It was four years ago this February that things turned around dramatically for our serviced accommodation business (‘our’ referring to Chris and I). Leading up to that point the business we’d started the summer before was in bad shape and actually burning cash rather than making profit.
Why was that? – you might ask.
Well, I have no shame in admitting that it was a business built on guesswork, hope and the sheer volume of summer tourist demand. Come the winter however, we were subsidising the business. Something had to change, and fast…..
Bill Gates said that, “Early success is a lousy teacher”. Well I can attest to that. In the first version of our SA business we certainly weren’t experiencing early success. We were instead experiencing something that many might, who embark on a new property endeavour with a cavalier attitude of hope and guesswork, and that something was a load of painful lessons.
However, that painful experience and associated lessons in the winter of 2016 brought out an incredible resourcefulness in me. It forced me to search hard and dig for solutions. Those solutions came in the form of a simple yet powerful approach to business I had learned a few years prior.
It was applying that approach that led me to starting again, from scratch, and create an SA business in a new location within 45 days, that was profitable from the beginning.
So in a short space of time, it really was a tale of two businesses – one based on guesswork, the other based on predictability and certainty, and I knew which I’d rather have more of.
That ‘pivot’ I referred to all started on 2nd January 2017 with one simple little email to find the demand first- that email I sent started an incredible chain reaction that transformed our property business. It led to several simple yet powerful conversations that saw me securing a 5 month booking before I even had a property to accommodate them. And within 45 days of sending that first email we welcomed a team of contractors to the property in the photograph attached. The rest, as they say, is history. We went on to grow a nice little business that has consistently served both our guests, and us, extremely well since.
If this true story strikes a chord of curiosity and interest, then I invite you to read about it in much more detail in my book Predictable Property Profits (you’ll find it on amazon).
Serviced accommodation is a phenomenal property business to be in whether as your primary focus or as part of your wider property interests. We made more pivots in our business during the early part of the lockdown that has enabled us to operate at phenomenal occupancy over this challenging period. And now all the signs are there for it to be a much more lucrative second half to the year for SA Operators.
So, which property investment strategy would you love to have working for you?
Single lets, HMO’s, serviced accommodation, commercial property, development …. the principles in my book ‘Predictable Property Profits’ apply to them all. You can read in detail about how we and other successful property entrepreneurs have applied these principles across multiple different property strategies.
Whatever stage your investment journey is at, this book can serve you because it’s all about better serving your own end users – your tenants/buyers/guests…whoever your end user may be.