Why Residential Surveying Is HARDER to Scale Than You Think | The Surveying Shift Ep. 5

What does it really take to scale a residential surveying practice when you rarely get a second chance with a client?

In this episode of The Surveying Shift, host Louis Blaxill sits down with Lucie López Walker, Director at Walker Dunn and Director at Jargon, to explore the unique challenges of growing a residential surveying firm. From building infrastructure and processes from scratch to handling high stakes complaints early in the journey, Lucie shares the real story behind scaling sustainably in a one shot industry.

If you believe the future of surveying lies in smarter workflows, stronger systems and confident leadership, this conversation is packed with practical insight.

Key Takeaways

• Residential surveying is uniquely challenging because most clients are one time customers, you are starting over every time
• Without infrastructure and processes in place, growth will stall long term
• Standard operating procedures create consistency, which builds trust and reputation
• Building referral networks through estate agents and mortgage advisors remains critical in residential
• Early complaints can shape stronger reporting standards and improve risk management
• Clear, structured report language makes Ombudsman complaints far easier to defend
• Scaling successfully requires operational support and business development, not just more surveyors
• Culture becomes harder to protect as firms grow, recruitment is one of the biggest ongoing challenges
• Report writing software and standardised phrases enable faster onboarding and consistent quality
• AI will not replace surveyors, but it will reshape how reports are delivered and how value is added

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Transcript

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I think with surveying that one of the real difficult elements of residential surveying is that we have customers that we will serve one time and one time only, and they may never move again. That is Lucy Walker, director at Walker Dunn. And after spending more than a decade building and scaling a successful surveying practice, we discuss one of the biggest challenges that everyone faces in the residential sector. The fact that you often only get one chance to get it right. You don't get any repeat customers. You're starting over every single time. She explains why residential surveying is uniquely demanding, and how building infrastructure processes and consistency is what allows a firm to scale without compromising quality. Without having the infrastructure and the processes behind that. You're going to stumble and you're not going to have any room for growth in the long term. Today, Lucy outlines how to build the structure behind a residential surveying firm so that growth is sustainable, repeatable and protected. And hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll learn how to create systems that protect quality, drive growth, and turn one time plans into long term momentum. I'm Lucy Blackwell, and this is the surveying shift. Welcome to this episode of the Surveying shift. In today's episode, we're going to be focusing on starting and scaling, residential surveying practice. And with me, I have Lucy, who is director of walkathon and founder of jargon, which we'll be touching on later. Lucy, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. Introducing. Walk it out. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, obviously, for having me on the podcast. First of all, Luke. So, yeah, so my background is kind of as most people in surveys, it's totally different roots again, to probably everyone else. And I originally have always said when I was younger I was never going to be anything in property just because I come from a family of mainly estate agents and a few surveyors now. So it was always the kind of I'm going to do something different, which is what I originally set out to do. Went away and studies, as an economist, kind of started my career as an economist, working with local councils, in a very corporate setting. What's, kind of Arab and McDonald in the past, very kind of big corporate firms. And then, after a while of doing that, I found myself back in the property world when the opportunity to kind of joint work done came up. So walked on. Yes. Started as a very, very small, independent firm, residential firm, just a couple of surveyors essentially doing a little bit of parlor work, no real direction, kind of a name and nothing else. No brand, no kind of infrastructure in the background, nothing really to kind of take them forward and scale or do anything we're all doing. We've now been going for, just over a decade. Over that time, we have gradually kind of expanded in terms of team numbers, turnover, geographically. And so now after starting, just in Liverpool, if you can't tell by the accent, we've now, expanded to cover a good chunk of the north. So we offer from kind of Derbyshire and all the way up to Fleetwood, and we're not quite done yet. And of course, and you are too modest to say that you've been instrumental in the company's success to. Become. Abundantly clear as part of the conversation. Yeah. The way I wanted to, to structuralist, if I may, is, we'll start with kind of those early days. And actually, it'd be interesting to dig into your motivation for joining. I was a bit of a a left, left hand for you, I suppose, having gone into into the economic side of things. And then we'll apply to lenses as we go through it and talk about the early days and what you think was instrumental in growing the business from, as you said, a relatively small company to where you are today in the important things that you're focusing on today and hopefully that way we'll be able to touch on, or inform people who will be on various different stages of that journey. So take you way back to to the beginning. What caused the shift in your mindset of the gravitational pull of the property? Yeah. Unfortunately, yeah. It's it's insane. It is in the blood, unfortunately. And it was always going to get me eventually. But I resisted as, as long as I could. Yeah. So I've kind of, as I say, I was kind of. I had gone down the economics route, and I kind of when I joined up, I was working, partially in the nuclear industry and partially with local councils, up in Cumbria. So, kind of working on ways to regenerate the areas around, Summerfield and, the small towns and the issues. They have been several and after a while of kind of working on that's really, really interesting. But unfortunately in that world you don't really get a lot of kind of you don't really see the fruits of your labor because things happen very slow government funding, stuff like that. So Walker Dawn, in the background had kind of started, it was, as I say, very, very small. And they were at a point where it was like, okay, well, things need to change if we all going to get any bigger, but we can't really do that alone because what we're doing at the moment isn't, isn't doing, you know, isn't making that work for us. I was kind of ready to jump out of the corporate space and do something else. I'd always had an ambition to have my own company and grow something from the ground up. So it was kind of it was just right timing for me to just jump into something else and take the risk. It was, I suppose, at the same time, I was kind of at the point where, what else can I do in economics that will give me what I'm looking for, which is instant kind of feedback on stuff that you're trying to do. And I'm not sure there was anything for me in that direction. So this was like the dream, opportunity to kind of. Right, I'm going to throw everything into this and see what we can build. And, and you know, do this until we have what we have. Yeah. I mentioned day one. You got that in spades in terms of, you know, when you were a company of that size, anything that you try, anything that you do, you can see the impact almost tomorrow. Right. So when you what I was called is, first of all when you, when you entertaining the idea of of joining walk. What what was your ambition. What did you want your vision to look like when you first joined? Did you go on with, look, we're going to take over the world. We're going to grow to the size that you are now or do you think actually what incremental growth would be sufficient? We're hopeful that we'll just build it for the end project at a time. So I'd be lying if I said, you know, at the start of For Kids Only had this amazing vision to what we are today. I think it was at the start, very, very scrappy. Lots of just trying to see what will work. You know, I came in from a completely different background. So surveying was new in the sense of although I'd been surrounded by kind of the property industry my entire life, I've never actually worked in it. So it was all new from that point of view. So it was kind of. Okay, first of all, let's make this a proper company that has and a bit of traction that we can kind of, first of all, have some clients. We, you know, we we we had kind of one sort of work at that point. So it was very, very it was a risky a. Small town is what do you mean by, you know, making it into a real business. What were the key things that you want? Actually, you know, in order for us to build a foundation for growth, we did these four things. And that actually set us on the right path. So I think the main thing, when you are kind of at the very start, I think it is quite easy to be excited about the prospect of having a business and thinking only about, right, I need to get out. I need to make money. I need to kind of do the instructions, but without having kind of the infrastructure and the processes behind that, it just you're going to stumble and you're not going to have any kind of room for growth in the long term. So I think that's what really set set us in motion at the start was just getting that infrastructure right. And it was just kind of even the smaller things, like having a brand and stuff like that, that's all nice to have and was really important. But I think the biggest thing for us was really just having processes in place, like our standard kind of operating procedures. That meant that what we were delivering to customers was going to be the same every time, or how we were dealing with queries was going to be kind of the same every time, and starting to kind of build that in the background so that it wasn't us kind of scrambling every time that, you know, at the same query came through, oh, we've already dealt with that. You know, it's having, system as offers and being able to repeat that because that's how then obviously if your customers feel like they're having a good service, that's how you start to gain that traction, getting that recognition. Maybe it's in reviews, maybe it's in they've spoken to five other people and they've shared they've had a good experience. And I think for real, is that all started with having an infrastructure in the background that made sure that what you're doing was consistent. You talked about kind of good reviews and feedback from customers. I'm sure that, I suppose unlocks further surveys and good reputation. How else do you know? You mentioned you had one source of leaks to start with. Yeah. What else did you do to to kind of get folks down on the map and get, I suppose, pipeline coming in. Yeah. So in the early days, it was very much and still true. Now, to be honest, I think that the biggest way that you can build your kind of client, network is just getting face to face with other businesses in the residential space, if that's where you're working. Just getting out there, meeting people, making the connections. I think there's lots of other tools that we can kind of tap into. Obviously, you know, social media is great, as a great tool for all businesses. Now, if you're in residential surveying, social media isn't necessarily where your customer's going to go to find you. It's somewhere that they're probably going to go. Once they've seen you on Google, they're then going to check you out next on your social media to see maybe what kind of business you are. And then maybe decide if they want to go with you from there, but it's not where they're going to kind of search for you know, surveyor in Liverpool. They're not going on Instagram to do that. I think that's that's a nice thing to have. But I think the more important things are kind of making the connections, getting the referrals, setting up maybe links with local estate agents or local mortgage advisors and, and kind of building the connections there. And then kind of once you've, you've, you've got your kind of customer journey and you've got customers who are leaving you good reviews or maybe they're little reviews that are going back to the estate agent who referred you. That's how you kind of make that connection move much stronger. Make sure that you kind of retain that connection. Connection in the long term. So that's how we've gone it. When you say going out and meeting estate agents, that the prospect of doing that without a plan, without a kind of, approach to imagine is daunting. But for some, was there a know tips, tricks that you deployed in terms of like, hey, this is how I'm going to get them to renovate, this is how to get them to refer work. Why? It's not everybody's favorite thing, particularly I find even in in my team. Now you've got some surveyors who love that selling part and other surveys who just want to run and hide and don't want to touch at all. And that's and that's fine. I think unfortunately, if you are going to run your own business, it's it's only going to be part of it. Yeah. Of it. So you've got to learn to like it and with kind of making the connections, I think it's it's good to understand that it's not about maybe going in once and leaving a card and having a quick conversation. You're probably going to have to touch base with that one estate agent, maybe 3 to 5 times before they actually go, oh, actually, you know what? I will refer. And that could be even a few months before that first referral come through, just because obviously they need to be reminded that you're there, that you're in this. And also it needs to be in their mind at the time that there's a with a potential customer in front of them. So it's all about just being kind of constantly going back to them and reminding them of what you can offer. And obviously at some point they will if they like what they you kind of offer them, they will then try out, a referral with you. I suppose, not dissimilar to your story, people coming into the surveying industry, and building their own practices. No doubt there were things that you weren't necessarily anticipating. We'll be very surprised if you didn't. This is exactly what I pictured happening when my joints walk it. What surprised you? What challenges did you face, particularly in that early stage going? You know, I thought this would be easy, or I was really surprised. Actually, this was pivotal to our success. I think, with surveying that one of the real difficult elements of residential surveying is that we have customers that we will serve one time and one time only, and they may never move again. And they or it may be 30 years before they move and they may not use your services again. And so I think getting that bit right is is really important. And that's probably the hardest point, is that you don't get any kind of repeat customers. So you don't get like stars in your day. Yeah. You starting over every single time. And I think it's hard then obviously because you're to generate more work, you're literally generating new wet you wet and wet all the time. And that's probably one of the hardest things at the start, because you're looking at diaries and thinking, well, I've still got to fill next week and nobody's gotten jobs yet, right? Where can I find work? And, that is that is quite hard. But it's it's kind of also when you're looking at the service that you're offering, it's making sure that you are getting it right every time because you don't get a chance to redeem yourself if you don't get it right. It's not like selling a t shirt, for example, where you can throw them a discount code. Maybe they'll come back to you again. You get it right the second time, and then maybe you've got a repeat customer. We don't get that opportunity to kind of yeah, it's a one shot. And then it's oh, and so if it wasn't good, they're going to tell you know people. And the only do what you know it is. The internet right. That's that's the real challenge particularly when you're starting out and you've got your precious bank of reviews, you know. Yeah, inevitably one on bad reviews on it's, a small number for one, which is exactly. Exactly how often that is. On that note, I mean, when I have conversations with people, inevitably this is not a very pleasant experience. But, also, I think because it's not something that surveyors necessarily consider at the forefront of the mind when starting out with the business. Claims are things you might say you're actually watching them right. But I think a byproduct of, producing I buy services. Eventually you're going to get your first claim, right. And as a small company, there's one quite daunting and too enormously time consuming. I'd be interested to know whether you've got any kind of war stories from from that side of things and how you did, particularly when you were small. Yeah, I, I actually one that sticks in my mind and probably will be that forever is we it was actually probably in the first couple of years, I've got worked on and it was somebody put in a claim and I want to say the claim was for 30 to 40 grand, something like that. It was a huge amount of money. And they basically gone into property, ripped every bit of the property apart, taking pictures of it and then gone, you know, you haven't noticed it to be strong. Yes. Yeah. But it, it was quite obvious that this patch. So it was clearly it was, it was a rip out type of property. They were going to renovate it. So they would just wanted us to pay for the renovation essentially. Which is annoying. And that and that just happen. We've had every firm gets claims, that, that one in particular, it went all the way to the Ombudsman and it was pages and pages and pages of a letter that we had to respond to. And it talk. I remember being at my desk at like 9:00 at night just trying to put together a response to this complaint. But it, it definitely, number one taught me how to deal with complaints very early on. Very quickly. Just in the in the end, we didn't have to pay a penny, because for the so which was because obviously it was none of it was actually anything that was incorrect in our report, it's quite clear that it was just somebody trying it on. But it does mean that, you know, it strengthens some of the kind of phrases that we use in our reports to cover some of the things that maybe weren't as obvious or where the where the advice probably wasn't as clear, in, in the report that we've done. So it was. Yeah, I think that that was my real first experience. But the I deal with all the complaints, unfortunately enough, is nice. And, that one really, really sticks with me just because it was just so lengthy to deal with that it was the first one that had gone all the way to the Ombudsman. So you obviously if they if they find in their favor 40. Yeah, I mean they could be that could be a stone tomorrow. So it was. Huge. I suppose it emphasizes the importance and maybe walk it on. When you joined already had a pretty good set of terms and a reasonable sum bank of phrases, but I suppose it emphasizes the importance of setting that foundation early and making sure that either you're getting advice from people. And I think actually, this is probably a good time to talk about to talk about jargon and making sure you're using the right phrases and making sure that you're not using unnecessary caveats. Certainly. But you have a covered. Where you'd be, I think obviously jargon as you just mentioned. So jargon is, a new venture that we just launched early this year, which is essentially, providing those, standard phrases for the level two and the level three report, but integrating it with, the likes of Good Report. So that just makes things far sometimes easier from a report writing point of view. But what I found, because obviously we use jargon in Wolf John. And what I found is that when I deal with complaints, I can instantly know whether, you know, we will have said the right advice or not. Based on kind of what, what I know of our phrases. And a lot of the time it comes down to whether you've put, customer on notice of a certain element and whether you've provided, kind of the right next steps, in terms of the advice you've given and that's what the Ombudsman will look at, because at the end of the day, a lot of the people looking at these complaints working for the Ombudsman aren't necessarily surveyors. They're just reading your report and kind of trying to understand whether you've given what they consider to be a good amount of advice on that, what the element is that they're complaining about. So I have found that, you know, in the in the last probably 5 to 6 years, the complaints that we've had have been so easy to deal with because I know we've already said you. Thought was. This high school. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So it does it makes it so much easier. You already know. And if you've chosen, you know, such a phrase, you will have said the, the correct advice that goes with that defect because you already know using those some phrases. So yeah. I suppose that's, that's the difference, particularly when you are smaller, between spending hours, days, months, weeks on a claim. And actually, you know what we can that's in the bud relatively quickly. Yeah. Which is, as you said, not only the financial, or potential financial impacts, but the, the, the time you have to sink into it, which isn't doing surveys, the stress it puts you under, when you might be going out generating businesses is, critical to avoid if you can. Especially in those early days if because you're kind of wearing all the hats at that point. So any time that you're spending on something like a complaint is time away from actually earning money and from doing the instruction. So you want to make sure you can streamline not as much as possible. And knowing that you will have already put the right advice in. You don't have to doubt whether it was relevant or whether it was kind of, you know, using the right terminology because you've got that already in place. All you need to know is whether you actually commented on that defect or not, I suppose. And and that comes down to knowledge at the end of the day. I suppose that that takes is nicely on to, you know, you built a solid foundation by the sounds of things, I imagine, with the team that already exists. And you said you built processes and systems. We'll kind of take it at almost another step for us. At what point, what was the trigger where you actually know what we're comfortable now, we start with our, first claim. We've got all the processes in place. We know what we're going to do if x, y, z happens. Maybe. And I suppose it has to be kind of, paired with demand. And you're going actually can't fulfill as many all of the surveys and requests that we're getting in. What was it the trigger actually. Now what we can we can look to expand. Now you're right. It's kind of expansion can be kind of two ways really. It can be that you've got so much demand and you kind of go, actually, you really need someone because we've got too much work, which is a great problem to have. Or it could be or we just want to branch into a new area. We've found a new surveyor that we really like. We want to be in this next neighboring area or something different. So it's one of the two. I think for us, it was kind of once we got to a point where we looked at ourselves almost kind of an internal audit of of what we were doing. Everything was kind of running like clockwork, I suppose in the background. We were really, really efficient in everything that we were doing. We were starting to gain traction. You know, we were getting lots of good reviews through our profitability was, you know, decent at that point. That's when you can go, right? Okay. I know I can go copy and paste, copy and paste. This is going to work. If I add another surveyor, and we'd kind of we'd grown to a point where we could then have you know, a few extra a team members in the background. So on the operation side, and one in particular on the business development side, which meant that at that point we could then literally go up to any additional pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just if, if it was the right area that we wanted to go into, it meant obviously we have to start from scratch in that area, but we have the structure already to do that. We knew how to do it. We've already done it. We know it's worked for this area in that area. So it's just a case of right, okay, let's do that again. Don't by any means list one by one everyone, this is this joined the business. But you know going from you and a couple of surveyors, what was the first move that you made and and how did the profile change team. That the team change. You mentioned that, you you took on admin staff. What point did you take that venture? What was the, I suppose, the organic growth that you saw entity. So at the at the start, I was kind of all the things. So I was I was kind of the admin for all the it they, they, you know, all the hats you background, everything. I like to say everything kind of non surveying. At that point I was like right. But and the answering question it's comes to me. So we managed to just with kind of knee in place, take on a couple of other surveyors. But at that point, once we were about four surveyors in it, it got to a point where it was just I couldn't then support all of that while for in the business while trying to, you know, also look at expansion and stuff like that. So then one of our first moves was business development, because it meant that we could then open up to new areas quicker. We'd already done it with kind of the full surveys that we had. So we knew that that at that point what was working, what we had was working. It's working long for them. And we'd kind of tested it enough, for surveys. So then we could kind of expand and grow from there. What were you looking for in a in a business? The reason I ask is, I'd imagine, you know, someone going on this journey typically would probably have a surveying background themselves. I appreciate that everyone does, but they probably be able to hire other good surveyors, right? Or at least surveyors that they know will, adhere to their standards and produce good reports on the company's behalf. But then venturing into, okay, what is the role look like? Or do they spend the time doing? I imagine for a number of people, that's that's quite daunting. I have to admit, a lot of the kind of when we start to take on brand roles at the start, a lot of it was kind of we're not actually sure what we're looking for, but let's put together what we think that might look like, and obviously then we'll go to market and see what there is. And if we find the right class and then the, the business development person that we took on, she's still with us now. She came from a stage of background. So that felt like a very natural kind of transfer over. She already knew the industry. She already had a sales background. So for us that that felt natural, like a natural side step for her. And it's, it is hard because I think that's one of the benefits that we had because I wasn't a surveyor, I had kind of a different insight or a different outlook for what the business needed. And I wasn't kind of bogged down with the technical side of things or worrying about the report side of things. So I could see what the what the business needed. And I could look at it more from a customer's point of view, and kind of put myself in their shoes reading the reports. And would I understand this? Would I enjoy this kind of customer journey that we've got in place? Would I think this was a good experience? So I think we benefited from the fact that I didn't have that background because it meant that I could then find someone that I thought would work, to grow the business from kind of the operations point of view, rather than it being kind of surveying based, because I don't think they the skills to be a good surveyor aren't necessarily the same skills. You need to then expand the business, the kind of, yeah, you know, different and understandably not. Not everyone wants to to go on that route. Right. This is exactly why there's a very, very, very good surveying practices, which are just 1 or 2 surveys that are extremely good at what they do. But, yeah. No, I agree, it's a, it's a different mindset to, to grow a business. And and on that note, you know, it doesn't come or it comes rather with, with risks. Right. In the sense that you are going beyond your trusted call of surveyors and actually it that everyone gets a little bit more arm's length because you have to trust them into to the, you know, I think you touched on kind of processes and systems. What what fundamentals did you get a place in order to go right? I have complete confidence that when we bring on someone and we've interviewed them, we're comfortable, they've got technical capabilities, that they're going to execute surveys in such a way that we'd like to. That's the scariest part, I think. I think when you do start taking on new surveys, it's not only that you're kind of or new or new team members in general. It's not only that you're kind of bringing someone into the fold and taking on the responsibility of their livelihood. You're also trusting them with what you've built. So it's kind of it's a it's a back and forth, isn't it? So, for us, obviously you have touched on kind of the systems and having those in place, and it's so much easier to kind of share how you do things if there's already a system in place. I think, but kind of the very start, we didn't have any, any use of go report. At that point, we were very much using just word documents and it was, you know, send it to a typist, wait the days, wait for it to come back, check it over, you know, and that whole process was lengthy. And at that point we did have, our bank of phrases in place, or at least we, we have that, but the formatting would always be out and somebody would always be sending a report that, you know, the front page was kind of, you know, the logo had gone up somewhere else. And that flow. Yeah, it was just a nightmare. And those would always come back to me like, well, can you fix there's not that I was an expert for some reason. They'd always fall on my desk. So one of the things that really helped was actually getting, report writing software in place. Once we started using that, it did mean that one. I don't have to worry about how a report's looking went, and it wasn't the report. I know that the format will be exactly the same every single time. And then when we've added in obviously, the jargon phrases, it means that I know exactly the content that's going to go out to the customer is going to be consistent and of good quality every single time. So when you bring somebody on, all you're kind of doing is one making sure that the knowledge is, is where it needs to be. And obviously, maybe there's some training to do to make sure that they're at that right level to go out and do a survey on their own. But then after that, it's literally just can use the app, have a look at the phrases. And and once those are in place, it's very easy to kind of just start. There's no kind of downtime once you've got that in place. So that really, really, advanced things for us. And then because obviously when we bring these surveys on and just in general, anyway, we do some internal auditing of reports. So and having kind of, you know, standard phrases and whatnot in place means that when you're auditing, you already know what you're looking for. You're not reading, you know, five different tight styles of writing. You know that the grammatically, grammatically, it's going to be correct to really you just looking to make sure that we're reporting on the right things. I mean, I suppose fast forwarding, fast forwarding even further now to where you currently are and in terms of, your scale. Yeah. You still still growing. How do you go about, I suppose, keeping that culture, keeping that, growth going when you've already achieved, an impressive scale? Yeah. You've just said the word culture, which is one of the. That's one of the hard things, I think, because you spent a long time trying to obviously build the right culture within your team. And whoever you bring on, you want to make sure that they're going to add value to that. They're not going to kind of disrupt the culture that you've kind of spent all those years putting together. And I think one of the things that probably the biggest headache, over in the business, and I'm running a surveying business is the recruitment side of things because, there's just there's not a huge pool of surveys to go up, when you need surveys because the market heats up, not no. One. But it's not often this is. In every one of the surveys or no one's looking to move because we're so busy. When it cools down, no one's looking at no hundred plus my other. Everyone's looking. So it's kind of, yeah, it's a it's a real hard thing to kind of muster, but I kind of we take the view that we're kind of almost open for recruitment all year round. If the right CV comes across our desk and we feel that we are the right fit, I'd rather take a risk and take them on, or. Do what is right CV being for you, it. Could be anything. So we we've taken a lot of survey graduates in the past and, and we've also taken a lot of experience surveys. So it's not necessarily there isn't kind of one size and that we'll take you know, we, we just look at kind of the whole package. No. What's the background, what is the current team looking like if we've got maybe if a trainee having maybe be looking for some more experienced surveyors or if it's, you know, the other way around, we might be prepared to take on some more savvy graduates at that point. So it's really just depends where we're at, with the current team. But it really all comes down to regardless of experience, it really comes down to finding like minded individuals because we are, you know, still a relatively small company. So we all work in very closely together. So absolutely has to be someone who has the right attitude. And is kind of going to add to that team and be a team player. And that is that is really difficult to get. Right. And I definitely haven't gotten that right every single day in every business. And it yeah, no no no no no. It's a variety of reasons. But and sometimes as you said, it's just that intangible kind of just just not working culturally or personality clash or whatever it may be. Well yeah I you just and it's, it's such because it is such, there's such a small pool survey is when there are surveys looking naturally, there's more than yourself. Who is kind of looking at that comes with it's from 4 or 5 of the surveying fans all competing for one candidate. So, during the interview stage, you get a very limited window to kind of assess whether the right person for you assess whether they've got the right experience, and then kind of put an offer together and see if they'll want to come on board before somebody else kind of steps in and snuck some off. So it's it's all happens very, very quickly. So you don't really get that chance to really get to know someone early. This is probably true for every in every business. But, you know, it's a risk on both sides. To do so. Yeah. Aside from the obvious salary, how do you differentiate yourself in terms of an employer value proposition? How do you know attracts the talent that you need to continue the growth? Yeah. So I think one of the things that benefits us is that we are kind of the size that we are. So it means that there's a lot less kind of red tape between, you know, directors and the rest of the staff. You know, we all try and make sure that we're really have a lot of communication with the whole team. It's all just a very kind of familiar vibe in, terms of how we work. And a people like that style. They like having the flexibility. They like being able to just call me up, have a chat if there's something wrong, we'll sort it. Let's hop chat and figure it out. Whereas I think when you're in a bigger firm or even in a corporate firm, and a lot of people come to us from a corporate set up because they're looking for something a little bit more kind of, I suppose. Yeah. Just familiar in terms of, yeah, being able to touch touch base, with all of your team members and know who you are. And I kind of have contact with the team members because it's a very lonely job. Everybody works remotely. Everybody's out there doing their own instructions on their own. So making sure that there's enough time for kind of team get togethers, meeting socials, and that people who want to can touch base with other people, in the team. Yeah. You go, well you mentioned corporates there that that brings us nicely on, I suppose to the next step though. Not say that that's not ambition at all. But you know, unfortunately corporates are the way they are for a reason. But inevitably once you get to a certain scale, you do lose that. That personal touch was of course the ambition. But for Walker Dunn and what, I suppose do you see as key drivers that are going to enable you to, to get to the next phase of, of the business? I think for Walker Dunn, we we have always said we never want to be the size of the corporate. Like it just it isn't is an say no, no. And I think what would happen is if we got too big, the kind of great team that we have now would suddenly think, actually, this doesn't work for me anymore because I joined for a certain reason and actually because my background was poor. But some of the things that I kind of tried at the start of work on the admin kind of been used to in a corporate world, they didn't really work in any of those. And so, yeah, it didn't it very obviously, it became obvious that that just wasn't going to work in this setup. So I want to kind of steer clear of being kind of that way. So I've really loved to grow to the point where I suppose it's a difficult question, isn't it? Because what's the size before you know it, before you tip over into that world? But, yeah, I think I think because we still want to grow at a gradual peat, we don't we kind of don't want to be taking on ten surveys tomorrow. I just hope I don't see that for us. I think, you know, we'll know it when we're at that point and we'll kind of go like, this is this is the limit for us. This is where we want to stay. Assuming you look like you may well say that you are now, but assuming you're not at that limit, what what, do you see kind of driving growth? You know, as I if you've got a well established presence now, is it more sustainable growth? Is it more geographical expansion? Is it surveyors in good surveyors in, in, attractive locations that drives that that next step? Yeah, I think it's a mix really. So I think we've got some of our core areas and geographic geographical areas that are really, really busy. And we could do with probably another couple of surveys in those areas. But I'd also like to expand geographically and just have a little bit more coverage. In the North, I think there's lots of areas we haven't tapped into yet. So and I quite what seems to work is when we tap into our kind of neighboring areas so we're able to kind of still benefit from some connections, maybe in some neighboring towns, and we're just kind of expanding a little bit like that. So I think that that's the growth that we seek. Walk John is just slowly but surely kind of widening our area from where we are. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting you said that actually. I mean, I've had discussions, I think on another episode of the podcast where most people will and I think the lowest risk option is to go to adjacent areas, right, as you said, where you've got connections where you can if doesn't quite work out, once they are, they're away for whatever reason. You can still get people over there. I've seen rare instances of some of our customers actually managed to kind of jump geographically. And I think, yeah, as you said, the sustainable and low risk is to proliferate from from, yeah, of where you are. It is hard to do that. I mean, it's something we've tried in the past. And what tends to happen is when you have, as you say, there's leave, issues or you just haven't got the kind of you've filled your diary too busy and not kind more available to our that you start obviously losing some of the clients that you've kind of built a connection with. So because you haven't got kind of two surveys to rely on or an even survey that could possibly, you know, drive into that area. So it does in the long run, it doesn't work out that well. I think it just ends up being, harder to maintain, as those. We've talked about as far as the future of, of Walker done, difficult to separate that from the future of kind of residential surveying work. Okay. You know, with the, consultation of the home buyer standards out at the moment. And, yeah, plus new technology and market forces, influencing the way, industry will be in future. What what's on your list in terms of watch outs, things that excite you, things that concern you in the years to come? The AI conversation is that is the big one at the moment, isn't it? Because obviously that mix of just brought out their eye guidance, not so fast and eye guidance that they've, they've ever developed, and it's kind of on everybody's mind is, you know what, what does this mean? You know, where are we going to be in five, ten years? I think what we what we can say is, you know, the younger generations, more kind of visual space learners now, and they and they prefer to, to have visuals rather than, say, a 50 page report or whatever to, to read know. So I suppose in the long term, kind of level two and level three surveys are going to have to naturally be more visual. And whether that's kind of just visuals in terms of normal photographs or whether in long term it's an interactive report, maybe it's, you know, something that they can click through. It's a video with touch points and stuff like that. I think that's the direction that we'll probably end up going to long term. Obviously, I is there for those who don't want to kind of read reports at the moment and want just a summary. That scares me slightly. Are you finding customers are arguing that and coming back to you with clearly AI generated questions? I haven't seen much of it. Yeah, I've seen, some questions about, you know, report gaps and stuff like that, which I definitely think has has been an AI, top highlight. Yeah. Yeah. Because when, when you dig into what were the gaps, there's not much content behind that. It's more just kind of a very and it. Should be aspects. Yeah for sure. But instead like we've have cited specific regulations and laid out by Rics that just don't exist. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I should take it upon itself to, to do that. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So it is definitely happening. It's that, that side of things, I suppose the kind of summarizing the report and not reading the report is a bit scary, just because obviously there's a lot of content in there that needs to be read as, as it's kind of written. And, and just having a summarized version won't give you the full picture. It's a bit concerning from that point of view, but I think, yeah, we've just got to adapt haven't we. To. Yeah. To meet that I think certainly the way, the way of viewing it go report is there, there are a lot of things that, can help us speed up the job, particularly in areas where it's more formulaic and perhaps don't need as much expertise in. But more observational. And actually, I think, you know, coming to the younger generations and expectations around surveyors spending more time with the customer and freeing up more time to be spent with the customer and advising them. And and you've raised a very good point, the notion of just giving them three bullet points to summarize an in-depth report is, is a scary one, but I think a report that's absolutely always going to be there and is going to need to be ratified by and built by, a qualified surveyor combined with time to walk the customer through it and highlight the selling points and make sure they really understand it is quite an exciting future. Hopefully. I think you're right. Yeah, I think because obviously I think a lot of people are scared that AI is going to kind of take away the job of the surveyor, but actually I think it's it's it's like what you just said, it's the opposite. It's going to be that we're going to bring back a bit more face to face or, you know, whether it's teams or whatever it is, conversation about, you know, the property about you report, a lot of people, you know, one of the things we offer after, and then a lot of surveys do this is, is the chance to have a chat with the surveyor after you mature more, and the amount of people that don't bother to do that is surprising, because you're thinking that's not costing you anything extra. And if anything saves you, save you time. I'm actually get people to sign up or go. Haven't even opened the report. Tell me all about it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Can you, can we walk through every every section? But, I think we're definitely going to move back towards a bit more of that kind of personal, touch rather than being, because obviously we've got to add more value if people are able to get information from ChatGPT or, you know, whichever tool they're using. We've just got to add a bit more volume. And that might be. Yeah, the personal. Touch I know is in such a position that people will use it to inform themselves, but they won't necessarily trust it. So I hope it will be a force for good in terms of lead generation, for surveyors as well. You know, people using basic tools or broad tools to achieve anything but basic abroad, tools to take pictures of defects. And so what might this be? And should I be concerned if ChatGPT goes, it could be any of these three things. And yes, you should probably get it checked out. Hopefully that then, you know, makes people more aware of things that they should call a surveyor for. So I think it's, it's positive strands to be proven as is. Well. Yeah, definitely. And as you say, any way that we can make the reporting and side of it easier for surveyors, you know, that surveyors just, you know, want want the report to take as little time as possible. Yeah. And it all comes back to kind of the work life balance, isn't it. So if we can make that easier, it just. Yeah, it just means happier staff, happier surveys. Yes. And more success of. Yeah. Thank you very much for joining us, Lucy. That was a really interesting conversation. If you enjoyed today's episode and or gave you some food for thought, be sure to follow our show on your preferred podcast platform. To learn more about what we do at Go report, visit Go report.com. The links are also in the bio. Until next time.