speaker-0: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Development Diaries. This is a show where we interview leaders, innovators, changemakers, movers and shakers from across the real estate development sector, learning about their career journeys, proudest moments, lessons learned along the way and advice to their younger you. We also find out what excites them most about the real estate sector right now. I'm your host, Jon Guest, founder of Henry James Search and the Rebels community. group of good humans in real estate who come together to move the industry forward and challenge the status quo. On this episode of Development Diaries, I'm delighted to be joined by Sonny Johal, Development Director at Glenbrook and fellow podcast host. Sonny, welcome to Development Diaries. Thanks for joining us today. Great to have you with us.
speaker-1: Great to be here John, thanks for the invite.
speaker-0: Looking forward to getting stuck in and hopefully having a productive conversation today. So I know your career has progressed from building site supervisor to construction manager at Vinci, contracts manager to then projects director at Arjun and now to Glenbrook. But could you share with the listeners a little bit more about the steps that led you to ending up in real estate? Was it something that was written in the stars or were there a few sliding doors moments along the way?
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ without boring everyone, I won't go into sort of too much detail, but it's a, I would say probably a very unorthodox route on how I got into real estate ⁓ property and sort of, suppose, to where I've sort of muddled my way to today ⁓ here and now. So, ⁓ if I take, go back a bit of a context and a bit of a backdrop. So grandparents came over to the UK in the 60s. ⁓ It was all part of the sort of the partition between India and Pakistan. So they took the leap of faith to, you know, change where they lived and came over and worked bloody hard to establish a base here with no support for a number of years. And very gratefully, you know, parents got married. They came over when they were very young, probably when they were three or four years old. And ⁓ and sort of kind of, you know, straight to the Birmingham area. So, born and bred, Brummie, those that know me, I'm quite proud of sort of reiterating that, especially when I go to Manchester or London, because it has had some bad press over the last few years. ⁓ And yeah, just come from very humble beginnings, to be honest, you know, just with our culture, education is quite important. It's very academic driven. It's all about education and... getting the right qualifications and all the rest of it. So that's almost drummed into you in a way which you've kind of got quite limited wriggle room on what your path's going to be. ⁓ The character that I am, I'm an Aries by Star Sign. So read between the lines kind of yourselves on what Aries are. But they're pretty, can be pretty difficult at times. And I was pretty difficult when I was young. Didn't like to follow a rule book. And... I really never got into education, wasn't interested and got sort of lured in by my good dad on what's called the 11 plus and obviously there's an expectation to go to grammar school which he went to and all the rest of it so he me on this tuition thing and I hated it. I hated it, you know, I was going to tuition, I was crying, I was coming back, getting things wrong, just didn't sync with my character and what I was sort of interested in. So anyhow... Got into grammar school, made some amazing friends that I'm still in contact with today. So looking back, all that pain and grief was worth it in the end. ⁓ But nonetheless, lost interest again. Did okay at my GCSEs, I'd say. Very average, nothing exciting. But then A-levels completely just, yeah, bombed. Got into football, got into of going out, alcohol, all that sort of thing that you do when you're teenagers and social. sort of activities and all the rest of it and ⁓ lost complete interest in my entirety really with education, full stop. So I knew at sort of that point, you know, the usual route to go into university wasn't gonna be for me. Just purely by luck, I was always very good practically with my hands and design technology at school was something I quite enjoyed. know, whether you're designing or putting things together, it was something that I... you know, actually enjoyed doing in my own time. So I think despite my sort of begrudging parents coming to a conclusion that their son isn't going to go into the normal route of getting a degree and a job and becoming a graduate and all the rest of it, he actually helped me get a job with his friend who was a builder, domestic builder. So at 16, I was able to kind of... start to get a flavor on what building and construction was really completely completely oblivious to it. So I started off actually working on construction sites when I was 16 sweeping sweeping the floors and laboring which is quite nice because I was getting quite good good money comparatively to my mates. They were all trying to ask the question how are you making all this money when we've got nothing. But I'm trying to lure them into going into you know all sorts of good leisure activities where they're having to borrow money off their own parents and I'm paying for myself. So that was always quite nice. But yeah, got into more sort of curious ways with trade and construction and building things and putting things together, which again, synced very nicely with my sort of, I suppose, my interest in design technology. And from then on, I think after my A-levels, knowing that I wasn't going to go into that sort of traditional route, I basically went into construction. So I was a trade operative for about four, four and a half, five years. So I started off on groundworks, learning very quickly on a very steep curve on how to work hard and building up resilience and early mornings and late shifts and working at all temperatures and climates with quite a diverse workforce early on. So you pick up some really strong people skills from day one. So that was great.
speaker-0: a strong language but probably a bit of that too.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, you, yeah, yeah. mean, goodness me, to, if I was to kind of do the management ways that I was sort of given back then, I wouldn't last very long in a job at all, be honest. You know, yeah, you know, just, just very hard, but very, very constructive. Tough love, I think is probably the way to summarize it. Something that's very, you know, sensitive and is a fine balance of today's age. Anyway, fast forwarding, got to a position where I was kind of like, right, this is good. I was getting sort of a little bit more experience and, you know, fortunately at a very young age, I was kind of given responsibilities to manage a workforce. And then this wasn't massive construction schemes. We were talking sort of care homes, know, new bill houses, extensions, all that sort of, you know, I say not domestic, but equally not massive commercial stuff. between, up to a potty five, six million quid's worth of construction value. But but neither less, you're still working and managing a workforce and procuring materials and organizing labor and materials and all the rest of it. So, you know, straight in the deep end, really, which was a huge, huge learning curve. I always laugh when I sort of back to those those years. I think one of the biggest lessons I learned very quickly in that whole round being being a trade operative. is you know time is of the essence i remember coming in one morning absolutely steaming i think i got in about five o'clock in the morning from a night out on a sunday we used to go out to this club called ws1 in war soul it was an absolute shithole it was awful ⁓ but they really they were really great because they were that would be the only place that'd serve us ⁓ anyhow got in i used get picked up in the van the gaffer knew straight away yeah the gaffer knew straight away that i've been on it And there was no hiding here. I fell asleep on the way to the site and all sorts. And clearly he had a lesson in mind. So for him, he's lost one man day. Productivity, it's an issue. Time is money. Very critical on sort of tight margin schemes that we were working on. he very, I don't know where he got this concrete lintel from, but it was bloody massive. It must have been about. 20 inches by 20 inches and I'm at four foot long gave me a hammer gave me a chisel and he goes break that into three pieces and for the whole day all I was doing was trying to splice this concrete lintel all day sweating I just wanted to curl up and cry because I was obviously hungover didn't want to do it and from that day on I was never in that position again because you know very quickly the position that you don't want to be in And that was a very, very hard, harsh lesson. So after the kind of the trade, the trade years then, very fortunately, I was sort of embarked by PureLut and advert in the Sunday Times to apply for a construction apprenticeship with Taylor Woodrow Construction, who Vinci bought later on. I think it was a national wide search for sort of a construction management apprenticeship. So I applied for it, it seemed quite interesting and kind of. For me, was about trying to move out of domestic and get into a bit more of the wider main contracting world, which is quite interesting. So applied for it, did a couple of tests and all the rest of it, and, you know, by a bit of luck, managed to get onto their cohort. And that was great because that was sort of my first stepping stone into, you know, the major world of construction. I've always been in Birmingham up until that point. So from 21, went to this town called Burnley. Had to get the old A to Z out. because Google Maps didn't exist. It was very limited and realized that I was going very, very far up north, know, relatively to where I was. So, and then from 21 all the way through to probably sort of mid 20s, 26, 27, I worked between two companies, was Taylor Woodrow, straight Vinci, but then also Long Quash Construction, where I then started to really build up my main contractor experience, getting up to contract manager level and. being trusted enough to build our own sort of business unit with a colleague down in the South East ⁓ before moving back up to Birmingham really. it's been up until the point of getting into development. It was all very construction engineering focused. But because I bombed A levels and I didn't go to university, I actually found something that I enjoyed doing in terms of the construction side. Being a very curious person again, I thought, right, there could be some interesting qualifications here that I could start to look at, which might not actually feel like learning, but could help me later on in life. the construction management apprenticeship helped with that because they put you on a H &C on a sort of block basis and then they move you around. Off the back of that, you had the chance to do a degree and all the rest of it. So I jumped in with two feet, did the part-time degree after the H &C, and then I thought, right, that's interesting. started to get into some really good schemes at Long Cross, did a mix use scheme at the Olympic Village, which was great, which had a bit more to it than our usual stuff on the retail side. And then I suppose I started to ask the question who the employer was and who the client was and actually what happens before stage three? know, what's the process before we actually get that tender pack to actually go and price and build it? And that was all started to then started to get me all interested about capital flows, investment, development, how they create or decide that that was going to be a mixed use development. So I did a bit of research again and just sort of looked upon sort of courses and put myself on a masses in real estate investment and development part time, which fortunately sponsored again by Long Cross and got more curious, got more understanding about the process of development front end. which I was completely green to, and I'm still learning about today, to be honest with you, because it's ever evolving. And it was purely by chance and luck that I got approached by an agent who were recruiting on behalf of Argent. So, and at the time they were doing, obviously King's Cross was fully immersed and amazing things there. I didn't know who Argent were, completely oblivious to what they did and being from Birmingham. being the sort of the orchestrators of Britney place and all the rest of it and thought, well, actually this is quite interesting. It's a bit of a sidestepping career in that I'll be kind of going back a step and having to learn something new, but hand in glove with sort of what I'm trying to learn and what I want to get into. So ⁓ again, some good conversations with some of the powers that be at Argent with Mr. Madeline and Tony Giddens and then. Rock Groves in Birmingham and ⁓ decided to take the plunge really and make that leap of faith. the rest is history in terms of the development phase. So I joined them in 2015 and then was very, very sort of lucky to be working on the Paradise Scheme, which is a big scheme in Birmingham City Centre for nine years. And then more recently joining ⁓ an incredibly exciting business called Glenbrook. ⁓ three years ago, who were based in Manchester, to start to broaden my horizon across the UK, now on some really exciting schemes. So yeah, a bit long-winded answer to your question, John, but I think, yeah, it was a very unusual route or untypical route, I think, that most people find themselves in the development side.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's called the Bellarmine Diaries. So I think that is your diary. And the whole purpose of the podcast is to hear that no matter your background or what hand you're dealt or where you grew up or whether how academic you are, you can still be successful if you navigate it in the right way. think a couple of things that I picked out there from what you said. You mentioned luck a few times. I'm sure there was a little bit of that. It sounds like you were in the right place and you were prepared to take advantage of that opportunity with the apprentice scheme. You already had some experience. You already done some of those hard yards. Some of the lessons learned, know, some of them quite brutal as you share life lessons as well as work lessons. It sounds like you always had the kind of bit that sometimes we. forget as we get older, which is the childlike curiosity to ask why, why are we doing this in the first place? Some people maybe haven't done that. And sounds like you're still doing that every day today. So thanks for sharing that. And I can definitely relate a lot personally to the education part and some of that stuff, but we're not here to talk about me, but it does definitely resonate. So from that point. ⁓ You've maybe touched a little bit on how you engineered the transition into development. I think it was being in the right place. It was having the knowledge. It was trying to be curious about why are we doing this in the first place and what happens before stage three. Could you come back to Glenbrook a little bit ⁓ a bit later on. But could you share a couple of your proudest achievements in your career today.
speaker-1: I will try, I will try. And you know, I can't take credit for any of these personally, it's always been a team effort to get to what the outcomes been in a matter of what I've been able to achieve or been a part of. think if there's probably one, probably concentrate on one main one and I'm sure there's a few smaller ones. But I think the main one for me was being able to have a really heavy contribution to almost lead the crisis of what was paradise when Coridium went into voluntary liquidation or compulsory liquidation, sorry. So this is a 1.2 billion pound regen scheme in the city center of Birmingham. We had over a hundred million pounds of main build contract with them. And the day they went sort of pop. ⁓ We had an open concrete frame, half a basement built and we're just about completing the Section 278 works and utility infrastructure works. So it was a very small team, know, that team on that scheme was very lean. you know, we were really leaning on a really strong consultant partnership as well to kind of bring this forward. And what was complicated with that is the first pre-let of the commercial building was also the receiver. PwC all of a sudden you've got this scenario where Our future tenant on the on the first building is coming and locked lock the site You've got all these raging and very angry construction workers wanting to get their tools off site, which they can't nobody knows what's going on all we're doing is reading a headline from the BBC news because we weren't told or given any indication this was going to go into a care by the directors of Corleon and we also knew that with the supply chain and the heat map that they had across the UK, we weren't going to be the only ones in this situation. So how do you go from that to sort of pivoting the scheme into a position where you safeguard the pre-let, because that's critical to the success and the future funding and quite frankly, whether the development is going to proceed and continue or not, to people management and behavioral management and calming down those individuals who have got livelihoods that are on a salary and don't really know if they've got a job today or tomorrow. So you can imagine the emotional uproar that was sort of being created in that period. And I think being able to remain, and I don't know whether this is a trained of mannerism that I've built up over time, but for some reason, when shit hits the fan, I'm always able to stay pretty calm. And I sort of kind of welcome the importance the complexity, I embrace that. The reason for that is because you realize quite quickly there's no right or wrong way of doing things. There's no rule book. It gets torn up. And actually it's about navigating the gray. That's really, really important. ⁓ And you also realize very quickly that people are looking to you. And if you're calm, measured and grounded, then actually that starts to calm them down as well. And I think, you know, being able to put the strategy together. with the support of the team who are, know, collective ease, we were all amazing because that became the day job, right? You know, how do we get this turned around? Who's going to deliver it for us? How are we going to manage PWC in that sort of Chinese wall scenario? And by hook or by crook, it was probably the hardest 15 months ever, you know, long shifts, long nights, but we got there. And for those that have been around Paradise and it's still there today, you know, we can all put back very, very proud of what we've achieved and what continues to be achieved there really. So ⁓ I think, yeah, something in and around how that whole process and the complexity of that and how that was managed and, you know, remaining calm and I suppose leadership, isn't it, comes down to, you know, quite a relatively young age without reading any raw books. It was just sort of innate and naturally occurred. So that was quite cool. I think I can look back at that and... You know, and so yeah, I didn't do too much on that at all.
speaker-0: And that was the word in my mind was leadership. People looking to you, probably the first, well, one of the first times in your career where by default you are now taking on a more senior role than maybe your title suggests because of the situation. And I was looking to you to see how they react. Because yeah, if you're running around like a headless chicken at that point, then what are they going to think? You need to at least come across like you have a plan. ⁓ Even though I'm sure some days, you did in other days you've thought what is coming next because this definitely wasn't in the development appraisal.
speaker-1: It's one step at a time, Like you're waiting. There were some days there thinking, well, you know, we've done this, we've done that. It was very hard to kind of look forward because you're very much in the moment. ⁓ But yeah, I think it's about creating confidence. think, you know, knowing that there's a drive there, there's a plan there, there's an intention to get to that endpoint was always the key and how we sort of articulated that in that narrative. the bit from where you were standing to get to that end point was never a linear process. But that communication throughout that whole period, I think, was the key thing to why people kept belief in what we were doing. And naturally, we were able to get ourselves out of the situation.
speaker-0: Is there a lesson that you would share with others that would find themselves in a similar situation or might hopefully not, but might find themselves in a similar situation in the future in our sector that is sometimes unpredictable and volatile?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think you, you there's only sort of limited things you can control. lot of the things that do occur that can become frustrating are tend to be out of your control as long as you're doing things correctly. If that is the case, just from my experience, you've got to just, well, it's easier said than done, but embrace it and actually just start to see that as not just your day job, a, but a lesson. And it's come to you for a reason because you've got the skillset to be able to manage through it. And I think, you know, when you look back at those sorts of scenarios and hard times, you know, you're stronger for it, you're more resilient for it, you're wiser for it. And actually, you know, things that aren't as bad going forward become very easy. So, ⁓ you know, just keep telling yourself that. And, you know, if you are in a situation, there's going to be someone out there who's also been in that situation. Don't be scared to reach out for that advice as well. And asking for a second opinion, I think I can't. I can't sort of advocate that enough to be honest and I think there's a lot of people out there that try and do things themselves without sort of you know putting their hand up and get themselves in a very stressed position when they don't need to you know a lot of people out there willing to help
speaker-0: Yeah, not letting pride get in the way. Thanks for that. I that's really valuable for those to know that they have got someone that they can reach out to or not to be too shy to admit that you might not know everything because it's an unknown situation. Why would you? It sounds obvious, but actually in the moment, sometimes that fact that you've got to take on that leadership role leads people to behaviors that sometimes go the other way. So you've had an amazing journey. Have you ever thought about
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: What you would have done if you didn't end up in development, Sonny?
speaker-1: Um, yeah, I was going to say something there, but I'm not going to say it. Um, it, it, it, it, it's very, it's very, it's very difficult. Uh, you know, you can almost, time tight's a great thing and you could always sort of, uh, crystal ball and gaze into the future and say this could have been, but, um, but I think if there's, if there was anything, it would probably be something to do with construction or technology or design, you know, something which is of a blue personality, know, engineering, very sort of linear ⁓ and logical. ⁓ So some sort of industry and that. was never gonna be someone who was gonna sit behind a computer screen. That was never me. Always quite liked art and was very creative. So I'd probably say very broadly something in sort of art or art design, you know, technology, something like that maybe.
speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like having got to know you fairly well, there'd be some kind of idea, business, some kind of, yeah, be creative through the sense of something that solves the problem. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, think that's a way to surprise it.
speaker-0: At Henry James, we focus on bringing a transparent and data driven process to the opaque world of executive search. We combine best in class, traditional headhunting with modern attraction materials so that we can commit to working on each search until it's complete. Executive search in property done properly. If you haven't already, please do connect with us directly on LinkedIn and you can follow our Henry James search page there and you can find out more about the business in general. HenryJamesSearch.com. So knowing what you know now, having by no means finished your career, you've got loads of ⁓ road left in front of you, I'm excited to see what you go on to do, but having come to a point where you've maybe, I don't know, third of the way through, halfway through, what would your advice be at this stage to the younger version of yourself navigating those early career steps or deciding whether to take their career in a certain direction?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, it's a massive question, isn't it? Younger you, taper your ego, number one. Understand what an ego is. You you can get into a position whereby you think it's all about yourself, but it's really not. And the only way I learned that was through some harsh feedback, some good feedback, because it changed me a lot. But that was a real sort of grounding lesson. So I think... understanding that as early as you can is really important. Don't underestimate the importance of human psychology throughout your whole career. You can be as intelligent as you want, but if you don't know people and you don't know how to work with people or read people, you're not going to get very far. So I think that's absolutely critical and developing a curiosity for that as early as you can, I think would definitely be something I would like to redo. And again, no one's sort of guided me towards that, you just sort of learnt that on the job really. So having someone push you in that direction early, I think is really important. ⁓ But I think the big ones is, you know, asking more questions. Asking more questions, not feeling that you're going to be, you know, belittled or, you know, this imposter syndrome that occurs. You know, being in a position, those, I think those junior roles are so important, those younger roles, because actually when you look back, You're navigating them unconsciously. You don't really know how low the expectation is on you at that point in time where you're just sort of free to experiment and get shit wrong, right? know, you know, at other people's expense, rightly or wrongly. So, you know, really try and immerse yourself in and not worry about making mistakes because that's the best learning. And I think I was a little, always a little bit. being probably a perfectionist sometimes, which is a very big weakness of mine, always worried about making that mistake before doing something. And actually, if I'd been a little bit more aggressive and carefree and not worried about what that feedback was, probably going to learn a few things a bit quicker in life, really. So ⁓ a few snippets there, which hopefully makes sense.
speaker-0: Yeah, as always, these things are much easier to say than they are to do. And hindsight is a wonderful thing. But if it inspires some of the listeners to just lean into it a little bit more, that's again, part of the whole purpose of doing these. So thank you for sharing.
speaker-1: Don't rush up as the position that you're in. mean, there's always this thing about trying to jump on an elevator, right? To get the next promotion or get to the next stage and... There's something quite compelling about just enjoying and being really good at the position that you're at and being, you know, really strong in that position. think, and maybe it's just the way the work structure's been sort of generated through industrialism, all the rest of it, but this thing on titles and, you know, it's quite, I think it's quite a bad thing generally in our industry where people chase that title, they're respective of... whether they've got the competency or not, know, all of a sudden they've got this label and they think they've got that competency automatically to do certain behaviors. And I think that's wrong. I think that's a narrative that companies need to change. And actually, you know, your merits are based on, you know, how well you're doing things, how well you're working with the people, you know, it's the softer side as well as the, you know, the more, you know, I suppose technical side, which, you know, a lot of people sort of fall short on. Really enjoy and savour the position that you're in. Don't worry about the time element because, you know, what's for you will eventually come to you. I'm a true believer of that. And just make the most of those early years. I'm trying to learn as much as you can, really.
speaker-0: Yeah, sometimes you see people make those mistakes when they're navigating their earlier career. Society and life, everything is faster now. You have to wait for much. that's only going to get patience is going to be a skill that people are going to need to practice more and more. Real estate isn't necessarily in its fastest moment of all time in terms of things progressing. So sometimes you see people, whilst you can understand they get frustrated with that because they want to get on and sometimes that's drive and ambition. Actually, if they make a few moves, it can start to reflect badly on them or they don't stay long enough to see anything through. So when it comes to progressing, they haven't rounded out their experience of revert stages, of seeing a project, of letting a bill contract, of practical completion, you all these things that actually when you get up to more linear roles, they want more of that. You've almost got pieces of it, but never together. So I kind of understand why it happens to people, but also you make a really valid point. It's something for people to consciously be aware of.
speaker-1: Definitely, and I think, people, you soon realize knowledge, know, knowledge isn't free. You you have to pay attention. ⁓ If you're paying attention, then only then that knowledge becomes really valuable. And if you're not doing that in your early years, you know, you're at a point where you're almost kidding yourself. Then as you do get into these senior roles, then, you know, you get found out quite quickly, you know, in the right businesses, people, you know, can't hide and... ⁓ What you want to be doing is, you know, challenging yourself and asking yourself the question, am I correctly in the position that I'm in, you know, and actually how comfortable do I feel? And if you're feeling too comfortable, then in my view, you're probably coasting. And if you're slightly uncomfortable, then you're probably about right. Cause that means you still got things to learn and you're developing. So, but everyone's different, you know, but yeah.
speaker-0: So what do you think, knowing what you know now, and maybe this has evolved over time, but what do you think makes an exceptional development professional in today's world?
speaker-1: Big question. I think there's a lot. I think there's a lot of traits and behavioral skills that probably don't just apply to development, you know, a number of industries really. One book that resonates with me, and you've probably read it, John, it's Ready for Kandor by Kim Scott. Awesome book. I think I read it in around sort 2017, 2018. And she talks about caring personally, but challenging directly. And I think... those exceptional development professionals do that very, very well, whether it's with their own team or whether it's with consultants or whether it's with, ⁓ you know, upstream stakeholders. I think the ability to be able to do that, but still create partnership and that collaborative working environment is critical because to get things done, you need to know how to influence, but you also need to, you know, you also need to be able to behave in a way which instills trust, know, 360 really with everything that you're working with. So I've always sort of taken that quite importantly, you know, in terms of that sort of that saying, think she also talks about obnoxious aggression where you're completely killing people with the feedback that you give. And I think when a very different time now, you know, demographically, the generations that are in the workforce, there's such a spread between, you know, Gen Z and, you know, Gen X and each of generations have got very different ways of working and also different levels of resilience and how they receive feedback and what that level of expectation is. starting to understand that sensitivity as well, I think is really important. Look, when you get into a level, everyone's got a sort technical attitude. You know, kind of, you kind of plateau, don't you? There's a baseline there, but... And those that are really exceptional, think it starts to come down to those again, people skills, softer skills, behavioural management, behavioural psychology, ⁓ and getting those things done through people really, ⁓ which is why that radical kind of book always stands out for me. So if no one's read it, definitely recommend it.
speaker-0: It's always good to get a book recommendation on the pod. I know we've shared a few between us. That is a book that I definitely enjoyed and I don't think it came from this book, but there's the phrase, iron fist, velvet glove. There's also, I don't know where I read this, but there's a concept I've played around with in my mind for years, which is a relationship being like a bank account, whereas you need to put deposits in and then you can make a withdrawal without it becoming overdrawn. similar to what you're saying around that emotional intelligence piece, which is turning the screw when you need to, but with a lens of, you know, I care for you and I'm only doing this because it's good for you rather than just for myself. Maybe your background actually going back through your story, having started from quite humble beginnings, worked on site, understanding what the supply chain experience, what pressures they're under, what that world is like, maybe that gives you a little bit of a competitive advantage. I don't know whether you've ever thought about that. but maybe some people don't have such direct exposure to what pressures these people are under, so therefore it's harder to empathize.
speaker-1: It is. No, I think you're right. And I think, you know, never really thought about it in that way, but having been exposed to, you know, those early years where, you know, you're working with a whole different grade of individuals. ⁓ Some of those are, you know, earning ends meets, others are working for the reasons and you do very quickly realize how well people can put a facade on as well. You never really know what someone's going through just by looking at them. So, you you've got to always, you know, always be mindful of that and how you approach it and deal with people and just be nice, just be kind, yeah? Not difficult. Yeah, it's pretty free. It's pretty free. If you can make the next guy's or next girl's life a little bit easier, it always comes back to you for sure.
speaker-0: Drain you last time I checked. Awesome. There's loads in there for people to unpack. Fast forwarding back to today, development director at Glenbrook seems like the business is in a really good place. Lots of exciting stuff right now. What are you most excited about in the market right now? What are you up to at Glenbrook right now? What do you think is positive in real estate over the next three to five years?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot ⁓ going on. mean, just to give a bit of context on the business set up by Ian and Guy, two fantastic individuals. It's been going for between sort of 12 and 14 years now. ⁓ And we've got a really amazing team who are based in Manchester, delivering some fantastic schemes ⁓ between Manchester Leeds ⁓ as we currently stand. A lot of our stuff is heavily sort of built to rent focused, institutionally funded, but we are starting to grow the heat map for the business now as well, which is exciting. So trying to get sort of a foothold in Birmingham. We've got quite a large foothold in Milton Keynes, which we're bringing various planning applications through on and also working on a very exciting scheme in greater London. So. So from where the business started to where it is today is extremely excited to see that growth and growth at a measured pace as well, which I think is really important. ⁓ The development world and to be honest, only kind of coming over to Glenborough, you realize how difficult it is to keep, you know, a of a medium sized development business capitalized. know, cashflow is absolutely king and critical. And, you know, you start to get a real narrow focus on where you put your time and energy. So. And that's something that I'm still learning. You know, I'm still learning about that. I'm still learning about what the key, you know, levers are, what things are going to really sort of make a support a city or a region that we want to sort of put our time and capital in, which is finite. So there's loads of things there just on a personal level that I'm still sort of learning and developing a really in-depth knowledge on. As a business, yeah, you know, I think we're cautiously optimistic about sort of the next 12 months. think when you're a developer, you've always got to be optimistic and believe. that things will get better, which they will. I think there's been a very difficult time in the market for everyone, you know, the last 24 to 36 months. But there are some, you know, there is rhetoric out there which starts to help move the dial, I think, positively, whether it's cost of debt starting to come down, interest rates trending down, know, the gilt rates were at the lowest, you know, for 12 months last week. That helps to sort of build in different levels of confidence in the investment market. ⁓ We know the position on housing for the UK, it's pretty bleak. So, you know, there's always going to be a structural demand for good quality accommodation that comes forward, which is the sector that we're in. And even though we're agnostic, ⁓ you know, clearly we are trying to focus our efforts very selectively to ultimately deliver, because that's what we enjoy doing. We don't like paper schemes. We like schemes that you can see come out the ground and... and have a real legacy side to them. that's really exciting for us as a business. And I'm sure I've missed the hell of an upload and I'll get kicked for it. I'll go back to the office, yeah, we're doing very well. But it's not an easy market, right? You know, we've got to be very, very cautious of that. And we've got to be very sensitive on how we do things over the next sort 12 to 14 months, but yes, going well.
speaker-0: Where do you think the opportunities lie then for those navigating?
speaker-1: But yeah, think, you when you think about opportunities, I think this is probably me having a bias as well from the route that I've come through. I there's always opportunities, but I think the blockers and the opportunities almost converge. I think one of the things that everyone talks about and everyone from industry-wide, you know, how capital and institutional capital has been held up and how... you know, the cost of debt is obviously prohibited, certain capital flows into development, planning issues that we all know exist. So I'm not going to repeat any of those. However, I don't think we talked enough about labor and actually who's going to be building this, you know, this housing or this building or development need over the next 25 years. you know, when you look at the stats, you know, they're quite, they're quite scary when you think... three quarters of a million of the workers today are to retire by 2036. You just think, well, okay, how are going to plug that gap over and above the 150,000 vacancy gap that exists already? I think even though that's a huge blocker to cadence of delivery, regulatory items aside, you've got this labor element which has the ability to push cost up because obviously then people start to demand... higher labor costs and all the rest of it. and then, parallel to that, you then look at, well, actually, what's the graduate situation looking like? And at the moment, the trend on that is quite negative. You know, you're looking at the cost of minimum wage to starting wage of graduates is ever closing. So, actually, what's the incentive for people to go to university to get graduate jobs? And you look at the competitive now of competitiveness of graduate jobs ⁓ in all sectors, professional services or whoever, it's becoming very, very difficult. So there could be a real opportunity here to almost go from a position whereby, you know, the younger cohort are always talking about sort of going and getting qualifications, you know, academic qualifications, but actually a pivot from lecture halls to site boots, if that makes sense. And I think that's a huge opportunity and it's an opportunity that the industry needs to really capture if we're going to have a chance on delivering the amount of homes, whatever data centers that they keep blurbing about due to AI, irrespective things need to be built and you can only put things together using manual labor. So we've got to start to look at building that narrative to say and demonstrate why being a skilled electrician is equally as important and lucrative as being a, I don't know, someone. in finance, ⁓ in the professional services sector. But I think that it has to come from government level. We have to start talking about salaries and packages because that's what people also need to understand in secondary schools. So I think there's a really interesting sort of turning point here on how younger people start to look at their career horizon and also where that sort of value proposition starts to become as well between professional services and almost going back to sort of know more physical hands on on jobs really which I think is going to be interesting.
speaker-0: I think you've done really well to turn a massive challenge into a potential opportunity for the sector. And I think you're right in that not many people are talking about that at all right now. You did really well to go through that without mentioning AI too much. And that's another whole podcast episode to throw into the mix. But is it more likely to take jobs in finance or is it more likely to take jobs on site? I think we all know the answer. Yeah, but maybe that's opportunity for the sector. Everything you mentioned is maybe a reason that it's hard and a reason not to do it. So perhaps the advantage is that less people will do it. Some people that aren't fully committed will tap out and therefore those that are willing to focus on the marginal gains and run the hard yards will end up arriving with a product that is quality led in a market where there's less competition and therefore get the upside. and the capital return that we all need to talk to our institutional capital that way instead. in the spirit of the podcast, we'll ask you to answer a question from the guest before. And in this case, that was Simon Harding-Roots, who works for Muse, and kind of follows on from what we've been talking about a little bit. So to give you a little bit of power to make some of these changes that sounds like you spent some time thinking about in your downtime. So his question to you was if you were made the Chancellor and you had a pretty unlimited remit, what would you do to completely reorientate and refocus the property industry and the broader economy but with a specific focus on real estate itself? So nice, small, easy to answer question for you there.
speaker-1: I think it's a poison chalice at the moment, isn't it, to be the chance that anyone would like to be in her position, to be honest. Although fixing the fiscal budget to once a year has helped settle things. think that's giving everyone a little bit of a runway. Massive question, really. I think there's probably three key categories there that I'll probably look into in a bit more detail. I think the whole... Trade school thing would be definitely one I'd like to get behind. I'm putting some real investment into that at sort of grassroot level, you know, not secondary schools, but we're talking about these being meaningful careers with primary school students and bringing that into the curriculum, you know, and how to put things together and all the rest of it. I think there's a real, real big thing there because that will sort of help support the balancing of the workforce going forward. ⁓ You know, we are seeing displacement. in jobs, aren't we, across all sectors, whether it's AI driven or whether it's, you know, just industries kind of consolidating and all the rest of it. So we know that massive need for for for workers in the construction sector. something around that. So investment into trade schools at a very, very early stage and bringing that into the curriculum, I think would be quite, quite compelling. I think there's got to be something about SDLT, that being a dead weight and somehow that coming through the development process where it actually can be sort of used primarily for infrastructure. So I think infrastructure is a big barrier at the moment for any development ⁓ and viability. So how do we get to a position where that's not sent to Whitehall? Actually, it's kept within that local authority and recirculated back into the development that ⁓ it's come from. And actually, you might even have a half a chance of getting rid of Nimbus and because people can see it being built and used in their own town and actually don't start to have my back. Yeah, and don't have these infrastructure worries and complaints that they tend to use before any new development comes forward. So something around SDLT usage and better utilization of that. And I think then we've got to we've got to do something about planning, I think, even though the velocity on the new bill has probably been moved.
speaker-0: God.
speaker-1: or hasn't been moved quick enough, there's got to be a position where we're finding, you know, in our experience, actually, you can still have those new rules put in place, but it's down to individuals within the local authority that are still going to pull the levers. ⁓ So something around zonal planning or whereby there's a binary route for people to get approvals within a certain time period if that local authority hasn't responded adequately really. I think, you know, without that, even with the new bill coming in, we're not going to be any better off to where we are today really. So hopefully those three things will help sort of support more property sort of specific ⁓ growth across the UK. But hey, I'm not the chancellor.
speaker-0: for a moment then I think you did a pretty good job so you got my vote ⁓ that you did well to distill it into some understandable points I think the planning practicality versus rules is an interesting one every investor wants certainty real estate or not UK or not they want to know that they're playing in a field that they understand and they know what's going to happen so every time that becomes a question mark that leads to you know having to have higher return for that risk. So I think what you said there can apply to so many different areas, but planning definitely so. So in reward for answering that question and giving us all a three step plan to fix the country, would you like to leave a question for the next guest, not knowing who it is yet?
speaker-1: Yeah, I would like to live question. I think, you know, we all know with capital becoming sort of more discerning, I think one question that we've got is, or that I've got is what unique leadership qualities are probably needed to attract more institutional or just general investment into UK property? I think it'd be really interesting to hear the next guest view on that.
speaker-0: What a question to leave them with. And it probably touches on a few of your points of changing the narrative. It ⁓ feels like our sector has a little bit of an opportunity to improve its perception, reputation.
speaker-1: Yeah, and I think it's it's probably not even sector it's UK as well, you know, UK PLC. We've seen we've seen the impact and the max exodus of, you know, the high worth individuals. I don't know what the consequences that that's going to be yet, you know, in terms of value for the UK, but it's going to be it's going to hurt pretty, pretty badly. We, know, we're competing internationally here for competitive capital. So how can leadership demonstrate that UK is and gives a clear pathway for new investors and emerging investors to come in and participate really.
speaker-0: The frustrating thing is actually some of this is hiding in plain sight. It is a great place. So much going for it. So much potential to get even better. So that hopefully ends the podcast with a little bit of hope. Sadi, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to spend with us today. You've shared some really... ⁓ Yeah, really interesting insights, some valuable life lessons. I think your journey is one that a lot of people will relate to, because it's been non-linear. And you mentioned the word luck. think you've probably worked hard and got yourself in that position along the way. ⁓ Look forward to seeing what you do next with the guys at Glenbrook and where your career goes. So thank you so much.
speaker-1: Really enjoyed the conversation and thanks again for the invitation John. Appreciate it.
speaker-0: Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. Your support means the world. Please feel free to like, share or pass the podcast on to friend or colleague. Do drop me a line with any suggestive topics you'd like us to cover on future episodes and recommendations of guests that you would love to see us interview. Till next time, go well.
speaker-1: Great to be here John, thanks for the invite.
speaker-0: Looking forward to getting stuck in and hopefully having a productive conversation today. So I know your career has progressed from building site supervisor to construction manager at Vinci, contracts manager to then projects director at Arjun and now to Glenbrook. But could you share with the listeners a little bit more about the steps that led you to ending up in real estate? Was it something that was written in the stars or were there a few sliding doors moments along the way?
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ without boring everyone, I won't go into sort of too much detail, but it's a, I would say probably a very unorthodox route on how I got into real estate ⁓ property and sort of, suppose, to where I've sort of muddled my way to today ⁓ here and now. So, ⁓ if I take, go back a bit of a context and a bit of a backdrop. So grandparents came over to the UK in the 60s. ⁓ It was all part of the sort of the partition between India and Pakistan. So they took the leap of faith to, you know, change where they lived and came over and worked bloody hard to establish a base here with no support for a number of years. And very gratefully, you know, parents got married. They came over when they were very young, probably when they were three or four years old. And ⁓ and sort of kind of, you know, straight to the Birmingham area. So, born and bred, Brummie, those that know me, I'm quite proud of sort of reiterating that, especially when I go to Manchester or London, because it has had some bad press over the last few years. ⁓ And yeah, just come from very humble beginnings, to be honest, you know, just with our culture, education is quite important. It's very academic driven. It's all about education and... getting the right qualifications and all the rest of it. So that's almost drummed into you in a way which you've kind of got quite limited wriggle room on what your path's going to be. ⁓ The character that I am, I'm an Aries by Star Sign. So read between the lines kind of yourselves on what Aries are. But they're pretty, can be pretty difficult at times. And I was pretty difficult when I was young. Didn't like to follow a rule book. And... I really never got into education, wasn't interested and got sort of lured in by my good dad on what's called the 11 plus and obviously there's an expectation to go to grammar school which he went to and all the rest of it so he me on this tuition thing and I hated it. I hated it, you know, I was going to tuition, I was crying, I was coming back, getting things wrong, just didn't sync with my character and what I was sort of interested in. So anyhow... Got into grammar school, made some amazing friends that I'm still in contact with today. So looking back, all that pain and grief was worth it in the end. ⁓ But nonetheless, lost interest again. Did okay at my GCSEs, I'd say. Very average, nothing exciting. But then A-levels completely just, yeah, bombed. Got into football, got into of going out, alcohol, all that sort of thing that you do when you're teenagers and social. sort of activities and all the rest of it and ⁓ lost complete interest in my entirety really with education, full stop. So I knew at sort of that point, you know, the usual route to go into university wasn't gonna be for me. Just purely by luck, I was always very good practically with my hands and design technology at school was something I quite enjoyed. know, whether you're designing or putting things together, it was something that I... you know, actually enjoyed doing in my own time. So I think despite my sort of begrudging parents coming to a conclusion that their son isn't going to go into the normal route of getting a degree and a job and becoming a graduate and all the rest of it, he actually helped me get a job with his friend who was a builder, domestic builder. So at 16, I was able to kind of... start to get a flavor on what building and construction was really completely completely oblivious to it. So I started off actually working on construction sites when I was 16 sweeping sweeping the floors and laboring which is quite nice because I was getting quite good good money comparatively to my mates. They were all trying to ask the question how are you making all this money when we've got nothing. But I'm trying to lure them into going into you know all sorts of good leisure activities where they're having to borrow money off their own parents and I'm paying for myself. So that was always quite nice. But yeah, got into more sort of curious ways with trade and construction and building things and putting things together, which again, synced very nicely with my sort of, I suppose, my interest in design technology. And from then on, I think after my A-levels, knowing that I wasn't going to go into that sort of traditional route, I basically went into construction. So I was a trade operative for about four, four and a half, five years. So I started off on groundworks, learning very quickly on a very steep curve on how to work hard and building up resilience and early mornings and late shifts and working at all temperatures and climates with quite a diverse workforce early on. So you pick up some really strong people skills from day one. So that was great.
speaker-0: a strong language but probably a bit of that too.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, you, yeah, yeah. mean, goodness me, to, if I was to kind of do the management ways that I was sort of given back then, I wouldn't last very long in a job at all, be honest. You know, yeah, you know, just, just very hard, but very, very constructive. Tough love, I think is probably the way to summarize it. Something that's very, you know, sensitive and is a fine balance of today's age. Anyway, fast forwarding, got to a position where I was kind of like, right, this is good. I was getting sort of a little bit more experience and, you know, fortunately at a very young age, I was kind of given responsibilities to manage a workforce. And then this wasn't massive construction schemes. We were talking sort of care homes, know, new bill houses, extensions, all that sort of, you know, I say not domestic, but equally not massive commercial stuff. between, up to a potty five, six million quid's worth of construction value. But but neither less, you're still working and managing a workforce and procuring materials and organizing labor and materials and all the rest of it. So, you know, straight in the deep end, really, which was a huge, huge learning curve. I always laugh when I sort of back to those those years. I think one of the biggest lessons I learned very quickly in that whole round being being a trade operative. is you know time is of the essence i remember coming in one morning absolutely steaming i think i got in about five o'clock in the morning from a night out on a sunday we used to go out to this club called ws1 in war soul it was an absolute shithole it was awful ⁓ but they really they were really great because they were that would be the only place that'd serve us ⁓ anyhow got in i used get picked up in the van the gaffer knew straight away yeah the gaffer knew straight away that i've been on it And there was no hiding here. I fell asleep on the way to the site and all sorts. And clearly he had a lesson in mind. So for him, he's lost one man day. Productivity, it's an issue. Time is money. Very critical on sort of tight margin schemes that we were working on. he very, I don't know where he got this concrete lintel from, but it was bloody massive. It must have been about. 20 inches by 20 inches and I'm at four foot long gave me a hammer gave me a chisel and he goes break that into three pieces and for the whole day all I was doing was trying to splice this concrete lintel all day sweating I just wanted to curl up and cry because I was obviously hungover didn't want to do it and from that day on I was never in that position again because you know very quickly the position that you don't want to be in And that was a very, very hard, harsh lesson. So after the kind of the trade, the trade years then, very fortunately, I was sort of embarked by PureLut and advert in the Sunday Times to apply for a construction apprenticeship with Taylor Woodrow Construction, who Vinci bought later on. I think it was a national wide search for sort of a construction management apprenticeship. So I applied for it, it seemed quite interesting and kind of. For me, was about trying to move out of domestic and get into a bit more of the wider main contracting world, which is quite interesting. So applied for it, did a couple of tests and all the rest of it, and, you know, by a bit of luck, managed to get onto their cohort. And that was great because that was sort of my first stepping stone into, you know, the major world of construction. I've always been in Birmingham up until that point. So from 21, went to this town called Burnley. Had to get the old A to Z out. because Google Maps didn't exist. It was very limited and realized that I was going very, very far up north, know, relatively to where I was. So, and then from 21 all the way through to probably sort of mid 20s, 26, 27, I worked between two companies, was Taylor Woodrow, straight Vinci, but then also Long Quash Construction, where I then started to really build up my main contractor experience, getting up to contract manager level and. being trusted enough to build our own sort of business unit with a colleague down in the South East ⁓ before moving back up to Birmingham really. it's been up until the point of getting into development. It was all very construction engineering focused. But because I bombed A levels and I didn't go to university, I actually found something that I enjoyed doing in terms of the construction side. Being a very curious person again, I thought, right, there could be some interesting qualifications here that I could start to look at, which might not actually feel like learning, but could help me later on in life. the construction management apprenticeship helped with that because they put you on a H &C on a sort of block basis and then they move you around. Off the back of that, you had the chance to do a degree and all the rest of it. So I jumped in with two feet, did the part-time degree after the H &C, and then I thought, right, that's interesting. started to get into some really good schemes at Long Cross, did a mix use scheme at the Olympic Village, which was great, which had a bit more to it than our usual stuff on the retail side. And then I suppose I started to ask the question who the employer was and who the client was and actually what happens before stage three? know, what's the process before we actually get that tender pack to actually go and price and build it? And that was all started to then started to get me all interested about capital flows, investment, development, how they create or decide that that was going to be a mixed use development. So I did a bit of research again and just sort of looked upon sort of courses and put myself on a masses in real estate investment and development part time, which fortunately sponsored again by Long Cross and got more curious, got more understanding about the process of development front end. which I was completely green to, and I'm still learning about today, to be honest with you, because it's ever evolving. And it was purely by chance and luck that I got approached by an agent who were recruiting on behalf of Argent. So, and at the time they were doing, obviously King's Cross was fully immersed and amazing things there. I didn't know who Argent were, completely oblivious to what they did and being from Birmingham. being the sort of the orchestrators of Britney place and all the rest of it and thought, well, actually this is quite interesting. It's a bit of a sidestepping career in that I'll be kind of going back a step and having to learn something new, but hand in glove with sort of what I'm trying to learn and what I want to get into. So ⁓ again, some good conversations with some of the powers that be at Argent with Mr. Madeline and Tony Giddens and then. Rock Groves in Birmingham and ⁓ decided to take the plunge really and make that leap of faith. the rest is history in terms of the development phase. So I joined them in 2015 and then was very, very sort of lucky to be working on the Paradise Scheme, which is a big scheme in Birmingham City Centre for nine years. And then more recently joining ⁓ an incredibly exciting business called Glenbrook. ⁓ three years ago, who were based in Manchester, to start to broaden my horizon across the UK, now on some really exciting schemes. So yeah, a bit long-winded answer to your question, John, but I think, yeah, it was a very unusual route or untypical route, I think, that most people find themselves in the development side.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's called the Bellarmine Diaries. So I think that is your diary. And the whole purpose of the podcast is to hear that no matter your background or what hand you're dealt or where you grew up or whether how academic you are, you can still be successful if you navigate it in the right way. think a couple of things that I picked out there from what you said. You mentioned luck a few times. I'm sure there was a little bit of that. It sounds like you were in the right place and you were prepared to take advantage of that opportunity with the apprentice scheme. You already had some experience. You already done some of those hard yards. Some of the lessons learned, know, some of them quite brutal as you share life lessons as well as work lessons. It sounds like you always had the kind of bit that sometimes we. forget as we get older, which is the childlike curiosity to ask why, why are we doing this in the first place? Some people maybe haven't done that. And sounds like you're still doing that every day today. So thanks for sharing that. And I can definitely relate a lot personally to the education part and some of that stuff, but we're not here to talk about me, but it does definitely resonate. So from that point. ⁓ You've maybe touched a little bit on how you engineered the transition into development. I think it was being in the right place. It was having the knowledge. It was trying to be curious about why are we doing this in the first place and what happens before stage three. Could you come back to Glenbrook a little bit ⁓ a bit later on. But could you share a couple of your proudest achievements in your career today.
speaker-1: I will try, I will try. And you know, I can't take credit for any of these personally, it's always been a team effort to get to what the outcomes been in a matter of what I've been able to achieve or been a part of. think if there's probably one, probably concentrate on one main one and I'm sure there's a few smaller ones. But I think the main one for me was being able to have a really heavy contribution to almost lead the crisis of what was paradise when Coridium went into voluntary liquidation or compulsory liquidation, sorry. So this is a 1.2 billion pound regen scheme in the city center of Birmingham. We had over a hundred million pounds of main build contract with them. And the day they went sort of pop. ⁓ We had an open concrete frame, half a basement built and we're just about completing the Section 278 works and utility infrastructure works. So it was a very small team, know, that team on that scheme was very lean. you know, we were really leaning on a really strong consultant partnership as well to kind of bring this forward. And what was complicated with that is the first pre-let of the commercial building was also the receiver. PwC all of a sudden you've got this scenario where Our future tenant on the on the first building is coming and locked lock the site You've got all these raging and very angry construction workers wanting to get their tools off site, which they can't nobody knows what's going on all we're doing is reading a headline from the BBC news because we weren't told or given any indication this was going to go into a care by the directors of Corleon and we also knew that with the supply chain and the heat map that they had across the UK, we weren't going to be the only ones in this situation. So how do you go from that to sort of pivoting the scheme into a position where you safeguard the pre-let, because that's critical to the success and the future funding and quite frankly, whether the development is going to proceed and continue or not, to people management and behavioral management and calming down those individuals who have got livelihoods that are on a salary and don't really know if they've got a job today or tomorrow. So you can imagine the emotional uproar that was sort of being created in that period. And I think being able to remain, and I don't know whether this is a trained of mannerism that I've built up over time, but for some reason, when shit hits the fan, I'm always able to stay pretty calm. And I sort of kind of welcome the importance the complexity, I embrace that. The reason for that is because you realize quite quickly there's no right or wrong way of doing things. There's no rule book. It gets torn up. And actually it's about navigating the gray. That's really, really important. ⁓ And you also realize very quickly that people are looking to you. And if you're calm, measured and grounded, then actually that starts to calm them down as well. And I think, you know, being able to put the strategy together. with the support of the team who are, know, collective ease, we were all amazing because that became the day job, right? You know, how do we get this turned around? Who's going to deliver it for us? How are we going to manage PWC in that sort of Chinese wall scenario? And by hook or by crook, it was probably the hardest 15 months ever, you know, long shifts, long nights, but we got there. And for those that have been around Paradise and it's still there today, you know, we can all put back very, very proud of what we've achieved and what continues to be achieved there really. So ⁓ I think, yeah, something in and around how that whole process and the complexity of that and how that was managed and, you know, remaining calm and I suppose leadership, isn't it, comes down to, you know, quite a relatively young age without reading any raw books. It was just sort of innate and naturally occurred. So that was quite cool. I think I can look back at that and... You know, and so yeah, I didn't do too much on that at all.
speaker-0: And that was the word in my mind was leadership. People looking to you, probably the first, well, one of the first times in your career where by default you are now taking on a more senior role than maybe your title suggests because of the situation. And I was looking to you to see how they react. Because yeah, if you're running around like a headless chicken at that point, then what are they going to think? You need to at least come across like you have a plan. ⁓ Even though I'm sure some days, you did in other days you've thought what is coming next because this definitely wasn't in the development appraisal.
speaker-1: It's one step at a time, Like you're waiting. There were some days there thinking, well, you know, we've done this, we've done that. It was very hard to kind of look forward because you're very much in the moment. ⁓ But yeah, I think it's about creating confidence. think, you know, knowing that there's a drive there, there's a plan there, there's an intention to get to that endpoint was always the key and how we sort of articulated that in that narrative. the bit from where you were standing to get to that end point was never a linear process. But that communication throughout that whole period, I think, was the key thing to why people kept belief in what we were doing. And naturally, we were able to get ourselves out of the situation.
speaker-0: Is there a lesson that you would share with others that would find themselves in a similar situation or might hopefully not, but might find themselves in a similar situation in the future in our sector that is sometimes unpredictable and volatile?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think you, you there's only sort of limited things you can control. lot of the things that do occur that can become frustrating are tend to be out of your control as long as you're doing things correctly. If that is the case, just from my experience, you've got to just, well, it's easier said than done, but embrace it and actually just start to see that as not just your day job, a, but a lesson. And it's come to you for a reason because you've got the skillset to be able to manage through it. And I think, you know, when you look back at those sorts of scenarios and hard times, you know, you're stronger for it, you're more resilient for it, you're wiser for it. And actually, you know, things that aren't as bad going forward become very easy. So, ⁓ you know, just keep telling yourself that. And, you know, if you are in a situation, there's going to be someone out there who's also been in that situation. Don't be scared to reach out for that advice as well. And asking for a second opinion, I think I can't. I can't sort of advocate that enough to be honest and I think there's a lot of people out there that try and do things themselves without sort of you know putting their hand up and get themselves in a very stressed position when they don't need to you know a lot of people out there willing to help
speaker-0: Yeah, not letting pride get in the way. Thanks for that. I that's really valuable for those to know that they have got someone that they can reach out to or not to be too shy to admit that you might not know everything because it's an unknown situation. Why would you? It sounds obvious, but actually in the moment, sometimes that fact that you've got to take on that leadership role leads people to behaviors that sometimes go the other way. So you've had an amazing journey. Have you ever thought about
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: What you would have done if you didn't end up in development, Sonny?
speaker-1: Um, yeah, I was going to say something there, but I'm not going to say it. Um, it, it, it, it, it's very, it's very, it's very difficult. Uh, you know, you can almost, time tight's a great thing and you could always sort of, uh, crystal ball and gaze into the future and say this could have been, but, um, but I think if there's, if there was anything, it would probably be something to do with construction or technology or design, you know, something which is of a blue personality, know, engineering, very sort of linear ⁓ and logical. ⁓ So some sort of industry and that. was never gonna be someone who was gonna sit behind a computer screen. That was never me. Always quite liked art and was very creative. So I'd probably say very broadly something in sort of art or art design, you know, technology, something like that maybe.
speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like having got to know you fairly well, there'd be some kind of idea, business, some kind of, yeah, be creative through the sense of something that solves the problem. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, think that's a way to surprise it.
speaker-0: At Henry James, we focus on bringing a transparent and data driven process to the opaque world of executive search. We combine best in class, traditional headhunting with modern attraction materials so that we can commit to working on each search until it's complete. Executive search in property done properly. If you haven't already, please do connect with us directly on LinkedIn and you can follow our Henry James search page there and you can find out more about the business in general. HenryJamesSearch.com. So knowing what you know now, having by no means finished your career, you've got loads of ⁓ road left in front of you, I'm excited to see what you go on to do, but having come to a point where you've maybe, I don't know, third of the way through, halfway through, what would your advice be at this stage to the younger version of yourself navigating those early career steps or deciding whether to take their career in a certain direction?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, it's a massive question, isn't it? Younger you, taper your ego, number one. Understand what an ego is. You you can get into a position whereby you think it's all about yourself, but it's really not. And the only way I learned that was through some harsh feedback, some good feedback, because it changed me a lot. But that was a real sort of grounding lesson. So I think... understanding that as early as you can is really important. Don't underestimate the importance of human psychology throughout your whole career. You can be as intelligent as you want, but if you don't know people and you don't know how to work with people or read people, you're not going to get very far. So I think that's absolutely critical and developing a curiosity for that as early as you can, I think would definitely be something I would like to redo. And again, no one's sort of guided me towards that, you just sort of learnt that on the job really. So having someone push you in that direction early, I think is really important. ⁓ But I think the big ones is, you know, asking more questions. Asking more questions, not feeling that you're going to be, you know, belittled or, you know, this imposter syndrome that occurs. You know, being in a position, those, I think those junior roles are so important, those younger roles, because actually when you look back, You're navigating them unconsciously. You don't really know how low the expectation is on you at that point in time where you're just sort of free to experiment and get shit wrong, right? know, you know, at other people's expense, rightly or wrongly. So, you know, really try and immerse yourself in and not worry about making mistakes because that's the best learning. And I think I was a little, always a little bit. being probably a perfectionist sometimes, which is a very big weakness of mine, always worried about making that mistake before doing something. And actually, if I'd been a little bit more aggressive and carefree and not worried about what that feedback was, probably going to learn a few things a bit quicker in life, really. So ⁓ a few snippets there, which hopefully makes sense.
speaker-0: Yeah, as always, these things are much easier to say than they are to do. And hindsight is a wonderful thing. But if it inspires some of the listeners to just lean into it a little bit more, that's again, part of the whole purpose of doing these. So thank you for sharing.
speaker-1: Don't rush up as the position that you're in. mean, there's always this thing about trying to jump on an elevator, right? To get the next promotion or get to the next stage and... There's something quite compelling about just enjoying and being really good at the position that you're at and being, you know, really strong in that position. think, and maybe it's just the way the work structure's been sort of generated through industrialism, all the rest of it, but this thing on titles and, you know, it's quite, I think it's quite a bad thing generally in our industry where people chase that title, they're respective of... whether they've got the competency or not, know, all of a sudden they've got this label and they think they've got that competency automatically to do certain behaviors. And I think that's wrong. I think that's a narrative that companies need to change. And actually, you know, your merits are based on, you know, how well you're doing things, how well you're working with the people, you know, it's the softer side as well as the, you know, the more, you know, I suppose technical side, which, you know, a lot of people sort of fall short on. Really enjoy and savour the position that you're in. Don't worry about the time element because, you know, what's for you will eventually come to you. I'm a true believer of that. And just make the most of those early years. I'm trying to learn as much as you can, really.
speaker-0: Yeah, sometimes you see people make those mistakes when they're navigating their earlier career. Society and life, everything is faster now. You have to wait for much. that's only going to get patience is going to be a skill that people are going to need to practice more and more. Real estate isn't necessarily in its fastest moment of all time in terms of things progressing. So sometimes you see people, whilst you can understand they get frustrated with that because they want to get on and sometimes that's drive and ambition. Actually, if they make a few moves, it can start to reflect badly on them or they don't stay long enough to see anything through. So when it comes to progressing, they haven't rounded out their experience of revert stages, of seeing a project, of letting a bill contract, of practical completion, you all these things that actually when you get up to more linear roles, they want more of that. You've almost got pieces of it, but never together. So I kind of understand why it happens to people, but also you make a really valid point. It's something for people to consciously be aware of.
speaker-1: Definitely, and I think, people, you soon realize knowledge, know, knowledge isn't free. You you have to pay attention. ⁓ If you're paying attention, then only then that knowledge becomes really valuable. And if you're not doing that in your early years, you know, you're at a point where you're almost kidding yourself. Then as you do get into these senior roles, then, you know, you get found out quite quickly, you know, in the right businesses, people, you know, can't hide and... ⁓ What you want to be doing is, you know, challenging yourself and asking yourself the question, am I correctly in the position that I'm in, you know, and actually how comfortable do I feel? And if you're feeling too comfortable, then in my view, you're probably coasting. And if you're slightly uncomfortable, then you're probably about right. Cause that means you still got things to learn and you're developing. So, but everyone's different, you know, but yeah.
speaker-0: So what do you think, knowing what you know now, and maybe this has evolved over time, but what do you think makes an exceptional development professional in today's world?
speaker-1: Big question. I think there's a lot. I think there's a lot of traits and behavioral skills that probably don't just apply to development, you know, a number of industries really. One book that resonates with me, and you've probably read it, John, it's Ready for Kandor by Kim Scott. Awesome book. I think I read it in around sort 2017, 2018. And she talks about caring personally, but challenging directly. And I think... those exceptional development professionals do that very, very well, whether it's with their own team or whether it's with consultants or whether it's with, ⁓ you know, upstream stakeholders. I think the ability to be able to do that, but still create partnership and that collaborative working environment is critical because to get things done, you need to know how to influence, but you also need to, you know, you also need to be able to behave in a way which instills trust, know, 360 really with everything that you're working with. So I've always sort of taken that quite importantly, you know, in terms of that sort of that saying, think she also talks about obnoxious aggression where you're completely killing people with the feedback that you give. And I think when a very different time now, you know, demographically, the generations that are in the workforce, there's such a spread between, you know, Gen Z and, you know, Gen X and each of generations have got very different ways of working and also different levels of resilience and how they receive feedback and what that level of expectation is. starting to understand that sensitivity as well, I think is really important. Look, when you get into a level, everyone's got a sort technical attitude. You know, kind of, you kind of plateau, don't you? There's a baseline there, but... And those that are really exceptional, think it starts to come down to those again, people skills, softer skills, behavioural management, behavioural psychology, ⁓ and getting those things done through people really, ⁓ which is why that radical kind of book always stands out for me. So if no one's read it, definitely recommend it.
speaker-0: It's always good to get a book recommendation on the pod. I know we've shared a few between us. That is a book that I definitely enjoyed and I don't think it came from this book, but there's the phrase, iron fist, velvet glove. There's also, I don't know where I read this, but there's a concept I've played around with in my mind for years, which is a relationship being like a bank account, whereas you need to put deposits in and then you can make a withdrawal without it becoming overdrawn. similar to what you're saying around that emotional intelligence piece, which is turning the screw when you need to, but with a lens of, you know, I care for you and I'm only doing this because it's good for you rather than just for myself. Maybe your background actually going back through your story, having started from quite humble beginnings, worked on site, understanding what the supply chain experience, what pressures they're under, what that world is like, maybe that gives you a little bit of a competitive advantage. I don't know whether you've ever thought about that. but maybe some people don't have such direct exposure to what pressures these people are under, so therefore it's harder to empathize.
speaker-1: It is. No, I think you're right. And I think, you know, never really thought about it in that way, but having been exposed to, you know, those early years where, you know, you're working with a whole different grade of individuals. ⁓ Some of those are, you know, earning ends meets, others are working for the reasons and you do very quickly realize how well people can put a facade on as well. You never really know what someone's going through just by looking at them. So, you you've got to always, you know, always be mindful of that and how you approach it and deal with people and just be nice, just be kind, yeah? Not difficult. Yeah, it's pretty free. It's pretty free. If you can make the next guy's or next girl's life a little bit easier, it always comes back to you for sure.
speaker-0: Drain you last time I checked. Awesome. There's loads in there for people to unpack. Fast forwarding back to today, development director at Glenbrook seems like the business is in a really good place. Lots of exciting stuff right now. What are you most excited about in the market right now? What are you up to at Glenbrook right now? What do you think is positive in real estate over the next three to five years?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot ⁓ going on. mean, just to give a bit of context on the business set up by Ian and Guy, two fantastic individuals. It's been going for between sort of 12 and 14 years now. ⁓ And we've got a really amazing team who are based in Manchester, delivering some fantastic schemes ⁓ between Manchester Leeds ⁓ as we currently stand. A lot of our stuff is heavily sort of built to rent focused, institutionally funded, but we are starting to grow the heat map for the business now as well, which is exciting. So trying to get sort of a foothold in Birmingham. We've got quite a large foothold in Milton Keynes, which we're bringing various planning applications through on and also working on a very exciting scheme in greater London. So. So from where the business started to where it is today is extremely excited to see that growth and growth at a measured pace as well, which I think is really important. ⁓ The development world and to be honest, only kind of coming over to Glenborough, you realize how difficult it is to keep, you know, a of a medium sized development business capitalized. know, cashflow is absolutely king and critical. And, you know, you start to get a real narrow focus on where you put your time and energy. So. And that's something that I'm still learning. You know, I'm still learning about that. I'm still learning about what the key, you know, levers are, what things are going to really sort of make a support a city or a region that we want to sort of put our time and capital in, which is finite. So there's loads of things there just on a personal level that I'm still sort of learning and developing a really in-depth knowledge on. As a business, yeah, you know, I think we're cautiously optimistic about sort of the next 12 months. think when you're a developer, you've always got to be optimistic and believe. that things will get better, which they will. I think there's been a very difficult time in the market for everyone, you know, the last 24 to 36 months. But there are some, you know, there is rhetoric out there which starts to help move the dial, I think, positively, whether it's cost of debt starting to come down, interest rates trending down, know, the gilt rates were at the lowest, you know, for 12 months last week. That helps to sort of build in different levels of confidence in the investment market. ⁓ We know the position on housing for the UK, it's pretty bleak. So, you know, there's always going to be a structural demand for good quality accommodation that comes forward, which is the sector that we're in. And even though we're agnostic, ⁓ you know, clearly we are trying to focus our efforts very selectively to ultimately deliver, because that's what we enjoy doing. We don't like paper schemes. We like schemes that you can see come out the ground and... and have a real legacy side to them. that's really exciting for us as a business. And I'm sure I've missed the hell of an upload and I'll get kicked for it. I'll go back to the office, yeah, we're doing very well. But it's not an easy market, right? You know, we've got to be very, very cautious of that. And we've got to be very sensitive on how we do things over the next sort 12 to 14 months, but yes, going well.
speaker-0: Where do you think the opportunities lie then for those navigating?
speaker-1: But yeah, think, you when you think about opportunities, I think this is probably me having a bias as well from the route that I've come through. I there's always opportunities, but I think the blockers and the opportunities almost converge. I think one of the things that everyone talks about and everyone from industry-wide, you know, how capital and institutional capital has been held up and how... you know, the cost of debt is obviously prohibited, certain capital flows into development, planning issues that we all know exist. So I'm not going to repeat any of those. However, I don't think we talked enough about labor and actually who's going to be building this, you know, this housing or this building or development need over the next 25 years. you know, when you look at the stats, you know, they're quite, they're quite scary when you think... three quarters of a million of the workers today are to retire by 2036. You just think, well, okay, how are going to plug that gap over and above the 150,000 vacancy gap that exists already? I think even though that's a huge blocker to cadence of delivery, regulatory items aside, you've got this labor element which has the ability to push cost up because obviously then people start to demand... higher labor costs and all the rest of it. and then, parallel to that, you then look at, well, actually, what's the graduate situation looking like? And at the moment, the trend on that is quite negative. You know, you're looking at the cost of minimum wage to starting wage of graduates is ever closing. So, actually, what's the incentive for people to go to university to get graduate jobs? And you look at the competitive now of competitiveness of graduate jobs ⁓ in all sectors, professional services or whoever, it's becoming very, very difficult. So there could be a real opportunity here to almost go from a position whereby, you know, the younger cohort are always talking about sort of going and getting qualifications, you know, academic qualifications, but actually a pivot from lecture halls to site boots, if that makes sense. And I think that's a huge opportunity and it's an opportunity that the industry needs to really capture if we're going to have a chance on delivering the amount of homes, whatever data centers that they keep blurbing about due to AI, irrespective things need to be built and you can only put things together using manual labor. So we've got to start to look at building that narrative to say and demonstrate why being a skilled electrician is equally as important and lucrative as being a, I don't know, someone. in finance, ⁓ in the professional services sector. But I think that it has to come from government level. We have to start talking about salaries and packages because that's what people also need to understand in secondary schools. So I think there's a really interesting sort of turning point here on how younger people start to look at their career horizon and also where that sort of value proposition starts to become as well between professional services and almost going back to sort of know more physical hands on on jobs really which I think is going to be interesting.
speaker-0: I think you've done really well to turn a massive challenge into a potential opportunity for the sector. And I think you're right in that not many people are talking about that at all right now. You did really well to go through that without mentioning AI too much. And that's another whole podcast episode to throw into the mix. But is it more likely to take jobs in finance or is it more likely to take jobs on site? I think we all know the answer. Yeah, but maybe that's opportunity for the sector. Everything you mentioned is maybe a reason that it's hard and a reason not to do it. So perhaps the advantage is that less people will do it. Some people that aren't fully committed will tap out and therefore those that are willing to focus on the marginal gains and run the hard yards will end up arriving with a product that is quality led in a market where there's less competition and therefore get the upside. and the capital return that we all need to talk to our institutional capital that way instead. in the spirit of the podcast, we'll ask you to answer a question from the guest before. And in this case, that was Simon Harding-Roots, who works for Muse, and kind of follows on from what we've been talking about a little bit. So to give you a little bit of power to make some of these changes that sounds like you spent some time thinking about in your downtime. So his question to you was if you were made the Chancellor and you had a pretty unlimited remit, what would you do to completely reorientate and refocus the property industry and the broader economy but with a specific focus on real estate itself? So nice, small, easy to answer question for you there.
speaker-1: I think it's a poison chalice at the moment, isn't it, to be the chance that anyone would like to be in her position, to be honest. Although fixing the fiscal budget to once a year has helped settle things. think that's giving everyone a little bit of a runway. Massive question, really. I think there's probably three key categories there that I'll probably look into in a bit more detail. I think the whole... Trade school thing would be definitely one I'd like to get behind. I'm putting some real investment into that at sort of grassroot level, you know, not secondary schools, but we're talking about these being meaningful careers with primary school students and bringing that into the curriculum, you know, and how to put things together and all the rest of it. I think there's a real, real big thing there because that will sort of help support the balancing of the workforce going forward. ⁓ You know, we are seeing displacement. in jobs, aren't we, across all sectors, whether it's AI driven or whether it's, you know, just industries kind of consolidating and all the rest of it. So we know that massive need for for for workers in the construction sector. something around that. So investment into trade schools at a very, very early stage and bringing that into the curriculum, I think would be quite, quite compelling. I think there's got to be something about SDLT, that being a dead weight and somehow that coming through the development process where it actually can be sort of used primarily for infrastructure. So I think infrastructure is a big barrier at the moment for any development ⁓ and viability. So how do we get to a position where that's not sent to Whitehall? Actually, it's kept within that local authority and recirculated back into the development that ⁓ it's come from. And actually, you might even have a half a chance of getting rid of Nimbus and because people can see it being built and used in their own town and actually don't start to have my back. Yeah, and don't have these infrastructure worries and complaints that they tend to use before any new development comes forward. So something around SDLT usage and better utilization of that. And I think then we've got to we've got to do something about planning, I think, even though the velocity on the new bill has probably been moved.
speaker-0: God.
speaker-1: or hasn't been moved quick enough, there's got to be a position where we're finding, you know, in our experience, actually, you can still have those new rules put in place, but it's down to individuals within the local authority that are still going to pull the levers. ⁓ So something around zonal planning or whereby there's a binary route for people to get approvals within a certain time period if that local authority hasn't responded adequately really. I think, you know, without that, even with the new bill coming in, we're not going to be any better off to where we are today really. So hopefully those three things will help sort of support more property sort of specific ⁓ growth across the UK. But hey, I'm not the chancellor.
speaker-0: for a moment then I think you did a pretty good job so you got my vote ⁓ that you did well to distill it into some understandable points I think the planning practicality versus rules is an interesting one every investor wants certainty real estate or not UK or not they want to know that they're playing in a field that they understand and they know what's going to happen so every time that becomes a question mark that leads to you know having to have higher return for that risk. So I think what you said there can apply to so many different areas, but planning definitely so. So in reward for answering that question and giving us all a three step plan to fix the country, would you like to leave a question for the next guest, not knowing who it is yet?
speaker-1: Yeah, I would like to live question. I think, you know, we all know with capital becoming sort of more discerning, I think one question that we've got is, or that I've got is what unique leadership qualities are probably needed to attract more institutional or just general investment into UK property? I think it'd be really interesting to hear the next guest view on that.
speaker-0: What a question to leave them with. And it probably touches on a few of your points of changing the narrative. It ⁓ feels like our sector has a little bit of an opportunity to improve its perception, reputation.
speaker-1: Yeah, and I think it's it's probably not even sector it's UK as well, you know, UK PLC. We've seen we've seen the impact and the max exodus of, you know, the high worth individuals. I don't know what the consequences that that's going to be yet, you know, in terms of value for the UK, but it's going to be it's going to hurt pretty, pretty badly. We, know, we're competing internationally here for competitive capital. So how can leadership demonstrate that UK is and gives a clear pathway for new investors and emerging investors to come in and participate really.
speaker-0: The frustrating thing is actually some of this is hiding in plain sight. It is a great place. So much going for it. So much potential to get even better. So that hopefully ends the podcast with a little bit of hope. Sadi, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to spend with us today. You've shared some really... ⁓ Yeah, really interesting insights, some valuable life lessons. I think your journey is one that a lot of people will relate to, because it's been non-linear. And you mentioned the word luck. think you've probably worked hard and got yourself in that position along the way. ⁓ Look forward to seeing what you do next with the guys at Glenbrook and where your career goes. So thank you so much.
speaker-1: Really enjoyed the conversation and thanks again for the invitation John. Appreciate it.
speaker-0: Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. Your support means the world. Please feel free to like, share or pass the podcast on to friend or colleague. Do drop me a line with any suggestive topics you'd like us to cover on future episodes and recommendations of guests that you would love to see us interview. Till next time, go well.
