Brand, Balls & Breaking the Mould: Property as It Should Be with Dan Marsden

🎧 Episode: “Brand, Balls & Breaking the Mould: Property as It Should Be”

If you’re tired of property podcasts that play it safe, this one’s for you.

In this energetic and unfiltered episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield is joined by Dan Marsden, founder of the award-winning brand agency Marsden & Co., and a force of nature when it comes to brand-first thinking in the property sector.

Dan’s not your typical marketing guy. He’s not here to flog templates, spew buzzwords, or pitch 50-page decks. He’s here to challenge the industry’s obsession with “sameness,” demand better from agency brands, and show us why bold beats beige every single time.

This isn’t just a conversation about logos and fonts. It’s a deep dive into identity, leadership, growth, failure, grit—and what it really takes to build a property business that people trust, follow, and champion.

💥 The Problem with Polite

Dan pulls no punches about what’s broken in estate and letting agency branding. Too many firms are stuck trying to please everyone—and in the process, they say nothing at all.

You’ll hear why:

• Bland, neutral branding kills growth
• Playing it safe is costing you market share
• “Professional” doesn’t have to mean personality-free

From independent agencies to corporates and proptech brands, Dan argues that the future belongs to the bold—and that the best marketing strategy is being yourself, loudly and consistently.

🚀 Scaling with Soul

Kristjan and Dan discuss the challenge of growing without losing what made your business special in the first place. It’s something many agency owners wrestle with: how do you scale the human, the humour, the heart?

Dan shares how Marsden & Co. helps property businesses retain their DNA while building brands that are scalable, sellable and sustainable. That means:

• Clarifying what you stand for
• Creating internal cultures that match your external voice
• Building consistency without becoming robotic

At a time when consolidation is everywhere, and private equity looms large, this is essential listening for founders and directors who still give a damn.

🧠 Why Brand Isn’t a Department

Let’s be clear: brand isn’t just about the visual stuff. It’s your customer experience, your people, your comms, your tone of voice, your reputation—all of it.

Dan breaks down:

• The difference between a “brand” and a “business name”
• Why most property firms think too small when it comes to identity
• How having a defined personality makes recruitment, marketing and growth easier (and cheaper)

The big truth? If you don’t define your brand, someone else will. And it probably won’t be flattering.

🔧 Bravery Beats Budget

This episode is full of real-world advice for agents and proptech leaders who want to make braver brand decisions—even without a huge budget.

From start-ups to long-standing agencies, Dan offers no-BS guidance on:

• How to stop blending in with everyone else
• Why most rebrands fail (and what to do instead)
• When to use humour, when to get serious, and when to stop talking altogether

Whether you’ve got £500 or £50,000 to spend, this episode will shift your thinking.

💡 Why This Episode Matters

In a world where portals dominate, tech stacks grow, and everyone’s “client-first,” your brand is the last piece of differentiation you truly own.

Dan Marsden makes the case that brand isn’t fluff—it’s leverage. It’s how you attract landlords, win landlords, keep landlords. It’s how you hire better, sell faster, retain more and get recommended again and again.

And the best part? You don’t need permission. You j

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking Podcast. You will see that today I am even more dishevelled and debauched than usual. I'm going to blame that on two things. My personal trainer who has absolutely killed me this afternoon, like never before, and the inclement weather. But I am absolutely delighted to be joined today by Mr Dan Moslin. Dan, thank you for joining me today buddy. Great to see you. Now we briefly met for a quick coffee before coming and sitting down here because much to my bemusement you and I have been for one of the better word acquaintances online for quite a long time now but it's often the case when you have relationships through social media you kind of lose that clarity as to whether you actually have real life relationships with these people or whether you met people or not. And much to my dumbfounded realisation, you and I have never properly met in person. At best we might have been hi. It's been hi. Yeah, yeah. Catch you later. And not catch you later. So yeah. It's incredible actually. Welcome. Hello. Because we've done a few events and I've now seen you there and I've seen you dancing. There is a rumour. There is a rumour that I go to some events. Yeah, I watched you dancing. I was there. I watched you doing the whole dance thing. Christ. - You know, you've had the Trauerberg counselling to... - Wait for it. (laughing) - I know, I know, you've got home away, darling. I have seen some shit today I need you to help me with. - Never again, never again. (laughing) Never again. - So, Dan, talk to me a little bit. For those who aren't familiar with Mr. Dianne Boulston. - There are. - Give us a quick, give us a quick blast. - Who are you? - I'm 51 years old, I've been in property for about 30 years. So I'm not old, but feeling my age sometimes. I've been around. - Depends who you ask. - It depends who you ask, yeah. I cut my teeth in with house builders and property developers and new homes and land in new homes and worked for Savils twice. Worked for house builders. Cut my teeth on big developments, you know. And then more recently about 80 months ago, I was asked to come and join an auction house, brand new business, the UK's first probate only auction house. And there's a story to that, but it's, couple of guys introduced through a good mason mine I used to work with. - Now you can see, it's not a fake backdrop. I just nearly smashed it. - It's real. - Just don't do the right one with the drink, see, we all right. - Sorry, I'll catch it in my mouth if I spill those. - And then, yeah, about 18 months ago, joined with Nick and Russell and a small team, small but perfectly formed. And we're 18 months in and we've sold well over 200 properties and we've had a handful of auctions and it's been insanely fast. And I love it. And yeah, I've been in property forever, been in new business forever. I guess if you, you know, I was on Watkins, so for a while ago, I was on there five years ago, I am apparently the grumpy man. I'm not grumpy at all actually, it's just one of these, I get grumpy at certain things, but I'm quite the opposite. But I've been around for a long time in the property industry and been in sales pretty much for all of that and investment. And now I find myself in Shortitch, and I haven't been to Shortitch for a long, long time, so it's actually really nice to be here. - Welcome back. - Thank you. - Yeah, it's a nice little patch, and it's changed a lot, it's changed a lot. I mean, I think the 21 years we've been here, It's been an interesting journey through what many would call, I suppose, gentrification. It was always going to go on that journey. We're on the fringes of the West End. It's not like we're Peckham or Croydon. Peckham, you look at Peckham. London is, I think, when I started in property in the late 90s in a porter cabin in Docklands, you look at it - Now he's sexy. - He's just the dream girl. - He's the sexy dream girl. - Tile choices and all that and carton. You know, it was, it was, it was. - You know what you need, lad? You need to be in a portrait cabin in a carpark. - That's exactly what you need. - Yeah. - Yeah, and I, you know, I'd done a law degree. I'd done a law degree. - Going to work in a suit with a high-ditch jacket and a hard hat. - And my dad's like, "Well, where you working for? "We're working for Savills." But I'm going to a portrait cabin in Dotland's. You know, I'd done a law degree, I was going to be a lawyer, wasn't going to be a lawyer, decided I wasn't going to be a lawyer, got into property and now I'm working in a port of cabin. Now you and I have kind of built a relationship over time over a couple of kind of key areas. I think one of those is our passion about property. Our passion about property and delivery of property services. And I think we kind of found a unity in our meek and unspoken opinions about the weaker side of our business right? You know the fact that we shy away from... Me too! Yeah! A couple of ball flowers. We can fucking retire at any age. We should yeah. That's two words that have never been said in the same room as me. Yeah, I think you and I bonded over a couple of things. A passionate desire to constantly do better, constantly ask those questions, constantly question why we do things the way we do things and not to default to the simple answer of "we'll let it till we've always been done" which is the biggest bullshit answer of all time. And then I think over time as we've found our voice we've also been a little bit more comfortable being a little bit more open on what we think the failings of the property industry are. Yeah, for sure. It's a shame and the reason why, people think I get grumpy about agents and I do get people - agents' mates and mine will message me and they'll say, "Why are you being such an asshole about agents?" "You know, you've worked in agency. I've worked for a couple of big agents, not in Resi, but in New Home, Landa, New Home." I think The problem is when you work with really great people in that industry, it pisses me off when I have to put up with people who are not. Because agency is a craft, it's not anything, it's a craft. And salespeople, yeah, you get levels of bullshit in agency and sales and everyone's got a hundred million pound deal on the table which is not true. You get a mip him and it's just the most unbelievable, you know, bullshit factory you've ever seen. Everybody at mip him has got a hundred million pound deal on the table. They're so rare those things that ninety percent of those people are full of shit. And that's the fact. - And the funny thing is, I've met people who do 100 million pound deals. Guess what? They don't have a fucking talk about them. - They don't talk about them. - They don't talk about them until about two years after they're done and dusted. - What it takes to do them. - I know the person who sold Battersea Power Station to the current developers. She also sold the Shell Building to the biggest real estate transactions in London the last, well, forever. - They're not on Facebook. I've never read them about the industry press. You know, I only found out she did it. She happens to be a distant family friend. And we bumped into each other in Manorca, where both of our families had houses at the time. And it was only when she was like, you're working property, don't you? And we started having a bit of a chit chat. And I was like, so what do you do? What kind of things do you work on? And she was like, you know, quite big stuff. And I was like, you know, like, what kind of stuff? Can't drop me something. She was like, I don't know. Do you know stuff kind of like Chelsea Barracks, the Shell Building, Battersea Power Station? I was like, "Oh, is it really small and significant shitty stuff?" Yeah, exactly. Literally three of the biggest transactions. And I think some of the best agents I've ever worked with, you've never seen on LinkedIn. You've never seen them. You certainly won't see them on the Facebook groups on, you know, the Facebook groups shouting into an echo chamber about how amazing the industry is, the best agents, you just don't see them. And I've been really lucky. You know, I started my career with a big housebuilder, so I work with big agents, the posh agents, that's what can cause them. Some of the people working in those agents are absolutely incredible and you never, ever, ever hear of them. Look, I think you can talk the industry up, I think you can talk players up and I think we need to because there is a lot of negative dialogue. However, right, let's look at the common three, whatever you want to call them, selections of our society who get the most shit. Politicians. Now, how unfair is that? Because they're absolutely smashing out the park and doing a brilliant job right now, right? No. No. I think we can all, all unanimously agree that it's the greatest clusterfuck of politics ever. And so that's why they take spot number one. In spot number two we've got journalists. And whilst there are some fantastic journalists out there, I don't think many of us under much illusions about what is driving a lot of the horrendous dialogue out there. And therefore again, warranted. And in spot number three is Agents and has been for 20 years and as much as those of us who do an excellent to good job hate and resent the fact that we are all tarnished with this same brush, we all ultimately know that it's for good fucking reason. Yeah, and we all know that there are still too many agents out there who will overvalue together an instruction, who will slash a fee to stop a competitor getting up, not because they can sell it, who will build a business based on simplistic targets, because it's an easy way to manage people. Yeah. Who will look we don't need to document it. It's all well known, you know the the the fact The that stat about leads I keep coming back to this But the fact that for the last 10 or 15 years you've got this pretty much universal stat from the three major portals That approximately a half of all generated leads go unanswered and that hasn't changed Even with the help of tech Even with the help of tech, right, you've got to think, so I think probably the first auto responder service I'm aware of out there is LeadPro, which is now earned by Nurture Group but was started by Sam Zawadski and is about a decade old. When you think that that's like, I think 10, 12 years old, I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around there. I might be over-racking it a little bit, but they're there about and cheap as fucking chips. not forget that a Google form is almost free to create. How? And yet the biggest gripe that you will hear come out of most agents' faces is what they spend on portals generating those leads. I mean it's shocking. I've said this five years ago, I said it recently, Mae'r gwybod dd they're actually converting all this sort of stuff. We all know the, you know, how quick they're doing these things. How much they getting on the asking price. All that sort of stuff is important. But I said to him, look, we're gonna go round, we're gonna go round about 10 agents, I can tell you one thing, this is what you're looking for, we want a noisy office. We went around 10 agents, nine of them were like libraries, one of them was like a boiler room. War for Wall Street. Everyone's on the phone, super noisy. Surprise, surprise. They were the best performing agent because they're just old school agencies. Smash the phone, talk to their buyers, a dwi i'r cyfnod, yn y cyf some of the what I would call great agents and you go into some of the branches you know I'm not going to name any but there are there are some very very very good agents I think that's why I get so pissed off about this whole thing because I know agency can be great yeah and when it's done properly it's a it's a great thing and I've talked to so many branch managers who just know their patch inside out back to front can tell you about every street every price without even looking at a computer and you go to other branches and they can't even tell They don't even know what they've done this year. They don't know what they're charging. They don't even think about anything and it's just depressing. - So interesting, I don't necessarily agree with the phones thing. In that, I think good agents, but good agency is knowing your applicant base. - 100%. - And in whichever way you disseminate that information. Now, if you have a client base that is very happy and comfortable to get on the phone, fantastic. you should absolutely be on that fucking phone. In our agency, Lettings, which you're typically dealing with a younger demographic, it is literally nigh on impossible to get any on the phone. - Yeah, I totally accept that. That's the thing. - You know. We spent quite a long time berating, well, I suppose, berating our staff years ago, going because that was, that was-- - That's the thing. - That was what made me-- - What's up? - A fucking amazing, Ned. And that's how Anne and I formed our bond, was you hit the phones. But what I realized later on was it wasn't necessary, it wasn't the act of hitting the phones that got the deal done. It was the interaction that helped me properly understand what that person thought they wanted needed and actually hopefully what they actually fucking wanted to do. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what made me a good neg back then was, yes, through those conversations I knew that, so that where Anne and I kind of built the foundations of our relationship was that, you know, literally so, 'cause she would just do take-ons. At the company we met, she was a Lester. And there were people who filled her diary. So literally she would just come in the morning, she would have three to six or seven valuations in a day. and she would come in, kind of, you know, do her own little bit of market research and plan it and then be off and then she'd back at lunch. And what, where, where, where we built our relationship was I would not leave, let her leave that office in the morning until I understood every fucking detail about those first three appointments she had before lunch. - Yeah, yeah. - And I would grill her and I'd be like, what is it, where is it, when's it coming up? What are you thinking? because she would also, she would all pretty much always list it around her valuation. So it's like, what you thinking? - Yeah. - What you thinking? And I write notes and off she would pop and she would always use exactly her full hour, always. - Yeah. - Probably 30 minutes, 40 minutes of just talking. - Yeah. Nothing about property, specifically. Nothing about our services, nothing about anything. 40 minutes of building a relationship with that person, understanding why they're renting, why they're looking at us as an agent, why they're leaving their former agent, all the wise. And then the last 20 minutes would be kind of pitching. and I would set my alarm at 50 minutes. I'd literally in the morning, I'd be like, "Right, she's got five appointments at these times." And I would set an alarm for 50 minutes past each of those hours. And at 50 minutes, that alarm would go off and I would call her. And I'd go, "How's it going?" She'd be good. I'm like, "Cool, cool, cool, cool." I've got three people who can come and see that tonight. Is that okay with the landlord? And obviously, you know, some landlords would go off. But actually, the vast majority were like, "Yeah?" - These guys are good. - You know, we do the deal. It drove my fucking colleagues nuts, right? 'Cause we had meetings every morning. - Yeah. - We had meetings every morning, and we'd go, "Great news, guys. "Yesterday I took on X and Y, "and Olly or whoever in the office would go, "Ooh, ooh, when can we get in there? "I've got someone for that." And I'd go, "Slight problem." I need, after a while it was just that I'll fuck off. I was like, I've already taken a hold. I've already let that one for like 50 quid a month over the asking price. - I love it. - 'Cause all of that was the other thing as well. Like, you know, it's the applicants. Be like, you'll see it before anyone else. It's not on the market. If you want it, we're probably gonna get big. So everyone won. Everyone won. And that was, but what I would say, like I said, coming away from that, and when I started in agency 23 years ago, abso-fucking-lutely it was all on the call. - Yeah, and look, I absolutely can see that, you know, a lot of the time I'm speaking to people, you gotta, you gotta do this best for them. I mean, I've got certain people I deal with who are big fans of WhatsApp voice notes. That's how I communicate with them. I've got other people who say to me down, I'm too fucking busy to send me a text. I text them. But to be honest, and I've always said this, Christian, and I was thinking about this this morning, And as much as people in it, not people, it's not true. There is sometimes people say, "Dan, you're quite grumpy, you're quite cynical, you're quite..." It's just not true, right? I get grumpy about certain things. I am, and I've always had, I've always believed that sales is an energy business, always has been. How you convey that energy, that's your thing, right? But I have always carried, and people have always said it, "Dan's got so much energy for this, so much energy for that." In fact, my boss, now Nick, is very kindly written stuff on Dating about it. It's an energy business. It doesn't matter whether you work in sales or let-ings. If you want to sell an idea, or you want to sell anything, let's be honest, we're always selling all the time. People just don't realise it. People scoff at sales and go, "Sales, nasty smell." Everybody's selling all the time. Without sales, there is no business. No, no, it doesn't matter whether you're an artist or a... But it's an energy business. Engineer. What I wanted to convey to my mate Anton when we were walking around the agency is look We need energy right and sometimes it's energy You can you walk into an office and feel it most people if you ask them and I don't know where this comes from But it's quite intimidating walking into an estate agent. Hmm. It's either everybody looks at you guys. Yeah They all ignore you they all ignore you which is just as bad. So you don't know which is worse They're all ignoring me or they're all staring at me. I think I'm gonna go, you know Mae'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r ddweud, ac yn ffawr yn ddweud. Mae'r ddweun o'r ffordd ffordd yn y bar, yn y bwysig, ac all gwell. Felly mae'n gweithio'n ddweun, fel walk in and you can feel it. As soon as you walk in it was friendly, it was happy, it was buzzy, it was nice and there were people talking over here, there's a customer sitting here on the sofa, there's a couple of people on the phones and I said to him this is the one, the others were like more... The great thing about good agency right is good agency is good agency. Yeah. You can try to compartmentalise it, you can try to be like oh yeah but that might work there. Bullshit. So recently my sister tried to sell her house in free and Barnett up in North London. As is often, I don't know if you find this, I find this very commonly with my family and friends. They usually come and ask my advice after the fact. So got my house on with such and such. Not very happy with what's happening, what should I do? Get in a fucking time machine to eight weeks ago and come and ask for my My advice before you do this shit would be my first tip. So please, if you know someone, if you're thinking about selling or letting out your property and you know someone who's pretty good at selling or letting property, wherever is you need, anywhere in the country, pick up the phone and talk to them. Because being good at sales or lettings, yes there are nuances to market. Yes, you will sell different, you will sell a hundred million pound super mansion differently "then you will sell a 150,000 pound flattened skeg nest." Agreed, but good sales is good sales. And a brilliant example of that is, like I said, my sister tried to sell her house up in Friand Barnet. She, I think she had already instructed the first agent. So I didn't have 20 EA, but the way I do it, 'cause we often, we closed our sales department about five years ago. But what I will do is when a client wants to sell, I'll give them an overview. I will go look. In my opinion, I think your property is worth approximately, it's a very loose, approximately somewhere around here, looking at that location and that type of property and that price band, these are the one, two, three agents you should be talking to. And if I know one, two, three of them, I will offer to make an introduction. Sometimes usually there's one or two in there, I know. Occasionally there isn't but that's kind of how we do that. So sorry digress. So so my sister had listed this flat and free in Barnett And And you know where this is already going to start off because oh It's been on about a month I've had three viewings. Yeah And I was like Okay, so just disinstruct them up. I Why you've been on the market a month. Oh, it's a 12 week minimum contract. I'm like cool cool cool cool cool Cool, that's the first thing I would have told you to cross out I was like the other two weeks. I was like how many ages you get around. Oh, I took your advice Yeah, I had three agents round and I was like cool cool cool cool cool Did you use my other advice? Like all of my other advice. I was like so how did you pick the agent? Well, we pick the agent, we narrowed it down first of all to the agents that valued it at, around the price we need to sell for. And then from those, we chose the one that gave us the lowest fee. And I was like, right, so you took my first piece of advice, you took that on board and then you thought, do you know what, I'm going to take the other two biggest piece of advice you've given me and I'm going to do the fucking opposite. (laughing) - It's just, I don't even know why I laugh because it boils my piss. She even listened to that. - Honestly. - You're so honestly. - And I decided-- - It's no feel, high valuation, that's how you win an instruction for your shit agent. And that's it. - And? - Double whammy! - And there we go, no. And you in for 12 minutes. And we're shit. - So then I went, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. I'm like, how have those chats gone? 'cause I'm like, you know, bottom line is they've pushed it on the portals, they've got decent amount of stock in the area. They've got about 25% of the listings under offer. I'm like, already that's red flags, babes. I'm like, already they only have one in four of their properties under offer or sold. I'm like, so already, not exactly smashing it out the park. Oh, but you know, more of a buyer's market than a seller's market. I'm like, well, you caught that sound bite off them, didn't you? So then I'm like, cool, cool. So what have the chats been? So I'm like, that price seems a little bit optimistic. My sister's like, yeah, but you know, it's on at that. And like, there's a little bit of movement 'cause we need to sell for that. And I'm like, cool. What have we talked about needing to sell at a price? I'm like, is that how the market works? Yeah, but you know, they said, I'm like, so we had that come around to agent number two. So we get out of that. I think she took a little, she did get out of that contract. I think she had a little break over Christmas 'cause I think that led up to Christmas. She's like, right, can we go back to market? And I was like, cool. I was like, please let me help you this time. So I was like, I will assess the local agents, but I'm like, let me do that. I was like, unless there's a true standout, I also want you to talk to my friends at location, location. And so I did a bit of data analysis on other agents, and I was like, look, a court from what I can see on like move, these are the ones who have the most sold stock. These are the ones that have the least listings come back to market. These are the ones with the least price reductions. I'm like, these are the kind of tics that you want. I'm like, however, the best performer in your patch, I would still consider, okay. Like, they are not stats that make me go, - No. - Why the fuck didn't you appoint these guys in the first place? I'm like, so, they're all right, but I still think you should talk to location location. - Oh, okay. But they're down and hacking me, they're not in my patch. I'm like, yeah, but good sales is good sales. Okay. And what do they charge? I'm like, 2% with that sole agency. - What? - 2% plus fat, sole agency. Yeah, but these guys are gonna do it for 1% plus fat. I'm like, but 1% plus fat of nothing is nothing. But I don't understand. If they don't sell your property-- - You don't need to worry about paying for it. You don't need to worry about paying a fee, but in the meantime, 'cause she doesn't live there, the property's completely empty. - Okay. - Right, in the meantime, you've paid three months mortgage. - Yeah. - So, we go again with the local agent. We did listen cap it 28 days or a month wherever you wanna call it, fee fine, a better price, they did a price adjustment after two weeks. But still ultimately, nothing, my sister's frustrated. I'm like, look, if you, oh, it can't be sold. - It's the unsayable thing. - It can't be sold. It's the market right now. It can't be sold. There's other stuff sticking. You know, I think I'm gonna rent it out. And I'm like, cool, cool, cool. Well, obviously we can take care of that for you. But I'm like, I know you don't want to be a landlord. - No. you want to sell, 'cause I know what your plan is. I'm like, please, can occasion come and have a meeting with you? I'm like, but because these are friends of mine, and because they're coming up from Hackney, I'm like, first things first, 2% plus fat, sole agent, no negotiation. I'm like, that is, you are not allowed to ask for a reduction. Don't fucking play the Christian's My Brother card. I'm like, bless her. My sister's going to be livid about this. Vicky was like, happy to keep you. I'm like, no, no, you get paid for the work you do. So the first two agents, right? Agent one, 12 weeks, six viewings. - Okay. - Agent two, four weeks, I think managed five viewings. She instructed location location. First week, 35 viewings. - It's just ridiculous. - Yeah, I don't, and... - Ended up securing five offers, having a bidding war. - Yeah. - And this is where it gets a little bit frustrating, got to the point of, the point where it was worth selling. And then my sister and her partner had a bit of a check of other mitigating factors in their life and went, Actually, do you know what? I think we're seven, two years. (laughing) Our blesser, Vicky and Anna at location and occasion were the consumer sales professionals and they went... - That's impressive. - It's fine. - We have a similar story. - That is half of the course, but what I loved was my sister went, I really thought you were talking a bit of shit. I really thought you were all pretty much kind of the same. And like it was all you were just trying to get me to use your mate's agency to pay a lot more. - Didn't get great torture. - I'm like, thanks sis. Thanks for that. And then she was like, fuck me. She's like, literally, how do you call those two things the same? And I'm like. - And that's the problem. And this one doesn't, but this one is the same story without the sister. We had a property in June, Which I do a lot of work with charities. I miss the charity in the office. So I work with a lot of the big charities. - And that's 'cause a lot of people leave property to charities and their wills? - Yeah, so say lots of the big charities, two thirds of their income comes from legacies. So people leaving money in minis, or literally entire houses, or you know, if they're lucky, but I work with charities every day. So some of the biggest charities in the country, I work with the legacy teams, and we're property consultants for them. But we had a couple of, well, four large charities, like a name to them, Cancer Research UK, and Great Ormond Street. A house in Buckinghamshire, it was valued, you've done it again. - I've done it again. - But it's the left elbow, you're okay? - Yes. - And that house was valued at 625 by the local agents. Been on the market 18 months, had one offer in it, by 50 and 2023, it's painful, bucking painful. beautiful house couldn't sell it, couldn't be sold. - Can't be sold. - It's a saleable property, unsaleable. - Unsaleable property. - So we had a meeting with the charities, I persuaded them to give it to us at the auction. - Guide price 550 or 500,000. - This is amazing. So we guided it at 500, had a reserve at 550. I was expecting it to do well. - Probably sold at something like 750. - Oh, it's even better. - What? So that's not even the bit, I mean the sales figure is phenomenal. It's not an outlier, we do this every auction, but this was ridiculous. So four charities all looking at us, we'd worked with Cancer Research already, I've sold a few properties for them now, but we had a couple of other charities, Great Ormond Street never worked with us before, I met them at an event, they're lovely and they persuaded us, they were the lead charity, they trusted us with this house, we listed it three weeks before the auction, the catalogue went out to a very large database of buyers we have plus we listed it on the portals just like the agents and we you know do everything did all the mark saying all that stuff. Happy days. So we put it in the catalogue, catalogue goes out and we had bearing in mind there was one offer in 2023 at 5.50 against evaluation at 6.25. We had 140 viewings on that house 180 legal pack downloads and 62 registered bidders on the day, guided at 500, reserved at 550, valued by the local market at 625 and the hammer went down at £901,000. What a result for the charities. So this whole thing about, it's a perfect point, it could be an agent in Hackney, it could be an auction house in West Hampstead that sells a house in Buckinghamshire, it doesn't matter. You do the good selling is good selling and yes I get it people like me and we've got the audience, we've got the biodata base, we've got of course weird local hackney agent, whatever it is, yeah fine I get that. If you concede to the fact and this is a bit nobody's going to admit to this, you just got to list it on right move. That's what I mean and that is awful and I don't believe that by the way, I don't believe that. But that is the public perception. But the public think you just Das ist nicht wahr? Ja, für uns ist es so, dass wir das aufgrund des großen Portals einbauen, wenn wir ein großer Database haben. Wir machen das genauso wie die Locations in der Region, wir haben die Häuser in Cumbria, in Cornwalt, wir machen das von Nordrheinland. Wir haben das, wir haben ein großer Database, aber was wir tun, ist, und Nick und Russer, und wir sind sehr beliebt, und wir machen das grundsätzlich gut. Das geht. results. If you don't, a sort of faff about, or you bullshit people, or whatever, you cut corners. My dad used to say to me, I don't know why he's one, cut corners, get more corners. That's what you get, right? Yeah. Turn a circle into a... And then this whole thing with agency, this is over. And I don't know what the reason for it is, laziness. I think increased competition in the market, you're winning instructions on low fees or high prices. You can't do both. And the problem is, if you've got a team that's poorly trained, you've got to blame the managers because they're not training their people and I think actually there's probably some good people stuck in poor agents offices which is really a shame. There's probably some very good nags out there. I think the difficult thing is you consumers are utterly ignorant and clueless. A, what we do would be what good sale is. And everyone's a property expert, right? Everyone's a property expert and like you said, a lot of them are under the perception that all you have to do is put it on right move because that is what agents, that is what we tell them we put a massive right-move sticker in our window, we put a massive right-move sticker on our website. We at the top of our marketing blurb if we have a marketing page we open with our properties are on right move. We walk into the house and we go fantastic news Mr and Mrs Jones we're on right move and And then we wonder why people think that is... I can train a chimpanzee to be a estate agent. If I had RightMove, that's what they think. And I know that's not true, and as much as I give agents a hard time, that's not true either. Do you know what's also fascinating about that is the whole... I know there are many people at RightMove who will be listening very intently to what I'm saying right now. But this isn't about being anti-right move per se. This is about understanding how you deliver transactions. As an individual, as a business. Now, if right move is what facilitates that in your business, okay, cool. Fine, great. If you work in a marketplace where that is literally all you need to facilitate the vast majority of transactions and you buzz around that, brilliant. But as we know the often the case is that's got nothing to do with it and I often hear you know a lot of agents one of their biggest expenses is their right move bill and I hear the same line time and time again or I can't leave right move because a) vendors will go are you on right move I'll go no and they'll go okay thanks a lot and b) my competitors will come in and go oh you know they're not - On RightMove, right? - But you can't complain about RightMove. If you had a machine in your office where you put a quid in and you got 100 quid out, you keep feeding it power coins. RightMove's a business cost. It's not, you know, I get it. If you're paying for RightMove and you're selling no houses, that's a problem. - Yeah. - But that's a problem anyway. You know, you, and that's the bit, and I've never, and it's actually just, that's the bit that grinds my gears, and that does make me grumpy when people moan about RightMove. Whatever their problems with RightMove are, customer service, whatever it is, people say, well, they don't look after us. - I'm not close enough to that. - 99.9% of people, that's a Ron Burgundy stat there, 99.9% of agents who moan about how much they pay right move, cannot tell you what they spend versus what it generates. - Well there we go, and that's the problem. - And they should know that figure like that. - Yeah of course. - They should go, in the last three years, boom, boom, boom. - And we said this when we met for coffee before this, the bit that I don't, and we'll never understand, good agents know their numbers back to front. I used to go to a lot of agents who used to come to some of the posh agents as Mr. Watkin calls them. You know, you go to some of these, not just them, but you go to some strong independents and you speak to somebody who's been in a market town for 20 years and you ask them questions about them. They don't even have to look it up. They know their numbers back to front and I've got so much respect for that, people who just know their stuff. - Well, these guys, the guys in the office laugh because we know our properties so well and I usually know the postcode. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You know, we'll have people go, oh, what about this flat? And I'll be like, oh, I'm pretty sure that's like E32DL. And they'll be like, all right, Rain Man. - Yeah, exactly. - It's like, yeah, and we've had it on our book since 2012 and we started off renting it for 1300 pound a month and now we're renting it for 2225 and the current tenants have been in there for three years And part of this is about giving a shit. And I think, you know, and you know when you're working, like, I can't just keep talking about agents, not just agents, any industry you experience if you're out and about and you're as a consumer, when you leave someone, you've had really great services. - You know, universal rules, right? - I love that, I love that. I just, such a great place. We do it locally. I live in a seaside town, I live in Whistelville. This place is pop up, it's 95% independent at High Street because it's very busy. It's very, very busy. They just got rid of Costa, which I'm over the moon about. And there's literally, I think, maybe two large brands on the high street. The places you go to, you go into a coffee shop, you get to know the people, you keep going back, you give them Google reviews, you do everything you can to help because actually they're really good. And they give a shit. - They're interested in you, they're passionate about their product, their service. - And I don't need somebody to be sick of having to do that. - They constantly try to have a good time in a shop. Now you're going to have a coffee and a quick chat. I don't expect them to be nice because they're not paying you money. Mae'n gwybod, mae' and experiencing good customer service, whether you're buying a car, eating a burger, or ordering a coffee, is good service. And it doesn't matter. - And do you know what's really interesting? You saying this because you talking about that, I'm talking about, I'm instantly in my brain, I'm thinking about things. And do you know what's really interesting? What gives me goosebumps now, what has got the hairs standing up on my arm proper, is remembering how we've made people feel along our journey. - Amazing. - You know, look, the awards are great and the wins and that, you know, whatever else, that's lovely and brilliant. But do you know the things that are gonna stay with me long past I retire from being an agent? - Whatever happens. - You know, we had a client we took on Early Doors, tiny little flat down in Ducklands. It's still on our books today. One of our cheapest flats that we've looked after. But about three years ago, the owner of that flat passed away, lived over in Middle East. He'd written two things in his will. One, that the family weren't allowed to sell the flat and two that they had to keep us as the letting and managing agent. Which they've done, true to their word. About three months after that they all flew over and went and met them near the airport. That will stick with me for the rest of my life. When I think about how we reacted in Covid. So when Covid hit, like everyone, you know, that first, particularly that first week, that first 24/72 hours, is this the end of the fucking world. One of the things I will, for the rest of my life, be proudest about is day two. Ann and I had a very detailed quite, you know, we had different opinions on it and I'm so glad that we reached an agreement on it and we made the decision to send an email out to our entire tenant database on day two of COVID. The premise of which was if you find yourself remotely concerned that you cannot pay your rent or that you're worried about losing your home, don't panic. Come and talk to us. We can't guarantee you anything, but what we will do is we will listen and what we will do is we we will then have a conversation with your landlord. And again, we don't know what their situation is, so we can't promise anything. - I think most people just shit themselves and did nothing. - Most people shit themselves and did nothing. And it is the fear that cripples people. It's the fear that encroaches in your brain, which you will know more than most or more than many. You know, it is what you think might happen. is what you think might go wrong. - Play out the worst disasters in the world. - And when you are already worried about, are we gonna be alive in six or 12 months time? Is there an economy? Is there a job? You know, I mean, none of us really had been through anything like it. It was fucking insane. - We passed a kid's playground when we got from war with the dog and it's all metal. I remember you weren't allowed to touch anything that was metal. We're like, we weren't even allowed to touch that. People were wiping it and there's all sorts of stuff flying about. - I don't remember when he said - Couldn't go out. - Couldn't go out at all. - Couldn't have put out the door. We forget how, you know, in those first few weeks, I mean, first of all, we had launched the depository one week before COVID. - I love that. - After five years, five years building and testing that fucker. So that was fun. But no, to my dying day, one of my proudest moments will be that email that we sent out. - That's amazing. It's amazing. because particularly in a situation like that, people should not have to worry about whether the fuck they've got a roof over their head. - And you started your flag in the sand and said this is where we are. Most people would do anything. They either shafted their employees, weather spoons, a few others, or they did nothing. They just rabbit headlights. I don't know what the hell, what do we do? Let's just do nothing. Let's just wait. Let's just get together. - I mean, we took it as an opportunity to do several things. So we did that. And as a result of that, we navigated the whole of COVID with only agreed renter ears and payment plans. And I think we had that on five properties across our whole portfolio. I have now forgotten the next point I was going to make. What was it? - Proudest moment, the hairs on your arms are up. These are the things, this legacy. - Jesus, what happened? - No, it's gone. - What's your PT skill, do you? - That is, I've, (sneezes) - Denise, you owe me big time. I'm definitely feeling better than we were when we had my coffee. - You're dry, you're dry. - I am dry. - You're pretty well. You're doing pretty well. (laughing) - A broken man might have made me a broken man. - Now that is the soundbite for a podcast. I don't know what is. - Oh Christ, but no, it is the soft things, the caring. Oh no, that's right. I said, you know, we took an opportunity in COVID. So we did that, you know, we reassured people. We obviously put a similar thing out to our landlords. Are you worried about your tenants' ability to pay? Don't worry, we're all in this shit show together. And again, so we opened up that channel of communication very early doors, and that was amazing. You know, we had a huge amount of empathy of our landlords with the situations the tenants were going through. and tenants, you know, I think we had a couple who tried to kind of leverage the situation for their benefit, but we had human nature. We had safeguards in place where we felt we tread a moderate line that kind of made sure neither party could leverage it. - I mean like, over the five years, how many people have used COVID as an excuse? They used Brexit as an excuse before that, and that was Brexit, it's tricky. That deals for a lot of Brexit. It's tough. nothing to do with it. As far as their concerned, you know, they're not controlling coffee prices or worrying about exports. Yeah, I'm pulling out of this because of Brexit. But we furloughed two staff, that was the other thing we did, we furloughed two staff and our condition, what we said to both of them was, we'll top up your salary to full pay on the condition that you do a course. And we said, but you choose the course, but it can't be property related. - Shit, that's amazing. - Because our kind of thing was, oh, well, we're gonna, greatest respect to Property Mark and my friends at Property Mark, but oh, let's put you through a level one, two, three Property Management course. - You can't be. - So, in case those-- - You know, I mean, Jesus Christ. And fascinatingly, you know, the two people we furloughed, Hannah, who furloughed, basically learned jewelry making and pressing flowers, and off the back of it, launched a brilliant dog kind of accessory business called Tails and Bloom, which is pressed flowers inside like dog jewelry and stuff. And I think she just celebrated five years of the business. And I love the fact that, you know, we played a part of that. And Tristan, who is still here, now he kind of did develop skills that were property related 'cause he, although at the time, he was not really in our marketing side of the business. He was involved with some content, but he was more kind of admin-y, and less overall marketing, just kind of shooting properties. But he did an editing course, and I think he did some other kind of film production course. And now, as it turns out, you know, now that plays back into our business and where we are and where we're going, but that wasn't the intention at the time. No. But again, our feeling at the time was there is so much scary shit going on right now. - Yeah. - You don't need to be forced to do a really dry technical course that is just gonna make you hate life probably even more than you already do. Let's let you indulge yourself in something that you hopefully wanted to do for a while but didn't have the time, money or resources. And yeah, those are the things. You know, we had one of our very first employees to us, about two months later he had absolutely dogs bollocks to his exams, his degree, got a fail. His parents had wanted him to go into investment banking. Okay. He was like, "Don't worry about that. I love it here. This is the life for me." We were like, "Ahhh, I don't think that's gonna work for us, mate." So we were like, You're gonna stay but we're gonna ratio your time so that you can fit in studies and you're gonna smash your exams And that is exactly what he did and he is now a very successful investment banker Who earns probably ten times what Anand I do combined that's depressing And what is lovely though is a few times every kind of three or four years. I'll get a message from will Going having forgotten what you guys did for me because he was like you could have just gone cool in you come Don't worry lads, estate agency is built on the shoulders of people who fucked up their exams. It lifts you fell into the estate agency. Yes you do. I say that as someone who royally fucked up their A levels and then did a degree in acting. So estate agency is definitely built on the shoulders of people who don't necessarily have the best academic results. And yeah, those are the things. Those are the things that, you know, when I'm 60, 70, 80, 90 and agencies in my rearview mirror, I like to think those are the things that I will look back on with pride, not the fact that I had a hundred grand lettings month. - Yeah, well that's the point. And I can't remember, God, what's her name? The New Zealander, she was a hospice nurse and she wrote a book called Tales from the Dying or something like that, I think, I can't remember her name. I always can recall this name, of course, now I can't. And she interviewed all these people who are in End of Life Care, and she said, "What is the thing, what would you do more of? "What would you do less of? "What would you do?" And none of them talked about earning more money. - No, working more. - None of them talked about working more. They all talked about, "I wish I'd spent more time with my kids. "I wish I'd done this, I wish I'd loved more, "I wish I'd done whatever else." None of it was to do with money. None of it was to do with buying trinkets. Oh, I wish I'd bought, you know, I wish I'd been able to buy an Aston. said that and that's interesting and I think about that a lot because you know life is difficult and you know if you've raised kids and mine are much older now so you've got through not the worst of it I actually did amazing watching these kids grow up when they were little and it was fucking exhausting but it you go through that and then you come through and I've been through you know I've been through divorces not just one and it's fucking hard right so I think - For the moment, people are finding life really hard. - It's really odd. And you know, it can be depressing. Reading, you know, look at the news in the morning, it's very easy to get down in the dumps. Very easy with social media to go, "Look, everyone's smashing it and I'm not." It's all bullshit. - Yes. - And that's the thing. So I'm mindful all the time that I've just got to stay in my lane and do my thing and look after my people. And I'm happy. And of course, everyone wants to earn more money, everyone wants to do better. But to be honest, for me, earning more money just means I have options and I can do cool stuff for my family. It doesn't mean actually I'm not interested in buying flash cars. I'm not interested in buying, I'm not interested in all that stuff. - It's important to this deal. - It's experiences. - What your success is. - No, that's my why. - What success looks like for you. - Yeah. - And if that is having a football as mentioned, - Right. - And a Lambo in the driveway, cool. - It's cool. - As long as you're true to yourself and that literally does make you happy. And if that does, excellent. - Then fine. - But understand what that is and focus on achieving that goal. - Is that a whole why, isn't it? - And then once you've achieved that goal. Raj, who set up FixFlow, he, Regine Noir, he gave me a fantastic bit of advice years ago and I told him I was starting the deposit tree and he went, "Here, look, if this goes the way "you hope it will." He's like, "Hopefully at some point down the line," he said, "You'll get to a point where people "will start making offers for the business." He said, "If I can teach you one thing from my mistakes, He said, "Figure out what happy looks like for you and how much that costs." And he said, "Write that piece of the right number down." He's either locked that in your fucking brain, but he was like, "If you're anything like me," he said, "Write it down on a piece of fucking paper and put it somewhere you know where it is." And he said, "When you get that first offer, go to that piece of paper and go, 'Is it there?'' "No, okay." But when you get there, as long as that still gets you the happiness, inflation, everything else, you're going to go back and change the number. Don't, you know, if it's two million, don't go chasing five. No. Don't go chasing ten, because another five, seven years would have disappeared of 60-hour weeks and everything else. And so what? For what? You get to buy a bigger house, a flash of car, or maybe two of each. Is that going to make you any happier? No, absolutely not. Because you knew what was going to make you happy before you got there. Exactly that. And getting there doesn't change that joy. Look, it sounds naff, but sometimes it's the journey. The journey's fun. You know what, sometimes I've made some mind and said to me, "Look, when you're back up against the wall down, you always just kind of like, just keep going." And I refuse, I've refused my entire life to give up, like, at any point in everyone's life. I love a crisis. I'm actually at my best when I'm up against it. Like if I'm really up against it, I come out fighting and don't get in my way. - Yeah, for me, the bigger the crisis, the more, the easier I find it. - Absolutely. - The more it's actually, I find the bigger the crisis, actually there are only usually a couple of options. - Yeah, that's it. - When you're just kind of ticking along, oh, that's an awesome thing. - Oh, that's actually a nice one. Look at all the pretty things I can do. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, no. But when you're presented with a do or die, however you want to phrase it, and there's two or three options, three, it's really easy. That's why people come to me and the crisis, the crisis that come to me. And I can do all that much better. Weirdly, like you say, sometimes if I've got every option available, that's more problematic for me sometimes. So, fuck, which one? Which pretty thing am I gonna go for first? 'Cause there's so many. - Yeah, 'cause like you, I can look at, I can detach myself from the situation, and I can look at five options, and I can easily weigh out, very honestly, the pros and cons of all of them. Does that help me? - No, it doesn't. - No, 'cause now I have five things with like 20 pros and cons each. So I've now got like 200 elements to try and figure out which is the best route. - That's difficult, it is difficult. And that's the constant dilemma. And we spoke about this. And it's your brain. Your brain's a prick. And for some people, more than others. - Yeah, my brain's less of a prick, but it does not like to shut the fuck up. I did, I did find it, we had a bit of a kind of revelation in the office, kind of a year or two, when there was this piece came out. And I'm still slightly confused of it. And I'm still not quite clear how kind of true or black and white this is. But it was basically this kind of statement that roughly 50, 50 people either do or don't have an internal monologue. - I think most people do. - Well, this was kind of saying that roughly half people don't. And I was like, I don't know how that works. I don't know, like genuinely, I, people talk to myself all day. (laughing) I have conversations where I'm like three different people conversation. But yeah, no I find that so fascinating. Now we're rattling on towards an hour and one thing I do want to touch on is your recent furrere into being an author. I know it's surreal. This morning when you sent that picture I put the picture on Facebook of you holding my book. - La book. - La book. Really, really weird, but amazing. I mean, I decided I was gonna write this book right and about four or five months ago and it took me about four months to write it. - And just to be clear, you love reading. - I love to write, but I don't write books. It's my first time I've ever written a book. - And when you say write it, what is that writing at the moment? Do you kind of journal? to you? Do you write like writing thought pieces about industry and whatever? I don't have the patience for journaling. I just can't. I can't do it. I know people say it's really good for you. I can't be asked. So I write a lot of content. I like writing content. I've written content for other people. I enjoy to write and I enjoy to read and I probably now have an appetite for learning that I didn't have 20 years ago. So I'm literally greedy for new stuff, cool things. And I think if I can transition the stuff that I've learned on the train on my way in and bring it into the office and say to the guys that I've got this really cool thing and you know, they're amazing. But I just like to write, I'm quite a creative person. So I was talking to my wife who is a very, very, very clever, very experienced psychotherapist. And she works with very, very troubled kids and teaches their families how to manage them a'r bw - Okay, sit down, I'd love to get inside your head, but I want to get the fuck out there in about two minutes. (laughing) I was gonna say, I haven't had to be friends with you. - I'd be careful what you fucking wish for, pal. - And he always says to me, "This whole thing about energy." Now I have a lot of energy for things, and I don't stop, I literally don't stop. So I always have good ideas, I've got hundreds of finished projects, and this is all weirdly not work-related. So stuff at home, I go, "Oh, that's cool, "I'm gonna do that, that's a great idea." And I do this thing on YouTube, that's amazing. I'm gonna write this, oh my God, That's great digital products. Oh, that's amazing, dropshipping. I've done it all, right? I'm still fascinated by it and I still, I like the journey 'cause the weird thing, my friend said to me a while ago, "Fuck, so many things down." These things never came to anything. They just unfinished like things in your garage that you just haven't built. I'm like, yeah, yeah, but the thing is, the joke's on you because in doing these things, I've learned so much. I know how to set up a YouTube channel and do all these things and dropship and set up an Etsy store and Shopify and all this, I've known how to do it. So it's great, I don't mind. I looked at TikTok, you know, I'm 51. I'm TikTok, what the hell? I know more about TikTok than the kids, right? And for me, that's great because I learned stuff. Yeah. And I got talking to my wife about my brain. Knowledge is never going to be a bad thing. It's never boring. It's never boring for me. And I love it. And I commute a lot, I come into London three times a week, I have time on the train. I've always had time to just sit and just now, obviously with YouTube and all this information available, it's just nuts. And I love it. And my wife said to me, good for years now, years ago, and she said, Dan, you know you've got like ADD. And I couldn't give a shit for labels. I find it boring, boring, boring, boring. The whole, this whole debate around, I need a label. And actually, I talk about it in the book 'cause it just pisses me off. People are people that have their own foibles and their nuances and that's what makes us amazing. And most people have got something about them that makes them unique or makes them interesting or drives or whatever. I don't actually care and I'm not interested in people who just blather on social media about who is an ADHD-er. Shut the fuck up. Writing about it on people who genuinely have got a lot of these things that deal with them, their lives, people who are, you know, I've got friends who are massively autistic, they don't write about it. No. Right? They're just who they are and that's what makes them amazing. But I started to think about my brain because my brain has over the years, it's not just about being driven, having tons of energy and millions of these things rattling around. It actually produces a lot of anxiety. It's why I stopped drinking about three and a half years ago, which if you'd have asked my mates who would have been the last person to stop drinking, it would have been me. I was the last one for the road. It's quite funny how often I know a few people who've stopped drinking and that is a line - huge anxiety - that comes out pretty much every single one of them. If you were to ask my mates who was the last person to stop drinking, it would have been me. always me and I and I listened to an audiobook coming back from a very delayed trip from York and I was working with Vicky at Simply Convainting at the time and I said to her I'm giving up drinking she's like what are you and we'd been out a few nights and you know we'd locked drinking and locked fun been to the events all that sort of stuff so I'm giving up gonna give it a go never done it never done dry whatever can't be done with all that stuff it just leads to a binge after the month yeah you miss it you just thought I need it you know I I've earned this. But I just found as I got older, I was approaching 50, booze is making me increasingly anxious. I've had a few glasses of wine in the evening, I'll wake up the next day and I'm just shitting myself. And look, I think that is part of it, right? Your body, when you're young, is, I mean, Jesus, I think. The abuse you put your liver through, you know, you play rugby, you go, you're in the property sector thirsty Thursdays. I've not been a big adult drinker at all. Like, I know people who see me at conferences are like, "You can drink." I'm like, "Yeah, but the conferences I go to basically like those five six seven events are basically the five six seven times a year I drink That's it. And being and being kind of Viking I can just kind of switch it on and I do have that that natural tolerance but when I look like Fuck when I looked I mean my my second year at drama college I was doing 50 hours a week at the drama college Well, I was doing between 30 to 40 hours a week running a late night bar in Soho. - Wow. - For a year, I averaged two and a half hour sleep a night because I would, do you monitor you to Wednesday? Thursday, I would literally finish college, jump on the tube, get down to Soho, go and do my heat bar till three o'clock in the morning. And then I would do a lock in. - Oh my God. Basically, up until the point where I'd be like, 'cause the Drama College was super strict, it wasn't like uni where you could just skip a lecture, right, you had to be signed in by quarter to nine that morning, or you were banned from the day's classes. - Wow. - So super strict. So I would literally be like, "Right, you've all got to fuck off, "you've got five minutes to get out the building." And everyone would be like, "Why?" And I'm like, "Cause if I leave in five minutes, "I can make registration for college in the morning." And I would turn up off my tits. - Oh my God. - Sunglasses on, two cans of Red Bull and a cigarette hanging out the corner of my mouth. My mates would be like, "Where the fuck have you been?" I'm like, "Work." (laughing) And I would do that Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. That was literally three to Saturday. And then I would get to Sunday and I'd be like, "Cool, time to go out. 'Cause I've worked the three big nights." Now all my mates at school, All my mates at uni, at drama college, were then broke, 'cause they'd been out Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? They're all students. So I'd be like, "I don't give a shit. "I need a night out, you're coming with me." So I would just, 'cause I would earn quite good money doing the bar, and yeah, I would just take us out, and yeah, that was that. And yeah, literally, I worked out for about a year, I averaged two and a half hours sleep a night, largely because there were several nights there where I just wasn't sleeping. and the amount of alcohol and other things I was consuming in that year. - It is insane that I came out of that year and still was like a fairly composmental- - Yeah. - seem being like. - I look back and I think, oh my God, you know the times you've been out even with work and everyone's been absolutely lashed. You see, how did I even get home? I remember being at Victoria Station, that guy wobbling about waiting for the, looking for the platform. It was horrendous. - I was in Cheltenham on the weekend. - He was in there with these two lads. He was about one o'clock in the morning. 'Cause I said to you, I'm a late nighter. About one o'clock in the morning, and they were these two lad's, trying to get home and one of them was just so, he just kept sitting down, and he was just like, I can't go any further. He's just like, come on! You can do it. I don't know how I'm saying. - Try doing a burger on the top. - Ooh, I don't. - Oh, I don't. - It's just a renders. - Do you ever know he don't miss those? No, I don't miss those. - I mean, they were a long, long time ago for me. - Yeah. - Those, yeah. - But it's that. - It is, and it goes hand in hand, you know, I can't, I just got to the point, I can't do it. It wasn't doing me any favours, it wasn't serving me. I just thought, I do enjoy it, but thank God they invented Guinness Hero 'cause it's the best thing ever. But I just, it's been three and a half years. - Nice. - And it's the best thing I've ever done. - Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, I go to a lot of family dues and stuff, and my family all like a drink, and I mean, they've got used to it now. But for years, they'd be like, drink, and I'm like, no thanks. - What for me? - Are you feeling all right? - Yes, I'm feeling fine. Like that's kind of the point. - Yeah. - But it's fine. So we wandered away from the book. So you had, you know, you like writing, you had this idea to do a book, your partner was like, you need to do a book. - It's part of therapy, to be honest. And I had it in my head that I'd be looking at maybe 15 chapters, I'd look to some guides, you know, 15,000 words, it's about right for a book, 15 to 20 thousand words, I'm thinking right, it's a thousand words, I can write a thousand words, no problem. So I just started writing the chapters one at a time and I had the chapters down, took me a while to edit it and I thought I'm really happy with those, I'm not moving those, that's it, they're done. I've fixed those and once I've fixed those, I just had to write and the first day it's just like messy, just really messy 'cause I can't recommend anybody, sometimes just write and I was told years ago, just write, you wanna write something, just write. Honestly, the messy stuff's the best. And so I just did this first, I did it, sat and that was it. And I got into the zone and I just start typing. And to be honest, most of it was sort of, you know, you look at it, it's shit. God. And so four months down the track, I get to a point the fastest route to market is Kindle. Right, so self publishing on Amazon, fastest route to market is Kindle. So I designed the book cover and I was so, so chuffed with the book cover. - I love your book cover. - Great, I love it. I thought that's amazing. As an absolute prucking amateur, I've left his book on my desk in a different room, 'cause otherwise I'd be like, "Hey, look how good it is, but go on my Facebook page. "You'll see this ugly mug with his book on it "from this morning to check it out." - First first I've ever seen holding it, 'cause I didn't have, mine just arrived itself. - Claimed a fame. No one's taken that title away. - So I submitted it, and I half expected an email or something back from Amazon saying, "This is shit, edit." And I didn't actually get the email, I had to keep logging into the KDP thing, and it said, "In review, in review, in review." So I logged in, I logged in one evening, got home, bit-knackered, I just refreshed the page and it said, "Live." So what the fuck? What? And I'm on Amazon, I'm like, "Ugh!" And there it is. And so then I spent the next few weeks trying to format and added some stuff for the paperback, which was a complete faff. But now I know how to do it. I can do it again. And I will do it again. I probably won't write something in the same type of a similar maybe. Because that's the thing. and I talked to people and I have friends of mine who have bought it read the Kindle version said oh my god this is a it's so you it's mad and secondly these things that you talk about in these chapters my god that's me and that was the bit that I realised saying that humans are just so many similarities all of us yes we're so different but we're so alike yeah absolutely and so you were nice bit before there's things you started reading the first 20 pages you recognize yourself in those pages for me actually I find that fascinating and actually I find that really rewarding that people can identify with it and without sounding woo-woo and a bit of a wanker if it helps somebody reading it then great. But I'll be honest and I said it in the book I wrote that book for me I hadn't realized at the time quite how much it would resonate with other people and I think if and I do find that people working A in sales but in property it attracts a certain kind of person and it's an energy business but there are people with very busy brains. - But I think that kept you quite true and honest, right? 'Cause you kept it about you, you didn't start going now. How do I frame this for, you know? You didn't start thinking about a target audience. - No, not at all. It was a very honest account of what my brain does. - The target audience of one. - It was me and I said it in the opening, why did I write this book? And I finished on it, I didn't write this book for you. I wrote it for me, but actually weirdly, it sounds very, very familiar to lots of people. And I talked to my brother at the weekend, who is very like me, we're very different at the same time. And he's just like, yeah, I totally get it. And he's really pleased I wrote it because nobody, apart from Susanna, nobody knows me better. - And now he knows you even better. - Yeah, I mean, I don't know. If he doesn't like to read my brother, I mean, he loves lots of other things. - Well, the next thing, you need to put it in an audio book then. I am weirdly going to do that and the other thing I've promised to do is because Susanna's Portuguese, my other harshest Portuguese, her parents Portuguese, they're so pleased I said, "I'm going to translate into Portuguese," which is mad, but of course it's easier to do now than ever, but it's one of those things, it's hugely rewarding and they do say there's a book in everybody, I don't believe that because I think it's like... There's definitely not a book in everybody. There isn't, but I think people are definitely... I have definitely met swains of people. Yeah, but it's one of those things for me. I mean, it might be a Mr. Man book. Yeah, but a Mr. Man book, there's so much. If you pick up a Mr. Man book-- It's probably harsher on Mr. Men to be fair. Yeah, but there's other books. You pick them up. You get something. But I think if the people who were minded to write something, it's actually really easy now to publish something. If you want to create something, you just want to do it and get it out there into the world. It's free to publish. - Well look, in a similar bit different way, me doing this. - Yeah, exactly. - I've, I'm the nerd about doing a podcast with people for years, it's been, you know, it was trying to trendy and then it wasn't trendy and then it became trendy again. And yeah, it was something I played around doing and then, you know, it was, oh, you know, how do I go about it? Do I have a strategy? Do I have a content plan? Do I have that? And then I was like, you know, I was saying to you this before, I was like, I've had, particularly now, we're kind of getting, you know, we're closing in on 20 episodes. So we're now starting to get on people's radars because we've passed those magical numbers. And we're getting lots of people being like, oh, we can help you strategize, we can help you grow your audience, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't fucking care. I like, do you know what? I do enough in my life, you know, with two businesses, I do enough in my life strategize. This is just really lovely having conversations like this. And this is a nice creative outlet for - Yeah, because you're, you know, I've been on a couple of podcasts recently, but I don't, I'm not one of these people that goes on loads of those podcasts, I don't get asked. I mean, but it's, I just think the whole process is, this is cool, I mean this space is cool. You've done, it feels like, you know, we've not met, but I've kind of got the feeling this is very much you, this is a comfortable space for you. - Yeah, yeah. - Kind of feel it when I walk here. It's cool, it's a cool space, the biking helmet's over. - We've got the bike helmets, we've got the the vinyl player behind you, the cocktail bar. - It's cool. - Mr. Who Doesn't Drink. (laughing) - I'm hitting all of those. - Still caught in your eye though. - Still something to do with it. But I think that creative outlet is so good for you to do something, whether it's writing, whether it's whatever it is, you wanna do a podcast. - Well I love, I love talking to people. - Yeah. - It's one thing in our industry, but also, you know, traveling around, going stuff. You know, I grew up with the family, we traveled a lot, We went a lot of places, met a lot of fascinating people at all different nationalities, societies, religions, everything else. And one common theme throughout that was conversation. I love it. I love talking. And I don't think anyone who knows me remotely will be like, "No shit Sherlock." But yeah, you know, this is a really nice little envelope. Like you said, you know, just like you with the book, Should I, I was a bit like, oh, so many other fucking, there's so many other fucking podcasts out there. And what's my goal going to be? And you know, what are other people going to think? And I'm not typically someone who wrangles with those questions too much. But this is very much for you as well. Yes. This is the same with my book. This is not for everybody else. And you can find your joy. That was it. And that's it. - I mean to that thing of like, it doesn't need to be - Who cares? - I don't fucking care, it's all like that. - I just wanna talk with people that I enjoy talking to, whether they're people I know and love really well, or whether it's just people I enjoy, just that conversational tussle, that. And like I said to you at the start, and I said to everyone, some people are like, oh, what's the topic and we're gonna talk about? And I'm like, right, we can have a few points, but it goes where it goes, and we wrap it up where it wraps it up, and if it goes somewhere that feels uncomfortable, we can redirect and reel it back. - Edit. - You know? - Haven't I done it yet? - You haven't had to do one. - I've waited, I've waited. There's gotta be one at some point. I'm gonna get someone to say something and they're gonna be like, "Shit, maybe." - Maybe. - Maybe, I don't want that in a public domain. But no, I think, you know, like you said, with your book, people will take something from it, but fundamentally did it for you. And I think that was the same thing I got to with this podcast was, now, there is another side to it, which is this is also fantastic marketing content for us. 'Cause what we do with these, we publish the video, we publish the podcast, but what we also do is I take the transcript and good old chat GPT, I feed that in the chat GPT because you've got this amazing hour plus of our language. - 100%. - Our thoughts. It's not homogenized. You give that to chat GPT and you go, I want you to use this as a basis as the inspiration and the kind of source material for a blog And I do one for deposit and one for the base and they come out as two really interesting different things I love it and great. So I get to do something that is fun. It's a bit of a hobby that I just love doing Hopefully have some interesting conversations. We create some market material out of it You know, do we have a million listeners? Absolutely not But what's lovely is that odd little message I get every once in a while going oh Listen to this one the other day. Yeah fucking loved x yz. I'm now gonna look into this I'm gonna try doing that or it really made me like reposition my thinking about x yz. Yeah, that's you know and and that is More than enough now. I agree more than enough and I look I've sold a few copies of the book. I actually genuinely Don't care what I wrote it. I said, you know what be nice to get some sales is always, you know I'd be an absolute bullshitter if you said you didn't want to sell me. Yeah, I bought one myself, haven't sold any. I think my dad might buy one. Apart from that. But I have sold some and it's one of those things that, you know, I'm proud of the book because I've done it. You know what? I've done it, I started it and I finished it. Yeah. Which for me is an achievement. It's always personal life projects that I just got. I start this thing, I'm really excited about it. And then, oh, there's a squirrel and I go and do that. And that's just life. And but to finish the book was nice to go right. I've done it. I've edited the shit out of it. I've read it about 30 times. - Yeah, I can't read it. - I'm actually sick of it. - I don't wanna read it anymore. And it's done and you press the send and it's done. And I'm like, it's out of my hands now. I wanna do another one, but like I said, this creative outlet, it's quite addictive when you find something that you just really enjoy and you do it for the process and you enjoy that journey. Anyway, blockbuster has signed it. Tom Hardy is Dan coming out next year. Just Tom Hardy in a spotlight in a dark room, swearing at himself. Mate, I think that's a nice little place for us to wrap it up. I think we've talked, done a nice little roundabout and we've come back around to the book and the podcast. And yeah, so remind me, the title of the book, Today's Enough. today's enough. So if you have found this interesting, if you found some of the stuff that Dan and I have been throwing around, jump on Amazon or Kindle or whatever. As Dan said there is a digital version, there's a paperback, I like paperbacks, I've got a paperback. Buy it, read it, talk about it. Tell him it's a load of shit. No, but I think like you've said already, you're not necessarily looking for all of it to resonate but I think what the interesting thing is is bits of it will resonate and it will either resonate with the person themselves or they'll be like oh that's why my partners like that or my dad or sister or mom or best mate or colleague at work whatever it is it might just help you understand someone else's psychology. That's why my sister didn't take my advice on the agent. Yeah and never will. But yeah no do do get your on the book. I literally only had mine arrived Friday, busy weekend, I'm very honest with Dan, I managed to squeeze in about 10 or 15 pages this morning, loved it. I don't think I've read 10 or 15 pages with so many quotable sound bites. Quotable sound bites that I'd like because pretty much all of them included a swear word. But yeah, there was some great ones. There's one early on which is - It's about like something about riot gear or something like that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not an ambi-pambi fluffy advice, it's a sledgehammer advice. - Yeah, yeah, and I love that. There's some really nice, and I'm, it is sledgehammer advice, but there is a, it's a sledgehammer and a velvet glove. - It's the sort of advice your best mate would give you. - Yes, yes, it's not breakdown in tears, Brutal. I love you you silly cunt and I'm gonna tell you the truth. That's exactly that's why I should have called the book I've just nailed the follow-up title there we go. I want one P for every coffee so But no Dan, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure Hopefully a bit interesting for you guys and yeah another one coming soon. Bye guys. Thanks a lot. Cheerio