Listen to the Podcast Here: Podcast Episode by Jason Lee – Premiered November 26, 2021
What You’ll Learn in the Podcast:
- Sarah’s interesting backstory and how she got into real estate coming from a place of desperation and considerable debt.
- How learning to be humble and knowing when to ask for help was one of the best lessons from her desperate time in debt that has helped her in real estate.
- What initially drew her into real estate and what turned out to be true and false about her assumptions.
- Information about the various aspects of the industry that she is involved in now (it’s numerous!).
- How Sarah involves digital marketing and social media into her business, and her approach in using it to find leads for herself.
- Why while social media can be a very powerful tools, a good old fashioned email list can still be your best bet in generating business.
- What Sarah is doing right now to grow her business, which includes a lot of new builds as well as talent recruitment.
- Why talent recruitment is so very important and what Sarah does to help her team excel at this task.
- The types of homes that Sarah looks to invest in and why she goes after the types that she does.
- What Sarah did to get herself her first round of funding.
- Excellent tips for the types of content to create for social media.
Summary and Highlights:
The podcast generally focuses on real estate investors and producers and how the industry made them a millionaire. It discusses certain points and topics that can be easily understood by newbies and those who are interested in joining the real estate. This episode talks about how a woman buried in debt used real estate in changing her life – financially and emotionally.
Sarah Poynton: How Real Estate Made Her Successful
Sarah, a UK-based woman who has almost £60,000 in debt had been financially and emotionally struggling. She started using company money to sustain her everyday living and her lifestyle. Due to this, she left her job and started a business. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful which made her return to being employed again.
The real property industry became her turning point. However, she started this business without having any knowledge about the industry. But with eagerness, she started attending webinars and reading books where she gained her knowledge about the industry. She started purchasing, renovating, and developing properties, and started an education company.
She believed that during dark times, good times will come in. This made her life buried in debt and became successful in just six years.
What She Has Learned From Her Struggles
Her first business was a photo booth company that can be hired for weddings and corporate events. Though she tried everything from scratch, her first business was not successful.
By the time she transitioned to the real estate industry and started her own company, she didn’t really know anything. But accepting that you do not know stuff, you will learn how to ask for someone’s help, and it’s okay to learn from someone who has expertise.
She realized that you may know something, but you would not know everything. You need to ask questions instead of guessing to avoid being wrong. There will be a lot of people around that are willing to help and it comes in many forms.
How Digital Marketing Made Her Business Successful
Though she believed that the use of social media can be negative, it helped her a lot in the growth of her business. It became her channel to create space for her audience that transforms into her leads.
She used Facebook as her digital marketing means to reach people to show how she was doing with her real estate business, office and property tours, and other content related to real estate. Due to this, she started receiving more leads and deals.
She made a funnel list that includes her prospective investors for Real Estate where she discusses the ROI, current projects, a question, and answer session, and ends her content with a call to action with a downloadable freebie. Once her lead downloads it, they become part of her company’s email list.
Insights
Not all businesses start well. But once you have accepted your mistakes and weaknesses, you will be able to do better on your next chances. By learning all the strategies, you will be able to try all means and factors that can help your business grow. Real estate is a growing industry not only for experts but also for beginners or those who want to shift their careers.
Episode 9: From Being Broke & In Debt To Now Running A Seven Figure Real Estate Business
Watch the Podcast | Read the Transcript
Transcript
[Intro] 00:00
Welcome to the multi-family millionaire podcast. The show that interviews multi-millionaire real estate investors and top producers in the real estate industry. If you’re looking to create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want, you’re in the right place. Our goal is to simplify and make real estate investing easy for you. For more information, you can find us at www.JLM.realestate.
00:30
Jason Lee: All right, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today We have Sarah with me. How you doing today, Sarah?
00:35
Sarah Poynton: I’m good. How are you?
00:38
Jason Lee: I’m fantastic. I’m excited to have you on, I think you have a really cool story. So, I think the listeners will really enjoy it.
00:44
Sarah Poynton: Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
00:47
Jason Lee: Yeah. So, the first question I want to ask is, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into real estate?
00:54
Sarah Poynton: Yeah, of course. So, my name’s Sarah Pointon, I’m based in the UK. I live about an hour north of London, so right in the middle of the country. I actually started in property or real estate as you guys call it 2015. So, I’m actually just coming up to my six-year anniversary next week. And I got into property from a place of desperation Actually. It wasn’t because I had money and I was ready to invest or anything like that. I was about 60,000 pound in debt, and I was really struggling financially. I was really struggling emotionally. I wasn’t in a great place.
I had a business previously and I had learn, it taught me every way not to run a company, Let’s say that. I made every mistake you could possibly make. And I was using company money to try and sustain, and it just got out of hand. And so, by the time early 2015 hit I was in quite a lot of debt, and I’d had to go back to a job. So, I’d left my job in 2013 to run my business. And I basically got it wrong and had to go back to being employed, which was the worst thing ever.
And so, after I got married, we were talking a lot, which was September 2015. We were talking a lot about the next chapter of our life, you know, should we have a baby? Should we buy a house? Should we go traveling? What should we do? And everything came back to, we’d love to do all these things, but we’ve got no money and I’d decided then that, that wasn’t goanna be my life. And so, I started working on my property business and I’d watch, I guess, similar to lots of people. I’d watched some webinars, I’d start, I’d read books and things like that. And I’d heard what was possible. I just didn’t really know how to do it.
So, I just started to kind of implement things that I’d learned, and it worked, and that was six years ago. And now I have got multiple property businesses. I’ve got a group that’s linked all linked to property from lettings right through to renovations developments, all of that sort of stuff. And I’ve got an education company as well. And I love it. I love what I do. And I think out of what was quite a hard part of my life, quite a hard season came something that I absolutely love now. And so, I’m grateful for that period of time. It wasn’t fun, but it triggered something in me and in my life that I really, really have a lot of fun with now.
03:13
Jason Lee: Yeah. It’s a fantastic story. And I want to peel back to onion a little bit on your struggles. Like what did you learn and kind of what were your main lessons from the struggles you had back then before you really succeeded?
03:24
Sarah Poynton: I think the biggest thing when I first ran my first company, I thought that I had to just work out how to do it by myself. I didn’t know that it was okay to admit that you don’t know stuff and that it was okay to ask for help. I thought if, you know, if you’re big enough and ugly enough to start a company, then you just have to handle it. And I was really, I took a lot on my shoulders, and I was, I mean, I was quite young then as well. And because of that, actually my business failed because when things started to become difficult, I didn’t know what to do. I was guessing instead of asking someone who’d been there before me to gimme the answer I was guessing, and I was getting it wrong. And I think that is absolutely the biggest thing that I learned is that it’s okay to accept that you can do everything you want to do, but you’re not expected to know all the answers.
And there’s loads of people in the world that will happily help you to find the answers or even give you the answers. Some free some you have to pay for, but ultimately the answers are out there and it’s okay for you to say I need help. And I need support. I think as well, for me, understanding that support and help comes in more forms than just like mentors or answers. It’s okay to build a team. It’s okay to not work 20 hours a day. It’s okay You know, where you see on social media, everybody’s hustling and working all the hours in the world. Actually, it’s not very healthy and it’s not very sustainable. It’s okay to have days off and it’s okay to shut your laptop at four o’clock on an afternoon. If you’re tired and you need to go home or, you know, that’s all, okay.
I think social media plays a big part in us believing that if we are not working, it’s not working and it’s not necessarily true. I think social media is a bit of a highlight reel of people’s lives. It’s not necessarily accurate. And so don’t compare yourself with other people’s show real, try to just do your own thing is I think the other biggest lesson for me.
05:24
Jason Lee: That is great advice. I think social media, like you said, is exactly going to highlight real. I think people want to show people that they work hard. They do this, they have all these cool things, but they don’t show you the bad parts of their life. They only show the good parts.
05:37
Sarah Poynton: Very few people show you the bad days. You know, I have days where I wake up and I’m like, I don’t know what to do. I’ve got so much on, I don’t know where to start the days where, you know, my hair’s not done, my makeup’s not done my nails aren’t done. And I feel like I want to like, just go back under the quilt. I don’t jump on Facebook, live those days, and go, oh, hi everyone. I feel like my world’s crumbling. But ultimately business is business, and it will have up and it will have downs. And I think that realizing that in my life that it comes in waves is that when it’s dark, it will get brighter. And when it’s brighter, at some point it will get darker, but ultimately that’s business. That’s what we hear. And the good days always outweigh the bad in the end.
06:21
Jason Lee: And I’m personally curious, what was your first business that didn’t work out?
06:26
Sarah Poynton: So, I ran a photo booth company, so I used to hire photo booths to like weddings and corporate events and things like that.
06:35
Jason Lee: Got it, got it. And what made you want to go into real estate out of all the different businesses in the world that you could have got into?
06:43
Sarah Poynton: Well, I heard on a webinar once that you could work for about five minutes a week and make millions overnight with no money. And I was like, yes, this sounds like a good plan. What I’ve learned since is that you do need money. You do need time and actually you do have to work quite hard. So, I feel like I was slightly misled, but actually you can earn a very good living from property. You can have a lot of fun with it, and you can create a lifestyle that you love and work, whatever you want to work. But that’s how I ended up in real estate. I think as well, my grandparents have bought and sold and renovated houses. So, I’ve seen what property can do. My grandparents were quite successful, and I guess my whole life I’ve kind of seen that in the background. And so, it felt like a reasonably safe place to go.
07:32
Jason Lee: Got it. And what does your real estate business focus on? Like how did you, what kind of business did you build when you first got into real estate?
07:40
Sarah Poynton: So, when I first started and what it is now are two quite different things. So, in the UK, we’ve got business model called rent to rent. I don’t know if that’s the same in America, if it’s called the same, it’s like a subletting strategy. So, you become the tenant and then you sublet to other tenants. It meant that I could start earning money from property that I didn’t own without having deposits. So, I started there and then I moved into portfolio buildings. So, I would have investors come to me and say, right, I want to buy three houses in the next six months. And I need them to be in this location, this price, this profit, etc. And I would go shopping with their money and they would pay me a fee for that. So, I did those two things for quite a long time.
And after, so it took me 23 months of running that business to clear my debt. So, after my debt was gone, then it freed me up to do stuff that was more what I enjoyed, not just what paid really well. Cause at the start, it was just about the money. I just needed to clear my debt and get myself back to zero. And it took me 23 months to do that. So, after that, I then started to like to explore other avenues of, you know, buying my own portfolio, investing myself, putting cash flow into various different places. I continued building portfolios for other people, and now I’ve got a lettings agency which manages portfolios for people. We’ve got a portfolio building company that builds portfolios and then our lettings agents manage.
We’ve got a development company that does purchases, renovates and sales or purchases, renovates, and rents. And we are just moving into new builds as well. And I’ve got an education company that helps other people learn how to do that as well. So, we’ve got a group now. But it’s evolved from just that first one rental deal. And it just went from there.
09:27
Jason Lee: You’re doing everything,
09:28
Sarah Poynton: I’m not doing everything, but I’m doing a lot, you’re doing a lot and I love it. And you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
09:35
Jason Lee: So, you know, running all those, you know, different businesses in real estate, what does your day to day look like right now?
09:42
Sarah Poynton: So, I mean, I’m a CEO of a group of companies. And so, I do get involved in some of the kind of day-to-day running’s, but actually my role is the visionary. I’m a strategist and I love digital marketing. So, I also, and sales. So, I’m also sort of head of acquisition and head of marketing. That’s kind of my job titles if you like. But I have teams now of people that do a lot of the other doing so you know, if I’m working on a big project, so we’re working on a project at the moment, we’ve got to raise 750,000 pounds for a like investment funds for a project. That’s the sort of level I get involved with. And that’s kind of my day to day. Whereas we do still build portfolios for investors that are building, you know, they’re buying properties for 40,000 pounds. They’re spending 20 on it, they’re selling it for a hundred, but I don’t get involved in that so much.
So, my day to day I mean, I come to my office every day. This is our office, it’s quite big in here now. I’m here on my own tonight. Cause everyone’s gone home cause it’s late and the dog they’re still here. And so, I come in, generally my days start about 10:00 AM. I generally get to my desk about 10 o’clock. I usually train in the mornings before I come to work. And then I have Tuesdays and my days where I deal with like lettings. Wednesdays, I deal with my kind of development projects and things like that. And I catch up with all the teams, Thursdays I deal with all of my training clients, all my one-to-one consultancy and education stuff. Mondays and Fridays are kind of my free days to do what it is that I need to do at any one point. So sometimes it’s creating content. Sometimes it’s sitting with our FD to figure out what we’re doing next month. It changes every week, but that’s typically what my week would look like.
11:30
Jason Lee: Nice. You and I are pretty similar. My favorite part about real estate is the marketing aspect and the sales aspect and acquiring the property. So that’s cool. It’s definitely a rush when you know, when you find a new property or when you acquire something new. So that’s cool.
Before the interview, you talked a little bit about how you’re, you know, really good at digital marketing, you really enjoy it. How have you used it to your advantage in your business?
11:54
Sarah Poynton: I think there’s a couple of things for this, so there’s sort of the paid digital marketing space and then there’s the free kind of audience building space. And I think everybody in property, real estate, everybody needs some sort of list building funnel. Whether that it is important to get your leads out of social media and into an email list. Because emails are still the most successful way of speaking to any potential client. So, whilst what I’m going to say has been the biggest tool for me has been social media and building a profile on social media by documenting my journey. Actually, it’s not just that, it’s building the audience and then getting those leads out of social media and into my own databases. That transition where we own the contact details, I think is one of the things that most people in the UK, especially miss.
So, they build an audience on social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever it is. And they talk to everyone on social media, but then they don’t get them out of social media and into their own databases. And I think building your email lists is something that, not many people are doing and if you do it and you do it well, actually you’ll be able to pick up way more business because you can be front of mind far off, more often than you can on socials without throwing a lot of money at social media. Facebook was my platform of choice when I first started, I didn’t know what Instagram even was when I first started. I just had Facebook and I love Facebook for what it’s created for me. Facebook is a bit much for me now. I feel like I get so many notifications and messages and stuff like that.
I work with my clients in my Facebook group and that’s where I go, but I don’t generally spend a lot of time on Facebook anymore. I’m much more Instagram. But the work that I did to build the audience in the first place was I just documented myself. I shared what I was doing. I did videos, Facebook lives of viewings I was on. I would share numbers online. I would just talk as if I was talking to someone in my office and actually it’s because I was very lonely running my business of just me and my cats in my garage, right at the beginning. I actually talked to Facebook to just try to have some conversation with people that were also doing what I was doing and that built a following and that following then started to invest in projects and started to bring me deals. And it kind of just went from there.
And now that has turned into what is, you know, we’ve got about 67,000 investors on our database now, but I’ve never really spent money to acquire those. All I’ve really done is spent time and create good content for them to acquire those leads in the first place. So, I think a lot of people forget the funnel piece they content create, but they don’t do it with any purpose of other than to just show off what they’re doing. I think it’s really important to show off what you’re doing and then have some sort of call to action to get a lead into your own database. So, you can then nurture that relationship ongoing.
14:57
Jason Lee: That is amazing advice. Yeah, I think the most powerful tool of social media is getting in front of them for the first time, but it’s expensive to, you know, run ads over and over again. And when an email list it’s pretty automated and you pay MailChimp or constant contact a hundred bucks a month and it works just fine. So how are you personally funneling these people into your personal database besides the call to action?
15:24
Sarah Poynton: Yeah, it depends on what it is. So, let’s say we’re building an investor list because we need funds for projects. Let’s say that’s what we are looking at. I will share you know, content online, useful content, usually educational value, add type content, not salesy content or we’ll talk about the returns that our investors are getting or the funds we’ve repaid to an investor plus their interest and how they’ve made that money, that sort of stuff. I’ll do tours of projects. I will do case studies of projects we’ve done before. I’ll do Facebook lives Q and A, that sort of stuff. And then the call to action is always, if you want more details about this, pick this link to download my freebie. And sometimes it’s a video series. Sometimes it’s a lead magnet. You know, at the moment I’m trying to raise 750 grand for a dealing card.
So actually, we’ve got content, which is why invest in Cardiff, why your money’s safe. We’ve kind of got content around that. So, then they click the link, they download the freebie. Once they’ve given me their email address, phone number and name, and that then goes into my database, we then nurture them with ongoing emails or a phone call or whatever we need to do depending on the project. But it’s usually just a free lead magnet of some sort, which is the click the link is the call to action from some piece of content [16:35 inaudible].
16:37
Jason Lee: It’s amazing.
16:39
Sarah Poynton: We do Ads as well, but actually, unless you know what you’re doing with ads, ads are a really great way to waste money and you can build really good leads and lists free if you are consistently visible online.
16:51
Jason Lee: Got it. Do you use YouTube at all?
16:54
Sarah Poynton: Yeah, my YouTube channel’s new. So, I’m on about 1100 subscribers, I think. So, we only started working on it this year. So, we do use YouTube. My YouTube is more for the education company actually, if I’m really honest, as opposed to the like finding property deals. But from a lead generation perspective, it works incredibly well.
17:16
Jason Lee: That’s amazing. Yeah, I think you’re a great example of someone who used social media to their advantage and created a business out of it instead of just going on it and scrolling and looking at other people live their lives.
17:29
Sarah Poynton: Could be a consumer or creator, right?
17:31
Jason Lee: Exactly. Exactly. So, what is kind of your focus right now in your businesses? What’s kind of like the goal you’re chasing for your businesses in real estate or property.
17:42
Sarah Poynton: So, the moment we’ve got big focus on recruitment because we are scaling up again. We are at the seven-figure mark, and I want to get that to multi seven. I can’t do that on my own and I can’t do it with the team you’ve got at the moment whilst they’re brilliant. They’re also at capacity. So, we are investing quite heavily in recruitment and training and that sort of stuff. We are also got, I’m really excited about things like we are introducing our own white label CRM system so that our clients have got the exact tools that they need to make the most out of their property businesses, tracking, leads, all of that sort of stuff. So that’s launching soon.
And then, you know, that’s one piece, the recruitment and the team of the operation is very exciting for me at the moment. And also, we are moving into more building of new houses, so new builds, and that’s also super exciting for me right now.
18:34
Jason Lee: Amazing. That kind of leads me to my next question was how do you find good talent? What are some of the, you know, strategies you use to find good team members for your company?
18:45
Sarah Poynton: It’s Really hard, really, really hard to do. It’s probably my, the thing I struggle with the most. I’m actually not a very good people manager. It’s not my skill set at all. I do have in my head; I assume that everyone will care as much as I will. And I don’t understand why people don’t and then I have to remember, well, it’s not their company and it is yours and that’s why. I think what I’m absolutely blessed with is that the team that I have got around me have either been ex clients of mine. And so, they’ve liked just the general vibe of working with us and they’ve wanted to work for us. And so that’s been really good, or we’ve found people that have been recommended to us because again, or that know me from social media, and we’ve connected some way somehow.
We’re at a point now where I’ve actually exhausted all the people that I kind of know and would want to or have work for me. So now we’re actually working with, there’s a couple of governments funded schemes, post COVID in the UK where the government will fund young people into work placements. So, I’m really actually quite excited. We’ve had two work placements approved a couple of weeks ago. So, we are now in the middle of recruiting, and that’s going to be between 16- and 23-year old’s to come in and actually nurture them in the business from no experience at all. So, I think that would be a really interesting way to introduce talent to the business because they won’t come with any baggage, but they’ll also come with less experience than what we used to. So, it’d be really interesting way to maybe nurture someone into the role that we really want them to achieve.
The culture here is we work very hard. We play very hard. We are very much a family here once you are in, you are in, and we all look after each other. But at the same time, my expectations on the business and the team are high, the standards are high, and you know, I really want to improve the standards in our industry. And so as long as people come in with that same culture and vibe, then they’ll fit right in. But it is one of the hardest things to, especially for salespeople, because salespeople will sit in front of you and tell you everything you want to hear so they can sell them [20:56 inaudible]. And they’ll say all the right things, but then when you get them actually on the phone, you’re like, hold on, you couldn’t sell anything to anybody. I find that really hard, but I think it’s about understanding who you are as a business and the culture that you want to create. And being very honest and transparent about that and your expectations and actually the people that have got the minerals to be in that will be in it and be excited about it. And the people that haven’t will back off. And I think that works for me.
21:27
Jason Lee: I couldn’t agree more, yeah. The three people I hired were from my network that I kind of knew from college in the past. So, I kind had an idea who they were, but I think your point, having people who are trainable is extremely important, cause the know it alls are the worst people to, you know, to your company.
21:45
Sarah Poynton: I’m totally unemployable. If I lost everything tomorrow, I’d need to start another company because I wouldn’t get a job and keep it. I would be probably the, I’m like the nightmare employee because I actually don’t want to be at my desk at 9:00 AM. I don’t want to work to make somebody else, but there’s lots of people that really don’t want to own their own companies and really are trainable and moldable and want to see their results in the bigger picture. And so, understanding that I don’t want another me, I want somebody that wants to be part of the vision. That’s where you have to try and strike a balance and find the right people.
22:22
Jason Lee: Exactly, exactly. So, switching gears a little bit what do you look for when you’re looking to buy a property? What are some criteria that you need to hit?
22:30
Sarah Poynton: So, if it’s for me and my own portfolio, it’s different than if it’s for an investor. So, with an investor, they will give me their criteria and we’ll go shopping based on what they want, with their money. When it’s for me, I really like, I love three bed terrace houses, just single lets I don’t particularly enjoy multiple let homes like we call them HMOs here. I don’t know what they are over there. Where you’ve got like five people living in a house. I like single houses where you’ve just got one family or one, couple or one person. I love three-bedroom terraces and I love two bedrooms that you can add a third bedroom to, to add value.
I think ultimately right now in our market here, the best way to buy is to buy where you can add value. So, where you buying a two bed and you can add a bedroom where you’re buying a three bed and you’re going to go a story and turn it into flats or you can put an extension on the back and on the side and you can create an additional two rooms, that sort of stuff’s really exciting for me. Because in the UK we’ve got planning law here that restricts what you can and can’t build. And we’ve also got planning law called permitted development, which has already got preapproved permission. So, we actually, we already know what we can and can’t do. So, if you can find a property that allows you to do this, it means you can pay more for it, which means your competition’s less. So, I like stuff like that.
23:56
Jason Lee: That’s great. Yeah, it’s the same here in San Diego actually. We know what we can build and can’t build. Three bedrooms do very well here. Cause three bedrooms are a little more rare than a two bedroom or a one-bedroom unit. Tougher to find. So yeah, that’s really cool. So, when you were first getting started, obviously you raised capital, right? Like you said before, you raised money to buy your first properties. How did you raise your money? Like a lot of people struggle with this. How did you raise money before you kind of had a lot of experience in the business because a lot of people ask me this question all the time?
24:31
Sarah Poynton: So, I’d run my business for 18 months doing rentals and portfolio building for other people before I ever bought my own. So, I earned my stripes with my investors by building portfolios for them. So, they knew that the deals I was putting in front of them would be as good as the deals I was going to do for myself. So, they’d seen my track record. But there was a time where I had never, ever built a portfolio for anybody and the skill and the technique to get my first investor for a portfolio build was the same as getting my first investor to give me money. And that was relationship and visibility.
I’d spent so long building my audience on Facebook and telling everybody what I did. I started to get people talking to me and saying, what’s this you’re doing. I’m interested in being involved.
And actually, now I would raise money exactly the same way, visibility, social proof, understanding who your ideal client, who your ideal investor actually is and being open and having conversations with absolutely everyone you come into contact with are probably my four tips I would give now. So, we run a five-day challenge in on how to get investors from social media, how to raise money from social media. And you know, we’ve done it six times now in the, we started in the middle of COVID actually, because everyone was using socials to raise money. We’ve done it six times now and we’ve got a hundred percent result, right. So, people that have finished it and actually completed the whole week and done every single task in the week have all got one lead of one investor, pledging money at the end of it.
Because actually social media visibility is the most powerful tool, we’ve got right now to build connection with people that we don’t know. And investors who’ve got money, They’re on Facebook too. They’re on Instagram too. They’re not all just hanging out in like country clubs. They are actually on social media as well. So be visible, join the right groups, you know, go, and communicate and talk to everyone, get out networking. Now we’re allowed to after COVID. Tell everybody what you do. And actually, that is the number one tip I can give to anybody, be visible.
26:39
Jason Lee: That’s fantastic. If someone who’s, you know, watching this and doesn’t know how to get started on the content building what is some advice you give to that person who wants to create content for their social media?
26:52
Sarah Poynton: So, the first thing I would do is write down on a bit of paper, 1 to 30, numbers, 1 to 30 and write down all the questions that you’ve got about your business right now. So right at the beginning it was things like, how do I raise money? What should I look for a view in? How do I know if a property is even for sale? Where will I find deals? Write down all these questions, see if you can write down 30 questions and then do a post about each one of those questions.
So, I went on a view in today and these are the three things that I looked for. I looked at the roof, I looked at the externals and I took a marble with me to hold on the floor to check that it didn’t roll downhill, there was subsident. Whatever you looked for. Literally just answer each of those 30 questions. That’s one a day, every day for 30 days. And if you do a post a day every day for 30 days, you’ll get out of your own way and you’ll just start to think of content to create. That’s what I would do.
27:50
Jason Lee: That’s fantastic. Yeah, and as bad as it sounds, some good ways I’ve used to create content was kind of just mirroring other people’s content that’s already been created.
28:00
Sarah Poynton: It’s not bad, [28:02 inaudible], right?
28:03
Jason Lee: Exactly. Kind of wrapping up here. What was some challenges you had when you first got into real estate?
28:15
Sarah Poynton: I think the biggest challenge I imagine is the same as everybody is what goes on up here. I had a lot of, I’m not sure I’m, you know, bearing in mind when I started my business, I had a failing business. I’d had to go back to being employed. I was financially buckled. I was emotionally buckled. In my head, I wasn’t good enough. In my head I was convincing myself almost every day that I was never going to be successful. And the problem with that is if you tell yourself something often enough, you’ll believe it. So actually, I started to just tell myself that I was capable, and I was enough, and I could do it. And if other people can do it, so can I, I just have to learn how, and then I started to believe that instead.
And so, you know, and that’s not gone away by the way, I have a seven-figure business, but I still have days where I think, oh my God, what are you doing? This is not, what are you thinking about? You can’t do this. You know, this is too big for you. You’re biting off more than you can chew. And so, you just have to remember to speak to yourself better. I always, a friend of mine said to me really early on when I was in business and she said we were having a conversation and she sort of stopped me and said, would you let a stranger walk up to you in the street and speak to you the way that you are speaking to yourself? And I was like, no, I’d probably punch them. They said, exactly.
That means that you need to address the way that you are approaching your day, because you’re convincing yourself from the moment you wake up, that it’s all going to go pear shaped. Well, of course it’s not going to work. I was like, oh yeah, actually it’s a valid point. If you keep telling yourself, you’re a failure because your business went wrong, then that’s what will happen. So, the whole law of attraction, the secret, all of this sort of stuff. Actually, the way you speak to yourself and the things you tell yourself you’re capable of or not capable of, you know, the person you want to show up to, show up in the world as if you tell yourself, you are strong, you’re motivated, you’re confident, you’re focused, that’s what you’ll be. If you turn up and tell yourself every morning, I’m not enough. I’m not capable. I’m [30:12 inaudible], I’m a bad businessperson. I’m going to lose money. It’s going to be the end of the world. Then that’s what happens.
And so, the darkest times for me were when I hadn’t quite learned how to control that. Whereas once you learn how to control what’s in here, actually anything’s possible.
30:29
Jason Lee: Yeah. My first six months in the business, when I was selling real estate, I had the same problem. I would always tell myself that I’m not going to make any money. I’m going to fail. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. But as soon as I met someone that taught me to think different, my entire career kind of changed. But even today, I mean, I have a seven-figure year business too. And I still wake up every day, not every day, but sometimes like, oh man, like I have too much going on. What am I doing? I can’t handle this. Like I got too many responsibilities, too many emails. But you said it best, you just got to tell yourself that it’s going to work out. You’re capable. You’re a good businessperson and things work out that way. So, it’s great advice.
31:10
Sarah Poynton: Yeah. I’m not sure who’s quote this is, it’s not mine. I wish it was, but there’s quite a famous quote from somebody. Who’s quite a high profile that says, you’ve not come this far to only go this far. And you know, we’ve all been through tougher stuff than we’re going through right now. Even if you’re in like your darkest moments, actually you’ve probably survived tougher stuff than this. And you are enough. You are capable. You have to just control that. And remember it’s business. It’s not personal and just crack on.
31:43
Jason Lee: Yeah, no, I agree. A hundred percent. And I know one issue that you probably have seen is that I’ve noticed from people on social media is kind of the analysis paralysis thing. When, you know, before they’re going to jump into their first property, they kind of talk themselves out of the deal because they’re scared of the risk that might go wrong here and there. When in reality they’re ready to make the jump. I think that’s one big thing that I dealt with too myself. But after that first deal, it gets so much easier.
32:11
Sarah Poynton: Yeah. And I think also what happens is people freak out about the numbers and you know, so a friend of mine said we were in IBI on our business retreat a few weeks ago. And he said to me, the worst-case scenario in all of this is that you guy broke. That’s the worst-case scenario. You go broke. That’s a terrible scenario. No one wants that. But if you are going to go broke and that’s the worst-case scenario, then you may as well go broke doing a 50 million deal versus a five grand deal because the result is the same. You’re still broke. There’s no difference. And when you start, when you really start to look at numbers and you go, well, okay, the difference between 5 million and 50 million is a zero. And what does the zero stand for? Nothing. Actually, then you can really start to think, well, hold on. As long as I do my numbers right, as long as my due diligence is right. I know I’m capable. I know it’s possible. Cause other people are doing it. I’ve learned how to do it. I might as well just do it. Because the worst scenario, the worst possible scenarios you go broke. You start again. That’s you know, look at how many people have gone, broke and started again and have been super successful.
It would be terrible. If I lost it all tomorrow, I’d be devastated. It’d be awful, but I’d survive. I’d live. I wouldn’t be dropping debts. That I’d be okay. We’d figure it out. And when you remember that the worst-case scenarios that you go broke, it’s only stuff. All right, you might have to sell your house. You might have to sell your car, all of that sort of stuff, but it is just stuff. You will be alright. So, you might as well just be brave and try because it could just as easily go right as it could go wrong.
33:49
Jason Lee: It’s a great mindset to have. I couldn’t agree more. I never thought about it that way. But the worst thing that could happen is you’re going to go broke. So might as well give it a shot if you know you’re going to succeed or if you think you’re going to succeed.
34:00
Sarah Poynton: Going broke is just losing stuff. That’s it. You lose stuff. You can’t buy stuff. You can’t pay for stuff. It’s just stuff. All right, you need to eat. But most of us have got some ability to be able to eat or rely on family or friends, if you’ve really got that bad. But you know, it is just stuff. And when you remember that you can be a bit more brave sometimes.
34:26
Jason Lee: I agree. And if you’ve done your due diligence, like you said, you’ve talked to people who know more than you that are smarter than you that tell you that it’s a good deal. Then what’s the risk, right? I mean if people are telling you it’s going to work, be brave, a hundred percent.
Well, Sarah, it’s been an amazing podcast with you. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. I got one more question for you. If the audience wants to learn more about you and get in contact with you, how can they do so?
34:53
Sarah Poynton: So, the best way is probably Instagram at, Iamsarahpoynton, Poynton is spell with a Y. I am on DMs, but I’m also like contact me on my stories or wherever. I’m on Facebook as well. And if you Google me, you’ll find me. I’m all over the place. The Instagram’s probably the best way to get to actually me and I can then point you in the direction of whether, if you’re looking to invest with me or learn from me or whatever it is, I can at least point you in the right direction for the next piece of the puzzle.
35:22
Jason Lee: Got it. What was your username? I’m just writing it down.
35:25
Sarah Poynton: Iamsarahpoynton.
35:33
Jason Lee: Cool. I’ll make sure to have it in the show notes.
35:36
Sarah Poynton: Thank you very much.
35:37
Jason Lee: Yeah. Thanks Sarah. It’s been a pleasure and I hope to talk to you sometime soon.
35:40
Sarah Poynton: Absolutely. See you.
35:42
Thank you for joining us on the multi-family millionaire podcast. The show that interviews multi-millionaire real estate investors and top producers in the real estate industry. We’re here to help you create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want. We’ll catch you next time on the multifamily millionaire.
[End of Transcript]