Adaero Property

Last week I shared the 4 pillars of productivity as they were taught to me: specificity, measurement, deadlines and accountability. At that time I was massively leveraging a holiday departure deadline to crunch through a list before sinking in to a much deserved break. [I’ll share the link to it at the bottom if you missed that post]

Deadline hit and the holiday began, this is where the fifth pillar (or 5th key ingredient for productivity) comes in. It’s one that’s often overlooked or not given enough attention. And here it is, the hidden fifth pillar of productivity is PLAY. What we mean by this is completely disconnecting from the busy world of your business and letting your inner child just play. It’s crucial for your mental state, your family and your business to make time for this stuff and I explain why in this short video. This is where you may need to challenge your current perspective on productivity to put a greater importance on scheduling time for play (whatever your version of play is).

I’ve played full out and been present spending quality time with my kids, parents and siblings for the entire 7 days. We’ve laughed, learned, discussed goals and dreams, danced, ate, drank, played games, and celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary one of the evenings in a magical mountain restaurant transported by a piste basher. We’ve created rich and memorable experiences that are captured in our minds and in the pictures and videos we took. This in itself is crucial to invest time and money to do, as I wrote about in a post titled ‘THE 4 KEY THINGS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE SPEND THEIR MONEY ON’ – no.4 being that they invest in memorable and inspiring experiences.

 

When I checked my screentime app on the phone I’d only clocked up 11 hours of screen time on my phone for the 7 days I was away and almost half of that was used for taking and sharing photos (of us all having fun on the slopes) within our family whatsapp group. I had 1 business call with our Ops Manager and reviewed emails for a total of 1hr 6mins across the entire week.

 

So what’s the benefit of all this and why is making time for play is so important for productivity?

• Disconnected time away from the business actually makes you hungry to get back into producing mode and working at being the highest leverage version of yourself in moving your business forward. I can honestly say I’m hungry to get back to business.
• Having let the proverbial ‘inner child’ out to play I can happily put the head down and focus on the hard work for another 90 day sprint without feeling frustrated or the higher risk of procrastination had I not taken time out.
• Changing up my environment and routine for a week has removed me from the day to day blinkers and made way for some creative thinking thanks to inspiring sights and new conversations- for example it’s reconnected me to a big goal Chris and I have to build a spectacular ski chalet where we can host mastermind retreats and gift holidays to causes that are close to our hearts – like families dealing with illnesses can come away to create wonderful memories.
• I’ve continued to feed the virtuous cycle – ie when we spend money on experiences for loved ones it not only creates wonderful memories but it inspires us at a different level to continue to produce results and create a life we are proud of for our family.

 

I’d encourage you all to be intentional about scheduling time for PLAY, even better, let us know what you’re planning to do.

 

Link to last week’s post: http://adaeroproperty.com/week-11-leveraging-the-power-of-deadlines-and-the-3-other-pillars-of-productivity/

 

Link to post on the 4 non-negotiables:

http://adaeroproperty.com/the-4-key-things-successful-people-spend-their-money-on/

There’s nothing like the positive pressure of a holiday deadline is there? It has the power to make you a super human for a few days and push out more than you think is possible in a standard week. This week was my last week IN and ON the business before departing on a family ski trip tomorrow. With two full days out mentoring, the window of time to move things forward in our other business endeavours has been limited however this looming deadline has lit a proverbial fire under my behind to crunch through a massively productive and rewarding week. Here’s a few of the highlights:

• Met with and signed up as an accommodation partner with a wedding venue
• Identified and made contact with 3 national business brokers to initiate commercial property searches
• Delivered online coaching
• Dropped promo fliers into a handful of building sites
• Confirmed 2 longer term SA bookings with a new direct client
• Delivered 2 full days of round table masterminding
• Watched my eldest son play basketball
• Cosied up for a movie with my 3 sons (and a wee G&T for me)

Deadlines and productivity have been a common theme in the coaching and mentoring conversations this week so it seems fitting to build on that for this post. [and in full transparency, I actually wrote a post like this back in 2017 so I can leverage that and repurpose much of the content now 😉 ].

Sitting behind my productive week were 4 key concepts (or ingredients) that I’ve been employing for several years now. I wanted to take a moment to share them with you because they will prove crucial to your productivity and goal achieving going forwards, if you’re interested. I am eternally grateful to one of my business coach/mentors and entrepreneur psychologist Peter Shallard, for teaching me these “4 Pillars of Productivity” as follows:

#1 – SPECIFICITY:

This relates to the ideal implementation granularity required to break a goal down into perfect bite sized chunks. For example a giant goal like climbing Everest can be broken down into taking 58,070 steps. Without specificity you would be hoping to achieve a goal without any actionable steps within your control. On the other hand, ask yourself, is it clear what I and I alone (i.e. what’s within my control) need to do in order to move closer to the goal?

#2 – MEASUREMENT:

Measurement assigns positive meaning and accomplishment to completing an activity. Without delving too deeply into the science behind this, suffice to say that building a streak in completed activity delivers a positive chemical reaction in your brain, this helps you feel good about incremental progress on the way to achieving a bigger goal.

A simple analogy is going to the gym to lose weight or build muscle. In the first 2-3 weeks we will likely see little or no change but by measuring and checking off our attendance 4 times a week we make a game of following through. This progress measurement helps us get to weeks 4-6 and beyond where we start to see the results of our work.

#3 – DEADLINES:

We’ve all experienced the power of deadlines early on in our academic careers. The looming deadline of a test has the power to make us study hard at the 11th hour (or in my case this week to compress more in before a holiday). Without deadlines, things can sit on your to do list for months. When all else fails, a real cut off point with consequences gets everyone moving. If you are up for achieving more this year then don’t shy away from deadlines, but instead look for opportunities to commit to things.

So, as an example, everyone on the Touchstone Platinum mastermind knows that Paul encouraged you to do something new and stretching before our next meeting on April 10th/11th. Why don’t you all challenge yourself to that? I’ll share ours below.

#4 – ACCOUNTABILITY:

Have you heard the saying that goes, “The easiest person to let down is yourself”? On the flipside, you can’t kid yourself on the goals you’ve made if someone holds you accountable to them. Accountability taps into powerful social behaviours because we want to look good in front of others. Accountability is like a secret weapon and serves to remind us of the commitments we have made. Successful business people build boards of directors and advisors to hold them accountable to goals and milestones. Where is accountability missing in your life right now?

Here’s a quote I love:

“Accountability is critical to anyone leading a group of people, because, after all, every business is a people business. Accountability is how people get things done—or don’t get things done. “

-Greg Bustin, author of ‘Accountability: The Key To Driving A High-Performance Culture’

I use these 4 Pillars to help set and achieve goals for each week, and if this resonates, you can too.

So here’s our challenge, I haven’t looked at BTL’s for 7 or more years now, but by April 10th, Chris and I are pledging to have bought/have had offer secured on either a BTL or mini HMO in a new area with little to no money left in. [See what we’ve done there, we’ve just layered in all the ingredients of those 4 key pillars above].

Anyone else keen to set a specific goal, with a deadline and share it for big accountability?

Have a great week ahead.

 

[image credit: Quotefancy]

Five months ago I met Jonathan Berliand for the first time and got to hear some of his remarkable journey. I captured what stood out for me as the 8 key lessons from his talk. If you haven’t read that post I’ll add the link at the bottom of this one.

This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Jonathan again at the Touchstone 6 Figure Summit. As the eternal student I was scribbling notes at the back of the room so thought, why not follow up the previous post with some more wisdom bombs.

[BTW if you’re interested the quote on the screen reads, “You weren’t born to just pay bills and die”]

LESSON #1: FIND YOUR WHY AND THEN FIGURE OUT THE HOW

‘It all started with a bucket’

Jonathan formed his first business at age 8 because he wanted more pocket money than 50p a week. Why? – he wanted a proper watch, and he was willing to apply himself to find a way. The answer came in the shape of a bucket and sponge and his car washing business was born.

Just to give you a small insight to the savvy of this young lad, this business grew to a turnover that saw him making more at age 12 or 13 than a professional footballer at the time.

LESSON #2: EMBRACE FAILURES

Jonathan shared a major reframe on failing, in fact, he loves failures and has probably had more failures than wins (all be it the wins have far exceeded the losses in value terms). Why does he love failures? –  they have massively accelerated the path to the wins and here’s the reframe I really liked – he doesn’t want to reach the end of his life with a load of question marks.

LESSON #3: UP YOUR GAME

Last year Jonathan got stuck in the lift of a high rise building in London for over an hour. However at least he had company. His lift-mate happened to be the author of that well known book ‘10X’, yes it was Grant Cardone. Jonathan described getting his proverbial be-hind kicked by Grant because he’d confessed to hitting a lull in his property investing business ie he wasn’t doing nearly as many deals as he wanted to, or knew he was capable of. Whatever Grant said it certainly lit a fire under Jonathan’s ass because he consciously upped his game and now has over 100 deals on the table,  just a few short months later. Wow, just wow! And why not? We can all up our game. To paraphrase Jonathan (and Grant), ‘when you have a good deal/opportunity, jump then worry about how you’ll pay for it. If you don’t jump you’ll always have question marks hanging over you, and you don’t need those in your life.’

LESSON #4: LEARN TO LOVE SELLING AND TAKING MASSIVE ACTION

Can tea towels make you rich? Jonathan has sold many different kinds of products and at one point in his career saw an opportunity to by tea towels wholesale at about 10p each. Confident he could sell them for a good bit more, he placed an order with the European mill for 100,000. On delivery day what arrived was the first 600,000 of a 10million item order! Somewhere along the line the supplier had chosen to add a few zeros. Faced with a mountain like this to climb (ie having to sell this insane amount of stock), many would have given up and thrown the towel in, (that just rolled out naturally, I promise) but not Jonathan. After 2 weeks of daily struggling to sell small volumes and on the verge of giving up, one more cold call led to selling 750,000 units! ‘You discover what you’re made of when your back is against the wall’, he said.

Rather than give up he chose to put in massive and consistent action, it didn’t happen quickly but he eventually found his way to bulk sales orders with large retail outlets and he did indeed shift all those tea towels. For a tidy profit too I might add.

LESSON #5: ASK BETTER QUALITY QUESTIONS

I’ve heard it said before that the quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of questions that you ask. To this point I have a couple of anecdotes from Jonathan that shows how his mind works when it comes to identifying problems and finding solutions that make money:

 

• in his car washing business as a kid, when Jonathan found that growth had stopped he challenged himself to think about what else he could be doing. The answers he came up with included, to upgrade the type of car the team were washing ie a more expensive car warranted a more expensive wash. Next he started to upsell the offering by moving the cars to be washed and putting them back for the owner’s convenience – a premium offering for a premium price.
• This next example is a beauty. Jonathan had a river boat and on the internal surfaces like window frames and shelves he noticed increasing amounts of messy black spots appearing. When he asked the boatyard owner what it was he replied, ‘that’s spider poo, no one has found a solution to that, when someone does they’ll be a billionaire.’ Of course Jonathan didn’t just accept this information and move on. He set about finding a solution to a problem that wealthy people would happily pay for to keep their boats pristine. But it’s not just for boat owners, you’ve probably seen these very black spots on your own window sills, if you’re curious, here’s the product to see for yourself

https://www.caraselledirect.com/_/spiderbird_poo_remover_500ml_by_caraselle_-_recyclable_bottle_-.3467-1

 

There was an open floor Q&A with Jonathan to close the session, so here are a quick few bonus gems from that:

ON BREXIT – we can’t base our plans on Brexit. Whatever happens people still need to live somewhere and stay somewhere when they travel to the UK. So property rentals and sales will still have to continue. OK it may not be at the rate of previous years, but it will still need to happen at a pretty significant scale to keep things running. In short, ‘you can only deal with what’s in your control and move on. ‘

 

ON WORK MINDSET – This circles back to Lesson #1 above– you’ve got to find your why and love what you do. Jonathan loves boating, it’s his tonic, but it doesn’t come cheap so he keeps working on his businesses to fund it. The key to point out here is that he also has great fun doing that too. Of course there will be challenges and tough weeks, but finding and making deals is fun.

 

ON FINANCES AND RISK MANAGEMENT – you’ve got to take control of your own finances, that’s why you need to learn how to invest effectively in property for yourself. When it comes to risk management, you’ve got to do what’s right for you, but Jonathan likes repayment mortgages. Paul recommends stress testing your deals at 12% mortgage interest rates.

The room loved Jonathan’s candid honesty, humour and humility. I can’t share every single anecdote here but if this stuff resonates then get yourself to a 6 Figure Summit where you can hear Jonathan speak first hand.

Click here to find out more

 

The first set of lessons from Jonathan http://adaeroproperty.com/8-lessons-from-a-humble-multi-millionaire/

Did you engage yourself in any property related education over the last couple of weeks? It might have been a book you’re reading, a podcast you listened to or a training event you attended.

 

Now ask yourself this – did you take notes? And if so what are those notes like and what will those notes lead to?

 

I’ve been a consummate and diligent note taker all of my adult life, particularly when it comes to property education and personal development. However, this week I listened to an interview that highlighted the way I’ve been taking notes is all wrong. And more often than not the way we are taught to learn at school is all wrong. The podcast interview I reference was with learning expert Jim Kwik, who explained that the worst way to take notes is trying to copy what’s being said verbatim.

 

Taking notes is a powerful way to massively increase retention and learn faster. However, unless we are taught a different technique of note taking we are leaving way too much value from our learning time on the table.

 

I’ll briefly share the technique I learned this week from Jim Kwik. I implemented it straight away and I’m a massive convert. The main picture is of the notes I made listening to the podcast, the other pic (below) is of notes I took listening to Paul on Friday.

So, here’s the enhanced technique for taking notes and optimising the outcome from them:

-in your notebook, take a clean page and draw a line down the middle (I actually preferred separating my page with approx ⅔ to ⅓ split, you’ll see why soon)

-the left hand column is for CAPTURE ie for ‘taking notes’ of what you’re hearing & seeing – the things you want to reference and remember

-as much as possible aim to capture keywords and relevancy

-the right hand column is for CREATING ie for ‘making notes’ to yourself, where you engage some thinking (asking and answering questions to yourself about what you are learning). This will massively accelerate your learning because ‘the brain learns through creation, not consumption’ to quote Kim Kwik.

Here are the three powerhouse questions to guide the CREATING notes you make in the right hand column:

#1: HOW CAN I USE THIS?

-this is forcing yourself to think about putting what you’re learning into action.

#2: WHY MUST I USE THIS?

-reasons reap results and information with emotion will be committed to long term memory. It’s super important to get clear on your motivation for the learning and infuse emotion into the learning process.

#3: WHEN WILL I USE THIS?

-schedule the action and it becomes real. This one is essential for getting results. 

So simple yet so powerful.

If you’re looking for a property even to practice your new note taking technique then I can highly recommend joining the Touchstone team at the upcoming Six Figure Summits:

London 9th & 10th March

Glasgow 16th & 17th March

Book your seat here https://goo.gl/6QQ1s4

If you have even a slight inkling of perfectionism in you then you will likely be able to relate to this post (I confess I’m a recovering perfectionist myself). The thing about perfectionism is it can be your best ally at times, but also your worst enemy.

Here’s a handy definition from wikipedia for context:

‘Perfectionism, in psychology, is a personality trait characterized by a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting high performance standards, accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.’

If you can relate to the above in any way then you’ll know that when it comes to goal achievement and productivity, having this trait means you can be extremely hard on yourself.

That’s why it’s so important to have a healthy philosophy on productivity. You might be thinking, what on earth is he talking about…philosophy on productivity? Bear with me on this as for those that do, I’m confident it will serve you. Your personal philosophy on productivity matters way more than you think. And here’s why – there are so many people doing amazing things yet being too hard on themselves because they are measuring the wrong things and philosophically just looking in the wrong place for what they think they should be measuring.

What we’re talking about here is the whole ethos for how you feel at the end of a work session, at the end of a busy day, and how you feel about yourself as you head into the weekend or time off. In other words, whether you feel as though you’ve done enough.

The sad truth about entrepreneurship is that you have a never ending list of to dos and regularly feel like “I’ll never be done”. If you’ve ever felt this then that is what getting a healthy philosophy on productivity is going to help with.

This is something I’ve personally wrestled with for as long as I can remember and I’ve actively sought to understand and reframe it. Now that I’ve finally discovered a new paradigm for thinking about personal productivity, I’m excited to share it.

To explain, I need to quickly refer to the Zen Buddhism practice of enso circle drawing – the ritual of attempting to draw the perfect circle. Here’s the thing, when you sit down to draw one you are fundamentally attempting the impossible, for something to be a true circle it has to be perfect and no human being can draw a perfect circle.  

The Zen Buddhists decided to make this a daily practice ie the decision to attempt something that strives for perfection yet cannot ever succeed at being perfect.

As they realised that perfection was out of sight, they dropped the game of trying to be perfect and started embracing imperfections.

This is a powerful metaphor for thinking about productivity, more than that, its the most powerful principle for thinking about my productivity day to day and week to week that I’ve ever come across.

The enso circle is a metaphor for what we do when we sit down to be productive as human beings. We seek to do something as entrepreneurs that is perfect ie we want to win, hit big goals, do 100% of what we are capable of but we need to commit to creative and courageous work that isn’t actually ever done ie we need to draw the perfect circle.

Borrowing the enso principle, we get to liberate ourselves from the belief that we have for everything we are working on to be perfect, by embracing imperfection.

Here’s the key – the magic of the Zen monks drawing these circles is not that they draw them one time, or that it looks a lot or a little like a circle. The magic is that they show up and do it every single day. It’s a ritual that generates incremental progress over time by showing up and striving towards perfection, imperfectly. Perfection is the goal but with the knowledge that they’ll never quite get there, however by consistently practising they actually create something of incredible beauty.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PHILOSOPHY WE CAN EMBRACE FOR OUR PRODUCTIVITY IS STRIVING IMPERFECTLY, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

We can approach our goals and to do’s in the same way as an enso circle. When we plan out our week ahead, we’re creating a vision and a definition of perfection as it relates to what we aspire to get done. All we have to do is show up each day and strive imperfectly in that direction. And when you do or don’t arrive at that perfect place (ie when you’re reviewing on a Sunday night), no matter what happens you’ll create something incredible and you’ll learn more about what it takes to get closer to that idea of a perfect week.

Are you up for striving imperfectly, every day?

As we approach our third year of using booking.com (bdc) to help promote out SA units it’s finally dawned on me how ignorant I’ve been in regards the capabilities of the platform. From the get go, it’s probably fair to say that I’ve seen bdc as little more than a platform to throw up a property listing to a large audience, along with some pricing and availability. This is in part due to the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have grown the majority of our business out of direct contractor type bookings.

For all the niggles SA operators might have with bdc ie fraudulent bookings, the high commission rates etc, there’s no getting round the fact that it’s a powerful ally in you wider SA marketing power team. And we need to make the most of it.

This week we (our Operations Manager and I) met with our bdc Account Manager at their Edinburgh office. I didn’t have high hopes for the meeting, thought we might iron out some of the recent fraud related niggles we’d had in the last few months and not sure what else, however the hour meeting delivered so much more than we expected.

Here’s a quick summary of the learning insights that other SA operators might benefit from (if you’re not doing everything covered here already).  

#1 MAKING THE MOST OF BDC ANALYTICS (using the Pace report)

First, here’s a definition of ‘Pace’ as it relates to the hospitality industry, courtesy of xotels.com

‘In most industries, speed is of the essence! Hospitality is no different. Pace – the rate at which reservations are made for a particular date – is important to control and also to monitor. Why? Because if you can see a pattern forming as reservations build for a certain date, weekend, week or even an entire month each year, this can be immensely helpful when it comes to forecasting: trying to accurately foresee and calculate projected demand and therefore revenue in future years. Also, Pace can determine aspects such as required staffing levels at certain times.’

Our bdc Account Manager talked us through the Pace Report for the Edinburgh area – essentially a chart showing the average room nights booked for each month in 2018 vs this year so far, and what’s booked for 2019 to come. It also showed the ADR – average daily rate that bookers are paying for accommodation in our area.

It was interesting to see that across all types of accommodation for Jan and Feb in our area, bookings are down this year compared to the same period last year. It’s worth noting that if you are running these reports yourself then be sure to not only look at the whole accommodation market but also for self catered only. In our area self catered bookings were actually a little bit up.

You can use the Pace reporting to look data from a number of different angles ie:

-Portfolio Pace – to look at room nights booked this year vs last year

-Peer Group – to look at all the properties of the same type and in the same location as you

-Competitive Set – you can select up to 10 specific competitors (that are listed in bdc) allowing you to compare your property’s performance against others

Clearly there is a lot of data collected by bdc so be sure to delve into it within your extranet and take some time to understand more about what the figures are telling you.

#2 MAKING THE MOST OF RATE CATEGORIES

We have always been on the strictest possible flexible rate category ie non refundable after 60 days or less before check-in. Our Account Manager explained how we are excluding many potential bookers from even seeing our properties so suggested that we use a blend of two rate categories as follows:

-a flexible rate that can be cancelled from 30+ days out (non refundable less than 30)

-offer a non-refundable rate with a discount for those guests happy to book and pay in full 30 or more days out.

The theory here being that we cover all the market in terms of rate categories and boost our conversions. (If you have multiple properties in your account, your bdc Acc Manager can add the policies at a group level for you to save individual editing).

#3 MAKING THE MOST OF PAYMENT METHODS

Bdc are hearing more and more from guests that they want to be able to pay differently ie, often in full at the time of booking, and with different payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay and other similar offerings from around the world. Again, we were unsure of all this and didn’t have it enabled until now, but there are big benefits of accepting online payments:

-Guaranteed payments, guests pay when they book so no chasing payments or invalid credit card details

-Fewer cancellations, when bookers pay online they are 4x less likely to cancel

-Potential of more potential guests, ie opening up the market to bookers who can’t or don’t want to pay with credit card

In short, be sure to say yes to accepting alternative online payment methods.

#4 MAKING THE MOST OF THE BDC OPPORTUNITIES SECTION

There are two main opportunities to increase bookings through bdc as outlined below. Quickly before I highlight those, be sure to have your listing content scores up at 100% to optimise the conversion of those who do view your listing.

Preferred Programme– Designed to increase occupancy by boosting property visibility, you also get a ‘thumbs up’ sign next to the listing (preferred partners get an average of 65% more page views and 35% more bookings). Property rankings increase with better visibility to all bdc users. Commission to bdc is increased to 18%.

Genius programme– Designed to increase occupancy by ranking boost and better visibility to genius users (on average genius partners increase bookings by 18% and their revenue by 17%). Properties appear to bdc genius guest members (a select group of customers who travel more often, book further in advance, and spend more when booking) with a 10% discount on prices. As a Genius partner, your property will get a special Genius tag, ranking boost and better visibility in search results.

This is far from an exhaustive coverage of what you can do but hopefully serves as a helpful starter for ten.

What else are you doing to optimise your bdc results?

This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Pattrick (founder of Dapatchi) and hearing him speak. What a joy and inspiration to hear how he has built up a multi-disciplined property investment company.

From humble beginnings in general property maintenance Dan has built up a substantial property business with tens of million pounds of property under development, and nine business divisions covering the full circle of property investing.  What’s more, this has all be achieved at remarkable speed.

His values and heart centred words resonated strongly with me, as I’m sure they did with many in the room. Thanks for your wisdom Dan.

He shared 22 of his success principles for property entrepreneurs- so, without stealing his thunder, here’s 8 of my favourite:

#1 Values are the most under discussed and underrated asset you can have. They solve all problems for you and act as a powerful decision making tool.

[If you’re unsure where to start with your values there’s no better place I know than reading John Demartini’s book The Values Factor and at the very least doing the free values determination exercise  https://drdemartini.com/values-determination/ ]

#2 Don’t be a lone wolf, why walk alone when you can walk further together.

In other words, so much more can be achieved when working with others rather than trying to do it all alone.  Every problem can be solved with a partner, so long as the partner shares your values.

#3 It’s not how you get into a deal that matters, it’s how you get out.

There are 3 main risks in property development:

1- planning risk

2- development risk

3- exit risk

You will need a plan on how to mitigate each of these, especially to satisfy lenders.

#4 Money is the byproduct of your action, not the outcome, find different outcomes and the money follows. Stop asking how to make money and start asking how to add value.

#5 Start recording what you are doing to run your business now. Create your systems which will enable your growth, rather than grow before creating the systems.

#6 Be kind to others – property, like in most businesses, is about the art of people and relationships. Generally the most successful are the most generous.

#7 Have a driver that is bigger than you, when the going gets tough and you get stuck your own self serving desire is not enough to move you.

And to finish, here’s a universal truth

#8 It will be hard and you will f*ck up.

Accept that now, be brave, take action and be the best you.

 

To put a proverbial cherry on this cake of wisdom, here are Dan’s closing words about creating a virtuous cycle for yourself,

“Do something today that you will thank yourself for tomorrow”

If these words resonate with you, why not layer in some accountability and share here what you will do today that you’ll thank yourself for tomorrow?

Recently our mentor advised us on 4 key metrics to focus on, track and measure along the journey to big goal achievement. One of those key areas is education. Coincidentally, I’ve received some similar and very fitting teachings from a couple of virtual mentors this week which really emphasise this point on the need to be strategic about our learning. So here’s my summary for all you voracious learners in the community. There are no shortcuts but these are some of the best pointers I’ve collated in recent times in regards to finding the most organised and result oriented approach to learning.

FOUR POINTERS ON HOW TO STREAMLINE YOUR LEARNING:

(credit here to one of Darren Hardy’s great videos this week and to Peter, one of my other mentors)

#1: Be sure you understand the difference between what you’re studying and what you are just marinating your mind with.

-The stuff you want to be actively studying should be directly related to your no.1 goal this year (ie ask yourself- what’s the no.1 skill needed for achieving that goal?) That’s what you should be consciously consuming, taking notes on and applying.

Then there’s the stuff you are reading/listening/watching to keep your mind and behaviour positive ie podcasts, biographies.

Every property entrepreneur should be picking a capability area to close the gap on that’s relevant to them. Here are some great questions to help you identify what would be a force multiplier for you in your goal achievement.

 

1. What are your biggest fears when you consider your main goal for 2019/or your Q1 90 day plan?
2. What are the most likely points of failure in your plan?
3. What would have to happen for everything to exceed your expectations?
4. What skills would stack the odds in your favour? – i) if you were delegating this to someone, what skills would you look for on their CV; ii) if you had spent the last year mastering anything, what would it have been to help make you great at that thing now?
5. What is the no.1 skill (of those you’ve listed so far) that is likely to drive an exponential result improvement?
6. How many hours invested in this skill would want to see in a staff member working in your role?
7. What specific steps can you take to improve your skill set in this area?

-Books to read

-Courses to complete

-Industry events to attend

-Advisors to work with

The aim is to build a syllabus for yourself, not based on what’s flavour of the month (although I have been culprit of that in the past) but based on the best concepts/practices etc written in your chosen area.

Rather than picking your learning material based on how well it’s marketed, pick it based on the answers to questions like these on what you need and how it fits into your plan.

In my case, I’ve identified the need to grow my capability in marketing, not just within our SA business but across all areas of ours businesses, as it relates to our current and future offerings.

#2: Understand the difference between just in time and just in case learning.

As Darren eloquently pointed out, success seekers consume too much disjointed learning, in other words, just in case we might need it at some point (also referred to as FOMO type learning). My hands are up again, I’ve done this more than I care to recall too. Instead, Darren reminds us to focus on what we need to learn now, to help achieve our goals now.

#3: Learn to go wide (ie get broad exposure across the subject matter) but then go deep.

In other words find one expert you like, or one voice as it were to read/listen to all their stuff. (I”ve consumed pretty much all of the content Darren Hardy has shared since first discovering The Compound Effect in 2008).

#4: You need both skill and wisdom growth.

Put simply, we need to also remember to read/listen to things unrelated to business and property in order to increase our awareness and empathy of people and the wider world.

What will be your biggest force multiplier when it comes to your education for the next few months?

This week I read a fascinating article about fear and greed in the stock market. This was the sub-heading-

“Political uncertainty is making investors nervous, but the best returns flow to those who stay in the market even if times are turbulent”

In reading this article there were several observations from the stock market that carry over to the property market, and that’s what I wanted to share.

One of the key messages from the article was the fact that in amongst this massively uncertain political backdrop, investors are having to live with sharp fluctuations in fund and share prices.

(I’ve personally experienced this with my own share portfolio seeing a 29% drop and a 20% recovery between Sep to Jan). The annoying thing about it is that these sharp movements often have nothing to do with the underlying assets or businesses, and everything to do with political events and speculation.

The market volatility plays havoc for anyone with a strategy to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. (Does this sound familiar for anyone trying to get the timing exactly right to buy a property investment? It can lead to waiting, and waiting and never actually buying something that could have been making money through rental income that whole time.)

The article went on to highlight the major point that history can help serious savers and investors build a fund to pay for the final decades of their lives, or indeed any other financial objective that is 5+ years out.

LESSON #1: HOW TO COPE WITH MARKET TIMING

The past few decades have demonstrated that the best way for investors to cope with the impossibility of market timing is to ignore it. That was the conclusion of a comprehensive analysis of stock market returns over the past 30 years by one of the world’s biggest fund management groups.

Relating that to property, I wouldn’t want anyone to misinterpret the lesson as don’t buy anything for a whole year or more because prices look toppy. Rather it’s a case of stacking the deck in your favour with proper due diligence and being clear on how you add value and create multiple exits to monetise the asset both now and in the long term.

I probably don’t need to remind anyone of the overused quote – ‘when is the best time to plant a tree?….”

The study by Fidelity found that if you invested £1000 in the FTSE All Share index in 1989, it would be worth £11,775 today.

By contrast, had you attempted market timing in buying and selling shares, but missed the best 30 days during these three decades, the total return would only be £2,838.

LESSON #2: IGNORE FEAR AND GREED

One of the Directors at Fidelity, the fund manager said,  “To succeed at investment, we need to ignore fear and greed. Trying to time the market is a fool’s errand, especially when history shows that the best and worst days often tend to be bunched together during times of volatility”

OK, so we don’t have the same kind of up and down spikes within the very short periods in property but the message to heed is not getting caught up in a similar fear and greed sentiment.

LESSON #3: TIME IN THE MARKET

The answer to avoid the stresses of short term fluctuations is to remain fully invested over what you see as your investing lifetime. For many that will be multiple decades. ‘Time in the market is a simpler and surer way to build capital than trying to time the market perfectly.’

Again, these are broad principles we can borrow, rather than a hard rule, but these principles hold a lot of value in the world of property. Yes there will be times you can capitalise on a hot market to sell and release capital. However, if buying to sell, rather than hoping that a rising market will create your desired profit, I would rather advocate forcing your increased value by what you add to the property, or by the business you run through it.

Here are some hard facts to back the long game in property:

UK property values have grown on average 10% a year since the first records began in 1086 with the Domesday Book.

-The average UK property price in Q1 2009 was £149,709*

-The average UK property value in Q2 2018 was £226,906* (source: UK House Price Index gov.uk

So, even though the last 9 years haven’t performed at 10% a year, it still represents a 5.7% a year average growth (a return well above saving rates).

The lessons borrowed from the stock market world hopefully serve as validation for those already investing in property for the long term, and provide sound pros for those just getting started.

With just over a decade into my own property investing journey I fully intend to be in it for many more.

Here’s a classic quote to close on:

“Don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait.” – Will Rogers, actor

Do share your thoughts on property investing during uncertain times.

[Article source: Sunday Times Business Supplement]

P.S. If you’re looking to take your property investing to the next level, I can highly recommend getting yourself to the next Touchstone Six Figure Summit. Book your free seat here https://goo.gl/6QQ1s4

 

Anyone operating serviced accommodation and taking bookings from booking.com (bdc) will know that sinking, annoying feeling of payment disputes and chargebacks. For the most part in our business, we traditionally haven’t had too many since the majority of our bookings have been direct and via an invoice and bank payment.

However, these payment disputes have been increasingly popping up so we thought we’d investigate why and share some findings.

In short, it would appear that more and more fraudsters are stealing credit cards and booking mini breaks using the stolen cards. Not only that, once staying in the serviced apartment they go on a shopping spree online and have the goods delivered to the property they are staying in. Sneaky huh? How do we know this? After one fraudulent stay pre Christmas, a pair of super expensive Nike trainers were delivered to the property he stayed in. We called the online store, who were surprised and grateful that we were returning the goods, and they confirmed that these fraudulent purchases are happening more and more frequently. Using a serviced apartment as the delivery address was new to us though.

The experienced members of the community will know all the below but I’m sure there will be others earlier in their journey who will find this helpful.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET A PAYMENT DISPUTE AND CHARGEBACK

When you receive notification of a payment dispute on Stripe the amount under dispute is returned to the cardholder’s bank along with a £15 payment fee. You have about a month to respond and provide evidence. Even if you have proof of guest communication confirming a remote check-in, if the card is indeed fraudulent then unfortunately you’re fighting a losing battle. The guest has been and stayed, you’ve paid for the clean and change of linen, and you’ll never be able to re-sell those nights. So, be sure you don’t spend the booking revenue or distribute it too soon.

The second kick in the ribs with too many fraudulent disputes is that your payment gateway will see you as a higher risk and start to increase your commission charges. Or worse, they can shut your account down.

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PREVENT CHARGEBACKS?

For all of your bdc bookings, be sure to cross check the guest address used for the booking with the country the credit card is registered in. If they differ it’s a definite red flag and most likely fraud. You need to request proof of ID to match guest booking name with the name on the card. If the guest refuses to show proof then you may want to cancel the booking. At the very least stipulate that proof of ID is required at check in- and with that there will be a good chance they will cancel anyway.

If you take a booking which you suspect to be fraudulent and you decide to cancel the booking and refund the payment be sure to report the payment as fraudulent to both Stripe, as they can stop any further action being taken with the card, and to bdc so they can cancel any commission charges.

Here are a few more tell tale signs of a potential fraudulent stay:

*The guest refuses a meet and greet

*The guest says they are arriving at a crazy time ie after midnight and so won’t need a meet and greet

*The guest wont answer calls or speak directly but instead insists on text communication

*The guest gives an excuse as to why they can’t provide photo ID

 

What other stories of fraud and preventative measures can you share?