There is a lot of talk about the Australian property market crashing, would that take my business with it and what can I do to help my audience (and stay in business) if that did happen?
Hi guys, Ryan here from Instructions Not Included, the show where I talk about me and my journey to making a decent income online. There’s a lot of different aspects of that I talk about and today I want to chat a little bit about what would happen if my market completely crashed.
If this is your first time tuning in then you may not know but I run a mildly successful website called onproperty.com.au which is an Australian property investing website.
I do a lot of general information, I do a lot of interviews on there and I make money through selling access to my membership site where I find certain types of properties as well as recommending people and referral fees for recommending people to a buyer’s agent who is a friend of mine.
Something that a lot of people have started talking about lately is the potential for an Australian property bubble, an Australian subprime crisis, the big shark, whatever you want to call it there’s a lot of people out there who are now starting to say that the Australian market is a way of a price that it’s got similar markets to what the Japanese market had before it crashed, what the Irish market had before it crashed.
And then there are a lot of people out there who are protecting the crash of the Australian Property market.
This is all speculation at the moment so I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I’m doing research, getting in contact with people, trying to line up interviews so we can talk about this more and understand it more.
I definitely don’t understand this topic enough to say yes the market is overpriced and it’s going to crash.
I recently did a video on just talking about the Australian property bubble and it was me reading through a few articles talking about what I think about it and just kind of talking about it. That video has gone gangbusters as it has done better than almost any other video that I have in that short amount of time.
It’s my number one video for the last 28 days so I’m just going to go into my stats now as I talk to you guys and check this out. It has done way better than I expected it to do. It is just a little video that I created – nothing really serious but it has done a lot of use.
But this is something that I need to think about, it is something that my buyer’s agent friend Ben needs to think about, something that I guess everyone in this industry needs to think about.
What happens if this is true and it is a property bubble? How is that going to affect my business? For me more importantly I’m thinking about well how’s that going to affect the people that follow me and how can I help them? I want to understand this so the people who follow me – my audience I can give them the best insight the best advice as quickly as possible before all of this stuff happens.
If I look at views last 28 days then this has had almost over 2,000 views and it’s about 1,000 views ahead of my second most popular video.
I’m just trying to work out when I actually uploaded it because I don’t even think it’s been out for 28 days. It’s only been out for half of the month and it’s already got almost double the number of views as my second most watched video.
So that’s pretty crazy in terms of lifetime views it’s probably not going to be up there. Because I got videos that have had 12,000 views and stuff like that. But it’s getting out there like within probably two months it’ll be in the top 10 of my most viewed videos ever.
However, this is just something that I need to start thinking about, “What happens if the market crashes?” And this is the really interesting perspective on me, Ryan. Because a lot of business people might be saying, “If market crashes how am I going to protect my business?” Whereas I am so passionate about this topic, I’m so passionate about my community, about the people that I’m helping my thought process goes like this – “If the market crashes yes that’s probably going to affect my business.
I’ll probably be able to scrape through and survive but I’m not too worried about that.
But I think about if the market crashes how is that going to affect my audience and what can I do now to prepare them for this so that they can make money they can exceed if and when the market crashes.”
I think so many people approach business that if this happens how we’re going to protect our business. And I’m thinking about I don’t care about my business, I care about the people who follow me, I care about the legacy that I have, how can I help the people that follow me. And if that means it’s going to affect my business then so be it but I want to help those people.
Therefore that’s something that I’m dealing with at the moment, trying to think about at the moment. Is it something that I think is going to happen in the next year? No, I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next year. But is it something that will probably happen in the future? There’s definitely a possibility out there that this could happen in the future.
I’m not a hundred percent sure how this is going to go down but I definitely wanted to chat about it, put it down in the podcast as part of my documented history that this is something that I’m thinking about, this is something that I want to help my community with and this is something that I think if I start talking about this, start warning people.
Not really warning people but making them aware of it and helping them by saying if this happens here are some things you can do. Then I think that this is the best long-term strategy for my business because that’s going to give me the reputation that I need moving forward.
If I don’t want to exit this market in the next year, if I want to be in this market for the next 5-10 years then my reputation and what I say today matters. Therefore I want to say the best thing with the best knowledge that I have to help my people now no matter how it affects my business. And that’s just the truth of it.
I am trying to be of high integrity as possible with my business and seriously help people. I think in the long run that’s going to be the best decision that I can make.
That is something that I need to think about and as I’m thinking about that as I’m talking about it now I do think this means that other parts of my business I will need to focus on like other niches and things like that. I’ve got other niches like public speaking and I’ve got a niche site that I started.
I also want to start a podcast on home-schooling just for fun. But I definitely need to start thinking about other revenue streams from other websites. This is great because I have been thinking of just spending a couple days a week on On Property anyway as it only really needs a couple of weeks of my time.
I’m working with my virtual assistant to take over more of the admin tasks for On Property so there will be less of those for me to worry about. Therefore I’ll spend more time creating content for the site and then creating content for other websites as well.
I’m getting really passionate about video, about audio and less so about writing so I just think that that’s the future.
I look at my own web habits and I just see myself doing a lot more searching on YouTube rather than on Google now and so YouTube is really my first search engine now and Google is becoming my second search engine except for specific topics where I don’t think I’m going to find the answer on YouTube then I might go to Google. But I’m doing probably more searching on YouTube than on Google or if anything it’s very close to 50/50.
I’m focusing on video a lot and I’ve just invested in a lighting kit and so I spent about $150 or a bit less on a three-point lighting kit. I’ve invested in that and eventually if I can build up enough buffer in my business I will also invest in a DSLR camera and some better audio equipment but that’s potentially down the line and I’m not 100% sure.
That’s where I’m at, at the moment. There could be a market crash in the future, in the near to medium future, probably not next week, probably not in the next year but probably within five years or something. It would-would be a good chance of this sort of thing happening – not a good chance – good chance is the wrong word – there is a chance that this could happen.
It is just something I need to think about, something I need to start preparing for because if it does happen I’m not ready to go back to work for someone else and with the large majority of my income coming from one website I do want to spread that out and spread my risk.
I think I talked about in the last episode but the strategy that I’m moving towards I’m calling it phase two of my business because I’m kind of out of survival phase is that I want security – I want to build up security of income, passivity of income and then I want to improve my production quality and get more production out the door and more videos and things like that. So I’m working on those things – security of income, passivity of income, I should probably add to that diversity of income as well as it is something that I want to work towards.
I’m having a great time in my business. I am doing very well financially but I’m well aware that the world doesn’t stay the same that the world changes, that tomorrow my circumstances could change and I’m trying the best to think about and prepare for that. So you will hear more from me about this topic as I think about it, mull it over and take actions towards it.
I wish you the absolutely the best in your business. Go out there, make a splash in the world, be integrit, help people like I’m trying to help people. And if you want instructions you know what to do – go and buy some furniture.
Business is going well at the moment and I am having a lot of fun working on some new projects.
Business is doing quite well and I am having a lot of fun again in my business, which is exciting. I have a lot of little projects that I am working on but I guess one of the things that I need to work on is managing my time that I am getting more stuff done and getting high-value things done.
Hi, I am Ryan from Instructions Not Included, a podcast about me and my journey to make a decent living online. Since the last update which was when? When was the last update? Let me check.
It was the 21st of March 2016 so about 2 weeks ago. What has changed in that time? Well, last week on Wednesday, I went up to the Sunshine Coast to meet with my friend and buyer’s agent Ben Everingham, who runs a great business up there. We went up there to talk about our partnership.
We have a referral partnership with each other and so we went to talk about that, talked about all the terms and conditions to draw up a contract with him to give us both some security there so that was great. And then we ran a webinar together that night. Now, when I thought about running a webinar, I thought ‘we do not really need to do it.
It is kind of a waste of time. What is the point?’ But we decided to go ahead. Ben was really keen to do it and I was like ‘yeah, alright. Sounds good.’ And I had seen one of the webinars that he ran before and I thought ‘yeah. This is good fit for my audience so let us go ahead and do this.’
Anyway, we organized it. I thought I might be pushing it to get 200, maybe 300 registrants from the webinar and I have a list of about 15,000 people and maybe get less than a hundred to turn up.
I think the last webinar I ran by myself I had 14 people show up to webinar so that was pretty devastating so maybe that is why I have not ran webinars in the past. And I also ran one with a lady who does renovation courses and for that one; I think we had about 60 people turn up for the webinar. So, I was not super confident with this one however, I had worked out how to do one-click webinar registration which was so valuable in the end. I did that through LeadPages or LeadLinks.
If you want to check out Leadpages and if you want to do that yourself, you can go to my affiliate link pelt.co/LP for LeadPages or you can go to Leadpages.com; I really do not mind. But yeah, I was able to do one-click registrations so send out an email, if they are interested in the webinar they click the button and it automatically registers them for the webinar.
So we had over 500 people, 530 people registered for the webinar, which was massive. We ran the webinar at night and just before the webinar I realized that Ben had a cap of 100 people on the webinar but he said, “Look, it should be fine. I ran it in the past and a hundred people cap means nothing. They will let us go over; it is fine.” And so I was like ‘yeah, alright. Do I think we will get more than a hundred? I am not 100% sure.’ Well, lo and behold one minute past after the webinar started, we started getting all of these notifications of people not being able to access the webinar because it was full so massive fail on our behalf and I think we had over 90% of people stay until the end of the webinar.
And even we did half an hour of question and answers, we had over 80% of people stay until the end of that, which was crazy. Definitely next time, we will be upping the limit from 100 to – I think the next tier up is 500, and then a lot of people really liked the webinar. They thought it was awesome and then a lot of people signed up for a free strategy session with Ben, the buyer’s agent.
They will go on that free strategy session; if they decide to use his services then I will get a referral fee for that. So that is the business purpose behind the webinar and in all, we have over 70 people interested in free strategy sessions, 35 of which came from the webinar night itself and then another 35 came from a thank-you page after they have registered for the webinar as well as an email after the webinar. The bulk of them in the webinar or before the webinar, huge response there so Ben sent me a text today and he was like, “Yeah, looks like I have a busy week,” and he just had so many free strategy sessions that he was running with people and consultations to hopefully get some clients. Yeah, that was massive and we had a great month in terms of sales so revenue is not something I have to worry about this month.
I am probably going to nearly run out of money by the end of this month, so it is the 4th of April at the moment. Looking at my runway, I might, might just scrape through until the end of April where I should get quite a large payment – 2 large payments from 2 different sources actually, which should then extend my runway to about 3 to 4 months. And then if I have another good month, that should extend it again but obviously the more I earn – now I am pushing into having to pay a decent amount of tax so a lot of that may go into tax bills.
I am not 100% sure so I will probably save it and I will look like I will have heaps of runway and then we may get to the end of the financial year, which is the end of June here in Australia and I may need to spend all of that in tax and my runway may go down against so I am not 100% sure.
In terms of On Property, things are going really great. I have also been working on a new website for the game that I am really impassioned about called Super Smash Brothers Melee so I started kind of documenting my journey there; not too dissimilar from this podcast where I am talking about my business journey. There I am talking about my journey as a competitive Smash player. This is a game that is going in popularity. It was a game that was released on GameCube back in 2001. If you are not familiar with it, it is my outlet.
I absolutely love it. I am really passionate about it and so I thought ‘you know what, I am going to start a podcast, start a YouTube channel documenting my journey so you can see through it, documenting the things that I am learning but it also gives me the opportunity to interview some great people in the industry.’ I want to improve my interviewing skills and get better at that and there is the potential to make some sort of passive income from this. Maybe minor passive income in terms of ad revenue and things like that. If we build it up large enough, I could potentially launch a membership site. I think I said in the first episode that I recorded that I had no plans to make money with it, but that is not entirely true.
I think that I am doing it for fun because it is something that I am passionate about anyway, something that I spend a lot of time thinking about anyway and so I might as well do this. It would be great to document my journey and hopefully down the track it will be small income generator that I can add to my portfolio of income generators, so I have been working on that.
A niche site that I created a while back has done alright. I think it has made about $30 last month and traffic has gone up from about 5 visitors a day to 30 or 40 visitors per day. Now I need to get my ass into gear and work on that again. My focus will be On Property still I have to focus on that. After the big payments that come through when I have a decent amount of runway, I am actually going to close my membership site to that so I do not need to run that anymore.
I do not need to worry about new members or anything like that. Basically, I will be putting all my eggs in one basket, which I do not know whether it is a wise thing to do or not but I will be doing that and going full in with Ben as almost my only source of income from On Property – will be recommending people to him. Time will tell if that is a good decision. I am confident in him; I am confident in our relationship and our partnership and I want to pursue that so we will go after that.
It puts more risk on the table but I still have my platform and so at the end of the day if things do fall over, I will be starting from scratch in terms of product and things like that but at least I will still have my platform to work from and my audience and things like that. Obviously, when I think that is going to happen in the future…but yeah.
So, that is where I am at at the moment. I want to create more and more content across more and more different sites and so I am working on doing that. I put on another transcriber who I found through Fibr, which has gotten really bad lately. I definitely do not recommend going through Fibr anymore. So I brought her over onto my team. She is going to be working for me on an ongoing basis hopefully.
I just need to iron that out. And yeah, things are going really well. I hope that your business is growing. And in tomorrow’s episode, I have an interview with a guy who has done a podcast similar to me, sharing his journey, things that he is going through and building up his business, learnings that he is taking away so go ahead. Go into iTunes and search for Zero to Four Million with Tom Hunt I think it is, and you will see his podcast over there.
I will interview him and release that tomorrow which is really exciting. I did that interview with him this morning. That was a great interview, to talk to someone who is sharing their journey just like me; talk about business and basically just hang out. That was a lot of fun.
I am having a lot of fun in my business. I am not 100% sure where the direction is moving forward but I am confident in terms of the money that I am currently making and I am playing around to try and make money in other niches at the moment as well as maintaining On Property.
So, that is where I am at. I am going to close it off for today because it is starting to get late. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for listening and until next time. If you want instructions, go and buy some furniture.
My current sales mentor is Nathan Wilson, and he has taught me a lot about being a great salesperson.
I wanted to take the time to write down some of the best kernels of wisdom that I have learned from Nathan in the last 12 months working with him.
Be The Best
When I came into the company I was 100% green. I had little to no experience in the type of sales I now found myself working in.
I was promoted quickly because I had promise but even after 9 months in the trenches (on the phones) I was still very green when it came to running a sales territory. I had a natural talent for developing relationships and driving growth but I didn’t really believe I could be great.
Nathan believed in me and taught me that I could not only be great but that I could be the best.
I had never really aimed for “best”. I always made excuses and performed well enough to be above average but never #1. Nathan showed me that not only could I be #1 but that my customers and company were counting on me to be the best I can be.
In 2012 I didn’t finish #1 in the company but I did finish in the top 20%. Not bad for my first year on the job.
Nathan still encourages me to be the best and in 2013 I am gunning for “rep of the year”.
Be Creative
My old boss Lisa said something to me once that stuck with me. She was comparing me to another employee.
She said if she told employee X to do something he would ask for the steps and execute it flawlessly. If she asked me to do the same thing I would think of the quickest and easiest way to get it done and do that.
Nathan took it a step further by showing me to go above and beyond and be creative in your role. He leads by example and is continually pushing the status quo.
Don’t settle for what everyone else is doing, get creative and create something new that will drive even better results.
Be Bold
Fortune favors the bold and in the last 12 months I have learned to be more bold.
Bold in my abilities, bold in my ideas, bold in encouraging team mates and bold with my customers.
Know what needs to be done and be bold in doing it. Not arrogant, not egotistic…but bold.
Be Yourself
Again something I have leaned through his living breathing example. Nathan is eccentric, outgoing and one of a kind.
He doesn’t try to hide behind who he is, but he uses his flare to drive business growth.
He can talk the talk with customers, but he goes an extra step and creates pizaz in his presentations. He puts on a meeting for pharmacists and has dancing girls and fireworks.
He isn’t putting on a show he is being authentic to himself. Something I strive to be in my interactions with team mates and customers.
Be A Standout (Be A Star)
Don’t just do things well, don’t just be #1 in results but be a standout. Be #1 in everyone’s mind whether your #1 on the leader board or not.
Set an example, be innovative, network, ask questions and go out on a limb.
Do what you can to share your insights with those that can either add to it or benefit from it.
A few months ago as I heard my name popping up here and there as an example of someone doing good things I got scared. I didn’t want to make a target for myself or to fail extremely publicly.
But Nathan encouraged me again to be bold and do what I thought was right.
It reminds me of my favourite quote
Your playing small does not serve the world. As you let your light shine you unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As you are liberated from your fear you automatically liberate others.
I’m Extremely Lucky
10 months ago I had a big decision to make. Should I take an internal promotion opportunity and move to Newcastle for my work.
I am so glad I did, because it gave me the opportunity to work closely with Nathan and I will always remember him and what he taught me.
The biggest gift he gave me was belief. Belief in myself not that I could be great, but that I am great and just need to prove it to the rest of the world.
2013 for me will be all about taking ownership of my ideas and testing an implementing them in an effective way.
I have realized that the ideas of others are awesome and I will run with them, but I CANNOT rely on others to think the same way as me or to help me execute on my ideas.
This means I need to find ways to create ideas that can be easily implemented with minimal hurdles to jump over. Maybe it is the small simple ideas that can be implemented immediately that will generate more results than the one big idea that probably won’t get implemented because of big corporation difficulties.
My father the journalist used to always say to me “Always treat your copyboys well, because one day they will be your editor.
For the non-journos among us the copyboy is the lowest paying job, the equivalent of the mailman or cleaner, and the editor is your boss.
In the past for a restaurant to be successful all they needed was a great review. If they knew the face of a critic they could make the food extra special and the service extra special for them too.
The 5 star review would be published in the paper and your store would be flooded with new patrons.
But now everyone is a critic. Places like Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and yes…blogs…have made everyone a critic.
I will always remember NEVER to use AAA Removals as a friend posted on Facebook and told me about their experience. If someone tells me they are moving out I will recommend “Shire Family Removals” but I will also warn them to steer clear of AAA.
You never know who is influential…or will be.
The keys (I think):
1. Treat everyone with the utmost respect
2. Choose a few who you connect with that are going places and seek to be a part of their inner circle. Do favors, send articles, work together, network.
You never know who will be your boss so make sure you don’t burn bridges. But you also can’t spread yourself too thin, so make some bets on people…you may just win big, and even if you don’t you never lose by serving people.
I consume a lot of information. Information that makes me improve, become better and think outside the box.
Only recently have I begin sharing with my network. Sending article links and short messages to those I am connected to.
This is not spamming or artificially trying to create a “networking effect” so I in some way benefit. This is because I love these people and truly believe these ideas could help them.
I am hoping that as I continue to do this in 2013 I will get emails and messages back with relevant links that people found especially for me.
I have already achieve this sort of sharing in my sales team at work, but not with external articles. I started communicating my experiences and what was working for me and after a while the team returned in kind.
The emails we send back and forth are awesome! I love the sharing of ideas because everyone wins!
Late 2012 I created the goal for myself to achieve “rep of the year”.
This prestigious goes to the sales rep who finishes in the top 10% of sales to target and who is seen to be the greatest contributor to the company as a whole.
However, upon reflection I have decided to change this goal.
Henry Ford is known for a number of things. One thing he is known for is the fact that he was always surrounded by people smarter than him. He was not intimidated by these people but saw it as the best way to learn and grow.
There is another rep in my team, Shaun, who I believe has the potential to be “rep of the year”. He is gutsy and diligent and works on the right things.
Even though he started after me I believe I have a lot I can learn from him. He has the potential to be phenomenal in 2013.
My new goal is to help make Shaun “rep of the year” for 2013. I still plan to finish in the top 10%, but I get more pleasure out of seeing others succeed and the company succeed that this would be a huge career success for me.
I am looking forward to partnering up with Shaun in 2013 and being “peer mentors” to each other.
All for one and one for all.