Hello, bonjour, salud, greeting and welcome to the leaders lounge, the success podcast for ambitious leaders in the operational excellence space. Each week, we feature powerful insights, training and interviews, helping you to deliver operational excellence in your business, leading people, executing process, amplifying profit. In that order, I'm your host, Marian, CEO of ethical maintenance and the owner of the leaders lounge. I live and breathe operational excellence now in the property
maintenance management world. Now, I know this is a mouthful, but I am so proud to bring my superpower customer experience to a starving, underserved and unloved industry, and I'm delighted to share my brownies with you too. So thank you for spending time with me. Hello everybody, and welcome to this week's operational excellence show. I'm absolutely delighted
to have a very, very special guest. All of you probably know that I started podcasting in 2020 now today, the special guest is Kevin Wilkinson, the founder of ethical maintenance. And yes, of course, my listeners know he is also my husband. Welcome to the show, Kevin.
That's good to be here. At last,
it's about time, I would say so too. Now today's topic is really about factoring property management, property factoring, as we call it in Scotland, and also very much about why would anyone actually choose a career in such an unloved and not well regarded industry at all. So the first question to you, obviously, is, Kevin, you started ethical
maintenance well before we met. And why would you even consider going out by yourself, going into entrepreneurship, considering you in the past, you had a very good career in a in in a property factor firm. First, you had also a career in the military. You worked for the government. You traveled the world. Why on earth would you do entrepreneurship in property management?
It was just serendipity. At the time I was working for. There's a long story behind it, but I was working for one of the large property management companies. I was lucky. I was in charge of their their services, their services they provided to homeowners. And to be honest, it went really, really well. We expanded rapidly. And yes, it was going, it was going really excitingly, but, but it's a but
there were some flaws in in the business model. And what was very clear is that when you provided the service, and when you talk to the homeowners that you were providing the service to, and you had the dialog and could explain what was going on and what they were paying for. Then it worked really well. But actually, if you didn't talk to them, it went horribly wrong.
And that's what happened in Scotland, in about in the 2000s let's say 2004 to 2000 Well, actually, some people would stay still ongoing, but by about 2005 2006 it was in the press about
the industry provides such a bad service. It was on the news programs on the television, and it was very clear, not only was the firm that I was working for providing a service that was causing lots and lots of problems, but it was it was also a service that actually people needed to look after their property and to have a Nice place to live and to keep the value of their investment and and somehow a lot of homeowners
didn't sort of engage with that, that concept. But where they did, it worked really well, and that was the prompt to to step out of a successful career and set up. On why, on set up ethical maintenance, and see if we could actually keep to the ethos of serving the community and and making it go well. And to be honest, since then, we've, we've more or less managed that. There's always bumps in the road, but as soon as the
homeowners start to engage. Then, then they really understand how it works and and it's gone from strength to strength. And
when we started, I think I thought that it was 2007 Correct? Yeah, when you started off with ethical maintenance at that time, I hope I'm getting this right. Otherwise you will keep you right. There was no property factors act for Scotland. Is that correct?
That's correct.
So let's expand a little bit on that. Clearly, the industry was so bad it was misused or abused, so that the Scottish government felt they had to step in, and they started consult with factors. They started to see what can happen, what should happen. How should factors be regulated, if at all, or at least registered, I'm assuming they weren't before
this, before the Act came into play. And tell us a little bit of how you ended up being part or be being an advisor to that parliamentary group in in the government, whilst at the same time you're just building a new business. I mean, juggling both is is asking a lot for common entrepreneur. At the same time you build a business, you try to bring some legislation into the
into the world of property factoring. That was, you know, you know, government's taken off a long time to get things going, and the act only came into play in 2011 How did that work for you? Why did you even engage there? You surely had your hands full otherwise.
Well, it well, it's back to so. The fundamental principles are, the homeowner has the responsibility to look after the home, yeah, but a lot don't, and that is truly amazing, and that's part of where ethical maintenance is different, because we talk to them and say, Look, this is your responsibility now, to look after their home, and you can imagine, in a block, block of flats, they probably look after their own flat, but who looks after the how they get into the
building? Who looks after the roof, who cleans the stairs, who looks after the garden? Well, it's those homeowners that do it, but because so many homeowners did not engage with that. Then most property factors took it on themselves just to get on and do it. But they took it on themselves in such a way without telling the homeowners. They they did jobs without
telling the homeowners. And sometimes when they asked homeowners, when the homeowners asked for work, it was never done, and sometimes it was not done and it was charged for so you can see that that's why it got in the press and the news. And then as soon as you the homeowner didn't pay for work that wasn't done, then the property factors, debt collection procedures, got into gear and and pursued these people for for payment. And that's why it got in the press.
That's why it got on the news. And then people started writing to their MPs and to the the MSPs, and that's why Parliament took it up. Now, in fairness to Parliament, they said, well, we better do something about this. We better find out what's going on. We better talk to the industry and and before they did that, they got consumer, consumer focus Scotland and the English equivalent of the consumer Association, to look at property factoring. And basically, they came up with the
industries broken. There is no dialog between the customer and the service provider. The customer can't walk away. The customer is stuck with a poor service. And that's why, fundamentally, where, where it all went wrong. And because of that, the government then said, well, we better talk to everybody and ask the property managers why they weren't talking to the homeowners, why they were not helping the
homeowners. And because we so they so the government was talking to loads of people in the industry, but because we were different, and we were set up to do exactly what the government wanted, and actually not what the government wanted, what all the homeowners wanted. Then they invited in as as part of the panel to advise on what was going on. And that was not only in setting up the property factors act, but the key part of that was the code of conduct for property factors, for property
managers. And we had a major input into saying, you know, there needs to be that dialog. You need to enable the homeowners to talk to you, and you need to tell them what you a, what you're doing, and B, that they're in charge, and that tell them what they're paying for, which in most industries you just said, was a pretty basic thing, but it. It just wasn't happening in property management in Scotland. Hence the government stepped in, and hence they talked to lots of
people, and we were part of that. And
it's interesting, this communication piece that you just alluded to is clearly the one that still today makes or breaks the community and the property the success of a property factoring company, as we can see every day, as we now work together as a result of that engagement with the Scottish Government, you obviously got noted, and you were even published in the parliamentary review in 2020, and that was in support of recognizing the ethical
maintenance contribution to the industry, the reputation of the industry, and how the industry had changed. That was, if I recall correctly, probably the first outing as a husband and wife team, when we got invited by Lord blanket to the House of Lords for to celebrate that recognition, and at that gathering, there were, we were asked a number of times, you
know, what is this with ethical maintenance? CIC, why did you set your firm up as a community interest company, where, in fact, it is just not much different than a limited company. Can you just talk to us about that? Because people then think it's a community interest company. Oh, well, it's a charity, is it?
There's two areas that you've just covered over there being published in the parliamentary review, obviously being engaged in the setting up of the property factors act 2011 then then we got some profile out of that, but then continuing to provide the service, and growing, and then growing the business and being recognized across the industry as something different, and then continuing to do it, and getting all our work from people who actually then use the
property of actors act to switch from their their the service that they didn't want, to a service that they did want, and that was part of why we were recognized by the parliamentary review. And in essence, the parliamentary review was, is a Westminster organization set up to promote British industry. And there's all different sectors. There's manufacturing, there's it in electronics, and there's a property section, and in that we were recognized as an industry best practice provider because
of the way our services are delivered. And then that got us into the parliamentary review and published and obviously being invited down to Westminster, which was all very, very nice. Yes, that's different. So and then the second part of what you talked about was becoming a Community
Interest Company. It really the challenge when we started out, is if the consumer Association and consumer focused Scotland said there are one or two good ones, but actually most of the industry is not providing a service, the service could be improved considerably. What's the point in changing property factor? You jump in, out of the frying pan, into the fire, you're going from one bad service provider to the next service provider that may or may not be any better. And so we
thought, well, how are we going to distinguish ourselves? Why would anybody trust us? Why aren't we going to be just assumed to be like every other property manager? Yeah, and looking around, and that's why we became a social enterprise serving our communities, and were registered as a community interest company. And the two, what the community interest company style of legal setup is, there is a regulator of
community interest companies. There is loose regulation of property factors now, through the Scottish through the property factors act. But actually, anybody who reads the results of the first tier Tribunal will know that lots of homeowners think the tribunals are could be given a lot more power. So we are doubly regulated. We're regulated the same ethical maintenance is doubly regulated. We're regulated by the property factors act through the first
tier property tribunal. If anybody doesn't, then that's basically a court. In fact. Why the tribunal one of the. Reasons the tribunal was set up is that there were so many claims against the existing property factors that it clogged the courts up, and they had to set up a tribunal that was experienced in running property matters and that could deal with the volume of cases against the property factors in a timely
way. And the point of being a community interest company is, not only did we have that regulation, like all the other property managers, but we've got a second tier of regulation through the Community Interest Company regulator. And basically, if there is a complaint that is upheld, then the community interest company regulator has the power to serve management orders on ethical maintenance, to tell us to serve our community, and if we don't, the regulator can remove the
directors. That would be me and no other property factor. Can you actually remove the directors of the company for not providing a service. So that's why we went down the line to to be different and to give our homeowners the reassurance that they really did have control, whereas the if going with somebody else in the industry, they don't have that level of control. And
that really leads nicely to that distinction. There is a clear distinction how to serve the community versus how serving an individual. Can you elaborate on that? Because you said earlier on in the in our discussion, people look after their own flat or after their own house, if they are talking a housing estate, but they hardly ever consider the environment, either the block of floods they live in, or if they live in an estate, the playground that's part of the
estate, or whatever it may be. How? How does this service? How do you serve a community? Basically, because you can hardly say to an individual, rather, can't help you. Sorry.
When anybody buys a property, there are the regulations on basically how they live with the neighbors and how they get on with the neighbors. And it's clearer in a block of flats you mentioned there the environment and the playgrounds. But actually, in a block of flats, it's either more important who looks after the roof if there's a leak in the roof, is it just the top flats that pay, or is it all of them?
But basically, when every flat owner in that block bought the flat, then they agreed, through the legal agreement when they bought the flat, the title deeds that they would contribute to the repair of the roof. They would contribute to the insurance of the building. They would contribute to the repairs of the common areas. And yes, it does throw up issues individual flat owners or and the same on housing estates as well.
Individuals want different levels of service, and that's and that's fine, but what they agreed when they bought their property was that they would work with their neighbors, and they would all come to an agreement on the common areas and the common parts, and then they would all pay for the maintenance and the repair of those areas. So in essence, an individual can't come to us and say, we want the stairs cleaned every week, and the next their name, their neighbor comes to
us, oh, I don't want to pay for all that. I just want to clean once a month. Point is they have to come to an agreement together, and then, as their agent, we'll do whatever they then they ask us to do. And so that's you can't it's not like being a customer in a shop. When you say, Well, I'd like to buy that. I'd like to pay for that service. You've got to talk to your neighbors, and you've all got to decide what the service is. And that's the difference between serving a community.
It's a community decision, not an individual decision.
And you just mentioned that it's regulated in title deeds. And in all fairness, the very first house I bought in Scotland. I didn't have a clue. I didn't know that I had the title deeds. I didn't know that I was supposed to know what they said, and I didn't actually know that they regulated how I paid my factor. So since joining, obviously at the ethical maintenance team, I've read countless title deeds and at the staff are really thought they were gibberish.
They're very they are written in endless sentences with no comma and no full stop. They're just they're just a whole lot of legal jargon. How do you make sure that your homeowners, or I should now say our homeowners, really understand. That their title deeds are actually the backbone of how they live together as community and what they can do and what they cannot do. There's various
different ways. But right at the start of the service, from ethical maintenance, we tell them about the service and why they need to pay for it. That's the written statement of services. And it will say in your title deeds, this burden, this section, this paragraph, it says you've got to pay for the maintenance of the common areas. So right at the start, they know that they're going to have to pay for it. Whether they all read it, is, is a different question, and when
they do really? Do they understand it? Probably some do, some don't. But we meet with our homeowners every year and and basically the point of meeting with them is to say, how has it gone so far? Can we improve on anything? And do you want something different? And what do you want going forward. And it's
at that point, what do you want going forward? We say, well, that's fine, and it's great that that you're here at this meeting, but actually, to work together as a community, you need if, let's say you're in the tenement with eight flats, then we need at least five of you to come to the meeting and say, This is what we want. So we explain it how they work together at the meetings that we hold. And then some people think, well, actually, oh, we had an interesting one the other
day. The building was built in the 1970s and there's a few owners now with electric electric cars, which is totally understandable, and they want to put an electric charger on the outside of the building to service the cars. Now it is it
was a new estate, a new block of flats. It would probably be there already, but the deeds written in 1970 didn't even imagine electric cars or water, and it just said, and an owner who's not allowed to change the outside of the building us, yeah, so, so interestingly, the first thing is to say, and, and what's, what's really got their attention and for the community Here is, is that a couple of owners have said, No, we don't want electric car chargers on the outside of this building,
and the deeds say we don't. We're not allowed to make changes to the outside of the building unless we all agree on it. But the deeds also say that the community can make rules of how they live together, and so we've gone into the deeds and gone through paragraph by paragraph and said, Well, you can do this, and you can do that, and this is how you work together to do this. So as issues arise, so how we go into this discussion as issues arise, then we explain to them what
their deeds see. And the point of this is, unlike homeowners, feel other factors deal with this is we make sure our homeowners are in charge. They know what's going on, they know what their responsibilities are, and they know how to make decisions, and then they make the decisions. We don't ethical maintenance doesn't make any decisions. It's always the homeowners that make the decisions. And
I think that's a fundamental insight, that we as the factor, as the property factor, we can only do what you ask us to do. It's actually pretty straightforward anything that we as factor, factors are not asked to do. We cannot just do, or if we do, we have no handle to issue a bill or literally, we don't have a legal a legal leg to stand on, haven't we? If we were just to go ahead and do things and then charge homeowners for it without prior agreement or at least a
framework to obtain that agreement. Yeah, that's basically it. So, yeah, we discussed that a couple of times. My listeners know you're my husband. They also know that I have worked in the in the customer experience space for many, many, many years, and when I joined ethical maintenance, for me, it was very clear, I'm not joining for the factoring, end of saying I'm joining for the homeowner experience side of things, for what we loosely call CX. And therefore I probably,
when I first started, went in a little bit. No. Light. And thought, Oh, well, I can, I can take this thing and turn it around. It's not quite that simple. But what we have done, or what we are doing in ethical maintenance, very, very clearly, is holding this communication to our homeowners really high, whether or not they like to engage. And that's their prerogative, but we engage and we change the number of things,
how we how we deal with our homeowners. We issue newsletters, for example, we issue quarterly, monthly, whatever update is needed to the homeowners. We meet with them. You brought me in, and I'm sure there wasn't an easy decision, although you always said you wanted me in the business, but sometimes, surely you think, Oh, my God, she drives me, Matt, would that be a fair assessment?
Absolutely not. We've both got different approaches to there's two issues and and that what makes a good, a strong, a stronger team. We don't always agree and totally comfortable not agreeing. But then when we don't agree, we've just got to find a way forward.
I think it goes with that. Say we agree to disagree, and then we just need to, we need to find, we really need to find the way forward. And I think here is where our leadership colors, if you want to go quickly into that, not in
much detail. So for our listeners, we did have a team day in August where we in depth, looked at how we lead, what type of color, if you, if you know, if you're familiar with the color coded leadership or the color coded behaviors, if not, you can go and get the book that's called surrounded by idiots, by Thomas Ericsson. You can read it all in there. Long story short, I am a very clear Red Leader, which means I am very focused on processes. I'm very focused on procedures. But
Kevin, you are red and green, right? If I remember correctly, yeah. And how does that show?
So I've done loads of these psychometric things, from Myers Briggs to the Thomas International to Colby to to whatever. But fundamentally, in what we've got four corners blue is the steady person that likes to follow procedures and doesn't like change a lot. Green is the team worker who brings everything together. Yellow is the artistic, quick start, sort of person who would be good in sales and marketing and red is the process driven. But if you don't follow the process, then L
mend you. So most of the time, I'm green, which means I'm I'm supportive and and there's things like, there's no such thing as a bad question, just a poor teacher. So if you haven't been taught how to do something, then it's great asking, and I'll show you how to do it. However, on the third time of asking exactly the same question, I flipped from Green, supportive to red, process and dominant. And say, this has been shown to you three times already. If you're asking a different
question, I'll flip back to green. But if you're asking the same question again, then it's no longer the poor teacher, it's the poor student, and you need to pull your socks up and and people know that I can make that explicitly clear, and that's how my leadership style works. And
so far, I think we, we all know that we are watched by our teams, probably more so than you know the team members watch each other. We have already established most of them are blue. That doesn't make it extra exactly the most, easiest combination people waiting to be guided. Where, in a growing business, you need people that take the lead, and they just, they drive, and they just do things. Hence, when I came in, for me, it's always very it's very clear you have to
inform people. You have to educate people, and you empower them. Talk a little bit to our listeners, how we do this. I don't know. You will say that these are not your words. They are my words, and they are I accept that. So information, education and empowerment. How does this show now in ethical maintenance?
So that's fundamentally how we work with the homeowners. Very clearly, most of them don't understand the responsibilities they took on when they bought the property, and so we we help them and show them where it is in their deeds. And if they don't have a copy of the deeds, show how to get a copy of the deeds, and we provide the information. And then once they've got the information, then we educate them on using it. So to do this job, it me. What it says in the
deeds is this. So this is how you need to approach it. You can't just say, I would like the stairs painted green this week. You have to work with everybody else and and so we educate them. And. Then on the empowerment, we actually hold meetings and
invite all the homeowners to come to it and what we see. But you can run your own meetings, and we'll support you and and in some properties, they do, that's when they get the best service, because they're all working together, they're empowered to do stuff and, you know, and if they're not running their own stuff, and they want to come to meetings, so come to discussions on on what they want with us, then we say, well, and the way you're going to get your result is by talking to your neighbors
before you come to the meeting, and work through the issues and how the votes going to run. So you are all empowered to make a decision at the meeting. And really that's that's the way it goes.
And I would say the same applies to our team members. We know that they there's a lot to know in our industry, so we offer them the opportunity to inform themselves about what does the property the Property Act in Scotland actually say, what, what tribunal have been held? They
cannot. They can read up on that we we put them to education. You are probably the one that does that much more when it comes to the subject matter than I do, because, you know, inside out and then it makes you go and just do it, because, you know, we do things based on what we know and the best foot forward. Yes, sometimes it might not go right, but chances are 80% of the time it is, it is right and it is, it is good, from what,
what do you now see? How, how the firm has grown? How do you make sure that this ethos stays alive, that you are not falling into the same scheme of property factoring that you absolutely never wanted to fall into in the first place. Basically
the procedures in the company, where we didn't want to be is we don't want to be doing work that has not been instructed and that the community don't want to pay for. And basically all the procedures are in place. Have the homeowners actually voted for this and have they actually paid for it? That's the essence of it. So with those it can't actually, with ethical maintenance, it can't actually run any differently, because that's how all the work and all
the jobs are set up. If somebody, if one of the team, went off and instructed work, then that hadn't been voted for by the homeowners. You know, they know they're in full breach of the procedures. Yeah,
so procedures really then form the background, as we said earlier, based on the title deeds, the procedures kick in, and based on what the homeowners vote wanted in the various meetings, we act upon their vote whether or not we they wanted a and by when they wanted and how. So it's it's really again, it comes into the community, and it comes into communication, and it comes into making sure that we all know what has been said at any one time on behalf of the whole owner
that be fair? Yeah, no, that's the way it is, yeah.
So from that on, I can imagine that probably one or the other listener now thinks, hmm, I have a factor. I don't know. I don't know anything about it, or I don't know anything about factoring. And I want to know more. I would quite like to talk to ethical maintenance. Where do they go? Kevin, go
to the website, www, dot ethical maintenance.org, that's O, R, G, and you'll get all the contact details. And just phone up and say, I listen to that podcast. I'd like to know more. And we'll get back to you. Brilliant.
So all our listeners, we will put that link into the show notes. If you want to get in contact, fill in the contact form, or better, ring us. Give us a call. Say who you are, refer to the podcast, and either Kevin myself or one from our team will get back to you. Kevin. Thank you very much for being my guest. It was an absolute pleasure and our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it gave you a bit of an insight of what we do and how we are positively different,
as in, factoring than our competitors are. Thank you very much. Bye, bye. Before we wrap this episode up, I would like to tell you about my mastermind the user lounge. This is a small by invitation only room for eight to 10 executives in the property maintenance management industry or related services. So for example, accountants dealing with property management trainers. Human Resources, etc. It's a place for an honest, elevated conversation around what's going on, where we
struggle with and how we can support each other better. I only open this forum once or twice a year, so if you would like to be considered for it, please do let me know either via instant message on LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile or via email, that's Marianne at the leaderslounge.co.uk, and please put the leaders lounge into the subject line. Please leave us a review on your chosen podcasting path platform. It really helps, because it helps to get the world out to leaders who want to
make a difference in their industry. I will be very, very grateful. Thank you very much for that. And last but not least, let me tell you, this podcast is teamwork. I couldn't do it on my own. A big shout out to my audio technician and technology. With technology, technology, visit Mike Roberts. He is the owner of making digital real, an awesome support
to have. Thank you so much, Mike. If you want to find out what we are up to, head over to ethical maintenance.org where you can find us and until next time bye, bye,