Adaero Property

There’s nothing like the positive pressure of a real deadline growing ever closer to focus your attention and efforts. Especially when the deadline has a hardstop that’s non-negotiable. What’s done is done when the timer goes.

I hope this post is helpful for anyone who has a little inner perfectionist, or for those who ever reflect on a week and question if they got enough done.

The theme of this week’s post is so front of mind for me as last Sunday I set an ambitious week of outcomes with the aim of disconnecting come this Saturday. I really mean disconnecting too. My wife and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary by returning to the same paradise spot we went  to on our honeymoon, and I will be challenging myself to disconnect from the rest of the world for a week.

Many of you may have heard Parkinson’s Law which states that, “WORK expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

This is exactly why deadlines can bring out the productivity ninja within – we have to push hard whilst simultaneously adjusting our satisfactory completion points for tasks.

When in this state, you can find yourself drawing on extra reserves to push things over the line.

You find you can be a little more decisive when it comes to completing something (i.e. saying that’s good enough).

It calls for an attitude of what gets done gets done. Yes we can strive for excellence, but don’t get caught up trying to be perfect, accept imperfection and aim for done. I’ll admit that I envy those for whom this comes easy. I have to fight an inner desire that wants to go for perfection.

To list a few of the main objectives completed this week, we (Chris and I) have:

• Set up a new SA unit from scratch
• Accommodated some new contractors
• Got our SA booking website to live testing stage
• Engaged in strategic conversations with JV partners
• Refined some systems with cleaners and linen providers
• Progressed a host of admin related to various SPVs

The deadline effect has really kicked in this week and a fair few extra hours have been clocked. However, as one of my coaches reminds me, if you know you have a special occasion coming up where you will be switching off and recharging then it’s OK to push hard so that come Saturday when I leave, I can give myself permission to feel disconnected.

Just think how much we’d get done if we went on holiday every month huh?

As a double bonus, the high leverage thing about down time is that we can use it to gain an unfair advantage. If I seed my mind with the thought and question of long term goals, then go have fun, great ideas will come and I just need to note them down then get back to the fun.

I kicked off the week listening to Episode 108 of the 10X Talk podcast, which was all about what it takes to create a self-managing company. Sounds very aspirational doesn’t it? [If you haven’t heard the 10X Talk podcast with Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan then I highly recommend you seek it out.] How does one create a self managing company? It starts with having a 10X bigger future vision and a desire to consolidate and automate what you are already doing. More on that in a moment.

The fourth week of the month rolls around quickly and this Tuesday Chris and I sat down with Aniko for another brilliant 1-2-1 mentor session. I admit that I find long term visioning pretty challenging (even my Wealth Dynamic Profile concluded I’m NOT at my strongest starting from a blank piece of paper). However Aniko is helping guide Chris and I to draw out of ourselves a vision for the next 10 years. Once this is done we can cascade down our ‘KIK’ that supports our ‘VV’ (in Progressive/Rob speak this refers to our Vision, Values, Key result areas, Income generating task and  KPI’s).

This is proving such a crucial exercise and over the coming weeks solid time will be invested to paint our 10X vision and get clear on the ‘KIK’ that supports it. Whilst this stuff is a challenge and makes your brain hurt, it’s great to pull yourself out from the operational stuff to do this. Even in the short time Chris and I have spent working on visioning this week it’s been incredibly rewarding and exciting to map out our ideas.

Looping back to the 10X Talk podcast and Dan Sullivan’s message, we definitely want to create a self-managing company, starting with our SA business – a major reason why we’ll be looking to hire a new team member in Q4.

I had a real light bulb moment this particular podcast and a positive re-frame that I think could help others too. It’s particularly relevant to anyone working with a team, whether that be directly employed by you or people in your supply chain. The mindshift I took onboard thanks to Dan Sullivan was this:

“It’s impossible for my team to let me down because either I get the result I want or we get a new lesson to teach us what to review and improve for next time”.

How impactful is that?

Tony Robbins has a similar message that, ‘Problems are the gifts we grow from’. Putting this into recent context, we’ve had a pretty operationally hectic couple of weeks on the SA front and slip ups from suppliers have cropped up. This reframe has really helped dissipate my initial frustration and instead view things from a constructive and learning perspective.

As Dan Sullivan puts it, “the essence of a self managing company is being willing to be a continuous learner and having a cooperation mindset.” He wisely says that, “It’s impossible to fail if you’re willing to be a constant learner”.

I’d love to know if this message also resonates and if you have any similar reframes, please share for us all to learn.

Here’s the link to the podcast if you’re keen to listen to the whole talk:

http://10xtalk.com/what-it-takes-to-create-a-self-managing-company-joe-polish-and-dan-sullivan/

On Friday morning at breakfast my wonderful wife made a really positive remark about a video that was shared with her on Facebook. I enquired further, curious to find out what had engrossed her for a few minutes and uplifted her.

Her response was a brief synopsis of a moving speech delivered by US Navy admiral William H. McRaven about the importance of doing the little things and embracing fear in life. The summary instantly resonated with me and I suggested we project it up onto the big flat screen with our chromecast gadget so the kids could see it too as they finished breakfast.

What a brilliant message to start the day. It’s been buzzing round my head all weekend and I felt compelled to share it.

McRaven’s analogies lifted from his experience in the Navy Seals are rousing yet so practical. This concept of making your bed in the morning (i.e. one task completed) begins the domino effect for many small tasks completed that day. Whilst so simple, I know that Chris and I are focused on completing lots of little tasks each day in our property business, and we fully believe that these small daily steps will compound helping us realise our goals in both the serviced accommodation side business and development side.

Our daily tasks completed over the past few weeks have led to us checking in our biggest contractor booking yet on Friday.

Here’s the 6 min video for you to enjoy and share. (If you’re like me you’ll probably find loads of other great speeches on this Goalcast website.)

https://www.goalcast.com/2017/08/17/william-h-mcraven/

Another full on week comes to a close. How has your week been?

The week kicked off with very much ‘in the business’ work to do with the administrative and operational side of running our SA business.

Tuesday went to the other end of the extreme as I joined our Development Discovery cohorts in London  for a day workshop with Kevin Whelan, founder of Wealth Builders http://wealthbuilders.co.uk/, to learn some key foundations about private JV funding. One re-frame highlighted at the beginning of the day was that ‘people finance property’. To elaborate on that – we might think on the surface that banks and various development finance lenders fund property deals, however tracing that money back to it’s source we realise that real people, individuals out there, are providing the funding. Even in its simplest form of taking out a mortgage, if we consider where the mortgage finance comes from, it’s the deposits from other people’s money.

As all property investors know, one of the most crucial things to grow your business is to have sufficient funds. In the workshop Kevin was opening our eyes to the fact that there are far more people out there with money looking for an investment than we originally thought. That’s why it’s so important for property investors to understand how to build the kind of trust in relationships that can lead to funding, and how to have professional conversations to bring it all together.

To borrow Kevin’s words, “Getting funding is not just about having a great deal with great returns it is about how you present yourself, how you meet the needs of the funder and whether you can present a congruent brand and product with the supporting material to them that taps into their personal preferences and whether they believe and trust you.”

Returning to Scotland, the second half of the week was back ‘in the business’ managing multiple cleaning schedules, check-ins and having direct booking conversations. These are exciting times for Chris and I as our SA business is growing, we are simultaneously fine tuning our processes, pipelining new property and developing relationships with direct booking clients. Each week brings a hive of activity and in the weeks ahead we will be looking to hire someone to help run the operations of our regional SA units. Hopefully this is someone we can identify through our property community and network here

So all in a fully packed week that had me wearing a number of hats from the operational to the strategic. Chris and I are in the midst of drafting out the five year vision for our business and it’s an exciting journey that we are making progress on each week.

In starting and figuring out how to grow businesses, I’ve found that the ‘mental game’ is one of the biggest pieces to the puzzle. Rob and those in the Progressive training community frequently mention the phrase, “skill set without the mindset will leave you upset”. I fully agree and as Chris and I work at growing our property business we are very aware of the mental rollercoaster we are riding. That’s why I’m a big fan of reading/listening to/watching material that will help master the mindset, and I write copious notes on wisdom I want to refer back to (geeky I know).

Rob recently did a great series on the ‘Entrepreneur’s Mindset’ and I captured the summary of his key points to add to my notes. These are proving a great reference for me so I’m sure there will be others out there who will benefit from this little cheat sheet.

Rob’s top tips on mindset:

1. The plight you are on, someone else has started and endured, hunt them down and learn from them
2. Take full responsibility, have extreme ownership, never blame, always give credit away and if anything happens accept responsibility and sort it out
3. Test fast and small to de-risk big problems and to get yourself moving rather than having to wait and get all ducks in a row
4. Net worth is self worth plus your network
5. You are the easiest person to lie to so take self out of the equation and get a coach, accountability partner, be in masterminds
6. Be a problem solver – you don’t have to know the solution to the problem, you just have to want to solve it
7. Be it til you see it- the legacy you want to leave and the person you want to become- be it and live it every day towards your legacy rather than thinking that when I’ve done X or when I’m at Y then I’ll be good enough
8. What you are struggling with you can learn a solution to and grow through the challenge
9. The past doesn’t dictate the future so don’t take all your baggage from the past into the future
10. Only ever compare yourself to who you were, not who you want to be and not by de-pedestalising yourself below mentors and gurus. If want to compare yourself to anyone it’s for inspiration because you want to have that trait, not because you want to be that person. Also look at where you were 2 years ago…if you don’t have quite what you want yet, what do you have that’s proof you are better than where you were? Lift yourself up, don’t put yourself down.
11. Your biggest fears rarely happen so don’t let them consume you. At the same time your fears are there to serve you to help you grow and to give you wise feedback
12. Scarcity or abundance thinking – there are infinite resources and money out there and plenty for us all to be millionaires, so have a mindset of abundance
13. Are you using your resourcefulness and creativity or are you relying on outside factors?
14. Mastering your emotions is a daily thing to work on like eating and going to the gym, keep working on it. You want to get emotion out of the way so can use logic based decision i.e. before making big decisions or communicating with people on important matters.

Brief update on our business activity from the week that was:

We launched our latest SA unit last Sunday and welcomed our first guests. We are underway with the build of our SA website, which is fairly straightforward thanks to using a simple kigo template. We have also viewed a couple of development sites, a property to assess for flipping and a potential R2R.

All in all a busy week and eager to continue the progress into next week.

This week had a particularly ‘progressive theme, both in nature and in events attended. Here are a few highlights.

Tuesday VIP

• Paul’s summary of his trip to the Real Pages event in Las Vegas (world’s largest property software company) and the launch of his SA book blew our minds. The strategic partnerships and opportunities emerging from these two things are phenomenal
• Kenny talked us through the opportunities for property development in Scotland when you can navigate your way through planning
• Aniko delivered a brilliant keynote covering 5 steps to systemise your business
• Chris and I had a brilliant 1-2-1 coaching session with Aniko which has helped us map out the next key actions that will help us systemise and scale our SA business (huge thanks for that Aniko)
• To wrap the day up all the VIP’s had a great dinner at Duck Bay overlooking Loch Lomond

Thursday – a potentially game changing meeting

• We met with the landlords of 2 blocks of apartments we have been in discussion with about leasing for SA
• In short, the 3 hour meeting turned out to be a very productive one with some good synergies identified and positive signs to move things forward

Sunday – Testimonial time at Glasgow MSOPI

• Chris and I joined a great MSOPI crowd in time for Paul to cover off some wisdom on company structures, tax efficient cars and capital allowances (even if we’ve heard some of this stuff before i find I continue to learn and retain with hearing it again in new examples – just brilliant!)
• Along with fellow VIP’s Kenneth, Andy, Lesley and Ankio, Chris and I joined Paul at the front for a wee testimonial highlighting our own accomplishments in VIP to date
• Standing up to share your experience is a funny one because whilst us Brits don’t like to brag, it’s a fantastic opportunity to check in with yourself and reflect on where you were when you first started VIP v’s present day. As each of us continue to grow, step by step progressing along our respective property journeys, the changes can seem indistinguishable from day to day. However, reflecting back over bigger chunks of time like we were doing today of 6,12,18 months and more, it really shows how far we have all come and who we are becoming. For that, we are both proud and grateful to be part of the Progressive community.

Meanwhile as we were engaged in all the above this week, our card payment app stripe has pinged through some nice alerts as more festival bookings for our SA units have rolled in.

Have a great start to August everyone.

As I committed in last week’s post, I started the week with Rob’s suggestion of a 15 minute ideation session- with the aim of brainstorming 15 business growth and money making ideas in 15 minutes. I managed 13 ideas in this first session, mostly related to our SA business and some related to new property income streams. Moving forwards, Chris and I have agreed to do a 10 min session each Sun/Mon with the aim of generating 8 ideas each. These ideas will be sent to our VA Hellen who will organise them in a Trello board for us to filter and work with from there. The aim is to dedicate some of our Thursdays each week to discussing and actioning the news ideas. FYI Trello is a handy little tool for capturing and categorising lists of tasks or ideas, and it’s free https://trello.com

On the SA side, I do feel like we are ‘bouncing back’ from a mini hiatus- the OTA’s have brought a handful of good bookings and the actions taken this week to explore new direct booking avenues have been promising.

We are also adding a new property to the portfolio next week with some new JV partners and already have the first booking in thanks to an early airbnb listing.

Looking forward to our VIP day on Tuesday, our 1-2-1 with Aniko and a dinner with the other Scottish VIP’s.

My 2 weeks in the Spanish sun is drawing to a close this weekend and I have been intentionally putting into play those pointers I wrote about in last week’s post (about how to use downtime to get an unfair advantage).

This week I’m going to share a little insight from our SA business that will hopefully resonate and be helpful to others too.

In amongst some amazing experiences with my family on holiday I have also had moments of fearful thinking and uncertainty, in relation to our SA business. Recently we have been experiencing a few setbacks from one or two longer term bookings not coming through and from some uncertainty of others that were in discussion. We have experienced a mild hiatus in bookings across a few of our properties, and while this is not drastic in the grand scheme of things, it has thrown some negative thinking and worry into an otherwise great SA business.

Chris and I know that a good booking is round the corner and can quickly buoy confidence, however the mini hiatus and delayed decisions have naturally given rise to more uncertainty than confidence.

Whilst running on the boardwalk, or during afternoon siesta time, I have absorbed some great content this week. Interestingly there have been 3 different pieces that shared a common theme – that of reframing uncertainty and fear.

One podcast interview referred to the mindshift of being able to “dance with fear” and use uncertainty to channel your nerves and focus on the problem in hand.

Another post gave the analogy of looking at a fall as an opportunity to “be like a ball” and bounce back higher – in other words to learn, iterate/take action and grow to new heights.

Then just today, whilst preparing some chicken skewers in marinade for the evening’s BBQ, I was listening to one of Rob Moore’s Disruptive podcasts about growing through your challenges. As Rob put it – challenges are there to help us grow, and when you do grow through your challenges you often have new strategies and techniques to do the thing you were struggling with better the next time (I couldn’t agree more), and ultimately set yourself up for bigger challenges and bigger growth next time. [Thanks Rob for that great podcast #161 and I love the idea to brainstorm 15 new money making ideas each Monday- I’ll be implementing that from this Monday coming.]

So in summary, my mindset has totally shifted over the course of this week and I am reframing this little hiatus in our SA bookings as a huge positive and a kick up the proverbial backside. Maybe we got too complacent with a long run of contractor bookings? Either way we are using this little dose of fear and uncertainty to channel our energy and focus into making adjustments in our business so that we don’t experience this kind of lull and uncertainty again. Chris and I have been brainstorming ideas to ramp our direct bookings and identifying parts of our SA business and systems that can be tweaked and improved.

So, after a solid stint of R&R I’m feeling motivated to hit the ground running next week with focus and energy. We have the opportunity to “be the ball” and bounce back higher than before so we can scale our business.

Last week’s post chimed in with the half-way mark of the year and we looked at 5 things you can do to make this half-time reflection point work for you. Point 1 on that list was to take a break, so this week, I thought it would be helpful to share some pointers I learned, from one of my mentors, on how to use holidays and downtime to get an unfair advantage. [Note- this is a bit of a lengthy post but for those who choose to read to the end, hopefully one that’s packed with value you can take away and implement.]

I am one week into our holiday in Spain and having an amazing time with my family so far.

It’s probably fair to say that many of us subscribe to Rob Moore’s philosophies in his book Life Leverage (if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to) – we all want to work less and succeed more. However, it’s all too easy for us to fall into the mode of trying to ‘outwork’ the next guy and keep pushing through with grit and a string of late nights at the desk. This is OK at times but the longer term result is willpower depletion, motivation depletion and reduction in overall effectiveness.

This is where summer holidays can really come to the rescue.

[As a quick bit of back context it’s important to understand (I’m sure many of you do) that our mental energy and willpower is a like a tank of finite resource that gradually depletes over the course of the day/week/month.

Our ability to solve problems is inversely related to mental energy depletion. Specifically, our ability and strength in these 4 key areas dramatically reduces:

-thought control -i.e. rabbit holes, bright shiny objects

-emotional control – i.e. positive thinking and mood control

-impulse control- i.e. resisting temptations

-performance control – i.e. focused problem solving, perseverance]

So now you know a bit more of the neuroscience behind what’s going on with the grey matter, what can be done about it on holiday?

Here’s the one-two punch suggestion from my business psychologist mentor:

Punch #1: How to come up with bold ideas over the summer – this might be ideas to do with how you find that first JV partner, how to double your SA portfolio in the next 6 months, or something unrelated to property.

• Read (holidays are a great time to give yourself permission to read for way longer than usual, so use the time to fill your head with the right “ingredients”)
• Have conversations with interesting people (you never know who you’ll meet through travel, events, dinners, sport, picnics etc so look for opportunities to tap into smart people, be open to alternative expertise outside of your industry, you may not have to look any further than a family member at a BBQ!)
• Be open to tangential connections (mull things over, give yourself permission to think creatively and laterally- new holiday environments are great for helping with this)
• PLAY! (literally, feed your mind the problem, go have fun being where you are fully engaged in the activity (tennis and snowboarding are great for this) then leave it alone for your subconscious to get to work on coming up with some solutions.)

Punch #2: How to replenish your energy tank and build the discipline muscle:

• Sleep (holiday is the perfect time to let your body wake up naturally in the morning)
• Get your diet right (yes enjoy your food and drink but use the luxury of time during the holidays to choose and prepare healthy meals/snacks that don’t peak and trough your blood sugar like processed foods and refined sugars)
• Don’t make big decisions (i.e. put on hold big decision making that may stress you out until you have replenished the tank)
• Spend time on “Implementation Intentions” (if/then planning – these are v powerful but a whole post in themselves, if curious learn more here http://99u.com/articles/7248/how-to-use-if-then-planning-to-achieve-any-goal or here http://www.developgoodhabits.com/if-then-plan/ )
• Transmute R&R into motivation (if you truly let yourself indulge in some downtime, you’ll probably find you naturally become motivated to get stuck into some meaty work again)
• Give your Inner child gratification (this is a big one. In other words, if you’ve been pushing through and working hard for weeks it’s means you’ve probably been suppressing your inner child i.e. that part of you that just wants to go outside and play. This uses up tremendous willpower. So, let your inner child out, kids are great for helping you with this ie  get out and go boogie boarding with your kids.

I’m conscious this is quite heavy material so kudos to those who read the post through. I’m personally fascinated with this behavioural science/human performance stuff so I do hope it’s useful to others out there and I’d love to hear from you if it is.

Until next week, happy holidays!

Here we are bang on the halfway mark of the year. How have the first six months been for you? How have you grown, what have you learned, what action have you taken?

This week we had our second VIP 1-2-1 (of our second year) with Paul Smith. Chris and I always love these meetings, both the group sharing during the day and the mentor sessions. Working with Paul and Aniko always helps expand our thinking on what is possible and gives us tangible actions to go away and work on.

We’ve also been putting finishing touches to our guest house. Big thanks to James at Fusion for helping with the kit out and for the team at Cleantec who did a brilliant job of cleaning and set up.

Six months ago we started the year with about 17 bed spaces across our SA units and our goal for the year was to be at 120. Here we are at the halfway mark and we are sitting just a few beds shy of 60, so almost half way.

Inspired by the morning message from Darren Hardy, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to share some half time review tips for anyone who’s interested.

How to make the halfway mark and holiday time work for you

1. Take a half time break, rehydrate (both physically and mentally), rest and recover.
2. Review your game plan i.e. what were your goals at the start of the year, where do you stand, what still lies ahead for you to achieve your goals?
3. Assess what you know now that you didn’t know at the start of the year (you’ll be surprised how much you’ve taken on board and how some things that seemed foreign to you in January are becoming part of your norm). Some helpful questions are: Who are you becoming? What are the obstacles that have come up? Where are your weaknesses/areas you can outsource? What are your advantages you need to leverage more?
4. Decide what adjustments do you need to make. How do you need to change your game plan to keep yourself on track for where (and who) you want to be at the end of the year?
5. Figure out specifics on what you need to do to still achieve your big goals and recalibrate your own performance metrics.

Simple! Then crack on with consistently moving the ball forwards each day.

Today marks the beginning of the Scottish school holidays and like many, I’m in the airport with 2 weeks of fun in the sun a few short hours away.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” This quote is completely true. Once you know what you want, you can stop taking advice from just anyone. You can filter out the endless noise and hone in on your truth.

Eventually, you can train your conscious mind to only focus on what you really want in life. Everything else gets outsourced and forgotten by your subconscious.

Decide what you want or someone else will.

You are the designer of your destiny. What will it be?