In this compelling episode of WealthTalk, Christian Rodwell and Kevin Whelan sit down with property expert Susannah Cole to explore how financial resilience can transform lives.
Susannah shares her incredible journey, from building a thriving property portfolio to overcoming personal health challenges, demonstrating how wealth can provide the freedom to focus on what truly matters.
Listeners will gain insights into the strategies behind successful property investment, the power of mentorship, and the importance of resilience in navigating crises.
Susannah’s story highlights the profound connection between health and wealth, showing how financial security can empower you during life’s toughest moments.
If you’re looking for inspiration to take control of your future and build lasting wealth, this episode is not to be missed.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
>> The Good Property Company [Webiste]
Susannannah's Top Tools:
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 membership director for Wealth Builders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin. Hi, Chris. Good to be with you again. I know. Been a couple of weeks, actually, because we've been replaying those post-budget sessions and the dust has just about settled after all of that. Yeah, my blood's just stopped boiling now. I'm getting to normal temperature. Crumbs, that was a bashing budget for everybody, whether you were building wealth in property, in business.
in investing, certainly in pensions, you were bashed big style. But of course, the key thing is to focus on what you can control, not what you can't. And that's a very key message from our guest today. Yeah, the theme of financial resilience and resilience in life, right? And we talk about wealth each week, but ultimately, the reason people want to build their wealth, Kevin, we know is for freedoms and different freedoms. And, you know, the money just facilitates those things and
course, our guest today, Susanna Cole from The Good Property Company, has got a story to share with us and talking about the freedoms, Kevin, perhaps a good point reminding our listeners of what some of those are. absolutely. I mean, the core one for most people is freedom of time, isn't it? Because time is our most precious commodity. having time for that freedom from financial worries, getting to security, then independence. So essentially money, freedom, relationships, choosing who.
and how you want to spend time and with who. That's a key one. Well, I think we'll hear from today freedom of location. I know that was important to you and some of our members too, location. I think freedom of purpose. What is it you're passionate about? What difference do you want to make in the world and can that purpose be enhanced because you can give it time because you've got that freedom of money. Big one for me, freedom of control.
Christian Rodwell (02:32.462)
I love being in control. I don't like being out of control. And that's a big one. you know, things like we talk about with the ability to control your own work-life balance, the way you can control your own decisions around money, the way you can control your pension, for example, through SaaS. That's always a big one of control. And that's why it's a big one for me. And of course, for those who are less about control, but more about creativity, you can...
show your creativity, you could focus on your way of being creative. And although I won't share it right now, Chris, I think usually, you know, when I do talks on the seven pillars of wealth, I have a sort of a standing joke, don't I really, which says, if you can help me find number eight, if you can help me find asset number eight, because I can't find it, 30 years of trying, can't find it, I will send you a case.
of very fine champagne. Never had it. But listening back to your excellent interview with Suzy, I believe I found freedom number eight.
Hang on to that one. And I'll reveal that one in the end. Well, yes. As we said, Susanna Cole, someone that, you know, has wonderful values, someone we really like and align with Kevin. In fact, Susanna joked a little bit about, you know, how you first met. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We did have a joke about it ourselves when we chatted recently. She was just too busy to talk to me. She basically was like, I think she calls herself a pocket rocket and she was
pocket rocketing everywhere with, you know, with the Duracell batteries firmly wedged up behind. And she was on going and she was introduced to me by somebody else. And it was like a cursory glance and off you go. And I pulled her about that. And she took it with good grace and good, good humor as I intended it to as well. And I'm so glad that we reconnected and you did a great job of.
Christian Rodwell (04:42.466)
getting your lessons shared, which I think without further ado, really, we should listen to what she has to say because very powerful. it's time to head on over to our conversation today with Susanna Colt. Susanna, welcome to Wealth Talk today. How are you? I'm really good. And it's so nice to be here. And we've really had to make a bit of an effort to make this happen, haven't we? We have probably just spent the last 30 minutes with technology, just really
challenging us from every direction. But we're used to that, aren't we? We're used to that. We're solving the problems. We're both laughing. Yeah, it's all fine. All fine. Susanna, I'm very, very happy to have you on Wealth Talk. It feels like it should have happened much earlier. And I remember seeing you out speaking many, property events probably about 10 years ago. You were very active on the scene. Still are, of course. But a few things have changed recently. We're going to talk about that in today's episode.
Today's episode is titled, Property Saved My Life. So, you know, tell us a little bit about what's been going on in your life over the last couple of years, Susanna. So when you and I were first there, and by the way, for people listening, what is wonderful about our property community is people go back way back and people like you and I haven't done much path crossing and I hope we rectify that going forward. But people know people from a long time ago. There's history, there's kind of credibility.
And that's quite nice about our property community up and down the country, isn't it? Yeah, indeed. Well, we were talking about the speaking and traveling over to Portsmouth tonight for a property networking event. And you recently flew from Barcelona, which is where you reside now. You flew back to the UK for an event as well, didn't you? Yes, yes. YPN was on the stage with those guys. really like the folks at YPN. They were one of the magazines I read when I was starting out and I used to cut out the pages and
stick them inside my kitchen cabinet where the cereal boxes were for the kids and thinking, if that lady can do it, then maybe I can do it too, know, 15, 17 years ago. yes, property saved my life. It's true. It's completely true. I now live half my time in Barcelona. So I'm chatting to you today from Barcelona. I'm going to go and have a little bit of a meditation later on on the beach. And then I also live half my time in Bristol and I do a lot of traveling, but I had a glitch and we'll just call it a glitch, shall we?
Christian Rodwell (07:03.362)
Because the world had a glitch first, didn't it? We all got, well, we didn't all get COVID, but COVID came and we all shut down and we all changed the way we worked and went inside. And then, I don't know, being an entrepreneur, I never do anything by heart. So with me, I got diagnosed with, ready? One, two, three, four, independent and non-connected cancers during COVID. So there's my glitch.
But you fought back and you're looking absolutely wonderful. Of course, we're filming on video as well today. So if you're listening on your earbuds, you know, head to Wealth Builders website or the socials, check out us in real Technicolor as well as we chat here. But yeah, look, it's so great that you're here and that you're willing to share openly and you have been very open about the story and property saved your life. let's look at really why.
Property was set up in such a way initially that it actually gave you the time to make sure that you could get over the cancer. of course, I know you had really good foundations in your property portfolio already with your processes and systems, but I guess there were some new things that you suddenly thought, wow, I've got to make some changes in my life now. So I'd love to talk about all of those, Susanna. Just take us back to where the property journey began. How did you get into property initially? Like I think most of us.
I got to a certain stage in my career and in part, I really enjoyed my career. know, I'd been head honcho at Kiss in Bristol, so, you know, major media outlets and that was pretty exciting. Although I'm so uncool that I met, well, met, I was in the same room at Kiss headquarters with Rihanna when Umbrella was happening and I was like, who's that girl? You know, Simon Sadler Kiss then, do you, from the London side, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, there we go. That's a separate conversation we'll have. yeah, that was fascinating to be in, know, FTSE 100 firm with that. And I worked in the cashmere industry and that produced cashmere for Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel. But what that part for me was fascinating was actually being either on the board or at the board of 14 different production companies producing the world's best cashmere, which is Scottish cashmere. And basically seeing
Christian Rodwell (09:22.872)
that management style made all the difference. The yarn, okay, it may be different places, but it's very similar. So it's all about how people run their businesses and all about those really critical choices they make. It was fascinating. So I've had an interesting background and I ran Fair Trade businesses, which I founded when I was 22 as a little Baba. And I ran that for seven years and I grew it to five shops and then lots of festival trading.
So then, and really the only way to expand there was to do more work. And seeing as I was already working quite hard and I had two young children, that wasn't really gonna be possible. how it got to that was, entrepreneurialism did an MBA, because I wanted to learn more, did some really fascinating jobs and enjoyed them. However, if anybody's listening, thought, hang on a minute, you lot quite correctly,
for you, want my every last inch of blood from my veins to do a really great job for the company. then what? Hang on. What's in it for my family? Not so much me, but for my family. Where's the time for my family? And that just isn't working out. So I think we felt that kind of career stretch that so many of us feel when we got to a certain stage in our careers and think, I cannot be doing this for the rest of my life. There's got to be an alternative.
Property is that alternative. Yeah. And was there a specific moment? Did you have a conversation with somebody? Did you go to an event? How did that first start? like almost everybody. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You you start reading books, start. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Tim Ferriss for our working week. Stephen Colby. my goodness. When that poor man died, falling off his bicycle felt like my uncle had died. I'd read his books so often. It was like integrated into my physicality.
And it was just trying to figure, and of course, like many of us, you know, bought and sold my family homes. was head of household, so I didn't want to go out in the evenings when the children were asleep because I'm their mum. So what are you going to do? might as well fix up the house. So I fixed up three houses while the kids were asleep and sold them and kind of doubled my money every time. And so, that looks good considering, you know, I'm a pretty skinned single parent of the rest of the time. So I think it was a bit of practical experience and a bit of reading.
Christian Rodwell (11:45.966)
and then came down to Bristol, started going to events terrified. Like you're going to talk at an event tonight. I remember walking into events when I was very new, just thinking, okay, okay, yield. I know what yield means. And I had a little slip in my purse, annual rent divided by purchase prices, gross yield. Okay, I know one thing. And then I'd walk into the Hilton, like trying not to show that I was panicking and sit down and come think, okay, here we go, kids, let's do this.
I'm sure our listeners now some will absolutely be nodding. I know what that feeling's like. Terrifying. What sort of year are we talking then? I'm a person that gets her ducks in a row. I spent 18 months writing a business plan, doing inverted commas, nothing. I've since transacted on 45 million pounds worth of property. Any little tortoises, any little step-by-step people, I'm with you guys.
And then I kicked off and then I absolutely went for it. So I kicked off in 2008 and straight after the recession when the Lehman Brothers went down and everybody said property is a disaster. And I was like, well, when you lot go left, I'm going right. Here we go. You mentioned a few numbers there, but just give us some context of, know, number of deals and your kind of portfolio since then. What you've achieved, Susanna. Well, I started as a deal packager, deal sourcer, but very good quality one because I didn't have any money.
And so, wholesaling deals onto people, finding discounted deals. And we transacted 217 deals in four and a half years, 45 million pounds value, probably actually worth more, but I like to underestimate an agreed purchase price of 30 million quid. So on average, free renovation, my deals were 33 % discount on average. And of course they went up and down. And out of those transactions, I bought a whole load myself.
I sold a whole load onto other people. I did a whole load of flips and I did a whole load of joint venture flips as well. So I had two strategies effectively. one is a cash generating strategy, which is deal packaging and flipping, particularly joint venture flipping. And at one point we had 30 flips on the go at the same time. That was a little bit full on. And then my other strategy was long-term investing. So the cash comes in from the cash generating strategies and then gets sucked into the properties.
Christian Rodwell (14:12.566)
And yes, you want to buy refurbished finance and rent out that BRRRR strategy, but you've always got to be mindful of cash flow. And you've always got to know at the last minute, some little spoke or spanner is going to be thrown in the wheels. So you just need to do a cash generating strategy at the same time as an investing strategy. If you're in the situation I was in, which was I didn't start with money. And I also worked with a lot of investors and I raised a lot of money. Like I raised 600 grand.
very, very quickly. And then I continued to raise money and paid it all back. was very conscious of that. So lots of questions that are coming in. For many years now, you've been teaching, supporting many others to either start their property journey or really accelerate with that. Did you have someone who led you, who guided you at the beginning that you would refer to as a mentor almost?
Yes, was one chap and the only, by the way, my education business was sort of a surprise. I went full deep into it because I like to do a very good job for people and I've had thousands of students now. But it was a lovely lady called Wendy who said, could you, you seem to be doing all right, can you teach me? And I was a bit like, what? Who? Me? And then I thought, this is fun, you know, watching somebody else succeed. And of course, the systems are quite simple to transfer.
But yes, I worked with one person for a number of years on a Thursday at two o'clock till about half past three, four o'clock. I went skidding into those phone calls, like a cat with a ball of wool and everything was mixed up in my head. those two hours sort of like a globe, isn't it? The snow globe. So my brain was so full of so much going on. And by the end of two hours, it was calm again.
And his specialty, I mean, he was very good at property, but his specialty was also around the private finance and the investment and the simplicity. His real skill was to take my overcomplication and simplify again. And it was incredibly helpful to do that. So for anyone listening now who's feeling uncertain, unsure, has never experienced coaching, would you advise that that's something they at least give a try? Yes. Yes.
Christian Rodwell (16:29.678)
And some of it is you're going to get technical knowledge. You know, this is how you do it. This is what an RX-1 is. This is how you analyze a deal, all the technical knowledge. And then some of it is about accountability because the amount of work I did on a Wednesday night, I mean, I was quite hard working, but you know, ready for the Thursday call. And then some of it is about settling and mindset. So my guy was ahead of me.
And he was saying, I can't wait until you've got a hundred grand in the bank. And that just felt alien and impossible to me. But for his side of the fence, that was a normal state of affairs. Now for me, it's a normal state of affairs. Prior to that, you know, I was a head of household with all my money going out every month with the children and childcare and working and all the rest of it. So it was an experience that wasn't within my circle. your,
You're having mindset experiences rubbing off. You're getting introductions, you're having technical knowledge, and you're having, I would almost call it soothing. Where you're coming in a mile a minute as an entrepreneur, but a bit confused by all the patterns that are going on. And then you've got a very experienced person that can place all of the jangly noise into the different, okay, great. I can see it with some perspective now, and I can proceed.
So was really, I own a lot. Vanish, Vanish Patel. Okay, yes, absolutely Vanish. Wonderful, wonderful man. It's helped me much, much in the past as well. So confidence then, you're not shy of confidence Susanna, I can see that. But to go out and raise that amount of money at that period in your property journey, what was it that gave you the confidence and the belief that you could go out and do that? Was that again, the mentor saying, you know, don't
rely on your own funds, start thinking about working with investors. How did that come about? It was less vanishable, the vanish is very experienced in that area. In fact, he didn't tell me what to do. He more helped me analyze what was happening. It was two things back against the wall survivor mechanism. I haven't got any money. If I do not want to be in a corporate job sucking the lifeblood out of me, even though
Christian Rodwell (18:49.59)
I enjoyed so many aspects of it, for the rest of my life, I have to do something radically different. So it was a non-negotiable, ain't nobody else gonna be doing this for you, kiddo. So when your back's against the wall, you do more, don't you? And also, I wasn't really doing it for me, I was doing it for my family. And you're probably gonna do more for your family or for the people you love than for yourself. And then the second part was good luck in some ways.
So my final job was as the marketing director of Bristol Museum. And it was a fascinating job. I eccentric, amazing, world-beating, wonderful job. And after I got the job, I was gently informed, or not. I was just told that I was in charge of the fundraising department and I needed to raise X million of pounds. And I was thinking, I applied for the marketing job.
But I have to say my boss is the director. He was quite a genius in that kind of old school genius way. And there was an amazing woman in my department. So I was technically her boss, Vanessa, but I wouldn't claim that she did it. And so she taught me so much about fundraising. And in fact, in the end, I actually said, look, I really think she needs to be at the table. She needs to be a director because I'm not going to claim her kudos, am I?
So I was extremely lucky because a bit like sales in Britain, we don't like sales. know, like Daniel Priestley says, anything but sales, ABS breaking. We also don't like asking for money. However, having technically been, I mean, I was officially, but technically being the boss of a really skilled professional fundraiser called Vanessa, I saw great quality professionalism and fundraising in action. So when I came out of that job and went into property, I simply...
pulled in all those techniques. And to me, it was a professional approach where investors are getting an amazing opportunity that they wouldn't have done otherwise. And you're getting an amazing opportunity and you jolly well make sure it works. And what do you think holds investors back from going out and raising more money? Because they all run out of money before they run out of deals, right? know that. Everybody does. Everybody does. And I remember being on the panel a long time ago, just after, well, maybe about five years after the recession in London.
Christian Rodwell (21:10.924)
really nice guy, like super successful, but like the best entrepreneurs, quite straight speaking. And he just went, Sue's mate, it was squeaky time just after the recession for me. I only got through by the skin of my teeth. And so even like really big people have moments. I think it's a combination of being culturally scared to raise money and not understanding it's a professional approach and confidence.
And it's not so much confidence in the deal because if you're to put your own money in a deal, right, you would comfortably put somebody else's money in a deal. So it's not really the problem with the deal. It's more the culture and the kind of nervousness of working with other people. But actually, it's simply a good quality transaction that will massively benefit the other person and benefit you. So everybody wins. And obviously, you've got to get rid of the 2 % who are the noncommittals or the prima donnas.
Apart from that, you're going to have great working relationships with your investors. Probably one of the other things you hear apart from, can't find any deals is, I don't have enough time. We know that that's a real challenge for many people or we could say it's maybe a challenge in the head. We appreciate we're busy, right? People have families, they've got jobs and all sorts of things, but you were juggling a lot, right? You had many plates spinning. You were certainly a busy woman.
How did you systemize and process your business to allow you to operate and not just go crazy with all of that stuff going on? Bear in mind, I did skid into vanish at two o'clock on a Thursday going, and he went, all right, let's just settle the weeds, shall we? Two books are really important. Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Start with the End in Mind. And the other technique that I used all the time, almost on a daily basis was separating out urgent and important.
So if I could just dive into that for a second, important is the stuff that nobody is going to shout about. So they're the things like incubate investor relationships. So then three months time, you can raise money because your business isn't shouting at you with a cashflow problem. Nobody's shouting at you to incubate investors and you don't know the outcome of those relationships at this stage. So that's a quiet, gentle, important, which
Christian Rodwell (23:30.346)
If you don't deal with it, then becomes an urgent in three months time or six months time. Help, I haven't got the cash. want to do the deals I want. And then there's the urgence. They're the urgence. They're firefighting. The urgence are everybody else asking you to do stuff. I don't know, portfolio management, making sure you've got your fire certificates, your EPCs, your gas certificates, know, all of, mean, well, that they shouldn't ever become urgence. So what I did was follow Stephen Covey's method, which is to say,
But every urgent I do, I'm going to do two importance. So if I can take the super simple, ridiculous one of a gas certificate, well, these days my letting agents manager, but when we were managing in-house, obviously we had a technology to remind us two months and one months in advance when a gas certificate was coming up. That's the important. So that was always scheduled. So it never became an urgent. So if you do the ratio of two to one, and at the beginning, feels terrible because you're, you're, you're sat with a
mound of urgent shouting at you. You know, you go to bed and they're still shouting at you. But if you do two importance, there are quiet that will prevent an urgent firefighting in the future. It calms, it takes two or three months and it calms the whole thing down. And then the other book is the E-Myth, which I think most entrepreneurs have read, Define the Roles and then Notice Who's in the Role, you know, and it's you Chief Bottle Washing Cleaner at the beginning.
And then what I started to do was pull in automation, you know, the eliminate, automate, outsource, and the pull in automation, pull in elimination. But the whole way through, as soon as I did anything once, create a template, create a process, create a system. As soon as something went wrong because we didn't do something, usually us, you know, user error, then add to that system and make sure that that box is ticked.
know, without being bureaucratic, because I'm not at all bureaucratic, it just means that you can slowly understand every single thing that either needs to be done or needs to be prevented to go smooth and fast. So slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And that was my outcome. And there's a whole variety of tools and tech and apps that can help with this now.
Christian Rodwell (25:42.734)
Do you leverage those tools or are you still a fan of simplicity? Just keep a spreadsheet, keep it simple. I do now, but we got to be clear guys, before you go spend loads of money on tools, I was Excel spreadsheets. I got into drive them, Google Drive the minute it was released. That was earlier, doctor stuff then. But yeah, now of course we do. We have the team on Slack and urgent stuff, do WhatsApp.
But we have the team on Slack and I have a whole bunch of automation tools or software apps to support the smooth, slow, smooth, smooth as fast delivery. So, know, software for letting, software for the education business, very much so. Yeah. What would be a handful of those that come to mind? What are the ones that you go to on your phone most each day, you say, Susanna? I'm sure listeners would love
Love a few tips here as they can optimize their life. Okay. So on the letting side, no, you could use any, but we use Arthur online. And then my team in the Philippines, particularly Noreen does an amazing job of managing that. So I outsourced the lettings to an amazing local Bristol letting agency. It's very good working relationship. know, quick WhatsApp text, quick message. You know, we voicemail each other. got, they got keys to my house, all of that malarkey.
But we use Arthur Online so that everything is tasks, reminders, updates. You can see when any certificates are coming up. If, God forbid, any certificates were missing, it flags it immediately. It checks all the money. It links in with zero. My bookkeeper checks all the rent, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the smoothest, simplest, beautifulest for me. Letting software, whether you use Arthur Online or a different one. And then for some of the other pieces of work, with the team we use Slack.
And we are all day long working together in Slack. use Drive, of course. We use LastPass for all of our passwords. what are we using? I mean, for the education, we use Webinar Jam. My CRM system is Keap or Infusionsoft. But my other CRM, because it is Go High Level, but it's a bit too glitchy for me to like it for the long term. Obviously, Zoom, use Otter AI.
Christian Rodwell (28:03.366)
Kajabi for the education because it's very good platform. I'm sure there's lots more and quite a lot of fun in individual AI mod as well. Yeah, Framio for all our videos, that kind of stuff. there's some great tips there. And I've definitely as you say, when you're starting out, it's easy to get sucked into subscribing to all these things when you don't need them and you forget about them year later, you'll realize you've been paying every month. So keep it simple to begin with and then start to edge into each of these. Yeah.
Yes, yes. And things like many chat and things like that for any of the automations. But you can do a lot of I mean, these things are evolving so quickly. They're all kind of devouring each other at the moment. Yeah. And let's talk about team them because you know, true leverage and I believe you
you know wealth dynamics and understand, you know, that, of course, the value needs to be created either from the, you know, the visionaries or from the timing, but then the leverage comes from the systems and the people we've talked about some of the systems there. how do you go about or what advice would you give a property professional now who is doing it all themselves, and they know they need to start finding other people to support them? What would you say is the best route for them to begin that process?
For me, and I don't know if you had the same experience, doing wealth dynamics was really useful. It was because first off, you see the bits that you're very good at and you think, yeah, that's me. Because they write it in such a complimentary way, you think, look at that. Aren't I fabulous? And then they write all of your glitches in also a semi-complimentary way. So you forgive yourself all the things you crap at. You're like, well, he says it's not too bad.
Did you have the same? I was going to have a guess. mean, I've got to say, you've got to be a star, Susanna, if not a creator, right? Yeah. Because you could also be supporto with your blazy energy. know, yeah, certainly in that area, top right hand corner. And where do you come? I'm a deal maker, so I'm lots of tempo energy. So me and Kevin work really well. Kevin's a star, visionary of wealth builders. And then all of these ideas, I have the job of collating them and trying to organize and make sure that we focus on
Christian Rodwell (30:12.3)
on the important things and that works really well. And it's, do you find it's absolutely true the way wealth dynamics is that people that I work really well with and love working with are exactly in the location where they tell me I should be working with people. So this morning I do weekly meetings with Rachel, my bookkeeper, we've worked together I think for about 15 years now and she's a supporter and the team, so team.
I used to employ people in-house and in the UK, I used to own an office, a really funky office in the paintworks, which is, know, as you can imagine, a paintworks turned into very funky creative offices. During COVID, I sold that office because I didn't need it anymore. And now where are my team? They're in the Philippines. They're in the UK and in the Philippines and everything is digital. So there's no location. There's no need for location. The whole thing works digitally and we all work in on our systems digitally.
And, but interestingly, the wealth dynamics of the people I work with best are still exactly the same as would have been in the past. But I tend to find recruiting a team, and this is the kind of, hurts your heart a bit. You are looking for A-listers. And so the reality is not every single person's work performance is going to be A-lister. So you got to take, you got to take the, it's a bit like fundraising. You take the pain now by thinking,
I've got to pick up the phone and fundraise. I used to eat a spoonful of Nutella every time. That's why I'm a size 12 and not a size eight, because I rewarded myself with a dessert spoon, not a teaspoon. None of this half-measured nonsense, but a dessert spoon of Nutella for every single phone call I made to investors. Not even money raised, every single phone call. And here, so you take the pain now or later, and I prefer to take the pain early for fundraising.
and think, I really don't like picking up the phone and asking for money, but I'm going to do it because the outcome is what I'm looking for. And the same with the team. So we have very simple, clear measurement of team performance on a monthly basis. We measure, sorry, I measure, but also my team self measures as well. And it's a six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Six is below performance. If you're on a trial, you're not going to last. If you are...
Christian Rodwell (32:30.178)
Further in, clearly something's going wrong because you passed previously. And we'll do performance improvement plan, a PIP, and there'll be a certain number of months before. I'm sorry, this just isn't fitting the profile of the A-lister we're looking for. Seven is competent. But competent. Eight is, woohoo, we're starting to cook. And we've got proper definitions and there's a little bonus coming in. Nine is, we're really starting to rock here. And 10 is, know, absolutely, you know.
super stonic and 10 will allow a pay rise and then the bonus system resets and you go again. So eight, nine and 10 gets bonuses. Seven is you're doing your work. It's perfectly acceptable. And six is no, you're below. Now that classification and cause cause I've written my, my business plan for five years. So I know really 80 % of the work that needs to slot in.
I don't know, obviously, the reactive work, but I know the proactive work that needs to happen for the next 12 months. So we can plan 80 % of the work a year in advance. And so we can know who we're allocating the work to. And then that colleague self-measures, I self-measure them. We have a conversation. And obviously, we're always trying to improve performance and reward performance. But my stats are for every 10 people you trial out,
probably you're going to end up with two and a half to three if you are keeping your standards high. So take the pain. You're going to have these really uncomfortable conversations, which won't come as a surprise to anybody, but you don't like it because you don't want to deprive somebody of an income, which say, I'm terribly sorry, we've had three conversations. It's not gone to where it needs to get to. So we're going to close off working together now.
That's the entrepreneur's journey, isn't it? It's, as you said earlier, the E-myth about being the technician at the beginning, doing everything, then moving into that managerial role, bringing in some team members, then teaching them to become the managers, freeing up your time to be the entrepreneur, the visionary, and go out and do those big deals and grow that business. Can I jump in? I forgot one super important tool. And in fact, I'm just about to investigate standard operating procedures through AI. We use Loom.
Christian Rodwell (34:48.045)
So we probably have 300, 400 videos for our operations manual all on Loom, including, and I'm never making these public, a whole bunch that I recorded in my pajamas because I was so enthusiastic to run my business. I'd kind of forgotten that although I was recording a visual operations manual, I'd forgotten someone was going to watch it.
Whoops! brilliant, brilliant. We'll get our hands on the bloopers there at some point. All of those tools, really, really great suggestions and I'm sure we can link to those in the show notes for people so they can go and check those out themselves. So we talked about your business and how it grew and then obviously the need to systemize. So let's fast forward a little bit to, I guess, let's take us up to COVID.
What impact did this global shutdown have on your property business, Susanna? Wow. Well, two, I had an office and I could see I'd been in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and I think I'd had COVID just before Christmas. And for some reason, you know, because it came from China and I was very close to China, I just took it seriously. I mean, know lots of others did. So I shut my office two weeks before the lockdown. so we overnight turned everybody into working from home.
And it was mainly, I didn't want people traveling on the bus, not so much for them, because they were robust young people. But if they were then going to meet up with older people, I felt that they would be impacting on other people's health. So we shut the office down. We moved to digital straight away. But I had a major service accommodation business going on in amongst my portfolio. So you have never seen us act faster to get people into
into single lets. So for the first time in my entire life, I slightly discounted the rents to get people in. And we filled every single one of my service accommodations with longer term lets at a slight discount. So those people got a wee bit lucky and we had every property filled. And then during COVID, you remember at the beginning, people were talking about rents and tenants wouldn't need to pay.
Christian Rodwell (36:57.896)
So we had really clear risk policies around COVID and about doing viewings and all of that malarkey. But of course, we had some tenants saying, you know, I've lost my job. So what we were very clear was, I'm terribly sorry, but you're going to have to pay your rent. However, we will go so far and beyond to try and assist you getting a new job. So my team ended up sending them.
hundreds and hundreds of online job up there and there were many things like, you know, delivery drivers and all because of course that went up crazy. So we didn't we turned into a job factory for a while because we were saying you have a legal obligation to pay your rent. I'm afraid we're not letting you off that but we will go so beyond to try and help you bring in the revenue that you need for your own life. Yeah, no, that's wonderful. And
Of course, many people who were reliant on one source of income during that period of time, the lucky ones were furloughed and sat at home watching TV getting paid, but of course, many didn't. that one source of income left people in pretty difficult situations. And even outside of COVID now, mean, who knows how safe a job is? You could walk into work tomorrow. If it's a business owner, right, who knows what could happen? And if that's your only source of income, it's a problem.
Wealthbuilders is built around the whole premise of diversify your income. There's multiple different assets you can use. Property is a great one, of course, for recurring income streams. did you have that security behind you because of that predictable recurring income, even though obviously it went a bit wobbly at the beginning, I'm sure, with COVID, but you had still some predictability coming in. And even within the property, I had three types of streams of income. I had the service accommodation, I had the single lets, and I had the student multi-lets.
which we'd already moved from professional multilets, which was very useful. And with the university being Bristol, the students still wanted to live in Bristol. They didn't really want to go back and live with mum and dad. So all of my properties were filled all the way through COVID. And then came my little glitch. And that was an interesting little moment. Yeah. So tell us how did this come to light then, Susanna?
Christian Rodwell (39:08.428)
Well, I would just want to say to everybody, do not be frightened and I want you to go to the doctor the minute something comes through and you must not be fobbed off. Even I, and I'm a little rocket, know, a little pocket rocket, even I got fobbed off and I was misdiagnosed two years earlier. So I was pretty cross. I mean, I'm quite a cheerful human being, but I was pretty damn cross. I went, luckily I went back to the doctor a couple years later, having been told it was something else, saying, this can't be right.
And so I got referred back in on the two week pathway. And I remember going to the meeting on the 19th of January, 2021 with my daughter. And my daughter was such a sweetheart. She'd spoken to a friend of hers who was a nurse. And her friend had said, if your mom didn't have cancer, they wouldn't be taking her to a meeting. She's got cancer. But my beautiful daughter was so darling and didn't let me know. So she'd self-prepared.
But she, I thought that was incredibly thoughtful actually. And the consultant said, I'm sorry to tell you, you've got cancer. At which point I leant all the way in and went, am I okay to swear or would you prefer me not to? Okay, I won't. This better not be word kill me. Yeah. And so how did, how did, how did those following few days and weeks, you know, how did you, you know,
of take that information in and start to think about, you know, what the next steps might be. Awful, if I'm truthful, without kind of, yeah, awful. And for anyone that's got friends or family with cancer, there's all sorts of mental health issues and also afterwards guys, so just hug them like mad. So there were many pluses, of course. My daughter and I came out of the hospital.
You know, I'm like, I eat organic food, I do crossfit, I do weightlifting, I'm super fit, I don't drink wine, I don't smoke. What? You know, I scrimped to feed my kids organic food when they were young. You know, this stuff is really important to me. How? And so before we even got home, we'd put together a WhatsApp group and you just know who you love and who loves you. It was so simple. There was no uncertainty. was, I love these people, they love me.
Christian Rodwell (41:26.174)
I can't tell everybody twice, we're just going to do a WhatsApp group and this is my inner circle and I love them and they love me. And, you know, we leant over the railings overlooking a little woodland on the way home from the hospital and pulled together this WhatsApp group. But then waiting was awful and we won't get into too much detail, but the NHS is struggling, as we all know, and it's fine to read that as a headline. It is not acceptable as a cancer patient.
So three and a half weeks between you've got cancer and finding out, is it terminal? Is it not? That is torture. That is unacceptable. there were multiple, long story short, there were multiple serious level mistakes. So I moved from one department and I actually ended up paying for my own care, self-paying. And I went to the Royal Marsden, which is the best cancer hospital in Europe. And I ended up with four different cancers, a whole bunch of treatments.
I had everything you'd expect and came through the other end. But yeah, it was a tough time. But I stopped working. I just didn't go back to work after that meeting with a consultant. I know you've been very open about the importance of proactive health tests and perhaps we can just touch on that again in a moment. balancing health and business must have been incredibly challenging for that period of time. those processes, of course, that are in place would have helped a lot with that.
Where was your head in terms of the business at that point in time? Zero. The only good news, because I hate letting people down, was I'd been running a mentoring program for 10 years, but my intention was to go off and noodle around Bali for six months. So I had luckily for everybody, already given notice to everybody that in a year's time, I won't be doing this for the next year. I'll come back to it afterwards.
And so what was really fortunate was we were just at the end of that period. So I wasn't letting anybody down and I was really grateful to have not let anybody down. So I was very fortunate that all of my live, if you want to call them appearances or my live obligations were right at the end. So nobody got let down, which was good. But the rest, I stopped work. And how was I able to do that? Because everything was there with the systems. I had almost everything outsourced and I had really good people in place.
Christian Rodwell (43:47.628)
And I literally said, I'm going to focus on my immune system. I need to try everything I possibly can to stay alive. I saw it as a journey. I saw it as I'm in a path and in front of me, maybe 500 meters away, there's a great big old oak tree and either I'm going to go right and I'm going to live or I'm going to go left and I'm going to die. And I can control some of my steps towards that great big old oak tree.
But I can't control the decision at the oak tree. So I've just got to work on everything between me and the oak tree. And that didn't include working. So I stopped work. Didn't do anything. So the portfolio and the business gave you the time freedom, which was really important. But of course, it helped with the funding, right? So the other part was probably the cost of the treatment, I imagine, was not cheap. Over six figures.
Yeah, over six figures. And then what I also did was, I I walked into the chemo and because of course you a like coming back to when folks walk into the first or the second property meet like I did when I was starting and you're absolutely terrified. Well, you kind of multiply that out by you're walking into chemo, you know, for the first time you've heard all these horror stories. So every time I went for treatment, I'd do my hair, I'd wear nice clothes.
I'd walk in, shoulders back and down, inside it was very scary. And I drew on all the people I loved. My cousin-in-law Al was sending me three terrible dad jokes a day on voice note. I mean, awful. Everybody had their own tradition on how they were just amazing and supporting me. So I walked into chemo and went, give me rainbows and chocolate with my chemo, please. Because I'm like, I am going in and I am projecting to my own body
as much as I possibly can. So the notion of working wasn't available to me. It wasn't going to happen. And I was able to not work because property was bringing in serious money. And I was spending serious money on formal treatments and I actually embraced them, know, chemo, radiotherapy, surgery, all paid for.
Christian Rodwell (45:59.532)
And I was also bringing in a bit like the sky cycling team, you know, that 1 % extra. So, I read 1200 medical papers because, you know, cancer patients tend to be awake at 3 a.m. on occasion. And I also read about 120 books. And what I wanted to do was say, well, what can add a 0.1 % extra possibility to my immune system to help me live?
you know, thinking about that pathway towards that oak. So I did everything, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, massage, lymph massage, massage, meditation, organic food, juice, mean, you know, everything. Because if it can give me a tiny little extra on my immune system, it might work. And look, I'm still alive. Yeah. And NED, no evidence of disease. Yeah. So everything is good now, Susanna. Yep. Ticked off. And I'm now doing
post, because there is a real mental health afterwards and there's a real change on how you stand in the world. Because you've been in these changing rooms on your own during COVID, going into brain scans to find out if it's gone into your brain. I mean, that's a pretty dark place to be. And so there's an inner love for yourself and strength and gentleness.
and protection in a very gentle way for me anyway. But afterwards it gets a bit bumpy, you know, because you've got some PTSD afterwards. so I went to New York for three months, swapped houses with my sister. They came to my apartment in Barcelona and I did the whole Motown. mean, Gladys Knight, know, man, went to a hip hop rap Motown of the 53 year old white lady listening to one guy going, thinking,
Now, really, do we really need to be talking about kill, destroy? Sounds incredible. Sounds incredible. then, know, 2024 now, how did you kind of step back into property and where's your, you know, where's your thoughts now looking back on the experience you've had with regards to your business and, you know, the next five years, 10 years, I'm not sure how far you project into the future with your business.
Christian Rodwell (48:23.992)
So where I'm at now, and I think part of it is having gone through that fire of, want simplicity and I want ease. Now, when I say ease, I don't mean laziness. I mean, I want it to be enjoyable and ease. So you and I, although we haven't spent a lot of time together, we've got a good fun rapport, know, it'd be fun to work together.
So I'm not, and that's probably a different approach. I used to sort of try and always make everything work. And now I'm much more interested in processes that are flowing and positive and productive. So I'll cut things earlier if they're not effective or flowing, or you think, come on, you know, I'm having to scoop up and do everybody else's job for them. Whereas before I would have picked up everybody's socks.
And that's a real different approach to work. So that is absolutely what we might term working on your business, as well as in your business and having very clear, quite loving boundaries to yourself saying, well, honeybee, if you ain't doing it, you can't be part of my business. You've got to be higher standard. So again, it's taken that pain early. So where am I now? Well, we have a wonderful student academy and it was gorgeous to see quite a lot of my students at the YPN conference recently. We've got an amazing community of hundreds of students.
that I love working with. So I do my coaching calls with those guys fortnightly. And then I'm just looking at the second portfolio in Barcelona. But just for safety sake, I'm going to give it a year's time just to, I've got no worries about cancer, but I'm still, you know, I'm still just going to be measured in that approach. And the other part I think is going to be very interesting is looking at the current portfolio and where can you develop further?
And then my final part, my beautiful son lives literally in the next street to me in Barcelona. So of course I've got my eye to, you know, what he might end up getting support from mum to do. Yeah. Well that diversification there, of course, from different avenues, different asset classes. And you mentioned that some of the
Christian Rodwell (50:33.23)
coaching that you do with your community and you've created digital courses. Just tell us a little bit about what some of the different topics of those trainings are, Susanna. My most popular ones are quite correctly the flipping and the deal packaging. Why? Because they're the kind of, I wouldn't call them the entry models, but deal packaging is definitely an entry model and flipping whilst you've got to be quite technically competent, which why people need the course, it again generates cash. And I think people need more support at the beginning.
because of course that's where you're really trying to generate your cash as well as learn your skills. So they're my most popular and I am considering a retreat in Barcelona because that would be really fun. But I do want to say while I was lying on my sofa having basically the biggest spa of my life in my home for about three years, I did actually angel invest in other people that I'd known for a very long time. That was fun to do. Yeah. Yeah.
So guess our time is coming to an end, I know it's such a shame, you know, it's been so enjoyable, really, really have loved speaking with you and thank you again for being so open and sharing with us today. And I guess you are listening. Sorry, Suzanne. Could I just put a tiny plea out for health, just for people to talk in, because you're quite right about it. takes a lot to be a patient. And the administration around being a cancer patient is
crazy level. I mean, I once spent eight hours trying to get a scan put on a system on the phone and you're thinking, kids, I got four blinking cancers. Can't you do this? Clearly not. I, so I would lead to everybody listening to move from a reactive point of view to a proactive point of view. So should we talk poo tests, fit tests, PSA tests, please, colonoscopies, endoscopies?
And if it were me and I'm not a doctor, so I'm not allowed and correctly to give medical advice, I'm just going to tell you what I've seen from the corridors of meeting so many people who were beautiful and terminal and young, because of course I've spent three and a half years in hospitals. So for my own son, my own children, I want to put in full body MRIs every five years and all of their floating DNA for cancer blood tests.
Christian Rodwell (52:56.128)
And that, if you catch cancer at stage one, yes, it's going to shock you to your core, but it's pretty good. If you catch cancer at stage four, it's pretty tough. So for me, I've absolutely moved from being totally reactive, you know, it'll never happen to me and I'm super fit, what are we talking about? To very proactive without anxiety. And I would adore it if other people did as well. And I did Matt Siddell.
He did take my advice up. and he and his two brothers, all three of them had precancerous changes and that was wonderful to see that they're now safe. That's fantastic news. And health and wealth, of course, they go hand in hand. Protecting your health, as you've just mentioned, protecting your wealth, though, having things like wills and understanding trusts and how will assets pass on to the next generation. Was that stuff that you already had thought about previous to this, Anna?
No. No, I got some gaps. And so no, no, was not. And the importance, obviously, of taking care of these things before you really start building up your wealth, because as you've explained, you never know what's around the corner. you know, it's a lesson, I think, for everyone to take heed. I'm sorry, keep it to myself. I think the lesson for me was,
If I had not had the properties, I would not have had the medical choice. And I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be alive. It's that strong. So it's not even about, you know, go hang around in the Mediterranean folks, go make loads of money. It's about if you have the wealth, you can provide the choice for you and your loved ones that you cannot necessarily access if you don't have the choice. So
It's about caring for yourself and your family by creating the wealth which would enable you to buy the medical care that is in existence but maybe not accessible through our cost-challenged NHS at all times. think that's probably a perfect place for us to conclude our wonderful conversation today, Susanna. Thank you so much. If someone would like to
Christian Rodwell (55:16.248)
check you out online and see what you're up to. Where's the best place for them to head? Well, I would love you to get in touch through maybe some of the social media. So Instagram, Susanna Cole UK, Facebook, Susanna Cole, LinkedIn, obviously Susanna Cole. Or I do have a whole load of free stuff, which I'd love you guys to download on my website, thegoodpropertycompany.co.uk. Or we've had over 2 million views on our YouTube. So you can go and see that. Susanna Cole, The Good Property Company.
I'm sure we're going to be doing plenty more work to get her in the future. would be fun. All right. Thanks, Susanna.
Christian Rodwell (55:53.752)
Hey, hope you enjoyed that. And we can certainly put out some lessons from that conversation, Kevin, and we will do in a moment. But we always like to read that review after we've had our guests. I'm just going to go to Apple podcasts for a slight change this week, Kevin, because we always read out our latest TrustPilot reviews. But of course, we've got people leaving reviews on some of the podcasting platforms and Apple podcasts, very popular platform.
And so if I have a quick look here, I've got one coming in from looks like law, LA you and they say engaging and insightful times are changing and we really need to leverage to stay in the game, especially for us in the property business. I can't wait to share the practical knowledge within my circle. Keep up the good work guys. They can however you pronounce it, law, law, whatever it is, but good, good to hear from you.
And absolutely we're delighted to continue sharing, but it isn't us that's always sharing. We normally like to pull out the lessons. We love to showcase people who are outstanding in their field. I think we use the word outstanding, but Susie uses the word A-lister. You know, we look for A-listers. want best people in class, best entrepreneurs, best employees, because the best people...
will shine a light not just on themselves, but also on what you're trying to do if the mission is big enough. And I think we like to believe for sure we're proud of what we do and get it echoed back is great, but wouldn't you be proud of working with Suzy too, given what she's been through and what value she stands for? I think a really powerful interview.
And, you know, some of our listeners, you may be listening now, you've seen Suzy on stage, you see how powerful she is when she's presenting. It was funny, wasn't it, when she talked about, when she got into property, her first steps. And we have to remember sometimes, everyone begins right from the start.
Christian Rodwell (58:00.704)
Okay, no matter where they are today. And sometimes we see that within the wealth builders community, don't we, Kevin, where some of our newer members are looking at some members who've been, you know, doing this for a year or two and they think, my God, they're, so amazing. They're achieving so much, but everybody has to start from the beginning at some point. And Susie's mentioned about going to those first property events, being a bit nervous, having her post-its and her notes at the ready.
And yeah, I think it's a reminder, you know, just get started. All right. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Just take your first steps. Yes. And it doesn't take long. And the fact that there is a community and she mentioned it herself, you can surround yourself with people who will help you, whether it's the community supporting you, a coach supporting you. And we believe in the power of coaching a mentor where you're paying for a more kind of one-to-one guided.
relationship can support you and she hasn't been shy in supporting herself and ultimately now being the very same for many others. So however you get started, the key is not to worry but get started. And that magical book came up again, didn't it? Rich Dad Poor Dads. How many of our guests have referred back to that as the catalyst, the turning point, the aha moment in their life? And same for Susie. And of course, one of our favorites, certainly one of mine,
Dr. Stephen Covey with the seven habits which again she pulled out very effectively and beginning with the end in mind especially when it comes to raising private finance thinking win-win and and certainly something we believe in which is sharpening the saw which is a period of time that you take which she would call important right as opposed to urgent because sharpening the saw is never urgent spending some quiet quality time
to not just refresh, recharge, but also be ready with new strategies and new insights that come from others. But there's another R in story here, and I think I alluded to the beginning, to my eighth, freedom. The freedom to recover.
Christian Rodwell (01:00:16.428)
How powerful was that to know that what you've done, what you built, what you've created in terms of an income stream can take one of life's biggest concerns and worries. You know, that word, that word that people dread. And as she said, keeping you up at three in the morning, reading everything you can simply because you need to survive. And this property business that she created for herself.
enabled her to recover, enabled her to give her the best chance of recovery. And that's an interesting insight for me because for the most part when you think about the power of wealth and what it does, most people see it as a positive. But also if your health was to change or some disaster were to befall you, to know that your finances are secure, permanently secure.
then you can do no work. You can just focus on yourself. And I think that's a lesson that so much was a powerful light that she's shown on that. And I hope that others can see that for themselves because I'm sure everyone's been touched either personally or in a relationship with someone who's been ill. And can you imagine being ill at the same time as being?
worried financially, I could not imagine that at all. So yeah, that was a, that's a really powerful lesson. And I know Susie said herself that if you have the wealth and you can provide and have that choice, that freedom of choice you mentioned at the beginning, Kevin, for you and your loved ones to be in a position to be able to afford the treatment should you ever be in that situation. So I think that's a good point for us to close today's episode and thank you so much again to Susanna for sharing today.
And we've put all the links. were many of them that were mentioned throughout today's episode. We put all of those in the show notes for you and Kevin will be back same time, same place next week. We will. And until then my friend, see ya.
Christian Rodwell (01:02:26.968)
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.