This post highlights the importance of aligning your weekly priorities with your property and business strategy depending on where you are on your investor/business owner journey, and where you want to go. 

We are already at the end of January and while everyone will have big dreams for 2022 and beyond, it’s wise to be clear on how our weekly priorities are aligning with the bigger picture. 

To help emphasise the point I’m making and paint a visual picture, I’ll borrow these wise words from Stephen Covey – 

“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

Had I not invested the deep thinking time to thoroughly consider and discuss with Chris what we want and why, that could have been us starting the year with the ladder not leaning against the right wall.

Here’s a bit of context:

Towards the end of last year part of me was thinking that we needed to scale our SA business and hire the right team that will help us do this. In other words an investment now in a bigger team for a future payoff of bigger revenue and bigger profits. But why would we want to scale our SA business to be even bigger when it’s already successful and profitable and generating consistent good cash flow?

Would we just be adding more ‘noise’ to our lives by having more properties and more associated operations for a little extra profit? Is that what we really want?

Quite fortuitously, I listened to a podcast on business strategy one morning in the gym at the start of January.  Hearing that solidified my thinking on strategy for the year ahead and I instantly felt lighter about the decision NOT to scale big. I had clarity of thought on how we would prioritise our activities to align with the bigger wealth creation strategy. 

The gist of the message that helped confirm my thinking was acknowledging that once a cash flow business is serving it’s purpose i.e. covering overheads and paying for living expenses then there’s no point wasting any more time on it. That may sound counter intuitive but it’s incredibly liberating.

Anyone who has a trading business knows that whilst they are great for providing monthly income, they come with an amount of proverbial ‘noise’. In other words things like managing customers and suppliers, staff, operations etc etc. 

We set up a great wee SA business in 2017 and have gradually grown it, predominantly with R2R and a handful of owned properties. It has taught us a huge amount about combining property investing with entrepreneurship and business. 

Trading businesses in property might be R2R for SA or HMO, property management or sourcing for example…typically something where we exchange a degree of time for a decent sized cash flow that replaces any need to have a job. This is the logical first step for anyone looking for property to replace employed income in a relatively short period, and without a significant capital pot to invest in multiple BTLs. 

One can carry on running a trading business for years, and for many that may be the desired end game. However if the bigger vision is serious long term wealth, and time freedom then at some point there needs to be a conscious focus on creating large profit events that provide the funds to invest in multiple assets that provide growing equity and passive income. 

MJ DeMarco describes a similar process in his book Millionaire Fastlane where he talks about first creating a ‘Business System’ (ie your primary income source from your main entrepreneurial endeavour) that pays your income and feeds into a ‘Money System’ (ie a way to earn interest off your capital) which eventually takes over the need to run a business. I’ve summarised DeMarco’s WEALTH CALCULATION in a past blog post here and I recommend you check it out to figure out your own property wealth calculation, its a fun and essential exercise.

Figure out your property wealth calculation here:

YOUR PROPERTY WEALTH CALCULATION

Back to my point -whilst Chris and I have been slowly building up the asset base alongside running the trading business, the clarity came that this is where our focus needs to be – prioritising time on longer term projects that have the options of delivering big profit when sold and serious equity and long term passive income when held.

With clarity and focus we can move forwards with conviction and confidence, without second guessing or FOMO. Most importantly we can set priorities that align with our wealth strategy. 

So, instead of trying to double our SA business, which would have been incongruent with our bigger picture, we can instead focus on the longer term projects. We have an exciting land development project kicking off now and once that’s ticking along we will be able to allocate some focus on pipelining the next multi-unit development. 

What are you currently prioritising?

I shared a message this week in a power hour coaching call that was so well received I wanted to re-share it here. 

This is a reframe that will help you figure things out along your property journey, helping you become the type of property entrepreneur/investor you want to be, with the results you want to have. 

The original inspiration came from Darren Hardy talking about a ‘no fail resolution’ for hitting your goals this year. I’m borrowing his words and applying them to me in property, and those reading this can choose to do the same. 

Here’s the cut through message for what we all have to do in order to hit our goals….

“STOP thinking about what you need to do (that’s when you get lost in tactics and overwhelm), instead FOCUS on WHO you need to BE.”

That’s it! That’s the big takeaway. I could end the post here because living that sentence holds so much power. However, I want to elaborate further and focus this on property for as many people reading this to benefit as possible. 

The follow up sentence to the one above from Darren that really hit me was, 

‘WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BECOMES SO MUCH CLEARER WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT THROUGH THE LENS  OF WHO YOU NEED TO BE.”

I find the more I digest content in the personal development space, the more I recognise patterns and similarities coming from different leaders, it might just be packaged up a little differently. There’s a psychologist I follow called Dr Benjamin Hardy, no relation to Darren, who’s work on FUTURE SELF ties into this message so I’ll weave in some insights from him too. 

Without going into lengthy detail, the reason why this focus on WHO you need to BE is so powerful is because it taps deep into our psychology at an identity level. Dr Hardy explains that ‘our IDENTITY is defined as the way you explain yourself, and that informs your behaviour.’ This explains why when we can get clear on the future identity we want for ourselves, our behaviour in the present will be driven by our future self. 

Dan Sullivan, a leading coach to Entrepreneurs has a great quote which goes, 

“The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger”.

So, if you’re serious about hitting your big hairy audacious property goals, here’s the big question you all need to answer-

WHO IS YOUR FUTURE SELF (AS IT RELATES TO PROPERTY INVESTING AND PROPERTY BUSINESS), AND WHAT IS THE IDENTITY YOU WANT TO DRIVE YOUR BEHAVIOUR?

So top help with that, here are some prompts to work through – think of the best property investor/entrepreneur version of you. Imagine it, picture it, then ask yourself:

*How would you show up on a day to day basis? (think of all the property related activities, interactions and conversations)

*What attributes and characteristics would you demonstrate?

*How would you walk, talk, dress?

*How would you prepare for meetings, viewings, phone calls? (think through contact with everyone from agents to investors and more)

*How would you analyse property opportunities?

*How would you arrive at investment decisions?

*When you sit down to work, how focused and disciplined would you be?

*What annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily routines and rituals would you have in place?

*How would you structure and allocate your time?

*What would you measure and how would you hold yourself accountable?

*What standards would you set for yourself?

*Who would be on your team to help you achieve your desired results?

“Our view of our future is actually the thing driving who we are today.’

To summarise the actions that can be taken from this post, here’s a great set of 5 steps from Dr Benjamin Hardy:

1.  Decide who you want your future self to be

2.  Do what your future self would do NOW 

3.  Start telling people who your future self is

4.  Start investing money in your future self

5.  Measure the gain, not the gap

My closing takeaway for you is quite simply to decide who you want your future property self to be and then……

ACT NOW LIKE THE KIND OF PROPERTY INVESTOR/ENTREPRENEUR YOUR ARE STRIVING TO BECOME!

Will 2022 be your best year yet? Will it be the year that you create positive lasting change?

If, like me, this is what you continuously strive for each year then you’ll want to read and implement the message in this post. 

I wish I could say the 3 magic words came from me but alas, they did not. Here, all credit is due to big Tony Robbins. What I’d like to do is share his message with people in property – and I’m confident that for those people who resonate with this message, you will take these 3 magic words and make great things happen this year……and well beyond. 

Are you ready for the 3 magic words? Here you go……

For lasting positive change……RAISE YOUR STANDARDS

If we want to change our life for the better, the foundations and key component of making that happen is to raise our standards.

What does that actually mean?

Tony reminds us that, “ lasting change is different from a goal, people don’t always get their goals, but they do always get their standards”.

To frame standards another way, everybody in life gets their ‘musts’, they don’t always get their ‘shoulds’. 

If you think about it, everyone has a list of things that they ‘should do’, especially property investors ie I ‘should’ find more deals to analyse, I ‘should’ network more, I ‘should’ work to a clear set of investment criteria, I ‘should’ plan my week/day before it starts, I ‘should’ speak to more commercial agents….

You get the idea, however the ‘shoulds’ rarely happen. 

BUT when you decide something is an absolute MUST for you, no excuses, you commit to yourself that you will find a way or make a way, that’s when we really can find a way and make things happen. 

Is there an area in your life where you need to shift a ‘should’ to a ‘must’?

Here’s the powerful thing at play when we make a ‘should’ a ‘must’ – it doesn’t require any willpower. Tony explains that when we commit to a must it becomes part of our identity and the powerful force at play is that human beings absolutely follow through on who they believe they are. In other words, ‘we all act consistent with who we believe we are’.

‘The strongest force in the whole human personality is this need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves’.

That line there is gold, read it again and think about it. 

Who do you believe you are? What kind of property investor/entrepreneur do you believe you are and define yourself as?

If you define yourself as the kind of property entrepreneur who only deserves to do small single unit deals, or the kind who tells themselves I can’t source rent to rent deals then guess what, that’s where you’ll be stuck. 

Most people are living their lives based on the standards and beliefs they made choices about at some point in the past

Whatever people have their identity attached to, they live – ‘we live who we believe we are’.

OK, so now you know the 3 magic words, how do you apply these in your life and in your property business?

You need to decide what your standards are for important areas of your life, and back those standards up with rituals.

We don’t get results without rituals ie some sort of action that we do consistently.

The people who get these rituals done each week don’t have more time than anyone else, they’ve just made it a MUST. 

So as an example, physically – if your standard is ‘I am an athlete’ then you will do whatever is necessary to maintain that identity and your ritual will be to complete certain workouts X number of times per week. 

Another example:

For me as a property entrepreneur & investor, one of my standards is to raise my hourly rate from my 2021 level. So the ritual to back that up will be to identify lower value elements of tasks I currently do and delegate or outsource them, and to consciously ask myself – ‘is this thing I’m working on at the level of my target rate?’ (Thanks for the awesome podcast on that Dan)

‘Wants don’t get met consistently, standards do.’

So, here’s a quick 3 step summary for you to action:

1. Define your standards
2. Stack up your reasons why those standards need to be a must for you
3. Create and design weekly and daily rituals that deliver your standards

I’d love to hear, what STANDARDS will you set for yourself starting now.

If you followed my post last week on ‘Intelligent Reflection’ then you will have neatly put a metaphorical ‘bow’ on 2021. In other words, the point of last week’s post was to highlight the fact that there is so much value in what you have done, experienced and accomplished in the last 12 months that you need to go harvest that gold through intelligent reflection. 

If you missed that post and want to go back you can find it here: 

THIS 6 PART REFLECTION PROCESS WILL SUPERCHARGE YOUR ANNUAL GOAL SETTING

WARNING: This post requires some heavy mental lifting but if you’re serious about your growth this year then read it to the end, and more importantly, take action on it. 

So, with the reflection bit done, the natural next step is to follow up with some deep thinking around setting the right kind of goals for YOU, and creating an implementation plan for them. That’s what I’m going to outline here.

So, what do I mean by the ‘right kind of goals for YOU?” Well, before jumping in to write out your goals, please be clear in your mind that they are psychologically optimised goals that are congruent ie your conscious and unconscious mind are aligned in relation to the goals you set. Getting this right at the beginning is essential!

By way of quick explanation, if you were to set the goal of doubling the revenue of your business, on the face of it that sounds great but what would the reality of that mean, and what would be the secondary and tertiary consequences of pursuing it? Eg. would it mean working twice as many hours, sacrificing weekends with your family, less sleep, more stress? Or can you genuinely see how to accomplish the outcome on your terms. 

All I’m saying is just be careful to choose goals that are aligned with what you really want. This quote from Stephen Covey captures my point perfectly:

“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step gets us to the wrong place faster.”

In the goal setting process it’s easy to get excited in the now by writing down a big goal but the science of achievement requires us to connect the dots between a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and what exactly we need to be working on quarter to quarter, month on month and how we’re using our time each day.

The big rationale behind artful implementation is to take the time to do strategic planning now so that at no time during the quarter are you at the desk on a Monday morning wondering what to do to get started (or at least it will be significantly minimised).

An implementation plan prevents that brain fog, but sadly investing the time to create such a plan is the most common part of goal setting that people skip. But not YOU, and not this year! It’s often looked at as too much like hard work-  and you know what, it is hard mental work! Most good things do require some uphill struggle, but it’s also where we can get most clarity. I heard a brilliant quote a while back from one of the greats that ties into this point, it goes;

“People have uphill hopes, but downhill habits”

– John C Maxwell

In other words, we all want the things that require ‘uphill’ efforts, but are we willing to put in the work that builds the ‘uphill habits’ that will get us there?

You need to take your big 2022 goals and translate them into a project plan. This part of the process is uncomfortable, which is why people skip it but having a well thought through plan will keep you aligned, in the zone and knowing what you have to do next. BHAGs don’t manifest on their own, it takes real intentional work to dream them up, plan the road map, and then of course execute on that plan.

Here’s a quick summary of the process for artful goal implementation that I’ve been taught and continue to use each year. (Chris and I do invest multiple hours in goal planning in the opening days of Jan)

IT’S TIME TO BUILD THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR YEAR!

STEP #1: List your key projects

Taking everything into account, list 5-20 projects that would have an immediate impact on your property business. With this list you are thinking up all the growth driving activities that move you closer to achieving the BHAG (ie various strategies and tactics you want to try that would/could result in a net positive to the business).

STEP #2: Now eliminate all but 3, and ask yourself:

– are you able to complete each of those shortlisted 3 in a 12 week period if you focused on one at a time (ie allocate each project a full 12 week sprint)?

– can you complete these with your current resources ie time, people, money?

– prioritise those projects that can feasibly meet the above

STEP #3: BUILD THE OUTLINE PLAN

Now for each project, build the outline for your implementation plan by completing a handful of answers to these 4 foundational productivity questions:

For project 1

#1 What specifically needs to happen…to get started? To continue? To finish? Can you specify now what your completion point will look like (really push yourself to do that)?

#2 How can you measure progress along the way? (ie no. of viewings/offers per week. Booking revenue, occupancy by month..) When answering these questions think about what can be ritualised/repeated by you and/or your team. Think about the input activity required to achieve the desired property outcome.

#3 What deadlines need to happen within 12 weeks? Think it through and allocate deadlines you can put into your diary (and physically PUT those deadlines into your diary). These will serve as milestones and checkpoints towards your completion point and get your mind clear on hitting them by certain dates.

#4 How can you stack multiple layers of accountability onto this project. In other words, who all can you inform, involve, make a pledge to etc that will help you follow through on your promise. Think mentors, family, advisors, peers. It’s a fact that getting things done is a social phenomenon so enlist the power of public declaration. 

Do the same for Projects 2 and 3. It’s a good idea to have no more than 3 projects in a quarter, and if one is particularly all consuming then stick with just that one project for the entire 90 days.

STEP #4: 12 WEEK PROJECT PLAN

The final stage to this is creating your 12 week project plan where you literally create a grid with 84 days and then populate it with dates, specifics and deadlines (as per your answers to the Q’s above) to work to each day and week. Schedule this stuff in using the mechanisms that work for you, phone, outlook calendar, a wall chart or whatever. Allocate sufficient time and protect it in your diary.

And there you have it. With clarity on what your goals are and your planning complete, now its all about taking action consistently each week, measuring the progress and feeling good about showing up to put the effort in. [HINT – one of the keys to sustained productivity is feeling good about what you do. So please don’t look at what didn’t get done or how far your dream lies in the distance, instead show up, put the effort in each week and celebrate that step of effort input and the progress it creates]. 

I’d love to know if you complete this exercise, let me know if you do and you will massively increase the likelihood of following through. 

To your growth and progress in 2022!

I hope you’ve been enjoying some quality family Christmas time, making memories with the loved ones you are able to see, and replenishing yourself to sprint out of the gates for Q1 2022.

I love the magic that Christmas brings, but also the quiet space from the busyness of a typical week. These final few days of the year and the first week of the new year offer us the time to pause for reflection and design, with intention. I hope you look back on your 2021, and despite some challenges of the year, you can acknowledge all of the incremental progress that has been made on your journey in property investing. It is important to think about the past year intelligently because past performance is the best predictor of the future.

Reflection is one of the most important things an action oriented entrepreneur can do – why is it so important to reflect and acknowledge progress? We tend to unconsciously discount the progress we have made and be painfully conscious of the shortcomings in the immediate future. 

If that sounds like you, then this quote may be helpful, “Things are never as bad or as good as they seem”. It’s been attributed to a few different people so not sure who originally said it. 

So, this instructional post is building on a mini tradition for me to share at this time of year – and it contains absolute gold for you, if you choose to invest the time to work through the following 6 sections and answer the questions for yourself and your own last 12 months in property. 

This intelligent reflection forms the most important part of the year end review – a powerful way to reconcile the last 12 months and transition into planning the next 12. In my questionable opinion it’s essential to punctuate this time of year with such a process. I am starting this exercise myself now and it forms the first part of the overall review and goal setting process that I invest significant time in over the final week of the year, and first week of the new year. I will follow up this with my summary on the goal setting process next week.

Happy New Year and wishing you health, wealth and happiness in 2022!

Below are the 6 phases of the intelligent reflection process with all the questions for you to answer. 

PART 1 – GRATITUDE REFLECTION

*What new capabilities did I master?

*What behaviours really caused me to win?

*What are my personal current strengths?

*What are the business’ current strengths?

*What were your biggest accomplishments this last year?

*What marketing or business development won this year?

*What was the best thing your property business created for you?

*What was the most extraordinary value or customer experience that you created? (who did we really move the dial for?)

PART 2 – CONSTRUCTIVE REFLECTION

*What were the most important lessons learned?

*What were your weak points, what do you need to improve?

*Are there any threats to your business or market?

*Any missed opportunities?

*What are the current weaknesses of your business?

*Were there any ways to improve customer service in the last year?

PART 3 – GETTING REAL

*Specific metrics for your business this last year (what was it you were focussing on? What were you trying to grow? What were the conversion rates you were trying to improve?)

*Products/services I sold in 2020?

*2020 gross revenue?

*2020 Expenses?

*Split expenses into 3 categories- what percentages were:

Marketing _

Operations _

Income/Salaries/dividends _

*2020 net profit

PART 4 – MEASUREMENT (need to compare year on year, power of measurement)

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your:

[assess all those that are relevant to your property business. NB, even if you don’t think you are marketing there is a good chance you are ie your version of lead generation may be networking to identify potential JV partners]

*Lead Gen –

*Lead conversion –

*Customer fulfilment (following through on the promise)-

*Human resources (are they the best people in their roles)-

*Financial Systems (how clear on numbers month on month)-

*Market research –

*Satisfaction of the people in the business –

*Satisfaction with your work life balance –

PART 5 – LETTER TO YOURSELF

Write a  letter to yourself (having reflected on each section). Write it as if you’ve gone back in time and are writing the letter on 1st Jan 2020 explaining the bumps, scrapes, wisdom to come (and wow there were many unexpected bumps due to covid). So to give you some guidance notes, you could be writing to yourself about what you will face (in the year that was), where you will despair, where you will draw strength, what beliefs will be tested, what capabilities will be gained, don’t forget all the good stuff to come. 

Why do this? This exercise helps you examine the past with a present perspective. It works on the idea of reconciling expectations from a year ago with where you really are today. Essentially, this puts a proverbial ‘bow’ on the last 12 months and who we have become. 

PART 6 – NAME IT

What single word would put a name to your 2020? (look to be constructive with this). 

See you next week with part 2 on the goal setting process. 😁

[P.S I’d love to hear if you actually do this]