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In this episode of Scale HER Up – The Female Entrepreneur Show, I’m joined by Laura Chapman, Managing Director of Chapmans Property Lettings and Management in Edinburgh. Laura runs a high-service, values-led letting and management agency looking after properties almost entirely within the Edinburgh bypass, navigating complex legislation, political change and the emotional realities of being a landlord and a tenant.
Laura shares how she became a landlord in her early twenties while recovering from ME/post-viral fatigue, buying her first flat as a student and renting it out because she couldn’t afford to live there. As a chartered banker, she saw the banking crisis from the inside and realised she wanted to build a different kind of business – one where customers came first, culture mattered and values like honesty and integrity weren’t optional extras. That combination of financial acumen, hands-on property experience and a stint fitting kitchens and bathrooms with her then husband led to the birth of Chapmans.
She talks about the reality of building a recurring-revenue, relationship-based business from six clients in year one to a trusted Edinburgh brand 15 years on, growing steadily while refusing to join a race to the bottom on fees. Laura explains why she chose lettings over estate agency, how legislation has transformed professionalism in the sector, and why she believes good safety-led regulation is essential – but politically driven changes can ultimately hurt tenants as well as landlords.
We also dive into the personal side: raising two children with no nearby family support, working through illness, intensive care, COVID and constant “on call” responsibility. Laura is honest about the juggle, the lack of real maternity leave, the postnatal doula and patchwork childcare, and the toll it takes when the system isn’t designed for working parents – especially mothers running businesses.
Finally, we explore team and leadership. Laura describes recruitment and retention as the hardest part of the journey: attracting values-aligned people, developing “homegrown talent”, dealing with poaching attempts, and creating a culture where there’s nowhere to hide but a lot of support. She shares how coaching and an accelerator programme helped her step into the Managing Director role, the loneliness that can come with leadership, and her reflections on being a woman in business – from higher expectations and empathy load to the importance of women actively supporting other women.
In this episode, we cover- What Chapmans does: full-service letting and management for private landlords across Edinburgh
- How Laura became a landlord while still at university and started self-managing her first rental
- Leaving a chartered banking career after the financial crisis to build a business where customers, values and culture came first
- Choosing a recurring-income lettings model over more transactional estate agency work
- 15 years of constant change in Scottish housing legislation – the good (safety and professionalism) and the challenging (politically driven changes and rent freezes)
- Building a recurring-revenue business from six clients in year one to steady 20% annual growth
- What she’d do differently: introductory offers, systemising processes sooner and leveraging networking earlier
- Why she has never worked for another letting agent and how that’s helped her build Chapmans’ own way of doing things
- The pros and cons of hiring from within the industry versus developing “homegrown” team members
- Balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood with no local family – intensive care, no real maternity leave, postnatal doula and childcare challenges
- Why our systems still don’t properly support working parents and business owners
- The hardest part of scaling: recruiting, developing and retaining a high-performing, values-led team in a competitive market
- Staff being courted by competitors, expectations on younger employees to move frequently and how she keeps Chapmans an attractive place to stay
- How coaching and an accelerator programme helped her find peers, language and support as a founder and MD
- Laura’s reflections on being a woman in business: higher standards, empathy load, and the call for women to actively support other women in leadership
