Stand Out or Blend In? Sian Miller on Building a Memorable Brand "TheEstateAgentConsultancy

In this episode, we sit down with Sian Miller, an independent estate agent who's teamed up with TAUK and voted their most memorable marketeer in 2025. We'll explore how she built a standout personal brand, balances business, and also what it takes to grow a one-woman agency from the ground up. Hope you enjoy it. Sian, welcome to the podcast and long overdue I would be saying. So let's start off by those tiny minority of people who don't know who you are from social Okay so obviously I'm Sian. I didn't start my career in a similar way to other people so I was never part of any sort of corporate high street agency. So I'd actually started originally in the in the real world of property as such with an independent estate agency near to me. I joined part-time just doing sort of more property management side because I was always quite a lettings focused person. I joined part-time because I just had my baby and then worked my way up to becoming branch manager. We had a very small team so I didn't have the same pressures that other people have experienced in their times. You know I still have my KPIs and my targets but they weren't on quite the same pressure or length to what a lot of people have experienced with the high street. I moved on from that when I was funnily enough about seven and a half, eight months pregnant to start my self-employed journey because you know no time like the present whilst also moving house. So I launched in November 2022 as a self-employed agent and like I said because I was moving house at the time it was just absolutely awful the experience and it just really solidified to me I was making the right choice in what I was what I was doing and yeah haven't looked back. I'm with the agency UK so we talk now absolutely loving it. Highs and lows as per any career but we take it on the chin and we keep going. And was that the catalyst for you to go from being an employed estate agent to going self-employed? Was it that experience of selling your own property you thought to yourself actually I can do better than this and these guys are getting paid x amount of money and I should be taking a larger percentage than five percent for funnily enough no. So what had actually happened was I was due to go on maternity leave from my current job hadn't actually considered the life of self-employment because you know kind of three three and a half years ago we didn't see as much of it as we do now and it ended up with because my role was quite varied within the business is that the owner of the business that she decided that it was going to be quite hard to fill my role temporarily while I was on mat leave and I took a voluntary redundancy and made the decision quite quickly about going self-employed. I'd seen what other self-employed agents were doing in my area and I thought okay we could we can give that a go. And from the moment that I launched it was sort of full steam ahead so yeah again it's not the traditional self-employed background of you know I knew I could do better or I you know I wanted more money or I wanted a better lifestyle. When I was working at that job I almost didn't know any different to what was out there because there was just so much less about it but you know looking back at it now it's the best decision I could have made. And obviously you went down the brokerage route was there ever a temptation slash thought in your head of going actually I'm gonna cold start this and I'm gonna open up Sian Miller Estates and kind of do it all afresh or are you always thinking you're gonna go down the brokerage route? I always thought the brokerage route for me it was just having that extra sort of support there and people sort of around you that have been there and done it and sort of taking their experiences on board as well. I think that from a financial point of view again you know I was heavily pregnant during my first my first child they all merge into one and just the financial aspect of moving house it was just it was never a consideration to sort of think you know what I would love to pay five grand for the portals as well as five grand for an office space in a high street that's dying out. I could see that before it sort of really snowballed so for me it was always always brokerage. So you mentioned also you've got three kids and I think you've got a horse as well and three dogs yeah okay so you've got a full and active life how on earth do you balance having a an estate agency business and that much going on around you what are some of the kind of factors you put in place or the boundaries you've been in place to kind of balance all of that in one go? So I think the lucky thing for me is that I almost don't know any different now because I'd started my self-employment with all of these extra sort of commitments and family and etc and it's taken me you know I'm on two and a half years now so it's taken me that long to sort of really figure out that that work-life balance but I think it was more of a mindset problem because when I was employed it was that you know nine to five working flat out you wouldn't really take a lunch break because you was always here there or dealing with someone and I think a lot of for the first maybe year or so is that I was mistaken being busy for being proactive and it was sort of the guilt at the start of I'm not doing enough work so I would try and fill that space whereas now I make a very conscious effort especially on sort of social media etc to highlight the fact that I do have children and you know I do have extra commitments so that my clients know from the get-go that I am you know a family girl and now it's resulted in you know when people contact me for evaluation they'll say okay do you want to do 10 o'clock it gives you time to do the school run they know that from the get-go the only days that I don't have child care currently are on a Wednesday and a Friday so what I tend to do is my Wednesdays and Fridays are sort of my days off or my admin days spend that with the littlest one who's two because I can't make a phone call with him anywhere because he'll be screaming in the background about something and then when it's his nap time I'll catch up with a little bit of admin I'll work you know some evenings generally try and work I fell into the trap of sort of doing viewings every single weekend Saturday and Sunday and that took a massive toll on you know the family environment as well as you know just burning out quite a lot so now I just try and I stagger the properties that I bring on so that I can give myself sort of every other weekend time to recover but now I'm in a situation where you know my business is scaled I'm in a better position than I've been in previously so now sort of use that like utilizing the time to go on holiday and things like that so we can sort of make the memories rather than just you know mum running around being a lunatic trying to do things yeah it's a hard juggle but I've found the balance yeah and if someone was listening to this and they were struggling with the balance the juggle of family life and run their own business and certainly when you first start a business it's kind of all hands on deck sort of thing what advice would you give that person that's kind of a quick win or a quick bit of advice that they could implement their business today that would kind of they would take a step back and go actually I feel better now I don't feel quite so rushed I think the main thing is just not to put too much pressure on yourself and that's something that I was doing as I was putting so much pressure on myself to be you know present for my kids but showing up for my business getting the work done etc that it was just putting so much pressure on me as a person actually it took me away from what was actually important and then that was the mindset shift of I actually need to be proactive and not just busy and I think it's very easy you know it's very easy to have mum or dad guilt it's very easy to you know think I haven't done enough today for the business but ultimately it comes down to just not putting that much pressure on yourself so you continue that motivation structure yourself and yeah get on with it. So you're now the award-winning Sian Miller because I went to the TA UK summer competition technical term and you won the top marketer award remember most memorable marketer 2025 so here's a weighted question for you what do you think sets you apart from everyone else as being the most memorable marketer in 2025? So as you know because he was there I was not expecting to be nominated for any award because I'd only been part of TA UK by that point for sort of a month or two and with regards to marketing it depends what aspect we look at we look at it do we mean sort of video marketing property marketing do we need mean personal brand marketing but for me a lot of people know me from LinkedIn because I'm very all over LinkedIn and I think that this industry there's too much sort of sugarcoating the life of the self-employed estate agent you know oh it's great you've got flexibility you've got freedom you can do the school run you can do this you can do that the truth of the matter is you can't all the time so I like to be really sort of transparent on LinkedIn etc to actually give people the opportunity to see the negative side of what we do you do have to make sacrifices for certain things um for your business and vice versa and it's you know it's hard work and you have your ups and downs and I don't think it's spoken about enough um and I think the dangers of LinkedIn in that respect is that people go into this sort of a little bit blindsided almost um to think that you know they're gonna in their first month be earning 100k and if they're not they're comparing themselves to everyone that's posting their pipelines etc on there um but I want to just bring more of sort of like a truthful element of it that you know we're not doing this to have an easier life we're doing it to have a better life so that's sort of I think from from that aspect is that I've had a lot of messages that say people say you know we're really pleased to see that not pleased to see we're struggling but we're so pleased that people are facing the same problems that we're having and then with regard to sort of my actual social media is you know Facebook Instagram something that clients are constantly watching is just the mixture of sort of like my business life and my personal life because with me as a person in general I'm very much what you see is what you get and I want clients to know that from the very get go and you know we do some swanky property tours in the meantime um but I think it's just having that person ability and transparency as a person. Yeah it's kind of like the expectations versus reality is next I think if you if you were an alien and came down to the UK and looked at you know social media like oh my god everyone's got a brand new range and everyone's got like houses with swimming pools and everyone's making loads of money in their screenshot in their pipeline when I think in reality you're probably looking at the top what five percent maybe ten percent if you're lucky um across the board and there's a lot more sort of the other 90 percent are probably a lot more sort of hand to mouth or sort of normal let's say in the grand scheme of things everyone else I think it's always very important to kind of look at the reality something. I think as well with the transparency side of things is that you know people that are posting their pipeline or their exchanges or whatever's going on like good for them I don't fully see the benefit of it um apart from potentially fulfilling one's own ego that will rough a few feathers but the other thing is considering you know that everyone has different fees they have different property prices they have completely different demographics and that in itself you know you could be selling 10 two-bedroom houses that are actually 1.5 million each or you could be on the other end of the scale where your two-bedroom houses are 200 grand so I think getting yourself into a situation where you start comparing yourself to other agencies is a really dangerous place to get yourself in. I always find it a really weird one because I think as as Brits we like the underdog like we would be like if you're an underdog if you're like oh you know Sian I've just launched my own business you're like I'm going to help you out and like we feel good for helping people out but as soon as people get too big for their boots we are the first ones to try and cut people down and so I always find it funny when people are like oh I'm amazing and I'm earning lots of money and I'm going to so-and-so and isn't this good I'm like you're literally setting yourself up people to go who are you like sort of thing whereas if you're like actually I'm trying really hard I'm working really hard and I'm being quite humble about it and yes I'm not showing you all the good stuff I'm showing you the bad stuff as well people are like fair play like you really deserve I've seen how much you struggle see how much you work when you've really earned it rather than just being some flash you know what and just going oh I'm amazing someone will be like actually we'll probably take you down a peg or two. Yeah and that's I think that's the big thing about social media is that like I said it's the post in sunshine and rainbows and you know posting a picture of your pipeline well what work have you done for it you know what have we seen the trials and tribulations you've gone through to get there and that's sort of the way I want to present my story is that I've had challenges you know over the last two and a half years and I've sort of gone from here to here but my head has remained the same size. I love that did you ever obviously talk about your family and pets and whatever it may be have you ever thought to yourself have you ever had a conscious thought where you said to yourself I am going to share my family on social media or I'm going to share the horse on social media for example or has it always been like I'm sure this is what you get you get you get me for an inch you get all of me sort of thing have you ever thought about the line you draw? So um no in all honesty and this is a really sort of 50-50 split I think in personal agency in particular is how much of your personal life you want to show off in comparison to how much of your professional life you want to show off and I won't post you know five posts in a row about my kids or my horses or you know my horses my kids and my dogs in one post that would be carnage anyway to create um but I will put you know a picture of my two-year-old smiling next to my soul sign or I will post a picture of you know my middle child who's seven came to work with me for a day and he came home and he was drawing a picture of the house that we're going to buy next and how it was going to be laid out I will post things like that so that people know that this is you know people aren't paying for me to sell their house for me to have this flash car and there's all these holidays and things like that they're paying for a family-run business and it's not family-run in such because it's just me but I'm a family girl and it's going to benefit me my children we're part of the local community so I like to bring the personal aspect of it in as well and the other thing like I said earlier is that I want people to know that I do have extra commitments as well so and my my clients are so so receptive of it that you know my my little one's been with me on viewings he's been with me to valuations and it's not a massive surprise to them because they've already seen him like on my social media so I know some some agents are very protective of that part of their life they want to really just draw that line and not have anything to do with it but I think for me it's part of my business it's part of my life it's part of my business plan it's part of my strategy so they're there so if I if I ripped away all your business and could take you back in time for two two and a half years or so and kind of back when you first started what would be your number one sort of focus with the lessons you've learned over the last couple of years or so being self-employed what would you really focus on if you had to start from scratch again um I think probably my mindset um and it sounds very generic and it sounds like you know a lot of people would say it but I had quite not unlimited self-belief but I I was almost trapped in that employed mindset of not sort of getting too creative outside the box or not thinking about other ways of doing things and once I got to that point you know I was competing against some of the biggest high street agents at the time I was like oh you know this is really good they've instructed me over them now I wouldn't even think about them in that way but yet now I've sort of scaled up and I'm competing against you know more of your equus and you know fine and country and sables like the sort of bigger ones that we don't see around here anymore and that's just from a shift of mindset of you know I know I can help these people I didn't doubt myself but I just felt like no one would have taken me seriously if I'd approached them whereas now I've got that sort of I know I can help you so let's just give it a go and I think I'm a lot more straight out with it now rather than trying to think of the best script to say or how to present myself it's just very look you want to sell your house you've been on the market for ages let's just let's get on with it so yeah a lot a lot more just sort of mindset shift I think. And what does success look like for you personally so where where are you kind of working towards with your business is is the goal eventually to have team members and take a step back is it's a scale to a certain figure then go off into the Caribbean sunset what does success look like for Sharmilla? So I am as you know my goals my vision changes every single week it's I don't have any sort of straight path and I think if anyone said I know exactly where I want to be at this point I just I don't really think that's too true because other things can pop up in between so from a from a revenue point of view is that I'm now where I wanted to be plus a year ago so my goalpost has changed that I want to be plus more because your goalpost is always going to change you know you hit your figure and you think I want more not in a greedy way just more of a I know I can do it. Being a estate agency director for TA UK I am looking to grow my team so in regards to what that looks like is that I want to be able to help other agents be successful in what they do it's not just a recruit recruit recruit bring anyone on it's about bringing the right people on with the right values the right culture and I'll be there to help them with things I didn't have help with at the beginning which I think is like invaluable to anyone that's starting out but my main priority now with success is about freeing up some of my time and actually having you know we haven't been on holiday for five years and now I'm in a position where I've got two holidays booked you know I can take my time away from the business reset come back and it won't fall apart and I think that's what a lot of agents struggle with is you know if I leave the business for a day I'm going to come back and have no one and that's not the case so for me it's just working towards you know the financial aspect where I'm you know eventually at some point I want that financial freedom but I'm where I need to be right now for being you know comfortable content enough time for the family not working till 1am yeah. I think that I you know when you were saying that I was kind of nodding along because I think I do struggle with something like myself I'm honest with you I think that the the bit of I feel like I said to my partner yesterday I was like if I don't feel like I'm going forward I feel like I'm going backwards and I was like I don't feel like I do these sort of things every single day in the business that you know the phone will stop ringing the day after sort of thing as if it's gonna be some groundbreaking thing I think it does take a certain amount of kind of trust, confidence, belief whatever it may be to kind of go actually I probably could take a day off or a week off and probably you know some people might notice you know my clients obviously will have to message and say that I'm off for a week you know it's gonna go to voicemail quite a lot I think actually the reality of sort of the momentum of the business probably after a year or two you've probably built enough behind you that you should kind of keep rolling whether you're at the wheel or not for a certain period of time anyway. And I think we just put we put much more expectation on ourselves than our clients do as well you know it's that constant I better check my emails, I better check my emails, I better check my emails literally every 30 seconds your client's not expecting a reply within those 30 seconds and you end up just sort of doom scrolling on your emails and the same as if you say you know to a client I'm off tomorrow if you need me then let me know but you know unless it's really urgent I need a time like the time off and in your head you're thinking oh my god they're gonna think I'm neglecting them and their sales gonna fall through and they're gonna leave me like a no-star trust pilot review but the amount of times they'll just come back to you and say you absolutely deserve it you know we'll pick it up at the end of the week it's not you know we just put that pressure on ourselves and the one thing I'll never do that it's a bit of an ick for me if I'm honest with other agents is this whole I'm available 24 hours oh yeah god yeah you're not if someone rung me at 2am to talk about I don't know that they don't know how to fill out their property forms that can wait you know I'm not available 24 7 and I'm never going to be because a you can't be and b why would you want to be I think that's a sign of um maturity because then when you first start you're like yeah we're 24 7 you could phone me at 9 o'clock at night and I'll speak to you sort of thing it's like okay when you first start that is maybe sustainable because you've got like three properties on the market and if we only get that many calls at nine o'clock at night I think once you get to a certain size it's just very unhealthy for you and your business to be like oh yeah phone me at nine o'clock at night like for me my phone goes in airplane mode at five o'clock literally on the dots or then I'm out the door I'm going to the gym thank you very much and all my clients know this they want to stand that and you know one of my clients the other day said oh do you mind if I send you a voice note when I drive to BNI at like 5 30 in the morning I was like do you like I'll turn my phone on at eight o'clock so it won't come through to that anyway so you can actually do what you like but it's definitely a maturity in yourself and your business to go actually I work hard when I'm at work but I draw a line and I say actually at this time I finish and therefore my life continues after that yeah what are some of the other mistakes you see self-employed agents make out there that you kind of wish you can kind of say to them that you're doing it this way but actually you should really be doing it this way so I've got a post about this on LinkedIn and scheduled to go out and one of my absolute bugbears is Canva oh I'm liking that post already okay so again another ick I love an ick but it's the agents that put together you know they spend all day putting together this one Canva post that quite frankly looks pretty pretty shocking anyway um and it's all sort of like look at me I'm better than everyone I can sell homes look at me look at me look at me with a crappy infographic or something and then it's the whole oh my dream clients haven't rocked up in my inbox yet I wonder why let me post another one and what they're doing is they're just spending all of their time on something that is just not going to work and that really really upsets me in all honesty say you know coming from someone that does most of their business on social media and I just want to say to like those people you're making a huge mistake in utilizing your time doing that rather than putting together a post that's telling a story about how you've helped a local home seller or buyer what you've done in your local community what the market updates are in your area actually you know people look at you as they have to relate to what you're saying and if you're saying look at me look at me look at me you're just thinking actually you're a bit of a like I don't want to look at you but if you you know put a post out that maybe says this homo will suck on the market for two years and we sold it you know in a month someone will relate to that and think we've been on the market a long time that person sold it I'm going to contact them and literally it takes 30 seconds to write rather than spending all day on a camera template it no I always do the camera templates I'm just thinking to myself that's a video right next one that's a video what the next one that's a video here's like here's my so-and-so and I think just just the time it takes to do a canva post get your phone in your pocket clip your microphone on and go you never guess what someone's just asked me and then just record a video about that topic is so much better when it comes to things like personal brand if you're actually relating to who they are no one ever says oh I love you camera templates and don't get me wrong you know when I started again I didn't have the guidance there that I needed is that I would put out canva posts and it would be well actually I wouldn't have it they would be done before I was back then and you know just really generic type information that no one really cared about um whereas now you know we they're being used as a filler post as I'd say you know I haven't really got anything to post about so I'm just gonna put this on and I think the one thing that I've really taken from you know the last six months is that when I'm on you know when I'm a property I'll say to my photographer do me a favor I'm gonna look like I'm arranging these flowers can you just quickly take a snap of it so it looks professional and then I'll use that as a this is how much care I put into marketing your home I'm here arranging flowers we need to get it right from the get-go and then again you're relatable because someone's thinking my agent didn't do that and I've got tea towels all over my kitchen and I've got washing up in the sink like they're not taking their time with it so it's again creating that problem and solution type I'm gonna be I'll be super nosy now if that's okay so where do your where's your main instruction source these days is it from your socials is it from sort of offline like lettery bawdy awareness stuff or what what's working for you now social is it a particular platform facebook it's like one on social so yeah those that know me know that like I'm very sporadic and I'm very shiny penny syndrome you know I've got one idea then I've got another idea then I'm bored of that one and I'm back to that one I'm bored of them both and I'm going to something else but the one thing that I have stuck with consistently is Facebook and Instagram and again I think because of I've got quite a creative mind is that I can put together posts that like I said earlier just is that problem solution scenario and the other thing is is not worrying about your reactions or your likes because actually what you want is you want the people that are reacting to it or liking your post or sharing your post or following your page are not just you know a thousand other agents that have liked your page but your hype and local market because then you know that you're getting your correct reach to the correct people um I've got you know people that I have no idea who they are they'll share my post in the community boards where I can't post as a business I've got people again I don't know that tag me for recommendations and things like that and it's that it's just it works um I have started now on sort of like more of the um lead generation through letters but that is because um they are set on auto campaign so I don't actually have to do too much which for me is perfect because I'll I'll start it and I'll never finish it um so I want to tap into you know a bit more of the market but for me my return on investment has come from social media so that's where I want to put my money. And if I'm going to put you on the spot now for a final question if that's okay um if there were three top tips you had to grow your presence on social media so other people can get a lot of their leads through from Facebook or Instagram or wherever they want to post on what would be those three sort of big tips you'd give them? So first one would be don't turn it into Rightmove or Zoopla you can't just be posting you know for sale properties and then linking it to the Rightmove um ads because you're driving traffic to Rightmove and not to your own website you know your own website should ideally have like instant battle or something like that so that you're going to attract vendors from there um the second one is just that whole problem solution create storytelling don't just post you know can but sold just sold this if you're looking to sell please contact me tell the story of how you've done it what problems they had what challenges they had and how you've helped to overcome it because again people are going to relate to it a lot more and lastly is um both your seller and buyer campaigns and now these are really good at data capturing they don't cost you know as much money as people think that they might but it's a way of you know you could you could do two avenues for a buyer you could say um you know click here to register your interest in properties before they go live you've already captured their data you've got then got buyers for your database and on the vendor side it could be you know how much is your homework in today's market and the one that we've got running at the moment is how much is your home worth they've put their name address um email phone number their type of property when they're looking to sell etc so you've already got that whole data captured and you can send you know straight away like a free home report call them a few days after see how they've received it if they've got any more questions you've already chucked them into your database you've got your lead from there John you are a award-winning marketer for very good reasons thank you so much for being so transparent and open today it's been absolutely brilliant thank you so much coming on no problem thanks for having me