Month: December 2021

Over the last 4 years, my blog post in the final week leading into Christmas has followed the same theme – about ‘presence’ over presents. As a father, husband, son, brother, uncle, godfather and friend, I’ve gradually come to realise over the years that the magical time of Christmas is an opportunity for so much more than giving and receiving nicely wrapped presents.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to give presents, and my kids in particular love opening them but what I’d really like to teach them by example over the years, is how to be fully present and create rich memories.

I hope you’ve had a fantastic year in your property businesses, and after pushing hard to finish strong all December we can look forward to some quality down time this Christmas. It’s such a special time where we can really be intentional about making memories with family and friends.

Each Christmas week I like to share a few ideas I’ve picked up over the years about how we can enhance the time we have with our loved ones and create enriching and lasting memories.

Here they are:

#1: CAPTURE THE MEMORIES

-make a conscious effort to pull the phone out and take some quality pictures of your loved ones laughing, playing, dancing etc (be sure not to bury your head in texts or social media, get back to that family meal/game/chat and really be there). Then be sure to schedule time over the holidays to compile your photos into an album (physical or online) to share with those you love for years to come.

#2: TIME vs TRINKETS

-in place of impulse buying gifts to bulk up what’s under the tree, write out a Christmas card or hand decorated note with a selection of experiences you will share with that person next year (I love this one – I started this 2 Christmases ago for each of my kids and in each year that followed we created wonderful memories and photos together and I know that they appreciated the 1-to-1 time when often everyone is talking over each other.)

#3: DON’T JUST GET TOGETHER, GIVE TOGETHER

-It has been said that families who give together make lasting and meaningful memories together.

-This might be organising a financial donation to a chosen charity, giving out soup and sandwiches to the homeless or any number of different charitable things.

-Every 2 years my extended family get together and for that occasion my wife and I organise a surprise dress up night with a twist, a little like a secret santa where we all buy an outfit from a charity shop for another family member on a £25 budget. There are 18 of us so we donate in the region of £450 to various charities by buying up old clothes and random accessories, and then after the party we then donate all the goods to Cancer Research for them to sell on again. 

I hope some of these ideas resonate and helps other property people out there to be fully PRESENT this Christmas and to create rich memories.

 Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas

Last week I shared a post that was well received – it was the one about habits and how your habits will form your identity. So in follow up to that I wanted to revisit some more great wisdom on habits, this time from the book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. I wanted to highlight something crucial that this book points out, something that all property entrepreneurs need to do yet so many fail to. 

Anyone who’s worked with me in mastermind groups know that I’m a stickler for this, but it’s only because I want to help people to become their next level version… and to do that, they need to practice this crucial thing?

What is this thing?

It’s celebrating! [Whilst that shouldn’t be difficult at this time of year, the point here is about creating an ongoing habit around it]

You want to achieve a certain goal in property, yes? Celebrating along the way is a key ingredient to getting you there. OK, I like to crack the champers as much as the next person, but I don’t literally mean bringing out the bubbly at the end of each work day (that’s a slippery slope in the wrong direction). 

What I’m really pointing to here is that the only way to sustain productivity, is to genuinely feel good about what we do.

For context, let me quickly back up and share BJ Fogg’s 3 step habit forming framework, then I’ll circle back to the celebrating piece and it’s relevance to property entrepreneurs. 

Here’s a quick summary of Fogg’s 3 step ABC method

A- is for Anchor moment

Use an existing routine in your life that will remind you to do the new positive behaviour. Here’s a simple template sentence you can use to fill in the blanks –  “After I……[something you already do], I will…..”[your new positive property related habit]

B- is for Tiny Behaviour

In other words to physically do a small version of the new positive habit you want to embed ie two press ups.

C- is for Celebrate

This is something you do to create a positive feeling inside yourself for having completed the positive behaviour (Fogg calls this feeling ‘Shine’)

This final step of the framework is the crucial step, and it’s the one that is too often missed out. Why is it so important? In Fogg’s words, “It’s emotions that create habits. It’s not repetition. It’s the emotion that your brain connects with the behavior that makes it become automatic, or in other words, a habit.”

[Read that last sentence again, you need to remember it.]

The celebration is something you do to create a positive emotion inside yourself. You need to get really good at creating that inner feeling of success from doing the small things that you know will lead to the big results. 

Fogg tells us that, ‘Learning to celebrate after a tiny win is the most critical component of habit development.’ The problem is so many people hold back on the celebration because they think they should only celebrate huge successes ie the the day they purchase a property, but that’s a huge mistake. 

Lets use an exercise related analogy to capture the message. If your goal is to bench press 120Kgs – as you work towards the goal you are not measuring did I lift 120kg today? Rather, you are measuring did I show up and go through the necessary pain to get closer to the goal (the pain being the core work out, the stretching, the work on other muscle groups). Did I show up and do that? – If Yes, then that feels good, you create an inner feeling of success, your inner ‘shine’, as Fogg calls it. And the more you do it, the more you feel good about it.

So what might be your equivalent ‘property workouts’? The small sessions you schedule each weekday that will eventually get you to your desired property portfolio and income? It will likely be groups of activities like phone calls (for due diligence, for chasing quotes, for selling, for marketing), spreadsheet analysis, viewings, batched admin tasks etc.

Whatever it is, you need to schedule those property workouts, do the task and consciously acknowledge and celebrate each mini win. Create that positive emotion and find your “Shine” so you can form the habit and make the behaviour automatic.

For me, I find that the ‘shine’ comes from answering the following question with a yes – ‘Did I do what I said I would do, for as long as I said, without distraction?’

Even though we won’t always overly love the nature of the task, we can train ourselves to love the feeling of the mini win. This is important for property entrepreneurs (and anyone for that matter) because it reinforces delayed gratification, which our subconscious doesn’t like to do.

When you feel successful at something, even if it’s seemingly pretty small, your confidence grows quickly and your motivation to do that positive behaviour again increases. Even better, motivation spills over to perform other related behaviours and this leads to success momentum.

Moral of the message is, don’t resist celebrating the small wins, that will only hold you back. 

So, what’s a small win for the week that you can celebrate by sharing it here?

One sentence I heard spoken in a podcast a week ago has resonated so strongly with me that it’s been front of mind ever since. 

Those words came from James Clear being interviewed by Ed Mylett, and here’s what he said,

“Every action you take is like a vote for the person you want to become.”

Isn’t that powerful?

I don’t know about you but knowing that one sentence makes me incredibly intentional about a) being clear about who I want to become, and b) taking the right kind actions to become that.

So why is knowing this important to you?

Well, we are fast approaching the end of the year, a time that we naturally punctuate with reflecting on who we were the last 12 months, and envisioning who we want to be this time next year. Whether you are just starting out in property or growing an established property portfolio/business we will all be having thoughts along these lines. 

We will all have an idea in our mind of the type of property entrepreneur/investor we want to be (and if you don’t use this post as a prompt to get those thoughts on paper 😊). If you were to paint a picture of you in a years time, the normal reaction is to start with WHAT you want to have ie a certain number of properties, a certain value of portfolio, a certain monthly cash flow or bank balance. That’s all fine but we also need to think through WHO we need to become in order to make those things happen.

Time to throw in one of my all time favourite quotes which captures this sentiment neatly,

“If you want to have more, you have to become more.

For things to change, you have to change.

For things to get better, you have to become better.

If you improve, everything will improve for you.

If you grow, your money will grow; your relationships, your health, your business and every external effect will mirror that growth in equal correlation.”

-Jim Rohn

Now to circle back to the main sentence that prompted this post “Every action you take is like a vote for the person you want to become.”

James Clear explains that if we can master the right actions and habits then we can start to cast votes for this desired new identity.

Quite literally our habits will form our identity. 

So as you start to reflect on your year in property, and future vision about the property investor/entrepreneur you want to become, I encourage you to consciously design the habits that will make it all happen. 

Will the habit be related to a certain morning routine to kick start your day? Will it be related to posting your property activity twice a week on social media? Will it be related to a number of viewings or agent conversations, or number of possible deals analysed?

Tell us 1 habit you are establishing that will help form your desired identity as a property investor.

Can’t wait to read what gets shared 😊