In the latest episode of OnTheMarket’s OnTheRecord podcast, the property portal’s CEO, Jason Tebb, is joined by Peter Rollings, non-executive director of Foxtons.

The pair talked about how agencies can move with the times whilst retaining their ‘core fundamentals’.

Rollings also talks about his time at Foxtons, Marsh & Parson, reflects on what he sees as being the future of PropTech, along with past mistakes, successes.

He also offers his take on the self-employed agency model and the difficulty of breaking into the elite tier of estate agencies, amongst many other things.

To listen to the show, click here.

Alternatively, here is Podcast transcript: 

[00:00:00] Jason Tebb: Welcome to the third episode in our second series of OnTheRecord. I’m Jason Tebb, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket, and over the course of this season of podcasts, I’ll be talking to the innovators and leading figures in our sector to discuss their journey in the industry, their views on proptech and their opinions on how adopting new technology could benefit every agent.

I’m delighted to welcome Peter Rollings to the show in a career spanning over three decades from the shop floor to the boardroom. He’s worked for some of the industry’s most iconic brands and was instrumental in both expanding and creating significant value at Foxtons, which he joined in 1985 – remember way back then? – and become managing director in 2007 and later on as CEO of Marsh and Parsons. He now works in a number of consultancy roles still within the property sector and had a well publicised return to Foxtons as interim CEO and Nnon-exec Director in 2001. He also gave me my first ever role in a estate agency over 20 years ago, so it’s with great pleasure that I welcome Peter Rollings to the show.

Hi Peter.

[00:01:17] Peter Rollings: Hi Jason. How are you? I could spot talent from the evening in those days, look at that.

[00:01:23] Jason Tebb: Very raw as it was back then. Did you like the way I said over three decades rather than ‘nearly 40 years’?

[00:01:28] Peter Rollings: Yeah. Thanks for that.

[00:01:29] Jason Tebb: You’re very welcome, I’m sure I won’t come back to that later. So we’ll just crack on if you’re ready? And I think like many people in the industry, as you well know, I fell into agency from a completely different sector. But tell us a bit about your own personal story in a very brief summary of the highlights of your career to date.

[00:01:46] Peter Rollings: Okay, sure. Well, I think I, I totally agree with you, no one wakes up on their 18th birthday and says, I know what, I’m gonna be an estate agent. It sort of doesn’t happen like that. You try these things. I was, believe it or not, I was selling fish in Chelsea Farmer’s Market becauase it came with a flat in Shepherd’s Bush and an old boy walking through the market one day gave me an advert. I joined a company called Lane Fox who were unbelievably posh. I was the only person that hadn’t been to Eaton and I did three years. I (was) literally an office boy, and I think, I hate to sound like an old man, but I think you have to do your time. And I did my time. I was making coffee, I was collecting maps, I was running errands, I was gonna see lovely houses, but I was learning the business and learning from some amazing people, how to speak to people, how to do deals. So, that was the purpose of it. And then I joined Foxtons in 85, which was an unbelievable change from nine till five, five days a week, to nine till nine, seven days a week. I had an ulcer in three months. I nearly killed myself, frankly. It was the first time we did 0% in Fulham in 1985, and we had 380 instructions in a month, and then we had to try and sell ’em.

[00:02:48] Jason Tebb: Wow.

[00:02:49] Peter Rollings: So, and then I grew up with Foxtons and learned from the very best. We weren’t a particularly nice company in those days. We were very early, a real change in the market. I believe John Hunt totally changed the market and I rode on his coattails and then I took over in 97. We grew it massively, quadrupled the size of it in three years, and then I sort of had enough and bought Martian Parsons with an Irish partner, magnificent partner, Sherry FitzGerald. Mark FitzGerald is the most fantastic man and we went into business together and we grew it and we changed a lot. When I bought the business, it was like walking back in Victorian times. I’ve never seen anything like it and coming out of Foxtons it was… wow. So crazy. And then we grew and grew and grew and bought another business and bought two or three businesses. We worked through the recession and then sold it in late 2011 and exited the business in early 2016. I cannot believe I’ve been out for seven years and I’ve been faffing around doing all sorts of fun stuff, not getting on the A3 at quarter to six every morning and getting home at eight o’clock at night.

So that’s a snapshot of what I’ve been up to.

[00:04:03] Jason Tebb: Fantastic, and we’ll come back to some of those bits a bit later. But most interesting of all of those things is your experience moving from one brand to another, operating in a similar space, in a similar location, but operating two completely different business models. Maybe we’ll come back to that if we get time in due course, but let’s talk technology for a bit. That’s why we’re here. So we’ve all seen the way tech, as it’s called, has changed the industry. I remember using applicant cards and boxes way before any CRMs, filling out the name and address and details and ‘what’s the three things you won’t compromise on?’ ‘How long have you been looking’, ‘what’s the best you’ve seen and why? All of that stuff.

[00:04:36] Peter Rollings: Look at that. You’ve still got it Tebby, well done.

[00:04:41] Jason Tebb: Still got it. But, how has technology changed the way agents and customers interact from when you were hammering the phones in the eighties, when I was trying to do my first deal in the early two thousands? Do you think there’s any drawbacks to all this new tech?

[00:04:56] Peter Rollings: Um, well, yeah, I do. I absolutely do. I think it has to be a combination. I mean, just to step back, 25 years, I went to something called the Inman Conference in San Francisco in I think 2000, it might even have been 99, with John (Hunt), because we saw the internet launch and start and thought, ‘holy ****, we’re screwed. This is gonna replace us, we’re absolutely bugged. There’s no way, you know, it’s gonna totally replace us and we need to do something about it’. So we went over there that year and we were terrified it was all happening, and it was all going online, and we were gonna be disintermediated and it was the end of the world.

So we went back and we made plans about how to go nationwide and, you know, gold, silver, and platinum service and all, blah, blah, blah. We went back the next year and the whole thing was totally different as we saw what the web did was it didn’t disintermediate, it helped us. It became a tool for us, a tech tool, and in the early days we thought it would beat us alive and then we used it as a fantastic tool.

John didn’t make many mistakes, but he made a mistake in buying a company in America called Your Home Direct, which was online only. He was always way ahead of his time. Incredibly so. Decades ahead of his time. Anyway, it didn’t work. It was ‘Your Home Direct, the home of the 2%’, so we went in and we, or he did, and rather than grow in London, which I was campaigning for, we grew in America and it was a catastrophe basically. Because it relied almost entirely on technology and not really on people and how we know the business works, which is a mixture of tech and skilled salespeople. I mean, in the early days, and you’ll remember I’m sure JT, printing off details and 36×4 photograph with sticky backs, sticking ’em on the front and mailing them out to people.

[00:06:47] Jason Tebb: Yep.

[00:06:48] Peter Rollings: It sounds ridiculous, but actually the thinking behind it has some relevance to today, which is we took the very best photograph and only one, because the purpose of that was to get someone in the door. And I do worry, and I’ve always worried, that multitudes of photographs showing every angle of every room makes people think, looking at 50 photographs and seeing three and saying ‘ooh, I don’t like that, I won’t bother’. So, you know, information is key and it’s crucial. But I think too much information kills deals. The start of deals. Cause you can’t get people through the front door cause they’re made up their mind that they don’t like the green bathroom. That’s a worry.

[00:07:27] Jason Tebb: Yeah. I think the aim of any kind of marketing is to get people, as we are talking about now, through the door. I caught up with John Williams a couple of shows ago and we were talking about the same thing. And back to your earlier point about, you know, Foxtons being a, a pioneer, we were talking about the concept of floor plans. I just thought it was the norm when I joined. And of course it was completely revolutionary. And the idea of a virtual tour, which back then was just some photos stitched together, but actually, you know, looked interactive even back then, 20 odd, 23 years ago. Was revolutionary. But there is that balance between giving lots of info so that people want to see it and giving too much info. So it gives people reasons not to, and I think that’s the balance that maybe, you are absolutely right, with all of this technology advances that’s happened, it’s about that balance between too much info and not enough, I suppose.

[00:08:16] Peter Rollings: Yeah, I mean, I think, I got into trouble on another podcast I did the other day by, I’ve forgotten what I said, it was an off the cuff comment, which I’m well used to doing, but it was something on the lines of ‘most estate agents are, are lazy’.

[00:08:30] Jason Tebb: Mm, yeah, I did see that headline!

[00:08:32] Peter Rollings: I know. Well, it was taken outta context, I think. There was a couple of things it was meant to do and it’s to do with technology. Agents rely too much on technology. They’ve forgotten what you have to do as an agent, which is get on the phone and sell to people. And if they don’t like something, you ask them why they don’t like it and then you find the thing that they don’t like, the small third bedroom, the south facing garden, whatever it may be. But in these days, well, I remember when I bought M&P, I went into an office and there was a a foot high pile of papers all printed, and I said, ‘what’s that for?’ So that’s a mail out. It was the antithesis of tech in that they were mailing out individual details to a thousand people, literally spraying the proverbial on the wall, hoping something sticks. That’s how we changed the business, because we changed it from a coverall marketing blast to focused marketing via individuals, which is in my view, how the business works. So tech does make agents lazy and my thoughts remain that many agents, I won’t say most, but many agents don’t really want to push themselves and they can be a bit lazy. It’s a joy in a business frankly, when as my first boss said to me, ‘Peter, you could be great at this, because 90% of the competition are completely useless’. I don’t think that’s the case these days, but, I do think it’s still quite a lot, but I blame it on fees.

[00:10:07] Jason Tebb: I think I stole that phrase from you because I think I edited it somewhat to say, ‘you don’t have to be much better than the rest to be exceptional’, or something like that, which is your phrase, and youtaught me that years ago. But I think my, my own personal view, and obviously I run a PropTech business, it is a portal, but there’s other services too, but my own personal view is that sometimes tech can be an inhibitor to the most fundamental thing about estate agency, which is building relationships. And it’s very hard to build a relationship over email, incredibly hard to build it over Facebook, but not that hard to build it on the phone. And I do hear some say, I don’t share this view, I do hear people say that actually, you know, ‘that’s my main method of communication. I only ever do matches on email from CRM and occasionally get the odd phone call’. I think that the one thing that makes the difference between exceptional agency and average agency is that rapport building, that trust building, that relationship building. When things aren’t going so well, when there’s a fall through or when there’s a price reduction conversation or when there’s a missing FENSA certificate from 1996, any of those things, if you haven’t got the relationship, you haven’t got the trust, it makes it very hard, very hard.

[00:11:17] Peter Rollings: It’s so true. I mean, I was told years ago, and probably still people think it, that millennials don’t like the phone. They don’t like speaking. They much prefer messaging, which I get. I mean, you know, I probably do it as well, but just cuz they prefer it doesn’t mean you have to do it. I know that sounds a bit bossy, but we are in this business on behalf of our clients, the sellers and the landlords, to go out and find the one person in the market to pay the most amount of money. Now, we’re not gonna do that, in my view, by sitting and flooding people’s inboxes and WhatsApp messaging with, ‘I think you’re gonna like this’. There has to be a follow up and you have to have a pyramid of buyers and tenants with the ones at the top, the most likely. They have interacted with you. They’ve called you, they called you back. They’re the ones you’re gonna call and they’re the ones you’re gonna focus on rather than the morass at the bottom who were just sort of, having a bit of property porn and seeing what’s around.

[00:12:13] Jason Tebb: Yeah, spot on. I mean, we used to call it ‘viewing off the phone’. Those people who view off the phone, they don’t need to see details, they don’t need to see the link, they don’t need to see any other information. They, trust you and they will come and see something because you’ve called them about it. Again, very hard to do that when you’re only pinging them emails every five minutes. So totally agree with you.

Following on from that question about the tech piece, you’ve got your finger on the pulse in the PropTech world, you advise some PropTech businesses. What do you think’s the next big thing, the next big innovation coming down the line, and if you think that that will affect the property market or affect how property sold and let in general?

[00:12:46] Peter Rollings: AI is the obvious one and I can’t pretend to to know much about it. I really don’t. I’ve had a play with chat GPT and I read a lot about it, very interesting articles that tell me it’s either gonna end the world or it’s gonna save us all by inventing new ways of producing energy. Who knows? So I think that will make a difference. I personally don’t think, and we’ve seen by basically the demise of purple bricks and most of those sorts of businesses that without that, personality and without that personal touch, tech by itself just doesn’t work in this business. And I’ve said it for 20 years or 15 years, however long it is, and I know many other people said it by the way, I’m not the only right person, but I think I am right in this, and I think as long as any tech is really combined with a personal, ambitious, enthusiastic salesmanship, then it’s got chances. But if you just rely on tech, you might do okay. But it depends what you want in business, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do okay. I didn’t wanna do okay. I wanted to shoot the lights out. But many people just want to exist and have a nice lifestyle.

[00:13:56] Jason Tebb: It’s part of my job to look at all new tech that is around, and I see lots of new startups and some that are in second stage as well .But AI is definitely on the rise and it’s become a phrase that people now talk about, whereas five years ago, no one really knew what it meant. We’re now seeing some practical applications. I think that AI piece for me, and I’m only looking from, in terms of my business, in terms of extrapolating data and finding trends from data, something that a human would take days, weeks to do that, AI can do, I think there’s value in that. I’ve seen a couple of details writing AI generation tools, which, you know, probably saves 25 minutes out your day when you’re writing, ‘this superb three bedroom, semi-detached property in a quiet location’ stuff, it probably saves a bit of time there.

[00:14:42] Peter Rollings: Oh God. Didn’t you cut and paste those, surely you did.

[00:14:44] Jason Tebb: I didn’t do any of them, did I at Fotxons, because they were all done for us. I was very lucky. When I did move from one brand to another and I went to run a small area for Chesterton’s and I went into the Wimbledon branch and got a listing and they were like, ‘right, you gotta do the details now’. I’m like, well do what? Do what now? It’s like, oh no here’s the camera and I was already outta my comfort zone. I had to learn a whole new skillset. How lucky we were back then.

[00:15:12] Peter Rollings: We were, we absolutely were. It was part of what we did, which was focus people on certain parts of the job that they could get really good at and take away all the ****. Which was part of it.

Just on that point, I’m part of the Property Academy with Peter Knight, and I have a group of agents and one of the agents who’s no longer in the group actually so I can talk about it, he is tech mad and extremely good at it and extremely knowledgeable at it and I went to see his office and it was surrounded by big old screens all over the walls showing almost everything that anybody had ever done for that week, that month, that day. And frankly, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. So I’m gonna tell you all you need to see, well, you need to see three or four things, outgoing phone calls, how many under offers they’ve got, how many deals they’ve done, how many mortgages they’ve made, all that sort of thing, but it’s very limited. Otherwise, it’s just chaff. You see nothing but you see everything. So I’m a big believer in whiteboards, as you know. They can be screens, whiteboard screens, that’s fine. But there has to be limited and very precise amount of information on it that is gonna move the dial.

[00:16:20] Jason Tebb: Yeah. Spot on. I can’t show you my whiteboard that’s sitting behind me, but I have a whiteboard. It is roughly 10 foot by about six foot and it mapped out my first two years on the market and what I wanted to achieve. Did I tick off everything on it? No. Did I add more stuff onto it? Yes, I did. Did it form the blueprint of what we executed? Yes, it did. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without, that’s just how I organise my brain. In fact, I organise my life on lists and whiteboards, but it’s very clear and I probably could have drawn into all the detail on another hundred things off the back of it, but that’s what kept us all focused on what we needed to execute. And that’s my point. You can get too smart with technology.

[00:17:03] Peter Rollings: You really can. You can think, ‘oh, that’s, we need that, we need this and we need that’. You don’t. You need a few good things and done really, really well. And consistency with complete vigor and determination and grit and guts and anything else you wanna say. But you have to complete it, not just faf around at it.

[00:17:20] Jason Tebb: Yeah. Right people, doing the right things every day. Simple as that. If only it was that easy.

[00:17:25] Peter Rollings: Yeah, it’s really not is it? You’re right.

[00:17:27] Jason Tebb: Uh, I wanna talk about the industry as a whole just for a little bit, if that’s okay. I mean, you’ve executed expansion strategies, exit strategies you mentioned earlier, but over the last few years, and particularly over the last sort 12 to 18 months, we’ve seen a lot of consolidation going on in the agency space. We’ve seen big significant changes to established business models, LSL’s announcement was one of them. We’ve seen the rise of the personal brand of agents and a self-employed model. Lots of change. How do you see that playing out in the future? How do you think it will affect the sector, or is it just another variation on a theme and the whole thing will continue with various different models operating independently?

[00:18:07] Peter Rollings: Well, I’ll start with the self-employed model, which I think is fascinating. And I went to Australia about 15 years ago, which is basically what they do. I mean it’s in effect, they’re working for brands, but they are self-employed. They don’t get basics. They get 50, 60, 70, 80 9% commission. I sort of came back to the UK thinking I was gonna reinvent the whole market and how I was inspired by it. i thought it was great. And get fabulous people on board because you’re paying them a proper amount of money and they’re really running their own businesses within my business, which is how I’ve always seen agency, as it should be. Not big old basics, but smaller basics, very ambitious commission rates that people can really thrive. That’s what happens in Australia. And to a lesser extent, funnily enough, America. It’s, it’s much more of mom and pop businesses in America, it’s many more agents doing far fewer deals. But what I couldn’t make work in the UK was the principle, making money. So I could get the brokers making money because they’re being paid 50, 60, 70, 80%. I couldn’t work out, and I went round the ****** houses with it, how the principal would make money, proper money. He, she would have to have massive volume of people out there doing deals, of which they’re getting, I don’t know, 10, 12, 15, 20%, but paying for various bits and pieces. So maybe someone’s cracked it. I don’t know. There’s many businesses, what was it, Keller Williams, EXP, I think they’re an impressive lot. I had dinner with the founder amongst many other people, the other day, and he’s an amazing guy from America. He’s a billionaire, so he’s obviously doing something right. So, so I think there’s opportunity there. I don’t think it’ll ever go mainstream. I do think it’s quite an interesting business. Not necessarily in London I don’t think, because I think it’s much more personal. I think it you know, (like) being a member of the Parents Teachers Association at school, you know, being a, a local counselor, being a real part of the community, which is less likely, I don’t think, in London. And also gaining instructions. Gaining instructions is the be or and endor of this business. And in my view, at both Foxtons and Marsh & Parsons, it was the brand that gained the instructions, not the individual. And it is much harder as an individual when you’re in competition with big brands like M&P and Foxtons and, and Svaills and Knight, Frank and Hamptons who have Chesterton’s, that you can gain those instructions and that’s the key. That’s the be all and end all. Especially then if you charge 1%. You’ve gotta do big volume to just make it worthwhile. It’s not just a lifestyle business.

[00:20:33] Jason Tebb: That was gonna be my follow up question. Do you think it won’t work cuz the fees are too low here compared to the rest of the world?

[00:20:37] Peter Rollings: That’s exactly it, yeah. Fees are pathetic. In Australia, that 2.5, 3%, and the householder pays half a percent marketing fees. McGraw, I, I remember at the time, this is 15 years ago, had a 30 million a year marketing budget all paid by the clients. Wow. You can only dream about that sort of thing. It’s different business and I don’t think that works. In terms of LSL, I thought that was interesting. I mean the Your Move brand didn’t have much focus on it, I don’t think and I think the franchise will be much better for them. Yes.

[00:21:09] Jason Tebb: I think that probably in major conurbations, it’s very hard for a personal sort of brand led model to work. Maybe out in the Shires or in other areas, there are some exceptions that actually by the way, I’m being slightly unfair. I used to work in Wimbledon Village and there was a very well known agent who’d worked there 30 years. He didn’t do any canvassing or marketing.

[00:21:27] Peter Rollings: Robert Holmes., Amazing guy.

[00:21:30] Jason Tebb: Got it straight away. But he did go to the pub every day and then all of a sudden instructions came that way. So there are exceptions to that rule.

[00:21:36] Peter Rollings: He is that, he’s an old school ‘that’. He was a very niche local agent who had his patch sewn up. He was brilliant agent.

[00:21:43] Jason Tebb: Yeah. And I think with those very few exceptions, I think it’s hard on both a personally branded level, but also with the current fee structure we have in the country, to build that of scale, as you said. But, we’ll see. The thing that fascinates me about this industry, there’s always new stuff coming. There’s always new ideas and always new concepts. There’s always new brands and I love that about the industry because it keeps it fresh. None’s doing the same thing all the time. There’s always challenges, and I see that in our own business vertical. There’s always challengers that come, and some of them sadly go, but it’s good to see what’s happening and (to be) kept on your toes, I suppose.

[00:22:16] Peter Rollings: It is, but I think I’m right in saying that it is almost entirely, I mean, blowing my own trumpet for a moment, Marsh & Parsons were one that sort of stepped up from a mid, well it was losing money when we bought it, let’s face it. And it up. But there aren’t many like that. The traditional, the Hamptons, the John D Woods, the Savills, the Knight Franks, the Foxtons, those guys have been generally pretty solid, good quality businesses for decades generally. They do a great job in a market. They’re the ones that have survived and people come and go, but they never really crack into that group of businesses, I don’t think.

[00:22:54] Jason Tebb: Agreed.

You are listening to, on the record, the OnTheMarket podcast with me, your host, Jason Tebb, my guest this week, Peter Rollings, we’ve been chatting about Peter’s career and the impacts of the digital revolution on the industry as a whole. Moving on from this, we’re gonna talk about the fundamentals of agency, what being an exceptional agent really means, and find out what Peter likes to do in the rare days, he’s not working.

Peter, so I wanna talk really about those fundamentals of agency. We touched on them already actually, in terms of what ‘s consistent amongst all top performers, all good performing branches. With the way, as we’ve just mentioned, there’s new systems, there’s new technology, there’s new software solutions, the whole sector’s changed dramatically. But if you were to ask a straw poll of 10 agents, and I mean at negotiator level now, maybe not at a a branch owner or or business owner level, if you ask those 10 agents, do you think you’d get a list of the same agency principles that I was taught that you learned, or do you think it would be different?

[00:24:04] Peter Rollings: Depends who they work for. I mean, if you ask 10 good agents, yes. As I’ve always said, this is not a difficult job to do. It is a difficult job to do well and, as we discussed at the start, I’m not sure there’s that many that do it really well. I think probably many more than when I was a youngster, but I don’t know. My journey back to Foxtons has been an eyeopener for me, is it was fascinating. I joined the board in December 21, and I was asked to come to the board to sort of cast my eye over what was going on, because it had basically been in decline since it floated in 2014. And it really was a lesson in how not to run a business and especially a sales business. And I was disappointed, cross…

[00:24:48] Jason Tebb: I was gonna ask, did it annoy you? Did it upset you?

[00:24:51] Peter Rollings: Yeah, it really did.

[00:24:51] Jason Tebb: Because of everything that you’d spent the majority, or the large chunk of your career, building was potentially unraveling.

[00:24:58] Peter Rollings: I mean anywhere where you are for 20 years, it’s in your soul. I’m probably much prouder of Marsh & Parsons than I am of Foxtons, but Foxtons was when I grew up, let’s say that. And it had lost its mojo in such a huge way and. Bluntly, it was incredibly poorly managed, I think. Not wantonly, I don’t think, just through ignorance and it didn’t have anybody on the board who had the slightest idea about estate state agency.

I know I’m speaking bluntly here, but as I’m concerned, it’s true. In the phrase of the day, it is my truth. But I do think it is true and they lost the ability to know and understand what makes a salesperson tick. They were ticking every box they could possibly find in order to fit in with what goes on these days at the expense of profit. And my view is very strongly, I don’t care who I employ, I don’t care where they’re from, whether they’re from a public school, what nationality they are, what diversity they are, but they have to have talent. They have to be positive, upbeat, enthusiastic, look you in the eye, understand what does to make people tick. Not be afraid of the telephone. Be able to speak. Something. I mean, be able to speak and write. Maybe that’s too old fashioned these days, but it did lead to the business having catastrophic figures and it had entirely come from mismanagement and the misunderstanding of a sales culture and what and how makes salespeople work hard. And that’s what you need. You don’t want to come in and exist, you want to come in and shoot the lights out and be the best people they possibly can and move up and make a lot of money and drive nice cars and have nice things. If you wanna have them save the world, they probably shouldn’t be in an estate agent.

[00:26:43] Jason Tebb: It’s like the old Foxtons ad, which was, ‘this isn’t a job, this is a career’. Certainly, when I was there, it was highly competitive and you know, people were there because they were striving to be the best, not just striving to get the next paycheck, because there probably wouldn’t be a paycheck if they didn’t work hard.

[00:26:56] Peter Rollings: Absolutely. And you’ll be delighted to hear that’s, that’s back. We’re growing quickly, cause there’s so much going on and it has changed so dramatically in the last six months since Guy’s been in charge. It’s a different place.

[00:27:08] Jason Tebb: It’s great to hear and you know, as you can already tell from the areas that I’ve touched on so far in this podcast, many of the things that I still apply today were learned back then. It’s as simple as that. I know this isn’t a Foxtons podcast, but it’s impossible to talk about what my experience without talking about it and the, the fundamentals of agency and I think that’s what probably, to come to the point you just made around experience of the sector within the exec team, if I can talk about myself for a little bit, when I got the gig, first of all, people were surprised that I got the role at OnTheMarket and they asked me, ‘would being an estate agent be an advantage to you?’ And I said, ‘actually, I don’t think it would be an advantage, but at least I understand the ‘. How wrong was I? It absolutely is an advantage. I talk about it every day. I get to talk about it with my customers every day. We do things in terms of our product and service delivery, our strategic plays. Everything is done off the back of what estate agency really is, and the fundamental agency principles of ‘stock breeds stock, pick up the phone, how many outbound calls did you make, manage expectations, be enthusiastic, all of that stuff. Where did I get that? I got that back then early two thousands.

[00:28:21] Peter Rollings: And many, many, many people had that. I mean, I employed thousands of people throughout my career at both Foxtons and M&P and I, even today, I sincerely believe that if you’re a 23, 24, 25, 26 year old person and you want an experience of a sales culture and and a work culture, then Foxtons is hard to beat. It’s a tough place. But it has more stock than anybody else. It’s busier than anybody else. There’s more opportunity than anybody else, and you work ****** hard still. This is a tough job. I think they got to the stage of employing people who were nice. Of course, being nice is important, but it has to be combined with talent and grit and toughness to get through it, cuz it’s tough.

[00:29:02] Jason Tebb: So I was gonna ask on one of my questions, of all the thousands of interviews you’ve done, what the main qualities you look for in a potential new starter, but I think you’ve answered it in the sense of grit, determination, something about them, a personality. Is it on those kind of lines, right? It can’t be experienced cuz you hired me. So what ‘s the main things that say, do you know what, this guy or girl is spot on?

[00:29:21] Peter Rollings: Of course I remember hiring you. I don’t remember the interview, but I seem to remember there was something about you. You had done something. To me, it wasn’t about what you’d studied at university, it was about what you’d done. If you’d sat around in your mother and father’s villa in the south of France on your school holidays, well, you know, you might succeed. Many people do. But for me, I wanted to see that got off your backside and had done something and I mean, you definitely had done something. And many people like that, and grit and determination is key. You could be a brilliant salesman, but if you give up at the first sign of adversity, then you’re not gonna be brilliant.

[00:29:54] Jason Tebb: When i was at EA Masters last year and I was doing a little speech to the audience, one of the things that I raised was, what’s the skillset that I learned over my last 20 years, and the key one for me was resilience, thick skin and developing a thick skin. You have a tough day, and let’s face it, some days an agency can be really bad, you can have a couple of fall throughs, a chain falls through, some drama, there’s cancellations, you have your valuation, cancel when you’re sitting outside it, all that stuff. But it’s the resilience to come in the next day, whatever’s happening at home as well, which sometimes we all go through some personal challenges. It’s that resilience to come in, hit the ground running every single day. Leave all your problems at the doorstep and in you go, work as hard as you can. And if you’re not absolutely exhausted by the time you come out to go home, you probably haven’t worked hard enough.

[00:30:38] Peter Rollings: Absolutely. And, and that’s the job. Anybody thinks it isn’t, is kidding themselves. Anyone thinks they can spend a month in the South of France every and expect their business to be brilliant. No. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’ll be fine, probably, but it depends what you want. If you’re an empire builder or you’re a lifestyle merchant, neither are wrong, it’s just you want.

[00:30:56] Jason Tebb: Yeah. The former is mine. I was never satisfied with the latter, ever.

[00:31:00] Peter Rollings: No, me neither. It’s quite exhausting though, isn’t it?

[00:31:03] Jason Tebb: Yes, it can be. Look, all the gray hairs that have come in the last 12 months, it’s , it’s scary. Anyway, so just before we run outta time, when you’re not working or advising or, as non-exec at Foxtons and other businesses, what are you passionate about? What’s your hobbies and interests?

[00:31:21] Peter Rollings: I genuinely didn’t have any hobbies when I was working. I always follow sport, but I didn’t have time to do anything. When I ‘retired’ I was only 51 or 52, so I thought, ‘I’m not gonna take up golf and go and play bridge’ and you know, it’s just on the downward slope, isn’t it? So I didn’t do any of that. I’m passionate about old cars. I collect old cars and I’ve got a wonderful, beautiful collection as far as I’m concerned they’re works of art. So that’s one thing. I’m a West Ham season ticket holder.

[00:31:48] Jason Tebb: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.

[00:31:49] Peter Rollings: Don’t hold that against me. So I’ve been a fan for 50 years, and frankly the last three years have been brilliant. I go to London Stadium, which from here when I live most of the time in Sussex is like going on holidays, about two hours. What else? I’m sort of passionate about business. I advise various businesses and I love it. I liken it to having, not that I’ve got grandchildren, but it’s like having grandchildren. You can hand them back when they get a pain in the ****, but you can sort of play with them and advise them and tell them what to do and then they go and do it. So I’m having a bit of fun with that and I travel a lot and I have fun. Really. I’m very lucky. I’m extraordinarily fortunate at this stage in my life just to be doing exactly what I want to do and not what I don’t.

[00:32:31] Jason Tebb: Well, you’ve worked incredibly hard, so well done, and very jealous of your car collection which I’ll talk to you about that some other time. Just a couple of questions to close. What do you think of all the things you’ve done and all the time you spent in turnaround projects with businesses and other highlights in terms of exiting businesses, what do you think is the biggest challenge you faced in your career?

[00:32:53] Peter Rollings: Without doubt, the 2008 to 10 recession, it was absolutely terrifying. We’d grown incredibly quickly. My God, we’d grown quickly and it was a huge learning curve. We took over M&P and we bought Vanstons, and within 18 months we went from a 4 million pound turnover to an 18 million pound turnover and making ****** all profit. So I’d really focused on just sort of growing the top line and really not bothering about the bottom line, which was a huge learning curve for me. So we came through the recession, as I said, when nearly went bust a few times. Lots of sleepless nights, lots of stress and anxiety and whatever you like to call it. But that, I think it’s the biggest challenge and what I’m most proud of.

[00:33:35] Jason Tebb: A great point to close on. So thank you, Peter, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed chatting and catching up, not just on the old times, but talking about your experience across all different businesses, large and small, and those fundamentals of agency, which I think will certainly be a part of the next generation and the generation after it, despite all of those technological advances.

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