Working around your family

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[00:01:48] Carla: Hello, and welcome to My Bump 2 Baby Expert podcast, where we bring experts from all over the UK to answer your questions on everything pregnancy to preschool.

[00:02:10] Carla: Today, I am delighted to be joined by Dean Coleman, the property agent that we have representing the Birmingham area. Today, Dean and I are going to talk about working flexibly around your family, and he’s going to be sharing a really exciting opportunity to help you do just that. I hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:02:33] Carla: Hello everybody and welcome to My Bump 2 Baby’s expert podcast. Today, I am joined by Dean Coleman and a property agent across the Birmingham area. Hello Dean, how are you? 

[00:02:47] Dean: I’m not bad, how are you?

[00:02:48] Carla: I’m very well, thank you. And today, I’m really excited for this episode because it’s something I am really passionate about.

[00:02:54] Carla: And why I started My Bump 2 Baby in the beginning is about working flexibly around your family. And that’s what you do, isn’t it Dean? 

[00:03:02] Dean: It is, yes. Thank you. 

[00:03:03] Carla: So can you tell us a little bit about you? 

[00:03:07] Dean: Yeah, certainly. Um, so, um, I’m a family man. I have a young family, um, little boy and girl. And, um, I’ve been an estate agent for 18 years now.

[00:03:20] Dean: Live and worked in the Birmingham area all my life, had the opportunity to leave Birmingham and work away from Birmingham, but I’m a bit of a home bird. 

[00:03:31] Carla: So you’ve always done estate, well not always, not since you were born, but you’ve done it, you’ve done it for a very long time. So with that in mind then, what made you make the jump to decide to work on You know, flexibly around your family.

[00:03:45] Carla: I’m guessing, obviously, um, it was down to having a family that you decided that was it. 

[00:03:50] Dean: Yeah, um, I mean, most people will know this that, uh, in any line of job, really, that when you’ve got a family, it’s, uh, then making those decisions between, uh, work and family commitments. And quite often you find that you have to put work first, for instance, you know, you’ve got, you know, you want to book a day off for a special occasion.

[00:04:09] Dean: And sometimes your boss turns around and says, you can’t have it off. And you’re kind of like, well, I’ll take it then if you want to be just forget it. I’ll just call him sick, but there’s lots of people. I’m sure over the course of their career and whatever job and industry they’ve been in have been in situations like that where they wish they would take more control over their own.

[00:04:33] Dean: Um, and there was lots of instances like that that happened with me during employment in a estate agency. And I think one of the biggest, one of the biggest, um, sort of pushes that I had was when my daughter shed an accident at nursery and it was quite a bad one. And I phoned my then boss and said, um, my daughter’s had an injury.

[00:04:55] Dean: I need to go and get her. My wife wasn’t available. Um, we had no one else to go and collect her. And it was just that, well, I have to go. And my boss said, well, you can’t because there’s no one to look after the office. And I said, well, I can close the office. It was only a little village, um, office. No one ever walked through the door.

[00:05:12] Dean: Literally no one ever walked through the door. We had an admin person. So I said, look, I can lock the door, leave the admin person here. You can take the phones. And they were, my boss at the time was very much like. Well, no, you’re not going to hold on. This is my daughter that comes first. And in the end, I just had to, I locked up and I just went to get her.

[00:05:30] Dean: And you know, those conversations afterwards about you’re on a warning, et cetera, my family, surely that comes first. And, and that was, you know, really the big push for me to go. I’ve had enough of this. I can do this on my own and I want to do it on my own. And my family comes first the day, because bosses don’t tend to think like that.

[00:05:51] Carla: No, and no disrespect to anyone listening that hasn’t got a child yet. But sometimes if you have a boss that doesn’t have children, they don’t really understand that it’s not, you know, we have to kind of put our children first, don’t we? 

[00:06:05] Dean: Absolutely. Um, you know, there’s always sort of a compromise to be had.

[00:06:09] Dean: And, and what I, what I personally have found, um, you know, I’ve spoken to other people and said that same story and they’ve never had that situation. I think lucky them. Yeah. I’ve had it so many times and I’ve speak to so many people that have been in that same position and you just want to be able to have more autonomy, more authority over dictating what you do on a day to day basis.

[00:06:30] Carla: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that was it. I mean, even for me as well, like it’s a case of, you know, you can end up going back to work, paying for childcare at the same time and you’re walking out of there with absolutely nothing, but you’re working full time. So it’s, uh, yeah, it is. So, so now Dean then, when did you join the company EXP then?

[00:06:51] Carla: Because they allow you to work flexibly, don’t they, as an estate agent. 

[00:06:55] Dean: Yeah, correct. So what EXP UK are, they’re a, um, they’re an offshoot of EXP Realty, who are a U. S. based, uh, estate agency. They’re basically a cloud based estate agency where you, as a business owner, so, you know, anybody that wants to set up their own estate agency, um, that doesn’t want the overhead, the office costs and things like that, could partner, uh, or power their estate agency brand with EXP, who take care of all the admin stuff, the back end stuff that we do.

[00:07:24] Dean: We as a state agent find boring and don’t like, you know, all the bits and bobs, the legal stuff, the contracts, collecting the fees, et cetera. So I decided to, there was two, there’s two options for me. There was either go it alone, open an office, deal with all the overhead and all the legal stuff that goes with it, or to power myself and be partnered with someone like AXP who would just take care of everything that I didn’t want to take care of.

[00:07:48] Dean: And allow me to do the one job that I absolutely love, which is on a day to day basis, meet new people, put properties on the market, get them sold, and get them through to the end. And, um, that was three years ago, September 2020. So I’ve just celebrated three years, just after the pandemic. 

[00:08:04] Carla: Wow, goodness, that, that’s amazing and within an estate agency, you can also find that, you know, the fact that you’ve got that flexibility is great for families as well because obviously you’re our property agent in Birmingham.

[00:08:18] Carla: So any parents, they can contact you after closing hours and weekends and things like that because sometimes those, those hours actually might suit you better. 

[00:08:28] Dean: Oh, I mean, it’s. I mean, I know it gets thrown about a lot, this line, but it is actually, it has actually been simply life changing. Um, for me and my family, um, forget financial and all that, just from time to be able to do stuff.

[00:08:44] Dean: So, I mean, Monday now, for example, is my dedicated admin day. I don’t go out of the office, which I work from home. I don’t go out the office. Um, I do all my admin on a Monday, but it’s the day that I also take care of my one year old. Um, because my wife works, so I’m able to stay at home with my laptop, with my mobile phone, which is all I need to do the job that I need to do, and my one year old, and I work around that, and there’s so many occasions I’ve, you know, I take calls all the time from buyers, sellers, um, solicitors, surveyors, mortgage advisors, you name it, I’m still being able to do my job from home on my mobile number with my one year old in the background, not having to pay for childcare, you know.

[00:09:23] Carla: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

[00:09:25] Dean: it’s absolutely flexibility. It’s just been incredible. And I do speak to a lot of, um, you know, people that were, that are estate agents that have had children and after their maternity or paternity trying to get back into work has been really difficult because it’s juggling that work and that, that home life balance.

[00:09:43] Carla: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think especially with, um, since COVID, um, one of the benefits afterwards, I suppose, is people are a lot more kind of aware that we all have our families. And, uh, if your child is in the background, a lot of people don’t mind that, do they? Because they’ve got the same situation themselves.

[00:10:05] Dean: I, honestly, it’s hilarious. Um, I was always of the opinion, now it’s very straight laced, very professional, you know, if kids are shouting in the background and I’m speaking to someone that I want to do business with, I was always of the opinion that that doesn’t sound very good, but actually. It’s totally the opposite.

[00:10:22] Dean: People are so forgiving and so welcoming to it. Ultimately they want to know that they’re going to be looked after and you’re going to do what’s right by them and the best for them. And just because there’s a one year old in the background, absolutely does not stop any of that happening. Um, so you can make, you can make it happen.

[00:10:38] Dean: We’ve got people at eXp at the moment that literally say to themselves, I’m only working three days a week and I’ll only put one property on the market. Um, so they are ultra part time ultra, ultra part time and they’re earning more. Similar to what they were when they were in full time employment.

[00:10:53] Carla: That’s amazing. And also, like you said, it is great for people that love the idea of launching their own business, but might not have huge amounts of investment to plow into, you know, uh, uh, uh, A shop or you know, and also, you know, things like Right move and things like that, you know, they can be quite expensive, but with you teaming up with them, they look after all that, don’t they?

[00:11:16] Carla: For you? 

[00:11:18] Dean: Uh, yeah, completely. You know, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s people that I know that have joined exp or, you know, there are other self, I’ll just say there are other self-employed models out there that do different things. But for me. For me personally, I’ve checked them all out and nothing compares to eXp.

[00:11:33] Dean: But when I speak to people that are looking to do this, they’re always like, Dean, we haven’t got the money behind us to do it and launch. And they tell me what they’ve got. And I kind of have to giggle and giggle and go, you don’t actually need that much. You know, obviously the more money you have, the more you’re able to do certain things.

[00:11:49] Dean: You know, people, we’ve had people that have started with a couple of thousand pounds up to 30, 40, 50, 000 pounds, it kind of doesn’t matter because what I tried to say to a lot of. Now these estate agents that want to launch themselves is their leads, if you like, the people that are going to get them their business are the people that they already know.

[00:12:09] Dean: And that’s friends and family and ex colleagues and, you know, the local trades person, the window fitter, people that they’ve built a network and relationship with over their years of being an estate agent. They simply go to them and say, look, I’m launching myself. If you’ve got anyone that wants to sell, get in touch with me.

[00:12:26] Dean: It’s free advertising. It’s word of mouth. It’s how you Build your business. It’s how I’ve built my business over three years is word of mouth. I haven’t spent very much on advertising at all of my business. It’s friends, family, ex buyers and sellers that have retained my number and called me. So it can be done without much of a budget.

[00:12:48] Carla: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also the thing that I like about, um, your model is like you’re looking after everyone from the start, right? The way through to completion, which sometimes, sometimes I don’t know if any of you guys have moved house recently, but when I did, it was like, I was speaking to one person, then they didn’t know what they were talking about.

[00:13:06] Carla: And then it was another. And, uh, also, um, Agency I use, they were like closed on, um, a weekend and, you know, it was all very old school. And I just think actually, you know, people like yourself, Dean, where you can be a bit more flexible, it is a huge benefit to people as well. 

[00:13:23] Dean: Accountability is amazing. Um, and it’s, and it’s so powerful and important.

[00:13:27] Dean: People want, people want that go to person. We all, we all do it. No matter who we used to buy. From people, customer services or whatnot. The person you’ve spoken, like, for instance, recently, when I changed over phone provider, the one person I spoke to was absolutely brilliant, gave me all the information I needed to make, to be able to make a decision.

[00:13:48] Dean: And I said, look, let me have a thing 24 hours. I’ll come back to you. I’ll speak into a brand new person. I spent 20, 30 minutes going over the same details. They have to read all the notes. Then they said that the 20 after 20 minutes. Let me go and speak to another person. So can’t I just speak to that person I spoke to yesterday?

[00:14:04] Dean: I hear it all the time with estate agents. You know, you’ve got an issue, got a problem, want to know, got a, got a question. You phone your estate agent. It’s quite often the person you, you, you can’t get hold of. And then you have to leave a message. They come back to you the same day or the next day or not at all.

[00:14:19] Dean: And it’s just like, there’s no accountability. And I, that’s one of my things that I say to people in the living room is that you’ve got my mobile number. I’m available on that seven days a week. So any question you’ve got, you come straight to the horse’s mouth. Um, and people love, people really love that.

[00:14:35] Dean: And quite a lot of a state agents I speak to miss that. They kind of, you know, well, what if they can never get hold of me? Well, you’ve got your mobile phone, you’ve got WhatsApp, you’ve got text, you’ve got email. It’s really important for customers to know that they can get hold of someone. That can give them the answers or give them the guidance straight away rather than be patched from pillow to post.

[00:14:56] Carla: Yeah, exactly. And I think with, um, estate agents as well, if you’re getting a page, a wage, not page, sorry, a wage, no matter, no matter, uh, whether you sell houses or not, um, you know, it’s going to make you a bit more laid back about the situation as well. So I do think, uh, working, obviously there’s a great incentive for you to sell houses, which means you’re going to work. Work as hard as you can to, to do that. 

[00:15:22] Dean: That’s it. I don’t, I don’t get a salary. So I haven’t got the, um, the comfortable notion that I know for a fact, no matter what I do in November, I’m going to get paid at the end of November, a certain amount of money. That that’s removed when you, you, uh, go self employed, um, you have to work for your money.

[00:15:41] Dean: And you also, on top of that, you have to work for your reputation. Because your name is front and centre. My, my, on my board, it’s Dean Coleman, estate agent powered by EXP. It’s Dean Coleman. It’s not hiding behind any brand. So, um, I’m sure every trades person will say the same thing or any self employed person will say the same thing.

[00:15:59] Dean: If it’s their name on, above the door, it’s, it’s so much more important to make sure that you not only do what you say you’re going to do. But you make the experience and the customer service is, is unrivalled because it’s referrals and recommendations that we live by that I, that I built my business by.

[00:16:18] Carla: That’s amazing. So, so with, um, with EXP, if people wanted to join your team, um, Dean, they can contact you directly, can’t they? And I put the link underneath this podcast. But would they need a state agency experience ? 

[00:16:34] Carla: They would 

[00:16:34] Dean: Yes, so There’s a lot of models. I’ve said there’s a lot of self employed models out there that offer different things that have different requirements and qualifier Qualifying criteria.

[00:16:45] Dean: At eXp, what I really love as well is that they, they absolutely are insistent that you have a minimum two year estate agency experience. Because we want to make sure that the people we’re bringing on board know what they’re doing, have that background, have that experience, that are able to do the job properly, um, for the customer, the people that really matter.

[00:17:07] Carla: That’s brilliant. It’s great, especially, you know, selling the house through you, you know, that people can know that you, you know what you’re talking about. 

[00:17:16] Dean: Well, I was, um, I, it’s really funny cause I was actually, um, it was, it was a couple of weeks ago I was, I was doing a viewing on behalf of my seller. So, so as a, as a personal bespoke estate agent, I help all my sellers sell their property, but I also help them find.

[00:17:33] Dean: And one of my sellers asked me to go along to one of the viewings That’s fine. Um, went along and the, the estate agent that was showing us around literally didn’t know anything about the house. Um, and I got speaking to the estate agent and found out how long have you been doing it, etc. Uh, they’d been doing it three or four months and their background was totally retail.

[00:17:58] Dean: They’d been working for different clothes shops for the past four, five, six years. And they thought, Oh, I want a career change. I’ll be an estate agent. And three or four ish months experience. I think they said they have selling a property. So, and I thought that was, that was so wrong because. Those and I put myself in that seller’s position thinking I’m paying all this money to that space and have somebody with no experience sell my biggest, most valuable asset.

[00:18:24] Dean: I just thought that’s crazy. So of course what happened there is the value of that went out to value their property, had all the experience, sold themselves, the sellers bought into that person. The moment that property went on the market, they went missing and it was handed over to this person to sell. I just think that’s right.

[00:18:39] Dean: Everyone’s got to start somewhere. But I think, You know, that’s, yeah, that’s why experience is absolutely key. 

[00:18:46] Carla: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because you want to do best by your seller, by the seller, don’t you? You want to sell the house and you want to sell it for as much as you can get for them. That does make sense.

[00:18:57] Carla: So, so if anyone wanted to sell a property through you, Dean, do you just cover the Birmingham area or can you cover a wider reach? 

[00:19:08] Dean: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Birmingham is predominantly where I’m, I’m based and I sell properties, but I have, I’ve got properties and sold properties as far as Wolverhampton, um, uh, Bromsgrove, Solihull, Redditch.

[00:19:20] Dean: Um, so I have property sold, uh, and the experience of selling in that wider region. The biggest advantage, I suppose, um, well, for me, that because I’m more personal and bespoken, I deal with a maximum number of properties. It means I have more flexibility and availability. For customers, um, so I’m not a volume agent.

[00:19:40] Dean: So the maximum number of properties I have means that I can spread myself across people more often and offer that sort of availability really. So yeah, Bromsgrove, Solihull, Redditch, um. Yeah, not a problem at all. 

[00:19:54] Carla: That’s great. And you also, um, have, um, you kind of mentor a team for people that come on, not under you as such, but anyone that joins eXp, you can mentor them, can’t you, as well?

[00:20:06] Dean: Yeah, and that’s another thing that I love. I absolutely, I love property. I always say that it doesn’t matter wherever I work, no matter how high up I got, if I was lucky enough to get to the very top of a company, for example, I would always want to sell property because I just love selling property, meeting people and getting involved, you know, rolling your sleeves up and getting in the trenches, so to speak.

[00:20:26] Dean: But Another love of mine is just the nurturing of estate agents. I absolutely love providing training and help, guidance, support with estate agents because I get a real buzz from their success. Um, you know, the estate agents I’m mentoring at the moment, when they text me saying, you know, I’ve just got a property on the market, Dean, da, da, da.

[00:20:46] Dean: And I’m like, ah, brilliant, go for it. And the sharing success stories, I absolutely love it because It really motivates me. If I’m ever having a down day, um, one of the aesthetics I mentor, uh, it was just recently, it was a bit of everything was going wrong during the day. Um, we all love those. We all have that.

[00:21:05] Dean: And it was just going wrong. I thought something’s got to give. And it was probably four ish, 4. 30 in the afternoon. One of the estate agents text me and says, uh, Dean, amazing news. I’ve sold. Well, he actually sent me one of the, it was a really funny gift. Um, and, uh, followed up by Dean, I’ve just secured a sale on this property, buzzing over the moon.

[00:21:26] Dean: And it just lifted me. And I was like, ah, brilliant. That’s amazing. So it’s really important. That’s really important for me to make sure that you know, I’m on hand to nurture estate agents, to help them, help them grow their business. If you like, you know, giving them any hints and tips and advice of how to generate leads, you know, any training that they need, any support seven days a week to help them be the best estate agent they can be for them and their customers.

[00:21:51] Carla: That’s amazing. And Dean, can you help, um, if anyone, wherever they are in the UK, if they’re listening and they’ve got a state agency experience and they want to start this, can you, would you be able to mentor them no matter where they are in the UK? 

[00:22:06] Dean: 100%. Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got an estate agent as far as Lincoln.

[00:22:11] Dean: So it doesn’t matter where in the country they are, because I’m always on hand to be able to offer advice of how to market a home, how to generate leads, if you like, you know, get get new properties onto the market, how to do it, where to go, who to speak to. What’s really important is one of the estate agents recently, who is very experienced, said to me, No, very candidly said, you know, I don’t need, I don’t need any advice.

[00:22:33] Dean: If you like, it was done in a really nice way. It was, you know, I don’t need the training. I don’t need the advice. Brilliant. But they needed someone to offload to every now and then to go, Oh, this is going wrong. This happened, that happened. And I, and they said to me, they thanked me for being that person that was able to call me and literally just bent to me because they know that I’m, I’m there.

[00:22:54] Dean: Um, I’m their support network. If you like, I’m on hand to help them. Any ways I can help them. Grow their business is massively beneficial to me as well. 

[00:23:02] Carla: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, that’s brilliant. So, so I’ll leave a link under this podcast so people could contact you. And also if anyone on here listening is thinking about selling the house and they love the idea of this model and working with one person in their local area, would they be a, would you be able to put them in touch with somebody in their own local area if you’ve got someone?

[00:23:25] Dean: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, yeah, come, come to myself. If you’re thinking of selling your property and, um, if it’s an area that I can’t cover and I’ll, I’ll, you know, I’ll, I’ll be honest with people. If it’s, if it’s something that’s just too far out of my reach, I will absolutely be able to put them in touch with another local estate agent that does similar to what I do that I know that they’ll be looked after.

[00:23:43] Carla: Oh, that’s amazing. Well, Dean, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing more about this. It fascinated me when you were telling me about this opportunity, because I just think, gosh, it’s perfect if you’ve got a family and you want it to work flexibly around them. 

[00:24:00] Dean: Oh, it’s incredibly. Beneficial to those people that want to do it.

[00:24:04] Dean: I’m speaking to a lady recently. She has been on the stage for, I think, about 14, 15 years. Um, she’s had a child and a year later, she’s really struggling to get back into. It’s just not the same, um, for the, for the reasons that I said was to, why Kickstarted me, um, she’s, she’s saying the same things I’ve heard it all before, it’s, you know, Dean, it’s, it’s not the same, I’ve had a child, I want to be at home more, and, you know, the, the company that she works for won’t allow her to go part time, and if she does go part time, She’s earning nowhere near enough to be able to, it’s worth doing it.

[00:24:39] Dean: And, uh, yeah, it’s just, it’s a, it’s an, it’s incredible opportunity. And I say to anybody that everyone has a fear to go it alone, but honestly use that fear to motivate you to, to make it, make a success of it. And it, and it can, if you’ve got the right attitude, the motivation, the passion, the drive, determination, you will make it work.

[00:24:59] Dean: It’s not easy. It’s hard work, but I’ll tell you now you’ll regret not doing it. 

[00:25:05] Carla: Yeah. Uh, yeah, definitely. I mean, that, that’s not to go on to myself, but that’s exactly, you know, I wanted freedom, flexibility to work around my family and you know, it really does. It makes you a lot happier in, in life anyway, if you can, if you can go to your kids assemblies and you can, you know, go and do attend sports day without having to ask someone for the time off and things like that.

[00:25:29] Carla: So it does make a huge difference. So thank you so much for coming on Dean. I really appreciate it. 

[00:25:34] Dean: Yeah. Thank you. Take care. 

[00:25:38] Carla: I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast on working around your family. If you would like to speak to Dean to find out more, click the link at the bottom of this podcast and you can make contact with him directly.

[00:25:51] Carla: Thanks so much for listening and see you next time. My Bump 2 Baby is one of the UK’s leading parenting platforms. You can find local pregnancy to preschool groups, classes, and lessons wherever you are in the UK. Not only that, but you can read our honest reviews on the latest products, days out, and services that you as parents need to know about.

[00:26:19] Carla: We also work with trusted financial advisors, family law solicitors, and now estate agents too. If you would like to find your nearest trusted expert. Head over to www. mybump2baby. com