"It's really important to behave the ability to be open and honest not just with the people you work with, but with the wider community."
Mark Allen Tweet
Mark Allen has worked across the property industry from new home sales to large-scale development clients at multinational agencies and everything in between. He is the founder of Patch. Mark is a property marketer with previous experience in real estate and property startups.
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Thank you so much for giving us your time! Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and take us through what exactly your company does and what your vision is for its future?
Mark Allen: Patch is a real estate platform that allows buyers to connect directly with homeowners so they can chat, inspect, negotiate and transact the property online simply and at a low cost. Homeowners use Patch to monitor the value of their home over time and how their biggest asset is performing against similar homes in the area.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO/entrepreneur when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get where you are today?
Mark Allen: I was interested in architecture when I was a child and loved drawing homes for hours and hours. I think that’s where my affinity for property started.
Tell us something about yourself that others in your organization might be surprised to know.
Mark Allen: I spent a week camping in the Dolomite mountains with Bear Grylls when I appeared on his tv show.
Many readers may wonder how to become an entrepreneur but what is an entrepreneur? How would you define it?
Mark Allen: I think it comes down to being someone prepared to balance or embrace risk. For many people, it’s difficult to leap because there are lots of perceived pressures or reasons not to. For someone who considers themselves an entrepreneur, there’s a level of self-belief that you have to have that allows you to take that leap.
What is the importance of having a supportive and inclusive culture?
Mark Allen: A supportive and inclusive culture is everything. It’s really important to behave the ability to be open and honest not just with the people you work with, but with the wider community. People generally want to help others and if you’re afraid to ask for help you can miss out on creating important connections for growth.
How can a leader be disruptive in the post covid world?
Mark Allen: In the ‘new normal’ world we’re living in, people have adapted the way they interact, adopted new technologies to enable this, and as a result, business leaders who deliver solutions that people are now demanding will prosper. The real estate industry has seen a massive leap forward in the adoption of technology that has been largely ignored by the industry for years, but now, because people are demanding the adoption of these solutions, the businesses that deliver them (like virtual tours of homes, online processing) are the ones coming out ahead.
If a 5-year-old asked you to describe your job, what would you tell them?
Mark Allen: I introduce you to the owner of that house down the road that you love so you can buy it.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Mark Allen: I think that as a founder of a startup there are so many difficult decisions that you have to make. Any entrepreneur will agree that there are tremendous sacrifices that they have to make to start a new business including giving up time with family, working for very low or no pay until the business is profitable, or having to wear multiple hats to get the job done. We’re a relatively new business so apart from the usual sacrifices we’ve been lucky. The ability to be able to offer the service to a wide number of users in the early days was a great sacrifice so we could learn what the greatest need was and how we could deliver that help to them.
Leaders are usually asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is your most useless talent?
Mark Allen: I like to sketch, which is a great way to lose yourself and get out of your head, but as business skills stand it is pretty useless when you’re trying to deliver your OKR’s for the quarter.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. If you wrote a book about your life until today, what would the title be?
Mark Allen: “The Allen key to success” (lol).
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Mark Allen for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Mark Allen or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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