Conferences are great for gathering ideas to implement into your business but the right idea at the wrong time can be disastrous.
Topic – Why successful ideas fail in business
Mentor – Jacob Aldridge – Co-Founder of Real REACH
- Where are you in the lifecycle?
- Learn from the mistakes of others
- Get momentum and revenue up
Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – How often are you running audits on your PM Department?
Transcript:
Kevin Turner: It’s Tuesday morning, good morning and welcome to the show. I’m Kevin Turner:. And today’s show produced in association with PropertyTree from Rockend, Printforce, LockedOn and View. Everything you need to know to build a better business and all in a short sharp show every day. It’s our pleasure to bring it to you with the compliments of those people I’ve just mentioned. You’ll find us at Facebook and Twitter as Real Estate UNCUT, LockedOn, of course, one of our sponsors, where you can get more listings, make more sales. Start your free trial today with the LinkedOn REUNCUT.
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Kevin Turner: Last week in this segment we did for PropertyTree where I talked to Tara Bradbury from BDM Academy, we did talk about using your support systems to 100% capacity. Raised an interesting conversation about programmes like PropertyTree, that we support and they support us, too. But, it raises the question, Tara, doesn’t it, about how often are you running audits on your property management department and how easy are they and which ones should you be auditing?
Tara Bradbury: Look, it’s … There’s so many angles that this conversation could go, but I will say this, if you’re a department leader of the property management business or the business owner who’s overseeing, whether it be portfolio based [inaudible 00:01:24] or POD, you really should be doing individual audits on those portfolios and obviously the reporting that you get from your trust programmes like PropertyTree supports that. Can give you that data and information that you need to make sure that the individual’s actually on track with their performance.
Kevin Turner: Is this to do with KPI’S? I mean, is this what you’re talking about, there are certain key areas you need to be monitoring?
Tara Bradbury: Look, I think it’s important to set bench marks with KPI’s in results that you’re wanting to get, whether it be the number of properties leased, whether it be renterees. There are many businesses I know who have discussed this in the past, having to go down to zero in renterees, where they don’t have any renterees at all. So, that’s a great goal to have. Making sure that you’ve got pretty much all of your tenants on fixed home leases and non-periodic leases. Making sure the routine inspections are set in advance and that’s all in order. Those things can be picked up on a department audit. And as a BDM, in the business that I was active working in, my principal was very very [inaudible 00:02:26] with that and it gave me a lot of confidence when selling the product as well. She would spend one on one time with each of the property managers once a month and not just run through what was happening in their trust programme, but in their whole work station and [inaudible 00:02:41] and the works.
Kevin Turner: So, there’s a prompt for you today, to have a look at what you are running, the audits you are running in your property management department. Have a look at them and see if you should be improving on them or how often you should be doing them. Tara, thanks for your time. Talk to you next week.
Tara Bradbury: My pleasure, thank you.
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Pre-recorded: More thoughts now from this weeks mentor.
Kevin Turner: Jacob Aldridge is back again with me today. Jacob is the co-founder of RealReach and also from Business Depot. He is the director of advisory there and part of RealReach is where we help you build, start, develop a very successful business. All the tools you’ll need inside RealReach will help you do exactly that. And this week we’re focused on just one of the elements inside RealReach and that is why successful ideas fail. We can learn a lot, Jacob, can’t we, from other people’s experiences, their failures and what they’ve learned along the way.
Jacob Aldridge: Oh, without a doubt and I say that adults learn by experience. It’s a heck of a lot quicker to learn from the experience of others than it is for us to make all of the mistakes ourselves.
Kevin Turner: Well, just on that point, I guess that raises the next successful idea or why successful ideas fail and that is our tendency to copy someone else’s work book or homework.
Jacob Aldridge: Yes, copying the wrong homework won’t help you get ahead. The answers might be right, but if it’s for a different exam, then it’s not going to help you in your business. And this [inaudible 00:04:33] back to one of the first conversations, Kevin, that you and I had, which is understanding the business life cycle that every real estate business goes through and breaking that down as we do into four separate areas, the startup phase, the scale up phase where you start to grow, the step up phase where you start to have some real challenges after kind of just, say, 20 years in business, and then the sell up phase, that exit strategy at the end of a business. Now, it’s a natural tendency for a lot of conferences, a lot of even great podcasts like yourself, the people you interview will often be the most relaxed, the most successful business owners, which means they’re normally in either the scale up or the sell up phase. Now, the struggle with that for some people is, if you’re in the startup phase of a business, just blindly copying the example of somebody who’s further along that business journey might mean you’re actually doing the wrong things for what you’re business needs right now.
Kevin Turner: I guess the right mentor could help you here, too. Pointing you in the right direction, Jacob.
Jacob Aldridge: Absolutely. Mentors have walked the path before and they know what it was like to be at your stage of the business. It’s why I love the series that we’ve been doing, Kevin, around if I had my time again. Because we’re not going to these top principals and saying, “What are you doing today that is working in your business right now?” We’re going, “When you started your business, what did you do and what would you do differently? What did you learn from that?” Because that’s a lot more helpful for somebody who’s staring their business than understanding what it’s like having 10, 20, 100 sales agents underneath you.
Kevin Turner: So, how do you pick the right person to, well, copy their homework, I guess?
Jacob Aldridge: Well, the first step is understanding where you are in your business and if you’re in the very early stages, that’s pretty easy. You’re in the start up. Once you’ve been a bit further along it’s important to understand what you’ve been through and what challenges are coming ahead. And when you’re talking to other principals or potential mentors, it’s getting an understanding of their journey. Have them share their experience in business and when you meet somebody who’s a few steps ahead of you, when they share their experience, the feelings they’ve been … So, you could say, “Yes, I’m there right now and you’re a little bit further past. You’ve gotten through this.” Then you’ve got somebody you can sit there and say, “Hey, how do I get from where I am to where you are. How do you help pull me along there and give me the right answers for the homework I’ve got in front of me.
Kevin Turner: Just before I let you go today, Jacob, what are some of the priorities for a startup business?
Jacob Aldridge: Well, the key thing in a startup business is getting that momentum and that revenue going. So, you’ve got to really get to know your market, the area that you’re working in and pitching your services in. You’ve gotta get your business model right. So, you’ve gotta make sure that if you get that listing or you get a property that you’re going to manage, that you’ve actually got the systems and processes in place to properly support those clients. And you’ve gotta get the marketing and sales engine rolling in your business. So, I see a lot of speakers at conferences, we’ll talk about culture for example. And culture’s important in business. My belief, my experience coaching a lot of real estate businesses, is that you can focus on culture too soon. So, if you go to a conference, you’ll see someone with a big business and they’ll tell you the importance of culture. If you are new in business, I would say, “Well, that’s some notes you’ve got for the future. Right now you’ve gotta get some revenue in the door. You’ve gotta get your profile out there because if you don’t make any money, you’re never going to be able to build that culture that you want.”
Kevin Turner: And talking about culture, I noticed inside Real Rich as well, there’s a big series, I think, it’s about a six part series on just building culture.
Jacob Aldridge: It’s something that a lot of business owners know they need, but they don’t quite know where to start. And so, we’ve put together a specific course that they can do that very very easily guides them to create exactly the culture they want and be able to communicate that with their team and potential recruits as well.
Kevin Turner: That’s gotta be inside Real Rich and if you want to know how you can get into that, all you gotta do is subscribe to that series we’ve talked about. There’s a button on all the pages right here on REUNCUT, if I had my time again, and that will allow you to be alerted when Real Rich actually launches. So, I strongly suggest that you do that. My guest this week, Jacob Aldridge, one of the co-founders of Real Rich. We’ll be back again tomorrow morning. Thanks, talk to you then, mate.
Jacob Aldridge: Thanks, Kevin. [inaudible 00:08:54].
Jet Xavier: The great philosopher Confucius says, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Keep pushing forward towards your goals today. I’m [inaudible 00:09:09] Xavier. Have a great day.
Kevin Turner: Thanks, Chet. That’s it for today, thanks for your company. Look forward to catching up again tomorrow morning.