Expat Property Story

How to Get Started in UK Property Investment with Jackie Tomes

April 20, 2023 The Expat Property Guy Season 3 Episode 85
Expat Property Story
How to Get Started in UK Property Investment with Jackie Tomes
Show Notes Transcript

#85
Jackie Tomes and her husband, Dave have accumulated a wealth of UK property experience through building their £15 Million portfolio in and around Thanet in the South-East of England.

After briefly falling victim to Shiny Penny Syndrome, they refocused their energy on adopting a business model consisting of acquiring and managing blocks of flats. 

By systemising, refining and adapting this model, they are now able to manage their business remotely, leaving them free to spend their time travelling around Europe in their camper van, while also helping other property investors to build their own portfolios.

Jackie argues that in the current climate of high interest rates, expats looking to build a UK property portfolio may be best advised to look to HMOs as their business model of choice and to see buying in Article 4 areas as an opportunity rather than a problem.

Jackie also has some valuable advice around how to apply structure to your business.

This episode also tells the light-hearted story of how we tried to flip a sheep for profit in our first holiday for three years in Kyrgyzstan and how the lessons learned relate to property.

If you have an expat property story to share, don’t be shy, get in touch!

To Join our Mailing List

To leave an honest review of Expat Property Story

To listen to Jackie’s Desert Island Property Disc

To find out more about Jackie’s Dealmaker Accelerator Program

primary business model, structure, maximizing returns, deals, HMOs, Article 4 regulations, systemizing, efficiency, profitability, block of flats, financing, Expat Property Story, balance, low value tasks, high value tasks, outsourcing, lag in cash conversion cycle, business model, investment models, scalability, working with investors, research, market, missing piece, high prices, roles, prioritizing, mindset blocks, simplified strategies, long-distance property investing, single lets, lending for expats, Kyrgyzstan, due diligence, commitment, serviced accommodation, financial management, investment strategy.

I think article four can be a really good thing because everyone goes article four, but it's not impossible article four. You've just got to know what ticks the boxes to make article four work. So just looking at areas from a purely research perspective, what areas are going to make sense from a good yield perspective? So what is going to have the fundamentals in place in terms of of the right values versus what rents you can get in the first instance? And then, of course, what demand is actually in place for a good stream of tenants. So, like a piece of research to narrow down which areas are going to kind of make sense in the UK. For that would be where I would start. You're listening to Expat Property Story, a podcast in which I share my story. To smooth the way for you to. Have your own expat Property story. Hello there. That was the voice of Jackie Tomes introducing episode 85. And we'll get to Jackie after reading out a review of the podcast, which I'm hoping will encourage you to write your own review if you haven't already done so. Reviews really help spread the word about our humble community. So in a bid to attract more reviews, I'll be reading out some of the nice things people have said about the show. And this one is from friend of the pod Richard Brown. To be fair, Richard wrote this review back in season one, but I'm hoping at least some of it is still relevant. A natural host of a wellresearched niche podcast. As a host of a podcast myself, I have to say this podcast is better. You can hear how much preparation and investment goes into researching his guests to uncover those rare nuggets of information that result, the format is more than the stock Q and a interview fare you get from some. The delivery is natural, with a clever yet understated way to share their own story, leaving the focus on the impressive guest list assembled in series one. There is even a free joke each week. Hand on heart, this is a genuine, unbiased review. In truth, this has rekindled my interest in listening to more podcasts, having spent the past few years immersed in audiobooks. Looking forward to seeing how the podcast evolves. Good luck. Richard Brown, The Property Voice as an. Ex client of Richards, there may actually be a little bias in Richard's very kind words there, but I really appreciate his generosity of spirit nonetheless. Now, in a break from tradition, we're moving the exotic listener location section to the front of the show this week because it's a little bit different. This week, we're off to the suitably exotically named Bishke, which is the capital city of stunning Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Now, at this point, I usually encourage our exotically located listener to get in touch, but hey, guess what? The listener in this lesser known stand was none other than myself. I've long wanted to visit Kyrgyzstan, and in fact, we had planned to go in 2020 before the Global Pandemic put paid to our plans and due to Hong Kong's, extended drastic three week compulsory quarantine measures for those returning from overseas up until late 2022. This was our first holiday in more than three years, not counting my two ill fated trips to the UK that resulted in the expat mortgage disaster covered in last week's episode. Kyrgyzstan is not a common destination for most people, but I can tell you it's a hidden gem of a country. Even though April is not the best time of year to visit, as most of the mountain roads to the most beautiful parts are still closed due to snow and ice and poor condition, but it's still a really beautiful part of the world. Towards the end of

our trip, my daughter and I decided to get up at 04:

00 in the morning to go to a livestock market in a city called Caracol to buy a sheep and flip it for profit on the same day, which turned out to be a fantastic experience which has some valuable lessons that could equally be applied to property trading. So we did our initial due diligence and discovered that the easiest livestock to flip would be a young male sheep, or ram to use the technical term, and we were advised by our guest house host that we should get a plump one. It occurred to us that we would have our work cut out to flip a sheep for profit, given that we knew nothing about sheep and arguably even less of the languages spoken in Kyrgyzstan, which are mainly Russian and Kyrgyz. Now, in property, the two most obvious ways to flip for profit are by buying well and adding value. The currency in Kyrgyzstan is called som, and we'd been told to expect to have to pay around 5000 som for a young Ram, which is the equivalent of about 39 pounds. But how would we add value to a sheep in an hour or two at the most? We gave this some thought the night before and decided to use superstition. We would call our young Ram Money, and design a sign to hang around his neck saying, my name is Money. I will bring you luck. Buy me for good fortune. We used Google Translate to write our message in Russian, as our guest house host had said that Russian would be the better of the two languages to market our sheep, we also added a couple of four leaf clovers to our sign for good measure. We figured that we would have to get to the market fairly early on in proceedings, but because we wanted to take photos of the whole experience, we thought it would be too dark if we got there at the start,

which was 02:

00 A.m. On a Sunday morning. So we decided to set the alarm for four. Unfortunately, it was raining when we got up and although the rain had stopped by the time we got there at five, the whole place was a mud and animal excrement sludge fest as we walked around in the dark trying not to get kicked by frightened horses and claustrophobic cows. We soon retreated to a calf to get a cup of tea and to try to suppress our second thoughts. Eventually we plucked up the courage to return to the fray and went looking for a sheep. When we laid eyes on Money, the name we'd chosen to support our marketing plan, we both knew that he was the one. Not only was he the cleanest animal in the thousands on display, but he was a real cutie, as I'm sure you'll agree when you see the pictures in the blog. I've written about this experience on our website@www.expatpropertystory.com. Now, as they say, you make your money when you buy. So when we asked how much money we would need to pay for money, if you're still with me, the young boy selling him said 2000 som before his older colleague flicked him a look and before we knew it, the price had risen to 3000. Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing, although let's be honest, it's not as good as foresight, is it? But we should have stuck to our guns and walked away unless they'd accepted 2000. But unfortunately, we were the worst thing you can be in this type of a situation in that we were motivated buyers. And having been told that 5000 som was a good price for a young male sheep, in the heat of the moment, we decided against being greedy in what's effectively a pretty poor country and happily passed over 3000. Som fortunately, Money came with a nice pink rope around his neck, which helped encourage him to follow us to a different part of the market as we could hardly sell him in the same spot we'd bought him. However, he was perhaps understandably reluctant to be herded around the place and was soon resisting, so we had no option but to pick him up and hold him, which is not really the kind of thing that comes naturally to me, unfortunately, but needs must and as I say, he was quite cute. So we took turns taking him in our arms and transported him to another part of the market, put him on the ground and set about selling him. At this point in proceedings, some of the previously grim faced, hard nosed animal traders soon started to smile as they read our sign. I'm not sure how many people understood our English, but we emphasized that not only was this the cleanest animal in the market, but that he would bring good luck to anyone who bought him. Someone who did speak English counted that it didn't matter how clean he was on the outside, what was important was what was on the inside. We received several low ball offers of 500 to 800 som. But we said that since this sheet was not only good looking but would bring good fortune, we were asking for 4000. Som before one friendly English speaking trader asked how much we'd paid for him, we told him that we'd paid 3000. Som the man replied that we'd overpaid. We told him what our guest house owner had told us that a young, plump male sheep should be worth somewhere between five and 6000 some. And our new friend agreed with us that this would be an accurate price for a young male sheep, but we had mistakenly bought a goat. We gamely stuck to our spiel for half an hour or so, but soon began to wonder whether the wry smiles and odd giggles dispatched in our direction were perhaps due to the ridiculous price we were asking for a goat as opposed to the novelty of a couple of tourists selling a sheep. Eventually we decided to lower our price to 1000. Som one man kept returning and sizing up money, our lucky goat, and eventually agreed to pay us a thousand. Som we found out that he was probably worth 800 som at most. So even though we had failed to do the necessary due diligence to ascertain that the animal was in fact a sheep and not a goat, and even if the price we paid was too much, we like to think that we at least got our marketing to add a little value through superstition, which helped save us from losing even more money. So all told, we lost about 26 quid. But it was a good laugh and a really valuable learning experience for our daughter, who, for the rest of her life will be able to tell the tale of how she bought and sold a sheep in Kyrgyzstan. Well, a goat, anyway. So if we relate all this to property investing, the three main takeaways from all this are firstly, to do your due diligence. If, for example, you're buying an HMO, make sure it is an HMO and that it has a certificate of lawful use to be used as such. Secondly, you should buy at the right price. It's often said in property that you make your money when you buy in that much of your profit is determined by the discount you secure at the point of purchase. And finally, it's always a good idea to find a way to add value, which you can do in a variety of ways and not usually involving superstition. Now, I have a feeling that if today's guest and her husband had found themselves in the livestock market in Caracol, Kyrgyzstan, they'd have been adventurous enough to flip a sheep. But unlike my daughter and I, they'd have probably had better systems and processes in place, if only to ensure that they actually bought a sheep and not a goat. But it wasn't always that way. The seeds of Jackie Tombs's property story began as a week's skiing holiday in January 2014 drew to a close and she realized that she didn't want to go back to work. We've all been there. She immediately ordered a whole bunch of property books and self educated for months on end before buying her first buy to Let in, erith, southeast London. After attending a property training course, she was inspired to accelerate her progress and turn it into a business in order to leave her full time job in marketing. By this time, her fiance and now husband Dave was equally involved and together they made the decision to sacrifice their social life and put everything into scaling their property business in order to get to a point where they could readjust their work life balance further down the line. As a result, they then bought eight properties in less than a year, enabling Jackie to leave her full time job and become financially free by the tender age of 26. At this stage, like many UK property investors, jackie and Dave fell victim to Shiny Penny Syndrome and wanted to do something that they perceived to be more exciting than single lets. They briefly dipped their toes into the world of conversions as opposed to basic refurbs, but found that this involved multiple layers of complexity, which required the services of far more professions than doing simple refurbs. Now they were having to deal with everyone from planning consultants to draftsmen to structural engineers and everyone else in between, which helped convince them to return to more basic refurbs, but with blocks of flats rather than single units. Jackie and Dave have now systemized their business to such an extent that they are now free to pursue passions such as travel and skiing, while also assisting others to scale their own property businesses by doing more deals in less time through raising private finance. And if you want to know more about their story, just ask Uncle Google to search for Jackie tomes and podcasts and you'll find numerous shows, but none of them reveal her property song of choice. So that's where we started. There's a Thailand property disc, so it's a bit geeky. I'm really like. I have terrible taste of music. I love really cheesy, really inspirational stuff and I'm a big fan of Disney, so I chose my property song is from the movie Moana. I don't know that one. So it's about a girl that lives on an island, and she's part of island life, and she feels like there must be more to life than what's on the island. And she goes on this big adventure to find out things. And people don't want her to go. They want her to fit in, but she wants to go on a big adventure. Very cheesy. Catchy. What's the actual name of it? I did find it earlier. How far I'll go from Moana. Right, so how does that relate to your property story? Just because it's very much like someone being scared of wanting to go and do something, but feeling that I'm capable of doing it. And even if it feels scary, and even if the people around me don't necessarily agree with it, or people disagree with it and want to try and discourage me along the way, that I've still gone for it. And it's been painful at points along the way, but it has been an amazing adventure that's pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. So many things that I would never expected have happened in life because of going off on this journey of investing in property. And ultimately I'm coming back. I'm not coming back yet, still on the journey, but like a stronger, wiser person for having done it. In next week's episode, we'll be taking a detailed look at their most recent deal, which is a lot more sophisticated than that first buy to let bought back in 2013. But I've been receiving a few emails from people at the beginning of their property stories recently, so I thought that for this week's show we could concentrate on those looking to get started. I asked Jackie what advice she would offer them. I think particularly when investing from a distance and the amount of different people that you're going to have to have involved to make all that happen. For me, I think simplicity is definitely the key. It's very easy to get swept up into some of the more complex strategies in property, so if you're doing like commercial conversions for example, there are many more parties and moving parts involved. So I would say look at the simpler route in terms of how to move things forward now. Single eds are a lot harder in this environment with interest rates. All the clients that I work with who are continuing to fly through this environment are those who are doing HMOs. So I think that is definitely an area of growth at the moment. And as long as you are doing it in a way that means you can stand out in whatever market you're doing, that is where my money is currently at, at the moment. I just think single lets there's a time and a place for them and we've done very well with them but it's definitely a lot harder at the moment and things will obviously correct and change and what feels like a long time at the time actually won't be when we look back on it, but just seeing who's doing well. The HMO stuff seems to really work well. That said, just making sure that obviously that the lending for expats is a much more complicated scene than it is for UK based people. So I think probably that's one of the most important places to start. Like what's the exit like if you're buying with cash, what's the exit in terms of traditional lending off the back of it? Because it seems so restricted depending on that expat environment from where you're coming from. So therefore it might be that even if single Lets are not the most profitable route, it might be a necessary route to go through in order to be able to access the wider portfolio stuff of the things that are working better at the moment, like HMOs for example. Yes, you'd probably need to get one or two single lets under your belt before a mortgage lender will lend for an HMO. So let's say you've convinced lots of expats all over the world, they've listened to you, Jackie, they're going, Right, I want to get into HMOs. Where should they start? Because there's so many areas of the country that are now Article Four. I think Article Four can be a really good thing because everyone goes Article Four, but it's not impossible article Four, you've just got to know what ticks the boxes to make Article Four work. So for us, focus has always been the way to overcome the complexity of property. So, first of all, I would say, just looking at areas from a purely research perspective, what areas are going to make sense from a good yield perspective? Assuming, for example, cash flow is what's important to you, what is going to have the fundamentals in place in terms of the right values versus what rents you can get in the first instance? And then, of course, what demand is actually in place for a good stream of tenants. So, like a piece of research to narrow down which areas are going to kind of make sense in the UK, for that would be where I would start and I would let Article Four put you off. I would then say, right, what area of Article Four would I be focusing on and who do I need to speak to in order to get the knowledge about what we need to do in order to have the best chance of success within Article Four? Or buying ready made HMOs that are already in that area, that are maybe low quality exiting landlords, obviously a big theme at the moment anyway, in terms of people wanting to get out. So there could be opportunities to pick up stuff that's already up and running. Everyone gets put off by Article Four, so I would lean into it and just figure out how to overcome the challenge that presents with that particular area. But the prices of the houses in the Article Four areas are a little bit steep, aren't they? What would you say to that? But then I think it comes down to the numbers at the bottom of the analysis, basically, because I think the prices might be higher. But what can you do to make sure you're getting the most premium rents? Because we're not going to be average, we're not going to come in and do an average job and get an average rent. We're going to do a great job and get a premium rent. So what is the rest of the market? Market doing what's, meaning that some people are getting higher rents than others? Is there a missing piece within that market that you could come in and offer? And obviously within article four areas the supply is much more limited. So therefore it's likely to be easier for you because you'll be in a shorter supply to be able to have a good supply of tenants that comes through. So I would say don't necessarily be put off by high prices. It might dictate how many rooms you have to have in order for it to be viable. But that's fine, that's just part of the plan too. So I would just get really into the weeds about how much the rents are in relation to the property, anything that can be done to command premium rents and then maybe it has to be at least six rooms to be able to make it work, or maybe more. So just understanding all of that and I think, again, higher prices puts off most people, so don't be most people. I asked Jackie why she prefers HMOs as a business model as opposed to serviced accommodation. I think there are no wrong strategies, there are all ups and downs. I would say to get a serviced accommodation portfolio that is really operating well from a net profit perspective is hard. Because I do worry sometimes about the exit. A lot of the people who do the HMOs, they go into the all on suites and once that becomes an HMO, it's always going to be an HMO, isn't it? So that's why I'm preferring to look at service accommodation at the moment because they can be more easily repurposed back as single lets if it doesn't work out. Whilst I do completely understand where you're coming from with HMOs that you're very much committed, sometimes that commitment actually just makes a lot of stuff easier. And as long as the demand works, as long as the numbers work, that for me, I just mitigate the downside in a slightly different way. It's just challenging to make it work in reality and I think you hear a lot of very exciting sounding gross numbers in serviced accommodation. But what is the genuine net averaged out over a whole year and you don't hear too much really great numbers. We have another business that we run which helps people with their financial management of their businesses. So like the bookkeeping all the way through to financial director advice and getting into the numbers, figuring out how it's working from a financial perspective and just being able to see some of the trends and themes that comes through from that is hard to make it work really well. Possible, of course, but I think if you're coming into it completely brand new, you've essentially got the combination of an investment strategy and a business that really all has to come together at the same time to work. Well, I know that your website says. That if you're doing property properly, you need someone to help you put some structure around your business. So how do you do that? The first thing that we always start with is like, what is it that you're actually building? So when we first started working, we worked with property mentors first of all, and then we started working with business mentors and they were like, you need to make a strategy. We'd gone from just focusing on single let to thinking what everyone else was doing was way more exciting than what we were doing. So we were looking at rent to rent and commercial conversions, all this kind of stuff. So at this point we sat down with him and we were like trying to make business plans and basically realized we had to have a business plan for every single one of these different things that we were doing. So we had like this business plan on the page tool in front of us and we had like seven different plans and because it was just so overwhelming, we didn't even get any of them completed in terms of an overall plan. So basically what we've subsequently gone on to learn ourselves from how to implement a real good business strategy within a property investment setting is unless you're really clear, I call it the business model, commercial conversions, rent to rent, HMO, whatever it may be. I call that the business model. Then the strategy is what gets wrapped around all of that. So if you aren't clear what your primary focus is, there are just way too many moving parts and spinning plates to be able to get that structure in place. I know a lot of people focus then on, well, I've just got to systemize my business. You try and systemize like three or four different investment models all simultaneously, it's a lot and you're so busy systemizing that you're not actually hustling down the deals. So there's just too many different things to do. That's why for us that always starts with what is a business model and how do we make that really work. So a lot of what I've alluded there too is like how do you get to the bottom of the numbers and make sure that the model actually works. And for us, we've worked a lot with investors. How do you make sure the model works not just for you with your own money, but being able to bring in other people's money as well. Because if it's always going to be limited by the amount of funds you have, that's a clear limiting factor to how fast you can go. So then it comes down to does it work with other people's money? And therefore you create something that is scalable in terms of I can do as much of this as I actually want to do to be able to get to my goals as quickly as possible. Every time you do it, you learn more of the downsides, your knowledge increases, you overcome more and more specific challenges within that model. And by doing it the same every time, you naturally start to take a systemized approach to how you're growing. And that makes it a lot easier to start to delegate parts of that process so that you're not doing everything and ultimately getting overwhelmed. So that's generally the start of being able to create that structure to mean that it's actually clear what you're building and then the parts of the business that sit underneath that become a lot clearer because your mind is then focused in just that one area. What should get systemized and in what order? Because I think most expats, right, they're pretty much 99% of them have got jobs, that's why they're expats, otherwise they'd be back in the UK. So what should get systemized and in what order? For me, the most progress is made at that balance of order and chaos. And I am naturally a very organized person, so I naturally stray into too much order and other people are more naturally towards the chaos side. If you're too far towards either end of the spectrum, it actually ends up sabotaging us in the end too organized, everything is beautiful, but you're not doing enough deals to actually hit your goals. Too chaotic, generally doing a lot more deals, but it's so chaotic and it's left too long in chaos that it becomes very hard to get back to some kind of balance between the two. So the hard thing with all of this is and again it comes back to unlock the boring point of like by being really clear about what the thing is that you're mainly focusing on. By doing that consistently, it starts to become naturally clear what part of it would be easy to let go of because you're consistently doing it and you can see that it's taking up a lot of your time and your time could be far more valuably spent. I think the challenge is if you try and systemize and delegate too early the wrong stuff, you spend more money passing that part of it over to other people when the whole point was really to build cash flow for you. So I think really particularly those lower value tasks, administrative booking in viewings, perhaps filling out check sheets, filing stuff, all of that kind of stuff, it lower value stuff, but you want enough order behind what you're doing by way of being focused. That means that when your time is freed up from those things, you actually put your time into the highest value thing that remains and that is challenging to do if it's not clear what exactly that focus is like. Going out and finding deals, bringing in finance, that is the highest value part of the business and that always has to keep happening and so it's just about letting. Go of those parts that are holding you back from being able to go out and do the stuff that's really going to add value to the business. And I think that's normally where it goes wrong. Try and outsource maybe too much too quickly, or choosing maybe a too expensive part of the business to do it and your time doesn't get put into the stuff that's really going to grow it and it just becomes like you're always behind. From a cash perspective, particularly with the lag that we have in property, the cash conversion cycle, to how long it takes to go from putting your time into something in property for that money and time resources to come back out the other side and start to pay you back. When you're starting, you'll probably search for six months, maybe even twelve months to get the first deal found and agreed. And then you're going to take a few more months to buy the thing. Then maybe you got to refurb the things. Before you know it, you're 18 months, two years down the line and you actually haven't had any return from any of the time that's gone in. And if you are expending too much of your financial resources on paying other people to do stuff or putting your time into systemizing, that time frame can get even longer. Great answers there. You talked a little bit about if. You choose to outsource the wrong thing and I guess each investor situation is different. But what sorts of mistakes have you. Seen in terms of what was outsourced. That perhaps shouldn't have been outsourced? Can you think of an example? It's so hard when you are starting out because you have to be everything. Like you've got to be the visionary, the relationship deal maker, and the kind of person who's putting enough order in place. You have to be all these different guys. And so an answer that many would give is, well, just outsource the stuff that you don't want to do. For example, I'm not a relationship person. I really want to go out and build relationships. I'll outsource that part of it. But if at the very beginning you've got nothing, you've got no money coming in yet, and a relationship person is probably going to be quite pricey at that point to bring in in comparison to other things. At that point, you're still really figuring out what your business is. So to be able to brief someone on what you're truly looking for at that point and for them to do a good job is highly unlikely to all work out that way. So what I would say is you've just got to get over ourselves enough and self manage our stuff to suck up and be the person that we have to be in that moment to move the business forward. So find a way to do the stuff that you don't want to do at your most energized part of the day. So you've got the most resilience to go out and do it so that you don't try and delegate what my mentor used to call like the crown jewels. Basically, like when you're just starting, the relationships you're making with people is all you have. So to try and just delegate that someone else at that point, particularly when you haven't got complete clarity about what your business even is at that point, I've never seen it work. And that just made me think of one other thing, which was investors. So many people have a lot of mindset blocks related to raising finance and it really holds them back. I have seen it happen many times. People go, I'm going to outsource the raising finance part to someone else. And maybe meeting people who allegedly well, not allegedly do have access to a lot of people who have funds, maybe in a different capacity, like an accountant, for example. They've got a lot of high net worth clients who've got funds and you don't maybe feel like you've got that network to be able to go and do that. Same people try and make partnerships in this way, but the problem is the blocks that you have that are preventing you from going out and raising finance will still ultimately block you from making that work because you have maybe some self belief issues or some other bad programming around money that will block that. But also potentially you haven't done the work to go, like, what is the value proposition for investors? What are they getting? How is this going to work? And if you just try and outsource that all to someone else who potentially is just a partnership, they are not part of your business either. They're not going to have that ability to get to that level of understanding. And if they haven't got experience raising finance, they're not necessarily going to be any better than you are, particularly because it's your business and you care about it more than anyone else does. That's quite a long winded answer, but I hope that there was something useful. In there because there were so many useful things to explore. I decided to pause there and we'll pick up again on next week's show when we'll also take a deeper dive into Jackie and Dave's most recent deal, a block of flats which had a purchase price of 1.8 million pounds and which they financed using none of their own money. So join me next week to find out more. So the three key points for me from this week's show are one, Jackie recommends establishing one primary focus and putting a structure in place to maximize the returns from that particular business model, which will allow you to do more deals in less time. Two, the idea that, contrary to my own intuition with HMOs Article 4 may be a source of opportunity as opposed to a barrier to entry. It's perhaps worth remembering that when something is difficult, there will be less competition. And three, on the subject of when to systemize, jackie talks about striking the right balance between order and chaos. If everything is too ordered, it may be because you're underachieving in terms of the amount of deals you're doing. But if it's too chaotic, then your business may become inefficient and therefore less profitable than with a better balance. As I say in next week's show, we'll be taking a deep dive into a particular deal that Jackie and Dave put together as an example of how things can be done once you've mastered some of the concepts touched on in this episode. A big thank you to Jackie Tomes for appearing, and if you want to find out more about her accelerator program, there are links in the show notes. Thanks also to you for listening. And if you want to go that little bit further to help grow our community, why not help us out with an honest review of the show? And don't forget to share the show to spread the word. You've been listening to Expat property story.