As time goes by I recognise more and more how ideas and experience from other industries and businesses can be lifted and applied to property. What about you, do you see that too?
As a quick example here are 6 ideas, by no means an exhaustive list, that I’ve taken from other areas of life/career and applied to property with great effect:
#1: PRE-SELLING AND STARTING WITH DEMAND
This first point is a biggy and has been the single most important idea I’ve applied to property. It’s been game changing for us and has completely re-shaped our entire investment philosophy.
I used to start by finding a property based on its location or relative price compared to nearby property, the end users of that property were generally an afterthought, or evenleft to hope. However following a painful experience in Serviced Accommodation we promised ourselves that we would never rely on guesswork again.
Thanks to a couple of American software entrepreneurs, I learned about the concept of starting a business by finding the demand first and then pre-selling the solution. This is exactly how we built our SA business the second time round, and what I’ve written about in my book “Predictable Property Profits: 4 Simple Steps To Remove Guesswork And Get More Certainty In Your Property Deals”.
#2: ACCOUNTABILITY
Going back to that same era when I met those software entrepreneurs, I also met a business coach/psychologist who taught me about the powerful social phenomenon that is accountability done right. He taught me about a constant weekly cycle of deciding 3 proactive tasks to hold myself accountable to with a suitable partner/coach. I initially used this practice to start a software business but later applied it to starting a property business. Having a regular and structured accountability cycle has been at the foundation of my habits for building out our property businesses, and it has shaped the way I mentor and coach others to help them draw the best out of themselves.
#3: PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Ever since being introduced to books like Think And Grow Rich through my student summer work, I’ve been reading books of that ilk. I’ve heard it said by Tony Robbins that our success in anything is about 80% psychology and 20% tactics. When it comes to starting and growing a property related business, that most definitely holds true, I might even say it’s more like 90% psychology and 10% tactics. By understanding this, my ongoing commitment to personal growth through books, courses, podcasts etc has been a huge contributory factor in starting and growing our property businesses. Most reading this will know that personal development and property go hand in hand, and the sooner you get to work on the mindset aspects the more success you will experience in your property businesses.
#4: RECRUITING
I had a career in recruitment and executive search for almost 8 years before leaving for the world of entrepreneurship. I’ve drawn on skills and practices from that career and brought them into property more times than I can remember. Like property, recruitment is a people business, everything is about communication and managing a process from start to finish. Whether that be a process for finding and selecting power team members, JV partners or actual team members, it’s very similar. This year alone I’ve drawn on those former skills to recruit 7 new team members into our business (5 virtual and 2 local).
#5: VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS (VA’s)
Following on from the point about recruiting, I first learned about recruiting a Virtual Assistant in 2013 from those same software entrepreneurs mentioned in point 1. Back then it was to help with market research for my software startup. I would later apply the same approach to recruit and manage VA’s to help in our property business to help us with sourcing, research and bookkeeping. In fact it was one of our VA’s who found the guest house that we bought in 2018. If you don’t already have a VA, make that one of your actions, not only will you get more done but it will keep you ACCOUNTABLE to focus on higher value tasks and delegate the lower value tasks.
#6: VALUES
Whilst closely related to point 3 on personal development I chose to single out values as a separate point, purely because of the huge impact it has had on our property businesses. Having read ‘The Values Factor’ several times, and invested in a weekend course with the author, Dr John Demartini in 2016, values have sat front and centre of our property business.
Understanding our highest values has been and will be like a North Star to us. It’s given us clarity on why we do what we do (in life and in property), and that’s helped us tap into the fuel source required to get started and keep going in property. Understanding our values also provides us with a filter through which decisions can be made, goals can be created and strategy crafted. Values steer what we do in property and how we do it.
IN CONCLUSION
So what’s the point of all this? Well, I hope it serves to show that no matter what career and life experiences you’ve had to date, there will be things unique to you, certain competitive advantages, that you can lift and apply for the benefit of your property business. That’s part of the fun of this journey, like what Jim Rohn would say, “See what all you can do with all that you have”.
So, what do you have that can help you in your property business? I’d love to hear, and who knows, by you sharing it may inspire others to apply something similar into their property business.
Please hit reply and share what you’ve borrowed from elsewhere and applied to your property business. 😊