Built to Break the Rules

What if your agency model wasn’t just outdated, it was holding you back?

In this episode, we sit down with Ian Macbeth and Mike Robson, the founders of Avocado Property, a brand now recognised across the UK for doing estate agency completely differently. No offices. No suits. No scripts. Just standout results, local leadership, and a system that lets agents earn more by being more of themselves.

Launched with borrowed time and big belief days before the UK’s first lockdown, Avocado has since grown into a network of over 30 self-employed agents, many earning six figures, some hitting £600k+ a year, with less stress and more autonomy than traditional agency ownership ever allowed.

But this isn’t a story about revenue. It’s a blueprint for relevance.

Ian and Mike didn’t tweak the rules. They broke them. From ditching corporate lingo and paper leaflets to prioritising personal brand and digital-first marketing, they built a model that reflects how modern buyers behave and what ambitious agents actually want.

You’ll hear how they:

• Built one of the UK’s most followed and respected agency brands from scratch
• Structured a business that empowers agents to lead locally with national-level strategy
• Use content, tech and storytelling to put homes in front of real buyers—not just portals
• Turned property sales into a fun, community-first experience
• Created a leadership philosophy that challenges the tired, copy-paste agency norm

If you’re a business owner and leader who knows you’re capable of more but feel held back by a system that no longer fits, you need to hear this.

This isn’t just about Avocado.
It’s about what’s next for you.

Leading Estate Agents of the World – Founding Members Launch

We’ll soon be introducing the first founding members of the network.
If you'd like to be considered for the launch event, register here

https://estateagencyx.co.uk/leadingestateagentsoftheworld

This episode is sponsored by Iceberg Digital, the AI Operating System for Estate Agents. They replace outdated CRMs, disconnected marketing tools, and manual prospecting with one intelligent, AI-driven ecosystem, built to increase revenue per employee and future-proof your agency. https://iceberg-digital.co.uk/

Transcript

Introduction to Avocado Property

Speaker 1 0:00

Estate Agency X the UK's number one estate agency podcast discussing the future of estate agency entrepreneurship and business.

Speaker 2 0:07

Host Mark Burgess and Rob Brady.

Speaker 3 0:11

Welcome to this episode of Estate Agency X. Today I'm talking to Ian and Mike, who are the co-founders of Avocado, one of the most modern, forward-thinking estate agency brands in the UK and one that I consider to be one of the very best models in the world. We dig into how they started it, the challenges that they faced and where they're going with it next. Ian, Mike, thanks for coming in. If anyone's been living under a rock and doesn't know anything about avocado, can you argue about? Who's going to give us a bit of a quick background on like you know what it is and why you guys started it? I think it's.

Speaker 2 0:51

Ian's gig. In fairness, we start with the swim shorts.

Speaker 1 0:54

Start with the swim shorts. Why is it called avocado? Yeah, I mean, it was called avocado because we were actually we were quite hot on the A's, because Rightmove still lists estate agents alphabetically.

Speaker 3 1:11

So we knew if we went with a we'd be at the top of the fight like this.

Speaker 2 1:12

It's like a 1980s version of getting at the top of the yellow page.

Speaker 1 1:14

Yes, tripple a plumbing spice. Yeah, just repeat total cheat code. It was like, yeah, okay, well, we'll go with a. And then, yeah, I had some swimming shorts that I bought in vegas on my honeymoon, as you, you know, that had avocados on that were pink and I was wearing them on holiday and the name just I was like, what avocado properties Did you say, fuck off. I wasn't in Vegas at the time. I was with the missus and she sort of sniggered a little bit. And then I went back when I had a hairdresser before lockdown this was and I said to him about it and he smiled a little bit and then everyone I mentioned it to there was just that little kind of smile on the edge of sort of taking the mick back to me and almost it's sticking. And then it sort of stuck from there, didn't it?

Speaker 2 1:53

so that was the name, yeah before that we had a wild say used to it. We had an awkward moment with uh, we went out with both our wives and, and, vicky, my wife said, so what are you going to call this business? And because I just hadn't got over why it was called avocado and what, what the gig was, why it was that in in any way, shape or form, and they, yeah, in and around, looked at me and looked at her and was like you haven't told her we'd have to name. About two months we had the branding, we had the name, I just didn't didn't get it.

Speaker 3 2:22

Yet you've got to have it. Yet You've got to come up with some crazy idea on why it's avocado, because I can remember once I was away with actually I'll tell that bit afterwards I went to this conference and I met this guy there who was really into alternative medicine and health and all that sort of stuff and he was talking to me about this website that he orders stuff from called Red23. And he didn't know that. I know the guy who set up this website. But he was like, yeah, it's an amazing website, it's got all this stuff Because you know Red23 is like. And he started going off on some conspiracy theory about Sanko. And actually the true story is that we was on holiday and he was like I don't know what to call the company. I was like it doesn't really matter, you can call it anything. What's your favorite color? He was like red. I was like and what's your favorite number? He was like probably 23 after Michael Jordan. I was like there you go, red 23.

Speaker 3 3:19

And now it's turned into this conspiracy theory idea, so you have to come up with another theory.

Speaker 2 3:25

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 3 3:26

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, okay, so we've got, we've got the name, uh, and what else? When did the company start? What? What's the purpose of it?

Speaker 1 3:35

for anybody that doesn't uh, I mean, the concept of it was way before that Actually. I mean I went through the process of being effectively made redundant. In the end it was like a settlement agreement Got all a little bit nasty. I've been there for about 16 years. That was a corporate or A large independent. It was like 10 branches at the time and I was the MD for the sales function and the marketing stuff and all the cross selling. So that kind of took place and it was really a decision process for me that weekend of finding out what was going on of okay, well, what do we do next? Because it was actually between exchanging and completing on the new house, so the timing wasn't great. If I was honest with you, the missus was a little bit concerned. But we kind of agreed that eventually I can't let that happen again needed to take total control of everything and after 16 years I sort of thought I was ready to do my own thing. Um, and that was where I kind of sort of coming up with the concept and the idea of what would my own estate agency kind of look like.

Speaker 1 4:35

Touch feel got a bit of shopping around looking at different parts of the world and then my brother who's got a marketing business. I was having a chat with him. I said I don't really want to do it on my own. I sort of feel I want to pair up with someone. And I kind of listed these three guys that kind of I'd worked with before and he was like no, you're a bit stupid if you go with those because you've trained those for the last 15 years. They know what you know. They don't really bring anything to the party other than you like them, party other than you like them.

Speaker 1 5:06

Um, you want to find someone that's got the opposite skill set to you, that's got the bits that you can't do, and I was like, okay, he said, what can't you do? I was like, well, I've never really done lettings, property management, got no arla attachment, but I know how important that is to the business. And that's when I kind of was spent a little bit of time sort of looking around and thinking, right, how would that work? And me and mike had worked together about eight years ago, um, and really spoken in eight years, to be fair. And I just dm'd him on linkedin, um, because I noticed he wasn't at the other corporate company that he'd left where I was to go to anymore and I thought I'll see what he's up to and yeah, mike, you look like you're sitting there thinking I didn't know any of that tonight, basically, yeah, basically you were looking for somebody that you fucking hate totally different.

Speaker 2 5:51

A guy who I'd never met, responsible for me being here effectively, um in in his brother and yeah, no, I totally get it. He's like I was driving to work. I was in a traffic jam on a dual carriageway on the way to church. Seeing this message pops up for me and I'm like can't be any worse. Last time I saw him he was driving a white range rover with a personalized number fate.

Speaker 2 6:14

Have you ever thought about going on your own? And I was like I'm savagely honest at any point and I just went, yeah, pretty much every day of my life in, in all honesty, but I've never not with you had to bother to do it. Um, because anyone has the propensity to, you know, to procrastinate over things or struggle with things and this, that and the other, and having someone else to do it with um would mean that I would absolutely fly, because I've always felt I work for one of the biggest corporates in the country and I always felt more qualified to run the business than the guy running the business. It was just a built-in part arrogance, part self-confidence on on my part. So it was just like, well, we I'll meet you for a beer and see if he still drives the right range rover, did he?

Speaker 2 7:04

No, uh, it's saying that sold all the cars like literally ready to yeah, ready to move, and it was, you know, rolled up in a 10 year old audi. And I was like, okay, this guy's serious, like everything's gone, everything's been stripped away, he's going to do this either way and if I don't do it, I will never do it. Yeah, because this is the point now where I either sit in the independent company's office where I've been for a year really nice guys, really good company but I'm either there for 20 years now or or I'm doing this. That's it because and if this succeeds, I'll look at it forever and be like I could have been- yeah, I could have been there, I should have been there, yeah that was should have been me.

Speaker 1 7:44

So, okay, we had that conversation actually, and then a couple of days later I messaged him and I was like so what do you think? He was like I don't think I really have a choice and I was like I don't know what that means. So you're in or you're out.

Speaker 3 7:56

Yeah, so so, um, so you start the company. Um, I'll kind of come back to that in a in a minute. So, because you mentioned about you had worked for a large independent and, uh, I, that large independent did things reasonably traditionally right, like as most people who have ever worked in any sort of corporate or traditional estate agents would understand estate agency to work.

Speaker 2 8:24

Yeah, um, but it's like a suburban foxton's wasn't it in a sense yes, yeah, minis suits two till four yeah, yeah, and, and successful, yeah, yeah yeah, um, so you've.

Speaker 3 8:36

You've sat, uh, at what was your title there? Sales managing director. Sales managing director.

Speaker 1 8:41

You've sat and seen that this company can be successful doing it that way and then you thought if I had my own estate agency, I'd do to really get to grips with what the ROI was coming in at in things like socials, seo, pay-per-click, just seeing the digital side of it and going well, we don't even need to get the agents out of the office to do that part of it. It's cheaper, it brings in more ROI and we're doing it on a sliver of the budget, whereas we're putting loads of cash into the traditional stuff, you know, the direct miles and stuff leaflets and all that.

Speaker 3 9:30

What year would that have been that you were seeing that, do you think probably?

Speaker 1 9:34

sort of 16 through to 19 yeah, that sort of period of time, um, and I was like there's something in this and I remember saying to to the it guy that was in the marketing department if we just kind of 10x on that google stuff, do the results keep going, or is there like a burnout point? And we did it and it just kept going. I was like, well, we need to do more of that. So I sort of got, but then I was in a in a boardroom, 10 years younger than the next youngest person in the boardroom, and it just it wasn't, it wasn't hitting and it's already working for them as well, right?

Speaker 3 10:05

so, like you know, do they necessarily want to tear it all apart? Yeah, yeah, um, okay, um. So then you start and I guess obviously you've got two things in your mind, like, one, what you've seen there and two, the fact that you've got a smaller budget to work with, right, and so you've got to prioritize what you're going to spend this money on. So you start Avocado together in 2019, 2020? 2020, yeah, straight out of lockdown.

Speaker 3 10:31

Six days before lockdown. Six days before lockdown Perfect timing. Yep, I think we actually think we launched Lifecycle about the same time, to be honest. So you start Av avocado just before lockdown. We won't go in too much to the lockdown thing unless it comes up later. We all know what happened there.

The Origin Story of Avocado

Speaker 3 10:51

Um, and so fast forward. Now, uh, four, five years later, um, what's avocado now? In terms of branches, like I know, branches for you are self-employed. Uh, people, right, so let's class them as the same for the time being. Like, how many, how many sort of branches or self-employed people work under the avocado brand now?

Speaker 1 11:55

it's sort of early 30s. Yeah, self-employed agents isn't there now yeah, some do over some singles.

Speaker 2 12:01

So there's about 20, 23 24 licensed partners, of which some some are business partners with each other and some are single. So there's about 20, 23, 24 licensed partners, of which some are business partners with each other and some are single. So there's about 34, 35 people online doing it. We've got the lettings arm as well and obviously the side business is that complement as well.

Speaker 3 12:19

Yeah, awesome, and what I don't know, what would you say have been your sort of biggest achievements in the last five years?

Speaker 1 12:28

I always remember the one of the first, one of the first guys that came on board, who is a duo who do crazy numbers. You know the two of them are doing 600 grand a year out of their business. But I remember kind of 18 months into him launching he was sat in our old office and he just said like my relationship with my dad is now like fixed because he totally respects I've gone out on my own, I've paid off all my debt and I'm now a completely different person because I'm not just that employed sort of cocky agent winning awards but I'm actually building and creating something. I was like that's really cool. So there's like we've had some of those sort of micro moments which I mean the figures are the figures. Everyone does good figures at different times. We've had some phenomenal stuff there, but that was a, that was a real good moment with with a partner agent.

Speaker 1 13:16

And then I remember when we were trading as agents ourselves, mike kind of looked after one town, I looked after the other. One of the first completions I did. I remember knocking on the door I'd grab some donuts for the kids on completion day I was bring, I was going over to pick up the keys for the buyer later on and a woman opened the door who wasn't the seller, and, um, I said I'm the estate agent here to pick up the keys from heather. And, uh, heather came to the door. It turned out they were sisters and she said, oh, this is our estate agent, ian. And I was, oh wow, no, I've been called our estate agent before. It's always the estate agent. It was like quite a nice, like it's quite an emotional sort of thing. I was like this is really cool.

Speaker 1 13:53

I'm I'm like part of the yeah the community, part of the family now I'm like, and he should be your estate agent. Almost it was, that was. That was two sort of special moments for me we had slightly differing visions on why we were creating the company.

Speaker 2 14:07

Ian was massive. Like I want to change the industry and nothing will stop me from changing the entire industry, not just what we do and to a certain extent I think we have, because people sit up and listen to two people who started a reasonably good sized company now from an office in a Regis much smaller than this room. I started the business because I always felt like a black sheep within an employed situation where I wanted to question, I wanted to focus on why it was good for a client and I wanted the other black sheep who wanted to have their own ideas. I wanted a home for those people so they could just be good at what they did without having to deal with the office politics and pleasing their director, whose directors, directors, directors, blah, blah, blah. So whilst we had two slightly different visions on what it was, they were the same thing. Yeah, it was. It's a good place for estate agents to be good estate agents without having to worry about everything else. Just provide a platform for them.

Speaker 1 15:09

The other thing that I saw when I'd done 16 years of kind of growing teams was you might put seven, eight, ten years into an agent. You know, they've climbed the ladder, they've got up to branch manager level, area manager, valuer level and then they kind of had kids or something and they just left. They didn't leave to another business, they, they left. Another industry like this is not for me anymore. I just found that that was as as a senior figure, that was so demoralizing that you put a decade into turning that person into one of your generals, one of your people, and then they just left because they didn't want to work weekends or they didn't want to work the late hours anymore and for them I guess, putting 10 years into a career and then starting somewhere else.

Speaker 1 15:50

Yeah, and that was like mike says there. That was the other part. The marketing was visual, but how do we actually fix it? And that's where going from employed to self employed was we can. We can make this the next option for the people that have kids and want time.

Speaker 3 16:05

Perfect, because I wanted to talk about self-employed. Um, because I have a bit of a problem with, uh, the general self-employed model and I feel like you guys have kind of solved the problems that I have with it. But I'm interested to know why you do it, because the other version just seems easier.

Speaker 3 16:31

So when I hear people talking about the self-employed model generally, in broad terms, they're talking about being able to list properties on Rightmove without paying much and that's the end of the package. Yeah, and you pay a little bit of money to me instead of paying it to Rightmove. So I'm basically reselling Rightmove, which apparently you're not allowed to do, but that's the business. I'm going to resell Rightmove at a cheaper price. That's the business. I'm going to resell Rightmove at a cheaper price. And then those people but I'm also going to tell you that you could earn, you know, 100 or 200 or 400,000 pounds a year, and you could. But it's up to you and you can do it however you want. You can have your own brand name, you can wear shorts to work or you can wear a suit, or you can do whatever you like, and basically the deal is you just get right move cheaper through me, maybe a few other bits, maybe you get some software as well.

Speaker 3 17:29

Um, and I've always looked at that and thought to myself like that just sounds like a nightmare, a disaster waiting to happen. Because what is my actual business like? If I'm just reselling right move, it would only take right move to uh decide that they're going to stop, uh, showing a blind eye to that and my business is pretty much finished. Um, what you guys have done is you've done the hard bit, which I would. I would consider it the hard bit, which is kind of enforcing that you are self-employed. You can earn a phenomenal amount of money if you put the effort in, but you do have some rules to abide by because you are representing all of us here, yeah, so, no, you can't have your own name and no, you can't, like, do what you want because you work for this company in in, you work for this brand, yeah, and your own part of it. So there must be times, or even in the beginning, where you questioned, when someone was like, oh, I'm not going to join unless I can whatever, yeah, we get.

Speaker 2 18:35

We get that question probably every month. Yeah is, I want to join, but I want to keep my brand and my website. And I'm like, clicking on the website, the website doesn't work and I'm like why, what's? Why do you want your website it? I've just clicked on it as a 404 error on the front page, like what's the point? But that's, that's an ego. But there still must be part of you that even in the beginning we could have. Great. You thought we could have 100 agents. Yeah, there's no doubt. Why not? We could have on board.

Speaker 3 19:00

What made you continually go? No, that's not the way. Even when you didn't know it, like even when you couldn't. Now you can look back in hindsight maybe and go thank god we didn't take that girl or that guy, but before you could know how could you be so sure?

Rethinking the Traditional Agency Model

Speaker 1 19:13

because there is a purpose behind it. I mean, mike said I was, you know, sort of actively passionate about trying to make the industry better, and that is a big, big part of it. We, we do want to make the industry better. We do want to build a business that the kids are proud of. We we don't want to be embarrassed to say we are estate agents like most people are. We wanted to create something that we were proud of, and to do that, what we felt we needed to talk to the public and be the influence, you know, behind that be the Richard Branson to Virgin or the Elon Musk to Tesla we felt there needed to be someone that was influencing the public in a really strong way to show this is our message, this is our vision, this is our purpose, this is how we do it, which also meant that to do that, we needed to have the right people doing the bit, with the clients doing the sales part of it, in this case, the self-employed agents and if they sat outside of doing good by the client, then they would impact the brand negatively.

Speaker 1 20:13

So the brand became we're like kind of guardians of the brand, if you like we have to make sure that no one puts the brand into distribute, but also we have to make sure that no one puts the brand into distribute. But also we have to make sure that if you're an agent in said town and we bring another agent on in the town next to you, that he's not fucking idiot, because if he is, that's going to mess your business and such a recommended him. Yeah, and they will cross pollinate with clients and buyers anyway. So our job is to make sure that everyone is of a high standard, which is why, like Mike says, we see four people One, financially can't do it, one's perfect and normally comes on board, and two we often say no to because it's about protecting the agents around as well, and the brand, and I guess maybe that ties in with one of the questions that I saw on social.

Speaker 3 20:59

You asked if anyone had any questions, and I think Tom McGee asked the question of like why, if someone starts with you as self-employed, I remember talking to one of the owners of what's considered to be the biggest self-employed model and saying to him, like you know, one of the problems you've got is your job is to really try and help people be successful, and when they are, they leave you. And I guess Tom's question was why would someone doing 300k a year want to stay with you? And I guess this ties in with what we're talking about. Right, because it's the brand You're building, a brand it's not just their name and they've got a cheap access to Rightmove.

Speaker 1 21:39

They're buying something more than just that, right and also how we work with, kind of trying to turn it into a bit of a wealth generator, because the, the estate agency, is almost the vehicle to where they want to get to today and also in life.

Speaker 1 21:53

And a lot of people talk about right exit in the business and who owns this and who owns that if you do this part right. I mean, we see the p and l sheets for the agents and some of them are like so profitable you'd think it's like a drug lord's P&L sheet. I don't know what they do on the side, but it's unbelievable the low risk of cost to the high profit you can earn. And that's why people kind of want to do that. And if they, if they're sensible with their dividends at the end of each year, with how they invest it and how they use it over 10 years of being a really good self-employed agent averaging 300 grand a year, versus being an independent on your local village high street. The cash that you're going to have in your bank versus the cash they're going to have in their bank and all the stress and headaches of staff is just so different. It's not worth your two underground exit in 10 years time because you've got a million pound in the bank already from doing it wrong.

Speaker 2 22:53

Yeah, we had that. I had the same chat with Chris Watkin. When I went up to see him I said there's all cards on the table. Yeah, you can start your own high street estate agency if you've got six figures to do that, and then you can sell out for half a million pounds in in 25 years if that's what you want to do. Or you can turn over 150 000 pounds as a self-employed estate agent and invest 50 000 pounds of that out of your profit every single year and be far wealthier without the attempted exit, because there's a lot of mergers and acquisitions that go on. What people don't see is the amount of failures and the amount of stress that the independent agent has to be put through by the corporate. When the sale eventually goes through, they get picked apart. I know they do absolutely. Um. So you can do it. You're you, but you have to be building the wealth in the background yeah absolutely play like you say, like both of them are both of them.

Speaker 3 23:50

Is somebody sitting down going? If I don't want to work forever, I'm going to need some assets, yeah, and so one of them is going. I think I can build a a retirement level asset myself in a business and be successful and get it to the point whereby it pays me and is profitable enough that someone else wants to buy it from me. And I want to sell it because, you know, usually you find that people want to sell businesses when they're a bit shit.

Speaker 3 24:16

Guess what, no one wants to fucking buy it, right? So when they're good, you probably won't need to sell it, or, like you say? The other one is that would it be faster for me to accumulate enough wealth to buy assets and retire, like you say? They're both heading in the same direction aren't they A self-employed estate agent?

Speaker 2 24:34

your business doesn't have asset value. Someone might want to buy your patch off you for a few quid.

Speaker 3 24:40

But it's not. You're going to invest it in. Whatever you decide to invest it in, it's no different to owning a McDonald's franchise, right? I mean, again, someone might want to buy the McDonald's franchise, but, putting that aside for a minute, you're going to have the keys to this area, whereby you get to sell lots of McDonald's cheeseburgers and buy property and buy Bitcoin or whatever it is that you want to buy in order to retire.

Speaker 2 25:00

I've done the McDonald's franchise seminar. I'm more interested in learning about what McDonald's do than what the next estate agent does, because, as you said, what we've created is a brand and a position in the marketplace. There's no better than McDonald's at that. You open a McDonald's in the middle of a field, in the middle of the Southwest. There'll be a queue, because people know what they're going to get. They're going to get the same as they did in the last town, which is the same, as there's a guarantee of service, which is what our brand guidelines effectively give, rather than a platform for people to be able to do their job how they want to do it.

Speaker 3 25:39

As I say, it's just, it's great to see two people that your background is a state agency, but yet you've set up a business like a business. You know, not just um, I don't know. Well, if we get, if we get, some landlords, that'll bring in some money and then we could resell, right, move to people and then we could do a bit of this and we could do a bit of that. And I we've got a uh, I know a lady who who spent 27 years building systems at mcdonald's and she was telling me in during her stint there they were opening a new restaurant every day, every day. Can you imagine with teenagers that can't even clean their own bedroom and it would run like a fucking machine. Yeah, yeah. And if you can get your business to work like that, then all of a sudden, like it's, it's amazing for you as business owners, it's amazing for the people that are working inside of it, it's amazing for people at all levels. Whatever path you've decided, you should be able to get the best out of it, right, um, okay, so so we're now at this stage whereby, um, you've started to fulfill your ambition of changing a state agency.

Speaker 3 27:25

I think it's fair to say that. You know, I don't remember there being too many estate agents walking around in hoodies before Avocado Seems to be a reasonably not common but accepted thing nowadays, like there are still traditional agents out there, but there are a lot of agents who also agree with your point of view that you know you're going to get more bang for your buck with digital. So, um, and I think avocado plays a big part in all of that, and you've achieved your uh ambition of making sure that you've got this company that accepts black sheep and can do the things that make more sense rather than just ticking boxes for the sake of it. So where? What next? What's the what's going to happen for with avocado? Is it just going to continue on this vein, or do you have some other plans with it?

Speaker 1 28:09

I think we've tried to do it in a way that, because we both sold our four by fours and the money that we put into avocado came from effectively selling our cars and then living on pasta for a year, we've never taken investment. So every year when we strategize, I mean we were talking off camera about setting up the business sort of map and what it's going to look like in three years. We've done that every single year, looked at what's the next layer is going to be with reinvesting that business. So each year that will change. And what we're in the process of doing at the moment is we realized very early on we're building a data business, because we had data coming in fast, thick and heavy from all different angles and they were the people that most of these other industries in networking, meetings and things like that wanted homeowners that the prime data and we got everything. We got address, phone number, email, what they're doing, all of the stuff. So we quickly realized, okay, well, that's, that's quite powerful to have that. So we've created a mortgage business rather than referring to a mortgage business. We built our own surveying business, built our own estate planning business. We've got as well and we're just going into recruitment to do self-employed and we've sort of realized that our skill set is. Actually we're quite good at creating a self-employed brokerage and it sort of doesn't matter what industry it's in a little bit. But if we can link it around the property world then that kind of works as well.

Speaker 1 29:37

So that was last year's project and this year is very much about getting super profitable in all of those areas while kind of protecting the value.

Growing Success and Key Achievements

Speaker 1 29:45

So we brought in some key heads of departments you know on good salaries into key locations to allow us to make sure that we're not doing everything, just the two of us and we've got expertise. So people say you know the first three years, you then have a very different team for the next five. We've done that first three years and we've sort of in the process of investing in that team for the next five and where it goes. So more skills in in the group, which and as a bigger entity it means the agents have got more security and firepower. We've got more revenue streams so we can invest more in different areas. We've got a company we're working on lead generation at the moment. We've got a company working on the google side of things at the moment. We've got a marketing team of um six now, so it's kind of investing for the next five years. Is really the project that we're managing at the moment, isn't it?

Speaker 2 30:39

yeah, we've gone from what an 80 square foot office to a 300 square foot office to a 900 square foot office. In june we go into 3 000 square feet of of offices. So we're not, it's just this online like, like you say, right, move, reseller, there'll be some serious support behind us that we don't need to put in yeah, the size that we are, but it's put in for five years time. And I remember we bumped into you at a um, um, they, uh, daniel priestly conference and we had a bit of a light bulb moment because he mapped out this is what company structure should look like. When you start off, just just employ your next door neighbor's daughter just to help you out with stuff, and we're like we literally did. We literally did that. She's amazing. And then do this and then do that. And we bumped into you with you, with your son, who was definitely should have been in school that day. This was better. It was kind of we kind of looked at each other. I'm like he's getting a lot out of this.

Speaker 2 31:42

My kid's doing like PSHE I was kind of like well, mark obviously gets where we are. And we then started aligning. Well, we picked a website company to do a website. We were with you guys to do the CRM. And we kind of like, right, we picked these companies who are specialized and actually get where we are. They're the sort of medium-sized companies because there's no point us signing up with money, penny and and and reap it, and because we're just no one to these people we're a tiny, tiny account. But to growth companies they can see what we're trying to do and we can see what they're trying to do and actually have an influence on each other and and go from there. But but we accidentally sort of stumbled across that sort of Daniel Priestley model and 100% kind of subscribe to the sense behind it.

Speaker 3 32:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and you've always been like. Now, it's easy to look back in hindsight now, isn't it Like you know? Now that there are all of these self-employed or branches, or whatever you want to call it, like areas that are covered by avocado, and there's all this data flowing in, you can go like, oh, we could set up these other models, but you've always been interested in the data, from day one, which is how we ended up working together in the first place. Yeah, um, so there are. There are a lot of people that I meet again that are just setting up and they're like, yeah, but I haven't got any data. So you know what's the point, ike? What made you so sure that that was the way to go right from the beginning, even before you had it best?

Speaker 2 33:09

time to do it. I thought if you've got really dirty data what I would call it there's no point. Like if you've got 20 000 contacts on a database which hasn't been touched for a couple of years, well, you might as well delete it. In my opinion, if you've got nothing, it's so clear when one person comes in, you have your journey. That is absolutely ultra perfect and it's yours and you can control it and you can make it work. I don't think you need 40 000 people on a database. As a small independent estate agent, you need, like this year's listing. Yeah, you need like 100 people on your database.

Speaker 3 33:42

He's really good, like you say even just one person who's now automatically being sent properties. It's funny because I was talking to someone the other day who said like oh yeah, you know, I just haven't got much data at the moment, so I might come back once I've got a load of data. And I said the same thing. It's like you still won't have any data. You just have names and email addresses. You can buy that somewhere. It's pretty worthless.

Speaker 1 34:05

So yeah, that's quite interesting Efficiency was the word I think that we spoke about, because we there's a year gap between us, but we both got wives that understand the property industry because they've been in it. We both got Mike's got one son. I've got two girls. His son sits in the middle of where my two girls sit. They're all under eight years old and we both actively said, before we even kicked off, that the goal here is not to build a job where we work 60, 70 hours a week for the next 10 years. That's like absolutely not the goal, because we want to be around the kids, we want to be active.

Speaker 1 34:41

So that meant we have to be really efficient, which meant any time consuming marketing or anything that was not able at some point to be bought, to be automated. It kind of didn't really work for us. We didn't want to do the manual stuff where we were reliant. That meant that a lot of the nurture stuff and a lot of the social media stuff and the digital marketing was a hundred percent the right way to go for us because it was more efficient. It's the lazy way to do it, but it's also the best way to do it if you want to have your attention elsewhere, because you can set it up and then leave it and it kind of just does it, whereas if you need to get listings and you haven't got that setup going on in the background, well you need to go out and door knock or leaflet drop an estate or you need to actively do something.

Speaker 1 35:28

If your diary's busy with viewings, well then at some point you're screwed because you're going to have no business. But whatever could kind of be automated and whatever could be keep going. At the same time, we sort of had this phrase at HQ where we're like how do we make it better, how do we make it better, how do we make it faster and can we automate it? So every project that we completed we then quickly look at it and go, if we could do that a bit better, what would we do if we could do it a bit faster, what we would do and is it possible that we could automate that, and kind of those sort of three-step conversations that we've always had, kind of just yeah, stedders, along that data nurture and and digital side of things.

Speaker 3 36:05

Yeah, I love that, because most people just underestimate all of that, don't they? They just sort of there's a list and they just go well, I'll do that, I'll do that, I'll do that, I'll do that. Eventually, you're like how many fucking hands have you got, you know? No, no, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, and I guess maybe you could see that, did you? You could see that. Did you run into that problem in the beginning when you were offering the self-employed model, like because I know now you do you have so much support for a self-employed person and you like people to work in, uh, teams, not two of them. Um, in the beginning, did you ever first run into the problem whereby, like, there's just too many things for one person to do on their own?

Speaker 2 36:44

yeah, we did. Yeah, quickly we would. We were doing estate agency and trying to do the estate, the self-employed model, and when we got to sort of eight, ten people, it was at the point you know your head falls off because you're trying to do a viewing or evaluation and you can feel your phone going in your pocket every 25 seconds and the anxiety just rises in you to the point where we just had to make the tough decisions. The most profitable thing to do is be out there and be an estate agent because there's a direct fee and I get paid it. The right business decision was to go right, I don't do this anymore. We're going to cut this profit down to zero on the business and push everything into marketing for the agents who are signed up to the brokerage effectively. Yeah, because you can't. We, we kind of signed up, you know, on a handshake, two years.

Speaker 3 37:38

We're gonna, we're gonna kill ourselves yeah, um, the total opposite of what you wanted really yeah, I know you said you wanted that we put a time limit on it.

Speaker 2 37:46

It's for two years. We're gonna we're just gonna write off this personal life. Our friends aren't gonna see us, family's hardly gonna see us. What? We're just gonna do it because we're young enough now that we can afford it. Yeah, in 10 years time we won't be young enough to have the energy to do it, or blah, blah, blah.

The Self-Employed Agent Blueprint

Speaker 1 38:05

And that happened so quickly that in the end it was about 18 months in and we had a conversation in our shoebox office and I said I can't be an agency or a new self-employed agent trainer, help them with this and do it for the brand and be an estate agent Like I don't have the wavelength to be able to be pulled across those. And that's when we said, well, if I step off first. So then I went on like a nine month process of stepping away from being an agent and when I'd kind of completed that step off, then Mike started it and we knew that we were going to struggle along that process. So we actually bought in a business coach and worked with a business coach for about 10 months on a kind of biweekly basis to actually help us and coach us along that process. And I think that that helped massively as well because it meant that we did it. I mean we had the answers, but they're just greater reflecting those answers.

Speaker 1 39:01

And then we discussed them and then we got the result quicker.

Speaker 3 39:08

And often it just stops you from sitting in a room having an argument getting nowhere, doesn't it? Because, like you know, you've got an idea. You may, may or may not agree with it, and you just go around and around the table and then go home still disagreeing about it. But when you've got that sort of third party, that mentor or coach or whatever it is, that says this is how you do it, there's weirdly, there's just less ego involved in it. It's like, oh right, okay, he suggested it and we'll do it together we found that they made no suggestions whatsoever.

Speaker 2 39:34

Yeah, they just reflect, yeah, anything absolutely, which was frustrating but empowering at the same time, because it's sometimes pete, just give me the fucking answer, yeah, just tell me but if I know you know the answer, let's just sit best in a redone the thing is.

Speaker 3 39:48

That thing is there's no right or wrong answer. Right, like yes, just yesterday I had a call from an agent, um, who said to me mark, I can see a little bit of a cash flow problem coming in the future. He said there's not actually a cash flow problem at the moment, but if certain things didn't change, I think there could be in three or four months. So you know, what do you think I should do? And again like there's no answer to that, is there. So I was just saying to him like well, I don't know where's the problem in your kind of funnel, if you like. And he was like well, because the conversation had started going down the road of who should he make redundant? Like this person, there's a reason he can't make this person, there's a reason he can't.

Speaker 3 40:36

I said what's the problem in the funnel? He was like what do you mean? I said well, are you getting enough leads in? Yeah, yeah, we get quite a lot of leads and stuff, but you know they don't always turn into like valuations straight away. And blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 40:50

I was like okay, what's your fees? Like, fees are great, you know they. They did a course last year with us. All fees are up, conversion rates are all up okay. What about how many valuations are going on? Yeah, they're down, it's like okay. So do you think, if you went on more valuations, like everything would be good? Yeah, they're like okay. What do you think you should do? He was like hmm, how could I go on more valuations? I was like I don't know, when you did do more valuations, was there anything in particular that you were doing? We used to do this social media thing where we'd go around local businesses and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. It sort of slipped off the radar a bit because we're a bit been a bit busy. Like that used to get us a lot of stuff and I was like all right.

Speaker 3 41:35

he was like we should probably restart that, shouldn't we maybe? But I mean I was saying to him, like the thing, there's no right or wrong answer like maybe you should restart it, maybe that'll fix the problem, maybe it won't, maybe it'll be something else, maybe he's got to go against what I believe in and what you believe in and go and knock on some doors. I don't know, none of us know, but like we can identify maybe where the problem could be here, it can only be in leads, valuations, instructions or sales. It can only be in one of those four places, because everything else is designed to get those four things. So if they're all running well, the company's running well. One or two or even four of them might not be running well, in which case that's where to fix. But no one's actually got the answer right.

Speaker 1 42:17

I don't know how we got onto that, but you know, yeah, it's just, we're just reflecting the information with people. That's why we like the duo, the self-employed combo, because we quickly realized that as a pair we could get to 250. As an individual, you can only ever get to 100. It just, I mean, even the first deal that we did would never have happened. That deal never happens on the planet with any estate agent, other than if it was me and you in the room no, it was so.

Speaker 2 42:42

We sold my best friend's house to the guy who makes our hoodies, who I know, like you, went to school with and that's why he does our hoodies like no, no one does that deal and we saw you just and it went through in about four weeks it happens, so so, but when someone is sitting there facing like you must have you, you you came out of the traditional estate agency that was doing everything traditionally.

Speaker 3 43:07

It started doing digital and stuff, but still doing lots of print and doing all of the ticking all the boxes. And you've, for budget reasons and for the fact that you'd seen like better return on investment, you decided like we're not doing that, we're going purely digital. And I know that you're quite uhant about that, but there must have been, and there must still be, times where you or one of your would you call them associates or would you call them partners, partners is just sort of saying like just, it's just not happening for me. Like Google ads, I need to I don't know, do what? Knock on the door, deliver a leaflet? Like what would you? How do you? Would you say yeah, okay, go for it. Or would you say like no, yeah, it's a question.

Speaker 1 43:59

It's a question which you then normally end up having a conversation with someone three months into launch, normally end up having a conversation with someone three months into launch. There's a couple of things which we help them with. That I think is absolutely vital is, obviously, we create a personal brand and blah, blah, blah. We do all the things, but one of the things that's really important and we were talking to the, to the lady that that wants to come on board two days ago about it is what do you want to be known for? Like, if you're going to be doing 25 completions a year in your town, in your village, or if you want two percent of the market and that's makes you the best living you've ever had in your life, then you have to stand out and be known for something. And what is that identity? What's that? Three things that you want to be kind of known for. And then, if they get that down, they get that sort of 30 second elevator pitch down and they can just reel that off that.

Speaker 1 44:52

I am the agent ian macbeth, the agent in crowthorn. I'm the family guy where the kids go to the local school. I'm a neighbor. I've been in the industry for 21 years. I do your viewings, I negotiate your offer and I progress the sale. That's what you get with me, and every property gets a video and a digital marketing strategy, because I'm good at that. They're the three things I get known for what's yours and if you've got that in year one. To be honest with you, it doesn't really matter what method they do to get the business, as long as they're telling that story. Yeah, so if they are going to the local shops and dropping our business cards, but they're telling that, as as long as they're sticking, as long as they're saying that Door knocking no one leaflets is in our license agreement. You can't leaflet drops. It's against the rules. You'll be struck off.

Speaker 3 45:33

And is that because you just don't want Avocado to be known for that?

Speaker 1 45:36

We set our sort of spade in the ground and said we want to be different and estate agents do leaflet dropping and wear ties and letters and letters, and we don't want to do that. So this is how we're going to prove we're right for and we'll do it a different way.

Speaker 3 45:52

So it's in the constitution yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1 45:55

It was written on three signs. Remember those three signs. No suits and ties. What was the rest?

Speaker 3 46:00

no leaflets and no, also it was bullshit. Yeah, no white rain drivers I got rid of that.

Speaker 1 46:07

I'd grown out of that after I had my firstborn and that was the thing. But if they get that identity piece, if they're going to network in meetings or they're door knocking or anything, as long as they're having that as this is who I am, everything else will work.

Speaker 3 46:21

It makes perfect sense as well, because, that is, they're sort of tied together, aren't they the whole, not probably all the time, but the image that you have, or the agents that I've spoken to over the course of whatever, however many years it's been too many years, now decades it's a scattergun approach of stuff isn't it.

Speaker 3 46:41

Put a leaflet out Anything. Spring into a new home. Put that out. Run a Google ad About what If you're looking to sell? But what you're saying is like, okay, you know, not leaflets, but however you want to express who you are to people that's now working in their area, just be consistent with that message and you only need to find a small niche of people that resonate with it. But if you're not consistent with your message, then like they'll miss it, they'll miss the, they'll miss. They'll see one of them, they'll see the like jump into spring message, but they didn't see the other message about the fact that you specifically work with families and you're a local person and all that sort of stuff and you hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 2 47:28

It's a small niche of people. You've almost got to alienate 60 percent of, yeah, of your town to bring in the 40 percent of the people who actually resonate with you and you'll find, as an estate agent I worked for a big corporate half our customers hated us and we hated the other half of our customers and it was a really difficult job. You go hope, go into work with a tin hat on in the morning. I don't think I've had a single argument with a client in five years. Yeah, and we sell 600 houses a year now. It's just totally different. People come to us because they want to work with avocado absolutely. We get messages. I'm thinking about selling my house. Would avocado consider listing it for us?

Creating a Distinctive Brand Identity

Speaker 3 48:12

the whole, the, just even the way people word things is totally different yeah, and you have to wait and you have to accept the fact as well that there's another group of people out there going. I would never use an estate agent who wears a hoodie, yeah good, I don't want to work with you either. That's reality.

Speaker 2 48:28

It creates the perfect situation If you've got a £3 million house and you want the guy from Savills. Savills have done the best job at this. Yeah, like over 100 years of alienating 95% of the British public because I wouldn't sell my house through Savills because it's not big enough. Yeah, that's the best marketing anyone's ever done.

Speaker 3 48:49

Yeah, I'm not good enough for Savills, Absolutely and any time that they try to get a bit more of the market Savills. When someone has the bright idea that they should move into mainstream homes, everything falls apart for them.

Speaker 3 49:02

Yeah, they moved into my town, which is a well-heeled market town, shut down a year later absolutely there was, there's a, there was a, an independent agent in a town not far from me who had made himself a brilliant little business in the high end. They were only like two branches, but they got all the high-end stuff and they were bought, uh, by a corporate who said, yeah, you're missing out on a lot of the mid market, and just ruined the whole freaking thing that they'd spent 15 years building up.

Speaker 3 49:36

Yeah, you have to alienate people and you also have to.

Speaker 1 49:39

Then, like with any business, the agents themselves, they have to review and progress each year. And that's where maybe that year one where we always say you're going to spend time or money and depending on how much money you've got, depends on how much time you're going to have to spend. So in year one you spend a lot of time because you've got time. If you're a new business, you haven't got a lot of cash. And then what normally happens is, over the course of year two and year three, the amount of time that they're spending on the bdm type stuff migrates into money and they start to do it the more efficient way and they always I mean I set the guys and girls up with a 10 pound a day funnel which just just sends their message out there, 10 pound a day, every day, thousand people in their local market seeing it. But then it evolves and we had some weird two of the guys in the office on monday, actually this week, and for the first time they'd just done, uh, one of the watkins blogs to their audience and these guys have been going for about three and a half, maybe four years now. So they've got about three thousand sets of data and matt was sat next to me and he was he's on the fence about this whole thing. I said have you sent it out? And he said yeah. I said let's have a look, let's see how it's gone. So we clicked and it's like right, these 17 people have read it. So we clicked on these 17 people. I said let's just see if anyone's in there. Now I was like right, well, that green dot means that person is quite literally in your database now looking at something. And we went on and it turned out that that person has been in the database for four years. He's in our branch. These guys never spoke to her.

Speaker 1 51:14

There was what didn't have a buyer profile, so it was only a vendor. Came from a val power google lead. That we put in the database and I said that's free, that's on automation. That's the person you've got to speak to tomorrow and obviously they've booked a valuation off the back of it. And that's like the evolution of. They're now in year four and they're starting to put copy dosed written blogs into a database that's been built over four years. It's got 3000 people in to click a button to then read who they need to speak to. So the spending the time part is way down and more efficient, so they can do what they need to do. I thought it was brilliant.

Speaker 3 51:50

That sounds like an awesome software Awesome.

Speaker 2 51:54

Honestly, that's your testimony. Don't clip that.

Speaker 3 52:00

So you must have seen, you must have had some people that you've worked with whereby it just didn't work out. Every business has that. If we have somebody that joins and uses Lifecycle and it doesn't work out, I can, without ever being involved in it, I can probably tell you why it happened. So what's the main reason? You think, like if you just found out like so-and-so's leaving, what would you immediately think has gone wrong there?

Speaker 1 52:30

you want that one? This is the. We'll get a mic drop.

Speaker 2 52:33

No, no like we've already been through it. It's like we have a blueprint. We know the blueprint works. We did the blueprint ourselves. We are living embodiment of our blueprint that we went from starting in an 80 square foot room or whatever it was to turning over 150k within 12 months as functioning estate agents. And then we've done it again and again, and again, and again and again.

Speaker 2 53:01

If someone comes to us and says it's not working, we'll go well, are you doing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten things? Or did you go, yeah, it's a good idea, and I got it and and I listened to what ian said, because ian's the brains behind like 80 of what it is, um, but then I just didn't. I did something else because I just wanted to, and you're like okay, I don't know. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you at this point, because there's 30 odd people here whose average income is 120 K over the last 12 months and you're coming to me saying it doesn't work. I'm gonna call it out as what it is the common denominator. Is you not it as the blueprint?

Speaker 1 53:56

you will have come across these people. We've we've now worked it out. Some people they want, they want the answer. You know, like the silver bullet. They want what's the answer? How do do that? Here's how you do it. Okay, brilliant, and they've got that and they go. I want to do it this way and you're like but we just gave you the answer. Yeah, but I want to try it this way.

Future Growth and Business Evolution

Speaker 3 54:14

I was on a business course. I remember like a few years ago, and you know, you go on these programs and like there was a few of us around the table and they'd they'd set the the homework, if you like, for that. And then like, uh, we all went away and we came back the next time and they went around like how'd you all get on with it? And people gave their ideas and and there's a guy next to me who's put his hand up and I was like, yeah, what did you finish? I realized that, like you know, that's that way of doing. It is not for me.

Speaker 3 54:43

And what? What I decided to do was this stuff blah, blah, blah, blah. And he went off and they moved around the room and then we had our break and I said to him I'm like why the fuck are you here? And he was like what do you mean? He was like you've paid all this money to come on the course You're just going to fucking make up your own course, like just do the, where self-employed estate agency works for some people.

Speaker 2 55:04

employed estate agency works for some people and starting your own business works for some people.

Speaker 3 55:11

And the same in everything. Just want to do it your way. Just do it your way. That's cool.

Speaker 2 55:15

Absolutely. I'm not saying everyone has to be a self-employed estate agent, because there's some people who are just made to be employees and be really good at that. Some people are made to just do it and grind it out their own way, which is also perfect.

Speaker 3 55:28

And would you say that that, in a nutshell, is the avocado thing, then? Because, as I said at the beginning, for most people that just are putting a broad brush across the self-employed model, it's a reselling of right movement and access to a bit of software. But you're actually going no, here's a blueprint, here's a blueprint, and no, it's not going to be your brand and no, it's not going to one day turn into your company. You can start another company if you want. I'm sure we'll still be friends. You're going to be very successful financially if you follow this blueprint. The statistics say you're going to be very successful financially if you follow this blueprint. Is that what you would say is different from like?

Speaker 1 56:10

well force financially if you follow this blueprint. Is that what you would say is different from like? Well, there's all these self-employed models. How do I choose? Yeah, I think so. I think there's. There's the blueprint to a version of success, which is pretty strong. There's also the exclusivity on the patch, which most of them just it's free for you, just a real estate agent in you could have 10 in the same town, but with us it's exclusive, so we become your business partner, if you like. We're like a consultancy to that area, because we want to make it work in that area, because if we've given it to you, we can't give it to anyone else. So, yeah, we want to make some money out of it too, so we want to help.

Speaker 1 56:38

Um, and then I also think there's someone dms me last week and said, oh, can I have the avocado e-deck? And I knew who the person was. They'd been at another self-employed brokerage for about three and a half years and I said, look, this is what we do. And then I messaged them about three days later and I said what did you think? And they were like, oh, I kind of just need access to Rightmove and the CRM, and so it's probably a bit more than I need. So it's probably a bit more than I need and I was like that's brilliant, you must be flying.

Speaker 1 57:05

He's like, no, it's bloody hard. I was like, okay, you don't just need that, you do want the support, you do need the help, the coaching. And I think when people realize if they've got access to that, that team, you know you would pay a lot of money on courses to get the information that we share, cause we don't teach any estate agency. Yeah, you know we meet every other month. We're always on, you know, dropping loom videos all over the place. It's a total education on business strategy and marketing and identity and that's what you get at avocado. Is you get that level of people in your corner?

Speaker 3 57:36

basically, yeah, I um, I was talking to someone the other day just who told me they were going self-employed and I said they should speak to you guys and they were just like oh, yeah just just too busy.

Speaker 3 57:49

Okay, you know, and it's just like you say. It's just a different mindset, isn't it? Like people are just not really thinking too much because, like you say, it doesn't you don't have to start your own business. Think about what. What are you trying to achieve here? I'm trying to achieve, like I know, financial security, retirement, this, that and all the other. Great, so let's talk about how we could help you achieve that. Then, um, as opposed to I know you work it out you're an estate agent.

Speaker 3 58:15

One thing I do like about that as well is like the exclusivity on the areas, because I remember talking to uh hayley, my wife, about we were just talking about estate agency generally, and you know, she was just like this whole self-employed model thing. It's like only estate agents could come up with this idea and I was like what do you mean? She was like everyone's complaining that there's too many estate agents, fees are too low, so what they're going to do is make fucking millions of estate agents. Fees are too low, so what they're going to do is make fucking millions of estate agents. It's just, it's so true, isn't it just like you know what? It's very hard to charge a good fee in this area, but we've got 10 self-employed models that are all going to work in this area together, fighting against each other.

Speaker 1 59:01

It's like I think the the country wants a better option. That's what we've realized is, when you come up with a business in any industry where it's you know it's not a very well-respected industry, and you can come up with a solution to this problem or a version of a solution, then they will flock to you.

Speaker 3 59:22

Well, your people do, and and it happens because of what you've done there with the market and whereby, like mike says, like you're happy to like, the worst place you can be is in the middle of the road and choose the right hand side or the left hand side, but you sit in the middle of the road. You're just going to get run over, right? I went down a high street the other day and I saw a corporate with a new window display that says, literally says we can sell or let any type of property for any type of person, and it literally says that and it couldn't, it couldn't be any more middle of the road, like they're, just like we don't want to lose anything, we can do it cheap. If you're willing to push us on the fee, we can overvalue, we can. We can charge you more if we can get away with it. You know, sell flats, houses, that we don't, we just put it on right move. Whereas if you're willing to go well, no, I work with these types of people and to do that I have to be able to charge this amount of money Then, all of a sudden, like you say, you go. Oh, guess what, guess who comes and knocks on your door.

Speaker 3 1:00:23

We do websites for agents and the main thing, the main thing that I'm saying to these people is like, who are you expecting to make an inquiry from this website? Like, I'm looking at their existing website thinking, who's this for? Like, how does anyone know anything about your company? I sit and talk to them about what's the point of your company and either they don't know or or that we get into it. But eventually we get to the bottom of what the real point of their company is, and then we look at their existing website and go like I mean, wouldn't it be better if it said that somehow on this site and then you got an inquiry from somebody that was like, really like the sound of that? That'd be be half the battle, wouldn't?

Speaker 1 1:01:06

it. It is crazy how estate agents are normally quite good communicators. They're quite good at having a one-on-one conversation with any demographic. Really, it's pretty much the barrier to entry. And when you then look at a website, you think who wrote this? What computer made this? There's a website. Language isn't there. I don't really understand what that means. It's the same on a lot of property descriptions. You know like commuter links and all that, and you're like what the fuck does that even mean?

Speaker 3 1:01:36

Roll-edge work service. I was thinking about that the other day. I was thinking like, why do people still write that? And I was remembering all the way back to when I went. I started in a state agency and like it was like shit.

Speaker 3 1:01:47

I remember now because we only had one photo on the front, so you needed to kind of describe it in a way that they could picture it. And it's just carried on. Even though there's a video and a floor plan and 36 photos, they're still going coving to ceiling like. You don't need to write that anymore.

Speaker 1 1:02:09

I sent an email out the other day, didn't I? With here's 10 different phrases that aren't using the word amazing or something like that. Do you know? Because I just noticed on everyone's video they're all look at this. Stunning. It was stunning. Look at this stunning. I was like all these properties aren't fucking stunning. You can't just keep saying that. So I was like here's an email with 10 different phrases.

Speaker 2 1:02:29

It was in our group chat this morning. Someone snapped another agent who's paid for a premium listing on Rightmove and the premium listing banner says recently refurbished and the bathroom is older than me and I'm not young. Like it's just like. Why have you done that? It's just a word. Someone's painted it Like why have you done that? But we we've actively gone against that and we said well, people don't want to be sold to, they don't want to hear from estate agents and only phoned by estate agents. So when we write our property listings, who do they want to hear from? Well, maybe the person who's lived there for the last 10 years. Maybe they know more than we do about why they spent 10 years of their life there and didn't run away after 18 months because the neighbour was an axe murderer. Just get the seller to tell the story. And we had people literally week one. I loved your description, I just read it and we watched the video. Then we read the description again and we didn't know. There's an alleyway through to the school.

Speaker 2 1:03:26

Yeah, we read the description again, and we didn't know, there's an alleyway through to the school.

Speaker 3 1:03:29

Yeah, yeah, it's so easy. But what I love about it is so many agents would say these things. So many agents would say I want to change the industry. You know, oh, we don't want to use the words, you know, stunning anymore. We want to let sellers write their descriptions, but they cave, they cave immediately. I'm not going to let sellers write their descriptions, but they cave, they cave immediately.

Speaker 3 1:03:48

As soon as, I don't know, things get difficult or a seller goes no, I want this to happen, and they just cave and go, oh, all, right, then you know, whereas you guys, like you've just, you've gone nope. Like obviously I'm sure that there's some flexibility in it, like every business, but like generally, no, we're building a brand company, a business, we're not just, I know how to sell houses, so I'm going to do it by hook or by crook and come and join us and you can sell houses by hook or by crook, whatever little methods that you figured out, knock yourself out. Like you know, you've actually successfully built, uh, what I consider to be one of the most impressive estate agencies in this country, and I think that the estate agency models in America and Australia are very overrated. So I would consider that to be one of the best estate agency models that I've seen in the world.

Speaker 1 1:04:39

Thank you.

Speaker 3 1:04:40

Yeah, I think that's probably a good place for us to leave it.

Speaker 1 1:04:43

Yeah, we'll take that, there's our testimony.

Speaker 3 1:04:47

Thanks very much for coming in. Thank you, Cheers Mark.