IAM2236 – Property Investor Guru Shares on How to Build a Multi-Million Pound Property Portfolio

Title: Transcript - Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:07:12 GMT

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:07:12 GMT, Duration: [00:16:46.75]

[00:00:00.32] - Rahim Bah

To understand what their pain points are and try to find out how I can best serve this person, genuinely serve this person. And then I also try to add value in whatever conversation or in whatever help they may need from me.

[00:00:17.55] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEO's, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gretch values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the imceo podcast.

[00:00:45.60] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gretch from the I am CEO podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Rahim Ba. Rahim, excited to have you on the show.

[00:00:54.13] - Rahim Bah

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to learn to a bit more about you and obviously for you to learn a bit more about myself.

[00:01:02.43] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. That's one of the awesome things about this medium, is we get the opportunity to collaborate and co create and connect. And Raheem's doing so many awesome things. So, of course, before we jumped in to hear a little bit more about what those things are, I wanted to read a little bit more about him so you can hear about some of those awesome things. In arriving in the UK alone at 15, unable to speak English and without money, Rahim navigated immense challenges. Growing up in a crime ridden neighborhood, he faced homelessness and financial hardship after university, but never gave up. He boldly ventured into property investment with no capital, eventually building a multi million pound portfolio. And one of the things that I was reading, just preparing for this, about Raheem's background, I think he was placed in foster care and he worked hard and eventually studied accountancy at Boundmouth University, if I said that correctly, and he started his rental or his property investment journey seven years ago with no experience, as he said. But he also is somebody that has, I think I'm going to call him a serial entrepreneur because he seems like he's involved in a lot of different things. I know he has loads of great information, knowledge and, of course, a story to tell us. So, Raheem, are you ready to speak to the Imco community?

[00:02:11.63] - Rahim Bah

Yes, I am. I am super excited. I've learned a bit about your company as well. It looks like you're there to promote CEO's entrepreneurs and I'm delighted to share my journey with you.

[00:02:22.59] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's kick it off there then. I would love to hear what I like to call your CEO story, your journey to hear about all the awesome things you've been able to accomplish and what kind of lez led you there.

[00:02:32.56] - Rahim Bah

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. My entrepreneurial journey, I would say it starts from at a very young age. I always intrigue about how cooperation works, how businesses operate and what makes people successful and what make other people not successful and what make other people work long, long hours, and other people work barely work long hours and make all this return on their investment. But really and truly what gets me to start doing what I'm doing now is few things, is I used to work as an accountant myself. I don't want to bore you. What happened when I was young, working as accountant, job is good. I was earning about maybe $35,000 in your currency. But what really triggers me to take my finances into my own hands is one Sunday morning where I used to live in a shared house where I'm not sure how you call that in America, where you, they say it's a house with lots of bedrooms, maybe seven or eight bedrooms. People share in all the community and community communal area, but it is also in a place where there's a market. We have this Sunday market where everybody around the area meets to buy groceries, fruits and all that sort of thing. So that sort of noise woke me up that morning. But when I woke up, it was one thing that really comes to mind. And the thing that comes to mind was, I've got this job. I'm doing okay. I'm about to become a chartered accountant. But I thought about what if I got ill? What if I got run by a boss? What if one of my children got ill? Or what if my mom got ill? You know, what can I do? I realized if I got ill or if my family member had something terrible happen to them, the company might let me stay at home maybe for a couple of weeks, or maybe if I'm lucky, a few weeks, and then if I cannot go back to work, they will just kind of let me off. And that was the time, the day, the hour, the minute, the second. I realized that one source of income is very, very dangerous. But when I looked at properties, real estate is that you can have a property and you can make money in two ways. You can make money by renting the property, meaning you will not even lose the property, still make rent, you still rent it and having the property, and you get paid every single month without actually doing anything after you bought the property, that was really appealing to me. But what really, really also draws my attention to drastically. It's not just for the cash flow is what we call capital appreciation, whereas as time goes on, the property value go up.

[00:05:27.06] - Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much in sharing that. So I wanted to drill down a.

[00:05:30.79] - Gresham Harkless

Little bit more, hear a little bit.

[00:05:31.81] - Gresham Harkless

More on how you're working with and serving the clients that you work with. Could you take us through a little bit more of what that looks like and what you're doing there?

[00:05:37.56] - Gresham Harkless

And of course, we'd love to hear.

[00:05:38.64] - Gresham Harkless

More of what you think is your secret sauce and what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.

[00:05:44.74] - Rahim Bah

Right. So to be honest with you, I would say is persistence, commitment and perseverance. So what I tend to look at when I've got a client or I've got a prospect in front of me is to first of all, try to serve them right? Because if I don't serve them, I won't be able to help them. So I find a way to understand what their pain points are and try to find out how I can best serve this person, genuinely serve this person. And then I also try to add value in whatever conversation or in whatever help they may need from me. So very important for you to be able to do that. I learned this from a gentleman called Tony Robbins. I'm not sure if, you know, he is. He's an american legend. Very good in what he does. He said to me, like, add value. If you add value more than anybody else is adding in your market field, you will dominate. So I've always got this thing in my mind when I meet a client or a prospect. It's not about trying to get money from them or maybe trying to sell something to them. It's trying to find out, what can I do to make your life better? I'll give an example. Now, when I start my property investment journey, I have landlords. Landlords comes to me wanting to actually rent their property out on a guaranteed rent basis. I help them sort that problem out, but most of them do not have money to kind of fix the properties or to kind of do something to the house. So what I do, I said, look, if you can afford to do the thing, I can do it for you, and then we can subsequently deduct that from your rental income that you receive from me. So basically, most landlords say, wow, are you going to do that for me? You're going to actually renovate my house for you? For me? I said, yes. And then obviously sometimes they come to me with some different problems. Someone will walk past my office, say, look, I've got this problem. Can you help me? I always help them because helping them also makes you feel happy, makes you feel really, really good as well in what you're doing, not just feeling like you're serving someone. So these are some of the things I actually do to kind of get people to kind of serve people, basically. But most importantly also is having the conversation that your client is already having in their mind as well. This is by probing them, understanding exactly what they're looking for, what they want. How can I best serve you knowing that if you go away, you can only refer me to people or talk very amazing things from me. So that has really, really helped me. Some people think I'm stupid for doing that, helping people for absolutely no charge, but it has helped my business grow significantly, especially when, when Covid hit, for example, is we have some of our properties that we've got this guaranteed rent contract, but when Covid hit, everything was locked down, nothing had happened. The goodwill I've already done came solving me because then landlords were literally saying, look, if you can't pay me, the rent is fine, you know, because I understand what's happening. They will not come down my neck trailer and all that stuff. It's because I've added value in advance. So for any entrepreneur, think about adding value in what year. Whatever you do, don't put having money in front of you, but however, put adding value ahead of anything you do. And most importantly, be genuine and willing to help and resolve problems. And most importantly, I'm going to add in there also staying consistent, committed and perseverance. Because entrepreneurial journey is a rollercoaster, you know, it goes up and down like that, but with persistence, perseverance, and getting a coach or a mentor to guide you along the way, that really, really take you a long way.

[00:09:41.82] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you so much and sharing that, especially like when you start to, I think so many times we get locked in like dollars and cents and saying, okay, we need this much revenue as far as like being a measure of success. But I love what you said around creating the most value within the marketplace when we start to really start to give. I think one of those things that we sometimes get short sighted about is that we don't realize that can come back in so many different ways at different times. Like you mentioned, everything that happened with.

[00:10:09.16] - Gresham Harkless

COVID sometimes that quote, unquote, goodwill that.

[00:10:12.37] - Gresham Harkless

You'Ve poured into comes back during times that you least expect it or times that sometimes you even need it. But if you are a valuable person and you always try to provide the topmost value that you can to people, then it ends up being something that continues to fulfill, fill itself in so many different ways.

[00:10:27.08] - Gresham Harkless

So I absolutely love that and how that's part of, like, what.

[00:10:29.78] - Gresham Harkless

What you've done to set you apart.

[00:10:32.39] - Rahim Bah

Yeah. Thank you.

[00:10:33.97] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely.

[00:10:34.64] - Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:45.91] - Rahim Bah

Good question. Good question. Gresh, you're asking amazing questions. What really, I think makes me thick is. Oh, that's a good question. I'm thinking about it now, is having a massive why behind you having a reason for doing what you're doing. And I think that was one of my biggest fear, to get me going. And also perseverance. I don't give up. Right. I am always doing things and hard working, quite frankly, you know, working hard is really, really. It pays off. People think not working hard will get you to where you want to go. Yes. That's what you see in social media. People sitting, sipping drinks in the beach or doing like that. But in real life, that's not the case. Right? If you really want to be successful, impact massive, massive, massive generations or lots of people, you have to put on the hard work and you have to create your own luck as well. So I believe in creating your own luck. I believe in working hard on yourself than you do in anything else. And also committing, knowing that you've got a vision and a mission. And most importantly, take your finances, make it your duty, responsibility, and your obligation.

[00:12:09.17] - Gresham Harkless

I love that. And I really love that foundational, that massive. Why? Because I think so many times when you're thinking about finances or you're thinking about, you know, perseverance, working on all those things, you can become very discouraged. I often say, like your why sometimes is the gas tank, gas in the gas tank that you need.

[00:12:25.87] - Rahim Bah

But look at it this way, you're going to work for that person for 46, may I say, 2030 years, okay? You get in that money, if you're lucky enough, you've got maybe 2% increase and all that sort of thing, right? So looking at that, then in 20 years time, you retire and you look at your pension, you're earning peanut, right? Whereas if you got a business, the first five, six, maybe ten years, you're gonna work really, really hard for it, right? But what then you would have done all those ten years compound itself and it becomes a massive snowball effect. And then you start making money and you start thinking, where is this money coming from? Not knowing you've worked all that hard and worrying about pension will be something in the past. So it's all about working hard, working smart, and knowing what you want to do. Knowing that entrepreneurship is not an easy game and you go through it wholeheartedly and ensure you execute no matter what.

[00:13:25.76] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love each of those nuggets.

[00:13:27.99] - Gresham Harkless

And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

[00:13:32.75] - Gresham Harkless

Our goal is to have different, quote.

[00:13:33.78] - Gresham Harkless

Unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Raheem, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:38.27] - Rahim Bah

What CEO means to me? Good question. CEO is being a people's person. Someone that is caring, someone that understand the people that they work with. Knowing that the people that you work with are your colleagues, they are your family, they are your everything. Having a good bond of the people that you're working with, relationships, being concerned about whatever difficulties that they're facing. Being a CEO is being able to be proactively making decisions to protect your business, as well as the people that work with you. Having a vision and a mission and being able to communicate that mission and a vision to the people that you work with. In essence, being able to sell your idea to them, get them motivated. And the only thing, the only way that works is by building relationship with the people you working with. It's not about the bottom line in most cases. It's about the people that you work with. If they're happy with you, if they're inspired by you, if they know you're there for them, they will do whatever it takes to make your business succeed.

[00:15:02.22] - Gresham Harkless

Nice. Love that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So, what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to.

[00:15:08.72] - Gresham Harkless

Speak, just to see if there's anything.

[00:15:10.17] - Gresham Harkless

Additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get a hold of you. Find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:15:16.03] - Rahim Bah

There's a link I will give you on this podcast. You can click on that book me for a free, no obligation consultation to learn about how we may have be able to help them. If you want to follow me, you can follow me on Instagram is bar Rahim properties, or you can type the word rahim. Bah. Basically, r a h I m. Surname is B. Ah, that is Bravo Alpha hotel. If you google that name or you type it in Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Be sure to see my face somewhere there.

[00:15:53.38] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome awesome. Well thank you so much again Raheem. To make it even easier, of course we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow you on socials. But of course connect with you with that link as well too. I hope you have a phenomenal rest day.

[00:16:05.22] - Rahim Bah

Thank you Gretch.

[00:16:06.37] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the imceo podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. Imceo is not just a phrase, its a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Junior. Thank you for listening.