Month: July 2017

This week had a particularly ‘progressive theme, both in nature and in events attended. Here are a few highlights.

Tuesday VIP

• Paul’s summary of his trip to the Real Pages event in Las Vegas (world’s largest property software company) and the launch of his SA book blew our minds. The strategic partnerships and opportunities emerging from these two things are phenomenal
• Kenny talked us through the opportunities for property development in Scotland when you can navigate your way through planning
• Aniko delivered a brilliant keynote covering 5 steps to systemise your business
• Chris and I had a brilliant 1-2-1 coaching session with Aniko which has helped us map out the next key actions that will help us systemise and scale our SA business (huge thanks for that Aniko)
• To wrap the day up all the VIP’s had a great dinner at Duck Bay overlooking Loch Lomond

Thursday – a potentially game changing meeting

• We met with the landlords of 2 blocks of apartments we have been in discussion with about leasing for SA
• In short, the 3 hour meeting turned out to be a very productive one with some good synergies identified and positive signs to move things forward

Sunday – Testimonial time at Glasgow MSOPI

• Chris and I joined a great MSOPI crowd in time for Paul to cover off some wisdom on company structures, tax efficient cars and capital allowances (even if we’ve heard some of this stuff before i find I continue to learn and retain with hearing it again in new examples – just brilliant!)
• Along with fellow VIP’s Kenneth, Andy, Lesley and Ankio, Chris and I joined Paul at the front for a wee testimonial highlighting our own accomplishments in VIP to date
• Standing up to share your experience is a funny one because whilst us Brits don’t like to brag, it’s a fantastic opportunity to check in with yourself and reflect on where you were when you first started VIP v’s present day. As each of us continue to grow, step by step progressing along our respective property journeys, the changes can seem indistinguishable from day to day. However, reflecting back over bigger chunks of time like we were doing today of 6,12,18 months and more, it really shows how far we have all come and who we are becoming. For that, we are both proud and grateful to be part of the Progressive community.

Meanwhile as we were engaged in all the above this week, our card payment app stripe has pinged through some nice alerts as more festival bookings for our SA units have rolled in.

Have a great start to August everyone.

As I committed in last week’s post, I started the week with Rob’s suggestion of a 15 minute ideation session- with the aim of brainstorming 15 business growth and money making ideas in 15 minutes. I managed 13 ideas in this first session, mostly related to our SA business and some related to new property income streams. Moving forwards, Chris and I have agreed to do a 10 min session each Sun/Mon with the aim of generating 8 ideas each. These ideas will be sent to our VA Hellen who will organise them in a Trello board for us to filter and work with from there. The aim is to dedicate some of our Thursdays each week to discussing and actioning the news ideas. FYI Trello is a handy little tool for capturing and categorising lists of tasks or ideas, and it’s free https://trello.com

On the SA side, I do feel like we are ‘bouncing back’ from a mini hiatus- the OTA’s have brought a handful of good bookings and the actions taken this week to explore new direct booking avenues have been promising.

We are also adding a new property to the portfolio next week with some new JV partners and already have the first booking in thanks to an early airbnb listing.

Looking forward to our VIP day on Tuesday, our 1-2-1 with Aniko and a dinner with the other Scottish VIP’s.

My 2 weeks in the Spanish sun is drawing to a close this weekend and I have been intentionally putting into play those pointers I wrote about in last week’s post (about how to use downtime to get an unfair advantage).

This week I’m going to share a little insight from our SA business that will hopefully resonate and be helpful to others too.

In amongst some amazing experiences with my family on holiday I have also had moments of fearful thinking and uncertainty, in relation to our SA business. Recently we have been experiencing a few setbacks from one or two longer term bookings not coming through and from some uncertainty of others that were in discussion. We have experienced a mild hiatus in bookings across a few of our properties, and while this is not drastic in the grand scheme of things, it has thrown some negative thinking and worry into an otherwise great SA business.

Chris and I know that a good booking is round the corner and can quickly buoy confidence, however the mini hiatus and delayed decisions have naturally given rise to more uncertainty than confidence.

Whilst running on the boardwalk, or during afternoon siesta time, I have absorbed some great content this week. Interestingly there have been 3 different pieces that shared a common theme – that of reframing uncertainty and fear.

One podcast interview referred to the mindshift of being able to “dance with fear” and use uncertainty to channel your nerves and focus on the problem in hand.

Another post gave the analogy of looking at a fall as an opportunity to “be like a ball” and bounce back higher – in other words to learn, iterate/take action and grow to new heights.

Then just today, whilst preparing some chicken skewers in marinade for the evening’s BBQ, I was listening to one of Rob Moore’s Disruptive podcasts about growing through your challenges. As Rob put it – challenges are there to help us grow, and when you do grow through your challenges you often have new strategies and techniques to do the thing you were struggling with better the next time (I couldn’t agree more), and ultimately set yourself up for bigger challenges and bigger growth next time. [Thanks Rob for that great podcast #161 and I love the idea to brainstorm 15 new money making ideas each Monday- I’ll be implementing that from this Monday coming.]

So in summary, my mindset has totally shifted over the course of this week and I am reframing this little hiatus in our SA bookings as a huge positive and a kick up the proverbial backside. Maybe we got too complacent with a long run of contractor bookings? Either way we are using this little dose of fear and uncertainty to channel our energy and focus into making adjustments in our business so that we don’t experience this kind of lull and uncertainty again. Chris and I have been brainstorming ideas to ramp our direct bookings and identifying parts of our SA business and systems that can be tweaked and improved.

So, after a solid stint of R&R I’m feeling motivated to hit the ground running next week with focus and energy. We have the opportunity to “be the ball” and bounce back higher than before so we can scale our business.

Last week’s post chimed in with the half-way mark of the year and we looked at 5 things you can do to make this half-time reflection point work for you. Point 1 on that list was to take a break, so this week, I thought it would be helpful to share some pointers I learned, from one of my mentors, on how to use holidays and downtime to get an unfair advantage. [Note- this is a bit of a lengthy post but for those who choose to read to the end, hopefully one that’s packed with value you can take away and implement.]

I am one week into our holiday in Spain and having an amazing time with my family so far.

It’s probably fair to say that many of us subscribe to Rob Moore’s philosophies in his book Life Leverage (if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to) – we all want to work less and succeed more. However, it’s all too easy for us to fall into the mode of trying to ‘outwork’ the next guy and keep pushing through with grit and a string of late nights at the desk. This is OK at times but the longer term result is willpower depletion, motivation depletion and reduction in overall effectiveness.

This is where summer holidays can really come to the rescue.

[As a quick bit of back context it’s important to understand (I’m sure many of you do) that our mental energy and willpower is a like a tank of finite resource that gradually depletes over the course of the day/week/month.

Our ability to solve problems is inversely related to mental energy depletion. Specifically, our ability and strength in these 4 key areas dramatically reduces:

-thought control -i.e. rabbit holes, bright shiny objects

-emotional control – i.e. positive thinking and mood control

-impulse control- i.e. resisting temptations

-performance control – i.e. focused problem solving, perseverance]

So now you know a bit more of the neuroscience behind what’s going on with the grey matter, what can be done about it on holiday?

Here’s the one-two punch suggestion from my business psychologist mentor:

Punch #1: How to come up with bold ideas over the summer – this might be ideas to do with how you find that first JV partner, how to double your SA portfolio in the next 6 months, or something unrelated to property.

• Read (holidays are a great time to give yourself permission to read for way longer than usual, so use the time to fill your head with the right “ingredients”)
• Have conversations with interesting people (you never know who you’ll meet through travel, events, dinners, sport, picnics etc so look for opportunities to tap into smart people, be open to alternative expertise outside of your industry, you may not have to look any further than a family member at a BBQ!)
• Be open to tangential connections (mull things over, give yourself permission to think creatively and laterally- new holiday environments are great for helping with this)
• PLAY! (literally, feed your mind the problem, go have fun being where you are fully engaged in the activity (tennis and snowboarding are great for this) then leave it alone for your subconscious to get to work on coming up with some solutions.)

Punch #2: How to replenish your energy tank and build the discipline muscle:

• Sleep (holiday is the perfect time to let your body wake up naturally in the morning)
• Get your diet right (yes enjoy your food and drink but use the luxury of time during the holidays to choose and prepare healthy meals/snacks that don’t peak and trough your blood sugar like processed foods and refined sugars)
• Don’t make big decisions (i.e. put on hold big decision making that may stress you out until you have replenished the tank)
• Spend time on “Implementation Intentions” (if/then planning – these are v powerful but a whole post in themselves, if curious learn more here http://99u.com/articles/7248/how-to-use-if-then-planning-to-achieve-any-goal or here http://www.developgoodhabits.com/if-then-plan/ )
• Transmute R&R into motivation (if you truly let yourself indulge in some downtime, you’ll probably find you naturally become motivated to get stuck into some meaty work again)
• Give your Inner child gratification (this is a big one. In other words, if you’ve been pushing through and working hard for weeks it’s means you’ve probably been suppressing your inner child i.e. that part of you that just wants to go outside and play. This uses up tremendous willpower. So, let your inner child out, kids are great for helping you with this ie  get out and go boogie boarding with your kids.

I’m conscious this is quite heavy material so kudos to those who read the post through. I’m personally fascinated with this behavioural science/human performance stuff so I do hope it’s useful to others out there and I’d love to hear from you if it is.

Until next week, happy holidays!