This week, our publish is aimed at none but us.
A quick retrospection on what we have been doing since last few months.
We have completed 4 months of launch of our business so far and is a good time for us to look back and see what we have done and where we have to improve.
Property Investment and Mindset is what we are focused on whole of this year.
As we see it, any business first starts with lots of ideas, expectations and evolves into something much more representative of evolution of your own belief system as a whole.
Building our property portfolio and coaching property investment with primary focus on personality that an investor has to become is exactly what our business is evolving into.
For such a business to be setup there are two things that we at Limitless Monks are set out to do as our journey.
- Grow our portfolio and thereby our expertise within property industry.
- Content development and marketing purely based on our evolution which can be used within our coaching business or any other business.
So:
What have we been doing in last 5 months?
- Blog launch
- Coaching Business
- Property investment and mindset (PIM) event
- Property Portfolio Development
We Launched Our Blog:
We launched our blog on 7th January, 2019 officially and rolled it out to public.
The blog is set out to just rely on one thing to grow and that is quality of content defined by how much will it be useful to end audience coming on to the website.
Looking at what market has been doing, we gather that
- Not many property related blogs in UK are focused on having a post that a user can take and use it as a guide to implement one thing within his/her journey.
- Property blogs are not focused on SEO and instead rely on volumes of posts and keywords abundance within their posts.
- As an average, the content within blog posts goes to less than 1000 words.
- More podcast based blogging which is good news.
- Lots of suspended blogs i.e. blogged for few months and stopped.
So we set out a small framework which will evolve over next one year.
- Publish schedule: Don’t go scattered gun approach and publish posts when you can and instead publish one post a week and on Tuesday.
- Content: Focus on quality characterised by end user being able to take the post and achieve an action if they wish to.
- SEO: Develop trust with search engines by writing relevant content and useful to subscribers within the niche. For starters i.e for first 6 months don’t spend a penny on SEO and instead experience what search engines look for in a blog.
- Keywords: Dont worry about keywords research for now instead, just focus on content and pick a keyword from the content written. Focus on internal linking of posts for first few months rather than pointing to external websites. However, this is something that we have some learning to do within the link building space.
- Length: Stick to an average content length of at least 1200 words unless there is a topic that does not have enough to write about.
- Niche: Remain focused on property investment and mindset niche for majority of the posts.
Below is our launch announcement back in the day on Facebook.
What Has Worked Well?
- While we have not done any SEO so far i.e. zero pounds spent on SEO, what we have realised is the quality of content with basic rules followed publishing posts can actually rank you on first page.
We understood that search engines to content relationship is no different to human relationships. For a human relationship to blossom, one needs to build trust over a period of time.
Search engines look for nothing but trust via the content.
Result:
Limitless Monks blog is now ranking for about 105 keywords in 4 months and also ranks on 1st page of google for two of them.
This now becomes a framework for us to continue into future and are able to define how we should do SEO if we decide to spend our money on SEO. This framework will focus on content self-reliance in ranking on search engines than continuous spend.
- Limitless Monks has managed to secure 240+ subscribers with an average 38% email open rates, within 4 months without any formal marketing (except for free Facebook sharing of posts and messages). This now allows us to define a subscriber funnel framework that will be personalised to the user journey of our community landing on our blog.
Where To Improve?
- Content marketing should improve drastically to ensure the blog reaches out to wider audience within UK and abroad.
- The blog should have had a services page designed by now and is now a top priority for next month.
- Email promotion of services hasn’t started yet and this space has to be improved within next 6 months. The journey that we have to go through is to understand that subscribers will leave with increased email communication and that’s expected. One who remains are your true and loyal community to whom you can offer the full value and your time.
Coaching Business
After initial learnings and retrospection from our 20 years of experience, we have been on a journey last few years that helped us to setup our coaching business.
We have since used those experiences investing in property within UK and overseas, to design content that reflects us and remain patient in understanding our market.
Limitless Monks team have since tuned their own belief system and aligned our activities to our belief system.
This may not be for everyone but, it is helping in segmenting our market slowly whilst a lot of evolution is yet to come.
We have had success with few clients, coaching them on both personal and property investment and helping them secure their property deals which eluded them for a long time.
Must Read: The Ultimate Guide To Find Your Core Values
What Went Well?
- We found our belief system and are able to understand exactly what our client’s need rather than a set framework and follow the framework.
- We have been designing personalised map depending on what the client’s situation is and leverage our experience from past 20 years to propel them to their outcomes.
- We have coached 3 clients in span of 4 months and have 3 more signed up on our basic 4 week package. The number is only going to grow.
Where To Improve?
- Marketing efforts on our coaching business has been non-existent other than Facebook posts but this area needs significant improvement.
- More public speaking and communicate the message we believe and stand for.
Limitless Monks First Event
Limitless Monks have launched their first event “Property Investment and Mindset (PIM)” and the first event has been a cool success.
PIM is a full day event which is focused on basics of property investment including the why’s, what’s and the how’s along with the incremental growth machine that an investor has to become.
The three things the person has to evolve into to ensure he/she builds their personality to handle the unknowns effectively within their investment journey.
What Went Well?
- First full day event completed with 16 people signed up to the event who have seen content with a difference compared to rest of the events in the industry (If I have to pick up words from feedback received).
- 3 people out of 16 have signed up to our basic 4 week program which fills us with confidence that the path we are on is evolving the right way.
- We discovered what our unique proposition will be within our events this year. Whilst this is going to improve further, we sure have the first stab.
- Income generation has sure kick started after over 1.5 years of free service helping people answering their questions both on property and mindset. That small win sure matters.
Where To Improve?
- Learn and scale formal sales techniques to promote events in which ever medium we choose to.
- Draft out online program which goes with the offline events to maximise the potential and expertise.
- Use the blog to promote events and have an events page designed in next few months.
Property Portfolio Development
One more property has been added to portfolio in last 4 months including completion of refurbishment on the property.
A good 2 bed terraced property ready for letting to a one nice family who would want to create a home for themselves.
Cashflow has been steady across the portfolio with all the properties tenanted bar one. This one property is up for refurbishment from this week given the tenant has decided to leave this week.
This single vacant property is in a prime street in Wigan suitable to be converted into a plain buy-to-let or a 4 bed HMO (demand confirmed) or even 2 flats (near-by properties being converted).
Must Read: How We Grew Our Portfolio From Zero To 12 Properties In 14 Months
What Went Well?
- We have remained consistent on visiting our investment area managing refurbishments/client coaching/area analysis/direct to landlord communication.
- New power team members being explored and have worked on small fixes to explore their potential. Improved agent relationships in last month further.
- Explored and viewed commercial properties on which we have placed offers.
Where To Improve?
- More property viewings to be done to ensure we have deals to add to our portfolio given the market has now turned into sellers’ market and deals are harder to come by.
- Need to add a planner and an architect to our power team.
- Refurbishment of the new property could have been completed quicker than time it has taken. But it’s been completed.
As a concluding note, the key things that have come out in all of the areas is more communication of our message and what we do and more marketing across the board.
Ultimate Property Viewings System For Serious Investors
A cool guide that will give you a property viewings system that just works and a handy checklist of what you need to view in a property to assess your refurbishment properly.
