Today marks the end of our Property Heavyweights series, which I shall draw to a close by drawing some conclusions. Over the past couple of months, we have heard from nine titans of our industry. Some have made great strides in a relatively short period of time, although most have been at it for decades. There are some common themes, and yet also some differences or individuality too.
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Transcription of the show
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 on the show again today.
Today marks the end of our Property Heavyweights series, which I shall draw to a close by drawing some conclusions. Over the past couple of months, we have heard from nine titans of our industry. Some have made great strides in a relatively short period of time, although most have been at it for decades. There are some common themes, and yet also some differences or individuality too.
Property Chatter
Over the series, I had the pleasure of talking to nine highly successful property people for this Property Heavyweights series. Our internal selection criteria were that our guests were either at or trending to have an estimated worth of £/$10m or more, generated largely through property-related activities. We did not ask for evidence of net worth, so are not making any claims or statements of our guests’ actual personal wealth here.
So, let’s explore some of the strategies, key takeaways and top tips from each of our property heavyweight guests now.
Ben Habib – Founder & CEO, First Property Group
- Principal Strategy(s): Commercial Property Fund
- Time in the market: 25+ years
- Key Takeaways: Have very clearly written sound investment philosophy & principles. Leveraging ‘other people’s money’ to scale your reach.
- Top Tips: Start young, sacrifice short-term gain for the long-term gain, leverage sooner to scale and steep yourself in financial knowledge.
Zach Aarons – Co-Founder & Partner, Metaprop
- Principal Strategy(s): Business Angel/ Venture Capital Fund
- Time in the market: 10+ years
- Key Takeaways: Hustle (hard work & networking). Amplify your voice (team, partners, marketing, systems and funding).
- Top Tips: Pick a really, really narrow part of the industry be one of the best in the world and then create opportunities from that. Back it up with experience. Your interest must dovetail with your experience. Tell a story that is coherent and resonates with your past, present and future.
Steve Bolton – Founder, Platinum Property Partners
- Principal Strategy(s): HMO Investments and Franchising Business
- Time in the market: 20+ years
- Key Takeaways: Strong moral compass, values and principles, ‘gamify’ yourself to do the things you don’t enjoy, invest in self-development and become an action-taker.
- Top Tips: Everybody with the desire to be more successful, can be! Personal responsibility – we are all self-made…self-made successes or self-made failures. Successful people have successful habits…master forming good habits. This is the one thing that will help you the most. Think, act, behave differently by creating new habits if you want to achieve anything in life.
Joe Lieber – Founder, JL Investment Group
- Principal Strategy(s): High Cashflow Single Family Homes
- Time in the market: 20+ years
- Key Takeaways: A lifestyle by design, not by default. Stay in your lane (stick to what you know). Put your money to work, don’t put yourself to work. Get others to back you by surrounding yourself with wealthy people and then tell them what you do and how they could participate. Take the elevator not the stairs through masterminding and mentoring.
- Top Tips: Don’t be transactional…have recurring revenue. Real Estate is an active, passive investment, but set it up once and it pays you forever. Then, use transactional money for the toys and playthings. It doesn’t happen overnight…just as it doesn’t with becoming a doctor.
Gill Fielding – Founder & CEO, Fielding Financial
- Principal Strategy(s): Portfolio Landlord
- Time in the market: 40+ years
- Key Takeaways: Squirrel away money into savings and investments to ‘delay your gratification’. Initially, focus on income-strategies to generate time freedom, then you can have a ‘fancy pants portfolio’ later. It’s all about mindset…have a life’s mission, have decent core values, set goals, remain positive and learn from all your experiences. 'Money will never solve people’s money problems…it’s altering a wrong belief and understanding about money that will solve their problems. Financial education solves people’s financial problems.'
- Top Tips: There are 3 routes to becoming financially-free: land and property, trading and own business…participate in all 3! Flex strategy depending on the state of the market. Begin with the end in mind, have a clear strategy, make evidence-based decisions, then act unemotionally & professionally.
Reza Merchant – Founder & CEO, The Collective
- Principal Strategy(s): Large-scale Co-Living Communities
- Time in the market: <10 years
- Key Takeaways: Solve people’s pain and problems to develop and grow a business. Financial growth and scale ($700m+ raised to date!) require constant attention. Becoming ‘investable’: a 100% true and sincere belief in what you are doing (resilience); convince others to come with you on this journey and; a sense of purpose – coming from an authentic and pure place. You need clarity: a practical plan, goals and action steps) to achieve them.
- Top Tips: Find experienced people that have been through something similar and bring them on board as advisors and mentors to help shortcut the process. Don’t go halfway…go all-in…with energy, time, finances, etc. Understand the deeper purpose and meaning as to why you are doing something and make that clear to others.
Abraham Bolel – MD, Simple Bridging UK
- Principal Strategy(s): Property Sourcing, Investment & Private Bridging
- Time in the market: 20+ years
- Key Takeaways: Use your experience and expertise to branch out and re-invest the capital this generates into your portfolio. Develop multiple income streams and business interests. Abraham followed an ‘out of the box path’ providing services to investors or ‘selling shovels’, not just investing or developing directly.
- Top Tips: Perseverance is extremely important, don’t quit, even when there are doubts in your mind. Know you have a fire in the belly first and then surround yourself with the right environment and people. Make sure you have the right coach or mentor on board. Even if you don’t succeed, you have at least tried...
Mike Hambright – Founder, Flip Nerd
- Principal Strategy(s): Property Trading
- Time in the market: 10+ years
- Key Takeaways: Mike took control of his destiny and became a real estate investor. He went from flipping around 300 houses to coaching others how to flip around 1,000 houses a year and so leveraged his knowledge and network. Flipping is a very active business, so larger deals allow a little more passivity and concentration of capital and other resources. Experience brings the confidence to make quick decisions, even though problems and challenges will still arise. Take personal responsibility for your own life, nobody will ever be as concerned about your success as you.
- Top Tips: ‘Burn the boats’, so give it a good go, not a half-hearted one. Surround yourself with people that are already doing it as coaches and mentors. Doing deals builds confidence, which improves decision-making, which leads to doing more deals. To avoid the trap of self-employment, introduce people and systems in order to grow a proper business.
John Howard – Property Developer, Trader & Investor
- Principal Strategy(s): Property Trading & Development
- Time in the market: 40+ years
- Key Takeaways: John’s proficiency stems from the purchase and sale of over 3,500 houses, apartments and developments. However, he started out assisting his father in his estate agency business as a boy for around 10 years before doing his first property deal personally. He managed to get financial backers: family and a ‘business angel’. Minimise the time in a deal, as time is everything with trading and development. John has never had a renovation project that has been both on time and on budget!
- Top Tips: It’s easier to buy say 5 properties and make money than just one; this gives you more exit options to make money. A 5% to 10% profit is not enough, netting 20% of total cost should be a minimum to do your deals safely and securely. Adopt the ‘unbreakable rules’: If you can’t resell straight after buying for a profit; if you can’t buy refurb and sell with a profit; or if you can’t buy, refurb, let and refinance and get most of your money back out, don’t buy it! You always need an angle and when lots of people catch onto it, you need to find another one. You must re-invent yourself every couple of years.
I am sure you can see some patterns, along with room for some individuality as well. Perhaps there were some surprising comments too, such as taking personal responsibility for example? Nearly all the guests spoke of the value of educating ourselves and having the right people around us to support, advise and guide. Plenty of personal character traits were also revealed, including having a clear purpose, values and goals too. Then, be persistent, resilient and even go ‘all in’. Mostly, it does take some time…so it’s not a case of get rich quick, despite what some may tell you. These were some of the ingredients of what makes this people property heavyweights.
Do make sure you listen to the individual podcast episodes to hear more of their stories in their own words.
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
All that is left to say, is thank you very much for listening once again this week and until next time on The