Max was delighted to be approached this week by Novaloca to write an article on the launch and growth over the first 3 years of Eightfold Property:
They say if you make it to 3 years you’ve done well! Well In November 2022, we celebrated 3 years of Eightfold Property…..Well, what a 3 years it’s been!
Eightfold Property was the amalgamation of James Hawley, Dan Lyons, and Max Pollock. Dan and James had experience with their firm in residential lettings, whilst Max brought 22 years of experience in commercial agency to the table.
Coming up with a name was the first hurdle to conquer. Dan suggested a number be part of the name and after a bit of research by Max, 8 was considered to be a good choice with it being considered lucky in the middle east and its links with infinity. “So how do we link this 8 with property the guys said” with a bit more research on the internet Eightfold was found in the form of The Noble Buddhist Eightfold Path which are eight practices followed by the Buddha, leading to liberation. Followed up by a client being sound boarded and asking “if it was because it was the ultimate, as you can’t fold a piece of paper that many times!” We put it to our marketing guys they loved it, so we were all sold with all other names falling by the wayside!
With a steady flow of business in the first few months, we were then greeted with COVID! No one knew where this was going at the start and we were faced with the choice of furlough and in effect closing the commercial side down or hitting Covid head-on in our infancy… so we went for it and shouted a lot about what we were doing! It worked we have subsequently won awards for 2021 & 2022 for Top Dealmakers in Sussex by Co-Star… we're hoping we might scrape it this year too.
Where other more established firms scaled down their operations we were still operating at 100% and were agile having already adapted to working off a laptop and a mobile when we launched. With great uncertainty, there was an instant steady flow of instructions and we did deals where various businesses were looking to adapt or also to exploit opportunities that were there for the taking. At this point, great relationships were formed and our reputation grew!
In 2021 we moved to new larger offices in central Brighton and had a chance introduction to Charlie Runcorn, a great surveyor specialising in Block & Commercial Management. Charlie came on board and hit the ground running; impressing clients with his professional manner and has grown an impressive management portfolio in a short space of time.
The snowball kept rolling and in 2022 we had the further addition of 2 more service offerings come into the Eight-fold. First of all, we had the pleasure of Simon Jones, Rebecca Runcorn, and Alistair McGill set up our valuation team who were then followed by the additions of Matt Wallis, Mark Fox, and Lucy Gill more recently. A fantastic result for Eightfold to have an experienced expert team who lead in their respective industry having all previously worked for national leading firms. With a brilliant start working initially from our London office in Soho, additional locations are certainly in the crosshairs for our superb valuation team.
Last but not least Robert Hawley was recruited to launch Eightfold's Residential Sales Department. Again, despite difficult market conditions, Robert has made a fantastic start in building his department from scratch, which is growing month on month.
Where will go next? who knows! What we do know is we have had great fun getting here and want to carry on doing so in a professional manner but with a great image and keeping an edge whilst making sure we have a key person of influence heading up every department.
Check out the original article on NovaLoca, here.