Lloyd Coleman

My name is Lloyd Coleman. I run an auctions and investments department within a large brand of estate agency and I am sat in my kitchen right now in Brookmans Park.

No day is the same as any other day. That's why I love my job. Every day is different.

But most of my time I spend on the phone talking to clients. I could be looking at plots of land with basically a field one day and then I could be looking at blocks of flats the next day.

So I do everything, every day is different, but generally I start in the office, hit the phones and then see where the day takes me.

Buying a house in this country can take anywhere from six months to a year. At auction, we hold a 28 day auction, so your property can go up for an auction and then it's sold, then done.

There's no legalities and it's so much quicker. So it's a bit more exciting.

Most of my clients, when I say client, I mean seller, a property seller, they are coming to me because they need to get money quite quickly. And they've been let down by high street agencies taking so long.

And most of my buyers, well, all of my buyers are investors. So they're buying properties for rentals, they're buying properties to do them up and make them better and then sell them but they're all investors and they all have cash, they don't use mortgages.

Flexibility, because I'm not sat in an office nine to five. I'm out on the streets. I'm meeting people a lot.

So yeah, my best part of my job, to be honest, is the clients that I've built over the years. They're now friends of mine.

So it's kind of, it's not really work. It's kind of, the guys in the office take the mick out of me a lot because I'm forever going out for lunches or I'm going out for drinks or I'm going out for dinner and that's working, but it's social.

The hours I would say. It's not a job for someone who just wants to work 9 to 5.

My phone will ring till 10, 11 o'clock at night, but again it's just phone calls.

So it's not exactly like I'm sat in an office in the West End. So yeah, the phone calls are relentless.

I left school very early. I did 10 years working for a corporate estate agency that taught me the ropes. I then did 10 years working for a high end estate agent dealing with three, four, five million pound properties, dealing with famous footballers, musicians.

And then I opened my own company for 10 years. And I just fell out of love with how long it took to do a sale, a transaction, and how many would fall through and how it wouldn't happen.

So I got into the auctions business and the investment business actually from a friend of mine who said, you need to meet this guy. So I went for a coffee, met this guy, started working for him two days later and I've never looked back.

I wasn't a very good kid, I was a naughty kid at school. I was removed from my first school at nine years old and that was the end of it. And I went to boarding school. School's not for everyone.

Yeah, my sister is very academic. She did very well in school, went to university. She now runs a West End firm. She's a CEO. Yeah, but it's not for me. It wasn't for me.

So Maths, English, Business Studies, that's that's how I got to where I am today. Maths, English, Business Studies. That's what I'm kind of geared to, to be honest with you.

I wish I'd done better at school, although I am in the sales business.

But if I was to listen to my advice, I would say study really, really hard because it is tough out there, especially now. It was easier 20, 30 years ago. Now it's very, very tough.

So I would say study and I know I don't practice what I preach and my son tells me all the time that same thing, but I push it into him, especially with the maths, the English and the business studies. But now it's computer science.

When I was at school, it was all about business studies, business studies. Now it's all about computer science. So it's different people for different things.

But I would say if school's not for you, you just got to go out there and get a job and learn from your way up.

My first business card was Junior Tea Boy. Start at the bottom, learn your way up and don't job hop. Don't leave jobs every six months. Stay with the job.