Us humans often need to hear things multiple times before we heed the advice. Just think how many times we’ve heard healthy eating and exercise advice…In many cases we need to hear the same message but packaged in different ways before it sinks in and we action it.
What about in the property investing space- what wisdom or advice did you hear several times before actioning it? Or what about advice you’ve heard but are yet to implement?
There’s a particular time proven business principle that has effectively been applied to start and grow businesses for decades that I feel many property investors are missing out on. By my own admission, I was one of those property investors up until a few short years ago.
Making some mistakes in property, combined with looking back and connecting dots from my past business life is what eventually allowed me to hear and see the wisdom that we applied to completely transform our property business.
Here’s that simple principle now – the fundamental core of an income stream comes down to a CUSTOMER using a MECHANISM of some kind to get a desired end RESULT.
And here’s a simple example:
A beginner guitar player (customer) wants to learn popular songs that will entertain their friends (end result) so they invest in guitar lessons (mechanism).
Here’s a property example from our world in serviced accommodation:
Construction company (customer) wants to deliver a project on time and with decent profit (end result) and a small but critical part of delivering that is to have their own skilled guys who aren’t local to the project, accommodated in a home from home environment near to the site and within a certain budget (mechanism).
In most forms of business, we don’t get to decide what works, our customers do. Some products and services will do ok, others won’t take off at all and others will really fly. When we can pinpoint the thing that really works, that’s where we have to focus and double down.
Going back the fundamental income stream model of CUSTOMER : MECHANISM : RESULT, we can shortcut the offerings that don’t work or just do OK by focusing on the CUSTOMER first.
The majority of property investors are way too focused on the MECHANISM ie they find the property first, and then try to find a customer and a result for that property. This is exactly where we were going wrong a few years ago.
By switching to focus on the CUSTOMER first, we can understand upfront what end result they want and what kind property offering would serve as the best mechanism to deliver that result. Makes total sense, doesn’t it? (Hence the choice of quote from Steve Jobs).
It’s not rocket science and it’s certainly not anything new, successful property people have been applying an approach like this for years, but then so many haven’t. That’s why I chose to write my first book on this simple yet super powerful approach to property investing, it’s called PREDICTABLE PROPERTY PROFITS – 4 Simple Steps to Remove Guesswork and Get More Certainty In Your Property Deals.
If this isn’t your natural approach to property, if you are always starting with the MECHANISM (ie the property) then this is what I’m referring to by ‘training your property entrepreneur brain’. We absolutely can train our minds to flip the script and look at our property investing with a different starting point – the CUSTOMER. Doing this will give you so much more certainty and far better returns.
Just this week, one of the delegates in our group coaching call asked a question related to possibly setting up a serviced office investment for the first time. And you know what, by looking at things through the perspective I’ve just shared, we were able to map out a plan of action and line of questioning that would lead to the answers he needs.
So I’m curious, what will you do this week to apply the late, great Steve Jobs advice in your property business – ‘start with the customer experience and then work backwards?