Globetrotting with a Property Portfolio: Julie Talbot’s Remote Investing Journey

In this episode of the Girls in Property podcast, host Athena Dobson chats with the fabulous Julie Talbot—property investor, adventurer, and full-time slow traveler.

Julie takes us on a whirlwind ride from her roots in a housing benefit family to living her dream life, globe-trotting with her family while managing a property business remotely (yes, it’s possible—and she’s doing it!).

From expat life in the Middle East to figuring out how to juggle work, homeschooling, and a suitcase lifestyle, Julie gets real about the highs, the hiccups, and everything in between. She opens up about managing her portfolio from afar, lessons learned from the mistakes that had to happen, and the power of just diving in and figuring it out.

We talk about what travel teaches kids, the magic of finding community on the road, and how freedom and fulfilment can look different for everyone—but it always starts with taking that first leap.

Get ready for a raw, honest, and totally unfiltered convo that’ll leave you feeling fired up, inspired—and maybe even checking flight prices or planning your own big adventure.

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Disclaimer: None of the content in our podcast is intended to constitute legal or financial advice. All interviews and statements are the thoughts & opinions of the hosts and guests themselves and should be taken as such. Any information used from this podcast is done so at your own risk.

Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. So believe it or not, we have a little bit of sunshine today. Very, very excited about it. Literally any glimpse of sunshine and I am absolutely loving life. I don't know what you guys did at the weekend, but I took full advantage and I went to Livington and went and had fish and chips by the key because I was like, the sun is out, summer is officially here. I'm going for fish and chips outside. So whatever you got up to this weekend, I hope you had the most wonderful time. Today guys, I have something a little bit different for you something that I actually haven't done yet on this podcast believe it or not after its 100th plus episode and today I'm actually getting somebody on the podcast who isn't in the UK she is abroad, she travels, she's amazing and she's currently I believe up a mountain and we still have the most amazing signal Wi-Fi going so I'll let her introduce herself and tell her story and without further ado I'd love to introduce Julie Talbot. Hey, Julie. Hi Athena, it's fantastic to be here with you today, lovely to see you. you! So tell everybody where are you, what are you doing? So right now we are up a mountain in Nepal. We've done two days of trekking and we've just stopped. So I'm wearing my woolly hat and my yak blanket because it's cold when you get to like close to the top of mountain, right? Yeah, I mean what time is it there? What time is it? So it is, five hours 45 minutes difference to the UK, not like you straight six hours, so we're, I think it's like half past three, which would be like, I don't know, 10 o'clock your time, nine, nine forty, something like that. Yeah, yeah. It blows my mind, like normally it's normally it's a straight, you know, eight hours, nine hours, whatever, but this is five hours 45 minutes and I just, I don't know, it baffles me. I love that. I love that. my God, this is amazing. So, and like we said before you actually came on the podcast, I cannot believe you have managed to get a signal up a mountain in Nepal. When you were like, I'm going to be tuning in from Nepal up a mountain. I was like, I'm not quite sure that's going to work. And you're like, no, it definitely will. Yeah, it's crazy. To be honest, the most remote places have the best internet. I can literally see. I can see this amazing phone mast up there. So sometimes it's the biggest cities where we have the poorest mobile data or the poorest Wi-Fi. When you're out and about somewhere, we're two hours' track from kind of like... the most, like a major road at the moment and yeah the phone signal, I sent you a ping test beforehand because I didn't want you worrying. It literally is better than most cities. It's crazy but it's, you know, it's the way it is we found in Asia. Absolutely. So, Judy, some people may not actually know much about you. Some people may know lots about you. And obviously you, you approached me because you were like, Athena, I really want to come on this podcast. And you know, a few people, quite a few people approached me saying they want to come on the podcast. And for me, what I love is I love sharing people's stories that I think are a little bit unique, a bit quirky and have something that they can offer in terms of value to kind of give insight into how potentially there is a different way to live one's life. And I think you're a fantastic example of that. So could you please, first of all, before we get into today's podcast, explain a bit about yourself, who you are, why you think I thought you were a great idea to come on the podcast and kind of what you've been up to over the last couple of years with you and your family. Okay, so me and my husband and my two children, at the moment we slow travel the world full time and carry on growing and managing our property business from wherever we are in the world. Which for the last three years, we're in our fourth year now, has been Asia. We just haven't found a reason to leave Asia. So our children kind of don't go to school anymore. I know some people might not like that, but yeah, they don't go to school anymore. They just learn as we go. and sometimes they get involved in tasks in our property business or they help me out on stuff or like I share with them problems they can brainstorm that with us and you know they're learning a lot from that and from where we travel to. So in the last three or four years, in last three years we've been travelling through Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, there's some other countries that I've missed there, spending a month or two in each sort of like city really and then staying for the tourist visa. Before that, just stepping backwards, we were expats. We lived in the Middle East for 12 years and that was really where I properly like refocused and started growing our property portfolio. I was a stay at home mum. I had a part-time job and I was really struggling to fit in life and being present for the kids with this part-time job and I... We had a bit of a life jolt and the only thing that kept paying me was a couple of houses that we'd bought years before and I was like, well hang on a minute, why don't I focus on trying to grow the portfolio as a stay at home mum kind of thing, as an expat stay at home mum. So that's what I was doing whilst I lived in Abu Dhabi with my husband's expat job. So there was always this location freedom kind of thing going on, right? You we lived in Abu Dhabi, it's God knows what, 4,000, 5,000 miles away from UK, I don't even know. And as a stay at home mum, I couldn't be flying back to the UK. So. I was doing that before that. And then stepping back before that, we lived in London and that was when we were in London that I started our kind of like bought a couple of houses when we were in London up in the North. So I've always had this distance. If you like, I've worked backwards there, but the distance from like us and our property business has always been far. It's just got bigger and bigger. And, you know, we've kind of like stepped through different location freedoms. You know, we were ex-part, you know, we lived in London first, then we lived in the Middle East and now we're just full time. kind of like travel whilst doing the property business. I believe, I've lived through lots of different ways and tried lots of different things, that you can take location freedom first. It's not something that you have to wait for, right? There's this kind of like belief or, I don't know, it's almost like assumed that if you're gonna grow a business, a property business, you have to get location, financial freedom first. And then once you've got that, then you can, you know, systemize, automate, and then you can get time freedom and location freedom and travel more. And that's the sequence. And I just don't feel and haven't experienced that has to be the case. We get to choose what freedom we want first and second and third, and you can sequence those however you want to. It really is your choice on what you've got an appetite for. Yeah, I love that. I absolutely adore that. And I love how you have a different perspective about life and the way that potentially the way that you want to live your life and how you want to raise your children. And I really, that's what attracted me to you, Julie, was just this notion that you think differently in a wonderful way. And of course travel, know, travels in my soul. So when you were telling me where you were, I think you were in Thailand at the time when we began our conversation. I was like, oh, wow, that sounds amazing. And definitely the type of thing that I would love to introduced to my children because, you know, we'll have a conversation about this in a moment, Julie, like there are lots of different people who listen to this podcast with varying views. That's what makes the world such a beautiful place is if we all thought the same, it'd be a boring place. So some people will believe in mainstream schooling. Some people won't. We're all traditionally the people that listen to this podcast are going to be innovative business thinkers, or at least wanting to get into business. So we are all naturally going to think different to the status quo and not just, you know, get a job and earn money and then get a pension and then die basically. And so I think a lot of people might be more open to this notion than you think they potentially would be in regards to just understanding how it works and how you can educate children abroad and give them this incredible sort of life. So I'd love to touch more on that with you as we go through this conversation. Before we sort of delve straight in, first of all, because I know you listen to this podcast, so you all already know I'm going to ask you. What are you celebrating at the moment? I'm celebrating walking two days uphill. I'm going to say uphill, it's been like vertical. So, you know, the kids have done it, we've done it like yesterday was just quite literally, if it wasn't stairs, it was just a vertical, a vertical walk because we took the wrong path and ended up on the road for cars, not the road for people, which meant there was no steps on that bit. It was just an incline with no shade. we are in life kind of like we're celebrating that at the moment. And in property, we're celebrating, we're just kind of like at the end of refurbishment where we've done some furnishing for the property as well. And we're just about to hand it over. So two milestones, property-wise and life-wise. I love that. How beautiful is that? That's amazing. And what am I celebrating at the moment? Do you know, I'm going to keep it really simple today actually, because yeah, I just, feel like I'm going to celebrate the fact that we are now going into summer and that the seasons are changing. And I feel that it's been a, don't know, well, actually you probably haven't felt this Julie, because you've been away, but I don't know about the listeners. I've just felt this has been a really long winter. I felt it's been really long, really cold, really dark. I'm celebrating the fact that now at 5 p.m. 530. It's still sunny outside and I really want to hold hold on to that and just try and get out as much as I can I've sort of after that I did my gala back in December, you know I was really active and really fit before then because you know You have to get into these tiny dresses But actually what then happened was Christmas happened and I really was like, okay summers here. Let's be like let's go insulate what's it called insulation let's Let's get a bit of chub on us, you know, to keep us warm. And actually now is the time. I can see the sunshine, the salads are gonna start coming out and I'm like, right, let's get back to it. So I'm gonna celebrate sunshine, summer, sunflowers and just positivity today. That's what I'm gonna celebrate. beautiful. And you look fantastic, as you always do. Thank you, thank you. Well, I've got little bit of sunshine on me. I need it. need it. So, Julie, talk to me then. So, first of all, let me ask you this so that we understand the context in which we're discussing this. in the UK, where do you actually invest at this moment in time? We invest in the Northwest. So I'm from Manchester, but Manchester's as big as Singapore, right? So it's not like a small place. So we're from the Northwest and we moved to, we lived in London for a few years and we looked at, you know, starting to buy in London. I'm talking like 15, 16 years ago, something like that. And I couldn't wrap my head around the prices of houses. I was like, you can buy five, you know, for what you can get something pretty small and pretty not great for. And right back then it made no sense for me. buy in London when we could spread our risk and buy a few units for the cost of one in London by the logic that if one tenant isn't in then you're going to be getting the rent from the others whereas buying where we were living down south at the time because we knew we weren't going to stay there you know we knew we always going be moving somewhere I guess the nomadic spirit was there even if it any small back then so yeah so we focused up north in Greater Manchester area Okay, fantastic. And so now, what does your portfolio look like when trying to manage it from a distance? So it's a mix of single lats, HMOs and small blocks of flats. Okay, okay, perfect. that's quite a lot. There's quite a lot to manage when you're not sort of local to it and you you're up and mounting in Nepal. So just so we understand kind of the story behind it, so, or the content behind it. So do you have like a management company looking after them or do you self manage? How does that work? Yeah, so as times evolve, once you've got a few units, sort of think actually it could be more efficient for us to, I don't say self-manage, but have our own netting agency basically. We've also over the years done sourcing and still do sourcing for a few of the long-term clients who we do portfolio building for as well. So whilst we've got our own portfolios, our own portfolio, we help a few other long-term clients grow their portfolio as well. So then we manage our... our properties and also their properties as well. So once you've got a bit of scale, it's kind of, it's like anything. We've got twins and I don't know, this might be an unpopular opinion, but once you've got twins, it's not double the work, right? It's certainly not easy, but it's not double the work. Well, once you've got a few properties, it doesn't like increase like double, triple, quadruple each time you add one. That sort of gets a point where it's like, you know, if you've got a few, you might as well add a few more. As long you've got processes in place, then it just kind of works. So yeah, we just, have our own let-in agency and we manage properties in-house but we only manage the ones that we've acquired for ourselves or acquired for our portfolio bill clients. Right, okay. And then when you're saying that you're currently going through a refurb at the moment, so do you have like a project manager who's looking after that refurb? you like project managing it? How can you keep an eye on these things? That's what I'm just trying to work out. Yeah, so we bring people on to oversee things. I'm a bit big on my background, kind of like business process design and organization design and things like that. And one sort of concept that I'm focused on a lot and it's single points of failure. So don't want to have single points of failure in your business by relying on one person, having the one person who does this and the one person who does that, which I know is what a lot of people kind of say, like, know, get your one person, get... get your bill, get you this person, get you that person. I just don't buy into it because it gives you a huge business risk and I feel it inhibits your ability to scale because you've got one person, they're dependent on their capacity. So I find it's important to focus on the process, like what's the process that you need to be able to find the people who you want when you need them and then as long as you can do that then you can handle any capacity that you choose. So then you've got flexibility, so then you can scale as and when you need to, you can do multiple projects as and when you want to but equally If you don't want to, you're not stopping somebody from eating. You're not turned off somebody else's income stream. So that's a sort of principle that I'm really, really sort of like one of the principles that I'm really attached to, but it comes from my corporate background in process design. Yeah, wow, I love that. love that. So tell me some stories then. So let's say that you've been away and you've got this portfolio of what you have in the UK up in the Northwest. Tell me some stories where you're like, we were in Asia and this happened. Tell me some disasters, because that's the funny, that's the bits we really want to know, Judy. the scandal stuff. Well, I am a bit of a Pollyanna, like anyone who knows me will tell you. And my kids were just like, oh, mom, stop making everything sound so positive. But I'm like, there's always a golden lining. There's always like, you know, there's like an upward spiral way of thinking about something. So even when something does go wrong, I'm always like, you know, there's kind of like something to learn from it. There's something to take from this. Like it's a good job it happened. So some disasters, probably like one, well, there's quite a few, like I could literally talk all day about this. I do aspire to run my business from my phone and it's always been something that I've kind of like focused on and maybe slightly stupidly but I've always been like, you know, I've got the laptop, I've got the phone, like disaster recovery, I need to be able to run the business from my phone. And we were in Sri Lanka kind of like, it was three years ago now, so was just around about after we got there, all the riots and everything started and they were having quite a lot of power cuts and power surges and like long, long ones, like, you know, 12 hours a day of power off and things like that. We still had data all day, we still had internet all day, the power was off, the lights weren't on but the internet was still there. Strange but true. But I had my computer plugged in and I left the charging cable plugged into the wall even after my computer was charging. it wasn't attached to my computer but it was plugged into the wall. And there must have been a power surge, I don't know technically what happened but I just know that I couldn't charge my computer at all. And we were up a mountain somewhere again, up a mountain somewhere. and I couldn't charge my computer and we were there for six weeks. it was a bit of a disaster that, no, I've fried my computer and I couldn't just pick up a charging cable for it. But I could do my business for my phone. So it was a total proof of concept test that I absolutely could do it. So that was a disaster, but a silver lining that, you know, it was an unintended proof of concept. Another one. I mean, even in Abu Dhabi, I mean, when COVID hit, that was like really difficult because at the time we were growing for everybody as it was, but we were growing the portfolio from Abu Dhabi then and I used to work whilst the kids were at school, right? That was my work time back then. So when they were at home all the time, it was difficult. We didn't obviously like everybody else. We didn't have childcare, but it was a really great test of the systems and our ways of working because I could still, I actually needed to work less than, I actually needed to be on like working, suppose, less than I thought I actually needed to because we still took on new projects. We had projects that were in the middle of, I could still do everything I needed to for the acquisitions that we had going on. We even acquired property during COVID. We finished refurbs, we carried on managing things. Yeah, I was still able to like be fully present in homeschool the kids. So when the school went to the lessons, like the online lessons rather than the like recorded stuff and the worksheets, we were like... no, we've been having so much fun, you know, hanging out all day and just, you know, because I could just move the business around and do the things that I needed to when they were sleeping. So that was a disaster. But again, another like proof of concept of some of the ways that we kind of do things. What other recent disasters have we had? when Sri Lanka had those riots on, because I was working in the travel agency at the time and I remember having a lot of issues with that. So you were actually there when the riots were happening in Sri Lanka. of... it was... I don't want to, you know... Yes, we were there and there were petrol shortages and, you know, like the queues, the petrol stations were kind of crazy but, you know, it was... yeah, it was strange seeing it play out on the news and actually be there. Like I woke up one morning to a ton of messages on my phone and I have my phone, like I don't have the alerts on so I've not heard them coming through overnight and I woke up and just looked at like, I don't know, hundred messages. what's happened? And it was all like, are you okay? Are you okay? And I'm like, why would I not be okay? And, you know, maybe it was just where we were, but it was normal. And then we ended up in Colombo, like driving through the riots, passing through the riots, the riots. And like, we were like on the ground, even like walked through something one day where it was a lot of protesting and we felt safe, you know, I wasn't, I don't, I wasn't really involved with what was going on, shall we say, but. We felt safe. In the end we did leave because it was sort quite difficult to get hold of medical supplies and my husband got quite ill with something. We couldn't get the medicine that he needed. So that was really what triggered our leaving and we had the privilege I suppose of being able to hop on a flight. It was strange to be somewhere where something's played out in the news and it's looking one way and then you're there and it feels different. Yeah, definitely. how, just trying to reflect then just on your family and the way in which you've done this. So how old are your twins then? They're 11 now, they're going to be 12 in a few weeks. They were 8 when we left, they were 8 and then within a few months turned 9 after we left. They would be in first year of high school now and they were in second or third year of junior school when we left. How incredible is that? That's absolutely amazing. So what do you feel, because I'm really interested in this like genuinely, and I know there's a lot of other listeners who would be interested in this as well. Because I've even thought about it for myself when I have children, how I might do things. What do you feel that they, let's say if you compare it, and I know this is a difficult question, but if we were to compare them being in say mainstream school in the UK, to actually going from the A, like, I feel like going at the age of eight, going into 11, in such a pivotal age, you're so young, you're like a sponge, and you're taking in all this information, what do feel they've really gained from the, you know, helping out the businesses, but more so kind of like traveling and learning and cultures and everything? What do you think is the difference with them? So I suppose, first of all, was saying that I think schools are brilliant. I think schools are amazing. I'm certainly not saying like, damn with schools. Like I'm not saying that at all. And you know, our kids were happy in school as well. They're having a great time in school. So I'm not sort of saying that this is the life for everybody either. But in terms of what they've got out of it, they've just, I don't know. On the one hand, I don't know, right? Because we're not living, we're not in school, although the twins, we've not separated them and done a proper experiment that way. But they're kind of curious about the world. They understand how, they're curious about different countries and how different countries work, just the systems in different countries, the history of different countries. Would they have had that interest anyway? Yeah, they did kind of have that interest anyway. But because we're in somewhere and we're kind of like learning it, they're experiencing that live, should we say. But I suppose because they're not in school, what they're able to do is they're able to pursue their passions and pursue things that they're interested in and learn about those. Because as human beings, we're all curious, we're all interested in things. But if you're being given something to learn, then you haven't necessarily got the space, the headspace to be able to pursue the things that you're genuinely interested in, right? Because you've spent so many hours learning. something that somebody else wants you to know so then have you got as much energy or motivation to go and learn the other thing. So what I've really noticed is, and this has become more in the last probably 18 months since we stepped away from curriculum because we used to follow a curriculum, I can touch on what that looked like if it's helpful, is that they don't sit around all day and do nothing, they actually, because I wouldn't let them, so they have to learn about things that they're interested in. One of them at the moment is doing an art class online or one of them is doing a writing course. So she's writing every week having a class and then she's writing every day. One of them is writing, you could call it a book, you could call it a series of pages if you like, about every single country in the world. She wants to finish this book where she's written about every single country. And I'm trying to say, break it down to continents. There's 198 countries in the world, it's going take you quite a while. So yeah, they pursue the things that they're interested in. We've just come out the back actually of organising a meet-up for the world schoolers in Malacca, which is in Malaysia. So it was like a one week sort of thing there and other families came along and we explored the cities together. And one of the girls was like really, I'd say she was leading it because she was managing all the communications. She wrote the text that needed to be handed over to the website because we were sort of like doing it under somebody else's support. handed over all, she was just doing all that, like replying to messages daily and just helping people with questions and stuff like that. So I don't know that really answers what they're getting out of it, but they're just learning stuff that they're interested in. My other daughter now, as a result, she's planning one for Central Asia this summer as well because she loves currencies and really wants to just... go and check out unusual currencies. So we're going to Central Asia because there's loads of currencies that I don't even know what they are there. So we decided to do that for a bit at some point this year. Yeah, I love that. And I love the fact what you said, they're learning about things that they're interested in. They're learning about things that they want to lean into. Like, I really, really love that. And what was also wonderful, and I didn't even think about this, be honest with you, Julie, is this idea that, so you actually meet up with other families across the world. Is that what you're saying? Who actually also are traveling the world with their children and homeschooling and everything. That's amazing. So how many, so have you done this meetup yet? Has it happened? Yeah, we did the one in Malacca, that was like just at start of January. So we did that meet up then and then we're going to host another one later on this year somewhere in Central Asia. But yeah, it is important to connect with local families when you're travelling because you want to meet people who are different. So you go into places, you want to meet people and families who are from there and that's really important. You also want to make sure that your kids feel connected and who are meeting people like them who have got a more unusual kind of like set up, like some people who they can relate to. So it is important to meet up with other people who are living a similar sort of life, whether that's people who are ex-pats. In some places we'll also meet up with other ex-pats, the people who are growing up in a country that's different to their passport. or sometimes you meet up with other kind of like travelling families or people who are, you know, maybe they're on a year's holiday or a year's travelling or maybe they've got a model where they go on holiday for like two or three months. So it's been intentional because it is important that kids can see people who are living a similar life to them as well as like, you know, meeting people who are living in the place where they're in. think both are important. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. then so, Judy, we'll come back to this in a second, but if we just take then a step back and we go backwards a little bit to sort of the beginning when you were, let's say you were in the UK, then you moved to the Middle East as sort of expats as it were, how did you get into property? Was property before the Middle East? So were you investing? You said that you were in London and then you realised, look, London's too expensive, let's actually go up more north west and got some properties. Like, how did that journey begin for you? Because I always intrigued as to how people fall into property, let's say, and everybody has a story behind that. So how did you fall into property? Okay, so I grew up, so it goes right back, as in I grew up in rented accommodation and our family was on housing benefit, we're a single parent family and you know, my mum was on housing benefit and we lived in the PRS, the private rental sector and we had to move because our landlord was selling up and you know, wanted to cash out and get a higher rent and all that kind of stuff that know, landlords do which kind of couldn't understand, well I could understand but I was just like, ma'am this is a bit inconvenient, you know, we've got exams at school, whatever. So we moved and but like doing that move we were trying to find other houses to rent and we'd go into letting agents as you do when you're looking for houses and we'd walk through the door and you can like walk in and once they realised we're on housing benefit they'd literally march us out the door and I'm like a young teenager at the time and I've got a... my little sister's there as well and my mum and it's like no no no we don't want people like you and literally they were they were showing us the door and I couldn't understand it I was like we get our money from the government but it's still pounds it's still currency and like you're being actually rude passive aggressive call it what you will but it was just like this just isn't this just isn't right I just I couldn't understand it you know that the houses were within a budget that we had the money to able to afford but they just didn't want people like us and we'd walk through I remember walking through a new housing estate once and we saw somebody who we knew from school and we said, oh, we're going to view a house. And she said, oh yeah. And this family who we knew, another family said, you don't want to go to that street. It's those people who live there. You the ones on benefits. And I was just like, she didn't realize that that was us. And I was just like, I just don't get it. I just didn't get it. So I had this background. then as I moved into work myself, I kind of wanted to, I knew that I wanted to move into my own business, right? I knew I wanted to work from employment into my own business. The whole Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad, I kind of bought into that and thought, okay, acquiring assets and getting a return as well as having a salary job, it's kind of like a thing to do. So I was looking at different businesses to move into or other businesses that I could maybe kind of like that I might be able to set up in my future. And we just kind of like hit on property as a business. And straight away, it made sense to me that it was a business, right? Being a landlord was a business because we'd had landlords, we had a couple of landlords in my childhood who both had individual properties and then they both sold up to cash out. We had to move a couple of times in my childhood and it was hugely disruptive. So I was like, you know, no, like I know there are people out there who, know, who, whether they're on benefits or not, want to rent long-term and will rent for a generation or longer. And therefore, if you can be a landlord who provides housing for multi-generations and doesn't sell up, you know, just... then that's a business. So I just got it straight away and then, so I must have been like mid to late 20s, yeah, mid 20s then I think, maybe getting on to the late 20s. So we bought a couple of houses, we were living in London at the time, like I say, so it made no sense to buy a house for us to live in. Once this penny dropped, I was like, well, there's no point in buying a house in London to live in. I was like, you we wanted to start a business, then start in a business makes sense, like let's not buy our own house, let's start to buy. places that can be home for the people. We bought a couple whilst she lives in Abu Dhabi I think and then we moved. The world went a bit crazy didn't it, 2009. The world was going a bit crazy with Credit Crunch, we had like contracting jobs so we knew that you know that it wasn't going to stay for much longer so we started to look worldwide for jobs for my husband because he was an engineer and the job came up in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi. There was quite a few jobs there that he got offered so we took one there. So then we were in Abu Dhabi. My approach then was, right, well I will carry on scaling our property business. We've just bought a couple of houses. I'll just do it from Abu Dhabi. How hard can it be? And I made some mistakes. A few things went really, really badly wrong. I worked with a sourcing agent thinking, like, buying into this whole line of, if you're not there, you can't do it yourself. You've got to work with a sourcing agent. You've got to. It's just what you do. You've got to make it hands-off and hassle-free. It didn't work out. It became a disaster. And I take accountability in that as well, but that didn't work out. So then I thought, I'll fly back to the UK then. Maybe that's like something that I can model, I can repeat. And that was just awful because I felt like I had, I felt like I neither lived in one place nor the other. It was like having two lives. And it was just like, I was like, no, that's not sustainable. So after a couple of years trying different things and it not working out, we must've been around 2010 at this point. I just thought, I must got to wait then until I moved back to the UK and just do it then. Kind of like, you know, burnt by all these mistakes that I'd made. So that was it. We kind of like paused and then. It wasn't until 2017 and I still like used to think I'd love to do more. This was this theatre, I'd love to do more with property, I'd love to do more with it. And my husband banned me from talking about houses because he just was like you're doing nothing. I'm not even listening to you talking about it because you're doing nothing. You're boring me. we got to 2017 and he was right, he wasn't wrong. We got to 2017, we had a bit of life crisis. I was kind of struggling with the kids being young and having a part-time job that was 18 hours a week and even though was only 18 hours a week I was struggling to fit it in with them and with life and I was always like, I get up early tomorrow and if I stay up late tomorrow then I can make my hours and then on Saturday morning my head was just racing like this all the time. I just wasn't as present as I wanted to be and then someone in the UK got ill and you can't drop everything in those moments, right? Someone gets ill, you're not there, you're kind of like My husband jumped on a plane and went and then the next few months we were all backwards and forwards. I had to reduce my work hours. And the only thing that paid me was these houses that I'd made a few mistakes on seven years before. And I'm like, what am I doing? Just because I made some mistakes it didn't work out. That's not a reason to stop. That's a reason to look at the process and be like, all right, well that didn't work. Let's try something different. Let's fix the process. Let's try something else and see if that works. Let's not give up. So that was kind of like really what made me kind of think Yeah, what made me restart and it sounds really weird, but I kind of like over the period of a year moved from this 18 hour week part-time job to grow in our own portfolio and portfolio building for some other people as well. And that became the best job for me as an ex-part stay at home mum, because I could plan my own hours. I could do whatever work you're doing when I wanted to. It gave me time freedom. I could be present for my kids because I could choose to work when I didn't have this like clock for 18 hours a week running in my head all the time. I could stop counting. And was something I was really passionate about as well. I was providing housing. It didn't matter that we didn't own them, our clients were owning them, as well as us as well. yeah, growing our portfolio and a portfolio for a few other people became the perfect job as an expat stay-at-home mum. We've kept the same sort of processes in place, really, as we stepped into nomadic life as well. Because once you can do it from a few thousand miles away, then it kind of doesn't matter then whether or not you stay there or you go and start moving. It's now my husband who's stepped out of his job, so that's why we decided to go nomadic and travel more. Yeah, I love that. I absolutely adore that. And you mentioned there that the mistakes that you made also with sort of the deal sources and thinking, oh, no, we need to, we've been told we need to get a saucer, you we can't do this from abroad, we've got to have somebody on the ground. What were those mistakes that you made that you touched on? it's that I bought into that somebody else had to do it for me, right? I love property, I bought a few houses, I knew what I wanted to do, so I didn't really want to be working with the sourcing agent, but I thought I had to. So I, they were, again, I could talk for ages about the mistakes, but we ended up buying, there was a couple of units in a block and they all completed on different timelines and... because they were completing on different timelines, one of them didn't actually complete, so we ended up that we didn't own all the units in the block, and then we couldn't complete on, like, we couldn't then complete on the other ones because somebody had been telling mistruths about the purchase price and things like that. It just got all really, really messy, and it ended up taking me 10 years to sort it out, which is why I kind of felt so burnt by it. I was just like, my God, I felt stupid. I felt ashamed. And yeah, so that was what went wrong there and for the one that I was doing myself, so. Yeah. I mean, sorry to interrupt you, but I just think it's important because I know that you also love this podcast, Julie, and I know you as a listener, you know, potentially also love it when I ask particular questions because you're like, oh, you know, so what was it that made you feel silly? Was it the fact that you had trusted the saucer? Is that why you felt silly? Because surely wasn't it the saucer's responsibility to have like, what was the issue in terms of where the miscommunication came with? block of flats? Whose mistake was that? don't think, and I don't sit on the fence with things, but equally I also think sometimes there's no one single point of like, I don't think you can say it's your fault, I think that's kind a dangerous place to be in because we've all, we can all take accountability for different things. So I certainly know that I made some poor choices, maybe the sourcing agent did some things that maybe they shouldn't have done, other people involved in the chain did something. You you also don't realise what you don't know. If I was to go back and do that deal again, I'd do it totally differently. So, yeah, just all sorts. And I think at the time, I also couldn't really understand exactly what had happened either. And I just felt, I felt really embarrassed. I just felt really ashamed. I just felt really kind of like silly about all of it. And yeah, it was at the point actually for like that seven year period where I said, you know, I didn't do anything. For quite a lot of those years, I actually wouldn't even talk about housing. you know, quite often in, quite often in an expat sort of like world, you will. Sorry, just got, just heard something then. Quite often, you know, when you're overseas, a lot of people be talking about, you know, buying properties or maybe they've got a house that they used to live in in the UK before they moved. And when I found myself in any of those conversations, I wouldn't speak up, I'd stay quiet. So I'd listen to other people talking about UK housing and I'd just be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, ooh, it's a nice day today, you where are you gonna go tomorrow? Like, I'd change the subject, I'd just move on because I didn't want to get into sharing. what had happened because of how silly I felt. It was only kind of like towards the end of the seven years and you know when we had like the funny life job that I started just to think differently about it and be like, you know what, it's nothing to be ashamed of, like just because you've made a mistake, like doesn't define you. It's actually, I learned so much from it that I couldn't have learned on any course or from any kind of like YouTube videos or anything. It was just, it was learned through lived experience and it's made me a better investor. because of it and it also meant that when I came into offering a sourcing service for other people I had like some lived experience that I could relate to and I could say well I do things differently because of these reasons and because I don't want you to feel like this. know, I absolutely love that. And you know, that actually comes back around to what you said earlier, which is that your mentality is that you do see the silver lining in most things. And that's probably where it comes from. You know, it's really interesting that you stay quiet for seven years and, you know, wouldn't talk about it and would change the subject. Whereas now you're on the Girls and Property podcast, sharing your story and sharing it so beautifully. And I think that that's what's so wonderful is to show others, which is what you've just said, like, Look, we're all going to make mistakes. Anyone who doesn't make a mistake is either an alien or you haven't lived enough, you know, you've got to make mistakes in order to learn, you know, yeah. it's the nature of walking, isn't it? Like, if you're gonna walk, you're gonna fall. At some point, you're gonna trip over a rock and you're gonna fall. It's just what happens because you're walking. The only way to not fall is to not walk. So, you wouldn't do that. exactly. And also, it's this, it's this notion which you said, which is I also agree with you, by the way, I think that you can learn all of the strategies and the theory and the method behind trying to take on a block of flats or HMO or an essay or whatever it may be. But until you actually start and sort of learn in the field, there's no way to kind of really be able to learn and understand the game if you were. The majority of your learning will come from doing. For example, you can learn the theory of buying an auction. You can understand how to buy your first auction property, but until you actually purchase your first auction property, you're never going to know. And then afterwards you would go, that's what I learned from buying my first auction property. This is how I would do it next time. That's just an example I had in my head, but I love that. And I love your mentality around this, which is you're now open saying, Well, now this is what I do. And even you saying that you now have your own sourcing business for other investors because of what you've been through. mean, I don't think you can, you can take life lessons any better than that. Can you? It's about learning and growing and then, and then implementing it into something that you can then do as a business for yourself. That's brilliant. Yeah, and we don't take on new clients for the sourcing business. Sourcing is great as a business because it means that as you're acquiring your own properties, you can, it's like buses, isn't it? More than one comes along at once, right? So a few other people can benefit. So we've never wanted a huge sourcing business. We source for a few long-term clients, so we don't take on new clients for that at all. But yeah, absolutely. Learning through doing is really important, but it's also important to what I did learn, I suppose, from that experience, seven, that caused the seven year gap, is that like when I did restart again, like I wanted to make sure that I was mitigating my own risks, you know? I was quite short on time, the kids were young, like, you know, just the whole sleep thing, there was a lot to do. I wanted to be present. So I wanted to kind of like, not short circuit my learning, but just be like, just, just do it in the least risk, most sensible way. So I would rely on mentors basically to kind of like help me, me confidence, service guides really on whatever it was that I wanted to focus on at that time, because you're right, can learn things from courses, but it's the doing that's important. And I just knew that I would get stuck in my own head about all the different options and all the different things. So for me, it was right to take on different mentors over the years to help me with the... with the steps that I wanted to, with the direction that I wanted to go in and where I wanted to take the business. Exactly. It's about direction and goal setting and just having someone accountable to really help you get that. Absolutely. And then Julie, do you remember, I've just thought about this, just came into my mind right now, but I think it's a really funny thing to say. Because obviously, you know, as some people know, I went traveling around the world for a year and then I went again six months. And so we were obviously connecting over Instagram about our stories and our memories of when we both travel. And when we were speaking about the whole internet thing, one of the things you told me was when that story, when you had to... what was it? You had to do something for a property that was really urgent and you were like having a hang off of things. So just tell the listeners, cause it's such a funny story. Tell the listeners that story you told me. sorry I forgot about that one. So yeah, made me smile last week because when we were messaging and I said, oh yeah, we're gonna be on a two day hike up a hill and you were like, oh, should we reschedule? And I was like, Athena, don't worry, it's gonna be fine. And the reason why now I know we're always gonna have good internet is because last year it was Christmas, Christmas not just gone, Christmas the year before. And I've got a bit laissez faire with the internet. We have good internet everywhere, whether we're... you know, we've been on the side of a hill with bears in Japan and we've spent months there and the internet's always been great. So we've just got a laissez faire with like checking the internet and I booked this like rural like place to stay in Cambodia and we got there and we had to make some like payments for like a refurb that we had going on and we had no mobile signal. The wifi was just like totally rubbish and just I just said, so we went to the man because normally you can like boost them like you know if this happens you go to the host and say we know can we get you know how do we get the good Wi-Fi can you boost it and he said yeah if you just erm and I'm like pointing as I'm saying it if you just go and stand on that rock over there and if you lean to the left just so that you're out the shade of the tree you'll get the internet and I was waiting for the laugh because I thought you can't be serious and me and my husband were stood there and this guy didn't laugh and we were like Oh my god, it's actually serious. So we had to go and stand on this rock and lean and we had to make these these like payments for our team and I swear we just generated the internet from our sheer will to get those payments to go through. we could not even watch the All Creatures Great and Small Christmas Special. My kids were raging. So now we always check when we're going somewhere. What's internet like? We don't need full on amazing internet all the time but we do need to know that we can either get it in our accommodation or that we're close to somewhere where we can go and get it from. So that was definitely a learning experience. I loved it when you messaged me that and they were like, just go on that rock and just lean. was like, yeah, I've been there. I remember them telling me that. I mean, I've had some wacky things myself. My favorite one when I was traveling was I'll never forget, I was actually in, was it Thailand? It was Thailand or around there at that time. And I remember traveling and there were ants actually in the, just like around the bed of this place. I mean, we were in hostels. I was like 19, was like backpacking. And so there were like these ants that were there and they just kept coming. I tried to get rid of them, they kept coming. So I went and spoke to the guy at reception. I was like, hi, I've got ants in my room. Can I like change rooms that I'm in? And he was like, no, we're fully booked. And I was like, well, can someone come and deal with the, the ants in the room? There's like loads of them. And the guy was like, are they in the bed? I was like, well, no, they're like around the bed, but they might come into the bed. He's like, yeah, but are they in the bed? And I was like, no, not at this moment in time. He's like, then just sleep around them. they're not going to cause a problem, just sleep around them. And I was like, okay, thanks for your help. Yeah, I I have got another one if you want to, another one. OK, so one of the things we regularly do is we volunteer at dog shelters and cat shelters because, you know, young kids and pets and, you know, so I'm like, how can we meet this pet need? Volunteer at cat and dog shelters because they're everywhere. So we were volunteering at this dog shelter in Sri Lanka and we'd go there regularly because we were there for like two months. And for the girls birthday, we organised to take some of the dogs from the shelter for a walk up this another mountain. We're not always on mountains, honest, but we're just on other mountain and the people from the shelter did it quite regularly so we went with them that day. the mountains in Sri Lanka, they're really steep and there's not really paths, it's more just like you just go where the water would go when it comes down. So we got to the top after walking for like 25 minutes and it just exploded like rain style, know, like that kind of like tropical rain and it hadn't been went to hadn't been meant to rain, it hadn't been scheduled at all, so we kind of waited with the people from the shelter expecting it to stop and it didn't. It just got like, was just sheets of rain coming down and they were like, it's not going to stop, we're going to have to go down because it's just, there were rivers on the paths as it was, so we were like, okay, so with these dogs, we had to let some of the dogs go because we couldn't safely get down, we were risking hurting the dogs and ourselves, so some of the dogs just ran down themselves and the paths became like, rivers but then what comes out when it's like that leeches so the kids are getting leeches all over their legs in the shoes so they were like you know seeing them and trying to pull them off and and the people from the shelter were like look we've got to get down which is really dangerous we can't take the leeches off ourselves you're just gonna have to leave the leeches on you and deal with it like it's not gonna kill you so the kids were eight or nine you can imagine And we made it down back to the shelter where the dogs that had run down were waiting for us and the other people at the shelter were there with a bucket of salt water for us to delete ourselves. my goodness. Yeah. That, Julie, you have just answered my question, which is, what do they get from traveling the world that they can't get from mainstream school? That experience. I love it. But you know what? It's going to really teach them because now if they, if anything happens to them in life or they fall over or something happens, like, don't worry, I've had leeches on me. I'm fine. Yeah, it's resilience isn't it? It's just kind of like, you things happen and you find solutions. There's nothing that there's not a solution to. Yeah, I love that. I have adored speaking to you today. I think that your outlook on life, think that the fact that, and I do believe there is a lot to this. I believe that travel genuinely enriches your soul. I really do. I think that from a currency perspective, I think it's one of the richest things you can do is travel. I really believe that. And, you know, I've often said this when I speak on stage and when people introduce me and I find it quite strange. Like I remember the other day someone tried to introduce me on the podcast, on their podcast. And they were like, this is Athena and she's in property and property, property, and this is who she is. And I was like, no, that isn't actually who I am. If you want to know who I am, that isn't who I am. Property is the vehicle that gets me to actually allow me to be who I am, which is travel, musical theater, sunshine, you know, that's actually who I am as a person. Whereas property is just the vehicle that does that. And I feel like you actually encapsulate that and understand what I'm saying, Julie, in terms of, you know what I mean? I do. do. You know, one question or one statement that people put at me a lot and I feel kind of the pressure of this but I try and throw it back is like people say to me, you live in my dream life, like I wish I could be doing that and I don't mean this flippantly when I say it but it's like what's stopping you? Like really, what's stopping you? Because there's so many different ways and I don't mean this to you but I'm talking to people, it's like there's so many different ways to live with location freedom. Like if you choose how you want to do it. Like, we're not special, like I'm a kid from Salford, you know? It's about making your choices and sometimes I think if people really want to have that time freedom or that location freedom, there's some difficult choices to make to get that first, but like, you can if you want to, just because nobody else around you is doing it doesn't mean that you can't. Yeah, I love what a fantastic way to finish this podcast. And I would say that it's just about the choices that you make and then taking action to implement them. Harder said than done in a lot of cases and life, absolutely. And we understand that and it's easier said than done, but you are living breathing example of somebody who has taken the step to have the life freedom first before the financial freedom and you've you've made that decision to do that. So Kudos to you and that's why wanted to get you on the podcast. really hope that it's just inspired so many people listening to this that potentially think actually is there a different way to live life at the moment? And that's really all I want to have the conversation with you about. And certainly for me, I'm thinking that as well for me, know, living in the UK. Yeah, like living in the UK, you know, I want to have children in two years time. How do I want to raise them? Like, what do I want to raise them in? What country do I want to raise them in? It doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be the UK. There's lots of conversations and lots of discussions happening at the moment as to whether this is the right country or not. I don't know. So, yeah, fascinated. You might see me up a mountain one day, you never know. Hanging off a rock to try and get internet signal. It could be a beach, a beach is way easier. It could be beach. could be a beach. And Julie, I've got no doubt that people are going to want to get in contact with you after this and just share their own experiences. Maybe even ask questions about it. Who knows? So what's the best place for people to find you? best place to find me is I'm on Instagram at Julie Rose Talbot or I'm on Facebook as well. Yeah, amazing, absolutely. And then I am Athena Dobson underscore official and girls and property on Instagram. Drop into my DMs as Julie did. You know, I get lots of DMs on a daily basis. So just come and have a chat. Absolutely no problem. And then Julie, you might not be able to be there because you're quite far away in Nepal, up a mountain, but I do have the girls and property retreat on Friday, 25th of April. We still have literally a few tickets left. So. Hopefully they go pretty quickly, but we are nearing the end now. All the speakers have been announced by the time this podcast comes out and sponsors. So just really, really excited about seeing as many people there. I've got familiar faces coming, but I've also got some new people coming as well. So I think it's going to be a really amazing mix of people. So if you want to come, 80 of us together, Penley Manor, entering Hertfordshire Friday, 25th of April, come and join the party. Be really good. But yeah, Julie, thank you so much for today. Like I really, really appreciate it. And it's nice to have different perspectives, different ideas on it. And I've got no doubt that we're going to start like a little debate going on with with what other people think. And we welcome that, don't we? And thank you for everything that you do for the property world and just sharing all the stories and everything you organise. It's such a positive, I just love your podcast. So thank you for everything you do. And yeah, I hope it's given, just giving some ideas to somebody and happy to answer questions. thank you, Julie. Is it going to be weird you listening to yourself on the podcast? I'm not sure I will, I don't know, can't listen to myself! Loads of people say that to me. Loads of people say that they don't listen to their own episodes. And I was like, really? And they're like, no, I get too funny about it. And I'm like, you need to listen. You need to listen to your own story. Like, definitely. But no, thank you so much for coming on. And just enjoy Nepal. Enjoy the mountains. Be safe and have the most amazing trek. And to everyone else, I hope the sun shines all week. Have an amazing week. Let me know where you're tuning in from. And I will see you next week. Have a good one, guys. Bye.