The Game Changer Mastermind

Today is part two of my 2020 plan and I am bringing you this episode from Berlin, actually, East Berlin. I came here in the 1980s when East Berlin was still behind the Iron Curtain. And in actual fact, I spent three weeks behind the Iron Curtain and traveling through the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany. And it’s the first time I’ve been back since then and I just found it amazing. I just cannot believe the amount of construction that’s gone on since then. Because at that point it was just East Berlin was quite depressing and now it is just a hive of activity. It’s very cosmopolitan. It’s very sophisticated and just fabulous restaurants and bars and lots of history. So we’ve been really enjoying our stay here.

But the other thing about staying here has been, of course, we’re staying in an Airbnb. And this time we have an apartment that’s in a warehouse development and it’s just been stunningly renovated. I just really find it incredibly inspiring to stay in a beautiful renovation. We pick up ideas and it makes me feel creative and inspired and I’m loving it. So if I get a chance, I’ll shoot a quick video before I leave. Tomorrow we’re heading off to the UK but one more night here and I’m really enjoying it.

Nuremberg

Okay, so part two of 2020. In the last episode, I talked about the final piece in our retirement plan, which we’re working on this year. But because of a lot of that is around the work will be done by the town planner and architect. There’s probably not going to be a huge amount of input from us other than decision making and keeping the ball rolling for most of the year. So, of course, I need a decent project that I can get my teeth into. But taking my lead from last year where I looked at what worked and what didn’t. I want to make sure that I don’t overcommit.

And so the first thing I want to do is share that I’m changing the way that I usually plan. Usually, Stephen and I have a planning date around this time of year and we will still be doing that, we’re going to wait until we get to the UK to do that. And that’s where we set our goals and sort of flesh out how what we’re going to be shooting for in the next 12 months. But I’ve decided that rather than get really specific about goals I am choosing a theme for the year. Mainly because when I get too goal-oriented my workaholic nature tends to take over. So I really want to devote the year to living a quality life.

And so the theme that I’ve chosen for the year is quality. And that’s really to keep me focused on making sure that I’m living the life that I have designed for myself. And so the first thing that I want to do is make sure that I have the time for things that are important to me. To not compromise my time too much with work so that I can spend the time on things that I am committed to. And it’s not like I don’t do that when I’m busy but I feel stressed about meeting my self-appointed commitments. I just want to take that pressure off.

But the first thing I’m doing is I’m removing the word “busy” from my vocabulary. I find that it’s quite easy to slip into that busy mode. And in some ways, I think it’s a bit of a cop-out and it can be worn a little bit like a badge of honor. And I don’t want my life to be defined by always being too busy for the things that I care about. So first step, remove “busy” from the vocabulary.

The next thing I’m looking at is health.
Now, this is something I started on last year.
For at least 10 years it’s been on my to-do list or on my goals to lose weight.
I’ve tried all sorts of different methods to do that. You get to the point where you think

“Nothing works, I can’t possibly do another program”
I decided that I would commit to doing whatever it took to actually get the result because it was impacting my health. Of course, breaking my knee certainly didn’t help and that happened the year before and it’s just been a real struggle ever since. So I took the step and tried yet another program last year and wouldn’t you know it, that was the one.

But the other thing that I did and this has always been missing from my other attempts has been that I assembled a cheerleader team. So basically, I engaged my whole family in supporting me. And I also engaged my personal coach in supporting me as well. So there were lots of points of accountability when you, I guess struggling with getting a result, the support team becomes essential.

I was able to lose 13 kilos. Now I’ve fallen off the rails a bit – a lot, actually. I’m not going to kid myself while I’ve been away. But when I get back, I’ll be back into it again and I want to lose another 10. And then I will be at a point where I’m happy with my results and then I’ll be swinging over to maintenance.

The next area of my life that I want quality to be a feature is in my relationships and friendships. I just really want to sit down and think through who are the people that are most important to me and that I want to spend quality time with this year because particularly as you get older, you really do want to treasure those times that you have with the people you love because you start to become aware of your mortality. And that’s certainly been my experience.

The other area where I want quality to feature in my life is in our home, like having several properties on the market and quite a few Airbnb’s. Our personal home has become a bit not disorganized but fragmented because I’d steal bits here from here and there, rugs and pieces of art and furniture even. And so I do want to spend some time just getting that back together and looking beautiful. Because that’s one thing about renovating when you’re creating beautiful homes for everyone else you don’t want to go home to something that’s substandard. And it’s not like our home is substandard but it’s just not presented in a way that I would like it to be. And it’s just a matter of putting things back together. So that’s another little project for this year.

The next area I want to look at is my Airbnb listings. I already started working on this area at the end of last year. And I have reduced my listings from six to two. And the reason I’ve done this is because I really want to focus on Stephen’s and my personal goals rather than getting too focused on building an empire of listings. And what I found with Airbnb, with investment properties, with whatever is that you can get focused on the number but lose sight of the goal. I see this a lot because I coach a lot of people who are wanting to improve their finances through property. And I talk to lots of people who have been investing all their life have quite a few investment properties but they’re not delivering on the outcome. So they’re not actually giving them an income. But often I will talk to someone in their 60s who might have 5 or 6 investment properties but none of them are producing income or cash flow for them. And that’s why I get really annoyed when I hear these so-called gurus talking about, you know, you should be building your number of properties.

I think you’ve got to look at the quality of the properties and you’ve got to look at what they’re delivering. I know that you don’t need a lot of properties to give you a decent income if you’re careful about the type of property you buy. And we have a process where we only buy properties that have the potential for further growth. So that you’re not just relying on the organic growth and then you do something to that property to increase the equity in the property and also to increase the income. And so the same applies to Airbnb listings, whether you own them or not, you want to make sure that you’re getting listings that are going to deliver the outcome that you want. And as far as I’m concerned Airbnb’s about cash flow and income. You might be using it in conjunction with your investment strategy, which is absolutely fine. But you want to make sure that it’s delivering the cash flow.

My Airbnb goal is just to deliver $100,000 of income per year through my Airbnb listings. And I want to do that with as few listings as possible because once you get over around about 5 listings you need to then start putting together a management team. Like I have a small team now like I have a team of cleaners and I have Judy, my V.A., who’s been managing my Airbnb communication for 6 years. But if I want to grow my listings, I would need to then build a bigger team, bigger management team. And when I already have a business, that’s not what I want to do.

It’s a really good strategy for someone who doesn’t have a decent income. And it’s a great business to grow if that’s your only business. But you need to be committed to it because the minute you take your eye off the ball the quality drops. And that has a negative impact on your business. So for that reason, I want to, I guess, other than listings where we’re just plugging the holes in projects, which I don’t really count I want to have a maximum of 4 listings.

I currently have 2, I may need to take that up to 5 as long as I keep our development site on Airbnb. But in terms of our income I’m looking at a maximum of 4 at the moment in that category. I just have The Factory Floor, which at the moment is producing about $50,000 per year. And so my intention is to add two more listings and that’s it. And I’ll be doing that this year. I’ve done some research on the type of property and the locations. And so now it’s a matter of just securing those properties and getting them established. Those two properties will probably be rented properties initially anyhow, while I’m sort of working out the area. So that’s really the plan. I’ve got a room full of furniture because I’ve emptied a few houses of furniture, so I’ve got plenty of furniture to furnish those listings. And to be honest with you I’m looking forward to relieving us of having to store all that furniture.

That’s my Airbnb goal. Other than to do a couple of really minor makeovers I haven’t completed the renovation on The Factory Floor and I’ll do that in the low season this year. I’m also planning to do a quick and dirty makeover on our development site property because it’s probably going to be on Airbnb for another year. And the house is carpeted all the way through and it’s not nice carpet. It’s even carpeted in the dining room, which is a maintenance nightmare. I think I’ve decided I’m gonna bite the bullet, put a floating floor in and repaint it because it’ll probably cost me about $4,000 but I will easily recover that with a better return on our Airbnb. So that’s one little makeover that’s in the offing.

The last piece of the puzzle is our renovation plans for the year. I’m planning at this point just one flip for which I will be solely responsible. I’ve got another little project coming up in the offing but I’ll speak about that in another episode.

At the moment my plans are not set in stone but after having done a house renovation last year, which I hadn’t done for a while I really enjoyed it. And so my interest this year will be in renovating a house if possible. Of course, I’m not gonna get this too set in stone. It just depends on what property I find. I will definitely be doing this with a JV partner I’ve got a few options I’m just deciding which is going to work best and I’m quite interested in doing it in a regional location. I guess that really determines who my JV partner will be. It needs to be someone who is able to be available to be on site.

At this stage that’s all I know about that project, I did find myself over Christmas back on realestate.com looking for properties. Unfortunately, that’s a bit of a side effect of a reno addiction but I’m actually quite looking forward to doing that project. We’ve still got one property to settle on and that’s the Wynnum house and that will be settling towards the end of January. And then hopefully we’ll have our next project secured in the not too distant future.

There are my plans for 2020. Now it’s over to you. Have you nutted out your plans for 2020? In the next episode, I will be going through a process to help you with your planning. But before then I’d love to hear what ideas you have. If you’d like to come over to the SheRenovates Facebook page and share about what you’re thinking for 2020. It would be fun to have that conversation.

Before I go firstly, I’d like to ask you if you haven’t already left us a review if you could go over to iTunes and leave us a review. Tell us what you think about the podcast. And I’d be very grateful because that helps us to let the world know that the podcast exists and helps to share that reno love.

And I also want to do a shout out to Christine Boundy, who left a lovely message in our Facebook group, which I thought I would readout.

So basically what she said was, “Bernadette, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for the awesome podcasts. Thank you for your vulnerable self. Thank you for all you teach us. I, for one, know I have gained great value from what you teach and share. I hope you have a truly wonderful time away and I’m very much looking forward to all you have in store for us for 2020.” So that was such a beautiful message. Thank you, Christine! It just inspires me to keep going with this. Yes, I do have some great episodes in store. We’ve got quite a lot of success stories coming out of our community that we’ll be sharing with you and lots of other tips and information. And so on that note, I will leave now and I’ll see you next week.

And next week I’ll be recording from the United Kingdom. So I’ll see you then.