Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Let's Talk, Let's An Original Podcast from the Lettings Hub hello and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast, let's Talk. Let's. I'm Heidi, the CEO of the Lettings Hub, the tenant referencing business that got good at tech. Let's Talk, let's it's our regular roundup of news and views on a whole range of subjects Sponsored the rental sector and in this session today I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Andrew Sape who is a director of asdt, a firm which specializes in personal safety awareness and self defense and provides sector specific training for a whole wide range of organizations. I'm sure many of you may have come across him at some point. It goes without saying this is a particularly important topic, not least as we record this just as the clocks have changed for winter and so the evenings are noticeably much darker, but specifically with letting agents who go on visits alone and their personal safety is clearly at times at risk.
Andrew is also trained in martial arts and has represented Great Britain at international competitions. So I think we're going to all get a lot from this pod today and learn a lot as we go along. So a big welcome to you Andrew.
Please introduce yourself to our listeners and tell our listeners a little bit more about what you do and how your career has taken you to this point.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Thanks Heidi for the intro. It's great to be part of what you guys are doing and sharing some knowledge about some important skills that affect both our working life and outside of that. But I've been involved in martial arts for almost 40 years and if you guys could see me, this is where you would think, well, how can that be possible looking at how youthful he looks. But it's taken me all over the world training, delivering sessions and being trained by some very senior people.
I've also been a doorman in my younger years both in Leeds and Blackpool, and a lot of what I have learned has come from that in how to conduct yourself with people who are perhaps a little intoxicated and wanting to cause some trouble.
I've also been involved in various security elements, working for private sector security and an organization that's authorized by the Home Office to provide security for locations.
And all of that experience has led me to have the knowledge to deliver the types of seminars that we're talking about. Personal safety training. I believe it's a life skill. I think many people just go around quite oblivious to the world around them and we know from the news that the world is getting a crazier place. It May have always been this crazy, but actually social media has given us an insight into a lot more incidents that happen. So that's me in a. In a nutshell.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Okay, wow. Well, you definitely make my intro seem very dull actually, because that is pretty impressive and you definitely seen the man for the job to be able to help us. So in the introduction I mentioned that you specialize in personal safety and clearly with a huge amount of experience there from, you know, all different levels, I guess. I wonder if you could maybe give our listeners a bit of a picture of why it's such a vital topic specifically for our lettings and estate agency staff.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Well, I've been fortunate to do quite a lot of my training with various people in the property sector. And as I mentioned in the introduction, I believe that taking your personal safety more seriously is a life skill. A lot of people may not agree with that because they may say, well, actually I've never, nothing's ever happened and I've never felt threatened. But certainly within the property sector we know that's not the case. It's vitally important because we are ultimately dealing with strangers and strangers with no history.
We have sometimes limited knowledge about those people. And if we talk about high profile cases, everybody involved in property is well aware of the Susie Lamplou Trust, which was set up by Susie Lamplou's parents, who is unfortunately kidnapped and died back in 1985 as a result of viewing for a property which went very wrong. There's a lesser known case a few years later in 1992. A lady called Stephanie Slater was also kidnapped and held hostage for eight days and managed to survive. So obviously not as high profile because she survived. But thankfully the high profile cases are few and far between. What we hear more of is verbal and physical abuse, whether it's on the phone or direct, face to face, and a lot of threatening behavior.
I suppose. Not to belittle it, but that often happens when you tell somebody the house is not quite worth what they thought it was, or I guess they can't.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Move in, they haven't been selected.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: That's right. And there's a whole host of associated issues, why somebody might get frustrated that they're not getting the answers that they want. So I think we think of estate agents and letting agents in particular. You are ultimately dealing with strangers and we have limited knowledge. So that's why it's really important to get as much information as we can and to be as prepared as possible going into every situation.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess in our industry we still typically Visit property on our own.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: That's right. And I think in an ideal world we would probably always have somebody with us. I think we don't know what we're going into. I think the pressures of business in general, the time restraints and particularly with letting agents having to do that many viewings, it's often not practical to have somebody with you. So we are on our own. So there's an additional risk being a lone worker.
Most companies have some kind of a loan worker policy in place, but in my experience it doesn't deal with any real practical measures. It's often about just keep your belongings safe. And it doesn't really talk about what should you do in a number of different scenarios. And when I do my training, we often talk about the scenarios that people have experienced because that's the real life and what have people done. We can learn from what people have done and we can put some measures in place and bring loan worker policies to life. So yes, I think it's just the nature of the business that 9 out of 10 times people are visiting properties on their own.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And we obviously deal with all ends, I guess of the spectrum in terms of lessing a home. But one of the sad situations I guess we have to do is we have to send bailiffs in to get possession of a property when a tenancy has gone wrong. And even in those scenarios now bailiffs go in pairs.
You know, they ppe equipment, they go in pairs. And that's why there's a bit of a backlog and that's kind of caused some problems for the industry. But that is purely for safety.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: That's right. They're having to be in pairs but in addition they've often got protection vests on that are stab proof and more and they've all got webcams. So, you know, I think when you are at the stage that a bailiff is required, it's obviously somebody is. Most of the time individuals are not want to be willing to follow whatever the protocol is because the bailiff that they obviously haven't done because the bailiffs there in the first place. But yes, they're absolutely having to go in pairs for protection. And I know we spoke about it briefly before the podcast but you know, are we at a stage if people are really feel unsafe, should they be asking a colleague to attend viewings with them?
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think it's, you know, it's fairly commonplace in our, in our industry that, you know, viewings are conducted in the evening because that's when obviously people can attend the property if they're at work all day, obviously they'll try and get as many done in the day as possible, but it's not always possible. So the last appointment slots are usually the busiest. So, you know, I know I mentioned earlier, but it gets dark. As a woman you definitely feel more vulnerable at this time of year to when you're in the summer. And I know that's just a light, dark thing, but it just feels, you know, quite different.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: I think that's right. And you know, I know even women who are just might exercise all year round and go enjoy going out for a jog and they always go in the evening, actually just stop during this time of year because they don't feel safe enough. And that's after 4:00. I think we're coming to now where it's getting dark or even 3:30 when we get to December. And that's something that I talk about a lot is that an environment perhaps doesn't change, but the atmosphere around it. So if you park in a car park in the light of day at 9 in the morning and you go back to that same car park at 5 o'clock at night in the dark, that car park itself per se has not changed. But the environment surrounding it perhaps, and we have to be mindful of that and planning ahead.
And we know that young men and older men and women are also at risk at times. We often think about women because a lot of the cases are higher profile for women. But actually men are just as much at risk, if not more so in certain circumstances.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll come back to that if we can, because that's actually quite an interesting point. But let's talk about red flags. What are kind of some of the red flags that we could all be aware of?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: I think we'll probably touch on this a bit later. But to me the preparation should have started in the office at that first point, that first phone call, and there may well be red flags there. I remember doing some training for an organization and a young lady was answering the phone trying to set up a viewing and she just didn't have a good feeling about the guy. He was very, very vague about some of his information. He didn't really have any ID or a home address. And it turns out he'd just come out of prison. So it was innocent in so much that he was now out of prison and looking for a property. But that red flag started at that first phone call. If we think further down the line when we're actually going to viewings, you know, spotting things that are out of place. And I talk a lot about your gut reaction. The gut is very, very powerful. The reason why we get butterflies when we feel nervous is because the nervous system in the gut is connected directly to the brain, and that's where we feel it. We don't tend to feel it in our head, we tend to feel it in our gut. And we should always trust our gut instinct. So if we pull up to somewhere and something doesn't feel right, maybe there's two or three guys hanging around.
They might be innocent, but we don't know that. And if you feel unsafe, that is perhaps a red flag. If we're actually in the viewing, things that can make us feel unsafe are perhaps we just don't like the look of somebody, and we can judge within five seconds, rightly or wrongly, that something is not quite right. Maybe somebody's acting in a strange way. Maybe they're looking at you inappropriately.
Maybe they're clenching their fists, breathing heavily, sweating. Maybe they're on drugs. Maybe they might look like they've had alcohol.
Some estate agents told me once about being locked in into a house where they'd gone to meet a seller who was wanting to list their property on the market and actually locked them in as soon as they got in and was drunk and they had no way of exiting. So all of these things are red flags. But the biggest red flag measure, I think, is your gut instinct. If something feels not right, the chances are it's not. Even if it is, okay, if you don't feel it is, then that's the time to take some action.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Okay, great. And obviously, even when you're talking about that, it's really reminded me of the many stories that our previous podcast guests have kind of shared with me. Most of them have ended up with kind of nothing more than like a funny anecdote about the properties they've managed or the people that they've met, or the, you know, slightly eccentric owners, you know, to your point, or unusual behavior. But actually, many of those stories really, genuinely could have been red flags and could have ended in a. In a different scenario and led to potentially quite a dangerous situation.
I just kind of wonder if we delve a little bit deeper into kind of discussing maybe some of the checks that should be done, you know, that you would recommend before a letting agent goes out on an. On an appointment or goes out to meet anybody. What actions should we. Should we take?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Well, I've got a sort of 10 point checklist that I'll share. It's certainly by no means a finite list, but as I mentioned before, point 1 would be the preparation starts in the office, and that is where we gather as much information as possible about the potential client. Wherever possible, I would have that client visit the office. I know that's not always possible because they give short notice or they've only got a certain window or the office is not near to where the viewing or letting might be, but I think the preparation starts in the office. Gather as much information as possible. And often I've highlighted to people how much you can find out via WhatsApp and via social media. So if you put somebody's phone number into your phone and then you go on to set up a WhatsApp message, you don't have to message that person, but you can often see what that profile picture, if it shows a, you know, a machine gun or a skull with blood covered on it and a knife cutting somebody's throat, that might be a red flag.
But I would certainly do as much outside information apart from the phone, email address and current residency, because you can find a lot on social media. You know, I do a lot of private training with people and I'll often check them out first and get a flavor of what they're like online. You can tell by the type of posts people make, by the friends that they associate with and the things that they follow. That gives you quite a good information. So that would be the first point, gathering as much information in the office as possible, the second point, and then they're not necessarily in order, but it would be to trust your instincts, which we spoke a lot about. And if something isn't right, it doesn't feel right. The chances are it isn't right. When a meeting is confirmed, ensure that the office know all the details of the client. If we look back at the Susie Lamplou incident back in 1985, much more than an incident, a tragedy.
All she had in her diary was Mr. Kipper. I don't even think there was a phone number. The guy had given a fake name. There was no other details back then. So we've got to get as much details as possible. Name, address, phone number, email, expected beginning and end time of an appointment, and that should be shared with your line manager or a colleague. Quite often people are just rushing around. They've done a viewing, they've left, and they've not had time to even register that that viewing was taking place. So some of those details are absolutely crucial that somebody should Know your whereabouts. I know there's all sorts of apps and trackers that we can talk about perhaps later on in the podcast. But if you are concerned, ask a colleague to attend. If you're a young lady and you feel unsafe, it's not always possible because everybody's busy. But ask a colleague to attend because you're just not sure it's in an area that you're not familiar with, or it's in perhaps a high crime area, which we know a lot of lettings can be in as well.
One of the areas that I like to talk about is something that a lot of people don't put in place. And I teach a lot of martial arts linked to scenarios.
Often you find that people are practicing martial arts, but they've not really thought about some of the situations that might occur. So when we're talking about lettings and viewings, we should plan ahead and at least have an exit strategy. People don't know, you know, how to get out of a house. Have they opened the back door? Should they lock the front door? You know, to me, often you should lock the door behind you and always be going behind somebody who's viewing so that you've got the best chance to escape if something terrible happens. But you know, nowhere to go, nowhere to park, know how to drive. Nowhere there's roadworks, nowhere there's dead ends. You know, we have to think about if something happened, what would we actually do? And a lot of people are caught short in all sorts of situations that I hear about because they've not thought about what if. Often people say, well, nothing's ever happened so it's not really an issue. But that's the point. If we think of all the high profile murders that have happened that are not related to estate agents, but we think of Sarah Everard, Sabina Ness, Ashley Murphy, you know, people just running by a river that they've done for years and being attacked and murdered. They, they probably also unfortunately said, well, nothing's ever happened to me, so it's not an issue. So you have to be very mindful of that. But plan ahead. Know all the details of the location, the property, surrounding areas and the best route and safest place to places to park. I've just got three or four more points we've got.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: You carry on. Yeah, okay.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: I'm just hearing a lot of my own, my own voice at the moment.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: No, it's good you're the guest.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: So I think we've always known that carrying a personal tackle alarm, particularly for a Young or for, for a woman is crucial. People have been talking about that for 30, 40, 50 years. And anytime I ever speak to anybody about an attack alarm, often called a rape alarm, and I ask them where is it? They'll say, oh, it's in my drawer by my bed. And that doesn't really help you when you're out, out and about. There's all sorts of brands now that have made attack alarms very funky. Different colors, very loud decibel alarms, flashing lights. One of the ones that comes to mind is empowered by Ashley, which is a brand that you might have heard of who do a range of devices. But carrying an attack alarm, I think is paramount in this day and age. Or having a safety device such as something linked to your phone or some kind of monitored alarm. There's a number of apps available that actually you can even call a live person that can keep an open channel while you walk to your car if you feel unsafe. It wouldn't stop an incident, but it gives you a live person to speak to and have an open line on a chat.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: I was going to ask about that actually, as an example of do you, for example, if you're viewing, dial to the office?
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Well, I think that's something that you could either do routinely and just say to the person that you're going to meet with, look, I'm just for safety, we have all our calls. I'm just going to leave my phone on the desk on the kitchen table or carry it with me. That's one thing that I often suggest to people if they're starting to feel unsafe, that they just make a call to the office. But actually, if the person that you're meeting is okay with that, I would actually do that from the beginning, leave it open on loudspeaker. But on that note, if you're feeling unsafe, most people I know have a voice or distress code.
So somebody I spoke to recently said, oh, we asked for Mr. Somebody or other, and somebody else says, oh, mentioned David Beckham within a sentence, something like that. But if you have a distress code, it doesn't alert then the, the tenant or the person who's viewing or the vendor, it just then alerts somebody in the office that something's not right and that they could come and help, be in attendance or in a worst case, call the police. But having a distress code, a safe code, a safe word, a number to be able to alert the office, I think most people do have those, but perhaps don't have a lot of people have protocols in place such as that. But not everybody knows about them, and not everybody is bringing their protocols to life, which is part of this kind of training. A lot of what we talk about is common sense. And you say, well, of course I would use that. And of course that makes complete sense. A lot of what we talk about and share is not rocket science, it's common sense. But it's common sense that needs to be brought to the forefront. You know, I'm not thinking of groundbreaking ideas that people have probably not thought of themselves, but they're not thinking about them on a regular basis. And that's the key.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And I suppose, what, like ringing the police?
Seems like a very simple thing to say, but I think you would question yourself, wouldn't you, in a scenario going, do I really want to bother them? Is this a really serious situation or not?
Any advice you would kind of give to people as to, like, you know, what, you know, ring the office is one step, like, how does it escalate and at what point do you trigger the next panic point? I suppose.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: I think it's. It's very difficult. There's so many different scenarios. I think the first point is to call the office.
Maybe you perhaps have two or three levels of distress code. So you could even do colors, you know, bronze, silver, gold. You could have three different celebrities names, and each one is a different escalation. And then you'd have to discuss between yourselves with your management team and colleagues to say, well, look, what do we think is the right time to call the police? I think if you're feeling physically threatened, bearing in mind, sorry, that threatening behavior can often be verbal and not actually physical. So we have to bear that in mind. When I ask people what does personal safety mean to them, they come out with all sorts of answers. But a definition that I like to use is personal safety is an individual's ability to go about the everyday life free from the threat of fear of psychological, emotional or physical harm from others. So, you know, that can mean different things to different people. And if you feel threatened and it's at the stage where you feel like you need the police there, then, you know, we have to act accordingly. And I suppose, you know, if you feel threatened, you're not. You're not wasting anybody's time. It might turn out to be nothing. But if you felt threatened enough that the police needed to be called by your office, then that's something that has to happen.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: I mean, the last couple of points on these tips are unlock all doors in a property ahead of time and Always trail behind a client, allowing them to enter rooms and go upstairs before you. I think that's something a lot of people know about but perhaps don't do because they're rushing or they've just, you know, gone into a room first because they've opened the door first. I think wherever possible. We know the time restraints are challenging, but if you can get to a property beforehand and open all the doors and certainly the back door and check, is there a way out through the back door? Some people often like to see a backyard or garden anyway. But you know, if you're leaving the front door open and the back door open, a lot of people say, oh, no, I like to just, I mean, it's a bad area. I like to lock that front door. I would argue that to leave that door open, it's much easier to go through an unlocked door, even if it's closed, than it is to unlock a locked door. That wasn't easy to say, was it?
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Unlock a locked door takes a lot more time. So I would leave doors open. But wherever possible, even if you've got five minutes to spare, open all the doors that you need to that relate to a viewer.
And finally, when we're talking about a car pulling up to an area, lock your door when entering your vehicle. I know a lot of modern cars, it happens automatically within the first few seconds or when you put your foot on the brake.
But, you know, always look around your car before entering and leaving the vehicle. A lot of the times if somebody's going to surprise you, they're not going to make it easy. So often you can look in a rear view mirror or look around your car or look out of the window and just see somebody might be hiding behind a car. You know, people hide for, for a reason. They know, as we do when we think of martial arts and self defense, our best, one of our best weapons is our, our element of surprise.
And that's the same for, for criminals that are intent on doing bad things. They know that giving you warning is going to give you time to prep to, to avoid a situation. So they, people will often hide. And that goes back to the point that we said before about parking in the day and then it turns night. You know, you might have walked past, I don't know, a concrete plant pot outside your office for years. And it's not been an issue during the day, but at night it's still a concrete plant pot. But somebody can hide behind it. And I think we have to be mindful of how our, our environment changes as the daylight changes.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And I know we mentioned in kind of passing webcams, you know, on bailiffs, but do you think that that is a potential deterrent if we. Nothing else. Not necessarily a solution, but a deterrent for, you know, people doing property viewings?
[00:27:00] Speaker B: I think it would be, you know, anybody that's involved in public service, you know, you have traffic wardens, you have security, you have police, you have PCSOs, you have security personnel, they all have webcams because they're more likely to be involved in a violent situation. You know, whether that ever gets to the stage where we feel that people in the property industry should be having a webcam, there's no question that that would help actors as deterrent if people know that they're being recorded all the time. I don't know what the legal aspect actually of having that, whether as you're still civilians and whether you're allowed to record somebody in that way, even though you're in a property company.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: I guess it's become so much more commonplace, hasn't it, to have kind of dash cams in your car? You know, it's a lot more people would, you know, potentially accept it more than you know before. Maybe.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: It's certainly worth to explore that. I might have a look online and see. But yes, it's accepted in a car. Whether it's accepted in a face to face, one on one meeting, I'm not sure. But we know a lot of calls are recorded. We know this podcast is being recorded. You know, people are more accepting of being recorded on calls because it's used for training what you hear on when you're calling an insurance company, it's used for training purposes or what have you. So, you know, we could say that videos, video footage is being used for the same reason.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: And how. Any advice? I suppose. Do you have any advice? Because I guess there could be a situation and one of the things that stops people doing something maybe to protect themselves is they feel awkward. You know, what if I've got it wrong? You know, what if this person is absolutely fine and I'm creating a situation out of nothing?
I know we've said that if somebody feels threatened, that's enough, but is there any kind of sort of resolution tactics like anything that you would recommend people say or do if they feel that they're kind of in a situation and don't quite know how to handle it?
[00:29:10] Speaker B: I think that's different for different people. And I suppose I would say that there's never A right or wrong. If you feel unsafe, you have to let somebody know. And you might even say to the tenant, look, I say, oh, can we go in this room? Do you mind? They might say, I'm going to lock the door, search. I'm not very comfortable with that. Or just make some excuse and just say, I've got. I'm sorry, I've just. I've got to leave something urgent to come up and you have to exit the property. I think that that really is a very personal thing and I think talking through scenarios, talking through the situations that each person ends up in, letting agents and estate agents find themselves in similar but different situations, and talking through scenarios and saying, what would we do if this would happen? And having a plan, I think that goes back to the red flags. If you feel it's a red flag to you and you feel particularly unsafe. If we even look at the Health and Safety at Work Act, I don't want to cause problems for companies, but if somebody feels unsafe for whatever reason, then you owe it to those individuals and employees and colleagues to.
To try and mitigate those issues that could lead to escalate to something more. I mean, one of the things that I've come across two or three times is that some estate agents I've worked with and done training for, they actually have products in their offices, such as Stay Safe, which is kind of. There's one called People Safe, one called Stay Safe. There's about 10 different companies, all either work through mobile phones or it's just a pendant that you wear or clip onto yourself. I went in and they were paying for a monthly fee and nobody was taking them out. And that was ridiculous. They actually had the protocols in place and people, to me, it should be there with your car keys, your phone and your personal safety device. So, you know, you've even got people that have gone to the extent of putting things in place and people are just not following them. There's a whole host of different things available. You'd be amazed, actually, what's available. Some of them are free and some of them, you know, I use. For my children, I use Live360, which is a free app, so I can just see where they're at via their phones. It tells me what their battery percentage is and I can send them a message to remind them to charge or whatever. So, you know, having all these things in place, they still need to be followed, the protocol.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it goes back to what you said at the very beginning is, you know, people need to know who they're going to meet. And trying to gather all of that information at the start is really important. And I wouldn't normally use the POD to kind of do a plug for our products, but I do think it's an important topic that's just based on what I kind of want to mention from a practical point of view. We're launching kind of pre qualification checks before referencing. It's free, so there's no pounds and pence involved. But I think it's going to help this situation potentially in two ways. The first one being it will allow an agent to create a short list of tenants which just naturally means they're going to see less tenants and they're going to do less viewings and that will naturally just reduce the risk down. But secondly, and probably the most crucial is the fact that the agency will already have gathered lots of information about the prospective tenant before the letting staff member even leaves the office. And I imagine that if somebody is essentially luring someone to an empty property, then it's highly unlikely they're going to have provided such a wealth of information that we've obviously done a cross check on.
I guess overall it doesn't change the need for everyone to remain on guard and be really mindful of the risks. But I think going back to your 10 point list and all the things it's is doing, lots of the smaller things that actually overall protect the best we can in kind of unknown circumstances. And I know that you mentioned at the beginning in terms of it's more known now, it's more talked about, but genuinely do we actually think the risk is getting greater like all the time or is it, is it just talked about more maybe?
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Well, I think it talks about more. Social media has helped greatly with that. I mean when I think of my martial arts world and the security world and the various things that I'm involved in, I think people are more brazen to be prepared to do bad things. We might have all, we might say, well these things have always happened but actually they're more in limelight because of social media. But I know that, you know, young kids, there's up to 30,000 14 year olds in the UK carrying a knife and they might not even be part of a gang, they're carrying it for their own protection. People are more prepared to defend themselves.
And I think the worry for me is that you don't really know who, who is capable of what. I think we're all capable of doing whatever we can to protect ourselves and family and Friends. But, you know, when I. When I think of looking at situations, if you saw my two boys walking down the street, 6 foot 3 and 6 foot 1 in black hoodies like they do, looking very chubby, looking like any other kid, they wouldn't. They can both handle themselves, but they're very, very conscious of other people. And I've trained them to sort of cross the road when they see a young lady walking on their own, to not make them feel vulnerable and that kind of thing. But you wouldn't know that as an individual. So we have to treat everybody with an element of suspicion that's not meaning that we don't trust anybody. I think for me, it's about doing 99%, spending 99% of your time to avoid potentially threatening situations. Because if you're not doing any training or you're not, I train every day. But if you're not, if you're training once a month and think that's going to be enough, it's not. So if you're not prepared to the physical side of defending yourself, we need to spend all the other elements. And like you said, it's a combination of factors, whether it's that phone call in the office or whether it's where we park on a viewing, a combination of those factors together is what keeps us safe.
But yes, to answer your question, I think people are a little bit more brazen to be prepared to do things. And the worst people to be engaged with are the ones that do not fear consequence.
So if I think of a purely physical match, you know, and I would take on anybody with skills, if you like, but the people with no skills but actually a hell bent on causing you harm, they're the worst because they don't really care. They might have already been in a juvenile detention center or been in prison. They're not bothered about the consequences. And those are the people that we need to really, you know, try and identify. And that can be very difficult to do.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. I've listened totally intently to everything that you've said. Just explain to our listeners if they wanted to join a seminar, how would they go about doing that? Roughly how much would it cost them? Do you do them online? Do they have to attend in person?
[00:36:31] Speaker B: So I've delivered seminars across the country for all sorts of organizations. I think I try and price it to be a relatively low cost per person to work, depending on how many people, but I work on around 25 to 50 pounds a head, depending on how many people. And I try and do that for a minimum of 20 people.
I try and do seminars for an hour, an hour and a half. I'm very flexible with time. So if, if people are engaged and want to, we can spend much longer and then I'm not precious about how many people would attend. If people want to have a whole organization or other organizations coming together once I'm there and delivering a seminar and I'm happy to do that, they're finding more about what I do. My website's asdt.co.uk and you can connect with me through there and I can share some information with you. I'm happy people have got any concerns, just email me or WhatsApp me and I'm happy to give them some advice free of charge.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Excellent. Well Andrew, thank you so much for what's been a really important session.
And as I mentioned to you earlier and it seems strange now to go onto a totally light hearted topic, but we'll end it in a light hearted way. Our regular listeners of let's Talk let's always know that we end the podcast by asking our guests for a funny story or anecdote. So do you have one for us today?
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Well, it was finding it hard to think of that many. I mean I was training a young 12 year old boy who had some autistic challenges and he nearly knocked me out punching me in the nose without a warning. But that's, that was interesting trying to explain to somebody that had been attacked by my 12 year old boy and had a big bruise across my, my nose luckily didn't break it. But I think back in my dorman days in my 20s in Blackpool, there was an interesting incident was about 50 guys from a rugby team on a stag night and the nightclub that I worked in had a swimming pool in the basement because it was kind of like a spa hotel and they were jumping in the hotel and that, that got a bit, bit hairy. And if you want to know more about that, perhaps if I meet anybody in person I'll tell you what happened.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Excellent. Thank you so much. And when we post the pod and when we put lots of information out on LinkedIn, we'll make sure all of the links are there for everybody. So if you're listening to this and you haven't looked at that, go find everything and you'll find everything that you need to know. To ensure you never miss an episode of let's Talk, let's please follow us on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast past, please leave us a review and thank you, Andrew, and thank you very much for listening. Let's talk. Let's an original podcast from the Lettings Hub.
