From high finance to high street: How Zac Goodman 
made his mark in third sector property

From crunching numbers at Goldman Sachs to sweet-talking charity gatekeepers out of a small room in Hendon, Zac Goodman’s entry into real estate was anything but ordinary. In this FATChat, the TSP Founder and CEO shares how the financial crisis sparked his leap into property, how cold-calling charities led to a multi-million pound advisory, and why he believes convergence is the future of the office market. Dive into the full conversation below.

How did you go from Goldman Sachs to starting up a business in the property world?

So I went into banking because that was the thing to do back in the day when you were graduating from university. And the truth is, one of my main reasons for going into it was that it had a really good starting salary! It was an amazing experience, but it was never going to be for me long term. It sounds really cheesy, but I was the kid always selling you something at school. I'm an entrepreneur. I wasn't going to be working for other people. So, in 2009 the world changed, we had this thing they called 'the credit crunch'…which is long history now. At the time, I was working in interest rates, and I saw very quickly went drop from circa 5.25% percent down to 0.5% and at exactly the same time, property prices went drastically down as well. 

So, there was this big market crash. And I remember talking with a very old friend, one night at dinner, and we were both remarking on the same thing, saying, ‘this would be a great time to get into property’. We we're having a cigarette out the back of his place, and we both said, ‘let's do it’. I literally went into work probably the following week and quit. I was 25 when I started the business, No wife, no kids, no mortgage. And we started TSP. 

You found your niche in the nonprofit sector. How did that happen, talk to us about that process. 

Honestly, it all happened by accident. The original plan - when we left Goldman’s - was to buy real estate. Prices had dropped significantly, and we believed that over the coming years, the market would bounce back. But we didn’t have the capital to buy ourselves, so we ran around investors and said “we’ve got these great deals, we think this is an amazing time in the market to get in”. Every single investor we went to said, “what are you talking about? We've just had a huge market crash. You've got no experience in property. You're 25 years old. Please leave”.

So, our whole business plan was up in smoke because nobody had any money. And if they did, they were very clever people, and weren't going to go and give it to a couple of 25 year olds that had no experience doing this. So, we had to go back to the drawing board and consider other opportunities in this market. And at the time, there was this big headline going on about high street vacancies.

The UK high streets were dying after the credit crunch - shops were shutting down, and it was actually really sad to see. These high streets had once been the heart of local communities. But amid the closures, one type of business was not only surviving but actually growing - charity shops.

They were one of the biggest freeholders and leaseholders in the UK. And when you look into most of these charities, you’ll notice they typically don’t have property professionals within their organisation representing them. We looked at that and thought - there’s got to be a play here.

If you're the only tenant on the high street who can reliably pay rent while everything else around you is vacant, you’ve got serious leverage to save money. So we came up with a simple idea, and went to these charities and said: “We’ll save you money, and if we don’t save you anything, you don’t pay us. But if we do, pay us a share of the savings.”

So we started hitting the phones from a little room in Hendon, and we started to get one small charity after another. We called up the landlords, and said, “we want you to give us 50% rent discount for the next two years and if you don't, we're going to move to one of the 30 other vacant shops that's on your street”. And obviously landlords who had these charity shops were petrified of losing them, so everybody started giving us these amazing rental deals. The charities were thrilled as they were saving money. And, that was the beginning of the business.

What would you say sets TSP apart from the other players in the property space? What is your secret sauce?

I think one of the biggest things that makes us different is that we approach everything from outside the industry. That probably comes from the fact that I founded the firm without coming from a property background. And to be honest, I’m still not sure I’d call myself a property guy.

I’ve always thought in a more opportunity-led, entrepreneurial way. I didn’t go to university to study real estate, I didn’t do internships in the sector - I came in as a complete outsider. And I think that gives you a massive advantage when it comes to disrupting and innovating. You look at things with fresh eyes. If something doesn’t make sense, you don’t just accept it - you want to change it, or at the very least question it.

When you come up through an industry, you’re often moulded into thinking, “well, that’s how it’s always been, so that’s how it is". But at TSP, we don’t accept the status quo - we apply an entrepreneurial mindset to everything we do.

How have your origins and values shaped the culture at TSP as it expanded? Do those roots in helping the third sector still influence how you do business today?

They are genuinely wonderful organisations to work with. When you’re around them, you see the best in people - volunteers, real altruism. It’s not a trait I’d necessarily claim for myself as a free market capitalist! But still… it’s inspiring. We’ve kept our third sector advisory department running throughout the life of the business. It’s a smaller part of what we do now, but it’s very much part of our DNA - and it’s not something we ever want to lose. It aligns well with our broader sustainability focus, especially through our B Corp platform. So yes, I’d say it has shaped us. They’re amazing people to work with. Brilliant clients. And I think that influence is still very much felt in how we operate.

Cold-calling charities every day, you must have faced some challenges. Talk to us about what this process was like? There must’ve been a ton of rejection. What kept you going?

We used to do it ourselves. And we were very old school. We wrote ourselves scripts. We worked out a play by play of what we were going to say. We definitely had some tricks up our sleeves. There was this idea of gatekeepers - usually a great office manager who was well-versed in spotting salespeople trying to get through. They were kind of our target. We’d send them boxes of Milk Trays,  offer to grab their favourite coffee - whatever it took to get a foot in the door. And we were just completely and utterly fearless. And I think if someone really gages that from you when they're on the phone with you, you'll get a chance.

And that happened to us in the early days - we had some real breakthrough moments. Call it serendipity, maybe. One good thing leads to another. But the key is, you’ve got to keep showing up and throw yourself at it. I was there making cold calls. I still remember my email address - “Z, A, C, @, T, H, I, R, D, S, E, C [TOR PROPERTY]”…we quickly realised we needed a new domain! So, we bought tsp.co and that made life a lot easier.

What have been some of your biggest achievements?

Last year, being appointed as the property manager for the British Museum - a globally recognised institution hundreds of years old, with one of the largest and most significant property estates in central London. That was a defining moment. I’m really proud of it and winning that contract felt incredible. The process was highly competitive, and to come out on top was a real achievement. There are some very exciting things on the horizon for the museum in the coming months and years.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges in the property industry right now? What hurdles do you find yourself and TSP navigating? 

One of the biggest challenges in the property industry right now is that, almost with a sense of pride, it's evolved far more slowly than other sectors. It’s had things its own way for a long time - and the end user, whether you call them the tenant, occupier, customer, or consumer, has just had to adapt around that. But that’s changing. Property is becoming more consumerised.- more like a product or a service. And as that shift happens, the customer is evolving too. Expectations are rising, and there’s a growing sense of impatience. People want to use property the same way they use other services: flexible, fast, and frictionless. And frankly, the industry is struggling to keep up.

It’s hard for landlords to pivot from business models that have been largely unchanged for centuries. But the shift is real - and one of the most visible signs of that is lease lengths coming down. Shorter leases signal a transfer of power: the shorter the lease, the more control the customer has; the longer the lease, the more it favours the landlord. And that dynamic has long been the foundation of the sector. Forget interest rates or inflation - those are cyclical. What we’re seeing now is deeper: a mega trend, an entire behavioural shift in how people view property. People expect to use property like they’d use a subscription service or on-demand product. It’s a pick and mix now, and that’s really challenging for an industry that hasn’t historically had the infrastructure, systems, or mindset to deliver that kind of experience.

But with that challenge comes opportunity. Just like in 2009, moments of disruption create space for new ideas. Right now, we’re seeing clear winners and losers in the market- and the gap between them is only growing. That’s the space we’re navigating at TSP, and we’re focused on staying ahead of that curve.

You're well known for having invested in a lot of properties over the years. How would you say that's given TSP an advantage?

One of the things that gives TSP a little bit of added insight, and certainly empathy with our landlord clients, is that we've had an investment side over the last 15/16 years where we have co invested and sponsor led office redevelopment repositioning. And so when you when you do that, and then manage it through, you really get the 360 degree view of what's happening, and see the full life cycle of it. It's also given us huge opportunity to tinker, which we love to do.

So, we've always viewed a lot of the investment properties that we've been involved in as our labs. If we've got ideas and they're difficult to sell to clients, if something's new, we can trial it, do it ourselves. And 30 Lighterman was a classic example of that. This was a building we bought in 2019 in Kings Cross. And we had this concept: to fully furnish this thing. Cat B, speculatively, the entire building.

And I remember at the time in the industry, which wasn’t even that long ago, everyone said “Are you crazy?! You don't fit out everything”. And when I say, ‘fit it out’, I mean fruit in the bowls, scatter cushions. This thing was totally and utterly done. And in the process, we had to come across some, real challenges. How will this work? How does the short lease work? How does the service pack work? But, long story short, we did 30% higher rents than we'd underwritten, we won four awards for the building, including Best Workplace. And, it became this amazing case study that many others in the industry refer to.

I think to this point, it's still the only managed space building that has been sold in London, which we managed to do. So I’d say yes - it definitely gives you an advantage when you’re investing yourself. It becomes your R&D lab; a place to test ideas, refine them, and prove they work before taking them out to the market. This is a standard format in America. In the UK, it’s very different so it certainly makes us unique in the UK market.

What is your view on the flex market? How do you think the future is going to pan out?

We look at the office segment as exactly that – offices. Right now in the market, you've got your traditional model and you've got flex. But what we’re seeing is this convergence of the two. TSP’s offering sits right in the middle of that. Our relationship with landlords is as a managing agent - but not in the traditional sense. We focus on hospitality, front-of-house, experience, community-building, events - everything that brings a space to life. Our model is very different from a typical flex operator. We’re not signing 10–15 year management agreements, and we’re not trying to own the entire value chain. We don’t do the broking, the marketing, or the tenant sourcing - that’s not our play.

Our vision for the future of the office is a multi-let building – where, say, the first floor is managed space, the second is let on a traditional lease by tenants who want to be left alone, and the third is a traditional lease but with a few extras like cleaning or internet. It’s essentially the same model as a hotel. Some guests want the Presidential Suite. Others want a twin room. Same building - different needs. And I think office landlords, agents, the whole industry, really needs to move away from ‘pure play’ models of one route, one strategy built around what suits the provider. Customers don’t think like that. No one wakes up saying, “I want Cat B space on a flexible term.” They’re thinking, “I need a home for my business.” That’s it and I think everyone needs to realise this.

So where does TSP fit into all this? We sit alongside the landlord. Ultimately, we don’t step into existing buildings to manage space for tenants – we like to control the experience from the ground up. That’s where we believe the most efficiency can be delivered, and stronger revenue performance for the landlord.

We still believe in the core fundamentals of property management – and those principles absolutely have a place in this new era of offices. But today the product has become more sophisticated, more complex to run – and, as a result, much more rewarding. We now get to work across so many different areas. Fifteen years ago, if you told a property manager they'd be responsible for ordering canapés and setting up lunchtime events, they would've laughed in your face. But that’s the job now - and honestly, we love it.