From £140k to £700k | The Keystone Story (EAX 10 Live Interview with Ben Roberts)

This is Part 1 of our three-episode EAX10 Special Series.

If you missed EAX10, this live interview brings you straight into the room. Rob Brady sits down with Keystone Director Ben Roberts to explore how a small £140k agency became a £700k+ market leader and the mindset shifts that made it possible.

Instead of a highlight reel, Ben shares the real turning points: the reset that changed everything, the moment clarity arrived, and the decisions that helped Keystone step into premium positioning.

If you're an agent or owner who feels stuck in the day-to-day or wants a fresh direction, this conversation sets the tone for the entire series.

Watch or listen now to get the insights that shaped the room at EAX10.

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Transcript

From Struggle To Growth

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Estate MCX, the UK's number one Estate MT podcast discussing the future of Estate MT, entrepreneurship and business. Host Mark Burger and Rob Brady.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Right now we've got five full-time members of staff, four part-time members of staff. We operate from Flincher up in North East Wales, and we have gone from sort of 2018 where we were struggling survival mode. We charging like 1500 quid fixed fee, selling around about 80, 90 properties a year, 140,000 pound turnover. And this year we're on course to uh go to around seven to seven fifty turnover. So uh yeah, it's uh all looking good.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

I think Kyper ran a report to that. Come on, yeah, and and one branch still. That's the important part to it. One branch still. So he's not had to expand his area, um, not he's had to move into a different new market, it's just him finding a better version of his market, really, out there. Um so I've got some questions here, but obviously if anyone wants to jump in and ask Benny any questions. Um so you mentioned like that 140, 50 grand turnover business, right? And how many people did you have at that time in 2018? Um three people. Three, yeah. Um, and now you've got seven full-time equivalents, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah, so five. Five full-time four and and and also on the part-time ones, there's some of them are even in South Africa. South Africa as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Two VAs in South Africa. We've got um Bridget, who's our own border, and Christian, who's our media guy, does all the video editing.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Perfect. So effectively you've gone from uh revenue per employee jumping from like 47 grand to a hundred grand per person, so almost doubling that. Yeah. So, like what's made that possible, and what does that what's the difference in that to your business now to where it was back in that period of time?

Team Size, Roles, And Efficiency

Defining Core Values And Culture

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, it's it's been a journey to be honest, and um we um I've had to sort of change the way we work basically. So um we firstly had to go down the route of learning who we were as a business, who Jill and I are as people, and what kind of business we wanted to evolve into, and that involved basically realizing that after 11 years back in 2018, when I first met you, Rob, um, that I'd been an estate agent, but I knew very little about estate agency. So it was adopting a sort of curiosity learning mindset, um really going out there and educating myself on what's right, and then bringing it into my business. We ended up in 2022, August 2022, um, we ended up sort of going down the route of um bringing in a whole new team. We realized that the guys that were working for us had served us well up until that point, but they weren't the right kind of people to take us further. So we brought in core values to the business, um, all based around the type of people we were. Um I brought those core values in, and then those three people that we had working for us at the time soon sort of left because they realized that they weren't the kind of people that we wanted in the business anymore. We then recruited all around our core values, um, our you know, knew what we'd realised to be our core values, and brought in a whole new team. What that allowed me to do then was step back, work on the business instead of in the business. Uh Lee, who's our main value now, um I I at the time I was going out valuing and um you know just not having any time to work on the business whatsoever. Lee came in and it allowed me to sort of step back and really put everything in place to grow the business.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Lee was uh uh a viewing person on a Saturday, wasn't he? And that was like he had his own he he worked, didn't he? He was a in recruitment. Yeah, he was in recruitment, and then he worked on you guys on a Saturday doing viewings, and now he's like their main value. If you if you if you follow Ben and Keystone, like Lee at some point, I think you said to me at one point, people were actually asking for Lee to do the videos over Ben, which is a great, great right in its own right coming forward, because it's like okay, I've now succeeded now, I've got someone actually to replace me. I'm not I don't have to be that face of the business as much as uh every owner thinks they should be. So uh really good. And also, you're South African lady, when we're talking about um revenue per employee and obviously the the cost of that. So, why did you employ someone in South Africa to do onboarding? Because you'd assume that like that would be quite a protective thing, and how does that work for you now?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

It works brilliantly. I mean, the the good thing about South African VAs is that they're on the same sort of time frame as as us, you know, in terms of timeline. I think they're maybe an hour behind. Um, and because it's a non-customer-facing role, we we again recruited around our core values when we were interviewing her. All of our questions are not necessarily about their previous experience or skills, it's all about whether they fit in with our core values, it's the most important thing. And Bridget certainly you know did. We brought her in and it's worked fantastically. She works very closely with Jill, and uh she's been like a brand new. And so on on boarding, what does that look like for her as a room so um AML checks, um bringing new customers on? So when obviously we have a new instruction, she'll get everything ready, she'll um do the write-up, prepare um the actual listing itself, um, she'll be in uh liaison with our video editing company um so that they can pass on the uh the videos to her and just getting everything ready. And she's a proofreader as well. So although obviously now everyone uses like chat or whatever or who's air to do the property descriptions, you still have to read it over and make sure that it's right and it you know it's coming from from Keystone.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Perfect. Okay, so um you've talked about uh turning points in your journey. Uh what's been the single biggest stage of growth since then, and why has it been so transformative?

Replacing Yourself With The Right Talent

SPEAKER_01 7:03

A hundred percent when we change the team, you need good people around you to grow a business. Um so uh as I touched on before, um those people left. We brought in then Sammy, Beth, Sophie, and you know, what once and and Lee as well. And once you bring in the right people around you, everything just gets a little bit easier. Um, so that's definitely been the biggest shift. Uh on top of that, identifying our target customer as well, because our fees now are at 2%, and to be a 2% agent, you have to have um you have to learn firstly who you are as a company, what you stand for, then you're looking at the kind of people that you want to work with, um, the kind of people that are gonna like you, the kind of people that are gonna identify with you, and then all your marketing is based around that. So learning those the changing the team and identifying our target customer, they're the two biggest turning points. That's an easy, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Um uh so um got a couple of questions up here. So uh you said you've said to me before in the past that Jill, your uh your wife and business partner in this, um was a real game changer. How did how did the business accelerate program you work with? Like, how did that help define the right result roles in the business amongst you two and all your team members as well?

Offshore Hiring For Onboarding

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Okay, so again, some of you might be familiar with the EOS system um and a book called Traction. So, what one of the most important things in that book is that you need in a business, you need a visionary and an integrator. And when Jill joined the business, I quickly realized I'd found my integrator. Luckily, it was my wife, um, and I must say it's been a game changer since she came into the business because she came from a corporate background, Tate and Lyle. She'd worked with them for 10 years as a customer services manager. Um, so she was able to come in, and all the ideas that I had as an as a visionary, I it was funny because I used to go into the office with all these big ideas, and everyone used to go, oh, here we go again, it's down this road again. So um, but since Jill joined the business, you know, she's got me back to start with, and she was able to sort of put the ideas that I was having into action, and uh, you know, that it's it's been that's again been a big turning point. Keep your shit in order, yeah. Exactly, yeah, because I can soon go off the rails.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

How many agents I speak to in coaching where they go, Oh, I've got another idea, the team are gonna hate me because I'm gonna go in and start telling them it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So um you're and incidentally, especially when we adopted the core values with the old team, they every single one of them hated change, and that was no good for us because the the estate agency industry is changing almost on a daily basis, so you you have to embrace change.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah, they they go hand in hand so well, like uh visionary integrator. Yeah, like you can't have two visionaries in a business. If you are sitting there thinking, I've got we've we're both visionaries, you've just got a load of ideas, and you're just gonna annoy everyone, and there's gonna be no real direction. You're gonna have all these ideas, and about two weeks later it gets fizzled out. If that sounds like you, then you need to think about your integrator. If you've got two integrators, then it's pretty much you're like don't really push the boundaries and you're a bit more screwed because you're probably in the older ways. So, really good point on that one. Um, so you're now charging one of the highest fees in the area. You said 2%, yeah. How much of that came from getting absolutely clarity on that ideal customer and how important is it for the right support in making it happen?

Target Client And Premium Fees

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah, it's where were you at the start? So it all came about and a bit of a plug for the accelerator course. You know, during that course, we really homed in on who we wanted to identify with, who was our perfect customer. So we worked out that for us, and it's not the same for everyone, trust me. You know, you um Katie's in the room and she targets a slightly different client to us. Chris as well, he he targets different clients to us as well. So um basically we worked out that busy professionals that want an agent that just takes care of absolutely everything for them, a bit like me, you know. When I want something, I just want I just sort it out, you know. If I want a guy who comes and cuts my grass now or does my hedge, and I just want it done, just pay him sorted. Um, and that's the kind of people we wanted to target, and getting clarity on that is so important because then all your videos, all your marketing, everything is calling out though that target customer, and what you what you do, you even sort of home in on what are those people likely to uh relate to on online, what are they what are their interests, what do they like doing in our local area, for example. You know, I might go and do a video like Street of the Month has been really popular for us, not necessarily sort of directed at them, but we'll always put a spin on it towards the end about calling out busy professionals, um, and that has been a game changer because when you're sitting down in the living room with someone, you're sitting in front of the right kind of person then that's gonna relate to what you're what you've got to offer. Um, you know, the last thing we want to do is sit in front of someone that is just interested in fees, and have have you found that that change?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

I know obviously you don't do the value so many valuations, and you've got obviously got a team doing that now, but even the ones you maybe have gone out to now, have you seen that the conversation in the living room change in how they are with you based on what you've done?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

100%, 100%. It's not very often now we go in front uh we sit in front of someone and they're asking about our fees. And the other thing that I think is really important, something I've come to realise, and sure probably some of you have realised this, it's it's quite far down on the list of priorities for somebody, the fees. That the the most important thing for anyone you're sitting in front of in the living room is the new house. They're already living in that new house, they've already visualised themselves, and all you've got to do is convince them that you're the person to get them into that house. The fee the fees almost pale into significance because you know their most important priority is getting from A to B, and they want an agent. If if they want an agent that's just gonna take all the stress out of them to go and do that, then Keystone's your agent, simple as that.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

And how many people do you hear in this industry say it's price and fee you lose your valuation on? It's different, isn't it? There, different mindset shift. Um we've we've noticed uh similar to people like Ben in our accelerator programme, uh their perception is that they could they've maxed out and they've literally gone, Mark said to them, like, chuck another half percent on, chuck another quarter of a percent on, and they've just started doing the next day, they've started to win the same listing at a high fee, with nothing changed in their marketing whatsoever, how they pitched it, just the confidence part to it.

Visionary–Integrator And EOS

SPEAKER_01 15:03

The the other thing to point out as well with that, the valuation team that I've got now, none of them have got any previous experience in estate agents uh up until when they come and started working for us in 2023. So not one had been in a living room before, and there's three of them now, and their their um conversion ratio is around the 40 to 45% mark, um, which is phenomenal for someone. And it so on that on that part too.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

So, how how do you get someone who comes to your business who's never had an evaluation experience, never sat in front of someone's front room for staying to see to be outvaluing with a 40% conversion rate? Like, what does systems processes, how did you how did you get that person in the first sort of few months?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah, it again it's about to going back to what I keep saying is recruiting on the core values, and then it's about having a process on the training, on how I train that team. Uh, we have weekly meetings, we go through everything, um, all evaluations that they've been on that previous week, just a continuous learning exercise. One of our core values is being exercise uh sorry, being expert. So I'm expecting them to be listening to podcasts like Estate Agency X, World Class Estate Agency Podcast, all fantastic platforms to just continue to learn, and um that's the key, really.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah, perfect. Um so you I some of the coaching that we've had in the last few years, I wanted to sort of touch on lead generation, yeah. Right, so uh we've just we've got James Cocker in the room as well, so he's a big person on lead generation, anyone won't see him afterwards. Um, but so many agents I talk to, they they talk about uh sales qualified leads, valuations, and when I have a conversation about marketing qualified leads, your lead generation, it's just a bit like eh, it doesn't happen. And I have so many people trying to sales bombard people who are doing lead generation efforts. So you you try and put up a lead generation tool and then you hammer them like you would do with them trying to book a valuation in. So every time I've spoken to you, you've been a uni, it's been quite a nice conversation because you've said when this has dropped, I've just turned up the dial.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

So like if you're able to explain what does that look like for you and how you've changed that in in the last sort of few years in form of lead generation, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

So um social obviously, social media is a massive part of that. We've got our instant valuations running, we've got heads-up property alerts um videos running, um, and we've got general engagement adverts running, all about consistency, by the way. Go on.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

And so how many ads have you got running in one time?

Sales Without Fee Wars

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Um any one time, normally around about six.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Um, different adverts doing different things. Um, we've got our property videos that generally you get more engagement with them than anything else because people are just curious. But again, that it's about making them better than everybody else's, um, but getting them then in front of the right people via Facebook, ads manager, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all the social media platforms. Um, if anyone wants a good person to follow, uh Gary V, I'm sure some of you do already, but uh he talks a lot about it going from social media to interest media now and putting out videos not just about property and estate agency but about your local area and all the little things that people are going to be interested in. So it's about being consistent across all of those platforms. Um we've got Google as well, although you know, the way it's going, as we touched on before, that might sort of have to be looked at shortly. Um so yeah, um, I think consistency is key.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

I've noticed that as well. If anyone if anyone wants to see Ben's page afterwards, Keystone afterwards, uh your uh heads-up property like intro videos, although they're different properties, they're exactly the same setup. Your your pictures and how you do stuff exactly the same setup, how you do your videos, how you do your market update videos. It's a consistent approach to all of it. Um, and you I always use it as an example when someone's trying to think about how do I do my strategy forward. Uh so like instant valuations and tools like that, what would you say on average you get instant valuation-wise on a monthly basis?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Uh, generally, I think it's around about 70-80. We do we do monitor it, we monitor everything. That's a massive thing as well. The scorecard that we've got now, where it just you you've got to monitor the numbers, um, but yeah, generally on average, it's about 70-80 a month across the different platforms. Scorecard, what do you mean by that? Um, so scorecard we developed around about two years ago, um, where it just tells us all the metrics, so you've got your conversion ratio on that, you've got your exchanges sales. I'm sure most people have got this. Um, the predicted cash flow as well coming into the business, so you can sort of see where you're going with it. This is why we know we're on course for this kind of money at the the at the end of this year. Um, yeah, just just monitoring. And what happens then is we had a little instance where all of a sudden the instant valuations started dropping off. We're like, what's going on there? Um, now because we were monitoring, we were able to go in and what we did is re-vamp all the adverts as soon as they start to drop off, revamp them all, back out there, it went back up to what it was before. But if we weren't monitoring that kind of metric, we'd never have noticed um that we'd probably would have ended up noticing, but six months later.

Lead Generation And Consistency

SPEAKER_02 21:59

So you wonder, then it's like at the edge of a cliff edge shit, we haven't got any sales valuations, and then and then it's a different type of thinking. It's quite interesting. I speak to a lot of agents, and the fundamental thing I always talk about in their marketing strategy is what's beyond the valuation metrics. How many, how much of your marketing qualified leads metrics, what you're doing with those, how you monitoring them, how you're improving them, how you changing them. Because a lot of people just do the tangible ones of oh, I've had a call in, I've got a valuation, we've done 20, 30 valuations this month. But some of the things I used to say quite cheekly in my old agency before I became a cell latency director, I used to they used to say how many valuations you book in. I'd go, uh what are we doing on marketing? And they used to get really annoyed with me, and I'd be like, Well, it's true. I'm I'm booking the valuations in, but like what we do in our marketing, how much marketing are you doing? And they used to get annoyed with me doing that until I took over marketing. So it's so such a vital thing to be monitoring. Um I've got one more question for you, Ben, before anyone else wants to jump any questions. Um you've managed to take out a six-week holiday this summer, yeah? Yeah, and I remember back in 2020, in the middle of COVID, you had a heart attack, yeah. And I remember that call we had afterwards, just briefly afterwards, like your Blas Ali just said I had a heart attack and you're full of fucking stress. And you read that at Middleton book, weren't it? Um Fear Bubble, right? And you've taken six weeks off and the team didn't even bother him in that whole six-week period. Like him and Jill went away for six weeks in that so you like how have you created a business like that that gives you that freedom? Because I'm sure how many people in this room could take a six-week holiday right now with their team and just run the agency for you? Like Ian, yeah, Ian six-week running holiday, yeah. Um but like the amount of business owners I speak to for like a week and it goes to shit, and they come back to it like a fucking hell, right? And Ben got to a point where he was actually like checking his phone to make sure his phone was working, and he said the business actually succeeded better than being away. Like, how good is that?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Needs to go more away more often.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Do you more fishy, mate? So, so um, how have you achieved that? Like, how did that happen?

Metrics, Scorecards, And Fast Iteration

SPEAKER_01 24:18

A variety of things, but like mainly having the right people around you, having the right culture within the business. So, um, again, the meeting structure that we have on a weekly basis, we have an issues, we go through any issues that have come up and we IDS them, so identify, discuss, and solve. And in EOS, that's for leaders of the business. We thought, well, we're a small team, we'll just involve the whole team in this, and we're all sort of leaders then in a way, and that was it, that's been gold because while we were away, there were issues. Of course, there's always issues in a business, but they were able to sit down as a team, identify, discuss, solve, and didn't have to bother bother us. So we were we got to the point three weeks in where we were like I said to Jill, she's like, I need to ring Lee and see what's going on. She goes, just leave them alone. Like, they haven't rung us, they don't need us, and all the rest of it. And we were like, Is it still there? It's is the business okay? Um, anyway, we kept on looking at a dashboard in life cycle, like 22 sales, 25 instructions, and we were like, Well, this is brilliant. So, yeah, um, I think mainly to do with having the right people in the business. So uh be consistent, be proactive, be an expert, and find solutions. Um the way we determined them was through the accelerator course. Um and again, it's about really looking at who the type of people Jill and I are, um, and thinking what personality traits do we have, what kind of people do we want in the business, and what would they what what type of traits would we like them to have? And I think there's there's more to it than that, which obviously we we go through in the programme, but um yeah, that's mainly to do with your personality, your your personality type, John. Like you have to think, well, I want 10 Johns in my business, so what do I want them to do?

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Get myself on that course, I think. Um the second one, so identifying your target customer, did you do that again based on who you wanted to work with as in the ideal seller, or did you look at your demographic and think this is probably the market share, this is who we need to be able to work with?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

More more down the route, John, of um the type of people we wanted to work with, because um I think there's always enough of those type of people. Um, and when we identified it was people like us, busy people that just want an agent to take care of absolutely everything, well, that covers a massive sort of metric of the population anyway. So uh yeah, I think you can look at both. Certainly you can look at the demographic of your area um as well. Um I am I right in saying with you, Chris, that you're um you go down the uh you target probate people or quite a lot of those. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a lot because you s I'm sure you're saying to me that there's a lot of people are that older generation in in the area, so naturally that was why you sort of gravitated towards the probate people.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

That was in January, mate. Everyone has probates in January.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Um yeah, so so everyone's different, you know. That that's this the key thing. You can't just copy somebody else, you've got to work out what's best for you.

Building A Business That Runs Itself

SPEAKER_02 28:34

One of the questions actually we had in the beginning of our workshop was exactly that. We all sell net houses, how are we different to the next competitor? And we had 10, 15 bit different businesses in the room, and everyone left that day with a different outlook on it and a different message. Like Katie about to come on stage shortly. Well, in our brand workshop, she had it um bringing grey, uh, bringing colour to the grey world of estate in city is a is a key brand message. Um, so they only deal with vibrant people, and her whole team's based on that assassiness of it all. Um same with Ben as well. Ben's market is that busy professional, so like you have to identify on that where do they go, where do they shop, what brands do they like, and then align your business to that. Um, I think everyone is perceived that they want to sell these million dollar houses and be on Netflix, but like if your market doesn't serve that, there's no point doing that. You just need to find it. Like Avocado, all of the guys sell family homes and that's it. Right, and they've wrote a fucking Amazon bestseller on it. So, how much more can you get towards that alignment of that market?

SPEAKER_01 29:35

You just touched on a really good thing there. Is um so when we were looking at this kind of thing, we were looking at like different companies outside the industry, different companies' websites, and how they identify with their perfect customer because websites like Land Rover, Tesla, you know, and they do, they all follow the same sort of blueprint, and this is why, and it's this I promise you, this is not a plug for the accelerator course and all the rest of it, but it teaches you not just how to run an estate agency but how to run a business. I would feel confident now going into any industry. Uh I I feel I could go and open a clothes shop and know exactly how to do it. Um big points.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Um, so we'll I'll wrap it up. Anyone want any questions to Ben at lunchtime? Grab him. Uh obviously on the networking at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

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