Top 5 Mistakes in My First 2 Years of Business and Property Investing with Athena Dobson

Back by popular demand!

In today’s episode of The Girls in Property Podcast, Athena presents a special solo episode, sharing the top 5 mistakes she made in her first 2 years as a business owner and property investor. Tune in for a candid and educational conversation about the lessons learned, the stories behind those initial years, and the exciting things to come.

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Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. How is everybody today? I hope you're well. I hope you're listening to this on your Monday morning, either on the way to work, on your way to one of your developments, taking the kids to school, whatever it may be. I hope you're having an absolutely wonderful time and hope I can make the next hour for you really, really fun. So something a little bit different today, because quite frankly, I have missed it. And I have decided to do a solo episode for you today. And the reason I've decided to do a solo episode for you today is I feel that there are some things that I would like to say to all of you as the listeners for this podcast and make some really, really important points for you all to think about and to take away from this. So it's going to be really fun. But yeah, it's just going to be me in your ears probably for the next 40 minutes, but hopefully get some really, really awesome. gems and top tips out of what I hope to say. So lucky you guys, it would just be me. So what I'm going to do in my usual fashion is I'm going to try and stay in on a topic that I think a lot of you actually do ask me about quite regularly. So I would like to do that with you. And then I've got some amazing guests that are going to be coming on over the next few weeks to really talk about some of the other subjects that when I've been asking you about what you want to hear from and the feedback. has been certain topics as well. So I'll delve into that a little bit deeper today and talk to you about some really exciting things coming up for girls and property. So today's topic of the podcast is gonna be all around my top five, if you like, mistakes that I made in my first two years of being a business owner and a property investor. And... reason I use the word mistakes is because firstly, it's a really good hook. Everyone's like, what are your mistakes? I want to learn from them. But really you've got to understand that mistakes are also lessons as well. So instead of me writing my top five lessons from my first two years as a business owner and property investor, because that's what we are at the end of the day, we are both, I've written it as mistakes, but just know that with every mistake comes a lesson as well. And I want to make that really, really clear for all the listeners. Always take something positive from it whenever you're thinking about what mistakes you might have made yourself within your own property journey. Now, before all of that, in true traditional style, I am first going to be talking about what I'm celebrating at the moment. And I hope you're all celebrating something as well. So for me, what am I celebrating? So some of you may or may not have seen on my social media that recently this week, it was my partner Steve's birthday. Absolute big kids we are together. We really are which is just so much fun. So I decided as a complete surprise for him to take him on a three -day adventure and as one of those nights in the three-day adventure I took him to West Midlands Safari Park to stay in a rhino lodge and it was a it was a two -story two -story villa overlooking the Rhino enclosure as it were. So there was a baby rhino. We saw seven rhinos in total. We literally woke up at about 6 .30, two rhinos having their breakfast. And it was really magical, really magical. And I took a moment to really reflect and sit there because when you're in a place like that, it is very symbolic and it's very peaceful, very tranquil. The animals are incredible and it gets you really thinking. And I think what I'm celebrating the most is this idea that I'm in a really good place in... which is really amazing for me to say actually, I'm in a really good place in my business life, my personal life. And like that's taken me quite a long time to get there to really live the life that I keep. I keep telling people to try and live for themselves. And I think I'm now really living it and I'm really beginning to see it, which is so amazing. It's taken me a really long time to get here from a mental perspective. And I'll talk about that more on this podcast actually, as we go through it, but I think it's just amazing. And this idea of living. you know, this idea of being a property lifestyle creator. I'm really coming into the forefront of it now where I did take my laptop with me. I always do just because I'm just in case I'm always an in case type of person. But actually I didn't turn it on once while I was there, not even to check anything. Because I wanted to be in that moment. And I thought, where am I going to be staying in a rhino lodge again? You know, I don't want to have my face down in a mobile phone. I don't want to have my face down in a laptop. I want to be here, it's his birthday, I want to enjoy the moment. So I'm going to celebrate the fact that I think that I'm really turning a corner at the moment in regards to this work -life balance. And I think it's very, very difficult to get there. And I think, again, you've got to take this holistic view of things and have personal things happen to you, such as I got really sick with COVID after going to the events and having to slow down. And actually by slowing down, realizing that... business still does carry on with or without you. And that was quite a realization as well. So I'm gonna celebrate being in a really awesome rhino lodge. People literally thought I was in Africa. They're like, where are you in Africa? And I'm like, I'm in West Midlands. That was a fun topic. People definitely did say to me, Athena, you've spent more time in the North than you have in the South recently. And I thought, God, am I becoming a Northerner? And just celebrating this idea of just being at peace within myself, which has been quite a challenge for me, and having that work -life balance and not necessarily chasing, constantly chasing everything. I think that's taken quite a long time to get there. So I'm gonna be celebrating work -life balance and celebrating Steve's birthday in a rhino lodge, which was pretty epic and pretty memorable and something I will never, ever forget. And having that time away and being able to... not only afford it, but being able to have that time away as well, not having to ask permissions and things. So yes, I'd like to celebrate that. So hopefully you're all sitting there and thinking of your own celebration as well. And I'd like to celebrate you all the listeners here today as well with that. So hope you're celebrating something amazing, whether it be small, whether it be big, whatever it may be. Okay, so on today's podcast, I'm going to talk to you, as I said, about my top, although I don't like the word, let's go for it. My top five mistakes that I have made in my first kind of two years as a business owner slash property investor. Now, what I would like to say before I begin and a full disclaimer, this is my opinion as to what my mistakes were. It might be that something I say you think is not a mistake or you think, well, I think that's a good thing or should you be doing it like that? That's absolutely fine. The whole beauty of this world that we live in is that everybody has the right to their own opinion. So if your opinion is different to mine, I actually welcome you to message me because I would love a conversation and even to welcome you on the podcast to almost have that conversation and that debate because these types of conversations, for example, are always better in kind of a two way chat. But I just felt like for today, I just wanted to... kind of say some things based on some messages that I've been receiving lately from various people. Hence why I wanted to do this podcast for you today. Because it is important that although we have such a laugh on this podcast, we also do give out a really, really clear message or I give out a really clear message about where I align and where I want to be seen in the industry and what I want to represent. So that's what I wanted to do. So I've written down my five points to try and keep me on target because otherwise I will waffle on. and I will try and do it and explain it in as much detail as I can. But any questions you've got about what I say, please of course do message me and we can have a chat about it, which I would absolutely love. And if you agree, also let me know. And if you disagree, definitely let me know because I'm always up for a conversation, always up for a debate. And I think that's the most healthiest way to be and everybody having the right to say what they want to say. As long as it's constructive and as long as it's kind, we must always be kind to each other. Okay, number one. So I've written here, one of my top mistakes that I made in being a business owner and in being a property investor in my first two years was treating the business like a business or not treating the business like a business is probably the mistake that I made. So not treating the business like a business. So what do I mean by this? What I mean by this is, is not getting the help where I needed it or outsourcing it where I needed it. So let me try and explain this. When you're starting out in business as a business owner or a property investor, in my opinion, again, one of the most difficult things you can possibly do, especially when you leave your full -time job to jump into the property investment world, business owner world, is you don't have, when you first start out, naturally, a steady flow of income. So you became, you become almost obsessed or at least I did obsessed with cashflow because you're like, if I spend money, it means that I then have to bring more money in and that becomes a real spiral and a real web of you can get trapped. So what you therefore do is you don't treat the business like a business because you start to think, I don't need help doing that. So therefore I'll do it myself. And let me give you some examples of this. So for example, when I first started out in property investing, which was a mistake, and I'll explain to you the story about this, was I remember my very first ever buy -to -let. And I'm sure many of you have heard the story of my first ever buy -to -let. This was before actually I left my full-time job when I started to get into property investing. And so I started to see other people who were doing their own property accounts, for example, their tax accounts, their end of year accounts, that type of thing. And I thought to myself, well, how hard can it be? So I started to get an Excel spreadsheet, which I still do today in some examples, but get an Excel spreadsheet. I took all my revenue in, I took all of the costs associated, and I started to actually do all of the tax returns myself. And although I thought I was doing everything the right way and I was saving 600, 700, whatever they may charge you, pounds per year, it actually turned out that that was not the best thing to do because I missed so much detail and so many ways that you could actually do certain things. And so, and another example is outsourcing to get help. And even now I'm having this trouble outsourcing to get help from, for example, a VA or something like that. So it's this idea where you need to build a power team. You need to build a team around you. You can never quite grow. to where you wanna be without that. And I think what I was doing at the beginning, and I'm sure a lot of business owners and property investors think this, is you think to yourself, okay, well, do you know what? I've not got a lot of income at the moment, so I'm gonna hold onto it. And yes, I understand. Yes, I understand there are bills to pay. Yes, I understand that you wanna hold onto as much revenue as you can. I'm with you. I understand all of those things. I've been there, trust me. But at the same time, what starts to happen is that you don't actually use your time efficiently. and you don't get the help when needed. You think you could just do everything yourself. So I think what I didn't do was I didn't at the beginning, maybe treat my business like a business and instead still continue to treat it like the side hustle that it was when I first started it. And that isn't the best way to do it. And what happens is, is, and for all the listeners out there, I'm sure you, you know, if you haven't experienced this yet, then, then either I'm glad that you haven't experienced it yet, or you're not quite at that stage yet. you will naturally experience burnout because what happens is, is you become so overwhelmed by it because you become the accountant, the admin person, the sales person, the lead generator, the marketer, the person that responds to all the messages for tenants, the person who has to do all the viewings for the tenants. Like I remember me and me and Sophie, when we first did this podcast together, we had this conversation about when you're a business owner or a property investor, you, you actually, when you write down all the tasks that you do, there's like, about 180 of them, because you think you have to do everything yourself, because you're not treating your business like a business. And now what's happening is, and it does take a while to get here, I reckon it takes about two years, it's taken, no, let me rephrase that, it's taken me about two years to get to this place, where I now realize that in order to grow, you cannot grow on your own. you need an army and a power team in order to get there. And I think that's a realization and looking at your figures and going, yes, I'm going to spend 500 pounds a month here. Yes, I'm going to spend 300 pounds a month here. Yes, my revenues, my income is going to go down for a bit. But by then the revenue that you'll actually accumulate as a result of that should increase. And in time, you therefore should get your return on the investment that you actually did. So it's almost like seeing your your business like property investing and seeing the return on the capital employed or seeing the return on investment for doing it. So I think, I think for all the listeners who are starting out, I would probably say this. I'd probably say, first of all, welcome. You're about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. It's certainly a roller coaster. It's great fun. I definitely understand how difficult it is, particularly when you might be the breadwinner. You might be like in full -time employment. It might be really stressful in terms of income. I understand that it's quite difficult in terms of holding on and keeping hold of all of the bits to be in full control of it. But actually, once you let go and once you actually realize I need to treat my business like a business and I need to outsource and I also need to spend in the right way, I think actually that's the point where you grow the quickest. And that, as I said, that's taken me about two years to get here. But my God, once you make that decision, it's so freeing because you're like, actually it's okay. It's okay to say it's time to let go. and that's quite a wonderful place to be. So, treat your business like a business. And I'm going to say one more thing on top of that. Also, when you're a business owner or you're a property investor, you do not have a shop and people have spoken about this before. It's not like I work in an office. I shut the doors at five o 'clock, six o'clock, whatever your hours may be. And therefore I shut off to the world. As a business owner, that doesn't happen. And you'd have heard me speak about this before. It becomes, and completely rightly so in my opinion, it becomes ingrained in you, it becomes part of your life. It becomes like an obsession that you have, but actually it's not a healthy obsession to have where you're constantly working on it over and over again. In order for a business to thrive, again, going back to this, you have to treat the business like a business. and come out of it and give it room to grow, room to breathe. The best ideas come when you're not exhausted working till three o 'clock in the morning. The best ideas come when you're sat looking over seven rhinos and you go, do you know what? I've actually got a great idea that I'm then gonna go and take forward. So give yourself the permission, I would say, not from anybody else. I'm not saying get permission from Fred or James or Susie or whoever. I'm saying get permission from yourself to say, It's okay to close the doors today at five, six o 'clock and go to the beach for a walk. It's okay to do that. And I tell you this, I did not do that for two years. I did not give myself the permission. So, best advice I can give to you, give yourself permission. Right, number two. Okay, number two. believing I had to learn every strategy at once and diversify immediately. Okay, I really like this one. This is for all you property investors out there. So you don't actually have to do this if you're in a public place, but in your mind, put your hand up in your mind, or you can put your hand up in your life if you want to, put your hand up if you, at the beginning of your journey, started to learn every single property strategy that there was known to match. And if you can't see me, I'm putting my hand up. If you're on YouTube, you can see me putting your hand up. So I thought I had to learn every strategy because I thought, you know what? I want to make sure that I know absolutely all my options before I get started. I want to learn all about rent to rent. I want to learn all about commercial conversions. I want to know all about lease options, sister sales, vendor finance, service accommodation, just to make sure that I understand everything so that I can then go forward. And then I've got to make sure that I diversify my portfolio all at the same time in case COVID happens again, in case a crash happens, in case the world falls apart. Who knows? Now, although it is important, I want to make this clear, although it is important to diversify your portfolio, and it is important to diversify your portfolio because using an example, which was a clear example of COVID, where, for example, people who only had service accommodation units, really, really fell down here and lost a lot of money because of course they couldn't use their service accommodation units for the general tourists. Now, of course, caveat of if they managed to get, I don't know, nurses in, so when they're to hospitals, that type of thing, fantastic, they can continue to run. But the majority of people who are in tourist destinations would have lost a lot of income and had to actually reevaluate their service accommodation units. So again, if they'd had maybe a couple of buy -to -lets, couple of HMOs, that type of thing, then yes, of course, All great, always good to diversify your portfolio. So I'm not saying not to do that. I'm trying to make this really clear. But at the beginning of your journey, what can happen, and people have spoken about this before. Jackie Thomas spoke about it amazingly at the property summit recently, is you start to get something called shiny penny syndrome. And what you do is you start to think, that looks nice over there. I can go and do that. And that looks nice over there. I can go and do that. And quite frankly, I see quite a lot of people at the moment in the beginning of their journey, who are watching a lot of people online. And then suddenly I see them either joining their academy, joining their group, joining their mastermind, joining whatever, and they haven't actually finished what they started somewhere else. So for example, somebody might be starting off trying to learn all about service accommodation. Fantastic. Great. And before they're even like a month into it, suddenly they're talking to me about land development. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? And what happens is they start to think that the grass is greener in one direction than the other. And I really, really, really do not recommend that because what then happens is, is number one, you get overwhelmed, you get overloaded. And number two, you get shiny penny syndrome. And that is the biggest thing that will make you stand still and not move in other directions. What you will instead do is spend a fortune on trying to learn about the other strategies without actually getting your return on your investments. And then you will start to deplete and then you'll start to feel overwhelmed. Then you'll get financial stress and then you will leave and quit and think it doesn't work, which is not true. So for example, what I recommend is I believe in diversification. I'm not saying I don't believe in it. But please, when you're starting out, or even when you're a bit into your journey, not just starting out, when you're into your journey, please, please, please learn about strategy and go and implement it before moving on. So let's take an example. If you're going to learn about service accommodation, just for argument's sake, please go and actively use what you're learning to invest in service accommodation. Then once you have got yourself a couple of service accommodation units, you've learnt the process, you understand it because quite frankly, there is so much to learn with it. Then you can say I'm now ready to use the funds I have accumulated, the profits I've accumulated from what I've learned to now go and invest in land development. Great. Let's take HMOs. I'm going to invest in HMOs. I'm going to learn what I've learned about HMOs and then I'm going to go and invest those profits that I've learned into service accommodation. Fine. Because you're diversifying. But if actually what happens is, is you start to go over here and you start to go over here and then you start to go over here without actually investing in anything, that's where the problems happen. And to be honest with you, I think what I'm seeing in the industry at this moment and when I'm speaking to people is what is happening is that everybody has an opinion about everything. So what I mean by that is a person will come to me and they'll say to me, they'll be so set on doing a HMO in that area. They're like, yes, this is what I'm doing. I'm going to do a HMO. I'm going to do it in this way. I'm learning about HMOs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then a week later they'll come to me and they'll say, I went to a networking event the other day and this guy or girl, cause I don't want to be gender, gender here. This guy or girl came up to me and was like, no, you shouldn't do HMOs in this area. HMOs are dead in this area. No, no, no. I've been doing this for 20 years. You shouldn't be doing this. It's, it's not the right time to be investing because of the election and things. And then they get in their head. And then once they get in their head, they then go, or maybe I shouldn't be doing that. And this guy or girl who has been investing for 10 years tells me I should be doing this. So now I'm going to be doing this. And it's like, although you should be listening to advice and listening to other people, I'm not saying don't listen to people. I'm also going to ask you to sit there and think to yourself. You also have knowledge. You also have taken the time to learn about your area, about it. So don't let somebody's opinion about something change your mind within the space of 10 seconds just because they have an opinion. And I have seen this happen to people so many times where they have had an idea, they are focused on their idea, they are feeling fantastic about their idea and then somebody comes along, says something to them or online, it could be online or in the real world and they completely make them feel horrendous and they crash and burn and then they don't do it and I've watched it happen. So My advice to you would be is listen to yourself, listen to others, but listen to yourself and always have your own thoughts and own opinions and trust yourself with what it is. You may not get it right first time. Fine. You may want to protect yourself from getting it wrong. I understand that. But if you end up listening to people all the time who have an opinion about everything, you will go nowhere. Like it's the story of when I left my full-time job. to go well paid, well paid full time job to go and start a complete, as I was in the travel industry, as many of you know, if you haven't listened to the podcast before, I was a well paid, well established travel consultant for seven years. And then I went into the property industry. So it's not even like they were similar in any way. It was a complete contrast. And the amount of people who said to me, don't do it. It's a bad idea. Think about it. You've got a well -paid job over here. It's not the best idea to do. And I literally just said, thank you for your thoughts. And I believed in myself and I went for it anyway. And those people are now either investing in my properties or they're asking me for mentoring or they're asking me how I did it. Right? You have to remain focused in your own thoughts and beliefs. Or if you are going to want to, if you want to have somebody just there to soundboard something off of, which is completely different, by the way, if you're like, I'm thinking of doing this idea, what do you think? then get yourself an accountability partner who understands your values and is on the same wavelength as you in that. Be careful, be really, really careful when you're speaking to these people who might've invested 30, 40 years ago and are quite stuck in their ways with how investing used to be or what they think investing used to be like. I still have people coming up to me who, and again, this will be another conversation and if you want to... have this debate with me on the podcast I welcome it on, no problem at all. I just have people coming up to me saying to me, I'd put all your, why have you not got any properties in your personal name? I'd put all my properties in my personal name. And it's like, thanks for that advice, really appreciate that. And I don't challenge them, I just go, thanks, really appreciate it. Because I'm like, you're stuck in your ways, you have your thoughts and that's absolutely fine. So. It's one of those where you just have to remain true to yourself and thinking about that. But sorry, I have gone off, which I said I wouldn't do. I have gone off piste a little bit on this particular topic, so I'm just going to go back to it again. So it was all about believing I had to learn every strategy at once and diversify immediately. So my advice would be, and I did this, this was a mistake I did at the beginning. So as a lot of you know, I started off in HMOs, did my whole HMO thing and then moved over to service accommodation. That bit's fine. Like that actually wasn't so much a mistake. That bit was all good. But I think what, what, what I did do at the beginning was I invested a lot in education in different departments, strategies, different strategies. So I learned about, the only one I haven't learned about is commercial conversion actually. But I did learn about all the different no money down techniques. I did learn about service accommodation, HMOs. I learned about I know about lots and lots of different strategies, vendor finance, you know, all of those, but it's, it really is coming down to what is it that aligns with you and your values. I always talk about this about, about aligning your lifestyle. So you get a lot of people, for example, who will always say, look, I only invest in buy to let's because buy to let's gives you wealth and this is what I want to do. And this is how I want to do it. Great. Someone say to you, I only invest in service accommodation because service accommodation gives you higher cashflow. There's more stress, but you can outsource that. And then you got your HMOs and then you've then got to think, okay, I'm listening to this person, bye bye to let's, I'm listening to this person about service accommodation, this person about HMOs, but then look at yourself and say, well, what do I want to do? What aligns with my values? And just because something worked for somebody else doesn't mean it doesn't work for you. It doesn't mean it will work for you. That doesn't happen. It worked for them for a reason. It might've been their geographical area. It might've been the time that they invested in. It might be the funds that they had available, lots and lots of different factors. So just take a moment to sit and really think for you, what is it that aligns with you? And the final thing I will say about this, because this is crystal, crystal, needs to be clear for people, is I don't mind you learning about different strategies and diversifying, but please don't spend like only a month learning about a strategy, such as service accommodation, HMOs, buy-to -lets, whatever it may be. And then suddenly they can go and learn all about land development. And I'm like, those two just do not even, they're completely different, completely contrasting. And then this person, you know, I'm just speaking about lots of different people here, which is what I'm seeing. They then end up spending a fortune on learning and education without actually implementing what they learn. And that is where I get upset. I'm happy for people to spend money. As I've done, I've spent over 30 ,000 pounds on my education. I'm happy to admit that. By far, you know, I've won the best investments I ever made, 100%. So that bit doesn't upset me. What upsets me is when people spend the money and they don't do anything with it. And what they end up doing is becoming course junkies and thinking that by paying people, it's the answer to all their solutions. And it's not. You have to implement what you learn. Otherwise, don't waste your money. quite frankly, because you have to implement it. So that would be number two, just repeat that's believing I had to learn every strategy at once, diversify immediately. That isn't always the case. I would say learn something, implement it, get good at it, and then use the profits that you made from that initial strategy to then go on to invest in a different strategy. So if you're gonna do HMOs to start, which is what I did as an example, through rent to rent. You get your rent to rent, you make the profits. And then I moved on to service accommodation using the profits that I had from that. So that's probably how I would explain that one to the best of my ability. Then number three, which is one of my favorite ones, because I think it's so, so important. And this was a mistake I made, by the way, this one was definitely a mistake that I made is comparing your journey to others. So I'm just gonna repeat that again, comparing your journey to others. So when I first started out in being a business owner slash property investor, I compared myself to so many other people and it was absolutely ridiculous what I was doing. I don't, looking back, I don't even understand the purpose of it. So I remember when I would be, I don't know, like four months into my journey, maybe four or five months. And I would be looking at people who'd been doing it for three years, four years, and stupidly, quite frankly, thinking to myself, why aren't I there? Why aren't I doing that? Why aren't I as successful as others? Which is ludicrous. It's like saying to somebody who's just started in the gym, who's either trying to tone up, trying to lose weight, and they're comparing their body shape to somebody who's been in the gym for the last five months and they've been in there for two days. And it's like, well, why don't I look like that? And it's like, the obvious answer is because you haven't been doing it as long. And what you do is you start comparing yourself to to others and you start seeing it. And one of the other things I would actually like to speak about on this particular topic when comparing your journey to others is the main way that people compare their journey to others is through social media. So they look at social media, which is what I used to do, and used to look at all these other business owners, property investors, whoever it may be, and you just think, wow, they're so successful. Look at what they're doing. They're so successful. I wish I was like them. And you do this like, what's it called? Doom scrolling. And you start getting yourself in a loop of your own head, your own thoughts going, why am I doing that? How come it's working for them and it's not working for me? Why am I as good as them? And you start to loop these thoughts that go around, which is so unhealthy. It's unbelievable. And I would just like to say this, and this is something I really want to say on this podcast. And I would like people to hear it when I say this. Just know that not everything you see on social media, is 100 % true and accurate. Right? That is something I will say. I've been seeing a lot of things at the moment on social media and I know the details and the backstories around a lot of things that I see on social media. And I've spoken to a few people about certain conversations where they have said, but they don't look like that on social media. And I say, well, of course they don't. Why would they? because on social media, we are all guilty of this, by the way, I'm not sitting here saying that I'm different to other people in any way, shape or form. On social media, it's a social platform, right? So you always wanna put up, because we're human beings and we always wanna put up our best foot forward when we're looking really great on a day. So for example, you're only really post the best days that you're having, the best content, you know. things that you're really proud of, those types of things, because you wanna look good on social media to attract others to follow you, to attract others to listen to you, all of these things. So you always put your best foot forward. And I was listening to a podcast the other day. God, who was it with? I can't remember, I've been listening to so many podcasts recently. And it was absolutely, I will find it for you. If you come asking me for it, I will find it for you. And it was absolutely brilliant. it was, I'll tell you who it was, it was Jimmy Carr on... Stephen Bartlett, obviously Stephen, it was Jimmy Carr. And he said to Stephen who laughed, he said, isn't it funny that you're actually jealous of yourself on social media? And Stephen laughed and I laughed as well. He's like, have you ever looked at your social media and thought, you know, I'm so jealous of myself. Doesn't my life look absolutely brilliant on social media? Whereas I know the reality behind it isn't like that. And I thought that was absolutely hilarious. And we've all been guilty of that. You know, I know for a fact, for example, because I'm always honest on this podcast and always will be forever. where I might've had a really bad day one day and, you know, had tears and things might not have gone well and a launch might've failed and all sorts of things can happen. And then the next day I'm posting, you know, talking about a really cool thing that's happened. And it's like, well, why didn't I post the day before about something negative that had happened? And I think what it is, is that maybe we are programmed as part of society to only talk about the good things. and not necessarily the bad things happen. And I can see there are a lot of people now coming forward in their own way, trying to craft this idea that it doesn't need to be perfect. And I'm seeing that a lot more in social media, which I really respect, where they come forward and they talk about the things that didn't necessarily go right for them. Hence, if I wanted to make this podcast all about the mistakes that I've made in my first two years to help others, because we're all human beings and we need to remember that we're not perfect, we don't have all the answers, but... to say it's okay if we're also having a bad day and to also almost champion that because otherwise what happens is, is we all get stuck in this web where we're all looking at each other with our fabulous lives going, that person's fabulous and that person's fabulous. And it's like, yeah, but is that the truth of what's actually happening behind closed doors? Is that the truth of what's actually happening in their business and their cashflow? And it's really, really interesting. The stories. that I'm hearing and then what I'm seeing on socials and they do not add up at all. The correlation is completely off. And I think that it's creating a society online that actually is not a healthy one. And so I really almost want to be part of a movement again, always, which portrays both ways of doing it and that it's okay to have a bad day, it's okay to have a good day and that's also really, really important. So. Going back to number three, which is comparing your journey to others. I've spoken to so many people where they've said to me, I'm going to take a break from social media. I'm going to take a social media detox. You'll see a lot of people say this and I'll say, how come are you feeling okay? And they'll say, I just, I'm getting into a phase where I'm comparing myself too much to others and it's not a healthy place to be. First of all, that's fantastic self-awareness that they're able to say that and come away from it. That's a healthy thing to be really self-aware about. But then the fact that they're comparing themselves to others and some of the stuff that comparing themselves to is absolutely ludicrous. And the reason I really understand it is because I did it myself where they're doing that whole thing where after let's go for a year or even two years, let's go for two years. They're comparing themselves to somebody who's been doing it for five years, six years, seven years. And I had this conversation with Rosalia Lazara who I saw at the Property Entrepreneur Summit. And she says a lot of people are now speaking to her about this idea of saying to her, Roz, you're really taking off and you become like an overnight success and everything. And she's like, no, it's not an overnight success. I've been working for the last 10 years to get here. And a lot of people almost just don't see that. And so people will compare themselves and think, well, she's only been doing it for one or two years because that's where she's been the most prevalent. It's like, yeah, but you haven't seen the last eight behind that. You haven't seen under the iceberg. So. Don't match this idea about comparing yourself to others. We've all heard that saying, comparison is the thief. Sorry, let me start that again. That was a, that I missed that up. Comparison is the thief of joy. It really, really is. And if you focus on other people and not on yourself, first of all, the emotion that comes out is envy, which is a horrible place to be. Doubt, self doubt comes out, not a good quality to have. Therefore quite frankly what I've learned is that it's wasted energy and so you start to waste your energy around thinking Why and I like that? Why aren't I doing those deals? Why don't I have a six -figure business and it's like yeah, but what do you have? What do you have that is better used energy to say to yourself? I have this I have this I have this and this is how I'm gonna take myself because I'm inspired by that person It's okay to watch somebody online or to meet somebody in the real world and be inspired by them I agree with that. Be inspired, find your people, be inspired by them always. But don't think, why aren't I like that? That is a completely different conversation. So number three, I did this 100%. It's one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I wish I could go back two years and just talk, talk to my younger self, but you know, you learn, you learn and you grow. Do not compare yourself to others. Journeys, you have your journey. It is yours. Nobody else's and nobody is you. So that's number three. And then moving on to number four, I've written here, having a lack of direction, goals or focus, number four. So what do I mean by this? I speak to a lot of people and myself when I first started out, because I was part of this camp as well, where what you do is you have an idea and you say to yourself, I know that I want to leave my job and I know I want to be a business owner. And I know I want to do it through property investing. Great. But do you actually have a clear goal, a clear direction, a clear focus? And then it's like, no, I don't. And you might think that you do by saying, well, I want to be a property investor. I know I want to invest in property. That's my goal. And it's like, okay, how are you going to do that? And I've been guilty of this. I've definitely a hundred percent been guilty of this. I'm laughing at myself when I think about it, because I think about my younger self and having that lack of focus. 100 % what I would say is, is that I've seen a lot of people and quite frankly, I have to put myself in this camp as well. I really do. When I first started out, you go very, very fast, very quickly nowhere. And I want you to sit, sit and I want you to think to yourself, am I this person? Do I feel like I'm rushing on a daily basis? I'm doing 101 tasks, I'm absolutely bossing life, but actually I'm on a treadmill and the treadmill I'm running on is going nowhere. And that's because you have a lack of direction, lack of focus and lack of goals, in my opinion. And it's because those direction, those goals or that focus is not aligned with what you're doing on a day -to -day basis. And so that's what happens. What you've got to do is before you start, you've got to say to yourself, what is it I'm trying to achieve by this? So for example, an action step I would recommend that every single business owner or every single person does is number one, you want to set yourself goals for the whole year. So you want to set yourself goals and say, right in 2024 and 2025, this is what I want to achieve by the end of the year. And you write your goals. And I would always break this down by the way, because quite frankly, goals can be to do with anything. Yes, it's important to think about your business goals, your financial goals, but what about your personal goals? What about your home goals? What about your health goals? What about your couple goals? What about your self -worth goals? What, et cetera. We can go on. So I want you to almost categorize your goals into different categories. And then you've got your year's goals. And then what you do is you break them into quarter goals. So you have Q1 goals, Q2 goals, excuse me. Q1 goals, Q2 goals, Q3 goals, Q4 goals. Sorry, I choked. I'm not gonna edit it out because it's a real podcast. So, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And then what you're gonna do is you are then going to, from your Q4 goals, you're gonna write those down, have a look at them, and then when each quarter comes, you're then gonna break those down into weekly action steps. So for example, if you take, where are we now? Q3. If you take your Q3 goals, you can then say, right, in week one of Q3, this is what my goal is, this is what my focus is, this is what my direction is, and therefore you then create your action steps as a result of that. So for example, I'm just gonna take a thing. Okay, let's take, okay, I need to fill a vacant HMO room. Okay, I need to fill this, okay, so I need to fill this HMO. You'd make it more, actually that's a really bad example, because you'd make it more like a SMART goal, so you'd say, I need to ensure that room one is filled by July 14th at 800 per calendar month. So it can all be measured, but then you'd work backwards. So you'd say, okay, I need to post the advert on spare room. I need to apply to messages. I need to set up the viewing. I need to conduct the viewing. I need to then go through referencing. I need to do write to rent checks. I then need to get them updated onto a management software system. I then need to make sure that I then get them to sign the AST tenancy agreement. I then need to take their deposit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many things when you're onboarding. But effectively, what you're then doing is you're creating your action plan that then goes with it. And what you can do is you can tick it off so that it doesn't feel like a mountain and you can think to yourself, right, I can do all these tasks, which then get me to my goal for quarter three to have that room tenanted. So that I don't know, maybe for example, in your whole year's goals was to have a hundred percent occupancy. And so Q3 was just part of that. That's the idea of what I'm trying to say. Without the clear focus of where you want to go and how you want to do it, how the hell are you supposed to get there? That is so important. And that's why I always talk about that, for example, which is so crucial in module two of my property lifestyle accelerator program, because I always think to myself, If you are not mapping out the direction that you are going, how the hell do you even know that you're there and how the hell do you get there? It's like having a car trying to get to an area you've never been before with no sat nav. Basically impossible without a map. You need to map your goals, have focus, which will drive you forward. Otherwise, if you're literally flapping around like Flounder from Little Mermaid, how the hell do you get anywhere? And I have seen many. many people, including myself when I first started because I'm no angel, go very, very fast or think that they're going very, very quickly, putting in loads of energy, loads of effort and getting absolutely nowhere. You must, must have a plan. And if you want to talk about goal setting, you want to talk about how to do it and this idea of a 90 day action plan, quarter goals, yearly goals, then DM me, DM me the word map or mapping. and we'll have a chat about it and I can jump on a call with you. That's absolutely fine because it's so important to get it right. And as I said, that's in module two of my property lifestyle accelerator program, because it's, it's, it's vital. It really, really is. Okay. So that's number four. And then number five is one of my favorites always. You have to fail to succeed. You have to fail to succeed. And for somebody, Like myself with my personality, who quite frankly always likes to succeed, always likes to win, has to win at Monopoly, has to win at the egg and the spoon at nine years old in a sports day race. It's a really hard lesson to learn that failing leads to success. And a lot, a lot of people talk about this nowadays. A lot of celebrities, a lot of podcasts talk about this idea and this notion of failure. Because I think when you're, if you think about society and you think about like when we're raised in schools, you know, you were always raised to want to get an A or a B or a C. And if you were to get like an F, it was a failure. You failed. And actually you were made to feel that you were either stupid, you weren't clever enough, but there was no one teaching you that actually what did you learn from that? What did you learn from actually failure? And so for me, I always grew up with this notion that failure was never an option. And I always used to say to myself, well, no, it will succeed because failure isn't an option. I will not fail. And I used to, I used to live by that by foot for years. I'm 32 years old now. I used to live by that for at least 31 years, if I'm honest with you. And now in the last year, what I'm realizing is, is it's okay to fail because I would rather fail, get up and learn and go again than never do it at all. And actually when they were speaking about on a podcast recently and they're so right, the people who really have this nailed other babies who are learning to walk, because you'll see a baby all the time fall down when they're learning to walk and they'll dust themselves off and they'll get right back up again and then try again. And it's like, when did we stop doing that? When did we stop allowing ourselves to fall down, to get up, to learn, to walk again? And so I think that's one of my biggest mistakes that I think I've... over my two years is not allowing myself time to make those mistakes or actually feeling like they were failures instead of allowing myself to think, okay, that failure led to a success. And the examples I would give you, for example, as I used to get so frustrated and I know a lot of my mentees do now, which is why I'm speaking about it because I know they're listening to this podcast and it's important to speak about this. is when I used to call agents at the very beginning when I was doing my rent to rent part of this. And I remember talking to agents and so many agents just used to say, no, no, I got so much abuse from some of the agents and some of the landlords. God, I remember those days. But, and I used to think to myself, I used to get so frustrated and I used to think, why am I failing at this? Why am I so bad at this? Why are the agents saying no to me? And actually what you've got to do is you've got to understand that that's okay because they're saying no, because that's not the direction you're meant to go in. You're meant to go over here. You're meant to say things differently. What can you learn from the call? Can you record the call so you can hear yourself and then learn how to do it differently next time, which is what I asked my mentees to do. I asked them to record the call so that I can actually hear what they're saying and I can then advise them to say things differently, which often works, thank goodness. But it's this idea of being hard on ourselves and thinking, to ourselves, well, you know, I failed in that. And it's like, well, you didn't fail, you just didn't get it right this time, but the next time you'll get it right. And so it's a really, really interesting moment. You're thinking about that and thinking, well, how can I succeed next time? And quite frankly, dare I say, let's be really truthful about this. It's absolutely exhausting as well, because every time when you're trying to be a business owner and you're trying to take that different direction in life, it is a very, very difficult path to walk, very difficult path. I genuinely believe that us entrepreneurs are wired differently to others. We choose this path, we choose this direction. And it is not easy. The amount of times I have sat, failed countless times in either property investing or business owning or anything and thought, why don't I just go back to get the well -paid job? Why don't I just give it all up? Because it would be the easy thing to do. That's why. And actually what you got to think to yourself is, is actually what did I learn from this mistake? What did I learn from this failure of a call? What did I learn from this failure of viewing? What did I learn from this failure of a negotiation? And it's like, this is what I learned from it. This is what I'm gonna do differently next time. And to say to yourself like that's okay, and to be kind to yourself and think how can I succeed next time? What can I learn from it? And I think that that's such an interesting and important one is understanding that you have to fail to succeed. and that it's not a quick journey. And I've said this to some people and I'll say it again, people out there who are teaching you that property investing is easy or teaching you that you can get rich in 90 days, it's a load of absolute bullshit. And yes, excuse me for swearing, but it's a load of bullshit because it is a long, long journey. And I have spoken to countless people or mended countless people that have said to me, Athena, it's harder than I thought it was gonna be. It's taken longer than I thought it was going to be. I had it written down in my goals that I was going to take on my first rent, rent property off the first month of trading. And I'm like, unless you are incredibly lucky or just happened to land on the perfect landlord or jackpot or that you have some history of this before it is not going to happen. And you have to really understand that and take a deep breath and say, okay, it didn't quite work this time, but I'm going to go again. And I remember nearly giving up speaking to the agents. I'll never forget it. I remember I had like about, of about, my God. At the beginning, I think I ha I remember calling about 15 agents and maybe getting like one yes and about 14 nos. This is at the very, very beginning, like, like, like two years ago. And I remember thinking, my God, this is not for me. I'm not used to people saying no to me. I come from a really well background. I used to have a really well paid job. I used to easily like sell holidays. This isn't for me. And actually, If you just learn like how you can tweak things or learn how to speak to people or learn how to just learn how to adapt to the people around you like an agent, how to speak to an agent. Because quite frankly, there's a skill in it and quite frankly, there's a game to it. And again, if you want to have that conversation with me, just DM me and I'll chat with you about it. There really is that way of thinking, how can I do things differently next time and building that rapport. So what I would say is Don't ever give up. Understand that failure is a good thing. And if you haven't been told that yet, I'm telling you now, it's okay to fail. Celebrate failure because it will lead to success. And sometimes when you're in your darkest time, actually that's when the brightest things actually happen next because you almost have to go through a stage of being extremely uncomfortable to then really take you out of your comfort zone to then find where you're meant to be. And I think that that is now what's happening after my two year journey is really now understanding that all of the failures I've had before, I'm now beginning to work out how can I turn those into positive successes? And I have no doubt that I'll probably do this podcast in another two years and go, right, remember everything that I said on this podcast two years ago, I'm now a completely different person again. And that's the way that it should be. You should evolve, you should adapt, you should grow. just to repeat these once again, number one is treating the business like a business. So again, get help when needed, outsource, always, always ask for help. It's so important and treat it like a business. Have your shop hours, don't get obsessed and also get help when needed and know when to invest. Yes, it might feel daunting. Yes, it might feel uncomfortable because of the cashflow. but that is the way to really do it. You need to grow with people. It's very difficult to do it alone. Number two, believe me, I had to learn every strategy at once and diversify immediately. So again, remember it's okay to diversify. There's no problem with that. But if you're going to learn about a strategy, pay to learn about a strategy, at least implement it before moving on. Otherwise you'll get overwhelmed. You get shiny penny syndrome. You'll listen to other people. You'll end up going nowhere because you'll feel overwhelmed and you'll stand still. I've seen it all before and I've done it myself. Don't do it. Number three, comparing my journey to others. This was probably my biggest mistake I made and it probably was the thing that held me back the most. Never ever compare yourself to others. And if you are going to compare yourself to others, be inspired by them. Don't watch with envy. Don't watch with jealousy. It's a dark place to be. So if you're going to compare yourself, do it with good intentions and love and celebrate one another. Number four, having lack of direction, goals and focus. So remember what I said, create a clear action plan. So if you haven't done it yet, create your goals for the Q3 and Q4. What is it you want to achieve? Break those down into business goals, property goals, home life goals, couple goals, family goals. personal development goals, whatever it may be, create your own goal list and have them in front of you. If you write them in a book and close the lid or close the book and you don't see them as outside, out of mind. If you've got them on like your desktop, you've got them in the kitchen or you've got them on the wall, you're subliminally seeing them all the time and your brain is going, right, those are my goals. Those are my goals. How am I going to achieve it? So have it as a, as a visual point somewhere I would say would be my advice on that one. And again, if you need help with that one, just DM me the word. maybe map mapping, and I can talk to you about that. And if you want to learn more, that's in module two of my property lifestyle accelerator course, that one. And then number four, most importantly, you have to fail to succeed. So the sooner you get to grips with accepting the fact that failure is okay, I promise you the quicker you will be a happier, more sustainable investor. and you will be kinder to yourself as well, which will lead to more opportunities. So embrace failure. learn from it, always, always adapt, grow, evolve, and go from there and be kind to yourself. And then finally, the last thing I would say about all of these five different mistakes that I made is if you really think about it, one of the main things that everything kind of amounts to is this idea of mindset. And I know that people talk a lot about mindset and you'll actually hear a lot of people nowadays, in my opinion, actually almost take the piss out of mindset. So for example, I was at a summit recently and somebody said something such as, I'm here today to talk to you about mindset. And then they went, nah, just kidding. We don't want to hear any, we don't want to hear any of that rubbish. And then went on to talk about something else. And I thought to myself, like, why would you do that? Why would you actually belittle the idea of mindset? Because in my opinion, and this is my opinion, I personally think, and it might be an unpopular opinion, but it certainly is my opinion. There is absolutely no point learning about different strategies such as HMOs, service accommodation, land, commercial conversion, anything, and spending all your money if you do not have the right mindset. If you think that investing to learn about these different strategies will suddenly change your mindset, that is a bad, bad idea. You need to make sure that your mindset is in a good place first. You need to make sure you are cultivating a growth mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. you need to make sure that when you're thinking, you're thinking with a positive mindset, you need to understand like the money mindset as well and understanding that, that the acceptance of money and being okay with that. you know, it, for example, it's like sometimes, I used to not, not so much anymore. I've changed my approach now, but I used to try and teach some of my mentees back in the day about a year ago, how to talk to agents. And I used to say, right, this is how you talk to agents. This is how you talk to landlords. But why I actually hadn't done. was I hadn't checked that their mindset was in the right place. So I'd leave them for two weeks and say, right, I need you to call 10 agents. And then they come back to me and they'd say, I say, how many agents did you call? And they say, I've called one. And I say, why? And they're like, I didn't want to call them. And then you delve deeper into it. And it's this idea of fear and it's this idea of rejection and not feeling comfortable, et cetera. And so because we hadn't dealt with the idea of getting in the correct mindset, they couldn't do the task at hand. So. When you're thinking about all these different types of topics and these five topics, it all does relate back to mindset. So somebody wants to talk about mindset, which I'm going to be doing loads of over the next course of a couple of months, because I think it's so important to talk about it. And what I've decided to do is as part of my property lifestyle accelerator program, which a lot of you are part of, it's been out now since January. And if you want more details, let me know. I'm actually going to give away the first ever module, module one, which is all around mindset. And I'm going to give it away free of charge because I genuinely believe that without the right mindset, you cannot be the best property investor or business owner you want to be. You just can't. And I've learned that the hard way. I know that I've held myself back for the last two years because I didn't have the right mindset. And I'm now in a better place to actually go forward and teach others that as well. So because of that, I'd love to gift to everybody. the module one completely free of charge. It's me speaking, it's learning from me directly. I do genuine practices and exercises that you can follow along and pause the videos as part of my program. And I'm going to give module one for free. So if you do actually want to receive that as well, just DM me the word mindset and I'll send that to you because if you can get yourself in the right mindset, you can then go forward to do whatever strategy you actually want to do. And that's so, so important. And I think that a lot of people nowadays might invest a load in property courses and learning all these different strategies, but they just don't have the right frame of mind to actually do it and therefore don't do anything with it. So I think if I can do good in this world and gift everybody that module where I literally am doing like a home study program, it's me teaching you. I include some of the... to do as well as part of it and you can pause me and do the workshop booklet. I think that'd be really great. So I'd like to give that to all my listeners. So just DM me the word mindset and I will do that. And know that that is the first place to start with anything that you do and do not ever think that you're gonna just jump over it or not take it seriously because it's one of the most important places to start. And I really believe that without it, you can't really go as far as you think you can as a business owner or investor. So give me the word mindset and I will help you with that. So that's it from me today. I can't believe I've spoken to you guys for an hour. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. It's good to sometimes just take a break from getting all the usual guests on and everything, and actually just having a moment to reflect and really think about helping as many people as I can who listen to this podcast. to really, really be the best that they can be as well. So then finishing true traditional style, I'll just tell you about a property disaster that I had recently, just to break it up a little bit. So as many of you know, I have my service accommodation units in Bournemouth, which is great. And they're doing really well at the moment. Summer's finally here, thank God. And so they're doing great. And actually now we've got long term clients staying, which is also good, about like a week to two weeks at a time. So what happened recently was I was at a barbecue. I was at a family barbecue and I got a message from the guest who had just checked in after traveling five and a half hours. They told me that. And they said, Athena, the apartment hasn't been cleaned. And I thought, that's weird. Why isn't the apartment been cleaned? That's never happened before. And so I messaged the cleaning team and I said, hi. This was a weekend, by the way. This was a Saturday. I said, The apartment hasn't been cleaned. The clients literally just traveled five and a half hours. They rocked up. They sent me photos. The apartment was filthy from the previous guest. It was so embarrassing. So embarrassing. And it was about like six o 'clock at night at this point, because they arrived late. And they said, they said, we didn't realize that there was guests checking in today. And I was like, What do you mean? You didn't realize it's in, it's in up listing. It's literally in the system that we've been using and we always use and they're fantastic cleaning team. They are just want to make a point of that. It just was a human error on this occasion. And this person was staying for a week, which was a big booking. It's a week. God. Right. And this person said, you know, if you don't get somebody here in the next hour, we're not going to be staying here. We've got a baby. We're not happy to stay here. It's unhygienic. I was like, god, yeah, of course. I'd be probably the same. I totally get it. So what I did was I obviously said to them, look, I will fund you immediately the cleaning fee. I'm not gonna be charging you that. And here's some money. Please, please go and have dinner on me and I'll get this all sorted for you. It was a sunny day. I was like, enjoy the beach, go for dinner on me. I'll get it sorted within the hour before you come back. So they accepted that and they said, yep, we need this sorted. Otherwise we're gonna be going elsewhere. I said, yep, completely understand. To be fair, it'd been quite interesting for them to have done that because it's Bournemouth in high season. So I wonder if they actually would have gone anywhere else. But anyway, you want to always, always have the best service for your guests. And so I said to the cleaning team, you need to get here. And what was really interesting was it was, for their nationality, it was a certain holiday or something. And I think it was Father's Day, that type of thing. So usually her husband would have driven her, but instead, He had had a drink so he couldn't drive her and it was six o 'clock on a Saturday So we had to get her an uber and be like right get in the uber and you got you got to come now because the team here and I was at a family barbecue at the time so You know I was also trying to have this whole work -life balance thing and you know games were happening and food was happening and I was like my god, like I've got to sort this there there's a cleaning team that hasn't cleaned it and suddenly, you know Saturday six o 'clock and the Sun is shining and Again, you're being consumed back into the business again, you're consumed back into it. Now, luckily it all got resolved. It was absolutely fine. The guest was really happy. I did what I said I was going to do, refunded them, gave them the extra money. But again, that was a cost to the business. It was a stress that didn't need to happen. It was human error, fair enough. But again, like these things do happen. So although it's not a massive property disaster, because luckily I don't have too many of those, hopefully, she says. going to be doing a HMO conversion soon. So I'll let you know how that one goes for property disasters. But it still is a reminder constantly that this is what happens when you are a property investor. It isn't all glitz and glamour. You have to work bloody hard. You know, I see so many of these incredible people working so hard on their businesses and I really see you. I salute you. I hear you all the way. I'm really understanding that sometimes you got to do what you got to do and you got to be a good person. You got to make sure that you're running an excellent business as well. So that was my property sort of mishap disaster was the cleaners did not clean correctly for the guests, nearly lost a week's booking, which is quite a lot of money. And had to get like problem solving, you know, getting an Uber, get them there, get them sorted, make sure the guest is happy and get them to stay. And luckily they had an amazing stay after that. So yeah, that's my property disaster of the week. And then finally, I'll leave you with this. Don't forget that on when this podcast is released, which will be Monday, the 8th of July, tomorrow, Tuesday, the 9th of July, we have the girls in property, well, girls and prosperity community online meetup at seven 30 tomorrow night. We've got the incredible Rebecca bar. Who's going to be joining us talking all about money mindset. So she's a business, like business alchemist, money mentor. She's. fantastic. Some of you would have met her at the Girls in Property retreat. But for anyone who hasn't joined the community group yet for Girls in Property, then please do just DM me the word community. I'll send you the link or go to girlsinpropertypod .com or girlsinproperty.co .uk. Both will lead you to the site and then click on the community group and you can join for 30 pounds a month. Make sure you introduce yourself to the group and then join and I'll send you the link. for Tuesday, 9th of July, 7 .30 p And we'll have Rebecca Barr on there, guest expert for an hour talking all about money mindset, which is such an important thing to do and how to really get the most out of cash in your business as well. So I hope you've enjoyed listening, guys. Thank you so much for staying with me. I hope you picked up some amazing tips from today. I hope you all have an amazing week. Don't forget, again, if you want to DM me the word map, if you want help with mapping out your goals and things, DM me that. If you would like the free module to my first module for my Property Lifestyle Accelerator program, DM me the word mindset and I'll send you that free of charge with module one, no problem. And if you want to join the Girls and Property Community, then please just DM me the word community and I'll send you the link for that one. Or you can go to the websites I just mentioned, but have an amazing, amazing week guys. If you ever need anything, you know where I am. I've got some absolutely fabulous guests coming on. I'm so excited. and a real mixture of both men and women as well. I want to make sure that I'm also shouting about the amazing men in this industry who are doing incredible things to empower women. And I think that's really important to give them a voice as well, because I recognize that actually a lot of men also listen to this podcast and I want to make sure that your voices are heard as well. So I'll be doing that, but have an amazing week guys. Look after yourself, be kind to yourself, be kind to others always, and just Always lead with your heart and just enjoy the process. Thanks guys. All the best. Bye.