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What has been on my mind a LOT is my latest book, called #PropTech. Anyone that is connected to me on social media or on my mailing list will no doubt testify to that! But there is the story of the book and then there is the story of making the book, applying the principles of the book and then the story of the book writer too. So, I intend to share a little bit of all these elements with you today. I do have a purpose though…other than promoting my book, which I am not hiding.
My purpose is to share with you a kind of journey of discovery, insights and application of some new elements into my property business, and equally, some reflections on what this has meant to me personally too. Then, you can hopefully apply some of these reflections to your property business too as they are transferable.
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Resources mentioned
Property Deal Tips & How to Reach me By Telephone
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#PropTech: A guide to how property technology is changing how we live, work and invest – a link to the latest book.
Property Investor Toolkit – here is the book link on amazon.co.uk & amazon.com in case you would like to get yourself a copy to accompany this series
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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.
What has been on my mind a LOT is my latest book, called #PropTech. Anyone that is connected to me on social media or on my mailing list will no doubt testify to that!
But there is the story of the book and then there is the story of making the book, applying the principles of the book and then the story of the book writer too. So, I intend to share a little bit of all these elements with you today. I do have a purpose though…other than promoting my book, which I am not hiding.
My purpose is to share with you a kind of journey of discovery, insights and application of some new elements into my property business, and equally, some reflections on what this has meant to me personally too. Then, you can hopefully apply some of these reflections to your property business too as they are transferable.
That’s it, so let’s go right now then
Property Chatter
2018 was not just a year marked in my calendar; it also marked the end-to-end duration of a project in learning, sharing and applying property technology or #PropTech.
First came The Property Voice Podcast PropTech series, so I am assuming you already know about that and will, therefore, skip some of what I had to say about that from a content point of view.
What was perhaps extraordinary is the amount of planning, connecting, administering and general communication with arranging 17 special guests that can hopefully help to paint the picture or tell the story that you have not even formed in your own head yet. When I started this journey into PropTech or property technology at the end of 2017, I was just curious, yet quite ignorant of all that it entails. So, the last year has meant I became a student of sorts, learning at perhaps one or two steps ahead of some of you and relying on some pretty big brains to help both you and I make sense of all this PropTech stuff.
To confess, I have heard a couple of people say things like ‘I would not usually get into this subject’, or that they found the content heavy-going at times. This is hardly a surprise, as most of it is by definition technical, brand new or very recent and in many ways seems quite alien compared to the simplicity of buying a property to sell on or rent out to a tenant in the time-honoured tradition of property investment.
However, I will say this…do you think the traditional retail sector with its demise leading to ghost town High Streets and rethinking of the out of town retail park model saw the threat to their business posed by the likes of Amazon? Many did not, several did not even react once the trend of online shopping was firmly rooted and so they paid the price with store closures, lease defaults and even bankruptcy.
Therefore, my quest has been to alert us all to what is coming, so that we can each be prepared for when the equivalent of Amazon, or a collection of mini-Amazons, starts to shake our established, traditional and slow-change world of property too.
I am very grateful that 17 smart people chose to share their knowledge and experience with all of us over the first half of 2018, therefore.
The second half of 2018 was all about turning what I had learned into another format, which could be an aid or reference, not only to what is coming but also to what is here and available right now. I will return to the process of writing and publishing the book later. In the meantime, I wanted to pause briefly to share some of the practical ways in which I have personally changed or adapted my own property business as a result of the same insights and knowledge that I and my guests on the last series shared.
Here are some practical examples of how I have applied aspects of PropTech through what I learned in 2018:
- Introduced alternative energy sources into projects - I am now an energy supplier in some of my properties! This is green and also profitable!
- I now Lay Cat 5 cabling inside the walls of HMOs and serviced accommodation during their conversion to ensure that each room has fast hard-wired, super-fast, Internet access. This future-proofs my investment and keeps my customers i.e. tenants and guests, happy too.
- I have now used or considering using alternative building methods, such as timber frame and pre-fab pods in the garden, which has saved me money and time.
- I was seriously considering AI property management and so-wanted to be a guinea pig with AskPorter's robot property manager, but it looks like I will have to join in their second or third wave, sadly. There is a better and more cost-effective alternative of using AI instead of expensive agents and staffing up my own management property company.
- Keyless access for serviced accommodation – I love the way that key-less audio-visual, remote access entry systems, managed on your smartphone from halfway around the world are now possible for just a few hundred quid!
- I have used DIY rental property listings through new online tech and apps, such as HomeRenter and upad, which makes self-management a more viable and cost-effective option; a defensive response in these S24-profit squeezed days.
- The world of FinTech is literally exploding. I have invested in PropTech start-ups. Used crowdfunding sites, invested in Cryptocurrency and love to look at what the specialist PropTech VCs are getting into now. This means it is now possible to have access to investments and funding channels not really possible or widespread just a couple of years ago.
- I am now in the process of deploying remote monitored, motion-detection CCTV for a vacant site - insurers place restrictions and policy conditions where a property is empty pending works, not to mention the risk, cost and delay to the property and project of theft or damage. So, technological solutions, such as this can deliver a security solution remotely as lower cost compared to physical on-site security. I was asked to pay £1,000 per WEEK for some fencing and a periodic security patrol, so this cost takes a significant chunk out of a development budget I can tell you.
- Utilising big data in my property searches - sites like Land Insight can sift through large amounts of data to serve-up opportunities to pursue at reduced time input, thus reducing sourcing time and cost.
- Plus, and to limit the list to just 10, I have extended the use of other PropTech resources that I already used, such as digital signatures, e-learning, mobile banking and offshore staffing to name just a few.
In other words, some of these applications were not even in my conscious mind a year ago, let alone being considered for implementation in my property business!
Had I not deployed these PropTech advances, I would have lost time, money, deals, tenants and both clients and investors I believe. So, these advances are enabling and fuelling the growth, service and profitability of my property business and providing me with a competitive advantage too.
And, do you know what…I am still only scratching the surface of what is possible out there! That’s both scary and inspiring at the same time. You see, I have no intention of becoming the Dodo awaiting extinction because I cannot fly with the eagles out there…how about you?
So, returning to the book writing and publishing process what are my reflections? Well, if you have ever published a book will know that writing the book is literally less than half the story. Research, interviews, fact-checking, proof-reading, graphics and design, file conversion, printing, publishing platforms, promotion and several other elements eat up lots of time and stretch you out of your comfort zone as a content creator or investor looking to become a content creator.
I had to overcome writer’s block, or procrastination to give it its correct term, deal with family squabbles (my daughter did the graphic design), a host of technical issues, such as formatting incompatibility across different applications and dealing with publisher restrictions, the threat of a missed deadline and hence one of my goals for the year, additional costs to get things done and in some cases redone too, deal with stress, more work than the usual routine or day job entails and something new to learn, digest and apply literally every week. It is not easy and that’s why not that many people ever get that book that’s in them out of them.
Was it all worth it? I would say yes it was it was.
You might think that PropTech is not ‘your thing’ and you might find the topic ‘heavy going’. However, that person that said it wasn’t their thing has also said they took away some ideas to implement into their business too, so it had an end-benefit that can be directly applied immediately, let’s not forget that.
Clearly, for me personally, I made it more than just a head-knowledge project and have actively applied much of what I discovered along the way and that is definitely a tangible plus from the effort of the last year.
Then, I get to call myself a twice-published author too! My first book was an Amazon Best-Seller and if you want to help me achieve that same result with the second book on PropTech, then there is an easy way to do that isn’t there?
To make it super easy, there is a special price offer running, although only until this Saturday 19th January, where you can get the book for just £2.99 in Kindle format. The paperback comes in two editions; black and white or full-colour. Now, if you are really smart, you will already have bought or will now buy my first book Property Investor Toolkit. Here’s why.
All you have to do is register for the book bonuses for the Toolkit book and then I will tell you how you can even buy the full-colour version of the #PropTech book, which retails at £17.50 for the next couple of days for just £1. The black and white version retails at £7.99, but that’s available for just £2.99…the same price as the Kindle special offer price and with both of these books you also get a PDF version if you prefer to read digitally.
So, you don’t have much time to take advantage of these super offers, which are carefully designed to reward loyal, action-takers, so what are you waiting for? If you want to feel good about the purchase, all book royalties go towards the cost of running The Property Voice, so you are supporting a good cause in the process.
Before I finish, there is another aspect of this process that really struck me as I thought about what to share with you today. That is solitude. Writing by definition requires long periods of time alone and that’s a kind of parallel to being a property investor too you know.
In fact, I was speaking to both existing and new TPV Apprentices about this just last week. Having support and accountability is often not as valued as time, know-how and money in this business. However, we are humans and so are designed to interact.
In the process of writing the book, I had people around me for lots of aspects of the project, so this helped to push me forward and achieve better results than if I had been completely alone I am certain. However, this is my takeaway point really that perhaps you can apply to your property journey more widely, even if you are not considering writing a book.
Getting some support and accountability around you can help to drive you forward and achieve more with fewer resources and in less time, trust me on that. So, no heavy sell or push in a specific way, as some of you have already reached out to me about this topic. Suffice to say that I have already filled a couple of seats on the next TPV Apprenticeship, which starts in March, with no promotion or advertising at all. Although, there are just one or at a push two more spots open for that intake now if you want to be considered for the next programme. There’s plenty of support and accountability in the programme I can assure you. Enough said.
Overall then, it's been really interesting how through this book-publishing process has changed certain aspects of how I now operate as a landlord/investor myself. It's amazing how developments in PropTech is progressing and the process of writing the book has helped me, not only to see these changes but to apply many of them, even as a potential 'property dinosaur' too!
How could the #PropTech book help you as a property investor, developer, industry service provider or homeowner? Well, perhaps Dan Hughes or @PropertyDan on Twitter, summed it up the best when he said...
Technology will change real estate and however you react to it, you must understand what is going on. This book will help you to do just that.
Whether you buy the book or not, I strongly suggest that you stay aware of what is coming in terms of property technology, as I am convinced that it will have a significant impact on our industry over the next 5-10 years and if you have that sort of time-horizon, you will need to respond that’s for sure!
OK, so that’s me done for another. Don’t forget the show notes are available our website www.thepropertyvoice.net. Or, 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!
All that is left to say, is thank you very much for listening once again this week and until next time on The Property Voice Podcast…it’s ciao-ciao.