Delegation, Decisions & Unstoppable Growth With Marc Wood & Shane Harris

Marc and Shane, co-founders of Harris + Wood Estate Agents, are living proof that it’s not about history, it’s about vision, clarity and action. In this episode, they share the full story of how they launched one of the UK’s most exciting independent agencies, growing from three people to 47 staff across three offices, plus a mortgage business, all without a traditional blueprint.

Their story challenges everything you think you know about partnerships, planning and profit.

Before opening their doors in 2017, Marc and Shane spent nine months building the foundations of their business, not rushing, not guessing, but intentionally preparing to lead. That discipline paid off but the journey wasn’t without its pressure points.

At one stage, they were both earning less than their branch manager. Rather than panic or retreat, they made the counterintuitive choice to expand, investing in growth when most would have pulled back. It’s a decision that reveals one of the most powerful lessons in agency building: sometimes scale is the solution, not the reward.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why trust doesn’t require a backstory but it does require shared standards
• The critical moment they chose to scale, not shrink
• How mentorship from Russell Jervis shaped their thinking
• The bold billboard campaign that made their brand unmissable
• The struggle of delegation and the mindset shift it demands
• How their decision-making process keeps the business moving forward, even when they disagree

Marc and Shane also unpack how they’ve shifted from working in the business to leading above it, creating a sustainable structure where the brand doesn’t rely solely on them to thrive.

Whether you’re just starting out or scaling past your first office, this is a brutally honest look at what it really takes to lead an agency that doesn’t just survive but sets a new standard.

If you’re tired of surface-level tactics and ready for real conversations about leadership, growth, and building a business with meaning... this one’s 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 They replace outdated CRMs, disconnected marketing tools, and manual prospecting with one intelligent, AI-driven ecosystem, built to increase revenue per employee and future-proof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

Meet Mark and Shane from Harrison Wood

Speaker 1 0:00

EstateNCX, the UK's number one estate agency podcast discussing the future of estate agency entrepreneurship and business. Host Mark Burgess and Rob Brady. Welcome to this episode of EstateNCX. Today I'm talking to Mark and Shane from Harrison Wood Estate Agents. They started a business together after barely even knowing each other and years later are now at the stage where they buy. They've got three offices, nearly 50 members of staff, they've got a mortgage center. They've got everything that they kind of dreamed of with that business. So we dig into how the fuck that happened, what it is that they learned along the way and what you can take to help your business.

Speaker 1 0:40

Okay, guys, thanks for coming in. For anyone listening that doesn't know anything about you guys, are you all right just to give us a quick background on yourselves and the company and how you got here? You start. My name's Mark. I've been in state agency now for nearly 20 years. Feels longer. I'm tons. That gives it a lot. Been to Turkey a couple of times. I'm tons. I've been to Turkey a couple of times.

Speaker 1 1:06

I started my career at Countrywide, which a lot of us estate agents did, back in 2006 I think it was. So end of 2006 started on a basic salary of 8 grand a year, which was a lot at the time, and, yeah, just sort of found myself no real reason of getting into a state agency other than I needed a job. But then seemed to just love it and from there worked my way up to branch manager in 2011. So I went through the whole 2008 property crash and then started my first business, a company called Taylor Millband, in 2012. Was there five years and then come away from there and then met this man, mr harris, and we started harrison wood and the rest is history yeah, so shane of, yeah, the other half of harrison woods, uh, started agency in 2009, I think.

Speaker 2 2:02

Yeah, 2009, or is it now 2025? Yeah, that's a long time ago. So it feels like just after the crash. Well, my, I started the spice of heart I think you wrote spice of heart is there else probably in all hours. Then it was spice of a corner, yeah, yeah, and then it rebranded to heart a little bit later, actually merged as one. But, um, yeah, I started there. It was my first job and I loved it at the time as a wonderful company. Obviously, culturally is where we're based in head office as a culture. So that was amazing. To learn from the people there and be so close to the ownership of the company had a really special feel about it.

Speaker 2 2:33

I stayed there for five or six years, I think, before moving on to another corporate, made my way up to branch manager at the tender age of 24, which was a disaster. I thought I knew everything about management and agency and everything, but I I didn't. I took a step back to join another company a few years later when I had my first daughter at the time, needed just a change, um, and then, a few years after that serendipitously met Mark for our partners and started Harrison Wood Wow, 2017. Yeah, so your partners knew each other. Yeah, so me and Mark actually not a lot of people don't know this Me and Mark didn't know each other before we set the business up.

Speaker 2 3:18

Well, we did. We had a dinner once, so my wife and Mark's partner at the time were really good friends and she said, oh, let's go around, marks, and have a bit of dinner, invite us around for a chinese. And I thought, fuck. So go around the speaker state agency. Lovely, just what I want to do on my weekend. Yeah, I went around and in line by yeah, how's the market?

Speaker 1 3:40

what else we're gonna talk.

Speaker 2 3:41

Had a suit on as well yeah, I didn't know him, he didn't know me and our partners knew each other, so they were chatting away and we were like, yes, I value him to get at the minute and and then, yeah, we had one dinner. And then I got a message, probably about three or four months later, I think, yeah, about that um from my wife, mel. She just said, oh, I've had a message, um from mark's partner at the time just saying mark's not very happy in his current business, wants out if there's any jobs in your company where you're at I know you quite enjoy your job, let him know. And I just thought, well, he's run a business, I'd like to run a business. I'll just ask him if he wants to run a business and then I text him, which I think Facebook messaged you, didn't?

Speaker 2 4:22

I, hi, mark, understand you're not particularly happy, want to try something new, there are jobs at the company, but why don't we look at maybe doing something together? Never I've met him once, spent one evening with him and he replied almost immediately like, yeah, all right, let's have a chat. And then he went down my local for a beer about three hours later and we were setting up. Wow, wow, yeah, and that's how and what year would that have been.

Speaker 1 4:45

That's yeah, so we opened in 2017. We were talking about this the other day. We opened May 2017. Yeah, so that's kind of the birth of the company. That's the day we opened the doors and stuff like that. But actually we started first talking about it nearly a year before that it was summer 2016. About it nearly a year before that, it was summer 2016. So we and we probably didn't think about it at the time, but we spent so much time working on the business before it actually opened the doors. You know where are so many companies, and myself included.

Speaker 1 5:11

When I started taylor milburn, I think it was like, okay, well, let's start a company, yeah, and then then we'll figure out. Yeah, basically we I think we decided to start a company in november, left in december, opened in january, yeah, and then sort of muddled our way through, whereas for us, we worked on the business probably for about eight or nine months prior to actually opening. There's a few personal circumstances in that that probably pushed us back. But we said, look, we want to make sure it's right and don't go wrong. You can prolong things for too long and procrastinate, but we kind of had a had a goal of where we wanted to see the company coming to the market and how it came to the market before we said, right, okay, we're here now to do business, okay, and so let's fast forward to today. What's the company look like today?

From Idea to Opening Day

Speaker 2 5:54

yeah, so we started with three of us me, mark and marcus at the time, um, so three people is now. We checked the group chat the other day because somebody asked me this question and there's 47 people in the group across the group. So we've gone from one office to three. We'll stroke four because we've got a mortgage company now, um, with another business partner of ours and it's just gone from strength to strength.

Speaker 1 6:15

Really love it? Yeah, I love it. Um, okay, so, um, let's dive into this. Um, so, all right, we've just spoken about the fact that you've done some planning around the company. Um, when, once you started the company, what do you think was the first first thing that smacked you around the face and made you think, well, that hasn't gone according to plan Day one. That's a great quote. Do you remember? The night before we were due to open, we were sat in the office We'd just taken the lease on this premises Well, it took about a month before Just finished the refurb on it and we were typing up instructions, ready to be open the following day, and I think we had about 10 or 15 instructions to type up. These were like people that you somehow knew.

Speaker 2 7:09

Yeah, it was a combination of people yeah, when you're lying, yeah, you're knocking for like three months before, like we're gonna open, like there's nothing to show you now. But there will be trust. There are some people to yeah, yeah their faith in you.

Speaker 1 7:20

Yeah, you win and obviously you know we've built up reputations in the industry, so we had that to fall back on. And we well, you lived and worked in the same town. Obviously we were open in the same town that I'd lived in, so we had a network of people. But, unbeknown to us, the previous tenant had set the power to go off at midnight. So we're sitting there on our fifth instructor type thing like, okay, we're gonna be here till two, three in the morning, before we're up there at seven o'clock, and at midnight the lights just went out, went out.

Speaker 1 7:43

We're like what's going on here, you know? So we were desperately trying to find the fuse board, aren't we? Yeah, we put the torch like looking through, like the you know the fuse board just to figure out how to get it back on. And I think we managed to figure it out and I think you end up typing some instructions from home and I end up typing some instructions from home. So that was the first almost technical issue we had from. Well, it wasn't even day one at the time yeah, probably the first moment for me.

Speaker 2 8:07

We were quite, we're quite lucky really in like how everything worked out. But this had been the story of my life I just seemed to land on my feet. My friend robbie calls me a little black cat because I wanted to land on my feet somehow. Um, and we like because we had mark, which was really handy, who had the experience of what didn't work before. So there was a lot of like well, we tried this, that didn't work. We did this before, that didn't work. This we could avoid this mistake by not doing this. So I've had the canary down the mine. I just up and exactly, yeah, I'd send him. We'll die if we go that way. So let's not go that way.

Speaker 2 8:41

So there was a lot of stuff we avoided and we were really good at just staying in our own lanes to start with and not getting under each other's feet. So I would go out and list, mark would run the office, marcus, the other guy who was the neck, would do the viewings and any other little bits and he was really good. So we kind of was just head down getting on with the job, didn't really lift our heads up probably for a year. Really just like, just I'll put house on the market, you keep making sure they sell and we'll just keep doing that and the the real probably smacked me in the face when it came about 12 months when we're like, oh right, we've made a little bit of money, and it was like year one, it was like, oh yeah, but no, you haven't because of this. And then then this needs to be paid. And well, actually now it's taxed, and then I'm like fucking hell.

Speaker 1 9:24

So I haven't made any money.

Speaker 2 9:25

Like you think you've done all right, and then everyone got paid except her. Then no, you had. You go into business thinking, oh, I'll have more time, I'll have more money, I'll have more freedom. And you get to the end of the year you're think, oh well, I've done it all. I've been an agent. I mean, you've done it all, it'll be easy.

Speaker 1 9:48

And this is a lot harder than you think, well, it probably felt easier than a lot harder. Do you know what I mean? Because we had that platform, we had obviously both experienced agents, we had the know-how to get properties on the market and we had had, you know, some advantage just to do that. But then it got harder, you know. Then it's the point of the business side comes in that, yeah, the actual bangs of the essence side, pay all, pay you. That's what a setup part of a business is always like reasonably fun, isn't it? Because, like you know, I don't know, you've got your. Whatever you've got for investment, you've got your. It's all exciting.

Speaker 1 10:24

Away you go and going from nothing to anything, isn't him it's like wow this is working, yeah, but like you say, then, I guess, like, then the reality kicks in of, like okay, or your partners kick in and go, yeah, the fun bit's over. When are you bringing some money in? Yeah, Something like that. You haven't thought about this soon? Um, okay, so then, and then? How did you try to navigate that then? How did you? Was there anything that you can think back to whereby it was like right, okay, we've got a business now, we've got listings, we've got stuff on the market, we've even got some staff that we're paying and we're not getting paid. So what has to happen for that to change?

Speaker 2 11:06

I mean in all honesty, we probably didn't for a good three or four years, you know by the time, because there was a point I remember having this conversation. We was walking around town where our office is based in coldstar. There's such as like a little loop that keeps coming back around to the office. So we would just walk sometimes and talk and I'll get out of the office, so we'll walk around, have a couple of loops. I remember saying one of the days and it was no fault of her own wonderful estate agent we had a branch manager in there who'd been at corporate. She was fantastic as far as like infrastructure knows the job can run an office with eyes closed, brilliant. And we must have been what three or four years in at that point. And I remember saying, to mark, something's not right here because we pay her and I've looked at her paycheck and she's taken home almost the equivalent money than what we both have combined.

Speaker 2 11:55

And it's our business yeah but something, something's going wrong here yeah and that was a long time in probably three good, three and a half to four years in, and then at that point we probably thought something's not quite right we, something here needs to change well, I think that was probably about the time when we always had a vision.

Speaker 1 12:13

And this, the first conversation we ever had, when we had that, that beer, that shane talked about the first ever real conversation about starting a business. I remember the conversation of where do you see it going? You know, and we, we always talked about growth and expansion and I think we talked about getting into like a five branch operation at some stage. That's kind of where we wanted to go and have that vision. That was probably the difference that I think we had at harrison woodland, what I had at taylor milkman, where I said it's okay, you're good estate agent, you're good estate agent, let's do this thing and hope it works. There was no real alignment as to where the vision was.

Speaker 1 12:47

Yeah, and I think from day one, we've always been pretty aligned as to where we want the company to go. You know, um, and I think from that point we realized, okay, well, now it's time to open office number two, because we you know, we always we get excited by growth. We wanted to focus on the growth of the company and I think at that point we realized, well, just having one office, okay, we could be market leader and we can, you know, get better across sales and stuff like that. But it was like, okay, well, we need to now spread our wings a bit and start looking at the second office and then where the third office is going to be, then when the fourth office is going to be, because ultimately, we want good people to come in and work in the business. Yeah, run those offices and ultimately they're people that need to be paid. Well yeah you know.

Speaker 1 13:28

So it was. It was a conversation then around okay, well, something isn't going right, or was it going right?

Speaker 2 13:35

we just weren't doing enough of that. Yeah, just weren't doing enough. I mean, it's all like a development. You know, like, yeah, if you get a development, three or four, the first one probably covers the, the second one's a little bit of money, and then three and four they make you the way you want to make your profit. So we're doing something right, but we probably need to just do this on a bigger scale.

Speaker 1 13:52

That's really interesting, I think, for probably a lot of the agents listening to this, because you know they might be in that situation. So I just want to go into that a little bit more, because that conversation could have gone another way, couldn't it? You could have gone yeah, maybe we could do her job, and then we'd get a bit more money, wouldn't we? So you know she is good, but maybe we're just not ready for it. But you guys flipped it to actually her, the second office.

Speaker 1 15:04

We could have some economies of scale here. We wouldn't need another one of her. She could cover it to start with, and perhaps there's some other people that could do a bit of both. And by the time we got to office three, we'd have even more economies of scale. And so, until you get to, you know, obviously you know the goal wasn't to get to the point of being the size of something like Countrywide or Spice of Heart, but they've got economies of scale in the sense of there's one central department deal with some of these things. So how comes or maybe you did have the conversation how did you get away from just sort of thinking, yeah, should we just get rid of her Because she's earning more than us. How did you go to no, let's invest more money and see if we could make money that way.

Speaker 2 15:49

well, because otherwise you just, you just buy yourself a job, don't you like? Why else leave? Because we were both particularly when I was at corporate, anyway you there a few years before that. But I had a comfortable job, was paid well, I was good I was good at it.

Speaker 2 16:05

I got a car paid for, I got holiday pay, all that stuff. I was comfortable. I had no reason to leave other than well, if I'm going to leave, then it needs to be bigger and better than where I am now. And if we get rid of her and take her job, then me or him do it, and then I'm back in the same scenario. I am apart from all the stress you've got to pay the staff and I'm no further forward like we can make a sensible living. But I was making a sensible living. So you know what I've invest and you go. You can make a bit more, but trust yourself, or you can buy yourself a job and keep doing what you're doing.

Speaker 2 16:37

Both are right for the individual if that's what you want, but for us we just said well, we don't want that. We want a little bit more than that, a bit more. You know what do we set out to do at the start free time, earn a bit more money, have a better lifestyle. Well, this one office doesn't really give us those things, or maybe one of them, but not all three of them, yeah. So we kind of have to go to scale and sacrifice in those short term for the longer term picture, the other, the other thing with that, I think, for us.

Speaker 1 17:09

So, going back to that first conversation, I think, starting with the end in mind, right, you know I think you want you want to both wanted to have something where the company was valuable one day. You know we might decide, okay, one day you want to be able to sell it and by us going down the road of saying, okay, well, let's get rid of this person, let's go back to me running the branch and you, listing or whatever get so dependent on the founder that you're worth far less to someone later on down the line and I think that's something which I've probably always had at the back of my mind is as we grow to become less dependent on shay and I, because the more it does, the less valuable the company becomes worth yeah you know, I think for us we wanted to have something where we can step back and grow, like I say, spread our wings in the right way with with the right people, um, and I think that you see a lot of companies do that.

Letting Go: The Art of Delegation

Speaker 1 18:00

You know, they get that first smack in the face after they've probably had that initial um acceleration of growth and you go for that like invincible stage. You think. Do you know what? I'll just do what I've done here, I'll do it again and I'll take this person. I'll take that person on. Then, when it doesn't go to plan, I think it's very easy to retreat, yeah, and you go right, okay, well, let's go back to where we were 18 months ago. Let's get rid of this person, get rid of that person. Then you're back to where you started, almost. Yeah.

Speaker 1 18:29

And as shane said, you, you know you, when we started harrison, would we? Okay, we have to be business owners, but the job we did every day was still being estate agents, you know. And we, we just happened to have our own name above the door and we probably did it a bit better because we believed in it a bit more. So I've got a couple of questions off of that then? First one is when you started, it seems like you know Shane was going out and doing this thing. She was managing the office but getting sales tied up.

Speaker 1 18:56

How did you decide who was going to do a bit less of that first, if that makes sense, like you know, I can imagine there being a. There could be a conflict there couldn't there when it's like, oh, let's take on a valuer and I'll do some other stuff, and the other person's like well, hold on a minute, I don't want to do my stuff in. So how did you decide who to recruit first? That is my first question. And, before I forget it, my second question was there must have been people you took on. That didn't work out. And, like you say, how did you stop yourself just going? Oh, fuck this, it was better when it was just. You know, it was just four of us instead of ten. I had to just stop yourself from reversing. So they're my two, my two questions. Okay, and don't take it after you.

Speaker 2 19:39

Well, the the first question is just because they were the roles we were already doing. So I loved valuing and I was a valuer in colchester. Mark was working in brain tree at the time, um, so it just made sense we just stay out on the road. Yeah, we got to a point where we were too stretched in number because we actually started with, you know, the business player. Yeah, we're gonna do all of this stuff and we're we're a fortunate story where we ripped the business plan up because it was too soft.

Speaker 2 20:07

You know, actually we put like 10, 15 instructions on there for the first month. We opened with 22 and we never listed any less than that. So we were already ahead of our target. So we sort of done a pre-plan, thinking well, by this time we're gonna have too many instructions, then we're gonna interview in person, then we need. So we just accelerated all of that. So we were kind of already because we had that mini plan. We already had a bit of an idea on. Well, actually, once we've got so many instructions, we often need somebody else in the office because somebody else gonna have to keep picking up all the viewing. So it was just whatever period or part of the business got busy.

Speaker 1 20:37

Yeah, we are, yeah, just employed for that part, then, because we need somebody in for that part, um, but I think we then started bringing in more specialists because, whilst that was, you do the listings and I run the office, there was so much other things we would do, yeah, and then we got so much busy it was like, okay, well, I can only run a certain part of this part of the business in the office and you can only just list houses. You know, because you were type your own instructions, yeah, for the best part of nine months, so you were an admin as well as yeah, uh, well, as a lister. You know was like, well, hang on, we're seeing double the amount of hours now. Well, clearly that can't keep happening. So we had to then bring in more specialized roles, ie administration, sales aggressor, sales negotiator, as opposed to just mucking and doing everything.

Speaker 2 21:19

But we had loads of instances where things didn't work out and loads of times where, you know, we went to open another office in a town not too far from where we were. We got two people in. One of them actually still works for us now. We thought, yeah, this will be great. They know the town, they've basically been marked. They both work there. You've been a lister, you know how to get deals done, you know enough people, you've got a great network. This is obviously going to work.

Speaker 2 21:43

And it was a failure, huge failure. Why? Various reasons. It wasn't as simple. As you know, when it's your name above the door, there's an obligation to make it work, yeah, and also the finance is well. If this doesn't work, then we take your house and then we'll take the money back from that. So we had like a burn your boats type scenario because we had to make it work. When you're employed and, understandably, it's not as heavy, yeah, so if it doesn't work, and then when I have a job, yeah, I'll just go back to my old job. Or if I'm knocking doors at five and no one's answered, I'll go in at six when we close and I'll start again tomorrow. Still, get about if it didn't work for us, we're like well then, we need to keep working until it does work. So probably the work ethic was just slightly different. No fault whether the guys per se, but it was just we're also unrealistic, unrealistic expectations.

Speaker 1 22:37

Well, that would have been our third office. Yeah, so there's only two of us. So when we opened a second office, I spent more time in that one and you stayed in culture, so at least.

Speaker 2 22:47

Yeah, we kids yeah, 50 yeah.

Speaker 1 22:49

But the third one was like, what do we do that? Yeah, how often do we go there? Because, actually, thinking back when we started, when we opened our second office, who was even running culture at the time? I can't even remember, but I don't know if we had a specific you're, the manager, shane was there. We had a, a manager in Whittam, but I was going to be there.

Speaker 2 23:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:09

So it probably felt like from the staff perspective, Shane was the manager of culture and I was the manager of Whittam, even though obviously title was said differently.

Speaker 2 23:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:19

And we probably got in people's way by doing that as well. Yeah, I guess that leads me on to my next question, then, which is like how did you relinquish some of that stuff whereby you were doing it? Obviously, like you know, if you're the owner of a business like, you're not necessarily got better skills than anybody else, but you've probably got more passion than anybody else and that'll get you through, like most of the jobs that you need to do, certainly if they're client facing. You know, like I don't know much about our software anymore, but I could have a go in support just because I'd be pretty passionate about it. A person would kind of feel that a conversation, even if I wasn't as helpful maybe as some of us support me out.

Speaker 1 23:59

But so as you started to get other people to do the valuing and other people to do the jobs inside the office, and they weren't doing it maybe to the same level that you would have done it, or maybe they just had different techniques how did you start to get over the idea of not just going around micromanaging everybody and going, no, no, no, no, I don't do it like that, I do like this. I just think, yeah, but me poorly. Yeah, yeah, I did it. I've been a lot of it. We I have. I think you got, yeah, just a bit.

Speaker 1 24:30

But I think you've got to put your ego away. You know, and let's be honest, us as estate agents, we always feel like no one would have won that listing other than me. Yeah, you know, and you always think, well, I better go and do this vow because I'm the best to do it. Yeah, and sometimes that might well be right, but the problem is you don you stifle other people's growth. So, again, we wanted to get to the stage of X amount of offices, whatever it might be. But you can't be the listener for every office. You know you can't negotiate every offer. So you've got to accept that people are going to learn and fail before they understand how to do it, before they understand how to do it. So I think a lot of it came from okay, well, let's put Ori go away and let's okay give someone who we think could be as good and potentially better it was hard though, like really hard, like we can talk it through as if it is, but it was really difficult because it's your your baby.

Speaker 2 25:21

Yeah, it's your baby, like it's your business. It feels like it's your business to feel. It feels like it's particularly your first proper business, which I consider my first proper business. It feels like it's it's like a child, you know, like you love it so much you don't want anything to go wrong with it, and as soon as it does go wrong with it, you think yep, knew that go wrong. Yeah, knew I should have done it. I'm going back to yeah, I just do.

Speaker 2 25:41

You know, but really over time you learn you just as you evolve as a person. I suppose, like we're old, now in the mid 30s, and and you think well as you learn more about. Well, actually, if you want your business to grow, you do have to find people who are better than you, otherwise your business isn't going to grow like.

Speaker 1 25:56

I suppose a lot of it comes back to what you were saying about the vision as well, doesn't it? Because, like you know, if there, if we go back to like I don't know your first business, and where there's no vision, we're just going to jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down. Like, why would you let someone go and do a listing there? You could have potentially won. There's no plan beyond getting the listing, whereas, like you know, if you're thinking like, well, we want five offices, then clearly from day one you know well, you're not going to do all the valuations.

Speaker 2 26:23

So at some point it relinquishes yeah.

Speaker 1 26:26

Well, I think, and also for us. Well, going back to running a business, well, because we're estate agents, running an estate agency, business instinct takes over and your instinct is okay. One person is off sick right, I'll step in and do that job. One person goes off on holiday right, I'll kind of do that job. Well, that's fine because we're estate agents, or by trade, we're estate agents, but we own a barber shop. Yeah, none of us can jump in a dish out yeah, dish out skin phase, unless it was yours.

Speaker 1 26:53

Yeah, I could do that, and but you know we would just work tirelessly to find the next best barber. You know so because instinct we're so used to thinking, oh well, you could do that valuation or I can tie this offer up. You just pull yourself back into the business and, lo and behold, you're six or twelve months down the line and you realize you haven't got anywhere and you've actually probably gone backwards because of that.

Speaker 2 27:16

Yeah, because you've got, I think, because you've got instinct and you've also got staff. And you know, sometimes staff look at you and you think, well, you could help me, so you should help me. And you then you feel guilt almost for thinking, yeah, I actually could, but if I did just jump back in and do the job and I am just jumping back in and doing the job and trying to get them to understand that that's not the best resolve for us. To move forward is difficult because there's there's times where you sit you know I remember us having loads of conversation why are you still editing photos and you shouldn't be doing? I'm sitting there being fuck. It's gone six o'clock and I'm doing someone else's job because they're not here doing it, but because I can do it. But you can't do it for everyone forever.

Growth Accelerators and Business Milestones

Speaker 1 27:56

Yeah, it's funny. I remember that I think I might have said it before on the podcast shifted on that because when I, when I started my fight, that when I started iceberg, actually, um, I was on my own and then I'd employ people to do things that I'd done, so they were like my hands and so I just I'd taken them on and told them how to do it. Um, it wasn't like a stage, it wasn't like I was recruiting estate agencies. I was just recruiting just random people and telling them how to do this bit of a job whereby you make a digital magazine, and that's, that's all they knew was what I'd said and that was how the whole company worked. So whenever anything went beyond what I told them, they would also obviously have to go mark, what do we do now? And I'd go ah, none time to explain it to you, I'll just fix it. Yeah, I'll do it.

Speaker 1 29:27

And the moment it changed was, um, my wife hayley. She came to work for the company and she'd had brilliant jobs assistant boval, head of legal for, like, big banks and all that sort of stuff. So this was, like you know, this is my shit kind of to work here and, uh, I gave her this project to work on, can't even remember what it was. And a few weeks later, uh, because I'm disorganized I just happened to remember that I'd given it to her and I was like, oh, what happened with that project? She was like, yeah, it's all done. I was like, oh, but you never showed me any of it. She was like all right, so she got all the stuff out. I was like here, you go, you go. And I looked through it all like a sort of school teacher. I was like I'm not sure I would have done it like that. Oh, why don't you fucking do it yourself? And it sort of clicked and I was like shit, this is why I end up having to do everything.

Speaker 1 30:18

And from that moment on, literally I I got comfortable with my staff would come to me and go mark, how do we do this? I go, I don't know. And I before that I'd felt embarrassed to go. I don't know, and I before that I felt embarrassed to go, I don't know. Like I was supposed to be. Like the brain, yeah, and literally everything, even to this day, like people will come and they'll be like how do we do this be like I don't know? You figure it out. I mean, we could chat about it if you're, but like I've got no idea, I don't know that you can figure it out or I can figure it out and then I don't need you.

Speaker 1 30:49

Yeah, so I suppose, like you know, as you start to like, like you say, as you start to release things into the company, like you have to accept that what you said earlier, like some people were here like for a nine to five job and that's perfectly acceptable, but like they're never, they'll never grow beyond that if you don't give them the, it'll give them enough rope to either succeed or hang them. So I guess haven't you? Yeah, and if you know that you're trying to build a company that is beyond what you can do, when you can do all the jobs, then I guess that's an essential part of growing a business. Yeah 100%.

Speaker 2 31:21

You worry early on, don't you? Because I think finance plays a big part. Yeah, you think when you get it right as well. Isn't it like if something goes wrong at home and you've got the money to fix it, you worry less. Something goes wrong at home and you haven't got the money to fix it? I can't afford for that to go wrong. So early days in business you learn that as you go, because early days you think let's just not get this wrong because we don't really have the resources to get it right. Should we get it wrong and it'll put us back so much more. But but actually rarely do things go that wrong where you go. This is unresolvable.

Speaker 1 31:52

And if they do, you know there's so many learning curves you take from that. I was listening to a podcast with Daniel Priestley recently and he talked about one of his friends. He said he had a business that failed and right the way up to the point of it failing it felt like he was walking a tightrope. But then when he fell off the tightrope he realized it was six inches off the floor and then you realize actually it wasn't that bad and actually all that education of trying, failing, trying, failing eventually the success comes at the back of that. I might have been that friend To me. Yeah, you know, it's so true. I mean, you know you go all the way to. You know the disaster happens. Yeah, oh, is that it? Yeah, you know it's kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 32:34

Okay, so when you now look back at your company, you've got all these staff, you've got these branches, it's, you know, it's all on track. You fulfilled the first vision that you had and all of that sort of stuff. Looking back, were there a few, or if you had to name a few moments that leapt you forward that you couldn't have known at the time were going to be like that leapt us forward a bit like you. Just I don't know, took a gamble and did these things. What would you say, like well, maybe I don't know two or three other things.

Speaker 1 33:11

Looking back where it was like when we did that, actually that that ended up being quite a big leap forward for us. I think finding a mentor was a big thing. You know, we, um, we were four, five years in, I think, and russell jervis approached us well, but you obviously know you from your spice of heart days and you from your spice of heart, though, yeah, yeah and um, and said, look, you know, he's obviously now gone off and doing a few various things by himself. One of the things he wanted to do was, you know, effectively coach and mentor small businesses, and I think it had been very easy for us and people in our situation to go no, we don't need that you know, we know it, we know everything or we know enough.

Speaker 1 33:53

Yeah, you know, and when you then speak to someone who's been there, done it, and you're like, okay, I don't know as much as I thought I did, yeah, you know, and I think that probably opened a lot of doors for us, yeah, because from from russell, he introduced us to so many different people, our land, the new homes director paeland he again seemed to know every developer between London and Norwich, you know, and the amount of clients that's brought us and just allowed us, I think, or helped us, become more of a business. You know, I think that was probably a big moment for us to actually we just got a soundboard, you know, a sounding board from someone who's been there. And obviously we have each other, of course, and we've got obviously other directors tracy, cranky within the business, who who can help us there. But this is someone who's been there and done it and, you know, is a lot older and wiser than us yeah, yeah, russell's great, yeah, I mean russell's the reason why I believed in myself in the first instance.

Speaker 2 34:47

And when I was running the office I told you about earlier, when money for it was a disaster, like there's no coating out. It was a disaster, but I remember you you may remember from like sparse height, sparse height days. You have to go to head office, yeah, and then you have your managers meet and then you produce your budget for the year and go. Why are you going to do what you're going to do? How many instructions, you know. I was really nervous, like early 20s. I've never done this before really really nervous, to meet russell. Paul. Like you sit in the board. You think, oh god, I can't present to everybody. And you get there and they sit, you in the reception and you know, please wait here whilst they come to here. I know that we wait for a reason. And you go upstairs. You know, is this what I'm gonna do? And then I left and I was like, oh my god, that's fucking terrible. I don't know if they believe it, I don't if I believe it. Like that was terrible. And then russell emailed me that evening just to say hi, shane, just want to let you know that was the best meeting that we had all day. Really great budget. Look forward to seeing how you do. I emailed him back and I said oh thanks, I appreciate you. Just saying that it makes me feel better. I've said it to everyone. I appreciate it. Anyway, you know, made sure. He replied saying no, I don't do things like that. I said it because I meant at best budget of the day and I was like, okay, maybe I can do it then. And then from that moment I was like I fucking love Russell. So as soon as he left, as soon as I found he left, I sent him a message to say I sent him the screenshot and I sent it to him. I said this is the reason why I believed in myself in the first place. They go out If there's like, yeah, let's do it. So he did, yeah. So that was a big moment.

Speaker 2 36:10

I think probably one that stands out for me is when we did the billboard yeah, that sort of ricocheted massive, didn't it? And then sort of just cemented us into like well, this is who we are, that we're not worried about. So we we sat around the table like this and decided on what campaigns should we do and like what message should we put out? We want to do a billboard, we want to get people's attention. Difficulty is when you're busy.

Speaker 2 36:32

Sometimes people don't know who you are, so like let's let everybody know who we are. Found a prime spot, didn't we? Right by the station and everybody goes through it and we put on that billboard in quotation marks. Nothing gets me more excited than a lovely semi and then underneath we'll help you find the perfect property. And then everybody saw it, but everyone. And then we were like oh fuck it, let's just do it. That other reason it's like that's not very professional. You can't say things like that. We all know what that's in your end. And we were like but that's who we are, you know, and like if we're not the stiff upper limb, oh no, we can't do that stuff. We're like we have a bit of fun, we're professional at the same time and we do. And it just sort of just said to everybody in the world here's who we are, here's what we're about. We'll do the job, we'll do it well, but we'll have fun whilst we're doing it.

Speaker 1 37:17

And the thing is, everyone loved that, didn't. It was like everyone other than the team wanted business. You know, loved it. Yeah, and you know people who work for other companies, who probably now work for us, now saw that, for do you know what? Even little things. I think that's a company I want to part of.

Speaker 1 37:30

It's so funny because on the way walking here to the podcast studio, like my son Fraser does the editing for the podcast, and we was walking here and I was talking to him about Sank and I thought to myself this is going to come up somewhere in the podcast. No, it is. And basically I was showing him this preview trailer of a podcast that I was on and I said to him like yeah, before I went, mum had said to me don't swear on a podcast. And basically the trailer is just me swearing. And I just said to him like the thing is is like something I figured out in business was like you have to. You can't sit in the middle of the road, you just get no one even notices you, you just get run over. You have to have people that think that you're a bit of a twat in order to have people that actually think I like this person. Do you know what I mean? And like it's it kind of ties in with that story that you're talking about there, right?

Speaker 1 38:26

So one was like having a mentor that had been there and seen it and done it, and you're so right in the sense that it's very easy, isn't it, to look at some courses or or books or anything, and think like I just can't be bothered, really. I've kind of I'm past all that, but you just get one little bit of golden nugget out of it where you're going. You're like you might not have even meant the way it meant, that way that I took it, but I just had a, a brainwave, yeah, and then, like being who you, starting to get to the point whereby, like you could be who you wanted to be, and so, like this is who we are. These are the type of people we want to work. We don't want to work with people that get offended by a city job. Yeah, absolutely yeah. We want to work with people that think that's quite funny. They're that think that's quite funny. Yeah, they're different.

Speaker 1 39:11

yeah, they've got a sense of humor they're people yeah, yeah, whereas the richard branson style of marketing yeah, that's what we've got it. Yeah, the follow-ups were probably a little bit too. Uh, too, interpupil, we're trying to find those innuendo. But yeah, they couldn't, they couldn't go out. Why that's a bender's? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Okay, are they the main two things, or do you think there's anything else whereby you look back now and you think to yourself I don't know, because you've been through opening branches, was there any point whereby the I don't know that little tip happened, whereby that conversation you'd had when you walked around the loop, where you hoped opening more branches was going to tip over into more profit, what was the moment where you went? That's only going to on fucking work, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 39:54

yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there was one, I think I think it's been a combination.

Speaker 1 39:58

Yeah, just lots of little things, I think, where simulated, where we probably got to in the last 18 months. I remember saying to you about probably about 18 months ago, like we had three offices and it was so, yeah, would have been 2023. So the market obviously, you know, wasn't great, obviously on the back of the interest rate shooting up and whatnot. And I think I said I just felt, I think I think you felt the same. We just felt like part-time estate agents you know, we're at that point probably of employees, probably about 25 to 30. You know.

Speaker 1 40:29

So we weren't a big business, we weren't a small business. You know, when we were sort of like questioning what our roles were within the business, right, you know. So it was like, well, okay, well, this person's off, so you've got a cover there. This person's off, so I've got to go cover there. So what we set out three months ago that we're going to shave all, yeah, that's falling flat on his face because we're busy doing the job again. You know. So, as I think now we we try so hard to not get back into those positions of right, okay, well, this where we were going to grow, the business is going to fall down because you need to list houses, or I need to run this office, or whatever.

Decision-Making as Partners and Lessons Learned

Speaker 2 41:04

Yeah, I'd love to say that it was like strategy and we this grand plan just sort of worked out. We had it all written down and then we followed that and it worked. But truthfully, I think it's just we keep putting one foot in front of the other and because we're moving forward, things just happen. You know there's enough money. Yeah, they just feel like it just happens at the right time, but probably because we're just brave enough to just keep going forward or that or that lucky superpower thing that you've got One or the other Combination of life.

Speaker 1 41:36

It could be that, yeah, that's the thing, I think. Looking back, one thing I probably guess we're not afraid of is starting and going in the wrong direction. I think I'd always rather start and realize we're heading in the wrong direction and pivot later than not starting at all. You can easily just not start that journey and not take a risk and then go and then fast forward.

Speaker 2 41:57

Three years later you haven't moved forward at all because it feels I suppose I'm saying that but it feels lucky. But it is just the chances that you take work out and they look like luck.

Speaker 1 42:06

Yeah, and you forget about the ones that didn't work yeah, yeah, yeah yeah um, how do you?

Speaker 1 42:12

how do you or maybe you don't, maybe maybe you haven't figured it out yet, but how do you use to, how do you use to decide who gets to decide about certain things in the company? You know, because obviously, when you started off, it's like all right, let's give it a go, like I'm going to do the valuing, you're going to do the running of the office, and like you know, and then obviously you've elevated away from that so that now you're trying to work on the business but you can't agree on every single thing about how to run a business. How do you get past that? Oh, we argue every day. Yeah, we do. We'll probably have an argument the way I'd argue. Yeah, we'll probably have an argument in the way I'd act.

Speaker 1 42:51

Is there a way past it? Or are you still just whoever argues hardest? Well, I think obviously Shane has his strengths, I have my strengths. So we sort of, when it comes to marketing, that's your back, you know. When it comes to the operational side of it, we probably have a conversation and sometimes neither of us are right. Yeah, but we probably just get to a point where you go okay, well, that's your department. Yeah, because there is no right. Right, exactly Like you say, it's just someone's who's who's taking, who's going to take?

Speaker 2 43:24

Yeah, we have to get to a point where you go, okay, well, even if we doesn't work, then we'll pivot, there's no blame later, which is the good thing like we'll argue it out until the point we go, okay, well, we try to. You know, some people go, oh, that's not particularly healthy, I don't mind it. Like we don't argue and go, oh, I'll never talk to you again. Enough, I will argue out and then we'll leave and be like cheers, mate.

Speaker 1 43:47

Yeah, see you in the morning but it can be a bit frustrating for people, though. Like you know, I've had it in business whereby you're arguing it out and like you're not agreeing air forward, like you're just arguing it out, yeah, going on, and then you're either continuing the argument the next day or you're just never talking about it again until I. So some people, could you know, find that very frustrating I guess I, but you've, it sounds like you've like when I, you guys, we moved very quickly from like never having met, to like being clients, to like going all in on a website, going on the Accelerator program Something has happened there with I don't know, having a mentor and all of that sort of stuff where you, you've switched to like, uh, like, less procrastination. Yeah, you say like let's do this. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong, but let's not just procrastinate over, shall we? It seems like a good idea.

Speaker 2 44:41

Yeah, we've never really been procrastinators in that sense. If we have an idea and there's always been one holding the other back yeah, we just will go and do it. Like I said, there's no blame. The whole stuff with with iceberg life cycle and you guys is is I said. But you know, mark trusted me to be. I felt innately that. It felt like I said, things just seem to somehow magically happen. What's that podcast? I don't know if you would both watch it. Watch podcast with dan a few months before that with on driver ceo. Then an email come through and it was like oh, oh, dan's at this event. Then I because I never how bad am I at my emails? But if you were to my emails now, there'd be a thousand unread emails and that would that's not an exaggeration that there would be over a thousand unread emails. I read that one somehow that that come through and found me Folded. Yeah, cool, we're free. Diary happened to be free, but that's the thing, though, isn't it?

Speaker 1 45:32

That's the moment right, Because wherever we do those estate NECX events, weirdly there's never any estate agents that are local to the event.

Speaker 2 45:43

Never.

Speaker 1 45:43

Yeah, all right. So just by being in the room already, you're past the procrastination of like you say, I don't know, it might be a complete waste of time. The procrastination of like you say, like I don't know, it might be a complete waste of time. Yes, we'll go for a saint to eat, yeah, but let's go, yeah. So so that first bit happens and then I'll cut you off yeah.

Speaker 2 45:58

And then we were about to walk out, toby grabbed us. Then he was like oh, chain mark, we turn around. I was like how do you know our name? Like we didn't introduce ourselves to him, which evidently is the magic of ice. You guys are doing something right there, or did you know? He said, oh, we're doing a. Yeah, we're inviting everybody back to talk about, uh, life cycle and the system next week, are you free? And then, just, luckily, we were free, like most of the days we have things in our diary, but we were from like, um, actually, yeah, we are because if you'd have said no, you've been, I've been in your diet I've got the diary.

Speaker 2 46:28

Yeah, you bought, yeah, so we were free and we said, yeah, we'll come back. Then we came back and, yeah, the rest of this history just went from there. But it's just like the stuff like that keeps happening to us, and our instinct has led us to the right place more time than it hasn't.

Speaker 1 46:42

So whenever someone feels good about something like I really think we should go down this road I think there's more lessons in that than than you're giving yourself credit for that maybe the listeners are thinking about because, like the lesson, there is like action, like okay, those things all, just they happen to fall in at the right moment.

Speaker 1 47:01

But the action of, like you know what I might go to that event, yeah, yeah, okay, tickets of 100 quid or whatever they might be, like you know. So I could think to myself oh no, I'm not going to do that, but you know what I'm in, work enough, I'm going to go to that event. That's the first thing. The second thing, like, oh, this person's having a chat with me, I'm not going to blank on them, let's hear what they've got to say about it. The third thing is like we are free, we could make an excuse, but might as well go, and it, it's the like I say, it's the action, it's the moving forward with like what else you got to do? Like you got the day off, why not go and listen? Well, I just can't be bothered with it.

Speaker 1 47:39

And then guess what? Nothing happens. Go into the office and do a bit of sales progression, or go into the office and tell someone how they should be doing evaluation, and nothing seems to. So I think you're not giving yourselves enough credit for the fact that you say it all just falls into place, but actually it's you know what. And I put myself in places whereby shit might actually start to fucking happen for you and gradually over that period of time. From you guys you know even that even the meeting, like you said oh, should we go for dinner at Mark's? Oh, I'm even bothered. Took to an estate yeah, fuck it, I might go there. And I'm even bothered. Took to an estate yeah, fuck it, I might. And after on it just rolls from there like the luckiness happens. There'll be many occasions whereby you've gone and done something and nothing came out of it, but it's just the, the action isn't it yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 48:22

It's just getting used to saying yes as opposed to no, because there's so many reasons to find a no, as you said. Oh, we're that busy, you know, and all of a sudden one or two things can be business life changing you meet Russell.

Speaker 1 48:36

He happens to introduce you to a lad, a new husband. Oh, how lucky is that? Yeah, it wasn't that lucky. Like you know, you took the action, you went. Yeah, let's see where this goes. Most people are just doing groundhog day, aren't they? Yeah, awesome like we've. We've been going 46 minutes, so I get there. Yeah, I guess I get a better wrap it up there. Thanks very much for coming in. Thanks very much, awesome. Thanks for listening to this estate agency x podcast. Can you make sure that you're actually subscribed to this podcast channel? If you liked the content, it helps us massively to get better guests and it just helps us generally. So you might think you're subscribed. But just have a double check whatever your podcast platform of preference is that you're actually subscribed and then that way we can continue to grow the channel and get better and better guests for you.