EE080 – Phil Jones

Tony Winyard 0:00
Exceeding expectations Episode 80.

Have you had many good experiences with estate agents? I can imagine many people shaking their heads now but my guest today Phil Jones is from a new breed of estate agents and he actually coaches estate agents to be of much more service to their clients. So that’s today’s episode with Phil Jones. This is the podcast where we give you ideas on how to give your customers a better experience so you get better testimonials and referral so you spend less money on marketing and advertising. Please do share this episode with anyone who you feel may get some more value from it. I want to leave a review for us on iTunes. And while you’re there, hit that subscribe button as well. Today’s episode now with Phil Jones.

Exceeding expectations My guest today is Phil Jones how are you Phil?

Phil Jones 1:11
Well, thank you. How are you doing?

Tony Winyard 1:13
Pretty good. And you’re oop north, whereabouts is it that you are?

Phil Jones 1:17
Very far north. So for those people that think Manchester is north, isn’t really north, Windermere in the Lake District.

Tony Winyard 1:26
Right. And that’s a beautiful area.

Phil Jones 1:28
It is when you can you can see further than 23 feet Yes.

Tony Winyard 1:34
That is for about three days a year. Yeah.

Phil Jones 1:36
In fact, I’m looking behind now and actually the sun is out. So this one of the three days, three days a year where you know, it’s a beautiful area. We probably don’t make the most of when you live here. But yeah, I should do really.

Tony Winyard 1:54
And is that where you’re from?

Phil Jones 1:56
Yes. So I live in a little town called Kendall famous for the cake. I wouldn’t recommend it, which is about 20 minutes away. And yeah, I’ve been there all my life or 28 years of them.

Tony Winyard 2:08
Right. And and so business wise, I know that you’re involved in estate agency. And so on, do you want to tell us how that all came about?

Phil Jones 2:18
Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a strange story. So we opened in April 2017. And I opened with my mother in law, which is an interesting relationship. Fortunately, we get on really well. And we can say we were like to each other. But Sam Ashdown, who is my mother in law and business partner, has been in the industry about 1516 years coaching and training estate agents. And the one of the objections that kept coming up was that she didn’t have an agency herself. So while I was looking, I was working for an energy company back in 2016. And I felt like I should be doing more and it couldn’t really work. Got what that was or what I wanted to do. We had discussions about Facebook advertising, etc, and going different things. And then eventually we’ll end on the obvious answer, which was opening an agency. So we had lots of discussions about how we were going to do this and which market we’re going to go into. And the only way, the only thing we agreed on was that we were going to go high end. And the high end meant unique homes only, and be strict on that. So in April, I think it was actually April Fool’s Day 2017 felt a bit of a fool we opened, Ashdown Jones estate agents and have a look back. One of the things that came to my mind when you were just saying that was if you’re not your mother in law was doing that for you know, you say 1516 years. What was the reason why she didn’t have an estate agency before? So the reason she always tells me was that they work too hard that Yeah, that’s the answer again. So sure. I will call it easy life, you work three to four days. Very good money doing something she loved, and I dragged it into a state agency. Yes, that’s the only reason why. And I think sometimes when you’re coaching and giving consultancy to an industry or an industry specific, it’s quite powerful, I mean, outside of the industry. So I’ve got a business coach now who has no idea about estate agencies, but he can ask questions about what I’m doing and almost say, Well, why would you do that? When he hasn’t got a clear understanding of it and he’s gives you a different aspect of it. So in one sense, I think it’s actually good that certainly we came from a marketing background outside the industry and then came into into that way rather than came through. The industry is a sales neck from you know, and then try to learn the marketing that way.

Tony Winyard 5:00
And so you when you say new things have been going pretty well. And would you put someone else down to you are doing things in a different way to many of your competitors, competitors,

Phil Jones 5:11
definitely, without a doubt, and one thing that was really important to us is that we weren’t going to be a run of the mill agency. And we, in within the first, maybe five, six weeks, we fortunately got invited out to a few homes and I remember sitting in the living room of one home it was 850,000. So at the time, which has 1%, the first five or 10 homes and I was just thinking eight and a half thousand needed money. We didn’t have any income at the time. And some said to the owners, look, I don’t think we’re the right agents for you and, and disappeared. We walked out and at the time I was I couldn’t believe that we just walked away from potentially and thousand pound feet. And it probably took me a year to realise why we did that, in the sense that it didn’t fit our brand. It didn’t fit what we were about. We didn’t we personalities probably clashed a bit. And I think that having that this selectiveness has probably stood apart from everyone else. And that has been the biggest thing as to how we got to where we are. So now people, although we charge more than one ask quite a lot more anyone else by them knowing that there’s a chance we will work with them. Almost makes it more attractive. Yeah, that’s good to hear. Yeah, exactly. So that I mean, one thing that we’ve done that although, you know, we spend a lot of time and money on our marketing, off homes, not all of ourselves. The fact that we’ve been selective as been the number one thing

Tony Winyard 6:57
When you were starting out and in that situation you were just explaining where you didn’t have or when you were first trying to get a property on to your books. So I guess it’s a real kind of chicken and egg situation for the customer. For them to go with you, would they have been aware that you didn’t have any other properties at that time? How did you cross that?

Phil Jones 7:21
Yes. So good question. And so what we did is we were massive into sales letters love, Dan Kennedy, and all of that. The idea of direct mail so we wrote these what we thought were amazing sales letters. But what we actually offered is three places for free. We didn’t hide behind the fact we were new, we, you know, we push that forward that we are new and that we’re learning and will you let us learn with you and and we got two calls immediately from those lovely houses. And we’re gonna dumpster market to homes that were already on the market. And they were winners because we didn’t charge a fee. And we were winners because we could then produce a marketing that we could then share with the people and say, This is the kind of thing we do. This is the position we’re taking in the market. And from there, that’s how it grew. So we didn’t hide behind the fact we’re new at all, and we embraced it. And we were fortunate that there were two homes that invested with us.

Tony Winyard 8:25
In general, estate agents don’t have a great reputation. So what were your thoughts on that? Obviously you would have been aware of that. And so what are your thoughts on that?

Phil Jones 8:37
Yeah, the industry as a whole has a bad reputation. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a wrong reputation. I think there are a lot of agents that take people’s money for granted and take people’s homes for granted. And still every single day We’ll go to the appointment as some will say something. We took our team out to a comedy evening a few weeks ago. Andy Parsons was the comedian and he stood there for 20 minutes talking about estate agents. I didn’t put the handle when he said he’s only stayed in but because if we’re you know that with a bit of joke, but as much as we possibly can, it’s in that once someone decides to work with us, then their experience is in our control. Everything we do has to or you’re already starting behind the curve almost because people are expecting not to hear from you or they’re expecting you to not be worth your money or it’s our job to spin it on its head and make sure that you know, everyone, when they comes to pay our fee, they pay it with as much joy as you can possibly pay a fee. So, you know, one thing I’m really proud of is that we’ve never had any questions of our fee. At the end of the process at the beginning we do naturally the end No one’s ever question that

Tony Winyard 10:07
What would you say are the things that people misunderstand about your business?

Phil Jones 10:13
Yeah, good question. So companies like purple bricks, which by the way, I think have been brilliant for the industry, the industry needed a shake up. And those companies that are struggling with purple bricks in the market probably don’t have anything they genuinely don’t do anything different to purple bricks and therefore that’s why they’re struggling

Tony Winyard 10:39
For those people listening who maybe not be so aware of Purple Bricks, could you explain?

Phil Jones 10:44
Yes, Purple Bricks are what’s now known as an online agent. So you pay them to market your home and then they put it on on the portals like Rightmove and Zoopla, etc. And if it sells, it sells, if it doesn’t, then you’ve already pay them a fee. But you basically you’re paying them for access to the market.What we do differently is we treat it as a project. So every little thing is taken care of in terms of photography will, two of our team will go on the photography shoot with a professional professional photographer to make sure every single picture looks exactly how it’s meant to look how we want it to look. Trust me in some houses that that means we’re moving 1000 items off a surface. We have a professional copywriter, which will write the write the copy and make sure that it’s talking about how the potential new owner could live there not about how many radiators or how many plugs are in there. And then we produce a bespoke brochure with bespoke branding on and it’s a whole project but the whole point is the end result. And we’ve been fortunate to show that everything we do, everything we put together, has been able to sell homes that no other agents have been able to sell. And that’s Yeah, that’s been that’s been great from a business sense, but also a personal sense when you meet these people that have been on the lock for five years. And a lot of them it’s not fair for people to, to cry appointments with us. And something I don’t think people or even agents really understand that that’s your responsibility. We have we can. This is one story where we went out to home when we were just open and our local agent valued at 900. And we valued at 1.25 million which Saucier a massive gap and we got questioned like, like hell about what we knew and how we could prove what it was worth and when you sell it in one day for for that asking price, so in between She made them, you know, 350,000 pounds. And that is life changing. And I’m not sure the industry always gets credit for how it of what it can do for someone’s life. We met someone last year, who actually knocked on the door door, knock them. And it was a gentleman whose wife had terminal cancer. And he sat me down and said, Look, my wife’s got six months, I do not want to end my life. And so I end our relationship or for a better way of saying in this house, and then we need to move and save on the back for a year and we sold it within a week and it gave them the opportunity to spend the last few months exactly where they wanted to. And that’s almost priceless. Whereas, yeah, it’s and that means more to us as a company then the actual fee at the end of it.

Tony Winyard 13:58
You mentioned to me you do things that are a little bit different to others, such as, collecting clients, could you explain a bit more about that?

Phil Jones 14:07
Yeah, so because we tend to now list the majority of the unique homes or high end homes in the Lake District, often buyers come from afar, and they want to view five or six homes with us. So we’ll offer to them by train will pick them up from the train station, take them out a couple of homes, take them out for lunch, show them the area as much as we possibly can. And then drop them back off at the train station or hotel wherever they want the end of the day. And it’s amazing how many people will just do four or five homes with us as an agent, and then offer them one of those four or five homes as opposed to then go in and seeing some four or five homes with different agents. I’ve never understood why I personally wouldn’t do that. But it’s Yeah, it’s lovely for us as a company and for our clients to be able to offer that

Tony Winyard 14:59
So that wasn’t anything any of the other agents were doing.

Phil Jones 15:04
I’ve never heard of any agents up and down the country doing it to be honest. It’s something that it’s because it’s not. I always ask myself, Why do estate agents have high street offices? And the only answer really that here is because everyone else has actually offices. So it’s like, that’s the dumb thing. And people keep following the dumb thing. And if you keep following the dumb thing, you don’t get any different result. And so, this is what I was saying before about when we haven’t come from an agency background. We come from a marketing and an entrepreneurial background background, and that allows us to make decisions that aren’t the dumb thing that makes us stand out.

Tony Winyard 15:46
So you don’t you don’t have a high street office.

Phil Jones 15:48
We don’t have a high street office. No, we never have we’re quietly tucked away in the countryside. Conveniently opposite Windermere golf club and no one can see when I nip in and take a half an hour’s lesson, which is badly needed.

Tony Winyard 16:06
And some of the other things you told me that you do a little bit different for your clients.

Phil Jones 16:12
Yes, so one thing we did when we opened, we’ve actually changed now but we gave a meal for two for, for the owners of the adjusting shop to those that are new clients in some different restaurants around Windermere. We’ve now changed that to for something a bit more tangible that can last so we’ve created our own scent. It’s not something I got involved with it was the team because there you know, I, I would not create the best end to that. But they all work together to create a sentence in a relay sandbox with our branding on and it has a volume spray and an instance etc. So that goes down really well in the we’ll put it up and then it works on two counts. Firstly, It, our clients love it. And secondly, when when potential buyers are viewing the home, and we have our branding or put in a sandbox, those potential buyers could also be potential clients of ours if they’re selling a home locally. So it works worked in a couple of ways, and it works on referrals. But it’s not something that we advertise we do, because we always want it to be. We try and under promise and over deliver as much as we possibly can without losing the instruction.

Tony Winyard 17:36
And you mentioned about your your sales team. So when you started off, was it just yourself and your mother in law, or did you take on other people at that point?

Phil Jones 17:46
Yes. It was me and Sam, in her dining room with two computers. And in fact, at the time we were talking about this morning, we got an email off our biggest competitor locally. had lots of interesting comments in it, but one of them just said, all you have is a computer and lots of confidence. And actually, I didn’t even have the confidence or had was a computer. So he wasn’t wrong when he said that, but he probably regrets sending it out.

Tony Winyard 18:18
He really trying to put you off

Phil Jones 18:18
if Well, yeah, it was. Yeah, absolutely. And it was as a 25 year old that had been in business for four weeks. It was genuinely found it extremely threatening. And I’ll probably hid under the desk for at least two or three weeks before I dared to put anything out on social or any, you know, do anything again. But now I see it as almost, you know, it was a badge of honour. It was something that they saw us as a threat. But yeah, one of those things, isn’t it? I’m sure it happens in all industries.

Tony Winyard 18:52
And so then, so how has the growth journey with your sales team? So how did that come about?

Phil Jones 18:58
Yeah, so we took on an office manager.That was that first hire with we’ve had, I was tracking this the other day, we’ve had eight or nine team members come and then leave because our values weren’t aligned or it wasn’t the job for them. So that’s really important to us that, you know, we work the team really hard and we expect them to be aligned to our values. And if they’re not, then it’s it’s not right for us. But we’ve now got a team of 10, three years on, which allows someone ages to concentrate solely on either the other business or just growth. We don’t get involved in any of the sales. But one thing that we do, again, differently in terms of the team, an agency is that we don’t pay commission. I feel like we feel if we paid Commission, the experience of our clients would be less you know, when we want our team to show someone for three, four or five hours of our 3 million pound house. We don’t want To over half an hour slot and then move them on. Whereas if we were paid commission, it might be of more interest to them to get as many viewings done as possible. And therefore, you know, we’re just not offering the best experience we possibly can. So we stayed away from any sort of pay structure that like that, but it costs us on the front end, in terms of salary, which is fine. But we think sets us aside as well.

Tony Winyard 20:30
And so would that make it harder to recruit people who have got previous estate agency experience because they will be used to that commission basis?

Phil Jones 20:38
Yeah, good question. So we purposefully have avoided anybody with industry experience. We can teach people how to be an estate agent. It’s very difficult to unteach bad habits, which I think is in the industry, and so we hire purely on value. If the values are aligned, we feel like we can teach them skills. So it does cause some challenges. We’ve got my client executive recall on my second in command, if you like, Hannah, is leaving to give birth in a couple of weeks. So replacing URL has been an absolute nightmare. But you will get it right eventually, you know, it’s, we tend to do group interview. We’ve got a very strict process. So we asked for a video initially, which probably only 10% of people do. And then we have a group interview. And then we have one to one interviews. And by the time we get to one to one interviews, I’d say 95% of people have pulled out. So yeah, so it can be quite quite difficult to find the right people.

Tony Winyard 21:58
Before we started recording you mentioned about you’ve been on the receiving end of some good experiences.

Phil Jones 22:07
Some bad also. But we’ll talk about the good good for now. So what someone I do is whenever we buy something from a known brand, say Vivienne Westwood or something like that, we note down every single thing they do from the from the email to the to the packages that comes in and consciously video at all. And then whenever we’re making decisions, try and do it from that. In terms of actual experiences. I was on a flight this time last year, the virgin flight. I’ve got some bad stories about some of the companies but there’s a virgin flight and I’ve got two young kids. And they were one of them was Rosie, who’s 100 About you infections so she was screaming the plane down and getting some funny looks so instead of you know coming towards them trying to trying to maybe not tell us off but try and get us to calm down the child she she made it clear to everyone around us that the child came first and yeah I’ve never really experienced anything like that before it was it was almost split it on its head so where I was I was really feel anxious my wife was in tears and it made us almost didn’t feel comfortable and maybe about the people around us feel uncomfortable but they were in a lot easier situation. So just by saying before we started recording about communication. I think communication is such an underused and underrated skill in business needs such as A simple thing to do. And people don’t know what they don’t know. So I had no idea whether the staff were going to be irritated or, you know, vice versa. So just a bit of communication goes a hell of a long way.

Tony Winyard 24:19
Because you were telling me about other things you’ve learned in communication and other other things as well that have been a revelation.

Phil Jones 24:25
Yes, it’s been recent really. I was shocked because the comment that gets chucked at us all the time, is we don’t want to feel like a number. And again, this is probably in multi industry, but estate agents have a habit of making people feel like a number. So I was trying to work out why exactly that is. And the simple answer is communication. And that is it. Agents expect and you’re telling me a story about when you were selling your home, but he didn’t expect you to know That if there’s a viewing and you don’t hear from them, then they haven’t heard from them either. They’ve been chasing me they haven’t heard from them, they expect you to know that they expect to know that if someone goes to see a home and and love it, but aren’t in position to make an offer, they expect you to know that without communicating it. And it’s such a simple and powerful thing to do. So one thing we do again to on the experience level is, after every viewing, we’ve got a card that we write on there to some simple notes like you know, love to the conservatory but felt the kitchen wasn’t quite right for them. And then we’ve got a scoring system of from a really sad face to a really happy face. And what we try and do this was five faces, we try and keep it on the middle three to keep it level because buyers are definitely liars. They’ll tell us that we’re going to put in our asking price offering and you’ll never hear from me again. But just that list Bit of communication, it’s not even verbal, you know, it’s just written, just, it buys you time and it gives you you know, if you put a sad face, that owner knows that night, that they’re not going to get an offer that person rather than not knowing which and not knowing is the worst thing for anyone, you know, I just come back from Barbados, and we, our flight was cancelled. And they just didn’t tell us anything. And what we don’t realise is people don’t mind the fact that it was 24 hours delayed, I just want to know, you know, and I think communication is such a big thing that and it’s forgotten. It’s almost like it’s better not to tell them. So, you know, if I’ve got bad news to tell someone. You’ve got to pick the phone up and tell them rather than avoid it, avoiding it just causes more problems. Which I probably used to do in the first year, it is difficult conversation to have, I would email it or just not have it at all. And I think that causes people to feel like a number as opposed to an actual client or person.

Tony Winyard 27:18
What you just said about the experience on the flight to Barbados and not being given any information. I was reading a book a month or so ago by a guy called Rory Sutherland. And one of the things he said in the book was, he believed part of the big success of Uber. Is they’re not actually any faster than any other company but when you’re able to look on the app, and you can see the cab is on its way. It just gives reassurance. And so that’s part of why they’re so successful because you’re not wondering more. Is it on its way? When is it coming? You know exactly what’s going on.

Phil Jones 27:59
Yeah, exactly. I’ve never even thought of that. But that is a great point. And yeah. Another powerful thing about Uber is how easy it is to buy off them is something we try and construct as well. making ourselves as easy to borrow as possible. But yeah, that people have a shower. And when they know what’s happening, man is certain it is Yeah, and I think it’s such an underrated aspect in business. We will concentrate on the marketing and the sales and and whatever else but forget about actually speaking to our clients. And I don’t think email does it. Really it I think picking up the phone or even face to face is the strongest way we have a hierarchy of communication in our agency where email is at the very bottom. Face to face at the top obviously that goes phone call video message. voice message we we try and make sure that the team go through every single piece of communication before they revert to email.

Tony Winyard 29:10
And how do clients respond to things like say video mails?

Phil Jones 29:15
Some reply using email. But they always tell us that, you know that they just know what’s going on. And we get the best feedback off clients when they’ve come from a different agency. You know, going from not talking to anyone, like you said for for six weeks, to all of a sudden every week having a video saying exactly what’s going on who we’ve spoken to what we’re trying to do. You know, it shows what we’re being paid for. We’re not just being paid to put something on onto the internet and hope that someone someone buys it.

Tony Winyard 29:54
I might have misunderstood you earlier. Are you now Coaching other people in the industry. Are you also doing the same?

Phil Jones 30:04
Yeah. So we’ve now got a company called Firewave, which does lead generation for independent estate agents. And yeah, so we do direct mails, we write monthly sales letters and send them to them. And they then get sent out to homes on the market in the area, we produce content for social media. We created this app navigation that which is a bit like Hootsuite where we upload the content and they can drag and drop it into their social media and it will send it out throughout the month. Yeah, so that’s what we’re concentrating on at the moment. We do do a bit of coaching but we’re slowly kind of coming out with that.

Tony Winyard 30:53
What you were talking about, do you have estate agents all over the country, is it just in the UK or elsewhere?

Phil Jones 30:59
We have a couple in Ireland. But other than that, yeah, just in the UK at the moment.

Tony Winyard 31:06
And how do you see that growing?

Phil Jones 31:09
Um, there’s a few ways we see growing first, we could go into different industries and partner with people. So industries like accountancy or law, you know that i don’t think that their social content is probably what it could be. So we could patent people in that way. Or as you say, we could go international and going to different countries. The challenge with that is that we talk about a right move in obviously, it’s totally different in the US, in terms of companies and buying and selling is different in internationally. So that’s a challenge with that. We have to create new content, which which will be fine, but yeah, it’s it’s a few years off. Yeah, I think.

Tony Winyard 31:53
What are your thoughts about exceeding expectations? What does that phrase mean to you?

Phil Jones 32:00
Good question. So exceeding is, first the word, I think just meeting expectations First of all, should be most companies they should concentrate on and I think a lot of companies over promise and under deliver as opposed to under delivering and over promise it and I understand sometimes you’ve got to win business and and and therefore that that’s where that comes in. When you exceed expectations you create superfans, when you create superfans you create an evergreen marketing machine of referrals. We have maybe four or five that probably every single month, give us a referral. Those referrals will always use us, it feels funny in the sense that they don’t… they’re often awkward referrals. But to have that network of superfans that refer you consistently, you know, it’s it’s not possible to create marketing as strong as that. And so that’s why I think exceeding expectation does.

Tony Winyard 33:18
How did you learn that by exceeding client expectations, that was a better way to do business? How did that come about?

Phil Jones 33:27
Yeah, that’s another good question. And it probably started by the feedback we were getting about other companies. And I’m extremely competitive by nature. I would hate to think and proud I’d hate to think that anyone would ever talk about my company in that way. And therefore that is setting the levels and then My business isn’t really a business in such it’s more of a personal thing. So when we go to sell someone’s home, it’s a, I’ve got a personal responsibility to do that for them. And and that exceeds expectations for them. They don’t expect that. And the results from exceeding expectations of them made it clear to me that that that is the way to do it. A couple of times, maybe in the past, we’ve slipped up and not done what we said we would do. And again, that that has cemented the fact that that is not how I want to do business. And I can lose sleep for 2, 3, 4 nights on it and it’s not worth it for me or my family.

Tony Winyard 34:49
So if people want to find out more about you and the things that you’re doing where will be the best place to look?

Phil Jones 34:55
Yeah, Instagram is a, good start. So my Instagram is @PhilJonesFW And our Firewave website, is www.Fire-wave.co.uk

Tony Winyard 35:12
You mentioned about your course. Who would be the types of people that will be maybe interested in the course?

Phil Jones 35:23
The independent estate agents up and down the country, the UK. We’re always happy to have a chat to help, we can help and then on my Instagram, I’d love to help any startups anyone in that was in my situation a couple years ago. I’m fortunate that I’ve had Sam to guide me through it. I’ve now got business coach the last few years I’d love to help anyone that needs it within the first couple of years of business,

Tony Winyard 35:51
Say there’s someone listening to this and thinking they’ve got no experience whatsoever of the state agency industry. And they thinking I want to do something different. I’m at my nine to five job, whatever it might be, what would you say, what would they need to make a success of this what do they they need? Like a certain amount of capital to invest or what would be the case?

Phil Jones 36:19
Yeah, so in terms of capital, you probably need £30,000 to do it properly. Which isn’t, you know, it’s not a great deal. But you need a clear strategy, marketing strategy of how you’re going to go about it. Like, like any business niche down and then Nisha, again, is the way to do it. There’s a there’s a big thing about fees in the industry that you can’t charge big fees. There’s no reason why you can’t. So I would go as little homes as you possibly can and charge large fees in terms of capital about £30,000 and clear marketing strategy. and I’d love to chat to anyone that was thinking about it. If anyone wanted 15 minute chat about what they plan to do and etc, they’ll be fine.

Tony Winyard 37:12
And just before we finish, we were talking before about quote or a book, which are you going to do one or both?

Phil Jones 37:19
I’m going to go book. Okay. And although, my business partners got a book coming out, that is not the book I’m choosing. The book I’m choosing is the book that changed my mindset completely. And it’s from Daniel Priestley called Oversubscribed.

Tony Winyard 37:37
Oh, yeah. It’s a fantastic book.

Phil Jones 37:41
Anyone thinking about trying to be everything to everyone? This is the book that you need to read to realise that. That’s not the right way to go. The quote that sticks in my head from his book is that 99% of people want a Porsche, but only 1% of people can afford it. And that’s exactly How Porsche wants to know if they wanted 9 out of 10 people to own one they would put the price down. But by doing that, nine out of 10, people wouldn’t want one anymore.

Tony Winyard 38:11
And so when when was it, you read the book?

Phil Jones 38:13
It was just as we were opening. So three years ago. I read it.

Tony Winyard 38:22
Did you go back and read it again?

Phil Jones 38:27
I think he’s just released a new new version. I’ve had it sat on my desk all the time. Anyway, I went to home this morning for around £50,000. And I said to him, it’s not right for me. And every time I go out and look at that book and know that exactly what our brand is, and by doing that will make us oversubscribed and make people want to work with us.

Tony Winyard 38:57
By following the philosophy he describes?

Phil Jones 39:00
Exactly.

Tony Winyard 39:04
Phil, I really appreciate your time. Thank you and good luck with your business.

Phil Jones 39:15
Thank you very much.

Tony Winyard 39:20
Next week is Episode 81 with Alain Hunkins. He runs a company called Building Strong Leaders and has just released a book a few weeks ago called Cracking The Leadership Code. He’s going to tell us about how to build strong leaders and what’s involved in that in next week’s episode. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s show. Please do share it with someone subscribe, leave a review and I hope you have a good week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai