Adaero Property

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?

Do you know one of the best ways to be your most productive in your property business? Do you work harder, faster, longer…? No. It may sound counterintuitive at first but bear with me on this because I think you’ll like it.

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

Deadline hit and the holiday began, this is where the 5th 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 property 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. 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).

Psychologists have proven that it’s actually “optimal” to not always be optimised. The latest science has actually proven that Playing – like a child – is a revolutionary brain hack that stimulates your neurological growth (ref to the work of Dr Stuart Brown). It also unleashes powerful focus and motivation.

So you see, taking time out to play and go on a holiday is a necessity for high performance, and the best ingredient for productivity IMHO 😊.

I’ve played full out and been present spending quality time with my wife & kids, parents in-law and some new friends for the entire 7 days. We’ve laughed, learned, discussed goals and dreams, danced, ate, drank, played games, and of course PLAYED on the beach.. 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.

So what’s the benefit of all this and why is making time for play 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. We have lots of exciting things happening in our property business and I’m eager to get back into progressing those. 
• Having let the proverbial ‘inner child’ out to play I can happily put the head down and focus on the hard work for another 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 given me headspace to think about a big goal Chris and I have to build a spectacular villa in the sun where we can host mastermind retreats and gift holidays to causes that are close to our hearts – like families dealing with illnesses so they 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, share with us what play you have planned for the warmer weather.

Link to post on 4 pillars of productivity: http://adaeroproperty.com/week-11-leveraging-the-power-of-deadlines-and-the-3-other-pillars-of-productivity/

Do you ever stop and think to yourself – ‘I thought I’d be further along on my property journey by now’. ? 😔

You’re not all alone. We all do. The cause of our pain as a striver, as an ambitious property entrepreneur, is a feeling of never being satisfied. We can easily fall into the self-talk of ‘I’ll be happy when….I have this, reach that, accomplish this….’ And that’s not serving you. 

Darren Hardy calls this the Staircase Paradox – where no matter how hard you climb, all you see is where you aren’t, and what you aren’t.

So the antidote to this is to understand the proverbial ‘staircase’ in order to reframe your perspective and see things through a healthy, and HAPPY lens. That’s exactly what I wanted to share in this post. 

Here are the two things to understand about the ‘staircase’:

THING #1: The staircase is infinite, there is no final destination to reach. The higher we climb on it, the more the staircase extends.

The key thing to understand is that the point is not to arrive, ie it’s not about the “I’ll be happy when”, because our brains don’t work like that. The only point is to climb and to enjoy the journey. 

So how do I enjoy the journey? – you may be asking. Well, psychologists have proven that what makes us happy is visual evidence of progress. Sounds simple but what’s easy to do is also easy not to do. That’s why I love the weekly power hour calls and monthly masterminds I do- I love helping people reflect on the week or month that was and recognise their incremental progress.

As a property entrepreneur it can be so easy to get caught up staring at the top of the ‘staircase’ thinking ‘I’m not there yet, I don’t have x no. of properties/monthly cash flow/portfolio value etc. And if we’re focusing on where we aren’t, we’re discounting all the little steps we took during the week, like the calls we made, the viewings we did, the spreadsheet we built etc. 

I know many reading this will know this stuff, but sometimes we need to be reminded of it by having it packaged up in a different way. I really like this staircase paradox because for me has reinforced a lesson I learned from Dan Sullivan years ago who said the same thing, just slightly differently – he talked about measuring the gain (ie  the ground covered) vs the gap (ie from where you are to where you aren’t yet but want to be).

THING #2: You can’t assess or measure your success by comparison to others because:

1. You don’t know where their ‘staircase’ started. I’d also add to this that you don’t know where they might be pointing their staircase – ie some people want to list a company on the stock market, and others want to create a property business that delivers a six figure income with minimal stress.

2. You don’t know if others have been given or have found an ‘escalator’. 😊

So, as we reflect on the week that was and think about the one ahead, have this staircase paradox front of mind. 

What step did you climb this week to create visual evidence of progress in your property business…that you can now acknowledge and therefore feel happy about?

We can’t deny that property is all about people, every way you look at it, and this was a phenomenal week for ‘people’. It kicked off with hosting brilliant people round a property mastermind table, while the rest of the week was spent (I should say invested) with one of my all time heroes and virtual mentors – Darren Hardy. 

I’ve been learning from Darren and applying his wisdom since 2009 and this week I finally got to meet him and spend 3 intense days learning from him. Ok, it was meeting him virtually however on the final day he actually picked me out of the sea of 1000 faces on zoom and said a genuine ‘Hi’ to me with a wave. Even though he couldn’t pronounce my name correctly 😂it felt great that he spoke directly to me 😎. 

Anyway, enough hero worshipping. Having come out of his business masterclass with literally hundreds of game changing ideas I thought it would be great to share one of them in this post. The ideas and tactics shared were not specifically being directed to people in property but the beauty of what Darren was teaching is that it can be applied to literally any kind of business, if you take the time to connect the dots. So, I wanted to share just one of the simple ideas to both reinforce it for myself, and so that it may help some others out there. 

A large proportion of my notes came out of the 12 point plan Darren shared for garnering enthusiastic, repeated and consistent referrals. No matter what aspect of property you are in, it will involve people and by virtue of that, wouldn’t you rather have people refer new business to you rather than the heavy legwork of originating cold new business?

To that end, the essence of the first 3 points are:

#1: Deliver baseline expectations

#2: Overdeliver

#3: Create a WOW Culture

There are a handful of different avenues to our property business but to share an example of how I am applying these points to our Serviced Accommodation business, here are some thoughts.

1 – Baseline expectations

Before getting into anything else, the fundamentals of what you offer have to be good. Darren shared an insight from the Ritz Carlton Hotel – they found that if the first 4 points of contact that a customer has are all good then there will virtually be no complaints (ie those first 4 could be the doorman, the receptionist, the concierge and possibly a housekeeping member in a corridor). If however, one of those points of contact go badly, a judgement is made and then a guest will subconsciously be looking for negatives to back up that judgement.

So, knowing that first impressions are so critical it really focused my mind on going back through our SA customer journey to look at where this can be improved. 

How could you improve first impressions by making things faster, simpler, easier and safer in your business?

2) Overdeliver

I noted this distinction from Darren, ‘Customer service is reactive, customer experience is proactive’. He shared some powerful statistics to prove that small increases in customer satisfaction can lead to big improvements in profitability over time. We need to WOW and the ‘WOW is in the relationship, not the product’.

Again, some great examples were shared from the Hotel industry – the Ritz Carlton sending a child’s lost teddy back to him overnight along with a series of photos making it look like the teddy had an extra day on holiday doing fun things at the hotel; then a budget hotel in Hollywood had rave reviews from guests and huge repeat bookings because of how they delighted young kids with unexpected free poolside snacks and ice creams.

3) Creating a WOW – Culture

This is about a shift in mindset, it’s about every team member understanding that first and foremost they are in marketing, branding and customer experience. 

So the practical application for me and the team is to map out all of our customer touchpoints to audit where we stand and define what the baseline expectation needs to be. Literally looking at everything from our messaging, to our invoicing, the check in, the mid-stay check-in, you get the idea. Once all mapped out and audited we can then look at how we can PLUS each touchpoint, in other words add ‘micro’ wows.

In terms of the culture, it’s then about constantly discussing this in our weekly meetings and empowering the team with the tools and budget to offer up wow moments both proactively and reactively. You see, it’s all about people 😊.

Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. I have over 100 pages of notes to filter through so I can then organise and prioritise the first three to put into action. 

What will you do to weave some WOW into your property business?

Here’s what got me thinking this week – the concept of asymmetric risk reward and how it might be applied to property.

I was watching an interview with Tony Robbins discussing financial success principles where he was highlighting some common findings having interviewed 50 of the smartest and most successful financial people in the world.

He said, ‘they are all obsessed with this idea of having the least amount of risk with the most amount of return’. That right there caught my attention, that’s what we all want in property too right?

They call it ASYMMETRIC RISK REWARD – Here’s a google definition of it ‘An asymmetric payoff (also called an asymmetric return) is the set of possible results of an investment strategy where the upside potential is greater than the downside risk.’ 

Tony referenced billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones who doesn’t just look for a ‘nice return’, he looks for a risk return ratio of 5:1, in other words if he risks $1 he can make $5. He knows he’s going to be wrong sometimes but he understands that he can risk not making money up to four out of five dollars and still make money overall. 

That thinking and that approach puts you in a very different position to most people.

Another example of asymmetric returns that Tony referenced was the way Richard Branson set up Virgin Atlantic. In those early days he invested a year in negotiating the first 5 Boeing jets so there was no downside. Here’s how- if in the first 3 years he didn’t succeed with his airline, he negotiated a deal to give back the planes with no loss to him. So it was all upside potential and minimal downside.

We may not always be able to find a 5:1 ratio but the main thing is to force ourselves to think differently from the ‘average’ investor.

This quarter Chris and I are working on our strategy for growing our build to rent (BTR) portfolio. We see this as a great way to create the long term rental asset base that we would like to hold.

A conversation with a developer friend at the start of the week reminded me that with BTR, even if your aim is to build a profitable asset base to hold long term, the best outcome may actually be to sell up to 4 out of every 5 developments. Interestingly, this friend comes from a hedge fund background so on reflection I can see how the thinking ties in with this concept of asymmetric risk reward. In other words not, all the BTR opportunities we identify will meet our criteria for holding, but when it meets the criteria for other long term investors then it makes sense to build-to-rent-to sell. So rather than narrowly focusing on the one exit of us holding and passing up on lots of potential deals, if we open our mind to this way of thinking we can increase the upside and minimise the downside.

The key message/reminder for us all in property is to look for ways to engineer asymmetric rewards by maximising the upside and protecting the downside. The simplest way to protect the downside of course is to have multiple exits. Even better is to line up your primary exit with commitment in advance (ie a pre-let agreement, a booking agreement etc) AND give yourselves multiple alternative exits. By doing that we really can create asymmetric risk reward ratios in property.

What are you already doing, or can you do, in your property business to create asymmetric returns?

Does your mind tend to overcomplicate or overthink things? What about when it comes to your property investing business- whether it be starting a new strategy or growing to the next level, does your mind over complicate or over think it? I certainly have done (and occasionally still do 😊). So, if you can relate, I hope this question I’m about to share helps you reframe things. 

Here’s where it came from – One little question buried inside a 16 minute podcast really jumped out and caught my attention this week. I had to pause my gym session, grab my phone and type out a quick few notes. 

I was listening to Pat Flynn talking about how he’s been able to succeed in the endeavours he’s chosen to focus on. In his 5 point summary about that he referenced a question credited to Tim Ferriss and that’s the one that got me thinking about it’s application in property. 

Here’s that brilliant question – “IF THIS WERE EASY, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?”

This reframe helps to counter over complication. So when the subconscious mind slips into overcomplicating things making things harder than they need to be, this question helps you to refocus on not just how am i going to get this done, but what are the simple ways or easy methods to do so. 

The reason I love this question is because it reframes the mind to get you thinking about what the minimum things are you can do to get the maximum results. This isn’t to say we’re lazy and looking for the laziest way to get there. In most worthwhile pursuits we’re probably going to have to work really hard but the key here is to direct that hard work at understanding what are the first dominos I should knock over that will push all the other dominoes forward.  

So in the context of starting a property strategy, you could be asking yourself, what are the highest leverage first steps I can take to get this flywheel moving?

By way of a quick practical example, when I think about how ‘IF THIS WERE EASY WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?” applies to SA, what I see is having the demand piece of the equation sorted in advance. When you have found the end user demand, and you’ve established some commitment for an accommodation solution, then the rest is relatively easy. The rest of the equation can slot into place far more easily than if you were basing decisions on hope and guesswork. When you have validated the guest demand it will inform you exactly where the property needs to be, what price point it needs to be, what kind of spec the property will need and what kind of service offering you’ll need to go with it. 

Without that key piece of the puzzle, SA can feel incredibly difficult to get started without some expensive mistakes. I’m talking from personal painful experience here [and I’ve written about it in detail in my book Predictable Property Profits] – all about how starting with demand made our second SA business far easier than the first one, which was based on guesswork.

So how else could you apply this powerful question to your property business?

If starting and growing a property business were easy, what would it look like? Some of the answers that come up for me are:

-learning how to do the thing from someone who’s already done it and got the results you want

-having regular coaching and accountability to keep you executing on the right things

-using the right power team experts to keep you safe – ie architect, solicitor, accountant, broker etc

-leveraging other people to help you get more done ie team members, VAs, freelancers, agencies

So I’m curious to read what comes up for others (and I hope this prompts some creative thinking and reframed perspectives) – in the context of your property business, ‘IF IT WERE EASY WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?”

Whatever sage you’re at with your property endeavours, do you ever stop and think to yourself, I thought I’d be further along the journey to success by now?

I’d make an educated guess that anyone in property reading this will have felt this at some point, or is possibly feeling this now. I know this because I’ve felt it on many occasions and continue to feel it. 

For many, property education goes hand in hand with the results – courses, mentorships, books, podcasts etc. So why can it feel like the reality of success lags behind the rate of learning and education?

I’ve been working through a Darren Hardy leadership course and in the Q&A one of the other delegates asked the following question to him-

Why does it always feel like my success is constantly playing catch up to my learning and development? 

Does this mean I’m overestimating myself or possibly down playing my progress and achievements, or is the problem something else?

If you can relate at all with this question then this post is for you. Darren delivered such a great answer that I had to write it down and share it because I know that others will need to hear this right now. He quotes Jim Rohn for most of his response so I’m going to quote and paraphrase both Darren and Jim Rohn for the rest of this short post.

Jim taught him that,  “There are 2 qualities that can increase your chances of success:

#1 Patience

#2 Persistence

Jim would call patience “learning to handle the passing of time”. Once you have the appetite for success, and you start going for it, now you’ve got to handle the passing of time. Here’s why…IT TAKES TIME. It takes time to build a corporate work of art that impacts the lives of many. It takes time to build a successful life. 

Here’s the ultimate challenge – you’ve got to have patience, first with yourself.

Lack of patience is probably the worst enemy of ambition. While your ambition keeps growing, keeps moving, keeps looking for new ways to succeed, impatience tends to grow frustrated. Impatience won’t allow for persistence. Impatience wants to give up. Impatience calls the temporary discouragement ‘failure’, but your ambition won’t let you give up so easily. Not if you’re persistent. What others might call failure, ambition calls ‘learning, growing and making progress’, a chance to make adjustments along the charted course towards success. 

Ambition knows there’s something else to this. It knows that the longer an achievement is in the coming, the more patience and persistence are required, and because of it, the more valued and valuable the achievement is. 

Here’s the underlying message – Just keep moving through the struggle of persistence and patience. Give your proverbial caterpillar the time it needs to go through the metamorphosis to become the beautiful and amazing butterfly it was intended to be.”

I do hope that these words serve to remind you to keep making that incremental progress, knowing that behind it all the metamorphosis is happening – you are becoming more!