How I Built My Own AI Property Power Team w/ Ian Bluck

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00.086)
I never have that dread on a Sunday that I've got Monday coming up. It's actually a pleasure to get up to decide what you want to work on, decide what you want to do. I took a lot of time to commit to leaving. Should I have done it earlier? Absolutely. However, my journey's my journey. I wasn't brave enough to cut off and jump in. I slowly built my wealth up over time, probably till about four years ago, where I was earning more through property than I was through...

by Roel, it took me 24 years to get to that level in lives and that salary, which I've replaced in one deal.

Speaker 2 (00:40.302)
Welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for Wealth Builders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin. Hey, not in your usual surroundings today. Where are you?

Hello Chris, what's a-caring?

Speaker 3 (00:53.282)
Well, it's not the sunniest day, but just so you're aware. So this is the Bay of Cardiff or Cardiff Bay. And I'm here at a hotel in Cardiff and I'm speaking this evening to a bunch of enthusiastic property owners and talking about different ways that they can create financial leverage.

and relationship leverage to build a faster, more profitable property portfolio. So yeah, looking forward to doing that and two great hosts, certainly, know, Morgan Stewart got a great business down here and also his colleague Luke. So, you they've invited me and I'm looking forward to that first time in Cardiff. And although I won't be seeing too many of the sites, lots of work to do today, but yeah, it's good to be.

in another part of the country, getting the message out as best we can. And, you know, we reach people from all over the UK, don't we? And sometimes in Spain.

Indeed. Well, we've got a great example today of the transformation that's possible when you commit to a plan and take action. And Ian Bluck, one of our members, is our guest today. before we get into that, Kevin, talk about another event we've got coming up next week, which is our next webinar titled The Recurring Revenue Blueprint, How to Create Multiple Income Streams and Take Control of Your Financial Future. And that's next Tuesday, the 25th of March. And as usual, we'll do two sessions, one at 12.30 in the afternoon.

and another at 8 p.m. in the evening. both the same, but depending on your kind of lifestyle, whether you can make lunchtime or evening, we try and give you those two options.

Speaker 3 (02:39.916)
Yeah, and never more important, Chris, that, you know, with inflation edging, the economy's shrinking, cost of living going up, taxes are going to hit again in the budget coming up soon, and I'll be doing a debrief on that. Never, ever more important than creating predictable streams of recurring income, because when you spend all of your time, or most of your time trading time for money, you're getting less out of that time now.

because you're paying more tax, you've got more inflation, your money's not going as far. So in reality, there has never been a better time to focus on a recurring income blueprint and a blueprint means you can follow it. You don't have to invent it. And as we'll hear today from one of our members, probably one of the most enthusiastic members, and I would suggest anyway, having listened to it and needing a lie down afterwards.

Like a good football match, you you probably should listen to this in two halves. Listen to the first half about the transition from a job to wealth and then the second half in terms of how he's reshaped his business life and or listen to it twice. You know, because this is an action packed episode full of lessons. And what I don't want to do, and I want to make this clear Chris is Ian is a rare individual.

He's got so much enthusiasm, you can almost feel it boiling over. And that effervescence, that ebullience is not normal. Yeah, it's in his wealth dynamic, it's in his DNA. So you do not have to be exactly like Ian to be successful. Just take one or two of the lessons that you pick up and apply them for one or two sessions in a week. That's all you need to do. Listen with great interest.

but recognize the pace at which he goes and you let him there, Chris. You and Akutu, and you...

Speaker 2 (04:39.342)
Yeah, it was a great chat with Ian and Ian's a great example of someone who has just followed the process that we teach. And I better just say actually, for the webinar, if you do want to join us next week, head to the WealthBuilders website, wealthbuilders.co.uk to register. It's absolutely for free. But we're going to show that same blueprint that Ian has followed. Okay, so I think it's time to head on to our conversation today with Mr Ian Bluck.

Ian, welcome to Wealth Talk today. How are you?

Yeah, very well, Christian. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Usually sunny Spain, but these last 10 days has been, I think we've switched around with the UK. I people are showing me blue skies when I'm on calls with them and I've got this gray, murky sort of rainy weather.

Yeah, in sunny Spain?

Speaker 2 (05:22.446)
Yeah, the listeners probably think that's not a Spanish accent. So we're going to be talking about a big transformation in your life over the last 18 months or so, right? It's been pretty quick.

Absolutely, yeah. From having a nice stable corporate job for 24 years to retiring from that, to uplifting my family of 64 young children to the sunny climates of the Costa Blanca.

Yeah, and specifically how you've managed to leverage technology and systems to give you that freedom to be able to move the family over there. So we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of that. But let's take you back then. It was June 2023, when you finally decided to join Wealth Builders. We've been talking for ages, hadn't we? And guess timing always has to be right. Tell us about life back then. What was it that was kind of maybe delaying the process for you?

I got out my own way back in 2020 and joined a business mentoring club. That was the 1 % club where you've had John Lammerton as a guest before. And I've also then was part of for business, the golf networking community. And I was stuck with my pension at work with Lightbank. I had one part was a defined benefit and one was a live pension part. But I started listening and doing some learning around tasks and the utilization of that. But I was just stuck that I couldn't get access to it.

So I popped something in my for business community and Kevin was recommended to have a chat with and we probably had about three or four sessions and Kevin come up with some really creative ways, which first of all got me access to my second part of my live pension at Lides Bank, which was a case of you leave the pension for one month and then you rejoin it. So that bit was frozen. So now you can start taking that out. And just as a thing, I was like, if that's...

Speaker 1 (07:10.752)
what's available in this community that I'm not part of now. I need to be part of it. And that was the thing for me, just having that knowledge available. And that's when I took the plunge, just not as thank you to Kevin, it was a more of, I need to be part of this community.

Yeah, and a fantastic member that you've been. I know communities in Portland will probably talk about some of the other communities. You've already referenced a couple there, Ian. Wealthbuilders is built around the IP of the seven pillars of wealth and the more of those pillars, assets that you can have working for you, then the more freedom that you can enjoy really. So, should we just have a quick look through? Because I think you've pretty much got all of them working at the moment, Ian. First one is your home.

You're out in Spain now. So what's happening with your home back in Birmingham?

Yeah, but we're renting it out on a 12 month basis at the moment. I was keen to sell off and move everybody to Spain, but the wife was like, look, let's do 12 months. Let's see what it's like. So we're getting a healthy income, which covers the mortgage and another couple of our properties that are in our personal name.

I know has been an important part in your wealth building plan. tell us a bit about what you've done then with pensions.

Speaker 1 (08:26.51)
really love this story because it's all about networking. Again, part of for business of Golf Network. I was in the Derby group in September in a car park and somebody shouted over to me, Lucky, do know anybody that wants to buy a care home? And I'm like, no, I don't. But send me the details and I'll send it out to my network halfway through the round. The email appeared and I was having a bad game. So you get your phone out, you're scrolling, you're not really focused on it. And I was looking at numbers and I was like, I wonder if I'd be able to, you know what mean, buy this

somehow at my pension, spoke with my pension guy and he was like, yep, you could structure it this way. And two Fridays ago, we completed on the purchase of a 22 bed care home. Now that's got a £150,000 a year lease on it's a 10 year lease, obviously fully insured repairing lease. So once I take the finance out of it, I've just replaced my Lides salary net in one deal. And we all know that

You don't need to earn as much that way than you do in the core because you're getting taxed. Whereas I was earning, getting taxed, then I'll spend. Now I'm earning, I'll spend, then I'll get taxed. When I completed it a couple of weeks ago, I had to take myself for a walk because it was that overwhelming. And I was like, this has actually happened.

Yeah, you know, I think there's no, we talk about luck, right, but you create your own luck here.

Yeah, I've been visiting them, them networking groups. Like I was an ambassador at the West Bromwich group, but I specifically went to certain groups in my area where I knew there was property people and it was being consistent and turning up for two, three years to them, different groups, adding value back to others, making recommendations to them, linking them up with other people in that area, helping them out. And it's all about just give, giving back from a networking point of view, because then I found.

Speaker 1 (10:23.134)
More than come my way.

So investments, I know as well that's an area where you're using tax-free, efficient wrappers, free vices and things like that.

Yeah, yeah. So obviously being part of Lides Bank, was lots of save as you earn schemes, lots of share save schemes. So obviously when they come to fruition, moving them out of the share schemes, locking them into stocks and shares eyes out just to protect the capital gains on them and do things that way. Again, did I know all about that from doing it? No. As I've gone through the...

wealth building journey and listening to all the different modules, you take these little notes away as I'm plugged in doing my walk with a dog to then come home and do the research of how to do it.

We've just completed on a 22 bed care home. Where was your first property? Where did that property journey begin for you Ian?

Speaker 1 (11:15.598)
It began in 2014, a three bed, by to let in Birmingham. was a vanilla beige box. It had all been done out by an investor. I think they wanted 105 grand for it. I went to view it and I was like, okay, yeah, it's great. I could probably rent it straight out. And the estate agent phoned me and I said, I was panicking. I didn't know what to do. I'm like, I'll offer 97,000. And they went, okay, they won't accept that. And after a week they come back and they said,

I've accepted your offer and I'm like, what do I do next? I was like, and I rented it out within days at 600 pound, but at the time I thought I had to pay off the mortgage. That's what I was brought up around. My mom and dad said, yeah, you get a mortgage, you have to pay it off. So I would take the agent fees out and insurance. I was probably making about a hundred quid a month, but I quickly got three. I bought first one with a bonus from Lloyd's, second one with shares from Lloyd's and the third one from remortg my own home. But I was out of money.

Got three properties where the mortgage had been paid off, but making about 300 quid a month. And that was the realization to say, right, there's different ways of doing that. And that's when I started educating myself with books from Simon Zuzzi, Property Magic, Rob Homer, Rob Moore, I think 46 different ways of buying property. And that just opened my eyes to the different strategies. And that's where it took us on a path to say, this is no longer a hobby. We can turn this into something different.

And I know HMOS is an area as well where you've definitely focused as well.

Yeah, and that was off the back of reading them books. I went and invested in my own education and paid a lot of money for that. But I found I didn't like sitting in the classroom with other people. I prefer having a one-on-one piece where I can learn from them and go and implement it or do some online learning in my own time. I just found it really frustrating sitting in a classroom where

Speaker 1 (13:14.594)
You'd listen to other people make excuses of why they haven't took action.

terms of your wealth building, in terms of your goal setting, did you have a clear vision at that point? Did you know what you wanted to achieve in the long term?

I'm going to say I had a dream and not a goal. I had a dream to live out in Spain on a golf course by the time I was 53. When I joined the 1 % club, there's a lot about goal setting. There's a lot about your reason why. There's a lot about, John talks about five pillars, the goals, the desire, knowledge, environments, and getting all them things in place. And that really helped me decide what I wanted to do.

how much I wanted to get to and by what time. And it was still 53 at that point, but I knew it was through property, it through HMOs, we're providing great homes. And it was then all about taking action and we take action in 90 day plans very much as we talk about in the wealth builders. Have I done something this week to get me progress? And I've been doing that 90 day goal setting and whether you read a book called The 12 Week Year by Byron Moran.

and another book by Gary Kelliha, The One Thing. A mixture of them two books of 90 day plans and just doing one thing each week that's gonna move the needle has just compounded me some huge gains over the last five years since I've been doing them.

Speaker 2 (14:42.334)
want to finish off the seven pillars because I mean, it's rare, but it's fantastic when someone has actually got each of these working. So we talked about your home, we talked about pension pillar investments, we talked about property. Let's talk about business then, Ian. So tell us about the businesses.

Yeah, so businesses, we've got Cohome. So we like to say we're the nationwide first UK co-living operator. So there's a lot of co-living operators that are brilliant in small pockets around the country, but we manage properties all along the South Coast in the Midlands where a lot of my investments are and up in the North. And then we've got a few sporadic ones everywhere. So I knew I'd get interrupted by the camera.

That's okay. Kids enjoying themselves by the pool, I think.

Absolutely. They have jumped in it today, actually, but they didn't last very long in there. Yeah, so co-homes are a property managing agency. So we look after HMOs or help landlords turn them into high-end HMOs, but we're very different. We focus on the housemate. We give them welcome gifts when they're moving. We put on pizza nights. We put on games nights. We send birthday cards and we've utilized them to do a lot more of viewings.

So they're choosing who they want to live with rather than us having to send somebody around to show somebody around the house. So we're trying to do very things, very different without having so many feet on the ground and using a lot of automation and systemization to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 (16:09.996)
You refer to we there. who's alongside you on this Ian?

So we've got some other investors from Scott Baker Properties. So we shared the same values and the team at Coho. So Coho is the game-changing HMO management software. the founders of Coho have also, we was their guinea pigs when they were starting out testing their software. And we just shared the same values about, as I say, putting the housemate at the heart of everything we do. We talk about comfort, we talk about convenience.

We talk about connections and we talk about community in the home and it's co-home. Every one of them words start with co-home. But it's a big thing for us.

One of the steps that you'll know Ian, we talk about a lot in wealth building processes, leverage. You're talking here about leveraging relationships, leveraging software, lots of forms of leverage, financial leverage, course. Pillar six, if we're going to finish off the seven here, is about leveraging your knowledge, your experiences, your intellect, so intellectual property. Tell us, what have you created?

Yeah, so I've got an education program online and it's called Beat the Day. And people used to say to me, how have you got a full-time job at Lides Bank with quite a senior role? You've got four young kids, you've got a really bad golf habit. You always seem to be away on holiday. How would you do it all? And my routine is I get up in the morning and I will do 15 minutes of work on the business of my one thing. So can I say to myself, can I do 15 minutes? Of course I can do 15 minutes really easy.

Speaker 1 (17:46.806)
If I said to myself, I need to do two hours, I'm like, it's a bit overwhelming, how am going to fit that in? So if I do 15 minutes on my one thing, sometimes that turns into 20 minutes, half hour or 45 minutes of really good deep work of making progress. Then once I've done that, I get on my bike, I get on my Peloton, I'm a real Peloton geek, and I find having that fitness element gives me time to think but feel much better. Keep the dad bud away at mid 40s.

So that's really important still to be able to chase these four kids away. So again, it's in the mindset, can I do 15 minutes on the bike? Yeah, turns into 45 minutes. Then I'd get into the day's work at Lloyd's and do all that. But in the afternoon, I had a really good boss who was very forward thinking and listened to the entrepreneurial ways. And I'd say, can I go out for a walk, walk the dog, get some exercise, get some steps in, but plug myself in? And I'd either listen to

on audio ball, listen to a podcast, or actually actually done my wealth building course while taking a walk and listening in and making notes on my phone. So if I've done that every day, I've beat the day. If I can beat the day four or five times a week, I've beat the week. If I can beat the week three or four times a month, I've beat the month. And that's how I just made progress. And when you look back every week, you go, geez, I have done, but just by having that mindset of doing

my little enough than my tiny gains, I've really made some big strides on my business, in my health and wellbeing, but also in my learning.

And that's the 1 % or the compound effect, whatever you want to call it, right?

Speaker 1 (19:27.296)
And I call it beat the day. that's the thing. But it's just, I'll give you the framework of what I used. I'll give you all the resources I've created, all the routines. It's not game changing. It's common sense. But sometimes we as humans need to apply common sense a bit more.

I'll make sure that we put a link on the show notes if anyone wants to go and check that out. Finally, pillar number seven is joint ventures. You've already talked about working with other people there, but joint ventures is a key part of wealth building too.

I've got three joint ventures with other property partners. So I've got two property businesses with my wife, but three other joint ventures where people have gone to me. I really love what you do. I love the values. I love what you're about putting the housemate at everything you do and not just chasing the money because I've learned by putting the housemate at the heart of everything, money becomes the byproduct of it. So we've seen our average tenancies go from nine months to 23 months. So we actually, we don't have to work as hard. If we look after them housemates, we're not having

turnovers and changeovers. So I've ended up with three joint ventures, which I hold eight properties in now as a stake of both the equity and the cashflow on a monthly basis. And plus then properties get managed for free from our property management company.

Well, I can see how all of this is working together and that's a fantastic example of certainly what we advocate at Wealthbuilders is synergistic, looking at what you've got in your life, how can you make things work together to grow, to compound. So appreciate you sharing that and how you've fitted all of that in with a full-time job and a career, I don't know, but you clearly have got the skills to do that. However, that job sounds like that was in the past. So at what point did you decide to make that break?

Speaker 1 (21:13.55)
I used to head up vehicle remarketing for Lightbank. So I was responsible for selling 125,000 cars. They owned the biggest leasing company in the UK called Lexortilis. They owned the biggest motor finance in Blackhorse Motor Finance. So I've been there 24 years and we started having some difference of opinions and it was quite clear they wanted to go on off in a different way to where we was going. And it just comes to a point where

It was an opportunity to go and I was like, okay, now I can go and follow my passion of property and golf and doing things like that. Because I was conscious for 24 years, it's difficult to break out of that routine because I was also doing like compressed hours. I was working from home, so there was no travel. So over the years, we'd really leverage different ways of, I'm going to call it buying back our time where we could focus that time on things that

was earning money for me rather than the bank. Because I had a bit of a light bulb moment where I was speaking with John Lammerton and he said, I talked about how much I was detesting the corporate job. And he said, right, okay, so how much do you earn in the corporate job? And I said this, and he said, right, so how many hours do you do a week? And I went, well, I'm contracted to do 35, but I do about 60 because I'm always first in the office and last to leave. And he went, right, now.

divide your salary by 60 hours and divide your salary by 35 hours. And that was a big wake up call. So then other hours that they was getting for free from me suddenly stopped and was dedicated towards my property journey. And that's where we started to excel.

benefits of having coaches, mentors, people around you, right?

Speaker 1 (22:56.77)
And it's just such a simple, challenging question, but it was one that I hadn't questioned myself. I just thought as a leader, I had to be the one that was first in there, one that was last out. But what was I really doing there? Nothing really value add. It was just being present.

So I dare say there's people listening to this episode, Ian, and they're in a similar position. They're wanting to get out a bit worried, a bit scared, things to make sure that they take care of their families, all of those thoughts and things you had to consider. But Breaking Free, how do you feel? How has it changed your psyche?

I never have that dread on a Sunday that I've got Monday coming up. It's actually a pleasure to get up to decide what you want to work on, decide what you want to do. You don't have to answer to anybody. You don't have to listen to somebody who's going to give you a performance rating because you have to meet a curve or a distribution of it. I took a lot of time to commit to leaving and I look back and go,

Should I have done it earlier? Absolutely. However, my journey is my journey. I can't change that. I can only learn from it and just say to others. I wasn't brave enough to cut off and jump in. I slowly built my wealth up over time, probably till about four years ago, where I was earning more through property than I was through my role. So I had that choice. Whereas,

That was my safety blanket. And once that's gone, the freedom and acceleration that I look at, I took the care home. It took me 24 years to get to that level in and that salary, which I've replaced in one deal, albeit the deal was probably funded by Lides for my pension and things like that. But look, I always take a lot of positives away from working from Lides because they're a very risk averse bank, very compliance, very boring, always made profits and healthy profits.

Speaker 1 (25:05.354)
and embedding that culture and then values and that learning into your own business, your streets ahead of anybody to start with.

Yeah, I think an important point you made there about when is the right time to quit and making sure that you've almost proven the concept that you can generate income outside of your job because I I wrote a book called Sack Your Boss, right? So it's a good thing to do. you know, don't do it until you're ready until you've got some sort of safety net, as you said.

I cringe at when you see some of these proxy courses to say, leave your job in 12 months or replace your income with rent to rent deals or things. And yes, there's a capability of doing that, but you need to manage all of them risks and identify them and look how you can mitigate them. I don't think you'll ever remove them all, but you can reduce the risk by doing certain things.

Some of this freedom, this time freedom that you've got now Ian, I know you've been focusing a lot on new technology and AI has just blown up, it? For everybody over the last couple of years and you've embraced it. And so let's move on now and look at exactly how you've embraced it. So where did your fascination, is there something that you can remember when it all kicked off?

It was probably about a couple of years ago where obviously chat GPT come out and I'm all big on if I don't automate stuff and systemize stuff, I'm to be stuck in doing the do. And that's why back in my Lides role in 2014, we'd done a big outsource deal. So I had 325 staff. We had all these cars that we had to sell. We had retail sites sold at auction, sold direct to the company car driver. We'd done a big outsource deal to one company called British Car Auctions where they

Speaker 1 (26:51.32)
picked up all our cars, inspected them all and bought them all off us. I went from 325 staff to 11 and I was like, no staff problems. This is great. Systemization, automation. So I've always been fascinated to make my life easier. So I started using ChatGVT to create social media content as part of my goals a couple of years ago. I wanted to be more presence on social media, showcasing what we do, but trying to help educate and motivate people.

Then started to learn that actually you could customize this. So it actually sounded like me used words that I'd done. And that sort of evolved over the, over the year. And literally now on a Sunday, I will talk into my phone to my customized GPT that does my social media marketing and talk about five things that I've done in property this week. It then will create that content for me, post it in a Google doc and my virtual assistant then.

We'll post that every morning and pick a photo for my photo reel that aligns to that story. And it's done in five minutes. Whereas before I'd be worrying what to post. I'd be stuck for things to talk about. Will people be interested? It now creates the hook line. It creates the content with emojis. It puts a call to action in and relevant hashtags. So what I was doing then is like, okay, how am I going to get it? And I remember

Probably about nine months ago, I had a really bad Friday night where three or four of our properties had issues. And I circled around a boiler pressure, went and topped that up, a filter on a washing machine. Easy things that the housemates could have done if they'd have known what to do or one got locked out and didn't have a key code. So was getting all these. So I was like, I wonder if I could create a concierge where housemates talk to a customized GPT and it gives them the answers that they want.

So we started building all that out and got your housemates to use that. And then just before Christmas, the person who run our property management business had a bit of a breakdown. He said he needed some time away from the business. And I was like, that's fine. And I'd just finished Lloyd's at this time. And I was like, look, I've not got much on at the moment. I'll help step in while you take some break away. And the guys were like, okay, we're going to really miss him because he's such a great person.

Speaker 1 (29:15.502)
You know what mean? We're going to miss all the questions. I don't mind, just ask me. All of a sudden, within them 48 hours, I'd create myself another job. And I was back into the corporate world where people are asking me, they want more of my time. What do I do here? And I was like, right, don't speak to me for a couple of days. And I created a customized property manager and I gave it to the guys and they're like, yeah, but this is not going to work. I'm like, just try it. Within two or three days, all the work stopped, all the contact stopped.

and I was going to the guys just checking in with them everything okay yeah this is brilliant what's so good about it there's no mood swings there's just more consistency with answers it's always available it's not in a meeting or on viewings so all of a sudden the guys are like this is brilliant so in the one percent club there's a guy called anil who's part of orbital.com and he loves my enthusiasm around AI and he said I want to show you something

And he said, I purposely want you to try it because you'll give me some honest feedback. And he built me a boardroom of roles and he helped me create a vision values document for the business. He helped fundamentally create me a business plan, which we fed into this boardroom, which had a chief financial officer, a marketing officer, a chairperson, a CEO, a legal counsel, a HR person. And I was a virtual assistant, a property manager support.

And I was asking this virtual boardroom, all these questions, and all of a sudden it's helping me deliver my five year roadmap by helping me reverse engineer back into 90 day plans and holding me accountable. But it's really overwhelming. Like I showed the team and I was like, no, this is too much. So I'm keeping them working with the property manager that we built. So I spoke with Neil and I said, look, I love this, but this is for big corporates, isn't it? He said, yeah.

But you've been in a big corporate world, you've sat on a board, what do you think of it? And I said, you'll smash it. I want to build one for me as an individual property investor. Because as a property investor, when starting out, you wear so many different hats on a daily basis that sometimes you want somebody to speak to, you want somebody to bounce ideas off. And it goes, why don't you build one? And I'm like, how do I do this? And he said, well, you've built your four separate ones.

Speaker 1 (31:42.85)
that you've talked about, let's put them into a customized team for you. And I was like, that's like having my own property power team. And he went, there you go, there's your name. People talk about that cheesy line of your own property power team. So that's what we've done. We've created my property power team.ai and what we've done is built this virtual team of, I think we've got 20 roles now. So all dependents upon.

where you are on your journey, your experience, your investment strategy, we've built some roles for you. But to be able to bespoke them, we want people to be interviewed by another of our GPTs, which helps them create, to start with, their purpose, the reason that they're doing it, their why. We help them create their mission then of what they're going to do, and then put the values that they want to help deliver that whole thing by.

Right. So once we've built that document for them, we send them that, but we then build their business plan by asking their questions about what they want to achieve, reverse engineer that back. Also, what are their pain points? What do they need help with? And we've created then a business plan, a roadmap, a blueprint, whatever you want to call it. By putting them two together, we can then make recommendations to them of what roles they want in their business. And we bespoke each of the roles by

certain people that maybe inspire them, that maybe they would love to be in their business but couldn't afford. Now, this is just, you've got all these people that are on hand for you 24 seven, all of the different hats that you want to use as a business to get help with at your fingertips.

I know this is something that literally you've put together really, in the last few weeks, it? The speed at which you move is impressive.

Speaker 1 (33:37.612)
If you don't move quickly, you're going to get left behind and somebody else is going to do it. Right. And what we're, what we're trying to do is, is encourage people to take this business interview. It's free. It's 30 minutes of your time. You can have it while you're a cup of coffee in the morning and talk to the GPT and be interviewed by it. You can type it if you want, or you can go and plug yourself in and get your steps done and do it while you're exercising. And off the back of that, you get these two free documents.

which are going to be hugely valuable for your business. How many times do we talk about as business owners or investors that you need your vision and values and your purpose. You need to understand what that is because that's going to guide you. We will always talk about a business plan. And I remember it can take you months and maybe years sometimes of procrastinating and getting done. We give it you within 30 minutes.

Ian remind us of the URL so anyone listening now can go there absolutely for free get these documents.

MyPropertyPowerTeam.ai.

Okay. And I'm going to link to that again in the show notes. So who is this aimed at Ian? Is it for someone who's right at the beginning or even advanced?

Speaker 1 (34:48.64)
in advance whether you've got one property or a hundred properties, because we understand where you are with your vision and your values and what you're trying to achieve, we then help you create your business plan. Some people might be really far ahead and know what their business plan is and we just make sure that's right. Or you might be at the very start and just don't know where to start. But then we recommend roles that are ideal for you. So if you're starting out, we don't recommend you have a chief financial officer because you've probably got nothing started.

But what we might recommend is a business coach or we might recommend a property mentor or we might recommend a virtual assistant to try and help get you started. We've got a marketing one. So that website that you see was literally created by our customized marketing officer by saying, right, this is what we want to do. These are the pain points of people. This is the successes. How I've taken them pain points away. Help me create.

an Alex Hormozi style website because I like that style of the way he goes about giving away lots of value in that first outset to gain the know, like and trust of customers.

So if you're listening now, you can actually go and see this, the proof right in front of you and see how advanced this technology is really. I think it's fantastic. some things that hold people back, Ian, obviously is the lack of time, but just, you know.

perhaps a fear of doing something that's new to them. Wealth dynamics is an assessment we take at the beginning of the wealth builders process, it? As you said, you've got to wear many hats, but we don't necessarily enjoy doing all of those things. If you can just talk to an expert, talk to your phone and have someone come back with exactly what you should be doing for marketing or for your viewings or for your refurbs or pretty much any part of that process.

Speaker 1 (36:44.854)
One of the big things from this boardroom that was created, when the director walked out and he hasn't come back, right? He said, I've found out a lovely property, I'm leaving. I was like, that's fine guys, anything you need, we'll get it from the standard operating procedure document. And there was like, what's that? And went, surely we've got our procedures documented down. I'm like, no. So I've gone into the boardroom and said, we haven't got a standard operating procedure. Give me six categories that we need to focus on.

And it gave me the six categories, housemates, landlords, operations, sales, marketing, finance. Right. Put me in an order of what they should do. And one person was in the boardroom was saying one thing, another was saying another. And I'm saying, well, why do you suggest that? So I'm talking to this virtual app about getting different views and who we should focus on first. And it went back. What is the values of the business? We talk about putting the housemate at the heart of everything we do. And he went.

focus on the housemate first and getting and keeping housemates. And so that's what we focused on and we've created a whole document now of operating procedures within a month just by talking to GPT to get us started.

I'm sure you'd invite anyone who's listening now who's perhaps got some pain points and they're not quite sure how can they manage that. I'm sure you'll be able to find a solution if you haven't already got one.

Yeah, I'd love to, you know what mean, they can get in touch with any of the email addresses that we leave here. And I'm happy to have a discovery call with people to just showcase what can be done with it. I don't think AI is going to take over your role, but it's going to make your role a hell of a lot easier to do. And I talk about, I give it 5 % of instructions, 90 % of the work is done for me at really high level. And I just need to validate the last 5 % that it is right. You've always got to, I talk about it as delegating.

Speaker 1 (38:36.834)
You've always got to own it from start to finish and it's your responsibility. But all of the work is done for you.

going to say the URL one more time, mypropertypowerteam.ai. Okay, so head there now or click the link in the show notes. I'd like to say, Ian, what's the plan for the next 12 months? But I feel like the amount of opportunities that you just attract, you don't know next week what's going to land on front of you.

Somebody's got in touch with me on LinkedIn. So at the moment we're leaving this place here in Spain. We have to be out of a friend's villa and that's just another networking opportunity. So they've given us their villa for three months here because I was adding value at property and Papa Dom's in their sessions. So they give us their villa. We've got to be out by April. Somebody got in touch with me on LinkedIn to say, I've seen you in La Costa Blanca. They're taking us on a tour for the next two days up in Altea and Calpe. But it's just putting yourself out there.

being visible, trying to add value for others. A particular book that I read last year, which resonates with me, Bob Berg, The Go Giver. There's five principles in that book about giving back. And when I've done a lot of that, I feel I'm getting even more in return.

Absolutely. Pleasure speaking with you, Ian. We love having you as part of the wealth builders community. You're such an inspiration. know many people listening to this podcast will probably know you. Hopefully we'll see you back in the UK and we can share a drink together and celebrate.

Speaker 1 (40:04.462)
Absolutely.

Ian, thanks so much for sharing with us today.

No worries. Thanks, Christian.

Speaker 2 (40:13.356)
All right, million miles an hour Mr. Block there. look, as you say beforehand, Kevin, enthusiasm there, absolutely loving what he's doing now and obviously being able to break free now from the corporate world to focus all of his time on what he loves, which is wealth building.

And you probably picked up, he's got a different way of expressing it than I've got, which is the sort of time for money formula. I call it IP times T. So IP, what you've got in there and you, you, you sell it for time, right? And my view about this is whatever salary on, if you're a job holder, or even if you're drawing money from your business, you're drawing combination of salary, dividend, whatever, whatever you're drawing, just divided by two.

So if you're on 50 grand a year divided by two, that's 25 pounds an hour. If you're on 100 grand a year, it's 50 pounds an hour. If you're on 200 grand a year, it's 100 pounds an hour. And then you know what your IP is worth when you sell it for temporary income. And the principle of wealth building is about permanent income. And the difference between the two fundamental, the first one is one is permanent, the other one's temporary. Recurring income is predictable.

You feel that from Ian, right? You feel the predictability of knowing. You don't have to report to anybody. You don't have to do anything. You just feel in control. So predictability over unpredictability. in an ever increasingly uncertain world, that predictability is important. And although we didn't talk much about that, Ian himself, because the kids are young, I mean, it's great to hear them splashing and splishing about in there, you know, just so it's authentic. What I call pass on a bold income.

You know, if you've got recurring income, you own the asset. So the asset continues to generate income. You can pass that on. If you don't pass it on, therefore it dies with you and jobs die with you. Businesses more often than not die with you. So this whole principle then of recurring income, of permanence predictability and pass on a ball. If that's a word I've just made it up, then that's, know, where we want to encourage anybody to put a little bit of their time.

Speaker 3 (42:23.822)
to do that and sometimes a bit of their money, know, whether it's a bonus, whether it's I don't know, if you're working on commission, whatever you can do, doesn't take much to redeploy money that you get temporarily or windfalls or gifts and turn it into recurring income as a one-off. And Ian did that ably as well, didn't he? He said that from Lloyd's Bank.

funny because last week we had Rachel Knight on the podcast. I remember she also mentioned about using her bonuses to purchase some of her first properties. And I guess that's a different mindset, isn't it? Some people spend that money if they choose to, others will invest it.

And the whole point, I think, is spend a little time to build recurring income and then you can spend the rest of your life not worrying about income. Otherwise, you spend no time building recurring income and then when you get older, you spend all of your time worrying about your income. And I just don't think the current system is set up to help people do that. So I'm grateful for Ian to adding his enthusiasm behind our message. And of course, other messages that he's listened to.

And other authors, you build off quite a few other groups and that's the benefit, isn't it really? It's an ecosystem of finding and connecting with good people, good groups, good communities. I think it's just important that you find the right combination of how you get that for you. Because the environment in which you build your wealth is really important. So surrounding yourself with the right people, whether it's in groups, whether it's one-on-one. Ian said he didn't like classrooms, for example.

You have to know your own learning style. Many business owners we know from research are dyslexic. So that's why we create materials ourselves that you can watch, listen or read. So you can choose your own learning style. So really important to choose your learning style. Really important to choose the way you want to have an environment of support. And we'll do our best to either be that environment or showcase other environments.

Speaker 3 (44:23.744)
if they're appropriate, because that's what we're trying to do is build more connections to more people so that, you know, we're just willing to be part of someone's power team. And obviously he mentioned that power team idea as well in part of his kind of almost his immersive activity in GBT.

Absolutely. One of the steps in our roadmap is leverage. And you created an acronym FIRST for the different types of leverage that can be used. And the S stands for software. Yeah. And, yeah, it's not as common that we see someone really embracing software and leveraging systems in their business. But with the advancement of chat GPT of AI tools now, it's great to see that Ian has

as well.

Speaker 2 (45:14.23)
Interesting as well that he dedicated, he said a couple of days to his team, don't talk to me, I'm going to lock myself away. I'm just going to figure this out. And he built what he calls a custom GPT. So without getting into too much detail, just something that he can use inside his business, which is essentially a kind of chat bot for his team to ask questions about the standard operating processes and procedures. And he ended up saying that they found the bot was

didn't have the mood swings and just always answered on time and quickly and efficiently. you know, interesting. We of course don't want to replace humans in the workplace, but he said you can leverage technology so it can do 90 % of the work for you. And then you're just there to guide it and to check it.

Yeah, I heard that and it kind of resonated a bit because I had a mentor meeting last night here in Cardiff with one of my clients who was telling me that his community, all of his community are all medicals, all medical doctors, all specialists. And he was saying that so much of AI is now going to be used in the diagnosis of people's conditions because it doesn't need opinions as much. You you still need a doctor to

perform operations, although, you know, watch this space on that one, I guess, but just the, the influence of AI for the positive. And of course there are people fearing the negative as well, but I think what we're certainly in our leverage, both in terms of using AI, Chris, and using VAs in the businesses to allow us to focus on what we're best at, where we can add the most value. And I think I've heard you say on more than one occasion,

leave me alone for three days or whatever, you know, I'm getting on with something and it's almost like you took a leaf out of Mr. Block's book.

Speaker 2 (47:04.494)
Yeah, well, I'm very keen to see what Ian's created there with mypropertypowerteam.ai, which is his website. And yeah, I encourage you to head along there now and check it out. It's absolutely wonderful opportunity that Ian is giving you to get a free assessment of your business, go through your values, and then give you some tips on how you can leverage technology in your own business.

One thing that I think is interesting when you listen to someone like Ian is how giving people are. Yet employees often struggle with that. You you heard Ian talk about the, I suppose, a struggling relationship in terms of where his business or where his employeeship was going in terms of Lloyd's Bank and so on. I think when people join wealth builders, and I had a real enthusiast of wealth builders, Tracy Hilliard,

to group of women. And by the way, if you're interested and you're a female and you want to be part of our work group, which is called Women in Wealth, how to help us understand and make distinctions about the unique aspect of the female perspective when it comes to building wealth in all of those seven pillars that you eloquently shared that Ian had built wealth in all of them, you know, but if you want to be part of that group, then

reach out and let us know and how would they do that Chris? What would somebody do if they want to be part of that?

you can email hello at wealthbuilders.co.uk.

Speaker 3 (48:33.666)
and just put women in wealth and then we'll be back in touch. But anyway, what she was saying is as an employee, know, everybody was guarded, was protected, protective even. But since she's joined not just our community, but other communities, that people are so giving and so sharing. And sometimes it's a bit disarming when you hear Ian say, I'll have a discovery call with you, I'll help you if I can. You know, he's always paying it forward as a philosophy.

You can see it's in the fabric of who he is as a person. It's not false. It's not somehow self-serving. He knows that karma will, he puts it out, he'll get something back and he's given examples of where that comes. And that's up to you to determine what's right for you. But I think that philosophy is a very powerful.

I'd like to say another huge thanks to Ian for being our guest today. If you enjoyed this episode, if you think somebody else might find some benefit of heading to his website, then share this episode. Hit the share button now and send it to a friend. And we'll be back same time, maybe not same place for you, Kevin, next week. But we'll certainly be back for another episode of Wealth Talk.

We will indeed my friend and until then, see ya.

Speaker 2 (49:49.934)
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership.