Month: August 2017

I kicked off the week listening to Episode 108 of the 10X Talk podcast, which was all about what it takes to create a self-managing company. Sounds very aspirational doesn’t it? [If you haven’t heard the 10X Talk podcast with Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan then I highly recommend you seek it out.] How does one create a self managing company? It starts with having a 10X bigger future vision and a desire to consolidate and automate what you are already doing. More on that in a moment.

The fourth week of the month rolls around quickly and this Tuesday Chris and I sat down with Aniko for another brilliant 1-2-1 mentor session. I admit that I find long term visioning pretty challenging (even my Wealth Dynamic Profile concluded I’m NOT at my strongest starting from a blank piece of paper). However Aniko is helping guide Chris and I to draw out of ourselves a vision for the next 10 years. Once this is done we can cascade down our ‘KIK’ that supports our ‘VV’ (in Progressive/Rob speak this refers to our Vision, Values, Key result areas, Income generating task and  KPI’s).

This is proving such a crucial exercise and over the coming weeks solid time will be invested to paint our 10X vision and get clear on the ‘KIK’ that supports it. Whilst this stuff is a challenge and makes your brain hurt, it’s great to pull yourself out from the operational stuff to do this. Even in the short time Chris and I have spent working on visioning this week it’s been incredibly rewarding and exciting to map out our ideas.

Looping back to the 10X Talk podcast and Dan Sullivan’s message, we definitely want to create a self-managing company, starting with our SA business – a major reason why we’ll be looking to hire a new team member in Q4.

I had a real light bulb moment this particular podcast and a positive re-frame that I think could help others too. It’s particularly relevant to anyone working with a team, whether that be directly employed by you or people in your supply chain. The mindshift I took onboard thanks to Dan Sullivan was this:

“It’s impossible for my team to let me down because either I get the result I want or we get a new lesson to teach us what to review and improve for next time”.

How impactful is that?

Tony Robbins has a similar message that, ‘Problems are the gifts we grow from’. Putting this into recent context, we’ve had a pretty operationally hectic couple of weeks on the SA front and slip ups from suppliers have cropped up. This reframe has really helped dissipate my initial frustration and instead view things from a constructive and learning perspective.

As Dan Sullivan puts it, “the essence of a self managing company is being willing to be a continuous learner and having a cooperation mindset.” He wisely says that, “It’s impossible to fail if you’re willing to be a constant learner”.

I’d love to know if this message also resonates and if you have any similar reframes, please share for us all to learn.

Here’s the link to the podcast if you’re keen to listen to the whole talk:

http://10xtalk.com/what-it-takes-to-create-a-self-managing-company-joe-polish-and-dan-sullivan/

On Friday morning at breakfast my wonderful wife made a really positive remark about a video that was shared with her on Facebook. I enquired further, curious to find out what had engrossed her for a few minutes and uplifted her.

Her response was a brief synopsis of a moving speech delivered by US Navy admiral William H. McRaven about the importance of doing the little things and embracing fear in life. The summary instantly resonated with me and I suggested we project it up onto the big flat screen with our chromecast gadget so the kids could see it too as they finished breakfast.

What a brilliant message to start the day. It’s been buzzing round my head all weekend and I felt compelled to share it.

McRaven’s analogies lifted from his experience in the Navy Seals are rousing yet so practical. This concept of making your bed in the morning (i.e. one task completed) begins the domino effect for many small tasks completed that day. Whilst so simple, I know that Chris and I are focused on completing lots of little tasks each day in our property business, and we fully believe that these small daily steps will compound helping us realise our goals in both the serviced accommodation side business and development side.

Our daily tasks completed over the past few weeks have led to us checking in our biggest contractor booking yet on Friday.

Here’s the 6 min video for you to enjoy and share. (If you’re like me you’ll probably find loads of other great speeches on this Goalcast website.)

https://www.goalcast.com/2017/08/17/william-h-mcraven/

Another full on week comes to a close. How has your week been?

The week kicked off with very much ‘in the business’ work to do with the administrative and operational side of running our SA business.

Tuesday went to the other end of the extreme as I joined our Development Discovery cohorts in London  for a day workshop with Kevin Whelan, founder of Wealth Builders http://wealthbuilders.co.uk/, to learn some key foundations about private JV funding. One re-frame highlighted at the beginning of the day was that ‘people finance property’. To elaborate on that – we might think on the surface that banks and various development finance lenders fund property deals, however tracing that money back to it’s source we realise that real people, individuals out there, are providing the funding. Even in its simplest form of taking out a mortgage, if we consider where the mortgage finance comes from, it’s the deposits from other people’s money.

As all property investors know, one of the most crucial things to grow your business is to have sufficient funds. In the workshop Kevin was opening our eyes to the fact that there are far more people out there with money looking for an investment than we originally thought. That’s why it’s so important for property investors to understand how to build the kind of trust in relationships that can lead to funding, and how to have professional conversations to bring it all together.

To borrow Kevin’s words, “Getting funding is not just about having a great deal with great returns it is about how you present yourself, how you meet the needs of the funder and whether you can present a congruent brand and product with the supporting material to them that taps into their personal preferences and whether they believe and trust you.”

Returning to Scotland, the second half of the week was back ‘in the business’ managing multiple cleaning schedules, check-ins and having direct booking conversations. These are exciting times for Chris and I as our SA business is growing, we are simultaneously fine tuning our processes, pipelining new property and developing relationships with direct booking clients. Each week brings a hive of activity and in the weeks ahead we will be looking to hire someone to help run the operations of our regional SA units. Hopefully this is someone we can identify through our property community and network here

So all in a fully packed week that had me wearing a number of hats from the operational to the strategic. Chris and I are in the midst of drafting out the five year vision for our business and it’s an exciting journey that we are making progress on each week.

In starting and figuring out how to grow businesses, I’ve found that the ‘mental game’ is one of the biggest pieces to the puzzle. Rob and those in the Progressive training community frequently mention the phrase, “skill set without the mindset will leave you upset”. I fully agree and as Chris and I work at growing our property business we are very aware of the mental rollercoaster we are riding. That’s why I’m a big fan of reading/listening to/watching material that will help master the mindset, and I write copious notes on wisdom I want to refer back to (geeky I know).

Rob recently did a great series on the ‘Entrepreneur’s Mindset’ and I captured the summary of his key points to add to my notes. These are proving a great reference for me so I’m sure there will be others out there who will benefit from this little cheat sheet.

Rob’s top tips on mindset:

1. The plight you are on, someone else has started and endured, hunt them down and learn from them
2. Take full responsibility, have extreme ownership, never blame, always give credit away and if anything happens accept responsibility and sort it out
3. Test fast and small to de-risk big problems and to get yourself moving rather than having to wait and get all ducks in a row
4. Net worth is self worth plus your network
5. You are the easiest person to lie to so take self out of the equation and get a coach, accountability partner, be in masterminds
6. Be a problem solver – you don’t have to know the solution to the problem, you just have to want to solve it
7. Be it til you see it- the legacy you want to leave and the person you want to become- be it and live it every day towards your legacy rather than thinking that when I’ve done X or when I’m at Y then I’ll be good enough
8. What you are struggling with you can learn a solution to and grow through the challenge
9. The past doesn’t dictate the future so don’t take all your baggage from the past into the future
10. Only ever compare yourself to who you were, not who you want to be and not by de-pedestalising yourself below mentors and gurus. If want to compare yourself to anyone it’s for inspiration because you want to have that trait, not because you want to be that person. Also look at where you were 2 years ago…if you don’t have quite what you want yet, what do you have that’s proof you are better than where you were? Lift yourself up, don’t put yourself down.
11. Your biggest fears rarely happen so don’t let them consume you. At the same time your fears are there to serve you to help you grow and to give you wise feedback
12. Scarcity or abundance thinking – there are infinite resources and money out there and plenty for us all to be millionaires, so have a mindset of abundance
13. Are you using your resourcefulness and creativity or are you relying on outside factors?
14. Mastering your emotions is a daily thing to work on like eating and going to the gym, keep working on it. You want to get emotion out of the way so can use logic based decision i.e. before making big decisions or communicating with people on important matters.

Brief update on our business activity from the week that was:

We launched our latest SA unit last Sunday and welcomed our first guests. We are underway with the build of our SA website, which is fairly straightforward thanks to using a simple kigo template. We have also viewed a couple of development sites, a property to assess for flipping and a potential R2R.

All in all a busy week and eager to continue the progress into next week.