Utterly Indispensable Podcast for Estate Agents

If you think HR is just contracts and common sense, this episode might save you a small fortune.

In this episode, I’m joined by Paul Fitzsimmons – an HR and employment law specialist who’s spent 15+ years helping business owners avoid expensive, stressful, tribunal-shaped disasters.

Paul doesn’t do fluffy HR. He’s run his own business. He understands commercial reality. And he’s seen everything – from cocaine-fuelled Christmas parties to dismissals that looked obvious… until they cost £60,000.

We talk about:

Why you can’t just sack someone on the spot(even when they really deserve it)

The simple HR mistakes that land good businesses in serious trouble

What the new employment law changesactually mean – without the scaremongering

Why performance management should be constant, not reactive

Christmas parties, social media, drugs, discipline… and why alcohol plus staff is a legal minefield

The uncomfortable truth about average staff, tough decisions, and avoiding six months of misery

How bad HR drains profit, energy, and leadership time

Why outsourcing HR is often cheaper, safer, and saner than winging it

We also get into Paul’s refreshingly honest take on conveyancing, margins, service quality, and why racing to the bottom on fees breaks businesses on both sides of the transaction.

Paul brings humour, clarity, and zero nonsense. You’ll laugh. You’ll wince. And you’ll almost certainly rethink how exposed your business really is.

If you employ people – or are thinking about it – this episode is required listening.

How to contact Paul

You can find Paul Fitzsimmons on LinkedIn. Drop him a message with your biggest HR headache and he’ll translate it into plain English before it becomes expensive.

What if the way buyers search for property is about to change forever?
And what if estate agents finally have a way to loosen the grip of ever-rising portal fees?

In this episode, I’m joined by Mal McCallion, a true industry heavyweight. Mal was there at the birth of PrimeLocation, helped launch Zoopla, and has spent over 25 years inside the engine room of property portals and proptech.

Now he’s back — and this time he’s taking aim at the very model he helped create.

We talk about how AI is already reshaping how buyers search, why traditional filters are broken, and how “vibe searching” will replace rigid portals. Mal explains why estate agents have been boxed into an expensive, outdated system — and how AI finally gives them leverage again.

This is not a fluffy “AI might be useful one day” chat. It’s a hard look at what’s changing right now:
– Why AI search will challenge portal dominance
– How agents can win market share, cut costs, and increase revenue per deal
– Why being small, local, and human may become your biggest advantage
– What the next 2–3 years mean for estate agency businesses that adapt… and those that don’t

If you’re an agent who wants to stay relevant, profitable, and in control of your future, this conversation will make you think — and probably make you uncomfortable in all the right ways.

How to Contact Mal McCallion (Show Notes)

Mal is currently touring the UK, speaking directly to estate agents about AI, portals, and the future of property search.

Register for the UK tour:
👉 https://myporta.ai/tour26

Email Mal directly:
📧 [email protected]

If you’re curious about where AI is really heading in property — not the hype, the reality — this is one conversation you’ll be glad you listened to.

Most training in estate agency exists to stop you going to prison.

Very little of it helps you win instructions, progress sales, or actually understand the law you’re meant to be complying with.

That’s why this conversation matters.

In this episode, I’m joined by Charlotte Jeffrey-Campbell, founder of The Able Agent—and one of the most grounded, no-nonsense voices in estate agency training today.

Charlotte has done the job. Lister, manager, trainer, business builder. She’s seen what works, what doesn’t, and why most agents are quietly blagging their way through regulation they don’t fully understand.

We talk about:

Why qualifications aren’t the enemy—but bad training is

What actually happened to RoPA (and why it hasn’t gone away)

The dangerous gaps in estate agents’ knowledge (even after 20+ years)

Why compliance and business generation should never be taught separately

How most agents learn sales progression the hard way… and why they shouldn’t

And why “free training” often turns out to be the most expensive option of all

This isn’t a scare-story episode.

It’s a grown-up conversation about raising standards without killing the soul of the industry.

If you want your team to be more confident, more credible, and genuinely expert—not just box-ticking—this one’s for you.



Life’s too short for bad training.

Most estate agents think they have a CRM problem.
What they really have is a data, discipline, and decision-making problem.

In this episode, I’m joined by Mark Hinkins, Commercial Director at Rex, to tear into one of the most uncomfortable truths in estate agency:
almost no one is using their CRM properly—and AI is about to make that painfully obvious.

We talk about why most agents under-use powerful systems, why moving CRMs is less about software and more about strategy, and how your database is quietly becoming your most valuable asset. Mark shares what he’s seeing on the front line of PropTech, how AI is changing prospecting, pipelines, and productivity, and why agents who “wait and see” will already be too late.

This isn’t a tech demo.
It’s a reality check.

If you’re an agency owner who wants to win more instructions, scale without piling on headcount, and actually work smarter (not just talk about it), this conversation will challenge how you think about CRMs, data, and the future of your business.

AI isn’t replacing estate agents.
But it is replacing the ones who don’t adapt.

This episode is a proper behind-the-scenes look at how sellers choose estate agents — and why so many get it wrong.

I’m joined by Colby Short, co-founder and CEO of GetAgent, the UK’s leading estate agent comparison platform. Over the last 11 years, GetAgent has analysed millions of data points, worked with over 7,500 agents, and helped more than 1.2 million homeowners try to answer one deceptively simple question:

Who is actually best to sell my home?

We dig into the original insight that sparked GetAgent — a single London postcode where 800 sellers chose 200 different agents, half of whom had never sold a property there — and why that chaos still exists today.

Colby explains:

Why most vendors confuse familiarity with performance

The three metrics that really matter when choosing an agent

Why speed to lead wins more instructions than fee discounting

The uncomfortable truth about completion rates and unsold stock

How GetAgent survives on a pay-on-completion model while many prop-tech firms collapsed

Why data without human judgement still isn’t enough

This is an honest, commercially grounded conversation about data, cash flow, fees, lead quality, and the brutal reality of running a business where you only get paid if everyone else performs.

If you’re an estate agent who believes you’re good — but wonders why the market doesn’t always reward that — this episode will make you think very differently about how sellers see you, long before you ever sit on their sofa.