“I always wanted to be a journalist, that was my goal in life and I’ve done that and I loved it and working at the EG really brought me into the built environment and I fell in love with that and when things were coming to the end, I knew that I wanted to stay in real estate, but I’d already had the best job in real estate and journalism as far as I was concerned so, journalism was off the table and then when the opportunity to join the BCO came up, it just felt really right because here’s a part of the industry that’s going through a massive transformation, which is super exciting and where there’s real opportunity to do some fantastic things.”
Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Sam McClary. Sam has more than two decades of experience in the UK real estate sector. She spent the first 24 years of her career as a journalist and editor, with an introduction to the property sector through a specialism in hotel and leisure reporting. In 2004 she took up a role as a rookie reporter at Estates Gazette, first covering retail and leisure. Over the next 20 years she moved her way up through the ranks of Estates Gazette, building connections with people across the real estate sector and broadening her coverage to include the key issues facing the industry and the core ways the sector contributes to the UK’s economy and prosperity. She took over as editor in 2019 and held the position until January 2025 when the business was sold to family-owned publishing house, Mark Allen Group. Sam is best known in the industry for being a fierce champion and challenger to the real estate sector, utilising her platform to help showcase the good that real estate can and does do for people, planet and UK PLC while poking the sector to continue to improve in key areas such as diversity, environmental and societal impact and tech advancement.
Among her proudest achievements is the launch and development of the Future Leaders Programme, which gave powerful voices to underrepresented groups in the built environment. In early 2025 Sam was appointed Chief Executive of the British Council for Offices, a key industry body representing the workplace sector. She takes up the role from 6 May and plans to continue to be both champion and challenger for the sector as it continues through this most transformative period. So now we’re going to hear from Sam McClary on her career in journalism, her reflections on the real estate sector and her plans for the future. Sam, good afternoon. I was just wondering does anybody actually call you Samantha or is it always Sam?
Samantha McClary
My aunt calls me Samantha and people when I’m naughty call me Samantha, otherwise I’m Sam.
Susan Freeman
I thought so.
Samantha McClary
So hopefully you’ll call me Sam through this, Susan.
Susan Freeman
Well I generally do. So it’s a little bit daunting interviewing one of our leading real estate journalists so, I’m assuming you’ll let me know when I’m not asking you the right questions. So, Sam, you recently left the Estates Gazette, formerly known as EG, after 20 years, including 5 years as a trailblazing editor and I was just thinking it must have been pretty turbulent for you as the announcement on the 6 December that the EG was closing totally shocked the industry so, I can’t imagine you know how things were for you, I mean how did you actually keep your team functioning?
Samantha McClary
You know, it sounds really cheesy but at EG we were really were a family so, actually we all took it quite hard as you can imagine when the announcement was made, we were all heartbroken, but we all, we all care and loved EG, we loved our, our jobs so, we still had that and we still knew that we were going to go out fighting until the end and I think probably within all of us there was the hope that it wasn’t really the end and thank goodness it wasn’t but we just banded together really as a, as a team and you know we cried together and sunk a few beers together and then knew that what we were doing was still important so, just cracked on and journalism is one of the best jobs in the world because really, you know as Peter used to always say to me whenever I complained to him when he was my boss about my salary, “you’re paid to gossip, stop complaining” and we are, I mean it’s a little bit more than that but it’s a great job.
Susan Freeman
I mean the announcement drew such an outpouring from the industry, it was, I mean you must have been quite overwhelmed by that.
Samantha McClary
I was massively overwhelmed and usually I’m quite a, apart from when Future Leaders, I’m usually quite a stoical kind of, kind of gal but Future Leaders always gets me and actually when people were sharing all these wonderful memories of EG and you know sort of talking about the things that we’d done as a, as a publication, it was so moving, so humbling and I’m not ashamed to admit that I probably burst into tears multiple times a day whenever one of those messages came through because they were just phenomenal, I never really realised I don’t think how much of an impact the publication had on people’s lives.
Susan Freeman
So, you were clearly very much appreciated in the industry and the ‘Sam McClary Appreciation Party’ in January when you stood down as editor was incredibly well attended by all of your supporters so, I mean that must have been a very nice thing to see.
Samantha McClary
Again, over, overwhelming and you know me, Susan, I’m not usually that lost for, for words but it was really hard that evening to pull some words together, particularly after you know so many people had helped support that event, we raised a lot of money for charity as part of it as well which was great that a very tidy sum went to Land Aid, which is brilliant and just you know the number of people who, who came along, it was a bit short notice, and were in the room was, like I still can’t quite believe it I suppose, I never, you know there’s, there’s a bit of me that thinks I’m just a, well not anymore, that I’m just a, just a journalist but this industry is so welcoming I think and once you’ve sort of connected with people, those connections run really, really deep and I think it’s a brilliant industry as well you know, Susan, full of amazing people who do amazing things so, it was just so wonderful to have all those people in, in the room and I hope that you know sort of everything that I did over the last 20 years meant, meant something and it did feel like it in that room that night.
Susan Freeman
So we’ll, we’ll get onto talking about the connections but I think since we’ve started with the end of your career at the Estates Gazette, I think we should get back to how that career started because I know you grew up in the New Forest surrounded by countryside and trees and ponies, so what, whatever sort of gave you the idea that you wanted to be a journalist?
Samantha McClary
Well, I was never very good with ponies so apart from My Little Pony, I never got into the horse riding vibes but I always loved to write and used to get told off by my mum for scribbling on the walls at home and I loved to talk to people and I quite liked finding out secrets but wasn’t very good at languages so was never going to be a spy. And so just always knew, I think there was always something in me that I knew I would be a journalist or wanted to be a journalist so, when it came to figuring out how to do that, I only applied to journalism, journalism schools so that was just the direction I was going in. I wanted to get to London, you know, and make it as a, either a newsreader which was what I wanted to do first, or I wanted to be Kate Adie, I thought she was pretty cool. I had a stint where I thought I’d be a fashion journalist and didn’t have the greatest experience at the work experience at one of those magazines that’s no longer on Hanover Square, and then sort of fell into B2B journalism, starting first at Caterer and Hotelkeeper which was owned by RBI, sort of predecessor to RELX and loved that, really loved it, but from Caterer could see this other magazine that RBI owned called Estates Gazette, as it was then too and thought ooh they’re quite good and they were very, very news focussed at that time, you know it was pre the sort of internet boom and Caterer that I was working on was very features focussed, which I liked but my attention span wasn’t that big so after 300 words I’d get a bit bored so news was really where I wanted to focus so, went along to EG, so Estates Gazette and knocked on the doors and metaphorically said ooh, could I have a job please, I’m a really good journalist, you should hire me. And it was just a junior reporter position and was turned down quite quickly, you know this isn’t the place for you, you’re not quite good enough and I thought hm, you know I went back to Caterer and tail between my legs and then for not, not long I paused and thought on it and thought no, no, no, I am actually really good, I had enough of an ego back then, Susan, even more than I have today, and I went back and said actually, I think you’ve made a mistake, I am really good, you should hire me. No, there’s no job here for you, and so off I trot again and then finally, I think I’ll just give it another go, back I go to Peter and he says you’re not going to leave me alone are you, and I said no, no, I really want to work here, I think I’m really good, you should hire me and eventually, I wore him down and, and he let me, let me through the door and you know was, I’m so glad that I didn’t give up that first time because I had such a wonderful, wonderful time at EG and I think it really taught me the, the craft that was journalism and ultimately has you know sort of really sucked me into the built environment in the real estate sector when, you know when things were coming to an end at EG, I knew that I couldn’t go anywhere else but, but this sector.
Susan Freeman
So there’s an interesting life lesson there isn’t there that you just have to be tenacious and believe in yourself. And was it, was it Peter Bills sort of each time that you, you approached?
Samantha McClary
Yes, it was, it was Peter Bill and then the wonderful Jane Roberts as well, I had an interview with her and yes, she wasn’t that enamoured with me first, first time round but we got there eventually and Jane was such a mentor actually, working with her, she was just brilliant so, I’m glad that she changed her views of me then.
Susan Freeman
And what was it like? So this is 20 years ago, isn’t it?
Samantha McClary
Yes, yeah.
Susan Freeman
So, I mean was it very different then at the Estates Gazette?
Samantha McClary
It was really different. I never worked in the Wardour Street office, sadly but we had a big office in Holborn, just opposite you and it was a massive team, it was, yeah, it was so different back then, you know, paper was still a big thing, so there was a team that worked purely on the magazine, had a magazine news team, a magazine features team, big legal section, huge production team and picture desk and all that sort of stuff. I think there must, there must have been, I can’t get the numbers perfectly right but there must have been 50-60 of us within that sort of editorial team plus then there’s online teams that did online news, so it was a bit, it was a weird bit of sort of internal rivalry between the mag and what was going on online, but then you know like everything, that started to change as we became more and more digital focussed, you know it became much, much harder to have a sort of weekly news magazine because you’d be able to break things straight away online, which is really exciting, but you know obviously impacted a little bit of how we, how we managed the magazine, so I had to think about that sort of transformative process that the paper product would go through.
Susan Freeman
And what do you reckon are the qualities that make a, a really good journalist?
Samantha McClary
Ooh curiosity, number one. Whenever we’ve been interviewing for people, it’s the, it’s the one thing that is a non-negotiable. If people aren’t curious, if people aren’t asking questions, no matter what they are, then they’re not going to be a good journalist. You can teach people how to write and actually that’s why we have subeditors to help, help clean up our copy and sort that out but if you can’t, if you’re not interested in something, if you don’t have the ability to get people to talk to you, to tell you things that they’re not meant to tell you, if you can’t get people to trust you and you’re not trustworthy, then I don’t think that you’re going to be the best journalist in, in the world.
Susan Freeman
No it’s interesting that you mention the trust point because it’s you know people have to trust you and sometimes, I’m sure people tell you things in confidence and they trust that that it won’t sort of appear in print you know the next minute. So, with the advent of online and almost instantaneous news, I mean that must add to the pressure so, I just wondered whether that had caused any issues because it can’t always go right and especially when you’re, you know you’re looking for the scoop and you want to be the first one out with a story, I mean have there been any particular issues that haunt you?
Samantha McClary
Err, many, many, Susan and I think, I think you know what as, as a journalist you’ve always got to have the, you know, the one cock-up that you’ve made because you learn, you learn a big lesson from it and I had a pretty, pretty big one, and we, you know we’ve had a few throughout the years of EG but I had an instance where I thought I had a story and I was pretty confident in my source, I knew other people were chasing the story, we had you know a lot of competition in real estate publishing and so you’re, you’re running to get there first and this was where we were still magazine first and online second probably, and so I think I was news editor at the time so I should have known better, but I ran with a story with a single source, which you should never do, but a single source that I, that was in the know and I trusted and ran a story about a administration or bankruptcy and you know you’re taught as a journalist, when it comes to money and bankruptcy and administrations, make sure you’ve got it right because you’re going to get into trouble if you get it wrong, and when I wrote it, when I filed it, it was right that the situation was occurring, by the time the presses rolled and the story landed, there had been a deal made and bankruptcy and administration was no longer on the table so, I had written a story that was false by that time and caused some, caused some issues, you know we didn’t go, we didn’t have to go to court over it but we did have to apologise quite, quite publicly and sort a few things out but it was, it was a real lesson in, I guess that triple sourcing, not being sort of swept away too much in the excitement of a story and just to, it was a real lesson for me that being right, being correct is better than being first and because people will remember a story that is correct, they won’t remember who got there first, they’ll remember something and you know that trust point in that if you get stories right, if you wait a little bit until the moment is the right moment, you will probably get more. You know it was hard lesson but I think there won’t be many journalists out there who haven’t, haven’t learned that lesson.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, I bet you didn’t do that again.
Samantha McClary
No, I didn’t, not yet.
Susan Freeman
So, when you joined Estates Gazette, I mean you know 20 years ago obviously the sector was you know pretty white and male, but you wrote a leader just a few months ago describing the sector as “male, pale and privileged” and I think it was in the wake of the Real Estate Balance survey which just seemed to show that there are less women in senior roles than there have been, you know, a couple of years ago. Do you have any thoughts on why it’s, why it appears to have gone backwards?
Samantha McClary
I don’t know. The only reason I can think that it’s moving backward is that excuses are being made because if you look at those results, there’s actually, that’s a huge volume of women in, coming into the industry and then in those sort of middle management roles, but we’re not seeing them being pushed upwards and I think, I think the change needs to come from the top at what makes someone suitable perhaps to be on a board, I think maybe some of the criteria that we have to put people in more senior positions hasn’t shifted enough and you know maybe we need to look at different skillsets that are relevant for those senior positions and maybe that will start doing it but I think, like it’s probably quite lonely isn’t it as a woman in a senior position if you look around the room and there’s only maybe three other women in there and it’s, and then you know it becomes quite competitive in that space as well. But I don’t know what’s caused the shift apart from perhaps we’re just making excuses for not taking a chance on the huge volume of women there are in the sort of lower level parts of the market at the moment and pulling them up.
Susan Freeman
You know you were talking about women not being pushed upwards but I was just thinking, you know from what you were saying about the way you were so determined to get what you wanted, maybe not enough women have got you know that sort of confidence that you know if they’re knocked back once, to go back again and again until, until they get the role they want.
Samantha McClary
I struggle a bit with that and maybe that’s just because you know what my personality is, is like but you know I get really irritated at that awful stat about if men look at a job description and they can do 10% of it, they’ll be like way hey, I’m going for it. If women look at the same job description and only do 90% of it, they won’t go for it. And that really irritates me because I think why, why don’t we just go okay I could do 10% of that and so why not go for it, I don’t understand the, like that weird sort of personality bit that makes men and women different so, I guess that’s why you know back in, back in the day I challenged a bit on the why we’re not seeing women on panels or why women aren’t putting, putting their, their hand up and you know didn’t that sort of controversial leader back in, gosh when was it, sort of 2018 I think, saying that it was women’s fault that we weren’t being represented up on, up on stage and you know that not going down well with everyone, but resonating with others who are, who then sort of pushed me to say well ask why women aren’t putting their hands up, so we did the, did a big survey and found out that there was this lack of confidence, there was this lack of time being given for women to prepare, there was you know issues around the timings of events and things, things like that so, from that our, the EG Future Leaders Programme was, was born that enabled us to fix at least one of those issues by giving people the skills and to build their confidence to stand up and on stage. And I hope that through things like that we are, or I have sort of pushed, nudged the dial a little bit to help other women, other underrepresented groups in real estate to have that confidence to keep knocking on the door.
Susan Freeman
The Future Leaders Programme is really impressive and you were kind enough to invite me to be on a panel, I think it was last year’s event, talking about networking, so I watched some of the presentations, you know from your Future Leaders who had had some training and they were absolutely incredible and I have to say I find it difficult to believe that any of those people didn’t have the confidence, maybe when they started out on the programme they didn’t, but you know by the end of it they were delivering the most incredible presentations, I mean how did that come about?
Samantha McClary
It blows my mind every time I see it, so obviously we meet the cohort right at the beginning and people are so nervous and you know terrified and being “what, what have I done” and by the end you’ve seen them, they are phenomenal and for me, the whole programme came about through that me having a rant and then being put in touch with Ginger Leadership training, who are brilliant, you know a plug for them if anybody needs help, go and see Sarah Lloyd-Hughes and she will sort you out. But that programme I think has been, it’s, you know it started off I suppose as a bit of an ED&I programme to showcase underrepresented groups, starting off with women. But for me it very quickly became more about the perception of our industry because here we had these amazing people who were so passionate about what they were doing, telling stories about the impact of real estate on all of our lives and you know these are people who are getting up on stage, not to go through a boring PowerPoint on yields and rents and you know, all that important stuff, they’re there to talk about how our places impact our quality of lives, how a space where someone can feel comfortable, can improve their mental health, how you know how we can get together to be pro-development because we can enable a child to live a healthier life, to do well at school or whatever that sort of thing is, all these things that real estate actually does and I think those, those stories when you hear, they just really change your perception about what property is all about.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, it occurs to me that if we were able to stream some of those presentations onto national TV, that would change the perception of real estate, wouldn’t it.
Samantha McClary
We need to get Netflix involved, Susan, I think and just have it streamed on there. Better than Buying Sunset, right.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, maybe. Do you think the programme will continue? Because it was so much, you know about you, you leading it and driving it.
Samantha McClary
I hope so and you know maybe watch this space, Susan. It feels a part of me as well and I, it’s one of the things that I’m most proud of that I was involved with so, I really hope it continues in some shape or form and you know I think there is, there’s a need for it, for our industry particularly around those different stories that we tell about what real estate is and what it does and how it feels and how everyone should want to be operating in this market and coming into it.
Susan Freeman
Well I’m pleased I saw the programme in action because it’s very, you know it’s very different when you’re there and you sort of feel the enthusiasm and no, it was great. And I’ve always thought you’ve been very brave because you’ve used your platform to champion diversity and inclusion and at times have been quite critical of the sector that you love, and I just wondered what sort of response that elicited from your readers, I’ve got no idea actually what proportion of readers are male, you know, female but I just wondered because there must have been some people who just didn’t really quite understand what you were talking about.
Samantha McClary
Readership across sort of different mediums is quite different, you knew, magazine was quite traditional, online I think a bit younger and more diverse and then you know particularly using platforms like LinkedIn to share things I think again the readership sort of demographic changes again but not everyone you know sort of appreciated I suppose everything I had to say all the time but that, that’s okay, you know, I think, and I think that’s the purpose of a platform, you’re not there to please everyone, you’re there to get people thinking and to debate a little, little bit and, and you said brave, maybe, maybe brave, maybe stupid sometimes as well but I think it’s, you know, if you do have a platform and you can see where there are opportunities to be better, you have to use that, you know, being critical doesn’t necessarily mean that you are just pointing the finger at an industry and saying you’re rubbish, what you’re saying is here’s a place where we can improve and make things better and there were a few readers who would send me letters saying I don’t understand why you’re writing about this in a property magazine, what’s it got to do with, with property and you know I get that and I’d always try and respond and say you know let’s have a chat and I’ll try and understand your point of view and maybe you can understand mine and you know, once or twice people would say okay and it was insightful when people did come back as a lot, and it really made me think about the diversity of readerships that we had as Estates Gazette because there were people who were operating in different markets where perhaps their day to day focus was just rent collection, you know servicing their clients and it wasn’t thinking about sustainability, it wasn’t thinking about ED&I in a programmed way, they might you know say well I just do that, I’m kind to everyone and I get that but when we talked about you know changing legislation that actually these are things that you do need to understand then we’d meet in the middle somewhere but, but overwhelmingly people supported it, I think the, the wonderful thing that I discovered about this industry over the last couple of decades is that they quite like a little bit of poking and the door is there that’s you know ajar to be pushed on mostly, it just needs a little bit of guidance sometimes.
Susan Freeman
And there seems to be a backlash now against diversity and inclusion and it’s difficult to see where you know that is going to end up, I mean has that sort of impacted any of the things that you’ve been trying to do?
Samantha McClary
Um I think it will unfortunately, I think we are seeing people pull away from using terminology. I hope that that doesn’t mean that they’re pulling away from actually doing the right thing. Maybe we will see you know some changes in, in job titles, we’ll see you know sways 29.24 being dropped from annual reports and things like that. My favourite company, as most people know if they follow me on LinkedIn, is Lego. They’ve always been really, really vocal around diversity and sustainability and but if you look at their latest annual reports, you know some of those words are now missing and I’m sure they’re still pushing forward on it but you know there is a pressure isn’t there to step away from some of that terminology. Gut then I’ve been, I’ve been out and about in the market still, I can’t stop doing that and most people that I talk to are saying well we’re still in here in the UK, we are still pushing ahead, we are still you know really focussed on our gender pay gap, our ethnicity pay gap and very clearly focussed on how we as a built environment do our bit to help stop the planet burning up.
Susan Freeman
Well, hopefully people will realise that actually having a workforce that come from different sort of backgrounds think differently is an important part of the mix. I was just wondering, as a woman in journalism and real estate, do you think that you know through your career to date you’ve been treated any differently from your male colleagues or would it just be exactly the same?
Samantha McClary
I think I’ve had moments definitely where I’ve been treated differently. I think I’ve probably had to be a bit tougher sometimes and you know knock on that door three times, but I think I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never felt, I’ve never felt pushed aside but sometimes I’ve felt not quite listened to in the right way. But I think there have been times when I’ve used that to my advantage as well. I’ve spent a bit of my garden leave reading books about the women of the SEO, so you know Churchill’s spies, and you know the fact that they did so well at what they did because they were sort of underappreciated or the chaps didn’t really get that these women could do what they could do so, they were able to actually do more and I think that’s, for me that’s quite empowering, thinking well actually if you focus on, on what you want sort of don’t worry about what, what anyone else is thinking about, you know, those, those women are quite, quite inspirational, if anybody needs, needs a book to read.
Susan Freeman
Okay, I’ll add that one to my list. So, we were talking at the beginning about connections and you know the importance of making connections and you have been very good at building relationships with key people in real estate and I wondered whether there was, you know, anybody or any group of people who have been particularly supportive or who have particularly impressed you personally?
Samantha McClary
Gosh, it’s a really long list, Susan, I think and I wouldn’t want to, I’ll miss people out if I, if I go through it too much but I, I have found pretty much every CEO of the major agencies here in the UK and our REITs have always been really, really helpful and supportive. I think unusual for a journalist to say this, or ex-journalist to say this, but there have been some great support within our PR comrades as, as well, you know usually as journalists we, we don’t offer any support to them but particularly as well in that time where there was a bit of a question mark over EG, the sort of number of phone calls that I had from people sort of checking in on me personally, that was really overwhelming and I think that just adds to that list of people that I think are quite brilliant in this industry, doing great things not only for property but who are genuinely nice human beings as well.
Susan Freeman
Yes, I mean it’s the people, isn’t it that make, you know that make the industry and we were talking about the CEOs of all the agencies and there seems to be a bit of a sort of seismic change going on at the top of some of the agencies at the moment.
Samantha McClary
There does, doesn’t there. And, you know, I think everyone who, who, we have seen in those news stories about us have done phenomenal things at those, those agencies and you know those agencies are better places for them. Like you I’m sure, Susan, you’re very interested to see where they all end up next.
Susan Freeman
Yes, particularly sorry to see Stephanie Hyde stepping down from, from JLL because you know it was, it was great to see a woman in that role.
Samantha McClary
Yeah, and from outside of real estate.
Susan Freeman
And from outside of real estate, exactly. Am I right in thinking that you’re only the eighth editor of the Estates Gazette since it was first started 166 years ago?
Samantha McClary
I think so. I’m the second female editor. There was a lady pre-Peter Bill. But yeah, eight, nine now with Tim.
Susan Freeman
But it’s, yeah, so they’ve obviously stayed in place for quite a long time.
Samantha McClary
I think the first few were there for many, many decades.
Susan Freeman
I see. One of the things I was looking at was you were very much ahead of your time in co-founding REWIRE in 2018 and I was sort of looking at, I mean that was about the time of the start of the Me Too movement. Was that sort of then replaced by Real Estate Balance effectively?
Samantha McClary
Yeah, I think though REWIRE came about because I went for a drink with the wonderful Sue Brown and I was whinging about that CV thing that I talked about a little bit a while ago and she said in the, you know, sort of classic Sue Brown way, “well, let’s do something about it” and of course when you say something out loud to Sue, you have to do it, so she went into organisational mode and I went into ‘argh’ mode just and thought oh no well maybe we don’t know enough women in real estate to even host a party to start this recognising and empowering women in real estate as it stood for, but very quickly sort of asked around the newsroom for people to give me a list of all the women in their contact books and suddenly we had more than 100 women on a list and it was, I was genuinely surprised and thought hang on a minute, well what, why aren’t we like seeing these names in the pages of EG or on, on the website and why aren’t we quoting these women, where are they all, where are they hiding? So we had that, that party and I guess it, it started just before Real Estate Balance I think and you know there’s quite a lot of those sort of membership bodies or bodies for women in real estate, which I think is a really good, good thing but REWIRE I guess sort of transformed into Future Female Leaders initially and then, and then that expanded out and yes and then we quietly left it to Real Estate Balance and Sue Brown, who’s definitely not quiet.
Susan Freeman
I know, I have interviewed Sue for this podcast. I was wondering, you host, you know in your role at Estates Gazette, you’ve hosted so many events and you know obviously the awards event when is a thousand people, I mean does public speaking come naturally because obviously is this a thing which seems to deter some women from putting themselves forward for speaking roles and things and you know, you seem to do it so naturally, I mean has it always been natural?
Samantha McClary
I am an introvert by nature and I find it terrifying still getting up on stage, but I think I was helped by my first attempt, that I’m going to call it, at hosting something up on stage went so badly, I didn’t, I had no clue what I was doing, the two people up on stage were much cleverer than me, which isn’t hard, and knew each other very well and were just talking and I didn’t have the skills to stop them I suppose and control the stage and it was just the worst and I thought once I’d got through that and I didn’t due and people didn’t come up to me afterwards and say you were so rubbish, I thought well it, it can’t be that bad ever again and it hasn’t yet. But then I think you just kind of get into the rhythm of it don’t you and, and then I grew to absolutely love doing the EG Awards and being up on stage for them and I think that was mostly because you’d have the teleprompters, which is quite fun, you feel like you’re on telly or something so, so I loved doing that because that’s you’re just reading, you can’t even really see the audience but it is terrifying and I do wonder what I’m doing up there and am I going to say something wrong, am I going to ask a stupid question, am I going to, have forgot to listen to what someone’s saying back to me, all those sorts of things but I think, you know, people don’t come along to events to sort of pull people on stage down, people are there to learn something and if you bluff your lines or get something wrong, you know, it’s not the end of the world is it?
Susan Freeman
I think it can feel like the end of the world if you’re, if you’re the person that’s up on stage but you certainly made that awards dinner into a much less formal event than it used to be, I mean it used to be sort of black tie and now it’s more party, isn’t it, sort of and much sort of younger.
Samantha McClary
Yeah, well I think we need to have a little party from time to time, we need to celebrate the good that we do and I can’t wear heels, Susan, I fall over and like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality when she walks out that air hangar and falls over straight away, that’s me so, I needed to come up with something where I could wear my gold sparkly trainers and we thought, you know, we also thought with black tie, it’s quite exclusive isn’t it and we wanted to make everything that we were doing much more inclusive and so we got, we didn’t get rid of it, you could come in black tie if you want to but if you didn’t, wear what you feel comfortable and fabulous in and I remember the first time we did that I had a pretty senior lady in real estate come up to me afterwards and say thank you, this is the first time that I’ve felt comfortable at one of, one of these events and I’ve actually enjoyed it because I felt comfortable and that made it for me actually.
Susan Freeman
But you probably made it much more difficult for the men because in the past, all they had to think about was putting on their black tie and you know now there’s actually a choice.
Samantha McClary
Yeah, shall I get the world’s smallest violin out?
Susan Freeman
So, talking about you know our wonderful industry, you know, how we tell our stories, how those stories don’t get through, I mean this, this obviously comes up a lot, something you and I have talked about but how can such a fantastic sector have such a you know negative image and is there any more that we can do about it?
Samantha McClary
I think there’s loads more we can do about it and we will get to that in a second. I think how can it have such a bad image? I’ll take some blame for that as an ex-journalist, I think that you know we’re taught as journalists that bad news sells, which it does, so you’re always looking for the, the scandalous story I suppose. I think for, in our industry for so long what’s been labelled a good story has been something linked with how much money is being made out of something and I, I talked many, many times about wanting to shift how we reported on stories and see if we could take out the GDV or you know the value of a deal and, monetary value of a deal, and talk instead about what the deal means for the people involved in it, the communities around there, and I never did it, and I never did it because I thought that it would impact our readership numbers, you know, it would have a commercial impact on what EG did because I thought the industry wasn’t ready for that, the industry still loves, loves those numbers doesn’t it. So I think there’s a fault in journalists in that we like to tell the, the bad story, but then there’s also a bit, and I’ll do my bear poking here, there’s also that blame I think on our industry that we do, that’s the way we talk as well, we talk in capital values, we talk about the, you know or our capital markets team get the biggest slice of the, the pie don’t they, they’re the ones that people will talk about being the most fun bit of the sector and I think that we just haven’t got to a place yet where not talking about that is seen as valuable and we haven’t got to a place where talking about the positive environmental impact that we can have, the positive social impact that we can have as this industry, are sexy enough to get the headlines and I don’t know how we change it, I think maybe we need some sort of catastrophic event that says this stuff is important and actually, you know, this is what the industry is about, maybe we need a new publication that goes do you know what, screw it, we’re not going to talk about sales and rents, we are going to talk about social impact, environmental impact, the good that real estate does but it does need the industry to back it.
Susan Freeman
So, it would be more about stories and just getting back to what we were saying about your Future Leaders Programmes and some of the people that were on it and the stories that they told, they were just so, they were so compelling so, maybe, maybe one needs sort of money from somewhere to sort of fund some more publication of those stories.
Samantha McClary
Launch a GoFundMe at the end of this, Susan.
Susan Freeman
Yes, that’s, why don’t we do that? Maybe we should get Sue Brown involved? So, you are taking up an exciting new role on the 6 May as Chief Executive of the British Council for Offices which obviously is a key industry body and it represents the workplace sector. Now, offices have been under a lot of pressure, particularly since Covid, what attracted you to the role and what are you most looking forward to doing?
Samantha McClary
So, what attracted me to the role was I, you know, I said earlier that you know I always wanted to be a journalist, that was my goal in life and I’ve done that and I loved it and working at EG really brought me into the built environment and I fell in love with that and when things were coming to the end I knew that I wanted to stay in real estate, you know I love it, I love the people, I think there’s still so much more to do in real estate. But I’d already had the best job in real estate, journalism as far as I was concerned so, journalism was sort off the table and then when the opportunity to join the BCO came up, it just felt really right because here’s a, as you said a part of the industry that’s going through a massive transformation which is super exciting, where there’s real opportunity to do some fantastic things, it needs a bit of support and love and critical care, which is what I like to give and it’s a part of the sector where I think you know when we look to national press, there’s a bit of a beating for offices isn’t there and you know I like to advocate and use a platform in the right way and I think the BCO is a beautiful platform to talk about the importance of our offices, or our workplaces in you know bringing our towns and cities back to life, you know, offices impact shops and restaurants and cafes, you know they’re such a vital part of our economy and people aren’t, you know sort of policy and politicians aren’t talking about offices, they’re talking about residential and warehouses and actually, there’s this amazing part of our sector that could really drive the UK forward and so I’m really excited about, about all of that and I think actually when you look at you know the product, what we’re doing in terms of design and operation of our workspaces is really quite special here in the, in the UK, there are some phenomenal buildings, I’m really excited to take part in some of the BCO tours around new spaces. You know, there’s so much that we can showcase and lift up and really show people outside of our industry too, you know I’m really passionate about breaking outside of real estate, the quality that we deliver here in the UK. I am of course very excited as well that just a couple of weeks into me joining, I get to go to Milan for the annual conference this year, which is shaking up to be absolutely brilliant and very much focussed on sort of the power of brand and design and quality, and what better place to have that than Milan.
Susan Freeman
No, I agree with you. I was looking at that and sort of thinking you know is there a way I can go and I also think in terms of our offices here in the UK, I mean the quality of workplace that we are building here in London is so much better than they have in New York so, you know we are world leading and it’s also interesting isn’t it because the, you know, the office sector is the sort of interface with every other business so, you know, you’re reaching out to other businesses. I also notice that 30% of the BCO membership is next generation.
Samantha McClary
It is and that, that obviously attracted me because I love sort of interacting with the new talent in the industry and they are the future aren’t they and those are the, the part of our, our industry that are really going to drive, drive the sector forward, drive the whole, the whole sector forward and I think you know Richard has done such a phenomenal job at BCO at really building that next-gen membership up and you know hopefully that will grow even more or I’ll be doing a really bad job if it, if it goes down but I think there is, there’s such a huge amount of passion in that sort of segment of our industry that you know I’m in this business because I want to make a change and that for me is what it’s all about, that will be, you know that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and wanting to continue to be part of this industry because I do believe it can bring about the right sort of change, it can, you know I’ll talk about it all the time, it can if we really try hard we can design out crime, we can design out ill health, we can do all these amazing things and I think with that next generation and our existing leaders in this industry, we can do that and there’s a lot of passion for that and that’s super exciting to me.
Susan Freeman
Can’t wait to see how, how things go in the next role, Sam, it sounds brilliant. So, thank you so much for you time, it’s been lovely chatting to you with that Lego edifice in the background.
Samantha McClary
It’s a Lego high street, you know, so while I was not working in real estate, I thought I could build some instead because I didn’t want to be too far away.
Susan Freeman
So, are you a frustrated developer do you think?
Samantha McClary
Maybe, maybe. Do you know, Lego for me is meditation, just putting brick on brick and following instruction and I quite like that, sort of switches me off from everything else. Brain going too, too fast sometimes for my own good.
Susan Freeman
It sounds great. Anyway, thanks for your time and I will see you soon in your new role.
Samantha McClary
Thank you, Susan.
Susan Freeman
Thank you so much Sam for sharing your experiences as editor of one of our key real estate publications and your thoughts on our amazing sector. Very best wishes for your new role at BCO.
So that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon..
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