Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
'Thrive in Construction' is the only podcast that delves into the personal journeys of sustainability leaders and innovators in the construction industry across the UK. Our show differentiates by offering unscripted, passion-fueled conversations that go beyond the buzzwords to the heart of what's driving the industry forward. It's tailored for aspiring professionals, seasoned experts, and anyone with a keen interest in the sustainable evolution of construction. We're here at a time when the call for sustainable development is not just a trend, but a societal imperative, empowering listeners to build a career that contributes to a greener future.
Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
Ep. 75 Why Upgrading Homes Beats Building New, and What We’re Getting Wrong
Governments love talking about new builds. But what if the real climate and housing solution is already standing?
In this eye-opening episode, Anne Harper makes the case for upgrading existing homes and why retrofitting is faster, cheaper, and more scalable than building from scratch. With 80% of 2050’s homes already built, this is a wake-up call for investors, housing providers, and policymakers to stop overlooking what’s right in front of them.
We break down:
• Why upgrading beats new build on time, carbon, and cost
• How institutional capital can unlock housing at scale
• What landlords and developers are missing about regulation
• How Green Resi is bridging the gap between investors and infrastructure
• Why solving the housing crisis starts with what we already have
If you’re serious about driving change in housing and delivering results that last, this episode is for you.
Watch now and challenge what you thought you knew about property and sustainability.
If you want to see our other insightful podcasts, click here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHI_yaqB2U8KWbsfJDPCoYEfOh-TTnip
Find us on:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dDkxLWZ25nT0krYWaTiIT
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thrive-in-construction-with-darren-evans/id1726973152
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTrzqei7gttB8WB5wM6hUpw LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/thrive-in-construction-podcast/ Our Website: https://darren-evans.co.uk/
Links:
Anna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaclareharper/
The Return Podcast:https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-return-podcast/
GreenResi: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenresi/
By-to-let mortgages basically became mainstream in 1997. From then onwards there was pretty cheap money that meant people could borrow for not very much and get a higher yield and make a multiple on their money Worked really well and also you had capital growth. So you had income, income growth, capital growth. Then, from kind of 2015-16, we had a lot more regulations moving towards a more professional rental market, because there were some non-professional, not very scrupulous um landlords not delivering the highest quality of service and you know, actually that's obviously not great. So in a bid to try and improve standards, we had a lot more regulations come in.
Speaker 1:One of them was called Section 24, which affected the tax of people who owned buy-to-let properties with a buy-to-let mortgage in their own name, so that made that less profitable. There's lots of other examples, but that's a really important one because it dramatically changed the game in terms of profitability and the ability for people to have like a passive income on the side of their job.
Speaker 2:So what did the tax go from? And to, just for context.
Speaker 1:So you previously were able to charge mortgage interest against your tax and now you cannot against your tax, and now you cannot, which means basically that if you're a higher rate taxpayer, then you can end up making essentially a real loss if you own a property with a large mortgage in your own name.
Speaker 1:The shift meant that more people who wanted to do property had to take it seriously, had to set up a company where you can still charge your interest against um, against your tax, and so if you want to do it, you kind of it's kind of like go hard or go home, right. So it's not to say that it doesn't work, but the minimum investment for it to work is higher now and, for example, if you're looking where you might have been looking, okay, I got 100 grand. I can invest this in a property or two properties or, depending on your strategy. Now, because of all the additional costs for example, we've got higher stamp duty, land tax now that's just gone up again um, the money goes less far, which means that in order to get a diversified portfolio, you need more money in the first place.
Speaker 2:So effectively, that cuts out a lot of the people that might have invested in property the point now where you would, would you recommend someone getting into that area if they had under 150 grand 100, 150 in direct.
Speaker 1:I can only speak for myself. Yeah, yeah yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:And you're not a financial advisor. I'm not saying this, no. No, I'm not a financial advisor. You're not a financial advisor or anything like that.
Speaker 1:No, but it's a really relevant question and it's not the first time that someone's mentioned it, because before 100 grand, that's a great amount, right, especially if you're able to buy in more affordable areas. You could put 20 to 50 grand as a deposit and then you could maybe buy two or three, but that's. The cost is so much higher. Now it's not so easy to diversify with that amount and also you can't borrow as much because interest rates have gone up and interest coverage ratios essentially would limit your ability to borrow as much.
Speaker 2:And what about with regard to home ownership versus renting? There's a big discussion going on at the moment. I know my daughter, 20 years old. She's like I need to buy a house. Would you again? And it sounds like and I'm really sorry, anna, if it does, but I'm just genuinely interested. This isn't a loaded question. It's like would you advise my daughter, just from your experience and your understanding of financials, to go down the I need to buy a property route, or actually there's a number of benefits if you just rent?
Speaker 1:Both are true. Both are true. It so depends on the personal circumstances of the person who's asking. So, essentially, when you're looking at buying a house, you are looking. The reasons to do it are if you want security, you want a long term base, relative certainty of cost, at least, for example, for the time period that you have a fixed rate mortgage. But the flip side of that is, if you think you're going to move in a year's time, maybe not such a.
Speaker 1:So if you're in a very fluid stage of life, it might not make sense to do it just yet. If you don't know which city you want to end up in, for example, and you're just doing a temporary role, it doesn't really have the advantage there, because you don't need that level of certainty and security. In fact it might hem you in um. And then the other piece of that one is I guess the other big benefit of renting is that someone else's problem when things break. So, um, if you're up for and ready for and I'm sure your daughter is but um dealing with the challenges of home ownership. But it's just, there is a lot of administration. They call it adulting, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I'm trying to help her understand.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There's a number of things that she wants because mum and dad make it really look easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it does come at a cost.
Speaker 1:A cost and the cost is flexibility, administration and obviously there's a big financial cost to it. So it depends. It's so circumstantial and I guess one thing I learned early on was that people when they do ask for advice on property matters I'm quite good at advising on it, I'm good at advising on investment questions, but homeownership is different because it's so much more emotional and so much more loaded or loaded. You can't really put that into a financial model because someone's desire to nest, for example, could outweigh anything to do with the financial benefits or costs associated.
Speaker 2:So I learned early on not to advise on that stuff. It's definitely and you see that with the way that people purchase properties that aren't emotionally attached. So I was sat down with my wife the other day and we were watching Homes Under the Hammer.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she could not get her head around why someone had purchased a house that was just derelict, it had fire in it and it was just a complete mess but why they purchased that property but had never visited it. And I was trying to help her understand that they didn't see themselves connected emotionally to that property Right.
Speaker 1:That wasn't the yeah, that's not the purpose of their purchase, Whereas if you're intending to live somewhere, that's quite a different thing and you can still detach emotionally, but not everyone does.
Speaker 2:To go back to the conversation we were having there with reference to Deloitte, oh yeah. You first started there, I did In the brochure. You had these elegant dressed individuals looking super successful. Elegant dressed individuals looking super successful.
Speaker 1:Um, you found that it wasn't like that in reality. It's a great company to start your career at like. Absolutely incredible really good training.
Speaker 1:Um, the best training, or the best piece, I think, for me was learning how to communicate in ways that other companies can understand. So, for example, powerpoints and excel spreadsheets learning how to use them in a way that a client whether that's a big bank or private equity firm, or even someone in another industry, um, outside the financial services, which is where I did most of my work in a way that they can understand and they can present to their stakeholders. That's a really powerful skill. So that was something that was really good about that experience, and I also loved my team. They were really nice.
Speaker 2:What got you to the point where you decided actually, I'm going to now shift gears and take this learning that I've got from Deloitte and go into what you do at the moment it that I've got from Deloitte and go into to do what you do at the moment.
Speaker 1:It's a long time ago, but I was sort of steadily building up experience doing residential deals and it got to the point where actually we could see that scaling and, as you know, it takes a lot of time and energy. For example, if you need to be on site, you need to be on site, you can't also be in the office, you can't do both at the same time. So it was a case of all right, well, I want to scale this thing and so, yeah, it's choice really. So I did that. I hopped out and, uh, you know, left on very good terms. I really really liked my team, um, and my boss and I still go and see him sometimes and then, yeah, hopped out and did the residential investment thing.
Speaker 2:So talk to me about that. What's the objective? What problem are you trying to solve by doing that?
Speaker 1:Well. So things have changed since then. So at that point I was working with still private investors and I suppose a great example of where things shifted was we had higher stamp duty it's even higher now which I mentioned earlier, brexit, which made a lot of investors very nervous, and a couple of other things. That all happened sort of in a relatively short space of time and it meant that the relatively small scale development projects that we were doing just didn't really make sense anymore. And I suppose I've always looked at three metrics One is risk reward, which is relatively widely accepted and widely considered for investors. One is effort to reward and the other is the opportunity cost. And looking at all three of those, I was going you know what development doesn't make any sense for me anymore. It's much effort for the reward, it's too much risk for the reward and there are other better things I could be doing. So I wanted to look at longer term, you know, buy and upgrade and then hold. And I partnered up with an investor who high net worth investor, who wanted to put five million into a portfolio and then build this, ultimately raise more money and build a hundred million pound housing portfolio. So I developed the strategy for him and I allocated the seed portfolio that five million, and that was a great project. It was the first one that I'd done where the intention had always been buy, rent and ultimately sold the shares in the business rather than selling the portfolio. So that was really interesting for me.
Speaker 1:And then along the way I had also started writing a bit as well as a podcast. Podcast did a couple of things for me. One was, you know, I told you, it kind of made me stay at the forefront of what was changing in the market and with regulations. But two, I kept interviewing people who knew so much more about tech than I did and I knew I needed to learn about it because my natural default setting is Luddite and I just didn't know really how to use it properly in the context of residential property. So I'd done some writing, including writing a book on sustainable residential investing, and ended up getting hired as the head of sustainability for a prop tech company, which is where I learned about technology from the inside of that firm. So that was kind of the shift into and they were working with big institutions, big pension fund um and pension fund allocators who need something quite different to what individuals need they have the same intentions make money, don't lose your shirt, but um.
Speaker 2:But they communicate things in different ways, so it's a bit of a shift just talk to me about tech in property, because I've experienced over the years, most people in the construction industry are really, really tech averse yeah, yeah, or maybe it's change averse definitely change averse for sure, and maybe it's because tech changes so frequently that maybe that's what I've attached it to well, I mean, I I'm just from my personal experience, the thing that's been.
Speaker 1:So over the last couple of years I've been working with a guy called duncan who the the CTO of FixFlow and co-founder of FixFlow, which is become the leading software in the housing repairs and maintenance space and you might not know the name because their customers are the letting agents, but they have one, one and a half million homes on their platform, so it's a really amazing category leader. They call it um, really amazing company. And working with duncan has been really interesting because that, I think, is what changed my perspective on that. It's not actually technology that's scary, it's change. And that's also my experience when helping my parents with tech stuff. They don't. It's not actually the tech, that's the issue. It's I've always done things this way.
Speaker 1:Why do I have to change? I don't want to change, so, um, so I think if that can be managed better, then people can be more sort of amenable to it, but just to kind of. I guess your question was around what kind of tech. So, for any process, it can be broken down into well, stuff that's essential and stuff that's not essential. But let's say you've got the list of the whole process written out of all the essential things that you need to do. In my case, let's take sourcing property. It's probably a good example that I can explain well.
Speaker 1:You start with a basic strategy which might be like buy at a 5% net yield, something like this, some kind of requirement, and there's any location that you can invest in. So you need to analyze lots of different locations to decide where you're going to invest. So that's the first stage is like kind of scoping out where you're going to invest. And then that can be done with tech, because you'd be doing the same thing in every single market, right, like, shall I analyze Cambridge for this? Shall I analyze Oxford, shall I analyze Manchester, liverpool. You're basically doing whatever your process is, you're doing it the same everywhere. So then you might as well just get a tool to do that. So it's anything that can be kind of repeated and automated. You could get a tool to do it for you. And yeah, and then the next stage of your investment journey might be about you know, we've got 100 properties in the location that we've selected and we don't know which ones are good.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you apply some kind of filter that says, all right, well, we don't want to buy anything that has less than two bedrooms, so we don't want any warm beds and we don't want any flats, or something like this. So you have some criteria that says you should buy this, you could buy this, you won't buy this, and everything fits into that category. But you can again get a machine to do that because it's not actually like. Again to your point about what your wife was saying, it's not actually emotional at all, it's just does it fit the criteria or not? And then the next phase would be okay.
Speaker 1:But how much are we actually going to pay for this thing? If we know we need to spend a hundred grand on it, then we can't offer as much as we thought we might have done. So what's that formula that you've got? And again, again. You can get a tool to do that and most people use a spreadsheet, but you can get something that does it for you and automate that process. And then the same goes for reporting and management and so on and so on. So, essentially, anything that is a process that gets repeated if it gets repeated enough times, then it's worth building a tool to do it for you.
Speaker 2:And so the building of the tool was done by a partner that you bought in.
Speaker 1:In Green Res, e Duncan built our software from scratch, which is very impressive, and I'm glad he was doing it, not me, because he's much better equipped. But yeah, I mean, other people have in-house systems, um, or they use third-party software. So the kind of clients that we would work with would be either housing providers or fund managers or investment managers who want to acquire and upgrade and hold homes so talk to me about green resi.
Speaker 2:What do you do? What does it do? What purpose does it serve?
Speaker 1:Ultimately, the purpose has become helping upgrade homes, but in order to do that they need to be owned by the right people. So it's a first stage is about getting the right money into housing to upgrade them. So I guess making that sort of a little simpler the landlords that we talked about earlier a lot of the time, a lot of landlords are selling at the moment because they don't want the hassle of being landlords and a lot of housing providers so social housing providers like housing associations are also having trouble with upgrading the homes that they own because standards and regulations have improved and it costs a lot of money to upgrade properties to modern standards. So there's a load of properties that are owned by people who don't have the money to upgrade them or they don't have the skills or they don't have the capability. And then there's a load of investors who are obsessed with residential in the UK because they're like, listen, it's stable, it gives a good income and it's growing over the long term because ultimately, there's more demand than there is supply and supply is really slow to respond. We can talk about that in a minute too.
Speaker 1:So there's a really good investment case for why new capital is coming in, but there's a mismatch basically between those two. So we sort of set up to bridge the gap for those kind of institutional investors to be able to scale down to the size of the average opportunity, which is basically the average house price, whether that's in a group of properties owned by a housing association or just one owned by a single investor. Their average property is like 280 grand. 285 grand, that is way too small for a big pension fund to get out of bed for they. It costs them so much to do their due diligence that they wouldn't bother getting out of bed for less than 50 million. So how do you bridge the gap between okay, I only want to allocate 50 million at a time and 285 grand? Well, you need technology to do that.
Speaker 2:So that's what we built um, so how do you bring those two parties together then, when you and I guess this is coming back to you making the point of properties being owned by the right people?
Speaker 1:people who are selling, people who are buying. That's it. It's the transactions that bring the two together.
Speaker 2:So our tool is built for institutions to make efficient decisions about what to buy and at what price I'm wondering, just picking up on the point that you made about making sure the properties are owned by the right people, and I guess what's in my mind is like who is the right people? Who are the?
Speaker 1:right people. The right people have the money to upgrade the properties and then rent them out. The problem that we have in the market at the moment is we have a load of empty and underused homes, and I mean, I know this is definitely going to come up at some point in the conversation, but I'll bring it up now. Labor have this uh promise of 1.5 million new homes, but there's like 1.5 over the next five years. That's 300 grand 300 000 a year. There's new build, new builds, new build, but there's about one and a half million empty and underused homes just not being used. They already exist, but they're not at modern standards or they're owned by the wrong people.
Speaker 1:So what we're doing is helping recapitalize that sector, which is critical, if you want to solve the housing crisis or help to do that, and if you want to solve the housing crisis or help to do that, and if you want to do so without the carbon cost of new build.
Speaker 2:Why do you think, then, that governments will focus on new build? It's easier, so much so that they'll go in and say right, we're going to change planning laws, we're going to go into greenfield as opposed to them saying we know what the stock is for those properties that are maybe dilapidated and so on and we're going to shift that.
Speaker 1:It's not really a headline winner to upgrade existing homes.
Speaker 2:But why?
Speaker 1:not, though. Why do you think it's? Don't know, but I know that housing is a political football and I used to get very exercised by this, but I spoke to some civil servants who said to me you're deluded if you think this is going to change. It's never going to change. Housing will always be a political football. Remember. Politicians are incentivized to win votes. They are not incentivized to give the best policy. So talking about building new homes and having a common enemy, which is the planning system, is brilliant for vote winning. It's not going to solve the problem, but it's great for vote winning.
Speaker 1:The other thing that's good about having a big target like that is that, theoretically, it should unlock the next level of capability.
Speaker 1:My mentor once told me, anna, the things that you need to do in order to double your productivity.
Speaker 1:There's a very long list of incremental changes that you can make, so it's like you know working an extra hour in the office so that you can clear your inbox, or I don't know, adding a new Pomodoro technique to your tool set, or something like this. Lots and lots of little changes, and you could just about double your productivity or, if you want to 10x your productivity. There's a very short list of things, and they all catapult your performance, and I think that is what Labour are trying to do. They're trying to say, ok, this is an audacious goal. They think that is what labor are trying to do. They're trying to say, okay, this is an audacious goal we need to really like, we need to unlock the next level here, and what they believe or at least say what they believe the solution is is improving the planning system I would query that and I would say a lot of people in the industry would query whether that would be enough, because there's also a big commercial issue with okay, is it worth building right now?
Speaker 2:but um, yeah, that's a longer topic interesting that you've mentioned about the 10x thing is have you, are you familiar with a author called benjamin hardy?
Speaker 1:I'm not sure, remind me if I haven't he's not commonly known, but I wondered if you have known him, because he came up with a book called 10x is easier than 2x I think that might be where this has come from, but I haven't read the book, but my mental has.
Speaker 2:Yeah he, he talks about this exact principle, which is that there are there are loads and loads of things that you could do, but what you need to do is focus on the thing that is of most value, that leads you to the ultimate goal that you're after. So he talks about a principle of raising the floor, and as, as you raise the floor, raise the standard, then the path to get to where you want to go becomes extremely narrow. You need to say goodbye to everything apart from the two or three things. Yeah, that's good he specifically talks about that.
Speaker 2:If you've got more than three goals, then you've not got any goals. All you've got is a list of to-dos, and it will never get you any closer to where you actually want to get to that's so interesting because, yeah, I can.
Speaker 1:That's really really good.
Speaker 2:I love that good insight I think you would like him as an author yeah even harder is his name, so he's written. So you've covered three topics of books that he has written. One of them is who, not how, okay yeah, Was it Duncan Duncan?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Duncan came in Again. Entrepreneurs will say I need to do it all, so it's like how do I do this? His philosophy is it's not how you do it, it's like who you get to do it. So bring in somebody who can do it and they'll do it really well. They do it. So bring in somebody who can do it and they'll do it really well. They'll do it a lot quicker. It will cost more in the short term, but long term you'll be laughing.
Speaker 2:Second element that you covered obviously the 10x is easier than 2x, which helps the focus. And then the last one is willpower doesn't work. That's a great title which, in essence, essence him saying that you will constantly say I just need to be better. I mean to be better motivated, you need to be better informed, more disciplined, but actually it will never, ever work and you're on a hiding to nowhere. And the reason you're on a hiding to nowhere is because willpower is um, is unreliable and is not controlled by you and the factors that control it. You're not and never will be aware of all of them.
Speaker 1:So you just yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Which I kind of On to another book.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Called BJ Fogg. I don't know if you've heard of him at all. He's a Stanford professor and he talks about habit formation, how habits are formed and how behavior is formed, and the element that he talks around around discipline, around motivation. He's like it's an element, but that's not the strongest element. The strongest element is ability and prompt. So the the easier you can do something, the more guaranteed and reliable that action will be interesting yeah and then designing when the prompt happens will design when it will happen.
Speaker 2:So, like motivation, is what most people focus on which they shouldn't focus on.
Speaker 1:They should focus on prompt and ability, then last for motivation yeah, I'm a big nerd for habits and I just think it's so powerful I can't add too many at a time. But there's that concept of habit stacking as well, um, which I think is quite interesting, and I've tried to add a new habit every month this year. So far, so good. But, um, it's not trying to do too much at once. My default setting again is to try and add all of the new habits and that doesn't really work but that's.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. I kind of went on a tangent there when you started speaking about the 10x element, because, yeah, you are 100 right. In order for you to get to really where you want to go, the goal needs to be massive and audacious. You need to say far more no's than you do yes's.
Speaker 1:So we were speaking with a prospective client earlier this week and they were talking about how they wanted to double their portfolio size. They're a fund manager, but they don't have any budget to increase their team size. And that's where all of this 10x 2x comes back to tech, because the only way you can double your portfolio size without hiring is by using the right tech and the right tools. And then you can double it again, and then you can double it again. But ultimately it comes down to that willingness to try something new, and if you're not amenable to change, then it's never going to happen.
Speaker 2:Did you end up getting that client?
Speaker 1:It's a slow sales cycle. So I think we will, but not yet. Well, I'm confident, but I mean, I'm confident that we can help them and that's the most important thing. I'm not. We'll see. You can't make someone else's mind up for them, but I I feel good about it.
Speaker 2:So what's your purpose then? What is it that, through what you do on a day-to-day basis, the why? Fulfillment, to say yeah, this is yeah at the end of my life?
Speaker 1:yeah, there's a couple of things I think, so I sat down and thought about it quite a bit, about. You know, if I was to have this one impact on the housing market, it would be to try to help deliver 10,000 homes that were good quality and affordable to the people who lived in them. What potential there is in the market. So that is the kind of mission, as it were, of our company to try and help unlock capital to fund the upgrade of 10,000 homes. A big part of it is that I don't see anyone else focusing on upgrading existing homes and yet there's a massive problem there. So it's an unsolved need in the market where there is a very obvious benefit, because helping house 10 000 people is huge and the barrier to getting there is largely conceptual. Because once you've got those homes owned by the right investors who have made a budget for improving the quality and upgrading them to modern standards, that's it right, like then you just get the work done.
Speaker 1:It's almost like the market kind of doesn't see that and the moment the market's like kind of obsessed with building new. Not that anyone is doing that much new stuff at the moment, but they talk about it for sure and that's the concept that everyone's got their head around is okay, well, we can build from scratch. There's loads of money for that, especially single family housing, which is awesome. That's a really important part of the picture. But let's say it takes like five years to do a single family housing project because you've got planning, you've got to build. That's not fast at all. And then it takes a long time to lease up because they're typically quite high, quite premium projects. Or you could retrofit homes in less than a year, so it's quicker. So I just think it's a no-brainer. But the why is? I suppose part of that is about kind of showing what can happen, what the art of the possible is, because it's not really being done right now the fact that there's not enough housing.
Speaker 2:I mean, why do you care about that?
Speaker 1:good point, good point I think I'm not charity, so I definitely see residential as a yeah, I definitely see residential as a sensible first attraction was okay, this is an amazing way to build wealth, right. But then it's become something so much bigger since then. But that was the first attraction for me, and now it's become okay. Well, I can actually make a difference in this space too. So here I am.
Speaker 2:I've had quite a few females come on this uh podcast and speak about their journey as a female in the construction industry very male-dominated and limited opportunities, lots of prejudice and so on and so on. Has that been your experience as well?
Speaker 1:when. So I haven't been doing construction for a while, but when I was um, I was always the only woman on the building site and it was uncomfortable and I didn't get taken seriously. And I think there's a self-fulfilling prophecy there, which is that if I spend time in an environment where people aren't taking me seriously, I almost internalize that dialogue of well, there's probably a reason for that, and ended up not thinking that I knew my onions. Back to the onions then. Actually, that's why it's been really good for me to move into a segment of the market, of the housing sector, where actually it's kind of a fresh start versus construction for me, because I'm now more in, more in investment, because I don't have that self-doubt.
Speaker 1:I think it goes both ways. Basically, if people kind of doubt you for a really long time, you start to doubt yourself. So in the same way that if people always defer to your opinion, you end up thinking, well, I'm pretty clever, right, you see it happen. One of the things I've noticed about gender is that it's easy, as the one who's not the norm, to see the difference. But I think a lot of men that I know, in real estate or without, they don't even notice if they walk into a room and there's only one woman in there, it doesn't occur to them, it's there's nothing deliberate about it, but they it just wouldn't occur to them, whereas if you're the only woman, again and again and again you do notice it right, like you notice when you're every time you sit down at a table, there's more people called andrew or james than there are women there's a certain kind of I don't know, it's just a different dynamic do you think anything needs to be done about that, or do you think that loads?
Speaker 2:of things need to be done, yeah yeah, what would you, what would you say?
Speaker 1:things that need to be done, that can be done and that are within my control, are um, giving other women a platform, putting effort into giving other women a platform. So, for example, which is something you're doing um, sometimes, from time to time, men who run events or podcasts or whatever will be like oh, I can never get any women on, and it's like, well, how many have you asked? Because, again, remember, like they're being asked to do everything. Because, at a certain level, if you're one in ten and there's ten, there's nine guys and there's one woman, and everyone feels like they need to ask the woman. She's being asked to do a lot of stuff and none of it's paid, unless it is. But, like, for most of the most, for the most part, things that are profile raising generally are not that paid. Um, you're just expected to do it. So then that woman has to do more work and it's definitely important that she does it when she can.
Speaker 1:But, like, I think basically what I'm saying is like I think it's important that everyone knows that they have to put a bit more effort into getting women, to giving them the capacity they need to do that helping, like the one-on-one stuff. Like when a woman approaches you and asks for help, help her. And actually, when I started Green Resi, there were so many amazing men who were really that person for me, who were like we don't have enough female founders, what can we do to help you? And it was so important that they did that and I didn't necessarily always know the answer, but it was just so nice that they offered. So I think that's helpful, mentoring really really important, and I think maybe that's it, that's the kind of things that I feel like it's the one-on-one difference that if everyone does it, then we have an at-scale model for bringing up a whole range of different, diverse opinions and perspectives.
Speaker 1:Um, so probably that, whereas I think sometimes the kind of top down approach doesn't really work because the people who need to make the decisions, um, don't have any incentive to, what's the incentive if you're changing your board dynamics, for example, if you're of the majority type, what's your incentive to reduce your own chances? There isn't one. So I think it has to be something that everyone has an incentive to do. My experience is that mentoring and being mentored I do both quite a bit. They're both really fulfilling. So everyone has an incentive, right, like my mentor has an incentive to pick up the phone to me, as do my mentees you find that you are a mentee and a mentor, both in the same conversation sometimes, I think.
Speaker 1:I think that's why it's so useful for both parties, because it's as valuable to teach someone else something or to share something that you've learned as it is to ask a question, have someone else share their experience.
Speaker 2:I think they're both really valuable so this question isn't designed for the world to reach out to you and say, hey, pick me, I'd love to be mentored by you. But if someone is looking for a mentor, what ways or what advice would you give for them to go about connecting with someone that's really going to add value but, at the same time, them not feeling like they're a burden to somebody?
Speaker 1:I think it's really humbling to ask for help and not everyone's willing to do it. Honestly, it takes a lot of courage to ask someone to go for that first coffee, especially if they're way senior to you. So I think that's a really. I mean, they may say no, but don't be offended because they're just busy. So I think asking for a coffee is a good way to do it, but maybe with a specific angle, something you specifically want advice on, that they are best placed, or that you can at least position them and do a little ego stroke that they are the best person to advise on that. Because, whatever it is, I've seen that you did this amazing thing in your career. I really aspire to do that in 20 years time. I would love to hear your experience and learn some of the things that you've learned. Um, and, if you're able to, if you're in a position to give something before you take. I think that really works.
Speaker 2:Give me an example of what that might look like.
Speaker 1:Again, I can only tell about my experience, but where there's been people who I've wanted to engage with, one of the ways I've been able to give and it's probably similar for you one of the ways that I've been able to give something is you know, actually I'd love to give you a platform. I'd love to either write a piece about what you're doing or have you on the podcast, or my podcast rather than yours, um, or something like this. Or I thought of someone that I feel like I could introduce them to usefully. I'd love to introduce you to this person. Would that be valuable? And then you're kind of giving before you're taking what about on the?
Speaker 2:on the point of view of, you have experience and you see a need, what filter or selection process do you go through before deciding whether to attach yourself to?
Speaker 1:so one of the people that um that I was looking for guidance from about two years ago, when I was starting my business, I didn't realize how selective they had to be. He's, by the way, a superstar like. He's so smart and so well qualified, and every time I pick up the phone to him it's like value, gem, value, gem. And you, 10 minutes later, you're like okay, well, you've just changed my week, month of year for the better. And for that person you know he had a particular set of rules and I think this is really sensible around who he gave regular attention to. But he said listen, you can always text me and tell me if you've got a specific problem, and I thought that was quite a good way of doing it.
Speaker 1:It's like he was really open to occasional reach outs or outreach from people who wanted help, and he has lots of people. I mean, I've met so many people who he advises, but it's ad hoc, it's not, he's not made a regular commitment to them and he has a very small number of regular commitments. That would be typically like a board advisory role. So for him, I think that makes sense and I like I think that would be really sensible too, because making a regular commitment is quite a big deal and you really have to have that chemistry right. And also, I think, something about being able to learn from someone who has what you want. I think that's quite important because otherwise why would you take their advice?
Speaker 2:Take advice from people who are in a position that you'd love to be in, but not just from a professional, also from a life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's much bigger than just work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so, for example, my mentor, like I love his attitude, I absolutely love it, and whenever I have a problem and I talk to him about it, he's able to flip it around into a learning opportunity or he helps me to. I don't know how he does it, it's magic. But that's what I want, right, like I want the difficult, because there's no entrepreneurial journey or creative journey or career journey that doesn't have its problems and its obstacles. You are going to have them, but what do you do with them? Well, kind of I mean, that's something incredible that I get from from my mentor, my regular mentor, um is how to flip those into learning opportunities that you thrive off, and you're right, it is.
Speaker 2:Mentorship and also entrepreneurship is all about knowing yourself and knowing how the story in your head is affecting how you feel and what you do. What, what myth shows up for you that you want to kind of just highlight and say look, this is a myth, let's just bust it yeah, we kind of alluded to it earlier, but essentially that 98 of the homes that we use in five years time already exist.
Speaker 1:80% of the homes we use in 2050 already exist. I think that's fine and we put all our attention into new builds and no one really understands the cost to upgrade homes or to manage them. And I say no one really understands it. In the property management space, everyone is making up their figures or they're like okay, we've got data, but like, there isn't good data, right? People say it's a slight aside, but people say, oh, yeah, we've got 25% gross to net. Yeah, yeah, 25% gross to net. And you're like but you've only owned this property for three years. How do you know? Because that's not the timeframe in which things break. They break over 10 or 15 or 20 years. So like, if you don't have that data, you don't have that data. You're making it up anyway. So people don't really have good data. You're on low power mode that people don't have good data on how much it costs to run properties over time and how much it costs to upgrade them, because the costs have increased.
Speaker 1:But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, so, um, we would have a much better chance of achieving that zero and a much better chance of solving the housing crisis if we upgraded the homes that already exist that are, as we talked about earlier. About one and a half million are underused or vacant. Then there's all the larger homes that are owned and lived in by a single person One person in a six-bedroom house. When you have person one person in a six-bedroom house, when you have six people living in a one-bedroom flat elsewhere, it's all just owned by the wrong people in the wrong hands. Um, for an efficient allocation of resources. So I guess the myth is that that the only way to solve the housing crisis is to build new, because that's simply not true. We need to do this. We need to improve the existing structure.
Speaker 2:So just going back to the point that you made before with reference to politicians and about how they are just chasing votes and there was a civil servant that had mentioned that to you and said look, anna, you're never going to change because it's not a vote winner I think that's one of the difficulties that we have, not just in the plight to try and get the properties more sustainable, but also just from a social perspective, as well.
Speaker 2:Because lots of things that we struggle with as a people are fixed over generations as opposed to within a five-year window.
Speaker 1:Totally. I couldn't agree more. The time frame for big infrastructure decisions should be longer than for a voting cycle and, arguably, housing should be treated as infrastructure, but it's not. It's treated as as we talked about earlier. It's treated as a political football, something that you can use to win votes with, when actually we need longer-term decision-making in order to have longer-term, better outcomes.
Speaker 2:I think that there's more that we can do if, when we view properties, we view them with people in mind instead of just Costs. Let's just look at money.
Speaker 1:Well, exactly, and I think it comes Okay. So a popular topic is potholes right. Where do they come from? Because we don't have them in other countries, in a lot of other countries. Like I, travel a lot. I've been to 25 cities this year.
Speaker 2:Don't go to Jamaica, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so there are climactic things. There are climactic like contributing factors to this, but ultimately, like, if you invest in the right way in the infrastructure, then it's not going to be a problem. It is a problem here. It is a big problem in London and in the UK and, yeah, and it's because of it's not just a lack of investment, it's lack of the right investment. Right, because you've got too many decision makers, and again it comes down to the very same thing as housing. It's like you've got too many heads making decisions and no one's making the right decisions.
Speaker 2:If you were to have an opportunity to set up another organization that would fix or speak to some of the issues that we've discussed, what would that be? What would that look like?
Speaker 1:so, going back to your point about not having more than three goals, I probably wouldn't set up another organization myself because I've got too many on the go already, but I would want to open up a new client base and serve a new type of organization. So one of the things that we I mentioned earlier we help investment managers, fund managers, housing providers, and all three of those take a long time to convince, but they all have the capacity to make serious change. So for me it would be going deep in what we've already done. It's a really niche, right, it's really niche to help investors with capital to allocate it more efficiently to a very specific sub-sector of a sub-sector which is living sector and it's either social or it's private housing, but they all already exist. That's a super niche niche. You're upgrading the energy efficiency, you're upgrading the property. I just want to go deeper into that. What I realized is that there's only there's a limit on one's capacity and if you and if I try to do everything, then I do nothing. Well, that's really. I mean you said it earlier more eloquently than I did, but that's so true.
Speaker 1:I've done lots of different things over the years, whether it be for a while, you know, I just wanted to do the content side of things. I can write for the telegraph for a while. You know, I just wanted to do the content side of things. I can write for the Telegraph for a while. I've written for the FT, I've written books and creative podcasts and things like that and that's all super interesting.
Speaker 1:But at the moment, the phase of the journey that I'm in is more doing but I can't do all of it at the same time. Do you want 10 times one year's worth of learnings, so you've relearned the same thing every year? Or do you want 10 years worth of learnings where each one is exponentially more than the um, than the previous one? And I was like, well, obviously I want the second of them. Obviously I want, in 10 years time, to not be making the same mistakes that I just made.
Speaker 1:But I think I, for me anyway, I kind of need to look back in order to leap forward. So I think taking that time to reflect and maybe write it down can be really, really helpful and then you can see your own progress as well, because I even look back on two years ago now and I'm like, oh silly me, did x, y and z didn't need to do that, but I didn't know at the time. I did my best, but I think that can be really helpful. And then, yeah, also just to know, like no one really knows the answers. So we're all just doing the best that we can Do you journal I do all the time.
Speaker 2:What's the…?
Speaker 1:Journaling nerd.
Speaker 2:You are yeah, okay, and so what structure do you have to your journal?
Speaker 1:So sometimes what I just described, so what went well, what could have gone better?
Speaker 2:what would I do differently next time? What am I grateful for? Okay, and then learnings. Yeah, lessons learned.
Speaker 1:Um, it's really helpful, and how far do you?
Speaker 1:go back in those journals to when I'm reviewing. Yeah, I try to review like each bit once, if that makes sense, so, but I'm always way behind on this activity. So at the weekend I was reviewing a journal from a year and a bit ago, which is so interesting because even in that time I feel like I'm a different woman. But obviously at the time I thought, like you know, I thought I knew what I was doing. So it's just interesting, isn't it? How much if you write it down.
Speaker 1:I actually have a friend, a good friend, who had a baby recently and she'd heard about this thing where new mothers basically it's really hard being a new mom and and. But the hormones of the new mother are designed that they forget all the pain. They forget the sleep deprivation or whatever, Exactly. And she, very smartly she's a lawyer, she's very smart she wrote down everything in the first six weeks of having a baby and now she can look back on it objectively. She's like I've completely forgotten all the pain, but I've got a record of it here. So I don't think she's having a second, but she's right, right, Like if you write it down and you have a record of it, then you can make a more informed decision next time.
Speaker 2:So again taking from the work of benjamin hardy.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I think um the one that I need to read after this yeah, you need to.
Speaker 2:I think you would like yeah, it sounds like.
Speaker 2:It sounds like he's already infiltrated my brain there's three elements of of time, and so he talks about how time can be used as a tool to help you as opposed to a tool to prevent you. So you've got past, present and future. So your present, for most people, is based upon their past. They take learning from the past, and then that populates their present, and that's why people get stuck. That's why people get stuck, that's why people get frustrated, that's why people put themselves into silos and places that aren't healthy and aren't helping them, and the present influences their future. So, because of I am right, this right now. This is, then, what my future is going to look like that's why people can get sad.
Speaker 2:They can get or feel depressed, or feel frustrated or angry is because the future is not that bright based on them, where they are and how they feel in the present, based on what's happened in the past. Okay, yeah, so he's saying that when someone focuses on the future and saying, in the future, I want to be this and this is what I am and that's what's guiding my present, then the past is a story that enables you to have what you have and what you need in the present to enable that future to become a reality okay so it's about leading from the future instead of leading from the past.
Speaker 2:So your present is determined by your view of the future. Love that.
Speaker 2:As opposed to the present being determined by the story of your past, because of that same reason that you've spoken about to your lawyer friend, is that our memory not just because of hormones but just because of memory anyway is just a story, and it's very inaccurate of what's happened in the past, but yet people's present and their future is guided by of what's happened in the past, but yet people's present and their future is guided by a hazy reflection of the past okay, I have to tell you.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard about adler?
Speaker 1:adler no okay, adler was a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychiatrist around the same time as jung and freud, and they all three worked together for a while and then Adler broke off and if you've ever had any like psychoanalysis, you will know like there's kind of a. The Freudian approach is essentially like well, you have a problem now, let's say like an eating disorder or something like this, and essentially there's a big part of it that I'm really oversimplifying here, so donate. But essentially it's like okay, well, probably something happened to you when you were much younger and that is the cause of this trauma, and kind of like it's a bit of a blame game. It can come across that way anyway, so that's a little bit negative. Yeah, something happened to you, dropped as a child, and that's why this is okay, so there's an excuse which can help people. But like, for me, I never really I don know, it never really vibed. For me.
Speaker 1:Adler is the other way around. He's much more like what you described and he's saying all of your problems today are a result of your goals. So, same thing eating disorder is a result of your goal. Like, let's say, you're not eating. Your goal is to stay small and childlike because you're scared of adulting. That is why you can't break out of that, and until the goal changes, you will never solve your problems.
Speaker 2:It's such a liberating theory and, um well, I think I much prefer it because it offers personal responsibility as a solution to deep-seated problems and I think it does more than that as well, if I can suggest something is it gives you agency, is it gives you power and that ability to be able to decide what you're going to do now, as opposed to this I can't change the past. What's happened in the past, I can't change it. I can't remember it accurately yeah, yeah, I'm stuck.
Speaker 2:My agency is gone. My power is completely diminished I agree, I agree really grateful for you coming on the podcast thanks for having me and just tell, tell us, or tell my viewers, a bit about your podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, who it speaks to, what it's about and where they can find it yeah, so the audience are property investors or professionals who want to grow their portfolio, their career or their business, and the typical themes are key trends that need to be harnessed if you're going to grow your business or your career or your portfolio Technology and how it can be used to grow. And, yeah, sometimes we talk about capital as well um, unlocking different pots of capital, for example. Um, that's a big part of what I've done in my career and something I'm interested in. So those are the typical themes, and we have industry leaders come talk about stuff.
Speaker 1:Um, for example, the next episode I think it's coming out tomorrow is with Helen Gordon, who's the CEO of Grainger PLC. I think she's a dream guest in a way, because she's so cool and so successful running this. They're the largest listed landlord in the UK and it's just really interesting getting to talk to people like that and it gets me going to learn more and the feedback I get is that other people like learning about the themes that we cover too.
Speaker 2:And it's called Property Matters.
Speaker 1:It's not, and so it's called what it's called the Return Property and Investment Podcast, and then, if you want to connect, linkedin is the best place. I share quite a bit about what I'm learning along the way, highlights from interesting conversations and things like that. Um, how's that go good?
Speaker 2:love it, anna. Really great to have you on there. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching to the end. I think that you'll like this, but before you do that, just make sure that you've commented and liked below and also that you subscribed.