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E28 Level Up Team Results with Dan Holland · Stronger Business Together

• Granger Forson: So this is the Stronger Business Together podcast where business owners learn from other owners. No theory, no gurus, just real journeys and overcoming real hurdles. Today I'm joined by Dan Holland who runs Signature Stays and like any business owner he's in that middle of building things, fixing things and growing something that really matters to him. So Dan, welcome. Daniel Holland: Thank you, Granger. Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head there. yeah, I look forward to the the podcast today and running through those bits you mentioned before. Granger Forson: Fantastic! So let's do Act 1, your business. In plain English, what does your business do? Daniel Holland: Yes, great question. So yeah, we run a property management company specializing in shortlets. So it's a shortlet management company where we work with landlords, we manage their properties, run them as short short stays primarily, and then manage that entire kind of process for them. and essentially like we offer kind of higher returns off the back of it because we're letting it on a nightly basis instead of like a traditional monthly kind of rental. and we essentially take care of the whole process for that, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: It does indeed. Who do you love helping? You talk about landlords. What are they typically dealing with? What are they trying to achieve? Daniel Holland: Yeah, it's a really good question. and especially prevalent at the minute with the recent regulation which has just come in, the renters' rights bill. so a lot of landlords are panicking about all the the upcoming regulation, how does it affect them, what have they got to get in place, and how that kind of affects their returns. as well as obviously juggling all of the should I keep this property, what are my other kind of options? how am I gonna hand this down to my kids? So that they're they're facing a lot of challenges. It's a very difficult time to be a normal landlord for people. so essentially like we're trying to take that stress away from them, guide them down a different path, which is away from traditional rentals and more short term, medium term letting, which is more lucrative and avoids a lot of the legislation which is restrictive and also costs landlords a lot more money. Granger Forson: Hmm excellent well taking some of my big problems away as landlords and bringing me more money fantastic We definitely want that so so Dan. How did business start? What was that original spark? Daniel Holland: Yeah, r really good question. So so originally I was working in London for a financial consultancy company, Alvarez and Marcel. Like good job. was was enjoying it, but I think the realisation hit about three or four months in that I don't really want to be doing this and working that corporate job for the rest of my life, which originally I thought I'd that was me. I was gonna be in London. I was I just thought that was gonna be my path. off the back of that, I started learning about property. As a family, we we had owed had and owned kind of properties our kind of entire life. So it was natural kind of focus for me. Basically did a lot of training, invested a lot of money in my education. And then off the back of that started transforming some of our properties, which are let out as single edge long term rentals, which were not doing that well. They were just covering face basically. and turned those all to service accommodation, like our short leg kind of model. And off the back of that, they performed like really strongly. and then subsequently from that we've started managing properties for other landlords now. and essentially over the past two and a half years we built that up and built that up and now we're exploring different regions of the UK. so managing basically anywhere from Birmingham direct down to London, Cornwall. we're based in Cheltenham myself, so basically expanding now and built out teams off the the back of that. But it all started, yeah, me not liking my previous job and wanting to to get out of that, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Yeah it does. Well fantastic and what a change for doing that and you know that really good grounding within the family and understanding property but then taking that to a whole new level and doing that short let and seeing the profits change and now growing a business around it. Fantastic. So what does the business look like today in terms of size and shape? Daniel Holland: Yeah, yeah. So we're we're definitely in a growth period at the minute. We want to get to around seventy-five properties by the end of the year. We're currently managing around thirty-five. So we're looking to onboard around five, six properties per month. obviously the the team has grown significantly from the start. It was just myself basically. From that, my brother's got on board, so he works full time. my mum's in the business pretty much full time now, so she's managed to transition from her previous dentistry work. to work in the business most of the time now, which is very nice. and there's a few more people in the team as well. I've got an operations manager who works full-time. in our like we've offices in Cheltenham now, near the brewery quarter. So he's based there. we've got a virtual assistant who works from abroad, and we have a London partner who's based in London, and we're always growing our team. We've got two new people joining next week as well. So we're very much like in the growth kind of cycle. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: bringing people on, 'cause basically we've got to cope with what's coming in the next six months, which is obviously dealing with a lot of leads which are coming in, and ultimately onboarding more properties. So we're just building up that base and that team now at the minute, to then to then scale again, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Yeah, brilliant. Well, what a fantastic growth, but a real family affair as well as Daniel Holland: Yeah. Granger Forson: that growth has happened and now you're reaching out and developing into other regions. Awesome. So, OK, why do customers pick you? How do you delight them then? Daniel Holland: Yeah, yeah, really good, really good question. So the way we differentiate ourselves is generally I try and do everything better as a company than everyone else. but to take that probably to a deeper level, like obviously we're again like a short land management company, right? There's other companies like us in the in the market. but we like to think we go an extra mile. So where we do our focus is we focus a lot on housing businesses, housing relocation stays, housing insurance claims when People need a home away from home after a fire or a flood, housing contractors. So we we focus heavily on that market and building that that relationship. So they're they're paying a nightly rate, but these people might stay for one, two, three, four up to that we had stays up to nine months last year, still paying that nightly rate. Where most management companies would just stick the property on Airbnb and they might get it might do all right in the summer, or you might get a sporadic kind of, yeah, do it might do all right in the summer, then you sporadic kind of stays during the winter. So it's not that all year round return, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: so we try to provide that all year round. So yes, we're like we're really good in the summer and we might do more shorter stays in the summer, but we have the flexibility to then transition to longer stays with the other partners we built up in the industry. so yeah it's not just okay short lets really the real value we add is more the medium term stays. Which is why we call it it's called service accommodation, because we're providing a home away from home with all this essential services. so that people can stay for a longer period of time rather than just being in a hotel, if that makes sense. So obviously we're heavily investing in Granger Forson: Mmm. Daniel Holland: our relationships that we built up. So we have all these contacts at insurance companies and agencies who facilitate all these long term stays. We do a lot of outreach for these. So that's where we like in terms of like actual delivery and earning people more money, that's really where we kind of stand out. and yeah, we always try and like we're landlords ourselves. We've been through all the struggles so we can relate to these kind of people and really like building relationships personally with with landlords. So most property management companies don't have an office, like a physical facility where a landlord can actually go in and speak to a human. Everyone's kind of moved away from the high street to now online, if that makes sense. So where Granger Forson: Right. Daniel Holland: where you see like the high streets dominated with estate agents, you don't see them with short term rental kind of management companies and or at all really. So for us having that presence on the high street where okay, if you want to come and speak to us in person, we're not hiding, we're not going anywhere. You can come and have a genuine conversation. We have that as well. So I suppose yeah the the delivery aspect but also the the physical kind of presence and kind of any any Granger Forson: Brilliant. Daniel Holland: any like location we're taking on is we have someone in that location to obviously speak with landlords. Granger Forson: Yeah, awesome. I love that. know that both physical as well as online, that ability for people to come and talk to you, adding that extra service. But short term stays through other types, not just Airbnb. I think that's a really interesting business model that you're developing and growing there. So you talked about leads, you talked about lots of leads coming in. How do you go about generating leads normally? Daniel Holland: Yeah, good question. Really good question. and this is something we're investing in all the time, new systems with AI and things I can touch on that in a bit. but a lot of leads come through referrals. and as we grow and take on more properties, we get referrals from from different kind of people, whether that's our existing landlords or also people we partner with, deal sources who source deals for other people, but then once the project's finished, then they need someone to manage it. So that's like the referral aspect. We a lot of leads from Facebook ads. So that's probably our main lead generation tool. so Karen, my mum, does a lot of videos for that. And then we probably get two or three leads a day, which come through the Facebook leads. and then yeah, otherwise it's like other leads we do, like advertising magazines. There's physical physical marketing as well. So magazines in locations, newspaper articles. We have some physical signs up in different locations. So r a real kind of mix and where we're Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: doubling down is using AI to bolster that because it can scrape data from all different kinds of sources now and then help us process those leads quicker. Granger Forson: Yes. Daniel Holland: so that's the next step. But yeah, currently probably our main lead generation is probably Facebook ads. Granger Forson: Awesome, it's not often I meet people that are successful through Facebook ads. Fantastic, well done. So what are you aiming for for the business in the next 12 months and why? Daniel Holland: Yeah, really good question. So as we're on this like rapid kind of growth cycle, so we want to try and by the end of this year, we want to try and be at around seventy-five properties, basically. but on a broader kind of theme of things, it's setting up the business like properly. So obviously we've got a load of people now involved, which is essentially allows me to move myself back and think about the broader picture of the the business. So Taking my back my time is probably one big thing as well. So I can focus on the bigger picture growth. but also making sure everyone's got like a clear, dedicated role. Like we have the resource now. Like previously it started with me doing everything. Then my brother came on board, so he dealt he dealt with all the guest communication. So took that off my plate. And now we've got other people on board who deal with help me deal with the landlords. So like there's essentially like I've essentially trying to remove myself from the entire process probably over the next year as well. And then it it becomes more managing team. and building something that's not reliant on me being there, if that makes sense. so that's probably the big big goal Granger Forson: It does, yes, no, that's really good. Yeah, and that's a natural cycle of business growth and development. You know, we're the center of everything and then over time we try to extract ourselves by bringing more people in. The biggest trick is actually making sure you do extract yourselves and you build the systems and the team around you to make that happen because time and time again, you know, as we help business owners at the Stronger Business together, we see that actually business owners get stuck in the middle and we need to fix that often and make that happen. But yeah, great. Great, we look forward to seeing what happens next over the next 12 months. So let's move on to Act 2 now on the journey of the business. So in a business as we're growing and developing, there are highs and lows all the time. What are some highs and lows that you could share with us? Daniel Holland: Yeah. and it's constant highs and lows. more probably lows than highs, I would say. so yeah, well I suppose the first high would be when I got the first payment from someone who stayed in the property. and booking started flowing in. I was like, this actually works when I probably didn't a hundred percent believe it until you actually saw the money coming into your your bank account at the end of the day. So that was probably like the number one high which sticks out. And then lows, there's no real major ones, it's just day to day stuff happens, things go wrong, I don't know, people in the business are unhappy, cleaners unhappy, maintenance person's unhappy, landlord's unhappy. So it's just dealing with those day to day. I wouldn't say there's no real major lows, as such, but just more like constant, like it's more like an up and down, up and down kind of cycle that you just gotta stay level with, I suppose. if that makes sense. Granger Forson: yeah yeah absolutely and when it has got hard and difficult you know what have you learned about yourself and your business in those times Daniel Holland: Yeah, you just gotta keep showing up at the end of the day. Most days are gonna be pretty crap, or you'll you'll find a a challenge and you just gotta work through it and then that's when you're on the good days, essentially. Well, that's what I've kind of found. It's just showing up every day, working hard, dealing with those issues. don't get too emotional over it. things happen and then just keep showing up basically. So Granger Forson: Yeah, don't get too emotional about it, it's so very true. Yes, we can get Daniel Holland: Yeah. Granger Forson: to... and often those things are very short-term, they're only happening right here, right now. We can fix that and move on, but yeah, we can get a bit wound up about that. One of the things that you're doing is you're taking on people. One of our principles is about growing your people so they can grow your business. So what have you learned about people over the last year and developing them? Daniel Holland: Yeah, it's a really good, really good question. I think it's been really good because I've been on this journey with my family. Like I've been on it with my brother, with my mum. Like we've kind of started this thing and grown it together, which has been like really nice. so yeah, obviously making them come and essentially be in the business and work, we're all essentially aligned in the same direction, basically. So that made it initially probably really easy. That we're all working to the same goal, we're all essentially, yeah, living together. still a f a family as such. So that's probably easiest to start with. But then obviously as you bring on external people, it's a different kettle of fish. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: so we've got really lucky our main operations manager Aaron is brilliant. So we did quite a long hiring process there. but he's turned out amazing. But we have had some virtual assistants. So they they work abroad essentially and deal with a lot of the guest communications. We've had some poor ones of of them where Yeah, they're difficult to manage. Like very difficult to to to manage. And you have to be constantly on top of them. and they're never gonna share the same passion and you you can't really expect them to, but you want them to have a certain level of I don't know, commitment to the role. So we've been Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: through a few different virtual systems, like we're hiring someone new next week. so I suppose it's yeah, you can do all the checks you you want, but then when they join, that's the real kind of test, isn't it? And Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: Like sometimes it can work well with like our and our operations manager. And then sometimes we've had bad experiences when we've hired more guest guest service kind of roles. and it's yeah, it's a process we need to get like for me, I need to get better at because over the next five years as we grow, it's like that's probably the most important role. is hiring is hiring the right people. So for me, Granger Forson: It is. Yeah. Daniel Holland: it's like I need to continue to like level up and improve in these kind of processes and Like we like for me I constantly get mentored by people who are probably five years ahead of me, so I can ask ask these kind of questions. but yeah, Granger Forson: Yes. Daniel Holland: I suppose it's all part of that kind of growth cycle and and and learning to deal with people. Granger Forson: It is absolutely and learning how to find the right people is one of the biggest skills for a business to allow the growth to take place. I follow some of Stephen Bartlett's stuff and he talks about he's a recruitment expert rather than the business owner it feels at times but he's constantly checking that his team are strong at the recruitment. He doesn't do a lot of recruitment himself anymore but he's always sense checking because that's one of most important. aspects of a business for growth. So what's maybe a habit that you've put in place in the business that keeps you all strong together? Daniel Holland: Yeah, yeah, really good question. we have weekly meetings, which I think's really good. We started those this year. so yeah, every well it's actually today now because we had a bank holiday yesterday. every Monday morning, yeah, just get together for an hour, like recap of kind of what's happened over the last week, any challenges we found, what we're heading for this week, what we want to achieve, and then everyone's aligned in the same direction, then we can push forward together. So that's definitely helped just having those weekly meetings, I would say. just to ensure everyone's in the know 'cause otherwise you keep cracking on and then three four weeks later no one knows what everyone else is doing and you're moving in different directions. So probably that alignment piece is definitely something we've worked on. Granger Forson: Yeah, it's important to bring everybody together and help everybody to understand alignment, structure, but also just learn from each other and those little problems that have taken place and how we fix them on what we're doing. Fantastic. So we believe in also simplifying your business, the stronger business together. So what did you maybe remove from the business that has brought energy back and simplified things? Daniel Holland: Yeah, it's a really good question. I suppose we're probably going through that process at the minute. Like there's a lot of moving parts and now we're like simplifying this into okay, we've got what five, six clear roles here. This is this covers the entire operations of the business, whether that's dealing with the leads, whether that's the operation side of things, dealing with customers. Basically there's a set number of clear roles and everyone essentially has those responsibilities to follow. so it's clear that okay, you're doing this, these are your roles and responsibilities, and everyone's pulling like their weight in their own area rather than there being so much crossover and then pe there's no clear focus for individual. So that's where we're trying to nail this at the minute, and that's with new hires to fill any gaps we've had. but also repositioning people in the team to get the most out of of them. So they're all just, yeah, focusing on their roles rather than mixed and it gets a bit messy, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah absolutely. Bring in that structure and organization and make Daniel Holland: Yeah. Granger Forson: sure things aren't missed through the cracks as they say as you grow. So you mentioned AI already. Where has AI genuinely helped you and where has it probably been a distraction? Daniel Holland: Really question. I it's generally gonna change like our industry massively. and we're already implementing things like today and at the moment that are gonna change over massively. So for example, like we get inquiries from guests all the time who communicate with obviously us through loads of different platforms. like we're implementing a system over the next month which handles all those inquiries without us having to do anything. It's autonomous, we train it. It's a knowledge base, we build it up and it'll it'll answer all the questions within all the channels, within WhatsApp, within our emails. It'll do all that autonomously as long as we there's an onboarding kind of process with that. And also handle all phone calls. So we get a lot of phone calls from guests asking the same questions. What's the lockbox code? Where's the lockbox created? What's the checkout time? Check-in. Probably 90% of calls are kind of repetitive answers that we have to again pick up the phone. takes a lot of our operational managers' time. It's the same answer every time. So if a b basically the is the AI is gonna in your in our voice, you can clone it your voice if you want to, answer a lot of those questions. And then if it can't answer anything, then it will just like ping us a message saying, okay, we couldn't actually answer this to guest inquiry. And then we make the outbound call if that makes sense. So instead of us answering twenty calls a day, we might make one outbound call. So that just means we hire less staff, we're a lot more lean, and again the issues are handled quicker because it's an AI. so that's kind of one of the main things at the moment, but also kind of lead generation as I touched on earlier. So building tools like we've got a tech guy who we work with who's we're building out over the next year. We've kind of got a roadmap of how we're gonna make our business more efficient in all the different areas. And it's starting with like obviously the leads because that's bringing on properties is the most important thing for obviously our business. So Granger Forson: Yep. Daniel Holland: How do we get all those leads? Where are all these landlords coming from? Let's sit down and work this all out. So then we can scrape data from here, scrape data from there, pull it all into one area where we can track it all better. So if we get 100, 50, 100 leads a month, instead of it being kind of everywhere and no one really knowing where all the data is or where the pictures for properties are, it's all in one centralized location and we can manage that process a lot easier. So yeah, it's gonna massively change our industry, but it's again. It's it's just it's efficiency, right? You're still doing the same kind of task. It's just making you and your employees more efficient and means you don't have to hire as many. So it's just essentially anything that's a repetitive task is just gonna be replaced. Granger Forson: Brilliant, I love that. And that's that real power of AI. It can deal with those, the simplicity activity at the moment. There'll be more complexity, it'll be able to do as you train it more, as you take that forward. So, I just love that answer, what you've talked about and yeah, really excited to see how that grows and develops for you. Thank you for sharing that. So when the business gets busy and... There's lots of things to do. How do you focus on making sure you're doing the right things? How do you keep the business healthy even when it's getting really busy? Daniel Holland: Yeah, and that's probably for me is like the the leader of it all is the most difficult thing. There's I've got an endless to do list. I suppose I've got to become content with not being able to clear that every day. but yeah, focusing on the high value tasks and like for me it's like blocking out time to focus on certain things. Like the start of the what the kind of main three things I wanna kind of achieve, make sure I get those done. And then blocking out time in the week and literally turning my phone off. have on do not disturb unless there's something really important, then the the team can phone me. 'Cause otherwise it's like I get so many calls, so many emails. I just don't have the time to focus on the the high value task. So yeah, a lot of probably a lot of planning and then removing distractions really. Granger Forson: Well done, that's fantastic. I work with number of clients who just to try to get them there will take me six months or more so you're doing it already. Awesome, well done. So let's move on to Act 3 now, our hurdles. So what's the hurdle question you've chosen for us to have a conversation about today? Daniel Holland: well you have to you can have to remind me of that, sorry. I forgot already. Granger Forson: So we talked about the variability in performance across our Daniel Holland: Yes, yeah. Granger Forson: team and how we would go about trying to manage that situation. Okay. Daniel Holland: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, definitely. so yeah, and again, this is probably something we've maybe started to see or gonna see more of. and especially in like for for us, it's mainly gonna be prevalent in like sales department. you're always gonna have people who are better at sales and high performers, low performers, and how you kind of manage that. so I Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: suppose for us it's First of all is having it like just clear like data, objective data. Okay, are you tracking everything? what Granger Forson: Okay. Daniel Holland: are in in each each person's key kind of metrics? So like for us, obviously leads come in and then you have a percentage of or they get to each step and then percentage you close. So it's making Granger Forson: Okay. Daniel Holland: it clear at the start like okay, obviously this is this job's performance driven. and you're gonna be monitored on those kind of key metrics and targets. but also it's like with a sales role, like it's better to have it commission based rather than just a base kind of salary because ultimately they're hungry to drive sales as high as possible which ultimately is going benefit myself for kind of growth. So it's probably Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: how you structure the the agreement with the person in in in the first place. Granger Forson: Mm-hmm. Daniel Holland: but also yeah it's it it's not letting it just drift on. Like if there's some Granger Forson: Okay, so. Daniel Holland: if there's yeah, I'm carry on. Granger Forson: So let's break this down a bit then. So we've got different types of roles within our business. So when we talk Daniel Holland: Yeah. Granger Forson: about variable performance, we have to be careful about actually understanding what the performance requirements are for each of the roles. So we've talked Daniel Holland: Yeah. Granger Forson: about a sales role, whether you do it commission based or not, always love to have that conversation and debate. And how do we keep people hungry on that stage? But let's talk about some other roles within a business then. starting condition would be a business, you know, that wrote in with this question, they probably don't have any real definition of roles and structures and performance. So where would be a good starting condition then? What would they want to start with first of all to help define these things? Daniel Holland: Yeah, I suppose it stems from when you're hiring them and your the role description, like what actually is their day Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: to day task, what should they be doing on a day to day basis? Like make it abundantly clear is like this is your responsibility from day to day, this is what you're doing. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: so they know from the get go this is that that's their role. Granger Forson: Yeah, and I think we have to be about tasks maybe because especially in a small business there's lots of things that need to get done by each of the different roles that we have but an outline of the responsibility which I like the word use of the outcome of that role, the structure of it and I always like to also think about this part of it which is what is your part to play within the growth and the development of the business? Actually that should be in the role profile. business cover your salary because other people will turn up and they will look at all the tasks they need to do and the things that need to get done but actually if in the description we're talking about how your salary is generated then actually you've got a better understanding of the importance of what needs to be achieved for moving forwards Daniel Holland: Yeah, no, I can definitely relate with that. And I suppose Aaron, our kind of operations manager, is like okay, I I want him to obviously do his job. He's doing amazing at his job, but part of it's like how can we help you grow as a as a person? How can we help in other aspects? Granger Forson: Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. Daniel Holland: Like we're helping him get on the the property ladder, investing in property himself, like away f away from work, if that makes sense. so there's different yeah, things like that. Granger Forson: Yes, fantastic. Yeah, brilliant. So we now talked about performance management. So within a role profile we can define two or three key metrics that define the output of that role. But in a small business that's often harder because maybe we have lots of things that role initially needs to get done. So we have to try and pick what the most important parts are for generating the growth of the business, for generating the salary. What's important that I've developed over many years in the corporate world as well is if you report that number to them, they won't own it. But if they can track that number themselves and they report that number, whether you do that monthly, quarterly, weekly, it doesn't really matter, but they take ownership of reporting that number, they then get that better buy in because what we can get hung up on is you didn't achieve this. Now, actually, they need to stand up to the plate and say, you know what? this isn't performing right, this isn't working. So understanding how you measure people and how that they actually do the reporting and they do the update of where we are. Let them bring those to the party. What are your thoughts on that? Daniel Holland: f yeah, definitely. and I suppose this is probably something we didn't do at first but have started to do. So part of that the weekly call that I mentioned is like different people from the business will bring their key kind of KPIs or whatever you want call it. whether it's like revenue, whether it's occupancy rate, whether it's the the guest reviews, they'll bring those for the past week or the month or whatever it is and share those with the team. So there is that level of accountability as I suppose as well, which really important and they actually own it as as you were kind of indicating before, rather than it just being a meaningless figure. Granger Forson: Yeah, even in my business, there's only two of us. And we have a weekly meeting and we both have four or five numbers that we declare. we live together and work together. Yeah, you have a family affair, but we still report on numbers because these are our numbers that we own to help the business run, to help tick it over. Some weeks they're down, some weeks they're up, you know, but we can then see the trends over time and we can help each other then to go to The real important thing, is how do we close the gap if we're not hitting what we want to achieve? How do we close the gap if we are achieving what we want to achieve? Do we need to increase the number or do we need to bring another number in? Because what often happens and this was the bit I learned long time ago that we can very good at keep increasing numbers, increasing numbers and just putting pressure on people to, you know, to excel in something that maybe doesn't need to be excelled anything more in. But how do we enrich their skill set? challenge them that's when we could bring in a different number that would help to grow some of them are important they just need to go up and up and up but others are ways of enriching the role over time of things and any thoughts on that Daniel Holland: Yeah, definitely. and I think something that I've noticed is my understanding grown within each role, if that makes sense. So before I wouldn't have had a clue of how to track certain metrics, but I suppose the more time in the business, the more you learn. and yeah, as you said, the the the the performance metrics can grow. so Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: yeah, whereas we might have just looked at revenue for kind of booking performance, there's probably five or six other metrics that we kind of track are which are really important as well. Granger Forson: And somebody then, you we've got this good tracking number in place. We've got a good role description that helps people understand, you know, where they're playing in the business and how they need to measure up in order for the business to be successful. We're there supporting their growth. And I love what you said about. helping people, not just in the business but outside the business to grow and develop. I think that's absolutely brilliant. One of our principles of our business is grow your people so they grow your business. This question probably came out initially from this organization that reached out to me and said could you ask this question. How do we manage the performance when it's not working? So if somebody isn't delivering for you and you've talked about some difficult VAs that you've had, how have you gone about dealing with that situation when we aren't hitting what we expected them to hit? Daniel Holland: Yeah, I suppose it's it's situationally dependent. It's like it's gonna be based on how far they off you you want them to be. If there's just a complete chasm of difference between you and where they want to be, then it's probably good to cut ties and move on to the next person or but if there's like you see potential in someone and there's just bits where you can see, Okay, this is what you're doing wrong, this is where we can invest a bit more training in to help you elevate you to that level, then it's worth that investment. so I suppose Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: it depends how far they are off the the level they need to be and the the gaps you can kind of identify if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Yeah, no, definitely. An expression that I learned many years ago when I was trained by some Japanese master engineers is this idea of being human first, being strict, but being fair. And it's understanding that we're all humans. We all think differently. We all react differently. We all think of things differently. Just because it's in your head one way doesn't mean that's the right way. It doesn't mean it's the only way that things need to do. So understanding humans. Being strict. The strict is the business has to achieve. This thing has to get done. Our customers have to be delighted. Whereas there are non-negotiables within any role. These are the strict things that we have to talk about and make sure being delivered. But being fair. understanding of situations, understanding what's going on, understanding that maybe we bring outside influences to work and we need to fix those as well sometimes. that human strict but fair is a real good approach. And the best way of doing that that I was taught and I've used is that expression of the it's easier to nudge a tiller to keep your boat in the right direction rather than not doing it for a long time and having to do a big change on that tiller. So it's those little short conversations that are really powerful. Same somebody that I noticed on Monday that the numbers weren't quite right. What are we going to do on that? How are you going to do that? How can I help you achieve that number because that's so important to us a business? You know what I noticed that there wasn't a very good conversation with a client last week I didn't think that was professional enough. What do you think? How would you define whether that was good enough? Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? How are you going to do that? So it's those little nudges on a regular basis are the things that can actually steer your conversation so you don't end up having to do those. How do we deal with that? difficult people that are not working. What are your thoughts on that? Daniel Holland: Yeah, that's a great insight. 'cause I suppose I've noticed this and it's it's it's better for us 'cause we're all working in the same office. Like everyone's Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: kind of since COVID have they gone remote. But you don't have that chance to observe people doing different things. So you wouldn't have picked up on stuff where if I see my operations manager manager handling something in a certain way, I could say, Maybe next time do you think about we could potentially handle it like this. What do you think? And then we can have those conversations and we can pad it out. and together we can come to like, okay, next time this is how we're gonna handle this. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: so there's that role, like everyone's constantly improving and feeding off each other. which is yeah, why it's but it's so much easier to do because we're in because we are in person and we can see what all of us are doing, and there's complete transparency. So we try Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: to in our business we try to have yeah, as many conversations as possible. No one takes it personally, so which is so good. Granger Forson: Yeah. Daniel Holland: Everyone challenges each other. Granger Forson: brilliant. talking negative because that was the question about underperforming people or variable performance. can have variable Daniel Holland: Mm-hmm. Granger Forson: performance if you grow the same number people in a team. Absolutely. But it's also really important to be human of praise. Well done. That was awesome. I love that conversation you did. Well done hitting those numbers. Fantastic. You the leader. I was challenged many years ago to how many times a day do you say thank you. And I worked it out and it was many and I got challenged to be a minimum of 10 times I thought what what but actually my teams were really strong and powerful from that point onwards by me walking around and making sure and also because I had remote teams phoning them up and just saying thank you 10 times a day built real strength of character within the team that didn't exist before so don't forget that its positive side of reward is far greater than the negative how are we going to fix that you Daniel Holland: Yeah, no, no, definitely. I can for sure see that. And it's part of that's like it's so rewarding for me because I can see someone acting in line with kind of my vision as the the business owner. So for me, if if I can see that, it's like, wow, that's amazing. Well done, Aaron. Well done, Miles. So that's what I want to see. And yeah, definitely. It's not just negative, it's positive as well, for sure. Completely agree with that. Granger Forson: Awesome! Then let's do our wrap up and close now. What did you hear yourself say today that maybe surprised you? Daniel Holland: Good question. Good question. It's kind of made me realize wow, how quickly we've been on this journey. I suppose just talking it out out loud from from when we started a few years ago to where we are today with what, six people, it's gonna be more from next week. how far we've come in a relatively short period of time. and until you you actually talk it through, you don't I suppose really appreciate what you have achieved because you're stuck in the day to day all the time. So yeah, I suppose for me it's yeah just reflecting on that process which you yeah, it's been yeah, you've done quite a lot actually. Granger Forson: You have indeed. It's been fantastic. Fantastic growth and development. So finally Dan, where can people find more of you if they want to follow your journey? Daniel Holland: Yeah, for sure that everyone can find us well online at Signature Stays. if you type us in, you'll be able to find us, you can book a call with me to have a have a conversation. Otherwise, we have a physical office presence. we're right by the brewery site, in Cheltenham. It's called Henrietta Street. So feel free to pop in, we can make you a coffee, have a free to chat about anything property related. or just if you just want to have a chat. So yeah, one person or you can find us online. Granger Forson: Awesome. Dan, thank you so much for being open and honest today. I know our listeners will get a lot from this conversation. It's been awesome. Thank you. Daniel Holland: No, thank you very much. No, loved it. Thank you. Granger Forson: Thanks for spending your time with us today. We're on a mission to make business owners stronger together. If this conversation has helped you, please like, comment and follow on whatever platform you're using. 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