This week we launch a brand new series on the podcast. The theme is Property Core Skills and this week is the introduction.
Each week we will cover one of the core skills and there is a chance for you to get involved in the conversation too.
Here are the core skills that we will cover:
1. Finding deals.
2. Finding Funds.
3. Managing Projects.
4. Managing Properties & Portfolios.
5. Managing & Understanding People.
6. Managing Cashflow & Budgets.
7. Research & Analysis.
8. Investment Criteria & Deal Review.
9. Systems & Processes.
10. Marketing & Promotion.
Plus a couple of bonus skills, which I will save until the end!
Make sure you listen in...and why not join in the conversation too?
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Transcription of the show
This week we launch a brand new series on the podcast. The theme is Property Core Skills and this week is the introduction.
Each week we will cover one of the core skills and there is a chance for you to get involved in the conversation too.
Here are the core skills that we will cover:
1. Finding deals.
2. Finding Funds.
3. Managing Projects.
4. Managing Properties & Portfolios.
5. Managing & Understanding People.
6. Managing Cashflow & Budgets.
7. Research & Analysis.
8. Investment Criteria & Deal Review.
9. Systems & Processes.
10. Marketing & Promotion.
Plus a couple of bonus skills, which I will save until the end!
Make sure you listen in...and why not join in the conversation too?
Property Chatter
Welcome to the property voice podcast helping you to navigate safely through the world of property investing, get the lowdown and updates, insights and outcomes on all matters property with a splash of entertainment along the way to a property, voice the voice to trust among the crowd. Now, let's get started with your host, Richard Brown.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the property voice podcast. My name is Richard Brown. And as always, it's a pleasure to have you join me again on the show today. Well, after my sort of four-week hiatus, and going I'm back, I'm back. Obviously, that was two weeks ago, you might be thinking how I mean, it was Richard last week. And, you know, in all honesty, I got, I got caught up again. But you know, I'm gonna tell you that he had a great outcome, a great ending. So you might have missed me or I might have missed, you know, recording for the podcast. But essentially, over the last week, to be honest, over the last 12 weeks, I've been working on along with my business partner on quite a big business acquisition. And the long the short of it is it's, you know, it became a beast, I guess is the is probably the reality, the sort of legal process, the extended due diligence process became very convoluted, very complex, probably unnecessarily So, in all honesty, we'll have a bit of a debrief later work out what we could have done better, what went well, and all that sort of stuff. But essentially, you know, one week roll into the next week was rolled into the next weekend. And it this, this acquisition has really dominated pretty much everything else. So there's a lot of lessons learned, actually, as a result of this process. But I think the biggest lesson of all is Don't, don't do so much legal stuff. Now, the biggest lesson of what probably is actually a big lesson, but the biggest lesson is to maintain rapport, maintain rapport with the vendor with you know, buying a business is much like buying a property, if you can have a good relationship, good rapport with the vendor, the owner, then you stand a better chance of overcoming any sort of tricky bits that pop up. And it does pop up from time to time. And what's really interesting is at the same time is trying to acquire this business was also trying to acquire a block deal. I think it was got the exact number now, but I think it was approximately 12 unit block. Deal. And if I contrast the two, it highlights the point of making very, very well. Because on the business acquisition, the rapport, the direct engagement, the level of understanding and mutual support, yes, people are trying to get the best outcome for themselves. But if you've got a good understanding of one another, you've got a good relationship, you can talk, you can normally get through the problems. And that's what happened with the business which we exchanged on on Thursday last week. It's kind of weird, actually, because we're exchanging and completing, but the delay in between which you don't normally have in the business acquisition. But in this particular case, there's a few things that needed to happen between exchange and completion, to make it more comfortable. So we just said a few days. So we exchanged on Thursday and reduce complete on Tuesday. So by the time you listen to this, it should have been yesterday, all being well. So you know, the I can't tell you too much about it, because we haven't completed. But maybe I'll come back again next week and tell you more about it. And what actually happened right at the right at the end there. So that was great. So but the contrasting is the relationship and the rapport with the owner. Whereas the book deal I was talking about was brought to me by a deal saucer, and I had no direct relationship with the vendor. Really. It was kind of all channeled through the deal, saucer, you know, and I'm not going to say too much about that. But you know it I think he just left a lot open. Let's say that for things to go wrong. And it did they went wrong. The wheels fell off that one and it didn't go ahead. Now I think I did allude to it the last time we spoke as to what happened and you know, perhaps it was a clash of values that happened there. But I think actually, the reason that was probably about our lack of sorry, a clash of values, is because we weren't in direct dialogue. And I always maintained that if you can have conversations, meaningful conversations with decision makers, with owners, then you stand a better chance of everybody getting what they want. Really, that's the longest shoulder. I think in my own personal case, I think I've got good empathy, good understanding can see where people are coming from. I think I'm quite solution orientated person, so quite creative in terms of come Partial structures, financial engineering, if you will. And usually there's a way through most things as long as the as long as people are being reasonable, and, and they don't have totally out of this world expectations, of course, of course, we're in a competitive landscape too. So that comes into the next but thank you. So that's what kept me away from recording the potluck cup. Excuse me, the podcast last week, we had another week extension. And finally, Thursday we, we exchange and then I went for a very long lie down after a nice celebrate every glass of Barolo.
So that was, that was really good. Anyway, so I'm back. And I'm just launching the new series, I think, because I don't launch it, it's just not gonna happen. So today's very much an introduction. The the series is going to be called property core skills. And it's a bit of a throwback, in a way to the very first series of the property voice podcast. But things have evolved and changed, I've matured, see things differently. And this list of core skills that we're going to run through over the next few weeks, they they've also taken shape and evolved over time as well, probably when I sat down, I wouldn't have been able to name the tenants will have. And I do say 10, or 12 of these core skills, you don't necessarily need to have all of them all at the same time, by the way, so don't get too worried by that statement. But you don't need to have all of them the same time. And perhaps when I started out, I perhaps had a different view outlook. Certainly then. And when I was sharing my first series, I came at it from a slightly different perspective, I call it foundations, foundations in prophecy or actually can't remember what it was called now. But it was something of that order. And this is similar, but not the same. So I was talking about the fact I've been six years into the podcast. So it's kind of good to go back to basics, back to the one on one level. And for everyone, by the way, because I don't plan to just talk about the basics of these core skills, probably going to open up a little bit further. And what's really encouraged me to do this is on the current apprentice program. The current apprentices have really been hungry for more content, and was a lot of it, you know, it's a slow reveal. It's a process. And a lot of the the sharing was going to be more back ended. But they they were hungry for content earlier in the process. And so we reject the program round a bit, we normally have an end of program workshop, and some of the content goes into that. And so what we decided to do with our encouragement was to redesign the program effectively around their needs. And what we did instead is we took away a large part of the end of program workshop, and we created master classes and deal clinics instead. So why am I telling you this? Well, the reason I'm telling you this is because I recognized the need if you like for people to get to grips with these core skills, obviously, it's been something I've been talking about through the apprentice program. And for the ones who ones that, you know, that we talk with with the individual apprentices as we progress through it is a journey, and it can be really overwhelming. So it has to be a little bit of a slow reveal has to be tailor made to the interests of the of the people. Because there's quite a lot of content, quite honestly. And you know, property is very much like peeling an onion, it's one layer at a time. But there's another layer underneath, you know, or Russian door, you open the door, there's another door, you open the door, there's another door. I've used those sort of analogies before if you've listened to me for any period of time, apologies for repeating. But so I think it was this hungriness of people to get to grips with these core competencies. And those realizing that, you know, kind of has some general principles around them.
I hadn't really kind of codified them if you like. But, you know, I started to when we started to share these master classes, what can I share? How can I share this content? How can I get what's inside my head? What's all this, you know, 12 years of experience or whatever, in multiple countries, multiple strategies, the sort of engagement I've had with a variety of different people, how can I get it all out in a way that is understandable and digestible, for this, for this, this group that I'm working with? And then I thought, well, let's share it more widely. So that's what's you know, spurred and motivated and incentivized, and given rise to this new series. Now, originally, I was going to call these the core competencies, property and there were there were 1.8, and then it became nine and then became 10. And there are, I don't think it's gonna get much more than that. There's two bonus core competencies, and I'll talk about why I'm going to rename core competencies in a second but there's a couple of extra ones there which I'm going to call bonuses. And they they sort of undermine undermine No, that's not the right word. They underpin the independent or like all of the other ones in a way Well, I'm gonna say those two last. So, as I mentioned core competencies, and my, my wife is a very senior HR Human Resources professional. And anyone who's worked with HR in any way, whether you're in HR, or whether you're a manager, and you work with HR, you might have heard the term core competencies. And if you've ever been through those horrible interviews, where they ask you what they call competency based questions, they go tell us a situation when this happened, and how did you deal with it, that's demonstrating your competencies, which usually aligned to the role that you're trying to fulfill. So it's an interview technique, HR people use it, they identify core competencies, core skills of a particular role. And then when they're interviewing people, they're trying to find out if they've got those skills or not. And that helps them to, you know, get a good fit for the role. So that's where it came from. So you can kind of blame my wife.
But she, you know, she's, she talks about this, you know, leadership development, in particular culture, transformation, core competencies, etc. So she's, we have those sort of conversations at home. But core competencies is not really catchy is it's not a catchy title. So I'm going to call it property core skills, it's also a little bit shorter. And we're going to run through that, thank you very much, giving you an introduction today, not going to go too deeply into it, I'll probably name the 10, the top 10 of these skills. And then what I plan to do over the next few weeks, is to share some of the best practice some of the general principles that I could, you know, share with you. So you just got a we can elaborate a little bit, basically into each one each week. But the second thing I'd really like to do, I think I was thinking about this, you know, thoughts come to you in the shower or just at random places, right? Well, I was having a shower, literally. And I thought to myself, well, you know, wouldn't it be great, I want you to get a little bit of interaction going with this particular series. So there's a bit of sharing from me, content sharing. And then I really wanted to get a bit of interaction. So but a discussion. And so what I'm planning to do is this, and you all know, I haven't really fought this for, so I'm going to say it. And hopefully it works. But I'm going to unfold, then unravel these core skills. Over the next weeks of this podcast series. Obviously, I'm going to do a bit of sharing content sharing in, in part, but I want to, I want to get some engagement and dialogue with you. So I'm gonna invite some people from my own community who have been engaged with now. And I'm gonna extend that invitation to you, if you'd like to get involved in a discussion around these core competencies. I'm going to set up Yes, it's a zoom call, I'm going to set up zoom calls, I'm going to put to put the information up on my meetup page, because I haven't really used that for a while. And, you know, I'm just gonna extend the invitation. So if you'd like to get involved, and you'd like to join in the conversation, and when I say join in the conversation, it's conversation is two way. Okay, so I don't pretend to have all the answers, I don't pretend to have all of the best practice solutions in place. And equally, even if something works for me, there may be something else that works better for someone else. And you'll get the picture in a minute when I actually list out the core competencies. So there's an invitation. So if you like to get involved in the dialogue, in the conversation, around prompts, your core skills, of which I'm going to elaborate a little bit in a second, then just connect podcast to the property voice dotnet. It's probably the easiest way if you want to send an email, and I'll be I'll share with you the the links and the times of the the dialogue that we're going to get involved in, bear in mind, it's going to be you know, rolling over every sort of several weeks. So you can get involved in in an earlier session, a later session, maybe more than one session, and try and do it in an area that perhaps you can both give and take in the conversation, contribute as well as take away that is, but equally the same time. I don't mind if people just want to join in and go well, you know, I've got this Richard, what do you suggest type of thing. So if you're a newbie, please feel free to join in. If you're pretty experienced, I really welcome you to join in. And so we can crowd share and knowledge really for the benefit of the audience for the community. First, the purpose of this podcast, after all, is to share knowledge amongst community, I don't have all the answers. I'm hoping that between us I what I've been through and people I know will probably join in and share and in my community and you dear listener can contribute to this conversation. And we could turn into something special, perhaps a little bit of dialogue. So there we go. It's gonna be a bit of a mix and match. So it's going to be sort of a share a content sharing piece, and then maybe the following week or dialogue piece. Let's see how this goes. It could be a complete disaster. Nobody wants to talk. Nobody reaches out and it's just going to be me all on my own. And if that's the way it rolls, that's where it rolls. Okay, so I'm just putting it out there. So reach out to me, as I mentioned, and if you'd like to join in the conversation, and I'd be delighted, delighted to do that, obviously, I can't probably deal with hundreds of people. So they might have to have some kind of way to filter and qualify, people who reach out. So just look out for that. It's nothing personal. It's just that I probably can't have hundreds of people on the call at once, because maybe I can. Well, I think about it. Okay. Anyway, you're probably wondering What on earth are these property core skills that you just been harping on about? What are these core competencies, Richard, and I'm glad you asked that, because I'm going to tell you now. And here we go. So essentially, the top 10. And there's a couple of bonuses, the top 10 as follows. And you'll get the picture quite quickly, that some of them are perhaps more important than others, or more prevalent than others, especially when we're starting out. But they're all important, eventually. Okay. So here we go. First one is finding deals, finding property deals or sourcing now is, you know, the core skill number one. So if you're going to get involved in property in any way, you need some deals, you need a property to invest in to buy to develop it, you know, or even to resell to someone else. If you're offering vendor services or vendor services, investor services, you know, it centers around finding opportunities, finding deals. So that's the first core skill, I'm not going to get into it too much, because that'll probably be the first week we're going to discuss that in a bit more detail. So that's core skill. Number one, core skill number two, kind of complimentary to that very point, is funding deals. So if number one is finding deals, number two is funding deals. And, you know, there's various ways I'm writing a whole bloomin book on it. And it's, it's a monster, I can tell you, it's an absolute monster, I thought there were 30 different strategies, I'm actually just collating a table with all of the different ways in which you could potentially fund a property deal. And some of them are, you know, they're, they're using traditional methods, some of them are alternative methods, and some of them are creative methods. So there's, there's more than 30, I think I've got more than 30 on my list now. So there's like quite a, you know, several dozen ways of funding deals. So that's another core skill. And if you can get familiar with all of those particular ways of funding opportunities, if you've got even awareness of them, it's just going to stand you in better stead. And I'll get into the nuances and the twists of both of those as we get through. So these two really are the heartbeat of any any property investor or property developer, or property service providers, you know, lifeblood, finding deals and funding deals. And even if you're finding deals for the people, the people you're finding, finding the deals for, needs to fund those deals. So you do have to have an interest in that. So there, the top two, they come up time and time again, just before I came on air actually had a quick look at the last three apprentice programs. And we get people to, you know, prioritize their content, and, and get people to prioritize their content around these core skills. And it's no surprise at all, in the last three apprentice programs that the top two or or two out of the top three, Funny enough, not always the top two, the two out of the top three, are finding deals and funding deals. And you know, sooner or later people run out of money, you know, sooner or later, people can't find the right deal. And they need some kind of a new avenue to find it, they're the top two. And then the the next two are kind of similar. Again, this, there's a subtle difference. The third one is managing projects. And the fourth is managing properties. So there's a distinction there. So a project is really when you take on a property that you need to do something to it, usually at the beginning of acquiring it, sometimes it doesn't have to be, but you know, you could have owned a property for a while and then undertake a project sometime down the road. You know, there's a lot of examples we can talk about there. But typically, when you acquire a property, you normally do something, you don't normally but you can, you can do something. And I call that a project. And it's the doing part, excuse me, of something called the property lifecycle. And within the property lifecycle, there is a project phase, before you get to a management phase. So that's, that's how you distinguish. So managing the property is all about tenanting. Looking after with tenants and toilets, as they, as they say, whereas managing a project is some kind of transformation usually doesn't have to be a large transformation, you could just put new carpets in, for example, or put, you know, I was gonna say you can just put, you know, a fridge and other white goods into the kitchen, but that's not really our project. But it's this is the early stages. So that next to the next. The next one is similar really kind of goes hand in hand. It's managing our cash flow and our budgets. And so, managing the cash flow is more sympathetic to managing properties. Managing a budget is more sympathetic to managing a project. Okay, so there's a subtle distinction there in terms of basically looking after the pennies, and looking after the people so that they look after the pennies. So managing our cash flow and our budgets is the next one, call it operating capital or sorry, working capital operating expenditure.
The next two also come together. So there's research and analysis, which is number seven. And there's Indian investment criteria and analysis, which is number eight. And again, there's a slight distinction here. So you've got general research and analysis, which is something about you know, choosing a strategy choosing an area to invest in, so it's more top level. So the seventh one is research and analysis, probably at a top level, how do I choose my strategy? How do I choose which location to invest in, for example, and then the next one is, you know, deal investment criteria and analysis? So how do you actually decide what property? Or what piece of land or what development is the right one to invest in? What are the things that make? Make it you know, right, as opposed to not right? And when I say right or not, right, I mean, right or not, right, according to you, and your criteria, because we, you know, beauties in the eyes of the beholder in the property. And what's a good deal for one person is not necessarily a good deal for the other person, and vice versa. So research and due diligence, top-level, it a deal that deal analysis and criteria, and another level down, we're drilling down a little bit deeper. And then we have a big one, but it isn't always as important on day one. And that's systems and processes. Now, we will have systems and processes, what is the system? Well, going and finding a deal can be a system, finding funds can be a system, you can systemize these things, but you know, there's so there's, we can apply systems and processes to some of the other core skills, but equally, they can stand alone, too. So, and I think, you know, we have that conversation as standalone systems and processes. And that's the hacks, the apps, the time savers, the sort of shortcuts if you like that, that people are using.
And that's number nine, and then number 10, is marketing and promotion. And you might be thinking yourself marketing and promotion. You know, I'm just an investor, I don't need to market promote anything. Well, actually, we kind of do. Because if you're an investor, you need to attract tenants and tenants or customers, at the end of the day, you might be able to sell yourself to you might need to sell yourself to a letting agent or a deal, sorcerer, or any number of you know, tradespeople or contractors as well, Believe it or not, it's a two-way process. But equally, if you're doing this at scale, or if you're attracting investment, or if you have clients that you offer services to marketing and promotion is going to be a core skill that you need to develop and perfect. So let's just take us through the 10. You're finding funding deals, managing the projects, managing properties, and portfolio managing and understanding pianists that will deny managing and understanding people, I think I actually missed it out completely. Yes, the fifth core skill, I'm glad I just did a recap the managing and understanding people. And that includes ourselves, by the way. So relationships. In other words, I should have said more about that. That's ourselves, its tenants, its funders, investors, suppliers, trades professionals, etc. So managing understanding people skipped managing our cash flow in our budgets is number six, research analysis at the top levels, number seven, deal criteria and analysis is number eight, which takes us down a little bit further systems and processes and marketing and promotion. So they're effectively going to be our themes for the next few weeks. And all being well, we'll probably discuss the theme each one of those themes in one week. And then we'll have a conversation. If any of you actually, you know, put your hands up and reach out and join in. And just help out here, please do that. And we'll have a conversation in a second way. Otherwise, we'll just rattle through them. It'll take 10 weeks, and we'll get it all done. And but I kind of want this to be a conversation I really do. So if you're new and just want answers, or if you're more experienced and want to contribute. And well, you know, love to have you involved. Obviously, I'm gonna reach out to some of my own community. Because we've been through this quite a lot. We talk about it quite a lot in our mastermind calls and things like that. So I'm sure there's gonna be a great contribution from some of the usual suspects that I would turn to in this situation, but I'd like to hear from you as well. So please reach out to podcast thepropertyvoice.net if you'd like to take part and just look out for my social media, look out for the meetup page for some of the sort of events of these conversations that are taking place. Now I did mention that there's at least one actually there are two bonus core skills, and I'm going to maybe leave them until the end towards the wrap-up but They are core skills, and they make all the difference. All the difference, just going to sow that seed. I often call it my secret sauce. But it's not a secret, frankly. So don't worry, I'm going to tell you all about those extra two. But I'm going to save it until the end. So you have to stick around. There you go, a little bit of intrigue keeps you in suspense for a little while. I wonder if you can guess why don't you guess? Tell me what you think the extra two bonuses are. And yeah, maybe there's a price for that. I haven't really thought about it. But that's it really, I kind of wanted to open the conversation. invite you to join the conversation. Rather, I wanted to introduce this new series on property core skills and set the scene really, this is the purpose of this first session, set the scene for what's going to fall over the next 10 slashes 20 slashes 24 weeks, depending on how things go. And I'd love for you to take part in this conversation. And with the technology that we've got, we can do zoom calls, and we can record it all and you don't have to say a lot, by the way, but you can participate. I'd love to have you involved. So that's what you're gonna look forward to on the property voice podcast over the next few weeks. Hopefully over the next few weeks. I'm also going to tell you a little bit more about this acquisition I've just made or hopefully just about to make could have an egg on my face, couldn't I because if it all collapses between exchange and completion, then I'm gonna have to back out. But I'm not really imagining that will happen but you never know. You never know. So I guess all I really want to say right now is the show notes are ever going to be over the website, thepropertyvoice.net if you want to take part in this series, reach out to me podcast at thepropertyvoice.net I'd be delighted to hear from you. And I guess all that remains to be said is thanks very much once again this week for tuning in. And until next time on the podcast.
Thank you for listening today. Now head over to thepropertyvoice.net for more inspirational content and get updates through our mailing list. Join us next time on the property boys podcast. And if you enjoyed the show, please don't forget to rate us on iTunes.