Hello everyone welcome to AOP the podcast where we take you behind the scenes of a

property business that does over a hundred million pounds worth of sales each

and every year and that number is growing.

But rather than just keep all that knowledge to ourselves, we love to share it on this

podcast, AOBB. And today we get to talk about something we've never covered

before and I always love talking about new topics but it's an important one and I think

there's going to be loads that people can take away from this. And Rob it it's about building a moat, but not the castle type of moat. A business moat. A business moat. A moat is another term for a durable competitive advantage. Something that your business has got that nobody else has got that sets your business apart and gives it long-term staying power.

So the term moat, I don't know where it originated from, but's associated as I most things in business with Warren Buffett.

The Buffett quote is in business I look for economic castles protected by unbridgeable moats.

So Rob I think this becomes clearer if we get into some examples. The

classic example is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has invested so much over such a long time in

building its brand. Now wherever you go in the world it's probably

what one of the top three brands that people could name. If you wanted to launch

a Coca-Cola competitor and people have tried, it's very very difficult because

they've got this moat, this brand moat that they've built up heavily over decades.

But that's just one type of moat. There are others.

There are loads when you start to think about it.

So Walmart is an example, the American super store, they have a

cost advantage because of their buying power or Amazon is a similar example.

But then it could be network effects like Facebook. So Facebook huge mode there. You could probably build a social

network tomorrow, but will it have the network effects that Facebook has? I'm certainly not.

It may be regulatory, so you may be in an industry that is super hard to get into because of all the regulation involved.

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