Beyond the Bottom Line: Stories’ People-First Approach

Adam (00:22.313)
Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to the ESG In Property Podcast. You're here with Adam Hinds, the co-founder of Life Proven Real Estate Advisory. And thank you very, very much for being a loyal listener and tuning in for another fantastic episode. For those who are new to the podcast, the show is dedicated to giving you access to the world's most innovative and ambitious real estate leaders who relentlessly

and consistently outperform industry averages by maximizing their environmental, social, and financial impact. And today we've got a really, really exciting episode with Paul Clark and James Scott, who are two of the three co-founders of Stories, a UK-based purpose-led property development company. So a little bit about Stories to give you a flavor.

of what we're going to explore on today's episode. I've extracted some copy from an article on their website in their library. And it gives you an insight into the uniqueness of their approach and their way of thinking. So I'll read this out. At Stories, we focus on development that puts people first. That is not just a slogan. It is a serious commitment that shapes how we think.

how we partner and how we deliver. One of the hardest things we do on every single project is working out how to maximize shared value and especially community value from development opportunities. Community value is not a fixed concept. It is a living, evolving expression of what a place needs, wants and hopes for. That makes it hard to define

harder to measure and hardest of all to embed in projects that are complex, capital intensive and governed by systems that are not always built to hold nuance. But at Stories, we firmly believe that the process of development should be centered on community value rather than being led by just financial returns. Oof, I love that. Paul, James, very warm welcome to the show.

James Scott (02:37.336)
find out who wrote that Paul and Hardin.

Paul Clark - Stories (02:38.948)
Yeah, promote them immediately.

Adam (02:42.345)
It's beautiful. It's so eloquent and I think it sums up your every interaction we've had and insight we've had to your approach in that one paragraph when I read that I was like, wow, that is incredibly powerful. So thank you very much for joining us.

James Scott (03:02.19)
Thank you.

Paul Clark - Stories (03:03.149)
Thank you.

Adam (03:04.103)
Let's get started. we always kick off first question to the guests is how you first became interested and passionate about real estate. And typically this is before you actually started your career. So that might be when you were a child, teenager, et cetera. What was your sort of first interaction where you thought I really am interested in wanting to explore this further? we'll kick off with you, James, if that's all right.

James Scott (03:27.48)
Yeah, of course. I don't know that there was a, I can't think of a kind of eureka moment. I guess I grew up in a household which was quite tinkering. My dad was an engineer. I would get involved with fixing stuff and making stuff. And I think like probably quite a few people would rearrange your bedroom, would paint your walls. So it's sort of always been around and it'd been an interest. I do have a funny memory of

instead of revising for my GCSEs, I would download night frank floor plans and sort of work out how I'd re relay them, which sounds a bit nerdy now that I say out loud. So I guess, I guess it's sort of always been there. And I don't know that then I read engineering at university, I don't know that it was immediately guaranteed I was going to go into property, but I think there's a sometimes deceptive how large the built environment is. And it's sort of a

A lot of people find themselves in it maybe by accident rather than calculation, but it's a pretty good place to find yourself if you do.

Adam (04:34.409)
Paul, how about yourself?

Paul Clark - Stories (04:38.467)
Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to pin it down. I guess a series of serendipitous events, I suppose. So I always thought I was joining the army, ever since a small child. And so for me, A-level choices, I just needed some A-levels and I just needed any degree and I was off to join the army. And so I always just followed my interests and I didn't really need any grand plan or anything. I was just...

following my interests with this bigger goal ahead of me. And I saw a poster at school in the sixth form comm room and it said, the final frontier. Have you ever considered a career in town planning? I said, no, I have not. And I started reading about that. And this was, this would have been in on 1996, 95, 96, something like that.

Adam (05:23.981)
you

Adam (05:28.147)
What an advert.

Paul Clark - Stories (05:29.471)
So just getting the UCAS book, what on earth is this? And I was like, okay, this looks, you know, just followed my interests. And even when I applied to study urban planning at university, I remember my personal statement said I'm joining the army. You know, I already had a place in the army lined up by then. But I had a big catastrophic skiing accident around that time, my first and last time on the snow pretty much. And it was just a good job that I'd chosen a degree that I was...

I only chose it because I was interested in it and curious about the environment growing up in London. And it just went from there. I just got a job as a town planning consultant and met developers. And that's what really kicked it off for me. I started to meet some. I had no familial relationships, no...

Adam (06:16.329)
Mmm.

Paul Clark - Stories (06:24.706)
no route into the industry. applied to graduate job, got a graduate job as a planner and met developers and then all the light started going on for me. I thought that's the ticket for me and I actually went back and did a master's course in land economy, very particularly to then move into development. So that's where I got going.

Adam (06:48.874)
It sounds like you've scratched your own itch and followed your curiosity consistently.

Paul Clark - Stories (06:53.859)
Do you know what? That's the absolute definition of my career. Just following where my interests took me. No plan, no grand plan. Now I meet James, and here we are. But yeah, that's definitely the case.

Adam (06:57.651)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (07:02.909)
How rewarding.

Adam (07:09.619)
Love it. Love it.

Okay, Paul, I'll stay on you if that's okay. In sort of one minute or less, so pretty short and sharp response, can you give a very quick career overview of sort of what roles you've had so people just have a better understanding of your sort of technical and professional background? And if you can summarize and integrate this into your response, what were the sort of key experiences through your professional journey that then

and curiosities that stood out to then help shape the founding of stories.

Paul Clark - Stories (07:46.421)
Yeah. So the very sort of, so started out as a town planning consultant graduate or in Joan, as was Jones Lang LaSalle. You weren't allowed to call it JLL 25 years ago. And that predated CBRE didn't exist at the time, you know, that came along later. But so the first light went on, I was getting, supporting the,

developers of a building in the city of London, I remember it so clearly, 111 Cannon Street. And in the frontage of that old building was a thing called the London Stone.

Adam (08:10.717)
Hmm.

Paul Clark - Stories (08:18.026)
And that's a very old, the story is lost to history, but it was certainly this reference is in Rome and London to it. And it's a very important stone. I think the optometrists, if you make a set of, if you want to become an optometrist, you have to make a pair of glasses and smash them on the London stone to do that. And so really historic. It was in the frontage of the building and the developers were trying to redevelop the building and try and work out.

where to put the stone and they would like, they were trying to make the case to put it back into the public realm. And at the time the Corporation of London was saying, no, you leave it in the, and so the developers all around the table said, what's the opportunity cost of the London stone? How much could we offer the city to take it off us and put it in a realm? And they all sat around and got the calculators out. And as far as I could say, they were just doing magic. They put a numerical value on the presence or absence of the London stone in.

in a given place and I just for me that was it. That was it. I needed to know what they were doing and how doing it and in you looking back it's actually quite straightforward but at the time that's what set me off on that path. So the understanding that the built environment is in many cases a series of commercial negotiations that really fascinated me coming at it from more of a town planning perspective. I then joined after my course I joined

a small development company called Goldcrest. I was a land buyer. We were a small team, but really, really, really exciting, dynamic little place that we bought. We shopped in auctions. We were straight up and down, primarily a trading company, but also we're building out at the time, but worked with some excellent people like Scott Hammond was there and Adam and Elliott, Lucien Grant, know, some really good people that I still consider friends and

James Scott (10:02.902)
you

Paul Clark - Stories (10:09.023)
And did that for about three years, really intense, really great training about how things get done in a commercial development game. then at the time CBRE was then sort of flexing, this is about 06 and moving into residential development. And I got invited to help build a residential development platform, consultancy platform for CBRE in CBRE in Hampton style.

And that just seemed like a really exciting opportunity to go and do things at a different scale. I and joined CBRE in 06 and had a wonderful time. was sort of the East London, I became the East London residential development expert for CBRE as CBRE need you to be, you know, they call it the big green machine for a reason. If I was quite, you get your roles. I had a wonderful time, great people. And then 08, 09 hit.

and everything stopped very suddenly. I fortunately, being the East London expert, and I worked for a wonderful man called Adrian Bunniss who helped second me over to the Olympics. And that became my first taste of major public sector projects. And I thought that was fascinating. So this was in 09. So we were planning the legacy for beyond 2012.

Paul Clark - Stories (11:40.0)
absolutely fascinating and from there I became interested in the public sector delivery end but I got an opportunity to go and become Oxford City Council's major development projects manager to run an urban extension and this was under a chap called Mel Barrett and he said at the time I can guarantee you two years work this is going to take two years to take this big site that the City Council owned through the planning system into a partnership for delivery of housing.

James Scott (12:02.042)
you

Paul Clark - Stories (12:07.059)
and no one else could offer me that at the time. I was like, right, that just sounds brilliant. A chance to take responsibility and help lead a really important project. I then went to Oxford for two years. And I would say that that probably was one of the defining things I did, that sort of sitting in the heart of delivery, engagement, community, looking at how do you create a new piece of a city in a way that is...

transformative for the people that live around it. Really amazing work. then we did that into a joint venture with Groven at the time and then my role was finished. I got approached to then start a, know, market was thawing by then like 11, about 2011 and Capita Simons had bought Nelson-Bakewell and they were trying to reinvigorate their development team. So I got asked to go across, I got headhunted to go and start.

a new development team for Capita Simons. And a big thing that happened to me there was under the Capita, as part of Capita, they had a big contract with London Borough of Barnet at the time. And I got introduced to the council who were struggling to try and work out how to bring forward Breakcross. Massive project in North London, five billion pound GDV. And I come off the back of a similar, but smaller, but similar process that we just done in Oxford. And...

So it cut long story short, I designed and helped run procurement for a partner into a joint venture with Argent. And that's where I became professionally acquainted with Richard, which again was a transformative moment for me, I suppose. And so, yeah, we did the deal at Brent Cross and I got to know Richard across the negotiating table. And from there, also got invited to...

Adam (13:48.339)
Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (13:58.344)
be to go and join central government for a few months to help with housing estate regeneration strategy. How do you leverage more private sector investment into public led projects? And it was really there that I got to travel the country with the government, Lord Heseltine, housing ministers, in and out of number 10. And I just saw the scale of the potential, but also I got a sense of how thin the private sector was, really.

Adam (14:22.973)
Hmm

Paul Clark - Stories (14:27.646)
truly with people that wanted to deliver meaningful projects and not just deliver a return on investment. And that's when it all came together for me. It was like, right, I've got to go and do something about this. And at the same time I was thinking, I've got to do something about this, Richard decided to leave Argent. And that was, I remember so clearly I rang him, I said, what have you done? And he was like, he was in Greece already. I said, right, I'm going to leave too because I've got to do something. And that was it really. And then we just spent the summer.

talking and he said, there's this guy called James Scott. need you to meet. I said, I know James Scott. goes, no, not that James Scott, another James Scott. And so he introduced me to James and yeah, we just, the three of us started talking. No, no big plan at the time. Just how would you, how would you do development if you could do it differently and properly in our humble opinion? You know, like how would you do that? What would it look like? And that was it. We just started pulling that thread. Here we are.

James Scott (15:04.51)
you

Adam (15:09.629)
ain't enough.

Adam (15:19.816)
Mmm.

Adam (15:25.405)
What I think, what I think is unique about that, Paul, is you've had incredible diversity in roles, positions, scale of sites. And I think that has probably helped inform your ability to take on different perspectives. And I would estimate that's going to be one of the founding reasons why,

And obviously following your curiosity and by the sounds of it, was the other thing I also found interesting was through your story, you mentioned six or seven different names of people that have obviously been very influential in helping shape your view of the industry. And I'm going to assume that that's probably been very helpful in the founding of the business where it's very people focused. Cause you weren't talking about

buildings or sites per se you're talking about the people and their journeys and how influential that's been. So that's, that's a really nice point. And James, over to you, you give us a quick overview of sort of your, professional background in terms of the roles you've had in the experiences and how that, that sort of has shaped your view into stories.

James Scott (16:39.438)
Fortunately, my story is a little shorter than Paul's. So we'll get through it in your one minute target much quicker.

Adam (16:45.033)
Hahaha

Paul Clark - Stories (16:45.533)
I was conscious of that but unfortunately it's a longer hair.

Adam (16:49.06)
No, don't worry. It's great. That's that's the definition of stories. No, that's it. That's it

James Scott (16:51.502)
Don't let that get in the way of a good story. Exactly. Yeah, I've got a very, I guess a very different story to pull. I was off to university sort of, guess university was an experience where I realized that there's sort of two routes you go down. You kind of really double down on your academic side of things and try and achieve highly there. Or in my case, I guess it was the opportunity to realize that there's sort of

Paul Clark - Stories (16:53.302)
No,

James Scott (17:21.102)
a much broader outlook that you can take. The product of that was not really knowing what I wanted to do. And in my second summer had fired off a bunch of applications for internships, had nothing back and then got a call. I remember on the way up, I was going on a trip with some friends, got a call saying, we'd love you to come and work for us. And I was sort of thinking, oh dear, which one of the hundred people is this?

Adam (17:28.841)
Hmm.

James Scott (17:49.806)
But this guy called Reza, who at that point was running a company called London Student Rent. So I thought, it'd nice to have a summer in London. Great, I'll come and work with you and do some marketing was the job. Anyway, stumbled across an interesting guy doing interesting things, worked with him for summer, was given the responsibility to sort of manage the refurbishment of a 50 bed hostel in Camden. Amazing experience, learnt a lot. I still remember sort of

being told to pick up the phone and call someone out of the blue. And I was like, I don't know. I don't have the confidence to do this. Went back to university, was planning a year abroad. I think I was going to go to Bali, but got a call from Reza saying, I've just bought a 500 bed hostel. We're going to build it. It's going to be Camden 2.0. Do want to come and work with me? So I saw him for lunch today before one of my finals. And he said, look, I can't pay that much, but I'll give you some equity in the business. We'll go and do this at

to do this exciting business. So I joined him straight out of university and we turned that business from essentially sort of leasing three bed houses, subletting the bedroom to make a margin to what then became the collective. So our first project, our first major project was delivering 350, depending on how you look at it, 500 bed co-living scheme in North London, which for

Adam (19:14.163)
Wow.

James Scott (19:16.876)
someone with no background in the industry was such an amazing opportunity because you can go in genuinely without a clue. And we were very fortunate to have a really good team of professionals around us who we could just ask questions. And I think the naivety of not knowing what the planning system does or doesn't allow is probably one of the only ways that you'll ultimately create a new use class that's now well established in planning policy. So a very different learning experience, very much thrown in at the deep end.

Adam (19:39.166)
Yeah.

James Scott (19:46.754)
We grew the business to, by the time I left in 2016, about 40 people. We delivered our first development. We had funding, we had pipeline. But I decided that that had been an incredible experience and I was really grateful for it, but also was up for doing something totally different. I think I'd also become a little bit frustrated with some of the downsides of the property industry, which I come and talk about because it's important for stories. I then actually flew to Chile, bought a car.

spent a year driving it from Patagonia to California. Basically, I spent a year reading. That was the most amazing part of that time. And I think having had four years of sort of lived experience in a sector and in a workplace gave me a really interesting perspective to how I used that time. But my plan was to go and I was, I think it was 2017, 2016, tech was still very cool. I settled in San Francisco.

Adam (20:21.459)
Wow.

Adam (20:35.878)
Usually.

James Scott (20:45.07)
with grand ambitions that because I was such an incredibly successful entrepreneur from London, I would have no issue starting a tech business in San Francisco. But I got actually got a LinkedIn message from Richard, similar time to when Paul and Richard would have been speaking saying, look, you're the only person I know who started a business. I chose not to clarify too much that I didn't actually start a business. But started talking with Richard about what a development business could look like. And yeah, we worked on that together. We were leaning into video calls and

and shared documents well before it was a mainstream thing. And ultimately set up stories, I think, from my perspective, because I'd got frustrated with the fact that the built environment so impactful on our lives, but the people that are generally given the responsibility for doing designing and delivering that are doing it with a proper profit motive first. And I'd seen how that forces you to even if you're very well intentioned to compromise on what you could achieve.

And while clearly I believe that, know, profitable development is key and the role of the private sector is fundamental for the system, I wanted to sort of prove, I guess, that you could do it in a way which is fulfilling your wider responsibility. And that language is now much better understood, be it triple bottom line, be it social impact, be it social value. But when we started Stories nearly seven years ago, it was right at the forefront of that more responsible way of business.

share stakeholder value over shareholder value was starting to come to the fore a little bit. And it's, I guess it's quite interesting having these conversations now that you reflect on kind of maybe where the macro or the global politics or the macroeconomics was moving. And I guess there's probably links to where the perception of business was and kind of the version of capitalism that was around seven years ago. And I guess some of the responses to that.

I mean, that's taking us off on a very different tangent that's probably not one for a prophecy podcast.

Adam (22:48.477)
James, what was the most transformative book you read in your year traveling?

James Scott (22:55.15)
That's a very good question. The one that springs to mind actually is a book by Eckhart Tolle, who's actually sort of a spiritual teacher. And I think that was the first, I think his messages is all about being present and understanding, appreciating what you have rather than always looking to future goals for your fulfillment.

Paul Clark - Stories (22:55.651)
Good, good question.

James Scott (23:21.056)
actually everything that you, if you live in the present, you will be fulfilled with what you have, which was probably quite surprising. But I think it gives a huge degree of perspective about, I guess, your responsibility and how you might approach building a business. At that time, was the business model was make no money, lose loads of money, raise lots of money. And in the future, you'll have this great success. I think we've already seen that that kind of approach is a little different. So yeah, that's probably the most influential one.

you put me on the spot. I would be remiss, however, to not also mention start with why, which is by Simon Sinek, which I whether I read it then or whether I read it when I was in, I read it definitely before we started stories. And I still bang on about it almost every day because it's a very good framework by which you you lead with the question of why you understand the purpose and the intention of a project. And from there, actually a lot flows. So that's

Paul Clark - Stories (23:54.713)
Yeah

Adam (23:55.987)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (24:08.697)
You

Adam (24:13.297)
Hmm

Adam (24:18.417)
And absolutely. Well, interestingly, very few people ask the question why, and not just asking it once, like multiple times to get really drill something down really into its first principle of why it's amazing. But yeah, it's it's a fantastic book a hundred percent. Yeah. Both of those. I haven't read the first book, but the second book is a great, great framework.

James Scott (24:19.342)
That's probably the answer.

James Scott (24:31.864)
Yeah.

James Scott (24:38.958)
Yeah, I mean on the subject of why I actually remember, I had an executive coach for a little while at the collective just before I left. And I do remember vividly the conversation where she said, why are you not kind of fulfilled at the moment? And I said, and I gave an answer. And then she just asked why, and then she asked why, and then she asked why. I think she said it six times. And by that point, when I was crying, she was like, that's That's all you have to do. You just have to keep asking why and you eventually get to the truth.

Adam (24:45.299)
Hmm.

Adam (25:03.945)
What a powerful word, what a powerful word. So James, I'm going to stay on you for a sec. Can you give a very quick introduction to stories?

James Scott (25:13.548)
Of course. So, is a property development company. We focus on projects where there's a real clear purpose and intention to delivering something with a... There's more than just financial return. So, that... We can... We approach that with a really open mind. You know, we're not a house builder that wants to deliver housing and we make that model fit. We very much start by identifying a partner.

who has a problem that we think we can help them solve through property development, but importantly through other means. And then we use all of our skills and our experience and our relationships to help them understand how they can solve that problem. And then we take them through the journey of generally property development as a solution to some of those problems.

Adam (26:06.771)
So just for the listeners benefit, what sort of things are you doing? And this open question, James Paul, feel free to jump in. What are the things that you're typically doing that is different than a traditional developer? And whether that's, you prioritizing certain things or are you doing certain types of analysis at different stages? What is it?

James Scott (26:27.146)
I think it's good question and one we get asked quite a lot. I think the fun, I think the thing that we perceive to be different from others is leading with intention. So we spent a long time trying to talk about how we're a social impact developer and we're going to deliver more social impact than someone else. And I think that we slowly realized that actually you'd already kind of missed, you were a step ahead of yourself and you'd missed the point.

We're in the business of doing projects that are by definition good. They're delivering good outcomes in the broader sense. so, whereas others are ultimately sort of solving for a profit and then looking to maximize wider forms of value around that, we're looking to deliver an outcome. That outcome might be supporting world class and most inclusive education in Oxford for the next hundred years, whilst helping them to decarbonize.

and to deliver a great experience for all of their community. Clearly, financial returns is an important metric within that so that it's sustainable, but it's not the point of the project. Similarly, if we're delivering a housing scheme, our goal is not to deliver a return to our invest history housing. In this instance for Barnet Council, it's how is the council going to continue to provide one of its most important functions, services, housing people, and importantly, housing people that can't access the private sector.

How do we do that in a way which supports that the public sector can do what it can do well, but the private sector can do what it can do well. And together we're in, you know, we're, hopefully going to be securing planning commission in a month for 50 % affordable housing scheme that will be funded by the private sector in this market. Now that I'm not only doing in a way that then keeps the value in the place. Someone said to me once that difference between regeneration and gentrification is in regeneration, the money stays in the area.

So the model we've got is one that all of the value, all of the profit ultimately that flows from that housing is goes back into the council and ultimately back into public services. Paul, I don't know if you want to add.

Paul Clark - Stories (28:33.78)
No, I think you've done an excellent job of summarizing that. all I would add is, think what it really means is we spend longer thinking harder than some might. So whereas, you know, we actively lean in to the complexity where other people might decide that that's not their job.

to think critically about how do you, how do you, know, once you've identified the why, how do you translate that into property development opportunity? So we probably, that's probably the key difference is that we are interested and like the challenge. I think that speaks to everyone in our business is everyone is just interested in places and.

and how places can inform social and environmental outcomes. I think that's a really key thing for all of us.

Adam (29:32.873)
What I really like about this approach is how fluid it is. it's isn't cookie cutter. You're applying the same framework everywhere you're going by the sounds of it. It's incredibly fluid to the place, the people, the challenges, the opportunities specific to each local area and the, and the human beings that are in it.

Paul Clark - Stories (29:50.688)
Yeah.

It definitely is. definitely is. I would say is we've actually over the years we've put together a framework, a kind of a very iterative framework. involves, we have this four questions. So you sort of take the triple bottom line we've added to it over the, you know, we've got these four questions. We just keep asking over and over again, does it work? Do we love it? Can we afford it? Can we deliver it? Yeah, okay. So I just rattled them off too quick, but does it work?

Adam (30:14.313)
and I'm gonna ask what it is, what the four questions are.

sorry, go go.

Paul Clark - Stories (30:22.004)
As in, do we think this project meets the stated ambitions of this place? Do we love it? Which I think is one of most important questions. Do we love it?

Adam (30:33.459)
And by we, does that mean you and the team, or does that mean wider stakeholders?

Paul Clark - Stories (30:39.07)
wider stakeholders generally. Because sometimes I think in our experience you go through a process and I think this is true for quite a lot of like procurement processes. We joke about you know I've heard references to people you the wrong trousers you know. You go through a process you tickle the boxes everyone says oh it's viable it works it fits it's and you look at it and I'm not sure I really want that.

Adam (30:40.689)
Okay, that's interesting.

Paul Clark - Stories (31:06.07)
you know, that's not exactly the, I didn't set off on this journey to get that. And so I think it's really important to give everyone a chance of reflection. Do I love it? Is that what we want here? And it's a really powerful thing, just giving everyone that chance to not have to.

James Scott (31:22.604)
We, there's a nice story of when we were thinking of the name of our business, we threw a few names around and Richard's daughter said, let's call it magic Richard. Now that would have been a little bit, misaligned on the old values, but I think he might still have the URL somewhere, but the, the word magic was, was, was one that we actually came quite close to because I think sometimes I up in Leeds, actually this week, a lot of people talking about

Paul Clark - Stories (31:33.654)
He's still I think he's hankering for it

James Scott (31:50.594)
what you lose when you design by a spreadsheet. And I think that that do we love it question helps to capture the magic, helps to capture those intangible things that can get lost, particularly even in the context of social value. Like I've had a lot of conversations with people, yourself included, Adam, about other frameworks, other ways of measuring it. And yes, that's really important. But if you're so focused on that, you lose sight of the intangibles that come through this amazing

in development is this amazing intersection of politics and psychology and sociology and geography and all of these other things. And you've got to capture the magic. And that's why do we love it becomes such a good question. And it's we is us. It's every you can apply that question at different at different levels.

Adam (32:35.209)
Mmm.

Adam (32:41.833)
I love that. just to add to that point, James, wholeheartedly agree that if, if you're focused too heavily on the measurement piece, you sort of miss the point of why you're doing it.

James Scott (32:52.878)
And that comes back to that point about intention. think that's the thing that is where we are quite different is that we spend a lot of time working out what's the point, what's the purpose of the project. And in some ways you then use all of your efforts, means, social capital to work towards that intended purpose, starting with why. And actually one of the things that will be interesting is can we in some way quantify the value that that brings, which can be really hard. Because

Adam (32:55.165)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam (33:12.713)
Hmm.

James Scott (33:23.03)
it ends up being a unique version of a project. It's hard to say, well, what would we have done if we were just a policy-led position? And because of the way we've done it, we created... Well, it's sometimes impossible to measure that. Anyway, that's only the second question. Third question,

Adam (33:37.235)
Go, go Paul.

Paul Clark - Stories (33:38.196)
Well, they get a little bit less, they get bit less romantic after that. Yeah, yeah, it's can we afford it? Which is a really, it's obviously important. And can we deliver it? And because often where we find ourselves is engaged with often an institutional landowner who is often kind of an accident.

James Scott (33:42.21)
That's sexy.

Adam (33:43.017)
You

Adam (33:50.409)
Hmm.

Adam (34:00.809)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Clark - Stories (34:06.77)
say accidental landowner, but the ownership of land isn't a fundamental reason for their being, it's an incidental. They use property and real estate to further their operational ambitions. So like James had mentioned, we're working for an Oxford college, they own property to be a college. They're not a college because they own property, right? And so often they are long-term landowners who care about outcomes.

Adam (34:29.417)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (34:36.061)
They're often asset rich, relatively cash poor, and they often are a very small team of, let's call them property professionals. And in some places there are none. In some places that team is very small. And so they're looking for people who care about their output and will allow their outcomes to have center stage, not just our profit motive or our funders profit motive, and that we're going to work together.

to deliver that thing. So can we deliver it actually becomes quite an interesting question about leadership, ownership of the project. And also I go back to can we afford it? In some places, yes, they can. They do have those resources. In some places they don't. So we will, like James said at the outset, we have no pressure to deploy any given model or a particular pressure to.

deploy a pot of money. Many development companies are designed and created to be a vehicle for deploying and returning superior returns to investors, usually over a five-year period. But that's not what we do. We structure the delivery mechanisms, the funding strategies and the project to completely prioritise the outcome, the intended outcomes of that project.

And then that kind of kicks us, that'll kick us into discussing how we do that. But that's true of all of our projects. Those four questions and putting outcomes first, that captures everything we do. Notwithstanding the fact they're all really very different things that we're doing.

Adam (36:21.075)
Hmm. And James, I'd like to dig into the intentionality piece that you mentioned earlier and on around, it's, it's sort of, I'm sort of connecting two things that we'd spoken about in the past into one here. And I think a few key themes that you've spoken about is also leadership and how influential advisors are to the outcomes from real estate and your approach.

is incredibly unique. So I want to explore how you've been so intentional with navigating the key stakeholder partners who are also aligned to that long-term thinking and the vision that you're helping to create and also how you're sort of navigating. I don't want to call it a lack of leadership with other advisors, but or real estate companies, whether that's.

whether that's advisors, whether they're investors, but who their vision isn't aligned. How have you sort of it, cause I presume with your approach, you're looking for a much smaller, you're fishing in a much smaller pond of people who are like-minded and are doing that. Cause it's, it's quite unconventional.

James Scott (37:38.04)
say that, but we've just been hiring for a new senior development manager role. I think by latest count, we've had 450 applications, which would suggest, which is a tough for our, tough for Stephen to sift through those, but he's earning his fee. But that is surely testament to the fact that what we stand for is resonating with people and simulating that response.

Adam (37:44.36)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (37:48.854)
my gosh.

Adam (37:53.129)
cool steven

Adam (38:05.265)
Absolutely, doesn't it?

James Scott (38:07.436)
And I think similarly, we've just started working with an organization, an incredible organization who are fundamentally long-term and mission-led. And it's a very clear mission from a very kind of high-profile individual organization. the reason that I think we're working with them is because, again, we stand, we...

hopefully our values and what we're trying to achieve as a business has come through. So I think in some ways, my answer to question is probably that those people that are like-minded present themselves and you seek them out. And so it's less a case, I think, of having a really targeted, you just end up talking to the people and meeting the people and being introduced to the people who people think might share your values. And I still think the industry is incredibly word of mouth.

Adam (38:46.473)
Hmm.

James Scott (39:02.766)
I think every project that we're working on is in some way a recommendation or a referral from somebody.

Paul Clark - Stories (39:10.129)
Yeah, I actually track it. We have a tracker, you know, all the things that people bring our way and we talk about this, you know, we look at a lot of stuff. And I know that I think 78 % of everything on our tracker is word of mouth at the moment. And I'm certainly sure that everything we work, everything we actually are presently working on has been a product of a personal recommendation. It's not to say we don't have to compete, you know, we have to...

Adam (39:25.587)
Wow.

Paul Clark - Stories (39:39.194)
would just be at a point, you it's usually, you know, but you're usually one of three, rather than it being a full blown thing. So yeah, I think, I think like James says, I think, I think it's more common, I think the requirement is more common than you'd think, but actually, because the industry is, and this is the sort of front.

Adam (39:43.368)
Hmm.

Paul Clark - Stories (40:02.287)
I mean, this was the frustration I used to find when I was trying to, used to, in my previous role, trying to broker partnerships between basically people, and money, which is what the end of the days, there's always that, there's always that tension between the land and the money because they're coming from different worlds and they often don't speak the same language and they're not really listening to each other. Not really, you know, you've got these guys, usually guys, right? They've raised a fund and they're trying to move, they're trying to deploy it quickly and they're just in a rush.

Adam (40:06.761)
Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (40:28.305)
They don't want to, they really want to speak to community because they're in a rush and you know, all the pressures that the money brings. That's why we're very intentionally stayed owner, founder owner. We sort of getting muddled up my words here, but it's just the three of us in a business. There's no external shareholders. We have intentionally bootstrapped stories so that we don't have that external pressure.

Adam (40:32.05)
Yeah.

Adam (40:51.998)
Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (40:58.585)
and I think it's been hard along the way but I think it's one of things I'm most proud that we committed to do and stuck with because it has given us that flexibility and we can be patient.

James Scott (41:11.698)
I think to your question of leadership, Adam, I think it's a really interesting one. I think I would make two observations. I think the importance of leadership actually often doesn't sit with us. I think it sits with often other stakeholders or gatekeepers. We could talk at length about some of our frustrations, for example, with like the procurement process or and then you immediately think, that, let's say it's a public.

Adam (41:31.944)
Like who?

Hmm.

James Scott (41:39.874)
public body or local authority. Actually, it's not even often you have incredibly good leaders in those environments. Quite often it's the gatekeepers like the lawyers who say, yeah, I understand that you, for example, want to move more towards a partnership built on trust, actually, legally, there's no framework to do that, which I don't think is true. We really want to work with you because we believe as a local authority in what you're trying to deliver on that project, but we have to go over here because it's

highest financial value and there's no way that we could do anything other than that. I think it requires a leadership, I would say the leadership question. I think we as a business are at a point in time where we need to step into more of a leadership role and I think the reason that we haven't is that again from early on we said there's too many people talking about what they will do or frankly just bullshitting and we said we want to let

our actions lead a little bit more. we're still, we're getting to the point, I think, where we can feel confident about what we're achieving and then start to, I guess, actors leaders in the industry to help move that forward and shine a light on some of our frustrations, particularly, say, in a procurement process. A perfect example is if as a, if as the public sector, that big thing that is the public sector wants to support

smaller medium enterprises, different perspectives on development, it's not very helpful if you put a procurement requirement binary pass fail on as a turnover test, particularly when you're applying it to construction value, which isn't reflective of the size of the development management contract, because by doing so, you immediately exclude anyone who is not a long established, very big property company.

And I think the general consensus would be that they are going to deliver a model that they have proven to work for them. So there's some very fundamental things that could be opportunities for someone to take leadership, to move the industry in a direction that I think as evidenced by the 450 applications to our job people want to see.

Adam (43:53.193)
There's a lot to unpick there, James. And there's one thing I really want to hone in on is you mentioned around law firms with there's no contract for trust. Now, something we spoke about when we caught up a couple of months ago was the creation of the relational contract that you have effectively pioneered and created. Can you expand on what that is and why stories have done it?

James Scott (43:54.658)
There is.

James Scott (44:21.719)
I'll have to defer to the resident, crazy legal expert.

Paul Clark - Stories (44:23.982)
Yeah, this is my, Adam, this is absolutely my hobby at the moment. Advocating for this, Yeah. So, so.

Adam (44:28.967)
Love this.

James Scott (44:29.198)
I'll go get a cup of tea.

Paul Clark - Stories (44:36.917)
In most cases, like I said, the counterparties that we're dealing with are relatively asset rich, but often have very limited human resource. so, and in the kind of projects that we're talking about, you tend to have, you kind of have a choice whether to have a full blown corporate joint venture together, where you put the land in and you vote on things as a board, or you enter into a development agreement where there's a contract.

between you of activities. You will do this by this time, I will then approve it and et cetera, et cetera. Everything is documented and it's probably the preferred way of creating a relationship between Lando and Renault Developer. Anything you read, you can see that trust in development companies is very low and the public perception of developers is very poor and...

There's been a lot of, there's lots of lots of examples of where that's true. But I think also it's the situation, the trust is, the lack of trust is also born of a lack of experience because most people don't go through the development process or even an institution that does own a number of assets goes through it rarely. Most buildings, most buildings are built to last more than a generation. So the frequency of going through these places.

When there's an asymmetry of information, there's an inevitable lack of trust. And what people try and do, the learned behavior is to try and pin each other down, know, nail feet to the floor. And in our experience, these development contracts have become incredibly, they sort of shrink wrap your behaviors. You know, have deadlines, you have, you know, you have...

there's implications if you don't hit the deadlines and you know who's got what hammer at what time to hit the other person over the head and so you have these very kind of confrontational at the heart they are confrontational documents right you must do this or else this happens and there is not much room in them for giving people the ability to build relationships and

Paul Clark - Stories (46:53.793)
We found some amazing research that been done and I've written about it on our blog, these Dutch academics. They took a load of public private partnerships, property PPPs and looked and then interviewed everyone that had been involved with them. Do you consider that project to have been a success? Just by any metric that you choose, do you believe it was a success? And what they then did is they got all the contracts that underpin those projects.

and they got computers doing clever things. there's a thing called fuzzy logic, which I'm still not, I still don't understand, but they did clever things with computers, you know, into the black box. And they tried to identify whether there was anything common written in the contracts that led to the good outcomes. So is what is written, is what is written impactful? And does it have a bearing on the quality of outcomes? And the answer is no.

The key criteria to a successful project is the capacity of people to build relationships and resolve challenges collaboratively. In those instances where that had happened, the outcomes were better than when they were relying solely on the contract. And we've had that experience. I think most people would say that feels true. But most development agreements do not create the conditions or really facilitate that. Everyone's in a rush, you sign the contract, you want a motor, whatever.

So we got introduced to this concept of relational contract, I mean really what it does at its heart is extend this duty of good faith that says, so normally a contract was saying all parties will act in good faith and you would adhere to the words of the contract. What we're saying is, actually we'll go beyond that. We'll go beyond that. If anything happens, if anything happens that we didn't expect in this project,

that would mean one of one or either of us was an unexpected advantage or a disadvantage. We will declare it and we'll sit around a table and we'll resolve that fairly. So whereas you might normally expect a developer to say, well, no, well, that's just the contract is the contract. I win. I've we've had all these extra profits. We didn't see it coming, but, you know, not my problem. We were what we're saying is, no, we will sit down and we'll be.

Paul Clark - Stories (49:17.984)
In the spirit of the contract will be fair. So it's actually elevating the intent right to the heart of the contract. And for us that's already proven to have unlocked a project that's been sat there with someone, you know, it's been sat there owned by charity for 10 years and unable to move forward because of the worry of the information asymmetry, are we going to be treated fairly? You know, what's going to happen? What happens?

what risk are we being embarrassed? And so we're very excited by this. The lawyers are all a little bit curious.

Adam (49:51.529)
As am I.

James Scott (49:55.342)
Perfect example, you would hope that given the opportunity to do something quite, if you're a lawyer, quite cool, I'd hope. The default response is, that's going to cost us a bit more time and money. Do we really need it? Why don't we just do what we've always done before? Come on, Come on. Come on.

Adam (50:10.333)
pewter says no. Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (50:11.691)
Yeah, we had one lawyer said, why would you want to do that? You can get away with not doing that. And she's like, we don't want to get away with it, right? We want you want to change the way things are, the way we engage with our built environment in this country, right? And so yeah, we're really excited about it. Yeah, we've got, we've got two underway, well, two in contract. And what's fascinating is it's the counterparty. It's the, in both cases, they are one to charity, one to not-for-profit, and they are delighted.

Adam (50:23.763)
Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (50:41.159)
that this is our intention, you know, we will, we are here, we want, but equally we want to be treated fairly. And I think that's the other point here. This isn't, this isn't altruism. We have been on the receiving end of someone just beating us over the head with, the contract says this, I'm sorry. Well, that kind of, you know, we didn't do that to you when we could have done it. And so it's not complete altruism. I think, I think we can build bridges between institutions that strictly don't speak the same language.

Adam (50:48.029)
Mmm. Yeah.

James Scott (50:48.846)
to racing.

Adam (51:01.319)
Yeah, it's a two-way straight. Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (51:11.276)
But I think we can do things better and we want to. So stories is we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. And we did have some interesting discussions at Reef about this and there is some healthy scepticism in the market. know, lots have learned behaviours. But yes, we're really excited. We've always said it's really hard, it's almost impossible to contract for behaviour. But I think we're getting close to something that I think is going to be really interesting.

for a number of reasons.

Adam (51:42.921)
Paul, out of curiosity, when would you look to introduce that contract? At what point does that come into your process?

Paul Clark - Stories (51:53.643)
Which process, a defined process.

James Scott (51:57.134)
beginning, whatever your, whatever your, each project will have a slightly different contractual structure depending on what project it is, but at the point at which you look to bring a legal structure around your relationship, that's the point at which you need to introduce it because it should be governing.

Adam (52:03.506)
Hmm.

Adam (52:11.529)
I suppose less so when are you formally introducing it? When are you raising this? this part of like your sort of when you're explaining who you are and what you do, that's just one of the pieces of the jigsaw? Yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (52:21.835)
Well it's quite new so yeah it's quite new so we haven't really had the mechanics it's new to us you know we've got introduced to it. Is that classic? It's quite niche yeah. I think look I mean I would say that... sorry

Adam (52:30.483)
Sure.

James Scott (52:32.782)
It's also a bit niche, I'm gonna put it out there.

James Scott (52:38.528)
I would hope, Adam, that it's a logical progression from our approach. We are positioning ourselves in the market as a trusted partner to landowners or institutions that realize that their built environment has a role to play in helping them tackle their organizational challenges or better pursue their mission. So as you get into the nuts and bolts of how you're going to do that,

Adam (52:47.145)
Hmm.

Paul Clark - Stories (52:47.531)
So that's it.

James Scott (53:07.192)
conversations such as these are intuitive rather than, again, a little bit like we talked about right before, lot of developers are, they're here to do their business model. And then we go, look, we really care about social value. So now can we have a discussion about how we're going to maximize social value on the project? And by that point, you've already locked in the purpose of the project. And so you're always fighting a really hard battle to then layer on as much as you can. And I think that that's a brilliant illustration of the difference from starting from a position of what's the point of this project.

Paul Clark - Stories (53:10.334)
Mm. Yeah.

Adam (53:25.554)
Yeah.

James Scott (53:36.47)
Is this a project that's ultimately good for society? And therefore, are we all going to pull together using whatever levers we've got to do that in a way that's maximizing value against the triple bottom line?

Paul Clark - Stories (53:48.777)
Yeah, I would say, because like we said earlier, most of our things that we're looking at are, you know, they are relationship, they're introductions. And so actually the relation contract is really just an extension of the way we're already building that relationship with those people. it's sort of, like you say, James, it's like a natural extension of that relationship building. And like I said, we probably spend more time doing that than most people would.

Adam (54:03.667)
You're doing it, yeah.

Paul Clark - Stories (54:16.329)
Like I said, it goes back to the fact that we have the ability to do it. We don't have those shareholders banging on the table. We've been working for over four years now with the community group in Froome and continue to do so and will continue to do so because we love it. We never intended for it to take this long, but we can.

building that trust and it goes back to trust and relationships.

Adam (54:47.145)
Hmm. We, I just connected two sentences that you'd said. So one of them, I really like Paul was building bridges between institutions. That's such a strong, such a strong framing. And when you said James is you're, you're a trusted partner to these institutions and to support that positioning, you should have a trust contract. It's, it's an absolute no brainer to facilitate it. So I really, really love that. And to just

summarize and wrap up a few of the key themes before we come to our last question for any final thoughts or advice for our listeners. Just for the listener's benefit, gosh, I've written about two and a half pages of notes here, but just some very key high level bullet points that I really enjoyed taking away was solving challenges collaboratively. That's so powerful.

And asking why, not just once multiple times to get down to the first principle as to why are we actually doing this? And that's why for you as an individual, but why with your key stakeholders for everyone that is going to that, that, development or that building is going to influence intentionality was, I was really, really pleased to dive into that. I think.

Just adding layers that from a listener's perspective, it's not just being intentional with partners. It's being intentional with your communications. And I think James, you sum that up really well by saying how you're positioning and communicating and how intentional you are is helping to attract like minded partners to you. And you're not having to have thousands of conversations because you're intentional in your comms. People are attracted to that messaging. And that's, I think it's testament that you've had.

450 applications for a single job role. People obviously believe in your mission, your values, and they want to be a part of that. And that, that is really, really powerful that, know, everyone that's coming to want to join you and, and partner with you, they understand your values and want to work with that and be around that as an environment and following your curiosity with magic. love that Paul. was, that was really, really interesting. And I actually resonate with that from my own career as well. My, I've

Paul Clark - Stories (56:58.386)
You

Adam (57:04.275)
taken jumps, duck, dive, roll, flips all over the place, but it's always been the one thing is just following what makes me curious and what am I interested in. And then from that, you're speaking with passion and intention when, because you've lived it and you've experienced it. So transitioning into our very last question, you don't have to answer it completely optional. You may have already emptied the tank, but do you have any final thoughts or advice for our listeners?

James Scott (57:31.086)
We're drawing on the process that we've been going on. So we've actually had four different roles up. And I think it's similar to the messages that we've been talking about. I've read a lot of cover letters. And although each of them are unique, a lot of them are very much the same. That's probably the beauty of generative AI now.

But what's exciting is that when someone writes a letter that's genuinely kind of it's got integrity behind it and you can tell it's been written from someone that's actually really passionate about wanting to apply to our company or work in the kind of work that we're doing, it sticks out so well. And actually it's the unpolished, not perfectly written ones that often really resonate. And there's probably, although that seems like a kind of minor example, I think it's probably a lesson that will apply

in most scenarios that you find yourselves in, showing up with authenticity and integrity and actually saying the things that you really believe, rather than just sort of hitting all of the tick boxes that you think you need to have in a cover letter, it's going to send you in much better stead. And I think as more and more information is able to be produced and more and more processes are able to be optimized, it actually almost creates a level playing field above which that authenticity shines even stronger.

So I think it's a really exciting time for, it's really exciting time because those tools are available to us. It's a whole strand of conversation we haven't gone down, but it's only making human interaction and authenticity and integrity even more important.

Adam (59:16.221)
Love that, pull.

Paul Clark - Stories (59:18.797)
I think, I think it's actually, this is a conversation James and I were having the other day and it's actually about, I would just say, keep, keep learning. think listening to stuff like this is great, but there's so, there's such a wealth of information out there now, you know, so many, you know, you can, you can take courses in anything pretty much for free now. And, and I think, I think when I reflect on, on, you know, listening to James is

story and my own journey, you know, those periods where we've, we've, we have made room to step back, read a bit more widely, do, do things that are a bit off beat. It's just, it adds so much to our, work we do day to day. I've just, we started relatively recently as a governor at a secondary school and I'm learning so much about a world I wasn't really aware of, but

But going through their own challenges of purpose and strategy and impact and outcomes and how you change people's lives, it brings so much. I think it's my advice, just keep learning. Always be learning something new and commit to something as well, really get into it. The best things we've, anyone that starts with us now gets a copy of Start With Why and also a book called How Big Things Get Done. Yeah, everyone gets that.

James Scott (01:00:43.778)
Yeah, read the book. Read the book. That's my one piece of advice.

Paul Clark - Stories (01:00:47.522)
And also how big things get done. We think that's a really good, a really nice thing to get your head around as well. But yeah, keep learning, keep listening, keep asking why.

Adam (01:00:59.133)
Love it. We'll put the links to the books in the podcast notes, but gentlemen, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your eloquence in conversation. was fantastic, but please keep doing what you're doing and keep giving back with education because yeah, your approach and philosophy is spot on. So please keep doing what you're doing.

Paul Clark - Stories (01:01:01.69)
you

James Scott (01:01:24.27)
Thank you, Adam. Appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about it.

Paul Clark - Stories (01:01:25.862)
Thanks very much.

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