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Q1 REVIEW AND SPRING CLEAN

The last 2 weeks have probably seen us watching more news than we ever have before, so I know I probably don’t need an update on anything in that regard. Instead, for this week’s post the focus will be on a valuable end of quarter exercise that I like to invest at least some dedicated time to. This quarter end will be no different. 

 

Yes, there will continue to be a large reactive aspect to everyone’s world, to manage cashflow, be solution oriented and try to add value and be helpful in what virtual ways we can. However, we must also do what we can to stay connected to our vision, and reviewing a logical time period like the previous quarter is a great way to do that. In amongst all of the uncertainty and reactive challenges we face, not to mention our new normality of home lockdown, it could be easy to lose our way or fall into a mental fog with no direction. I think it’s particularly important in a time like this to acknowledge our progress in 2020 so far and reassess our direction moving forwards.  

 

**Before I continue though I just wanted to give a massive shout out to all those in the NHS, our volunteers, our supermarket teams and all those in the supply chain keeping our country supplied with food.**

 

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, I learned from Peter Voogd, that I’ve been using for a couple of years to help reflect on the previous quarter 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? 

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 going with the nitty gritty march of each day it’s important to mix it with the things that energise you. In previous quarters this would have included things like getting in a game of tennis once a week, or maybe a mini break with Mrs W.  For those with freedom in their highest values this will be particularly important, however it will be massively challenged in weeks ahead with our foreseeable lockdown. We will all need to be creative about what little things we can do from home to create mini rewards during the month. If you have a garden perhaps you will find a new love for gardening a few times a week, or it may be a new found simple pleasure of making time for a relaxing bath. Whatever it is, choose something and schedule it.   

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

 

Section #4 – RELATIONSHIPS

I love this one:

  • Who did I 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?

To add to this, based on what’s currently happening, who can you make a conscious effort to connect/reconnect with virtually in the months ahead. My wife and I are actively engaging in more family and friend video calls based around coffee mornings or drinks evenings, and we’re really enjoying it. Tools like zoom and the phone app Houseparty have been helping with this. 

 

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?

If you have a team, what can you do to help assure and engage them in during these uncertain times. 

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 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 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.

 

WHAT ABOUT THE SPRING CLEAN BIT?

OK, I know this is a long post so well done if you’re still reading. Here are a few prompts to help with a spring clean [I’ll be allocating some time to these over the coming 2 weeks].

YOUR BUSINESS SYSTEMS

Audit your processes and operations in five key areas:

*Communication – ie your email processes, templates, filing etc

*Project Management – do a hard pruning of your task management system

*Documents and Data Storage

*Finances – can you simplify what key data points you are tracking/reporting on

*Customer TouchPoints – ie invoices, contracts, marketing etc

For all the above, ask the question: “How can we make this better?”

 

Whether you worked from home previously or not, now you’ll want to create an environment that is set to support the high-performance of your spring forward momentum.

 

Schedule a time to declutter, organise, and prune around your entire home office:

*Desks

*File drawers

*Shelves

*Computer desktop

*Computer folders

*Cloud-based folders

*Project management system

 

If you have any practices you’d like to share on how you review your quarters and/or transition into spring then please share it.

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TAKING ACTION ON ‘PLAYING THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT…”

When I wrote last week’s post on “PLAYING THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT LIKE IT’S THE HAND YOU WANT” I had no idea how much further things would unfold. In a week, my family has transitioned from agonising over a decision about travelling to France for a ski trip or not (1st world problem I know), to being fully accepting of self isolation and homeschooling our 3 active primary school boys.
 
How we choose to respond in these uncertain times will be key, hence why I chose this pic to share from High Performance Coach Brendan Burchard. The message really resonated.
 
Like for all private business owners I’m sure, I’ve focused the week on a two pronged approach of reactive and proactive measures to address both cash preservation and new business generation to replace cancelled bookings in our SA business. Here are some of the most positive results to come from those endeavours that might encourage you to do similar:
 
*in contacting most of my lenders, 2 so far have offered rate reductions and others are still in conversation (I have to say the Regional Director for Cambridge and Counties Bank was particularly helpful).
*in speaking to my letting agents, one of my tenancies that was nearing it’s end actually renewed for another year rather than gave concern about paying April’s rent
*verbally secured 3 fantastic SA bookings in empty properties for the coming 3 months
*negotiated a delayed payment on business rates for our new commercial property (however that was before the announcement of the business rates holiday and opportunity to claim £10K grants for each business registered for small rates relief, so the situation should be made even better with that).
 
 
With what has proven to be a rapidly escalating health crisis, it’s clear that people are scared. They are glued to the news. They’re wondering how to care for their health and the well-being of their families, their businesses, teams and communities. They’re juggling a multitude of changes.
 
That’s why I felt it would be a good idea to start a conversation to connect directly with those who want to [more details on that at the bottom of the post]. These are challenging times, and I know people want to do what we can to support each. I certainly do.
 
In the last week we’ve witnessed many acts of kindness, community spirit and solid family values, it’s been heartwarming to see, hear about and contribute in our own little way. Isn’t it amazing how a crisis can bring out the best version of ourselves?
 
Anyone in the entrepreneurship and property space will have built up some understanding of how to overcome obstacles and stay optimistic during challenges and setbacks. Some of the things I know will help keep you focused, calm, and confident are to:
# Take care of your team and their families. They work hard on your behalf and want to know that you, and they, will be OK.
# Reach out to your clients and let them know you’re there for them.
# Focus on gratitude. In other words paying attention to what you have versus what you don’t, and appreciating all of the incredible resources, strengths, knowledge, relationships, and expertise you have to draw on.
# Be aware of “strategic by-products” that result from this new way of living and operating. Even though most of us aren’t able to move forward the way we were before, new opportunities and capabilities will evolve, and, by necessity, we might discover new ways of operating that are better and more efficient than the old ways.
# Focus on your relationships and how you can create value for them by helping them to get clear on and eliminate their challenges, maximise their opportunities, and reinforce their strengths. This includes not only your business relationships but also your family, friends, and community.
When it comes to self isolation, my wife jokes that I’ve been practising that since Jan 2014 when I left the world of employment. Working from home, predominantly in my little office (my ‘Harry Potter cupboard’), is my zone of strength. It’s where I’ve created businesses, formed productive life habits, written a book and daily, live a wonderful family life. If you’re anxious about the prospect of working from home, you’re not alone. I’d like to draw on my own experience, and invite that of others, to share and discuss ideas and resources in an open mic virtual room on Wednesday 25th at 11am.
It will not be my attempt at the ‘sofa choir’ (which by the way I do think is very cool, but my singing voice is not one to share) nor will it be a place for negative sentiment.
 
This will be a fun social experiment and may well be the tonic and varied human connection some of you need mid-week. I can only imagine that with a group of abundantly minded people we can have a productive discussion where we can share ideas and resources that can help in the current environment for your health, family and property business.
 
In summary, and if you’re interested, I’m inviting you to join a conversation around what I see as some key topics for the situation we find ourselves in, such as:
 
*Tips and routines for working from home
*Managing your property business in uncertain times
*Adopting a role model mindset
*Family life and home schooling
 
 
So, come with your choice of hot or cold beverage and join me for a coffee and a chat Wednesday 25th at 11am.
 
 
And if it’s well received, maybe we can do it again the week after 🙂
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“PLAY THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT LIKE IT’S THE HAND YOU WANT”

For many, this week will probably go down as one of the most surreal we can remember. The impact of COVID-19 on financial markets, the rapid unfolding of news relating to travel restrictions, the emptying of supermarket shelves…the list goes on. 

 

For my own family, we had the agonising decision making process of weighing up the risks and choosing to cancel our ski holiday – a decision that broke our snow-loving boy’s hearts. We were due to fly out to Geneva on Saturday morning, then take a transfer out to Morzine. With everything operating as normal in the resort on the Friday, we had to make a decision based on potential border and transport lock down risks. Wow, are we glad we made the call to stay at home – 24 hours after our decision, the official reports came out that our ski resort was closing. So if we had would flown out we’d have had to figure out trying to get straight back home again. 

 

So, what’s the point in sharing this little drama? Firstly, I hope that you and your loved ones are in good health amongst all of this. My guess is that many of you are having to make some challenging decisions every day as more news unfolds. The main reason for this post is to share my two cents on perspective and attitude. 

 

Have you ever read about the concept of extreme ownership? [There’s a book of that title written by former Navy Seals, and many business leaders/coaches talk about a similar message]. The concept is essentially about taking ownership and responsibility for everything in ‘your world’. Darren Hardy, who I’ve followed for years, teaches us that we are 100% responsible for what we do, didn’t do, and how we choose to react to things.

 

It’s on this same vein that I chose the headline quote of this post – “PLAY THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT LIKE IT’S THE HAND YOU WANT”- [a quote I heard from Inky Johnson, a former NFL hopeful who had his dreams crushed by a freak accident but emerged successful on a different path].

 

Whilst I know it is crazy to ever imagine wanting this situation we find ourselves in [well, my kids are hoping to be off school :)], the reason I chose the title and topic of this post was to remind us all that how we emerge from this situation will come down to our choice of perspective and attitude. It will come down to how we choose to see things, what we focus our minds on and the attitude we choose to take each day. Will you be focused on problems, or on solutions and even opportunities?

 

Here’s a quick look at just some of the areas where we will need to be proactive, solution oriented and possibly even opportunistic as people in property:

 

# With the bank base rate being cut to .25%, some of you will automatically benefit from monthly payment reductions if on variable rates. Even if you’re on fixed rates, how about asking for a reduction? Our mentor Paul Smith advocates all of us should at least be asking the question of lenders, you never know. Now that I have a week back at the desk and not on the slopes I’ll certainly be asking my lenders for reductions. 

 

# If people start losing their jobs, what will that mean for their ability to pay the rent? I’ll be contacting all of the letting agents who manage my long term single lets this week to understand the employment status of my tenants so I can be as prepared as possible. 

 

# How will Serviced Accommodation be affected? We have already started to feel the sting of a few tourist related cancellations. However, there is good reason to believe that SA operators could experience an upcoming spike as more people want self-contained property over hotels where there would be more public interaction. Thankfully our focus is not on the tourist market, but it does mean we’ll need to double down on finding the bookings from contractors and other more local sources. What about the opportunities that might come from the health service? I read in the paper today that The Department of Health is in talks about using hotel rooms as hospitals. This prompts the thinking, what non-tourist related audiences might you be able to help serve in your local area with your SA units?

 

# Preserving and managing your cash. Whilst the lockdowns may not hit your property business as hard as others, if anything it will bring a keener sense of financial control to any business owner. In other words, this might be the nudge you need to do a full cost review of all direct debits and standing orders – you might be paying more for utilities and wifi than you need to for example, or may even be paying for services and subscriptions that the business isn’t even using. 

 

# For the commercial property investors out there – restaurants and retailers are likely to be hit pretty hard and casual dining chains are already begging landlords for rent holidays. If, like us, you are actively investing in commercial property, think long and hard about the commercial tenants you are looking to serve, you want a sustainable investment. 

 

# Commercial property owners in Scotland will be pleased to hear that the Finance Secretary has announced a 75% rates relief for shops and venues with a rateable value of less than £69,000 and grants of at least £3000 will be made available to small businesses in sectors facing the worst economic effects of coronavirus.

 

So that was a handful of things I picked up from recent conversations and reading that thought might be relevant for you to think about going into the coming weeks. One thing I find fascinating is how, as nations, the mind is being focused on basic fundamentals like food water and shelter, hence the run on supermarkets…. and this humorous revision to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I am so grateful to be in the comfort of our home, safe with everything we need, as opposed to being stuck in a ski resort on lockdown. 

I’m curious to hear what thoughts are going through your heads at the moment – what uncertainties or questions might you have in relation to your property businesses in the weeks ahead? And how can you ‘play the hand you’re dealt like its the hand you want’?

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3 THINGS PROPERTY INVESTORS CAN LEARN FROM SUPER BRAIN BILL GATES

This week we started watching the documentary series “Inside Bill’s Brain” as a family. I’m delighted to say that both my wife and kids were as interested in the programme as I was.
 
Having never read much about the founder of Microsoft I was intrigued and excited to get tucked into this docu-series, where the director tries to shine a light on what makes one of the world’s wealthiest people tick and what formed him?
 
I’ve often heard it said that success leaves clues so naturally I was looking to pick out and remember what golden nuggets I could. In the space of watching the first two (of three) episodes 3 key things have jumped out at me (I’m sure I’d find more if I were to watch it again).
 
Here are the 3 things I picked out that I feel can serve to help property investors:
 
#1: Early in the documentary Bill points out that the brain can only FOCUS on a finite amount of things at any one time.
 
 
#2: Bill reads books with a specific purpose in mind (bearing in mind Bill reads enviously fast, taking in 150 pages an hour with about 90% retention- wow! And fun fact, he carries around a heavy duty bag with about 15 books everywhere he goes).
 
#3: Bill is intentional about taking quiet time to THINK and problem solve.
 
 
So lets unpack those quickly to draw out the relevance for property investors.
 
NUGGET #1: ON FOCUS – Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have become BFFs. As told in the documentary, “Becoming Warren Buffet”, Gates’s father once asked them both to write down a single word to describe their success. They both wrote the same word: focus.
 
I feel like we often need to be reminded of this. As investors becoming educated in property today we can be spoiled with a wide menu of strategies from the good old buy-to-let, HMO, through to serviced accommodation, commercial, development, build to rent, rent to buy, and any combination of the above. The problem with these choices means that one can often suffer from either a) overwhelm and indecision on where to get started, or b) shiny penny syndrome where you fall victim to jumping into another strategy before getting traction in the first one you tried.
 
The fact is that any one of these strategies can work amazingly well and help you achieve your bigger goals, however each investor is unique and their own context, resources, network, likes/dislikes will inform the most suitable option. The key is that once the strategy is chosen, the investor must FOCUS on that one thing until a certain level of success is achieved before jumping into something else.
 
We absolutely want to be in a position where we are experienced enough to draw on anyone of these strategies to optimise the exits, but time and experience generally tells us that we can’t expect this from day one. It comes from focusing and mastering one thing at a time.
 
 
NUGGET #2: ON READING WITH PURPOSE
 
This makes total sense and follows on neatly from point one. If you are investing your learning time on mastering serviced accommodation then it makes sense to go deep on that topic through the course, the books, the webinars etc that you allocate time to. And beyond the content consumption, reading with purpose must be followed up with implementing the key learns in order to get the return on that content.
 
In short, what Bill confirmed in my mind was that we need to proactively align our reading to the specific skills and capabilities we are looking to grow.
 
 
NUGGET #3: ON SCHEDULING TIME TO THINK
 
This point is something I suspect can easily be forgotten or neglected in favour of busy activity. You know what it’s like to set ambitious goals, we can get caught up in a full day of activity – the phone calls, the viewings, the internet searching, the emails, the social media……feeling busy but not necessarily acting as the highest leverage version of ourselves.
 
Busy activity is needed at times to get certain things done, however another part of the puzzle that I feel is essential is the quiet thinking time. Whilst Bill allocates vast amounts of time to think about solving world problems to do with disease eradication and such like, property investors first need to solve the problems of figuring out how to achieve their own financial freedom [or fill in the blank for your goals], then they can step into the philanthropic space.
By my interpretation this would cover time to figure out your why, set a vision for the year, plan out your 90 day sprint, your week ahead and your day ahead. In addition to planning, conscious time needs to be scheduled for figuring things out – we typically have a lot more answers within ourselves than we think, we just need to create that headspace to ask ourselves the better questions and noodle on the possible answers. Whether it be in relation to how we structure a JV deal, coming up with all the possible exits to a deal, how to scale your SA business…or whatever, it needs focused time out of the ‘weeds’ of busy activity to think about this stuff. You could say time working ON the business as opposed to IN the business.
 
So that’s my 3 applicable takeaways for property folk so far from this fascinating documentary. I’d love to hear what lessons others have taken into their property businesses by learning from successful figures in the business world.
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HOW TO TAKE MASSIVE ACTION – AN INSIGHT FROM TONY ROBBINS

What’s been the single most impactful thing you’ve learned this week? Without a shadow of a doubt, for me, it’s this powerful little process on how to get all of the endless ‘to do’s’ and ideas out of your head and into some kind of order that you can get high leverage results from. It’s a subtle distinction that can see us taking a traditional to do list and supercharging it.
 
This process really resonated and I’ll be intentionally applying it going forwards to help our property business, our family and each key area in the wheel of life.
 
Here’s Tony’s process:
 
This technique can pretty much relate to anyone at any point of time in their busy week and it relates to us all having a million and one things floating round our heads. We need a method to capture what’s in our heads, pull it out and put it into one separate place (a capture list which can be paper or digital) – we need to be able to let things go from our mind and create more mental space.
 
Here’s the big distinction I picked up about that capture list – we can use that list of all those things that we ‘think’ we need to do to stimulate a higher level of thinking in relation to what we really want, why we want it, and then get strategic about doing the key things. All the other items on the list will go away or won’t matter as much.
 
When we make traditional to do lists they rarely get done because they are typically so long and we never have enough time. So what this approach from Tony does is to switch our mindset to first capture everything, and be totally fine knowing that we are not going to do it all but we need to later be able to decide which things are worth doing.
 
From a starting place of having an overwhelming list of action items, there’s a good chance you’ll actually be able trim down and translate these to just 4 key outcomes ie outcomes for my home, my kids, my business and my personal life.
 
By catagorising the monster capture list it brings stress levels down and increases focus.
 
Take your capture list and filter it with these questions and actions.
 
3 SIMPLE QUESTIONS FOLLOWED BY 3 SIMPLE ACTIONS
 
QUESTION 1: What do I really want? (rather than thinking about what do I have to do). What is the desired outcomes?
 
QUESTION 2: Why is this important to me? Why is it exciting and transformative?
 
QUESTION 3: What do I need to do? Now that I’m clear, what’s my massive action plan ie what do I need to do to achieve this?
 
 
Once you have answered the questions above you can now go back through your massive capture list with renewed clarity and complete the following actions:
 
ACTION #1: Star the ‘MUST’ items, ie the actions that are the 20% that will make 80% of the difference towards the end result.
 
ACTION #2: Establish the real time needed to get the result . Ask yourself what is the minimum amount of time to get these MUST items completed and figure out where to block out time to get these done or instruct others to do them/help you.
 
ACTION #3: Find the leverage – this might require a switch in our thinking but there will typically always be multiple ways to find leverage in getting to the end result. Tony talks about finding ways to work with others where they really understand your desired outcome and purpose. This will produce a very different result to simply delegating without that connection to the purpose.
 
“Tony reminds us that we are never going to grow when our time is taken up with activities that aren’t important. Activity without high levels of purpose is a drain on your fortune.”
 
What have you learned this week that you will be implementing to help your property business progress?