From Process to People: Rethinking How Great Agencies Are Built
What Liana & Oli teach us about building better agency businesses
In property, we often talk about performance in numbers.
Instructions.
Lets agreed.
Revenue per branch.
Time to let.
All important. But there’s something far more powerful, and far less measurable, sitting underneath all of it: Culture.
And not the fluffy, poster-on-the-wall version. The real version. The one that shows up in how decisions are made, how teams behave, and how clients are treated when things get difficult. That’s exactly what came through in our recent Viking Chats episode with Liana Loporto-Browne and Oli Browne.
From Corporate Comfort to Purpose-Driven Business
Liana and Ollie didn’t just build an agency, they rebuilt the idea of what one should feel like. After years in large corporate environments, they’d seen:
What works
What scales
And what quietly breaks people over time
So when they stepped out to create something of their own, they made a conscious decision: Do things differently.
Not for the sake of it. But because they believed better outcomes come from better environments.
The Myth of “High Performance vs Good Culture”
There’s a long-standing belief in agency: You can either have a high-performing business… Or a people-first culture. Not both. Liana & Ollie prove that’s simply not true.
In fact, the opposite is closer to reality. Because when you build a business where:
People feel trusted
Communication is open
Expectations are clear
And values are lived, not just stated
Performance improves. Not by accident, but by design.
Where Most Agencies Get It Wrong
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. A lot of agencies don’t have a culture problem because they don’t care. They have one because they’re:
Too busy
Too reactive
Too caught up in process and pressure
Sound familiar? In lettings and property management especially, teams are often buried under:
Admin
Compliance
Chasing
Firefighting
And when that happens, culture becomes an afterthought. Something you’ll “get to later”. The problem is, later never comes.
The Hidden Link Between Process and Culture
This is where things get interesting. Because culture isn’t just about leadership style or team dynamics. It’s directly impacted by how the business runs day to day.
If your team is:
Spending hours on manual processes
Repeating the same tasks
Chasing information across multiple systems
Dealing with avoidable friction
That is your culture. Not the values on your website. The lived experience of the people doing the job.
Easier. Faster. Better. (And Why It Matters More Than You Think)
At The Depositary, we talk a lot about transforming a 3-hour process into 15 minutes. On the surface, that’s about efficiency. But underneath? It’s about something much bigger. Because when you remove unnecessary workload, you:
Reduce stress
Improve consistency
Create headspace
Enable better conversations with clients
And crucially…You give people the time and energy to actually live the culture you want to build.
Running a Business Is Hard. Doing It as a Couple? Harder.
One of the most compelling parts of this episode is the dynamic between Liana & Oli themselves. Running a business is one thing. Running it with your partner adds another layer entirely:
Blurred boundaries
Constant decision-making
Balancing personal and professional relationships
And yet, what comes through is alignment. A shared vision, a shared standard.
A shared commitment to doing things properly. That clarity is something many businesses, regardless of structure, could benefit from.
What This Means for the Industry
As the property sector continues to evolve, the pressures aren’t going away:
Regulation is increasing
Customer expectations are rising
Margins are tightening
Workloads are growing
Which means the businesses that succeed won’t just be:
The busiest
The biggest
Or the loudest
They’ll be the ones that:
Build strong, sustainable cultures
Remove unnecessary friction from operations
Invest in people as much as process
And create environments where performance can thrive
Final Thought
Culture isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s not a perk, it’s not a branding exercise. It’s a performance strategy. And like any strategy - it needs the right systems, the right structure, and the right intent behind it. Because when you get it right?
Everything else gets easier.
Faster.
And better.
Not just for inspiration.
But for a reminder that doing things differently…is often exactly what the industry needs.
