FOUNDER #44. Pilot’s Career Crashed, Then Built A £10M+ Empire From Scratch - Matt Robson

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1:50Only once there was a galley fire. A galley fire? I forgot to do something because in the back of your mind you've got 15 minutes. Did they sense anything? Oh yeah. Did they smell anything? Everybody could smell it. Because it was so bad as well you're doing a PA through the oxygen mask. How did you go from airline pilot to a multi-million pound property developer? I was working for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong. I was on a good whack but it just didn't really it was monopoly money essentially but it just goes nowhere so whenever i'd saved a bit of money off i was buying in the northeast every time i had 20 grand you know buy another one buy another one buy another one but when i was doing it i was like this is just a massive ball there's got to be somebody out there that will just do this whole thing for you what do you actually do so what we do is we help people buy good quality investment property in the northeast and then we manage it on your behalf so we're a one-stop shop this sounds like an absolute no-brainer.

2:36It's mint. Anyone out there who's got excess cash come to you because you've got a hotbed up there in Middlesbrough and probably one of the cheapest places in the UK to buy and you've got a business model that works. So if I gave you 500 grand what could you get from me and what would be my return? So it depends how aggressively you want it to do it. Aggressively. Aggressively. So what you'd be looking at doing is...

2:59Hey guys we've been running this podcast now for five and a half years. We've had some most amazing business guests on here. Simon Squibb, Daniel Priestley, Barry Hearn. The list just goes on and on from billionaires to people who have built brands. If you want to come on the podcast and talk about your business and sit here with me in the studio and tell your story, go check out dodgewoodall.com forward slash guest and check out the three minute video. We've also left the link below as well. Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, very much looking forward to this one let's roll all the way back um how did you go from airline pilot to a multi-million pound property developer good question um i guess i never really was comfortable being an employee um and it started all almost by accident i was my first proper flying job i was working for catheter pacific in hong kong and um i don't know too much about hong kong yeah essentially it's it's it makes london look cheap so i was living in this this uh apartment that was probably not much bigger than this podcast studio.

3:59And they were going for millions. And I was priced out of the market there. But obviously the northeast, where I'm from, is super cheap. Whereabouts northeast? Just outside Middlesbrough. Okay. You a Borough fan? I am, yeah. Good club. Yeah, we're going along all right. We finally signed a striker. But yeah, so I was priced out of the market there. I was on a good whack, but it just didn't really, it was monopoly money essentially. you know you could be on you know taking on well into five figures a month which i was by the end of it um but it just goes nowhere so what i was doing i was renting there and whenever i'd saved a bit of money up i was buying in the northeast um my intention at that time was to stay in hong kong as long as i could but circumstances meant that in 2016 i came back to the uk but by that point i'd maybe i don't know maybe 10 or 12 or something at that at that point but when i was 10 to 12 houses yeah in in round middlesbrough yeah what sort of money are you talking about about 100 grand like that was about the sweet spot um what'd that get you uh at the time that was 600 quid a month something along those lines so seven percent ish um knowing what i know now you know kind of eight or nine is probably where you'd want to be um but i started just just buying stuff really you know every time i had 20 or grand you know buy another one buy another one buy another one, pull a bit of money out, pretty standard.

5:18But when I was doing it, I was like, this is just a massive ball lick. It's everything about it, agents, trades, tenants. And I was like, there's got to be somebody out there that will just do this whole thing for you. And at the time, there wasn't. There's millions of people that try it these days. So when I came back to the UK in 2016, I started it off as a bit of a standard side hustle, really. um because people were kind of going well i'm thinking about buying this and i was just like do not buy that or like i've just you know i'm gonna pay this for this absolutely do not you can get it for this etc and then it kind of ended up as well will you help me do it and i was like there's a business in this so i remember visit vividly when i came back in in 16 i was sat in the crew room at thomas cook um where i came back to work for and um i started i built my own website just sat waiting for the phone to ring and it went from there really um i still remember like some of the first deals i did i had no idea how to price it where there was a street where everything was kind of going for about 110 grand and i got a friend of mine a house set for 77 like like for like and i was like what do you think the service is worth and she was like well 250 quid i'm like i've just saved you 30 grand yeah yeah um obviously we weren't charging 250 quid for very long and it's kind of just went from there um obviously that turned into a decent little trading business in its own right but you're always buying stuff developing stuff um i wouldn't consider myself a developer i have developed stuff but it's um i'm not for example similar to uh um is it john i think he was on with uh a little while back when he's kind of got 250 million quids worth of stuff i've built a couple of blocks and i've got no interest in doing anymore it's uh it's too tricky so so what um we focused on is is really like building the trade inside and just as and when some decent pops up i just go yeah i'll have that i'll have that and what would you get for 100 grand up in middlesbrough 10 years ago what did you get for your money is it three bed four bed what um back then three beds kind of xlha style house um so decent size three bedders you could even get into new build stuff like so one of the first houses that i bought i bought a few of these actually was was literally a brand new shore home that you just leased back to the developer until they finished on the site and i got a couple of them at 100 grand exactly um they looked after it got it back three years later still looking like a shore home um and you learn a lot from that actually because then when you actually tenant that out um of course it was a nice house when the tenant leave after two three years or whatever you get the keys back and they'd more or less look the same whereas if you buy knackered stuff um with the greatest one in the world you get about more knackered whereas nice stuff tends to stay nice so it's all those it's funny isn't it when you go into people have more respect when there's nice stuff there oh they do the same tired and they have more disrespectful yeah um so we kind of took that lesson into what we kind of um worked done for other people and our stuff as i said um just before we went on um it just tends to be a different spin on what you typically associate with the northeast because the real cheap stuff in my opinion is just a massive false economy because when something goes wrong it tends to be expensive yeah quality of ten and you probably won't get the capital growth either so just kind of going from you know where everybody else looks at to slightly nicer stuff there's very much a sweet spot there in my opinion so i want to roll a bit further back yeah you're a pilot for how many years working for whom so first job i started when i was 23 which was a company in coventry that's uh since had about five different names um that was almost as an airline it wasn't an airline it was um it was generally aviation company as part of it it kind of all got split up at one point and i worked for what was like the aerial reconnaissance part which like like twins doing you know charters coast guard stuff and i did what was pretty much the last of like the old school apprenticeships um but just as i was kind of at the back end of that and i was about to go on proper money um the gfc rolled around and then they just they just went right you're gone um to 2008 yeah that was that was pretty grim so i went from kind of having a career as a pilot mapped out to um to basically you couldn't get a job cleaning toilets back then it was horrendous um somehow i still don't know how this happened um considering just how many guys were available i'd basically no experience, managed to get a job at Cathay Pacific, which back then was pretty much the top job.

9:26That was a big airline, wasn't it? It still is. It's still going. Yeah, it's massive. And back in the day, that was the place to be. Like, anyway, it's changed a bit. That was the airline to go on back in the day, wasn't it? Yeah. And obviously Emirates come around and Qatar and what have you. But I remember going on those planes, yeah. It's still good. I mean, it's a cracking airline. I mean, to work, it wasn't necessarily my cup of tea. I don't think it's many people's cups of tea, to be honest, but they pay well, so you get the golden handcuffs on. But there were certain things that, like going back to kind of how I ended up, that kind of shaped me at an early stage because going back to my first job, basically they did what they did to me to a load of other lads, but one of the other lads' dads was quite a prominent employment lawyer, as it turned out, and he was like, you've broken every rule in the book.

10:15And anyway, I went to a tribunal because we were all after a couple of quigs, we were all skinned. and I remember vividly obviously these things get they get like sorted just before it starts I remember the guy went in spoke to the CEO and I'd long held these suspicions but as I was 23 they didn't know any better and we were like well you know how did it go and he just kind of shook his head and he went the man's an idiot about the CEO and that never left me because at that age you kind of think that everybody that runs businesses knows a lot of stuff and I was like you're right actually he's thick as mince and he was what was his name?

10:51I'll keep that to myself in case he saves me and that never really left me and then when you work for a company like Cathay they're very down the line you're just a number at the end of it where are they based? Hong Kong and anybody that has ever worked there has a pretty similar opinion if your life for whatever reason your life's not where it needs to be or you're not happy it's not a great place to work and they moved the goalposts on as big stocks. I went out of there thinking that in five years' time I'd have the seniority to go back and be based out of London, which would have been great with family, etc.

11:31And then they just went, no more European bases. So at that point you were like, got to move now and start again. So just tell me the journey here. So you were at Coventry for five years. No, Coventry for just under a year. Oh, just under a year. And then what was your movement from there? So I spent about eight months unemployed. And then, as I said, somehow I just got into there and I still don't know how considering the calibre of guys that were available at the time. And what have you got to do to get your licence? How hard is it? It's not... Again, people have wildly different opinions on this.

12:04I didn't find it that difficult. To become a pilot? Yeah, it's more the actual, the flying element. the flying element some people take to it very naturally some people just can't do it i'm probably somewhere in the middle if i'm being honest i'm not particularly brilliant um there's a lot of work to go through but again if you're quite clever with that because if you take the time to really understand every last subject you you'll sit there in an exam with the questions in front of you and you still won't know it because they're so complex you know some of the principles behind navigation systems and stuff just like um whereas if you're quite clever with how you kind of organise your study, you can almost role in it to a degree and truthfully a lot of guys do that.

12:45You obviously need to understand the things you need to understand but a lot of it is very outdated and you just kind of go right okay, yeah, C, it's B, C, etc. But some people do struggle with that. And how many hours you've got to get under your belt before you can actually fly 300 people on the back of the plane? I think it's about 200. There's shorter courses these days where they kind of went from because typically you'd fly you know small things and slightly bigger slightly bigger slightly bigger whereas now you kind of come out of flying skill and the expectation is you just end up in a 737 or a 320 easy jet somewhere um and if the trainings you know these airlines are very very good training um training factories um it's pretty safe and you know people have been doing it for for a very long time you know when you go you know you go into a cockpit yeah and you've well i certainly do i've been in the cockpit a few times you look around and think jesus christ where'd you start here is there a lot of buttons in that don't get used yeah the vast majority of them um the vast majority of them you especially on a i can only talk about airbus points are fundamentally pretty similar but the vast majority of there you're not really using in normal day-to-day okay um again you need to understand what they all do to a degree but some a lot of the buttons you'll go your entire career without touching you know unless it goes really badly wrong which you want to avoid yeah Was there anything in your career that you, how many flights did you do?

14:03I think I got about 6 ,000 hours. 6 ,000 hours. I wouldn't even like to say. Good question, actually. I don't know. But yeah, about 6 ,000 hours. So are we talking like 500 times flying a commercial plane? Oh, way more than that. Way more, okay. Yeah, there's a mix of long haul and short haul there. So yeah, average flight, probably three hours, I would say. So yeah, a couple of thousand flights. Managed not to break it. Yeah, yeah. And what was it like flying to different countries? Give me an example where you would fly to and where you would stay, and you're staying in a hotel for two, three nights, then flying back.

14:38How does it work? And all the trolley dollies staying in the same hotel as you? Yeah, generally, yeah. But you had quite a lot of fun, didn't you? It was a lot of fun. I bet. But definitely, every airline has a different culture. so a cathay for example um you typically um you'd have a mix of short haul and long haul it's one of the only airlines that um has really big planes flying short routes because that's just what they do now so mix of short haul long haul short haul might be 12 hours so you literally just get to an airport hotel they class that as short haul 12 hours do they oh sorry at 12 hour rest so you land in bad no japan go to an airport hotel sleep fly back the next day so all those lines the longer haul stuff um i mean it's brilliant when i started like the first the first ever flight i did was from hong kong to auckland and um i remember in the morning just sitting up at the top of the tower at sky city my breakfast above the fog and i was like you've made it yeah um and then where's that where was sky city uh middle of auckland okay yeah and that was that was awesome um and then the next trip was to paris and that was four nights in paris and you check in as well like they're called pdms which basically is just there's an envelope full of money which I think was 640 euros at the time just four nights, just filly boots and just spent it all on food, red wine basically it's brilliant but you didn't really socialise with the crew much in that airline but then Thomas Cook was vastly different that was a bit of a party airline it was all fun destinations so off the top of my head used to do a lot of Orlando's, Las Vegas's Barbados the destinations were just absolutely amazing and sometimes you get a really long one so you would get like for example like a week in Cape Town like you're getting paid for it and it was great and that was and what were you in your 30s then?

16:28early 30s yeah I was 31 when I started you must have felt top of the world that was great in your 30 travelling around the world stopping here for four nights five nights here stopping in Barbados going to Vegas for two three nights and it was just as far as flying jobs went that one was as good as it got because you'd have a look at the crew and you'd go oh that'll be a boozy one or that'll be a quiet one. But if it was a quiet one, you just take your golf clubs. You're just walking through the airport, like take your golf clubs and people are just, you could almost read their faces. They were like, as if you get paid for that.

16:57And I'd be like, yeah, I do. It's nice. Do you know what I love about when you go to an airport? It just reminds me, every time I see a pilot or someone, there's this beautiful feeling of respect. Yeah. You know, like when you see one with the hats on, they're walking through with a little case or whatever, straight away I just think respect because I don't know what goes into being a pilot. But now you're saying, I wouldn't change my view on this, but you're saying being a pilot isn't as hard as it's made out to be and that that's my opinion a lot of people will will say actually no it's pretty challenging but truthfully knowing what i know now about the stuff what i've done in business and sort of the sort of stuff that you have to put yourself through there i wouldn't rank it in the top five difficult things quite frankly so again it's in relative terms like is it difficult could anybody do it absolutely not but i personally i didn't think it was it was that difficult in the grand scheme how long are you at cafe pacific for uh seven years in seven yeah and where were you based were you based in hong kong for those seven years or were you based in england yeah i was based in hong kong for those seven years yeah because it's really super expensive there it's insane so expensive um like the highlight of of uh i mean to give you a bit of perspective this is going back probably just shy of 15 years it was like a new bar opened um just around the corner from me which was near the airport so it was nothing exciting and um and uh that guinness on draft which was like oh well this is a thing and um four pints of guinness like 44 quid yeah okay and that was back then that's nearly 15 years ago yeah jesus and that's 11 quid back then it's yeah my god it's just insane looking back um so even though you would i kind of ended up having like two different lives because i would i couldn't buy anything over there like you couldn't afford anything anything but i bought a house in the uk bought a daft car that i took out when i was back because what you could also do is you can like compress your work together yeah so you'd work quite hard for two weeks and then you'd have like maybe 10 days off so okay so i just go back to the uk um and almost live you know if the tax man's listening i wasn't living there yeah you know what i mean yeah yeah um and it was great because you actually felt rich because you're earning like big city money in the northeast so you know at the time i was it was just me bought a five bedroom house and a stupid car that i never drove but it was just nice because it actually felt like you're getting somewhere yeah well that's best way to do it earn all the money in the expensive country a big dollar there and send it back to middlesbrough yeah i mean some of the unbelievable some of the south african guys took that to extremes yeah they would literally have like thousand acre lodges yeah you know um you know full stuff what's it now it's like 23 ran to the pound or something yeah it fell off it fell off a cliff um i think about 2012 and i remember this vividly because a friend of mine he we were a south african guy from cape town he um he's on about getting a mortgage and um and he was like oh i don't know it's a bit of a stretch i remember going to buy you you won't regret it and i saw him across the terminal a few months later and he's like i won't do the accent but he's like matt have you seen rand like his mortgage is just halved overnight and he was just the happiest man in the world i saw him from like like 200 meters away somewhere i said is that richie he's like yeah that's quality so Well, you were the one who encouraged him to go and speak.

19:59I remember sitting there with a beer going, buy the house, mate. Yeah, I haven't spoke to him in a little while, actually, but that was quite funny. What was your lifestyle like, travelling the world? How do you deal with stopping off in another country and being jet-lagged? How do you deal with staying in a hotel for two, three nights and then flying back? How do you have a relationship with your family at the same time? It's difficult. Or a girlfriend or wherever it may be. Yeah, it's very difficult. And it's how I dealt with it versus how you should deal with it probably two very different things because again you're early 30s um if anybody said do you want to be you just go yeah yeah um do you want to go and say that yeah exactly it's always like do you want to before they even say it yeah i mean do you want to i mean yeah and it's that it's very much that culture as well i mean it's not like you're caning it every time don't go far from it but you know you were always doing something like i i could never i was saying to somebody the other day actually in 15 years of predominantly long-haul flying i can't ever remember turning the tv on in my hotel room i just never did it because i was always wanting to do something um and the last few years i was always working but before that especially when you've never been to a place you'd always want to do something so um i mean yeah to answer your question directly if you can kind of keep yourself on a semi-normal body clock that helps but the reality is sometimes it's just impossible and on the long haul one way um usually on the way back actually especially in a uk-based airline it's always through the night so there's just not much you can do like a lot of these hotels as well they put you generally speaking in good places um but some people can sleep through the day and some people just can't and i just can't so you'd sit there in bed like waiting for the clock to yeah there's not much you can do and you know you can go you can can it all night and try and sleep through the day you can be up at four in the morning running go to the gym but i'd never found anything that works so it's difficult and then the knocking effects with that is when you do land, you know, my wife at the time, it was just an unwritten rule, just don't take anything I say seriously on the day that I land because you're just absolutely upside down tired and then you'd have a couple of days, you'd just be getting back to normal and you're going to do it again.

22:02So it is knackering and that's why most, most pilots, as and when they're able to, because seniority and stuff kind of affects it, they go part time because it just makes stuff manageable and because of the properties and stuff I had, I was actually able to go part time in my early 30s at Thomas Cook. And that was a bit of a game changer because then you only do one or two of these a month. So you actually look forward to going into work. It doesn't feel like a, you know. While having a side hustle building something. Exactly. Yeah, brilliant. And it was good. But they went to the wall in 2019.

22:33Who did? Thomas Cook. Okay. Who bought them? No, they went bankrupt. Yeah, they just ran out of money. Which having worked there, you can totally understand why. Because it was a bit of a basket case. but why um it just seemed like it was running on it was like a 70s opera it was like an analog company in a digital world would be my best way of putting it there's so many things that were just obviously inefficient um like for example it's the only aircraft it's the only airline i know that just keeps uh an a330 which is a massive expense i think they're about 200 million pound new obviously these weren't new but just as a spare in case one of them breaks um it's like when i was part-time as well there was ways you could you could legitimately engineer the system to only do part-time working but get paid a full-time wage like and you could just game it like and everyone knew what was going on genius and it was basically like i remember at the time like i got quite close to somebody in crewing and everybody everybody denies this sort of thing goes on but it happens in every airline there will be somebody crewing and you have a little relationship with them and i to paraphrase i more or less said like i only go up a hard time because i don't like flying that often but it's very rare that i've got anything i can't move so if you need me i will do anything um monday to friday other than the hogarda which was like the longest day in the world flight to egypt and back in the day is horrendous um i will do anything um other than that i'll work weekend and you can just take it if you've got anything that needs filling anywhere on the network you know it could be here it could be bristol whatever monday to friday i'll just do it yeah um so you ended up getting paid for your days off like a massively premium rate um but they take another day off your calendar and it was just and no one knew everybody knew um everyone's just at it basically everybody was at it but and again it was just that it wasn't run efficiently like comparatively like something like ryanair for example um i've got a friend that works at ryanair and like i you know i just take the mick out of him religiously because he just hates his life but that is a very very good like looking at it from a business owner's point of view now they're on it aren't they oh they're amazing like they don't miss anything like that would never happen in a million years like you get sat for that you get sat for even suggesting it i imagine um but that's the difference between obviously a business that works yeah and one that just you know yeah did for a while but um yeah doesn't anymore what's it like when you're up flying a plane through the night is it just you and a co-pilot there's two yeah there's two so do you take what do you take in turns or are you pressing a button you know you're going to be at 30 ,000 feet for the next five hours nothing's going to get in your way it's fairly easy depends where in the world you are so if you're doing that in Asia there's weather everywhere so the chances are you especially during like the summer months where you get quite a lot of convective weather if you're doing it in for example coming back over the North Atlantic from say New York or somewhere typically the first hour or so is quite busy and the last hour or so is quite busy.

25:36The bit in the middle is pretty quiet, to be fair. And again, depending on everybody's attitude, I was kind of like an hour on, an hour off type of guy. So you close your eyes for an hour. While he's obviously flying. Yeah, and you just do it that way. And it's an established procedure. It's called a controlled rest, which is basically just a fancy way to say it. You just have a kip when you're tired. But it is essential because, again, it's back of the body clock. You're just knackered. And I remember, especially at Cathay, you're doing a lot of like indias for example and you're landing and even the new hong kong airport you've got this wind rolling in um if you're landing eastly you've got this like cold wind rolling in off the right it'd be like that and sometimes you'd be literally hanging on to the plane a bit and it would it would only be that little bit of rest that you thought actually that just made it yeah okay um because it's as easy as your life is 99 % of the time usually when it's difficult is when you're knackered um and that's when kind of you know you will revert to your kind of lowest level of habit so to speak so yeah was there any times when you thought you were going to be in a lot of danger while flying um only once um well actually actually no that's a lie uh twice but one was self-inflicted in a very small aeroplane when i was flying somewhere that i shouldn't very marginal weather and i kind of looked and i thought what's that what's that's green oh shit uh wow that um and then and uh yeah i nearly had a what they call a sea fit in in the in the malvern hills um very very new very inexperienced what's a sea fit uh controlled flight into terrain okay which again is just a fancy way of saying you thought you were somewhere else and you weren't um and that scared the life out of me and from then on i never did anything you know it's like an old saying like um if there's if what is the saying um if there's any doubt there's no doubt yeah um and obviously when you got 300 people behind you that i mean that's just a given um so that was that one um second one we had a smoke and fumes event um and a good rule of thumb with that is if you've got an uncontrolled like smoke or fumes um historically you've got 15 minutes before it becomes a big problem that that threatens what within within inside the plane or wherever it may be yeah so we were over the irish sea we weren't far far out manchester and we just looked at each other man you smell that um and at that point because you obviously you go through your drill you get your buck out you go yeah um but sometimes you just can't identify exactly where it's coming from but equally you've got to do something because in the back of your mind you've got 15 minutes so i started to stop watch it's not written down anywhere and i'm just thinking we need to get on around very very quickly to turn back around straight into manchester um oh you spun the plane did you yeah 180 back to manchester or will have been false or 320 something like that back then um did they say did they sense anything oh yeah did they smell anything everybody could smell it so everyone could smell it yeah and you're doing because it was so bad as well you're doing a pa through the oxygen mask so it sounds bad and we actually kind of got well totally different story but at the end of it we actually said well you shouldn't have done that you should took it off and i'm like you don't know what you breathing yeah like like yeah really um so got it back on the ground in manchester and ultimately it was nothing it was it was a bit of air conditioning smoke but you don't know that um there's there's plenty of incidents where crews have said for example or you know i don't think that's that i was flying it this week it always does that yeah okay um but it does get your attention because modern airliners is just so reliable that stuff like that doesn't really happen um so that's pretty much it really um other interesting one um i think three of the i kind of had three events within about six months of each other and then i didn't have any in like 15 years it was another one where there's a galley fire that's not quite as bad because ultimately you know a galley fire yeah so it was uncontrolled initially but you know essentially if you just turn your turn the power source off to it it's going to pull itself out like so that's not a big deal um again get your attention and um a fun one was we had a quite high profile diversion to winnipeg on our way to las vegas um group of lads that just went too far and they just ticked every every box for what you're not allowed to do in an airplane so started drinking smuggled their own stuff on obviously it goes through the gears you know shouting abusive with each other with other people um ended up with a with a sexual assault on one of the girls grabbed her as she's walking past um and we diverted into winnipeg where the mounties came on dragged four of them off um we then just about got to um got to uh vegas and um fast forward about six months or whatever it was i got called as a witness because at one point we just ruined out of ideas you're not really meant to do this but there was one of the party that was he was drunk but he wasn't he wasn't an issue he was a bit like we're all drunk but like lads like he was kind of on your side so i said get him to the front yeah we'll drag the curtain around so i don't see it and i went back and said look you need to understand like you need to calm this down now like if you do not calm down now right we are going to divert you are going to be arrested you will go to jail you need the lads to understand that we are not messing about um because it's not so much them that you're bothered about it's it's you know if there's another stag party at the front they're behaving but all of a sudden and they don't like what's going on.

31:00And there's a guy with a dodgy heart in the middle. Like, it's, you know, it can literally go up. And, yeah, they did go to jail for them, split 10 years in prison. Yeah. You're joking me. They got 10 years. Between them, yeah. So I think one got, whatever it was, like three and a bit, like the really naughty one. Yeah. And the other lad's like two, I think, something like that, yeah. Oh, my God. I was actually called down to give evidence, and I was on my way down then the copper at Manchester airport I said we don't need you I'll just change the police to guilty at the last minute so but there's so much evidence because obviously everyone's got smartphones everyone's got smartphones I was going to say so they landed in Canada got nicked then sent home back to the UK yeah and they were met by plainclothes on arrival I think obviously where like now to do is at this stage but yeah those are the ones where I said sometimes you you kind of have to earn your money because you see these clips these days you know when you see clips someone's filming and then there's a fight going on because someone's pushing on the back of their seat and it can just erupt if you're in 30 000 feet in the air and it can erupt what what do the stewards do what do they you know they're trained for they're trained for are they to restrain and they're trained to restrain now they are trained in reality you know if you're a 23 year old girl trying to restrain a 16 like 16 zombo yeah um but they are trained and now and again you'll you'll rope a you know an able-bodied person and if needs be it's pretty rare but it does happen um it's like again some sort of routes and some places are worse for it than others like for example going back to thomas cook uh there was a night to be through at one point and it was just so it was as you can imagine absolute carnage so they changed it to a morning of beaver just because at least at that stage everyone's coming down a bit you know there's a great photo in fact it's like we'll you know that we've all got a bit for a lot of times but you know everyone's like excited going there on the way home everyone just heads down exactly that exactly that it was always calmer flying over but yeah so it does happen again most airlines these days they've got a pretty good handle on it some don't care but you know he likes the Jet 2s for example obviously it's airbread but you're right in there don't take any rubbish either Jet 2s come on the scene well I think when you see it in the airports and they're all red and they've got people meeting you and greeting you the service seems great I don't know if they're doing financially well or not it's fantastic yeah they are they're a really good business a lot of my friends work there and it's actually one of my favourite brands in general jet too really for a short haul yeah it's it's like like I've got three young kids I've got four kids three of them are really young but whenever you travel through the airport as a family or with your kids exactly what you said there's red shirts everywhere can we help you take you to the front of the queue you know get you through security etc and the holidays go as well yeah I agree everyone's super polite they just get it they get it that whole like friendly law fair is exactly what they do yeah so their competition is going in against Ryanair?

33:51Yes, I think Ryanair are more point-to-point. Whereas Jet2, I think they make a lot of money off the package holders, etc. I think EasyJet is somewhere in the middle because they've just been bought out by private equity because I think they're seeing the value in what they could do with, for example, the holiday arm of it. Because you think EasyJet, you just think flights, you don't think holidays. You don't think anything. Whereas Jet2, it's like£50 off a Jet2 holiday, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. It's almost a meme at this point. And the music. Yeah. So what was it? So when you finished, when you finished that, sounds like you had a great crack, by the way.

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Stunning design that never sacrifices performance. enjoy customizable features for elevated comfort and convenience it's more than a fixture it's a cleaner routine and a more refined space experience the difference of kohler smart toilets find more at kohler.com the funnest parts were i think the first year or so in hong kong that was wild for various reasons because all of a sudden you're you're flying a jet whereas six months ago you couldn't get a job i said early cleaning toys like literally um that was fun again that becomes a grind thomas cook was generally good fun on the long haul um short haul was a bit of a slog and then um after that i joined ba and from that point i like i knew from day one at ba i'm not a fan of ba fly personally i don't like anything about that company if i'm being really honest um i knew the day i joined ba that i didn't want to be a pilot anymore um i remember vividly actually because um thomas cook thomas cook obviously went busting i was like right i need i need somewhere stable now because i had a daughter due um and i was like right be here they've never made a pilot redundant 101 years um until corvid and then see you later see i was like this is the universe telling me something but i remember vividly day one where they'd kind of stream stream me for i've the a350 or the a380 what's the difference um 380 is a bigger aircraft how many people oh i don't even know depends on the i think you can get them up to about some airlines have about 600 passengers but i don't obviously if there's more first classes there's fewer passengers but um that was great because they had quite good route network so again you take your golf clubs etc but like a week before i started they said right matt so actually given that you've got no notice period because you're not working at the minute we can start running 320 like next week or whatever it was and i know it might not be you know your desired option but you know you'll be capping in two weeks and you know it's not that bad and seniority is everything this sat in the other side i was like all right and i just walked in on day one like to the welcome center like because i knew what short all fans about i knew what he throws about and i walked in i was like i've made a massive mistake yeah and like everybody else there it's like to join ba if you'd have told 20 year old me you could work for ba thank anything i'd be like who'd you have to kill yeah but i was 35 at this point and i walked in and like everybody's there and everybody's like happy be there and there's like loads of experienced guys you know faster power they text you know jet two cabins etc and everyone's like this is a pinnacle i walked in i didn't even introduce myself i just sat down the corner like signed in i was like i hate this place so covid for me didn't feel it at the time was the best thing ever because it i changed from kind of being a an airline pilot with a property sideline to a property guy with a flying sideline yeah yeah and i didn't i didn't even touch an airplane for about three years i think um and then a couple of guys i knew got quite senior roles and some interesting uh kind of outfits um not too dissimilar to what's parked outside actually yeah and i do like there's a job here for you matt and we do this we do that sounds like fun um but those jobs were never really like they were never going to be permanent it was just you know to to um it's kind of scratchy it really um and i joined air lingus flying you know to uh are they still going airlingus yeah big uh big company um they had a manchester base so i did that okay um and again that was all they did so a 330 all they did was um orlando new york and barbados from from manchester from manchester again part time there but they shut that um and now again you know they showed it i could took it or leave it at that point and um i've got no interest to do anything else unless something comes up that i go i thought that'd be really cool but and i'm in a privileged position now i could do that but realistically i just don't see it i don't see anything that would give me enough to go back yeah exactly but the ba how would you explain ba then because whenever i got a flight a long haul flight and it's the only options you got is virgin ba i'm not virgin all day long yeah and the ones i've gone on ba with it's short haul i just don't like the and i'm very proud and patriotic british man yeah but i just don't like the airline it's very transactional isn't it i don't know it just feels very warmth warmth there's no warmth and fun there it seems really dull and yeah like my take on that is because i agree with you completely my take on that is because it's such a big company what you don't get there like certainly with the pilots and the cabin crew like you might be on a plane and none of the pilots have ever flown with the pilots and none of the cabin crew have ever flown the other cabin crew it's not big so i think it's four and a half thousand cabin crew um i'd be sorry four and thousand pilots i'd be guesstimating the cabin crew but probably times that by four so fifteen thousand okay so because you're not flying with the same people regularly i don't think you get any camaraderie and you don't get any crack um and i think that kind of manifests itself in a product where smaller places like thomas cook where most people knew people and even virgin yeah who are much smaller you kind of get that yeah you get a nice vibe yeah you do agree um so that's kind of my take on it um the smaller airlines smaller bases were always a bit more so when cave kovid come godsend yeah full on into the property and a bit of flying on the side yeah pretty much where are you today with your property business so at the minute we are in terms of numbers um 300 and i think about 350 clients 33 countries about 30 staff um 30 full-time staff yeah all on the payroll on the payroll fair play to you it's um it's turning it's growing arms and legs at the minute yeah it's a dangerous place to be sometimes with that number of staff because you can get politics you can get hierarchy, you can get gossip, you can get all of this thing when it's over, for me personally, when it's over 10 people.

40:58Yeah. And then sometimes you're too small to be big and too big to be small. And you're kind of caught in that area there, aren't you? Exactly that. Yeah, okay. So that between 10 and 35 or 40 is, for me personally, when I see it as a dangerous place. Do you feel in that area right now, that space? Yeah, we're kind of repositioning as well. So we've went from working with kind of what I would consider like retail property investors to more institutional property investors. So basically professional investors, funds, family offices, that sort of stuff. So what do you actually do? If you're talking to a 10-year-old now, what would you say you did for a living?

41:37So what we do is we help people buy good quality investment property in the Northeast and then we manage it on your behalf. So we're a one-stop shop. okay so you know if you for example you know i've got x amount of money i want to buy something um i've heard the northeast looks good but i don't really know what i'm looking at we just go right give us a couple of quid we'll do it all for you okay um and that you know it's a bit of a cliche but the quote-unquote busy professional that's where we've been for the past few years um but i said we're just having a bit of a pivot but like 30 odd staff at the minute um you're right exactly exactly what you said too big to be small too small to be big and um obviously you have to grew up as a business quite quickly so where you might have just got to i don't know your first million quid something just pure hustle yes you've got to start setting targets yeah right you know sometimes the fun comes out of it in that in that period there do you know when you've got a smaller amount of team you've got six eight ten you're all having a laugh you all know each other you're making it work and then it gets really serious and you're probably in that really serious point now you're going right this is the amount of turnover we need more people to make this business work because there's more income coming in it's getting really serious there's loads of red tape we got to bring in more money just to bring in to pay for the staff yeah exactly that okay and then obviously when you're hiring I mean hiring is a blackout at best isn't it I love hiring not a lot of people do I need some tips mate not a lot of people do I love hiring that's one of my strengths I haven't got many one of them is hiring good people I don't know why I just I don't know I just have a good neck is that something you reckon you've always been good at or did you develop that yeah I've always been I'm good with people I love people so I've always been hiring I've hired hundreds of people over the years I just love hiring I love getting people and I love giving people an opportunity and seeing the best in them and seeing potential and they don't even see the potential in themselves they're the ones I like yeah I can relate to that actually I definitely wouldn't class hiring as one of my strengths again in grand scheme I probably don't have a ton of experience at it but exactly what you said there when you get somebody and you go actually you could you know you could go somewhere with this we're coming through now we've got a couple of apprentices in the business they've always been great my buyer manager like you know he came I didn't even finish university and I didn't even have a job for him at the time but he turned up at 20 year old I said well friend of mine was I was like you know if you got anything I said well no but if you could have a chat with him that 20 year old you know comes in with a shirt he's eye in it eye contact decent handshake I sat in chat for an hour I was like I'll be honest I have nothing for you but I'm gonna make something i just think you're going to be good um and fast forward three four years and he he probably makes mom now he's making flying yeah like and and i like that but what a lovely feeling that is is being a uh an owner of a company being able to do that to change someone's life from they might be keeping on they've got nothing against this but they might be working in a coffee shop they might be picking up glasses at a booze all of those things all of a sudden you've created something for them and you're taking them on a journey and they're on like a a fast track of learning everything you've known over the last 30 years to go boom this this is what you're good at and you'd show me what else you're good at and if we're good at that let's go with it yeah roll with it i really yeah that's exactly what i like um i mean it's funny because the guy in question um he's i think he'd have been successful regardless some people just have it don't they but it's been good because i always joke you know by the time you're my age you'll be buying and selling people at me yeah um so it's good so so your day-to-day so you've got a business now are you looking for investment into your business not really you don't need it we we don't i mean You could always do something with it.

45:01But I see in our sector where a lot of people take private equity money and it just goes to shit. Like the service delivery just goes through the floor. And we actually get, and the reason I know that for a fact is we will occasionally be contacted by very serious people. It will say exactly that. I was with so-and-so, but the crap, I was with so-and-so. And the common denominator is they've got a guy who is doing, running three completely separate businesses and his eye's not on the ball, or they've taken on money elsewhere. and all of a sudden now the in-house property manager is being outsourced to a VA in the Philippines and you don't get that touch, personal touch.

45:37Exactly. And property at the end of the day is a people business. You know, people think it's a bricks and mortar but it's absolutely not. It is. So you're saying you've got 34 times of stuff and you're managing 350 accounts. 350 people, is it? Who have invested, who have given you money to go and buy stuff or you're looking off their property, etc. Pretty much, yeah. Okay. So are you on, are you personally on call all the time? No, definitely not. Not on call, I mean, for the properties, but via you being the owner of the business, they're like, Matt, there's a problem in this house. Matt, I've got another guy who wants to buy 10 properties up in Middlesbrough or Newcastle.

46:07Can you sort this? Is it on the go constantly? Not really. It's at a good spot now where I can walk out of the business for a couple of weeks and not really do much. Well done. Anything that's granular, I don't really touch. I mean, unless you're really designing a process from scratch, in which case you're getting micking. you know make it home but any kind of little grumble now that goes there that goes there and there's very much a well-established chain of command there the exception to that is if you get somebody that goes right actually i've got a million quid here um i want 10 in which case that'll get my attention i'll help the guys put something together because what's been good about our business so far maybe not so much now is that our kind of target client was basically me yeah so i know exactly what people like me want because i just wanted somebody that would just do it all for me.

46:56So sort that, sort that, sort that. So if I gave you 500 grand, what would you give, what could you get from me and what would be my return? So it depends on how aggressively you want it to do it. Aggressively. Aggressively. So what you'd be looking at doing is buying good value stuff, the risk is certainly obvious, for the best price possible and then proactively managing it. So to pad that out because that was probably a bit of a politician's answer, where the sweet spot is, in my opinion, is kind of 100 properties in the northeast that Joe Bloggs kind of pays 150 grand for. That's a three-bedder.

47:28That's a three-bedder. That is so cheap. It's great, isn't it? That's unbelievably cheap. 150 grand for a three-bedder. It's a modern three-bedder as well. Oh, my God. All done up. Yeah, it'll need very little. And what sort of return, what sort of rent you get on that amount? So it's two streams you can do. You can go down the standard kind of buy-to-let route or what we're quite big at as a business these days is service accommodation, which basically is Airbnb's, but it's more marketed towards contractors. so for 500 grand I'd say you'd be looking at three or four of them you'll hear all sorts of different opinions, you know, buy this, do this develop this, personally I like very simple because I know it works you minimise the moving parts so you get probably four of them as I said, stuff that people generally pay$150 for but we've got our ways and means of getting them for$120 because ultimately people know we buy a lot of houses and we do and they trust you because we follow through I mean, we got a phone call last week, almost word for word.

48:26I've done a bit of research. I know you guys buy a lot of this sort of stuff. Here's 50 houses. I know you need to make some money and, you know, I'll be sensible on the price. Yeah. No one else getting a phone call. Yeah, of course not. So we're in the process of doing something with that now. So, yeah, a handful of them. As a normal rental, probably$9.50 a month at the minute. They call it a grand a month. Just under, yeah. alternative service accommodation is a little bit more like that yeah so

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49:34That's why there's Noom. They combine GLP-1s to quiet the food noise with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet even if you get off the meds their program is designed to make weight loss a smooth ride helping you understand what drives you so you can build better habits to not just lose weight but keep it off noom lose for keeps get started at noom.com not all customers will clinically qualify for medications individual results may vary would you prefer would you prefer that or would you prefer a long tenant in there i do prefer service company i'm i'm i love it i call it the crack cocaine of property investing because it's it's just been it's why i'll tell you exactly one story so a couple of years ago we we had an inquiry through airbnb said uh i'm coming to the area for six months um and i want somewhere that's furnished and you know kind of have a look at this house before i commit to six months usually you wouldn't do that you just book it but obviously it's six months um my wife said yeah fine took him around and he said i like it but it's a bit small have you got anything else and she went well actually we've got one around the corner it's not finished yet but if you want to have a look at it um by all means he went oh yeah and it's three bed townhouse you know top floor with the master suite and non-suite really nice pay 120 grand for it just for 100 about 120 grand whatever it was and by pure coincidence it happened to be one I owned and he said oh yeah great I'll take it, can it be ready on Monday and we were like it can but we need a bit of a commitment alright I'll pay six months up front it's alright to sound by nine o 'clock in the morning £18 ,590 had been paid for six months and then about a week later he said actually I'm going to need it for seven so he sent another five grand or whatever it was so I paid£120 ,000 for the house hadn't even finished it yet 20 or grand back and that i'm not saying that always happens but when you've experienced that you want it again you want it again i mean again like i always talk about um like on my linkedin for example like just two flats i bought 190 grand for a pair of flats they've grossed 50 grand a year between them for the past three years but it's just easy and the beauty of it is you've got guests not tenants so all of this renters reform where essentially it's your asset but actually it's not your asset it doesn't apply so if they don't pay you know if they do make a mess which the vast majority of them don't because you've got the credit card deals all the employees paying for it you just get none of the hassle as you would do with a long term tenant and it there you go and modern properties so you're not getting you know you're not getting a lot of maintenance on them either and these are the sorts of stuff as well this sounds like an absolute no brainer it's mint like we've got is there loads more properties is there loads more properties up there to be snapped up yeah we're not or is it or are you saying it's got saturated?

52:20It's definitely not saturated. As far as the actual values, the North East, weirdly, is the one place that, in fact, it's not weird at all when you look at the bigger picture. That's increased value-wise, 10 % year on year. Okay. Almost exactly 9.9, I think, through to June. So you're getting 10 % on your money and then it's going up 10 % as well. Well, yes. Yeah. But you get more, like these properties, especially on the SA side, like the buy-to-lake will clear probably$4.50 net of everything if you're mortgaging it. The SA's, the service accommodation is probably double that. The only downside with a service accommodation is it can be swingy.

52:52So if, for example, you've got money and you want to buy one of these houses, it's not unrealistic to have a year where it actually doesn't make much. But the flip side of that coin is you've got a guy that's wildly overperforming because his house is just literally full. So it'll average out where it averages out. But if you're buying one, you know, you might prefer the certainty of a long-term let. Whereas if you said, I want to go aggressively, I'd be like, well, great, get four of them, get them up and running. Like, because you've got four properties that will average out more or less where it wants to be.

53:20Two years later, they've probably crept up in value and you've nicked them in the first place. Pull a bit of money out if you want. Reinvest the cash flow, reinvest that. And go again. Before you know it, you've got six. Two years down the line, you might end up with 10, whatever it is. And is it just Middlesbrough or anywhere else around those areas or is it North East? Do you go into Newcastle? Do you go into Durham? Or is Durham too expensive? We're all over the North East. And what we're doing now is we're technically national, to be fair. We've got stuff as far west as Liverpool. And we've just taken a block on in Redditch.

53:48which is really cool. Birmingham way isn't it? Yeah just south of Birmingham. Generally speaking we do stick to the northeast because the beauty of using a company like ours basically is boots on the ground and just that granular local knowledge. Like we know what our edge is. Like we know we're good at managing it and we know the areas. When you start going too far away then you know what you're paying for really. But now and again when there's a compelling argument why we would take something off. But if the deal was right you'd take it off. Yeah exactly. You know I don't buy stuff out of air but now and again you get offered something that's like way too good not to see just go out all the dice and what's your how do you earn out of that so we charge a fee for actually kind of facilitating the purchase so sourcing the actual so if i bought one for 150 grand you charge me how much seven and a half plus that yeah um and generally speaking we're saving you 20 30 um and then we charge uh we make money from the refurbishments generally speaking they're not big refurbishments you know on the on the sa side you know what side sorry sa service accommodation service okay um you're just looking kind of carpets decor that sort of stuff um and you'll source all that and then we just pay for it we do all of it you do the whole lot and you write a bill and say that's how much it costs to fit exactly okay um and we just again i'm just conscious of like you wherever you are in the world whatever you're doing all you want is just like something that there you go that's the thing that's that's a make my life easy exactly how much how much am i getting back how much are get in i know we've got a good relationship perfect we've got clients now where i mean we've had clients for a long time actually but when it was just myself for example once somebody's gone through that process and bought a few with you um you'd write a full kind of investor pack you know these are all the numbers but once they've got a few with you it could get to the point it did get to the point with one client um where you literally just send them 10 pictures this price is what it's worth this rent and you just send the thumbs up and money back and that's you're buying a house on that basis because you've built that trust with them.

55:40So are you saying like, obviously being on this podcast here, many people are going to listen to this. Are you saying that anyone out there who's got excess cash come to you because you've got a hotbed up there in Middlesbrough and probably one of the cheapest places in the UK to buy and you've got a business model that works? I'd love to say that, yeah. That's more or less what we're saying. It sounds like it to me when I'm looking in. I'm thinking, well, I'll speak to my wife later and have a chat about it. It's great. I mean, what's good now these days as well is it's kind of getting validated by people that are actually very serious.

56:07so that also helps yeah exactly I'm not going to name drop in fact the only one person Janinho you can name him you can drop him Janinho fully enough I can name drop Janinho Janinho's still a he's a god isn't he he is a god Vialli you had Vialli as well didn't you do you have Vialli we had Ravanelli Ravanelli that's the one that's the one we've had some players my pal is he's a big rugby boy and every time he takes his top off and run holiday obviously all the boys call him Ravabelli so he's there with his top yeah Janinho's a god I used to live quite close to you when I was a kid who else was up there Paul Mersin was up there Gazza was up there yeah some good stories there we've had Mendeeta we've had Emerson was the best player that never happened I don't know if you remember Emerson but he was the next big thing out of Brazil yeah we signed him at the same time and and I remember this actually we beat I think we beat you lot 4-0 or 4-1 I forget exactly what it was but in 97 we ended up getting relegated for a week or so you beat West Ham 4-1 I don't believe that pretty sure we I'm not I might imagine things.

57:07I forget who it was. We beat some, I think it was you guys 4-1 and somebody else 4-0 in September. And honestly, I thought we were going to win the league. We had Ravinelli, Giannino, Emerson. And Emerson, I think he split up with his missus. Like, Borough fans still talk about him. Like, the best half a season from any player ever. Like, we all thought he was, he was going to be the best player in the world, but it just never happened. But, yeah, we ended up getting relegated. But we've had some players. Amazing. What coaches you had up there? What managers? so we had Gareth Southgate for a bit did Brian Robson go up there Brian Robson started the revolution that's right so Brian Robson we had Steve McLaren Gareth Southgate Steve McLaren as well we've had a few God you've done Middlesbrough have done really well on signing players because it's a tough place to go to it's a hard place hard fans exactly really hard I don't think I think these days it's changing a bit I think we've kind of readjusted our expectations but it was wild.

58:04What are you talking 32 ,000 is it? 36? 35 I think. 35? And what about now then? Are they packing it out? Championship? They're not full, full. I think we're full opening day of the season but we get 30 there every week. It's looking good this season. I mean we were a striker away in my opinion from getting promoted last year. We always say that. We're standing with a striker away for about 10 years. I think we've got him. I think we've got him now. Okay. So I'm optimistic. We've got Lancashire from Spurs and I think he scored like six in five or something. Something like that. So this might be the year.

58:37Nice, mate. So if people want to reach out and get hold of you now, where would they find you? So most of my self-promotions on LinkedIn. So if you just type my name, Matt Robson, into LinkedIn, you'll find them posting there most days. Business Blue Skies Property Investment. Blue Skies Property Investment. .co.uk, that's the website. So either of them, yeah. You can have a look at what we do and kind of, you know, where we've been and what we're up to. Well, from hearing this conversation, anyone listening to this, I would definitely go and check this business model out and get in contact with Matt.

59:08I think I want to have a chat with my missus and... It's good. Definitely have a look at what's up there. Is there any downside? Obviously, there's a downside to any risk you take in property and stuff, but is there any downside that you can see? Property, yeah. I mean, if I'm being completely transparent, nothing happens quickly in property. so the downside is if you buy something you really need to be looking at oldness for a very long period of time like it's not 10 years yeah i would say yeah i always speak to when i speak to people i don't speak to too many people these days but whenever i do i always try to to get across that please don't come back after a year and go oh well you promised me this and they only did this like start thinking decades like unless something fundamentally changes you know rent controls come in or whatever something like just zoom out like the clients without exception the clients have done the best with us are the ones that just go there you go like i said forgot i'm gonna forget about that for seven eight nine ten years and i'll come back to and hopefully it's gone up exactly and then okay and then that's business that's it that is business i'm not talking about property i'm talking about any business you gotta put a 10 year shift in to create a strong brand yeah and a business that is that that works every angle totally you know and most businesses don't get to 10 years I think like 2 % of businesses get to 10 years yeah you know we literally just got to 10 years in June well done mate yeah still don't know how still flying by the seat of my pants but that's what that's what we've been doing all our lives you know I'm lucky that you're coming in the festival is coming into our 20th year yeah I saw that Bournemouth 7th Festival 20th year still independently owned that must have been quite a ride it's been a proper journey I think it was I forget who you're speaking to it might have been Al Barrett where you'd more or less say you work 365 364 and three quarter days and you make all your money in the last six hours absolutely how mad's that that's if you were I said to Al from Grenade I was like mate if you were from Mars looking in you'd look at a business model of a festival and go you're telling me you're earning all your money on the last day and actually break it down in the last six hours all your profit from the bar you would run a million miles wouldn't you you know and we're coming into our 20th year and it's a big big risk yeah it's still a big you're talking millions of pounds up front for a big party in a field with 30 ,000 people and you know my missus i love i love it yeah i love it man i've got to say my wife bless her she's been a huge support and she's a business partner and whatever she's the brains with all the finances behind it she protects everything she's wanted out for the last 15 years honest like i love risk she doesn't love risk you know so you compliment each other on that side of things yeah i might i've i've kind of had the opposite side of that to be honest my like um i'm at the back end of a divorce at the minute just for what it's worth but like is that divorce gone through not yet it's it's not a million miles away but um i'm i'm optimistic it's going to be sooner rather than that but we kind of my wife could never kind of that never really sat well with her it was like well you could just you could just have this job and you wouldn't have this stress you wouldn't have that that's boring yeah but the kids wouldn't be in that school yeah driving that car and equally you know what happens every five years i get made bloody redundant and I go back to the bottom again.

1:02:13So a lot of people, I think if you've got that, as I said, I've never really had that so it was always quite tricky but I'm probably similar to you by the sounds of it. I just love getting out of bed every day at the minute. I just want to be better. It's a bit of a mantra and everybody gets sick of me saying it but it's like 1%. It's the truth though. It's the truth. All you want to do is get out of bed and progress. Have I progressed today? Yeah. Have I moved the business forward? Have I improved myself? Have I improved my relationships with people around me? It's simple things. Yeah, it's compounded.

1:02:41Yeah, it is compounded. Huge amounts. What's it like going through a divorce? Oh, God, that's a good question. It is, by a considerable distance, the weirdest experience of my life. It starts off very much like a bereavement, even though it was my choice to leave it. You know, like a lot of divorce, we just bicker, and we weren't right, and it was never going to get better. but then obviously you lose the the risks in it very obvious you miss waking up with your kids every day you miss kind of you know that family home even though it wasn't necessarily a calm place I then end up living in one of my rentals until I bought another place which was next door if you want a top tip to piss your ex-wife off did you what you bought next door to the house yeah it's like a mile it's like a mile but like just when we started the ball rolling I committed to buy a farm and even though it made no financial sense to buy it um based on what we were going through um the reason i buy and again no one believes me i'll say this but i swear it's true the reason i bought it is my son who was two at the time as we were walking away from viewing it pulled up my child's leg and he went you'll buy this for me and i was like god who now have enough um so they're there and i've got a you know quite a nice place as well but technically it's next it's like a mile away but um yeah she wasn't very keen like that but like that interim period where you're just living in a rental and you feel like a bit of a cliche yeah exactly a bit of a cliched middle-aged man um you're not taking your kids to school you're not putting them to bed you're not going you know isabel turn that bloody tv like you know the the real yeah um is there an upside as well with that oh massively because because i've i've got quite a few pals who have divorced and they've said exactly the same as you they move out in the one bed flat they're looking around going where's my kids what's under but there's also a massive upside as well because you kind of get your mojo back and you get your everything else that you might have lost over the years i guess 100 yeah and that's what i found um it took a little while but when you i think certainly when i've moved into my new place um it's really starting to feel like ah this was worth it because you wake up every day and you don't feel burden you don't like you're not basically the decision's been taken away so there's no decision fatigue weighing on you every day you just wake up and you feel calmer you know where you're going and as part of that um turning a bit of a therapy session actually but as part of that you kind of you learn just basic stuff that i didn't realize i didn't have like boundaries and standards and like i'm not going to accept this and i i will only accept this moving forward which sounds a bit daft at 41 but i didn't realize that i accepted the level of of not chaos chaos but a level of level of chaos i suppose that of course that you don't have to um so yeah we're in a good spot at the minute yeah um nice part of the world and I see tons of the kids and it's starting to feel normal.

1:05:34But yeah, it's very weird. It is, yeah, it's like a bereavement initially, but obviously things get better. Well, hopefully when this, by this time this comes out, it'll all be sorted for you. Fingers crossed. You can clutch it on the paper and then you're right, move on. Amazing. Matt, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks. Really enjoyed the conversation from an airline pilot to growing a wonderful multi-million pound business here in an area where there's a little hot spot. Is there anyone listening out here? take a look on the map where Middlesbrough is that is it seems like there's a gap in the market there for sure yeah I think there is because I think people are realising now that obviously you can't get the returns in the south east and you've got to make your money work harder so people are going you know I'll start everybody starts off where they live and then they'll just go further further further north until they find somewhere they like and you might get to Leeds or Newcastle or whatever but people are now looking at somewhere like Middlesbrough and they go well actually what's going well there's Middlesbrough bang for your buck is unreal and it's what's going on there as well because you've got, you know, Freeport's, next year at Teesside, you know, the Treasury's relocating there.

1:06:33So people are looking and going, well, actually, it's similar to Stoke and Hull, but Stoke doesn't have this, Hull doesn't have this. Oh, the North East. So that's kind of where you're starting to get some proper serious money. What could you get for a million pounds up in Middlesbrough? You could get a spectacular house. What, like, you would drive up to you and go, my God, because that million pound house, I'll be interested to see what that million pound house would be compared to being down here in pool with bournemouth yeah what you well it would you yeah so i'll show you um i've bought drop me a whatsapp afterwards and show me a photo of what you could get i've bought two around that price last year and uh you get a lot for your money do you get an enormous amount of your money okay um especially if you buy well and you don't just buy something that's being knocked up by the builder yeah but yeah it's great fair play Matt loved it mate thank you for your yeah really enjoyed it thanks for coming down you drove down from Middlesbrough Middlesbrough last night to Windsor and Windsor to Bournemouth this morning Bournemouth this morning fair play mate are you back up to Middlesbrough today or tomorrow back up to back up tomorrow lovely I'm going to go and meet a client in London on the way back wonderful couple of drinks and head up Brian early tomorrow good man I wish you all the best mate thoroughly enjoyed it good man cheers cheers hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

1:07:56Can you do us a favor and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show? Cheers, guys.

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