Welcome to Me & My Journey

Business is a funny world, I'm two weeks into properly starting to run my own business & I've learned so much.

Hello everyone & welcome to my first blog post for simplyswales, these will usually be in video format but for my first one I wanted to introduce exactly what you can expect from this, as well as tell you a little about what I've done in the last two weeks & what I've learned.

Firstly you guys can expect these posts to be in written or video format where I will share with you all journey to becoming a property millionaire. (I'm just saying that because it sounds cool, I honestly just want to build a successful business that is fully systemised and produces me great passive income, but if we become a millionaire along the way, we won't complain will we :)). Whilst sharing my journey I will offer tips & tricks to help you become not only a successful business owner, but to attain a powerful, positive mindset & much more. As I grow the business you will also potentially see posts from other employees, offering their tips & tricks, as well as their experience from their side of the business, whether that be the numbers side of the business, gathering leads, the interior designs & plenty, plenty more.

So join me in this journey so you can all see a young, ambitious, normal lad from an estate in Leeds build something in the world. So what have I got up two in the few weeks?

Free Property Event in Manchester

I got back home from America three days before the event. I didn't plan to go, mainly because I didn't know about it, but I got an email from Alasdair Cunningham, telling me to secure my free ticket. Now I was part of Alasdair's property launchpad, which includes online training as well as live training events & I thought this free event was only free to me because I was part of this course, so naturally I wanted to get my money's worth & felt obligated to go. Thank goodness I did go!

Property Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Event

This was my first real live event & I didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect the energy to be as high as it was; the room to be filled with likeminded people & the energy in the room to feel completely judgement free. Here more about everything I learned & my complete experience here, in this video. Enjoy!

Agency Malarky with Joe

I got really fortunate that one of the academy ambassadors, Joe, is from Bradford; with me being from Leeds this was perfect. He was up for helping me out by showing me the ropes of going around agencies & building relationships. I got to pick his brain about a lot of different things & it was a top day out. But seriously, some people really don't like people trying to build their own successful business, we literally got thrown out of one place & verbally attacked! Watch the video to find out more!

After the days out at the agencies with Joe I had a much better idea of what I needed to do to fully immerse myself into the business and start to try an dominate Leeds as a property entrepreneur. The next day I went to a property viewing & close by was an agency so I decided to go in & just wing it, hope for the best. Well... it was brutal, I didn't explain myself well, I didn't pitch myself well, I was all over the place & we just got no where, ultimately resulting in me building no relationship whatsoever & making a fool of myself. But with this failure came huge character building & it made me realise what I needed to do to create more success for myself.

Joe knows the business exceptionally well & he's got the gift of the gab which allows him to wing it & get results. Now I'm not too bad socially but I don't fully understand the business currently & I've got no reputation or results to my name so I decided I needed more of a strategy going into these places.

This was my strategy...

I searched up potential rental deals on Rightmove, then I noted down the agency, giving me a conversation starter when I go into the agency. Along with this I had some marketing material, it was a makeshift A4 poster explaining exactly what I'm looking for in Leeds. It had my company details on there including my contact details. I used this because I didn't have my professional leaflets yet, but it's also useful if you're trying to save money!

So how did it go?

To be honest, it went fantastic, let me let you visualise it. I would walk in & ask to speak to the letting manager. They would often direct me or put me with the rookie of the letting team because they didn't want to deal with me. At this point in my career I took what I could get, but I found it was useful when going into the smaller agencies because the younger people were more influenced & open minded; with them having more responsibility because it's a smaller agency I found an in. I would then enquire about the property I was interested in & explain exactly what I want to do with the property. Then I would introduce them to the poster, explaining exactly what we do as a company & what we're looking for.

With this strategy I felt a lot more confident going in, the marketing material made me look a lot more professional (told to me by agents), the agents took me a lot more serious & I got some really good leads that I'm continuing to follow up with. Something to note is that I struggled with the bigger agencies in Leeds on the letting side of things: William H Brown, Manning Station & a few others. This is mainly because they have their company systemised in such a successful & efficient way that they don't need me & they have such a filter of staff that it's hard to speak to someone who can really give you an in to their portfolio. But over the next three years it's my goal to get an in with Manning Station!

Overall a very successful day & now I am just watering the seeds I have planted, being consistent with them, singing too them until they come to fruition.