The Boring Stuff That Saves You Thousands in Property with Louise Reynolds

In this episode of Girls in Property, I’m joined by Louise Reynolds to talk about something we do not hear enough about in property… staying safe.

We talk a lot about moving fast and finding exciting deals, but what about the part that protects you? The due diligence, the checks and the decisions that stop you making costly mistakes.

Louise shares her journey into property and why being cautious is not a weakness, especially for women, when it is done properly. We talk about how to protect yourself when working with sourcers, entering joint ventures, buying at auction and trusting other people with your money and your future.

We also get into the practical side
 Running your numbers properly
 Adding contingencies
 Checking titles
 Understanding demand

This episode is about going into property with your eyes open. Property will always involve risk, but there is a big difference between blind risk and calculated risk.

If you want to build your property journey with confidence and clarity, this is a really important listen. Grab a cup of tea and settle in with me.

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Transcript

0:02

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. Once again, how are you all doing today? I hope that maybe the sun is shining for you. Maybe there's a bit of rain, but if there's a bit of rain, I hope you're dancing in the rain, whatever it may be. It may be you're taking the kids to school. It may be that you're doing a bit of DIY. It might be you're doing a ripout, whatever it is. I hope that you enjoy the next hour with this absolutely fabulous guest. Now, quite a few, no, quite a few of you might already know this person in the industry. You've probably seen her a lot at networking events like you, like me, you love her energy. And it's all about really this notion of thinking about the experience that this person has in the industry and this notion of like, how do we actually protect ourselves in property? You hear quite a few people talking about this idea of getting into property, building up, you know, a cashflow, building up their wealth, but actually what happens about protecting yourself and what are the... processes that we can take in order to do so, which are so important. And obviously have fun along the way, which I know that we all will do with this particular guest today. So if you're new here, welcome to Girls and Property. Welcome to the dysfunctional world and family that we are. And if you've been listening for a while, thank you so much. I know who you are. Thank you for all your DMs. Thank you for your love. And thank you for being my super fans, as my mum would say. So without further ado today, I would love to introduce Louise Reynolds. Hey Louise, how are you? Hi, um I'm good, thank you. It's lovely to be here with you. Welcome to Girls and Property. Louise, today, what I'd really love is for everyone to get to know you a little bit more. A lot of us see you posting some great content online. We see you on around networking events. And really today's episode is about getting to know you a little bit more, almost Louise kind of behind the business and behind everything that you do and get to know you more. and interesting things about that. And then also how we can help people listening who are either looking to scale their portfolio today or even just start in property and how we can protect them in their business and in property. So if that works for you, then uh I'd love to do that. So before we begin, Louise, can you start by introducing yourself to everyone, to either people who know you, people who don't, let us know about you, your life. how you came to get into property, where you're at now in your business, and then maybe something interesting that people don't know about you as well. Okay, well maybe, well actually I think probably people know that I love travel, so I'm a fellow uh traveler like you, Athena. And I think most people know, so I have come into property, it's almost like my third career. So I started out in marketing and sales roles, uh consumer goods and financial services, and then went into management consultancy. um And property for me was really about, You know how you get that inner burn in your stomach, in your tummy, where you know that there's something in you that you want to get out and that's a sort of inner drive to do something. I'd always had this inner drive to explore what creating my own business would be like, being an entrepreneur, and property seemed a really good fit for me. And the timing came about because I had a young family at the time. I was working long hours in the center of London. um commuting in as well as bring up a family. And I was just creaking at the seams. I've been doing it for a long time and just thought there's got to be a different way, a better way where I've got a better balance of life, where I can nurture and spend the time needed when the children are very small at primary school age. But I can then boost and ratchet up as they get older and a bit more independent. And property seemed like a great way of doing that. mean, there's the usual passive income, all the rest of it. I mean, I never went in thinking I'm going to get loads of passive income, but it seemed to be the way of generating some income streams that weren't always time related. The thing that always struck me with being a management consultant was the money that you earn or the fees that you can command are always time related, so you're always working for money and if you want to earn more money you've got to put in longer hours and that's just not sustainable. I mean it's a great experience you know when you're younger and single and all the rest of it but when you're trying to uh you bring up a family it doesn't always uh work well that way and for me it's also actually over time become a way of Trying to be a role model to my kids and showing them that traditional roots of a career and earning money or going into profession aren't the only ways of making your way in life and earning an income and providing for yourself and your family. It can also be about property and property can play a really good and uh useful part in that. And so what I'm pleased about is that my children are seeing really tricky times and actually a lot of problem solving and learning how to come out of those. I one of your things was, you know, what's gone wrong in property? What are you celebrating? What's gone wrong in property? So the things that I'm celebrating at the moment are I've just launched my new website, which I think clarifies a lot more about what I do because I act as a bespoke property finder. So that can be busy expats, busy professionals who don't have the time to invest in property or they don't know how to, and they want to build up a portfolio to either help them in retirement or just give them a bit more freedom in life. But I also do some online training for those who want to get into property and get it right first time and protect themselves when they invest in property. And so that's a bit clearer on my website as well as my own. investing journey. So it outlines those three things. So it's been a long time coming. So I'm really pleased about that. But in terms of building up resilience and problem solving, it's when things go wrong in property and they do. And one of mine was a development that I took on and carried out just in the aftermath of COVID and all the lockdowns and all the challenges that anyone would have come across during that time where It was difficult to operate, there were lot more delays, material costs increased. So the whole thing ended up costing a lot more than I was expecting, but that on its own wasn't the problem. It's also managing the contractors. I had one contractor walk out, made a big mistake, a structural mistake on the property, which I spotted and he didn't like the fact that he'd been caught out. em and walked out em when the building was structurally unsound. m And then getting another contractor on board and anyone in property will know that it's very difficult when you have a contractor walk out partway through the build because then the second contractor tends to em build in a lot of padding in their quotes because they know that you really need them to come in and finish off because time is of the essence plus they'd always, oh, you know, that's not how we'd have done it. You know, this needs rework. This needs to be redone. So you get the additional costs coming in there when you've got a second set of contractors coming in and doing that. yeah. So I've had quite a bumpy ride, as most people in property do have. It doesn't always go according to plan. And I am passionate about staying safe in property. I'm risk averse. And I think that a lot of women tend to be more risk averse. I mean, that's an overgeneralization. I know men who are also risk averse. But when I came into property in 2007, uh was lots of, know, em gung ho, go ra ra, know, em max out, do this, you know, invest in 10 properties in 12 months. There was a lot of, em you know, very positive speak. ah And what I've seen over the years is that some people get caught out by that because they believe that hype and go into property thinking that's what it's all about, but then come a cropper when they haven't got the experience or resilience to deal with some of the problems that they come across along the way. um And one thing that I've found is that whenever people look at de-risking, and doing due diligence, know, checking things out, they immediately think about property. You know, I've just got to go and check out the property. Is it in the right location? Has it got the right level of demand? What's the supply like? What type of property it is? But a lot of people underestimate how much they need to check out the people they do business with. And a lot of what I see in terms of even experienced people in property where problems have occurred is where They might have over trusted someone a bit too much and it's caused them financial significant, in some cases, significant financial loss. And it's very difficult to row back on some of those decisions because, for example, on my development project, I went through the whole process. I went out to tender to six contractors. And that was a really good thing to do because when I had problems, I then had other contractors I could check back on quite quickly and say, you know, can you step in? Because I'd already done all that work up front. But I made the wrong decision. I mean, I'd done all the due diligence, but I made the wrong decision in the builder that I, who I chose. And he let me down badly. Some of, some of which I knew, I knew what his... failings were, but I didn't think they were quite as stark as they were. But the issue is when you get out of kilter or you're paying someone ahead of time or your payments get out of kilter, and it's the same when you're investing other people's deals or you're handing over money for a service in the property world, it's very difficult to claw that money back even though you take all the right level of precautions, you have contracts in place. because it's very easy in this limited company world for someone to have a limited company, you're paying into that limited company of the supplier. And then if it goes wrong, they can easily fold that company and walk away. And I think we quite often get lulled into a false sense of security and think, well, I've got these legal protections. And in reality, they aren't always there to help us out when we for recourse. So sometimes best about really being careful who you give money to in the first place. Absolutely, absolutely. And what I love about that, by the way, I was writing as you were speaking, Louise, because there's so many points I really want to pick up on that. What's hilarious is, is you did my job for me because you started to talk about your celebrations before I even asked you about your celebrations. So I was like, oh, she's ahead of the game. But no, I love it. And I think that I think that's really, really important. And the things that I think would be really great to talk about today, and I wrote some down was this. Number one is this notion of being risk averse. I think that's a really important topic to speak about. Timing. And also this notion of partnerships, whether it is trades that you are dealing with or actually joint venture partnerships as well. I see a lot of people talking about going into business with other people. And I think we could do a really good section today around real protection around that as well. I have my own personal experience of the good and the bad and the ugly of going into joint venture partnerships with people. So I think that there's real scope to that. just before I kind of go into celebrations and go into that sort of bit of it. So just going back to you for a second, then, because I'm really fascinated to hear more about you, Louise. So go back before property. So you did marketing, marketing and sales, did you say? Is that right? Yeah. So in terms of, I always like to think about transferable skills for people, because my background is marketing as well. You know, I went to Bournemouth Uni, got my degree in marketing. uh My first ever job was actually being a marketing uh assistant executive for a forensic accounting firm in Liverpool Street. And one thing I always say when I speak to lot of women getting into to property and men of course, is they always say to me, I don't know anything about property. I don't know anything about this. And they list everything that they don't know about. But I think a lot of the times we forget about what we do know about and the transferable skills that we actually bring over. So if you were to think to yourself about about before property and sort of Louise before property and when you were doing marketing and sales. What transferable skills did you actually bring into your property world? Well, I at first was feeling quite gung-ho because, well, gung-ho as in, wow, you know, I don't know much about property, but I put some things in place to plug that gap. I started working on a sort of freelance basis with a couple of people I knew in property so I could learn about property business. I was thinking, well, you know, I've got a degree in marketing like you, degree in marketing. um I've worked in marketing departments, I worked in sales roles, I've got a lot of commercial experience. That commercial experience has got to be transferable. And in some respects, that was right. But what I hadn't contended with was that a lot of my sales and marketing skills. So the sales skills, I've always been consultative in style, in terms of asking questions, looking for answers. That's more my sales skill is actually the questioning and answering and then shaping a solution uh in that respect, which carried me over also into my management consultancy world. But my marketing has been very much more about being in a marketing department, understanding all the theoretical side of things. But when I set up my own business, Property Venture, in 2007, what I hadn't really got to grips with the nitty gritty on a day to day basis of search engine optimization, which is, of course, all changed now. it's, you know, more chat GPT optimization, it's all AI optimization. So we're all going through that shift at the moment. Social media, you know, social media wasn't something that was high up on people's agendas, or even really, particularly present when I was in more of a corporate structure, or when I was a management consultant. So there were some principles and broad skills that were uh useful and transferable and sound business sense like relationship uh building, like personal organization, like use of IT, spreadsheets, knowing how to do analysis, which has all been transferable into deal analysis. And the other thing actually from my management consultancy days, there were quite a few tools and techniques that I like to think I brought into uh my property business. ah So I used to run courses on negotiation for corporate clients. Well, that's a skill that I use and can help other help other people use as well. But I recently, in fact, a week or so ago, I went to a presentation where there's not many former management consultants that come into property. And his presentation, he started off with one of the two dimensional boxes where you look at what's of value to the vendor and low cost to you and what's of high value to you but low cost to the vendor. And you can use that, the different features or attributes in a deal to work out what your negotiation position is going to be and how you position your price. And I said to him afterwards, that's really interesting because there's not many presentations I see where people are quite proud to bring over. their skills from management consultancy into property and it's absolutely relevant. And one of the, and I use similar skills uh and models, but one of the things that I have always had at the back of my head is triangulation. So when you are, when you're given a fact, and I think this is really relevant in the day and age of AI, you know, where the West Midlands, the head of the West Midlands police has had to resign because he resisted, the match with the Maccabi fans and it was on the basis of a piece of information that the police force had got from AI, which was false, which had created uh a match that didn't exist where the Maccabi fans had apparently created uh problems and there'd been a lot of unrest. Now, we're all guilty of perhaps looking at AI and thinking, yeah, but... what we need to do is actually sanity check anything that we get from AI. And the technique of triangulation lends itself to that, which is something I've learned in management. It's something I um put into effect and practice in my property business. So if you're given a piece of information about someone like, you ought to check this person out. They do really great developments, always looking for private finance. um Yeah, check them out. They're really great. Now, you don't know, first of all, what the motives of that person are in recommending that developer. You don't know whether that's authentic, whether they're on a retainer commission, whatever it might be, whether they benefit in some respect financially. So rather than just trusting that piece of information, you you need to check that person out. Do they own the company that they claim to own? do they have a track record in property? Sometimes it's quite difficult to check some of that stuff unless you know what specific properties they've bought or own. So you can check out on land registry title deeds. But if they have got limited companies, you can check them out um and build up a picture of the kind of companies that they run, uh who they associate with in terms of directors. and checking out social media. I I once checked out someone who wanted me to act as an agent for them. I thought, hmm, and I checked this person out on LinkedIn because their name sounded familiar. And I think they were involved in something which I hadn't found particularly tasteful. And I, there was a big gap in their history. And that raises questions in my mind. Why has that person got that huge gap in their back story in terms of their property experience or their business experience. Now it was around about the time that this uh situation was going on and so it may well be that they were the same person that was involved in that uh particular deal that didn't go particularly well. So triangulation is getting three points of information. So if you get one point of information, someone says, that person's great. You ought to be, you know, doing business with them, investing with them, whatever it might be. You don't just take that for granted. And if you're then checking out online registry or company's house, any of the facts you've been given, and if you're also checking them out on social media and you start to see information that makes you think, oh, I'm not sure about that, I'm not sure about that. If after doing that, you're still not sure, then you should go to seven points of reference. Because ideally what you want to get to is a stage where you're getting no new information. or information that doesn't surprise you, or you should be getting no information where there's a disconnect that's conflicting. And now for me, that was a fundamental piece of what we used to do in management consultancy. And it's a business skill, and I think a life skill, that translates really well into property, and particularly now we're operating in an AI world. where too many people just seem to be taking everything at face value. And I kind of liken that to how we can stay safe in property is by just going in with an inquisitive and inquiring mind and following through on that. Just approaching things a bit like having the mindset of a detective, just checking things out. And for me, that's a really good way, good start point to try and keep yourself safe and property. Definitely always your due diligence. Absolutely. I love that. I love that great great Louise so I am gonna ask you just before before we go into it because it is an important point of of the podcast always is and you spoke about something professionally that you're celebrating at the moment as you're anything sort of Personally like just as yourself like what are you celebrating in life? that I, well yeah, so my family, my kids have flown, well not sort of one of them has flown the nest and moved out and living with his girlfriend, which is fantastic, learning what life's all about, paying bills and all the rest of it. And my daughter is fulfilling an ambition of hers, she's traveling around South America for three and a half months on her own, which I think is quite a... ballsy thing to do. I think I've got myself to a place where I have clarity this year on what it is that I'm doing business-wise and that I have planned a bit more slots when I can go traveling with my husband because it's been long been an ambition of mine and my husband's to see more of the world. And it's kind of what we did. What we've done, always done, I mean, it's more expensive when you are traveling with children, it makes it more expensive and then you're limited also to school holiday travel times, which is when things at its peak. But yes, so celebrating what we're doing there, but also celebrating that I actually feel comfortable saying, you know, go and check my website. because I've had my website in my business for years and years and years. It's always been in the back of my mind. It doesn't reflect what I do these days, you know, because I have changed what I've done. When I started out in property, I helped people invest overseas, mainly in continental Europe. um And I bought a buy to let. My first investment was in uh Poland. So I feel a little bit more aligned business-wise. And it's also enabled me to feel a bit more aligned personally. uh And I've also been wrestling for a while with what's been going on in the industry, the whole residential property market, the private rented sector, what's been going on with the Renters' Rights Act. And I um thought after my first development project, I want to do something more. I want to do more stuff in residential. And for a long while, I kind of sat on my hands and paused. I mean, I was developing my online training program to help beginners and people who are just stuck with their property investing. So I wasn't idle. I was actively doing things. But so I feel a bit clearer about where I'm heading and I'm kind of making a little bit of a change and looking at commercial property investing moving forwards, which I think for where I want to be in the next couple of years, I think is going to be the right strategy for me. So I spent the last six months learning about commercial property and how to value and assess commercial property deals. I've started looking at deals and getting all of that set up. And I think that because on the whole, they're a bit more an asset management play and they're a bit more arm's length. Residential property can be quite labour intensive, dependent on the set up. And I'm mainly single family homes, which interestingly, I think are in a huge demand at the minute because a number of uh accidental landlords or ones who've probably only got one or two properties who have been a bit scared by what's happening in the market have either exited or are looking at exiting. And I think that there are shortages of single-family homes in places. um I think with uh HMO, housing and multiple occupancy, uh investors and landlords, going into that as a strategy tend to have uh bigger portfolios because it has to justify the processes and systems to put in place to support that kind of strategy. And I suspect some of those landlords and investors will be a bit more resilient um because they've got a number of them. They see that their risk is spread among multiple units within a property. And I think that um the costs of potential operational costs are potentially increased for HMO landlords over recent years. And I think that the rents on the single family homes have probably jumped up considerably more in relation to HMO em pricing. So yeah, so I feel as I've got a bit of alignment, a of clarity where I'm going personally in terms of freeing up time. I mean, last year we did a lot of travel, but I felt I hadn't really planned it in. So I felt it a bit, a bit chaotic that I was just sort of stumbling from pillar to post with work and travel. But this year I feel a little bit. about it. Oddly, I didn't really have the time to plan it in quite the same way as I would normally do because I had a busy uh December with some medical issues and health in the family, which meant I didn't have time to do all the planning. maybe because I stripped it right back and made it a lot simpler and just had to make some clear decisions that may be a bit more focused. Simple is always a good way to be as well, absolutely. And I love that celebration that you just had. And actually, I was thinking about my celebration as you were speaking, and I'm going to go along a similar uh path, which is I'm also bringing out my brand new website. And what makes me laugh is, so basically, I created my first ever website. everyone knows I can't stand the current girls and property website. I built it. I don't like it. it's like... I always say progress over perfection. We needed the website, I needed to get the girls in. So took me ages and blood, and tears, but the website got made. And it comes a point now where I'm going into this next level where I'm like, need a brand new website. Because like you Louise, everything's changed for me. Like literally everything has changed. There's brand new stuff that's come out and I've gone through this level up. I started this project with my personal brander, Jackie Laws, who I love, and I'm gonna get her on the podcast, because she's just brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant personal brander. And we started this website together in February last year, we started it. And because life is so busy, and because there's the property stuff going on for me, there's girls and property stuff going on, there's new ventures happening, there's all sorts happening for me, it's almost like my brain has gone... because you've got to review copy, you've got to review the images going on, you've got to do all of the links that go through and you've got to be part of the process of that. There literally hasn't been any time to build this website. And now I have finally gotten to the stage where we're hoping, we're praying that this website is going to launch in February. So it's going to take a year to have built. And we're praying that it's just gonna be done. It's gonna get out there and it's literally gonna be like effectively Louise Let's face it a shop window So that you know, we can go on to do what it is We need to do is you rightly said when you first started this conversation If you know if the only way that you're generating income is effectively through your time, you're never gonna scale So you want to build a shop window and a website? where if anybody wants to get more information or or to join your services, whatever it may be to learn more, the website literally has every single bit of information that you could possibly need as opposed to a lengthy DM from me on Instagram, which is what I've been used to doing. So I'm also going to celebrate, finally, finally, God bless you, Jackie, getting this website in tip top shape and showing everybody it and hoping that they love it as much as I love it as well. I can empathise with that. I heard because you really do need to block out the time and it's like I blocked out time. was last year. was in the summer, I thought, because things tend to go quiet in August. So I blocked out August and September and wrote, you know, just lots of lots of of and all the images, sorted out all the content. Literally, I think it was about a month. In reality, it was probably a week and a half of solid. one week and a half, man days, solidly working on it. And then there's the time of handing it over and, know, the web designer getting started on it. But the thing I hadn't quite catered for was the amount of toing and froing with editing. And that wasn't necessarily me making lots of changes. It's because you've been asked to create all the content, but not necessarily know what the design is going to look like. And then when you see everything in the design, oh, I hadn't quite realized it was going to be like that. I need to just shorten that or... em And then some of the phrasing and the way that the image, know, so it's all of that, which I think took a lot longer than I thought it would. But I always found myself saying, oh, here's my website, but check out my LinkedIn profile. Because I've got a lot more, you know, it's a lot more dynamic. I'm constantly updating my LinkedIn and connecting with people on there. But now I'm, you know, that's the sign that it's good. And actually, I was at a networking meeting and um There was a guy there who started chatting to me and he said, I saw something that you'd written, I think it was on Facebook. And as a result of my comment, I'm not even sure what it was. He then decided to check me out and then he got through to my website and then he saw my consultancy and training offering and started talking to me about doing something on a bespoke one-on-one basis. Now I thought, now that's the sign it's working. It's doing what it's meant to do. Cause I've never, I've never really had that before with my other website. And you know when your website's not working when someone says, so what is it you do again? It's just, no. Yes, yeah, well, and then you know, you're not making it clear enough. So I feel as though I've sort of stripped it back, simplified it, and cut off all the legacy that no longer serves me, which is what I think was confusing before. And you also stated in your celebration there, which is important to say for the listeners listening to this is the strategy is aligned with kind of what it is that your end goal is and what you want to do at the end. And it's like working backwards as well. Whereas I think that when we start out, we sort of work forwards. Whereas I love that. I love that as well. So great, great celebrations and tease us up beautifully in terms of then protecting ourselves, which is what we really want to get involved with. So let's say then Louise, let's take this notion that we were talking about in terms of being risk averse. So as you said, it's mainly women that listen to this podcast and women are traditionally risk averse. Now it's good to be cautious, always. It's good to not just jump into things. It's good to do your due diligence. It's good to do your three points of reference, which is what you mentioned. But what I do get concerned about is when women can sometimes talk themselves out of doing things. they start to prioritize their family and the security of their family over the futures of themselves. And they start to almost in a way talk themselves out of it and allow fear to sometimes overwhelm them. And traditionally, I'm not a psychologist, but traditionally I do find this more prevalent in women than I do in men. So we want to protect them, which is what we're going to be talking about today. But at the same time, just before we speak about that, What advice would we also give us to sort of not be too risk averse, if that makes sense? Yeah, I absolutely agree with all that you're saying but yes when you are risk averse you have to be conscious and aware that you can... surround yourself with research and with tasks, checking things out and due diligence, and then never actually make any decisions. And I think, yeah, but I think also some people aren't aware they're risk averse or they're not in tune with their personality. And that's one of the things that I tend to do a lot. I've had women coming on my course who have done an awful lot of training. So they're almost in overwhelm mode. They've been on training for all of the strategies, but they still haven't been able to go away and take action. And it's not because they don't want to, they just keep holding themselves back. And what I like to do is take people through figuring out their personality. Now, people who have come from corporate life have tended to do personality profiles or team building activities where they find out a bit more about what role they play in a team or what their personality is like. Not everyone in property has done that. And so it's been a bit of a revelation for some people thinking through, ah, okay, so there's that element of my personality or I hadn't realized that I am as risk averse as I thought I was and what does that mean for me? And then it's about... doing the meaningful due diligence and research that's actually going to deliver the answers that you're looking for, but with a view to making a decision at the end of it. Now, if doing due diligence, it still seems fairly risky, then I think if it's to do with the property investment, and it's to do with negotiating, you actually build that risk into the price that you're offering on a property. And I think that's a lot of people in property would say, you know, it's not how much value you add, it's the price that you went in at. And it's just a very simple example. was in, went to India on holiday in October and November, traveling all over India. And when I've been away before, I have bought an item of jewelry when we were in Sri Lanka. And I thought I'd taken all the right precautions. I bought the ring on credit card and I was thinking, well, If it's not the stones that he says are in the ring, I'm going to be fine. I got back, checked out the ring that I bought and it turns out it was what the guy said, but I paid three times the price for it. When I got it valued here, was 500 quid and I paid 1500 quid for it. And that was because everybody in the value chain is getting their cut. So the guy who's our guide he's getting a commission for taking us, because it was one of those big, not quite factory environments, but a shop, but it's almost like a big market area where this, you know, it's a captive market because you can only really get there by car and people who are local who know that it's there and they get their cut. So paying on credit card does provide a certain amount, risking asking certain questions does provide a certain amount of, sorry, provide a certain amount of security and de-risk it. But buying on credit cards doesn't de-risk being an idiot and overpaying price. So in India, I went in and I said, you know, I really like that. And he told me the price and I offered him half that. Now give him his credit. He didn't laugh at me in the face, but I said, look, you know, this has been my experience of buying something before. And I know enough to ask the right kind of questions. what I, I think I know enough to know whether someone's completely hoodwinking. hoodwinky me, but even the most persuasive people can still uh fib at convenient places. So I said, look, that's my offer because I'm having to de-risk for me. No, you don't see that as a risk, but I do. Anyway, he was great in negotiating. We negotiated. I didn't end up paying half the price, but I did end up getting a good deal. And I came home and I had that checked out. paid a really good price for what I got. So I liken that to property, know, yeah, if you're risk averse, be aware that that's in your personality and how you manage that. So for me, I can, you know, in the past, I have found myself sort of over analyzing stuff. And I think you have to think of the Pareto rule, again, a business thing, the 80-20. If you're 80 % there and you think you've covered off the main aspects of... um the fundamentals of the property, the fundamentals of the deal, the fundamentals of the people who you are dealing with and the demand for what it is that you want to offer. And you've got all the relevant professionals, decent professionals on board because professionals can also be inappropriate for any given task. Your diligence is there to help you make decisions. It's not there to block them or prevent you moving forwards. And actually, had a, you know, one lady who made a bit of breakthrough saying, I hadn't realised that that's why I feel I'm always coming up against a barrier. It's because of my risk profile. And I think she went away with some tools then to know how she can deal with that, that it's meant to aid decision making, not prevent it. But yeah, you're right. Someone who is risk averse um can end up sometimes getting into analysis paralysis rather than helping move forward. And there's nothing perfect. You're never going to know 100 % about any given situation, but if you've understood the key fundamentals of the situation and the deal and the people, then yeah, I think you have to sort of. love that analogy that you just used with the ring as well, because I think that's a really easy analogy to kind of base it on and I love that. And I've done that myself in South Africa as well, know, diamonds and everything like that. been that girl, I've done that. But what I would almost say to the listeners from listening to that story and the conversation is you only really learn to do things differently once you do them in the first place. Yes. almost like you can't, learn because you went through the ring situation first of all, and therefore you knew to do things differently next time. And so because if you haven't done something for the first time, your natural instinct is to be more risk averse because your brain is protecting you to say, we haven't done this before. So I think that don't be so harsh on yourself listeners in terms of doing something for the first time and not necessarily getting it perfect. Like you were never meant to get it perfect. I hate to break it to you. For me. not the perfect website, not the perfect launch, not the perfect first retreat, whatever it may be, not the first perfect buy-to-let, a classic one. My first buy-to-let is one of the worst deals I've ever done. I speak about this openly. Okay, fine. But I went on and did better buy-to-lets and I've still got my first one because it's my legacy, if you like. So, yeah, didn't lose money, but I didn't make a huge amount. So it's just a case of learning and developing from that. So I think that's a really important thing to say. It's like, at least give yourself a shot. and at least give yourself a chance in order to learn from that. Yeah. also a lot of people they understand the term check things out They understand the term due diligence But I think a lot of people don't actually really know what due diligence means because I've been talking about it on the property circuit for a long time and on my training programs and with my clients who I help, know my bespoke sourcing and I don't think people automatically think that they need to think about checking out people that they might think, check a trade, check out trades people, but they might not think about checking out professionals. They might not think about checking out um joint venture partners. They might not even check out just people who they're working with on a lucid basis because these people can scupper what you do. So once you've got a of a framework and you know the tools and techniques, I think that can build confidence in decision making. A lot of people don't know what they don't know and they have this uh very narrow view of what due diligence is, it's the property. And there's so much that you can do to keep yourself safe very early on and that can give confidence in making decisions rather than being frozen into inaction. So let's say that someone was gonna go away literally after this episode and do due diligence on, let's go a property. So what three things should they do instantly for due diligence on a property? One of the things, well, I personally would be checking out the situation of the vendor, conversation with a state agent, if you're looking at letting out what the demand is in the area. But one key thing that I would, and you can check out the agents and whether they're decent agents or not, because they all have ratings as well. But one of the key things is downloading title deeds on Land Registry. Because that tells you an awful lot. um it usually tells you if there's a mortgage on the property. It doesn't always tell you how much that mortgage is. So that will give you an idea that it's encumbered. And so there might be financial um commitments that the vendor has and that they're going to want to honor, which might be pushing the price that we're asking slightly higher than the market. So that will explain that. But it also gives you an idea of any covenants on the property. And a lot of people get down m to the step and think, well, I don't need to do that because my solicitor is going to do it. Well, by the time you get to your solicitor doing it, and of course they need to do it and have a look at it as well, you've already spent lots of money. You've spent potentially or committed with a mortgage broker. You've already spent some fees on your legal, you spent on surveys. You've taken a lot of time. um You know, you may have had to pay other, you know, conveyancing, getting bits of um some of the technical drawings or searches that might have been initiated. And if there's a fundamental covenant there which restricts use of that property, and I think of one local to me, there's this beautiful building and it's been on the market for very long time. And a fellow female investor was really interested in it. And she downloaded the title deed and it said it could never be used for residential purposes. It had been used for offices and for commercial, uh but the amount that was being asked for it, it didn't make sense to buy it at that price uh if you couldn't get a residential use out of it, because the residential use would be value. the per square footage or metrage much higher than if it's commercial. Now, there's no point in her wasting any time on it. So she's paid a seven quid odd downloading the title deeds and she found that out, didn't waste any more time on it. But a lot of people would probably get down the whole, you know, spending several thousand pounds, uh spending a lot of time on it and then get scuppered at the point where the Solistras looked at it. So yeah, I think that's one of the key things em that people can be doing on checking out the property. That is great advice Louise, that is really good. And just say for the listeners, just if you're new listening to this. So whenever someone talks about a covenant, they're talking about restrictions on the property, as Louise was saying. So for example, one example we had recently when I was going to go look to buy a bike to let, one of the covenants on that was that a person living in the property could only, um they had to have lived in Dorset for at least five years. So they had to have a registered address of living in Dorset for five years, but you've got that restriction down south, which of course made it then very difficult in terms of then taking it on as a buy-to-let because of then in terms of the issues there, because I only had three years instead of five years. you've got to really look at the details in that. So I think that's a really, really good piece of advice actually, is rather than just going straight in and instructing your solicitors and paying out all those fees and then find out down the line when your solicitor just looks into it. save yourself a lot of time and lot of headaches. So great Louise, I love that. First bit of advice to protect yourself in your property uh business. Brilliant. And then Louise, I'd love to talk to you just for a second about people em in general and protecting ourselves from people. So I have experienced myself in this and I speak to a lot of people nowadays who also going down this road and I'm sure you have experienced this yourself. This notion of working with other people either on a loose basis or actually going into a joint venture partnership. with somebody. And I had an experience recently, and I'm not going to name the person who came to me about this because, you know, it's private and confidential. But she mentioned to me that she and this is a, this is a, a person who is quite a risky person, let's just say she jumps in with both feet, she's very similar to me in terms of my personality. And she she messaged me and said, Athena, I want you to know, I've got some great news. I'm going into partnership. with this person, they gave me the name and we're going to be doing lease options together going forward. And I said to her, okay, I said, who is this person? Number one, because I thought I might know them because I know quite a few people. So I thought, who is it? Didn't know the name. And I said, okay, where did you meet this person? I didn't even say that. Congratulations. I went straight into my questions. I was like, where did you meet this person? She's like, we're doing the same training. I was like, okay, what do you know about this person? Where are they? I was like, give me all of their socials. I'm going to start checking them out. So I started to do the due diligence for her. And I said to her, like, you really need to, to brilliant. I'm happy for you. And you know, it could be amazing. And I'm all for positive mindset, but we need to just also think about all of the difficult questions, all of the different circumstances that that could happen. So what's your, what's your take on this, Louise? Cause I've had good and bad experiences of joint venture partnerships. So What's your stance in terms of protecting if there are people and listeners out there going, Athena, I love the idea of teaming up with another person. It's quite lonely. How can we protect ourselves if we want to go down a joint venture route? I think you just need to have quite a lot of contact with that person over a period of time and in different situations to understand how they em react to certain situations. um You know, I've had someone who I thought looked great and then over a period of time, not necessarily anyone I was thinking about doing business with, but over a period of time. uh meetings, contact in different situations. uh Over a period of time I've wondered about how they've reacted to certain things and it has made me think twice and someone who can be uh the most charming, wonderful, approachable person when everything's going well is not necessarily going to behave in that way under pressure. um So you want someone who you can anticipate how they're going to act under pressure because there's always going to be a problem somewhere. And so you want to know that. So even asking them, well, if you can find out some things that happened to them in the past, understanding how they reacted, why they reacted the way they did, as well as experiencing that in person. I personally think you have to meet and have several in-person contacts or meetings in different situations to actually do that. I wouldn't necessarily go into a joint venture without having built up a decent picture of someone over a period of time and asking different people and doing my own research a bit like you. I think it's very easy to get caught away in spontaneity and I think it's very easy because we all want to think the best of other people. We want to believe that people are good. And so sometimes that can lull us into a false sense of security. I think we just have to be a little more objective about it rather than getting caught, oh, this is really exciting. And there's a lot of people out there who sell the dream and people want that dream to happen to them, but they don't understand the amount of hard work and grit and the groundwork and the research that is required. in making that dream happen. Dreams can happen but there's quite a lot of input and there's quite a lot of um hurdles you have to overcome along the way and making decent decisions or even if you end up making a wrong decision, if you put the building blocks in place you can easily switch that decision or rectify that decision. It's not to say that we all make the most perfect decisions and everything's hunky-dory all the time. It's also knowing how you come back from that or how you don't overexpose yourself that you can sort of take a step back if things don't go quite according to plan that you have got a plan B. Definitely, definitely. And I think that we want to encourage always people to go forward in whatever way that they feel. And for me, I think now, knowing what I know, if I was going to do my time again, think if you are going to go and do partnerships with people, for me, think... Well, I was just about to say something and then I thought, well, actually, that could also be questionable because I was going to say about friends and family. But then at the same time, at the same time, friends and family could also go where you think you know friends and family and then they're in certain situations that you haven't seen them before and then it could go a bit skew-yip. So I think don't be fearful. think fear could be quite paralysis and it could literally like stop you in your tracks. But I think doing exactly what Louise just said, which is, this is the only thing I can say, having difficult conversations from the get-go. It's the best way I can describe it. is have the conversations which actually make you feel uncomfortable to be having a conversation with that person where it's no longer like, yay, this is amazing and yay, how incredible this is. It's like, well, what happens if this went wrong? And what if this went wrong? And of course, please, please set out your heads of terms, your roles and responsibilities and also get a legal contract in place. The amount of times I do not see people getting legal contracts in place with clear stipulations, clear responsibilities, clear shares, everything, uh terrifies me. I think you really need to have that contract in place no matter who it is. a really good example is that when I set up my business in 2007, I was going to be doing it with one of the ladies who I've been working with who knew an awful lot about property, more about property than I did. But I I bought a lot of the commercial skills. So I thought that worked quite well in terms of complementary skill sets. So we were going to set up property venture together. And I kept saying, well, we need to sit down and agree. how it's all going to work, how much money we're putting in, how we're going to split shares, how we're going to split profits, all that kind of stuff. We need to sit down and talk. And she's a great woman and very charismatic, but she was always quite reluctant to get into the nitty gritty. And it was only literally when I got to start having the conversation about specifics, like percentage share ownership, all the rest of it, she'd kind of been avoiding it. Literally the night before we were both due at the accountant's office to set up our company. And when we started having that discussion, it became apparent that we were miles apart. Even though I'd been trying to have that conversation for a long time, and then I just went along to the accountant's on my own and the accountant said, so where's your partner? I said, well, it's just going to be me. And it made life an awful lot more difficult because I set up the business. feeling a bit naked really. I went up a learning cliff, not a learning curve, because that didn't work out. But in a way, it was good that it happened when it did. I mean, it would be much better if it happened sooner. But that, think, is the power of trying to get into the detail and get down on paper the specifics. And if someone's avoiding that, you don't know where you are. You don't know where you stand. And until you've got something down on paper. And actually not even just having an agreement, because a lot of people don't even read agreements unless you've actually talked through stuff or talked through what should be in that agreement and percentage shares of, you know, control and ownership and all of that kind of thing, then you're just fumbling in the dark. So, so, yeah, so that's a crystallization of exactly what you've just talked about there, Athena. Exactly, exactly. We both had experiences with Louise and all I'll say guys is remember this, right? It effectively is a relationship. So the way that you wouldn't just rush into a relationship or rush into marriage or rush into having children with a person, it's exactly the same. You need to know that this is the person that you want to be effectively in bed with, in business with because what people forget and I had to learn the very, very hard way of this. is they have access to everything. That person that you're in business with has access to the bank accounts, they have access to permission control, they have access to security, they have access to passwords, everything. And I tell you this, the biggest lesson you will ever learn guys, and learn from my experience of this, is when you're in a business with a person and you do all of the work and you see money coming out of that account, because they put their hands into the account, taking the money without your permission. and there's nothing you can do to get that back. So just take my word for it. Know that they have access to everything. And as I now know, it is easy to get into a relationship with a person. It is easy to get into a joint venture partnership with a person and it is really difficult to get out of it. So just make sure that you do protect yourself. As I said, I want to reiterate, please don't have fear. We're not trying to create fear today. We're trying to ensure that you do things in the correct way. And as Louise says, you know, have the contract in place. have the difficult conversations and make sure that you have an amazing time with them, have fun, do all the things you wanna do, go out for drinks with them, but make sure that you are on the same page and have those conversations early. And that is the best way to protect yourself. Louise, I'd love this, because I feel like we've really covered kind of like this notion of checking land registry to protect the property, when it comes to people, joint venture partnership. So I think in terms of... a protection standpoint for today's episode. It just almost gets the listeners to really think about just how they can just open their minds, just be like, okay, I'm gonna do this, but also I'm gonna do my due diligence at the same time. I'm gonna really just take those steps to almost just go, you know, just go a little bit slower, but in the right way as it were, which I think is brilliant for today. Considered, great. if you don't get the grounding perfectly right, if you've got 80 % of it right, you've got something to fall back on. If you don't do any of it, you're going to fall back a long way. So it's almost like if there is a bit of a blip, you're just going to fall back a little bit, not all the way to the bottom of the cliff. Yeah, considered as a great word. I love that. So, Louise, thank you so much for today's episode. Loads of people are going to want to get in contact with you about this. you were saying your usual hangout. So where's the best place for people to contact you? On social media, I tend to hang out an awful lot on um LinkedIn. So I'm on there with Louise Reynolds, Louise.AidleReynolds. My website where um my offerings and training is property-venture.com. And if someone is interested in the training and doing some of this stuff we've been talking about on the services on the training, you can click through and sign up for the wait list. my next Unleash Your Feelers Property Investor course which I'll be doing in the next couple of months. So I run it on a regular basis but the next one's coming up shortly if anyone's interested in that too. yeah website propertyoffervention.com and LinkedIn. I am on Facebook as well and my personal name and I am on Instagram in my personal name as well uh but I suspect I migrate more to LinkedIn on the professional side but yeah Facebook and Instagram good too. that brand new website to go check out. I love that and as always guys I'm Athena Dobson underscore official and girls and property on Instagram. basically live on there so just drop into my DMs. Come and join the girls and property community of course we've got over a hundred women so do come and check it out if you want any info just DM me the word community. We've got a whole library literally of people that come in like experts because we meet up every single first Tuesday and third Tuesday of the month at 7.30, which is online. um So it's just, it's absolutely fab. And then of course, I was just, I was just gonna, I was just gonna say, Louise, you've already got your ticket to it because you're gonna be there, but yeah, so. last year, I came last year and I thought wow. There you go. See Louise, there we go. So Louise came last year, loved it. She's coming again. And that's going to be Friday, 24th of April, over back at Penley Manor in Tring. We've got four guest speakers, expert tables, brand new. It goes from 9am to 9pm in the evening, lunch and dinner. It's a full day. But yeah, but what's amazing is we've only got about, and speakers haven't even been announced yet, or they're in the process of it now by time the podcast comes out, but we've only got about 20 tickets left now. It has just been... Wow, phenomenal. Yeah, it's been amazing. you know. such a great community there that everybody knows that's the place to be. But also they've trusted me to know I'll get good speakers. They're like, don't like it's Athena. She'll get to some people. yes, if you want to come genuinely, I'm not trying to be like, you know, getting quick, you do what's right for you. But seriously, we only got about 20 tickets left. And that's that was in January. So if you want a ticket, grab it. I'll see you there. You'll see Louise there as well. Louise will be there and other absolutely incredible, incredible women. Louise, I'd love to give you the sort of parting words for today's episode. But actually, I'd like to do something a little bit different today if it's okay with you. And I'd love your parting words to actually be a question I've got for you. Because I'd love to know your answer to this. about a couple of months ago, I went on a podcast and on that podcast, I was stumped by a question that I got asked. And the question that I got asked, which literally silenced me for about two minutes was, I'd like to ask it to you today, is... you're gonna stump me too! Yeah, I am because I'm curious to your answer actually, which is what's one question that nobody has ever asked you that you wish that someone would have asked you? goodness. Yeah, and I think that's going to stop me for two minutes, but you do want two minutes of silence, do you? Well, to be fair, I gave them two minutes of silence because I thought, what is my answer to that question? But I wanted to make you think because I think it's so important when we're building these businesses to also see the women behind them as well. So I love to know your answers to this one. you a business sense, I don't know maybe why personalise experiences, m but I'm not sure that that gets to the root of what it is that you... why have I done some of the things that I've done maybe? Why the wanderlust? Why setting up my own business? Because I have this stuff going on in my gut that kind of guides me, I think that maybe I haven't been asked enough about what that gut... gut feel is, how that gut guides me in the decisions that I make in my personal and business life. Because if you think about it, your gut is a gut instinct that the older you get, the more experience that gut becomes. uh And sometimes the gut instinct can be protecting you from dangerous situations and being able to recognise when it's dangerous or actually, as you mentioned earlier on, it's just about being uncomfortable because it's the unfamiliar, but that might still be the right thing for you to do. So I think sometimes maybe ask you bit more about unpacking the gut feel and how that impacts some of the stuff I've done, because a lot of mine has been driven by gut instinct, but that is based on experience as well as instinct about people. Yeah, absolutely. See, lovely question. I love that lovely answer. just, it just really, it does, doesn't it? It really does. And, and I'll tell you one thing I'm learning at the moment, I'm speaking to various people about is always trust your gut. We always say that always trust your gut. But also, I'm learning that um the same neurosciences and the same feelings go through your body when you're experiencing both fear and excitement. So it's exactly the same, you know, this idea of butterflies, this idea of nervousness. And so you feel a really certain way. And so what's important to just define is whether you're actually genuinely feeling a sense of fear, or if you're actually feeling really excited about something. Because you'll hear people talk quite a lot saying, my God, I'm terrified, but I'm so excited to do this. Almost like bungee jumping. You clearly want to do it because you're excited to bungee jump, but you're absolutely like crazy scared at the top going, I should not be doing this. This is insane. So we've really got to recognize that and our gut is 100 % the place to do that. So brilliantly said. able to distinguish the difference and what could go wrong. I mean, I have a fear of heights, but I have still felt the fear and done it anyway, because I wanted the sense of achievement at the end of it. And when I thought about, what are the risks involved? You sometimes you have to rationalize things. And I've always tried to live a life of not letting some of those things stop me living the life I want to. So it's actually... Yeah, being in tune with your gut, knowing when it is about safety or when it's just the unfamiliar. Yeah, beautiful. Well said, Louise. And as always, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. know, DM me, let me know what you're tuning in from. We'll see you at the retreat. We'll see you over in the community. And if you've got any feedback for me and Louise, then um come and let us know as well. And hope you enjoyed today's episode. But as always, everyone, sending you loads of love, um you know, keep in touch and just wish you the most amazing week and amazing, protected property journey that you can possibly have. So take care, love you lots, speak to you soon. Have a good week, bye.