Join me, along with my guest, Cara Cunniff, in the final podcast of the year, as we talk systems and processes in your property business. Discover the difference between an automated system and a manual one. Understand the difference between Vital and Functional tasks. Plus, there's the 4 steps to set up an efficient and effective system or process cheat sheet to giveaway too!
Then, if you want to start off 2020 with a bang, have a listen out for two ways where I could help. The first is a 21-day habits & routine challenge in January and the second is a seat on the TPV Apprentice Programme in 2020.
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Giveaways mentioned by Cara can be obtained by dropping us an email podcast@thepropertyvoice.net with Cara Cunniff Resources in the title.
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Transcription of the show
Join me, along with my guest, Cara Cunniff, in the final podcast of the year, as we talk systems and processes in your property business. Discover the difference between an automated system and a manual one. Understand the difference between Vital and Functional tasks. Plus, there's the 4 steps to set up an efficient and effective system or process cheat sheet to giveaway too!
Then, if you want to start off 2020 with a bang, have a listen out for two ways where I could help. The first is a 21-day habits & routine challenge in January and the second is a seat on the TPV Apprentice Programme in 2020.
Property Chatter
Transcription of the Show
- Hi, everyone, Richard Brown, obviously, the Property Voice, with my property buddy Cara Cunniff, and Cara, welcome back.
- Thank you, Richard, nice to be here.
- Yeah, it's great. Well, we've just had a conversation about setting the scene really about with your own background and also some of the hallmarks and principles that you have in your approach to running your property businesses. So it was a really interesting conversation, and as ever, I think there's lots more we could talk about. I think what'd be really great now is to sort of talk about the system side of things in general terms. I know that's one of your hallmarks, isn't it?
- Absolutely.
- Maybe one or two blended, actually. Do you wanna sort of lead us into that a little bit and take us down into the idea of systems a little bit further? Would that be okay?
- Yeah, absolutely. For me, systems are about precision and about bringing clarity to workflow within an organization, within a person's life, when we're dealing with an investor, it's about identifying processes that an investor will do on a daily, repetitive basis, and potentially, so the system is a set of procedures or a way of doing something that you formalize, and I want to give you an example first of all of switching on the engine of a car. If you imagine switching on the engine of a beautiful BMW, you turn on the engine and you hear this stunning noise that comes out of this car, and it's got rhythm, and it's got cadence, and it's smooth, and it's operating efficiently, and that is a complete system working together. What I'm talking about there is an automated system, it's a system within a car. Within the property industry, we can have the same sorts of systems. So you could have a system whereby it's just how the telephone is answered. You've actually scripted... how you answer the phone.
- Like a greeting.
- Yeah, and then how you respond to the person who's calling. Again, it comes back to managing and measuring, so you're actually measuring the types of calls that you're getting in, and you can do something with that data. That is a very simple system. You can also have automated systems, and it's really important to differentiate between an automated system and a system where there is human engagement. Automated essentially means that you've got some machinery or you've got a computer doing some of the work for you. Now actually, mostly, I would say within the property industry at investor level, at I suppose where you maybe have maybe one, two, three, four people working in an organization, most systems will have some form of human interaction in them, and that's absolutely fine. Somebody has to answer the phone, then they have to have a script and know how to respond to the person calling, and then they will do something with that information.
- So for example, it could be a tenant calling with a repair or something like that.
- Absolutely. Well, actually on that point, and that is something that you can automate, we have a tenant maintenance form, and this is just a link that we set up on Google Drive, we set up a Google Form, and we email this out to our tenants. Our tenants, when they have an issue with their property, they just complete the form, who they are, what the issue is, what the property name is, and we go down into detail, so for example, if it's a fire we give them direct, direct instruction--
- Don't bother filling the rest of the form!
- Don't fill out the form, call 9-9-9. But if it's, and again, same with water or you know, complete power outage. Those are the things where you need to--
- So it's got an escalating sort of--
- Yeah, it's an escalation process. But actually, if it's just something simple as the loo seat's come off, just to complete the form, and every day we check the, so you fill out the form on Google Drive if you're a tenant, and that then comes straight into our system. At nine o'clock every day we check the system to see has there been any maintenance issues.
- You say the system.
- Well, so when I say the system what I actually mean is we have a, our tenant will complete the form and then we will receive a message to say that a maintenance issue has arisen during the night or since nine o'clock the day before.
- Will that populate, like, a Google Sheet or something?
- Yeah, absolutely. It populates Google Sheet, we check it, and then we give our tenants on the form instruction as to that we will come back to them within 24 hours as to either it's rectified or how we're going to deal with it. Actually, this is something that within the military that you hear about, it's called mushroom syndrome, and I don't know if that, do you know that term?
- No.
- No, okay. So mushroom syndrome, if you're under the shadow of the mushroom you don't know what's going on, and I don't know where that's come from, but it's called mushroom syndrome, and essentially if you're under the shadow of the mushroom you don't know what's going on. You absolutely want to know what's going on. So if you're a tenant and you submitted a maintenance issue
- You just need a security on that.
- You want to know someone's dealing with it. It's communication.
- Is that automated? Is it?
- No, that's something actually then I will directly contact. I'll ping a message out to the tenant and say we've liaised with X or Y--
- And here's what's the next step.
- Yeah, the next step. And actually, mostly we set up, and again, this is a system, although it's not an automated system, it is a system whereby my trades deal directly with my tenants because actually, otherwise I just find I'm in the middle and all I'm doing is just relaying information. They speak and I ask both of them to then feed back to me so that I know that the trades did the right thing, and that the trades were also happy with how the relationship was dealt with. It's very important and I think it's fundamental with any system, any business, communication. It is just relationship building. It's the basis of anything.
- Well, if you ever go to any form of counseling, like couples counseling or something like that, I've just admitted that I've done that, but you know, they always talk about communication, and communication you invest in. I think it can be in any sort of relationship. How do you improve the communication? One way is just having an effective system to do that, isn't it?
- Absolutely. You know, that's part of the reason to have a system, it saves time. As long as it's set up well, as long as it's efficient and effective, it actually saves money, and this is something I would like to just mention because I think in the complex environment that we are in, as we mentioned earlier, you know, political, economic, social, and the technological changes that are happening, ah, I lost my train of thought completely.
- You're talking about benefits and how time and money being savings.
- That's right! In the complex environment that we're in at the moment, politically, economically, socially, and technologically, actually, it's really important to also be looking at what's happening in the business because we often look to the outside of the business to make us more money, and obviously that is a way to make more money, but what we can really do is look inward at how we are running our businesses, and I think an example of that, a very good example of that, is Team Sky. I think most people will be aware of--
- They're now INEOS, aren't they, I think? But they were Team Sky.
- Yeah, absolutely. As it were, Team Sky, where they came from, they were looking inwardly at the one percent marginal gains. How can they improve their performances in every little aspect of the bike? The seat position, the gear they were wearing, the helmet, you know, there were lots of issues, I remember, there were lots of issues in the news about how they were doing that, but the principle is there, one percent marginal gains. If you can take that approach and look inwardly at your business, and look at where you can save pennies, because pennies, as we know, make pounds--
- Well, money saved is money earned is what you really need to say. People seem to lose sight of that.
- Absolutely.
- It goes back to your earlier point about your hallmark in protecting the resources, so if you can look after existing assets you don't have to keep growing, growing, growing quite as much.
- I think that's also to do with building strong relationships because we don't often put a cost to our time.
- Ah, right. Glad you brought that up.
- Yeah, you know, that being vital thing again, is where we spend our time is costing us money. Are we working on the high value tasks? Are we really investing in our relationships? So when we are bringing on a new tenant, so building that relationship right at the beginning, as well as bringing on new trades, that first piece is so important in terms of rapport building--
- It sets the scene.
- It absolutely sets the scene, it manages expectations, and time you spend there doing your duty of care to both actually reaps longterm rewards and saves time and saves money.
- So just dwelling a little bit on the time is money thing and valuing that time, do you have a method of quantifying the value of our time? Do you happen to have any tools there at all?
- Yes, I do. One of the things that I use personally is what I call the ideal repetitive week. As we've already discussed, the constant in my world is change, so I have to find as many things that I can do routinely. My husband and I have a sort of mantra in our house which is do the routine things routinely. So actually, it is so simple, and I actually think it's one of James Clear's habits he suggests is to get up and just make your bed. It sounds really simple, but you set the day up, you set the day up really well, and then for me actually, I write a daily journal, and I would seriously--
- You do that morning or evening?
- Yeah, I do that in the morning, and I just kinda put down the thoughts that I've got just, actually often it's a lot of questions. They might be business questions, they might be questions relating to my children, they might be thoughts I had woke up in the middle of the night and had some ideas--
- Yeah, you were getting things thought out of your head.
- I am taking them out of my head. What I'm actually doing there, this is really important, is I'm giving myself the time and space. A lot of the stuff that I do and the work I work with clients on is actually giving back time and space because if you've got time and space and you've removed the noise, it means that you can move forward, and I think we see a mistake that investors make where there's lots of activity, lots and lots of activity because we're really busy and we've got really long to do lists, and actually what we've got to do is prioritize. Having an ideal repetitive week allows you to fill your week out, and you block things out, those things don't move, and some of those things are things like being with your family, being with your friends, because otherwise, why are we doing this?
- Well, the urgent can take over the important--
- Absolutely. What I suggest is first of all you just make a list of all the tasks you've got to do, activities, tasks, whatever you want to call them, but just download, and then--
- So a bit of a brain dump.
- Just a brain dump of everything, and also things that irritate you, things that you're finding annoying.
- Sorry to interrupt you, but do you use a specific tool to do that?
- No, I actually, I like--
- Or is it pen and paper?
- No, I personally use pen and paper, but--
- That's a good system.
- Trello, there are lots of systems out there--
- And Wunderlist, and Basecamp--
- Yes, Basecamp, absolutely. So there are lots of tools out there. Actually, I'm writing a book at the moment and I'm using Trello to map out the book. It's a kinda brain dump, everything, in whatever way, and actually, a really great way is a Dictaphone, or I suppose that's an old word.
- We have the microphone, we have the Memo app on the phone.
- That's right, that's what I meant. You know, voice record, and then even transcribe it. That's something very easy to do, you can use the Control-F on your Mac to record just a list in a Word document, there are loads of ways you can do that. Whatever works for you.
- So just to pause on that, is that speech detects software that you're using?
- Yeah, on the Mac, yeah. I do a lot of dictating online.
- That's funny what equipment is on a PC.
- Oh yes, there'll be something very straightforward.
- They're quite simple, yeah. But I know there's also paid for technology and low cost transcription services, Simon Says, I think is one.
- Yeah, and Temi.
- Rev.com, but you pay for that.
- Well, I think Temi is owned by Rev, and Temi, although the transcription isn't 100 percent, often it does the job, and it's very--
- 'Cause the difference with Rev is they have a human interaction, so they probably use A.I. or something, and then they have a human looking at to refine, sounds like--
- I think it's 10 cents a minute.
- 10 cents a minute? It's a dollar a minute for Rev. I was gonna say on that note--
- Back to you, and I love apps, I love, you know, if I can find something to do it for me, but actually when it comes to making lists I just like pen and paper. I'm a very visual person.
- 'Cause I'm trying to pick out of you some of the tools, and the apps, and things, which I know is not always automated, but just to give some value for people watching this, too.
- I mean, actually, also be checking in time, something like Calendly is another tool if you want people to book meetings with you and you don't want to spend time interacting with them to set those.
- Like a self serve.
- Absolutely. The more you can do that, the more you're offering that time and space, so when you've actually brain dumped--
- So you're doing your brain dump, are you doing that at like, the beginning of the week or something or at the end of the day?
- I do it whenever I feel I need to do it, personally. That might be a brain dump on--
- So not 10 times a day.
- No, not 10 times a day.
- Oh, okay. No, not you, me.
- On a Sunday night that's something I might do, but actually, I also will do a brain dump, so if I'm working on a particular project I'll do a brain dump for the project, and then the next step which is the, there are two things here, firstly, it's really important to write down your irritations, things that are annoying you about the process, because often that's something that needs to be changed, and then write down if it's a vital or a functional. So a V or an F. Is this something you have to do that no one else can do or is this functional, somebody else can support you doing that, which then will free up your time. Then you take your vitals and you populate your repetitive week, and the idea, and it doesn't happen overnight. It might take a couple of months before you've got a week that works for you. The idea is to do the routine things routinely to give you time and space.
- I mean, personally, I guess there's different ways for people to approach this, personally I have what I call a three to five list. I recognize I can't really get more than three to five things done a day, vital things, to your point, so I populate my three to five list, and then there's the rest of the stuff, that probably is the function stuff that you're talking about, and whether I do it or give it to somebody else, at the moment I'm doing too much, but that's a different point, but I have that three to five list. I've also tried chunking out time in my calendar, you know, 'cause I do a lot of writing.
- Does that work for you?
- No, it doesn't work that well for me. But I've taken it now out of the regular working day, so I have chunks of time which is basically I need to be available to other people to enable them, and then I have different parts of the day which are more for me, which are not necessarily during the working day. I have a very fluid way of working, personally. I think some people are much more rigid and pragmatic in the way they work. I'm more of a creative so I need that creative space where I have blocks of time where I can just be and just think, just reserve it. I think it is important to personalize it as it fits you--
- Oh, absolutely.
- You know, I look over, Martin's behind the camera, so I'm just looking directly at him right now, but we've been talking a lot in our Mastermind group about setting up routines and habits on a regular basis. You just got yourself involved in the conversation. But yes, anyway, I didn't want to take you off there, but I think it's really important that we can have a personal routine and habits that we kinda get into, and it's consistent, isn't it?
- It's absolutely about consistency. Just taking you back, when you said that the chunking of time doesn't work for you necessarily all the time, I think it's really important when you're three to five that you also identify the other tasks that you're not doing because actually that's noise, and it sits there going, "Hello! "I'm still here to do. "You still need to do me, "you still need to find someone to do me." So actually finding--
- So we need record both.
- You do need to record both, because actually that other stuff even, you need to find time to do it, or you need to eliminate it. Eliminate, find somebody to do it, or do it.
- For me it's, I forget the right order, delegate, defer, ditch, or last, do is my sort of mantra.
- And it's about consistency, it's actually about doing it. If you don't do it, then nothing's ever gonna change.
- In terms of systems on a practical level, have you got any other tips that perhaps our listeners could maybe utilize, or do you even have any giveaways in this area that maybe you could share with people? I don't know what you're taking in that direction.
- I think what you need to do is identify, there are four easy steps in terms of defining a system, and it's a very high level look at your business. It's about looking at the workflows in your organization, identifying where you could bring in a system, and I actually think this is possibly the hardest piece, is identifying what to systemize. So you need to find the time and space to identify what you can systemize, so property management system, that is the most obvious, where you can hold all your data, where you can have all your property information, where if you need to send somebody some property information you can get to it really quickly--
- Some examples of those?
- So yes, Go Tenant. Yeah, that's a great system. It also helps you with your compliance because it flags up when things--
- Triggers if you have gas safety or you need to renew things like that.
- So you know, again you're removing noise and being able to focus on the things you need to focus on. It's about identifying the systems then identifying the workflow. It's just a question of making a list--
- Just these routine steps.
- Yeah, what has to happen for this system to work, for this process? If you don't like the word system call it a process. Sometimes, if somebody else, you know, if you've got somebody in your team who runs this process, get them to write it down, and then you actually go in and follow their instructions, and if you follow their instructions, are you able to achieve the end result? What I've done is I've put together a cheat sheet on this. I'll send that over to you and you can put that up with this.
- Yeah, I mean if anybody wants that just reach out, drop us an email, the normal email is podcast@propertyvoice.net and we can share that cheat sheet with you. I don't know if there's anything else you particularly wanted to share in terms of the systems area, Cara, at all?
- Just don't be afraid. Embrace change, it's happening. Technology is available, and it is there to help us as long as you use it selectively. It is there to save time, so don't get caught up in the technical element of it. It is there to save time, it is there to help you. I just say just give it a go! Just give it a go.
- Try different things, see what works for you.
- Yeah, and it is personal, but I think it all starts with working out what's vital and what's functional.
- I think that's the biggest takeaway for me, what's vital, what's functional, thank you for that. Cara, how could people connect with you, and what should they say to you? How could you potentially help people?
- You can contact me at cara@propertyprecision.group. So that's cara@propertyprecision.group, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Cara Cunniff, that's two Ns, two Fs, and I have to say that because I get all variety of surnames. That's Cara Cunniff, two Ns, two Fs. We work with people on a one to one, and I'm actually also developing at the moment a webinar series to work with organizations and investors to develop an ecosystem performance to help investors develop a performance business, and this is really focusing on how the business works, how you can look at your one percent marginal gains, and just contact me, say hi, connect, and we can take it from there.
- Sounds great. Well, you know, it's brilliant, I think, yeah, it's in fact vital.
- It is vital! It is, absolutely.
- It's underestimated. And even if you're a so-called small landlord investor with maybe just a couple of properties or something like that, you can still benefit from a degree of systematizations, a degree of automations, so I've been looking forward to getting you sat here, talking for a long time now, so thanks so much Cara--
- Thank you, Richard.
- For making the time. Really appreciate that, and that's been another two property buddies talking about systems and automation, amongst other things. Thanks for watching.
That's all from me this week, remember if you want to talk about anything from today’s show, or just talk property investing more generally, email me at podcast@thepropertyvoice.net, I would be happy to hear from you! The show notes can be found at our website www.thepropertyvoice.net
Thanks very much for listening again this week, so all that left to say is ciao ciao!