What Got You Here Won’t Get You There with Sam Olliver

What happens when the processes, systems and structures that helped build a successful agency are no longer the ones it needs to keep growing?

In this episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan is joined by Sam Olliver, who has spent almost 25 years in agency, including nearly two decades with Michael Jones. Having experienced the business grow from a relatively small independent into a substantial regional operation, and subsequently become part of Lomond, Sam has seen first-hand how dramatically the needs of a business change as it evolves.

Now, through his own consultancy, Olliver, he's using that experience to help agencies take a fresh look at how their businesses actually operate.

Kristjan and Sam get into why buying good technology doesn't guarantee good results, why some businesses abandon perfectly capable software without ever really implementing it properly, and the often-overlooked gap between the decisions made at leadership level and what actually happens on the ground.

They also explore centralisation, accountability, handovers, KPIs, staff engagement and the danger of managing a business purely through spreadsheets. There's a particularly interesting discussion around why involving your team in change matters without allowing "we've always done it this way" to become a veto on progress.

More broadly, this is a conversation about business evolution. The people, processes and technology that get an agency through its first stage of growth won't necessarily be right for the next one, and sometimes it takes an outside perspective to spot where the friction really sits.

A great listen for agency owners, directors, operations leaders and anyone wondering whether their business is genuinely set up for where it wants to go next.

Transcript

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking Chats podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Sam Oliver. Sam, thanks for joining me today. Thanks. Having me. Um, now, Sam, you and I met as supplier and agent a few years ago, um, with obviously the depository and you at the time were at um Michael Jones that's right, that's right. James. Um, so look, for those of you, what are we going to talk a bit about your journey? You've gone through, uh, a career as an agent. Um, and now having worked in Ops, you're going into that kind of advisory consultancy space and we'll talk more about that in due course. Um, but we always like to start off with kind of people's journey or story to date. Um, so without doing a Christopher Nolan epic, um, tell us a little bit about your agency journey. So how did you get into agency and kind of what did that look like? So I, it was my mum was working at Fox and Sons and I wasn't getting on at sixth form. I just wasn't enjoying it. So she got me. She'd already got me a job. And I just got to a point where I thought, I need to go and do something full time. And so I rang my boss and said, can I go full time? Market was good. He got me on eight K a year. I was only sixteen. And, uh, so I started off in sales, quickly shifted into lettings, property management and, uh, and then yeah, obviously eventually through to the sort of the, the Loma Linda thing. So when was that? So when, when, when was that? How long ago was this? Uh, so I was sixteen. Yes. Was going back um forty this year. So yeah. Fair old fair old. Correct. So it was about twenty four ish years ago. Absolutely. Yeah. And uh, yeah, so it wasn't something I'd planned to get into, but I've, I've now Fox and Sons that's part of sequence and that's countrywide now, right? Yeah. I think it was just countrywide then, but obviously now it's or was it was it was it was sequenced. So it was, yeah, it was um sequenced kernels, a countrywide I can't remember. It was secret. Yeah. Sequence. Yeah. Um yeah, it was a something in alliance. I'm trying to think of the insurance company that backed them at the time before it was Connells. Ah. So it was. Yeah. Yeah it was. Yeah, yeah. Before Connells acquired them. Yeah. Cool. And so how long were you there for from your kind of part time role into when you started looking for something different? So only a couple of years. Um, and I think at that age, you're not really old enough to be fully fledged to be able to get into the sales, anything. So I'd only done the bare, bare bones of it. And just a lettings position came up as a smaller business that had a, um, a twin sort of office in Brighton, and I just found lettings to be a lot more interesting because of so many different elements to it. So that was the appeal. So I shifted, shifted. I still find it quite fascinating how people tend to lean into sales or lettings. Like I still, I mean, they are very different disciplines. Yeah. It is still fundamentally finding homes. It's yeah, it's a very different I mean, I started my career the first the first two years of my career were both joint roles where you did both, which was quite nice actually, because you got kind of best of both worlds. Um, but definitely like, you definitely found myself, I mean, I, I think I always preferred the cleanliness of lettings, the speed of lettings. Um, and I think personally, I found as sales got more turgid, more drawn out, more complex, more, more, uh, elements that you have no control over. That's, that's where I tended to find it less interesting. So, um, when you started, so you said your mum worked in agency, so you were working with mum? I was, yeah. How was that? Yeah, it was fine. Absolutely fine. Um yeah. So, so my mum was the secretary at the, the office, we weren't working necessarily alongside each other. Exactly. Correct. Yeah. But it wasn't, you know, a sales area manager. Parking target. Yeah. Yeah. And is your mum still an agent today? No, she's retired now. Very sensible. Yeah. But. But worked through to retirement in agency. She did? Yeah. Yeah. She stayed in agency all the way through to the end. So a similar role. So yeah. Yeah. So. Right. So, uh, so you did Fox and Sons and then did you go from there to Michael Jones or was there a bit of a journey in between? It was a bit in between. So I worked for a company called Ashcroft and Dean. I jumped around Bell Chambers, various different sort of independents, and the, uh, Michael Jones role came up and, uh, they only had about three, you know, two or three hundred properties at the time. Well, wow. And so. Wow. Yeah. Very different brand to when we, we met you then. Yes. Very much so. Yeah. So yeah, it grew ridiculously over the years. So, but um, yeah, so, and I always like working for Mike. He had a good way about how we approach things and caring for the team and the clients and yeah, good business to work for, good business to sort of come up through. And so how long were you with Michael Jones for in the end? Uh, well, it's got to be eighteen, nineteen odd years, but most, most, most of your career. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's very cool. That must have been hard to walk away from even even though things had changed. And yeah, we'll talk about the Loehmann thing in a bit. Yeah. Um, but that's that's that's, that's a really long time. Impressive length of time to stay in the business. Yeah. That must have been really hard to. Yeah. It was. Because, you know, still lots of people there that I'd obviously come up with and, uh, yeah, like you say, been there a long time. And also going out on your own. Those two elements alongside each other a bit daunting, but yeah. So, so look, what was that like? We're not, we're not gonna, I'm not gonna lead you into some dangerous ramble fest of stinging nettles and thorns here. Um, but what was that like? I mean, Loman, obviously it's, you know, it's no secret to anyone. You know, they have grown insanely quickly, right? Um, what is it? Two and a half years they've been in existence now. They buy on average a business every two weeks. Um yeah. I mean they, they've, they've definitely carved a very new path in that respect in terms of how you can go about building an agency. Yeah. And understandably, they've targeted a lot of those really successful what I would call mid-market independents. You Michael Jones is your brand. Vaughn's your charter's your CPH. Yeah. You know, a lot of the brands they've picked up, I mean, obviously they've picked up smaller brands to fill in gaps. But you know, right from the early doors with Linley and Simpson and their domination of the North England market. What was that like, that kind of shift of pace going from an independent back into a corporate environment? Because obviously, having started as a in a corporate environment and then whether intentionally or not, moving into the independent space. Yeah. Um, what was, what was that kind of like sort of going back from independent to corporate because I imagine, you know, just the shift in scale of business, I imagine you lose quite a lot of control and, and kind of say and direct communication over your brand and your role because all of a sudden you're no longer kind of a big fish in a smallish pond. You're now a smallish fish in, in a lake, right? Um, what was, what was that like? Yeah. I mean, I mean, Fox and Sons, obviously that period of time, I was only an egg. So, uh, I didn't really detect any, um, change in terms of the front end because I was just a small fry. I think from the, from the Roman perspective, even for me personally, we went from having, you know, two thousand, two and a half thousand properties under management to mind them being doubled overnight because the brand Vaughan element came in. So that was, yeah, massive change to go and sit around the boardroom with Mike and him saying, you know, just just get on with it type of thing to there being, you know, going up to London as a board and, you know, chatting about EBITDA and things that you've never, ever traipsed into before. So yeah, it was a massive adjustment. Um, things that you had to pick up and just kind of find your way. Um, it's just kind of shift of thinking, right. Isn't it? You're thinking about things, like you said, from a different perspective on a much bigger scale. You've got businesses that are answerable to shareholders and investors in a much broader sense than would be in a, in an established independent, like you. Definitely. And look, I, you know, instantly you understand that you have to look at it from loehmann's the business. Um, and, you know, it's not as simple as just what we used to do independently. It has to be the wider business has to be considered. So, so yeah, it was an adjustment, but I enjoyed that period. You know, I spent it was only five years effectively in a regional director role. Um, but I enjoyed seeing that other side of it. Um, but that's, you know, I think, I think credit to you, that's I think a lot of people find that shift quite difficult. Um, particularly, I think because quite a lot of people, particularly ones who start, even though, like you said, it was more of a junior role, so you didn't get to see the full workings of, of corporate. But again, as we were talking about sales and lettings, I find also people tend to lean towards corporate or independent, right? Because there are different benefit structures, approaches, language, attitudes, everything. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people find it really hard when that suddenly switches the other way. Um, because it is a big shift in the structure of the business and the attitude. You're thinking everything. So look, we, you know, we won't, we won't hang on too much on that. So obviously you've talked about how you kind of found this passion for lettings. Yeah. Um, and I know you said, we we met. I think, um, I'm trying to remember what your, what your title was. It was, it was area. Was it area head of head of property management at that point. Yeah, yeah. I find or I think that lettings, particularly nowadays, and particularly with where lettings is going with the ongoing compliance regulation, I think a huge part of lettings now is about your operational structure. Yeah. Agreed. Um, how you go about delivering and fulfilling not only what you promise a client, but being compliant, giving your residents a great time and ultimately building a viable business, right? That delivers all of that, but has that all important profit margin at the end of the day. Um, what's your journey been about that? Because obviously, obviously this leads us nicely into what you're doing now. But, um, yeah, I just want to talk a little, want to understand a little bit more what your kind of journey's been like the last five to ten years, because obviously there's been a huge shift in tech in terms of what tech can do, but also the solutions in the marketplace that help you do that. I know you guys implemented a lot of tech throughout the business, um, over that period of time. Um, what are your thoughts on how agents and not just tech, but how agents and supplier partners work together and building that kind of mission critical kind of structure within, within an agency. I think, you know, anyone that I've had conversations with recently that have decided to step away from a prop tech of some sort. When you look into it, it's interesting that it's never the tech that's failed them. It's the usage of it that seems to be the problem. I think that's the area that could be better is that you've got prop tech and you've got the agent, and there's that bit in between of what works on the ground and utilizing it properly. And that period after six months where that initial period has gone by and how it's used moving forward, it's quite worrying how things are. Yeah. How things are used from what I've seen, um, just in terms of just the day to day and what people put on the side, you know, spreadsheets and stuff like that, that they run alongside it. You think you've got a perfectly decent bit of kit here. Why are you utilising those things? So yeah, look, I um we're, we're sponsoring the voice of the ancient conference. Yeah. For the second time this year. Um, and for the first time I'm going to be talking on stage. So I've got a half hour slot. Um and it's the first time I'm revealing this. So, um, roughly half of that I'm going to be talking about our tenancy conclusion index data, which for those of you who don't know, um, these are reports that we started doing in partnership with the state, uh, estate agents and letting agent today. And it's us looking at our monthly data, how many tenancy conclusions we do and what we kind of see out of that and really focusing on, on good performance. Um, so we're going to be focusing on that data set. But the second half of the talk, um, and I haven't landed on a title yet, but, uh, the one bouncing on my head at the moment, which is very clickbaity is it's not the tech, it's you. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I find it really interesting. And, and this isn't just true of depository, this is true of every industry event I go to and I talk to people about what they're using their business, what they're loving, what they're not. Nine out of ten people will use a product and anything from find it serves a valid purpose to loves it. You know, it's in that it's in that happy segment. And then you will talk to those one or two people out of ten who are like, oh yeah, we tried it and it didn't do anything for us. Or like we tried it and the team said they got nothing from it. Um, and it's something that I have found fascinating now being in the supplier space and actually, you know, selling into businesses because I'm like, you know, we've had conversations in the same day where we've spoken to an agent in the morning and they're like, oh my God, everyone's so happy. One of our favorite bits of tech, you know, we wanted to achieve this and we've done exactly that or better, or, you know, we're on our way to it, whatever, you know, and you come off that call on cloud nine thinking, awesome, we're delivering exactly what our agents need. And then two o'clock in the afternoon, you'll have a chat with another client. They're like, yeah, we're just, you know, I'm struggling to get the team to, to buy into the platform. And the results were getting back aren't great. And, you know, they're saying they're not really seeing the kind of the results they, you know, we hoped for. And I found it. I've found that a fascinating position to take because they all have the same product. Yeah. You know, we don't we're not some bespoke software company where every agent gets a unique version of a product themselves, but obviously how everyone uses and configures and deploys that product varies enormously. And I think that's a really fascinating thing. And I think it's, it's a very, it's a very nuanced skill set because. You've got to find that balance of understanding what an agent needs, but also understanding what makes that agency unique in terms of their voice, their tone, their service delivery, and how they sell into their kind of target marketplace. Because you can't, you can't ignore all that and just expect every agent to use a product in exactly the same way, because then we all become homogenized and we're all the same. We're all the same business. So you've got that challenge in itself. Um, but equally, that person has got to find that line of how do we stay who we are? But how do we shift the business to to squeeze everything we can out of this new product and service? And I've cited this case before, but you know, what crystallized this for us in experience was, um, when Megan, uh, eighteen was at Haslam's, they deployed, um, the depository, uh, when they were there. Um, and that for us was a fascinating case study of what can be achieved if the deployment is done. Well. Um, and that was really fascinating to watch because there was a very conscious decision. You know, there were a lot of questions in the lead up to signing up with us. What does it do? How can we customize it? You know, training, support, all this sort of stuff. Where's the product going? But what was really interesting was once they had made that business decision of this is what we're doing. This is the problem we're trying to solve. This is our objective. Um, it was really interesting to see because. The deployment was. It was, it was like bringing a new person, a new role into the business. Right? Right. Yeah. Um, and I, and again, I've kind of used this analogy before of as an agent, if you think you can sign up to a product and use an off the shelf version, i.e. virtually no configuration done, you can just shove it into a business and say to a team, yeah, you know, there's a tool like it might help you do X, Y, z. It's there if you want it. Um, and then that agency is surprised, often disappointed with that product when they don't get the outcome that they expect. But what they've done is the equivalent of hiring a specialist for a role. And if you imagine that being a human being, if you imagine having that human being come into your business and you don't educate them at all on how your business works and delivers and interacts with your clients, etc., you don't tell anyone else in the business who they are or what they do. You don't restructure the business around them, and you just quietly have them come in and sit in a corner desk, and then six months later, you turn around and go their shit. Yeah, they haven't changed anything. They barely do any work. No one talks to them. We haven't seen this metric improve. You know, we're going to let them go. And of course you're going to let them go because they never had a chance in the first place. You haven't embodied you know, you haven't embedded them within the style of the business. You haven't educated the team on and remap the team around this new person. And I think tech is exactly the same. You have to take a similar approach that you would, like I said, to hiring a new person in a new role and you've got to yes, good tech will will align, will allow itself to align with quite a lot of your operational procedures, but there's always going to need to be a little bit of movement. Ultimately, you're not delivering exactly the same service. You're hopefully delivering an enhanced service. Yeah. But what it means is you're going to have to adjust a couple of things. And you're also going to have to just like you were leading a team of humans, and you would call them out on performance in your weekly or monthly meetings, whatever it is. Um, similarly with tech, it's a similar kind of thing. You need to have that kind of eye for detail, that fastidiousness about how it's being deployed, but also how your team are engaging with that platform. Yeah, you know, celebrate the ones that do well, get them to knowledge share. Call out the ones that aren't using the product or using it poorly. Um, one of, one of the, one of the biggest lessons we learned out of the haslam's deployment was their, one of their most senior property managers who was a lady who'd been doing property management for fifteen, twenty years. Um, and her attitude was, oh God, another tech product. Um, but also I've done this job for nearly twenty years. I've done it absolutely fine without needing tech in this journey. Why do I need it now? And she was really resistant. And it was really interesting because to her credit, kind of Megan really kind of put her in a box in this respect and was like, thanks for your feedback, but this is a company decision. Yeah, this is what we're doing as a business. Yeah. And it is very simple. You're on board or you're not, but it's happening with or without you. Sure. Um, and that kind of silk glove and an iron fist kind of worked tremendously well, to the point where about two months later that lady emailed us, not including Megan, not including anyone else, just sent a message to me and Carla, which it summarized was, how wrong was I? Like, you don't know what you don't know. She was like, I didn't I could not appreciate how much time, energy and effort I was expending. And I think this is the interesting thing with the tenancy conclusion process is it's just one of these horrible, consuming jobs that has to be done. Yeah, it's resented because it's at the end of your fee income. Like, you know, you just want to get it done. You know, that the tenants are probably going to have a whinge about what you're proposing to them. You know, the landlords probably going to have a whinge about how the tenants have handed it back. And, you know, there's just there's just nothing to look forward to. But because also it's not digitized, there's very little tracking of, of what resource this use is. And I think some of the, some of the best things we've had from our front line users is and we've had it a lot of times, um, because God, I don't know how many users we have now, I think over two thousand individual users. Um, but the most common thing is, oh my God, I didn't realize how much time and effort I was spending on this because it's just those hours that kind of just bleed into your day chasing things, answering things, following things up. You know, it's all this stuff that you have to do. You've always had to do it. You don't think anything of it. Um, plus you're having those repeat conversations when I think about our experience with that platform is that you're, you're pointing everyone in the same space and you're managing their expectations in the lead up. I think that's half the battle, isn't it, for any businesses, like you said earlier, is trying to map out what it looks like so that by the time you get to that end point. I know you're not going to eradicate the fact that you're going to get some objection from tenants, but you're minimizing some of it because you've preempted what some of those objections are going to be. So look, I've obviously talked very personally about depository, but you know, what I liked about watching you guys as Michael Jones was, it was very clear that you guys were constantly looking at what do we do? How do we do it? And can we improve the experience for our clients and customers? Can we improve the efficiency for our team, be that workload or margin or the holy grail where you kind of deliver all of those and thinking more broadly, because obviously, you know, in your time at Michael Jones, in particularly in your in your kind of director role, you must have deployed quite a few bits and pieces over the course of that time. And what what what did you find? What what did you find were kind of your big learnings as you did each of those? And what, how did you learn to tackle the kind of naysayers in the business and get them on board? Or maybe you, you know, maybe you got to the point where you were like, you know what? If someone really doesn't want it, you can't win them over. So maybe you just readjust the role of that person or, you know, whatever, what, what were you kind of, I mean, you can't please everyone. I think that was half the thing. But yeah, I mean, partly that partly getting involved in the process, which I think is very much overlooked. So if you're going to bring new tech into the business, I think to have the people involved who are going to be using it, that's key element. I think a lot of businesses don't do that. They just drop it in and yeah, absolutely. If you're employed, you've got to just get on board and do what the business wants you to do. But I think for them to have input into how it works. And have you thought about this? And actually we have this thing come up. I think the adoption is a lot better that way. You know, we went through two centralizations whilst I was there. So there was lots of things that we did well and lots of things we didn't do so well. And I think one of those major elements is having the involvement of the team. Yeah. And I think that's what's key across any business, whether you're independent or corporate, is that you have to make sure that the people on the ground are able to have their, their say, albeit you've got to go in a specific direction. So that I was going to say it's kind of finding that balance though, isn't it? It's it's because, you know, we've seen that in array of demos over the years. We've, we've, we've seen the, the senior execs and directors who don't really give any input into their team. And then it's chaos because they don't know what's coming. And equally, I think we've seen leaders where they actually go too far the other way, you know, and they give too much input to their team, or rather, they don't frame what they want from the team. Right. So for example, again, you know, using the example of Megan and Haslam's, um, There are companies that we that we there are companies we've, we've demoed to or whatever over the years where that person who was like, I've done this for twenty years. I never needed it. Why do I need it now? This is just tech looking for a problem. Mhm. And they listen to that person too much. Yeah. Because that person, because that person is so safe in what they do. But also they then what they, what the senior management got to remember is they're not looking at this from an operational business, a business delivery, you know, compliance margins, whatever. They are looking at it very selfishly, as do I think or feel this is going to transform my day for the better. Sure. Um, and it's quite singular. Yeah. You know, and if they don't perceive something as, as necessarily an issue in the first place, then they're probably going to default to being like, I've got to where I am without it. So I think I'll be fine. But I think that's probably a key from what you were saying, like Megan said earlier, is you've got to look at it through the lens of them to be able to present how it's going to benefit them. You know, if you went in from a client perspective, from some of these bits of kit and to say, look, we're doing it because we've decided as a business, but they're not going to get on board with that. Whereas if you say, actually, do you know that by having this platform in place, it means that you're better informed, you get this, you get that if you compose things in the right way. I know you can't sell everything, but I think it goes a long way. You've got to have a you know, the whole carrot and stick thing has to have its place. But I think it's often miss that the benefits aren't sold to the team. And I think for me, that's what I would always have taken in terms of any rollout is how this is going to help in the long run. In the interim, you're probably going to find that it will get worse before it gets better. But actually long term it will help overall. And I think if you think of the centralization as we did in all the changes and putting the teams in and merging different businesses in, we had to get the best of both. Um, so it was always a journey, but you had to get that involvement from either side of looking at it from the business perspective, but also what works on the ground and that in-between piece. So look, the experience you've done, like you said, you know, you've done a couple of central eyesight centralizations kind of amalgamations of businesses and operating procedures, procedures and stuff like that. What do you find? Whether it's, whether it's. I don't know if mistakes is the right word, whether it was mistakes or, or, or stumbling points that you came across, either implementing your stealth or now, you know, um, and we'll talk about this is more obviously from your background, you've now set up your business, Oliver, and you're now helping agents with this kind of understanding, um, and framing of what they're doing, what they're building and how to make that operation structure better. So, um, you know, kind of leading on from what we've been talking, what are kind of some of the big, the big kind of mistakes you see teams or businesses make, um, like, like the big ones, the ones that, you know, straight away are kind of warning sign. We're going to need to have a bit of a, you know, piece by piece, uh, analysis of this. And equally kind of what are the things that you've seen that have maybe surprised you either that you've done or you've seen other businesses do in terms of operational tweaks or deployments or whatever. And that just ensures you get a better outcome. I think one of the things, and I know this is sort of overarching summary lines is I think one of the issues that most businesses don't see is that what got them to where they are isn't what's going to get them to the next stage, or at least sustain where they're at. That's a really interesting point. And I think and they've had to run that way, granted, because you're just when you're setting up, you're not thinking about operations, you're just thinking, how do I get this off the ground? And so the things that I see are very much centered around that. And when you when you get the the business owner to give their opinion of how things are, and then you look at it through the lens of the team and the client, all of those are pointing in different directions. Interesting and communication. And the handover points seem to be one of the main elements. So if you take tech, for example, it's the who's accountable and responsible for putting the information into the system because it's only as good as that in terms of coming out the other end. So it's not a sexy part of the business, but it's the, it's the part of the business that actually costs the most money. And when you look at complaints all the time spent, when you look at efficiency, especially in the corporate world, well, your efficiencies are there within your team. You don't have to cut members of the team. You just need to release some of that resource. And equally for them, you know, you go into some businesses and they're like, I've not been able to make a cup of tea today. And then you get someone else who's like sitting there with their feet up on the desk because there's this imbalance. And so for me, that's probably the main element is looking at it in terms of the handovers, the work split, you know, what are we doing in terms of tech to help the team? And equally, what we put in there, communication wise to our clients to make sure that journey is where it needs to be. So they're the sort of key elements, I think, overarching that I would say tend to come up. Now, interestingly, you know, we're obviously, you know, we're talking about tech and partners on the basis that, you know, so far that they are genuinely good for the business and do deliver change and improvements and, etc.. Um, but particularly doing the work you do now where you're going into business structures that you've not been involved with previously. Um, and I think it's a really interesting point you just made about where the business is and where they've come from, where they're at now and where they're going and how they frame what that is. Because like you said, it's very different. A business in the first three years is very different to the business in the next kind of two or three years to ten years. Um, and I'm not sure. I'm not sure enough businesses really sit down and recognize that. I mean, I even sat here thinking about bass. Um, and yeah, I don't know that we have necessarily framed our overarching conversations. Like we've always had a view on like there's certain underpinning principles within bass in terms of our attitude to tech and partners, which is we will always be looking for solutions that improve our customer experience, our client experience, and the experience of our team. And obviously, the Holy Grail are the ones that deliver on two or three of those rather than one. But I don't know that we've necessarily changed or reviewed what our overarching objective is as a business, as an umbrella over all of that. Um, and I think when you look at our industry and the makeup of it, the fact that it's eighty percent independents and most of those are one to three branch operations. And when you start breaking it down like that, it's actually really interesting to see how companies kind of get stuck in the weeds and get and get caught up in those key kind of stages of growth or transformation is that they're not necessarily, like you said, having that chat and being like, right, guys, we've done five years. Yeah, we've got to target two for the business. Yep. And right. What is target three and how do we go about that? Um, what. What has been some of. Worrying. I don't know if that's necessarily the word, but what's what's some of the less successful Um, deployments that you've either experienced within your business and we're not looking to name or shame anybody. No, no, no. Sure. So we're not going to talk about a product partner or solution specifically. But um, because again, I want to focus more on kind of maybe why it failed less because of the product or the supplier, but more because of the manner in which it was adopted. Yeah. Um, what are the kind of commonalities that you often see where you've got a partner or a product that just isn't delivering for a business? I think it goes back to that point again, of it's, it's perhaps the people that brought it in aren't necessarily around anymore. And no one actually really, truly explained, like you were saying earlier as to what the benefits are behind using that system. So, you know, eventually it comes down to the business looking at, you know, hang on this, we've got this amount coming out every month. What are we actually getting from it? What do you use it? No. Okay. We'll just scrap it. So that is one of the key elements. But again, that goes back down to the point of continuity. It's continuity as well. Yeah. Um, so I think, you know, for me, from a tech perspective, it, it has to be rolled out properly from the get go. And I think if you get to a point where it's not being utilized before you cut it, you need to truly look at as to whether it's being utilized properly. And, and that's some of the work I've been doing recently is just let me have a look at the system and getting into the weeds. Yeah. Don't need jerk. Correct. Just have a look and see how it's being used. Well, no doubt, you know, you look at it and you say, no doubt you're, you're not getting the value out of it because it's not being used properly. You know, you've only got one person using it. I think one of the cases of the businesses I've looked at recently is that, you know, most of the work that should have been in that system, about fifty eight, sixty percent was an email. And you think about those people are off or they leave or all of those other elements. If you've got a system where those notes get put in place, someone's off, you pivot to everything's there, someone rings up, you've got the update. And so for me, that's, that's probably one of the elements is that you're not testing, I guess, continuously that the platform is being used and incentivizing the team around it. I always made a point of incentivizing the use of the system. So if you look at some of, you know, from depository, for example, in terms of the turnaround time, where actually they wanted to use it properly because they wanted their bonus, and actually that number was important. So there's a few different key elements there, isn't there? It's the qualitative and quantitative you're looking at when it comes down to how things are rolled out. And I think that's a really important point. You know, you referred to performance targets. Again, I think every agent that we see get the best out of our platform from their team. They're configured, they're deployed, but we do an array of reporting, as you know, and, and it's about tying those KPIs into your staff performance targets, making it clear that they understand that you expect, you know, whatever it is, if you're working with fixed flow, it's that a contractor is out within forty eight hours of a report. Yep. You know, whatever it is, invoices are with landlords twenty four hours after the project's done, whatever, whatever that metric is. Obviously, for us, the kind of two common ones are time to close and the claim versus payment. Yep. And, and yeah, I think interestingly, like you said, the, the ones, the agents that we see get the best transformation, the best outcomes are the ones that are tying that into their monthly quarterly performance reviews. So it's like, right, you've delivered on this, you've delivered on that right now your tenancy conclusion stats, uh, or great. Yeah. Um, and it's that gamification, isn't it? I think it's, it's, it's, it's something we want to build out more within the platform. Mhm. Uh, in due course is to kind of bring that gamification into the back end a little bit more. Yeah. So that we're encouraging because again, that's, this is a huge part of agency, right? That internal competition, that, that competition to do better than you've ever done before. To beat the other people on your team. To be the best in your area. Brand business. Um, and potentially then further afield, you know, against competitors. Um, but I think until we've, until we've got that within the platform, the best way operationally is to pick those key performance targets, embed those within those standard performance reviews. And like you said, tie it into whether it's bonuses or leadership progression or, you know, whatever. Um, make sure you motivate and gamify, uh, the staff to keep them engaged, give them another reason, um, to keep seeking better results. And that's even, even when we were an independent business before we were acquired, you know, I was always keen to have, I hate the word KPI, but effectively, we always had them for that reason that if you take tech and you want to see the value or from what you've just said, you know, if you're coming into a performance review or one to one or whatever way you want to refer to it, if the requirement is that a specific number is achieved on average, well, it's the job of the person then to bring any concerns or areas that perhaps the system is not performing in. So again, by doing that, you're you're getting an even better sense of how things work because they'll come to you with anything that's not quite right. So you can put the, you can put the things right for them and put it right for the business. So I think it's really key. Um, however, the businesses that you have some level of performance metrics to work to, even if you're a small independent. So yeah, so, so look, we're, we're, we're running out of time already. So I do want to talk a little bit more about Oliver, the business. So, um, you made your decision to step away from Michael Jones. Uh, how long ago is that now? Eighteen months. Uh, no. So, December. December. December. Yeah. So not not quite as far as I thought. No. So yeah. Eight. Nine months. Yeah. Um. And then am I right in thinking you took it? You took a little bit. You took a little break over December, didn't you? Yeah, I remember correctly. Yeah. You did the very sensible thing of time out. Enjoy the family kids. Perfect time of the year to do it. Um, and then I imagine by January, you were raring to get back to it. Um, look, talking about agents, because I think, again, we, we, if we come back to what we were talking about, about how businesses sometimes forget or lose track of their objectives and the fact that those evolve as the business evolves and grows and faces challenges and etc., etc.. Why should nature reach out to you? Why should they? What? Sorry? Why should an agent reach out to you? Why shouldn't they reach. Why should they? Why should they reach out to me? I think because most businesses, I think from what you're saying earlier, you don't necessarily need to have an issue in the first place. I think if you look at any some of the you know, you look at some of the most successful businesses out there that have not necessarily survived because they've not evolved as time has gone, why wouldn't you want to be looking at what the next? Yeah, how can we make things better for the clients, for us as a business? So I would say there's no reason to not want someone to just come and have a look. You know, the worst case scenario is I come and have a look and go, hey, look, you know, I'm not sure I can add any value here. Exactly. What's the point, you know? Um, so but the best case is that actually there's some areas of improvement and I think there's always an element of somewhere or another that tends to score not low, but lower than some of the other elements, whether it's people, customer journey tech, you know, all of those elements. And so having done what I did for Michael Jones, and as we grew in the whole Lohmann piece, there's lots of elements there that I've had experience in that I can then assist with. And so for me, it's about trying to make the life easier for the business to achieve its goals and equally for the team as well. Well, this is it. So I believe partners and in tech. There's there's, there's an unspoken element that I would argue is possibly one of the most important bits. And that's job satisfaction. You know, we work in an industry where we are constantly saying that it's difficult to bring people into our industry. You know, we're struggling to get young, bright, creative people who passionately want to come into our industry. And that is becoming ever more challenging. Um, and looking ahead in terms of what people expect from a job and where they get value in fulfilling that job. Um, you know, I think there is a massive piece for businesses to look at where sure, you can look at a performance result and you can look at a KPI and you can look at X, Y, and z. But actually, what if it changes none of those. What if operationally you remain fundamentally the same? Yeah. but your staff come into the office feeling twenty percent happier every day. You know, what does that mean to the business? Yeah. Um, does that mean, you know, you've got staff that are sick less often that stay in the business for longer? Yeah. That, um, are genuinely happy and proud to be a part of that company. Um, you're talking about staff who are freed up to whatever help their teammates do that little bit of extra something for a client. It's obviously a really hard thing to measure because we don't, we don't plug ourselves in each day and go, you've got a seventy eight percent happiness rating today. So me saying joy, lift, lift, job satisfaction by twenty percent, obviously you're never going to get that sort of metric. But I think when you drill down to it, and I think you look at sick days, off days, staff churn, um, you look at client friction, client and customer friction. So landlord and tenant friction within the business, where do people get frustrated? Maybe it's not public. Maybe they don't get frustrated to the point where they're going on Google and giving you a two or three star review and going, ah, but they're definitely not leaving happy. Oh, absolutely. And they're silently leaving you. Not necessarily where I think for me, Mike, as in Mike Jones always made it his point to make sure that the team were happy. Um, and the flip side to that is the clients were happy and that was where he put his focus. And, you know, he sold out for a massive figure at the end of the day. And that's because of the fact that he put time and effort into ensuring that the team were happy. Put your team first, give them the tools they want and need to succeed and enjoy. And and he had that balance as well. He's still he's still a fantastic businessman. So it's never about just, you know, appealing to what everyone wanted. He still had that business element, but you have to get that balance. But I think it's it's overlooked. And as a business gets bigger, I think that's the piece that perhaps you've got to be ever so careful of, because you get spreadsheet management and what shows on a spreadsheet and what happens on the ground again, is two completely different things. You might have someone that, you know, on the face of it, numbers wise, doesn't stack up, but you don't realize how much of a support that one person is to three or four other people that sit around them. And I think that's the the bit where you have to get on the ground and look at it face to face, not just from the spreadsheet. So yeah, yeah, I think that's it. You can you can't kind of track what you can't measure. I think that's absolutely true in any business. So, you know, the more data and metrics you have, um, from a leadership and operational perspective, the better positioned you are. But like you said, there are the things that you can't, you can't measure, but you can feel and you can observe and you can see. And there are certain metrics, like I touched on, you can look at sick days, yeah, churn and all this sort of stuff of your staff and that will, that will give you certain insights. Definitely. I always think, you know, as a leader, you can learn a lot from just sitting at your desk in the morning and watching the faces of the people as they walk in the door, especially if you catch them before they see that you're in the room watching them. Yep, yep, yep. Um, and I think that tells you a lot. And I think, you know, when we also consider that, yes, our industry struggles to get people, but also, you know, people once they've got a good job, those are very precious jobs right now. A lot of people are living under a lot of pressure. You know, we are living in a cost of living crisis, and a lot of people are struggling to find housing and everything else. And so, you know, if you can create a career for someone where they are genuinely happy and proud and excited, nine times out of ten, we're not going to expect people to be lunatic robots. And, and we all know we have shit going on in our lives outside of work. Absolutely. So you're not going to come skipping through the door every day of the week? No. Um, But I think you can learn a lot by just observing your team and their general demeanor and how they interact with one another, and how they interact with your clients. And yeah, the general energy that they bring into the office and into a meeting, I think tells you a lot about the culture and structure that you have within a business. And it might not be clear if you're not getting it right, how you fix that. But if it's not, that's what people like you were there for. Absolutely. Yeah. Because you've been there, you've done it. You've done it in a growing team. Yeah. You know, um, you very much got that agent perspective on it, but equally blended with that kind of operational top down view of, look, you're not going to like everything we change. No, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's also the challenging thing is, you know, we touched on the objectives of a business might change, but also with those shifting, you might outgrow certain members of staff. Absolutely. Yeah. And vice versa. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You might not become the right business for those members of staff because they liked where you're at, not where you're going. And for those very same reasons, they've been a fantastic and maybe crucial team member for the last five or ten years. But they're happy there. And you want to go here. Yep. And so what does that look like? And what does that new what does that new structure look like? Is that moving someone sideways in the business to make room for someone else? Or is it a more final parting of ways or. Yeah, it's a multitude of things, isn't it? I mean, the idea is that if you if for any reason they choose you, you choose that they're no longer going to be part of that business anymore. Is that you part on good terms? Yeah. And I think that's the thing. If you've run things as it should be, that conversation, by the time you happen to have that uncomfortable conversation, you're not telling them for the first time. These are the areas of concern. Actually. You've had those conversations and any experience I've had in that realm, albeit not nice, is most often than not they go. Fair enough. And you shake hands. And that's the thing. Usually on the same page, you know, you've had it with base. It's I would say with base, it's been less about the agency and more about the individual. You know, we've seen an individual get to a certain point where either because of the size and scale of our business, we we don't have anything further to offer them. There is no progression. There is no area director. There is, you know, um, or it's the fact of we have evolved as a business, we're not the same business we were five years ago when the person joined us. Um, and that's fine. We've, we've also had that with clients. I've talked about that as well. You know, we've, we've had, you know, we, we've had clients who were with us from a very early stage when we were very different business. And then we get to a certain point where it's like, oh, they want what we they want stuff we can't possibly give them any more. And equally, they just aren't where we're going with the business. I think the clients as well as staff completely agree. So Sam, we're pretty much out of time. So, um, if people wanted to find out a little bit more, have a bit of a chat, I think, you know, I imagine that is how these things start is jumping online, having on a phone call. I would imagine ideally, if it's if you know, if you're not having to schlep to the Isle of Bute in Scotland or something, maybe a face to face, a coffee and a chinwag, if people want to start a sort of conversation with you and start exploring whether whether you're, you know, part of what this next phase of business looks like, how do people go about reaching out to you? LinkedIn. Um, it can reach out to me or my website as well. I've got a score card on there. So I encourage people to fill that in. They fill it in themselves. And if there's anything off the back of that, they want to have a conversation off the back of, um, they can feel free and it gives the conversation a good footing. So awesome. Yeah. So look, guys, um, thanks for joining us today. Um, it's been an absolute pleasure having someone who I've known for a few years now. And I, I think there's a really interesting phase the last few years where we've got a growing number of tech and partner products being built by agents or former agents. You know, you've got, oh God, I'm having an absolute brain fart now about what's being delivered. But, you know, you've, uh, but then you've also got people like Rajiv coming back to the market with, with market rent, who's kind of been there and done it before with fixed flow. Um, you've got agents like myself and, um, JP with, uh, his call service. Um, and also you had, you know, Kai Wheatley who built area, which is now owned by home flow. Um, one of the things really interesting, we've got products being built that better understand the industry. But I think equally we also need is that counterpart on the other side that better understands how deploying partners successfully and correctly within the business and the right partners for that business can transform the business quite substantially. And as we've touched on, that can be in a myriad of ways from more simple things, perhaps like staff satisfaction, job satisfaction through to the the big bottom line stuff, growth and margins. And I think for a lot of a lot of agencies we've touched on, they kind of get to a certain point where they've never had to look at the business on that scale and think about it quite in that shape or form, but also in doing so, how they've deployed products and partners to date. It's now becoming a very different journey. It now needs to be a lot more strategic, and there needs to be a lot more methodology to successfully deploying products. And I think it's great, um, to see more and more people like yourself. You've kind of been there, done it, walked the walk and talk the talk and seen it firsthand and have learned good and bad on that journey. Um, you know, and now you can sit alongside agents on a kind of as needed basis, um, to help make those processes better. And I think that's, you know, that's great. At the end of the day, I think, you know, like we say about landlords, uh, all the time, you don't know what you don't know. Um, and I think as agents, we feel all too often like we're meant to have all of the answers. Um, and we don't, some of us are just really good salespeople and some are really good at building teams, but not necessarily. We're not, not necessarily ops specialists or tech experts. Um, and I think, yeah, it all comes down to, to finding the right people with the right skill sets to get your business where you want to go. So, um, look, if that feels or sounds like your business, I mean, we're in a very interesting place space at the moment with a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on. Um, and a lot of targeted growth as well. So, um, yeah, I feel people like Sam alongside quality products in this space are kind of really what's going to determine who the big winners are over the next three, five years. Um, so in light of that, if you want to be one of the winners, Sam's told you, look him up. Uh, the business is Oliver, you will find Sam, and it's Oliver with two L's before that catches you out. So. Oh, double l um, look up Sam on LinkedIn. Uh, reach out to him on the posts about this equally, uh, if you want a direct intro and you know me, reach out, say hi, and I'll happily put you in touch with Sam. Sam, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making the schlep down to London. And, uh, yeah, we'll keep talking, mate, but, um, it's been a joy. Yeah. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Take care. Bye.