Podcast appearances and mentions of chris really

Chain or no chain? Greatest and worst covers out there. What got cancelled for you? Roast or Toast Tuesday. Chris REALLY likes chicken.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is an ongoing effort to get Chris a 35C (post conviction relief). Numerous parties are vigorously working towards this potential reality. Is this what the world wants, needs, can even fathom???

We get a chance to talk with Dan + Shay and of course, must mess with them a little bit...

Bree and Chris welcome lawyer well-being pioneer Anne Brafford to the podcast, best known for her roles as author of Positive Professionals, co-chair of the ABA Law Practice Division’s Attorney Well-Being Committee, editor-in-chief and co-author of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s report The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, author of the ABA’s widely distributed Well-Being Toolkit for Lawyers and Legal Employers and founder and principal organizer of Lawyer Well-Being Week, an annual event occurring every May. Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD:Welcome to the Path to Lawyer Well-Being, a podcast series sponsored by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, where we talk to cool people doing awesome work in the lawyer well-being space. I'm here with my cohost, Bree Buchanan.BREE BUCHANAN:Hey, Chris.CHRIS:And we're here with really one of the pioneers in our well-being space. It is always, I think, an honor to be the first guest of any podcast series and we are obviously thrilled to have Anne Brafford here with us. Bree, do you want to go ahead and kind of do a quick introduction of Anne, a dear friend of ours and again, somebody who's been doing incredible work on behalf of our profession.BREE:Absolutely. I'm delighted to introduce Anne Brafford, Anne, who is somebody I admire and who I genuinely like and I know that whenever I'm going to have a conversation with Anne, I will do it with a smile on my face. So, that goes for this podcast today too. Anne, thanks so much for being here today.BREE:So, Anne, just a little bit about her background, she started out in big law and spent some time there and then made a pivot over the course of her career and ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania and pursuing a master's in applied positive psychology and I can't wait to hear Anne talk a little bit about what is this positive psychology business.BREE:She has been a very prolific writer. She has published a book entitled, Positive Professionals. She's also been very involved in the lawyer well-being movement and has been a pivotal person. She's somebody when I think about the work that the National Task Force has done. But for her, we would not be where we are truly. She stepped into the position of editor in chief for the National Task Force Report and took seven or eight writing groups, very disparate styles and pulled it all together and added all the research and really made the report in many ways the incredibly preeminent document on lawyer well-being. And so, we owe so much to her.BREE:She's gone on to produce the ABA's Well-Being Toolkit, which is an open source document that has been downloaded and used by thousands. So, I don't want to just take all the fun away, Anne. So, I want to give people an opportunity to hear from you.BREE:One question we're asking everybody that's our guest, tell us what brought you to the lawyer well-being space. When I look at your bio, I see that pivot from big law over to pursuing that master's. Tell us a little bit about that, if you would.ANNE BRAFFORD:Yeah, good question. And thanks so much for having me as the first guest on the new podcast. And Bree, I always love speaking with you. And it leaves a smile on my face as well. So, this should be fun.ANNE:So, how I got into well-being, it's a long story that I'll try to make short. But it started as far back as I wanted to be a lawyer since I was 11 years old. That's when I first started saying I wanted to be a lawyer. And unlike so many of us, my childhood dreams came true. I actually kept the dream up, went to law school, which was pretty odd because I was the first kid in my family to even go to college, let alone law school.ANNE:So, when I got my law degree, it was really just one of the happiest and most proudest days of my life. And then I got a judicial clerkship and then I got this great job at Morgan Lewis Equity Partner. It was like, on the outside, everything looked really successful, and it was. I was very proud of my accomplishments.ANNE:But as I began getting a little bit older, I started questioning whether this was all that there was. Was I kind of living up to my 11-year-old dreams of what it was to be a lawyer, which is sort of impossible to do. But I kept asking whether is this all that I'm going to do in my one short life.ANNE:And so, really, it began to be a deterioration of meaningfulness for me. I became a lawyer because I wanted to make the world a better place. And I was an employment lawyer. As an employment litigator on behalf of defendants and I never felt bad about what I did. I thought I was protecting a law that really meant a lot to me, but wasn't enough.ANNE:And eventually, I couldn't answer yes anymore. And so, I ended up applying to get a master's of applied positive psychology from Penn while I was still practicing law thinking I was going to fix myself or fix my culture. I was going to fix something, so I could stay because I wasn't leaving.ANNE:But as I got more into it, I just started feeling a pull that I could either stay in law and kind of do this other well-being stuff part time or I could leave and really potentially make a bigger contribution to the legal profession by helping to make it a place where people have a whole kind of variety of backgrounds and interests can stay and be happy and thrive.ANNE:And so, I made a really hard decision of leaving law in 2014. And I kind of liken it to it was like tearing my arm off. I mean, it was a really hard decision.BREE:I'm sure.ANNE:Yeah. And then I resigned from my partnership position in the firm and then almost immediately started my PhD program in organizational psychology, which I'm still in the middle of. And so now, I focus entirely on the legal profession. But the individual organizationally, institutionally have really helping to use science, apply science to help make the profession, help it live up to its potential to be a place where lawyers can really feel like they're doing something good for society and also thrive themselves. And so, I didn't really leave the law. I'm contributing to the law in a different way now.BREE:I love that you've verbed thriving. That's great, thriving.CHRIS:Yeah. And I think it would be helpful for our listeners to, you've now been for the better part of five, six years, but even before that, what would be your assessment of kind of what the current state of lawyer well-being is. We know that the report was released three or four years ago, right? We think that that was a significant catalyst and a national discussion. It feels like we've been making progress but I just be curious on your current assessment of where we're at and what you think is on the horizon in terms of where we need to go.ANNE:Yeah, good question. I think it's, for me, I feel like it's a really exciting time to be in this area right now. And I've had this conversation with Bree as well. I think people who have been doing well-being legal profession for a while are feeling like there's movement now. We're starting to make progress in a way that's really exciting.ANNE:And I do think the National Task Force's report that came out in 2017 was a catalyst for that, that there already was so much talk and action going on in kind of small cells and that the report then really catalyzed thinking organizations around this idea of well-being.ANNE:And now, I don't think you can talk to a firm or a lawyer who hasn't thought in some way about your well-being and that was not true. When I was growing up as an associate, well-being wasn't talked about really at all. And it was sort of considered, it's your problem not mine, where I think now organizations are getting more onboard and saying, this is really a team effort that we are responsible to each other for this.ANNE:So, I think that's great progress. I think we're still at the very beginning though. I think, well, where I'm hoping to see the evolution will go to is from this individual level, which is really where the movement is primarily focused now. So, things like stress relief, meditation, resilience, these more individually focused programs, nutrition, physical fitness. These are a lot of the things that I see that firms are doing and I see at least around and that's fantastic. It's a great place to start. And it's probably the easiest place to start.BREE:Right, absolutely.ANNE:But I think, yeah, the next part of our evolution needs to be more organizationally where and I think firms are starting ... They're sort of at the beginning of that now. I'm seeing this as more widescale culture change that if we really want to promote well-being, we have to seriously look at the cultures that are recreating the ill health that we're seeing in lawyers, like what about the way that law firms, and I come from a law firm background, but when I say law firms, I really mean all kinds of legal employers. But what are they doing and not doing to support well-being and seriously, looking at their policies and practices. And how can we change those.ANNE:And I think then we also need to evolve to more of an institutional level. Or people raise their eyebrows when I say it, but even things about how our court system is run, how judges treat lawyers, how clients, inhouse clients treat their outside lawyers and how the outside lawyers treat their clients.ANNE:I was a litigator myself thinking about the judges, and multiple times and judges deny lawyers' request to move something because they had a vacation or they weren't feeling well, or judges just being disrespectful. And lawyers sometimes being disrespectful to judges as well.ANNE:But I do think it's an institutional wide challenge of how can we rethink our system so that lawyers can still be their best and do their best for their clients, but also be well themselves. And I think we've made great progress, but we have a long way to go.BREE:No kidding. Yeah. And I also talk a lot about the fact that it's not just individual lawyers that we're trying to get to change the way they go about their work, but it's the culture change, and that's really hard. And so, I know that when we were writing the report, there was discussion about what are sort of the levers of the legal system that we can push to try and bring about some shifts to this, and particularly around, you've talked about with legal employers. And I know that you currently go out and speak to major law firms on these topics and what they can do differently. Can you give us some examples of what a law firm, a midsize or large law firm could do to bring about some culture change so that well-being is prioritized?ANNE:Yeah, I think the first place for organizations to start, and I actually think it might be the number one recommendation the National Task Force Report, number one or number two, but it's about leaders. And I truly believe this. And my book that you mentioned when you're introducing me, Positive Professionals, that's really what it's focused on, leaders and law firms.ANNE:And by leaders, I mean, partners and anyone who is responsible for supporting and influencing others. And I think a lot of partners don't actually think of themselves as leaders if they don't have a formal leadership position, but they really are because they have such an impact on other people.ANNE:And the organizational science part of this shows that leaders really are the creators of culture. They are the most important lever when we talk about creating cultures and changing cultures. And so, often when I talk to firms, what I'm talking about is focused on partners and how they interact with associates. So, many of our firms, although this is changing, but many of our firms have not thought about doing any kind of sort of leadership development with their aspiring partners and their current partners. And so, we think there's many partners that want to be better, want to do better, but just have never had the skills, tools or training to do so.ANNE:And I so I think that is the first place to start of really talking to the partners about how their own kind of supervisory skills, but also with their role modeling to the associates and to not just associates, the staff and everyone around them that you can come out with the best well-being policy and your professional development people and your well-being director can have really good words to say. But if the partners aren't doing it, that's what everyone else is going to follow because they're what staff and associates and all the other lawyers, they want to do well. And so, they look to the partners to know what that looks like.ANNE:So, if say they see partners that are not sleeping themselves, that are typing emails in the middle of the night, that aren't taking vacation, that are rude to others, like that's the pattern that they're going to follow.BREE:Absolutely.ANNE:And so, it's one of the things that I always underscore when I'm talking to partners is that everyone is watching you very closely. The higher you get up into an organizational hierarchy, the more people are watching you, both for what is the value system here and what do you think of me.BREE:Right.ANNE:And so, although you might not think of yourself as any different, oh, I'm still the same Anne Brafford, I just have a new partner title, like nope, you're actually different because people are treating you differently, and your behavior has a much bigger impact on them both for their own well-being and for them watching what's valued.ANNE:And so, I think there are other levers, but I think that one is so important and such a challenge, that that's where we should just be focusing for a while.CHRIS:Anne, are you optimistic that the cultural elements that position those leaders to move the profession forward is going in the right direction, the wrong direction or there's generational things that are in play, right? There's societal factors in play. It certainly feels like there's more willingness for folks to be vulnerable, which is a probably a driver that could be really helpful in culture shifts within the professions. I'm just kind of curious on your outlook of how optimistic are you? And what do you think are the kind of the underlying drivers that could either accelerate or hinder our ability to engineer this shift?ANNE:I think I'm always optimistic.CHRIS:We know that of you.ANNE:But I would say that my experience is that organizations are still all over the map. I would say like the ABA has come out with a wonderful ABA Well-Being Pledge, where many organizations, especially law firms have signed up saying that they're going to really commit themselves to lawyer well-being.ANNE:And I would say, even within that group who have made a public commitment, they're all over the map, that some of them, it's nice window dressing, but everyone else is doing it. So, we need to do it to show that we care about well-being.ANNE:There's others that I would say really are trying to figure this out. So, I think that at least now they're interested and asking questions, even the ones that just have it as window dressing, that's progress. It's better than what it was before. Once you start making public statements about your commitment, you're much more likely to start taking action because people are going to start questioning you. And you also want to be consistent with your public statements.ANNE:So, I think I am optimistic, but I think there are many obstacles to getting to where we want to go. Just our billable hour system, which is going to take a really long time to change, is everyone knows it's a problem. I don't know that you could find a single law firm leader that says they like the billable hour structure, but just no one has found a way to change it yet.BREE:Anne, I think that you're a heretic for saying that, I mean. I mean, to go ahead and call it out, I get up and talk. And I usually don't do this in a big room because I'm just afraid what's going to happen but really, if I can get around to it, the billable hours, the 800, 8,000 pound gorilla in the room until we have some shift with that, it's going to be a hard time to really change culture.ANNE:It is and I'm with you. I don't often talk about it in large rooms. I talk about it in small rooms, but I will also say that the science on it, on number of hours worked is really interesting. So, there was a big study in 2014 led by Larry Krieger on what makes lawyers happy? Let's stop talking about only what makes them sad. So, what makes lawyers happy.ANNE:And their study found that number of hours alone was not related to well-being or happiness, but billable hours work were. The more that billable hours rose, the less happy that people became. So, you could have two lawyers working the same number of hours but have different levels of happiness based on whether one felt like they were doing it freely and autonomously because it was their own choice versus feeling like they were forced to because of billable hours.ANNE:So, there's this idea of a basic human need that we have is autonomy. And it supports intrinsic motivation, like am I doing this because I enjoy it, because it's my choice to be doing it. And it's highly related to happiness and energy and all sorts of well-being that we care about. And so, it's not just that.ANNE:I think when people think about billable hours, it's often, oh, because we're being overworked. And yes, there is a lot of overwork in the profession. That's absolutely true. But there's also it's just harmful cultures that it's [crosstalk 00:19:04] worst.BREE:Yeah. What are you billing your time doing, which can be really mind numbing and it gets back to that meaning piece.ANNE:Yeah. And do I feel like I'm just making up hours because I have to. Am I having to find work when I really need to go take a job just because I need billable hours rather than because I'm so engaged in what I'm doing. So, I think billable hours is a challenge for a number of problems. But firms tend to be extremely competitive. And when you get to the partnership level, the way compensation works, there's all kinds of issues. I think the billable hours is just kind of the tip of the iceberg. But I do think there are a number of the ways that have just been standard practice within the legal profession that are posing obstacles that they're going to be hard to change, but again, I'm ready remain optimistic. It's just not going to happen overnight.BREE:Yeah, and I just want to commend everybody, the study that Anne just mentioned, it's called What Makes Lawyers Happy by Professor Larry Krieger, and it's really a great piece of work and maybe we can get Larry on the podcast.CHRIS:Yeah. It's probably a good time to take a quick break here from one of our sponsors. What a great conversation. And again, thank you for being here. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. —Your law firm is worth protecting. And so is your time. ALPS has the quickest application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates and bind coverage – all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com—BREE:Welcome back, everybody. We have Anne Brafford with us today, who is the founder and owner of Aspire and also has been a pivotal leader in the National Task Force and lawyer well-being movement across the country. And one of the things we're going to talk about with Anne in this part of the presentation is about her pivotal role as being a founder of Lawyer Well-Being Week.BREE:And Chris is going to talk to her about that in just a minute but Anne, really one of the reasons I wanted you to be our first guest is that you can really speak to a foundational component of our work, which is how we defined well-being. And in fact, I remember when we were writing, you, as the editor in chief, kept pulling us back to, okay, we need to define these terms. We need to substantiate what we're saying with data and studies and all of the 200 plus whatever footnotes that were in the report and really tying us back to science. So, could you talk a little bit about how we came about to define lawyer well-being? What does that mean?ANNE:Yes, so this was set out in the report. We had a couple of pages of just saying, okay, we're all wanting to talk about lawyer well-being, let's talk about what we mean. And I need to give a shout out to Courtney Wylie and Patrick Krill, the three of us are the ones who really did the research and debated with each other and then offered it up, proposed it to the whole National Task Force for acceptance.ANNE:But what we did initially was to look at what other organizations were doing, both like corporate organizations and also organizations like the World Health Organization and other large organizations and how they were defining well-being and how they were approaching it.ANNE:And the first thing that was obvious is that this was a multidimensional concept. It's not binary, you're well, you're not well. It's a continuum and has lots of different dimensions. And the other thing that the World Health Organization agreed with, thankfully, was that it was, well-being isn't just the absence of illness. It's also the presence of full well-being.ANNE:And Bree, you'll recall that I wasn't only harping about the evidence, I also was always wanting to remind us to not only focus on the absence of illness in our report. And understandably, that's where a lot of people tend to focus because that's important of when people's lives are really being harmed and ruined by alcohol use disorders and mental health. You want to focus there on just helping those people get better.ANNE:But there's so many lawyers in the profession that although they don't have a diagnosable illness, they're not fully well. And so, we wanted to capture the full continuum of well-being and all of lawyers no matter kind of where they were in the continuum. And so, that's how we define well-being of really making sure the first thing we noted is just like the World Health Organization, we are defining this to mean both sides of this, curing illness and also promoting full well-being and then the multidimensional concept of this involves both mental health, intellectual health, physical health, of all the different areas of our lives. These work synergy synergistically to make us fully well.ANNE:And then when you look at one of the big dimensions that is important to lawyers, all of them are, but it's occupational health. As lawyers, are we fully well and we define that. And that's an area where I have focused more on lately, like what do we really mean? And how do we measure it? And is it just again, like so many people will focus on things like burnout or depression, but what else is it?ANNE:If we're looking at optimal functioning, what we want to look at is yes, we want the absence of illness, but we also want things like engagement, job satisfaction, high performance, low turnover intentions, like people who actually want to stay and thrive here.ANNE:So, I think even just getting into each dimension, there's more that we need to understand and figure out how to measure so that we know whether we're making progress or not. But that's basically the gist.CHRIS:One of the pages that I'll refer to our listeners to is page nine of the report, which I think has just a wonderful graphic of the holistic dimensions that I think you cite, the emotional well-being, the occupational well-being, intellectual, spiritual, physical, social. And I'm curious and just because of how much scientific research that you've done in your work on the occupational side, you've done some work as part of your master's program on building the positive law firm. And what does some of the research kind of say out there with respect to that part of the well-being definition that I think that you're spending considerable amount of time really waiting into?ANNE:Yeah, so my master's capstone was on building the positive law firm. And then that was further expanded in my book, Positive Professionals. And there's a lot of dimensions to that. The first thing I already covered, which is the importance of good leaders because they create culture.ANNE:I think that one of the other things that it's so important in the legal profession that gets missed is that working hard isn't the problem. That people who are highly engaged and love their work, they work hard and they work a lot of hours, but failing to take time to recover, that's when the wheels can start coming off.ANNE:And so, I don't think that there's so much focus on lawyers work too hard. I think we should just turn it and say lawyers need to recover. Good lawyers are going to work hard. Anyone who loves what they do and are passionate about what they do are going to work a lot of hours. But thinking about how we recover and there's a whole body of research just on what are the best ways to recover.ANNE:And I talk about it a little bit in my book, but it's things like just sitting on a sofa and watching TV is not actually the best way to recover and actually conserve energy. So, one of the best things for lawyers, people who are very cognitively invested in their work, so lots of brain power, one of the best ways to recover is actually physical activity. It's very engaging. It makes your mind come off your work. And also, just physical movement is really good for both our brains and our bodies.ANNE:And the disengagement from work is a really important component of recovery, of finding something that will engage your attention. So, thinking about what are called mastery activities, so art, music, sewing, knitting, anything that will fully absorb your attention is a really good and important activity for recovery because it helps you disconnect a little bit from work and also has other sorts of great benefits.ANNE:And I don't think we can talk about recovery without talking about the importance of sleep, which I do think is a challenge. When I was a lawyer at my firm, it was honestly like people would sort of be competitive about how little sleep they have had for the week. And that's toxic. Those kinds of things have to change.BREE:Yeah, and I talk about that when I go out and speak to new lawyers and just talking to them about the importance of sleep and how everything that you need to do as a lawyer is not going to be online if you're not sleeping and there's no honor in bragging about being powered by Red Bull. You're not going to get the best work product.ANNE:I was one of those people, like I'm embarrassed by some of the things. Guys, if you would know me back then, some of the things that came out of my mouth ... I was one of those people. So, I totally get it. It is hard to change. I'm still recovering on that whole sleep is good sort of thing. And I read all the science, like I'm absolutely convinced, but there's just this draw of I have to get more done. So, sleep is a really important thing to work on in our organizational cultures.CHRIS:Let's spend a couple of minutes in talking about something that in your capacity as a leader of the ABA's Law Practice Division's Attorney Well-Being committee, you kind of hatched an idea knowing that we needed to continue to keep this issue front and center and that was Lawyer Well-Being Week, which we just enjoyed.CHRIS:Anne, I just love your perspective on why you felt like that week was so important to sustain awareness of this particular issue, what will you ultimately learn from Lawyer Well-Being Week in terms of the amount of activity, which I think was enormous and encouraging and why it's so important that we continue to keep this issue front and center?ANNE:Yeah, so, Lawyer Well-Being Week had been on my mind for several years and very excited that it finally came together. And there were a number of reasons why I thought it was important. One was that there were so many people that wanted to contribute in some way but didn't know how. And so, I wanted to create one event that was big enough and diverse enough for a lot of different people to contribute.ANNE:And then second is just what you said, Chris, of keeping attention this important topic that we've all seen kind of fads come and go in the legal profession that something is there's so much energy and attention around it for a couple of years and then we move on to the next thing.ANNE:And this well-being just can't be one of those things. We have to sustain this lawyer. Well-being is too important for it just become another fad. And so, creating an annual event to really focus attention around the idea, keep attention on it, create a time and space for more innovation, discussion around it, firms get to see what other firms are doing just based on social media and by communicating with each other.ANNE:And so, we had the first Well-Being Week was just this last May. Unexpectedly, we had a global pandemic occur. And we had to pivot pretty quickly. Firms and other organizations have been planning some really cool in-person events that hopefully they'll still be able to do next year, but everything had to go remote.ANNE:And I will say I was pretty disappointed. A lot of people were pretty disappointed. But in the end, I think the silver lining was that people were even more open to the idea of needing to care about well-being in the middle of this really difficult time.ANNE:So, although we couldn't do a lot of the programming that we wanted, it may have even been better in that people were so much more open to this message than they might otherwise have been. And so, there was lots of engagement involvement by bar associations, law firms, in-house departments because I think everyone has become interested in well-being but also they were looking for stuff to get out to their lawyers during this time that they knew a lot of people were struggling.ANNE:And I do hope it continues to be absolutely raising awareness. But I also really emphasize innovation of really thinking about how do we move this forward. The meditation sessions and resilience sessions are really important, but how can we push Lawyer Well-Being Week to get organizations to think more culturally and institutionally as well.ANNE:And I've gotten very positive feedback about it. And so, we're hoping that it continues and that it will be an annual event for many years and that we just keep making it better and better and find even better ways to serve the profession.BREE:Absolutely. And it's definitely a priority for the National Task Force for 2021. So, let's hope we can get together and enjoy that in person.BREE:Anne, because you're really are, and I mean this, and it's complimentary, but I really mean it, you are a visionary and a thought leader in the space. And so, I'm going to push you a little bit to think about how do we know that lawyer well-being is done? It's fixed. We can check that box. I mean, when we sat in the room, the original founders in 2016, we talked about that this is a project that will take at least 10 years because we had a sense that it was a really a lot of heavy lifting. But we didn't really break it down to what would the world look like?CHRIS:Yeah. What does success look like?BREE:Yeah, right, Chris, what does success look like in the lawyer well-being?CHRIS:You're a metrics person, too, so, this is even better.ANNE:Yeah. So, I actually think those were two different questions. And I think what does success look like is a different question than when will we be done, because I don't think we'll ever be done.CHRIS:That's right.ANNE:Because the profession will continue to evolve. The world will continue to evolve. People's values will continue to evolve. And so, what lawyer well-being means and how we get there will be a forever project.ANNE:But the urgency that created the National Task Force Report had a lot to do with ill being, which was the statistics that got all of our attention on the level of alcohol use disorders and mental health disorders. And so, alleviating that I think is job one.ANNE:And how do we know that we've succeeded? I've thought a lot about that just with respect to Lawyer Well-Being Week, how do we know we succeeded. And I think like one, more simple one is, have we raised awareness about the importance of this issue? And how would we measure that.ANNE:But then, have we decrease the incidence of alcohol use disorders and raised the incidence of people's willingness to seek help? And I think no organization yet has been doing broad scale regular surveying to measure that, for a lot of reasons.ANNE:But I do think like that those would be the kinds of measures that I would want to look at first because those are the things that are potentially ruining people's lives. And these aren't mutually exclusive. But then also looking at the more thriving aspects of well-being or do we have high job satisfaction, high engagement? Do people feel that their work is meaningful? Those kinds of things which there's measures for all of that.ANNE:So, I think those things are hard to get out. That's costly to do all those things. But I do think that's how I would measure it. But I don't want to undermine the importance of our people realizing that this is important, like have we got people's attention. And I think, on that score, we've made incredible progress.CHRIS:Yeah.ANNE:Whether we've made a dent yet in alcohol use disorders and mental health, I'm not sure but we have to have that first level of awareness before we get to the next and then next, are we getting to full thriving, are organizational cultures fixed or institution? I'm not sure what those measures are yet, but I think that's a longer way off.CHRIS:Yeah, the full thriving I think is really an interesting component because again, the opportunity for folks to pursue a legal career and find personal and professional satisfaction, so many of I think of our colleagues ultimately will find that they may have made a wrong decision.CHRIS:And one of the questions that I ask oftentimes when I get up the podium at a regional or a state bar gathering is, would you recommend that if your son or daughter or one of their close friends came to you and said, "Should I go to law school?" That generally the answer is a little startling of a lot of people saying no. And to me, that says something about the systemic nature of problems that people can't maybe find what they are actually looking for or there's a false sense of expectation on what they thought it would be like, versus what it ultimately is.ANNE:Yeah, I think it's all those things. Even though I've left law, I would actually say yes, go to law school. There are so many great things about being a lawyer, but also stay true to the reason that you're going to law school.ANNE:That Larry Krieger, who we mentioned earlier has done on work on the evolution of values for law students throughout law school. And what he finds is that law school culture is channeled lawyers toward, well, the brightest and best go to the big firms. And that's great. There are lots of great opportunities at big firms and if that's the right fit, do that.ANNE:But there are other people like maybe me, that when I had a different value system but I wanted to do what the best kids were doing.CHRIS:Yeah.ANNE:And so, I was actually going to be a prosecutor and was looking for internships with prosecutor's offices, and a professor came to me and said, "What are you doing? You have good grades, you should go to a big firm." And I'm like, "Why would I do that?" I said, "That's not what I wanted to do when I came to law school." And he said, "You can always go from a big firm to a prosecutor's office, but you can't do the reverse. So, just go try it."ANNE:And so, I did. And I got into employment law, which I really liked, it was super interesting. And then you just get carried away with like, whatever the next thing is, I'm going to get that, I'm an achiever like so many lawyers are.ANNE:So, I do think like, yes, be a lawyer. There are so many great things about being a lawyer. It's super interesting work. You can make a positive impact, but stay in the right lane. Do what you think you'll love in 20 years and not just what seems prestigious right now.CHRIS:Yeah. Well, Anne, in our last question that I wanted to pose to you is one of the things that we're so excited about is the growing army of folks who are passionate about this issue. And this podcast was developed for those particular folks who are leading state task forces, working on subcommittees at the state and local level. Just be curious on your words of wisdom as you get to kind of address an army of well-being advocates across the country, any thoughts about just this fight, this culture shift, any recommendations or motivational words to really an incredible growing number of people who are passionate about this issue?ANNE:Well, get involved in Lawyer Well-Being Week. And part of resilience is anticipating failure along the way and figuring out when you face those failures, what are the 10 or 20 different ways that you're going to get around those obstacles?ANNE:And I think that that doesn't sound very inspiring, expect failure. I think it's absolutely important to the cause that we're undertaking because there are so many obstacles. But it's so important. So, expect that this is a long road. Things aren't going to change tomorrow and really think about what those obstacles are. And when you have a failure, don't feel like a failure, that think of the 20 different ways that you can get around whatever that obstacle is.ANNE:And that's how I've approached it, that when I have a door closed or hear a no, I'm going different ways to get to my yes, maybe not as easily as or as quickly as I wanted. But this is a long game, this isn't a short game. And so, just keep at it and really engage, get connected with people who feel as passionate as you do so that we can all help keep our energy up.BREE:I want to point out to everybody, we've been talking about Lawyer Well-Being Week and if you want to learn more about that, go to the National Task Force website, which is lawyerwellbeing.net. And all of the information, the great materials and worksheets and ideas for well-being is still up there. And it's applicable throughout the year. And so, I'm hoping people will use that.CHRIS:Anne, thank you so much again for your leadership, for your inspiration, for taking risks in your personal life to become a leader in our movement, for the work that you're doing on the science side of well-being. I mean, we are truly fortunate to have you amongst us and being a leader in our movement. So, thank you for being our first podcast guest.BREE:Thank you.CHRIS:Really cool. And we will be back with the Path to Lawyer Well-Being podcast in a couple weeks. Again, our goal is to do probably two a month, where we'll bring more great guests like Anne into the fold and talk about specific areas of lawyer well-being. So, for me, signing off. Bree, any final closing thoughts?BREE:Just a delight to get to spend time with you, Anne, as always. Thanks so much.ANNE:Yeah. Thanks for having me.CHRIS:All right. Thank you. 

Published Nov 13, 2017 Chris: Good day, world. Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from the MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads for "Get Fact Up" episode number 68 - on important marketing metrics to track. How you going, Andrew? Andrew: Good. How are you? Chris: Good, mate. So website traffic is probably the number one metric that people tend to track when they're looking at - obviously their marketing reports. And we know that being that high a level probably isn't good enough. Andrew: Yeah, traffic's not really that important. There're other things that you should be looking at. Chris: Cool. So we've got some example Google Analytics snapshots that we've got here from the Interwebs. And we wanted to just have a look over those and break some of them down. So here we have the Google Analytics snapshot of acquisitions and channels, it's real easy to find. And it's breaking down that high level traffic into multiple different channels... Andrew: The different marketing streams, yeah. So this one's eCommerce business, and straight off the bat you can see that something's wrong here, ‘cause you've got paid searches as the highest traffic. But, you need to circle a few things here, so the problem here is the bounce rate is massive. Paid search, high bounce rate, a lot of money's gone down the drain quite frankly. Chris: So let's talk about bounce rate while we're on that. So between 55% and 70% bounce rate is considered high. Anything over 70% is considered pretty much extreme. So it's time to bring that down. Andrew: So just to explain what a bounce is, it's when someone comes to your page - doesn't click on anything and then they leave. So someone that didn't interact with your page at all. Chris: And bounces can happen a lot. Especially in search and social - ah sorry, in paid search and social, because people have searched for a particular product. Andrew: They may not necessarily wanna see it. You might have put it in front of them when they don't want it. Chris: In paid search they've searched for a particular product, they've clicked on that link to that paid page and they've seen what they wanted to see - probably priced, they're shopping around, boom they're gone again. If you didn't entice them to click through to another page, then essentially they've bounced. And they could've been sitting on that page for a long time. In fact, they could've been sitting on that for hours, all day, reading all the content that you had to offer, but if they didn't click through to another page it's called a bounce. So the same thing can happen in social, right? Because... Andrew: Yeah, we say this all the time that social's people's down time. And if you're putting ads in front of them and they don't realise it, they've clicked through to an ad, they're often just gonna bail back out of that. Social traffic tends to have high bounce rate and lower engagement metrics because of that. But, it's a great branding opportunity, it's not a right off there. You just have to be showing the right sort of content, maybe not necessarily trying to get someone to buy something straight from Facebook. Chris: And then we've got on that same slide we've got their conversion rate, and 3.11 conversion rate. Conversions categorised as 2% as average, 5% is good and 10% plus is great. So they're sitting between averaging good. Now if we were going to say, for example if the client said, "Hey, while I'm getting lots of traffic on paid search, that's great, I'm gonna increase my spend." Andrew: Well I would say don't even bother. Especially when you have a little bit further down that email traffic is a 10.24% conversion rate. I would be saying do more email campaigns, 'cause that's obviously working really well. And then maybe have a look at bringing this bounce rate down, put a bit of work into that. Make some more relevant content, have a look at your page load potentially and have a look at your targeting - maybe you're showing your ads to the wrong people. Chris: There's so much you can do in eCommerce. Show that there's a sale on and that it's a limited time. For example, there's a counter there just above the "add to cart" button that says buy now or you'll miss out. For instance... Andrew: Get some more testimonials. Get some more reviews and writings and things like that. Chris: More content on that page essentially. So that is called conversion rate optimisation. Improving your page to improve conversions. If you can improve those conversions then potentially go back and invest more dollars into that paid advertising. Andrew: I would also say maybe get a heat map or a screen recording software installed on the website and actually get some hard data - hard evidence about what's going on there. It might just be as simple as there's no calls to action above the fold, it might be a real easy fix. Chris: Could be an error. Paid search - don't forget if you've got so many heaps of campaigns, that's a very high level view. You could have one campaign that's absolutely tanking because for whatever reason your products are no longer available, discontinued or something like that. Andrew: Yeah, that's right. Especially with AdWords, it could just be one keyword's just ruining your entire campaign. It's really important to be looking at those metrics as well. Chris: So let's move on to slide 7 where we've actually got a different eCommerce business where their highest traffic source is organic. Andrew: Whoa, yeah, they're doing really well. 11% conversion rate. Chris: And they're converting 11% on that organic traffic. That's really good. Essentially then we looked at paid searches, their second biggest paid channel. And they've got a 7% conversion rate there. And so therefore they're advertising campaign on AdWords needs tweaking and improving because obviously there's a good conversion rate happening in organic. There's not a lot wrong with their pages, but that conversion rate indicates to me that maybe their actual advertising campaigns wrong. Andrew: Yeah, that's what I think. Maybe they just needed to tighten up what they're targeting there. Another good thing that I've seen with this one - we've got a great ad, but they've got their revenue filled in there. So they're actually pushing data of all their sales back, which is awesome because that means they can actually measure ROI properly, so you can have a look at your AdWords page and analytics - you can see how much you spending and what you're getting back for it, then you get that ROI metric. That's awesome if you can actually get that, it's not possible for everyone. Chris: Which comes down to cost per acquisition. Andrew: That's right, so if you know that then you can scale as far as you want. Chris: So cost per acquisition is basically cost per sale. Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Chris: Instead of tracking cost per click, track cost per acquisition. If you bring that down... Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Also, here their bounce rate is incredibly low on this one. Chris: Yeah, 19.43% on organic search and 14.78% even on paid, which is just awesome. Really good. Andrew: Two other metrics I think worth mentioning here because this is so high on this one I just want to say. Under behaviour on here, you've got bounce rate, pages per session, average session duration. Pages per session is really important, that's how many - for each person that comes to your site, that's how many different pages they go on there. And if you're above 2.5% that's pretty good. Their average pages per session across all channels is 6.89%, that's great. That means people are really searching around going through everything. Chris: Yup. Andrew: Also, the session duration: 3 minutes, that's great too. If you've got above 2 minutes that's awesome. People spending a lot of time on their website. They've obviously got a lot of really good related content, a lot of good internal linking. I'd say they've got a really good interface there as well. Chris: So, on product pages you may also be interested in if they're doing blogging then potentially they've got interlinked pages. Here's the product we're talking about - go and check it out in the cart, all that sort of stuff. Andrew: They've got a great funnel, that much is obvious. So yeah, they're doing great. Chris: Slide 8, we've got a service based business, and obviously which means no eCommerce tracking on the site. And the highest channel - highest volume of traffic coming through is via organic for this one. Now, they've got a 56% bounce rate on their organic and 2.12 pages per session. Andrew: It's not bad. Chris: Yeah, that's right. Andrew: But there's room, room to improve, that's for sure... Chris: There is room for improvement. So, with bounce rate, like we said, that people are coming in and their not exactly seeing what we wanted them to see and they're leaving. But with 2.12 pages per session on organic - they kind of are finding what they are wanting to find. They're not really that eager to make an inquiry because their actual conversion rate is low, in the 2%'s, so it's an average conversion rate. Andrew: Yeah, so maybe there's a trust issue there and that's where I'd say probably maybe looking at getting some reviews, testimonials, that sort of thing - maybe having a look at the form, reducing the amount of fields in the form. Just to bring down all the barriers, make it easier for an inquiry to happen there. Chris: Really good point you've made there, Andrew, about the barriers to inquiry and completing a form. Those - Don't ask for too much information, what do you really need from people? Name, phone number, email address - that's pretty much it. Andrew: Yeah, like that's it. Even have a request to call back can be a better option than having an inquiry. Sometimes people don't feel that comfortable about filling all that information in. Chris: An optional message field is good. I think leave that one optional. So the top 3 required and an optional message field, boom. And then that could absolutely increase the conversion rate on those inquiries. Andrew: If I was to give these people any advice, though, it would be look at they're social campaigns, though here. Cause you can see there that their conversion rate is .9% on social. Bounce rate's 84%, like obviously they're sending the wrong message out there or maybe just reaching the wrong people. There's massive room for improvement there. Chris: Yeah, hard one, I'm with you on that. There's definitely some improvements that are needed. I mean, what are they sending people to this site for? Is it to consume content? They're not really clicking through to other pages on the site. It's - pages per session 1.6, time on site a minute ten. They really do need to reconsider why they're sending people there and... Andrew: Obviously sending them there for maybe promoting blogs or something like that. But then you just have to look at what they're doing next. Chris: They need to encourage and click through... Andrew: Calls to action in their blogs. Chris: Yeah, super important. Cool. Slide 9, we've got another service based business. So again organic search is the highest traffic source. Bounce rate is lower, 48%, that's great. It's good, rather. And 2.39 pages per session, which is pretty much average there. And a conversion rate of 4.84%. So, their conversion rate's obviously better than the last. And that means that their calls to action are much better and their barriers... Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative)... Chris: Their forms are probably better. They potentially got testimonials or some kind of - they've developed some kind of trust with the audience to encourage that inquiry. Maybe there's some sort of free offer, potentially round that... Andrew: Yeah, their funnel could just be better overall. And it might just be a type of service that people are more interested in, in general, you never really know that. Chris: Industry comes in... Andrew: That's right, yeah like some people just have a tough industry that you always have to consider. Chris: Exactly. So apart from website traffic sources we wanna focus on what's happening out there in amongst the other - I guess campaigns that we could be running. So, obviously social is probably the most popular and most common activity that people are undertaking when they're doing marketing. I think we've spoken about this before, but just to recap, what's some of the metrics people need to be tracking when they're doing social campaigns? Andrew: Okay, big thing for me is always engagement, especially the social. You wanna say that people are actually interacting with your content. Clicks through the website not always that important, 'cause you can see that they might be doing nothing when they get to the website. Most important thing is that they're having a good time on the social platform first and foremost. And then something that people don't often look at is one called "social clicks", which is a sort of like the viral effect. It's when someone's interacted with your content and then their friends doing it or maybe they've shared it to someone else. That's that sort of roll off growth effect that happens on social, that's a really important one, cause that means that the community's accepting it. It means it's getting shared around. Chris: And another really important metric that people need to be targeting - I'm sorry, monitoring when they're looking at their reports, their monthly reports, is search into results pages. So the results of their ranking of their keywords in search. Andrew: That's right. So you can look at your traffic for organic and that's great but you really wanna know where it's coming from, because you wanna know what you wanna optimise for on what you should be creating more content for. If you're not using a software for tracking your search engine results, you can go into search console and everyone should have search console. Google search console set up. You can have a look at your keyword report in there and that'll show you all the traffic that's coming in for different keywords and it will also show you the impressions for different keywords. So you can see who's seeing you for different keywords. And that at least is very important because that data's not in Google analytics anymore. Chris: It's not a complete picture because Google has wiped out a lot of the keywords that people actual typing in under a category called, "not provided", but... Andrew: It shows a lot more than Google analytics at least. Chris: Exactly. Andrew: So you get something there. Chris: Yeah. Is that all we got time for? Look I think this is a very high level view. Still, we've sorta dived in a little bit. But, with eCommerce there's so much more you could be looking at. Once you've got some of that conversions - what's happening with the conversions? Well potentially people are getting to the cart, and they're abandoning cart. So you need to look at the exit pages and what can you do there? Well you can be running automated email campaigns. You can be running remarketing campaigns on Google AdWords and social. There's lots of opportunities there. But again we said we're gonna have a high level view, and I think we've done that here so hopefully that's - I guess helpful. Anything to add, Andrew? Andrew: You know what? We could just go on forever. But I think maybe we'll do one on each specific channel, in the future, I'd think it'd be good. Chris: Yeah. Great! Well, thanks very much for your time. That was "Get Fact Up", episode 68. And you're here with Andrew Groat and Chris Hogan from MeMedia, here at the Burleigh Heads Studio's on the Gold Coast. Cheers.

Tim Hur is the Managing Broker of Point Honors & Associates, a residential real estate firm in Duluth, GA. Tim has built a great firm and has also served on NAR's Fair Housing committee during 2018. Tim joins us to give life to the fair housing conversation and why it's important in our business. He also answers great questions around involvement in the industry and commitment to clients needs. Don't miss this episode. Tune in and listen to your favorite real estate podcast, reThink Real Estate. You can find Tim Hur at https://www.pointhonors.com The re:think real estate podcast is hosted by Chris Lazarus, Nathan White, and Christian Harris. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 36:42 RTRE 49 – Tim Hur, Managing Real Estate Broker of Point Honors [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. Guys what's going on? [Christian]: Not much. Talking to my favorite people.   [Nathan]: Speak for yourself. But I am glad to be here on recording so that's good. Excited we get to talk about some new stuff. For someone might be boring but I still find it interesting so I am excited about that. And this is about it. [Chris]: How is your CMA going? [Nathan]: My CRM…I am just slightly…I'm doing alright. [Chris]: CRM. I say CMA because Christian was just talking about could services and CRM. You know. [Nathan]: That is something I am still failing at. We won't talk about it. We have a guest and we don't want to bore people. [Chris]: We'll move on. We do. We do have a guest. We have great guest. His name is Tim Hur. For those of you who haven't seen him at NAR events, Tim is the managing broker of Point Honors. His bio is a freaking novel. So we're gonna let Tim. Tim thanks for joining us today.  [Tim]: No thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it. It's a lot of fun.  [Chris]: It's great to have you on. So for…for our audience you have achieved quite a lot of honors. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? And what you're doing. [Tim]: Sure. Thank you so much for that [laughter]. I appreciate that. Well my name is Tim Hur. Unfortunate not related to the fictional character Ben Hur otherwise I would be not selling real estate. Of course. But no I am…I was your 2018 chair, national chair for diversity for NRA based here in Atlanta. And I have been rocking and rolling ever since, been a realtor for what 12,13 years now. Kind of have been doing this right after college.  [Chris]: Nice. So tell us your story. Did…Where did you grow up? How did you get into real estate? Where did you go to school? All the fun stuff. [Tim]: Sure. I was born in Huston. Moved to Atlanta than got too far away. You know, I went to high school here. I went to Georgia Tech right after that. And… [Chris]: [inaudible] [Tim]: I know. [laughter] Either you hate me or you love me. One or the other. But I had a really good opportunity going to real estate. So I got my license and got into real estate right before the crash. So it was really good. We all…I think a lot of us who have endured the pains of early real estate and have been in the industry at least for a while and everyone is complaining about interest rates right now but you know we started real estate when we were selling into it. It was 7,8,9,10,11,12%. So you know.  The market tanked so I moved over to commercial for a little bit. And sustained myself with Doreos [phonetics] and commercial and came right back swinging and we've been…You know we have a small team here. We have about 18 agents in our company and we operate pretty well. So… [Chris]: That's awesome so you were the 2018 national chair for Federal Fair Housing and implementing that. [Tim]: Well slightly. So yeah I was 2018 chair diversity.  [Chris]: Can you tell us on how that went on.  [Tim]: Yeah so the 2018 yeah chair for diversity. [Chris]: OK. [Tim]: So the diversity committee from the national association of realtors we were…one of our tasks was to make sure that we helped launch the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the fair housing act. So we were…we were very hands on on that last year.  [Chris]: So what was the…like how did that go? What did you do for the 50th anniversary? I know I saw you at several events. But what was the whole…What did NAR put together for that? [Tim]: Sure. So you know a lot of us you know we think of fair housing and fair housing violations more as…I mean this...It is obviously a very dry subject and a very boring subject at times but it is very instrumental and very important. But a lot of us put their housing as a risk. More than something that you can violate… [Christian]: You can't [laughter] [laughter].  [Tim]: …Trouble and then we learn about it. But really we were trying to take it different aspect of it and try show that fair housing really should be implemented in the beginning where you really should know about fair housing.  And the 50th anniversary was very, very instrumental and very…is very important because as realtors we are on the wrong side of the law. Back in 1924 our code of ethics actually said that we would not be instrumental in introducing members of the community that would actually bring down poppy values. It was a direct attack on you know Asians, Blacks, Hispanics. So there was actually red lining and we were instrumental in doing that. Obviously we…that's why it was very important. [Chris]: We as realtors, not… [Tim]: Right. Realtors [laughter]. Yeah that was in the code of ethics. And you know can you…Nobody really believes that 50 years ago that we were actually fighting against fair housing.  And you know obviously people don't know this as well but you know Atlanta has a very strong history with Dr. Martin Luther King and he actually was a very big pioneer in fair housing. And the day after the assassination of Dr. King, about a week later was when the fair housing act was signed.  So it kind of…you know it kind of…there was a lot of things that went out to it. And realtors got smart and the legal issues got smart and we started putting restrictions and covenants. And you know building you know, fair housing violations into them. But now it's obviously, it's all been taken away.  You know as realtors or you know, people that are in the real estate industry we are now looking beyond race and all the…classes at the fair housing act and trying to include LGBT queue housing rights and stuff like that. So we are looking at the future as well to make sure that stuff like this does not happen again.  [Nathan]: So question for you than Tim, and I don't want this to sound ignorant.  [Tim]: No no. It's OK.  [Nathan]: Right [laughter] you know, like fair housing you said it sounds boring but it's not but then again how big of an issue is it? Like it's not…Like I just don't…my mind doesn't think that way to say “Oh we can't take you here because of this, that or you know redlining as we talk” or steering. My mind does not work like that. Like it just… [Tim]: And that's like…that's the point. Right. So a lot of us…And that's why it was very important. Not a lot of us don't think to vio…Intentionally violate the fair housing act. Nobody goes out and says “I am gonna discriminate tomorrow” or “I am not gonna do this and that”.  We do it unintentionally and it brings up…that's why it was brought up to light. You know when we…for example you know there is issues such as you know I know that you know we as realtors and tidal companies you know there is a lot of D distinctions where it says “This property cannot be sold to somebody of black descend or Asian descent”. It is actually built into the legal description. [Chris]: I saw somebody post one of those online the other day. Yeah. [Tim]: Right isn't that crazy? [Chris]: Yeah and it's the first time I have been in real estate since 2010, that's the first time I have ever seen it. [Tim]: Yeah and you…it's still there. What people don't realize is that Tidal companies they assure over it because it is illegal. They don't really remove that portion where it says, this portion you know “This must sold…”.  So you know a lot of it is awareness but a lot of us don't go out and say “I am going to go and discriminate against you know, somebody in some, you know one of the protected classes.” We just don't think that way. That's why it's very important. That's why NAR really…and a lot of people took this as a moral of risk issue. Our committee was very…we were very adamant about you know rewriting the fair housing camp book. And making sure that everyone is tarter at the beginning. Yeah not to intentionally violate but a lot of us just don't know. And we just don't know. Sometimes you need a refresher.  [Christian]: So I have a question so if some would say, I have heard you know going back… [Chris]:[inaudible] [Christian]: Yes. And I am in Seattle. So you know it should be much more progressive and more focused on… [Tim]: Sure. [Christian]: …Discrimination. That sort of thing. You know I have heard you know very well articulated points that you know the history of real estate is reared with if not has a lot of racism and discrimination in history. And sounds like back in the day NAR and probably the whole real estate industry as a whole is on the wrong side of this issue. When did that change? Was that kind of the process of the civil right movement as society started shifting? Or.. [Tim]: Yeah I think…So I think you know I can't speak on behalf…I am not a history bud, but you know a portion of it you know when FHA started issuing loans. You know a lot of after World War 2 a lot of our veterans wanted to have the white big fences and to live in suburbs. And they were denied that because of FHA insurability and saying there whole fair housing violations here.  You know, as people came back and they were promised they could live in suburbs and they don't have to live in you know in the city limits sometimes and you know a lot of this stuff that were not allowed they weren't given the same rights so to speak. Some were African Americans but you know we also have to look at you know women. Women were not allowed to own real estate without the permission of their fathers or their husbands until certain parts of the country until the 70s or 80s. So you know, this is a very recent event. These are not stuff that again you know you talk about Seattle being very progressive and you know and California LA but you know fair housing violations come all the time.  [Chris]: Really? No way. [Tim]: I know that there are several instances where I have been, when I go around the country for renters. Renters they see an interracial couple. And the landlord is like “No not renting to you”. But in the beginning it was fine because they look at the last name and they were like “Sure sure sure”. And than they come and meet the tenant and they're like “I don't want to rent to you anymore”. Why? “So what's really the case. Why are you not renting to me?”  So you know there is a lot of those…there is instances and maybe there are one offs sometime but I think that if you talk to some of our women or if you talk to some of our multicultural clients or agents they may have a lot of different stories. And it was really interesting to hear a lot of stories.  You know there was one case in Chicago. There was one of the champions that I know. And he was talking about how he opened a real estate company and people just kept his phone lines busy so that he cannot sell real estate. So you know back in the day we didn't have email so you know all we did was we had a group of people keeping his phone lines constantly busy so that nobody could call his real estate office. [Christian]: Wow. [Chris]: Because he was black. [Christian]: That's messed up. [Tim]: That's crazy. Yeah it's crazy. You would never think that. That's just something they thought about. [Chris]: You know what year it was? What year was that? Do you know? [Tim]: This is right…I think this is…I don't know. He does speak often. He is at the VLNAIR [phonetics] conference. Well…But yeah it's crazy just to hear this. [Chris]: It's nuts.  [Christian]: That's in our generation. [laughter]. [Tim]: Yeah.  [Christian]: That's… [Tim]: It's only a few years. So what can we do? [Christian]: Yeah for like your situation you're talking about with the…the rental discrimination with like mixed race couple or whatever. I mean what sort of resort they have because I mean let's say “Why don't you rent to us?”. I would imagine most landlords aren't gonna be dumb enough to be like “Well because you're black”.  [Tim]: You actually would be surprised.  [Christian]: OK. [Tim]: Actually you would be surprised. So you would actually be very surprised. And a lot of realtors you have to be very careful as well.  [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: Because you know and you know the way that you…You have to be puritan. If you report it you have a special dedicated line. You know you have to really be careful and they'll make the calls. [Christian]: Sure. [Tim]: You know if it's not any to you and they deny you. They may not sustain. They may not claim race or they may not claim sexual orientation or whatever the case is or classes. But they can…if you are denied they will call the landlord back and see if it is available for rent. And if it is they will try to go through the whole process you know with a very different case scenario. And see why they wouldn't rent. So you know if you don't report it, it doesn't get reported. So we encourage everyone. If you see violations, you have to report it. [Christian]: Sure. Now I would imagine that the violations, well I mean you know prior to the fair housing act you know it was just kind of part for the course. But I would imagine with those initially enacted those violations were much more obvious you know as they were struggling to civil rights and racial discrimination stuff. I would imagine it is much subtler these days. I mean what are you seeing as the most common violations you know and I would imagine a lot of those are even unknowing violations. What are you seeing now?  [Tim]: Yeah I don't know if there is any common violations. Right. And again nobody goes out there and says “I am going to discriminate against a certain race or you know religion.” It's you know…it may be more nuanced or a little more subtle than before. It may not be so plain. But you know it does exist and it does happen.  You know it depends…depending on what part of the country you may be in and if you're not aware or how to work with a certain culture you may…you may…you may be found in violation. Especially from the code of ethics not if you are a realtor. But you may be found guilty of violating their housing. And again it's a matter of reporting it. Rather than you know…And figuring out was it really a fair housing violation they really…”Are they doing something against me?”. [Christian]: Sure, do they take into account kind of intention versus ignorance or kind of just kind of if you were violated you violated it. [Tim]: That's…it depends on how that I guess would…how they want to…you know, how they want to approach it. You know I think a lot of the familiar status gets…gets you know found upon. You know being single versus with family right you know with 2,3 children,4 children, 5 children. You know what…I see that part often as well. You know, disability. You know, you have to make sure you don't discriminate on disability. So it's…I think some of the…You know…A lot of the stuff…some of this comes up especially during the rental process. No, I don't think you know someone says no to somebody when they buy or sell as much as you may see that in more of a lender, tenant sometimes. [Christian]: Sure. The ones I have seen…You own a brokerage, is that correct? [Tim]: I do. [Christian]: OK. As do I and Chris. And the thing I have seen most common that I had a couple of agents on would be like listing descriptions. Would be like “This is a perfect friendly house”. I am like “Yeah you can't say that”. You know, great for kids, you know.  And the other think I heard recently you know was an agent who was working with an Indian buyer and they were like “I want to live in a neighborhood hat is primarily Indian”. He is like “I can't tell you that. You do your research, you tell me where you are looking and I will support that”. But you know… [Tim]: Yeah if you say like “Oh yeah this is…you know…I think I know where you would like to live because there is a very big Chinese community”. You know that…that's…you're steering somebody so you have to be very careful how you do that. You know the next kind of the big one you know is schooling.  You know schools and how much is good schools. Is that also kind of rooted into fair housing right. Because sometimes some of the better schools will have certain races that would make them more predominant. And so people have been using sometimes, may be using schools for fair housing violations. So you have to be as an agent and as broker, be very careful of schools. Because they are looking at that now. [Christian]: So you're saying they're kind of using that as the avenue to be in a predominantly white neighborhood or something like that? [Tim]: Potentially yeah, potentially right. So you may need to be careful on how we present schools. You know if you're saying that this is a really good school it's very different form saying “Hey this school is predominantly white”. You know in a predominantly higher class subdivision, or a neighborhood so you have to be very careful of how you use school in it too because they can use that… You know it is interesting that you bring schools up too. Or I brought it up but you know the listing descriptions anyway. Because the other day I was browsing around and there is a couple of apps on…on target marketing. And some of the target marketing for properties I have seen clearly violates fair housing. And I brought it to their attention and they're like “Wow wow we don't do that”. But I am like “But you can click male or female and you can click how many children that they have and you can click you know…”Because the data is out there.  So you have to be very careful on how you do your advertising as well and this is why Facebook got sued. Because you know make sure that you're advertising when you do decide to purchase ad space, that it is open to all. Because you know in certain people…and this is another unintentional case.  So people have said “Hey this million-dollar house I envision this to be a certain client. You know it's gonna be someone with a certain amount of wealth. And you know a certain race and sex”. And so they target, hyper target it you know a certain demographics so to speak. And you know instead of targeting based upon salary they were doing it…you can literally click on the different options and I was telling them “This is very bad”.  And then of course they redid their algorithm and they took out some of the choices but that it happens. So again another unintentional violation. You're not going out there as an agent to intentionally say “Hey I am going to market this property only to white people or only to Asians in this market or only to certain you know, Chinese”. You know whatever the case may be. So unintentional. [Chris]: That's interesting that you…you know with the whole schools and how Christian you mentioned being a predominantly white neighborhood for a school with…you know Harvard was just recently sued by Asian students for… [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: For not being able to get in because they were too good. So I mean it…cultures are changing. The demographics are changing and you know us as agents…what are some things Tim that really brokers or agents should know? Brokers can train the agents or things that agents should know to be aware of outside of the normal like federal fair housing. Because you mentioned online with algorithms. [Tim]: Yeah. [Chris]: There really has not bene anything that comes down formally that says “This is how you can use demographics online to advertise”.  [Tim]: Right. [Chris]: In the past we've had…Say you're in the Buford Highway area and you're advertising in a Korean newspaper. In Korean. In…In my training it has been that if you were advertising that elsewhere in the general population that is sufficient but if you go online and you target that it's a completely different story.  [Tim]: Yeah I think the intent is always a key factor, right. So you know as brokers our jobs are getting much harder. You know as an agent it's very important to train them but you know we…they're independent agents. You know we don't…They're not employees of our companies. You know we do have to watch what they do and what they say and I have seen a lot of employment agreement or…You know not employment agreement. I have seen a lot of independent contractors in the game that are actually saying that they are able to monitor social media. Right? Because that's one of the places where a lot of people do market their properties now.  And it does get a little harder as our jobs you know, as you grow you firm and your brokerage firm gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You know, how do you control your 3000 agents in you know do not violate right and who is the one that gets the trouble the broker or the agent? Right? Who is the one that has to go through the whole process and who is the one that is gonna get fined?  So it is you know…It's hard to always…Our job is you know to not employ…not only to encourage our agents to make money but to help them you know elevate their business. But it is a harder job for us. You know you mentioned advertising in different languages. And yeah you know I always say make sure that you just don't advertise it just to 1 community or 1 avenue. Make sure it is available to everyone.  And I think just in general it's good practice anyway. You know, why would you put everything in all Chinese or in all you know or in Spanish. You're limiting your market sphere anyway so why would you do that? [Chris]: Yeah. [Tim]: You know it's good practice. [Chris]: So what got you involved with NAR? So you came into this before, divide, you got into commercial. What created your firm and why did you get involved on the level that you did? Let's steer a little bit off of fair housing. [Tim]: Yeah. It was fun stuff. NAR you know being a realtor, starting off in a realtor world, you know that is something that we kind of naturally gravitate towards. I was fortunate. I kind of took a different path. I went to NAR and started on committees at NAR first.  I am kind of a little bit of a goof ball and I was taking a…auditing a class. ABR class. And I just happened to be with a lot of the past presidents and future presidents of NAR in the class. And it was really cold and being from Georgia I am always cold. I don't like snow and I took…I was in a hotel room and me and the instructor were just fighting you know over the thermostat and I just eventually took the hotel robe and I just brought it to class. And the minute he started playing with the thermometer I was like “Done, can't do it anymore”. Just put on my robe. Out at the NAR building. All the along had no idea. I didn't even know who I was even talking to. I was just like “Oh I came to take a class”. And then everyone was like “Is that the robe from the hotel? Did you just steal a robe? We're paying for your class”. And I am like “Oh no no I will take it back, I will take it back”. Come to find out that was Ron Vapes and Steve Brown and those were all the future presidents and the past presidents of NAR. So I think I made a little bit of an interesting impact rather [laughter]… [Chris]: Yeah that's a little bit of an impact.  [Tim]: Yeah but and you know I started getting involved with the realtor world just because it's very important for us to really ensure that our business is sustainable. You know there's so many things that we do and one of the few plan to my president circle…planted our members in Georgia. And I just…you know. Right? [Chris]: Our Pack baby. [Tim]: Our Pack. Yes. I do believe in giving back. And so I do give quite a bit back just because I have seen the policy world. I am a policy wonk. I have you know as…I want to make sure that our housing rights are protected. And you know yours and my jobs are…you know we're not impacted every day and I see that. So I want to make sure that we give back. [Chris]: Well you know what Tim is a former Our Pact chair. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your contribution. [Tim]: Of course. [Chris]: You did everything that Our Pact does. So what made you go out and start your own brokerage? How did you get back into residential? [Tim]: So I work with a lot of international clients. You know, the good thing about having a dip or diversifying in the real estate world, you know, when I jumped back into commercial I also started working with a lot of international clients and global clients.  And so you know our firm is a little unique. Most or our agents actually are bilingual. They do speak more than 1 language in our firm which is nice just because we do cater to a whole different demographics of clients at times. And we can help them.  So when I started working with a lot of international clients they weren't really affected a lot by the recession. So they were able to work with a lot more investment properties and stuff like that. So when I started coming back into the residential world they were looking for commercial and then they were looking for something to buy on the residential side. So I kind of put my foot back in and it was fun. I started my own firm because I wanted to have a little bit more flexibility you know. Back in the day I would have said that it was because of commissions but looking at it now as a broker you don't really make that much money. You…There is a lot more headache. But I wanted to… [Chris]: A headache [inaudible] changes [laughter]. Yeah. [Tim]: But I did want the autonomy. So I started the firm and ever since I did it has been going ever since out. You know there is a lot of changes going on in the industry and I hate the word “disruptor”, but there is a lot of change going on. But I think at the end of the day if you service your clients and you take care of your clients that's why they have always been with me and you know I think they will always come back. [Nathan]: A [censored] men to that. [laughter] [Tim]: Yeah so I just… [Christian]: Nathan said the first F bomb in the day. Ladies and gentlemen Nathan [censored]… [Nathan]: Well you know how I feel about that so you know you don't need a big name, you don't need a gigantic flag, you don't need to have all the tech in the world. Just need to take care of people.  [Tim]: Yeah absolutely. And you know in that thing that is you know going to independence or working in a mega firm there is always pros and cons. But people always go…they go back to you. They back to Nathan White because they know Nathan White is in real estate. They go back to Christopher because they know that Christopher is in real estate.  So I think that if you know…and that is what I try to teach my agents like “You guys can leave me any day, I mean I have to sign your release forms if you decide to leave tomorrow or today or within the hour. You know, I hope that you know, during the time that you were with me that you were able to build your own brand so they come back to you for ever and ever and ever for real estate purposes. And if you can't than tie yourselves with…if you're not gonna be in real estate than tie yourself with a referral company and make some money that way”.  There are so many different avenues in making money in real estate. And I have a top agent, a top agent in my office. I call her top just because she doesn't sell real estate. She refers. And it's funny because she works for a company that does a lot of relocations and if they don't offer real packages she's like “Where are you moving? I know where you're moving to. Let me find you an agent”. And she just collects a referral check all day long. And so in my world that's a top agent who doesn't sell real estate but is able to collect and really utilize her license. But it's funny how…I know when the checks come in. And I am like “These are yours”. I know exactly whose check it is. It's fun.  [Nathan]: So Tim I always like to ask some fun questions and I typically pluck them out of a great book by Tim Ferriss. [Tim]: So you're the one? [Nathan]: Yeah I am the one right. Tim Ferriss wrote a great book called “Tribe of mentors”. He asked everybody the same questions and I always like to ask guests a few of these questions that he asked people. So I will fire away with the first one. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it? What would it say?  [Tim]: A billboard with anything that I want on it? [Nathan]: Yeah what would that message be? [Tim]: [laughter] I think people very close to me would say…It would probably say “Leave me alone”.  [Nathan]: Really [laughter]. That's great. [Chris]: Tim Hur wants to be left alone.  [Tim]: You know when I am at home and I want to be by myself, I want to be by myself but you know you don't get that luxury as a broker and working with international clients. We're always…We're always doing something but you know just having the time alone to be like “Give me my 15 minutes”.  You know I try to turn off my phone when I am working out just because I am like “That's my 1 hour that I have, don't have to worry about clients. You can wait”. But yeah I think that's…you know that was the first thing that popped into my head. [Nathan]: That is fantastic. Might be the best answer that we've gotten for that one yet. I don't know. Leave me alone. [Tim]: I think that's the most truthful one you could get on the show. Right? [Nathan]: Yes and I appreciate that. So... [Chris]: That's good. [Nathan]: So number 2, what are some bad recommendations you hear in our profession? What are bad recommendations you hear all the time? [Tim]: Bad recommendations. You know I don't think anything is ever a bad recommendation. I think you just...you're just…you're just very misguided, right. You just…people don't realize all the ins and outs of how difficult it is to buy and sell a home.  Recommendations…Gosh I hear that every day. I hear bad recommendations every day. I will say that rather than giving examples you can probably tell by my face. My partner says that I have facial trots. And I can't hide it anymore. So when I hear something really weird or wonky my face just turns. So you know I don't say anything. You just kind of tell from my face. [Chris]: You just see the reaction.  [Tim]: You see the reaction. So I have been told that I need to really control my facial [laughter]… [Christian]: Start doing Botox. Just numb your face. [Chris]: Yeah it will tone it all down. Just nothing to worry. [Tim]: Yeah just gotta tone it down. That's probably you know sort of recommendations I hear all the time. I will tell you that. Just kind of be careful of that. [Nathan]: Got you. So 3rd one. What is a book that greatly influenced your life?  [Tim]: A book that greatly influenced…Who reads books? OK. [Nathan]: Audible counts. [Tim]: Yes I am a bad millennial. I like to have something in my hands. No this is… [Nathan]: I am a book nerd so… [Tim]: Oh you're a book nerd. You know I am a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia and I do like reading a lot of of very you know I don't want to say Christiany but you know it's very interesting reads. You know things that are kind of up in the air and Scrutiny…One of my favorite books is the Scrutiny of Letters. It was…I re-read that book not long ago and it's a very good book. I would recommend it. [Christian]: Allegory. Allegory story. [Tim]: Yeah. I just like the title too. I mean Scrutiny of Letters. It's kind of like…you know. [Nathan]: I will tell you I like books. I do have to do a quick plug. For those that do listen and like to know what book…Right now I am reading a book called Men's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. If you haven't read great lately go grab this book. It's really interesting. He was an Auschwitz survivor. If you are having or struggling with your why in your life, go read this book. It will speak to you. Great book right now. This one right here. You can't see it because you're listening but those that are recording right now can, but an awesome book. So anyway, onto that. Well best answer ever. Leave me alone. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. [Tim]: [laughter]. [Christian]: I have a quick question as we're wrapping up here. So you own your own brokerage. So you're a managing agent. So are you selling real estate yourself? [Tim]: I am. I am a compete broker.  [Christian]: OK. So you're doing that [inaudible]. Whatever. We know what you mean. You're still involved in NAR? [Tim]: I am. [Christian]: Right you're still committee. So what's…What's…I mean I don't know how you find time for all of that. But what's kind of your next move? [Tim]: Mainly. [Christian]: Because of your involvement in the association. [Tim]: You know in this…as long as you can constantly serve and you know I don't mean that there is always ways to always get involved. You know I am a big Our Pack guy. I am a big global guy. Big diversity guy. You put your hands in a lot of business.  But the thing as…the important thing rather than what I want to do or what I see myself in 5 years with what the realtor world is really more of “Let's get everyone else involved too”. I think that's just really important on a local level. State level. International level. You know we hear all these different stories about “The realtor committee doesn't represent me” or certain things, “Certain communities don't represent me well”. We can find you a mission. We can find you a way to get involved. And I think that's the really more important story than trying to find where I really need to be plugged in the next life. We can all…We're all…We're realtors. We're selling real estate. We can bounce around. We can serve wherever we're asked. [Christian]: Yeah. Do you…Do you believe that non realtor, non-members have an ability to serve and make an impact without being a member of the NAR. Is there…is there diversity in that or… [Tim]: Yeah, so actually there's 4 multicultural associations that NAR recognizes rather. There is the agency of real estate association of America. There is a national association in… [Christian]: ARIA.  [Tim]: Yes ARIA. There is the national association of Gay and Lesbian in Real Estate professionals. NAGLREP. And National association of real estate brokers for the black community and the national association of real estate…of Hispanic real estate professional. NAHREP. So you know just because you're a realtor…You know if you're not a realtor and you want to get involved with some of our multicultural associations that's where to go.  And so they make an impact on their own communities itself. So yeah you don't have to be a realtor. We would always encourage you to be one but if you want to be one. But even if you're a part time or…you can still make an impact because there is so much to do in our world. And yes we don't have…There's only 24 hours in a day and we don't have a lot of time but you know there is always…You can shrug along and you can find something to do.  [Chris]: I couldn't agree more Tim. Thank you so much for joining us today. We got a lot of really great nuggets both on the fair housing side, both on your background and getting involved. For anybody who wants to reach out how can they find you? [Tim]: You can find me again…My name is really easy just think of the fictional American character of Charles Helson and think of Tim Hur. Other than that you can find me on Facebook. I am easily available on social media all summer. It's always nice when you get hacked and someone makes a fake profile of you which I found very recently but yeah you can't miss me.  But you can find me…the easiest way is just google me and find me. If you don't google yourself and do a vanity search of yourself I highly recommend it. [Chris]: Definitely. Awesome. Everybody thank you so much for tuning in for this episode of re:Think Real Estate. Catch us back next week as we celebrate our 50th anniversary…not anniversary. Our 50th episode.  [Tim]: Congrats you guys. [Chris]: Could be a long year. But thank you Tim for joining us. Everybody if you haven't go to rtrepodcast.com. Put in your email and name in the little subscription form and be alerted every time an episode drops. So you can hear great nuggets from guys like Tim Hur. Thank you and we'll see you next Monday.  [music] [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

This week's lecture is on the subject of "Off Colors" plus Chris REALLY wants to watch the next episode. You can catch us on Twitter @nothinbutstatic or mail@nothingbutstatic.co.uk

This episode is the the first of a series of interviews exploring how entrepreneurs scale up their serviced accommodation businesses. In this first episode Chris interviews Hitesh Mistry as he talks through the different ways to scale serviced accommodation businesses, and the ways he has personally done so with his own business. Hitesh is owner of Vision Lets who provide rooms with a difference: Modern, Bright and Clean. Hitesh runs Vision Lets with his wife and focusses a lot on the lifestyle that being a landlord gives, and the passive income it can bring.   Show Notes: The Serviced Accommodation Podcast is a show brought to you by Chris Poulter and Ritchie Mazivanhanga aimed at new and experienced property investors alike. With each show we help you Start, Systemise and Scale your Serviced Accommodation Business. If you would like to ask us a question or discuss anything in this episode, please join The Serviced Accommodation Podcast Community on Facebook, and ask away. To listen to more episodes or get more information go to www.thesapodcast.com. Find out more about Hitesh and Vision Lets at: http://visionlets.com/       Transcription: Chris: Hi, I am Chris. Hitesh: Hi, I am Hitesh. Chris: And welcome to the Serviced Accommodation podcast.   Chris: As you may have noticed, it is not Richie joining today, we have got our test results for our series on scaling up. So, we have been working Hitesh for a little while now and having been through the process of scaling up his business, and we thought it would be really interesting and useful (process) to talk about that painful process; right. So we are just going to have a kind of chat about the process you have been through, if there is any (parts) you can help people with — that kind of thing. So it would be really useful for everyone, just to start off with — to kind of under a bit more about you; who you are; where you are based; what you have kind of been through; and tell us your background career? Hitesh: Yeh nice one. Thank Chris. Thanks for inviting me today, I really appreciate that. I think when you said you have been working with me for a little while, a little bit longer than a little while. I think nearly around two years. Chris: Really! That long. Hitesh: Yeah, it’s been quite a long time and it’s definitely been a journey. I’ll tell you my background. It’s been a great journey though. Really hard. My background, I am actually a corporate person. I work for huge corporate conglomerate, global company, for ten years. I haven’t been a serial entrepreneur at all. Hitesh ordinary average guy, you know, just… Chris: That’s amazing. I find it hard to like envisage you in that whole corporate world. I guess the whole time I have known you, you have kind of been out of that you see. Hitesh: Yeah, exactly right. That’s exactly correct. But you know, I have done a lot of academic studying, I have went through the kind of traditional study modes, the university, I have got an MBA as well. So academically, I have really studied a lot, I have really always (sealed) myself in the kind of corporate world. But back in 2009, my wife and I, we started buying properties — our own properties — as buy to let. And that kind of got into the flavour of how we invested in property. And actually around 2004/2003… Sorry, 2013/2014, around there. Now we have we have get that decade… I started getting a little bit itchy in my corporate role and I was thinking, we have started building up a property portfolio, and the income we were getting was quite good. If you kind of called it this passive income whatever. And I really thought of, you know, if I can do it more in property, and left in the kind of corporate traditional job side of things, I know it’s a bit of cliché but I read that kind of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book. It really did flick on a lot of light in my mind actually. Chris: It might be a cliché but it genuinely does, kind of, I think the word is paradigm. I think it’s a great word, I don’t really understand it but certainly kind of, you can look at something and see it in a completely new light, and that’s certainly what it did for me. Because suddenly you will go, I can see the mistakes I am making, my money comes in and I spend it. Hitesh: Yes. Chris: In I just… The money comes in and I put even a fraction of that away to invest in assets and then start sending your money from that, that’s the wealth. It’s such a simple concept and yet so powerful; isn’t it? Hitesh: Really powerful. Really, really powerful. And really resonates very strongly enough for a while. And also, at that time, 2014, my son has been born and he is three years old. My wife was, in 2015, pregnant with my daughter. And I thought to myself, you know actually, in the first three years of my son’s life, actually… In fairness, because my job was a (field) based role, I generally have a lot of time and freedom to manage my own diary and my customers I was working with, so, I do get to spend quite a lot of time with him, probably more so than an average kind of person. But, I wanted more than that, I wanted to spend even more time with my son and my family, and I really saw property as a vehicle to do that. And those few things in my mind started to make me think perhaps I should leave my corporate job and go full time property and kind of just go through it and see what happens. Because another thing that I thought was that if I go through it, even if it doesn’t work out, I am young enough just to still go and get another job again. Very employable in that regard. So, if I don’t try that I might have a lot of regrets and that’s really my background and how I got into property. Chris: So what was it that kind of made you take the leap then — the final leap if you like, from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial world? Did you kind of have something (lined up); did you just go — I have got focus? Hitesh: I mean the property portfolio was supporting us, not obviously replacing the whole income (with me), but, it was a nice cushion. Chris: Yeah. So it was kind of a safety blanket, if you like. Whatever happens you would have some money coming in, at least enough to kind of live on. Even though it may be not as much as you used to; right. Hitesh: Absolutely. But even it was still a just in time because Kim, my wife, she was on maternity, so actually she was picking up a new kid. All of that was becoming — it was a bit of a risk, really. Chris: Particularly, because she is on maternity. Even that child too is on the way as well. Hitesh: Exactly. The cost are about to go through the roof. I kind of leave my job… Chris: So, was that something that Kim has always supported you in or was it kind of a battle? Because I think that a lot of people struggle with is that, you kind of start to come into this entrepreneurial world and you have a kind of mind-set around what you are doing. And if your partner doesn’t share that mind-set, it can be very hard to kind of communicate on the same level. So was that something that you struggled with or…? Hitesh: Yeah. I think Kim was — she was so supportive, like really supportive. You know, if you really feel that something you want you want to do, and it’s a dream, then go for it, I will fully support you — we will find a way of doing it. She really gave me that extra confidence to take that step (how) you want and really go through it. The other really interesting thing as I have always been involved with — personal development, and psychology, and mind-set, and believe (system), and things like that — being involved in practicing, and trying to improve myself, and make myself more accountable for man years. And I thought to myself, you know what, let’s just go through it, one way or another I will just make it work. Do you know what I mean? I think when you really are focused on something, like very focused, I think then you really do make it work. Especially, if you then say to yourself, you know; we needed to kind of live a good life as well. I don’t need more pressure but, it is true that… For me, I thought I didn’t think working and going major on property was going to work for me — that I just don’t think I would have the focus. I need to really, really, really focus in one thing only. Chris: Yeah. And I would say you are absolutely right. It’s very hard to really make something successful unless you have the focus around it. Certainly for years I have like two or three businesses, really. At least three businesses going on at any one time, and none of them really did (anything) because they didn’t get the full focus and attention that they needed to really start growth. So, now I completely understand that. When you went full time in property then; what were you focusing on that time; was it single let still? Hitesh: I went for the rent to rent HMO model. That’s what we went for. So we did setup our own HMO that we purchased, we just completed it, it was getting it to go live, so that was really exciting time. And then really focused it on rent to rent HMOs — that was what we focused on. Chris: Okay. So I guess that’s kind of natural progression, you bought an asset which is an HMO. You have kind of been through that process, seeing how it works. And so, you know what, I could benefit from a lot of these cash flow without a lot of our capital input by taking on rent to rent. Hitesh: Yeah. Definitely. Didn’t quite go very straight forward though, it took me seven months to get my first rent to rent HMO. Chris: Yeah, I am sure that’s quite a common path; isn’t it. Because here is an interesting thing, people think if they are going to and get, say, three properties. And you won one every two months and then after six months you are having three properties. But it took you seven months to get your first HMO, but, on rent to rent; how many did you get in the kind of six months or so after that? Hitesh: Yeah. Then they started to come through. (They first start to flow) through after that, until we got another four or five, quite quickly after that. Chris: So it’s amazing how that looks; isn’t it. And it is kind of putting the time on it first. And you know when we are working with people in the quick-start program, you have to keep reminding them that okay, you are paying the work, and you are paying the work, and it doesn’t feel like it’s paying back, yeah, but it’s exactly the situation which you found several months of work and after six and a half months you just have been going kind of mental. You know what we are doing. Hitesh: Definitely. That really does reminds me of about pushing a snowball up the hill. Do you know what I mean, this analogy, you know it’s hard work — pushing up the hill. And you think; what am I doing? This is not working. You can see, there is (someone mentioned), but it’s hard sometime to really think, you know what, I am close to doing it. And then all of a sudden something happens, it starts to come together, and you get a break. And then that snowball tips over and it starts to roll down the other side of the hill, and the momentum becomes somewhat self-fulfilling. You know, you still keep the focus, you still got to keep going. But, things starts happening for you, which is really nice. But you have got to do that bit first, of pushing up the hill, and the belief, and to keep going, and all other things. Chris: Absolutely. It doesn’t matter what strategy on a guaranteed rent, for instance, the kind of typical one way. You are having to get around with the agents and explaining what we are doing, you feel like hitting break all of the whole time. And just throughout you are saying, eventually, you kind of hit that critical marks; don’t you. Management is exactly the same. At first you are having to, (it will be out there), kind of trying to find people you might be able to help with it. And then eventually you kind of get to that point where really people are referring people to you, or people are giving you a ring. So, it doesn’t matter what kind of structures you are using, there is a way that kind of critical (mass point); isn’t it. And a lot of effort required beforehand. Hitesh: Yeah. Very much that. Chris: So, if you kind of quit your corporate life and went rent to rent, which presumably a cash flow strategy. So what was it that attracted you to then do another cash flow strategy on top of that, in serviced accommodation? Hitesh: This whole thing was kind of around with rent to rent HMO that you are going to make at least £500 a month. Chris: I was for about a thousand pound a month per property, and I was about to say that sounds very familiar. Often that’s said about SA as well. Hitesh: Exactly. And that was powerful, it got me into the rent to rent HMO. And the reality is that it was really different, quite honestly, really different. My result weren’t like a thousand pound a month, not at all. My first one wasn’t even £500 pound a month. So, actually if you look at it (and) the breakeven point, because you got a furniture. Actually I am still trading at a loss, in the first… As soon as you go live you are trading at loss. You know, that takes at least twelve months to break even. Chris: Yeah, that’s true. Hitesh: So that’s really interesting because I thought, well actually this is not as great as I thought it was going to be. You know, if I was taking five out, which I end up being leveraging so that to finance the outlay for it, but this will take a whole year to break even. Well okay, I have got to hang in there, it’s a waiting game… it will come good, that’s fine. But then I think maybe naively I fell into a similar trap with serviced accommodation. Chris: I was going to say because that sounded very, very familiar to me. Because people do guarantee rent and a cashless strategy, but, you have got to claw back all that cash which you presented in the first place, and that’s usually a six to twelve month period. And of course ironically, most of the people doing this are doing it because they need money now. Hitesh: Yes, that’s right. Chris: So it always depends how you look at it. You can look at the money as well but now we have got the cash flow. But in financial terms if you don’t have the money then you are going to have to borrow the money or come to some arrangement and work with someone else, which means that you are not going to get that cash flow from day one. Hitesh: That’s correct and the other thing that attracted me to serviced accommodation or changing was, I am a sort of person that I write like to, if you like, diversify, so I don’t really want all my eggs in one basket anyway. So, having the HMOs that (will) build up the rent to rent, you know, that was good and I thought to myself, well, I have got a good focus on this but you we have got rooms got rooms that are filling with pushing the market rent, good properties. But, I always worry about tomorrow, (if it’s) going to change. So, having a new strategy and a new property business, if you like, means I am kind of de-risking myself in that regard. So as long as I keep the focus on the other thing and have the focus on this new thing, and I felt it was contradictory, you know, but we had systemized quite well, the rent to rent business, the HMO business. So, I felt the time was right that I could spend some more time now, looking at a new strategy and serviced accommodation was what I wanted to do. Chris: Yeah, I think you are completely right. You need to focus at first, to actually build the business up, but then once you know how everything works, you can put systems and teams in place, you know, leveraging quite (hard). Okay. So you kind of make the position into moving to SA, so did you start looking for deals or…? Hitesh: That’s a foundational kind of trading and stuff like that, reading up and trying to understand how it works and comes together conceptually and theoretically. And then went out and started to look for… Actually, you know what happened was, the first deal was a rent to rent, which originally was going to be an HMO. Yeah, it was going to continue to be an HMO. And the builder who was helping to do the work said, oh, there is a lady –you know, it’s quite close by — that’s operating serviced accommodation. And obviously being fresh in my mind from reading and learning and trading and what’s not. The (word) as an interesting thing, I haven’t originally consider it for this property but (why not) consider it. So, she and I had a really good chat and she has been doing it for about one year, so, she had gotten some good underground experience, and we went through some numbers with what she was doing, and I thought it was really interesting. I have done some further research and felt that this could be a really good opportunity. So, we then went for it and we tried to a serviced accommodation instead of HMO. That’s kind of how the first one started. Chris: Cool. So tell us a little bit about that first property, you said it was like an HMO. So where you kind of doing it as rooms or studios? Hitesh: Studios. So, it’s a rent to rent deal, doing the guaranteed rents deal. And seven units in that whole studio, self-contained units. So you have quite nice, quite attractive proposition for the marketplace. But I thought if I can create a mixture and get an amount of money running a serviced accommodation, it was well worth trying. And the numbers really look like they were going to step up quite well for it. So, that’s what we have done, we went for it. When I say we, that’s really me, but the lady was very much helping me. We basically agree that she would help me with the day to day operation, so it wasn’t very much a (we) operation. She came in and she was absolutely brilliant at helping to get things moving in that property. Really-really good. Chris: Does she have like an interest in anything or was she just being helpful? Hitesh: No. Chris: Was she doing it for free? Hitesh: No. We obviously set things up so that she would be rewarded on a commission kind of basis, so I set it as a commission type basis. Because I really wanted her to over deliver and really help us to… I wanted us to have some skin in the game. Do you know I mean. So, she is not investing any money in the property itself but if she is going to provide money from services if you like. I guess what it was really. And she was pretty much handy with everything, from the initial setting up on the portals and platforms, to the pricing, to the guest experience, the after sales, all that stuff, she was doing all of that. So, we set it on a commission type basis and we started… It flew out of the door, to be honest. It started really-really well. Chris: Yeah. And it started with reasonable scale as well, you are not just like taking (on the)… I think the standard way would be take on a two or three bed apartments, and see how I have got to scale from there, so go in with seven studios. Hitesh: Yeah. Absolutely. Chris: So, what do you think you struggled with the most when you first get started? Hitesh: In terms of that property or like… Chris: Just common, in general. You know coming into SA, it is very different from anything else you might see in property, it’s a real whole business; isn’t it. So there is so many different moving parts to it, from the systems you might have in the background to the end product which people have to get right every time, or they get, you know, you don’t leave guests unclean towels, your (linen) or anything like that, Through to the kind of bookkeeping aspects for it. So it’s such a kind of high arena really, SA. Or was there anything specifically which you kind of struggles with, or it was new to you, or did you feel like it was just a big kind of learning curve but you took it all on board quite easily. Hitesh: To be honest with you, I was terrible. I didn’t get very involved with the business at all. I went for an approach where I had leveraged this lady, because she has the experience, she knew what she was doing, and she was delivering pretty much everything, and I didn’t get involved really with it. I went back to this idea of spending a lot of time with my family and I was quite happy because I have leveraged out the whole function to her. But, in hindsight, I think that’s the bit I struggled with in that… And the e-mist book is such a good book. Early on in that book they talked about delegation by abdication, you know, leveraging by abdication. You give someone a function but you don’t actually set the KPIs and measurable, to track actually how well they are delivering. It’s fine to leverage someone, but if you don’t really know what’s going on then what’s the point. All I could (say is that) in a month money was coming in and I was making profit, (first of all), happy with that. But, by making tweaks and changes you can make that profit even greater, you know that’s the beauty of the business; isn’t it. So, in some ways and it sounds bad, I kind of leveraged someone. But, I didn’t really set anything up in terms of KPIs and measurables, to really understand the business myself in any real detail. So I think I probably struggle with that because obviously at some point things started to change. You know demand changes, or the amount of profit I am making is changing, although I am actually… Chris: And then you have no idea why the income is going down. Hitesh: Yeah, I don’t know why. Because I don’t have a grasp on the business, and then you are really relying on someone to tell you about your business and it’s not even bloody their business. Sorry, I know that sounds a bit ridiculous. Chris: That’s fair enough. It’s easy enough to kind of fall into, but then obviously at some point you kind of identify that risk and started involving yourself a lot more in the day to day operation of the business. Hitesh: Yeah, very much so. And I think that’s probably about the time when you and I got involved because I am really a great believer of kind of working with people to kind of create best practice and systems, and have people that have good experience in what you are trying to do and we had a really great chat and I think (a) really good connection. And it was from then that we started working together and you had helped me to kind of see the whole parts of the business, the different parts of the business, and to get me more involved in it, so that I have got more control — that was it — I think you really helped me to get more control of my business, but at the same time keeping this lady happy. Because (certainly) now I am starting to meddle in what she has been doing. But I have to because it is my business and I have got to get control of it, you know, and (deal) with myself in that regard and actually make sure that we are running a very smooth and profitable business for everyone. So that was the next kind of step, really. Chris: Yeah. And it was taking it from a, you said, leverage by abdication, into the (thing) that we always talk about, the best way to leverage is you build a system get someone into the system and monitor their performance through KPIs. Hitesh: Definitely. Chris: And so, as I said, SA is quite a complex beast; isn’t it. So it’s just getting your head around all the different areas of that aspect and building your own way of doing things. It was what then kind of really built into a business for you as opposed to, essentially, more of a kind of hands off investment before, I’d guess. So, what pointed you to say that you were going to start scaling up your business and from the kind of original units that you took on? Hitesh: So, I always had in my mind… And again I think it’s one thing that we talked about in one of our mentoring sessions. Because I had taken this lady on and I was paying her on a commission type basis. I was quite happy and understood that the concept of leveraging, you know, a staff member. So I was really happy, then I thought well, we definitely got capacity to take on more properties. And if I can do that I still have really good time free, but still making more money, we would be foolish not to do that. So, that was the idea that I really wanted to kind of move that forward and just take on some more properties. Yeah I obviously wanted to take more profit and be more profitable. But going out there and starting to leverage some of the relationship we have been building over for the last two years now, then it was good because some of the good properties were coming and we thought, okay well we can leverage this. Get more properties on, we have got the capacity to deliver and the expertise now, to deliver on a product. And that was just really a no-brainer to try that. And then obviously with us working together, Chris, having more systems and controls in place, meant that I could be more kind of strategic, in terms of my involvement with the business and make sure that we are steering in the right way, and that we were really focusing on creating a very nice, really good customer experience, product, that was good for them, good for us as well. Chris: Yeah. And that focus on the end product, which I think when you have got one property your first one and you are setting up you have such focus and attention to detail around it. And as you have started to scale this property, the biggest thing and the most important thing, which can kind of get lost along the way. Is that you have got people in all this different mechanical aspects of the business but you did have to be keeping an eye on the end product. You know, in the guest experience, (multiple) customers actually going in and experiencing. Very important for sure, very easy to get lost. So when you were kind of going from that point and to scale up the business; what kind of models where you looking out for that? Hitesh: Rent to rent. That was it, that’s all I knew, to be honest. That was it. Chris: You had a bit of a false start with that really; didn’t you? Hitesh: Yeah. And no one ever told me about something called VAT. Chris: Until we spoke. Hitesh: Until we spoke. And you said to me… are you joking; are you kidding me. Because that’s really a game changer, and not in a good way. You know that’s life. Chris: Not a kind of positive impact really. Hitesh: No. Chris: So we kind of have a look at your portfolio and I have to look at the different methods around it. In fact I think yours was genuinely the first review I ever did, you know, a couple of years back. And we have kind of been introducing you to some of the other modules and management was certainly one of those modules. And I seem to remember when we kind of looked over it. You went well, this is kind of a no-brainer; why am I doing this when I could be doing management, taking a similar amount of money and not having to put any capital (in); right. Hitesh: Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s also interesting because, you know, going back to like owning your own assets, this kind of obsession of, sometimes you want to buy into that property, we want our own assets and we get a yield that comes off it, Actually a management module… You know, you don’t have the assets but the yield, and it’s fantastic, you know, you get a great amount of money from an asset that you are just managing but you don’t have any of that necessary (recycled) with it. You know all the capital outlay (actually) get going either. And it’s a really scalable module as well, which when you opened my eyes to. Chris: Yeah. And I think we were looking at your financial targets, and we went okay so you need X many management properties to achive that andyou were off then, going straight to find these properties. Hitesh: That’s right. Chris: Okay. So, you started to scale the kind of management module, so how has that been going for you now? Hitesh: It has gone really great, really-really well, it has been really game changing. We have taken on some pretty quite diverse properties, we have got some one bed property, we have got quite a few two bed properties, we have also gotten really interesting units that, you know, quite a large scale, and the management fee on those have been really great. So, it has been a really enjoyable journey, to move up from. And then also with our rent to rent properties, we have also restructured that — you helped me with restructuring that. So moving away from rent to rent to become a more management property. By selling them as investments to other people but retaining the management on them. So, which have helped me from that capital perspective, in terms of paying off on my capital debt that I secured into the business to get going in the first early days, helped me to get rid of some of that. But I retained the management fee on that as well, which was really-really nice. That’s very scalable than to do it that way. Chris: (I remember) because of that impact, stepping away from that and taking it below the VAT threshold, actually making very similar amounts of money, but you are also getting this nice capital input from having sales and deals. So, how many guaranteed rentals do you operate now? Hitesh: Now we have two. Chris: So kind of scaled it all team way back to below the VAT threshold and all the rest of your business is around the management module. Hitesh: Yeah. Chris: And so, obviously you have scaled your management business to a reasonable level now, and that’s kind of the point that this series of interviews is really talking to people and seeing how they have scaled up. Because I know there is, to some degree, a sentiment now around scaling up in SA, though it can be very tricky, and very hard; so what do you feel were the most important elements to you kind of scaling your business up to the level that it is now? Hitesh: It’s really good question. I think there are few things… When you say there is one thing — there is a few things. I think when you start to scale up it can be quite daunting, you know when you are taking on more and more and more, it can be quite daunting. And actually you come to this kind of feeling, I don’t know if it’s a psychological feeling. And when you think oh crikey, things are moving quite fast now, and wow… You already probably can actually do it, you start to have a little bit of self doubt. There is also responsibility, you always have responsibility to the landlord that you are representing. And you know as management, you have a lot of responsibility to your staff as you scale up and take more people on. You have a responsibility to the customers that are going to experience the product, and try to get that. And all that combined, for me, it starts to create anxiety and worry. So the mind-set stuff was really important for me, very-very important, I really went back to my (ways) to always do, which was running in the morning, doing a really early morning routine, I am very much a morning person. And starting my day with time for myself, to really get my mind-set in the right place so that I can really perform on my business. That was honestly so important. It’s hard because sometimes you can’t directly attribute what you are doing today to your mind-set or some other things that you do on a day to day basis, but for me I am convinced it’s helping me to perform and do really well. Chris: So do you feel that a routine and it’s very important to kind of bring structure to an entrepreneur’s life. Hitesh: Yeah, I do. Chris: You know, on the basis that you have not go to be in the office at 08:30 or 09:00 and you have not got someone looking over your shoulder to see if you are working or not and that type of thing. Hitesh: Yeah, I think so. I am very much a quite structured near kind of person, anyway, organised. So for me it’s very important. I mean I do think it is, you can easily lose days, weeks on end, if you are not careful and you can get so easily dragged into things you shouldn’t be doing. You know as you scale up and get more involved, you know, you can easily get dragged into organizing the cleaning rota. Fielding the calls for the customers that are not happy or really happy. And actually you have got to really be very disciplined to what you want to do with your day that’s going to deliver and add more value to the guest, or your business, or your staff, or whatever it might be. I mean that’s definitely one, the psychology mind-set side of things. That was massive for me. The second thing was really your numbers and your accounts, and your profit and loss, and that sort of thing. For me, it’s a very critical area, such a critical area. I think there is many of us, me included, would go on this journey and have no clue whatsoever about that business. And I don’t mean in a harsh way… But honestly it’s such a major problem, I think that we go up there and we are so focused on getting more sales and bringing more properties, just go and get them, just go and get them, set them up, just go, go, go. But actually when you measure them, some of them could be performing not very well, or with some small changes you can make them perform really-really well. You know, with some, you got a cull and say this is not the right way I am doing things, get rid of them. But you only know that, for me, you only know that through your numbers, and you have to be (so) on your numbers, also setting up KPIs, I never had KPIs. My only KPIs was the kind of occupancy (rate). Chris: And we both say what a great gauge that is. Hitesh: Having KPIs in place, having your accounts, and actually looking at them all the time, like all the time, and making all your decisions based on it, you know, it’s very-very important. I think for me, scaling up, that’s a massive part of it. Chris: Yeah. Definitely. Because otherwise, it’s very focus on scaling and lose the performance aspect of it. And realizing you are not really performing where you need to be. And actually it’s part of growth, and that’s always going to happen to various degrees. But like you say that, what you found certainly is that the biggest impact you can have on that is by having focus around the KPIs, having focus around the reports, and checking in with them a couple of times a week to see where you are at, what can you do to impact things, make a difference, etcetera. Hitesh: Yeah, definitely. And you can become very busy otherwise, just running around as you grow; but is good running. Good way of measuring. So that was very-very crucial for part of scaling up. I think also really embracing and leveraging people, systems, technology — huge — and what can be done with technology is just (depending on that)… But so powerful because it can give you really low cost, automation, much smarter way of doing things, and then we have talked about… And low cost can really make a difference to a business. You know leveraging people, very important, you know, part of scaling up as well. You can’t do everything, you are going to have the right people in place. Chris: You wouldn’t want to be there Hitesh: No, you wouldn’t… Chris: It’s very hard; isn’t it? It’s very hard to let go of various aspects, you know, controlling the business. Hitesh: Yeah. A hundred percent. And then also having peers, people that are operating similar business to you and being in the right network of people, I think it’s really important too. You know, regular meeting up with people, having contact with other people. You know, having people around you that have best practice, and are operating best practice, that know their stuff, you know, it’s really crucial to surround yourself with people like that as well. Then the part of the mentoring and the coaching that we do together for this few years that we have been working together, Chris, it’s been really vital, because it’s part of that network. And when you are not sure, because you don’t ever have all the answers when you are not sure, you got to better ask somebody. And get answers to that instead of reinvesting the wheel, you can implement things that other people have done that have served them and worked really well for them. You know, you put it into your business and yeah, great, you are seeing almost immediate results. Chris: And it’s also a kind of motivation as well; isn’t it. I was talking with Graham, he is also a member of the boardroom, and he was saying how when he comes each month, it’s like if someone has come along and they have taken on an extra block, and he is like, okay I better get my ass in gear, I feel like I want to come back… He sees someone else and they have implemented a system which (is working) really well in their business, he is like okay, I am actually going to do that. So there is a lot of that kind of peer driving your business forward as well, in terms of healthy competition, if you like. Or getting ideas and kind of wanting to do that. And if I can put words into your mouth, I think probably the element in your case was just scaling, and we have already kind of touched on it really with just getting the strategy right, because obviously if you continue to scale using the (guarantee rent) around what you are doing, then that would have ended quite badly. And so it was (all the) things are fundamentally important but getting that strategy right, I think without getting that in the first place, there is no foundations to build off. Chris: Very true. And that is a great way, Chris. Again I think if you try and fly on your own — somehow you would be aware of some of this stuff. And when you surround yourself with people that are doing same business, operating a similar way, ahead of you then you can learn, you can learn and you can review things and go, do you know what, this is not quite working, this is the reason why it’s not working, you know let’s change approach, let’s try something new, something different. And then you can explore it, and then implement it and try and see what happens. But the strategy — that was a real big game changer, that whole VAT thing, changing the module, going in the management module, and scaling upwards, it was a really game changer for me. It’s a very massive thing, thank you Chris. Hitesh: So we talked about (build) to a scale module, and we heavily recommend to people that (are often) just scaling up straight away. You build a module, say two bed properties using half (mile) of your city center, targeting trades, and (tourists)… Whatever your module might be, on each specific module you test that module and make sure it works in the way you expect before scaling up. So if you are talking to someone who have maybe been through that process, who have been operating it, you know, two or three properties for six and twelve months and now they are looking to really push forward and scale their business in the same way that you have; what kind of advice would you give to them? Hitesh: Set up your KPIs, early (days), really early (days). Get your measurables in place and how you are going to measure it — your growth — I think that’s really crucial. I would say get up your game, kind of like mind-set psychology wise, you know, really, when you go to any level, it is very (testing) of the mind; do you know what I mean. And I think you are going to be prepared for that, and I think that’s a big thing. And make sure you got the right kind of structure in place, strategy and support in place for that next phase. You know people that you can turn to, work with, (help) with, and have the right systems, and process, and people in place. That’s what I would say. Chris: Thank you. Thanks for joining us today Hitesh. I hope everyone found that very interesting and also very useful. Hitesh: Thank you Chris so much for your help. And thanks for inviting me today, I appreciate it. Chris: Cool. Taking you. Hitesh: Fantastic.   Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast. To hear the latest on serviced accommodation. If you are looking to start, systemise or scale your serviced accommodation business, visit www.thesapodcast.com to see how we could help you further.          

Welcome Panelteers, we’re Breaking the Panel! Charles, Paul, and Chris bring you the humor, the fun, and the ever-evolving conversations you’ve come to expect. WOW, join the hosts as they boldly go into one of the longest segments we’ve ever had outside a movie panel show. It’s all about The Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery. We’ll tell you what we think you let us know what we got right or wrong. There are strong opinions voiced, McFall claims a win, and Paul and Sean, #FotS , are not fans of CBS All Access. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is still causing debate with your hosts and one of us has a slight change of heart. Danny Elfman’s recent comments have Chris REALLY worried about some possible musical appropriation and questioning Danny for the first time ever. Finally, Ron Pearlman has something to say about the new Hellboy and…it’s…concise?     Be sure to check out Breaking the Panel for full show notes, links, and our archives!   Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, and Chris Wisdom Producer at Large: Mike Woodard Publisher:  Chris Wisdom Breaking the Panel is brought to you by the Giant Size Team Up Network --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

Welcome Panelteers, we’re Breaking the Panel! Charles, Paul, and Chris bring you the humor, the fun, and the ever-evolving conversations you’ve come to expect. WOW, join the hosts as they boldly go into one of the longest segments we’ve ever had outside a movie panel show. It’s all about The Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery. We’ll tell you what we think you let us know what we got right or wrong. There are strong opinions voiced, McFall claims a win, and Paul and Sean, #FotS , are not fans of CBS All Access. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is still causing debate with your hosts and one of us has a slight change of heart. Danny Elfman’s recent comments have Chris REALLY worried about some possible musical appropriation and questioning Danny for the first time ever. Finally, Ron Pearlman has something to say about the new Hellboy and…it’s…concise?     Be sure to check out Breaking the Panel for full show notes, links, and our archives!   Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, and Chris Wisdom Producer at Large: Mike Woodard Publisher:  Chris Wisdom Breaking the Panel is brought to you by the Giant Size Team Up Network --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

This week in our twice-weekly look at Season 10 of Big Brother the guys let you know who is the third person to leave the house, "Power of" Vito has some more impressions for you, Chris REALLY hates a former houseguest and it seems like BB production is getting even cheaper and cheaper.

Albie and Chris are joined by "Life Coach Mike" Reddin and their mother, Caroline. In this episode: -Albie and Chris uncomfortably talk about birth control with mom in the room -Albie and Chris uncomfortably talk about sleeping in the nude with mom in the room -Albie and Chris REALLY uncomfortably talk about preparing breakfast in the nude with mom in the room -"Naked breakfast is not what makes marriages last" -Albie and Chris hear some unsettling details about their father -How much should you fart in front of your significant other?   Have questions for Albie and Chris? Send them in! DearAlbieMailbag@gmail.com And please subscribe to not miss an episode!