In this episode, we're joined by Aran Curry, Founder of The Insight Group, who shares his incredible journey of building a property portfolio of over 200 properties – and how you can do the same!
Aran breaks down his strategy for buying properties at a discount and reveals expert insights on negotiating deals in today's competitive market.
You'll also learn how to tackle common challenges faced by investors and discover the importance of building a power team to support your growth.
But that’s not all! We dive into creative financing strategies, including vendor finance, along with tips for structuring your deals for long-term success.
Aran also explains how to systemise your property business, diversify within the property sector, and unlock the power of recurring income streams.
Tune in if you’re serious about growing your property portfolio, this episode is packed with practical advice and insider knowledge to help you scale fast and achieve financial independence.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
>> The Insight Group [Website]
>> Insight Education [Website]
>> 'Save A Fortune' eBook by Kevin Whelan
>> 'The Property Coach' [Hardcopy Book]
>> 2025 Blueprint To Grow Your Portfolio [Event]
>> Blueprint for Acquiring Property That I Will Use to Buy 100 Properties [Webinar Replay]
Next Steps On Your Wealth Building Journey:
>> Join the WealthBuilders Facebook Community
>> Schedule a 1:1 call with one of our team
>> Become a member of WealthBuilders
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Christian Rodwell (00:02.018)
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. Today's episode is brought to you by Wealth Builders Membership, a proven step-by-step process that helps you achieve financial security within two to three years. find out more, head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash membership.
Welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the Memeship Director for Wealth Builders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin. Hi, Chris. Good to be with you again. We've got a really interesting conversation today with a man named Aaron Curry, who some of our listeners may be familiar with. Aaron is the founder and CEO of the Insight Group. He's been investing for 25 years. He's been teaching property investing for nearly 10 years. So his knowledge and experience is immense.
You can tell from, well, obviously we don't want to steal the thunder of the interview, but you hear the experience, you hear the confidence, and that only comes from people who put in the hours, you know, including mistakes, right? I like the fact that Aaron shares mistakes. He's a straight-talking kind of a guy, which again, I very much applaud him for, and he tells you what works, what doesn't work, and yeah, very, very, very insightful without the pun.
Yeah. you know, Aaron works with people at all stages of their property journey, right at the beginning to people who are wanting to scale up and expand their portfolios. And in the conversation today, we touch on the upcoming budget, which is something we're going to be doing some focused sessions on Kevin as well over the coming weeks. And also Aaron shares his top three ways to find below market value deals. So, definitely some good nuggets today. I you might have snuck in an extra little bonus, if I recall.
He might do, he might do. So listen out for that and we'll be back with the debrief after our conversation today with Mr Aaron Curry.
Christian Rodwell (02:09.038)
Aaron, welcome to Wealth Talk today. How are you? I'm awesome, thank you. Thanks for having me here. Really looking forward to spending some time with you. So thank you. I've been waiting a while. You've been traveling Europe, is it, over summer? Where have you been? Yeah, we've got a holiday place in Javier in East Spain. So we spent about 10 weeks. We've been a mixture of there and other places, but mainly there. And yeah, we're very blessed these days to get quite a lot of time off in the summer and to relax and enjoy it. So it's been good.
Good. you. Back to work now. to work. Well, I know the team have been working hard in your absence. And isn't that the dream for most people that we work with Aaron, right? It's to have that time freedom, that ability to choose what you do and you're living proof that it's possible. Thank you. Thank you. Very blessed. Thank you. So the title of today's podcast is pretty bold, right? Buying 100 properties at a 25 % discount in 18 months. So before we get into that,
Can you just tell us a little bit about your journey into property investment, please, Aaron? Do you know what? I struggle with this. And the reason I struggle with this is because it starts with, I've been in property for 25 years now. And I used to look at other people and think, gosh, they're old because they've been in property for anything for 25 years, but now I have. So, yeah, I started investing back in 2000. I'm not going to bore you with a whole journey, but I invested a lot between 2003 up to about 2008.
the credit crunch here and probably built to 70, 80 properties in that period and then evolved into having various companies that sourced for other people. We've sourced for over 1700 properties for what my done for you clients were. The doors are full to that now but we continue to source some properties for them. I built a lettings business that we sold for seven figures last year, over a thousand properties in it.
And I've grown to about 200 properties on that journey, primarily by to let's, but I've got some HMOs in there. I love Holly that's but large ones, not that sleep six and things like that. have large sleeps 16 up to sleeps 20. Holly lets real specialism in that that I practice and teach about 14 of those. What about the just under 6 million of those last year were buying another four this year. So very, very involved in property, love what property can do. It creates option and choice when you can.
Christian Rodwell (04:27.702)
find a route that creates some financial freedom. You've got options and choice of how you spend your time. And yeah, it's something I'm passionate about, obviously. And was there a particular catalyst, right, at the beginning for you, Aaron? What made you buy that first property? Yeah, real great question. So the first question, the first property was more in need. So I kind of left uni at 21. I, not on purpose, but at age 19, I'd had a child and me and mum had already split up when Adam was there.
We found out that she was pregnant with Adam and so we were living, after uni we living in different towns but I was having Adam kind of on the weekends and things but they weren't living in a great place so I used a bonus I got from moving job like in my first year graduate job I put a deposit down and bought a house and I won't fully bore you with that story for the sake of time but I was such a good negotiator it was worth about 21,000 the house and I paid about 27,000 for that house. I was rubbish, absolutely rubbish.
What really got me into property was circa four or five years later when a mentor of mine, was working as a mortgage broker, doesn't really describe it properly. We used to coach people around their money. So we'd sit with couples, they'd sign up for 25 years of service. We'd look after their mortgages and their finances, but we'd also coach them how as a couple to work with money, which was really fascinating because when people get together.
You've got all your beliefs about money in your back and many couples, a lot of their arguments are money based because they've never been trained in it. They've never, they've got different beliefs. So that was really interesting. But the guy that owned that business was Australian based. He'd grown a big business out there. He was setting up a business in the UK and growing here, I was in early in the UK. And he came over and they believed in debt reduction. So paying the mortgages off your residential.
but asset accumulation improved lifestyle and that was the mantra. Every presentation I did, I covered those three points. And he gave me the book, Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which is not read, it's a great property book. It's a high level concept, it doesn't teach the how. But that got me into it. His push, I wasn't earning much money for the first six months. I was like, how can I buy property? He showed me, he said, you've got to find a way. For me, for...
Christian Rodwell (06:44.974)
for me personally, but for my clients, I was serving, you need to role model. So it was great from that perspective. And again, I don't think we'll cover it now, Christian, but the first 10 were pretty much a disaster because I've read this high level concept, but we didn't have the detail. So I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes with other people's money as well. But learn through those, learn, I had to learn and keep learning, finding the best people I could and learning from them.
And luckily persisted. I was very close to quitting at one point about 18 months in, but luckily persisted and where I am now with it. No, that's great to know. And you mentioned Robert Kisarcki, such a catalyst for so many people as well. actually we play the Cashflow 101 game in London every month. yeah, it's good to hear you mention him as well.
Okay, and where did the Insight Group come to life at what point? Yeah, so that was about 2008. when we hit the credit crunch in 2008, I already had a mortgage business, so Mortgage Insight, which I've since sold back in 2017, 18, I think it was, but my mortgage-broking business was Mortgage Insight. So suppose that was the start from about 2004. But in 2008, when the credit crunch hit, we were probably buying about 10 properties a month at the peak there.
And we were keeping half and the other half, we were buying all of these at discount. Back then you could have no money and buy houses if you knew what you were doing. So it was just, it was unbelievably easy if you knew what you were doing, but we were buying 10, keeping five and the other five we would flip. We would either put them straight back on the market and sell them for open market value. bought with 20 or 25 % discount or we'd do a bit of refurbishment, but not a lot. And then we'd flip it on and sell it on. So.
When the credit crunch hit, suddenly the mortgage lenders turned around and said, you've got 70, 80 mortgages, the most we're going to give anyone is three. And someone else said the most we're going to give anyone is 10, the most we're going to give anyone is five. And the numbers didn't add up. I could still source the houses. I still had my systems to get great discounted properties. I had my contacts to do that, but we couldn't source the properties. So around 2008, nine.
Christian Rodwell (08:56.27)
I started giving them to friends or saying, this is amazing. They'd be like, I don't want a house. I'd like, it's amazing. You need to buy it. And this friend will buy one. This acquaintance will buy one. And eventually I just went, there's a business here. I can source all these houses. There's people that do actually want them. I can make some money in the middle. And my done for you business was kind of born out of that. And that's the business where we've bought over 1,700 houses for clients in the last, a bit over a decade now, maybe 15 years now actually.
Yeah, and that's where it was born. The education and the lettings business kind of fell out of that. We were buying all these houses and people going, I want them, I don't want manage them. So the lettings business fell out of that, which again I've since sold. And then the education started about 10 years ago, maybe nine. We were recording this at the end of 2024, so it'd be 10 years next year. I got challenged by somebody who said, great human that I knew, he's sadly passed away, but join me. But he said to me,
you're doing it done for you for people. Some people want it done for them, but others want teaching to do it and then to do it. And first I was like, I don't like doing that, John. I like negotiating, cutting the deal. It's where I'm best, sat in an office, don't like humans, leave me alone. But yeah, I learned I could help more people. He was right. And we went and studied and became really detailed. It took me about 18 months before I was happy to teach this all on and put it all together. And we've been teaching since.
And it's part of that what you refer to today as the hands-free portfolio building service that you offer. Yeah, yeah. So we don't anymore offer that to new clients. So if a client comes along now and says, you source me hands-free some properties? We're full. We're fully subscribed. This isn't a sales technique. We're full. We don't intend to ever open the doors again. So we're serving the clients we've got and building their portfolios in the background. So these days...
The primary function we have as a business is educating and teaching people how to do this themselves. Anything from a, you know, I'm totally starting out, I have no clue, can I have some free results? We run about 25 free webinars every month. We do two day events that people can attend for free. There's lots of different ways to engage and challenges for free.
Christian Rodwell (11:15.182)
And that can be starter out, or also one who wants more impetus or has got stuck. They've spent all their money on the first three or four, they don't know how to build the next one. And then all the way up, we've got people with 300 properties that want to get to 400, people that want to model us. know, we're buying these hundred houses, which we're to come onto over this 18 month period. And you know, people that want to model that, but they might want to model and get 10 or 20 or five or whatever their number is. So yeah, people from free all the way up to 48k plus back for one-to-one coaching and everything in between.
got the different path for them to help support them on the way. we know there's so many different strategies in property. There are a handful that you focus on primarily. Yeah, I'm really, really passionate about what I'm about to say. the challenge for me with the property industry is what tends to happen, and I'm not pointing at everybody, but people are out to sell their courses. So they'll come along and go...
Rent to rent, everybody should do rent to rent. So regardless of who the individual is, they're like, everyone needs to learn rent to rent. So now everyone buys rent to rent. And then a couple of years later, they've sold everyone rent to rent. they go, options, everyone should do options. And they sell everyone options. And then a couple of years later, it's service to combination. And a couple of years later, it's HMOs. And we have these cycles that when you're in the industry, you can see it going on. But basically, it's like a one size fits all. I'm really, really passionate that
There are hundreds of ways to make money in property. There are hundreds of property strategies out there. All of them are good. But what I found is we went 10 years ago and interviewed 50 people who were making 100k plus a year through property. Not one off a year from development, but consistently. And we went spoke to those people about their journey, where they started, where they got to, how they got their obsession. What was fascinating out of the 50 that I interviewed, out of all of those people, all of them by one used one of just five strategies.
Just five. And so for me, success leaves clues. I'm not saying the other strategies don't work, but these five work the best in my opinion. And so for me, I help people to unpack those. for me, that's vitalettes, it's HMOs, or the housing month of occupation. It's service combination or hollylette, whichever you want to call it. And they are different, but the two of them wrapped in.
Christian Rodwell (13:34.178)
and then using options and different versions of options, it's so, that word is really dangerous and underused. And normally for me, by the way, an option or a purchase lease option is year two training. It's not year one training. I know this is a straight to it apart from the market we're in right now, which makes it a little bit different. So they're the five kind of core strategies that I recommend that people kind of hang their hat on.
And again, it's working out some of those strategies, your investor strategies, where you put your money in and it works for you and you get on with your life. Some of them are job strategies, like an HMO, you're going to trade time for the extra money. Yeah, you'll get extra money, but you're going to trade. And people do the wrong thing. People take a job strategy and then get stressed by it it's extra work. They just want it to invest and then they quit. So I'm really passionate about helping people pick their right strategies. I think if you said to me, Christian, do we have a niche that
other people don't have or is less spoke about elsewhere. We've obviously got a massive buy to let background and people go buy to let is dead, buy to let doesn't work if you buy the wrong ones or you bought the wrong ones in the past. Not having a go but you didn't have the right rules. Anyone could make money when the base rate was 0.1%. Our specialty, probably our niche is these multi-generational, these large, a lot of my clients work in that space.
And then also being able to buy in the market with little or no money. so I think while we've got that buy to let foundation, and I can teach that till the cows come home, this multi-generational holiday which creates great cash flow, know, 120, 130 grand in and you're making 30 grand of net profit each and every year from one property. I love that. That's really sexy. we can get that to run without you. I was in Spain in the busiest period.
for 10 weeks and it's five minutes a week on WhatsApp for property. But then this ability, which we're going to come onto to buy properties with very little of your own money, our big discount, is our real speciality as well. we are going to come onto that in just a second. I do want to say because we are recording now, it's early October 2024, we've got a budget coming up, a big, big budget. Surely you can't make
Christian Rodwell (15:51.79)
money and property anymore. That's what everyone's saying, Aaron, right? So, you know, with the budget upcoming, you know, how do you see things panning out for property investors? Yeah, I love it. By the way, I love that everyone's saying that, right? Because guess what? There are lots of landlords leaving the industry. There are lots of would-be landlords not coming into the industry. And what does that mean? That means there's more deals available.
It literally, Warren Buffett says it in investing world, he says invest when others are fearful. And right now, what are people about property investing? They're primarily fearful. Interestingly, the people in the know that have got a lot of properties already, what are they doing buying lots more, but other people are backing off and backing away. So I'll talk about budget first though, in terms of what you've just said. And I'm not going to make a prediction because someone's going to watch this in November and they'll know what the budget was.
So I'm not going make predictions, but it is the thing that I would say, right? In my opinion, whichever government had been in, they've got almost an impossible job because right now, they're short on money. They need to tax everybody more money. There's not enough money for the NHS. There's not enough money for schools. There's not enough money to support all these services that they want to support, right? And the money has to come from somewhere.
So people need to get tax more. So a lot of property investors are going, we're getting beaten over the head. We're getting tax more. Well, actually everybody is. Actually, everybody needs to pay more. So I don't overly worry about what will or won't happen. And that sounds quite blasé, but if you can't control it, don't worry about it. I love that saying and I live to it as much as I possibly can. I can't control what the government will do. And there's nothing more definite that taxes will change and taxes will go up and will go down.
and generally we'll pay more and then we'll die, right? That's gonna happen. So I can't change that. What I can do, I'd rather have a hundred properties and get taxed on those a lot or a little than have none because I'm busy worrying about the taxes and I don't get started, right? And the bottom line with property, the bottom line with property is you make money not just from the cash. And this is the bit that people are missing. In the last 15 years, when the base rate was 0.1%,
Christian Rodwell (18:10.114)
And I don't mean this disrespectfully, but anyone could buy a buy to let and make money. And you could buy the wrong buy to let on the wrong street and you still made money, right? Now the base rates gone up and mortgage is more expensive. By the way, in the next three years, it's going to go back down again. But now the base rates gone up and it's more expensive. Now that there's some more taxes in play, those landlords are getting found out that they bought the wrong houses and they're blaming property. But actually,
you just bought the wrong one. If you'd have bought the right one in the right place, my properties are performing. I haven't had to sell my properties. I haven't had to change them because they were bought correctly with the right rules, with the right analyzers. They're in the right structure. Apart from my first 10, by the way, which we tidied up and got rid of, right? So, but since then I've been doing it right. So if you learn to do it right, then there's a massive opportunity. But if you don't learn to do it right,
and you do it wrong, then it'll hurt you and it's like anything. So what's gonna come, we don't know exactly. The biggest challenge the government have got is people expect them to go after the landlords, but they're not stupid, whether you like them or not, right? They're absolutely not stupid, right? And the bottom line is if they go after the landlords too much, more and more will leave the industry. What's the result of that?
less properties, rents going through the roof, which they already are. By the way, as a landlord, that's amazing. Socially for society, it's horrific. And that isn't getting fixed until they go build two million more houses. And that ain't getting fixed, in my opinion, until the government replace the houses that Thatcher sold off or set off selling off all those years ago and they've not replaced. And until that happens, we're going to have this supply and demand issue. And by the way, we all say we need to build more houses.
but do want a house building on the field that you've got a view over right now? Everybody then says no. So where are these houses going to go? For me, they can't attack landlords too much because if they attack landlords a lot further, too many will leave and the prices will go up even further. And I'll I'll be stuck pretty with that, but I won't be happy with what happens to society as a result of that. That's the second.
Christian Rodwell (20:23.394)
Yeah, so I don't overly worry about it. What will be will be and then we deal with it. And if you've got the right experts around you, you just make the right decisions, right, at that point in time. But I'm definitely not worried yet. It's still a brilliant investment if you know what you're doing. Because it's not just cash flow, it's capital growth, it's the ability to refinance, the ability to leverage. I'm going to finish with, on this point, and I've gone for a while, you spend 100 grand in the stock market and you buy a share.
and the market goes up 10%, you make 10,000 pound. If you take that 100,000 pounds in property, the banks will lend you 75%. Try doing that for buying shares, by the way, they laugh you out of the bank, right? But now you're able to buy four houses, you're controlling, we're to come onto this, but 400Ks worth of asset. When the market goes up the same 10%, because the stock market and property over time pretty much go up the same, so people go, well, why would you probably not?
Now I've got 400K of property for my 100 grand. I make 40K of capital growth. Well, the stock market, I only make 10K unless I know how to do options in the stock market and things like that, which is a lot more risky in my book. So for me, I'm making 40K instead of 10K and then I can reinvest it. Now I've got five going up going forward. So that's what I love about property and people in the media are missing that opportunity and missing that you got to buy to the right rules with the right structure. And as long you do that, you're in great shape.
Hopefully we've warmed our audience up enough now for the main event. Let's break this title down then. So we're talking about 100 properties, 25 % discount and the time period of 18 months. Where did this all begin? Yeah, yeah. Great question. Great question. So it began actually, I've got a JV partner that I'm doing this with. So there's the two of us together have set ourselves this target and we're doing this together.
And it began at the end of last year. So again, we're in October 24 now, but at end of last year, both of us saw where the market was and where the market was heading. And we kind of put a marker in the ground and said this next 18 months, so kind of all of 2024 and six months into next year, approximately, this next 18 months, we felt and believed is the best time to buy property for the last.
Christian Rodwell (22:40.398)
15 years, you going back to 2008, nine, that was a dream time to be buying properties. And it's the best time since then. then again, I could give you loads of data on that if you want me to, and you can ask me more about that Christian, if that'd be useful to the listeners. So, this, every time's a great time to buy property. So it doesn't mean I didn't buy in 2023. We did, we bought 5.8 million pounds worth of property that year. It doesn't mean I won't buy in 2026, 27, 28. I will.
but I won't buy a hundred in that period. That's not what I'll do. It's such a great opportunity. the reason, without going into the detail, I can if you want, but the opportunity for us is supply and demand. If someone wants to sell their house quickly, right, they're gonna have to take a hit in this market in most parts of the country. And that means they're willing to take bigger discounts. We can buy with bigger discounts. And there's also more people in distress. People will look in and say,
or this is about ripping other people off. Why would someone, you know, I did it at beginning, why would someone with in their right mind sell for a 25 % discount and it'd be anywhere near a win? We must be ripping them off, we must be. But there are so many reasons, genuine reasons, about 42, we teach them, why people would sell for a big discount and it be a win, and it be a win. We said, look, we can do 100, we can do 100. We actually think we can do more. We're at this point, they're not completed yet, but in completions.
and already completed, we got 72, we did a count up the other day, might be 73, 74 now by the way, but we got 72 and we've got another nine months left nearly, eight months left, so we're gonna hit that 100 target and go through it. But we said, we can do at least 100 at this, but we set a rule and a criteria, we said if we're gonna buy it today, so if we're gonna complete on the purchase date, if this is a 200K property, the maximum will pay.
is 75 % of that, so that's 150. So a vendor has got a choice. First of all, they have to have a problem. If they don't have a problem, no one is going to sell their house for 150, right? Wait on the open market, you'll sell it for full price, don't sell it to us, you'd be stupid to do that, don't even speak to us, right? But we've got marketing strategies to find the vendors that have got the problems. Once we find the vendors that have got the problems, and that, again, people automatically go, must be financial problems.
Christian Rodwell (25:05.486)
It's about 3%, 4 % of what we do is financial. There's all sorts of different ranges of problems, right? But either they're going to sell for a 25 % discount or the alternative is we take control of it now, but we pay for it later. Now that's a bit more complex to understand, but the principle is they give us the keys now. We sign some paperwork. They give us the keys now. We take control. We can start optimizing for cashflow. We agree a price now.
but we don't pay them till five, often 10 or 15 years from now, and we're paying them today's price. So they're willing to wait for the money. That problem isn't money, for example, they're willing to wait for the money, but we'll pay them later for it. But we get control of the property now, any asset growth is ours over that period, et cetera. So that hundred, that number of a hundred is ones that we've got control of. And taking control.
There's 62 different ways to do that, literally, so I'm not going to cover all 62, but it can be an option for those that understand what they are. It can be an exchange now with a big delay of completion, but work complete for 10 years. People go, can you do that? Well, most of the visitors don't want a file open for 10 years, so they say you can, but you actually can. It can be any number of different structures that work for the vendor. It can be vendor finance, where we've had vendors say, I want to sell this house. We've said, what are going to do with the cash?
put it in the bank. We're in our 70s, we don't want property anymore, we're put it in the bank. Well, what are you gonna get in the bank? 4%, 4.5%. If the base rate goes down another 3 % in the next three years, what will you be getting? Well, we know it will go down 1 to 2%. What will you do then? I'll leave it in the bank. Okay. Well, do you want to lend it to us for the next 15 years and we'll pay you 5 %? Well, what do mean? Well, they'll lend us the 200K to buy their own house.
So they're the mortgage, we don't go to HSBC or Abbey National or any other lender. They lend us the 200K on a mortgage. We sign a mortgage deed with them and we get the house. We put no money in, we just pay the solicitor as we complete. And now we've got control of the house because we own it, but we have a mortgage debt to them for the full amount. I had a really frustrating vendor the other day that we got to near completion.
Christian Rodwell (27:25.356)
It was only on a 70k purchase, think it was, roughly that number. And they turned around and said, actually, we've realised you're not putting any money in. And we said, yeah, you knew. And they said, we feel like you need to put something in. And we said, OK, well, what do you think we need to put in? They came back and said, can you put a thousand pounds in? But this is instead of a 25 % deposit, right? So I'm frustrated by that story, by the way, because we had to put an extra grand in. The key is cash is king of queen, whichever you want to call it.
And we're spending on average six K a property. So we're doing these 100 houses. Yes, we've had to raise 600 K. That for a lot of people is a load of money, but do your own maths. What if you wanted only 10? Six K properties now 60 K. The ones where we buy with a 25 % discount, we have to buy them now and probably put a deposit in or use bridging finance and then we'll refinance back out of it. The control now pay later, we're not paying.
You've maybe put a pound down and pay the solicitor's 1500 quid for ours and theirs, but you're paying for it later. There's a couple of things that are crossing my mind. Some people will be listening now and they'll be all over it. They'll be like, yeah, absolutely get it. There will be others where this will be a massive challenge to their mindset and their thinking, how can you possibly do this? And all sorts of psychological barriers and things going on right now. You've taught thousands and thousands of people over the years. Have you?
encountered this where some people have just got a mental block and what advice can you give someone listening now who just needs to get that other side of that mental block in order to be able to open this sort of strategy up? it's an amazing question and I think this feeds into, you've obviously as a company got relationships with lots of different people, lots of different investment options, lots of different ways of making money and doing that tax efficiently and supporting people on that journey.
And all of those, you'll have heard what I'm about to say, which is 80 % of success is the psychology and 20 % is the what you do. All this property stuff is a set of rules and formula that we follow. We know that they work and we just repeat them again and again and again. So can I teach that on someone else? Yes, as long as they're 14 or over, they'll understand it. And I've got students that are 90. It's simple, right? You can teach this stuff and you can learn it.
Christian Rodwell (29:42.392)
So why is it then that so many people don't get financially free? And it is that, it's that mindset and it's working on the mindset. And actually we haven't talked about it here, but these days, my biggest passion is actually helping people with their mind and their mindset. So when someone does my training at the high end, my VIP clients at the high end, we do mindset every, we're together like 12 days a year minimum. Every time we're together, we're working on this.
I also run a retreat that they go to and then a foreign retreat that they go to which are purely mindset and a three-day boomers event that's more mindset. And often people come off my programs and go, I love the property stuff, but I really love this because it flows into every area of your life. So I'm really, really, really passionate about this. It changes the game. So therefore giving a little golden pill doesn't actually work. Because you always say, what's the thing that'll get them over the fence? Well, I can give them all the logic under the sun.
The logic on its own won't get you over the fence because if you're listening, you'd already be over the You logically know property can make you a lot of money, so you'd logically be already over the fence, right? So it is what Christian's saying, it's that mindset issue, it's that, and what's that made up of? It's made up of your beliefs that you've picked up since you were seven, eight or nine years old. So I was taught, I've been thinking beliefs in money, I was taught that wealthy people were idiots. My mum worked for a housing charity for 25 years. She hated landlords because she dealt with all the rogue ones.
a big car, a nice car went past, she'd go, idiot under her breath. I'd go, mommy, mommy, what do you mean? I'm seven, eight years old. She goes, they spent 30,000 on that car. It could have fed six families for five years or housed six families. So my beliefs going into my twenties was really poor in serving me to do well financially. Not my mom's fault. She was a great human being, right? She still is. She's an amazing human being. But they were the beliefs I had. it's a case of working on your beliefs. And if you hang around with,
10 people who are all doing property and all making loads of money out of property and all love it, you'll start to love it. But if you hang around with 10 people that hate property and don't like property and aren't doing property and think it's a bad idea and don't like landlords, you're never gonna do it. So there's two extremes there. So your peer group is important, but it's working on those beliefs. It's working on...
Christian Rodwell (32:02.838)
TR Vekker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind is a book that I absolutely love. think he's done a great job in this space. Tony Robbins is a great mentor of mine. people may or may not have heard of him, but I've done so much training with Tony around beliefs and values. If you're going to go Google it, go Google Tony Robbins' beliefs and values. And more and more these days, Curry, go get around Aaron Curry because I spend more and more time in this space. And there's a number of other people, but it's really important.
to work on this because if you don't work on it, you'll stay in the masses. And I don't mean any disrespect with that, but the masses don't get wealthy. The masses might make, you might be making okay money, you might be making good money. But getting financially free and having the choice to do what you wanna do, and most good people, by the way, when you get financially free, choose to help lots of others. They might start by helping themselves and then they help their family and then they help the extended family. Before they know it, they're helping.
community and then the world, right? But you don't have to do any of that, it's your choice. But it's the point is that it's the choice. So I love that. I love getting people financially free and then the ripple effect of it. But you've got to work on your mindset. You've got to deliberately, this isn't just working on property and whatever you choose to invest in. The most important thing to invest in is this, get the right training and the knowledge to do the steps, but actually make sure you're working with someone who can help you.
get over those hurdles. So when you hit a bump in the road, you don't procrastinate for three months and then back off, but actually you go, can get over this or round this or I'll find a way through it, because you've got the right mindset to do that. Perhaps when you were starting out, Aaron, you didn't have the luxury of the communities, the network groups that exist today, right? You obviously provide that environment now for many people, even with coaching and handholding.
there's still sometimes people who don't take that next step right. But certainly having education, having a peer group, having people around you is going to make a big difference. I think it's so important. If I want to get good at something, I get myself in the right community. I mean, we moved five years ago. My head office is based in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. My grown up kids, I've got five kids, totally separate story, but my grown up kids, I started when I was 19, as I mentioned.
Christian Rodwell (34:19.297)
My grown-up kids are in Scarborough, so I left them, I left them, and we moved to Wimslow Cheshire, it's two and a half, three hours drive away. And 70 % of that was peer group for the two younger kids that we got for us to about a different level, you know. One of my goals, for example, was to be a world-class husband. Like, that's been my goal, written down goal, something I'm actively working on, and I think I'm already pretty awesome, I wanna be world-class. Layla's the judge, not me, right? But so, for example, Layla will go out in the day, and one of her jobs every day is to find amazing men.
and she'll come home and go, I met the most amazing man today, right? And most husbands would have a fit at that, but I'm like, tell me about them. And most importantly, I ask, are they married? And she'll go, yes. And I'll go, brilliant, let's invite them around for dinner, right? I know that sounds crazy to most people, but if I can get a dinner party with three other couples where Layla thinks the man is batting at this level and is a mid.
I want to be around them to see what they do, how they interact, because I can learn and get better in that space. Right? If it's business, I want to be around business people batting higher than me. If it's property, I want to be around people. And guess what? It's really uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to walk in a room where everyone's batting above you. It's uncomfortable to always be around people that have got a higher standard or a higher result. But flipping it, you grow. Flipping it, you reach higher plateaus more quickly.
So yeah, look for that community, look for people that are batting above you in whatever you wanna get great at. If that is the stock market, look for people that are brilliant at the stock market and hang around with them and you'll be amazed how things then grow in that direction.
Aaron, just coming back to the 100 properties there and some people think, well, okay, might be okay for you, right? But I'm early stages, you know, I don't have the experience, I don't have the contacts, I don't have the money, all of this. You've talked a little bit about how you can do this with limited funds. Do you have any other advice or tips for someone who perhaps has got limited funds, how they can start to acquire their first few properties? Yeah, really great question. Really great question. first of all, know that you can. So know that you can, you just have to find a way.
Christian Rodwell (36:27.918)
You have to find the way. Now, it's obvious that I'm about to say this, but get trained because you don't want to find a way and do the wrong thing. So I might be a great fit for you. I might not, but someone else might be. Find a trainer that you feel rapport with and that you feel aligned with, that you feel comfortable around, that you've got similar values and work with them. would strongly say, but I'm bound to say that, but coming away from that, coming away from that, if you've got little funds, let's say you've got zero to
to 30K, less funds to get set around this. You can look at a rent to strategy, so rent to service commercial, where you rent from a landlord, take the property, and then you put it on Airbnb and book a knock on when you make the profit in between. You can do rent to one of these large holiday rents, right? You can do a rent to an HMO. So rent to strategies can be a good strategy. You're gonna trade your time, they'll take you more time to run the SA or the holiday, but you'll get a better financial return.
they can work well. If someone's in the rat race and they hate their job, you might do that in the first year to get you out of the rat race. But long term, I want you earning the asset, right? So how do you earn the asset? You earn the asset if you've got very little money by getting JV partners, what I call be your own bank. So finding somebody else with 100K that doesn't have the inclination to do this themselves, they put the money in, you put the time in, you build a great portfolio. And either you do a 50-50 with them.
But actually what the mistake people make is most of these people, if they wanted some property, would have bought it. So they'd rather, we do something called the guaranteed interest model. You just pay them a rate of return guaranteed every month, regardless of how the investment does. A lot of people prefer to lend on that basis. People think, surely they'll want to share. No, if they wanted to share, they'd be buying property already if they had a hundred grand. So that's what, and then people say, well, just starting out, why would someone lend to me? Well.
I raised my first hundred grand having read the book salivating at 9pm on a night knocking wildly on a neighbor's door because I'd remembered he got some money and it was raining and dark. was October, raining and dark, right, miserable. I'm salivating. I'm going, you've got money, I've got time, we should do this together. It was a ridiculous pitch. And he gave me a hundred grand about three weeks later and he was very glad he knew it. We built a load of properties together. But my point is...
Christian Rodwell (38:48.686)
There's 8 billion people on the planet. So yes, not everyone will lend to you if you're just starting out, but someone will. And I sit and people say, well, I've asked lots of people. I say, who have you asked? Well, I asked my mom. Well, and she said, no, well, that's one then. So you've got another 7 billion, whatever it is to go after. that, be your own banks an option, a rent to strategy is an option. All then what I was talking about, the way we're buying these 100 houses, it's on every 6K of property. So it's about finding the motivated sellers, learn the skills.
to find the motivated sellers. There's AI and software you can use to speed that journey up. Normally that'll get you to about 15 % discount, not the full 25, or you can use marketing strategies to get the full 25 % discount. And control now pay later. You don't even have to pay for it now. You pay for it later. Yeah. No, thanks for that, Aaron. And we're definitely coming close to our time today. But just a question, in terms of sourcing, there's multiple, multiple ways you've alluded to that you can find properties.
It sounds like you've got a process, you've perhaps got a team that helping you to get these hundred properties yourself. For someone listening now, what would you say are the top three most effective ways to find below market value deals right now? Option number one is out there now in the UK are about 5,000 people or companies that call themselves property sources. Like any industry, there's some great ones, some good ones, some average ones, some poor ones.
scandals, right? So, and everything in between. So you need to do your due diligence on the deals, et cetera. But I would get on the database of as many property sources as possible, set up a different email address, because they're going to span the heck out of you, and have them send, and then once a week sift through that and tell the ones that are you wrong stuff why it's wrong. So, but that's route to market one. Yes, you're going to pay a fee in the middle, but if they're getting you a 20 % discount and you are happy with 15, and you're paying them a fee in between, you're still getting your 15, right?
And how do you find those people? Just go on social media, they'll find you. Go on social media and say you're looking to buy some houses. They'll pop up, they'll go, I can help you, I can help you, right? So, in all the property groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, et cetera. that would be route 101. Simplest way to start to get deals put in front of you. But do not get distracted. You've got to know what type of property you want, know the rules, know the analyzers.
Christian Rodwell (41:07.522)
So you run what they say is an amazing deal through and you check for your rules. Don't take their word, it's a great deal. And I can do loads of training on that. that method one. Second method is to explore, explore different versions of AI that are out there. These days with artificial intelligence, there's so many companies moving forward with the software solutions that they offer to help you take all the data on right, moving all the data on Zoopla and Nanregistry.
chop it up in different ways and use it in different ways. So that's the second option for you that can work really well. You won't get quite as good at these scouts from that, but that's the second option. I'll give you a third one that's worked really brilliantly for us recently, which is working with letting agents. So letting agents right now are not enjoying this marketplace as a whole because landlords are leaving the industry. So guess what? They're losing properties on their books. So we'll go to a letting agent and say, listen, I know you might be losing properties.
here's an idea, why don't we mail your list, you mail them, we'll give you the letter, but you mail them, and you say to your list of 500 landlords, I know some of you are considering selling, we don't think you should because, however if you are, we found someone, we want to service you and look after you, we found someone that would be interested in buying your properties from you. Now what's in it for the letting agent, what's in it for them is we guarantee they'll get to keep managing the property and we may even.
you know, if they push us, we might pay them a sourcing fee. And if they really push us, we'll JV on the deals that we get together. So it's pretty good for the letting agent. What's in it for us is we've now got a motivated vendor and the buy to let landlords who are selling up a permanent quandary because if they sell it tenanted, they'll get less money for it than if it's vacant because there's less people that can buy it, only landlords, not first time buyers and second time buyers, et cetera. But if they decide to make it vacant,
It might take six months to sell and then the sale falls through and the other six months are lost and now it's empty for 12 months, 18 months, etc. And in meantime, they're paying bills and the mortgage rates are up and they're all already felt they were losing money and they're feeling really a lot of pain. know, lot of the deals we're buying at the moment are a landlord that wants to sell 20 at once, 10 at once. One of my deals I've done this year, 36 at once, right? And that landlord has made a load of money out of property for a load of years, but they just want out.
Christian Rodwell (43:28.28)
and they're happy for me to pay them in 15 years time, right, for the properties. I've paid them nothing now. In fact, separate story, but they lent me 150K at the same time. So they lent me money to set their portfolio on. I didn't need it for that, I've used it for other stuff and I got the portfolio for the next 15 years, but it was a win for them because they just wanted 36 grand a year guaranteed, 42, sorry, a year coming in, which the portfolio will pay for within 12 months.
So they know for the next 12 years, they've got three and half grand a month. They live off that, they're happy, and I'll pay them in the future. So it was a win-win. I could unpack that for a whole half hour as a separate podcast, potentially. yeah, so letting agents, letting agents are a great source. It's a win for them, it's a win for you. They send a letter, send a couple of letters to 500 landlords. You'll get 10 to 15 people seriously interested, seriously interested in doing some kind of deal with you.
And finally, this is a boost, I've given you three, but look for people later on in life, late 60s, early 70s, landlords looking to sell up. If they're unencumbered, if they have no debt on those buy-to-lets, the question is, where's your money going to go in the bank? What's it going to earn very little in two or three years' time? Vendor finance. Now they're providing the finance for you to buy that property. It's clear that we're only scratching the surface here and you're a man clearly on a mission.
and so much more to share and so much experience in property and to help others and a real passion of helping others that's coming through loud and clear Aaron. So if anyone would like to follow you on the socials or come along and check out one of your events, where should they head to? Yeah, great, great, great, great question. So really great question. So we may be able to put a link somewhere around here. Me and Christian didn't talk about this beforehand. So we may, but I don't know, able to put a link around here.
What I'd really recommend, what you wanna be doing is coming along and just check us out with free stuff, right? So, and see if there's a fit. So, you you can either attend free webinars that we run, and we run those probably three or four evenings a week. There's a different webinar running on a different topic. If you've got the time and you're really interested, free two-day event. I'd really, Matt, because we'll do some mindset stuff. We'll take you through the types of transactions I'm talking about here in a lot more depth.
Christian Rodwell (45:49.358)
will help you work out the best strategy for you, which is massive, because then you can focus where you go next with your learning and training and stuff like that. But your best to come into the database and we'll just invite you to the webinars. When you've had enough unsubscribe, I'll just say, I don't want to attend this type or that type. But that's the best way to consume some free content and then take some easy steps to learn more.
Excellent. Well, I'll make sure we grab those links from your team, Aaron, and share those alongside today's podcast. once again, thanks so much for sharing with us today. Really enjoyed it. And I know we'll be touching base again really soon. Yeah, pleasure. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
Christian Rodwell (46:28.558)
Well, that was an enjoyable conversation with Aaron. Lots of insights there we will pull out and dive into in a second. But before we do that, let's do our usual trip over to Trustpilot where we can read out one of our reviews that have come in this week. And I'm going to read one out from Mike, who has taken the time to say, I joined Wealthbuilders a few months ago, excellent amount of knowledge, experience and advice contained within the program.
that's helping me to understand where I currently am and what I need to do. The wealth building team are great and always on hand should I need anything. I've had the pleasure of personally engaging with Kevin and his ability to provide direction according to my circumstances has been brilliant. Looking forward to the journey ahead and making progress on my financial goals whilst being part of Wealthbuilders. And it feels great having this network of support behind me because I know I'll have lots of questions and knowledge gaps ahead.
Very open minded, isn't he, young Mike? To try and to not just recognize there's a gap now, but also you're always learning. The whole journey of Wealthchrist is a transformation, isn't it? Almost people start off, and Aaron mentions it as well, you you just need to start. When you get started, you'll learn something new. If you're in the right community and you're meeting, what did he say, batting more than you, batting higher than you.
I think stronger than you, whether it's a cricketing term or another term, but people who are more experienced than you so that you're constantly being pulled by the learning that you can see from other people. I think what surprises so many people in the world of property is how open and sharing everybody is. know, it's not quite that way in employeeship, is it? It's not quite the same culture.
when you work in a job, but it's definitely a culture of sharing, in my experience anyway, and we surround ourselves, don't we, with sharers. I also like the point Aaron makes just in that spirit of sharing, which is whoever you choose to find education with, whoever you choose to find and connect with, just talk to people and find out who you resonate with. And like what build is right for everyone, but...
Christian Rodwell (48:53.868)
We tell the truth, don't we? We just say how it is. And if people listen to enough podcasts, they'll get the hang of who we are. And they'll decide whether they like what they hear or whether they don't. And I think all the good people, Simon Zucci said the same thing, saying the same thing. I'm saying the same thing. Just go out, talk to people. Don't do a DIY job because you only know enough to do the job. You won't know enough to get to the next level and the next level after that. So see wealth is a continually.
a continual process of learning and building and developing connections and being willing to give as well as to receive. All of those things, you Aaron was, you could, you could pull so many lessons out of what Aaron shared other than the direct lessons of what he's done in property, which for some might be confusing. You can accept that, right? Because when somebody's outstanding at what they do, and I think you mentioned it, Chris, it makes it sound so easy or it's okay for you.
But some of the basic strategies he shared, they are basic. The principles of property are the principles of property. You want to get cash flow, you want to be able to get a capital appreciation, you want to make sure you're buying right at the start. You need to find solutions for other people's problems, what an entrepreneur does. And those problems are constantly changing and evolving. And as we see now in a world where we've had the most feared
and talked about budget in 30 years, would say. Chris, I've been around financial world longer than you, and I've never seen a budget talk more about this. And I've never seen so many landlords being fearful of their future, and so many of them, you know, just, I suppose, really feeling that perhaps the traditional way they own their property isn't for them. And whenever someone's having a problem, there's an ethical solution.
find and not taking advantage of, but finding a solution that works. And if you can do that, you'll never ever run out of opportunity in business, in property, in life, really, as long as you can do that. And I think that's a valuable life lesson, not just a property lesson. I must admit, when Aaron was talking about his mortgage days and he was talking about his early mentors' mantra of debt reduction and asset accumulation, did make me think there's some similarities with your background, Kevin.
Christian Rodwell (51:22.658)
Yes, I did start as a mortgage broker back in the very late 80s, early 90s and did focus on debt elimination and that differentiation made my mortgage business more valuable. I wrote my first book called Save a Fortune, How to Completely Eliminate Your Mortgage Loans and Credit Cards Fast. And by the way, we always give away our things free just as Aaron does. So please sign post that Chris, if anybody wants a copy of my
first book or my second book or my third book, they can have them. I'm just more than happy that then by reading them, they'll know who I am and who we are as a team. And we'll go from there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, all the digital versions of those books are available for free for all WealthBuilder members. So if you're not already on the inside of WealthBuilders, then you can do that absolutely for free. Just head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash membership.
And yeah, we'll be happy to share those with you. I'll put links as well in the show notes for easy access. Okay. So let me think. obviously we were talking about the strategy of buying a hundred properties. And as we've said many times, there's so many strategies out there, right? But Aaron kind of boiled it down to his five, which he sees and, know, again, you were saying about simplicity and principles and sometimes people overcomplicate things, don't they? And just going back to the basics. But I also like a quote.
from Aaron that he said, know that you can when it comes to not having the money, not having the knowledge, just know that you can and you need to find a way. And that all comes back to having the right network and community around you. think we've increasingly seen, haven't we, with our experience with wealth builders, the people who succeed and become financially secure, then onwards to independence, are those who surround themselves with good people. Number one.
So they work with like-minded people, they connect with like-minded people. So difficult to do it when you've got naysayers around you and there's plenty of them, just look at what's going on with the budget. You know, so much scaremongering going on. The other thing is, it's important to get coached. It's important to feel like the experience of other people can guide you to a place that you'll see distinctions and intellectual shortcuts that you're not going to see on your own.
Christian Rodwell (53:46.572)
It's a bit like a guide, you know, so I often mention it that when I go to a foreign country and spend, you know, a week there or whatever, like the time I do that because I love my short breaks, I always look for a guide because a guide takes you to places you can't find on your own. You know, and they make the whole journey more enriching. And I'll be doing that in Athens over the next week or so and looking forward to doing that because it's taken an old ruin with me. no, I'm going to talk about this.
I've got to see an old ruin. That's it. That's it. Anywho, you get the point that getting a guide is really, really a smart thing to do. I remember when we did it in Rome. crumbs. know, just the depth of knowledge of people who know their city inside out rather than just doing what the tourists do. It's just the enrichment of the experience is outstanding. And so it is with wealth and so it is with property.
Surround yourself with great people, be guided by great people, take your time to see who you resonate with. But there's loads of testimonials and case studies you can get in all sorts of different places if you're looking to connect with someone and test out their stuff for free, just as Aaron said. And I think he's offering a couple of days insight into what he does free of charge anyway. So I think we should definitely signpost that because anybody willing to give a couple of days
of their time, obviously they hope that you'll resonate with them. That's fine. That's just commercial. But no obligation. And I think it will be definitely worthwhile promoting that. Yeah, indeed. So hit the show notes right now on your phone and you'll find a link there where you can register for that two day event. And we'll link to all of other resources from Aaron as well, which he mentioned.
So, yeah, thanks once again to Aaron for being our guest today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you think someone else would enjoy listening, then please hit the share button, send it to them. yeah, Kevin, we'll be back same time, same place next week. We will indeed. Until then, my friend, see you.
Christian Rodwell (56:01.582)
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership.