£32 Million Profit! | Developer Diaries | Episode 12

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]What are the pipelines up to? 16 mil.

[00:00:02]32.85 32 mil.

[00:00:08]So, it puts us basically in the 0.0 1% of businesses in the UK.

[00:00:16]OH MY GOD.

[00:00:24]YEAH, I KNOW. ON THE GREEN WOMAN. NO respect for our plants. I don't think it's a difference in the plants.

[00:00:31]On plants alone we have 520 quid. [music] We take plants very seriously.

[00:00:37]As you can see in how Rosie is cradling hers.

[00:00:41]It's a money tree. It cost about 20 pounds, but she'll make us millions.

[00:00:49]Okay, that's one. [music] I don't know if I'm going to get it.

[00:00:53]Don't snap.

[00:00:56]Yeah.

[00:00:57]Good at protection. Plant protection service.

[00:01:01]For the office, [music] my primary job was plants cuz I can't be trusted to do anything else and nor do I want to do anything else. Today is 6th April, new tax year.

[00:01:10]Spend the money and waste it on anything.

[00:01:14]But Pete can load his plant on his own.

[00:01:20]He's built different, but not in a good way.

[00:01:25]Few years ago when Pete worked for me >> [music] >> and Will was doing videography with us, we got each other mugs.

[00:01:32]And the mugs told a story and we thought we should bring back our office mugs.

[00:01:37]So, we have each as a group [music] designed a mug for each other. So, for example, for my mug, the boys designed it. For Pete's mug, me and the other two. So on and so on. Uh George more recently joined us and [music] these two were taking forever to make my mug. So, I said, "Well, George got to have a mug as well."

[00:01:53]So, we all have a mug now, finally.

[00:01:55]They've all arrived. So, [music] today is the mug unruffling ceremony. They all tell a story, typically of some form of trauma that we each experienced and the other side to laugh at. So, Cuz we're very supportive friends like that. Pretty warning, yeah, these will depending what's on them, Most likely you're just going to see blurs. I don't need >> [laughter] >> Oh, >> [laughter] >> I just got it.

[00:02:25]Top right corner is out. Look at your top right corner. Oh.

[00:02:28]>> [laughter] >> Good work.

[00:02:33]OH MY GOD.

[00:02:38]>> [laughter] >> OH MY GOD. Oh my god.

[00:02:45]>> [laughter] [laughter] [snorts] >> That's sensational.

[00:03:01]What do you think to it? Perfect.

[00:03:02]>> So, tell me. Good mate. Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:05]So, Mike was here, sort of running through progress on the site.

[00:03:09]So, obviously, back in October, with the start of kind of like cash flow issues with the contractor, we put some money in, whatever whatever.

[00:03:18]Investor came on board, which is good, but it took longer than you'd initially think for the buyout. That whole thing created a more complicated buyout. So, the fund that was putting the money into Trident, they couldn't put the money in as quick as we would hoped, which basically meant tools were pretty much downed for the most part. Um, like the site's maybe running at like a 15% capacity for a good two or so months.

[00:03:40]Yeah, basically saying probably looking at May now before we're finished, which is a joke. I always thought the anticipated finish date was a little bit optimistic. I expected maybe two months later than that. So, we're realistically 5 months behind the schedule I thought was reasonable.

[00:03:57]She's mostly down to this issue with the the contractor and their funding. This is about planning up this room forever be better.

[00:04:06]Right now, no comment.

[00:04:10]>> [snorts] >> Welcome to site. It's nice for the weather to be nice for once.

[00:04:15]No, so today we've been doing a lot of like social media content um partly to get a bit more exposure for all the properties, obviously to help with sales, uh also just for general reals, etc. And Pete's here for vibes.

[00:04:31]But, 100. But, look retail is from bricks.

[00:04:37]George.

[00:04:41]Now, back home I've got a workshop with Build Up Members on appraisals at 6:00. So, we got a schedule.

[00:04:56]Because we have so many sites now within Build Up, that's why we say we invest in people that invest in us. We have people asking us for investment or money or help every single day, and they all get the same answer. It's the we work with Build Up Members, and that's basically it because we don't have the need anymore. Rosie spoke for an hour and 26 minutes on uh designing sites.

[00:05:17]She designed two sites. She then appraised these two sites, went through the cost and calculator, BCIS, everything.

[00:05:25]She's actually able to deliver real value in what she speaks about, which for any of you that have been in the webinar before from other people, I'm not just talking about property people, I'm talking about anyone in general, most people can't actually teach you. They read slides off screen that somebody else has made for them. Uh got George on here cuz I wanted to obviously you can run through any bits on deals if you need, but I've got a call with Zaff at 4:30 4:30. Um so, me and George have sort of flushed out the um initial process a bit more on site submissions. So, just wanted to lock that in with you, make sure you're happy. So, this is obviously the process that >> [clears throat] >> um yeah, we've kind of mapped out in four stages, then a high-level appraisal from the development manager / land buyer. One thing I said we'll need, Anthony, is do you know how at the minute you've got the stage two review?

[00:06:19]That focuses on planning, but obviously between Neil and Russell looking at it from like a high-level numbers point of view, the only next point that someone in theory would look at it I mean, Mike could look at it from an appraisal review as well.

[00:06:33]Um but, if not, it'd be us. So, I want a soft offer to go out of I call it like a ballpark offer, you know, in the region of a million pounds. If that land owner is like, "Oh, no, I want five." and we know that's not going to work, Mhm. then it doesn't pass on, but we say to the student, "Look, this deal does fundamentally work at roughly this price." If the if the initial approach is being passed through each stage, the numbers are working, I don't think I need to go to Mike. I agree.

[00:07:04]It's just plenty of the numbers are robust enough, we're making enough money. I think, you know, let's leave Mike be and let him look at the ones that might be a bit more difficult so that he can have his view, like you say, >> [snorts] >> on drainage because ultimately, myself and you, Rosie, haven't got the time to look at every single site that might require additional drainage. Myself, you, Mike, whoever it is, can jump on a once-a-week call and just go over the sites that are borderline and make a decision between all three of us and say, "Okay, we're happy to move that forward." or Yeah.

[00:07:39]>> or we're not. Do you know what the [clears throat] on that is?

[00:07:43]The allocated one is seven figures. It's around a million pound uplift. We've got a site which is four houses. The uplift on that one is 450 to 500k.

[00:08:00]Site in Bristol that we're making progress on, which is 150 allocated. We think we can get it for about 4 million.

[00:08:08]I've already had conversations with some of my former housing providers. So, we're looking at about 8 or 9 million, but that could be a huge one. So, that's 4 mil uplift. We could have about 4 million pound uplift on that one if we can secure it at the four. We've got Who's got one in Wales for 26 units.

[00:08:27]Uplift on that one's around half a million pound mark. We're just sorting all the JV paperwork at the moment.

[00:08:33]Amazing. On the promotion side, I think we get 15% of the site value at the end.

[00:08:38]The site value's going to 30 million. So, we're looking at 3 or 4 million pound on that one. That's 52 units in Oxfordshire. The uplift on that one is between 1.8 and 2.3 million.

[00:08:51]We've obviously [clears throat] got one.

[00:08:54]Um, I'm down in Camden on Thursday for the official pre-app. Depending on strategy there, as I say, could be 8 million if the council accepts what we're going to do. We've got somebody already interested in buying that. We've got two parties that are waiting for us to do the pre-app. We've got about five [clears throat] sites now with with Grace.

[00:09:12]>> [laughter] >> What do you think the pipeline's up, Pete? Total profit before split with student. Signed or Agreed. Like agreed. 16 mil?

[00:09:24]Total.

[00:09:25]32.85.

[00:09:28]32 mil?

[00:09:30]Nearly 33. The current uplift pipeline of agreed deals is 32.85 million of profit, not GDV, profit. Yeah, build a profit after members, funding line, whatever.

[00:09:49]What do you think that's at?

[00:09:55]12.

[00:09:56]14.3.

[00:09:58]14.3 million pounds in the next what?

[00:10:04]18 months. A lot of it would be. We've got some that could be a bit longer, and we probably got offers out on another 12 sites at the minute.

[00:10:14]Yeah, you know, that the 32 month doesn't include offers that are Yeah.

[00:10:19]We've said, yeah, you can offer mini quit, whatever. What are you going to do with 12 mil? So, how many businesses in the UK make 15 million pounds a year in profit?

[00:10:37]There's 5.7 million businesses in the UK. 99% are like small businesses.

[00:10:42]I don't know if we still class as a small business, probably do. The average small business profit 13,000 pounds a year.

[00:10:49]Good work Good work. Honest work.

[00:10:53]Right?

[00:10:54]Honest work.

[00:10:54]>> I mean, huge respect for the people that deal with the hassle.

[00:10:58]>> That slave away. Of It's like just getting a 9-5. Yes, running your own company. Massive respect if you're in that. Oh my god. Only large businesses, brackets 250 plus employees, realistically hit 15 million pounds of profit. Number of large businesses in the UK, 8,300. Most large businesses are low margin or loss-making. Some have high revenue, but low profit. Realistic estimate.

[00:11:21]1,000 to 2,000 UK businesses make 15 million plus annual profit. Out of the 5 and 1/2 million businesses in the UK.

[00:11:32]That's 0.02%.

[00:11:35]So, roughly one in 5,000 businesses in the UK make that. So, it puts us basically in the 0.0 1% of businesses in the UK, which I think would officially make us the fastest growing business in the UK.

[00:11:53]Caveat that with we started it with 5,000 pounds and I've not taken on any sort of outside capital to grow the business.

[00:12:03]And caveat that with you did get all those statistics from ChatGPT.

[00:12:10]Look, it knows best. Are we getting an award?

[00:12:14]What from who? Peter Masi? I don't want an award from them. Imagine the bleak plaque we could get with the amount of money we pay them. Yeah, how do you how do we get these awards? I see people win awards all the time. Fastest growing small business, whatever.

[00:12:25]What about the fastest? We're one of them, aren't we? So, Pete obviously used to work for me and then went worked with another info product. I had an ex-business partner and the deal I had with that business partner was many things.

[00:12:36]But one of the things was whilst I handled the development side of the business, he would handle the education side of the business, which obviously paid for life, paid my bills day-to-day, whatever. He kind of just stopped. So, there was no money coming in. For a couple of other reasons, I ended up giving several people some money back from that.

[00:12:54]So, that drained a lot of I don't really sounds bad, I don't really save a lot of money myself. I just put all my money in my businesses uh or keep it in businesses. So, I ended up in a situation where I didn't have any money coming in, I spent a lot of money out and I didn't have a huge amount left. We did it before Cambridge started, didn't we? On site. So, the money stopped coming in from the other business and I've been skiing for a while and then then I started getting my project management fees from Cambridge, but I started giving some I'd say some, quite a lot of money back to other people. So, basically all the money came in on that paid back at first and then when Pete me and Pete first decided to do land sourcing, we wanted to put some money in to help you start it. For ads? For ads.

[00:13:36]It was 15 grand.

[00:13:39]Good luck.

[00:13:40]Because I was paying off money elsewhere, I took out a personal loan.

[00:13:43]Risks pay off. Risks often pay off.

[00:13:46]Right, risks always pay off because if it goes well, then your risk is paid off. And if it hasn't gone well, you've learned something.

[00:13:53]And then typically when you have you learn something, you go out and do it better next time.

[00:13:56]That's what people that always take those risks win, not cuz they win all the time, it's cuz they keep going.

[00:14:01]We've not made 50 million pounds of profit, don't get me wrong, but the pipeline is what it will be after 11 months.

[00:14:08]All came from 15 grand.

[00:14:11]>> [music] [music] >> We are going to Birmingham right now to go and view an event venue for a members event. The goal is we've done two members events so far, and both of them were in London. And London is great because it's pretty accessible for most people to get to. However, um none of us are from London. A lot of our members now are more up north or in the Midlands.

[00:14:47]So, this will be a lot easier for them.

[00:14:48]So, we're going to Birmingham to go and look at a venue that I found I knew of because it's actually in the old building that I used to work on.

[00:14:58]And we're going to see Chanel, see what she thinks, and see if it's basically big enough.

[00:15:10]So, they talk about developers destroying our countryside, but you know, you'll let farmers sell 1 acre of their land for 100 grand per wind turbine, by the way, which can never be built on ever again as a result of that cuz of everything that goes into the ground to make about oh 0.2% of our energy and they're ugly and they're in the least windy county in the whole of the UK.

[00:15:36]Stupid. The last job that I ever had is the building we're going to cuz it was in the building we're going to today. I remember when I was looking at leaving I got made this counter offer by the boss and the exact message said this is a good offer. You won't get this anywhere else. It was a [ __ ] offer. It was like a big moment for me of like you have everything that you need, go and do it by yourself. Why you I like sold my soul for this bloke for for 9 months. Did everything I possibly could for him. I made him a huge amount of money.

[00:16:14]And in return I got this offer.

[00:16:18]Um with no sense of gratitude at all.

[00:16:22]I was like, no. Hey, the most important lesson I've learned this year is that you should say no a lot.

[00:16:29]>> [music] [music] >> That's 103 Colmore Row. It's the biggest building in Birmingham and hopefully on floor 18 is where we're going to do our members event if it's big enough. We'll see.

[00:16:50]>> [music] >> That's why she's great. She's allowed to. Whatever she wants. Whatever she expects.

[00:17:03]It's called good.

[00:17:05]I look at them. You, Chanel, just the way you Tears of joy. Especially because the members event will be in the second week of June. no wind, sun, have a coffee, come sit out here, chat to our members, talk to them all about how much money we're going to make together.

[00:17:25]Spread across that entire room. Yes, do you miss the whole conversation?

[00:17:29]>> I wasn't missing out. I'll let you know what you think. That's a serious brew.

[00:17:32]Amazing. I hate the word brew. I love it. Dead lover. It's not that there's no spaces, but it's all very like carpeted hotel.

[00:17:40]It's just miserable. smells. Corporate.

[00:17:43]You could send me the contract. Yeah.

[00:17:46]And then anything that you need from me, I know we've gone back and forth quite a few times.

[00:17:50]And then Peter will get that sorted.

[00:17:53]First strings. Very nice. Very us.

[00:17:56]Very open space, big windows, views of the amazing Birmingham.

[00:18:03]That as Birmingham goes, you're not really going to find a better view than this anywhere. So, I do all of the work that Scott doesn't want to do. Would probably be the best way to sum it up.

[00:18:12]In terms of the events, when we have our members events, when we have our sales events, just finding the venue, making sure the day goes smoothly, making sure everyone has a good time, and just organizing the logistics behind that.

[00:18:26]But, when I'm not doing that, I'm doing all of Scott's work. Very accurate.

[00:18:29]Without you doing everything else, we can't do Big Picture. I genuinely have no idea what life would be like without her. It would be unbearable. We couldn't do it.

[00:18:39]It wouldn't work. She is the single most important, valuable person we have in our business. Because without her, none of this none of it would work.

[00:18:55]Very important projects in the boiler HQ is currently being built. Maybe the most important of all, but not all of us are at max capacity right now.

[00:19:04]There's one very important team member who needs to be comfortable at all times, and also very accessible to the sun.

[00:19:12]Because he's a little Mexican boy. So, the boys at Rosie and Spud's request are currently building a sunbed. It's a sunbed, isn't it?

[00:19:22]It's a sunbed for a 5-year-old to lie on.

[00:19:28]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Gorgeous.

[00:20:06]Beautiful, love that.

[00:20:12]Big shout out to the boys, always.

[00:20:15]If you want anything doing, literally anything, they will do it. They have done the entire refurb of our office.

[00:20:22]They built everything, anything we need to do, they have done. It's made up of a group of three of my best friends and a few of the guys, and started as a carpentry business, and now it's going into this amazing construction business.

[00:20:34]Where they build barns, do refurbs. They practically do whatever they want. A massive shout out to E.J. Wicks Carpentry and Construction. I'm writing ads.

[00:20:43]I'm writing ads for the weekend, where we are going to film them. I'm reading through it, right? And for example, when we recorded them in December, it's like we have Em's deal and Luke's deal, but now we can add in talking about Angus's deal and Addie's deal and Scott's deal and all these other things. And it's crazy because in January, well, we filmed them in December of last year, we said, you know, the profit pipeline is at 10 million pounds and now it's at 32 in 5 months. Because our business moves so fast and we do so much all the time, it's very difficult to reflect and look back. So, it's only really seeing things like this, which was not that long ago, where you realize just how fast it's growing and how far we've come.

[00:21:26]And we're 11 months in.

[00:21:30]Welcome to the Build Up office. So, last time, was it last time we showed around this office? No work had started.

[00:21:36]No work had started. Doesn't look much better, but we're getting there. So, one of the main things we did was refloor everywhere. You can see, just somewhere.

[00:21:45]There is new flooring, which is instantly brightened up the space. We repainted everything. We had a couple of painting disasters and there was these like old commercial fluorescent buzzy light bars. There was 27 or 28 of them in the building as a whole. We replaced all of them with spotlights. So, this is like the entrance area. In here is going to be sort of like a, I guess, waiting room and where, if you want, you can sit and eat lunch. These are actually beets.

[00:22:15]All types of In here will be our um content room. So, when I do sort of like sit down educational videos on YouTube, we're going to be recording them here.

[00:22:26]Mainly because it's just so much easier to do those videos cuz you've already got to sort of like plan them, script them, then you got to sit down and record them. At the minute, it's like got to come to the house, do the setup, etc., etc. It just takes longer. If we've got sort of a couple of go-to setups in here that we know and we can even like tape out where the camera goes and things. Like, it just makes it so much easier to record that content and get it done, you know, just on the fly rather than, yeah, having to find like a whole day, basically. In here, this will be our meeting room. So, this one's probably one of the dare I say closest to being finished. We were toying with the idea of having like some cool built-in cabinets there. I think our contractor is coming around today to have a chat with me about that.

[00:23:07]Um, it's become a temporary coffee shop.

[00:23:10]So, this is the main office where we like work out of basically. So, in here we've got um, mine and Pete's office first.

[00:23:19]ADHD AF. We're both medicated, so we're allowed to say that. Still looks like a building site, but you can kind of see it coming together. Well, and the color I picked was called biscuit cream. One would expect that it's a slightly cream color. It's meant to be just be a slightly warmer off white. As you can see by our, as we call dementia dreams care home pink, it did not come out that color. So, everywhere else got repainted, but I thought I'd keep mine and Pete's room in Powerpuff Girl pink. So, here my desk, sort of little meet area, Pete's desk.

[00:23:49]Here will be our wall of inspiration.

[00:23:51]So, this is anything that inspires us.

[00:23:55]And then this will be the thinking corner. So, we're going to have I've ordered a console table which is going to have like tea, coffee making, etc. So, me and Pete don't have to leave our office.

[00:24:05]And importantly, two thinking chairs.

[00:24:08]So, in my house I've got an Eames chair, which is like the most comfortable thing ever, and I've always called it the thinking chair. So, we're going to get two facing each other. So, when he has a little sit down think, he can come into the thinking corner. What else is there to say? Pete goes in the corner.

[00:24:23]I love the color.

[00:24:25]Um, I love the office, but I love the color because it's horrid.

[00:24:30]And that just adds character, really.

[00:24:32]And you've also said as well, cuz we've been working from home basically for the last year, you don't realize that working from home day on day, well, some people can work from home no issue. Personally, I find it over time quite like draining, and also I got to the point where basically if I was at home I was like I should be working. There was no separation from like home and work. Whereas this morning, I literally text Pete saying, "I'm excited to go into the office."

[00:24:55]Like I've been so much more productive in here. It's nice having that separation. For me, it's like a half hour drive home, which is a perfect time to like decompress, switch off from work when you get home and actually relax. And since he was a puppy, Spud has always basically sat at my desk. And then across the street to Autism Avenue, they work in the dark, apparently. So, Will's got his desk. We have neon sign, artwork, plants, chairs, coffee table, £600 rug. We've got George boy in the corner.

[00:25:26]Some of our Red Bulls I recently purchased. 120 of what can only be described as the elite flavor of Red Bull, spice pear. But this is going to be like a shared office between sort of our higher-up teams. Like Anthony will have a desk, Mike will have a desk, Chanel will have a desk. We're going to have a kind of like admin development assistant for Anthony, who's going to work from here. I've got like this idea for sort of like a almost like a shared library desk. For the number of people we need in here, having individual desks, it was just too difficult. But I can't stand the thought of just your standard office banker desks, so having something custom. And yeah, we'll have the Build Up Build Up HQ will be done. So, we have all of our Build Up members submit their deals onto um Nexus, which is like a platform software website that we've had somewhat custom built to obviously whatever we need. Anthony's away at the minute. I always thought it would take people longer to get deals. Approaching a year of Build Up, I thought we'd only just be getting our first serious deals through, and we've already got deals secured and loads of serious deals coming through that, you know, could be secured. So, we did end up in a situation where um we just didn't have enough like manpower to get through the reviews. We have got two new starters, two planners, which will be great. But until then, with Anthony being off as well, I've just hopped in to do a load of um like appraisal reviews for people to give an idea of the kind of variety of sites we're looking at, Uh this is one that could be for 124 housing units with the plan of kind of selling it on to a PLC. We've got one here which would be for this one's for 150 units. This one here we're looking five five or six units depending on what the architect comes back with. This one we're looking at a sale to a HA so it's an affordable home scheme. We're looking at how many units? 64 units, 13 units.

[00:27:27]This one is for two three bed semi-detached bungalows so like on the smaller side. So we look at it there's like different kind of layers so they can do a planning review which is to look at it from a planning perspective.

[00:27:39]I do we think this site has some grounds to achieve planning and then we also look at it from yeah like an an appraisal numbers review which is are the assumptions around what we're fitting on that site reasonable?

[00:27:52]So like on this site for example we're sort of appraising four or five units and that's all based on sort of standard design principles. So like you know they do little bubble diagrams which so we send to check from a design perspective. So in this one they're asking do we think like five or four houses would be better and then we look at the financial appraisal [clears throat] so the numbers in the deal. So we sense check the comparables, obviously all the costs for that deal and then importantly we're looking at the margin and then the proposed offer to see obviously what uplift there would be and then depending on what that you know client wants to do whether or not they're looking to build out themselves, sell it, etc. etc. But regardless, you know if we're going to fund the planning there has to be a planning uplift margin in it for us. But yeah, it's just the the volume of sites that we have has surprised me by how quickly people are are moving on things but also the average site size I would say at the minute is like 85 units. I thought we'd be on average looking at sites of like 5 to 20 units. We have got everything from the small to the big, but on average they have kind of sat on that that bigger side, which is, you know, completely fine by us.

[00:29:04]Um but it's just interesting that what I thought would be the case kind of isn't the case. Yeah, getting back to students and what I think we should be doing next, etc., etc. As I say, members need the most help. Obviously, we've got kind of like a variety. So, I've got one one of our members, Grace, she comes from a development background. I think she worked for a big house builder. So, like her appraisals, I barely change a thing.

[00:29:24]Like they're perfect. She's put detailed due diligence and she knows what she's looking for. She's done this before.

[00:29:29]Um whereas we've got other clients who are obviously new to this. And I think where they need the biggest help and the biggest learning curve for them is one, like looking for the right thing. As a general rule, they're not kind of a million miles off, but just learning how to take something from, "Okay, this has the initial green flags of potential."

[00:29:49]to actually doing the due diligence into things like site constraints or um local plan policy to see if it's something we would then rule out. So, teaching them how to do that in more detail, but then I think the appraisal. Obviously, you can teach someone how to do an appraisal, but what you can't teach is years of experience of like site nuance and just knowing, you know, what every little strange thing could cost. So, sort of getting involved there and and helping them with that it is, you know, to be expected. But as they do more and more, obviously they get better, but it also what we've sort of been doing, I say we, it's not me. It's like George and the team who are very good with AI and things. They're looking at all the feedback we've been given or we've been giving and basically trying to pull together more training resources. So, if I'm saying, "Oh, something like this is going to cost XYZ." You know, when you put stuff like the training together on these things to try and think of every nuance and situation you could cover is so difficult. Whereas, if we can start, yeah, I guess like compiling all the feedback we've given into some sort of guide, etc., to help us further develop the training, it obviously helps us in the long term because we're training people better. But, of course, yeah, some people are completely new, so it's understandable that they're not going to get things right 100% of the time, but that's why we obviously do all these feedbacks. We have multiple calls a week again to kind of help coach the students through, but it's all just busy and madness at the minute.

[00:31:11]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Uh.

[00:31:29]I'm pretty sure the baddest [music] I'm pretty sure the baddest girl.

[00:31:34]Nobody