THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT YOUR NEXT 3 MONTHS IS TO LOOK AT….

End of the quarter already! What! Wow that was fast. Do you remember the well known saying from Ferris Bueller –

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while,  you could miss it…”

Ok, so that was coming from a High Schooler eager to seize the day, but the words carry wisdom for everyone and applies across the board. Especially into your business world. Why not take this punctuation of quarter end to ‘look around’ and look back on the last 90 days of business. How are you tracking towards your big 2019 property and business goals?

Last year I discovered a great monthly review process, courtesy of Peter Voogd from the YEL 2.0 podcast, that I like to use for a quarterly review instead. It’s called the 7-figure review’ and it provides a great framework.

Firstly, the rationale behind this- Peter Voogd says that, “the best way to predict someone’s next 6 months is to look at their previous 6 months. So, putting that into a quarterly context, we can say the best way to predict our next 90 days is to look at our previous 90 days. Habits trump everything, mindset, decision, network and so on. So if you had a mediocre last 3 months, the takeaway here is that the next 3 are likely to be the same unless you really get conscious about what you’re doing, what info you put in your head, and every single day you do things to get you closer to your goals.“ Is that hard to hear?

This post borrows from Voogd’s teachings and is all about how to purposefully review the previous 90 days so you can set yourself up for a rock solid next 90, and so on.

Most people want to have a great year, they think they will but they don’t take the necessary daily steps to ensure that they will. It’s easy to plan, but executing when you really don’t feel like it is what separates the champions from the mediocre.

This process is about using your reflection as an awareness tool, on what’s worked for you in the past and what you can do differently/reinforce going forwards.

Reviewing each month and quarter is about investing past experience into future preparation and focus – ie your past decisions, successes, failures, lessons. That’s where the good stuff comes from.

Here are a selection of questions to help you reflect on the previous quarter so you can carry on with momentum. Use these prompt questions to help you reflect and free flow write for 30 mins or so each quarter about the previous 90 days. [By the way, I used the accountability of writing this post to get my own review done before hitting publish and it does only take about 30 mins].

Section #1 – OVERVIEW

  • What went well, what didn’t?
  • When was I in my zone, when wasn’t I?
  • When was I at my emotional energy peak?
  • What caused me peace of mind?
  • What frustrated me?
  • Did I do what I said I was going to do?
  • What systems have I put in place?

Section #2 – PSYCHOLOGICAL

  • What have been my biggest breakthroughs?
  • What have been my biggest frustrations?
  • What have been my mind-shifts?
  • What have been my biggest disappointments?

Section #3 – TACTICS

This section looks at what were my top 5 wins from last quarter: financial, family, adventure…?

Getting down to business metrics ask yourself:

  • Did I hit my business income goal last quarter?
  • What were the top three marketing campaigns or sources of income last month?
  • What were my top income producing activities?
  • What are the biggest ways I’ll be producing income this next month?
  • How did I add value to the marketplace, could I have added more? (In these property communities and we talk a lot about fair exchange of value, because that’s ultimately how we get paid.)

These will likely be related to your highest values but only you will know.

  • Did I leverage technology?
  • Did I maximise my reach?
  • What will exponentially grow my reach this next quarter?
  • What did I do to stay adventurous and feel fully alive?

To help keep you from the nitty gritty march of each day it’s important to mix it with the things that energise you. It might be something small ie for me it’s getting in a game of tennis once a week, or maybe you had planned a mini break with your loved one.  For those with freedom in their highest values this will be particularly important. Can you mix your passion and profession and link up travel to fun destinations with your work?

If you aren’t consciously making a decision to put things in your diary that will keep you alive and vibrant, you will become complacent.

Section #4 – RELATIONSHIPS

I love this one:

  • Who did I you connect with and reach out to last quarter?
  • Did I take care of my current relationships and did I reach out to people who can cut my learning curve in half- i.e. people who I can partner with in some way that’s relevant to your business?
  • Did I leverage partnerships?

Section #5 – TEAM

Think about questions that will help with your team review:

  • How was my team engagement?
  • How was my speed of communication?
  • What feedback can I give them?
  • What do they need in terms of skill development?

Section #6 – LEGACY

  • What did I work on that was legacy focused? In other words something that you work on now but won’t get paid until long into the future, or something that you don’t reap the benefits for until way later, ie it creating things that you value but that you get paid 6 months or more down the road. Note that if you just do this kind of work for the rewards/benefits you will lose steam, it’s important to engage in legacy work for other reasons, for something bigger than you. As a side example, part of my family legacy work last year and ongoing now is taking conscious time with my boys to teach them one key life value each month.

Voogd recommends spending 80% of your time on profit making activity, creating systems etc that makes sure you have the money coming in for you and your family now. Then 20% of your time on legacy focused things. Eventually when you have built the business you want you can switch focus to investing 80% of your time on the legacy side of things. Isn’t that an exciting prospect? To spend 80% of your time on something that helps a cause you believe in or adds value to the world in some way, and not worry whether it pays you or not.

Conclusion

I challenge you to invest 30 mins each month or quarter to do this. WHY? Because high achievers always ask better questions, and they are always investing their past mistakes/lessons into their future preparation.

Ask yourself the tough questions because the better the questions you ask, the better the answers, and the more clarity you will gain.

With this exercise completed, your task is now to look at how you can use your insights to course correct for the next quarter.

If you have any practices you’d like to share of how you review your months and quarters then please share it.

Here’s to a great Q2

THE FIFTH PILLAR OF PRODUCTIVITY

Last week I shared the 4 pillars of productivity as they were taught to me: specificity, measurement, deadlines and accountability. At that time I was massively leveraging a holiday departure deadline to crunch through a list before sinking in to a much deserved break. [I’ll share the link to it at the bottom if you missed that post]

Deadline hit and the holiday began, this is where the fifth pillar (or 5th key ingredient for productivity) comes in. It’s one that’s often overlooked or not given enough attention. And here it is, the hidden fifth pillar of productivity is PLAY. What we mean by this is completely disconnecting from the busy world of your business and letting your inner child just play. It’s crucial for your mental state, your family and your business to make time for this stuff and I explain why in this short video. This is where you may need to challenge your current perspective on productivity to put a greater importance on scheduling time for play (whatever your version of play is).

I’ve played full out and been present spending quality time with my kids, parents and siblings for the entire 7 days. We’ve laughed, learned, discussed goals and dreams, danced, ate, drank, played games, and celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary one of the evenings in a magical mountain restaurant transported by a piste basher. We’ve created rich and memorable experiences that are captured in our minds and in the pictures and videos we took. This in itself is crucial to invest time and money to do, as I wrote about in a post titled ‘THE 4 KEY THINGS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE SPEND THEIR MONEY ON’ – no.4 being that they invest in memorable and inspiring experiences.

 

When I checked my screentime app on the phone I’d only clocked up 11 hours of screen time on my phone for the 7 days I was away and almost half of that was used for taking and sharing photos (of us all having fun on the slopes) within our family whatsapp group. I had 1 business call with our Ops Manager and reviewed emails for a total of 1hr 6mins across the entire week.

 

So what’s the benefit of all this and why is making time for play is so important for productivity?

  • Disconnected time away from the business actually makes you hungry to get back into producing mode and working at being the highest leverage version of yourself in moving your business forward. I can honestly say I’m hungry to get back to business.
  • Having let the proverbial ‘inner child’ out to play I can happily put the head down and focus on the hard work for another 90 day sprint without feeling frustrated or the higher risk of procrastination had I not taken time out.
  • Changing up my environment and routine for a week has removed me from the day to day blinkers and made way for some creative thinking thanks to inspiring sights and new conversations- for example it’s reconnected me to a big goal Chris and I have to build a spectacular ski chalet where we can host mastermind retreats and gift holidays to causes that are close to our hearts – like families dealing with illnesses can come away to create wonderful memories.
  • I’ve continued to feed the virtuous cycle – ie when we spend money on experiences for loved ones it not only creates wonderful memories but it inspires us at a different level to continue to produce results and create a life we are proud of for our family.

 

I’d encourage you all to be intentional about scheduling time for PLAY, even better, let us know what you’re planning to do.

 

Link to last week’s post: http://adaeroproperty.com/week-11-leveraging-the-power-of-deadlines-and-the-3-other-pillars-of-productivity/

 

Link to post on the 4 non-negotiables:

http://adaeroproperty.com/the-4-key-things-successful-people-spend-their-money-on/

WEEK #11: LEVERAGING THE POWER OF DEADLINES, AND THE 3 OTHER PILLARS OF PRODUCTIVITY

There’s nothing like the positive pressure of a holiday deadline is there? It has the power to make you a super human for a few days and push out more than you think is possible in a standard week. This week was my last week IN and ON the business before departing on a family ski trip tomorrow. With two full days out mentoring, the window of time to move things forward in our other business endeavours has been limited however this looming deadline has lit a proverbial fire under my behind to crunch through a massively productive and rewarding week. Here’s a few of the highlights:

  • Met with and signed up as an accommodation partner with a wedding venue
  • Identified and made contact with 3 national business brokers to initiate commercial property searches
  • Delivered online coaching
  • Dropped promo fliers into a handful of building sites
  • Confirmed 2 longer term SA bookings with a new direct client
  • Delivered 2 full days of round table masterminding
  • Watched my eldest son play basketball
  • Cosied up for a movie with my 3 sons (and a wee G&T for me)

Deadlines and productivity have been a common theme in the coaching and mentoring conversations this week so it seems fitting to build on that for this post. [and in full transparency, I actually wrote a post like this back in 2017 so I can leverage that and repurpose much of the content now 😉 ].

Sitting behind my productive week were 4 key concepts (or ingredients) that I’ve been employing for several years now. I wanted to take a moment to share them with you because they will prove crucial to your productivity and goal achieving going forwards, if you’re interested. I am eternally grateful to one of my business coach/mentors and entrepreneur psychologist Peter Shallard, for teaching me these “4 Pillars of Productivity” as follows:

#1 – SPECIFICITY:

This relates to the ideal implementation granularity required to break a goal down into perfect bite sized chunks. For example a giant goal like climbing Everest can be broken down into taking 58,070 steps. Without specificity you would be hoping to achieve a goal without any actionable steps within your control. On the other hand, ask yourself, is it clear what I and I alone (i.e. what’s within my control) need to do in order to move closer to the goal?

#2 – MEASUREMENT:

Measurement assigns positive meaning and accomplishment to completing an activity. Without delving too deeply into the science behind this, suffice to say that building a streak in completed activity delivers a positive chemical reaction in your brain, this helps you feel good about incremental progress on the way to achieving a bigger goal.

A simple analogy is going to the gym to lose weight or build muscle. In the first 2-3 weeks we will likely see little or no change but by measuring and checking off our attendance 4 times a week we make a game of following through. This progress measurement helps us get to weeks 4-6 and beyond where we start to see the results of our work.

#3 – DEADLINES:

We’ve all experienced the power of deadlines early on in our academic careers. The looming deadline of a test has the power to make us study hard at the 11th hour (or in my case this week to compress more in before a holiday). Without deadlines, things can sit on your to do list for months. When all else fails, a real cut off point with consequences gets everyone moving. If you are up for achieving more this year then don’t shy away from deadlines, but instead look for opportunities to commit to things.

So, as an example, everyone on the Touchstone Platinum mastermind knows that Paul encouraged you to do something new and stretching before our next meeting on April 10th/11th. Why don’t you all challenge yourself to that? I’ll share ours below.

#4 – ACCOUNTABILITY:

Have you heard the saying that goes, “The easiest person to let down is yourself”? On the flipside, you can’t kid yourself on the goals you’ve made if someone holds you accountable to them. Accountability taps into powerful social behaviours because we want to look good in front of others. Accountability is like a secret weapon and serves to remind us of the commitments we have made. Successful business people build boards of directors and advisors to hold them accountable to goals and milestones. Where is accountability missing in your life right now?

Here’s a quote I love:

“Accountability is critical to anyone leading a group of people, because, after all, every business is a people business. Accountability is how people get things done—or don’t get things done. “

-Greg Bustin, author of ‘Accountability: The Key To Driving A High-Performance Culture’

I use these 4 Pillars to help set and achieve goals for each week, and if this resonates, you can too.

So here’s our challenge, I haven’t looked at BTL’s for 7 or more years now, but by April 10th, Chris and I are pledging to have bought/have had offer secured on either a BTL or mini HMO in a new area with little to no money left in. [See what we’ve done there, we’ve just layered in all the ingredients of those 4 key pillars above].

Anyone else keen to set a specific goal, with a deadline and share it for big accountability?

Have a great week ahead.

 

[image credit: Quotefancy]

LESSONS FROM A HUMBLE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE- PART DEUX

Five months ago I met Jonathan Berliand for the first time and got to hear some of his remarkable journey. I captured what stood out for me as the 8 key lessons from his talk. If you haven’t read that post I’ll add the link at the bottom of this one.

This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Jonathan again at the Touchstone 6 Figure Summit. As the eternal student I was scribbling notes at the back of the room so thought, why not follow up the previous post with some more wisdom bombs.

[BTW if you’re interested the quote on the screen reads, “You weren’t born to just pay bills and die”]

LESSON #1: FIND YOUR WHY AND THEN FIGURE OUT THE HOW

‘It all started with a bucket’

Jonathan formed his first business at age 8 because he wanted more pocket money than 50p a week. Why? – he wanted a proper watch, and he was willing to apply himself to find a way. The answer came in the shape of a bucket and sponge and his car washing business was born.

Just to give you a small insight to the savvy of this young lad, this business grew to a turnover that saw him making more at age 12 or 13 than a professional footballer at the time.

LESSON #2: EMBRACE FAILURES

Jonathan shared a major reframe on failing, in fact, he loves failures and has probably had more failures than wins (all be it the wins have far exceeded the losses in value terms). Why does he love failures? –  they have massively accelerated the path to the wins and here’s the reframe I really liked – he doesn’t want to reach the end of his life with a load of question marks.

LESSON #3: UP YOUR GAME

Last year Jonathan got stuck in the lift of a high rise building in London for over an hour. However at least he had company. His lift-mate happened to be the author of that well known book ‘10X’, yes it was Grant Cardone. Jonathan described getting his proverbial be-hind kicked by Grant because he’d confessed to hitting a lull in his property investing business ie he wasn’t doing nearly as many deals as he wanted to, or knew he was capable of. Whatever Grant said it certainly lit a fire under Jonathan’s ass because he consciously upped his game and now has over 100 deals on the table,  just a few short months later. Wow, just wow! And why not? We can all up our game. To paraphrase Jonathan (and Grant), ‘when you have a good deal/opportunity, jump then worry about how you’ll pay for it. If you don’t jump you’ll always have question marks hanging over you, and you don’t need those in your life.’

LESSON #4: LEARN TO LOVE SELLING AND TAKING MASSIVE ACTION

Can tea towels make you rich? Jonathan has sold many different kinds of products and at one point in his career saw an opportunity to by tea towels wholesale at about 10p each. Confident he could sell them for a good bit more, he placed an order with the European mill for 100,000. On delivery day what arrived was the first 600,000 of a 10million item order! Somewhere along the line the supplier had chosen to add a few zeros. Faced with a mountain like this to climb (ie having to sell this insane amount of stock), many would have given up and thrown the towel in, (that just rolled out naturally, I promise) but not Jonathan. After 2 weeks of daily struggling to sell small volumes and on the verge of giving up, one more cold call led to selling 750,000 units! ‘You discover what you’re made of when your back is against the wall’, he said.

Rather than give up he chose to put in massive and consistent action, it didn’t happen quickly but he eventually found his way to bulk sales orders with large retail outlets and he did indeed shift all those tea towels. For a tidy profit too I might add.

LESSON #5: ASK BETTER QUALITY QUESTIONS

I’ve heard it said before that the quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of questions that you ask. To this point I have a couple of anecdotes from Jonathan that shows how his mind works when it comes to identifying problems and finding solutions that make money:

 

  • in his car washing business as a kid, when Jonathan found that growth had stopped he challenged himself to think about what else he could be doing. The answers he came up with included, to upgrade the type of car the team were washing ie a more expensive car warranted a more expensive wash. Next he started to upsell the offering by moving the cars to be washed and putting them back for the owner’s convenience – a premium offering for a premium price.
  • This next example is a beauty. Jonathan had a river boat and on the internal surfaces like window frames and shelves he noticed increasing amounts of messy black spots appearing. When he asked the boatyard owner what it was he replied, ‘that’s spider poo, no one has found a solution to that, when someone does they’ll be a billionaire.’ Of course Jonathan didn’t just accept this information and move on. He set about finding a solution to a problem that wealthy people would happily pay for to keep their boats pristine. But it’s not just for boat owners, you’ve probably seen these very black spots on your own window sills, if you’re curious, here’s the product to see for yourself

https://www.caraselledirect.com/_/spiderbird_poo_remover_500ml_by_caraselle_-_recyclable_bottle_-.3467-1

 

There was an open floor Q&A with Jonathan to close the session, so here are a quick few bonus gems from that:

ON BREXIT – we can’t base our plans on Brexit. Whatever happens people still need to live somewhere and stay somewhere when they travel to the UK. So property rentals and sales will still have to continue. OK it may not be at the rate of previous years, but it will still need to happen at a pretty significant scale to keep things running. In short, ‘you can only deal with what’s in your control and move on. ‘

 

ON WORK MINDSET – This circles back to Lesson #1 above– you’ve got to find your why and love what you do. Jonathan loves boating, it’s his tonic, but it doesn’t come cheap so he keeps working on his businesses to fund it. The key to point out here is that he also has great fun doing that too. Of course there will be challenges and tough weeks, but finding and making deals is fun.

 

ON FINANCES AND RISK MANAGEMENT – you’ve got to take control of your own finances, that’s why you need to learn how to invest effectively in property for yourself. When it comes to risk management, you’ve got to do what’s right for you, but Jonathan likes repayment mortgages. Paul recommends stress testing your deals at 12% mortgage interest rates.

The room loved Jonathan’s candid honesty, humour and humility. I can’t share every single anecdote here but if this stuff resonates then get yourself to a 6 Figure Summit where you can hear Jonathan speak first hand.

Click here to find out more

 

The first set of lessons from Jonathan http://adaeroproperty.com/8-lessons-from-a-humble-multi-millionaire/

3 QUESTIONS THAT WILL TRANSFORM YOUR LEARNING AND ACCELERATE YOUR RESULTS IN PROPERTY AND BUSINESS

Did you engage yourself in any property related education over the last couple of weeks? It might have been a book you’re reading, a podcast you listened to or a training event you attended.

 

Now ask yourself this – did you take notes? And if so what are those notes like and what will those notes lead to?

 

I’ve been a consummate and diligent note taker all of my adult life, particularly when it comes to property education and personal development. However, this week I listened to an interview that highlighted the way I’ve been taking notes is all wrong. And more often than not the way we are taught to learn at school is all wrong. The podcast interview I reference was with learning expert Jim Kwik, who explained that the worst way to take notes is trying to copy what’s being said verbatim.

 

Taking notes is a powerful way to massively increase retention and learn faster. However, unless we are taught a different technique of note taking we are leaving way too much value from our learning time on the table.

 

I’ll briefly share the technique I learned this week from Jim Kwik. I implemented it straight away and I’m a massive convert. The main picture is of the notes I made listening to the podcast, the other pic (below) is of notes I took listening to Paul on Friday.

So, here’s the enhanced technique for taking notes and optimising the outcome from them:

-in your notebook, take a clean page and draw a line down the middle (I actually preferred separating my page with approx ⅔ to ⅓ split, you’ll see why soon)

-the left hand column is for CAPTURE ie for ‘taking notes’ of what you’re hearing & seeing – the things you want to reference and remember

-as much as possible aim to capture keywords and relevancy

-the right hand column is for CREATING ie for ‘making notes’ to yourself, where you engage some thinking (asking and answering questions to yourself about what you are learning). This will massively accelerate your learning because ‘the brain learns through creation, not consumption’ to quote Kim Kwik.

Here are the three powerhouse questions to guide the CREATING notes you make in the right hand column:

#1: HOW CAN I USE THIS?

-this is forcing yourself to think about putting what you’re learning into action.

#2: WHY MUST I USE THIS?

-reasons reap results and information with emotion will be committed to long term memory. It’s super important to get clear on your motivation for the learning and infuse emotion into the learning process.

#3: WHEN WILL I USE THIS?

-schedule the action and it becomes real. This one is essential for getting results. 

So simple yet so powerful.

If you’re looking for a property even to practice your new note taking technique then I can highly recommend joining the Touchstone team at the upcoming Six Figure Summits:

London 9th & 10th March

Glasgow 16th & 17th March

Book your seat here https://goo.gl/6QQ1s4