I’m riding the Virgin East Coast train back home for the second time this week after two great property meet-ups.
Tuesday was our monthly Development Discovery meeting in Sheffield where we got together for group work on progressing our development site in the south coast. Next step will be a site visit and meeting with the architect about revised drawings to optimise our site – very exciting.
As of now, Chris and I have literally just left a brilliant weekend ECA event (Elite Cashflow Accelerator) with our Progressive VIP tribe so we could catch our train back to Edinburgh. Our heads buzzing with ideas, inspiration and excitement for next steps. Here’s a few highlights of the speakers and some of their wisdom that resonated with me:
- Samantha Brown on the power of networking – 1) have a 20 second intro prepared that you can use when at networking events that covers name & company, something relevant you’ve done this week, something specific about what you do/offer and something to build intrigue in what you do. 2) Mindset re-frame – don’t see networking as ‘getting out of your comfort zone’ but rather ‘INTO THE ADVENTURE ZONE’.
- Shaz Nawaz – ‘Every man is entitled to order his affairs so that the tax is less than it otherwise would be’- actually a quote from Lord Tomlin but neatly captures the essence of what Shaz can help us do.
- David Clouter – brilliant talk, what a career to learn from -in addition to giving us a brief history of the money and the banking system he left us with 15.5 millionaire hacks – my favourite is point #9 INSPIRE TRUST – deliver on promises, make win win situations, be honest at all times, admit mistakes, keep confidences, share credit and acknowledge contributions.
- Lloyd Girardi and Andi Cook – wow – three yrs, 116 properties built/in the pipeline, £20M GDV, £120K/mth cashflow. Lloyd’s mindset reframe – analogy of a jigsaw puzzle dropped on the floor being like property development – the pieces facing up that we can see are like the pieces of the process we know, the pieces facing down that we can’t see are like the parts of development we have no idea about but can fill the gap with the right education and power team. Instead of struggling to find BMV property, why not do BBMV ie build below market value.
- Mark Homer – shared with us some inspiring case studies of big commercial conversion projects he’s completed and is working on – many great nuggets of wisdom shared in relation to focusing on one geographical area so you learn what works and test the market by starting with smaller projects and then scaling the model up, increasing density, clever design to add rooms where no immediate windows exist, business rate tips and so much more..
- Jamie Madill – The secret sauce to raising £10m in JV funds …… run your own property event.
- Dillon Dhanecha – loved Dillon’s humorous story of mistakes and lessons on his journey to make a difference and feel fulfilled, really resonated – an inspiring message around bridging the gap between commercial profit and social impact. He firmly believes that no investor should ever run out of cash so he shared with us his model to consistently turn assets into sales, into profit and into cash.
- Liam Ryan – 2016 VIP of the year inspired us with a summary overview of the Business Income Blueprint system created and refined over the years by Rob and Mark to help them build a business that generates over £30M revenue.
- Terry Waite CBE – wow, we were privileged and moved to hear Terry’s story of surviving five years being held captive in Lebanon. In that period of extreme difficulty he chose to never give up hope. He shared that suffering is part of life but suffering need not destroy. Out of it can come something creative and brilliant. What an inspirational man to reflect on his experience in such a way!
- David Siegler – was our brilliant and witty presenter who seamlessly hosted the weekend for us- thank you.
Huge thanks again to David, Hannah, all the excellent speakers and to all the Progressive team for a brilliant event. So great to meet so many awesome fellow VIP’s and thank you for having us on stage to share some of our journey so far.
Here’s to everyone’s continued success.