Walked Away From a £350K Deposit to Win This Plot: Tom Glanfield on Life After the Exit | Walk & Talk #3

Recruitment Mentors Podcast

Tom Glanfield discusses his journey from building and selling the LHI recruitment group to embarking on a massive luxury property development in

Key takeaways

Tom Glanfield maximized LHI Group's growth by limiting his own salary to Â£150k to reinvest profits into the company.
The Sandbanks plot acquisition involved a bidding war reaching up to Â£13.5 million against billionaire Peter Ogden.
LHI Group achieved a turnover of Â£150 million with an EBIT of approximately Â£10 million before its sale.
Tom utilized an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) for a tax-efficient exit strategy during the business sale.
He emphasizes that recruitment remains a 'safe' industry due to the irreplaceable nature of human sales interaction and relationship building.

Main topics

Sandbanks property development
LHI Group business exit
Entrepreneurial financial discipline

Notable quotes

I was always building a business to sell.

Conclusion

A masterclass in entrepreneurial discipline and the long-term rewards

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) So Tom, first time for me on the Sandbanks. Sandbanks build. Sandbanks build. Yeah. Beautiful part of the UK. Yeah. Only time that I've been to Bournemouth prior, and maybe this isn't deemed as Bournemouth, I don't know, but only time I was here prior was when my friend was at uni. It was a very different experience to this time around. We were having a little one, but absolutely stunning. So talk to us a bit about... When did we first see this plot? Speaker 1 (0:30) Well, so weirdly, when I sold my business, I bought a ski chalet. probably a bit over the top bought a very expensive ski chalet uh and then i bought a uh 65 foot like powerboat super yacht like triple decker and i was just going to stay in the house i i had in camford cliffs which i actually really liked and so i basically spanked the first chunk of money i got and then a mate of mine sent me this plot um on sandbanks and i i always thought sandbanks is a bit probably a bit wanky i wasn't sure so what's your Speaker 2 (1:06) place what area is Speaker 1 (1:07) that that you just can't for cliffs uh so it is just a bit more bit closer to bournemouth and on the beach there okay uh so like he's just like it's a third generation family this this on this particular road they just never come up i was gonna say i can't imagine that they come up often so i was thinking uh i just like and i can't afford it like um i'll go and have a look because i'm always obsessed with getting the best stuff okay and i walked in here and i saw this And I was just like, wow. And I was like, Jesus, like I spent my money already. So I did some big things. So I walked away from the boats, the deposits. I put 350 grand down this boat. I just literally walked away. So I just raced it off. Wow. And then I basically had to sell the ski chalet, downgrade it. I managed to scrape together enough money to start bidding on this. And how long ago was this? This was like three years ago. So I had... Oh, wow. Okay. My bank said they'd allow me to agree a value up to, I think it was about 11 million at the time. That you could potentially bid up to for this? Yeah. What was it on for? 15, but they thought it was overpriced. It was going to be a bit less. Okay. So basically the first offer came in, I can't remember if it was me or someone else, but it was about 10 million. Right. And it was rejected. It was like 10 and a half. Yeah. Then it went to 11. So I got to my... tough and it turned out I was bidding against a couple of other people and I tried to weasel out of the estate agent who was bidding on it and it was Peter Ogden and I was like are you kidding me? Because obviously his son Ed Ogden ran Spencer Ogden which was like a competitor of ours in LHI. There's no way I'm losing to the Ogdens. I was a bit worried because he's a billionaire. Speaker 1 (3:03) He went in, I think like 11 and a half million. I was like, so I went at 12 million, even though I was getting above what the bank had cleared me for. Look at that. And then. Speaker 1 (3:15) And then I think I went 12 and a half. Then he went to 13. I was like, oh my God. Like, it's like, he really wanted that bad. This Speaker 2 (3:22) is Speaker 1 (3:22) like, you know, when you play poker. Yeah. And then you're going all in the hand and you're not quite sure if you're, and the other guy goes all in as well. You're not quite sure if you've got a better hand. So then I went to 13 and a half and luckily he pulled out and then I got it. So then my next call to the bank go like, it's good and bad news. The good news is I got the property. The bad news is. more than 11 so you have to find me another couple of minutes um but yeah so So how did you go to that place? I mean, it was quite an ambitious project, but I quite wanted that because after selling the business, I just wanted something else to sink my teeth into. So we had a small property here, a cottage. It was actually in all the papers at the time. The Sun said it was the most expensive house in the world because it was so small, the cottage. They worked out per square foot. No one had paid more than that in the country. So I probably got conned. Speaker 1 (4:19) the cabanas you made and everyone and everyone said i wouldn't be able to knock it down so i had a two and a half year struggle with the council what was that all about then what was the main like right it just seemed to be that they it was the last part of the original sandbanks estate right and it wasn't like grade two listed or anything they just it seemed like because it had been there so long and every boat sells past it here they wanted to protect they just weren't they didn't want to go but i think it was just because they were used to it uh so i eventually got planning and then that wasn't that long ago was it yeah and that was uh it's well it was it was about a year ago but we had to do quite a few tweaks and stuff like that to the sea front and stuff to make it all work just quickly then was you concerned at any point of like oh my god i've got this plot of land Speaker 2 (5:02) and i'm gonna have to keep the cottage or was you always uh at Speaker 1 (5:05) one point a bit but i think if we had just had the cottage I'd have put out buildings, maybe modernize the inside or something like that. Okay. So you would have stayed committed to not being here. But now again, I've gone like all in on, yeah, I think when I sold LHI, my... my sort of investment advisor, my wealth advisor said, you're never gonna spend this amount of money. I think he's used to Speaker 2 (5:30) - Speaker 1 (5:30) Not enough to worry about money. I think he's used to like 65 year olds getting their money and then being really cautious for their money. And I was just like, so then I okayed a 10 million pound build on here. Well, the budget is 10, but I managed to get it down to eight because we did have a basement. I managed to act because it was just getting a bit crazy. I never thought I'd spend. 23 million on the property wow okay but yeah so so it's basically eight and a half million now is the budget which we're trying to stick to that if Speaker 2 (5:58) i've learned anything from property shows mate the budget always goes higher yeah this is what i'm worried about but i am like keeping Speaker 1 (6:05) my uh my builder on that number so we actually Actually on social media, on Instagram, we actually were documenting it all on and it's called the Sandbanks Build. Seeing the progress and also holding my builders to account on the budget and the timeframe. She's doing very well. I Speaker 2 (6:21) think a lot of people would be very surprised to hear that someone like you is in this part of the world because of recruitment business. And that's why I want to try and have more transparent conversations, get to meet people like you who... you know, have got to that end outcome. We've spoken on the podcast about the business that you built, how you've done it. But leading up to that, you know, was you taking a lot of money out of the business? How much like money did you make leading up to it? Speaker 1 (6:47) So