Month: June 2022

In the week ahead we will hit the end of quarter two and the half year mark for 2022. Will you use this marker for strategic reflection and planning? 

In this post I’ll share 6 POWERFUL STEPS TO REVIEW THE MID YEAR POINT IN 30 MINS OR LESS. Not only that, I’ve also included a guide for creating your implementation plan for Q3. [There’s a link further down to access an instant download of the guide, no email address required.]

 At the beginning of the year Chris  and I always set some Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs), both to grow ourselves and our property businesses. Our goals tie together our ambitions across our SA business, our resi and commercial assets, development projects and our training and mentoring. Reflecting on where we are, there has been a great deal of progress in our businesses and growth in ourselves. Whilst it can sometimes feel like taking a 6 month snapshot right now doesn’t equate to half of what we want to achieve in 2022, we recognise the importance of measuring the progress and gains. Measuring progress is such an important part of the property journey, and any endeavour for that matter. To borrow the words of big Tony Robbins, he said that “Progress equals happiness”, and I definitely believe in the psychology behind that. 

That’s why every quarter end I invest 30-60 minutes to review the past 3 months, predominantly focusing on our property business but also reflecting across other key areas of life. 

Whether you set big hairy audacious annual goals, half year goals or 90 day goals, this mid-way point in the year prompts a great opportunity to check in on where we stand with things.

This kind of exercise holds multiple rewards for you and is a goldmine of learning and ideas if you’ll just take the time to do it. Benefits include, taking time to acknowledge your incremental progress, course correcting, checking in on alignment to your highest values, identifying patterns or insights you can learn from….and so much more, you get the idea.

If you’re up for investing some high value time on yourself, here’s the full 6 step process I originally got from entrepreneur Peter Voogd several years ago and I continue to complete this every quarter. 

For those serious about their growth, I’ve made this into a worksheet with a few prompts that you can download and complete – you’ll find that here. 

As an added bonus I’ve also included a step by step guide for crafting your implementation plan for the next quarter. Taking the time to DECIDE your priorities and craft your implementation plan in this way will see you executing at the level of your best self.

You can quickly download the full pdf guide here, and no email address is required 😊

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 month/quarter; financial, family, adventure…?

Getting down to business metrics ask yourself:

Did I hit my property business income goal last month/quarter?

What were the top three marketing campaigns or sources of income last month/quarter?

What were my top income producing activities?

What are the biggest ways I’ll be producing income this next month/quarter?

How did I add value to the marketplace, could I have added more?

Did I leverage technology?

Did I maximise my reach?

What will exponentially grow my reach this next month/quarter? [you need to define this for the context of your property business ie for your SA market, or rent to buy market for example]

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 and procrastinate on the big work needed for your goal.

 

Section #4 – RELATIONSHIPS

I love this one:

Who did I connect with and reach out to last month/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 can be creating things that you value but that you get paid 6 months or more down the road for. 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.

And there you have it. With the gold mined from your previous 90 days you are primed to set yourself up for success by planning out Q3. You can do that quickly by completing the step by step guide that you’ll find here: 

Now it’s all about taking action consistently each week, measuring the progress and feeling good about showing up to put the effort in

I’d love to know if you complete this exercise, tag me with a post on Facebook and you will massively increase the likelihood of following through 😁.

Did you know that our brains have two different modes of focus?

By understanding and leveraging these modes effectively, making progress in your property business (or anything for that matter) can feel straight forward as pushing a hot knife through butter. However, by not leveraging these modes effectively your days and weeks can feel the total opposite – like trying to push treacle uphill. 

I first learned about these modes of focus about 6 years ago from a long standing business psychologist mentor who bases his approach on scientific research. When I understood and intentionally applied what I’m sharing, I experienced a step change in both productivity and sanity.

This week was mastermind week and what I’m sharing is essentially what underpinned everything we worked on in our sessions each day. More on that in a moment, first I’ll clarify the two modes of focus you need to understand:

DECISION MAKING FOCUS

We all know how tough it can be just to arrive at a decision, even with something simple like what Netflix movie to watch with the family 😊. Now take something much bigger and more impactful, like choosing a property strategy to focus on or deciding where your time is best allocated, and it can feel like climbing a mental mountain. 

The point is, we know decision making is hard mental work – it requires us to think through different options and possible outcomes. It’s tiring stuff and will literally deplete us of willpower and mental capacity. You’ve heard of ‘decision fatigue’ right – well it’s called that for a reason. Suffice to say that making decisions relating to your property business is difficult, especially when you’re trying to make decisions on your own and you are unsure of what your possible options even are. 

In order to arrive at decisions it takes that intentional focus to clarify what exactly is the decision in hand and to figure out what you will do to arrive at a decision. 

Winston Churchill referred to decision making as ‘the long road of agony’- that agony being the period before deciding should I or shouldn’t I, this path or that path. 

Churchill concludes however that“Once the decision is made all the agony goes away”. You will feel infinitely lighter and can now switch focus into taking action. 

ACTION TAKING FOCUS

This is when you have decided on a course of action – you have a clear picture in your mind of a completion point, you know your starting point and the first step, and you can just get on and do the thing without distractions or second guessing yourself. This is where the time invested in decision making pays huge dividends in your ability to execute and make visible progress.

Here’s the risk of jumping into ‘perceived action’ without investing in the DECISION MAKING FOCUS first. The danger of someone simply blocking out 3 x 1 hour slots in their diary to ‘work’ on their property business is this – when time slot 1 arrives they revert right back into decision making focus, trying to figure out what task to do first. This in itself depletes willpower and takes time. 

There’s an empirically measurable brain chemistry cost to sitting around picking out what to do next.

So lets say you decide after 10 minutes what to make a start on, it’s common to then second guess yourself and change tasks part way through because you think something else may be a better use of time. The hour flies by and at the end of it you can feel horrible about having bounced around tasks but not accomplished much. 

WHY IS ALL THIS RELEVANT?

We all know it, making decisions is hard mental work, especially trying to make decisions on your own in mental isolation. That’s why I love masterminding – as a small group acting as each other’s ‘private board of advisors’ we can arrive at big decisions far more easily. 

The way I see it, the work we do round a mastermind table is the mental gym work of decision making. Using this time to assess options and arrive at a decision- for example this strategy or that, pursue a certain property deal or not. This is all made far easier in the group environment where your thinking can be validated or challenged by your private board of advisors. With big decisions made, along with the first action steps to implement that decision, people can transition into action with clarity and conviction. This is the catalyst for making massive progress.

This is exactly what Chris and I do on the day long mastermind tables, and to an even deeper extent on our mastermind retreats where the decision making is for clarity on future self, the longer term, the year ahead and on creating implementation plans with granular specificity. [Keep a look out for more details about these mastermind retreats in the coming weeks].

So now you know the two modes of focus you need to master for massive progress in your property business.

What decision can you make today that will see you switch into action taking focus tomorrow?

PART 1:  QUICK STRATEGY CHECK-IN

It’s been a while since Chris and I have posted a video so whilst on a property visit this week, we used the time in the car for a strategy meeting and we share some of our thoughts and direction here. The main takeaway for anyone choosing to watch the video is to have you think about your own allocation of focus, we refer to it here as a 70:20:10 split.

PART 2: REFURB WALK ROUND

In part one of this week’s post Chris and I shared a strategy update. Its fast approaching the halfway point in the year so we used the driving time to one of our recent purchases to have a strategy meeting – reviewing key things we have progressed so far this year and discussing our allocation of focus for the second half of the year. 

We touched on our main focus (the 70%) to grow our asset base through build to rent of multiple units at a time; our secondary focus (the 20%) of our mentoring time and creating incredible mastermind retreats that help people set property goals in alignment with their values and then implement their plan; and our 10% focus which is continuing to add single lets for either long term holding or rent to buy. 

As part of that 10% we took half a day to visit one of our recent investments – a 2 bedroom semi detached house that hasn’t been lived in for 7 or 8 years. This video below covers a walk round tour of that house where we aim to highlight a number of issues that may alarm some investors, but in reality they aren’t major issues and Chris talks through how we will refurb the property. 

Reflecting on when Chris and I were first getting started in business together, we know we quickly became overwhelmed and too diluted trying to do four or five different things. The result was doing none of them very well. When we focused in 100% on serviced accommodation we were able to quickly see the results of our efforts and then rapidly push through the learning curve with one thing. 

Over the years we have been able to introduce additional strategies and business activities, but that has only been thanks to the big focus on first getting the foundations in one thing right and then building a team around it. 

Are you clear on your allocation of focus – what’s your sole property focus? or if you’ve been in property a while, what’s your 70:20:10?

What does it take to be successful?

Several years ago I heard part of a speech from Darren Hardy where he was explaining what it really takes to be successful and it really struck a chord so I wrote it down. There were a few paragraphs I’d noted with the last one finishing as follows, 

“Success is not mysterious, success is simple but hard. Success is simply a result of daily disciplines compounded over time. Success is not for those who want it, it is not for those who need it, success is only for those who are relentlessly committed to doing the work for it every day.”

Every time I re-read this and share it with others it reminds me of the principles written about in The Compound Effect book (highly recommend it 😊). The way I see things is that having the compound effect on your side doesn’t have to be painful and difficult. Once you understand the principles of how to progress in your desired area – whether that be in health, in property or in something else – it’s then a case of applying those principles consistently by making them part of your routines, lifestyle and habits. 

So for example, this is why I’m a huge fan of having a morning routine that entails a handful of impactful components, like exercise, a healthy breakfast, meditation and personal development time. 

When it comes to property, I know people who will do certain tasks on set days and times each week i.e. their sourcing time, their agent phone call time etc. Having structure baked into your quarters, months, weeks and days is, in my view, crucial to being successful in your property business. 

For me, I will use 20 minutes on a Friday afternoon (see the routine there? 😊) to review the week’s progress and to decide my top 3 projects for next week, and even get the specific activities scheduled in the diary. These planned sessions are blocked out times in the diary  to focus on working on the right things and towards a specified mini completion point with no distractions like inbound phone calls, emails, texts or social media. For example, one task from this week was building out a big spreadsheet to help me understand and evaluate the pros and cons of 8 different options for lending to finance the purchase of a block of flats and a restaurant. 

It’s this repeated weekly cycle that I’ve found to be the biggest contributor to results I’ve had in the last 8 years. The weekly and daily rhythms are my compound effect. However I’m very conscious that even when we do arrive at a certain level of success at something we need the self awareness not to get complacent (I’ve felt the pain of complacency with our SA business in the past 😊). To borrow more words from Darren, he said – “You never really arrive, you never really own success, you only rent it, and the rent is due everyday. [I think that’s brilliant and poetic.]

My daily rent includes my morning routines and working on one of my proactive needle moving activities for 90 minutes with phone and email off. 

What about you? What ‘success rent’ do you need to be paying each day with your property business in order to start or continue benefiting from the compound effect?