Because We've Always Done It That Way with SJ Taylor

Why do so many businesses keep doing things in ways that no longer make sense?

In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by SJ Taylor of Greenhouse OS for a wide-ranging conversation about estate agency, lettings, technology, AI and one of the most dangerous phrases in business:

“Because we’ve always done it that way.”

SJ’s route into property was, by her own admission, fairly typical. She fell into estate agency, started as a junior negotiator with Countrywide and went on to spend more than two decades working across sales, lettings, operations and technology.

Along the way, she helped steady and rebuild a struggling lettings operation, worked through acquisitions, rebrands and rapid business growth, and developed a deep understanding of what happens when good people are let down by bad systems, poor training or processes nobody has stopped to question.

That experience now shapes her work with Greenhouse OS, a Salesforce-based CRM platform designed to give estate and letting agents more freedom to adapt, automate and innovate.

But this is not really an episode about software.

It is a conversation about how businesses think.

Kristjan and SJ explore why so many teams become trapped in inefficient processes, why technology is often implemented badly, and why innovation rarely succeeds when a business simply buys a new platform and expects transformation to happen on its own.

They discuss the burden placed on property managers, the need for better training and professionalisation across the lettings sector, and the damaging attitudes that can develop when teams are overwhelmed, underprepared and left to spend their days handling complaints rather than building relationships.

They also challenge one of agency’s favourite sayings: “people buy from people.”

Of course they do. But they buy from people they know, like and trust. If those people are too busy with repetitive administration to answer properly, listen carefully or add real value, then the human element is already being lost.

SJ explains how AI can take on the high-volume, repetitive work that people either dislike or struggle to do consistently. Used well, it does not remove the need for people. It gives them more time to do the work only people can do well: building trust, understanding motivation, negotiating, advising and helping customers make decisions.

The conversation covers automated viewing bookings, prospecting, feedback, data, CRM migration, customer experience and why sixty-two percent of enquiries now arrive while agents are closed.

It also gets into the uncomfortable reality of technology adoption.

Why do some businesses implement a new system and see transformational results within weeks, while others introduce the same technology and conclude that it does not work?

Often, the difference is not the software. It is the thinking, consultation, training and implementation behind it.

As SJ puts it, people are like water: they will always find the path of least resistance. If old processes remain available, teams will often return to them, especially when change has been forced upon them without explanation, support or a clear understanding of the problem being solved.

Kristjan argues that technology should be treated like the head of a new department. You would not hire someone to lead a major function, put them quietly in a corner and expect them to transform the business without introduction, authority, training or structural change. Yet that is effectively how many companies adopt software.

From Yorkshire sayings and sausage-making equipment to AI agents and customer data, this is a candid, funny and practical conversation about business change.

It is for anyone who has ever looked at a process and wondered whether it still serves a purpose, anyone trying to get more value from technology, and anyone prepared to ask the question that work-experience students and six-year-olds are often brave enough to ask:

Why?

Because the way something has always been done may explain how you got here.

It does not mean it is the right way forward.

Transcript

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking Chats podcast. And I am delighted to be joined today by SJ from greenhouse OS. Hey, how are you darling? I'm really good. I'm really good. I'm back from two weeks holiday, two weeks holiday. And not only that, you have schlepped from up north. Yes I have, but on the direct train. So it was less than two hours. Oh, there we go. Yeah. So no complaints. I mean, it takes me half an hour to do like the zero point two of a mile down the road. So my speed efficiency ratio today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so look, before we start having a chit chat. For anyone listening to this who lives under a rock and has not come across the mighty SJ before. Let's start with just telling us a little about about you and where where you're at now. And then we'll go on to a little bit about your, your journey. Yeah. Cool. So unlike most points in my life, I am a definitely a stereotypical estate agent in that I didn't intend to go into estate agency. I fell into it purely by chance. The true career path, the true career path. Not like these lunatics like Megan, eighteen, who wanted to be one for like five years old. Yeah. I mean, some of those people, I think, need their heads tested. But, you know, here we are twenty odd years later and I'm still in and around the industry. So, um, so yeah, so I graduated from uni and bummed around for an extra year, um, doing a sabbatical year at the university, came home and got the classic telesales job. And so I was selling identity theft insurance through cold calling. In two thousand and six two thousand and seven, mine was worse or better. No. Two thousand. I did a stint of selling those like photo shoots out in the street. I just randomly stopped people in town. You look pretty. Have your photo. Do you want to look fantastic? Only two hundred and fifty pounds. Did you pay now? Yeah. Just give me your card details. Just give me your entire identity. So we were buying data in from, like, banks and stuff like that, and then just cold calling. Pre GDPR. Yes. Oh, yes. Those wonderful days. So and I just it was soul destroying work. Um, and I was moaning a bucketful and my dad doesn't tolerate fools gladly. Um, so I mean, Yorkshiremen aren't renowned for, uh, and he's a typical Yorkshireman. He's got really long pockets, really short arms and zips to keep him safe. So, um, So anyway, he threw the job paper at me and said, stop moaning. Do something about it. And there was an advert in the paper. But good advice as well. Yeah, yeah. Like if you don't like your situation, do something. You change. Nothing. Change. You can't always. But yeah, so so that's what I did. And I went to a recruitment event for countrywide and got a role as a junior neg. Um, and that's when I first met Ian Preston. And so. Oh, wow. So. Right. So you guys met right at the start of your journey. Right. And where was Ian then. So Ian was the area manager for okay. So he was already. Yeah. So he was area manager for Countrywide in Yorkshire. Um so he was running eight, eight, nine ten branches um at the time. Um and he put me into one of the branches. Um and then a couple of years later financial crisis hit and countrywide started shutting all of their offices. Um, and Ian and his cousin James, um, at the time thought that shutting York office in particular there's going to be a huge mistake for countrywide. Yeah. Um and so they put their money where their mouth was and they took it on as a franchise. So it went from being renton's countrywide to best countrywide under the franchise agreement. Um, and that was the beginnings of Preston Baker as we know it now. So how did, how did that franchise evolve into Preston Baker? Or did they kind of cut their teeth on that and go, we can do this? No. So it was a bad start. Cold. It was a forced change. So a couple of years later, countrywide sold the franchising rights to Hunter's. Yeah. Um, and Hunter's Heartland was York. So it was started by John Waterhouse and Kevin Hollinrake. Yeah. York. Yeah. That was their. That was their motherland. Yeah. And by this point we had offices in York and Selby and Headingley and Oakwood in Leeds. Um, and the franchises existed around us, so we couldn't then become Hunter's franchises because they already existed. They existed. So we had to buy ourselves out of the franchise agreement. Even though this was a force change upon us, we had to buy ourselves out. And that's how the press and Baker brand. But kind of the best thing was born. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And then the business just went from strength to strength. Then because there was nothing to constrain us, we could make any decision. So how so when was that? It was like two thousand and nine, twenty ten ish or was it twenty ten, twenty eleven or something like that? The PB brand came out. Um, and all through that time I was in the state agency. Um, and then twenty fourteen hit and we bought a lettings business. We sort of had some lettings stock, but we bought a couple of hundred units. Um, and it just didn't go well. We were losing money hand over fist. Um, and just things just weren't right. It just didn't sit right. You know, nobody set out to, to do a bad job of it. So, you know, the team that were there didn't come into work in the morning and go, I'm going to screw someone up. I'm gonna lose five management properties today. That was not their intention. But for whatever reason, just the systems and processes weren't working. Mhm. Um, and so Ian sat me down and said acquisitions. It's, um, there's a fine art to it. Oh, one hundred percent. Yeah. And we learnt a lot and it cost us a lot of money, but, you know, we learned the lessons. Yeah. Um, off the back of it. So Ian sat me down and said, look, I know you've never done lettings before, but you like a system and a process. Um, congratulations. Yeah. Can you go and plug the hole in the dike? Which was ironic, but. Yeah. That's fine. No, it's staying in. This is the Viking chats. We've had much worse than that. Um, and so he parachuted me in and I went from, uh, running, uh, the, one of the biggest offices that we had for sales into running this lettings business. And, and how was that? Because, because that in itself, switching from sales to lettings, particularly for someone who's, what, six, seven, eight years in the in the in the biz. Yeah. That's not that is not a common switch. Like that thing tends to either people go the other way, right? Like me, I dallied with, I did a blend of the two at my first jobs and then happily went into lettings. Yeah. Um, but it's, but I, I still to this day find it fascinating, the drawn line between. Yeah. You know, I've got, I know some amazing sales mates who are like, you're mad doing lettings. What are you doing? And then outright lettings people like me being like, I don't know how many sales they require. Totally different mindsets, that's for sure. Massive. And but there are some skills that do cross over because you're dealing with people. Yeah. And whether you're dealing with people through sales or people through lettings, people are people. And so that that that bit transfers beautifully. And then you have to get your head quickly around the legislation. So, you know, I, I walked in to, to a, to an inferno at the front door. You know, there wasn't just a fire burning. It was raging like five complaints a day on my desk. Wow. Um, you know, and so it was not on a massive portfolio then. No, it was a couple of hundred units. So. But but we'd also dropped the ball on the stock that we already had. So you had this perfect storm coming together. Um and so we just knuckled down and you know, I remember sitting with Ian and saying, I, I don't know what else to do here. And he's like, you've got two choices now because we sort of steadied the ship a little bit. And he said, you've either got to change the people or you've got to change the people. Which meant I either had to train and develop and get them to where I wanted them or, or we had to have a switching of the guard. Yeah. Um, in order to move it forward. And that's what we did. So the guard, well, a blend, so we retained retraining is really hard. So we retained three of the team. Yeah. And the rest over time were replaced as we started to implement the standards and be really fastidious about those standards. Yeah. And I think I do you know what I think particularly in lettings retraining is really hard. Yeah. And, and I say that because like you said, I think there's there is a different mindset involved with sales and lettings. And I think someone look, if someone's not a good negotiator, full stop, there's only so far you can run with that. Yeah. But ultimately with, with sales, like if someone's not quite getting sales, right, you can kind of turn it around the corner. I think, I think we're letting more in sales. I think that's the difference. Yes. Yeah. If you're if you're not a particularly good negotiator, you can hide behind the fact that you're the first to answer the phone. Yeah. And, and register people and book the appointments or you're the first to deal with the right move leads, or the Zoopla leads or your website leads that come in. There is a little bit of an easier place to hide. Whereas when you get into the technicalities of being a property manager in particular, which I in my opinion is the most underrated and underpaid job in the industry. Pan industry, sales and lettings. Yeah. Um, that requires such technical knowledge because of the legislation that governs it, that you really have to have the right person in the right seat on the right bus. Yeah. Otherwise you're screwed. Yeah. I think, I think for me, I think there is a fundamental thing that happens when people first land in lettings. And it depends what business you go into. Yeah. Because for me, and still to this day, we're getting we're getting better. It's better than it was. But hot back to when we're talking about ten years ago and again ten years prior to that. The default psychology around renting and attitudes towards landlords, but especially tenants, is often toxic. Yeah. You know, I, I have worked in businesses for people stood in businesses small and very big. Um, where there is this where they are trained to be like landlord is a client, one hundred percent tenant is inconvenient, but do you not think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that there's a bit of a flywheel that goes on in that we don't train the people properly in the first place. Yeah. And particularly in property management, um, their professional complaint handlers essentially because tenant wants maintenance, doing money needs to be spent. Landlord wants to maximise investment, doesn't want to spend money. So you spend your time getting it from both sides. Yeah. And if you don't, you've got to revel in that middle man. You've got to. And if you don't train your people properly, then one or both sides of that particular yeah, uh, arrangement are going to end up being really disappointed, really disheartened, and will begin to think that estate and letting agents are not good at their jobs. Yeah. And the more technical it gets, the more important that training becomes. Yeah. And so the less you invest, the more you frustrate your customers, the more that your customers are frustrated, the more that they don't speak to your team with the respect that they deserve. Yeah. Um, and therefore, you have this almost death spiral that starts to trigger. And, you know, I don't want to get into a whole like ropey debate, but, you know, unless we start training people properly and whether that's through licensing or whether that's through compulsory training courses or whatever, that might look like, there has to be a better investment in the person. Well, I think also right, there's this there's this growing conversation about the professionalization of renting the landlording in particular. I think, um, this will probably go out in a few weeks time, but last night, I don't know if you caught any of it. BBC Panorama post on it this morning. Yeah. Did I, I've rented to, you know, rented to a gangster or whatever it was called. Yeah. Um, and it was really funny because I actually put it on by chance. I don't watch a lot of TV and stuff like that and literally happened to flick on the telly just as it was starting and was like, oh, it's talking about, oh, it's renting, this is my bag. Do you wanna know the reason I didn't watch it? Because it's obviously I've just been on holiday. We did a sausage making course on holiday, and they have sausage meat grinders and sausage stuffers on sale in Lidl at the moment. So I was in the Middle Island buying meat grinder, sausage stuffer. I was like, where is this conversation going rather than sit at home watching TV. But do you know what? Do you know what struck me is you know this. This isn't. Like I said, this isn't just a shift in our industry as letting agents. It's a massive shift in the sector. And it's it's not happened overnight. It's been creeping right the last ten, fifteen years, more and more laws, more and more regulation coming in, more and more fines and consequences. Um, and what I find fascinating in our industry is there is a lot of pissing and moaning that goes on in our industry about, oh, I can't believe the government's released another set of laws and the boroughs rolled out another roll of licensing. And it's like, guys lap this up because this is where you become an expert. Yes. This is where you convey that expertise because like you said, you read my post about the program yesterday. I wasn't very nice to the landlords on the show. No, because, um, fundamentally, like, as I said in the post, it felt initially like a bit of a hatchet job on open rent because every tenant on there seemed to have been a tenant through open rent. And they kept citing their referencing. But although the kind of lead journalist presenter was kind of asking these probing questions, what I find interesting is they didn't really take the landlord to task about ownership, because what was really interesting in it was with open rent. Look, at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. And I know there's been a lot of battle lines in our industry, less so now. But, you know, ten years ago when Purplebricks launched, there was this huge them and us online versus full service and just poppycock anyway, because every agents online, every agent's online. Exactly. And but, you know, at the end of the day, in most walks of life, you get what you pay for. So if as a landlord, you make a choice to go for open rent or equivalent, there are other providers out there. Um, and you make that choice to go, do you know what? I'm not going to pay an agent two, three, four, five grand to let them manage my property each year. I'm gonna do it myself. I'm gonna go to open rent. I'm gonna pay. I don't even know what their fees are. One hundred and fifty quid to let it go. And I'll pay one hundred, you know, fifty quid for their referencing, whatever it is, a few hundred pounds. Great. Cool. Perfectly fine business. Yes. Yeah. But what I found fascinating in each of those cases was like the references came back from open rent and it was like, look, this is just a superficial rent. Like we cannot verify the ID, we've just been sent a copy. We recommend you pay for our enhanced ID verification process. None of them chose to pay for that. I'm guessing that was probably like twenty, thirty, forty, maybe fifty quid. Yeah, but probably more like At twenty or thirty quid. Okay. That was costly. Uh, we recommend you meet your tenant in person. Every single one of them was like. No, I decided not to meet them. It's like. Right. Okay. Um, you know, every single one of them because they initially pass referencing was offered a rent warranty. No, I'm not going to spend money on that. And I'm like rent warranties I find fascinating, right? Because particularly in London, I mean, our average rent is two and a half grand a month, so thirty grand a year. I think the London average is about two thousand one hundred a month. Okay. But I know talking to some of the more luxury brands in London, their average rent sit around three and a half to four grand a month. Yeah, it's a lot of money. Now, that's a serious amount of money. And referencing will only ever go so far. Yeah, because you can't fix the future. Exactly. But for roughly a week's rent, I mean, most most rentals in the UK, maybe not that premium stuff, but most rentals, including ours for between like three to five hundred quid. Yeah. Free for a year. You can indemnify all of your rent with no excess and legal expenses to gain vacant possession. Decent ones usually cover like a month's void afterwards for you to reset the property and get it relaxed. And I'm sat there and I'm like, so hold on. Right. You've chosen to save thousands. You've then been recommended to pay a few quid for an ID check. You've not done it. You could have gone and just met them for free yourself. And just looked at the docs and asked some probing questions. You chose not to. This epitomises buy cheap, buy twice. Right? Yeah. So so that's a classic Yorkshire phrase. So you know, let's get back to my Yorkshire and then see me when we buy um a t shirt or a jumper and we buy it from a fast fashion brand and we pay less than we would pay if we went to a M&S or a, you know, a next or something like that, then you would expect the fast fashion brand version to not last as long or not be as good quality. Well guess what? When you pay a much smaller fee and there is a place for everyone in the market. So this is not a dig at open rent by any stretch. But when you pay that lower price and you choose not to take things which could help protect you, there are consequences to those decisions. So if you buy cheap and you then have to rectify the situation, that's the risk reward that you trade when you acknowledge what you're taking on your own place. Exactly. Now look, this is muddy. And the reason this is such a fascinating discussion is like you touched on, Roper. The other challenge is, as we know, like if every full service agent in the country delivered lettings to the same professional standards and excellence, it would be black and white, right? You'd get a fantastic agent or you go like online hybrid, or you go proper one man band, you know, somewhere in between. Now, as we know, the challenge in that is that lots of agent, lots of landlords rather have made that decision of, do you know what? I don't know what I'm talking about. Yes. I'm just happy to be in a. I just lucky enough to be in a fortunate position that I've inherited or bought or whatever invested, but I don't know about any of this. I don't want to get involved. Here's an agent. They seem reputable. They've got a branch or two. They've got a logo in the window. They're on a big profile of the landlord as well, isn't there? Because there's there's some landlords that are in it through choice. Yeah. There are some landlords that are there, uh, by, by virtue of circumstance, as we've talked about, like inheritance or getting together, like we see quite a lot people partnerships. Yes. Yeah. You know, a couple gets together, they both have a flat and they go, oh, we don't, we don't need to sell them both. Yeah. Like we could keep one and we can sell one and we'll move in together. And that will be our little relocation one day. Relocation? Yeah, we've got quite a few clients like that. And then you've got this sort of, I was going to say playing at it landlords, it's really unfair. But those landlords where they've maybe invested in in one or two properties because someone told them it would be great to top up their pension to do it. They don't fully understand what they're doing, but they're trying to make good choices. And then all of these and then you've got your institution. This is the thing. They're not they're not bad people. They're not bad people, but they've been forced into a situation where they have to make choices based on circumstances which have been inflicted on them. And that comes through things like taxation as well. So, you know, some people have they've been right on the wire in terms of, um, you know, stuck in mortgages where the rent and the mortgage are not far apart, certainly in the world that I live in. Yeah. You know, in terms of average rents, we're not at two and a half grand. No. So, you know, so so those margins are super tight. You've then got additional costs layered on top of that. You're not getting the same tax allowances that you were before. So you and and also because of the freezing of the tax brackets, actually, as rents have crept and tax brackets have stayed the same, it's actually the equivalent of a tax rise. Yeah. Nobody talks about that. Um so but let's get to section twenty four. Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's not get too too stuck into the politics of it. But people are then forced into making these choices in that I could keep this asset because I know I'll get capital appreciation on it, but it's going to cost me a thousand pounds a year. Yeah. Because by the time the rents come in and my mortgage has gone out and I've paid the agent's fees and I've paid for my rent warranty, and I've paid for around a year by doing it myself, by doing it myself. Yeah. And so we've got this sort of whole section of the market which has become a victim of circumstance done to them rather than choices that they've made. And look, I think also like attitude. I don't even know that's a word. Um, but if you look at being a landlord twenty years ago, twenty plus years ago, it was really simple. Yeah. You bought a property, you know, your mortgage need to consent to it. You got a gas safety certificate. That was pretty much it. It was, you know, and, and, and, you know, with the best intentions, off you went. And, you know, for a while that that really was about as complex as you go. Yes. You had your, your furnishings had to meet the fire and safety regs and yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah around the edges wasn't there. It was simple. The changes have been really smart. You know, electrical safety certificates really smart. Change deposit deposit regulations. I mean, they're critical. Yeah. Tenant. I know a lot of agents didn't like it, but guess what. Everybody made about it. It was going to be the end of industry. And guess what. We we had our backs against the wall. And what were we forced to do? Innovate. And we had to charge and charge for what? We charge what we were worth. And yeah, that was the other thing. It changed that conversation. It changed from agents selling themselves short, underpinning their value, cutting their fees and leveraging tenants to forfeit the shortfall. Don't worry, Mr.. Mr. Landau, we'll do it for five hundred quid because we're going to take twelve hundred pounds off your tenant. But I think a lot of lettings is about common sense. So massively, if we go back to my early days in London and just taking a step back, right, a lot of the time it's just like, exactly. So if I go back to like my first six months running a lettings business with no experience, I must be fucking terrifying. It was it was absolutely petrifying. But what did people would come to me with a question and I would I would sit there and they'd look at me expecting the answer because I'm supposed to be the the team leader, right? I'm supposed to be the one that gives them reassurance. Yeah. So I'd sit there and pause a moment and I give an answer that in my head made sense. I'd use common sense as my guide, you know. What would I do if this was my home? What would I expect to do if this was my home? Yeah. And so I'd give my answers based on common sense. And they'd scoot away. A little smile on their face. I then rip into Google and, you know, if you were a property manager and you were doing this, what would you do? And then Google would give me some answers back, and then I'd go back out and I'd say, I think considering my point a little further, and I think we should also do this. Yeah. So I think if you just take a breath and you apply some common sense, I think there's some common sense, apply some empathy, like you said. What how would you feel if you were the landlord? How would you feel if you were the tenant? How would you feel if this was your find that balance. If you know, every single one of us lives in a home. Yeah. You know, not everyone there are. I know there are challenges with homelessness, but for the vast majority to live in a home, we all aspire to live in a home, and for the majority of people that will be watching this, we live in a home. How would you feel about things being dealt with in your home? Whether you own that home or whether you live in that home, how would you feel about that? And if you can apply that logic, if you would turn a light switch on and it sparks every time you do it, what would you do? Yeah, you'd change the light switch. You'd get an electrician out. You change that light switch. Yeah. If you know your partner was getting, uh, was losing sleep because there's this constant drip into a, into a tin bath, which makes a noise. And it doesn't matter whether you shut the doors in the bedroom, in the bathroom, you can still hear this drip. Would you make sure that that drip was stopped? Yes you would. And it doesn't matter whether it's a small drop or a big job, whether it's a safety concern or it's a hygiene factor in terms of somebody's ability to be able to live peacefully and happily in their home. Those things need to be addressed because in the long run, it plays out, right? Yeah it does. Happy tenants, you know, happy tenants. Better rent, fewer voids, better care, lower maintenance. It's documented over and over and over and over again. So I ran a lettings business for eight years on a, on a whim, um, until it was sold. And then I went back into a state agency, um, and did a couple of years in estate agency. And then I've gone into the deep, dark world of the supplier industry world of supplier. So let's, let's, let's talk about this next phase. So for those who don't know, so you were at Briston Baker. Um, Ian then sold that off or is it, was it just the lettings arm that you got. It's just the lettings arm that got sold. Ah. Okay. So I didn't actually realize that I thought they'd actually sold the whole business. So they retained the estate agency, just the lettings arms and. Yeah. And, and I think Ian also set up that kind of land development. Yes he did. Yeah. Richard Roberts um, which was a, um land promotion business that was really interesting. I remember, um I went to before. I think they rebranded to Leaders in Property Academy taster session. And Ian was there talking about that and I thought that was fascinating. Yeah, it really and again, talk about just looking at taking a step back from your business and just looking at it and going, cool, we're doing this well and we're doing that well. But yeah, and, and you know, that that business, in all fairness, was spearheaded by a chap called Hugh Roberts, um, who joined Preston Baker in the London Homes team as a land manager. And he was going out and he was like, that land is prime for planning, but the farmer can't afford to put the planning application forward. How do we help them? Um, and he really grabbed that and he was business partners with, with Ian and James in terms of the setting up of, of Richard Roberts, he's gone on now to set up his own business as well. And between him and Harry and a girl called Charlotte Nicholson, who was my right hand woman when we ran the lettings business, Incredible Lady and Charlotte Bugg, she is now actually, she's got married about a month ago, but they've gone on to take that business further and what they've been able to do by taking a piece of land, assessing it for planning, agreeing a strategy with the landowner, submit, creating the plans and submitting the plans on behalf of the landowner to then sell it. So they're taking I mean, it's land that's the idea is not rocket science, but it's just it's cash heavy. Like you've got to you've got to drop tens of thousands of pounds, but you're backing your knowledge, right? You're backing your knowledge of the market and your experience, your experience of knowing which kind of gets through planning and also what developers want to build, what developers, not just what gets through planning. It's what developers actually want to build. Yeah. Um, and yeah, so it's cash heavy, tens of thousands of pounds invested per parcel of land, but you can take a ten thousand acre and you can turn it into six figures. Yeah. For, for, for a, for a farmer. And, you know, we've all seen Clarkson's Farm. Yeah. You know, some of the trucks and also the year they've had this year. Bloody hell with the rain at the start. And now everything getting everything getting scorched. Yeah. It's not getting any easier for him. It's not. And so you know if they've got a parcel of land which they can't farm because it's got derelict buildings on or you know, it's, it just doesn't, it's not nutrient rich enough to be able to produce. We need homes, right. And we need homes. We need homes. We need people going out. We need to be homes that could be homes. We also need to be fed. So we need to be smart about where we build. Yeah. So don't just build on any old parcel of land. Pick the parcel of land where the soil's not nutrient or not nutrient rich enough. Yeah. It's got derelict buildings on it's on the edge of an established development. You know, that's where you should be building close to an access road, all this sort of stuff, all that sort of stuff. And so that's what they did with that business, which, which was incredible. So, um, but, but I just love I had nothing to do with the success of that. No, but I just, I just really love when Ian was talking about it and it was like a fucking no brainer. Like, you know, if you've got a decent sales operation and you've got good hold of a decent patch that you operate in, you know, they say, why wouldn't you? And like you said, farmers, you know, people inherit land. They've got no clue what they do outside of Yorkshire. It's really, really clever. So yeah, they started identifying you start in your start in your patch. But once you got the model, they were down in Norfolk and Oxfordshire and you know, they were helping, helping these farmers realise potential from their land. It was, it was a great bit. Yeah. A great bit of business. Yeah. Now look we've talked about agency and we've we've talked a little bit about that. But um we need to talk about the techie bit. Techie deep dark land of suppliers. Yes. Uh, and the even deeper, darker bit of AI. So, um, let's start, first of all, let's talk a little bit about greenhouse OS. Yep. Um, so for those who don't know, let's talk a little bit more about that. I mean, it's a CRM, but it's more than that. So talk to me a little bit about how did that idea come around and at what point did you guys go right? Do you know what? Actually, yeah, we're going to back ourselves and, and, and do something for the market. So whilst we were at Preston Baker, um, one of our big frustrations, um, was every time we had, uh, an opportunity within the market, an innovation, an idea that we could see that we could take somewhere we were restricted by the systems that we were using to help support the operational side of the business. So the CRM, they're very rigid, aren't they really rigid? And, you know, you would you would get responses back saying, it's a great idea and we'll put it on the roadmap. Expect delivery in eighteen to twenty four months. Yeah. I can't deliver in a year and a half. The opportunity is now. Yeah. Or or they come back and say, look, it's a really great idea, but there's only you that wants it. So we're not going to bother. And so all of a sudden we're in this place where we could see these great opportunities. And then we were having to like create Frankensteins child of yeah, spreadsheets here. And, you know, I'd watch a negotiator or a property manager in the mornings and they were logging into like eight or nine different systems because we'd subscribed to this and subscribed to that and subscribed to the other in order to be able to execute their role. Yeah. And that's, that's not an efficient or great place to be either. Right. Um, and so we, we started shopping around and we were introduced to Alex Rhodes. Um, and at the time, um, Alex was running a business called steely and they were a Salesforce implementation partner for estate agents. So we got into bed with Salesforce at that point, if you like. And we subscribe to a system called Property Base, which is no longer supported in the UK. So I didn't know that because because yeah, I remember them. They'd approach us every kind of six months. Yeah. So it was originally American based system. They came across the UK. It wasn't quite fit for purpose. You know, they referred to closings and all that sort of stuff. So like it just wasn't quite right. So anyway, we took it because we knew because it was on Salesforce and we'd had these conversations with Alex, we could customize. So we could start to let our creative juices like flow and really let rip in terms of how we wanted to. And so when, when was that? When was that? That was. So we went live with property base in, uh, beginning of March twenty twenty. I was going to guess. Oh, wow. You know, there was a great companies that launched around that time. Yeah. So we went live with, with property base then and we then spent. Um, but did you, do you already have the ambition to build something to sell out, or is it? Initially it was just about how do we satisfy what we need to do at Preston Baker? Yeah. How do we run Preston Baker to the best it can be run. And what do we need to be in the way we want to run it? Yeah. Exactly that. Um, and so, uh, we started then adding and creating and we could start to see these efficiencies being created in the business. So not a single spreadsheet existed in the business to track figures anymore, because it could all be done within the platform. And it got to a point where if you imagine, and that's the power of Salesforce, right? It's all about reporting all that reporting and data accessibility of it. So if you imagine an A4 sheet of paper, that column, there was property bases, original functionality, and everything else was what we built. And it was at that point we were like, hang on a minute. Yeah, there's something in this. And, you know, you reference leaders in property academy. You know, Ian and I were both members. Um, and we, we'd be sat in, meetings or chatting to people and they'd say, well, can we have a bit of that? Well, you can, but you'll have to build it or you'll have to invest in it. And the penny dropped at that point that there's a market for this. There is there is an opportunity. And don't get me wrong, it's not for everyone. So, you know, I mean, Holly, Holly, our marketing manager, is probably going to kill me for this line, right? The CRM, the CRM space in here, I mean, I, yeah, I don't, I, it's not a market segment I would do. Yeah. And, and also the, the, the philosophies and the ideas behind greenhouse are not for everyone because you have to want to innovate. You have to have a mind that wants to think. Yeah. And you know, otherwise you're not tapping into its biggest resource. No, no you're not. And, and, you know, if you want innovation fed to you, there are some amazing systems that are going to do that and that will provide you with real reliability, real robustness, you know, modern sleek looking operations, particularly the ones that are cloud based now, you know, some really great operations out there, but you're still going to be in that position. If you have an idea or you want to do something, you're still locked into that framework. You're locked into their development schedule and you're locked into their development, prioritization, and enough people have to want it in order to warrant them to build it. And we just didn't feel that that was right. Um, and so greenhouse was born and, you know, we're now working with clients and, and watching them, some of the things that they're doing with it just, it blows my mind. So we've got one business, a really good business. They're, they're the biggest volume of transactions in their area, bar none. So it's a big, big business. And when I say area whole county, right. Yeah. So not a small business. They don't make a single phone call now for viewing feedback and they get more viewing feedback completed of the systems that they're using than see your AI agents thing. I find this so, so I wanted us to get onto this eventually because I find, I find this fascinating. A obviously where AI and technology is going. Yeah. But also. This um, what do I want to call it? Um, I suppose a safety belt, I suppose. I think that most agents refer to this whole thing of people buy from people. Yes. And fundamentally, yes, it's absolutely true. And fundamentally that is the core of a great agent, whether you're a single branch, three person team or you're nationwide, if you're not getting the relationship right, yes, you're always going to find everything else harder. AI cannot replace people. But will it? It can. It can replace people who aren't very good at their job. It can replace people who aren't very good at their job, and it can replace the jobs that people don't like doing and therefore don't do them very well or do them infrequently because they don't like doing them. Yeah. And but those jobs are essential to the business in terms of its growth or its sustenance at its current level. I just, I just think agents make it too simple when they when they say, oh, but people buy from people. I don't feel like it's the full sentence. No it's not. People buy from people that they like, know and trust. Yes. Yeah. And and that fundamentally is it if if if your team are not good on the phone, if they are not engaging, if they are not leveraging that personal contact, if they're not open that conversation with, how are you doing today? But if they don't have the time to do that. Yeah. Because their time is swallowed up by administrative, the administrative burden. I'm just going to call it. Yeah. You know, of everything that needs to be done. AI is at its best in my opinion, when it is taking on the heavy lifting. Oh for sure. a high volume, repetitive tasks. So I've been saying for years. Again, agents and this isn't unique to agents. I think this is this is the evolution of business. But I think too many businesses look at how they've done things and, and also how they assign value to the people in their business. And oh, I've hired this person and they are getting X, Y, z done. They're fixing leaks and they're sorting gas certificates and blah, blah, blah, blah. But what they don't actually sit down and look at what they do and where they add value to that process. So let's go back to that example that I was talking about with the with the viewing feedback. So because they've released so much time for their team now, because they're not making those three phone calls to chase it, then the three phone calls to the seller back and forth to, you know, try and deliver it, leave a message, they call back, you're on the phone, call them again. You've got this whole two and three. They released so much time that when we started working with them, they had an objective that they wanted a negotiator to be generating a quarter of a million pounds per year per seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That now is at four hundred grand a year. Wow. Because they've managed to release enough time to allow the value add jobs to be done. And by value add jobs, I mean being able to do prospecting to the right opportunities, because those opportunities have been nurtured to a point by AI through conversational AI, to the point where then the human can jump in and can build the relationship, continue to build the relationship, to secure the valuation, to secure the listing, to, to get the offer to the point where the viewing feedback has been collected automatically. Customer indicates they want to make an offer. You make the phone call. You get the offer. You now have the time to invite the seller to come into the office to do to discuss the offer, or to go out to their home to put the offer forward, face to face or, you know, worst worst case scenario, jump on a teams call. We're now, you know, in that world they're talking about worst case scenario of a teams call to negotiate an offer. Not a quick like yeah, I got an offer like, yeah, not an email. Yeah. So that value add piece, it's, it's about saying where's, where, where are the points where we hit a crash, where we've got more work than the racecourse can do, but we can't bring just more resource in because that's not a cost effective way to deal with it. So let's use the logic of AI to help move that forward. And let's be really clear about what AI is. It is not a process. It is something which has autonomy to make things happen. Yeah, I think there's a lot of AI washing that goes on in the industry where people say, oh, this system is AI. And you look at it, it's not. It's just a workflow, a workflow. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we have to be really clear about what AI actually is. And AI is having intelligent conversations, autonomous, intelligent conversations, carefully, carefully guided with really strict guardrails. Yeah. We don't want hallucination. We don't want it going off track and telling people things that aren't true. You know, that has to be really carefully monitored and really well, guardrails. And you know, that is now generating business for our clients. You know, it's booking valuations, booking viewings. Well, I think it's really, it's really the, the before and, and I started base, the agency we met at. So they did something which I hadn't met another agency before doing, which was they expected their eggs, like most agents to go out and sell, you know, whether sales or rentals, you're out there selling. But what they had grasped was, you know, quite a lot of agents. And that was just a single branch independent, right? So particularly in single branch independence as an egg, usually quite a lot more fell on you. It wasn't just filling your diary, going up and getting the offers. You then secure the holding deposit and get the referencing forms filled out and sent off. And you know, you'd be involved in quite. Yeah, you'd be involved, quite involved with that whole tenancy progression. And again, part of that was that mentality of that's how it's done. So that's how it's always been done. When I, when I worked the company where I met Anne, what was really interesting with them was they had, they had an admin assistant that sat behind every two to three Negs. Okay. Yep. And their job was there to, you know, if you needed to move an appointment, bump it, say someone was running late, they'd keep everyone updated, they'd check your viewings. But importantly, once you once you got an offer in, they did the rest. Yeah. You know, that was it into the system. Because why do I want someone who can bring in, you know, and again, in London, we do work on silly figures. I mean, back then. God, let's say average rents were, I don't know, let's say fifteen hundred a month, so like eighteen grand a year. But if you were getting fifteen percent, you were earning, what, nearly three grand with tenant fees on top. You're owning three grand a let. Nice money. Yeah. Uh, bearing in mind this is twenty odd years ago. Yeah. Um, if you've got someone who can generate three grand a deal. Yep. Why the hell do you want that person stuck behind a desk for a day? Mhm. Doing mind numbing admin, half of which they're probably gonna miss something anyway, because that's not their skill set. Because it's not their skill set. Just just embrace the fact that they are really good at building that relationship, getting people through the door and getting an offer out of people, the jobs that humans don't like doing and therefore don't do very well. Yeah, prospecting is a is a really great example of it. So admin is a wonderful example, but so is prospecting. Yeah, you'd think that salespeople would love a bit of prospecting, right? Let's get on the phone. Let's talk to people. Oh my God, guys. It's like trying to pull teeth out of a crocodile. Yeah, they just don't like doing it. And so. But if you can have a system which gets it to a point, because as much as salespeople are gregarious, outgoing individuals, most of them hate rejection. I mean, they, they cannot cope with it. Yeah. And actually, salespeople, I think are some of the worst because they hear it so often, it becomes personal to them. It's why valuers think that, you know, every time they lose a listing, every time they lose a listing. Yeah. So. Well, exactly that they frame it as losing a listing, right? It's not the fact that someone else happened to win it. Yeah. Or the landlord decided to go a certain way. It's I lost it. I've lost the listing. And and so they, they shy away from it because on average, you'll make, what, forty phone calls before somebody says, yes, that's thirty nine no's before you've got the yes. That's that's pretty hard going. But if you can get to a situation where AI has warmed up those. Those leads, and then you make five phone calls and book two valuations. Suddenly you feel like cock of the North, right? Well, there's been yeah, I think I think what's been interesting with you guys, you guys Ian's put out some at times they've sounded quite frustrated. Little post, but equally I get it because agents want our market to evolve. They want suppliers, particularly technology to innovate. But then at the same time when we do, they're like, hold on a minute, is this just some piece of shit you're wrapping rolling in? But I think to convince me of something, I think we. But then there's also that, oh, but I don't want to take two like. But what if my team aren't doing that? What am I paying them to do? Yeah, there's also that. But like I remember, I was probably it was at least six months, maybe a year ago. I remember Ian doing a thing and it was all about the, the booking of viewings. Yes, the auto scheduling of viewings. And he was like, I really did a little video on LinkedIn. And he was like, guys, got to be honest, a little bit dumbfounded at the moment because it's like, we've built this tool. Yeah. Um, and yet we've presented this tool to you and most of you are like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's where my eggs are like really good and where they earn their money. And yet these are the stats of human eggs. And these are the stats of them supported by our AI agents. Okay. So I've got two things for you on this. And I found it fascinating because it was the stats were were markedly different. Oh they are. And it was, like I said, coming back to this thing, I think there are there are certain false truths in this industry that we cling to because we're terrified it's going to somehow undermine our value or the perception of someone's value, or all of a sudden we're not going to understand how we now manage that person, because I attributed your value to doing X, Y, z. And actually now x and y, I can actually take that ninety percent of that off your desk by switching on X, Y, Z, and you're going to be better, but you're now not doing that. So now you're only doing half the work that I was assessing you before. So and I'm not happy about that. Even though we're getting more viewings, more deals and more revenue. So, so given the opportunity, when presented with the choice to book their own viewing, forty, forty percent of customers will choose to book their own viewing. Yeah. Now, given that sixty two percent is the most up to date stat of leads arrive in our businesses when we are shut. Yeah. So they come after six. Yeah. And before nine. Yeah. Yeah. Or over the weekends when we're running skeleton crews because everyone else is out doing viewings, so forty percent of customers will choose to book their own viewing. If you call that customer after they've booked their viewing. So your neck still has a job. Yeah, because you still need to find out about them and, you know, get some extra information, double check the viewings. Absolutely right. They're the right person. Recommend other properties for them to have. Have a look at in a sales environment. Really interrogate what the financial position is. Do they need a mortgage but give them what they want and get them booked in first. Give them what they want, get them booked in first. So if you do that, you are thirty seven percent more likely to book a valuation or a mortgage referral appointment than if you do the full registration process. Thirty seven percent. So the full registration process I find fascinating. I can't remember what comedy show it was. I was watching, um, about six, six months ago, but there was this brilliant clip. Um, I think it was families or something like that. It was Jim Howick who, funnily enough, was a guy that went to drama college with me. Okay. His name was in ghosts and stuff like that. And I think it's like families or something like that. He does. And him and his partner, there was this classic scene. And again, it's one of these things. I don't even watch the series. I just happened to have the telly on at the time. And they go into an estate agent's office because they're really worried. They screwed up a neighbour's sale and they go in and they're like, oh, this property you had on, like, just checking, is that still under offer? And the agent's like, oh, happy to have you discuss it with you. I just need these details from you first and then. No, no no no no, no, we're, we're not wanting to register. We're not wanting to view anything. We literally just come in to have a bit of a chat. Yeah. Cool, cool. Happy to discuss that with you. All I need is your name, your email? No. Yet again. And and it just, I, I found it like this really funny crystallizing moment because it was like, that is that is how consumers see a lot of us is particularly if they're on the search, you know, they'll inquire about twenty properties and they will have twenty variations from hopefully good to unfortunately horrible within that. That will. And can you and what's your email address? And can you repeat that? How do you spell your name and how do you spell Christian again? Yeah. And what's your budget that one hundred times. Oh my God. Yeah. And how do you pronounce Christian. Yeah. It's and it's not it's not an enjoyable experience for the customer. Yet when you ring them back and say, hey Christian, I see you've booked in to view three Bank Street. Have you got a couple of minutes just so I can. I'm delighted that I'm going to get to show you that property. Tell me why you booked to see that one, because there are two things that the Brits love to talk about the house that they live in. Yeah. And the house that they want to live in. Yeah, yeah. And so if you can get them on those topics really quickly. Yeah, we talked ages ago now about rapport and relationship building and trust and empathy and do them a favor. Right. That cool? Yes, I have a bit of a chit chat, but add some value. Yeah, but you can get straight into the stuff that they want to talk about. And then once you get them talking, that's when you can add value. That's when you can pitch for the the mortgage referral for the tenants contents insurance for the, um, for the valuation, if there's an opportunity to go out and value a property as well. That's when you can help enhance your business, but give them an experience that they enjoy first. But I think part of the reason that we've been so desperate for data is we've been told for so long that data is really valuable, right? So we want everybody's name and address data. Cold data is gold, and then we stick it in our database. Well we can't access it, use it, leverage it, understand it, interpret it. Uh, if we, if we do understand it, we can't present it in a way which is useful or it's it's all stored in these different silos. So I've got a whole list of people who've had houses valued, and I have a whole list of people that have registered to buy a house or to rent a house, but I can't match the two things up. And so therefore, I can't understand that Christian registered with me three years ago, and his house has just gone on the market now, and I've double checked it against land reg, because that happens automatically for me. And I know he's still the owner because there hasn't been a transaction in that time, and he's just gone on the market with Smith and Co, so I can get in touch with him and say, hey Christian, I know you've just got on the market. Great news. I bet you're really excited. How can I help you with the onward? Yeah. And then become useful then and then if it fails to sell or let with the other agent, start selling. Don't sell, then don't sell on new instruction. Be useful. Just offer to help. Be helpful, be useful, be empathetic about their the situation, and then you can move that forward into a position where. Okay, so you've been on the market for weeks. How's it going? You know how you know what they said? What's the feedback been like? What's the market been like? But if you're, if your database is in these silos and it's not marrying these things up for you, then that information is is great. You've got it well, but you can't leverage it. So it's useless. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Meanwhile, you're creating a terrible experience for the customer. And, you know, you talked about innovation a couple of minutes ago about, you know, as an industry, we've said, you know, we want innovation, we want innovation, we want innovation. And then we've gone out to people. And it's just sometimes it's just been done badly. I think we've had some really bad self-inflicted wounds. Yeah, yeah. In terms of implementation of, I think implementation. And we were getting on to this way too late in the chat because we've already run over. Sorry. Definitely meant to have tried to finish ten minutes ago, but let's try and get it under the hour. Yeah. Um, but no, I think look, implementation I think is, is, is a massive thing. And we've, we've just agreed to sponsor Unchained, um, voice of the agent event. Okay. In November, um, and I'm going to be doing a speaking slot in there. And part of that we're going to be looking at the tenancy conclusion index data that we get through the depository. But what I'd really like a part of that talk to be is about exactly that implementation. Um, and I think there are some amazing products available to agents. Yeah. Um, but, but agents are too flippant about adopting and using them or too scared or too scared, whatever it is or. Yeah, yeah. Maybe scared. They just come out from kerfuffle. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's, it's all about, um, CRMs and data migration. Obviously it hit my agenda because I was like, oh, ringing. Simon, can I get the results of results that sent me, please? Um, so but but in there, they're asking questions of the agents. Like, you know, if you, if you've moved CRM in the last two years, like what went well, what didn't go well and what would stop you from moving if you haven't moved in the last two years? And I bet you my bottom dollar that the results that come out from that survey will say, well, I can tell you now with like with implementation is a is a nightmare. We couldn't get the data out that we wanted. If we could, they were going to charge us a fortune for it. When the data came in, it was put in so badly it was useless. And we're too scared to move because we. We think that the. We're going to lose too much data. We had an all right migration. We. We migrated from Jupiter to Altair, and we made a very conscious. One of the. One of the key reasons we decided Alto was to stay in the same software stable so we could go, uh, no excuses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Yeah, one of you is responsible. One was talking to dad. We don't care. Yeah, Cos you're in the same house. Yeah. And, and that was actually a massive reason for it. But when I have even remotely suggested maybe it's time we, we revisit our CRM choice and just death stares me and he's like, don't you fucking dare. This is the migration in the end was all right, but the stress. And given what lettings is like now, the compliance and the note keeping and the record keeping and the archives. And so I spoke to an agent of this stuff that they were migrating. They migrated, I don't know, three, four years earlier, and they moved from A to B, doesn't matter who A and B are. But A refused to release all the information about the tenancy. And then when B got some of the information so works orders in particular, they couldn't they couldn't map it all so they just mapped what they could. And that for me is incredibly frustrating Because if implementation is so important and we know that the CRM is in. Often is often the heartbeat of a of a business because that's where everything comes back to. We have to do better. And look, if you're if you're losing a client, why do you want that parting of ways to be. Also, it's you can't have that. We're not doing that. That's not in our terms. That's not your data. It's ours. It is not my data. No, it is the customer's data. It is not for me to hold it to ransom or to say, no, you can't. You know, companies saying, oh, well, there'll be natural twenty percent wastage of data as you move it. That's just not that's insane. And, and, you know, we, we, we've just moved somebody over like literally four weeks ago. And the feedback from the, from the team when they've transferred to greenhouse was, we can't believe that you sent two people on site to train us for three days. But why? You need to learn how to use the system. Yeah. This is a serious business here. Oh, well. With the last system we were sent. How to guides and videos. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know. No wonder agents are reticent about implementation of innovation or tech. If the the key system within their business. Yeah. Whenever they've made the decision to do something with with that that experience so terrible, quite poor. Yeah. Then that's going to leave you scarred and no wonder. And gives you dagger. And that feeds into your expectations of what you're going to get elsewhere. Yeah. Whereas I think, I think what I see is I, I look unsurprisingly more at the ancillary marketplace, the bolt ons like depository and fix flow and, you know, pay prop and other products that are out there. Um, you know, whatever else is out there. But, um, but what I, I think it's fascinating. I find I find it fascinating looking at how five agents will adopt a product and four will go, oh my God. Yeah. Transformational team. Love it. Like getting pretty much what we expected out of it. Fantastic. Thank you. And the fifth agent will turn around and go. I don't get it. Yeah. It it hasn't changed anything, if anything. It's just an extra thing to look into. And the team don't like it, and it doesn't really match with our processes. And I don't like the way it does this. But that's a mindset thing. It's a mindset thing because pretty much all of the issues they've just talked about can be configured within those platforms. Most products have, whether it's through the supplier or whether you have access to it yourself. You know, most understand that lettings businesses are going to accept going to expect a level of customization. You're going to need to. There is no plug and play A singular product that miraculously works for every agent outside of tenant referencing maybe, or something like that. But, um, but yeah, and I think, but I think it's really fascinating when you look at, you know, when we look at in depository, when we look at the agents, where we see them get incredible results, not six, twelve months down the line within two to three months. Yeah. Because holy shit, that process, they understand it, they question it, they bring it in, they customize it, they do the figures. They come back to us. Oh, by the way, this bit, we actually really wanted to do this. What do you suggest? Oh, great. Yeah. No, you can do it that way or do it that way. Or maybe we could, you know, do something for you in the future. Whatever. Boom boom, boom. Or, you know, and, and we'll share our. Or maybe don't do it that way. Have you thought about doing this way? Great. Um, and then they will do a proper implementation team. This is what we are now using. This is what our new process looks like. This is how we will work. But what you've just described is a process of consultation and consultation on many levels. So you've got consultation between the supplier and the agent. You've got consultation between the agent and their team. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the some of the worst examples that I've ever seen is when change is forced upon. Yeah. And is not brought about collectively together. So I, I'm going, I'm going, we're going over time. We're gonna have to wrap this up. But I, I will partly disagree with you there because only in that often businesses need change. Mhm. Um, and I'm sure you see it, we see it a lot. There is a lot of resistance, uh, within quite simply the longer the person's been in a role, typically the more resistant they are to change because they have this method, this process, this familiarity that they are used to. Um, don't get me wrong. It's important to understand. Yeah. Understanding feedback from your team at the at the evaluation period is critical. Yeah. Understanding what to listen to and what to go. Yeah. But I know this is going to solve that problem. Yep. You might not see it, but I do. Yep. Um, so yeah, I think, you know, understanding that there's still, I think that is still and particularly obviously in the larger businesses, there's still a lot of inconsistency in that decision process. Yes, there is. In terms of what are the driving factors? What are the objectives? What is the problem we're trying to solve? And in terms of that resistance to change, even with the consultation, I don't think it eradicates that resistance to change. And we and we've seen that we're humans, but we're we're humans. We like we constantly change. Like we also like routine and familiarity. Yes, we do, but at least with consultation. Yeah. Even if you disagree with it at the end, you hopefully still understand why, you understand why and you've been involved and you feel part of the journey. And you know, that level of consultation will vary depending on the size of the business going into a one branch business with, you know, eight to ten employees will be totally different than going into somewhere ten offices, one hundred and twenty staff. You know, that's different, but you can have key partners within a branch, key partners within a department where they've been brought about, and they then become your ambassadors. Well, this is exactly this is exactly what I was going to say. We we had we had an amazing experience when, um, when Megan was still at Haslam's and she rolled us out with, with Haslam's and during her time there. And one thing that was really fascinating, eh? That lady should go out and teach every business how to implement tech. Yeah, because. Wow. Mhm. I said one of one of the biggest impacts we've seen in data and results within two months. But one of the other reasons I talk about it was, and we'll finish up on this point is one thing was really interesting through that whole process, one of the senior property managers there, who was a lady who had been in the job, from what I recall, around fifteen years going on twenty years, knew her shit. Been there, done it, got the t shirt. Um, and she was very vocal in a professional way with Megan throughout the whole kind of tenure and adoption process of this feels like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, right? I've always managed to end tenancies. I have my method. I have my process. Please don't fuck with it. Yeah. Um, and she was adamant this was just gonna be a frustration. And about three, maybe four weeks after they'd adopted us, um, not copying any of her team, not copying Megan or anyone else. Uh, that lady wrote us an email and went, oh, my God, you've changed my life. Yeah. She was like, I did not realize how much of my day was drained. Yeah. Chasing stuff. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. And you can't. You can't track that. None of us have systems that tell you how many phone calls you've made today that weren't answered, that didn't get an outcome, that ended up in a voice tracked. It can be tracked, but most don't. So they don't they don't have that visibility. And as a property manager, you're just busy being busy getting through your task of every day. Um, and I found that absolutely fascinating, and it's something I've clung to ever since. Whenever we talk to people in a business and, you know, you get that that negative Nelly in there. Yeah, yeah. You know, often for very valid reasons. Um, and it's like, just, just trust the process, trust the tech, lean into it. And I think, you know, I keep saying time and time again, you should treat tech like the head of a new department. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't hire someone, you wouldn't create a new department and hire someone to head up that department and then have them quietly link into the office on a Monday morning and park themselves in a desk in a corner and quietly get on their job without telling anyone else who they are, without telling anyone else what they do, and without rearranging your business around this new department and role. Right. And tech is exactly the same. You can't take some off the shelf product change nothing to it. Click on an integration and tell your team to use it and and walk away and expect to turn around a month later in your business to have been transformed. Because like you said, people are resistant to change any way they can find to go back to what's familiar to them, they will any way they can find to be like, yeah, but I don't, I don't really like the way it does this. You see, I used to do it that way. And so my phrase on this is people are like water. Yeah. And they will always find the path of least resistance. Doesn't matter if they've got to squeeze through a tiny crack, if they can see that it's going to make their life easier in the end. Yeah. Um, and you know, if you don't implement that tech properly, if you don't have a strategy to support people, to train them to, um, support them after, go live to map your process though and like to review it internally. You're fundamentally not changing your business, but you've got to change a little bit. Yeah, you've got to get the most out of that. And look, we're playing around in base. We're playing around with a lot of tech at the moment. We're playing around with the guru, the self-serve solution through alto, you know, and working through bits like that. Um, yeah, we're playing around with lots of bits and pieces and there's lots of discussions with us going, ah, but you know, the challenge is we do it this way and it's like, yeah, but what value do we add doing it this way? And why do you do it and why do we do it that way? And how much time do we spend doing it that way? And that might have been actually fine to do it that way ten years ago. But we're not the business we were ten years ago, and our clients and everything else has moved on. And we've got this funny little process because a client might save twenty quid. And it's like, I don't necessarily think, you know, we've got a duty to our clients to try and save money. But if we're creating this quite complex workflow around a really simple responsibility over a twenty quid difference where I said, you know, our clients On average, you're getting a thirty zero zero zero pound a year rental income. I don't think that's a deal breaker, and also safe in the knowledge that we already know. The price point that we're talking about is already thirty, forty, fifty percent less than a lot of our competitors in the space anyway. Best thing I ever did was bring in work experience people into the teams that I ran because every single one of them would ask why? Ask why? And every time, whether it's a member of the team that's looking after them that day or they're spending a day with me. And if the answer was because that's how we've always done it, yet you're forced to rethink the processes. And so many people now don't accept work experience. And I understand why there's lots of legislation around it. But get get a family member who doesn't understand your industry, get a six year old. You know, when you've got childcare issues that day, bring your kid into school. It bring the kid into work and get them to ask why? Because it was the best. My daughter has been asking to come in and a. I was thinking of having her come in to interview me on a podcast. But I think also really interesting, maybe eight years old, a bit young. But to ask some of the questions of why? SJ we could keep talking for a lot longer. We've gone well past the one hour mark. I was like, let's aim for forty five minutes. Yeah, keep it under an hour. We're definitely an hour, like an hour, ten hour fifteen. So we're up there with the longest episodes like Claire and Joe. Sorry, but it's what happens when you're passionate, when you're, you know, it's. Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating journey, but I think hopefully, I think what's really nice is you and I have had a chat and we, we, we've both been actively on the front line and we're in that supply space. We get that the blend, you know, and I think sometimes when you get people like people like us in a room, we have got that unique joint perspective. Yeah. Um, and I, I think that's a really interesting conversation today. So I think there's some good ones there. Um, right guys. So, so we are definitely going to cut it there. Um, if you want to find out more about greenhouse OS and how that can embrace innovation within your business, reach out to SJ and team. Find out more. You will also find quite a lot of videos posted by people like Ian talking about various features. I remember an ICG approved event recently. I had a little bit of a play with the viewing booking thing. Super impressed. Really, really impressed. So if you think people are getting some homogenised AI, um, just, just just think, just have a conversation with them. Um, and equally, you know, if, if you've identified quite a lot of things, we've talked about operation and structure and people and business, um, maybe it's time to just stop and take a bit of a check, look at what you've got, look at what you've got in your business. I think it's something we do quite a lot at base is we try and revisit a platform at least once a year where we'll go back in and we'll ask questions about what's working and what's not. We'll go into if we've got access to settings. Yeah. What haven't we configured in settings? What's new in there? Is there some new feature that rolled out three months ago and we missed the alert? Why aren't we using it? Why isn't your account manager told you? Why isn't your account just told you? But also, you know, have have those difficult conversations in the business. Why do we do it this way? And that might have been right ten years ago, five years ago, two days ago. But is that right now for the business, for the customer, for your team? Um, yeah, I think just start asking questions. Start being curious. SJ an absolute pleasure. Uh, guys, see you next time. Bye bye