In the latest WealthTalk episode, we invited award-winning property trader and investor, Saif Derzi to speak about his experiences in the property market, having sold over 160 properties in 5 years for his investment/trading company SDGB Properties and is targeting a massive 300 properties sold within 7 years. In the episode, Saif shares his property journey; from starting out as a part-time property investor while working a full-time job to building a successful property investment portfolio, managing over 400 properties for landlords and investors. He also discusses the key elements that led to his success, including how he found properties for great value and how he was able to scale and implement processes to grow several successful businesses.
In the latest WealthTalk episode, we invited award-winning property trader and investor, Saif Derzi to speak about his experiences in the property market, having sold over 160 properties in 5 years for his investment/trading company SDGB Properties and is targeting a massive 300 properties sold within 7 years.
In the episode, Saif shares his property journey; from starting out as a part-time property investor while working a full-time job to building a successful property investment portfolio, managing over 400 properties for landlords and investors.
He also discusses the key elements that led to his success, including how he found properties for great value and how he was able to scale and implement processes to grow several successful businesses.
Resources In This Episode:
>> Property Buyers Today [Website]
>> Register for Property Deals
Next Steps On Your Wealth Building Journey:
>> Join the WealthBuilders Community
>> Join the WealthBuilders Academy
>> REGISTER HERE FOR ACCESS TO FREE RESOURCES
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Speaker 1 0:01
The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform, and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.
Christian Rodwell 0:19
Welcome to Episode 193 of wealth talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for wealth builders joined today by our founder Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin.
Speaker 3 0:28
I, Chris Good to see and nice to know we got the got the memo about the suit as well. Nice colours nice black
Christian Rodwell 0:35
like Yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff. So today, we have another exciting guest with us. And that's safe Daisy. And safe is another example Kevin of an ambitious employee, clever guy background in the pharmaceutical industry who just realised that wasn't the future for him. And he explored and almost by trial and error kind of fell into property. And he has built a very, very successful business. Now we'll be hearing all about his story today. Good and safe
Speaker 3 1:02
by Namesake by nature. I guess realising there's many people do that no matter how successful or how well lauded your occupation or your businesses, relying on one source of anything is always dangerous. And it's that fundamental lesson, we teach within wealth builders and talk about fundamental lessons, Chris, did you know it was had a bit of a realisation I was talking to somebody about books that they read. And I often quote from Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In fact, I was on a webinar today, talking about how to make yourself irresistible to private investors. And I said, the best thing to do is recognise that all money starts and ends with people. And the real skill then is building relationships with people. And the quote from Covey is seek first to understand before being understood, and that's the opposite. Most people they often want to jump in done day with what's in it for me, me, me, me, me. And they forget that the whole purpose of building wealth building business building property building, any form of recurring, predictable income, is to serve the needs of others, not just think about the needs to do so. And it made me think about another lesson that's often misunderstood. Chris, seminal book, right? reached out to that, aha, what's the biggest lesson in that book? And I bet it's not the one that I'm thinking of?
Christian Rodwell 2:38
Well, I'd probably have to say, the key lesson would be building assets.
Speaker 3 2:44
You might think that though, but here's the thought, if the book was poor dad son made good, he kind of wouldn't have the same impact. It's the fact that there was a rich dad, Robert had a mentor, Robert had the power of the leverage of inaction. And that's the biggest lesson that mentors don't hugely accelerate, it's not building the assets, he could have built the assets, could have learned that from another book, which is Man in Babylon, or any other book, what he learned was, somebody's been there and done it before. And you follow the lessons or they inspire you to learn new ones. And that to me, is Rich Dad, Poor Dad lives is a whole different story. There's no rich dad. You know, it's the rich dad, who's the mentor. So just a, just a thought that came to me, as I was just thinking about, you know, what, what, what are the lessons that we want to get across to people when they're building their wealth?
Christian Rodwell 3:50
Okay, well, you're given us a lot of food for thought already, Kevin, and we haven't even got on to our main guests for today. So I know, we'll have a lot more lessons to share, after we've heard from safe and safes award, an award winning property investor now, and he's done over 100 deals within the last five years. So I think there'll be some really interesting points to pull out. So let's head on over to our conversation today was safe jersey. Safe, very warm. Welcome to wealth talk today. How are you?
Speaker 4 4:20
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Christian really good, really good. Thank you really
Christian Rodwell 4:24
excited to hear about your journey in property, but also in business, because we're going to be talking today about, you know, how you've managed to grow several businesses at the same time. And some of those challenges that come with that, and be good to just give our listeners a bit of an intro to yourself. So what what is your business and what do you do safe?
Speaker 4 4:44
Yeah, sure. So that's obviously evolved over time. But if I look at a snapshot of what we do currently today, we buy properties, and then we'll sell them, we'll buy properties, and then we'll record them and hold them. And then we've got property management business that basically manages them. That's in a nutshell what we do. Okay,
Christian Rodwell 5:00
and then how long is that there's all those businesses been operating for.
Speaker 4 5:03
So circa 2018. So getting into the fifth and sixth year on some of these.
Christian Rodwell 5:08
Okay, so you've had some tremendous success, which I'm sure we'll come on to throughout our conversation. So let's just rewind it quickly, because always good to kind of know the backstory, what got you into property?
Speaker 4 5:19
Yeah. So my dad was a traditional sort of landlord back in the sort of 70s and 80s, in London. So he was he did everything himself, you know, there was no courses back then there was no YouTube, there was nothing he kind of just figured out that property was was a great way to build wealth and get into it, he ended up going through this recession in the 80s, which obviously hit him pretty hard. And I learned a lot from his story. It's basically in lessons. So he basically told me a lot about the things that went wrong, not the things that went right. And I took a lot of weight from that. I went and did pharmacy and graduated as pharmacist and really didn't find any sort of pleasure or any satisfaction. So I went on afterwards, and basically tried to look at how can I create a business out of the knowledge that I have from being a pharmacist, and I created a healthcare related business, which I won't go into too much detail about. But the the reality is of that business, I started it from scratch with nothing. It was a it was an idea, I had to go out and sell a vision, an idea to a lot of manufacturers, which I did successfully, it wasn't just that it was more because I create something tangible for them, I've got them sales without costing them a single penny. And I just put a margin on top that that's the reality of what happened. So they made money from me. And I made money from them, which was a real good symbiotic relationship. And that was the start of me making money in general, which then allowed me to think, what do I then do with that money? What's the natural next step of trying to, you know, as wealth builders look at it? How do you really sort of looked to build that wealth over the long term. And for me, the main thing was property, that's what I just saw as a, as a real pillar for me in terms of what I want to try and achieve out of the wealth building is property as a vehicle. And that's when I got into property investing.
Christian Rodwell 7:03
Right? So what was driving you in that it's early stages of business? When you say you hadn't really done that before? But you were successful with it? What do you think was some of the key elements that led to that?
Speaker 4 7:16
So I think for me, it was just looking at it from a point of view of how do you find a property that is of good value. So for example, for me how I started off, I looked at Salford at the time, which is based in Manchester, where you got all these massive high rise buildings going up, and so much infrastructure and you know, so much investment going into it. And all I did was look at an area, right, very, very close to it. But it was secondhand. So they have been built up, I'd say seven or eight years before that. So it was it was already lived in the shine, and everything went off that. So basically the premium had come off that. And I just thought, well, if I buy this, then as these get built, and these gets sold, and you go all the sales agents selling them for top dollar, this will naturally go up and bump you. And that's all I did. It was nothing sort of too. Too clever. Really. It was just more a case of just trying to find the value in something that was essentially developing as an area really. And that's what I did. Yeah. And we're doing this by yourself at the time safe. Yeah, so just really, it was the most traditional thing ever. I went for a NatWest buy to let. So I actually went to the bank themselves and the servco get a bite. Yeah, can I get a buy to let mortgage, I went to an estate agent to basically say that are found on Rightmove or to stage and try to agree the property and went to a state agent to rent it out. As simple as that, you know, didn't think let me do it myself. Let me do this. I just said, let me find a state inspired from them find the state easy to rent it. And let me go to a bank to get the lending. Just just as simple as that. Yeah, it was really vanilla. Yeah. And what year was that? Just remind us 2015.
Christian Rodwell 8:50
Okay, now, let's just quickly fast forward now just give us some numbers as to how many deals, how many properties, what kind of revenue and cash flow? And then we'll kind of go back and we'll say, Well, what are the steps that you took in order to get to this point today?
Speaker 4 9:04
Short, so fast forward to today, we've done over 160 deals, so we bought and sold over 160 deals. And cash flow varies because we've got that in two different businesses. So we've got the investment side, and then we've got the trading side. But you know, typically on the trading side, we can get anything from sort of two to 300k in a year. And that's, that's net after everything, basically. And that's on the trading side of things. And, you know, I mean, I don't really talk about revenue as such, because, for me, revenue doesn't make as much impact as net profit really does. And then on the rental side of things, you know, the typical net could be somewhere between sort of five to 7k. And we've got probably about two or three different vehicles that we do that in and that's on a monthly basis. Yeah. Excellent. And
Christian Rodwell 9:48
you've now got a team which is, you know, substantial, I think around 10 members or so we would say.
Speaker 4 9:55
Yeah, so across all of the across the whole business. We're around about 40 between team members, but our kind of core team members within the investment side of things I'd probably say is about that. Yeah. across the whole, all of the businesses were about 40. Team members.
Christian Rodwell 10:09
Great. And in that period of time, you've also won some awards. Tell us about that.
Speaker 4 10:13
Yeah. So we won. So we're up for the property investor Awards, which is the largest property investing award ceremony in the UK that was offered last year 2022. And we had done a really good deal. It was a land deal that we had done, we bought, and we traded within about six months. And I think we love story short, we paid about 475. for it. We traded it out at 750, within six months without doing any planning or any anything to it, really, we just bought and sold there purely. And that was probably the trade of the year for 2022, which was a really proud moment for us at off journey and in
Christian Rodwell 10:48
our career as well. Yeah, huge congratulations for that. And I'm sure it won't be the only one. So let's break it down now. So you know, how did you go from that first conversation, you know, with NatWest to where you are now? What are some of the lessons you've learned in terms of finding sourcing deals? And then obviously, you know, funding the deals the whole process, really. So? Where should we begin?
Speaker 4 11:08
Sure. So let's go back to 2015. So 2015 first property, as we said, it's very, very vanilla. But I cut my teeth into I did it. And I always say to people, when they're starting out, don't wait for the best deal. Just get into it, you know, because you get into it, you understand the whole process, how the labels work, how the the purchasing process works. I didn't do a deal from 2015, all the way up until 2017. And the reason was, I was watching I was learning I was trying to do as much as I can to understand the fundamentals of dynamics 2017, we did three deals. So that's four deals in total from 2015, all the way through to 2017. And again, a lot of these were just vanilla deals, so estate agents cetera. Now I quickly realised that if I want to scale up what I'm doing, I need to be able to find properties that are giving me a margin or equity from day one. Because everything that was doing I was buying, I then have to pay all the stamp duty the legal fees, essentially, I was paying 5% of the cost of the property on day one. So not only was I 100% of the value, I was at 105% of the value on average, which meant that I had to wait a couple of years for the for the appreciation, which works for some people. But for me, I was just all about scalability, how can I scale quicker. And in order to scale quicker, I needed to find properties with equity from day one, or some people call it discount, some people call it below market value, whatever you want. The reality is you need to provide a solution to a seller to a property seller that they can't get elsewhere. And in return, they'll give you equity for that. So let me give you an example. 2018 was when we really started to scale this up, we did some direct to vendor marketing campaigns. So we found vendors directly that wanted to sell and needed to sell. So it wasn't just a case of they had the luxury of setting an order away on the market, it was a case of they had a financial burden on them, that made them need to sell that property. And that could be going through divorce, it could have been a probate property could have been all sorts of stuff, really, it could have been a tentative property where they have problematic tenants, etc. So they came to us, and we've got known as the people that would always execute on that purchase. So anyone that needs to sell, they knew they weren't gonna get the highest price with us. But if they needed the speed, and needed the certainty, they could come to us. And we would always, always provide that for them. So we were reliable people. But they used us as let's say, a, I'd say a worst case scenario. So if they couldn't sell it on the market, if it failed the auction, whatever happened, or if they did set it on the market and the chain broke, they would come to us because they knew that they had that certainty. And that's how we built our whole reputation, our whole business, essentially.
Christian Rodwell 13:47
And are you referring to individuals there? Or did you make some connections where those kinds of deals were flowing through and they knew that you kind of trusted source to help them?
Speaker 4 13:57
We made connections with property funds, institutions, and individuals and in all honesty, it was it was purely just a mix. But the thing is, I would have someone that was selling their, you know, grandma's probate property, who Ben basically told us, their daughter about it when their daughter tried to sell their property on the open market. And couldn't they came to me. So there's a lot of word of mouth happening within the individuals and institutions were obviously quite recurring, which was obviously ideal for us. And so yeah, it was it was a quite a mixed bag,
Christian Rodwell 14:27
I'd say. Yeah. So certainly that sounds like you know, building connections, building relationships, word of mouth, very much was playing a part there. What about external marketing branding? Did you hit the internet at all to try and bring leads in that way?
Speaker 4 14:42
Absolutely. So when between I'd say 2018 to 2020. And the markets were relatively up and down. We had Brexit looming, we had the referendum under 2019. So things weren't very easy on the market, and that's why we had a lot of relationships where people will come Austin sell. As we had the Forever members back to early 2020, that Oris bounce back. And things started to get really difficult for us to buy. And most people were not selling and they were trying to keep it themselves so they could sell, hence why we really started to hit, we created our brand, which is now called Property Buyers today. So that's all we have a website. Okay, video marketing content. And a lot of what we do is Google Adsense pay per click, if someone goes into Google today and type thing I need to sell my house quickly. London, Birmingham, whatever it is, you'll get a whole host of companies similar to ourselves, and probably you'd see us ranked pretty highly on that. And people click on that submit their details. And then we would give them a call and understand their situation properties, and then offer them a cash offer, you know, the same day effectively. So that's a large part of what we then started to do, as we found relationships was still working, but it didn't give us enough deal flow that allowed us scalability. Yeah. And it sounds like the key here with regards to sourcing to finding deals a lesson for anyone who's listening now is you can't just focus on one single strategy here,
Christian Rodwell 16:05
you have to have multiple different layers operating at the same time.
Speaker 4 16:09
Yeah, correct. And, you know, in terms of the direct marketing, we can spend a couple of 1000 pound a month on that a time. And we say to people, we got economies of scale with what we're doing now. And, you know, some people are, oh, I'll go make my own website, other designers do the setup costs alone could be 20 25,000 pound, and then you've got ongoing costs, and employ people, etc. And some people look at anything, okay, there's a lot of money to be made. There is, but there's also a lot of, you need at least a two to three year buffer to get the organic website, you know, on Google anyway, ranked quite highly, because it's all about as you know, SEO as well. So to try and get you hired, you can you can set website tomorrow and put a whole amount into paid ads, it won't get you the same level of interaction and engagement, and leads, as it would if you have a three year mature website that, you know, had the SEO had backlinks had affiliate links, etc. And so that's why we say to people, look, we've now got our economies of scale with what we're doing here. So we are also helping other property investors, traders, etc, that need the discounted properties for their own portfolio for their own scalability. And we're basically saying to them, we can actually provide that support you with that as well, because we can't boil by all the deals, you know, we might buy three or four deals a month at a time, if we're getting in seven or eight deals. We need to find people for those deals as well.
Christian Rodwell 17:29
Yeah, yeah. So I want to get into a few more of the processes systems in a second, but let's just focus on that point there then. So you know, someone listening now obviously, searching really struggling to find deals, you know, how can they potentially work with you guys?
Speaker 4 17:44
Yeah, so it's quite simple as we have a registration form. So we send that registration form to people. And that basically signifies what's important to you. So it's yield important to you is discount report to etc. So we get all the information, you then get added into our system into our CRM system, we're not really doing mass email campaigns, and all the rest of it was properties were very bespoke. So we would understand your requirements. And then as soon as we get some official response would send you something out accordingly. If you like it, if you're happy with it, you'd secure it, and then you buy effectively. Now, with what we're doing there, what that allows us to do is become this magnet, where people can rely on us and come to us now. From our perspective, we're all for it. As I said to you, we become this one stop shop people that really need to sell. But also, we've got one stop shop for people that really need to buy it because you need that reliability. It can't be fragmented, you know, they're not going to come to yourself, Christian, if you only want to buy one property a year or five properties a year, whereas you could come to our security want to buy that many? Because we are that middleman that allows vendors and buyers to kind of interact together. Yep. And where would someone go? What's the URL
Christian Rodwell 18:49
if they would like to have that look?
Speaker 4 18:51
So the best the best way? Basically, if they go on to the website, it's www.net koat.com. Or they could also add me on social. So my name is safe, does it SAF Drs. And I'm on LinkedIn, and Instagram, that's probably going to be the easiest way they can just drop me a direct message. And I'll send it over to them as well. Okay, brilliant. Thank
Christian Rodwell 19:10
you. So as you've grown the business, as you've grown the team, you have to have some processes and systems to make sure that all of this stuff is running those repeatable tasks, right? What have been some of the lessons that you could share with us safe that have really made the biggest impact in allowing you to do that.
Speaker 4 19:30
So processes are evolving, evolving, and they're an evolution. So you know, when you first set up a business, you set up a process and you think that's it. That's the process for life. It's never the case, processes need reviewing. So people get, but this whole work process and systems people use quite a lot. But let's break it down. Let's make it more tangible for people so they can really understand it. A process in simple terms is something that is done and it's the steps to get you there. So for example, what's the process for you if you wanted to go Shopping, you know, you'd get in the car, you'd go to the supermarket, you buy a product and you come back. That's a four step process, essentially. So what you don't need is you don't need a 15 page document on a process, what you do need is a couple of bullet points, because the post process needs to be fluid. As long as you have the bullet points in the process, people can fill in the blanks, because you don't want it to be such a strict process that you basically have wrote robotic processes, right. But at the same time, you need to have a framework. So it's called a framework, because it's just a few bullet points. So that's what a process is. And the best way to understand what's what you could put process around, is just look at what you do there today, write it down on a piece of paper. And anything that you see a repetitive reoccurrence of that is literally repetitive, take that out, map it out and just look at what does that process entail? What does it look like it just put some bullet points, and then find someone that you feel is good enough to do that process? Right? So that's the process. Now the system is effectively the way that what what are they going to use to allow them and support them with that process. So that could be a project management tool that basically has that process, that four step process that we just said, into bullet points, but it will give you a task based bullet points. So for example, question for today, you've got that process into the system. And you've got four, four tasks for today. All do for today. And you have to do want to get to the next to get to the next next. And that that system might be Asana, for example. So that's the process. That's the system. And they go hand in hand basically together just a breeding route, keep it simple for people in terms of what the next decades, you then need to wrap around a team with that process. And without systems, you need to find the right team members that have the right skill sets. And then basically make sure you can monitor them make sure that they're doing that process effectively and using the system effectively. And then you start taking the step back. Because if you don't take that step back, you're not going to allow that team to work well there and flourish effectively. Yeah, really key.
Christian Rodwell 21:59
And you know, at the beginning, people may not have the access kind of cash to be able to pay staff, team members. So have you got experience of working with virtual assistants as well? Is that something you would recommend to perhaps people as a first step?
Speaker 4 22:16
Yeah, I think, you know, this is a diner that I literally came onto when I first started my businesses. How do you employ someone? And who do you employ? And how do you how can you afford employment, especially where people have an exit, we talk about your recurring income. But if you have a business, which doesn't have recurring income, it's much much harder, because you can't then foresee where that money is going to come from to pay that team member. So it's a much more scary proposition. But let me keep it really, really simple. When you're starting out business, you've got two ways of being able to start and employ people, you've got, like you said, virtual I don't call it virtual assistants, because they're virtual team members. So their team members that are doing things day to day, because what you don't want is you don't want a task based system. So a system which has tasks based will always come back to you. Okay, Christian, what we're going to do next, Okay, our first sign our Christian, what we're going to do next, what you want is you want to give them a framework for them to have the whole day where they're doing that, and then maybe come back to you at the end of the day and say, Christian, just to let you know, this is what I've accomplished today, this is what I've done today, right? Rather than interrupting you in your cycle in your workflow, and come back to you. So that's what a team member is versus in a system, right? So you can find virtual team members. And they can be anything from, you know, four pounds an hour to 11 pound an hour, for example, right? So, obviously much cheaper than what you'd get potentially in the UK. And when I say 11 pound an hour, people might be like, well, minimum wage in the UK is 10 pounds an hour. That's right, but for less than pound an hour, trust me, you're gonna get someone that is probably a 40 pound an hour UK team member. So it's the calibre of person that you get in. In comparison, if you want to go to hospitals, the other thing that you could do is employ family, for example. So if you know, people that basically are maybe that out of the job, or, for example, part time or housewife, or whatever it is, you know, you get lots of people now that not necessarily are working but want to do something not as steady full time. That's a really good way. You can incentivize them. You can say, Look, I don't have a recurring income right now. But maybe I pay you a percentage of your profits or pay percent your sales or whatever it is, but there needs to be an incentive there. That is not necessarily aligned to just a straight salary, for example, and you need to do whatever you can to hustle and get started. As you start to get started as you start to get cash flow coming in, don't go out and spend that money on luxury cars and watches or whatever, use that money to invest it back into the team to build your infrastructure. Because that's a crucial part. You can get over that stage. You're running, you're up and running. Right. But it's really, really crucial that you reinvest, at least for the first couple of years into your team to grow it to get that traction.
Christian Rodwell 24:53
Yeah, no, that's great advice. And are there any websites companies where you've used where people might be able to go and Find some of those virtual team members.
Speaker 4 25:02
Yeah, so one of them we use quite frequently is commonly called Freedom geeks, which is, which is pretty good. But also to be to be honest with you, as we start to grow the team, a lot of our best team members have come from recommendations. So our own team members recommending people that they know, for example, x classmates, aluminized, etc. So that's where we're recruiting a lot more is internally, but we do use premium gigs quite a bit. And there's also I think we use pay per hour and all that there's quite a lot of websites online as well. So I could drop them in the in in, you know, in the links, if you wanted to, as well. Yeah, for
Christian Rodwell 25:36
sure. Big shout out to Imogen from Freedom gate. They're
Unknown Speaker 25:38
very, very,
Christian Rodwell 25:40
very great people they are. Okay. And so what we're talking about there makes me think of wealth dynamics. And I know you're familiar with wealth dynamics, as well safe. And all of our wealth builders members, they take the assessment when they join us in the academy. And, you know, it's really important to really get clear on what are your strengths and weaknesses, but then it helps you build the team around you doesn't. So there might be some people thinking, I'm just not a process person, right? I just don't want to list out and do all that stuff. But you could hire a virtual team member to actually then put all of those processes in place, couldn't you?
Speaker 4 26:13
Absolutely. And the thing is, I mean, yeah, we talked about this off of the show, but I am an accumulator. Right. So very much similar to kind of Warren Buffett. But I also sit very, very close to Trader as well. And it's been interesting, because then I've read, I've really mapped out what we've done better today in our business, compared to the wealth dynamics, dynamics. And we started out being an accumulator, our business, buying a port, buying properties and holding the portfolio. But now we're switching to trading, for example. So the mindset is really interesting, but I do genuinely feel like I am in the middle of both I kind of like holding, but also like trading. And and I think as you mature as you grow, you know, it would be good for me to actually take that test again, probably to try and see maybe far more trader than accumulator necessarily right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Christian Rodwell 27:03
I know, when I first took the test, or several years ago, now I was trader, and then I moved across to a deal maker, which is only one to the, to the right, slightly more glazed energy. But yes, you know, it's good to refresh that every few years, just to make sure because things can change. So, okay, I want to throw this one out to you safe, because, you know, often, you know, education is at the start of everything right, and you talked about as well learning are the beginnings. And a lot of people who want to get into property, perhaps haven't got the funds to actually really get going, will sometimes look at sourcing as a way to build up that cash flow. And this is where the term No Money Down Under deals also gets, you know, referred to so I just like to get your thoughts on the whole no money down way into property.
Speaker 4 27:52
So, yeah, I see things from different angles. And I understand different people have different perceptions, when they look at business in general, you've got two things really right when it comes to any business. But let's specifically look at property, you've got the people that have built up their wealth from selling businesses or having a well paid job and basically saving their income, for example, from that and having a lot of savings. They don't need to get into what you've just referred to as no money down. Because they don't necessarily have the time, or the effort, that they want to have the investments. So those are the people that we call armchair investors, they are the people that need the people that have all the time and effort and don't have the money, right? Who basically can combine resource. So you have people that have got the resource of the capital, and you've got people have the resource of the time, effort and operations running. And they combined really, really well together. So this is basically a way where people that don't have money can then think, well, how can I create it? If you don't have the money and you don't have time and effort, then you can't do anything? That's the reality, you've got to have one form of resource. So do I think it's possible? Absolutely. It is possible? Do I think it's probably being overused in the industry? Yes, I would say that because, you know, for every one, sort of every sort of 10 people that do it, you might have two or three that succeed. That's it. That's the reality. And that's not necessarily because of the training or anything else, just because maybe the people that have an open to it, don't as I said don't have the relevant resource to succeed at it. But I've seen some really, really successful people that had nothing, and just have been ruthless and just gone on it and comment build relationships. And not only if they're done sourcing and make their money, they've now set up another business of now buying assets and they are now becoming the you know, let's say time poor, cash rich people that now starting investing in assets. So I think it's like anything you can it's a business based on a business from scratch, you need to have that energy that time that effort to put into it relentlessly, to build up some money. You're hustling that as a few pure hustle in order to get to a position where you do have some money that you can start investing and then you can start to balance it out and hope Li, the aim is to get to a point where you don't put as much time and effort in over the years. And you just get to a point where you're accumulating more and more assets. And then you can wind down maybe the more active form of the business. Yeah,
Christian Rodwell 30:12
yeah. No, that's, that's great. And, you know, it's always harder and slower at the beginning to get the momentum with everything going on. And obviously, now you're several years in, you're building momentum. And we refer to Upsee assets as pillars that wealth builders. So if you have the property pillar working for your business pillar, creating IP now by teaching others how to follow processes and source, and and I'm sure joint ventures in there as well, right, working with investors, so you know, multiple pillars, multiple streams of income. And over those years of being in business of growing, growing, what you have done today safe, have there been any other key lessons? So for someone listening now, if you were looking back to when you started, was there anything that you'd do differently now? Yeah,
Speaker 4 30:56
I mean, to be honest with you, when I started, I didn't do any education. When I started, I kind of learned everything purely myself. And arguably, there wasn't as much education as there is. Now when I started in 2015. Let's not say that there wasn't a tool that just wasn't as much. And I actually think education is a good thing I didn't even need do, I just think it's the right education that you need. Because there's loads of education providers out there, like there is for everything, really, you've got to choose the right ones and the ones that are going to give you some tangible results. So me personally, if I could go back, I probably would have done some education. Even though obviously education provides knowledge. What it does do is it also gives you a network of people. And that network is your starting point. So if I had that network when I started, I think that would have accelerated my journey, you know, very, very quickly. Yeah, yeah. No, that's
Christian Rodwell 31:43
very, very good advice to leave on there safe. So thanks so much for sharing today how this whole journey evolved? I mean, I'm sure there is so much more ahead. You know, just looking at that, you know, do you plan ahead? Do you have like a five year 10? year, one year target? How do you operate in terms of goals?
Speaker 4 32:02
Absolutely. I literally have a three, six and nine month goal list, because I used to have the five year and I used to have the 10 year and the vision and everything else. I'll be completely honest with you, since COVID. That's every Everything's changed. And I've realised that you can't see too much in the future. And you do have the massive visionaries, but for me, actually like working on a three year, six year, sorry, three months, six months and nine month goal. So what do so what do I need to do in the next three months? What do I need in the next six months? And what do I need to in the next nine months? And that's a me I've found, I've been able to create something tangible, where I've been ticking things off, what's a five year goal? Very often I end up saying, Well, I've never, you know, I've gone in a totally different direction to what I thought I was going to go into. So kind of didn't make sense to me. So yeah, for me, it's three, six or nine months reading. So it's how I set my goals.
Christian Rodwell 32:49
Yeah, no, that's, that's very interesting. Okay.
Speaker 4 32:54
It's been great safe. And again, congratulations on all of your success so far. And just remind listeners, if they want to get in touch if they want to kind of follow what you're doing, where should they had to? Yeah, so I'm very active on Instagram, and also on LinkedIn. So my name is safe does isa that's s a ifd. Rs, and I'll drop you the links as well. But I'm saying those on Instagram safe dosing LinkedIn as well. That's probably the best way to get ahold of me. And don't be afraid to drop me a direct message. You know, a lot of people are thought you're really really busy. It's like, yeah, I am. But I'm also happy to chat to people. And also, I'm always happy to engage with people. So you know, don't be afraid to drop me a direct message and happy to have a chat. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to chat with me today. And we'll catch up again very soon. Thanks a lot for that cheers question.
Christian Rodwell 33:39
Of case. So hope you enjoyed listening to that one, Kevin, I'm sure. There are some lessons there that we can pull apart for our listeners. But before we do that, let's head on over to Trustpilot. And I'm going to read out a couple of short reviews that have come in recently. And the first one is from Winston and he says had some great conversations with Gary at wealth builders, which have really helped me clarify my strategy for using my SAS pension. And then soon after that, oh, Lou said I had a discovery call with Kevin Whelan, and within an hour he was able to identify some issues and actionable steps for me to take so impressed exclamation mark. Now, well saw my first rodeo. A couple of Whelan's there mentioned.
Speaker 3 34:23
Yeah, I mean, look, it's the CAT scan brain is just dial up to deploy it and often will give people free time just because, you know, I like to try and help people wherever I can, but also, just touching on the fact that you do need a team, you know, wealth builders is not about any individual Of course, you know, I play a role in the creation of the IP but the perpetuation of that the development of that sits with yourself and with Paul and with Gary. And with Sue and with Matt and with names I could go on and mention so which I think is a great point out there. At safe brings out in his story, although it I think he mentioned that near the back end, which is, the more predictable your rate of flow is, the more certain you are of your ability to get the leverage of having more members of your team. Bang, that's really important because it's very difficult to beginning to leverage with employee, employees and others, where you don't have that income, because you can, in many cases, I've seen business owners, you know, employ people live paste, pay slip to pay slip, and business owners slip payroll to payroll, they're just about making payroll, they often will pay themselves more than they're paying them less than they're paying their staff. So, so there's lessons to be made in there. But I think there was a very good observation by safe, which is, soon as you get that recurring income, should reinvest some of that in the ability to improve it, develop it, nurture it, grow it, and he's done that. So congratulations to him.
Christian Rodwell 36:04
Yes, so safe shared, about how he how he used processes systems to grow multiple businesses at the same time. And we'll look at some of those in a second. But I think one of the the key things is just get going. So he was talking about the start of his journey. He didn't really know what he was doing. But he just got going, he got his first property. And sometimes that can hold people back, Kevin Carter, they can want everything to be perfect, and they want to understand everything before making a move. But then it may never ever happen.
Speaker 3 36:33
Yeah, well, we've we've dealt with that before in many podcasts, about the drifters and the DIY errs, and those people who do overthink their situation and want every traffic light to be green before they set off on a journey. And that's an impossibility. I think that much more in the camp that you just outlined there, just get started, you'll get better later. And when you get better, you'll make different distinctions when you can't make the distinctions. spectating, you make and learn the lessons by doing. So what governorship the education comes from doing it does come from learning, No book, no advisor, nobody can teach you to do wealth, they can give you some lessons and give you some insights. But in the end, it's you who's got to do it. And I often try and encourage people to get off the fence, Chris, because sometimes when you're on the fence between one thing or another, you get splinters up your bum and they can be painful. So just get off the fence and do something with somebody doesn't matter who it is just choose to get started. Because then you start moving to something in cars that you go from, you wouldn't judge your journey in a car by how far you go from zero to first gear. You know, if I'm trying to get to Newcastle to go and watch a football match, I can't get there by thinking about this gear or assuming all the traffic lights between here and St. James's Park going to be green and not. So you just get going. And then you know, the journey will take care of itself. Particularly by the way, if you've got guides and mentors, because they just the GPS, they'll show you the way they'll show you the shortcuts. And and if there's enough testimonials and evidence that it works, they'll actually be able to show you who they've helped as well. So it isn't just about who knows how to do it, but to demonstrate that they've helped others because teaching is a skill. And good to see many people in our field, Chris, good teachers, but also have got the evidence they've done it for themselves as well.
Christian Rodwell 38:40
Sure, and I'll just quickly mention, of course that, you know, we know what that roadmap is at wealth builders, and hence, where we're able to help many people through the wealth builders Academy. And that roadmap contains nine steps. And one of those steps is what we call the wheel of wealth. And this is the process, you created Kevin, five steps, which we won't go into too much detail, but we've covered it in previous episodes, actually back in episode nine. So I'll link to that. But the wheel of wealth extends all the goals. But the way the wealth, you know, begins with education and includes having good support, having the right connections, doing your due diligence and then taking action but we teach our members that and that helps people to take that first step to get that first wheel turn and start to generate that first bit of recurring income and once you've done that, it builds confidence and you can really go from that.
Speaker 3 39:30
Yeah, it's not going from first to second you know, and you you build number when you first learn to drive you roll your feet, your hands, your eyes, everything was in the wrong place. You couldn't quite work it out. But after a little while with instruction and feeling safe you you get to do it so it does it does work. So I think if you sitting on the fence and thinking I'd like to be wealthy, but I don't know where to start, just get started young in somebody or find something you want to get an education on because education is great. cursor to a wealth, bind something you're interested in, do some reading, do some listening, and then find some people who know how to do it and make a connection. Because they should be able to at least move you a little bit to a place where you feel confident to take some action on you.
Christian Rodwell 40:17
Yeah. And if you're interested just to have a look at the academy, see exactly what that roadmap looks like, then head to wealth builders.co.uk forward slash Academy. So let's talk just for a moment about the systems, the processes, there are some tools there, obviously software plays a part now, automating processes that you find yourself doing. And often when you start out in business, and you haven't got the money to build your team, you find yourself doing repeatable tasks week after week, and they're very low cost tasks, they don't really deliver a high income generating result for you. So if you can outsource quickly, and you can find people for you know, very low costs on some of the sites that he mentioned their people per hour. And we've also had a couple of our connections on previous podcast, Christina Osbourne was an episode I'll link to Christina helps property investors with a whole team of virtual virtual assistants or virtual property team members. That name David. And also Steve day from systems now sourcing, so we'll link to those because those were great episodes, which would really help anyone listening who needs to start outsourcing some of those tasks. And, and yeah, setting goals, I think was another key point. And you got to really kind of find what works for you, haven't you, Kevin, there might be, you know, lots of different plan of opinions out there. And you have to take a little bit of that knowledge and really find what works for you. And certainly for safe, he said in terms of goal setting is not about long, long term vision of five and 10 years, but just really the next 12 months, and he breaks down into three months, six months, nine months. And that works for him and and we follow our own processes that wealth builders, don't we following the EOS system as well. And that works well for us.
Speaker 3 42:03
Yeah, you always need to be able to think about where you go. And you have to do that. Otherwise any road will take you there and most roads will lead you away from it. So to definitely make sense, but not to overthink the goals that I need to know everything I need to know what accounting I'm going to have and exactly what pocket I'm going to make and how I'm going to structure that now and my legacy going to be left, you don't need to know all those things, the starting point is just to get some recurring income in your life. So if it's zero, get the first 100 quid get the first 500 quid get the first 1000 know what it means to be to feel that you can get to that locked down lifestyle where your basic expenses are covered. So you can choose to do what you want to do or not what you want to do. So you need to know what those numbers are. And that's the key thing. And then I think the other little book that I like, I think we signed close to this pause the gap in the game. So all too often, it's easy to measure the distance between where you are now with some long date in the horizon, which of course horizon never reaches you, or you never reach it. It's always about kind of looking at how far you've come. So the benefit of just doing the first year is saying, Well, okay, I started off with zero recurring income, where have I got to by the end of year one, and then just celebrate where you've got to not worry about where you haven't. So often people can beat themselves up when they go into comparison economics between what other people have done, I wouldn't worry what sage has done. He's done, what he's done. And I'm pleased for him that he's won some awards. I'm actually also delighted to be on the judging panel for those awards, not particularly in safes award or didn't have anything to do with that. But I do get involved in in the Property Investor awards and looking forward by the way, it's a really helpful thing for those who like property to to think about going to those and be inspired by the people. So maybe you could send a link to the lovely people at property investor awards. They have 650 People can you believe it sort of other award ceremony and in London, I think it's in November, we'll be there. And can definitely look those up and see for might be something you might want to go to and maybe be an award winner yourself someday. Yeah.
Christian Rodwell 44:23
Now that that'd be fantastic. And yeah, I think that probably covers all of the lessons there. But just a great example how safe took that first step. And then 160 properties bought and sold over a period of five years. He never would have imagined that when he did his first deal but Sam without doing that first deal, he never would have got there so so yeah, thank you safe and we've shared all the links in today's show notes. If you want to get in touch with him have a look at some of the property portfolio building that he does for his clients. Then go and click on today's episode, click the links and If you enjoyed it, don't forget to also share this with a friend. So we can continue to spread the word and help more or more people and build our community even bigger and better than it is today.
Speaker 3 45:12
Hmm. Well, thanks for doing that. Chris. Thanks as always for doing the interviews. I was appreciate that. And I guess we're well, slowly getting up to our to under whom we really
Christian Rodwell 45:24
we are gearing up for the big party. So yeah,
Speaker 3 45:28
I'd be charted the week when will that actually be? Oh, and I heard of it our
Christian Rodwell 45:33
Nan Tierra and we're 90 free. So yeah, it's going to be
Speaker 3 45:37
next time. Better be a good one, you need to think ahead, Chris, in July, while recording don't don't have a damp squib or number 200. Night, we'll, we'll make sure there are no damn scripts on well, because everybody is outstanding in their field. And I think as we turned in wealth builders, outstanding in a niche, and I think that's another key lesson to learn, I think, which is, you can't be outstanding at anything unless you play for long. Yeah, you can make some money by build your recurring income, great. But think about moving towards, as if you're charting a little story of your path, like St. Cristo, you know, from nought to 160 properties, we don't have to do that from day one. But just chart your progress, celebrate what you've done, record it, take photographs, and we'll show you how you can build that credibility story, which can lead or lead to the leverage of creating your own IP, and your own method of sharing and teaching other people because there's always spare capacity in in others. But do think though, you have to have a bit of money and a bit of time into it. And I think most people know you need some money, you could do some strategies with that money. But you must put time into building your wealth. It's like planting seeds. You can't just pull them up, you've got to leave them to grow and you need to fertilise them, you need to water them you need to nurture them. And that's you. You need to nurture yourself and give yourself enough time to do that. And I know we've gone beyond the lessons, but I just thought that what came to mind as we were chatting, Chris
Christian Rodwell 47:16
Yeah, no definitely worth worth remembering people about that. So okay, thanks for listening today. Hope you enjoyed it. And Kevin, we will catch up again same time, same place next week.
Unknown Speaker 47:26
We will indeed Christian until then, my friend so yeah.
Speaker 1 47:32
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the wealth builders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealth builders.co.uk/membership right now for free access. That's wealth builders.co.uk/membership