Why Most Architects Shouldn’t Be Developers (But Some Should) ft. Ben Richards

Ben Richards
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[00:00:00]

🎄 Christmas Live Stream Kickoff
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone and welcome to this live stream special. That's right. You've got nothing to do. I know you're knocking down the pub. We're all wasting time until Christmas, except my team. If you're watching this live stream, I want you back at work. I'm only joking. On that note though, before we all get drunk, before you get tipsy down the pub, we have got an interesting live stream special here.

Stephen Drew: So if you are an architectural professional and you thought I can build a building. I should be doing it myself. I want to learn all about development.

👷‍♂️ From Architecture to Development: Ben's Journey
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Stephen Drew: I can do it Well, maybe this is the episode for you Because i've got someone here that's actually done it themselves And it's going to give us the real deal on what it's like being an architectural professional Who's now doing real estate and development?

Stephen Drew: Is it all it's cracked up to be? Is it easy [00:01:00] is it printed money or is it a lot of bloody hard work? Well Ben Richard, you're here and you're going to help me work it out. Ben, how are you?

Ben Richards: Again, stop thinking that you want to be a developer. Just stick to what you know, it's hard work. It's not worth the risk.

Ben Richards: No, there's some good stuff around it as well.

Stephen Drew: That's the real advice. However, there's a few crazies like me and you who have set up businesses who will not listen to that and they will do it anyways, so maybe. You will help them along that.

💼 Building and Managing Multiple Businesses
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Stephen Drew: But now, while I know you, Ben, some people might not. So do you want to introduce yourself first and foremost?

Ben Richards: Yeah, cool. Ben Richards, director of XP property. That's where I spend most of my time nowadays, probably 70, 80 percent of my time. Um, but historically I've got a master's degree in architectural engineering. Um, I worked for probably seven years within the sort of architectural industry, then worked for the Berkeley group on some.

Ben Richards: Big old schemes in central London before jumping ship and starting my own ventures. And that sort of [00:02:00] jumping ship started because I did my first property development myself. So evenings and weekends project managed the delivery of a two bed new build house on like a corner plot. Refinance that, put some money in my pocket, thought this is now the time to jump ship.

Ben Richards: I've got a little bit of a cushion if things go tits up. Um, and that's where the, the sort of latest ventures started seven years ago. So I started an architectural practice at that time. It's grown to, um, over 12 people now based in Clapham in London. We generate about a million pounds in revenue, um, nowadays, and then met my business partner.

Ben Richards: And now we have built XP property, which is a development and investment business in London and the home counties, actively developing over 25 million pounds worth of, um, projects over five sites at the moment. And then because we're not glutton for punishment enough. Um, we also started four years ago, a surveying and topographical, a measured building survey and topographical survey business called XP surveys as well.

Ben Richards: Um, and to top that all off at the same time, we also [00:03:00] started a social housing portfolio as a joint venture. Um, with a couple of other partners. So we've built that into 130 beds now, um, worth about 20 million pounds in value generates about 1. 2 million pounds in gross rental. Uh, so it's been a significantly busy seven to eight years.

Ben Richards: Um, and it's, uh, not been an easy ride. You definitely got to be resilient to be in business and certainly in property. And hopefully we can touch on a few of those things during this chat.

Stephen Drew: It's super impressive. It was, you got so many businesses that I couldn't keep up showing all the websites. And we did talk about it in the pre chat chat.

Stephen Drew: However, I am struggling with one business. It's hard enough as it is. So I don't know how you do it, Ben. With the four businesses, you're,

🛠️ The Challenges of Hiring and Team Building
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Ben Richards: yeah, it's the team, you know, you, you, you can't, you can't do it all yourself. And I think that's where a lot of, um, certainly professionals like architects, like engineers, like technicians, [00:04:00] they don't understand business enough to know that you have to build a team around you and you can't be the one doing the doing.

Ben Richards: You can't be operating your business whilst growing a business. And that's, I think where I took a bit of a. Slightly different mindset into what I've done. Like I set up my architectural business with the one goal to remove myself out of the day to day as fast as possible to do the property development stuff.

Ben Richards: Um, so my goal was very different to a lot of architects. I think they're probably set up on their own.

Stephen Drew: Very good. Let's go into that concept because. I am beginning to learn that as well, working on the business, not in the business. I think that's really, really important at the start of your journey. So for me, I was working in the business or if you're got your own, if you're a, what's it called a trader?

Stephen Drew: What's the word now? Uh, sole trader.

Ben Richards: Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I mean, you're effectively working for yourself or if you even have a limited company and you're spinning stuff along. You're working for yourself, but what was it like at the start days for that? Was it you [00:05:00] with AutoCAD just gunning out all these projects and then building it up?

Stephen Drew: I mean,

Ben Richards: yeah, I mean, not exactly. So I guess there was a bit of that. Absolutely. Um, but because I wanted to. build the business. I knew that I had to bring in other people sort of very quickly. So even from sort of almost day one, I was sort of scouting around to bring in architectural technicians that, you know, once I've got the planning process approved, I could then pass it over to them to do the detailed design.

Ben Richards: And I just get it back and check it and make sure I'm happy with it, blah, blah. So I was always in that mindset of like, what can I delegate? And there's, there's amazing books around, you know, delegation. I think one's called who not. Uh, who, not how I, who do you delegate to rather than how do I do this?

Ben Richards: And that was very much my mantra from day one. It was, it was sort of forced upon me to a certain degree because I started or architecture in May, 2017, full time. Um, and then in October, 2017, my now wife and I went traveling for five months. So I only had five [00:06:00] months really at the start of my business to.

Ben Richards: Build relationships to try and, uh, you know, win work, start working with new clients, but what I made sure I did before jumping overseas in October was that I had a team already in place in the UK. So my first hire was a business assistant, part time to help manage all of the admin. And then my second hire was a part two architect.

Ben Richards: Somebody that could do the do. So I basically hired those two people within five months, first five months, my business scuttled off overseas for five months, traveling through New Zealand, Australia, the U S or all sorts of all over the place. Um, and I was managing things from abroad. So at the time of.

Ben Richards: seven years ago, you know, it was Skype. It wasn't zoom and no COVID hadn't happened yet. So it was, it was Skype and I was doing Skype calls with clients saying, you know, sat in a little beach hut in New Zealand and, um, managing the team, you know, sort of challenging was just challenging thing was the time zones to making sure that I could sort of have a two hour window with my [00:07:00] team to feedback to Sophie, feedback to Michelle, kind of this needs to happen today.

Ben Richards: This needs to happen, check drawings, et cetera. So, um, I was almost forced into. Building a team because I knew that, you know, I, I can't. Do it all of my, all myself, basically. So as soon as I could, um, bring in people to, to do the do I could and did.

Stephen Drew: Right. Got it. And I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes around hiring as well, hiring the wrong people or doing all this stuff.

Stephen Drew: I mean, did you make any mistakes yourself or things that now you. You do always

Ben Richards: stick by, yeah, made, made huge mistakes through the recruitment process is so tough and HR in general is just incredibly tough. We've got over 30 people within the ecosystem of businesses that that we run, and I've probably employed 50 plus, I guess.

Ben Richards: So, you know, 20 of them haven't made it, um, for whatever reason, um. I remember the first time that I had to fire someone. Um, I clearly wasn't, um, [00:08:00] I clearly wasn't clear enough that it was effective immediately. Um, because when I was out on site the next day, she turned up in the morning. So I had like one of my team being like, um, so this person is just.

Ben Richards: Um, and I'm like, Oh fuck, yeah, I've messed that up completely, but, um, this is, you know, this is the learning process I'd never done it before. I sort of firing someone is hard enough as it is yet alone. Somebody who's like. Uh, just new to the business, you know, the business world, never gone through that process, doesn't have any structure.

Ben Richards: Um, so yeah, I've, I've made a ton of mistakes. I've made a ton of recruitment mistakes. Um, the, I still, I still know that I'm going to make more, but at least I've now put processes in place where we have a more rigid, um, recruitment process. Um, we have different stages to that process. Um, we set tasks for people now, which I never used to do, which people can come across so well in an interview.

Ben Richards: But actually it'd be really crap [00:09:00] at the actual job. So setting a task that tests how good they are actually doing the job is a must, in my opinion.

Stephen Drew: Mmm. If it helps, just to add to that, so I've made one or two as well. The number one mistake I made was when I kind of know it wasn't working out, but like you said, I was too scared to do it, or I didn't want to do it.

Stephen Drew: And then you prolong the decision, which is worse because you're keeping everyone in limbo, including yourself. And so

Ben Richards: you,

Stephen Drew: you, you kind of just push it away. It's like, Oh, I'll deal with that. I'll deal with that down the line. I mean, while you're hemorrhaging money, aren't you? It's

Ben Richards: exactly one bad egg within, especially when you're in an SME business, let's say you've got five people and you've got one that is about 20 percent of your, your resource dragging everything else down.

Ben Richards: And it does, it is not just. That person's salary that it costs you. It's the time that they sat from everyone else. It's the projects that they're delaying by three or four times as long as it should be and all that sort of stuff. So absolutely slow, um, higher, slow fire [00:10:00] fast. That's, that's definitely sort of our approach.

Ben Richards: Use that three month probation period. We literally have reviews every month within the first three months, because you can tell a lot in the first month you have to then give feedback. You then give them the chance, you know, over those, the final two. Two months. And, um, yeah, bringing in like development plans, even at that age, uh, that, that stage of the business is fundamental.

Ben Richards: Cause you, they need to know what's not going well. You can't just wait to the three months then be like, Oh, actually I'm not happy with this. Well, if you start from month one, giving that feedback, it gives a chance to, for them to take it on board, put it into practice, have another review, you know, before you even get to that three month period, you should have a really good idea of whether or not it's.

Ben Richards: Can work

Stephen Drew: fairly good advice for whatever businesses this year as well. And, uh, yeah. And the last thing I want to reiterate as well, as you're right, people that seem great in the interviews, maybe a skill is just interviewing very [00:11:00] well.

Ben Richards: Yep.

Stephen Drew: And, and actually the other thing that I've learned lately is.

Stephen Drew: Speaking for myself, sometimes you want to hire people that have similar traits than you, because you're like, Oh, I see this in them. But actually, especially in a small business, maybe it's people with different skills and more complimentary. So actually some of the best hires I've done recently. They weren't amazing interviewers, if that sounds a bit crazy,

Ben Richards: but they crack on with it.

Ben Richards: Yeah, I think we do. So we've done, um, a lot of disc profiling, which is, um, sort of red, yellow, green, blue. It is sort of, it's a personality profile type test. We, we do sort of disc profiling. I'm, I'm part of a property entrepreneur. property entrepreneur group, which use, um, kind of a different metrics.

Ben Richards: You've got kind of like dynamos, steals, tempos, blazes, where blaze is like red, really social, outgoing people, great for sales. And you've got the steals, which are blue, which are more like hermit crabs, like introverts want to sit behind a spreadsheet. Don't want to pick up the phone or [00:12:00] speak to anyone.

Ben Richards: They just want to crack on. And, you know, Do all the financial stuff. Tempos are a bit more like systemized, organized, they're doers. They, you know, they have no vision at all of where things could go, which is why they need a dynamo, which is green, which is what I am, which is more of like a creator, kind of more visionary, like longer term viewpoint.

Ben Richards: Um, I, I definitely recommend like looking up these kind of disc profiling type type things. We, we, we get everyone in our team now to do them so we can get into understanding the person behind. Um, you know, just, just the architect.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I thought about doing that as well. I did do one, one, one place I interviewed years ago.

Stephen Drew: The report was quite scary. I was like, Hmm, I don't know. Sometimes you learn stuff about yourself you're not comfortable with.

Ben Richards: Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Drew: Wow. Okay. It's

Ben Richards: often very eerily correct. You know, you read it, you know, yeah, I do do that. You're like, I'm a

Stephen Drew: monster. This is terrible. Luckily, I'm not hiring this person, but.

Stephen Drew: God forbid my boss, but maybe this, [00:13:00] it sounds like this podcast way shaping up, especially, I think business owners or people who are thinking about doing this stuff are going to enjoy this episode in particular. So let's talk about that. So you've, you've done the architecture practice and you were doing that stuff.

Stephen Drew: However, in your.

🏢 Transitioning from Architecture to Real Estate
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Stephen Drew: met, you've got all these different businesses, but your heart is in real estate and property, right? Is that, so how did you go in that direction then from the more quote unquote, traditional architecture practice and start pushing into real estate and property?

Ben Richards: Yeah, I think, um, I have learned in myself over the last five or six years that my.

Ben Richards: I've actually fallen out of love with, with property and real estate in, in, in sort of have you not in its entirety, but, but a lot of it, what I've loved more is business. And I think I love property because it's, it can still be very creative, but there's financial, um, you know, [00:14:00] there's financial. Um, things involved that there's, you know, the element of risk, which, you know, I don't mind, um, you can still be very creative and you get to see something that's nothing be, you know, flourished into something that's great.

Ben Richards: And, you know, you, you've, you've taken it on that journey and you've taken it from something that looks rubbish to really good. That's what I like. And it's. I've found that business is the same thing where you're, you're basically creating something from scratch. You're constantly learning. You're constantly kind of growing and the end goal post constantly changes.

Ben Richards: So there's so much variety, which I also love, but there's huge amounts of creativity with the marketing side of it. I still get the financial, like it's the business side of it that I love. Um, it just so happens that all of my businesses focus around that property and construction and real estate space.

Ben Richards: But I guess I've always loved it. I've always watched homes under the hammer. I've always loved seeing those transformations. Um, and I think when I was sitting there working for the Berkeley group and in my lunch break, um, you know, when I'm looking on right move. To spot opportunities or find [00:15:00] something that I can do or see, try to create value.

Ben Richards: I knew then that sort of working for someone else was really not my calling. I've always known I've wanted to start my own business and I've always envisaged that would be where I end up. Um, and I think at that time when I'd been in the industry for seven years, I guess, in a professional sort of corporate setting.

Ben Richards: Um, that was my time. I think I, I, I'd had enough. I was clearly kind of the signals were there. I was constantly on right move, looking for opportunities for jumping ship and doing my own thing. Um, and the house that I bought was, was prime for development. And then that was really the instigator of everything that follows.

Ben Richards: But, uh, yeah, I still, I still like property. Um, I just prefer business more now. It just so happens that everything that I do is revolving around real estate.

Stephen Drew: I'm the same. But it makes us a bit weirdo. So as in not many people do that you have, because I don't think businesses are right for everyone. And that's why I want to get across in this because I [00:16:00] absolutely love it.

Stephen Drew: And I think it's amazing, but it's not an easy. Lifestyle, you know, there's always things going on. There's always distractions. It's like my doorbell's going right now, but we let it go. There's always things going. There's emails, there's staff, there's all this stuff. There's profit, there's loss, there's marketing, there's everything.

Ben Richards: Your back is constantly up against the wall. That, that, that is the job of an entrepreneur is to fight fires, to deal with all the shit that comes your way. You have to be incredibly resilient to start a business, to be an entrepreneur, to be a property developer. Uh, and anyone that's listening to this, you know, if anyone tells you anything different, you know, that they're lying through their teeth, it is extremely tough.

Ben Richards: You know, you've got, we've got, I don't actually know what I'm at 25 probably. The best part of 15 million pounds of debt. No, the, the, I am personally guaranteeing, for example, you know, my, my house is potentially on the line. If things go tits up, you know, people don't realize that. And I think when you're sat in an architectural practice and you see property developers making [00:17:00] loads of money, which they don't often do, um, You think it's all gravy and, uh, it's, you know, the grass is always greener, but it's really, really tough and any business owner, which is why I think kind of, we touched about it, touched on it a little bit in the pre chat chat, but, you know, governments are really, really shitting on a lot of SME businesses.

Ben Richards: It's very, very tough.

Stephen Drew: Just to wrap

Ben Richards: it up. Yeah, no support for

Stephen Drew: us. No, it's just really, really, really hard. I mean, there's two parts here. I want to quickly jump back to what you mentioned about architects. Yes. Looking to development. So even if you're a business owner or not, I get that all the time on recruitment, a very good project architect going, I want to go to a developer and they go immediately go, I want to go to the developer and I want 20 K more.

Stephen Drew: And I'm like, Hey, it don't work like that. Probably be on the same or less. If you go to development straight away, because the design is one aspect of the role. And even then you're giving up the, the. The, the notion of design, like [00:18:00] before it's a very, very different role.

🏘️ The Realities of Property Development
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Stephen Drew: Do you think that's a fair description of like when you pivot from architecture to property, it's a totally different beast.

Ben Richards: Absolutely. Like, like you say, the architecture piece of the property development life cycle is only a small part. And I think when you're, when you're in that architecture seat, you think, you know, you're the ones designing it. You're the ones adding loads of value, which you are. But it's a small piece.

Ben Richards: You've got to find the opportunities. You've got to fund it. You've got to structure it. You've got to deal with all of the other technical utilities around it. Community infrastructure levies. You've got it. There's no, the sales process is a skill in itself. You know, once you've delivered the unit, you've then got to sell it and put sales, um, sales and marketing plans in place.

Ben Richards: No. If you don't sell fast at the end of a scheme, your finance costs just eat away your profit every month that goes by. And I, you know, we've delivered schemes where we should have made a quarter of a million pound profit, but we've ended up with 40 grand because it's taken eight months too long to sell every month goes by and you're paying 15 grand in, um, [00:19:00] in finance costs it's.

Ben Richards: A different beast and design is only one piece, like you say, and it's a valuable piece and it's, it's my piece of our development business puzzle because that's my role. My role in the business is design and delivery. Um, my business partner, Jack is more of the land and acquisition side of the business.

Ben Richards: So he finds them and funds them and structures them and then passes the keys over to me and kind of away I go. That's, that's how we've split it. Um, but the design piece itself, you know, it's. It's a very, very small part of that puzzle and what I see a lot of architects of, or the way that I think a lot of architects feel towards it is that if they're doing their own developments, they can keep the creativity and keep the control on the design.

Ben Richards: And the reality is. What really drives the design is cost design adds value. I can't, you know, you can't deny that, but at the same time you have to work within a [00:20:00] certain budget, otherwise the deal doesn't stack and you lose money. You know, it's, you see it on homes under the hammer where they don't take into account a lot of the fees that are associated, half those projects don't make any money yet on homes under the hammer, all they say is we bought it for this.

Ben Richards: We, the build costs were this and therefore we made this much profit. Well, where's, where's the stamp duty? Where's the legal costs? Where's the finance costs? Where's the utilities fees? Where's like that will dwindle away all of that profit very, very quickly. Yet it's not really spoken about. So everyone thinks property developers make loads of money.

Ben Richards: And the reality is, is that it's a very tough industry to make money in.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. And also I want to just go down that again, because again, when I was growing up, I was like, okay, I'm going to get my business and then I'm going to develop maybe a few, flip a few properties myself. I'm going to rent them out.

Stephen Drew: And the more and more I'm speaking to people, there's a podcast that I follow this guy, James Sinclair, I think it's brilliant where he does absolutely love his stuff to bed, learn more from him than. Ah, architectural school is something I was going to say. I was going to be mean then, but [00:21:00] he invests in commercial property at the moment because he says there's no money in residential and that blew my brain completely.

Stephen Drew: It's so much harder

Ben Richards: to make money in residential property nowadays. Buy to let properties are incredibly difficult. You know, we, a lot of our investment assets that we hold are more HMOs, houses of multiple occupancy, shared housing, um, because the yield on that. It's far greater. You know, you're, you're, you're charging per room as opposed to per house.

Ben Richards: So you are sort of supercharging your investment, but vanilla by to let's are incredibly tough to make work.

Stephen Drew: And also HMOs, yes, they make a bit more money, but they are incredibly complicated, right? Ben

Ben Richards: you've, yeah, you've got five regulations that have gone through the roof over the past couple Grenfell, et cetera.

Ben Richards: Um, a lot more regulation in that space. Um, you can still make it work. You have to have, um, they are hardest to manage. vanilla by to let rental properties on assured short hold tendencies ASTs. Um, but if you've got a good management agent in place, you're going to, you've got it. You could, you could pay any [00:22:00] way up to 15 and 20 percent for someone to manage your HMOs.

Ben Richards: Um, but because they yield so much higher, they. Most of the time they will still outperform a single, single a ST. Um, but you do take more risk. You, you, with energy prices rising over the last couple of years. HMO landlords will generally pay the energy for the property. Um, so that's also one unforeseen risk over the last couple of years where it's just diminishing margins.

Ben Richards: And that's one of the reasons. You know, rental prices have gone up significantly over the last couple of years, not, not just because there's a supply and demand issue, but the other regulatory things that the government are putting on landlords, energy prices increasing, there's a huge, everything is going wrong for renters because it's 30, 40 percent increases in London over the last two years, it's, it's mad, you know, getting on that, that rental market is so tough nowadays.

Stephen Drew: It's a vicious cycle because I do really understand the frustration of rent tees. [00:23:00] Um, but the idea of becoming a landlord is just totally less and it's not even that appealing anymore. Yeah. And that's why James

Ben Richards: talks about commercial property. Because, you know, we we've got commercial property. It's often let out on like a five year lease, for example, they are response.

Ben Richards: The tenant is responsible for so it's full repairing and ensuring. So basically, you know, they have to take care of everything within the building. If something breaks, they don't call you up and say, can you send your maintenance man out to fix this? No, it's your responsibility under the lease. Um, You know, you see that money come in, there's not a lot for you to get involved in from a management perspective, which is why we started our social housing portfolio, because that's a very similar thing.

Ben Richards: We've got leases on 10, 25 year leases, um, where it's full repairing and insuring. So essentially we are redeveloping those properties, forming, you know, the bedsit type units that are then handed over to the housing provider. And then they operate it and manage it and we just take, take the income, you know, that's, that was meant to be the model.

Ben Richards: It's not worked out that way, but, uh, it's, uh, always the case that [00:24:00] things get thrown in the way and you have to pivot and deal with issues. But, uh, that's, that's what a business owner is really an entrepreneur.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. I mean, well said, and clearly you're good at that and there are opportunities here as well, but maybe.

Stephen Drew: Cause you're so honest and revealing about stuff. The time of recording this, this is what December 18th, right? And we're going into new year and labor's come in. Um, politics aside per se, what I'm interested in is their new target now, which gets people excited and equally concerned that this 1. 5 million housing in the UK.

📈 Opportunities and Challenges in the Housing Market
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Stephen Drew: Is that an opportunity, Ben? Or, or, or is that with all your knowledge? Is that. actually quite scary. I mean, which way do you go?

Ben Richards: It is an opportunity, you know, the fact that they are, um, setting those ambitious goals, which I don't think are achievable. And let's just say that, but, um, you know, the fact that they are setting those, those, those goals, they are changing a few things that need to be [00:25:00] changed in the planning process.

Ben Richards: And they're showing signs of doing some of the right things. Um, I proof is in the pudding. We'll see. We'll see what happens next year with, um, they've just literally changed the MPPF, which is the national planning policy framework. Um, I've got a couple of documents that I need to get through as a bit of bedtime reading to kind of understand what those changes are.

Ben Richards: They're supposed to make developing. easier in, uh, like greenbelt areas in, um, areas that may once have been difficult to develop on. Um, the greenbelt for me is one thing that is so incredibly misunderstood by everyone in terms of why it was brought in. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's luscious green grass trees, um, you know, habitats that are going to be demolished.

Ben Richards: There's a lot of. Opportunity in Greenbelt areas that are disused petrol stations, old, um, [00:26:00] airfields, uh, hard standing, you know, hard standing in those areas that is right for development, but it has been historically very protected under the sort of Greenbelt notion, um, that would unlock a huge amount of land in, in areas that there is already infrastructure there's already, you know, it's already a sustainable location to develop, but historically it's been very Um, hard to unlock because of the planning process.

Ben Richards: So they have identified that there are issues, um, and ways in which we can, um, bring forward some of that type of land. The planning process is the biggest stumbling block as far as I'm concerned. Huge bottleneck. I'm literally creating a, um, a slide deck at the moment for, for something that I'm doing a webinar on Thursday night, but, um, you know, the, the amount of what's the moment I can't hear.

Ben Richards: So 2023. The amount of planning applications received is around about 85, 000 of which only about 70, 000 were approved. That is the lowest approval rate on this [00:27:00] graph, which goes back to 2007. So we're talking in the last 15 years, lowest approval rate, the number of, the number of housing. Units granted, planning permission has dropped from its peak of 320,000 in 2018 now to 250,000 last year.

Ben Richards: Um, so how we meant to build 350,000 homes a year. When we're not even approving that many in the planning process, it's a huge blockade. And it's, it's one of the things that, you know, these receding hairlines and this gray beard, you know, is, um, is the thing that's planning permission is the thing that's dealing with that.

Stephen Drew: Okay. There's, let's go into that a bit. Cause we're told I'll. I always thought it was mental back then and now that, you know, we have architectural professionals, people like you, property developers, and then it goes to a bunch of people on council that maybe know the area or decided to volunteer or, well, I mean, I worked, um, I worked on a.

Stephen Drew: Famous [00:28:00] counsel for architecture might start with our might end with a, and I found that a lot of these people involved with just killing time on their way out to semi retirement to having an opinion, turning up, slowing everything down. It's a fucking nightmare. It is like, is that what planning is like?

Stephen Drew: It just, it's still that way.

Ben Richards: It's still that way. Absolutely. You know, one of the good things I have sort of seen over the last couple of days that the new government are looking to is potentially shake up the committee process and sort of stop as much going to that stage because, um, you know, I've been at a committee before where one of the committee members has fallen asleep.

Ben Richards: You know, you literally got these 12, 12 committee members and one of them is dozing off. All the rest of them are like 60 plus years old. They have no idea about, um, the planning process and planning policy, you know, for them. It's, Oh, I don't want, um, don't want the construction noise. I I've lived there for 30 years.

Ben Richards: I [00:29:00] don't want to park in this area as it is, let alone with 20 new houses. But it's, it's a joke. You know, we're not going to build. The housing numbers that we need without shaking up, um, that process. And it's good to see that again, are talking about, um, at least acknowledging that it is a bottleneck and trying to do something about it.

Stephen Drew: Fair enough. Well, this is it. So. There are opportunities here. And this is one thing that I always like to say is because on surface level, there's going to be two listeners here. There's going to be people going like, Oh my gosh, the stuff that these guys are talking about. I'm not interested in that. Or there's going to be the people that hear everything we say, and they're going to continue to do it.

Stephen Drew: However, I do think there's opportunities. And also what I'd love to know about in your businesses, what opportunities are you seeing for your clients or opportunities for yourself that you working on next year? Do you reckon?

Ben Richards: Yeah, there's, there's a few things.

🏠 Social Housing and Affordable Development
---

Ben Richards: Um, [00:30:00] social housing is, and is here to stay obviously.

Ben Richards: And the demand for, I think there's 1. 5 million people on the waiting list for a, you know, a council house, um, social housing that's, that's massive. So that industry I'm seeing, um, Huge numbers of property investors, property developers putting their properties onto a commercial lease with a housing provider, housing association, which is what we've been doing in South London.

Ben Richards: I think there's a massive, uh, massive growth area there. That being said, the regulation in that space is becoming more and more, um, stringent because of. You know, rogue landlords in the past and landlords that have really done a bad name to the industry, for example, but I think social housing is always going to be a top priority and creating affordable housing on new developments is still going to be a massive challenge because to make those types of sites stack up.

Stephen Drew: Yeah,

Ben Richards: it's extremely difficult. And most a lot of councils want between 30 to 50 percent [00:31:00] of major developments, which is above 10 units to be affordable housing. And we've looked at schemes in the past where I know full well, I can get 12 units in this site. Yeah, I've designed it to nine, because as soon as you go That 10 level, the deal, it crumbles because you have to factor in that affordable housing contribution and they do no longer stacks.

Ben Richards: So unless the landowner is willing to slash the price of the land, which they're not, um, you're not going to be able to deliver, um, you know, deliver that amount. So I think that whole. The way that they, um, the council kind of operate that that process needs to be shaken up. They're trying to shake it up, but what they're doing is basically just slapping a higher requirement on developers, which becomes even more difficult to do.

Ben Richards: Yeah, other opportunities. Um, and it has been around since sort of 2014 is when they brought in class. Oh, permitted development rights to convert offices to residential. Um, they've amended those. Uh, permitted development rights for, [00:32:00] uh, class ma, which is like, uh, so everything that's used class e, which is like offices, light industrial, some retail, um, space, there are now permitted development rights for you to convert that into residential, a lot of our schemes throughout the 65 units that we are currently delivering across five.

Ben Richards: sites. Um, 55 of those 65 are some form of commercial to residential conversion. So taking disused, defunct retail commercial office spaces and repurposing them into flats. Um, great for us because effectively a lot of them are often, um, fit outs. You're not doing any ground up development. It's not very messy.

The Planning Process: Challenges and Changes
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Ben Richards: The planning process is a 56 day process. And if you tick the boxes that conform with the permitted development. Um, criteria, you know, you get that approval within 56 days. Game changing when a full planning application might take you six months, eight months, nine months, you're, you're dealing with committees.

Ben Richards: You're dealing [00:33:00] with hundreds of reports. You know, we, we submitted a planning application for two houses about six months ago. I uploaded 24 documents to the planning portal. We had biodiversity, we had ecology, we had daylight, sunlight, we had noise. We had, it was just, you know, the amount of reports that are now needed for planning applications is ludicrous.

Ben Richards: There's no. It's no wonder why planning officers don't have time to review everything. I feel like we're submitting documents that actually have nothing to do with planning and everything to do with building regulations. Well, why are the planning officers signing off on energy strategies when you don't really have to get to that point until you've got building control sign off?

Ben Richards: So we're spending thousands of pounds on reports. They don't know what they're looking at and what they're really aiming for. It's just a waste of everyone's time.

Social Housing and Property Conversions
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Ben Richards: So I think social housing. Commercial to residential type conversions. Um, I still do think that there's huge value in, in creating HMOs and, and, and building, um, you know, we [00:34:00] getting on the property ladder is extremely tough as everyone knows nowadays, where are people going to live when they come out of uni, when they come out, you know.

Ben Richards: Shared housing will need to fulfill and continue to fulfill a role. It's not going to go away. So repurposing properties into shared accommodation, I think, is a great way of, um, you know, building assets, getting good rent roll. Um, so yeah, that's, that's, that's three for you.

Stephen Drew: They, they was really good now, maybe more about how you touched upon it.

Trends in Retail and Industrial Sectors
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Stephen Drew: Now, what about other sectors like retail, all that stuff? So the busy clients that I work with on recruitment, uh, data centers, if an architect is needed than that, it's because they're building loads of it. Social housing now with labor. You're talking about it. I mean, do you see any other trends? Is there maybe a few sectors that you're not interested in getting in?

Stephen Drew: Or, and there's a few that maybe are dying like retail. I mean, what's your forward span?

Ben Richards: Yeah. So my, um, my old premise, my whole premise with, [00:35:00] with aura architecture and XP property is residential. Like I like creating homes for people. That's always been the kind of backbone of what I've always done. Um, we've got commercial assets, we've got offices, we've got, we've got some commercial assets and my business partners got a big, um, sort of.

Ben Richards: industrial unit, which is on sort of commercial let's there's huge, uh, there's been huge growth over the last four to five years in the industrial space because of the likes of Amazon warehousing, you know, fulfillment shipping centers, all that sort of stuff. So the industrial space has really, really, you know, gone bananas over the last couple of years.

Ben Richards: Um, It's not a sector that we're in, but it's a sector that I see. And I kind of wish I wasn't at five years ago, but hindsight is a, it's a wonderful thing. Um, retail has been dying again for the last five, six years since sort of the industrial digital kind of. Uh, the digital age is kind of taken over with online shopping and Amazon, that sort of stuff has that as that's increased [00:36:00] people visiting the high street and retail mom and pop type type shops as as diminished and it's become very, very difficult to, um, to make those work.

Ben Richards: And I think we will see in 2000 and 25 and beyond. a, um, repurposing of the high street, bringing in more experienced type shops. Um, and yeah, bring it. There's so many shops and uppers actually, that is another opportunity, I think. And it sort of goes in with the sort of permitted development because there's opportunity to convert high street retail shops with uppers under permitted development into flats on the upper level.

Ben Richards: So let's say you've got, um, you know, we did a. What was the shop? It's like a, uh, yeah, it was a retail shop with, um, toilets and staff, like staff accommodation on the upper levels. And then the top floor was actually just completely vacant. Like just hadn't been touched in 40 years. That is prime for opportunity.

Ben Richards: There's a lot of disused and defunct commercial unit on the high street that would make amazing homes on the upper [00:37:00] levels, making this, the retail units smaller on the ground floor, because actually the smaller it is, the more affordable it is for like smaller. SME businesses and mom and pop type type shops.

Ben Richards: Um, and what that does is also stimulate the high street because you've got retail residential on the upper levels. You're bringing more people into that space living in that area. Um, but you're also catering for, um, a retail space. That's a bit, bit more affordable for, for, for most people. So yeah, the high street, although it's struggling.

Ben Richards: I do think there's a lot of opportunity for people to be repurposing and redesigning high streets in that respect.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I think so too. I mean, they do need to sort out the business rates though. My gosh. Yeah. I mean, you're wondering why in Covent Garden, they, they, I mean, they beautifully. Put up the boarded sign so you'd almost not tell but if you go there You can't I mean the business rates are somewhere like carbon garden is astronomical hundreds of thousands.

Stephen Drew: It's yeah, it's completely crazy But [00:38:00] um, I was just wondering while we're speaking as well. So, I mean, thanks for your Picture of the sectors, which are bouncing industrial. You're right. A cardo and all them have been some of my biggest architectural clients over the years. So I totally agree. Yeah. And, and bizarrely, 15 years ago, TK max or TJX Europe, they were on it.

Stephen Drew: They weren't been before. I had an Arctic practice in

Ben Richards: the

Stephen Drew: UK because they had it down. Um, but. Maybe we're talking about that. No technology. So I, I wonder you talk about businesses.

The Role of AI in Architecture and Business
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Stephen Drew: You're like me. I'm always thinking I use AI so much in my business right now. Anything remotely data entry. I have got scripts.

Stephen Drew: I have got stuff. I like to think of it almost for me, like a virtual PA because it's getting to that point where I can do some stuff. Do you think there's an opportunity with tech and like that? Maybe it can help with it. The burden of all these bloody planning files. So do you have any thoughts or excitement around tech that maybe can save you time, Ben?

Ben Richards: Absolutely. You know, AI is, you know, we're only [00:39:00] scratching the surface and in most of our businesses, but, uh, it's, it's a game changer in every industry and it will be. And, and even the architecture space, no. I don't think it's going to be, you know, too far till, especially in like space optimization within floor plates of large developments.

Ben Richards: For example, finding the optimum layout, giving a, you know, an AI bot, a, um, uh, a set of criteria that you want them to stick to in terms of size of rooms and layouts of rooms, et cetera, plugging that all in. Boom. It gives you 10 different layout options within five seconds. You know, I think for, for big schemes like that, there's, there's huge amounts of plugins and AI integrations that will help speed up the process.

Ben Richards: Um, yeah, we, we try to push AI upon our, um, Team as much as we possibly can. And I was having this discussion with Graham, my, my, um, ops director in aura. Um, it's actually not being taken up as much as it should be, you know, everyone with those

Stephen Drew: people done, [00:40:00]

Ben Richards: everyone in the team, like, you know, you could be doing things so much faster, like I asked, I think.

Ben Richards: I just typed into chat GPT the other day when I was, I wanted to know how many cycle spaces I need for my development in Buckinghamshire, you know, straight away it comes back, boom, the answer's there. And one of my team was like, Oh, how, how do you know that? I'm like, well, just ask chat GPT. Like it would have taken me 20 minutes to find that.

Ben Richards: Search it on Google, find the right document, find the right section, read it through. It's done in a second. Now, these are the sorts of things that, that team members need to be thinking about. And I, the way I described it to Graham was I feel like I've grown up in the Google age where I'm asking Google what people should get into the mind frame of, of thinking now is.

Ben Richards: Ask chat GBT or ask perplexity or, you know, whatever you want to use for your, for your, for your AI. But it, that, that is the shift now. I think that the younger generations would almost have that as pre programmed in their brains. Like they will just automatically ask, [00:41:00] you know, an AI bot. To provide them answers when our response to things would be just ask Google, it will be just ask AI.

Ben Richards: Yeah. And the answer is right there. So tech is absolutely going to transform everything. I, we were slightly concerned with XP surveys because at some point I imagine, and I already saw an advert on LinkedIn from, uh, I, you know, iPhones having LIDAR use, you know, on the phone. So you're literally capturing 3D information into a like a 0.0 cloud.

Stephen Drew: Well, is that what LIDAR is? 'cause I'm a bit of a newbie on that. So what is that like , so it's so lidar.

Ben Richards: Yeah. So li it scans the room Exactly. That Lidar will scan the room. It's not as accurate. So, so. The kit that we have in our laser scanning, um, business XP surveys is 42, 000 worth a piece of kit. Um, Trimble X7 scans 2 million points per second and creates a point cloud, um, digital twin of the surroundings.

Ben Richards: Yeah. But what one of the latest iPhones has is LiDAR, which does a similar thing. Like have you seen [00:42:00] Matterport, you know, like 360 virtual tours with Matterport?

Stephen Drew: It's quite good for marketing.

Ben Richards: So that's exactly. So we do that for, um, our development businesses. We have three 60 virtual tours. We do some before and afters of walking through.

Ben Richards: The other benefit is for flight architects and structural engineers. For example, when we do a measured building survey, we try to push the Matterport. Um, alongside it because it basically means any stakeholder in that process, i. e. structural engineer, they don't need to go to site client doesn't need to spend 600 quid for, you know, a day trip for the structural engineer to go to site, send them a link to this Matterport 360 virtual, um, tour, and they've got everything they need.

Ben Richards: They can also take measurements. They can see, you know, see, see every angle. Um, But it's not as accurate because that is LIDAR technology. Whereas our 42, 000 pound piece of kit is high tech kind of, so, so the. It's more than the accuracy. [00:43:00] You know, the, the LIDAR might be 25 mil over 10 meters, whereas our piece of kit might be 25 mil over a hundred meters, you know, that sort of level of accuracy, but if it's, if it's fit for purpose and you don't need that level of accuracy, then using your iPhone to kind of capture, you know, capture the, the, the 360 tour might suffice and it's moving at such a rapid.

Ben Richards: Pace in terms of the technological advances in that that area, it does make me concerned about five years from now, like what will the surveying industry look like? Um, we need to get on top of that now to kind of be at the forefront of it.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, maybe we can throw it back and forth to each other on this point.

Stephen Drew: I think there's A great opportunity there though, because I'm still convinced, especially say no, your potential client, they will want you, they will want you, the architect and you will have that thing. However, all the mundane stuff, all the bits that you can outsource, all the bits you can go, I think is brilliant.

Stephen Drew: So I'll give you [00:44:00] one example. When we started my business and my partner would be helping me doing data entry, and it was all right and going at a pace, and then I got an automation Um, chat GPT to do hundreds of things. And the same result was done in a weekend

Ben Richards: and it

Stephen Drew: is, and you imagine how much time that is, or, or for example, you can even now while being too tacky to our, for our audience, but you can.

Stephen Drew: Feed documents into chat, GPT, you can make an assistant and it can become a port of authority. So, I mean, I've got it on, um, our, our employment contracts in the business. And it's not even just for me. I say to the staff, there you go. You don't understand your contract, look at it. And it will give an objective answer about what is your notice period?

Stephen Drew: What is this? What is that? And I think that there's, there's a huge opportunity to hopefully like that. Maybe AI is the answer for dealing with the plan system.

Ben Richards: Yeah, I mean, I think they'll bring in the whole property industry, I think [00:45:00] needs to move on to more like a blockchain type next technology where it's smart contracts and it speeds up that whole process and the planning process could feed into that.

Ben Richards: Um, there's the opportunities are endless. Um, we're even looking at, or I've been doing recently, um, using AI to generate images for me, you know, we can utilize. to maybe, um, we talked about testing this. I haven't done it yet, but even from a, a rear extension of a person's house, for example, you could feed in three photos to say, I like this piece from this photo, this piece from this piece photo, this piece from this photo, um, chat, GPT, pull all these three images together and create a.

Ben Richards: precedent image or a example image to show to our clients that combines all these three elements. So the power of it is incredible. We were doing a, um, as part of this property entrepreneur process that we're going through this year is all the past couple of months have been about goals and goal [00:46:00] setting.

Ben Richards: And, um, well, my, my, my, my like year of goal is, um, I mean, it started as basically survive to thrive. I need to get through this year because we've got so many, so many projects to deliver. I was like, we need to just survive. Get through. That's a real answer. If I, that's

Stephen Drew: the real one at

Ben Richards: the moment. But I basically told chat GBT, this is my year of survive to thrive.

Ben Richards: I envisage, I envisage basically like gold thrown at the top of a pyramid, loads of like gladiators to get by and battle. And, and, you know, this is what, this is my. Uh, to, to get to the top, I need to make my way through all those people. And within five seconds, I had this like JPEG image of lining up in front of this big daunting pyramid gladiator is everywhere.

Ben Richards: I got, and I was like, if I knew how to design that or ask somebody else, it would take weeks, it's done it in two seconds. Yeah. And even if there's one bit that was wrong, I should be like, I don't like the color of the gold throne, make [00:47:00] the gold throne blue, you know, whatever I want to do, and within two seconds, again, it's made that change that it's just.

Ben Richards: A game changer. It really is. And I'm not using it half as much as I should do really.

Stephen Drew: Now it's fine, but you did say about the, the star. I think the thing is with AI, there's so much things you can do. It's really about. Uh, uh, the use of it, first of all, like what do you really need? And I think what most people have done is they, they'll visualize an image and go kind of done that.

Stephen Drew: But if you can plug it into what you constantly do, maybe there's the exciting opportunity on there.

Exciting Prospects for 2025
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Stephen Drew: I mean, the last question I was going to have for me is, so what are you excited about next year? Cause we talked about the hardship. There's a glimmer of hope. We talked about in the AI and stuff that we had a twinkle in our eye.

Stephen Drew: We're not quite giving up yet. But what are you excited about, uh, going forward in 2025 too?

Ben Richards: Yeah, 2025 for me is just about that delivery. Um, so delivering those [00:48:00] schemes profitably, um, within the development business, you know, we've got five on the go. Um, one of which slightly concerned about, but the other four are going gangbusters and you know, I'm super excited to see those come to fruition.

Ben Richards: Some of them actually are almost finished, which is which is great to see within the architecture practice next year. We are going to be focusing on our interior design offering. Um, it's, um, something we've already started to do in 2024, but we're going to be going a bit heavier on that next year and, um, even potentially sort of recruiting some, some junior interior designers to come in and help out, um, and, and not only kind of upsell to our existing architectural clients, but also offering standalone interior design services, which is, um, Yeah, very exciting.

Ben Richards: I think the sustainability space is also huge in the architecture business. So we're going to be exploring how we can, um, integrate some more of the, so I've just put one of my team through a SAP course to understand EPCs and, and, [00:49:00] and analyzing, um, properties from a thermal perspective and. If we change this here, what does it mean for our EPC rating and bringing that all into our architecture practice?

Ben Richards: Not only as a, a tool for our team to, um, get to grips with how little tweaks in installation levels here might mean that we don't have to put. An extra PV panel on the roof, or, you know, what that kind of cost benefit analysis is going to be easier for us to do internally. Um, but it's a great offering for clients.

Ben Richards: We're having a lot more clients come to us wanting to think more sustainability about long term energy cost in their property, which 3 years ago. When we mentioned air source, heat pumps, or proving the installation requirements in your property, people are like, Oh, that sounds expensive. Whereas now people see the benefit of the long term cost saving of installing it now.

Ben Richards: And the way that energy prices are increasing, there's a huge value add to the client now, I think. So yeah, sustainability, interior design, um, [00:50:00] and delivering the, uh, the sites we've got going on at the moment. That's my big goal.

Stephen Drew: Hey, go cool. Well, I look forward to seeing it. Try not to do too many more businesses.

Stephen Drew: You've got enough. My wife,

Ben Richards: she said that I'm not allowed to start anyone new ones.

Stephen Drew: I'm joking. I'm in the crazy camp with you. Keep doing them. I want to learn with you. I think I've got

Ben Richards: enough. I need to consolidate now.

Stephen Drew: I saw it. We'll get there. Well, we'll get there before you go though. Why don't you give me one or two questions first?

Stephen Drew: Cause you know, you're, you've got your own podcast and I'm going to touch upon that at the very end. Come on. Have you got one? ? What, what are your

Ben Richards: goals for 2025?

Stephen Drew: What are my goals? You want the, the hardcore answers, so, so, well, so, so last year was survive slash um, I don't know if we can go another two months.

Stephen Drew: Uhhuh. , I opened up zero at the start of the year. So zeros and counts of piece of software for anyone. And it was forecasting by March we would be gone. So I was like, okay, we need to. [00:51:00] When you see things go into the red, it really like kind of pushes you one way or the other you, you, you make it happen or you don't.

Stephen Drew: And so you, I, you, you, you survive. So we've gone past that point and we had a decent year, but I'm beginning to learn all this crazy stuff. So how much you can have all these big numbers actually. With the current UK system, you got to be careful because of that big profit. It sounds good. You're heading to a million, all this stuff, but it's amazing what you get out at the end.

Stephen Drew: So for me. It's doubling the turnover and screw it. I'll say. So we turned over half a million, but need to get up to a million turnover. That will then mean that we have more profit that we can put back into the business, uh, that will just help out. And that means I can hire more people. And then that means we can, we can grow.

Stephen Drew: I think the recruitment offering is really getting there that brings in the, the, the revenue for the ecosystem. And we've got some cool stuff as well. I mean, some soft [00:52:00] touches, we're actually bringing back the community forum because, uh, it'd be the third time I've done it. Um, and this time it's

Ben Richards: gone and come back.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I closed it for different reasons, but this one's way more focused before the first version, we talk about everything. You know, it's like, do you want to talk about tech? You want to talk about this? It's a forum. This one's much more career focused, much more for either people start their businesses or people that are students.

Stephen Drew: Perfect. It's much more career driven or business driven, because I think that just, that's a little bit about what the architecture social is really professional communities of people going into it. So that's that like me and you will be getting our geek off talking about the planet system.

Ben Richards: Yeah,

Stephen Drew: that's the kind of place.

Stephen Drew: So we'll see, we'll see what happens, but you know, like all this, that's why I love talking about businesses because you need cash to do all this stuff, right? Yeah,

Ben Richards: absolutely. Like you say, profit profit is well, cashflow is King, but, um, you know, you need the profit there to, to do it.

Business Strategies and Community Building
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Ben Richards: I think, but another question on that, then how do you plan to double your revenue?[00:53:00]

Ben Richards: What's the strategy?

Stephen Drew: Really good question. So. It in recruitment, it is hiring people. So we predominantly do an architecture. I'm looking to expand interiors, but I need someone that can help me do it. And it's not fair for someone that's not done it before. I really need someone with experience to do it.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. But there comes the start of the podcast where we talked about hiring personalities and not being seduced by this cause not being so, so really. I need, so I've, I'm going to have to spend a lot of time doing internal recruitment, which is very hard. And I have to be careful because I'm the recruiter, right?

Stephen Drew: So people go, Oh, it's going to be so easy, but very easy doing it for other companies. Cause you know, it's like when you get advice, you can say to me, Oh, you need to do this, this, that, but when you're in the zone, it's really hard. So for me, it will be internal hiring and building up and getting the right people to get going.

Stephen Drew: That's really it. I guess

Ben Richards: in your internal hiring [00:54:00] model, most of the time of recruitment is based on commissions, right? Is that, is that sort of how you work with sort of relatively. Oh, but a commission base for my life in recruitment in like product marketing.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Yeah. It's where it's incredibly volatile is in theory, you can make a lot of money, but you get paid at the end of the process.

Stephen Drew: So it's, it's a lot of work. For a lot of risks. So sometimes you can get that one blue moon where, you know, one person, you will demand and they get hired and you send the big invoice and you're like, Oh my gosh, if I was doing this every day, it'd be absolutely loaded. But then there's just loads of times where projects drop out, people change their mind and you know, you, I really believe you, you can't push people in the jobs, they're just going to do the opportunity.

Stephen Drew: So it really, it's a really strange business. I mean, You, you effectively start every other month from a zero, which I don't like our mutual friend, James Sinclair does not agree with that. So we're looking at bringing other, uh, things into the business [00:55:00] as well. Like we do coaching, uh, we are, we do are doing some recruitment as well for on retainer for companies.

Stephen Drew: So for example, sorry,

Ben Richards: go on.

Stephen Drew: No, so one, a large architecture practice, we, we do all of their in house recruitment for, so that helps.

Ben Richards: Yeah, that's, that's a good like, um, baseline, isn't it? My wife introduced like a mentorship scheme within her, her recruitment, um, company, which, which might be. Might be of interest, you know, you build that network and effectively all of the mentees, um, you've got mentees that are offering their services to bring up new people within the product marketing space.

Ben Richards: Those companies obviously need recruitment. And then you've also got the mentees themselves that. I'm looking for jobs that you can fill with within the role. So you're building this kind of internal ecosystem of, um, uh, the mentorship is feeding some of your other recruitment needs and sales and revenues.

Ben Richards: But, um, yeah, it's an interesting space. It's, uh, not, yeah, not something [00:56:00] I think I could do where it's. Heavily, heavily commissioned based isn't it? It's sort of feast or famine type.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, it's, it's, it's completely, completely crazy. I will take your community idea or sorry, that, that mentorship thing, but you know, what would be great for that?

Stephen Drew: A big fat sponsor, Autodesk. If you are listening, I will. Take your money. I will let you put Autodesk all over it. It would be amazing. And I will scrub out any comment I've ever historically made about Reddit. I will redact it. I totally will. I can be bought. Um, somewhat. I'm not, it's like a Part reality, but now I'm always excited.

Stephen Drew: But also what I would say, like yourself, I'm in it for the journey. I love sharing ideas and you know what I've learned recently as well. It's so cool to speak to other business owners or people building their own businesses. And there is a community of crazy people like us, Ben, in this space. And actually you all come up [00:57:00] together.

Stephen Drew: And that's the last thing I would say is because. Um, sometimes I've seen, I think you're very given you do your podcast and we're going to mention the name of that in one second. You're very given with your information. However, other architecture practices as well. There's no reason why you can't speak with each other.

Stephen Drew: I speak to other recruitment agencies. It's okay. You know, we're not all nicking each other's work, but we have that fear at the start. Like I can't speak to another architecture practice, but you have to. Go up together. You, you are the product of who you were around, aren't you? You need

Ben Richards: plenty of business out there for, for everyone.

Ben Richards: Uh, and the same goes kind of externally talking to other practices, but also actually sharing with your team. I think when I first started. Or I was very close guarded with like the financial statistics and profitability and this sort of stuff, completely the wrong attitude since, since, you know, we now share things on a monthly basis, you know, revenues here, it's not quite where it needs to be.

Ben Richards: Profitability last month was X. We need to get another project here, project there. [00:58:00] Um, all of that is shared and it's, it's. It's given everyone a much better insight into why they're doing it. Um, and they, they root for you. They want the business to succeed. And when we have, um, performance bonuses based on gross profit margins and all these other sort of, um, rewards for hitting certain targets.

Ben Richards: And I think. People appreciate that, that they know what they're driving for. They know what their, their end goal is. They know what they need to, to, to invoice that, you know, all of that stuff is, is shared with the team. And I think, um, a lot of people when they start a business are way too close guarded on that type of stuff.

Ben Richards: And I'd implore everyone listening to this, if you've made it this long, um, to share, share with your team and bring them on for the journey.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I agree. And I'll echo that and double down because I always find it funny. Isn't it? We, everyone in the social knows what each other are on and knows what commission everyone's made and it's all on the board, even down to base salary, because I always makes me laugh because he gets so secretive.

Stephen Drew: And then we, when we've worked in practices before, what's the first thing you say to your mate down the pub? [00:59:00] What you want, it's hilarious, isn't it? So we all do it right.

Podcast and Final Thoughts
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Stephen Drew: Ben this you given so many golden nuggets and there is more golden nuggets because you have your own real estate and property podcast.

Stephen Drew: So when we do a roundup of all the links to the business, and then tell us about where people can listen to the live streams.

Ben Richards: Yeah. Cool. Um, you want me to go through all the businesses?

Stephen Drew: Yeah. We'll do a round. We'll do a quick round. So you can go from your least favorite to favorite, even though you're not supposed to have that.

Stephen Drew: I'm not going to do

Ben Richards: that. These are in no particular order. Uh, just the ones that came, came to mind first. So aura architecture, um, is aurahomes. co. uk, um, we've got quite a good following on social media, on Instagram. If you want to follow us there, I've just had a notification on YouTube actually, that in 2024, we had.

Ben Richards: Uh, 263, 000 views on our YouTube channel in 2020, which I'm super impressed with because that was part of our, our goals for 2024. [01:00:00] So check out our YouTube channel. Um, XP property is our property and dress property development and investment business. XP surveys is our measured building and topographical survey business.

Ben Richards: And then a paro social is our social housing, um, business down in, down in South London. Now, the best place to kind of find out what we do. What we're up to learn about business, learn about being a, a property developer and, and learn from award-winning developers, which is what myself and Jack are. Um, you can go over to the Property Experts Podcast.

Ben Richards: So every Friday we go live, um, on YouTube, Facebook, uh, LinkedIn and various other platforms. I think the YouTube channel is at XP Property, actually, but it's called The Property Expert Show. Mm-hmm . We repurpose the audio. Uh, re repurpose the video into audio format, launch the podcast on Spotify and Apple and all those standard places at noon on a Tuesday.

Ben Richards: And there you'll find every week, you know, [01:01:00] lots of learnings from what we're up to in our businesses. You can grow vicariously through what we're up to, see the progress on our. Projects. There it is. The property expert show. Um, yeah, and it's, that is also gaining quite a lot of momentum now as well. We've got a lot of shorts and shorts, um, videos being now pulled from our Friday lives, um, lots of in depth.

Ben Richards: Topics that we go into and we're repurposing some of those topics into standalone videos. Um, you know, uh, Jack spent a couple of days last weekend in Dubai with Daniel Priestly, you know, the amount of value that he got from those couple of days is insane. And we talk about that on last week's. Podcasts are some of the key learnings that we've, we've, we've gained from him over the last couple of days.

Ben Richards: So yeah, it's a place where if you're interested in property development, if you're interested in business entrepreneurship, you'll take away huge amounts of value from our, our weekly lives.

Stephen Drew: It's so good. It's so good. And I did subscribe. I am [01:02:00] subscribed to you on my other account, but then that done the architecture social, right?

Stephen Drew: So I've done it now. I don't know if I like blasted your years in between that, where I loaded it up, but everyone should sign up to this because the amount of content here. Is ridiculous. This is so so so much and we have to support other people in the community as well Subscribe, what are you bloody doing?

Stephen Drew: It's for free to subscribe Rant over thank you so much ben. I really appreciate it right on that. Thanks for having

Ben Richards: me

Stephen Drew: No, no problem. Ben, you're an absolute star. I really appreciate what you do. I'm going to end the live stream now, but before I do, thank you so much, everyone. If you are watching this tomorrow, when I'll put it live, have a good new year.

Stephen Drew: But if you're watching it in 2025, let's see how it goes. If it's all gone to shit, we'll work it out together, but there are opportunities in the madness, more content to come. Thank you for tuning in and have a great day. Take care everyone. Bye. Bye.

Ben Richards: [01:03:00] Thanks everyone. Bye now.