Tej Talks: Being Better

Starting in business at just 16 Phil has extensive experience in successful startups over the last 15 years, across a wide range of sectors including; furniture, retail, manufacture, technology, hospitality, interior design and property development.

Phil and Karl have been friends for over 12 years and combined their skills to form Winter Melia Developments back in 2015 where they have seen the business scale organically from single dwellings to large scale residential conversions. Phil heads up the business and operations side of the business, while Karl focuses on the construction side of the business. 

We fell into historic buildings as an investment strategy when purchasing our first listed building in auction back in 2017, since then we have focused on this niche - which doesn't come without its challenges but our desire to create something unique and desirable has led us into this sector of the market. Having won several awards over the past couple of years for our schemes its certainly an area we are looking to explore further and we currently have 2 more Churches in the development pipeline with a combined GDV of £8m.

Aside from property we have also recently launched a Proptech startup called BreezeMove, after being so fed up of the slow, opaque and frustrating side of the transaction from both a buyer and seller perspective on many occasions, we decided to set out to change that. Having come up with the ideal of a centralised digital platform to give all parties complete transparency of where the process is up to and which side is accountable for the next stage, we were invited down to The Home Office in 2017 to discuss with MHCLG which is where our journey started!

Tej graduated from King's’ College London with a BSc Biochemistry in 2014, he then pursued a career in Medical Education and Marketing. Soon after his second job… he was fired! A moment of relief and freedom was what he felt, not sure what his mother felt when he told her he was jobless at 23…

He then went in search of a more ethical path, a business he could set up where the reward was equal to the work put in. “If they are making pounds, why am I making pennies?” - was his thought process, not happy with slow progression and bureaucracy (& having to wear smart shoes everyday). This lead him to opening a Recruitment business (not sure where the ethics went) which doubled in profit every year, for 4 years. He hated it. Golden handcuffs they call it.

Fortunately, he used the cash he’d built up from that business, to educate himself in Property Investing. Soon, he’d stopped the business and transitioned into Property Investment full time. He then had a slow start -

Purchasing 15 properties in his first 9 months, using over £650,000 of Investor Finance, he built a £1,200,000 property portfolio and created £30,000 of profit from flips. This gave him ‘financial freedom’, but it was the most stressful period of his life. Growing quickly is very painful.

Let’s not forget that his Podcast grew to be the most-reviewed UK Property Podcast, peaking at 4,000 unique downloads per episode.

His Podcast (Tej Talks) now sits at 660,000 downloads in over 100 countries and has 489 reviews, rated 5/5.

www.wintermeliadevelopments.com

enquiries@wintermeliadevelopments.com

https://www.instagram.com/wintermelia/

https://www.instagram.com/breezemove.co.uk/

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