The real work behind long-term success 🎢 William Stokes

People always talk about property being like a passive industry. There's no way around it. It requires hard work. It's not passive. You are liable to swings. We've experienced this on projects where it cost us half a million more than we expected it to cost us. Now that's fine because we're a business that's established and set up and can handle that swing. But if you've got your first property that you're buying and your refurb goes from 50 grand to 65 grand, where's that 15 million from? That's going to hurt. There's a lot of people that are chasing these get-rich-quick schemes that don't exist. Like they never have existed and they never will exist. If you're doing it on the side and, and you're in a position where you can do it, then it's great. But if you're not, you can't.

This week's Millennial Master is William Stokes, an engineer turned entrepreneur shaking up coworking with Cospaces. Starting by flipping commercial buildings into homes, William spotted a gap: workspaces with style and community. Outside London. Now, as Cospaces co-founder, he's bringing sleek community-led spaces to towns like Reading, Stevenage, and Milton Keynes. In this episode, William shares his story about building Cospaces from scratch, taking smart risks, and the sacrifices along the way. He talks about finding the right business partner, Managing risk in property and why enjoying the ride is as vital as the end goal. This episode is brought to you by Offwork. Let's be real, the usual staff perks like gym memberships or gift cards just don't cut it anymore. And don't even get me started on free coffee and pizza Fridays. That's where Offwork comes in. The employee perk that actually gets used. With OffWork, your team gets something they already love: travel. They can book their own flights, pick their own hotels, and plan the perfect getaway, all with the travel fund you set up for them. The best part? It's super easy. Just set the contributions and OffWork handles the rest. Better time off? Means less burnout, more motivation, and happier employees when they're back. Give your team a perk they'll actually love. Check out OffWork today on offwork.com. Millennial Masters is proudly sponsored by Jolt, the UK's top web hosting service. Every great project needs a reliable home. Whether you're launching a WordPress site, or scaling up a custom app. Jolt has hosting plans starting at just £3.95 a month, with unbeatable deals on domain registrations too. Why Jolt? Well, it's a no-brainer. They have super fast support, so you can get help within 30 seconds on live chat, so there's no waiting around. They do flexible payments, So you can pay with Bitcoin, American Express, or whatever works best for you, all while racking up points. How good is that? And there's unbeatable uptime, so your site stays live no matter what. Ready to give it a go? Sign up today and enjoy your first 3 months free. Head to jolt.co.uk to get started.

William, welcome to Millennial Masters.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

So how did you get into the property space? Was it always your plan?

No, not originally. Weirdly, I started out as an engineer. So I used to work in— I studied mechanical and then I ended up working in oil and gas. And then around kind of 2015, I got a bit fed up with more dealing with corporate politics and actually doing work. And ended up stumbling into the property sector. And I started in resi. So my original business or private business I was involved with was commercial to resi. So taking office blocks and turning them into apartments, primarily first-time buyers, a lot around the home counties, but a couple bits up north. And as part of that, one of the things that we did was we turned this amazing office building into these, you know, small apartments, which was typically the model. That's what the market was requiring.. And I thought, you know what, this would be really nice as an office. This wouldn't, you know, why are we taking these historic amazing buildings and turning them into these apartments? Actually, this should be an office space. And so from that, I kind of fell into the office side of things. You're a Lincoln guy as well. So as you know, with a friend of mine, we set up a very small coworking space in Lincoln, which Codespace was eventually kind of built off the back of. And that was kind of semi-successful, like it did well. It was small numbers. So when you scale it up, it was highly incredible. But at the size that it was, it was just a kind of small side business. And eventually we said, you know what, there's an opportunity to do this bigger. The guy who was previously involved, who was a Lincoln guy as well, his interests were in other areas. He kind of fell away a bit. And I'd already met my business partner now, Ali, and we kind of both had these ideas. And from there said, right, there's an opportunity, why don't we go and grow this with the aim to build portfolio of design-led workspaces, but in regional locations. And Lincoln was a prime example of this. Like, it was a market where there wasn't really anything on offer. The only thing, and at the time they didn't even have a Regus, they have a Regus now, but everything was in London. Everything was very London-centric. And we said, actually, why don't we go and do this in regional locations where there's cheaper assets and there's no, no one doing it. And that's effectively what we set out to do.

Did WeWork and the rise of it give you any inspiration to CoSpace, which you said in Lincoln was basically a bit like your proof of concept?

Yeah, so Lincoln was born out of the fact that I went into a WeWork. So I went into a WeWork in London. And I walked in thinking it was a coffee shop, because I had a meeting around that area. And then I literally got coffee, sat down, and someone came over and said, you know, hi, how are you? Are you interested in a tour? And I was like, oh, it's not a coffee shop. Like, you have to tell people, it's an actual workspace. And I fell in love with that model. It was interesting watching what happened with WeWork. And from a fundamental perspective, I'm a huge fan. I like what they did, put the sector on the map. I like their product and their design. Obviously they ran it a little bit differently to how we try and run ours, but it kind of inspired us a lot to say, actually, take that model and do it more regionally, change things that we don't think are working. So what isn't working? Well, we think it was these things. Let's change that and let's build that into our model, but keep the kind of core focus around design and around the hotelization. We call it the hotelization of workspace, which is running things more like a private members club than necessarily a traditional office building like a managing agent would run. So WeWork definitely played into it as well as several others within the sector, but obviously WeWork are the big elephant in the room and probably one of the most well-known.

Looking back at WeWork now, do you think Adam Neumann is a role model or a fraud?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer. I always say that the similarities between us stop at the leather jacket. Beyond that, I have no delusions of grandeur. I don't know, I don't know the answer, right? And it's all about what you do next. So, you know, if you took a view of it today, and at the time where it was imploding, you look at it and go, there were others involved that fueled something that he already had. But, you know, if you— let's say we fast forward 10 years, and he's hugely successful, I mean, everyone will look back and go, that was just the origin story. It's all about what it looks like in the future. I don't know the answer, if I'm honest. I admire what he's done, but whether I admire him personally, probably not.

Coming back to Cospaces and trying to get a bit into the concept behind it, it's not your regular office space or coworking space. It's modern, it's fresh. How are you differentiating yourselves from what people would normally expect?

My selfish answer is that it's not me. And that's the honest truth. Me and Ali, very early days, realized that we had absolutely no idea when it came to design. And so we managed to get an incredible designer who's part of the team, a woman called Tiff, and she's incredible. And she basically takes our vision and puts it onto paper. And the whole aim was how can we create a workspace that looks incredible? That when you walk in, people like, they touch the table, they touch the kitchen, they touch the worktop, it becomes aspirational. So people are like, I want this in my home, I love this style. How do we create that, but doing it at a price point that matches where the region wants it, right? So there's no point putting in gold taps and going absolutely crazy because people don't have a budget for that. The way I describe us is we are the David Lloyd of workspace. We typically go to David Lloyd Markets, right, which is where higher premium product, but we're at a price point that is reflective of that. We're not, you know, a really, really high crazy price point, especially for the locations that we're in. The way we kind of differentiate it, I think, comes down to service and understanding what individual clients need, whether it's somebody that has a 2-person office or a desk, all the way up to some of the large corporates that we have within large units within our space. And it's understanding what, what do they need from us? And how can we deliver that service? And it's almost delivering a tailored service to several different clients. So we currently have 3 locations. Our first site was in Reading. Our second site was in Stevenage, where I am today. And our third site was in Milton Keynes, which we launched last year. Over the next year, we're going to launch hopefully another 2 spaces, legals pending. There's a few things in the pipeline that are waiting to drop, and as soon as they do, then that gets exciting. But as of today, it's those kind of core 3 locations, which is this kind of like weird hour London.

So how do you pick a location for co-space? What's, what's your criteria?

Yeah, I am conscious not to give away too much of the secret sauce that sets us up and defines us. But the honest truth is, when we started business, we spent a lot of time looking at the macro and micro data and saying, where are salaries above market average? So people can, you know, people are in a price point where our product makes sense. There's no point putting a Rolls-Royce showroom in Blackpool, right, for instance. That's a good analogy. So where is the market that we want? How connected is that market? I.e., you know, if you've got a location like Sheffield, how integrated is it with other local areas? How easy is it to commute to other areas? Good example is kind of Manchester and Leeds. They're two areas that are big and, you know, close to each other-ish., but hard to get between, like, it's not, it's not easy to get between the two. So what was the commutability like? And where are people living? Because what's traditionally happened is people have commuted for work to business parks or to, you know, industrial estates, and that seems to be shifting. People are wanting to be more city centres, town centres, more local to where they work, especially with everybody working from home during COVID So we spent a lot of time looking at that data and the way that was trending. And we were pushing this style of flex way before COVID So COVID, if anything, came along, accelerated it and helped us. And what we were able to do was say, okay, where are the top 30 locations that we want to be? And we created this list. And then as we've evolved, we've realized that there's huge opportunity around where— within kind of 2 hours of where we both live. And so at the minute, our growth strategy is focused around where we live. Making sure that it's within kind of 50 miles of existing sites. So if we need to cross, you know, utilize resources, we can, and then eventually we'll just, you know, to hire people and be outside of where we want to be. But at the minute, that's kind of where we're at.

I know it's not fair to pick your favorite children. But do you have a standout site or location that is the closest to your heart?

I do. And it's actually where I am today, which is Stevenage. And the reason for that is, so Stevenage wasn't our first site, it was our second site. But the reason it stands out to me the most is because it's the site where we were the most involved. So we took it from shell and core, we replaced the windows, we put a new roof on, you know, we poured a concrete lift shaft. It's the site where we did the most work. And I think the product we created here really showcased what we were trying to do. Stevenage was also the first market we went into where there wasn't something like this already. There was a couple of other spaces, though, you know, and they were good on their own. But there wasn't a market like there was in Reading. So Reading, there's a lot of operators, a lot of competition, is well connected to London. And so the market was already there. Stevenage was the first place we came to where we said, we think that this market exists, but at the minute, it's not being serviced. Let's go and deliver that and see if that market is there to service and Thankfully, it was.

So you said you have 2 more spots in the pipeline. Where do you see CoSpace going in the next 5 years? How many locations are on your target list? And are you going to break into London as well?

Good question. The initial target was always 20 sites. And that's kind of where we're getting to the position of where we're at today. And especially the position of where we're getting based on our pipeline gets us to a really exciting position where we start to become a private equity, a PE play. And we're starting to feel that slightly already. The question we ask ourselves is, is that the right thing to do? Or do we just grow off our own back? So to date, we've grown off our own back. We don't really raise much investment. We have a number of investors behind us. We started self-funding, then raised some investment. But, you know, we primarily build our cash reserves and open another site. It's why we've been so slow with our growth to date. As we look forward, you know, getting to that 20 sites is quite easy from where we're at now. Now we've got a foundation. It's basically like building a snowball, and now it's starting to get enough momentum that it can keep going itself. Going into London's an interesting one because— and I live kind of southwest London, so I kind of see the market myself— you could go to one part of London and everyone says, I want you to have a London site. But what they don't say is, I want you to be in the West End. Or someone says, I want you to be in East London. I want you to be in central, I want you to be within zone 1, I want you to be, you know, Wimbledon, Southwest, or whatever. It's such a huge market that unless you fully understand, unless you go and do like 5 or 6 sites, you become so drowned out by everybody else in the market. For us, we see more opportunity in regional locations than we do in trying to go and compete with huge established operators that are already within, you know, zones 1 to 4. So At the minute, it's not on our roadmap. We do keep getting asked if we're going to look at London, and it is something that we, you know, we keep talking about within our meetings. But at the minute, our roadmap is very much, let's keep it regional for now.

Looking, looking back at your co-space journey so far and your entrepreneurial journey, how much of your success do you think comes down to good timing, luck, or pure hustle? Or is it a combination of all three?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it is. I think primarily, and it's weird because I don't overly consider myself successful, right?

I don't—

it's not something that I really think about. I just think about the fact that I get to do what I enjoy, and I get to build something and work with people that I like to work with. I think a lot of it, and when I connect— when I look back and connect the dots, is connections that I've made throughout the years. So people that I've been able to go to and say, actually, I need a bit of help with this, can you help me? And they, you know, introduce me to someone or something, and it facilitates something that happens. There's a lot of that. There's definitely luck involved. We got very lucky that we entered the market at the right time that we did. We got lucky that we were in a position to weather— because we literally started our first site in March 2020, and within 3 weeks we downed tools because of COVID And we—

the look—

the lucky bit was we were in an incredibly good position where we negotiated and extended a contract and did all those kind of things. If we'd have started the business 2 years earlier, or been open— I mean, we started it in 2018. But if we'd have launched our first site in 2018, we would have had a much tougher time going through COVID. So part of it was luck around that timing. But I think as well, you know, everything— and you know this as well— like, everything's just hard work. And you just have to work so hard and keep consistent at it. Because if you're not, somebody else is in the background somewhere else. And they're the guys that you're not thinking about right now, which is someone who's going to overtake you or someone that's, you know, trying to do the same thing you are. So for us, we just keep our head down and just keep building away.

You mentioned connections are very important in this world. What's one of your secret tips to nurture connections, not just being introduced and then getting what you want? Is it something about giving back as well?

Yeah, I am It's, it's, it's easy to say one thing, but how you actually act is how people will measure you by. I generally don't need anything from anyone. Most of the time, sometimes I'll need something, I'll say to someone, you know, do you know anyone that can help me with this? Most of the time, I don't genuinely need anything. So what I find is, if someone needs something, it doesn't cost me anything to give it. Or someone says, I need something, do you know someone, and I do them an intro. I think when you do things like that, you put enough karma out into the world, that when you do need something, people are there to support you. I think, I think some people go with an agenda, like, if I do this favor, you owe me one. I don't care about any of that stuff. If I do you a favor, you don't owe me one at all. If you're in a position where you can help me, great. If you're not, don't worry about it. I don't do things because I want something back. And I think as long as you keep that mentality, when you do need it, people are always receptive to help you, because it's very rare. That's generally what I think. And you're lucky because of the timing on your message. I am awful at responding to people because I have so many messages. And I'm trying to get better on it. If people send me a WhatsApp, or if they send me an email, I'm generally much better at it than Instagram, LinkedIn, things like that. But one thing that I'm trying to work on is being better with my responses, being more responsive. But generally, it's just, you know, support people where they can. And if you need support, ask for it and know who you're asking, you know, ask the right person.

Speaking of support, you explained that you have a business partner and a lot of people are trying to think, how can I find the right business partner? What are the qualities in your view of a good business partner?

I'll give you, I'll give you the story of how it came about. And then I think that ties into the answer. So, um, me and Alan met by chance. We connected with each other on LinkedIn. He sent me a message saying it'd be good to get a coffee. I said, you know, I live in Lincoln, I'm a Lincoln lad, you know, before I moved to London, but I'm down in London, you know, once a month, it'd be good to meet up. I set a meeting with him at Waterstones in Oxford Circus. And I went to Piccadilly Circus, we had a half an hour meeting. And I was like calling him, he was like, I'm here, where are you? I'm on the top floor. I'm on the top floor, I can't see you. I was wrong location. So anyway, I said, shall we just sack this off and rearrange it in a month's time when I'm back? And he said, no, no, jump on a tube. I've got a little bit of time. You know, you'll be 10 minutes and then I'll be here. And we met, we both missed 2 meetings each, and we were chatting for 2 and a half hours. And it started about property, because Ali was kind of in investment and M&A and was interested in property. And I was in property. And then we kind of touched on this coworking model. And then the conversation progressed. He's from Sheffield, he's a regional guy, he understands regional markets. He'd lived in London for 15 years, however long it had been. And we just kept talking and talking and talking. And off the back of it, we said, let's meet up again and have more conversations. And the conversations developed over, you know, a period of 6 to 9 months. And we eventually sat there and looked at each other and said, we are the two people that are really good at doing this. He's corporate finance, he's got the finance aspect. And I am property. So I bring what I bring to the table. We recognized what the gaps were that we had, and we recognized who was going to do what pieces of work. So I was going to pick up on marketing and ops, and he was going to pick up on some other stuff, you know, more documentation. He's really good with looking at document. I can read it 10 times and not get a single word. And so I think we went into it recognizing where each other's strengths were, but also where each other's weaknesses were. And I think That's one thing that I always look at is who complements you. If you have the exact same skill set and the exact same personality, that's probably not going to work as well as if you get someone who contrasts. And then the other thing, and I think we realized this later on, and thankfully, a lot of the time I looked at him thinking he knew the answers. And I focused on my bit because I thought I don't need to worry about the other stuff because he knows the answers. And he did the exact same thing, which was he focused on his bit and just assumed I knew all the answers. Between the two of us, we didn't know the answers. And I think that gave us a strength because none of us were really from this sector in terms of the commercial world. And so a lot of the things where people would say, you can't do that, or that's not doable, we didn't know that. So we just went and did it. And so I think that worked. But I think when you're trying to find someone, it's almost like a marriage, right? So you need to find someone that complements what you do, but that you get on with well enough that when things go bad, and inevitably things will, you'll go through tough times, and you both withstand that pain. And I think we did very well, you know, going through what we've gone through with COVID and things like that. I think we complement each other's skill sets enough.

You've grown your team to quite a sizable one right now. What's the criteria, in your view, for hiring your first and your second employee, which are crucial to the business development, especially in the early days. What are you looking for in people to join your crew and your mission?

Yeah, so I, and this is funny, when I, when we were going to hire our first person, there was a couple of people that I went to for advice on making my first few hires. And one of them is a, is a successful LinkedIn guy. Um, I don't know if you want me to name him or not, but I don't mind. Um, but it was Leo from Tendip. So, you know, Leo, and, you know, he gave me some really good advice, which was focus on the person and what they bring. And I dropped out of university, so I never focused on CVs, which I can tell you that's backfired and in a big way. But, you know, I look for people that believe in what we're doing, bring something to the role, are fairly self-sufficient. We're, you know, at that time we were a startup. We don't have an HR department to support somebody, we don't have a load of perks. You know, we pay good salaries, we benchmark and stuff. But beyond that, it's very much a self-sufficient role, you kind of have to figure out your own schedule and stuff. You know, we could be busy for weeks at a time. And so I did that, I looked for people who had experience in the industry, but not in competitors. I.e., did they come from a hotel background? Do they come a private members club background? Do they understand people are the most important thing and creating the environment is important rather than, you know, someone that works at a competitor and was sat behind a desk for 12 hours a day or 8 hours a day, whatever it is. And so I think that was quite key. CV thing was quite funny. So I—

Yeah, let's go back to that story. Tell me, tell me how you, you dropped out of uni. What's the story behind that and your, your CV?

Yeah, so I, so I studied mechanical engineering. And one of my roles at a company that I worked for was training graduates. And I was training guys who were older than me, typically, typically guys, the women as well, but engineering was very male-based at the time, unfortunately. So I was training guys that were, you know, typically older than me, earning less than I was at the time. And I was like, why am I going to university part-time to get a degree that inevitably isn't going to serve me, actually. And I've always been like this, that's always been my mentality. I like to just get on and work, do things, and I'll just learn on the job. So I dropped out of uni and kind of fell into that. And so that, that kind of gave me a position where I never really valued— and by the way, I value self-education, I never valued formal education. And so when I look at people's CVs, I just look at like, what's their work experience, what they've done, I never looked at their university stuff. It's never played into me. And I hired a guy who is now my champion for sustainability. He's my guy who, he runs all of our policies, he runs our ESG. He had worked for us nearly a year before I found out he had a degree and a master's degree in business sustainability. And I was like, hang on, why didn't you tell me? He was like, it's on my CV. I was like, I never looked at that. Okay, you need to come and help me with this. And you know, we've together we've been working on going through the B Corp process and all these kinds of things and putting these sustainability practices in place, working with Ed, another great entrepreneur from Lincoln who's doing My Square Meter, which is about, you know, planting wildflowers, giving back to the environment, things like this. So it's quite a backfire for me. So now I look through everyone's CV and fully understand, okay, but what's that person done? And what drives them? So that was quite a learning curve.

Coming back to hiring your first employees, you've already done that. But now, when is the point in your view when you start stepping out of the day-to-day running of the business, which I understand you're doing now, and focusing on the big picture? Are you able to pinpoint that or a particular moment when you felt now is the chance to step up and look at the big picture rather than be involved in the nitty-gritty?

Yeah, that was, um, within a week of launching Milton Keynes. So there was somebody already in the business who I promoted to operations manager, who now runs all of the operations, deals with the team and manages that entire process. So it freed me up to go, okay, I need to focus more on strategy, growth, and just generally dropping into areas that need support. Ie, you know, we need some support with some financial modeling we're doing, great, I'll spend a few hours there working with that part of the team, or, okay, I need to focus on this sustainability piece for the next few hours, and I'll drop over there. And so that was a game changer for me. I needed that before, but I couldn't, again, because of the fact that I just haven't gone and raised a load of money. I knew at the point where I brought Milton Keynes, I then had cash flow that would service that role. So I waited till I took on that site. Once the cash flow started coming in, I could service that role and then put the role in place. So I left it later than I should have, but I did it at the point where we were financially secure enough to do it. So I just suffered it in the meantime. And that definitely was a big help, getting the right people in the right place that you trust and give autonomy to. The key thing is just giving them full autonomy. People will make wrong decisions. It's human nature. And what we'll do is we'll sit down and we'll say, okay, well, why was this decision made? This was the wrong decision. Here's why it was the wrong decision, but why was it made? Okay, we didn't have a good enough process in place. Let's put that in place and ensure it never happens again. I think if you just, you know, if you go after people for making a wrong decision, nobody learns from that. Actually, there's a learning opportunity here. There's an opportunity to put something better in place to support the people that we've got in the business and make sure it doesn't happen again. And so that's generally the view that we take.

So how do you encourage your team then to take initiative and make decisions while also having some brakes in place? Because some mistakes can be fatal, right?

Yeah, 100%. You can do it in several ways, which I view. So each of our sites runs its own P&L, and the on-site team see that P&L. So they see exactly where costs are, they see, they know exactly what the income is, they know exactly where the costs are, and they can see it. And they can go, hang on, this seems high, we spent this much here when we shouldn't have done, actually, let's control that. There's measures in place so that purchase orders up to a certain value can automatically get approved over a certain value, they get approved by the accounting team, and over another value and they get approved by accounting team and either me or Ali. So in terms of financial costs, that's how we, that's how we manage that. In terms of the role, they pretty much have full autonomy. And I say pretty much, there are some big deals that I'm involved in, which I kind of still keep hold of the reins of. But a lot of the other stuff they pick up with, we sit down, you know, once a month with, with me and them, and I'll sit down, they'll sit down with our ops manager as well. And we go through, okay, what are the decisions that have been made? Are these right decisions? Yeah, these are the right decisions. Actually, we would have done that a little bit differently. But the way you you've done it, it's fine. Here's how we would have done it in future, and do those kinds of things. I don't think there's anything— there's no major decision that could be made today on site because of the structure that we have that would drastically affect our business, within reason. There's always something that could go wrong, but within reason. So on that basis, the guys have pretty much 99% autonomy. And we've built to that. And again, that comes back to hiring the right people. You hire the wrong person, you'll know. But if you hire the right people, you have trust and you have autonomy. I give people trust rather than say they need to earn it. With me, you don't need to earn trust, you've got it already. If you break it, you'll never get it again. But there's none of this, I need to see you do this so we can work up to this trust basis. I just give it and then, you know, once it's gone, it's gone. Thankfully, it's not gone.

When business life is so hectic and it can take a big toll on you physically and mentally. What is a habit or routine that keeps you sharp and focused on what needs to be done?

Yeah, I, so I have a number of resources that I use. So one of them is I time block everything. So everything is in my calendar. If it's not in my calendar, it doesn't get done. So to the point where my week starts on a Sunday, I sit down and go through everything that I need to do that week, and I stick it in my calendar, and I make sure it's in blocks. And if somebody says, you know, I need a meeting on this day, they can see it's a certain color code, and they know that it's a task that I could potentially move. If it's another color code, it's a meeting that I can't move, i.e., this is a good example, right? And things like that. So time blocking definitely helps. Making sure you have a routine, because success is built off habits and routines. It's not built off, you know, it's doing the things you don't want to do regardless. So making sure it's in the, in the thing and in your diary. And a good example for that for me is like going to the gym. I have set times that I go to the gym, and that gives me a, a breakaway from what I'm doing, and, and I can focus on something else other than work. Because like you said, work is a large part of our life, and I don't really believe in work-life balance. I just believe in harmony between the two, that they are so intertwined. There's no clear, I start at 9, I finish at 5. It's literally 24/7. But I'd move everything in and around stuff. So going to the gym gives me that break and that bit of clarity. And then beyond that, it's just making sure that the reason we do all of this is we have to work a lot, we have to spend a lot of time working because things need to get done. But also we have to have a life around it as well. So things get dropped in, i.e., you know, I'm going for dinner at 6:30, that's in my diary, and that's a fixed event that's happening. And I kind of just run my day through my diary. And I know that I have a set number of outcomes that I need to get to by the end of the week. And regardless of whatever I do that week, these things have to be achieved. If they're not, I'm falling behind. So no matter what, even if I've got to stay up late, I've got to get these things done. And once they're done, great, what's next week? Let's go tackle next week and get that started.

Speaking of staying up late and having a partner in the entrepreneurial world as well, How does that work for you? Is it cross-support, or sometimes you don't always understand each other's priorities?

No, I think we've been— I think we've been— I mean, we've been together a long time. We've been together 12 years now. And I think one of the things that we've been so successful at is we both understand what each other's drivers are, what each other's trying to achieve, and we support each other with that. So I support her with her thing. She massively supports me with my thing. That is the reason I've got to where I've got to. We have certain things that we don't deviate from. So I have like a fixed bedtime. I wear an Oura ring that tracks my— I've never pronounced it, but I could track my sleep. I try and go to sleep for 10, half 10. I get up at 5:30. She doesn't get up at 5:30. She gets up later, but that's fine because she, you know, goes to bed a little bit later or whatever. We have these like routines that work. And then beyond that, we just both know that we, we both know the reason why we do it and what we're trying to achieve as a, as a couple, what we're trying to achieve together. And so we both understand that that feeds towards that. But we make sure that we book in a, we're going away for 2 weeks in June or whatever. Great. That's what we're building towards for the next little period and things like that. It's never been like, oh, you're focused more on work than you are me. We've never had that conversation, because we both know what we're trying to achieve together and individually.

Which calendar tool do you use, if you don't mind me asking? I know there's loads out there, but you mentioned color codes and time blocking, and some other entrepreneurs will find that useful to check it out as well.

I'm old school, so I just use Google Calendars. So I have— our company runs off Google. I use Google Calendars. There's a software that I tried to use. I can't think what it is, but it's like an AI one. I think it's called Motion or something. Thing, and it allows you to block things in. But what I found was that didn't work for me, because like, for me, the morning and late evening is when I'm the most productive. Booking something in at 2 PM on an afternoon, that's when I'm my least productive, because I've had lunch, I've generally been either, you know, done stuff. So my deep work is in the morning, and my meetings are generally in the afternoon where I don't need to be as like focused on my mind. I'm more just taking things in, the kind trying to take things out, if that makes sense. And then I just color code. So I have it hidden so people can't see what personal items are, and I color code it based on personal. I color code it based on meetings that I'm having, and I color code it based on tasks that I'm doing. I, I need to get a report out, I've put an hour in the diary. One of the other things I do is I track how long it takes me to do those tasks, because it's easy to go, okay, I'm going to put this in for an hour, but if it takes me 45 minutes, actually make it 45 minutes and I've got 15 minutes to spend on something else. And I try and block it into 15 and a half hour increments.

Speaking of being organized and staying on top of things, you've opened up in another podcast about ADHD and how that wouldn't let you survive in the corporate world. So how did you turn it into your superpower for the entrepreneurial world?

Yeah, it's a good question. And I think a lot of the people that we both know who are successful generally have the same trait. I generally see that between a lot of people. I don't know, I don't know the answer fully. And the reason I don't know the answer fully, that sounds like a bit of a cop-out. I think the way I think isn't conducive to just corporates and structures. I don't do structures and my brain's all over the place, right? One minute I'm talking about one thing, the next minute I'm talking about something else and I'm over here dealing with something else. I have that ability to just drop into things. And what I found in corporate careers is people are very structured, i.e., do this at this time, do that at that time. And when people are generally telling me what to do, I generally hate it. So I generally push back against it. And so I don't, I don't fit into that environment. What I also find, and I always say this to people, I always think this is a really good quote, people generally have a lot more value than is valued, i.e., I have members in the team who we have hired to do a core role. So that's their role. But they have value over here. As a company, we don't need that value. And that's not to say that that's undervalued, it just doesn't benefit us on what we're trying to do. This is the bit that we need. These are the bits that people can do. And what I generally find is entrepreneurs get put into this block of this is the value that we need. But all this other stuff that they know we can do isn't, isn't being used. And when you have an ADHD brain, you have everything being used. And so when this isn't being used, it's just frustrating. It's like, I could do this. I know that. I know that. And then, so that's generally how I've kind of balanced it. And I'm quite fortunate, like 90% of the time, I just do things that I want to do. Like I, you know, I have meetings that I want to be involved in. I have projects that I work on that I want to be involved in. 10% of the time is the stuff I don't want to do, but I know I have to do it. So I'm quite thankful that most of the stuff is stuff I want to do.

So you said you're not one for authority, and then you also said you don't want to be the bossy CEO at the same time and give people a lot of independence. Would you say that's thanks to ADHD, or it's just you're leading in the way you would like to be led?

Yeah, I think I lead in the way I'd like to be led. Again, I don't, You know, in some elements, I think I'm a leader. In other elements, I think I probably don't do well at it. And I think I'm quite fortunate that I do better at most things than I do worse at most things. I think I, yeah, I've always cared about outcomes. And I look at some something and I know I backtrack it, right? So this is where I'm trying to get to, these are the steps that get me there. And as long as I communicate that with everybody, and everybody knows what they need to work on, check in to get us to where we want to get to, as long as stuff's getting done. I'm not a, I want to see you sat at your desk 8 hours a week, 8 hours a day, sorry. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm a, as long as stuff's getting done, and this is the outcome that we're trying to achieve, however you get around that doesn't matter. And the way that our roles generally work is they're quite social. So someone will come over, someone will speak to you for 10 minutes at the reception desk or, you know, over a coffee and things like that. And that builds long-term value. Because then when somebody needs something, they can go, oh, I need this, I need that, you know, oh, we're talking about renewal. It's an easy conversation. Whereas if it's very like corporate and regimented, it just, it doesn't feel authentic. So I just say to my guys, just be yourself, just be you. Get, these are the outcomes that we have to get around that. You're in control of doing your role as best as you can.

So how often would you check in or have meetings with key staff in order to make sure things are on track?

So a lot of that now falls to the ops team. So I'm quite fortunate that a lot of that stuff gets dealt with. I don't have formal meetings with these guys. I have informal meetings. So for instance, I'm in Stevenage today, seeing Stevenage. I'll see them throughout the day. I'll sit down with them at some point and say, right, this is what we've been working on, how we get this. It's more informal. I'll almost always follow up with an email based on what the conversation was, just so I've got a log and say, right, this is what we're working on. This is what Andy's doing. Ideally, can you get this to me by, say, Friday? Things like that. But it tends to be more informal. And I try and travel around the different sites. I mean, I'm here every Wednesday in Stevenage. I go to Reading, you know, every other Monday, I try and go to Milton Keynes every other Thursday. So I kind of balance it based on that.

Speaking of balance, risk is a big thing in the property market and in entrepreneurial journey. How do you calculate risk or How do you take those big risks that can leap you forward?

Yeah, everything is calculated risk. So like you just said, so every risk that we have, we are aware of, we have it on a register, we have a risk register that we review every 2 weeks. And every single risk to the business is on there. Every single trigger that triggers that risk is on there. And every single mitigation strategy, because risk is, risk is just something that could go wrong. And then a safety net below that is how do we protect against it? And Charlie Munger has this really good analogy where he goes, if I want to figure out, you know, how to do something right, first of all, I figure out everything that could go wrong, or everything that I'd need to go wrong for it to fail. And then I build a safety net around that. So I'll look at something and go, okay, the risk to us on getting involved in this site is legal costs, which are going to cost us 35 grand. Okay, do we have 35 grand available to us? Yes, we have it in our holdings account. Or, you know, across the revenue we have contracted, we have X amount bottom line. Cool, I can use that to fund that. So now that risk has gone away. I'm not at risk that 5 grand that could send us under, I know where I'm feeding it from. Do we have a risk of a deal falling over because of time? Yes. Okay, well, what measures can we put in place? Okay, if it's these guys' fault over time, let's put some measures in where they have to pay on board fees, things like this. So for us, we just look at every single risk and mitigate against it. Things like, you know, we're in the business of selling space at a set cost, and then we have to aggressively control our cost base. How can we fix up our costs? I don't mind paying 5% above what we should be if we get something fixed for 3 years. Let's get it fixed. Let's get certainty. A good example of that, and I got incredibly lucky, by the way. So going back to your point of luck, just before the energy market kicked off, I signed a 3-year contract for energy, a very attractive rate. And I looked at whether to sign a year or 3 years. And I thought, you know what, I don't want to stress about this in a year's time, let's sign it for 3 years. And then because we're happy with the rate, rate is really, really good. So in 3 years' time, we'll just review it. And that came up for renewal probably 2 months ago. It's up for renewal early next year. And again, we got it at a really good rate. And we just rode through the energy crisis on one site. Now we didn't on the other two sites, we felt it, but on one site we did. And so I took a view of I'm happy to pay a little bit more, but just lock that in. And so I try and mitigate risk as much as I can through those measures.

Speaking of risks, you shared how you started at a particularly tricky time that you couldn't have foreseen. And we're talking about COVID and the pandemic here. And you naturally overcame that possibly impossible task But how do you see now the remote and hybrid workspace moving? And how are you marrying that with what the CoSpace vision is?

So I can't talk about the wider market. And when people look at the wider market, the market is so big, right? If you look at the London market today versus where it was, that's so different. When I look at the markets we operate in, all I can speak to is how I see businesses interact. So a lot of the businesses that we, we have as members, or as customers, are some of them, some of the larger corporates are, you're in the office 4 days a week, minimum, maybe 5. And so we see that, and that's quite a lot. Others are, we only want you in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but the office is here if you want it. And a weird trend that we see and didn't you know, forsy, was that even though some people are given the option to only be in 3 days a week, they need the routine of being in 5 days a week. And so, you know, whereas I'm someone that works from home 2, 3 days a week, others want to be in the office so they have separation. And I saw this during COVID where people had, say, one-bed flats that they were working from their kitchen table or didn't have a workspace. They wanted to be back at the office. And then we have the polar opposite of that, which is people that come in 1, 2 days a week. And what you need is that balance, because someone that uses their office one day a week is really good for your bottom line, because your costs are really, really low. But it's really bad for your community. Because if there's no one in the office, no one wants to be there. Because why would you be there? You want to be around people. And so it's trying to find that balance of what do people's— what are people's needs? What are they changing to? Again, having a really well-designed space makes people want to come back to the office. They're coming back to suspended ceiling, carpet tile, you know, coffee machine that isn't even a coffee machine. It's a tub of Nescafé that's got a spoon that's still in it. No one wants that. So if you create the right environment, people will want to come there. People will want to be there. You know, it's like when you go to, you know, there's a David Lloyd in Lincoln, when you go to the gym there, it just feels so much better than when you go into, you know, another kind of gym where there's nobody there. You just go through a turnstile and just go do your thing. Like, It's all about the experience. And I think post-COVID, people are focusing more on that experience. And that's the thing that we try and focus on. We don't, we don't mind if people want to be in 2, 3 days a week, whatever works for them, we work around.

So good coffee and community are key to the experience.

100%. I mean, I'm a coffee addict. So I constantly always say it has to be good coffee. And thankfully, we've got pretty good coffee. We don't have baristas though.

The property market can be quite wild. You've had an amazing journey through it, but there are a lot of get-rich-quick schemes that are being peddled on the internet and telling people that do this, buy this, get 8 of that, and this is how you'll succeed and you'll have steady income for life. But you coming from that journey, how do you see those?

I think what people— people always talk about property being like a passive industry, which don't get me wrong, in an element it is. If you have your own business and you're throwing off several hundred thousands a year in dividends, let's say you own a construction business or you own an art gallery or a restaurant or something, then taking those profits and using it to invest in property is quite If you're focused full-time, and that's getting the right deals, right? Because at that point, you're not really too bothered about whether you've bought it below market value or what the refurb is. You just want it for income. So, you know, that gets quite attractive. If you're working in property business full-time like we are, it's a job. There's no way around it. It requires hard work. It's not passive. You are liable to swings, you know, building costs. I mean, we've experienced this on projects where we tendered it at be a good example. Like we tendered it at £1.8 million. And by the time we came to build it 6 months later, the market— that was during the market crisis of building and trades. And we ended up delivering that £2.3 million. I mean, it cost us half a million more than we expected it to cost us. Now that's fine because we're a business that's established and set up and can handle that swing. But if you've got, you know, your first property that you're buying and your refurb goes from £50 grand to £65 grand, where's that £15 grand from? That's going to hurt. And so I think there's a lot of people that are chasing these get-rich-quick schemes that don't exist, like they never have existed, and they never will exist. And I think that, you know, if you're doing it on the side, and you're in a position where you can do it, then it's great. But if you're not, you can't. And a good example I use, there's someone we both know, who has been banging on about Bitcoin for years. And I'm pretty sure he has done very well from Bitcoin. Now at the time he was talking about it, I looked at Bitcoin, but I wasn't in a position because we just started the business and we're doing all this stuff. I didn't have the spare cash to go and start buying Bitcoin. If I'd have done what he said, I would be very well off right now, as I imagine he is. But I wasn't in the position. So you can only take opportunities that you're in, that you put yourself into a position to take. And if I had to pick between doing that and Codespace, Codespace was the logical choice because I could control that risk, couldn't control the risk of Bitcoin, I couldn't control the swings, you know, looking back now, I could say, oh my God, I've done amazing. But at the time, I looked at the risk reward. And I said, I can control the outcome here with my hard work, hard work over here doesn't control the outcome at all. And so I think it's understanding those things as well.

So if you would give your top tips to somebody looking to start into the residential or commercial business, industry, what would be the advice from William Stokes?

Okay. So the first one is, is in fact education. And I did education the formal route. I went down, you know, one of those course providers that you're talking about, I went and did that stuff. What I subsequently realized, having done that, is that a lot of stuff there you can learn in books or YouTube videos, you can get well educated in certain things. Understanding, you know, how refurb costs work, how to speak to agents, those kinds of things, they're quite key. Everything comes back to sales and selling yourself, right? So you're selling yourself to whoever it is. So the first thing is make sure you fully understand what you're trying to do. Number 2 is stress test everything. So ensure that if, let's say, let's say you were doing a refurb and you forecast it to be 6 months, if you stretched it out to 12 months, and you're buying it on a bridge, a lot of people buy on bridges, let's say, which is kind of like a very expensive loan. Can you stretch that out another 6 months and stand it? And if you can't, then it doesn't— then it doesn't work. And the third one, which is the most important point that I go on to everyone I speak to about, is understand your costs and understand your margin. Because without margin, you can't build anything. And the reason we've been as successful as we have is because we aggressively track our income against our costs, and we always target a set margin. And everything we do, we do in mind of trying to achieve a set margin. And if we do that, at the end of the year, we sit in a position where we say, great, we have now built this much value, which we can now go and spend to do X and Y. Or we can say we're going to hold this amount and we're going to spend that amount. I think coming into this, I— and because Ali's background is finance, I didn't know a single thing about finance. I'm a property guy. I can, I can do some numbers, but I'm not in, you know, not in detail. I didn't know what EBITDA meant. I didn't know any of that stuff. And pretty early on, by 2021, I'd spent a lot of time learning finance and understanding everything. And I think it's quite key to understand that stuff. And even the bits that you don't do, so i.e., you're gonna go hire a project manager, you can read— so this is a really good quote, by the way. And I think, I think it's legit. I've Googled it a couple of times. So if you read 3 books on any topic, you, you know more than 95% of the population.. And as long as you get a basic understanding of every element of the business, you'll have enough of an education and enough of an understanding to go and have conversations. So I think the key thing is, you know, getting your education in the areas that matter, making sure that you're aware of costs and controlling your costs and making sure you stress test things, which ties back to risk of if something goes back to— so what could go wrong? If these things go wrong, how are you protected against it? And they're probably my 3 bits of advice.

Agree. Books are very important, and Millennial Masters has a book club that's coming out on Wednesdays with actionable key takeaways. And you mentioned 3 books that will give you 95% of what you need to know. What are your 3 key books that you've read and inspired you?

Okay, that's a good question. Oh, I read a lot of books. So I'm a big Goodreads fan. And I spend a lot of time traveling to sites in the car. So I tend to do like a lot of audiobooks in the car, which is the game changer for me, because like I said to you earlier, I can't read a single thing, but Audible changed my life. Best books. So one of my favorite books of all time is How to Win Friends and Influence People. And that talks a lot about Understanding how different people are, understanding how to talk to people in a way where you can, again, get what you want, but do it in a way where it benefits everybody and isn't just a take, take, take. Another really good book that I read is a book called Surrounded by Idiots, which I don't know if you've read it. It's an incredible book. And it talks about people's personalities. And until I read that book, so my business partner, he'll make decisions in a certain way. And I don't make decisions in that way. So I always think, why on earth have you done that? Why do you think that way? And I read that book and immediately recognized his personality type and my personality type and was like, that's why, that's why he makes that decision. Because he's that type of person, which is a good thing. It's a positive. I'm this type of person, which is also positive. So between the two of us, I'm quite optimistic. He's quite pessimistic. It works really well in the middle because we get a pretty realistic outcome. I read quite a lot of business books and I read quite a lot of autobiographies. So like, uh, you know, learning from other people. I really like the Steve Jobs one. I really like the Elon Musk book. Um, the autobiography by Isaacson. Yeah. So I would probably say one of those books and there's probably other books I'm going to think of after I go. I should have said that, but they're probably the ones.

I'll definitely come back to that. And I'll include in the show notes as well, all the books that you reference too. So nobody misses out on your essential reads. Um, who has inspired you to be the, and guided you to be the William you are today from 5 years ago, say?

Yeah, several people. Um, and several people informally and formally. So, um, and in fact, this ties back to the books that we were talking about. So I read a really good book. By someone who I've clearly never met.

I—

it's almost like his autobiography. And so the book is Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, who is someone that inspires me, because he has figured out life. Like, if you read his book, he's figured out life, and the life he lives is incredible. He lives it on his own terms, and he does the things that he wants to do. And I find that hugely inspiring. So there's informal things like that. There's people in my life that I have around me today, such as, you know, family members, my partner, Jess, these kind of people that inspire me daily. And Jess has always been my really good counsel. So if I have a problem, or if I have something that I'm trying to work through, I can talk to her and she gives me her view. Sometimes I take her view on board and go, actually, there's more here that you're seeing. So therefore, it doesn't work. But 99% of the time, she's much more level-headed than me and goes Okay, this is what you need to go do, go do that. And I'm like, okay, great, I get it. Which is good. I've gone down historically the formal mentor route, and you know, had people that I've paid and have coached me and things. And what I've generally found is that I have people around me who are just friends or acquaintances that just want— so many people just want to see you succeed, and they'll always support you. And they know that you're there to support them. So I think there's a lot of informal people that have given me some of the best advice, friends in my network. I meant, I went back to Leo earlier when I was hiring people, he gave me some really solid advice. So generally we are a culmination of how people impact us.

Looking back at the last 10 years, what would you say is the biggest sacrifice you had to do to be where you are today?

I think I'm quite fortunate that I haven't— everyone sacrifices, right? And everyone has sacrificed. I had a lot of friends that spent their 20s traveling. And I never did that. Like I never did. I always said, no, and I remember doing it after I exited from what I left one business and took a bit of a payout, I had the opportunity to go travel and said, actually, I'm going to put it into this business idea. And that will do that. And I always said to my partner, we can go travel now. And it was a choice between the two of us. And we'll have 6 months where it'll be incredible, and we'll come back and figure it out. Or we can go do this idea. And if this works out, which is never guaranteed to, but if it does, that will fund us spending the rest of our lives doing whatever we want to do. And we'll have full control of whatever we want to do. Like we can go anywhere, we can work anywhere and do that kind of thing. And I think we've always taken a long-term view. We've never taken a short-term view. And I've left money on the table. And I've postponed doing things that I've wanted to do personally and things we both want to do personally in pursuit of this longer-term vision and saying, you know what, sacrifice today, because in 5 years' time, we'll be in so much more of a better position. And so I think that's probably, you know, if I was to look back and go, well, that was a sacrifice, that was a sacrifice, that was a sacrifice. I don't really see it as a sacrifice today, because it led me to exactly where I knew it was going to get me to. And so at the time, it definitely felt like it. But I think there's a lot of stuff where I'm like, okay, it's got me to where I want to get to.

Based on that, what's one piece of advice you wish you had received when you started, but you can dish out now to founders, entrepreneurs along their journey?

Yeah, I have two. Can I give you two?

Go for it.

One, cool. The first one is it's 10 times harder than you think. So however hard you think it's going to be, however many late nights you think you're going to have, it's a lot worse. And it being a lot worse makes it a lot more rewarding. And so it's a huge accomplishment. And one of the key things is to set those milestones and make sure you, you celebrate them. One person someone in my life said to me, make sure— I remember telling them about something I've done. They said, oh great, how do you celebrate that? I was like, oh well, I've got this other stuff that I'm doing. They said, take the champagne off the shelf or you'll leave it there forever. So always set the milestones and celebrate that way. And the second point is, the longer I've been doing this and, and the more we've got towards the outcomes that we want, the more I've realized that I spent so long chasing this that I've got, and people told me this, and until I experienced, I didn't believe it, the actual enjoyment. And when you look back, is everything is in the journey, everything is in getting to those steps. But because you're so focused on just trying to achieve this outcome, you, you don't have time to think about all this stuff in the middle. But when you start to get to these outcomes, you then recognize, okay, actually I was having the most fun, I was enjoying it the most during this phase, but I was too stressed because I wanted this outcome outcome. I didn't step back and enjoy it. And someone who's one of our quite large investors and, you know, provides a lot of support to the business, he went through this process for 18 years, exited. And he always says it to me, which was, the most fun that I had, the time that I wish I'd enjoyed more was the journey. But I was so focused on the outcome. And that's why most people are. So enjoy the journey, enjoy the process. It's not guaranteed to work. But if you work hard at it, you'll get outcomes and you'll start to get outcomes, whatever they are. But yeah, just enjoy the process.

You said you started traveling a bit more and exploring the world. How has that opened up your perspectives and how do you see UK's role in the world, in the wider world right now and in the future?

I have never wanted to leave the UK more than I have recently. We are seeing a lot of people leave the UK. And I spend a lot of time in the US. Now the US is a very, very turmoil place. You've got so much division between the country. But in certain parts, like I was in Nashville a couple months back, and that's an incredible place. And when you're there, you don't feel like you're, you're kind of like insulated from the rest of what's happening in America, because it's just this place where there's this incredible vibe. And so I'm like, I want to go live there. And then I go out to Barcelona, and I'm like, I want to go Barcelona, sounds amazing. There's all these really, really cool, amazing places. I think the UK is going to have to figure out what is it going to do to attract people to not leave. And however they do that, they do that. London is an incredible city. I love being here. Obviously, you know, I left 4 years ago, left England 4 years ago to come to London. But London in the winter is horrible. It's awful. So I'd like to go and escape that. My honest truth is I want to be— and I said this quote to a friend of mine— I want to be everywhere and nowhere. And it's such a weird thing because I just want to be in so many places, but I don't want to be in any one place. And so what I think I'm trying to design my life around is just having the flexibility to go and say, I'm going to go to this place for 6 months, and I'm going to go to this place for 6 months. And that's what I'm trying to achieve and trying to get to. Because there isn't any one place where I'm like, okay, right now that's where I want to be. And eventually I'll get that, I'll go to enough places and say, okay, this is where I want to settle. But at the minute, I haven't experienced enough of it to say that's where I want to be. I just know that there are places that I enjoy more than being in the UK full time.

Any particular place that you think I could set up shop here, or I could work from here for the next few years, or you would like to be in multiple places, like you said?

Yeah, I think so. Well, before I answer that, one of the things, so I'm obviously a Lincoln lad, and having left Lincoln, I realized how much everything was on my doorstep. And I don't think I'd ever go back because that chapter of my life is now done. But I do miss Lincoln. And I took a lot of things for granted. And it, you know, always has a place in my heart. I, my best friend moved to America. He has now had a baby. I like to see, you know, I love spending time with him. So that's an attraction for me. But the attraction is more the people than the place itself. I did like Nashville. And I think it's a really, really cool place. I'm, I don't really watch much, but I was obsessed with Yellowstone. So now I've moved to this mindset of I want to go get a ranch somewhere, disappear. But yeah, I think just experience different places and then figure it out. But the US is definitely more of a pull to me than Europe.

You're getting a feeling that the UK is not being business friendly anymore towards entrepreneurs. How do you think this could be fixed without going particularly into politics if you don't wish to?

Yeah, I don't know the answer. And the reason I don't know the answer is because I don't have enough of a picture of what is the actual underlying issue. I know that the government needs to increase its spendability, let's call it. So the only way they can do that is through either taxation or adjusting things. There's a really good study that shows higher taxation leads to collecting less net revenues than lower taxation. And if you think about the US, right, the US was founded because— and I'm giving you a very, very short synopsis of it. But it was founded because the British government wanted to move from 1% to 2% tax. And they said, no way, we'll revolt, we'll go over here. And now you laugh and go, oh, look how much is taxed. I think it's very easy for me to answer from the position that I'm in, you know, and you're probably similar where we've experienced the restrictions in dividends. I mean, they've massively been affected over, say, a 2, even 3-year period where they've gone from £5,000 to £500. And the reason for that, from what I can gauge, is leveling up against sole traders. But if you think about what a limited company is against a sole trader, limited company generally, and I know there's so many, you know, small business limited companies that are out there, I have several that are registered that have nothing go through them because they're all part of a group code, all these kinds of things. So it affects the statistics. But generally, a limited company employs more people, generates revenue, more income for the, for the economy as a whole. And so I think I like what they're trying to do. But I think they need to support sole traders more rather than penalize limited companies and kind of try and bring them down. They need to level up sole traders more. Other than that, I don't know the answer because I'm not at the heart enough. I know that there's a lot of bureaucracy within councils. And I know that they could probably streamline things when things go, you know, private rather than public. They tend to— the market economy, you know, the competition beats out these inefficiencies, the market inefficiencies. But I honestly don't know the answer without spending enough time looking at it. I've not looked into it enough to say, here's my position on it, and here's what I would do. That sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but that's kind of where I'm at.

I think that's a great place to wrap up this episode of Millennial Masters. Thank you so much for for sharing these insights, William.

Thank you.

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