Marketing and Brand Management in the Shared Living Sector

Here's a snapshot of our conversation in Episode 12
✔️Marketing Budgets and Strategies: How are budgets allocated and what strategies are most effective?
✔️Focus Groups and Surveys: Utilising these tools to understand resident needs and satisfaction.
✔️Brand and Investing in Brand Awareness: Budget considerations, who is responsible, and the importance of consistency.
✔️Staffing Structures: Are current staffing levels sufficient to deliver a brand experience?
✔️The Life of a Consultant: A day in the life and the real roles they play in shaping the industry.

Housed: The Shared Living Podcast aims to bring the latest news, views and insights to the shared living sector.

Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the 12th episode of How's the Shared Living podcast with me, Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

and Dini Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists, Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists.

SPEAKER_03: 0:14

What have we been up to this week then, Sarah?

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

I feel like I've been traveling quite a bit, doing some really interesting projects with clients on marketing, really gearing up for next year's marketing budgets and strategies. It's only May that we're in at the moment, but we're still, you know, it's never too early to start consolidating what's worked, what hasn't worked and what you want to ask for the marketing teams. They're absolutely fundamental to budget setting. It does go hand in hand with pricing, which doesn't usually happen as early as this in the year. So we always kind of caveat it with planning for budgets and strategies is preemptive and it can't be finalised until the pricing and proposition strategies have been made. It's really great to support our clients really and give them the space and time to do this this early because I certainly as a marketing director I was never able to do it this early but by supporting our clients we can take some of that load off them to enable them to really have the time and the support to do it properly.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17

Yeah and We've been doing a bit of mentoring teams, which is one of the things that I love doing is kind of just working with teams and really supporting them to cover off the gaps that they've got and fill those gaps and things they can't always get to. The other thing that we have done this week is we've launched our latest youth forum on the attitudes of students and work, which is really interesting and really shows how much work is now a given for students, really. You know, it wasn't when I went to university, but it is now. Please go and have a look at it because it's all always an interesting read and it's great we love doing those youth forums we love working with our clients customers and really understanding where they're at what they're doing what's impacting them because that just helps us do our job better and obviously we'd like to share that for free to the sector and obviously thanks to our partners the crowd agency and dig in for supporting that to enable us to do that

SPEAKER_01: 2:07

on the subject of the youth forum though we did actually do a youth forum for a client on the interiors of their property they were looking to do a big capex investment into their social spaces but quite rightly want to know what students think so we've done a qualitative and quantitative piece of research for them as well we can't publish that because it's private to them and it's for for their benefit but like denny said we we love doing it we love literally you know speaking face to face to students and overwhelmingly i think when we do these youth forums the students are so grateful to be asked they really really value being involved and being engaged with they are not shy they're not backwards and coming forwards with their opinions. They just want the forum to be able to be asked.

SPEAKER_03: 2:50

And Dini, there's no such thing as a shameless plug. You plug away, I think, especially when it's so much value being created for the sector. That thought leadership is great and really good that you can get the sponsorship to then allow you to do that kind of work. So, you know, good on Dig In and the crowd agency there. And I know you've worked with Yugo and University Living in the past. So let's hope we can drum up some more sponsorship for some more thought leadership pieces there for sure. Me this week, seeing as I are I've been in Cornwall for a little bit, but I don't know whether I should admit this, and we'll come on to this a little bit later on, but I am slammed with work at the moment. I have taken on a lot, lots of different projects, as well as my retained work, and I'm making it all fit in in some way, shape, or form, making sure that my retained clients have enough time dedicated to them, not just as per the contract, but making sure that I can add value and get the work done. But then these projects are just super exciting, and they're things that have come across my desk because of either things that I've said on linkedin or things i'm known for being involved in some of them involving marketplaces in particular there's one project which i'm quite excited about that has a lot of potential for some really positive impact i think on the sector and the same on the esg front as well we've taken on a new client on esg within pbsa i'll talk about that soon once we've got once we're not embargoed on that and so we'll effectively be doing the outsourced esg department for that developer and operator so excited about that and my mum always says said to me, just try and do as little as work as possible for as much money as you possibly can. I'm in a nice position at the moment where I am enjoying the projects and the clients that I'm working with. And long may that continue. I know we want to talk today about various different areas of the shared living sector, but let's start with the brand and investing in that brand. Now, I'm conscious that you both will have very strong opinions of this. And actually, I think probably because of my time at Nido in particular, I understand the importance of a brand and what that means moving forward and how that can really add serious value, not just to the investment, but to the lives of the students as well. So are companies still investing in brand as much as you would like them to be? And what would you like to see moving forward?

SPEAKER_02: 5:06

First off, I guess I want to take it back a bit because when Sarah and I first came together, we did a survey out to lots of people in the in the sector both from a marketing background and those just in the sector and one of the questions we asked was what brand was and what we discovered in that is that what a marketer believes a brand is and its value is is totally different to what senior leaders have and we still get this to this day is brands are important it's only about the building and location no one cares about brand they don't care about the logo on the door and repeatedly and we always say this is we'll always say with a smile we get we get that location is important we get building is important but what a brand is is not your logo it's actually what your product is what your business is what it is you want your customer to know about your product to help them decide to come and live with you and I can't put it in plainer terms than that and I think the problem that we have still is that people just go brand logo don't care about that and it's not that and it goes much deeper than that and it goes far beyond that and I think when you know speak to people and you get them to understand that actually all we're trying to say is all that great work and all that planning that your operations team do that your marketing team do that your student experience team do that your cleaners do that's all going into who you are as a building who you are as a product and you need that good stuff needs to be told to your customers because that's going to drive them their decision too and we all know that there's not much difference in in many kind of pbsa particularly more on the co-living there is differences but p is not much different in product or price location a lot of them are on the doorstep together so what they're going to make a choice on they're going to make a choice on the product and the feeling they get when they speak to your staff the feeling they get to they speak to your customers and that's all going to start with them looking at a website looking at some of your marketing so all that feeling and all that good stuff needs to be communicated effectively and that's what brand is and i'll let sarah go on to explain whether we're seeing people have investing in brand or not but i just thought it's important that people understood what we mean when we talk about brand. The

SPEAKER_01: 7:20

thing is with brand and brand awareness is it's less tangible. You can't really put an ROI on it. You know, Neato is a great example, Dan, who have invested, you know, previously when they're in the UK in brand awareness. But something like freshers fairs or clean graffiti on pavements or coffee trucks outside student unions, that's not going to result in bookings today. It's not. It's brand awareness. They're going to take their free coffee. They're going to take their free sweets from the Freshers' Fair. And they'll probably take a photo of the clean graffiti because it's quite innovative and cool. But you can't really put a price on that. And that's what brand awareness is. It's the subliminal messaging that comes through. Like Dini said, it's not about the logo. It's those people that saw your Freshers' Fair that then saw the coffee at the Student Union. They'll then go on social media and then they'll then get a vibe from your Instagram and your TikTok about your brand. They might then hear of someone and be like, oh yeah, that brand, I've heard of them. They might then go on a review site. They might then go on a forum and it's all part of, of the brand. Now, none of that is about the logo or the colours or the font. It's the effort and the time that you put in that's a consistent message, that it sounds like you, it looks like you, it feels like you. And that's what people I think aren't investing in, because particularly if you're a management company, I mean, how does an investor buy into that when it's your brand as a management company? that is getting the brand benefit and who foots the bill for that. And I think quite a lot of these models are quite complicated and, you know, that's really, really problematic. You know, where does a budget for brand awareness sit? You know, Dan, what's your view on that?

SPEAKER_03: 9:09

When I first got to Nido, I had Steph and Mel who were phenomenal marketeers. Steph in charge of brand, Mel in charge of digital. I kind of engineered it like that. So that's how the marketing department was then structured and with me. So I knew how important brand was because of Nido and because of the track record that Nido had had, really kind of creating something out of nothing to three flagship properties that are now run by Chapter in London. So I knew how important brand was from the start. I don't think many others really do. I mean, you look at the likes of, there are some good examples of some recent rebrands or some in-housing of operations in particular, where they've gone to town on their brand like the guys at now and here students or novel student with ca ventures and you know there's various others besides and the new brands that are kind of created by homes for students or collegiate or whoever else like there is some good examples of the fact that brand can differentiate you but it's still very much that it's the same product and so i think that the difficulty that any operator has trying to differentiate themselves is that But just having a brand, like you said, a logo or signage or something to stand out, that isn't enough anymore. It has to go deeper. It has to run through to the marginal gains. And we've talked about things like the new Mies brand and website, et cetera, and how that is low energy. And therefore, they're really thinking about it and going above and beyond. I think that's what every single operator needs to be doing now, really thinking, right, what are the margins? because yes we've got a brand yes we've got you know we know our color palette and we've gone to town on the design of this but actually how simple is it for us to then get a student through the booking journey is our website any good my experience of websites in pbsa isn't great like i i think we're beholden to the pms whereby we can't streamline that booking journey and we can't get through to that kind of one-click booking as you would like to on booking.com or airbnb or wherever else are there various different reasons for that. But I still don't think that we've really nailed that side of things. But it's then through to your values and what you stand for. And it can't just be values like be kind, be nice to people, you know, look out for each other, whatever it might be, or like be good to the environment. You've got to actually stand for something now, I think, to really stand out from the crowd. You've got to have great brand, but that's got to be underpinned by some real core values that everybody can live by. So I think again i've seen some of the work that you've done in the past and i've done some of that work myself whereby you can intrinsically link your marketing values to your brand and i think that's what a lot more operators need to be doing there

SPEAKER_02: 12:05

i am back when i first joined sylvia i remember saying that our student accommodation needs an apple like where's the apple of the student accommodation world i'm still waiting and that that comes to putting like ease of convenience like ease of technology at the heart of what you do and you build a brand around that and it becomes a brand that's synonymous with easy and that people want to associate with and I think the other thing is like we don't talk about brand equity in this business and what I'd be interested in is actually those businesses that have invested in their brand have they been able to add value because they've got brand equity because people understand those brands they understand what they are and they choose to go and live with them and I think yeah we need to just change the conversation around it because it does have value you know Pepsi and all these big brands in the world don't spend millions on marketing budgets because there's no value in it they do it because of brand equity

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

what you said was quite interesting about you know the chapter buildings that were the Nido buildings now did they just subtly change the signage but everything else stayed the same I bet it didn't I bet chapter arrived in those buildings and those locations and they told people what was different and they showed people what was different they didn't just subtly like I said just you know change change the uniform and put a new sign on and if that's happening more and more you know we know that people are buying portfolios all over the place and they're changing hands but every time that happens we should be overwhelmed with brand awareness in those cities we should be like you know we should be talking about massive events and huge kind of online viral things that students can get involved in we should you know see events and we should we should feel a sense of arrival when a new brand has done something differently. And I think the fact that we generally, does that just mean that they haven't got anything? They've got nothing different from the building as it was with the previous brand. So they can't do anything because they haven't got anything or they just don't have the budget. They never thought about it. And I think that's what we'd really, really love to see. And we'd love to be involved in it. If anyone is in that process of transitioning to different brands, it's something that we feel all really strongly about. And we've got the evidence from it. We've done the youth forums and we know what students are saying about it. And like Denis said before, you know, you can't differentiate between location and price and product. So I think brands have got to dig deep to find that differentiator?

SPEAKER_03: 14:37

I don't think there's the, uh, the budget to be completely honest, especially when you are third party managed and you are an investor with, you know, maybe you've got homes for students in at the moment and you want to, you know, move to another operator or vice versa. And, and, you know, the investor has changed hands, but still wants to retain that third party. They don't want their brand over it or anything like that. They're quite happy for it to be known as, you know, uh, Orion House or whatever it might be. There's very rarely the budget to do any major changes. And I think quite often there's a bit of apathy and a complacency around switching operators when quite often I think people should be looking to switch operators a lot more regularly. That won't be particularly, you know, it won't be music to a lot of third party operators ears, but that's the way that I feel about it. And so, yeah, I do feel like there is a lack of budget. But when you think about the owner operators, it's a very different ballgame. So the likes of Yugo in particular, particular, the work that they've done on that brand, albeit, you know, I remember it as a small car, but actually it is a really strong brand on a global level. It works well in multiple languages. And I think I know that they've done a lot of CapEx projects to bring their buildings up to speed as well. That's great because they're an owner-operator. They own the buildings. They can do what they want in them. You just won't really see that remotely as much with the third-party operators for various different reasons. And as much as it would be lovely if you had consistent branding in every property, that's also a really difficult thing to get right, especially for a third-party operator when you might have half your portfolio owned by Apollo or EQT or Maple Tree or whoever else or Ares and then half by someone else. Or maybe you've retained some of that and that you own that too. It's really difficult to get that consistency only by sort of fully in-housing that, creating your own brand. And I know there's a few investors looking at that at the moment. And that may put the fear of God into a few third-party operators. But there is definitely well there's so much to be said in terms of that branding and the importance of it it's just a case of who can afford to do it which properties which investors and then how well is it done and communicated

SPEAKER_01: 17:03

how much do you think that that then impacts the the staff and the staffing structures because the brand has to be delivered through through the people they have to be invested in and if your brand is centering itself around brand experience about experience, for example, you've got to have the people to be able to deliver that. And that shouldn't just be done between nine and five, you know, during office hours. If your brand is about student experience, you've got to have the budget for that. You've got to have the people for it. And I just think that some of the brand visions aren't realistic about deploying it when you get down to front of house operations staff. And I think that's where

SPEAKER_02: 17:49

brand development has to be done at the beginning because you have to be able to say well what this is what I'd like to deliver how do I deliver it can I deliver it and you might you know you know unfortunately everything does come down to money and if you can't deliver everything that you want within the budget that you've got to deliver what you need then you need to bring that back down but I think One of the challenges we have in the sector is that we do have really lean staffing structures, both from a central wear a lot of different hats. And and, you know, I often talk about this is that, you know, is is sales in property teams, job descriptions is student experience in property teams, job description is local marketing in property teams, job descriptions is. I bet a lot of times it isn't, but they're expected to do that. But if it's not in their job description and it's not part of their objectives, it's going to be the nice to do. So therefore, all those things that go into what you might have your wonderful mission, visions and values based on can't be delivered because it's not following through in that company and it's not being part of what you set out to achieve. And I think this comes back down to what I said earlier, is that brand is the core of who you are. And therefore you can't be who you are without having the infrastructure to back that up. And it starts from scratch and day one. And I think the problem is then that the money isn't there and we can't really retrofit this, but there probably are smart ways that we can say, well, actually in year one, we're going to focus on doing this element and work through that. And then in year two, you work through another element and, you know, we'd all love to have, a golden pot of money that we can just make things as beautiful as we want them to be. But that's not realistic. But actually, where's the stepping stones to get us where we need to get to? And if you did that, in five years time, you'd see a totally different business. And it's just a transformation project.

SPEAKER_03: 19:48

Some kind of sinking fund for brand marketing within each property or within each investment case, I think, would make a lot of sense because, yeah, you can't quite often... quantify it in terms of the return on investment but you know that it's there it's tangible I've seen it firsthand how important it is to have the right brand not just for a property but for your entire operator or your joint venture and that's something that I think will certainly come to the fore the fussier that students get and the you know the more discerning that they become and and so I think that brand and there's some operators doing brilliant things out there already in terms of terms of building up that brand value with great alumni schemes and you know quality branding and you know you're in a vita building for example when the moment you get in there so same for a novel building it's the same from quite a few of these but it's got to you know we've got to make sure that that the learnings from in particular the premium end can be born out with the affordable sector or the mid-range sector as well. And, you know, thinking about there's a lot of opportunism in terms of the investment and the way people are bringing things on board. I had a real battle on my hands with the team that I had who were used to three fantastic buildings in London. And I was part of the acquisition process of the old mansion stock in Liverpool, which was old townhouses that needed ripping apart, and well done to Richard from Kecks Guild for doing that more recently, and a property above a pub. And that was totally alien to everyone. We had to completely rejig the brand. But I did that straight away because I knew how important that was and had the team to do it. And luckily was working really closely with the likes of Soraya or Mel or Steph and the team at Roundhill to actually execute that and was given a really decent budget for it by Paul, who's now the CEO of Harrison Street. So if you've got someone in a high position or a leadership position that understands the value of a brand and the difference that it can make to either a portfolio premium or future fundraising or investment, then you've got to stick with it and make the most of it. And that's what I did at Neato. And I was very lucky in what I did, but it was still a real challenge to sort of put that in front of the likes of Starwood or KKR or anyone else and explain that. And it wasn't because of their attitude towards it. It was because I knew that I had to try and justify something where they were going to be looking for numbers on a spreadsheet. And actually, it was unquantifiable, the value that it would bring to the brand to totally change all of the signage out the front. We didn't need to leave it as Stepney Yard. We wanted to put Nido Stepney Yard in Newcastle, for example. And that cost a fortune. It's like 10, 15 grand a sign. So you've got to make sure that that money is, firstly, that that's underwritten, but ideally that there's some kind of margin or brand value sinking fund, and then that you're being smart about where you're spending it. But yeah, I did get lucky with Nido. It was a good initiation into the world of brand marketing in real estate, for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 23:02

I think this comes back to what we were discussing in the previous episode about what does stacking up mean? Because actually... what is being put on a spreadsheet is a very lean staffing structure, a very lean marketing budget to be able to give investors the return that they want. And once that's been put in there, that's it. There's no wiggle room there because the investor has bought into that. Spreadsheet says no. because you don't have the budget for the staff to be able to deliver it you then also don't have a brand marketing budget because you've just been given them their the lead generation budget and that's what's been signed off so actually maybe developers and operators need to get a

SPEAKER_02: 24:17

Is it about having the right people in the room though? And we've spoken about some, how often are marketing or sometimes even operations teams brought into the room when people are doing those financial models to say, actually, what do you need? You know, I've been handed mobilization budgets that I haven't been a part of. And I'm like, well, where does this come from? Cause this isn't any reality for a mobilization budget. And I think, and you know, a lot of that work is about training marketing teams to Sarah, you know, where it says you've got to get your elbows out is actually, if we're taking on a new building, you know I'm always in there going well I'm going to give you a budget for that because you need to get that right and I think so so much budget could can be put into mobilization budgets that isn't and then you've got to pay out of operational budgets because you haven't done done it in your mobilization and it's if you're doing that get the right people around the around the room to to build that spreadsheet because therefore it's based a bit more in reality

SPEAKER_03: 25:09

marketing are brought in typically too late to that process and I think segwaying this nicely and Sarah started this pro into staffing structures that is something that has always been a bit of a challenge in particular on acquisitions with regards to taking over buildings in particular from third party operators I think you can sometimes struggle and I'm trying to choose my words quite carefully here I think you can struggle to get the calibre of staff for the salaries that you're paying them especially on a regional basis I think I think the benchmarking isn't particularly well done. I think that PBSA is a very unique skill set in particular, but also so is BTR and co-living in terms of how you knit everything together. But a student is probably the best example because there's a lot more pressures on students and therefore a lot more for the operations teams to handle from a mental health standpoint in particular, but also understanding the needs of the student as well as the academic needs and the social needs. And I think that... We're getting there in terms of how much property teams get paid, not just compared to the HQ teams, but just in general as compared to hospitality and various other sectors as well. And just a general level of appreciation of quite how important the property teams are to your brand, to link it slightly back to the first topic, but to the success of the building, to how occupied you are, to how much revenue you can bring in, to your operating costs. I love generalists. So I've always tried to hire generalists and then teach certain skill sets as and where possible. But we're now getting to the territory where PBSA is certainly, it's a very specific skill set that you need to have to be able to thrive in a property, whether you're a general manager, assistant manager, or whatever else it might be. And the structures are not always set up to help people thrive. I think all too often GMs are thrown in the deep end and it's like, right, can you go and be sales manager, marketing manager, operations manager, facilities manager, ESG manager, finance manager. Literally, they need to do everything. So if you get a good GM, and I've had my fair share of very good GMs, then they are worth their weight in gold and they will be the lifeblood and soul of that community. And they will build you a community and your brand and your property and your asset will be a success off the back of it. But to link it back to where I started in taking over buildings in the past when they were acquisitions, I didn't feel like the staff were remunerated well enough. And therefore, I think the caliber of people that I sort of inherited in a couple of locations just wasn't up to where I would expect it to be. And part of that will probably be because I took over from a third-party manager, whereby I think there's a bit, not less of an investment in the teams, but I think when it comes to budgeting in particular, that operator, third-party operator wants to win the contract for that property or that portfolio or whatever it might be. And quite often, I think what you see, and certainly what I've seen in the past, was that the OPEX would be pretty low And the revenue budget would be pretty high. And then if their management fee is there or thereabout, back in 2018, it was around sort of 3.5% that I was seeing, but I saw as low as 1.5% for a management fee. I don't think that's conducive to then looking after your staff or budgeting effectively for your staff. So I think staff have then consequently been underpaid. And it's meant that there's not been that investment in the staffing structures that I think we would need to see. But just before I sort of finish up on that point, I do see that we are taking a little bit more of an American model at the moment. Novel Students is a good example where they've got leasing managers and leasing assistants and leasing coordinators. And that's firstly American terminology, but it's Secondly, it's very rare that you'd get a salesperson in a specific building. You'd normally call them a general assistant or community coordinator or whatever else it might be. So I do see that there is some change in the structures with a bit more of an Americanization of some of these staffing structures. But I do still feel like we do undervalue a lot of the GMs and the role that they have to play in how important, and not just the GMs, right the way through the entire team, from your housekeeper to your security, maintenance, events coordinators, you know, whatever else it might be, whoever else you might have working on site, whether it's a warden or ambassador, however you want to term them. I do think that there's probably a bit of an underappreciation and they may feel underappreciated in certain companies, that's for sure, because there are some out there paying well and really looking after their staff. But on the whole, I do think that that's something that we need to get better at as an industry, understanding how much good property teams should be paid and what that structure should look like for success.

SPEAKER_02: 30:27

Yeah, I'm conscious of time, but one thing I just want to add on that is that if you invest in your staff, you will get returns on that because you'll get less wastage. And what we see time and time again is lots of marketing leads going into really busy operational teams that can't deal with them and therefore they're not getting converted and therefore you're getting a lot of wastage and that same goes with it. If you haven't got a great service, you're going to get bad reviews. You're going to get bad word of mouth. So all that stuff does go into return on investment. It's just not as easy to track, but it will bring dividends.

SPEAKER_01: 30:57

I mean, ironically, the last point that we wanted to cover today was the life of a consultant. But I think we probably embodied that in this conversation because these are the conversations that we have with our clients day in, day out. And that's why they hire us. Usually it's because they need someone from the outside looking in. They need our expertise. They need our kind of 360 degree view on what's happening in the market that you can't often see if you're within within a structure, really, you know, and it's not, you know, some of our consultancy roles are a little bit more specific, they can be more project based, or they can be about achieving a specific KPI. For example, we, we do social media specifically for some some clients, and inevitably, it leads to other things. But a lot of our consultancy is an advisory role. level it's these kind of you know deep conversations and and sometimes it's not massively tangible it's our time but quite often it's not us producing a tangible outcome from that advisory. Quite often it's then the operator or the investor or the developer or the university in some cases for us that take our advice on board and they run with it. And we can support them, but sometimes people have got their own teams and they're quite happy for that. And we just give them the impetus and the support really to deliver some of those objectives. What do you guys think? Does consultancy cover anything else really? It's very, it's very vague it's fair it's wide every day is different

SPEAKER_03: 32:29

it's as vague as you make it in the sense that I yes I do a lot of strategic advisory so that's retained and that is me acting either as a sounding board or providing pearls of wisdom as and when I can and that's I thoroughly enjoy that work but typically there's KPIs at the end of that And so it's really trying to link that through to either remuneration in terms of day rate compared to bonuses or whatever, or a long-term incentive plan, even with client. To the project work as well, which has specific KPIs. You've got to do this by this date and it's got to look like this and it's got to cover these points. And so I always try and make sure that I've got KPIs and that it's not just me giving out anecdotes or whatever, or just chatting as I do on the podcast. I do try and link it to specific KPIs as and where I can, whether that be business case for someone that I'm asset managing or what. But the life of a consultant is fascinating in the sense that we're across so many different clients, different areas. For me, it's from marketplaces to developers to investors to education agents, universities, operators, you name it. I add suppliers into the industry. I've got clients in so many different areas. different areas and I know you both have too and but it's difficult to stick at it in the sense that I think there's actually very few consultants that will actually stick at it and don't then go into fully paid employment, either relatively quickly or not. I can count on one hand the amount of long-term, and by long-term I mean that have lasted more than a year, consultants who haven't been snapped up by other people. I saw one the other day, a really well-respected consultant, basically saying, I'm open to work. And I think consultancy is not for everyone. I think it's... It's typically born out of either redundancy or wanting a need for flexibility or potentially spotting a gap in the market. And for me, it was kind of all three, I suppose. My previous employer effectively stopped paying me. And so I had to go and do something pretty quickly. And what I chose to do was set up student housing consultancy, get a website up within 48 hours of getting that news that I probably wasn't going to get paid at the end of the month. And got lucky, put it on LinkedIn, walked into a good contract. But, you know, there is a real temptation to walk back into, you know, employed work. And I get quite a lot of requests for me to have a look at certain roles. And I'm sure you both do as well. And there's interim work you can do that might lead on to something. I was approached about a role a little while, about three months ago or so. Very good operator, high profile, MD stroke, director role. And It was the first one that I thought, yeah, actually, I am interested in that. I would throw my hat in the ring for it because I could see the long-term potential. I liked the people that I'd spoken to. And so I thought, yeah, well, let's just see where the process goes. Had a couple of interviews and I gave it a lot of thought and made sure that I was diligent in my due diligence, I suppose, but didn't get it. And I'm okay with that. It hurt for a bit, stung for a bit, but at the same time, it just wasn't right. And I know that I know the person that's got it and they're brilliant and they will do extremely well. So fair play. But it just goes to show that however much flexibility I have or however much... I enjoy the work that I do on the projects or with the clients that I've got. If there is that role out there, I think a lot of consultants will, in whatever stage they're at, because student housing consultancy is doing well and I am enjoying it. If there is one role out there, I thought it might be this one. It's not, and that's fine. I know that there probably is a role out there that would tempt me away from it at some point, just not right now. So it is just trying to find the positives in the fact that I didn't quite get a role that I had started to think about you know being able to have a really positive impact in but knowing that I've got a good consultancy and a I think in terms of the projects and the clients that I've got, I've got plenty to be going on with, shall we say. And it was a bit of a watershed moment for me thinking, okay, actually, this may have been a really good role at that time. It may be a good role in the future. Who knows? But I've got a real opportunity now to kind of kick on with the consultancy. So this was a real sort of wake-up call for me to be like, okay, this one didn't work out. There are plenty more out there and I can certainly make sure that the consultancy is is front and center of my mind in terms of the way that I work with my clients and that the way that I build that as well. So it's really galvanized the way that I kind of feel about consultancy going through that process more recently of, you know, potentially moving back into the world of world of work. That might be a bit, that might be oversharing, but I just, I feel like it's, it would be remiss of me not to mention that I've had a bit of a brush of with full-time employment relatively recently, given and that, you know, I know that it looks really rosy on the consultancy side for me at the minute.

SPEAKER_02: 37:55

As I say, I'm sure your clients are pleased that you're still on the consultancy and you're still doing that. And I think you often think that it'd be darn sight easier to just have an employed job. But the other thing is that actually that's never close to you, as you just rightly said, Dan, but equally all the stuff we do on a consultancy basis because it's so wide ranging, so diverse and gives you the flexibility to not be so insular into one company and one company's mindset and what one company's doing that it actually makes you more employable anyway not that Sarah I'm going to be looking for jobs because I quite like the life of a consultant and I think it works for me it works for my lifestyle and it would be easier to just go and get a job and get a paycheck every week but I like what we do and we do what we do because we want to do it and I think that's what I love and as you say Dan it's about adding value and we only work with clients where we know we can add value and we have all the way for clients where we're like actually we can't help you because you don't align with how we want to work with you and therefore it's not going to work what we want to do so therefore we'll walk away because at the end of the day life's too short and you've got to enjoy what you do and that's why I love what we do.

SPEAKER_01: 39:03

I think that there's an opportunity in a future episode to go all Elizabeth Day and do a how to fail episode because I think we could I could certainly fill an episode on that as well but thank you for sharing that Dan I think it is refreshing to kind of be honest about you know the consultancy and it is a genuine you know it's a genuine pull I guess and I started my own consultancy and I I loved it I was doing well and then I did get pulled into employment I I couldn't think in the end I kept saying no and in the end I couldn't find a reason not to anymore and I was I was in that role for for 18 months and went back into into consultancy um and have been here ever ever since and very happy to do so and I don't think that there's anything that could tempt me back into employment So don't worry. I'm with you. I love the variety of it. I love the clients that we work with. And I feel like as a consultant, you've got your head out and I'm absorbing everything and I'm not jaded by it. And that was really, really difficult to do in an employed position. And that's why people hire us, because we have our eyes and ears and heads in all pockets, in all corners of the sector. And I always think that our most recent client gets the best of us, really. It's that accumulation of knowledge and expertise. We just keep getting better. I've got a book behind me that's called F being humble. So I'm going to embody that phrase. And on that topic, let's get back to our clients, people.

SPEAKER_03: 40:39

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it stung a little bit, but I think partly because I was number two out of 250, but there was just one person who was probably better for the role at the moment. So fair enough. And I wish them the very best of luck. Thank you very much, everybody, for Listening to episode 12 of How's the Shared Living podcast, we really want to hear from you. So do get in touch. Let us know what you want us to say and what you want to talk about. And we look forward to seeing you all next week.