented withproducts that...
The foundation, the idea behindit...

(05:54):
There was something there.
Having a crap experience issomething...
Let's face it, that's how allgood products and businesses
come around.
Someone has a or a repeated crapexperience and gets to a point
where they go, surely it doesn'thave to be like this.
And you go about fixing it.
But I think the nice thing...
The solutions that really workare people who, as you say, are

(06:16):
either already in the industryand feel and think that way, or
someone goes, I'm going tochange this, but before I do,
I'm either going to go andimmerse myself in it for a year,
or I'm going to find a businesspartner that gets it.
Yeah, to engage with those earlyadopters.
One of the interesting things, Iknew we were going to be quite

(06:36):
popular with smaller agents whodon't have the time, energy,
they don't have procurementpeople or operations managers,
directors.
What I've been surprised at ishow many corporate clients we've
got and larger clients.
And the same is true for them.
They still only have enoughhours in the day.
There are too many prop techsuppliers out there to do them
all justice.
And so what they're looking forfrom us is that they want to get

(06:58):
to the tech at the most excitingstage, which is just beyond
guinea pig stage.
So you don't go through all thepain of doing it.
You know you're going to get thebest deal in the marketplace and
you're going to have the abilityto hone the product as well.
Have a bit of say in where itgoes, shaping.
Exactly, a bit of ownershipthere.
And then the critical thing isyou're not doing, you know, the
worst time to adopt it is justbecause every one of your

(07:20):
competitors has it, isn't it?
So that's when it's notparticularly good.
So that's where we try to do iswe try to encourage as many
early adopters, but not theguinea pig stage.
Yeah, I think it takes a veryunique agent.
with, like you said, a strongbusiness model, a strong
mindset, and a very clearunderstanding of what problem

(07:42):
that product's trying to solvethat is willing and able to get
involved in that early stagestuff.
Well, let me turn the tables onyou as I'm one to do.
I mean, let me just ask you, soobviously it's hard building the
product in the first stage.
Yeah.
What is the next biggestchallenge, though, is moving it
from your own business toanother business, isn't it?
Yeah.
Because I know we've been guiltyin many different businesses

(08:02):
I've dealt in where you kind ofthink, I've done the Steve Jobs,
haven't we been brilliant?
I've really been brilliant.
We tell the world, you know,look at our brilliant release
and glory in it.
And then just like you saidthere, yeah, that is good, but
we need it to do this.
We don't work in quite that way.
And it's much harder to rollback at that stage, isn't it?
Where if you just engage withthose agents at an earlier

(08:23):
stage, you could have built thatnecessary configuration and
customisation.
Yeah, and I think, look, I thinkwe learned that.
I mean, look, we came into itknowing that to a certain
degree.
I think coming in to So I findthe letting space really
fascinating from a techperspective for two reasons.
I think when you look at it fromtech as an opportunity,

(08:46):
lettings, there's a lot ofregulation and compliance.
And there's a lot of things thatyou have to do.
And so that side of it lendsitself to in that there are
certain things, there arecertain processes you have to go
through.
the complexity with that isbecause it is an industry where
you all have to do so many ofthe same things what you then

(09:11):
have is the order or the way inwhich an agent facilitates those
becomes part of that company'sidentity yeah that's the that's
the bit that defines you as thedna isn't it really and that's
where you get tricky and and andI don't think they'll mind me
saying this because they're aradically different platform now

(09:32):
and they've come an insanelylong way.
But I think that was something Ilearned when Richard first
launched Goodlord.
On the surface, beautifulproduct and I could totally see
what he'd gone.
He'd had his experience inFoxton's and he was like,
there's got to be an easier wayto do this.
And he was absolutely right.
And I remember him coming andpitching it to us and it was a

(09:54):
beautiful looking product, butthere was...
zero customization it was thatwe've decided this is the best
process and you adopt this isthe process and you you know at
the time you had to use theirtenancy agreement you had to use
their referencing in it and itwas locked in and there were no
there were no iterations to itat all and whilst it was

(10:15):
beautiful it made you as anagent go yeah but that's not how
we do things and i think yeahand rich rich's pushback at the
time was like yeah but this isbetter and it's like yeah this
is what you you think is

SPEAKER_01 (10:27):
better.

SPEAKER_00 (10:28):
I'm not sure I agree.
And also, something you touchedon in a comment earlier, if we
are all forced to adopt anexactly identical product, where
do we how do we become adifferent business at the end of
the day if we're all using thesame 10 products that mandate we
do it in exactly the same wayare we literally just a white

(10:49):
label agency let me play devil'sadvocate or as i call it making
myself more unpopular withestate agents than i already am
there is there is by the waythat is true and i think the
only thing worse than you knowis all those uh and that wasn't
in his case but principles ofbusinesses they know it has to
be like this there are some verywell-known ones there we just
put people's noses out of jointwhat i would say is it's not and

(11:11):
it's kind of the world'ssmallest violin stage when
people start thinking about poorold prop tech but if you divert
yourself building customizationafter configuration option
you're never going to drive theproduct further forward so there
is the thing about trying tofind your perfect kind of
clients because otherwise theproduct doesn't develop further
forwards in the way that itcould do and that's quite a
difficult thing to get yeah it'sit's definitely finding that

(11:32):
balance and look we've we'vedefinitely learned that that
lesson like we do a lot oflistening at Depository we do a
lot of listening to our agentsand you know we do a lot of
listening to people who aren'tyet with us you know how do we
get you on board really like wealways like that by the way
because that's all some of thevery best businesses I do almost
do pre-adoption pre-projectstuff before they've actually

(11:53):
got it on there so that thatputs a lot of faith into the
business that this is you knowyou'll hear it yourself I'm sure
and certainly I've heard it inthe CRM space where Jesus you
know we don't get this from ourcurrent provider I think the
thing is I think we got ourfingers burnt a bit early days
and i think maybe because wewere one of the first to really
be doing it to to say right youlike it yeah but it needs

(12:17):
something for you to come onboard what is that tell us what
it is um and i won't name theagent there's there's a good
independent london agent that wesigned on quite early doors um
on the premise that there was avery particular piece of
functionality that they wantedbuilt into it and we were like
Cool, fantastic.
If we build that, you're onboard, right?

(12:38):
Done deal.
Naivety, should have got thecontract signed before that.
But we went off and built it andcame back to them four weeks
later and went, ta-da! And theywent, oh, um...
Yeah.
Next excuse.
We didn't mean we'd adopt itnow.
We spoke about this before,didn't we?

(12:59):
We said this, actually.
One of the, again, agents thatcan sometimes be their own worst
enemies is that lots ofsuppliers will be told, look,
we're not going to have it.
It's a brilliant product.
We're only going to have it whenthere's an integration involved.
And then they say the very samething.
Oh, I've done the integrationnow.
And it's like, you know.
Yeah, just got a few things onmy desk.
Come back to me in a month'stime.
There is a certain burden ofneeding to deliver on and stick

(13:21):
with it.
But, you know, I don't think youreally need to go down the
contractual route because thenit feels like you're being
closed anyway, isn't it?
It's just live and learn andchoose.
I think one of the things that'sfascinating, isn't it?
And definitely one of the fewthings that I have actually
grown up with or grown up at allover my life is that in the
early days of growing abusiness, you're just desperate
for getting anything, aren'tyou?
Any clients on board or anythingelse.
And then you realise throughmany pains Yeah, I mean, I'd say

(13:51):
I've probably learned that morein agency than in software so
far.
I'll give you the list of thatmight change in the future you
know like Uber where you get toreview the client as well we
definitely learned that inagency I think that was

(14:12):
something that took us nearly adecade to learn in agency and it
was only when we sat down oneday as a whole team and really
picked apart the business as wetry and do at least once a year
that we all discovered thatthere was like five or six
clients on our books that werecausing 90% of the misery in the

(14:33):
company it's amazing isn't itand it was that epiphany moment
of we went to the six of themand we wrote them a very kind of
generic polite email saying youknow thank you for your loyal
customer the last few yearshowever we feel like we're going
in different directions it's notyou it's me exactly it's not you
it's me like we feel like youknow maybe we're going different
directions and we'd like tothank you for your loyal

(14:53):
customer but we don't reallyfeel like we're the agent for
you and the fascinating thingwas I bet your staff must have
been so with that as a decision?
First of all, the fascinatingthing was that three of them,
like, we basically either heardnothing or were like, fine,
which kind of underpinned thatit was absolutely the right
thing.
The fascinating thing was theother three came back to us,

(15:13):
like, two of them called and oneof them emailed, she was in
Brazil, Within like 30 minutesof getting that email, I was
like, what have I done?
What do you mean?
I can't work with you guysanymore.
You're amazing.
And it's like, cool.
You need to understand that'snot how you make us and our team
feel.
And those three clients becamesome of our best landlords.

(15:34):
Well, you know, we're from thereview world.
And one of the most powerfulthings, without a shadow of a
doubt, is turning around thoselow-star reviewers into
advocates.
Because then you've got that,you know, sometimes the ones,
some of The very best clientsyou can ever have are the ones
that said, I thought the grasswas greener.
And as long as you have thewherewithal to not say, I told

(15:56):
you so, go on, do one over theelse.
And leave it with them.
If those people don't deliver onwhat they say they're going to
do, you have to give people aget out, don't you?
Those ones, when they come back,though, because they can then
really testify in a way that thevast majority of your client
base probably won't.
And that's it.
Clients coming back.
And we were talking aboutsomething earlier with

(16:16):
depository we've been aroundlong enough now.
And agency being the ratherclosed, you know...
Incestuous.
Incestuous, thank you very much.
That actually was the word I waslooking for.
Game of Homes rather than Gameof Thrones, but that part is
absolutely true, yeah.
But yeah, you know, once you'rein, you don't tend to go too

(16:38):
far.
And the nice thing we're seeingnow is, you know, we're seeing
people who use our platform morefor a couple of years within an
agency and then they move toanother for whatever reason,
promotion, fresh change,whatever.
Yeah, and the nice thing is, youknow, we typically will see
within...
We'll quite often get a heads upsaying, well, by the way, don't

(17:01):
tell anyone, but I'm justhanding in my notice and I'm off
to join this.
And we'll either get like...
And we'll quite often get, arethey a client of yours?
Yeah.
And then we say...
If they say yes, fantastic,brilliant, so glad to keep
working with you guys.
But the nice thing when we getno is we get, okay, leave it
with me.
And the nice thing is quiteoften within that first month,

(17:24):
we'll have...
them get in touch and be like,cool, I've got my feet under the
desk now.
Just wait for the right time.
Yeah, well, I mean, equally, youknow, no one walks into their
new job the first day and golike, boom, you know what, we're
changing.
Or they do, but then they movequite quickly.
Yeah.
They bounce a lot.
But yeah, no, we find, you know,once they've done that sort of

(17:45):
first one, two, three months ofreally getting their feet under
the desk and again,understanding that business,
understanding that operation andgetting the trust of the owners
and their colleagues and blahblah blah that's when we'll
quite often go right I'm nowlooking at how we improve the
business.
And, you know, one of the firstthings we want to do is get you
guys in.
And there's nothing lovelierthan that.

(18:07):
And we've had that for years inagency with base.
There is nothing lovelier than areferral.
The word of mouth, as we allknow, it's overused, but it's
overused for a reason.
It's true.
Word of mouth is the mostpowerful form of advertising or
marketing that absolutely isthere.
And some of the absolute keyfactors, as you will know, and
anyone who knows has had aconversation with me, we will
not be talking about theproperty market or any aspect

(18:30):
you know void is only what goeson inside my head so I know
literally next to nothing aboutany part of the process where I
find get interested about thesuppliers at least here though
is I start to pay interest whenI see when people are being you
know reputations about whatpeople say when you're not in
the room things like beingreferred as I said that was one

(18:51):
of my biggest lead sourcespeople moving to anybody else
people who are getting the ravereviews before they become you
know the in And as you know, andI've shouted about it, even
before Mr.
Simon Ledbetter, Mr.
Net Promoter Score there, you'vebeen our Net Promoter Score
heroes year in, year out,haven't you?

(19:11):
Getting some of the absolutelyhigh score from inception.
And for those people that don'tunderstand it or don't recognize
it, it's very simply that you'llhave seen it yourself where
things like Apple Store ratedfrom zero to 10 and that gives
you a score.
If you are positive, that isconsidered doing quite well.
I haven't checked your latestone, but I know in the early
days you were over 80 for a longperiod of time.

(19:34):
That is off the scale.
Okay.
To be fair, so was Tesla, so itcan show where it can go.
But Apple has consistently beenin the 60s and 70s, and they are
held as one of the paragons overthere.
And the reason why this isabsolutely vitally important and
why some of the very best agentsdo Net Promoter Score as well is
they have statistically shownthat it has the closest link

(19:56):
between Net Promoter Scorecustomer satisfaction and
long-term profitability.
So you get these little nuggetsof word-of-mouth...
referrals and everything elsegoing is, you've got a glorious
future.
Look, I think one of thefascinating sort of elements
that I've always found atPropTech is the role that money

(20:20):
and investment finance playswithin it.
Because it's an essential toolin there, absolutely.
You know, I think...
It's definitely part of thatprocess.
We made a very, very consciousdecision not to go that route.

(20:41):
Not to go down and just take theinvestment.
Not to raise too early.
Again, it wasn't...
It's not that we're never goingto raise.
It's not that we're never goingto take investment.
That would be insane to say.
And we do have some plans.
But it was...
If you're...
If you go too fast too soon,I've seen great products and

(21:04):
great ideas raise too much moneytoo early.
And first of all, they treat itlike they've already succeeded.
And it's like, no, no, no, no,no.
You've literally just fired thestarting pistol.
You've not won anything.
You've just given away 90% ofthe business.
But also it places immensepressure on the business because

(21:28):
no one is chucking three millionquid into a startup business or
more.
At a time where you need totalfocus on the business.
Exactly.
And I think, you know, we did alot of thinking about when we
were starting the depository andwe looked at our experience with
suppliers, just generally, notjust tech, but generally what

(21:50):
did we like and dislike aboutsuppliers and what at the
occasional soiree that you and Igo to, where we mingle with a
couple of agents.
It's about half an hour, isn'tit?
What, you know, what are thecommon things we heard other
agents piss and moan about?
You know, and so it was, youknow, and the common things kept

(22:12):
coming back.
Like, cumbersome training, quitea difficult platform to wrap
your head around.
You know, costly onboarding,opaque pricing, slow support.
Slow or almost seeming.
Ticket systems.

(22:32):
Ticket systems, almost slow,almost non-existent support.
And, you know, something wealready touched on, that, you
know, not listening.
Not listening, like going, thisis what we're going to build.
Even when an agent goes, no, wereally need this.
And like, oh, yeah, but that'sboring.
We're going to do this excitingthing.
No, but honestly, we really needthis.
I've been banging the drum forthe last few weeks on a separate

(22:52):
thing, and it was one of PeterKnight's partnership groups
where, you know, you go andlisten to speakers.
And one of them was really,really interesting in that they
were talking about about themain reason why people, across
all generic businesses, whycustomers leave.
And overwhelmingly, I can'tremember whether it was over 60%
or 70%, but it was in thatfigure, people leave because
they believe they're not beinglistened to.

(23:12):
There's no empathy there.
We only have to talk about thebiggest supplier of all that we
know here.
I have no idea who you'retalking about.
Well, exactly right.
But what's fascinating, and thisis where I get so frustrated, is
when we get behind the curtainwith many good agents, that is
the only reason is the onlyissue with it.
It's the emotion.
It is the emotion of it.
I want to deal with companiesthat I enjoy being a partner

(23:35):
with.
And you know, if you've got theluxury of that.
But in terms of what the actualproduct does for them and
everything else, a lot of thoseguys are actually, they're okay
with it.
Yeah.
And look, and I think also whatwe know, like emotions as well,
it's all good to talk aboutdata.
And I think most agents up anddown the country understand that
data will tell them what theyneed to hear.

(23:56):
But the reality is, A, a lot ofagents don't really know where
to start about picking apartthat data.
And a lot of, particularly thesmall agents, and agency is
still dominated.
by small operations.
They just don't have theheadspace or the capacity.
Some of the 28 stats the otherday that Paul and Katie, I

(24:16):
think, were providing overthere.
And it is still somethingabsolutely ludicrous, isn't it?
Like 80% of the industry, oneand two office agents.
And what's interesting there is,of course, is the big ones are
becoming Goliaths as well.
So Commonwealth Countrywideacquiring, obviously, there.
You've got Lowman going at it.
You've got a franchise group.
What's happening at the momentis you're having that really
successful middle band gettingdevoured by the big companies.

(24:39):
In my day, back in, you know,doing the old Uncle Albert and
during the war kind of thingthere, you'd have this, and it
has been the changing of theindustry and I haven't found it
particularly enjoyable becauseback in the day you'd have this
rump of mid-sized agents where,you know, they would be market
leaders so it was really worthdonating time and energy.
They weren't big enough so thatnow you might not make any

(25:01):
margin.
But of course, those have beenthe mergers and acquisitions
targets.
Yeah, and I think, like yousaid, they're a really exciting
band of the industry as asupplier like you said because
they're bigger than ever beforenow they're big enough as a
supplier that they're worthpursuing that they're
commercially viable for you as aclient they tend to be small

(25:21):
enough that they can still makepretty quick decisions yeah
nimble you know if they yeah ifthey want to you know if they
decide I like this let's try ityou know you can be signed and
onboarding within you know twofour six weeks you haven't got
to wait for the next fiscal yearor some escalation to the board
or you know So triple sign offwith a devil's stone.

(25:44):
So yeah.
And it's, it's, it's, it'sinteresting.
It's kind of bittersweet at themoment to see.
But look, it makes sense.
It makes sense.
The way of the world, isn't it?
The way of the world is going.
You can bemoan that as much asyou want to.
But what that does leave youwith is a really interesting
two-tier approach, isn't it?
You've got to either decide toignore the enterprise blue-chip

(26:07):
end of the marketplace or you gofor the SME side of things.
But then it's very difficult totarget all of those guys
effectively.
But I think also it representsnew opportunities, right?
Because...
Those businesses being acquiredand the main acquisition
businesses at the moment haveall made it very clear they are

(26:30):
not slowing down.
They've all got deep pockets andthey're going to keep going.
As long as there's a multiplierin that recurring income.
It represents an interestingopportunity as a supplier
because you might be going tothe big CEO head office, big
brand, trying to bang on thedoor and basically getting told,
yeah, not now.
But...

(26:52):
If you're embedded within aquality business that they
acquire and you suddenly comeinto this business and you have
this respected business thatthis big company has just spent
5, 10, 20 million quidacquiring.
It's a de facto trial.
And they turn around and go,well, oh, why do you use that?
You get rid of that, there'sgoing to be problems.

(27:13):
We love that.
Oh, why do you love that?
Well, this is why we love itbecause it does this and does
that.
Before we did this, we had to doall this.
And now...
you know, and we started usingit two years ago, and by now it
does this, and we know this iscoming down the line.
A very well-known brand that youhave brought on board, it'd be
wrong to talk about acquiredanother one, and I know for a
fact that's actually what you'reable to do, aren't they?
They're able to run with it fora period of time, with the new

(27:35):
processes of the acquiredcompany there, and as you said,
it's absolutely spectacular,they can say, actually, if we
then leverage that back into thebusiness and got anything like
it, so that's where it does getquite interesting, and obviously
there is a, the opportunity forsuppliers is, I think also if we
look at as entrepreneurs buildas agency entrepreneurs building

(27:56):
agency I think it's I think it'shealthy for startup agents to
see that there is this healthymid-market area of, you know,
not every agent builds abusiness, builds an agency to
sell it.
Absolutely not.
There are those familybusinesses and some just haven't
even thought that far ahead.
But I think for some, there isabsolutely this thing of, you

(28:18):
know, I can remain a smallcottage industry business and
that's absolutely fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But if I want to have a 10, 15,20 year plan, I know, I get my
business to that kind of sizeportfolio or turnover or
whatever, then I become targetnumber one for those five, six
acquisition things.

(28:39):
And there's, that's my strategy.
The strategy of, you know,what's definitely happening now,
I've noticed it more on thesupplier side, but it's
definitely happening more inagencies.
The days of opening up and youknow what, you know, I'm just
going to see how it goes.
You know, there's a lot morepeople that are very, very clear
about I'm doing this for threeyears.
I'm coming in and getting out.
And because of theprofessionalism now of of
mergers and acquisitions.

(29:01):
You know, actually you can dothat and it's very, very clear.
You know roughly what themultipliers are going to be.
I thought it was reallyinteresting.
She's not a lady I know well,but I saw Chris Webb announce
today a lady's come on boardthat he's kind of partnering
with on the letting side ofconsultancy who had built and
sold her agency and so was kindof brought on board brilliantly

(29:23):
as someone who's been there anddone it.
And I went and looked into itand it was Vesta Lettings in
Essex I think the lady's name isChristine.
I'm really sorry.
I've forgotten her name.
But that was really interestingto see because, I mean, from
LinkedIn, I didn't spend hourson it, but it looked like that
business was only about threeyears old.
So, you know, they'd come upwith the idea.

(29:43):
They'd done the concept.
They'd obviously achieved somedecent growth during that time
and then gone, cool.
And this is a letters business.
That's really hard to do, youknow, to build up that from a
head of steam, isn't it?
What I think, yeah, it isreally, really interestingly
that whole approach there to beable to understand what you want
to achieve and get out.
The problem is, of course, isthe speed of acquisitions are

(30:07):
going so much quicker than thegrowth of agencies.
What I mean by that is, over aperiod of time, you'd expect
those one, two, three officeagencies to go to four, five,
six.
They aren't growing at a speed.
There aren't mergers happeningquick enough so that that rump
isn't growing.
It is actually shrinking back.
Look, I think one challenge ofthat is the fact that agency
growth And it's interesting, inLondon I think you're starting

(30:28):
to see a marginal shift back,but largely in agency now, the
value's in your lettings andproperty management book, right?
And so that is where the valueis, and part of the reason that
value is there is becauselandlords are quite hard to
lose.
They're quite hard to get, butthey're quite hard to lose.
Once you've got them, they'resticky.

(30:49):
You know, it's a bit like banks.
As long as you're all right, youdon't have to be perfect.
As long as you're doing a rightjob, and you don't run into any
major problems.
I despise Barclays, andgenuinely, this is how pathetic
I am.
I've had so many, you know,their systems when they went
down endlessly.
The simple reason is because Imemorise and know my sort code
and account number off Barclays,because I've been with them

(31:09):
since 11, prevents me frommoving.
And that's pathetic, isn't it?
And if you think about that sothey have to absolutely drop
that and that's for a bank whereyou couldn't take your money out
which most people would kind ofsay that was probably you know
kind of the von seal part of theagreement so it's amazing so So
we don't end up talking for likefive hours.

(31:29):
Let's drop in a few other bigbits.
I don't think we can remotelydance around the topic of tech
at the moment without talkingabout the all-encompassing AI.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's fascinating, isn'tit?
And again, you know, let's usethe groundbreaking and
everything else.
For me, it's really, reallysimple at the moment.
AI has been just spectacular andit's one of those ones that

(31:51):
nobody, although, you know,machine learning was out there
and it was doing some of theautomation there, that
excitement Explosion of itobviously was it now two years
ago, whatever else it seems likea lifetime ago But when we let's
be honest the vast majority whatpeople are talking about 90% of
it Plus has been about contentcreation has been about
marketing what we are nowstarting to witness is going to

(32:11):
be the stuff that that stuff'sas great as it is is Literally
frills and the cherry I thinkthat stuff that stuff was like
your your your Facebook.
Yeah, it's stuff that is everybob and jane or across the world
it's something you can pick upand play with for fun whether
you're on a train and and ithink for any substantial shift

(32:34):
in tech or or any substantialkind of evolution in society
you've got to have that kind ofimmaterial kind of buy-in from
everyone first which then drivesit then being more commercially
driven you know we look at likei said i use facebook i threw
that out there but i think it'sa good one the whole thing of

(32:55):
like you know it started off umas purely a a way to network
online with your friends andfamily you know and there were i
don't think there were anyadverts in there to begin with
and any of that stuff and nowyou now look at the the the
cesspit in some respects thatit's turned into now but um you

(33:18):
look at that evolution and ityou had to get the consumer
buying and i think you're rightlike the the The stuff two years
ago about, hey, look, you canask it to make you a picture of
a kitten riding a bicycle whilstwearing a Michael Jackson bad
outfit.
You know, whatever.
That was fun.
And that got the huge sweepingadoption.
And what it also instantly madepeople do is go, wow.

(33:42):
Like, that's nuts, because thespeed it would do stuff.
Yes, it wasn't perfect, and yes,they still can't do hands, and,
you know, all this sort ofstuff.
Yeah, it's just bizarre, some ofthe stuff.
But the speed, you know, and,yeah, it's fascinating.
But like you said, where it'sgoing, and it's, you know, it's
this thing of, you know, it'sthe dumbest it's ever going to

(34:05):
be.
You know, as astounded as we areby where it is, it's only going
to keep moving faster becausethe cleverer it gets, the
cleverer it gets, and it's goingto be teaching itself.
The ability to turn numbers,massive numbers, into actionable
info like that is the bit thatis just insanely brilliant.

(34:25):
The ability to uploadspreadsheets, to compare those.
So this is the thing, right?
We touched on earlier.
I think there's lots of agents,smaller agents up and down the
country who...
have data sat within their CRM,within their Zoopla and
Rightmove accounts, within theirwhatever, they know there's
something they can do with it.
They don't really know what todo with it or how to do it with

(34:48):
it.
And I wonder how many havetwigged onto the fact that
here's your perfect resource.
You don't necessarily have toaction it, but I'll tell you
what, why don't you extract fiveof your biggest data reports
that you can out of whateveryou've got, chuck it all into
track gbt or gemini which youknow whichever platform you're

(35:08):
on and just go you know this ismy business this is where we're
at this is where i want to getto from the data i've provided
to you what are the key thingsyou think i should be doing you
know and i think this is this isthe fascinating thing like for
me like the um the ability to doresearch and stuff like that the

(35:29):
you know Your average person,even your average business
leader, unless you're building amedium to large business, I
think a lot of that stuffpreviously wasn't really on a
radar.
You wouldn't go, oh, do you knowwhat?
I'm going to hire a data analystto look at this and extrapolate

(35:49):
all of this so we can figureout.
You're not going to do that.
But guess what?
You've now got a data scientistthat is fantastic.
for now, free.
That you can just chuck stuff inand just play around with it and
keep asking questions.
It's a wanky phrase, but thatdemocratisation of the tech is
what we're talking about here.
And you're talking about, I knowat least a handful of agents,

(36:11):
really forward-thinking ones,who did exactly what you said,
took on a data scientistresearch, whatever else, 40, 50,
60K or whatever else there.
And now, you know, they couldjustify it in their minds back
then, but now, if you're goinginto it, this should be able to
be open up to everyone.
There is an interesting angle,though, as well.
Whilst it is absolutely truethat tools like ChatGPT, and you

(36:32):
highlighted it there, whilstit's free or whilst it's cheap
and everything else, there isgoing to be, again, a two-tier
approach come here.
Because obviously, as we know,AI works better with bigger data
sets.
So some of these largercompanies, you know, the likes
of Property Franchise Group, theConnells Countrywide, where
they're going to be able to pourover that data there and what
they're going to be able to dowith that.
When they figure out how to plugall of that data into an ongoing

(36:55):
system.
Yeah.
I mean, wow.
analytics when people are goingto move, you know, or spotting
opportunities.
Well, we were talking aboutacquisitions, I mean, from
everything.
You know, what businesses to belooking at for acquiring
prospects, you know.
Team performance, marketanalysis, looking at where the
opportunities are to pick up newclients, to go into new markets,
all this sort of stuff.
But you know the one for methat's really interesting, and

(37:16):
it's actually a bit scary, itgets a bit, is it Black Mirror,
isn't it?
You know, dystopian thing there.
We're moving less aroundactually what the tech can do,
because let's be really honest,it's almost getting to the stage
where you can do whatever youwant, thinking about it.
But then it starts getting intowhether, just because you can do
something, should you dosomething?
Now anyone who's again seen meat a conference knows that I
very rarely challenge myself onthat.
But The tech now with theability to create, sorry, to

(37:41):
have tools that will do outboundphone calls, you know, literally
posing, you know, and I alwaysthink this is where they fall
foul, where they pretend to be,you know, they pretend to be a
person rather than saying I amthe AI chatbot or whatever it
is.
suddenly you can unleashliterally a boiler room style
hell, phoning out your entiredatabase set.

(38:03):
Where's the legality of that?
You know, where does that fit?
I mean, telephone preferencesystem isn't going to be able
to...
I mean, GDPR doesn't seem to gettalked about much at the moment,
does it?
As I always joke about.
And where the data silos are andall this sort of stuff.
5% of global turnover, as Isaid, is I haven't got any
global turnover, but I'm missingthe point a little bit there, I
think, yeah.
But I think that is where, youknow, there's going to be some

(38:23):
companies that are really,really burned with that.
I think there's a real place forit in terms of...
I myself, now that they'vereached that stage, there's lots
of people who...
And a bad AI experience ishorrific.
On a chatbot there where youknow they're dust on that
chatbot to cut back on peopleanswering the phones.
Yeah, yeah.
And gone for the cheapest onethey can find.

(38:45):
And awful, yeah.
But I prefer to use a goodchatbot than actually to talk to
somebody because of the natureof multitasking and everything
else.
This is the thing, but also Ithink if you're...
I think the fascinating thingwith AI at the moment is how
insanely accessible it is.
And I think, you know, the onlything I would say, if there's
any agents watching this who areon the smaller side of agency

(39:09):
and you think that AI is in someway, you find it overwhelming,
and I kind of get it.
There are so many thingshappening at the moment.
I think the fascinating thingis, for me, I've regularly come
back to this thing aboutPropTech of, you should treat
PropTech like it's a member ofstaff.
Absolutely.
So, you know, you don't hiresomeone in a new role.

(39:33):
Like if I was going to hire abusiness development manager
tomorrow, I wouldn't hire a BDMtomorrow.
and put a desk in the corner andhave them come in and sit them
at the desk and not introducethem to the team, not introduce
the team to them, notrestructure the business around
them, not embed them in ourculture, our processes, our

(39:53):
whatever.
And it's exactly the same withtech, right?
There are...
there are at the moment, thereare little to no products that
you can sign up to that you canliterally switch on and it will
instantly create a substantialshift in your business.
You've got to spend the time tobe like, you know, and we, we,

(40:16):
you know, we see that with, withour platform.
We don't have it.
No one else does what we do.
And that is kind of a blessingand a curse in itself.
Um, But, you know, we've hadthat over the years.
We've had agents who think theywant to change and who sign up.
And then, you know, a month downthe line, you give them a bell

(40:39):
and you're like, guys, youhaven't added any tenancies.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We're just going to get aroundto it.
Just going to get buy-in fromthis person.
And, you know.
two weeks later, four weekslater, you're checking in again.
Guys, still, do you want us tocome down?
You know, like, depending wherethey are, we'll even say, if
they're London, I'll even quiteoften be like, you know what, I

(41:01):
don't mind sticking my face in.
Maybe you've got working withsomething, isn't it?
It becomes second nature, itbecomes habit forming, but the
hardest thing is breaking out ofthat comfort zone.
And the biggest challenge isonboarding without a shadow of a
doubt.
But here's the thing as well is,whilst it's great to have
something that works out of thebox, actually, that's not great
for the business as a wholebecause as you said, if
everything works out of the box,there's no point in
differentiation.
So anybody can be like you can'tthey as long as they buy that

(41:24):
software and look again it comesback to that whole ain't broke
don't fix it i'm experienced iknow what i'm doing i have my
method i have my process i meanwe we had we had one of the best
experiences i've ever had with auser a couple of years ago um
when uh megan yep um who's nowat swindon home finders he's
another client of ours was athaslam's great round clients

(41:47):
great round clients and um youknow and and They came to us,
wanted to solve the problem ofdeposit returns.
It was too slow, whatever.
And we got better.
They signed us up.
and they were training up theirteam and one of their senior
property managers pushed back sohard.
She was like, no, you know what?

(42:08):
I've done this job for 15 years.
I can do this job in my sleep.
I know exactly what I'm doing.
It's not, you know, yes, it'stime consuming, but it's not a
complex job.
And, you know, if I break myprocess, I'm not going to be
able to follow it.
And she pushed and she pushed.
And full credit to Megan, youknow, at the time, she was like,

(42:28):
you know, You get on board.
This isn't a debate.
It's not a discussion.
You do need to have thoseconversations.
You don't pick or choose.
You need good leadership withinthe business to go, I respect
what you're saying.
And do you know what?
Use the platform properly for 90days and then you come back to
me and you're not happy.
Then we'll have a chat.
We'll have a conversation, yeah.

(42:49):
But this isn't a democracy.
We're embedding this.
And do you know the best thingwe had was about...
about six weeks later totallyout of the blue we had an email
from the lady totally unpromptedMegan wasn't copied in it hadn't
gone to Megan and been forwardedto us we got an email to me and
Carla going this has changed mylife there you go I was worried

(43:14):
and I didn't really get it andlike it scared me because a lot
of the stuff I do manually justkind of happened And we see that
a lot as well.
And that's the Luddite approachto AI, isn't it, as well?
A lot of that is that initial,and look, there are going to be
losers, and anyone who'spretending that there isn't in
terms of AI, this is out of thebox genie style there.

(43:34):
There are going to be massivewinners.
There are going to be job lossesbecause of it.
As with any revolution, it'sgoing to create more and better
jobs, I would suggest, than bybeing able to do it.
Did you guys previously, did youuse CFP at any stage?
No.
But you'll have heard of it andremember it.
It was the grand old daddy oflettings and accounts software.
there, still used by loads ofagents.
And when we were moving peopleacross, you know, from the

(43:56):
account software on the repitside of things, and I know it
happens with other packages nowtoday, you would have, first of
all, you just have, like thatscene in Shawshank Redemption,
you know, where, what's hisname, is, the old fella's
released, isn't he?
He just can't cope with beingout, he's been
institutionalised.
You can get institutionalised totechnology in exactly the same
way, and as you said there, it'sreally, really important to I

(44:20):
always used to have aconversation with the MD before
we went in, if we were doing ademonstration with the staff and
say, look, I'm going to tell youhow it works now.
Often it will be, they'll startsaying, oh, that's good.
That's great.
And then they'll start actuallythinking, oh my God, this has
the potential to replace me.
Well, so this is the thing.
I mean, we, I'm definitely notgoing to name them, but we did a
demo three years ago with, witha very prestigious brand.

(44:43):
And to this day, I did a demo toa room of their property
managers.
I think it was 10 or 15 propertymanagers sat in there, their
senior PM team.
And to this day, it still standsout as one of the best, best
received demos I've ever done.
Literally, it was an hour of 15people going, oh my God, we

(45:07):
don't...
have to do that anymore and likeliterally there were points
where people were giggling inthe room and i skipped out of
that building i was likeliterally skipping down the road
but i skipped out of thatbuilding like yes yeah like and

(45:29):
i said to the day Best receiveddemo ever.
And I remember, I think it was aThursday or Friday, and I was
like, cool, Monday rolledaround.
Nothing from Tuesday, Wednesday.
And I'm like, this is a bitweird.
And obviously, you know, I'dalready done the little
follow-up email thing, whichthey'd acknowledged.
And then by the Wednesday, I puta call in, and I was like, oh,

(45:52):
you know, have you got a minute?
And they were like, yeah, yeah,yeah.
And I said, yeah, yeah, I justwanted to have a bit of a chat,
because...
you know, seemed to really go,go really well on Thursday.
And they were like, yeah, yeah.
No, we've had a chat with theteam and they've decided they,
they can't really see the valuein it.
They don't really see what'sgoing to change.

(46:13):
And the interesting thing Ilearned in that was that you
said a, the fear.

SPEAKER_01 (46:16):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (46:17):
I think they had clearly gone on that cycle of,
Oh my God, this is getting ridof 80% of what we have of this
job.
Yeah.

UNKNOWN (46:27):
Um,

SPEAKER_00 (46:28):
And then there was that realisation of that
probably means that, OK, maybenot 80%, but maybe 30% of the
people sat in this room are nolonger needed.

SPEAKER_01 (46:39):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (46:40):
And also the importance of making sure that
you have someone else in theroom.
Like, we've always...
I've always...
focused on because it's afrontline tool.
It's the thing that yourproperty managers or your
administrators use.
We should always be demoing tothem because equally, we've had
it the other way.

(47:00):
We've demoed to businessleaders.
They've gone, oh my God, this isamazing.
And then you get all giddy andyou put it in front of PM.

SPEAKER_01 (47:08):
They're

SPEAKER_00 (47:08):
like, no.
And the PM takes it from them.
But also, if I'd had a seniordecision maker in that room when
I'd done that demo, I'm adamantit would have been a completely
different outcome.
But because I didn't have asenior decision maker in that
room and it was just a room offrontline people, there was

(47:30):
allowed to be that like, oh myGod, this is amazing.
What does that mean?
Oh my God, actually, this couldmean this.
Yeah, no.
Mad.
Yeah, it is.
And it's a reality of it and youneed to be aware of it and at
least be able to approach thesubjects and everything else.
And that's fine.
People are going to be, youknow, people are going to worry
about their job.
They're going to look aftertheir job.
So off the back of that, you...

(47:52):
You invited me to a chat aboutAI we did down in town probably
about a year, 18 months ago.
It was...
We did it down.
There was like a meeting we didit in.
It was...
I can't remember.
It was like a cool tech companythat...
You sure that was me and not myABBA-style avatar?
No, it was definitely...

(48:13):
I remember you invited me andVicky Viveris to come down at
it.
And there was a few others inthe room.
And I think there's...
There's something fascinating Ifind about the...
Oh, Tapture, was it Tapture?
Yes.
So I remember, but one thingthat stood out with me, and this
is a bit of a contentious onefor us to talk about, but I

(48:33):
think, look, A, you reallytouched on something.
There's a lot of pussyfootingaround, there's the benefits of
AI, but there's a lot ofpussyfooting around the fact
that there are going to besubstantial changes.
Like it or not, it is going toget rid of jobs.
You know, certain jobs.
And hiding or ignoring it is notgoing to change that.

(48:54):
It's not going to protect yourjob.
What's going to protect your jobis learning how you leverage
that to deliver your job so thatif you're on a team of five,
you're the one or two that staybecause by leveraging that tool,
you can now do the work of fivepeople.
It's a tech weapon of massdestruction.
What I mean by that is, youknow, it is still just tech.

(49:15):
It's just doing it on a scalethat has never been done before.
But in the way that, you know,we would find it now, you
know...
Isn't it cute that people backin the day would have sort of
looked at typewriters and thencomputers and laptops and sort
of, oh God, what's, how are wegoing to, this is the same
thing.
I genuinely think this is our,this is our generation's
industrial revolution.
It absolutely is.
It is going to be that seismic.

(49:38):
It is, you know, the, the, thedata entry people who sit in an
office at the moment and, and,move data from one system to
another or literally go throughgoing, yeah, I've done this,
I've got this certificate, nowI've got this, I've uploaded
this document.
You know, with the greatest ofrespect, they are the horse

(50:00):
plows, you know, of...
modern industry whale oil youknow it kept it going for
hundreds of years whatever elsethere and then was in a matter
of decades disappeared andeverything else is it's just it
look the famous this is a waveit's a tech wave coming and
famously with waves you want tobe on top of it rather than
underneath it don't you thereand i think the key thing that

(50:23):
is just to come back to is andthis is where it does get
interesting is understanding andbeing at the heart of that good
tech and good ai definitelypersonalizes whereas actually
when tech is done bad you knowwith That experience we spoke
about with the chatbots andeverything else.
Well, chatbots, yeah.
I mean, you gave a perfectexample of, look, you can go out
there now, and you've been ableto for years, go out and plug

(50:44):
and play any chatbot, cheap orexpensive, and it takes you
through a very, and we've allused the bad ones, right?
We've all used the all right andthe good ones, but we've all
used the bad ones where it'slike, Jesus, why?
Why have you got to go?
Go away.
The fascinating thing now is yougo out there, It is so easy to
get a chatbot now that you teachyourself.

(51:06):
And it's beyond the Turing test.
I mean, genuinely, some of thechatbots, I can't now tell
whether it's a human or theother.
Well, I mean, one I know, andI'm fascinated at the moment by
open market AI.
There's lots of, you know,depository.
We're working on our first AIproject.
That will be out before summerand super exciting.
But I think actually as anagency, don't worry.

(51:28):
Us as suppliers will be figuringout how we're going to leverage
AI within our products to makeour products even better for you
don't worry too much about thatlook outside of that space and
look at what I think the openmarket AI place at the moment is
fascinating because A, there isso much out there, but B, as we
know, it's generally so freakingcheap.

(51:49):
And you're not tied into bigonerous contracts.
There's usually little or nosign-up fee.
There's a low subscription, oryou can pay a higher
subscription to get all theknobs and whistles.
But again, you don't like itafter a month.
You can go, but go and play.
But there's some amazing things.
things out there there's umtelephone one there's a platform

(52:10):
called bland okay which is supercool and literally it's super
clever the first thing you doyou go on their website if you
look up it might be bland ai butif you look up bland uh it's
really clever you go land ontheir website and the first
thing it says is put in yourphone number and you put in your
phone number click enter and itinstantly calls you So you

(52:30):
instantly get an experience.
That's very clever, isn't it?
What a strange thing to call itbland, though.
Well, I can't...
Well, it's...
Yeah, you know, you're gettingaway from the bland, aren't you?
I suppose.
I'm just trying to get my headaround it.
But I think when you think abouttelesales calls and support
centres that we have to callinto and that whole...

(52:52):
Yes, it's a human, but it's thatwhole computer says no attitude.
They're following a script orwhatever.
Ultimately, the better thingabout this is you're not in a
queue to talk to them.
if the staff have to work to aset script, then you might as
well have a chatbot doing thatset script because it's quicker,
faster, cheaper.

(53:12):
Get them to focus on the stuffthat's better.
You can even, you know, with alot of these things, you can
say, oh, I want you to have anaccent native to where the
person's calling from.
I mean, this is how nuts thisstuff is now.
So that people align with it.
I mean, we've seen that, youknow, at the moment, it's still
a bit sort of like when peopleare showing it and it's like,
yeah, the fingers are all overthe place and everything else.
But in a matter of months,that's going to be, you know,

(53:33):
video.
quality or studio quality stuffand that that then frees it up
you know so we're not talkingabout then having to be
corporate so we're paying thesebig agencies and i think you
know what's nice about this isthis has brought me brought us
around to to someone to talkabout so i think there is a
safety blanket phrase thatalmost every agent i know uses

(53:55):
when it comes to anyconversation around tech within
their business and it is Peoplebuy from people...
Is the biggest...
Safety blanket...
Like...
Oh...
Don't worry...
Someone needs to sell Amazonthat man...
Tech can't...
Yeah...
Tech can't...
No...
It's alright...
Like...
Tech will help us...
You know...
Our process will get a bitbetter...
You know...
We can do this...
We can do that...

(54:15):
But...
Tech's never gonna overhaulagency completely...
Nope...
Because people buy frompeople...
And I think...
Stop...
Stop kidding yourself...
Yeah...
Because I think also...
What you need to...
What you need to tellyourself...
Yes...
People do buy from people, butin the long term, consistently,
people buy from people theylike, they identify with, and

(54:39):
who are good at what they do.
And you've still got to get infront of them.
So if you haven't got theprospecting AI tools and
everything else there, thecommunications tools, if you're
not open 24-7 because that'swhat the AI allows you and
everything else there.
But when someone calls youroffice, if they have to go
through a five-step, press onefor sales, press one for, are
you looking to buy property?

(54:59):
Do you want evaluation?
All this sort of stuff.
Versus that, versus a seeminglyreal-life chatbot who answers
the phone literally withinseconds.
You know, be honest about whatyour customer journey is
experiencing.
And also, you know, again, wetalk about it a lot.

(55:21):
Obviously, we're filming this onmy one, but take that bloody
device out of your pocket.
You think the amount of thingsthat 15, 20 years ago were
seemingly impossible to have inyour pocket.
And now the entire thing.
Kit that 20 years ago would havetaken, you'd have needed a house
to fill with.
And you'd have needed a truck tomove.

(55:41):
But also look at that mother aswell now.
So these things.
do far more you know famouslythe the computer in that phone
is more than they had to land onthe moon it has been on there
for 60 years the irony is thereare less calls being made on
these devices than ever before.
And if you're not going to getyour head around where, you
know, Y generation or whatever,I can't even get my head around
it, is there.
They are using them less astelephones now than ever before.

(56:05):
This omni-channel approach, awanky phrase though it is, is
here to stay.
And I believe that's...
And again, you know, again, thiskeeps chipping away at these
kind of rather stale mantrasthat we have within agency of
people buy from people and, youknow, you've got to pick up the
phone.
Yeah.
If you make enough calls a day,if you do enough appointments a

(56:26):
day, all this sort of stuff,you've got to get up.
That era of agency, that era ofinteraction in any business is
dead.
Can I give you just one examplewhere I can think really, really
obviously about this?
It's lots of agencies.
If you're doing your Josh Feigand your Power Hour, your
prospecting calls and everythingelse, what typically happens
when you've got the team doingthat is one or two of those

(56:47):
might be taking the incomingcalls and everything else there.
You might have a spilloverfacility out of to likes and
money penny and everything elseor whatever it is you Now you
can have the AI just totallymanaging the incoming calls,
they're dealing with all thatand everything else, whilst
those staff members areabsolutely doing it.
I've never seen an agent thatcan't be bettered by the right

(57:10):
technology, even the ones thatgo down to it, as long as you're
using it right.
And what I can tell you nowcategorically is that if you use
the right technology, AI evenmore so now, you will have a
strategic advantage overeverybody else that doesn't
before they've even opened thedoors even worse than that they
don't have to worry aboutopening the doors because

(57:31):
they're open 24 7 365 days ayear i know i know i know there
will be agents spewing spewingat what i just said about
annoying i know they'll bespewing at what i just said
about you know it's not abouthitting the phones it's not
about you know just gettingpeople out of the road and
booking appointments I'm surethere are agents still doing it.

(57:51):
Yes, it still works to a certaindegree.
But if you really look at yourbusiness, if you really look at
the results, and if you look atthe data, God forbid, you will
see that tapering.
You will see, you know, I mean,I can see it now.
I mean, I've been an agent nowfor what, 23 years?
24 years and and you know I comefrom that era where just before

(58:15):
the portal started yeah andwhere we were and and CRMs were
not the de facto particularlyfor startups because software
back then was expensive if youcould upload if you could upload
to rightmove and do a match uhthat was all you needed that's
how I managed to make it find aproperty find a property back
end was like your mini CRM backin those days but like you know

(58:35):
we all had those applicant boxesand yes we all remember that and
yes you would pick up the phonein new listings and you'd call
through your 30 people and you'dspeak to 20 of them and you'd
get 10 viewings.
Yes, it worked.
We don't live in that eraanymore.
Most people have got less staffin the offices as well, so
they're doing far more thanthey've ever done before as

(58:55):
well.
So unless tech's taking some ofthat heavy lifting, who's going
to do it?
And this brings us to anotherpoint you touched on really
early on in this conversation,which is you've also got to
think about the experience yourstaff have working with you.
We keep talking about a crisiswithin our industry or growing

(59:17):
into you within our industry,whether it's perception or
reality of finding it reallyhard to get people to recruit
into agency to get young minimumwage excited about coming into
agency because guess what theyoung people of today who they
said they don't even talk totheir best mates on the phone

(59:37):
they're not coming in to do amlchecks they don't want to get on
a phone and you can thinkwhatever you think of it you can
think it you know whatever weirdand and sad and you know you can
have whatever negative emotionyou can about the fact that that
younger people today generallydon't like to talk to one
another anywhere near as much aswe used to at least not on a

(59:58):
phone maybe more in person butit's still happening that shift
is still happening so guess whatif you promote yourselves to
that young generation going heyguys guess what you're going to
come in and five days a weekyou're going to spend four hours
a day picking up the phone justcalling people and doing that

(01:00:19):
thing that you find souncomfortable so you're going to
lose out to the ones down theroad or the industry sorry the
industry will and this is andthis is the thing and as an
industry like you know these arethings technology you know we
have to embrace technology notjust because it creates a better
business not just because it canmake you more profitable but

(01:00:40):
also because this is what peopleexpect if we want to attract
young exciting people into theindustry and look they will
bring ideas and concepts that wecan't even wrap our head around
because these guys are growingup with this stuff well they
grow up with these tools that'sabsolutely second nature to them
as well Ian Preston banged thaton me didn't he he's been

(01:01:01):
talking about it as well yeahyeah I saw him post the other
day he did an interesting postbasically kind of calling out
agents saying isn't itfascinating how many agents want
AI but are absolutely pointblank refused to let AI book
viewings yeah the mental abilityand to be fair even you know
I've heard even you know MilesShipside was banging the drum I

(01:01:23):
mean again from the right moveperspective but that's so just
so large I mean the fact thatthey need to obviously put
things like WhatsApp on thatsite is you know that's a
completely separate thing butIan's point about it was you
know by freeing up the crappierjobs, let's just say, and
everything else, but also bybeing able to cut that, and the
technology then cuts your costbase so that you can pay for the
best talent when you need it tobe, so when it's doing the

(01:01:46):
dollar productive stuff, you'vegot the best people in there,
that resonates for me, and Itell you the other thing as well
is, you know, the generationscoming through now, what they
are looking for, of course theywant wages, they like that, but
they also want to work for theright company, more than any
previous industry there, theywant to know they have the right
culture, they want I want tohave them know they're doing the

(01:02:06):
right job and everything else.
So we know that the competitionfor decent talent out there is
not going away.
And guess what?
A young, aspirational persondoes not want to come in your
business and do something whichis largely inconsequential.
Where it is either success orfail.
They want to feel they're addingvalue to it.

(01:02:27):
We said before about businesses,one of the main reasons before
is they don't feel valued anddon't do it.
Why should that be any differentfor staff and people?
No, exactly.
I mean, I've said it before, youtry as much as you can Automate
the ordinary to focus on theextraordinary.
Yeah, that's brilliant.
I'm having that.
You took it off me, didn't you,that phrase?

UNKNOWN (01:02:45):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:45):
Whaley's phrases.
Nothing is original, Whaley.
I've got AI spying on you.
You wait until I retell thatlike Del Boy and get it
completely wrong as well.
I'll tell you one thing, though.
Can I just say as well?
I think there is something therebefore I forget.
One of the things that I lovedabout it, if I remember your
origin story, and I do have somethings through this amaretto
stained brain, is the thing thatI loved was if I...

(01:03:08):
I remember rightly that youlooked every single year and
looked at the processes withinthe business.
You looked at what wasdifficult, you know, what was
causing hassles.
Then you would look at actually,you know, did we need training?
Is there tech that could helpout?
Is there available tech?
And one of the main reasons thedepository happened was there
wasn't anything else out there.
So it led you to do it.
So really big part of thatconversation.
And I have to be honest, wedropped the ball a little bit

(01:03:30):
off the back of COVID.
We used to do this every yearand off the back of COVID, we
dropped it and we brought itback in last year.
And I'm so glad we did.
And yeah, like you said, we havea day where we kind of pick
apart the business as abusiness.
And that's not just me and Annesat going, what are we going to
do this year?
How are we going to make moremoney?

(01:03:51):
There's a very specificstructure to that, which is we
will sit down with every memberof our team.
And it's a small team, the sevenof us.
We will sit down and we willhave a one-to-one chat with that
person for roughly half an hour,for however long it takes.
It could be 15 minutes, could bean hour, whatever it is.
We talk for as long as we needto talk.

(01:04:11):
We make our notes.
Anne and I, once we've donetalking to everyone, we then go
and over lunch kind of pourthrough What resonated with each
of us?
What kind of stands out?
But a really important part ofthat conversation, sitting down
with each team, there were tworeally important questions that

(01:04:32):
we would ask every single memberof staff.
What is the thing that makes youhappiest in your job?
What is the thing you lovedoing?
Great question.
And what is the thing when youwake up in the morning that
makes you go, oh shit, I've gotto do that today.
Whenever Waley comes to visitthe office.
What's he doing here again?
But it's really important.

(01:04:54):
And I think we've learned somany fascinating things out of
those two questions.
A, we've learned that there arethings people enjoy that we
never had no idea.
But also, we've had people whohave hated...
A tiny element of their job,which is actually like 10% of

(01:05:15):
what they spend their timedoing.
But it has a disproportionate...
But it had never come to us.
It had never brought it to us.
They just assume all that.
They're just going to say, geton with it.
Because it's just part of thejob.
They expect you to go, look,that's what the job is.
Shut the fuck up and enjoy therest of the stuff.
World take out.
Nobody's tuning into this.

(01:05:37):
But yeah, look, yeah.
So, so, but, but what wasfascinating that came out of
that is, yeah, these, these,macro learnings and as you say
that was how Depositoryfundamentally came about this

(01:05:58):
wasn't me and Anne or techie mesat in some black room going
what hasn't been touched what dowe do in 2016 we sat down and
had that chat with the team andthe fascinating thing was Every
single one of them cited thething they hated most as the

(01:06:18):
deposit return process.
There you are.
And they all had different bitsin the process.
Like, you know, our admin wouldbe involved with issuing the
notice and coordinating theclean and the checkout.
And then the property managerswould have to chase the
inventory clerk for the reportand then decipher that and then,
you know, relay all of that tothe landlords and have that

(01:06:39):
whole interaction and then gothrough the whole joyous thing
of presenting it to the tenantsand whatever we reaction they
got from that.
And actually when you looked atit, A, it was a hugely time
consuming process.
Again, when you looked at thevast majority of what they did,
It was zero value.
They either did it or theydidn't, but they didn't add any

(01:06:59):
value to it.
When you book in a clean, you'renot booking in a better clean.
Super clean.
You're not booking in a bettercheckout time.
You're just either getting itbooked in or you're not.
If you send that tenant thehere's what you need to do
before you check out email, youeither send it or you don't.
And it doesn't help.
And so the more we looked at it,and then we went out and we were

(01:07:22):
like, is anything out theredoing it?
And we very quickly saw therewasn't.
And then, you know, we looked atthe CRMs a bit like, you know,
are they gonna do this?
And I think, why are they doingit?
But then I think we took acertain amount of security from
the fact of seeing what GoodLord had built And no one, no
CRM has really leapt onreplicating that.
CRMs have to do so much.
So much.

(01:07:43):
They're specialists ingeneralism, don't they?
So somebody who wants to learnthat vertical bit and do it
really well has that place.
And to be fair to them, youknow, the best ones, you've
obviously got this fantasticrepeat integration and
everything else coming forward.
It's like what you've got now isbecause they are much easier to
integrate with, they've actuallyliberated out that
functionality.
So they're bigger as a resultbecause of it.
And that's what's reallyexciting when what it's done

(01:08:05):
right and why we keep, you know,me are really passionate about
let's get these you know let'sget the integrations right
everyone should have open apisthat glue dog in terms of a
zapier style integration toolthat has to become a de facto
part of our industry yeah forthe benefit of everyone for
everyone you know for thebenefit of everyone stopping
innovation it's stopping youknow the single sign-ons and all

(01:08:26):
that pain in the ass it's notjust frustrating it's stopping
businesses being able to get offthe ground because if you again
for us you know again you knowwe are still a self-funded
bootstrap yes prop tech businessand that that's challenging you
know and we understand the valueof integrated partners and we've
got what 13 or 14 now and likeyou said we're about to do

(01:08:50):
release our new Reaperintegration which has been like
a six month project it's a sixfigure sum that we've invested
in building that and that'sbefore we invest a penny in
actually promoting it andmaintaining it and everything
else so you know these are bigthings and Yeah, you know, it's,
it's, yeah, things like Blue Dogare going to be a seismic,

(01:09:11):
seismic shift, and it's, butit's still fascinating.
I've spoken to quite a lot ofsuppliers, prop tech suppliers
within the space about Blue Dog,and it is really interesting.
There is still, I think there'sstill a lot of education to be
done around this.
Because I've had somefascinating chats with prop tech
companies that I really admireand respect.
And then we've talked about itand they're like, yeah, I don't

(01:09:33):
know.
And I'm like, yeah, but how manyintegrations do you currently
have?
And I remember years ago talkingto Brief Your Market.
And at the time they had over50.
And I'm like, the money youspent.
And most of those will be like,you know, one of those will be,
you know, CRMs.
If you're integrated with five,ten CRMs, dear God, what does

(01:09:57):
that cost?
If you're pulling in...
know data you know what do thoselook like again the thought of
the fact that you can get on anddo exciting stuff with what that
integration does rather thanspend i mean like for example
we've got seven i think seveninventory partners now
integrated inventory partnersnow when i look at that resource

(01:10:19):
that we've replicated seventimes to fundamentally build the
same thing yeah it's like whatwe're talking about before
wasn't it you know you canconcentrate on whereas we could
have just gone guys it's therein glue dog it's there it's all
specced there's thedocumentation bosh done and then
that work that we've replicatedseven times now we could have

(01:10:39):
done Yeah.
But take it back there.
I was going to use the old TomPannis phrase when you were
talking about that kind ofreview process.
That's gold dust, mate.
Although I might have done apassable impression of Vapu out
of The Simpsons there.
What I think is really, reallyimportant, I don't think there's
anything more important you cando as a business.
And when we're doing businessconsultancy with some of our

(01:11:01):
agency clients, we do ask themin a very simplistic fashion to
break down every part of theirbusiness.
You can start off literally attop level in terms of
departmental lettings, saleswhatever else there then start
drilling down more accurately soif you're looking at prospecting
if you're looking at the youknow all different angles and be
really honest with yourself andscore that out of 10 you know

(01:11:23):
there and then that gives you asyou said involve the staff on
that stage and I think doingwhat you've just done there the
best bit you know even better ifwhat works well at the moment
that's where because we're allso used to just getting on with
this is the way we've alwaysdone it and that's not good
enough these days and also Ithink out there I think a thing

(01:11:43):
to remember is well like we'renot we're not anti-people you
know of course not you and I arequite the opposite we I love the
people in this industry andactually much more so than when
I started BASE.
I actually had quite a skewedopinion of agents, although I'd
been one for a few years when westarted.
Actually, my opinion generallyof the industry now is...

(01:12:05):
It's better and rounded now,without a shadow of a doubt.
Yeah, for sure.
And it is becoming a betterindustry.
It is becoming better and techwill drive that further.
And, you know, I don't wantpeople to think that we're for
one minute kind of caveatingthese strange kind of futuristic
kind of neolithic businesseswhere you've got like three

(01:12:26):
people working in them and it'sa mantra of tech that does
everything we're not for onesecond trying to do that at all
but if you are really honestwith yourself and you really
look at each role within yourbusiness and you look at day to
day what those people do andwhere they add value to what

(01:12:46):
they do I think you willactually be horrified when you
actually realize what a tinypercentage of time they actually
spend moving the needle, addingvalue, adding expertise, giving
clients that special touchbecause most of their time is
doing some tick box bit of aprocess or some rudimentary like

(01:13:10):
thing that, because you did it,they did it, and the next one
will do it.
And I think if we're reallyhonest, and also, So what if we
free all these people up?
You know, like, there's thisthing of like, oh, but you know,
I don't want to free people upbecause I don't want to fire
everyone.
Who's saying you have to fireeveryone?
You can grow the business.
You know what?
Who doesn't want more timeprospecting?
And, but also, even if youdon't, even if your aspiration

(01:13:33):
isn't to grow the business, Ican't think of anything lovelier
than coming in the office andbeing like, do you know what?
80% of what the business does ischugging over.
I get to hang out with five,six, seven people that I
actually just like spending timewith.
We have some really interestingconversations and I hear and see
them do moments of fantasticinteraction with a client or

(01:13:55):
problem solving or whatever thattech for the foreseeable future
won't be able to do thosespecial moments.
And then the rest of the timeyou just sit and just sit in a
room with people that you enjoyspending time with bouncing
ideas around and getting stuffdone.
And is that terrible toperceive?
No?
Yeah, because you're a massivehippie, even though you've got

(01:14:16):
the whole Viking thing, whichI've always found amusing.
But the key point is, let's justdeal with this further.
Unless you are sat behind thatcamera and say, well, actually,
I don't have any spinning platesin your business.
Shut the fuck up.
It really is.
We've all got so many, and thebigger as a business, you tend
to have these projects that arejust never finished, are they?
I always found it reallyinteresting when we dealt with

(01:14:37):
Romans.
I think they nicked it fromApple back in the day.
They turned down more good ideasthan they adopt, and I always
really found that, I couldn'tunderstand that.
And I get it, because I'mabsolutely worse.
I'm like a Vesuvius of goodideas, but actually finishing
them off is what holds me back,and that's so many else.
And I think the biggest Achillesheel of business businesses in

(01:14:58):
general, but definitely inagencies, it's so easy to be bad
busy, isn't it?
You know, you come at the end ofthe day, you say, oh God, what a
day I've had.
What do you mean?
You've been on Facebook?
Or me doing a TikTok orsomething like that.
Oh, my wife always catches me.
I come back and I'm like, what aday.
She's like, so when did you getdone today?
I'm like, yeah.
Well, nothing productive.
I mean, I was very, very busy.

(01:15:20):
Yeah.
I am mentally exhausted.
Yeah.
And But yeah, look, I think thatwe've danced around quite a few
nice bits there.
So I think this is probably agood place for us to wrap it up.
That's right, because we've gotto meet Jaden.
We've got steak to eat, damnyou.

(01:15:41):
Steak, yeah.
We've got steak.
Jaden's cooking the steak.
So, no, look, I mean, Whaley,always a pleasure.
Of course.
We could...
do this again and again.
I look forward to seeing youback here next week.
Yeah.
Yeah, there you are, listeners.
This is where you're going tofind us.
The weekly AI, AI waffle,waffle, waffle, waffle.
But yeah, no, cheers, bud.
No, thank you.
Always a joy.
Thank you.

(01:16:01):
Money's going to be in theaccount by the end of the year.
Yeah, hopefully.
There's a few bits in there thathave got some of you thinking
and yeah, like it, disagree withit, lump it.
Yeah, we know where you live.
But yeah, I think if you're notstarting to set up and take
notice with AI.
And if you're not looking tostart up and set up at what, how

(01:16:21):
your business is going toevolve, you know, the next three
to five years are going to be avery, very tough place.
I always love this, you know,making predictions and we should
probably make one either way sothat we can then edit it back
and say we were right.
But let's catch up in, let'ssay, three months time as well
and see where this genuinely haschanged.
It would be quite interesting tolook at, you know, from this
micro point of AI and just say,well, you know, did much happen

(01:16:45):
in that time?
I think that's reallyfascinating to assess what's
actually going at pace at themoment.
Yeah, nice.
Let's do it.
Cool.
Cheers mate.
Thank you.
Bye.

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