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.