Why Personality Beats Skill When Scaling a Business

0:00The biggest thing I've learned from business and what I'm really passionate about is making sure you look after the people around you and the people that help you all day every day. Some skill is required for certain jobs, but it's more about the personality fit. If you've got the right personality, you can teach anyone a skill. If it's not the right fit in a team, it's going to cause cancer in your office. And that cancer spreads, so then it becomes a bigger problem. So I always make sure I get to meet the person before they come on board. Can you remember back to when you had that kind of first entrepreneurial aha moment that you thought, I don't want to just go and work for anybody else, but I actually want to be my own boss, work with my family, obviously.

0:41Yeah. I think it's hard to say when that first moment was because I grew up in a house with 18 of us. It was my grandparents, my dad, his brothers and sisters, obviously my mum and their wives and children, which is all those lots. So it was 18 of us. And they're all very entrepreneurial, always just out every day working, coming back. So the conversation at the dinner table were very business-driven. so it kind of at an early stage that was kind of drilled into you you kind of and then the language became a bit more of a norm so when you sometimes you forget okay i'm so lucky i've had all that information given to me at such a young age and that kind of entrepreneur spirit said to me um you kind of pinch yourself when you when you meet people that want an investment you kind of think you pinch yourself because you you can see that looking for the answer that you kind of know just because you've been around all your life.

1:34So I'm very lucky in that sense. So I wouldn't say that whatever, a particular moment is a combination of just growing up with my family and having those conversations around the dinner table and just naturally slowly coming to you. And obviously you don't know all the answers. Things change, social media came along not so long ago. So then you learn and adapt new things. So it's just a case of just keep learning and just knowing more stuff and asking questions. Knowledge is key, they say. it is and like you say asking questions listening um what would you think your best skill is or something that you've learned since you since you've been in business then um i remember my uh dad saying to me i'm a granddad saying to me um a long time ago the hardest thing about running a business is managing the people that managing people because obviously you're going to create this atmosphere and this culture in your office and it's like a football team not everyone's going to be friends but you're going to have groups of people but there's challenges with that different personalities different views different processes different thoughts so managing a team has always been the hardest thing so i've always been a big believer um that makes sure you get the right people around you and look after them there's no point there's no point everyone working out their bollocks off for only you to get the reward i don't i don't agree with that and none of my family agree with that it's like everyone should be rewarded fairly uh if i win you also win if i lose is we don't point fingers we all work to find a solution to win again um so there's no eyes in this team it's always about we and looking after each other so i think the biggest thing i've learned from business and what i'm really passionate about is making sure you look after the people around you and the people that help you all day every day yeah yeah no i agree you know lucky enough to richard branson to have been my boss for many years and and when i decided i wanted to start my own business you know so much of what he did i just literally saw he always employed you know pick people how was it he was you know literally great and i'm going back to you know in the like late 90s when i started working for him and just the way he that he treated his staff like we all knew we weren't going to be the best paid in the airline industry but just the way he treated you and how he gave everybody a chance no matter it didn't matter if you've gone to university you've got a master's degree where you live you just finished your gcse's last week you know if you're good enough you know you had the opportunity given a big philosophy of ours is you know okay some skill is required for certain jobs but it's more about the personality fit if you've got the right personality you can teach anyone a skill you can't teach someone their skill their personality but you can teach them a skill so we're always very conscious of bringing the right personalities into the office because you spend more time with people you work with than you do at home with your partners or your family you go home and watch TV you go to sleep and then you spend all day with your work colleagues so you just got to make sure you get that vibe and atmosphere right it makes such a it does and um i was chatting to um chatting to maria hat sister fan is she who owns the rodeo that hundred million dollar beauty company and she was saying she still goes into every interview that um that they have and i was just trying to get my head around that for a company of that size thinking how can you you possibly do that i get yeah yeah yeah because i i will necessarily into the first stage of interviews, but I'll always be there for the last stage.

5:11I will always be there, but every last stage I will be there and we will then, between us, discuss who that person is because... Okay, because it's hard because you've got people in your team that are really keen to bring in a certain person with certain credentials and skills, but then you can bring two or three really good, strong candidates, but if they're not the right fit in the team, it's going to cause cancer in your office and that cancer spreads, then it becomes a bigger problem so i always make sure i get to meet the person before um they come on board interesting i was chatting to um julian hearn from cure you know h-u-e-l the um that meal replacements yeah he was saying exactly the same thing that he'd literally have the final final say again because like his hr might go i really want this this person's work for this company and they yeah but he's like the end of the day i completely get that yeah yeah i completely get that yeah how would you how would you define success for this for this project then how would i define it oh uh you've turned me off a little bit there um i don't think there's a very straightforward answer but it's a case of can we destruct the market if we destruct the market and get people using this in the way we wanting to use it and switching over from the platforms to us then I think we've done what we've set out to do and that is a case of not just the customers being happy but the agents also feeling like they're not being ripped off and they're getting valued for what they've been paying for it's not about them getting valued, it's about adding more value to them so I think I would define that as success yeah Yeah, that's a good answer.

7:01The more you get, the more you get, or monetary-wise, the more you get, you want more, you become greedy and you want more. So I wouldn't say, obviously, that everyone's end goal with any business is to make money. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying. Yeah, we don't do it just because we want to lose money and just we fancy doing it. We want to make money and earn from it and create a life from it. So obviously, you want to earn money out of it. But the real aim of the project is to strip the market and make it easy and simple and fun. Put the fun back into property searching. So that's it for today's bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It.

7:35Make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations. And remember, the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.