Building business through community

Michael, it's an absolute pleasure to have you as a guest on Lead with Curiosity.

Thank you so much for your time.

For the benefit of those listening that don't know about Blocks and Mill, can I start by asking you to tell me a little bit about Blocks and Mill?

Okay, so I founded Blocks & Mill in 2000.

I was in the property sector for a long time, and it always occurred to me for a long time that the property owners and property occupiers were not properly aligned.

There was this landlord-tenant relationship, which was sort of antagonistic, almost sort of deferential, And it should be a symbiotic relationship.

And I thought particularly before that time that serviced offices were badly organized, badly arranged.

And so I wanted to set up something that was a little different.

mainly location was important, the environment, also the IT, and really looking after the people that were occupying the offices.

and treating them as clients.

So we, myself and a partner at the time, found a redundant carpet mill, which was in Bloxham, and it was called Steel's Carpet.

Well, it was just becoming redundant.

So as soon as it was empty on the 1st of July, I think we took possession of it.

And then we spent the first two years converting one third of it into inverted commas serviced offices.

But I don't like the term serviced offices because it has a mix, as I think you've said before, a mixed reputation.

Yeah,

I'll be interested to explore that a bit more later with you as well.

Right.

And so we converted and then opened the first phases in 2002, then converted the rest in the next two years and opened the rest of it in 2004.