IF personality and determination powers profits, then larger-than-life Scott Anscomb has a head start.

Ever since Scott bought the franchise of the estate agency at St Trinity House in Kings Square, York, transforming it into Your Move Anscombs three years ago, it has boomed.

In the last financial year - only his second year of trading - turnover for the venture soared 600 per cent to £1.24 million.

You may remember Scott silhouetted and scintillating on the stage of The Grand Opera House in York as a sassy and slinky Mr Bo Jangles in The Deep End, that local corporate concert in which he wowed the audience to wild whistling applause.

Powered by the same guts, sprinkled with gritty self-belief, he has inspired his 14 staff to success in spite of the fact that when he started there were two interest rate rises in succession, signalling a lack of buyer confidence and a seemingly imminent house price crash.

Now his staff are rooting for him to become the Business Personality Of The Year and are also pitching for the firm to become Growth Business Of The Year.

Scott says "With my own house on the line and the inherited losses continuing, I had to have faith in my strategy to turn the business around."

Powered by 12 years of experience in the estate agency business, he sat down with his new team and shared with them his vision - a dream that through success all his staff would still be with him in the next 15 years.

He enthused them with the advantages of being a privately owned franchise having the best of both worlds - being locally owned yet at the same time sharing a national infrastructure of IT, internet, legislation, systems, processes, compliance and being part of a national brand.

He says: "Key to my strategy was focusing on doing the basics of the business better than anyone else.

"Leading by example, I worked alongside the staff on the front line, registering buyers and sellers, showing buyers around houses and carrying out valuations."

The enthusiasm spread - and the result is that Scott believes his estate agency is now among the top three in York.

It has certainly been voted the top office in the Your Move network for two years' running.