The Business Village People Podcast S2 Ep 8 "Remembering Adrian"

This is a Pod One production. For more information, visit pod1.co.uk. This is the Business Village People 

podcast.

Hello, I'm David Markwell , and welcome to the Business Village People podcast. This is episode eight of series two. In this podcast, we showcase stories from the companies, service providers and staff at the Business Village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

In this episode of Business Village People, we meet Dave Moss from Property Projects Yorkshire Limited. His company identifies houses that need renovation. He secures investment to fund the purchase and the refurbishment and  ultimately utilises their buildings as social housing.

I also have a conversation with Gemma Edwards from Get Real Comms. Gemma's business career has taken her to many countries , and while living in Spain, she secured a job with William Hill Online Betting. Today she runs her own communication company here at the Business Village.

In February of this year, everyone at the Business Village, both staff and tenants, was saddened to hear of the sudden death of Adrian Waite, the former chief executive of the Business Village. Adrian retired just over a year ago. Not long after we began this podcast, we knew we wanted to invite Adrian to share more about himself.

He came on, we recorded it, and this is Adrian Waite in his own words. My name is Adrian Waite. I'm the Chief Executive here at the Business Village.

I was born in Lisbon in Northern Ireland and spent a little bit of time in England before my mum and dad took me off to Australia when I was fairly small. And so my formative years were spent Sydney. I can remember walking off the plane when it arrived in Sydney airport the first time.

I think I was five years of age. I've been led to believe that Australia was very, very hot, but we arrived in the middle of winter , and it was absolutely freezing. The next thing, I looked around and I couldn't see a kangaroo anywhere.

In my junior years in Australia, I think it was very much juniors who were still sort of seen and not heard. So I can remember my first time on a tennis court was when the temperature was 40 degrees Celsius and there were no adults interested in playing at that temperature. My early introductions into sport were playing tennis when it was too hot for the adults and playing golf at 5 o' clock in the morning because the tee times were booked from seven for adults only.

I wanted to be a pilot, but as my eye deteriorated. You had to be very good at physics. The eyesight and the physics killed my dream of being a pilot.

I ended up becoming a geologist. I have a degree in geology from the University of Birmingham. I got offered a PhD at the University of Edinburgh to go and study the algal growth on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

But unfortunately, I lost my grant and , to cut a long story short, ended up doing a master's degree at Leeds University in engineering geology. So my first career was as a geotechnical engineer. So that's sort of halfway between geology and civil engineering.

I am what's called the Lawn Tennis Association councillor for Yorkshire. So I sit on the advisory body, about 60 LTA councillors in total. We work alongside colleagues at the LTA and advise them on strategy.

I was self-employed in the noughties. When the world fell off a cliff in 2008. I went from being very gainfully employed as a consultant to working about 20 hours a week.

I thought I'd better try and find something else to do to fill those hours. I heard about a role in Barnsley, working on a specific project, working with the larger companies and helping them with  taking advantage of public sector support. And I thought it would just be for a couple of years.

I kept  getting into different projects and Tim Milburn, who was the chief here, he retired after 22 years. I sort of knocked on his door and said, do you think I might be the type of guy the board is looking for? And he encouraged me to apply for his job and here I am. We're much more modern, I think, than nine years ago.

We've invested a lot in future-proofing. So I'd like to think that, you know, some tenant who came and based themselves here would say it's a modern, forward thinking organisation I've come to be based at, but the infrastructure that's in place is going to be the right infrastructure for my business moving forward. So I look at things like broadband.

I think we have the fastest speeds in Barnsley. I think the infrastructure we're putting in place. So, as things like artificial intelligence take off, my understanding is it'll require a larger bandwidth.

We've already put those sorts of structures in place so people won't have to say, well, you know, we'll have to leave the business village because it doesn't have the facilities, the technology that we require. So I'd like to think that we're, you know, we're staying on top of the changing business world and hopefully accommodating the requirements of our tenants. This time next year I will probably have retired.

There's a management team of four that runs the business village, but the four of us hopefully have set the village up for   growth. We're very much focused on Net zero here at the Business Village. And that's not just, you know, objectives for the next couple of years.

I mean , we're talking about 20, 30 years. I'd like to think that the new management team that take over when we've gone, there'll be some changes at the management level. Adrian Waite, former chief executive of the Business Village, who sadly passed away in the February of this year.

Our thoughts and love are with his family . SA , my next two guests , both believe that running a business is not only about financial success, but it's also about what the company contributes to society. Gemma Edward is from Get Real Comms, which is based here at the Business Village. Originally from Scotland, Gemma has lived and worked in various countries around the world and she tried to explain to me what a company actually does.

We are a people-first communication, end-to-end solution for business. So what that means, what's that mean? Well, what that means is that any type of communication internally in an organisation and also externally, so creating a reflection, a mirror image of what's going on internally for them to employer, brand from an investor relations perspective, esg, all of that, that's what my business does. I still got no idea what you're on about.

So if you were an employee in an organisation, from the minute you start to engage with a company, whether it be on their social media page, their careers page, the first onboarding chat that you have, once you're successful in getting a career with that company, right way through your life cycle. So every internal communication, everything about performance management, everything about employee retention, all these different things, that's what I am involved with , and that's one of my biggest clients that I do that for. So give me an example.

An example? Yeah. What would you do if a customer came to you, one of your clients, came to you and said we need this doing, what would it be? Well, for example, one of the clients I work with now and have done successfully for seven years, I am effectively their director of people shared services. So what I do is I handle all of their internal communications.

So, let's say they have a massive revamp of performance management, which is an annual performance review. They want to look at one to ones with clients, like how their leaders engage and communicate with their team members, how they then create that in a culture, a workplace culture, successful and where all you're doing is driving entrepreneurial drive on each and every single team member. I then take that, take their ideas, what they want their deliverable and their outcome to be.

I work back the way , and I create a great communications campaign. That harnesses everything to do with that, which is massive. It's a massive production to do.

It's every employee interaction that there could be, whether it's just a conversation with a leader or a team lead or with their HR team; all of that is curated , and then it's encompassed and packaged into a campaign that they can reuse consistently. And that would be something that we would do. That's a service we would provide.

Yes. So it's very wide but very specific as well. Yes, absolutely. At the end of the day when I say a people first culture, I truly believe one of the consistent things in my life has always been the psychology of speaking to people and making them feel good, paying it forward.

So when a client may come to me and say, okay, so we need to roll out, let's say they are either expanding or they are reducing in size, how can we communicate this? This is what we want the  result to be. And I will then sort of survey and canvass the people that they have. I'll speak with them, their teams, we'll do surveys, we'll look at all different types of results and you can see, okay, how is the best way to communicate.

Communicate this in a kind, caring, compassionate way and the right thing to do. Sometimes, there have been situations where what a client would like to happen can't happen the way they'd like it to happen if they want a good result in the end, where their reputation isn't damaged. Whatever a move a company makes with a communication, if it's shared internally, it can go externally, and in fact it will.

You need to wear about 10 different hats from a legal perspective, HR, newspaper reporter, all these different things.  You need to make sure that when you're communicating, you are communicating in a positive way and that you're looking after your people regardless of what part of the life cycle they're in as an employee and making sure that they are looked after. And that's why I say it's a people first communication.

And that's what I'm. So that's what you're doing now? Yes. How did you end up doing what you're doing now? So about 15, six, almost two decades ago, showing my age now, I was qualified in adult social care and wanted to become a social worker.

And I was doing my studies for this and I discovered that after a number of very complicated years, personally and professionally, that not only was the remuneration not worth it, but the outcomes you could get within the social care system system just wasn't adequate and you can also see that now, especially in today's system as well. So I moved away from the uk, but my love of writing. Which part of Barnes do you come from, with that accent? I come from a little place called Dundee in Scotland and we moved away from Scotland and I just decided that writing was always been my passion.

Communicating was always my passion. And. And after many waitresses jobs and all these other things.

So where did you move to? We didn't get that. Sorry. Didn't cover that.

Sorry. I moved to. Very exciting listener.

I moved to the south of Spain. I started in Fuengarola and then sort of every year incrementally moved about 40 kilometres closer up the coast up to Gibraltar. Estepona was a stay for a while as well in Marbella and then up to La Linia de la Concepcion, which is where I lived predominantly for my time in Spain.

And I applied for lots of jobs and I ended up getting very lucky to land a job with William Hill on customer service. And then within a year I just worked as hard as I possibly could. I volunteered to do all sorts of different jobs with them for free, for nothing.

Just getting in on projects because I just knew if you could get the foot in the door with a company like that. And right enough it paid off because I then started rewriting the Refugee. I started launching their internal software with Microsoft Yammer.

I then was sent around the world to all of their locations to train their entire team, their online team with that. And then that graduated to the internal comms manager position. Then I was moved back to London for a short period of time and I worked with a number of the big CEOs there and it was an amazing time.

And that's what led me back to the gaming industry industry in Malta. You're making me feel pathetic. You've done so much stuff, haven't you? Yeah, yeah.

My dad and I have often joked that by the time I think I was 32, I'd done 27. I tried 27 different types of jobs, but this is the one. It all adds up though, doesn't it? It all adds up and it's.

It's where it takes you. So in Spain you learned the language and everything? Yeah, yeah. I mean, hola comes.

Well, not quite as good as that, of course. David. I've a nude lore as well.

I'm doing Scottish. No, no. So I would say fluency.

I was about a three and a half out of five. Especially being a waitress for the first sort of six months, being out there. I picked it up and then I lost part of it when I moved away back to the UK for a year and a half and then I moved to Malta, which is a remarkable language.

It's something like 70% Italian, is it? Or Arabic, and then 20% Italian and then 10% of the rest of the world. That's a phenomenal language, phenomenal people. And I still travel over to Malta regularly now.

I've got an amazing team over there. It's just such a vast array of people, talent, really talented people. So tell me how you ended up at the business village.

So Covid hit my now husband and I, we had moved to Spain just internally. We moved from Malta back to Spain again and we fell pregnant with my son and we gave birth about three months after lockdown. And the lockdown in Spain was an entirely different prospect than it was in the uk.

It was earlier. It was a lot more severe. You couldn't travel more than a kilometre from your house.

We lived nine kilometres up a mountainside, so that didn't really help. And we were struggling and we made the move to come back home to the uk. My partner, he is from Essex, I am evidently from Scotland, so we thought a midway point was a really nice way to see family.

So we got a little wee flat in Huddersfield just so we could have a look at the area, see where we liked. And we settled in Darton and it's just such a beautiful area. And I ended up in the business village because my mental health was really going downhill.

Working at home because running your own business, yes, there's a lot of flexibility to it, especially as a mother. However, there's no days off. I rarely get a weekend to myself and holidays.

I've always got my laptops with me, I've always got my phone on and I will always respond because when you're an employee, there's somebody else above you to look after you. When you're the consultant, when you're that person that's been hired. I truly believe that when somebody hires me, I am theirs, that business is mine and I will do everything I can in my power to make sure that what I'm doing for them is a success.

And it often doesn't stay within the remit they've hired me for. It often spans very wide, whatever they need support with, if I've got knowledge in it or I know somebody in the industry, especially in the I gaming industry, it's a very vast in revenue, but small in numbers of people. And everybody knows everybody, generally just Reminders.

If anybody's unsure of what igaming is, what is it? So I gaming is online gambling. Effectively play. It could be anything from bingo lottery through to casino sports.

My largest and best client. Currently not best, they're all amazing, but my largest client, they're the ones who helped me start my own business during COVID They run a fantastic technology platform and for sports. So they actually do the technology side of it.

They're not business to Customer, they're not B2C, they're B2B and B2C. I Gaming is the likes of your William Hill paddies, etc, etc, all of those foxy bingo. They're all business to customer.

So. Yeah, but igaming is all the online version. If you can do it on your phone and then land based is when you go into a shop or a bingo hall or you pay your lottery at the shop.

Yeah. So what plans have you got for the future? Well, it's funny you say that because I've actually been thinking a lot about the future and I will grow with my clients I've currently got because I've really been embedded with them for so long and I love their businesses and I love working for them and I hope they feel the same way. I think they do.

But I want to give back one thing that has been so just a constant in my life has been paying it forward. If I look at my life 20 years ago to who I am today, it's like two different people, two different lives and that is only because somebody believed in me and I want to continuously pay that forward. So I've been doing that as much as I can over my past, I'd say 10 years where I've been able to pay it forward in meaningful ways.

Whether that's hiring somebody, whether that's giving somebody an opportunity, whether it's supporting someone, if they're starting out on a course and they need support to buy a laptop to do it, then that's what my company is going to do. And I want to do it from a philanthropic perspective where there is a lot of parents and young people out there who want to be educated in something, who want to have a job in something, but they can't get the first set of work experience. There's a blocker.

I want to be that person. I want getreal Comms to be that company that can set up some sort of a fund or some sort of organisational setting where they can come to us, they can apply for support and then we can say, yes, we can help with this or we can't quite do that but we could do this and then build up that reputation and help get parents back into work as well. Because the one good thing with how I my business running is that we are very, we can be completely remote and also it's the working hours.

So one of my sister in law who works with me now, she works at night when the kids have gone down, she can spend the time with my nephews and she's able, she's so fantastic what she does but she would be able to have a job like this if it was during the day because she still has young children. So that's the kind of aim. That's where I'd like the business to go in the future to support more people in the community.

Lots more of that. How come people get in contact with you? Well, funniest thing is I don't have a website. I found that out because I've not needed to have one.

I didn't think I'd ever take off as a business but thankfully we. Word of mouth in my industry has. So my.

They can go to the business village website. My phone number is there as is my email address and that's how they can get in touch with me or on LinkedIn. I'm there.

Gemma. Edward. Next, Next we have Dave Moss.

After leaving school, Dave secured an apprenticeship in the plumbing trade, marking the beginning of his career in the construction industry. Today, Dave's company, Property Projects Yorkshire limited is thriving due to his team's hard work, commitment and the support from the business village. However, it's not just about financial success.

The company's contribution to society is a key objective. Basically what we do is we work on behalf of investors from all over the country, sometimes all over the world and basically we find, locate, refurb and deliver the properties over to either social housing providers or supported living providers. So we provide a full, encompassing, end to end, full turnkey service.

Why have you got this ethical strategy about your business? It was something, we sort of fell into this by accident just by another company letting an investor down. So they said, oh, would you get involved into social housing? And we've never really done any. The more work we did, we did that first project and the more we did and we saw the social impact of what we do and the vulnerable individual that come in and live in the properties and it just, it sort of stuck with me and I just thought, you know, we can, we can do more of this and, and make a difference rather than just running a business and Just getting all caught up with day to day, you know, stuff.

And I just got. I just thought one day, I just thought, well, why don't we do something that really does make a difference to people's lives? What kind of agencies do you work with? So we work with. I can't mention too many, but we work with.

One of the biggest ones is MIA's and they are. They work direct for the government, so they. For the Home Office and they do all the asylum and a lot of the Home Office and defence contracts, which also includes halfway houses for ex convicts that are coming out of prison and stuff like that.

We don't get necessarily involved in a lot of that, but the majority that we do are all for vulnerable individuals. So how does the process work? Do you source a house, buy the house, or does an agency come to you? So we've got these. Yeah, both.

We get both. So we will basically have a requirement off the agency that will say, we need so many properties in this area. We'll go out and find those properties on.

By using, you know, we've got some, like, sourcing software, which is basically, right, move on steroids. So we find the properties, we link them with an investor, we've got an investor pool. So we can go to an investor and say, look, we found a property, this provider is looking for it, this is how much they're willing to pay a month, this is how much it's going to cost, this is how much the refurb is going to cost.

And then that'll then tie in with their return on investment strategy. So I know I can approach certain investors for certain properties, properties that matches their criteria. And if we, as long as we get it right at that end, they will, they'll pull the trigger on it.

So we're not wasting people's time because we want to literally find a property, match it straight with an investor, or vice versa. If we've got an investor that says, I'm looking for certain properties, I want to spend X, then we find, we go to a provider and say, we've got this, do you want it? And, you know, if this. 9 times out of 10, and they'll say, yeah, because they're so desperate for properties.

You know, there's currently 600,000 people in temporary accommodation in UK that's costing the taxpayer money in hotels. So we see bridging the gap, getting people out of this property, out of the hotels, into properties to make a better, you know, so they've got, you know, better homes, you know, they've got a better standard of living and ultimately cost a taxpayer a lot less money. You're like a big conduit then, really, aren't you? Yes, basically, we.

A producer, as I used to call them. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny reminding me my dad. That's what my dad says. And it's funny because we can literally create like a conveyor belt.

Yeah. Of properties matching and we investors and delivering. And we are, as it stands right now, one of the biggest provider for social housing in the Northeast.

We cover the Northeast due to a number of reasons. There's a lot of empty properties up there, like a lot. And there's a lot of housing providers up there that are desperate for properties.

So we see it that, you know, we're just creating where we create, basically, we. We've got the investors, we've got the provider, we just put them together and they know that they've got, you know, five years or 10 years of, you know, sort of hands off investing. Tell me about yourself.

Where are you from? I grew up in South Kirby, which is just outside Pontefract. I mean, it's just outside Barnsley. Small mining village.

Grandparents grew up there. My dad worked down the pit and obviously the pit's closed. And then I moved to Barnsley 15 years ago now.

Married, got three kids. Well, they're not kids, they're adults. And, yeah, I love Barnsley.

I love everything it stands for. And that's another aspect of what we want to do as well, because we're just in talks with Barnsley council to be able to see how we can help locally in Barnsley. So, you know, what we do up there is just we, like I said, we're just turning them out, but we really want to support Barnsley in our hometown and see if we can make a difference in that respect as well.

So, when you're South Kirby, what were you like at school? Not academic. Struggled, I think. Because.

Because I think back then, which, I mean, I'm 43 now, so 20 or, you know, 30 years ago, you're either academic or you were told that you weren't trying hard enough. And I were one of them. So I sort of left school.

I sort of left school in a position where I didn't realise, didn't really know what I wanted to do. And my dad's a joiner by trade, so I sort of slipped into. He were like, oh, I know somebody was.

Who wants a plumber friend? Latest plumber. So I ended up going down that path as a plumber. So I'm a plumber by Trade.

But my dad being a joiner builder, I've always been in and around the building industry growing up and yeah, it's, I've been self employed on and off for the last. Well since I were about 20, done multiple things and multiple businesses and I won't say tried and failed but I've tried and learned a lot. Yeah, yeah.

And I always thought that if I ever get to a stage where I can create something, I can create something that's ethical and that I want to build a business around something because yeah, we all do it for money but there's a greater good as well and we've got, I think we've got a responsibility to each other which, you know, I can go a bit deep but just to be. Whether it's holding a door open for someone or providing a service and just going the extra mile because it does make that difference. Yeah.

So that's like really important to me and. Yeah, and then I think I've done that many things and worked in that many industries. I've been a project manager, I've been a site manager on construction sites.

I've been, I were an operations director for a company in 2016. So I've done everything and I thought if I ever do this, I'm going to do it this way. You know, there's no.

If you walk in our office, there's no shirt and ties. It's all we want the, you know, relaxed atmosphere, everything, you know, decisions made not under duress, not under stress and create a bit of a, you know, like, like we do for his clients, a supportive team mentality and team ethos. So, you know, everybody's important as the next person.

I'm not in part more important than anybody, you know, because there's guys are on the ground there delivering these projects every day and their well being to me is really important as well. I think it's brilliant what you're doing. You know, you've got a social conscience, you're trying to provide a service but also do it properly and with respect.

I think. Yeah, because. But I think you need to take some time off sometimes and chill because you'll.

Yeah, yeah. I'd say these, I'd say these last, last three months it's starting to get a bit better. I'm.

I'm just getting to the. The worst thing is, is you almost feel like you're cheating yourself because you know how much work you've got to do. So I'm thinking, God, I've got all that work to do.

So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just fight a laptop up while my wife's making tea or while she's gone out or usually when she's not there. So it's.

It just. I think it just ends up in a place there where you've just got to think, right, well, I deserve some time off and I need to do it, otherwise I'm just gonna end up burnt out. Yeah.

And I've, you know, I've been close to that a few times. But, yeah, it's. It's funny because I used to work from home and the office was at home, but the disconnect is getting better.

Yeah, I feel like I can stay a while, sometimes six o' clock, sometimes later, but I can switch my laptop off and I can leave my laptop here. But again, it just comes down to self discipline and not. But the processing systems have to go hand in hand with that, otherwise I'm still getting invoices at seven o' clock on a Sunday night.

Wanting pain. What about the future? The future for us is because, at the minute, it's funny because the refurbishment part of the business is the. The main income stream for us right now.

So because we've utilised getting to the point where we've got a handful of investors that are really good to work with and don't get me wrong, we've had people that have been a nightmare to work with. And again, it comes down to alignment. We don't want to work under people that work under high stress levels, that pass that on to us because we don't work like that.

So it's really important that as clients align with us because I don't want to end up in a situation where we've got anyone treating anyone disrespectfully or talking to my staff like that. So that's really important to us as well. But just going back to what I was saying, the main income stream is the refurbs, but now that's operationally set up within the business, then we're going to transfer, concentrating his time onto the investment side and the clients.

Dave, you've been amazing. Thank you. I've learned such a lot, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's. I think it's great work that you're doing and all the best to property projects if people want to get in contact with you.

How can they do that? You can find us on Facebook and Instagram just. If you just search property projects and we've got a website as well, but that's currently just being built. But I can update you on that once we've got that done.

And yeah, you'll, you'll find us down at Barnsley Pick, you know, five days a week or six maybe. And what's it like down at the Business centre for you? It's amazing. And I'll be honest with you, these have had such a important hand in our development and supporting us because we had.

We grow so quick. We grew so quick and they were there, you know, they helped us, developed us with rent, you know, and just supported us. And it's good that there's such a.

An incredible team down here that do support you, not just, you know, but with business, with grants, with yourself, that put us onto yourself. So being able to put, you know, our business out there in front of other people is really important. And without centres like this across Barnsley, you know, I think businesses would struggle.

So I think it's really important that we carry on supporting this site and stay here and, you know, we can carry on growing. Good morning, the Business Village. Holly speaking.

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And start your success story at the Business Village Foreign. That's it for this edition of the podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

If you want to find out more about our office rentals or the services available at the Business Village, please call 01226-249590. Thank you to my guests Gemma, Edward and Dave Moss, as well as to the family of Adrian Waite, the former chief executive of the Business Village, who sadly passed away in February of this year. I'm David Markwell and this is a POD One creative audio production for the Barnsley Business Village.

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