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What a Meth Contaminated House Taught Me About Business · The Sharon Francisco Show

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Sharon Francisco show.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to share something that I perhaps haven't shared with many people uh since it's happened, but I know way, way, way more about meth than I would expect you to think that I would know.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna go into a little bit of detail about how I know about this terrible, terrible drug called methamphetamine.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Soon after my property settlement following my divorce back in 2013, I was really keen to get back into the property market.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it was something that I really needed to do.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not staying out of the property market for too long was not on my bingo card.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew that I had to do that, but I was a little bit scared about doing that because, you know, I'd never had a I'd with my ex-husband, we'd bought and hold sold many homes.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like, I don't know, probably five or six homes.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never even really thought about when we did it too much.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, yeah, we just need to buy a home and we get get sorted or an investment property or whatever.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you've got two people on a contract, there's a lot of safety around that.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: When it's just one person on a loan contract and on a property contract, it's a very um for me, it was very, very uh scary.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even to this day, I'm absolutely surprised at how overwhelmed I felt.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I'm still surprised is because I have an amazing, amazing supportive family who are incredibly supportive.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if I need help at any time, I know that they would be there to to help me out.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So really didn't have too much of a worry, but it was a big, big step for me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just quite overwhelmed.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think perhaps maybe going through a divorce felt uh left me feeling very vulnerable and very um, I guess, alone, even though I was with Pierre when I made that purchase.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we were kind of at a stage where we weren't at a stage where we were going to sign a contract on a house together.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So he was uh we had he and I were together, uh, but he didn't um uh sign on uh the contract for the that house.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one one of these reasons, the the vulnerability that I felt around making that decision and going through my divorce and all of that is one of the reasons why I'm so passionate to help women with financial independence.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because what financial independence does, when you can grow a business yourself and uh make a decision on how you run that business and how how much profit you want to make and how much you want to pay yourself, creates a lot of choices for women.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you do have a business and you're by yourself, you don't have a partner, or if you do have a partner, you can create that financial security for yourself.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you know how to grow a business and make money and wages and profit, no one can take that away from you.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: You've got that intellectual property, you've got that know-how of how to do that, and knowing how to set up a business that pays you wages and profit, I think, is one incredible way to create financial security for yourself.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to know that it's profitable.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm gonna go into a little bit with this, with my story about meth.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we lived in that property for about 18 months and we decided to rent it out because Pierre was going to buy a place as well.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, all before the property boom, which was very, very lucky for us.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the lessons that we got be all I got before that were massive.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we lived in that, we rented it out after, and we bought Pierre's place and we moved into Pierre's place.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I did everything I believed a responsible property owner would uh would and should do.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I employed a property manager because I didn't want to have the emotion of interviewing people to um come into my house because I was very nervous about having people living my house.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna get a professional to do that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: She can collect the rent and do all the things that she needs, or he or she needs to do.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I also got landlord insurance.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about landlord insurance, it's not cheap.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It uh it goes up and up every year, that landlord insurance.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I was paying about 11 or 1200 bucks a year for that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The first tenants uh our property manager put in were absolutely lovely.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: A young couple that they had a little baby and they were just amazing, paid rent on time, and that sort of made me feel very, very comfortable with the property manager and with renting out my precious little home with my name only on the contract.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The next tenants were a whole different bag of eggs, is it?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Bag of eggs, bag of fish, whatever.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were uh very different.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the first indications that I knew that something wasn't right was I was getting through uh the the breakdown from the property manager about the rent, and it just didn't seem to the the it maybe it's just me, I don't know, but it didn't seem to really make sense to me, the the paperwork that she sent through.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I I finally I said to her, like, is he paying regular?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: She's oh yeah, it's a little bit hit and miss.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he pays less and then he'll make it up the next time.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why it might be confusing for you.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: If any, if anything is confusing for you, which I am really strong about, you'll need you need to say, and I did to her, I'm not buying this, I'm I'm confused.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this confusing for me?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she got quite short with me about it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, no, I just I don't understand it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that he's paying the full rent.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, if you just look at it, you'll be able to see it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I can't, you'll need to go through it with me.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she went through it with me.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we finally figured out that no, he wasn't paying the full rent.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually he stopped paying altogether completely.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: He just stopped paying.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I thought, you know what?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm covered, I've got landlord insurance, and you know, you I know that there's a bit of a process that they've got to go through to do this.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it was absolutely enormous.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: We had to, I had to ring the police to try and get him out.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he also had subleased it to three other men.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there were three other men plus one of the men's girlfriends living in my house.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So four men and a girlfriend were living in my house.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I was completely blown away about this.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then to try and get them out when they hadn't paid rent for quite a few months was just crazy.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize it would be that hard to get people out.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when I finally got those keys back to that house, I started organizing, you know, to get it all set up to rent out again.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd made quite a bit of damage.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to get trades in.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had to get a cleaner in to do a bond clean to make sure that it was all good.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um she came back to us and said, Look, I'm having an enormous amount of difficulty cleaning the windows.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in my experience of having trouble cleaning windows, there's probably not going to be a good outcome for you.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, Well, what do you mean?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Look, I the only other time I've seen where you can't clean the windows properly is when somebody's using or cooking an enormous amount of methamphetamine.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, great, fantastic.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would have thought that would have been picked up in the inspections.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I had I got my property manager to do regular inspections.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I arranged for professional testing.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a whole world.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is a whole world.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are people that come and do meth testing in houses, and it costs a lot of money, guys.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's not cheap to get this done.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this chap came out with his little meth testing kit, and it's not just in one place, they meth test in each each room, and they'll do several in the kitchen because that's where you cook meth amera, apparently in the kitchen.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it came back to be very, very, very high.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So every time we had it tested, it was about$1,500.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to do the test.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we came around, do the test, then they'd send it away to the laboratory in Melbourne, which obviously it had to be sent.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then they had to do, I was in the line for the testing, and then they had to send back the results, which all took about a week or two weeks, and sometimes three weeks.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then the test came back, and they said, yes, extremely high in the kitchen, extremely high in the main bedroom, extremely high in the spare bedroom and the lounge room, and the other places were less, but they were still way too high for somebody to live there, apparently.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's all different levels that you can actually um sustain if you if you wanted to go and live in a house where there's been meth.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a levels that you can, there's still meth there, but you can go and live there if it's below a certain level.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: No part of my house was livable.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was not livable.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we said, all right, so what's the next step with that?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, well, we can come and get it cleaned.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a wall brushing down, and they came.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, it was like it was a nuclear bomb place.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: They had th suits on with the over their head and and the full Maz, whatever it is, suits, the white suits.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a whole bunch of them, and they were in there with their little.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I went around there and saw them watched what they were doing.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: They had um like mop things that they were mopping the walls down.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were there, like it took ages, and it cost a truck ton of money to get it done.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So then each time after they came, we'd have to get it tested again.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So then the little meth guy, the guy with the little meth meth test had come out and they'd test everything, and then they'd send it off to Melbourne, and then we'd waited two or three weeks.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It went on and on and on.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And long story short, I think we did that about four times.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, look, we can do it one more time, but now we're what we're looking at is a thing called encapsulation.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, encapsulation when you have meth in your house is like painting, I guess, like a lead paint over the meth.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you you have to paint it into the walls, and if it's if that doesn't work, get this.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: If that doesn't work, you've got to take down all your walls.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if that didn't work, I was looking down the barrel of getting the whole internal of my house gutted.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was so overwhelming.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, uh, we did that three or four times, I think, to come and get it tested and then sent down to Melbourne and come back.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then the the final time they did this encapsulation, they did the testing, and thank goodness the encapsulation worked.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing with meth is that you can't smell it, you can't see it, you have no idea it's even there.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently, if somebody, because we were trying to get this house ready to for to rent out again, if somebody goes into that house that's pregnant, it can actually affect if it's not um dealt with, it can actually affect the feet, the fetus, your your little baby growing inside you.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way in the world I would ever, ever have rented that house out or sold it with that on my conscience.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I went above and beyond with these testing backwards and forwards and the cleaning, ongoing cleaning, and then the encapsulation.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I would have gutted that place and got it done if the encapsulation didn't work.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: But thankfully, it did work.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Testing, cleaning, repairing, retesting all of the things, getting everything done, the house up to scratch, ready to rent out, cost me$40,000.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: $40,000 for this single woman who decided to make this investment.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never had anything like this ever happen at any other time in my life with investment properties.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: $40,000.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this experience has taught me something incredibly important about investment properties, but also about the correlation that these lessons could teach you about business.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: The most expensive problems are often the ones that developing, they're developing quietly underneath.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So generally, these things that are happening that we don't really look at can be causing heaps of issues underneath the surface if we're not looking at it closely.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: If I was there and and doing the inspections now, I'd be doing meth testing every single time.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: The things that I've learned from from this experience is just incredible.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like the house that we bought after that, we had it the completely tested for meth.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're buying a house, test it for meth first.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my experience, I believe there's a lot of um if you don't talk about it, it it's there's no problem.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning the people you're buying the house off, the the whole process, if you're not being self-aware around what this could actually cost you, and if you're not saying, hey, is part of this process with the building and inspection, uh, building and pests is that uh meth testing, that it's not something that people ordinarily do because guess what?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: It holds up sales, it holds up commissions, it holds up a lot of things, and it's a bit of a pain in everyone's butt.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So best not say anything, really, or from their behalf.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm saying if this, if you're buying a home or an investment property, ensure that you do meth testing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is the business correlation?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Businesses can look perfectly healthy from the outside.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your business.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: It can look perfectly healthy from the outside.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: The owner's busy, the revenue's growing, new clients are coming in, the team's expanding, everyone on the outside is looking, wow, aren't they doing exceptionally well?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: That looks like it's a real going concern.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think in business there's a lot of shame around not running your business the way that you should.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there's shame around that, especially in the industries that I work in, like bookkeeping and accounting, because that's your wheelhouse.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You should know that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the same old story.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're human, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: The plumber has the leaky tap.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: The bookkeepers and accountants may not be looking closely at their numbers.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is hopefully a bit of a wake-up call to go, you know what?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: If everything looks great from the outset, what do we need to scratch the surface of to look underneath the hood with your business?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the revenue might be growing, but do you know how much you're really making?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you're paying yourself consistent wages and profit and you're measuring that regularly, nothing to look at here.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not sure how much profit you're making on a month-to-month basis, this could be a red flag.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: The team's expanding.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting and you're getting new clients and you're growing.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the owner might be working just as hard.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this a lot in the bookkeeping world where the bookkeepers get really busy.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: They think, gee, I need help.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they hire somebody.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's generally somebody that they know or they used to work with.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they hire somebody to plug a hole because they're getting referrals and they're growing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden, that doesn't mean that the business owner um steps back from the work.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: It just means, hey, great, you can take that work and I'll just continue working along here until you get to the stage where you both get too busy and then you have to hire somebody else.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I see a lot of bookkeeping businesses grow organically, because as you get busier, you just plug holes, but you keep just as busy because it's there's a process in which to make sure that you're stepping back and you're giving the work across to your bookkeepers that you're hiring.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that process can take a bit of time to set up.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the times I hear from bookkeepers, what's the first step?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to do with this?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is stuff that I can go into um deeper later.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the team's expanding, but the owner is working maybe even harder as the team expands.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Clients are paying, but are you certain that they're happy?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, clients might be paying their bill every month, but are we going out and we're talking to them and saying, hey, can I get some feedback?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are you happy with my service?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is there anything that we could be doing more or better or differently?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So seeking feedback from clients is really important.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the other thing is that, you know, wages, super, software, subscriptions are all being paid, everything's being paid.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: But do you really know if your pricing with your clients is covering all your costs?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've got bookkeepers or if you've got a team, are you pricing in such a way to make sure that your uh costs are covered?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So tax and GST liabilities may be accumulating or sitting on payment plans.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got that happening and you've got a payment plan happening, that could be going on in the background.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the owner's withdrawing whatever is available rather than paying yourself consistently.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the times you might be just pulling down whatever you make in that month.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: It might be two grand, it might be five grand the next month, it might be three grand the next month, whatever comes through, or it might be just done from a way that it's just a working bank balance that you're just whatever's in there you're using and and going um and using it as the business is good some months and not other months.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of just used as a bank account that you're buying your groceries with.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I have heard that quite a lot.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is busy, but no one knows which clients or services are profitable.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the other thing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're all busy, but busy doesn't mean profitable.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So now we need to ask a few uncomfortable questions.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: If something were quietly contaminating, like meth in your investment property, contaminating your business, would you know?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know the true monthly costs of your business?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Things like how much tax on average are you paying, your subscriptions, your apps, your wages, all of those things.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know your true monthly ongoing costs and the variables?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know your break-even point?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know which clients make you money?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk about A, B, C, and B class clients.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's A-class clients are making you money.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: We know that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: We go, yeah, they're the good ones.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: They pay on time and they're paying us lots of money.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what happens with that?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Usually those A-class clients are funding your D class clients, the ones that don't pay on time and perhaps are quarterly and perhaps maybe haggle over your bill and you go, really?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it's okay because those A-class clients are funding those D-class clients.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't do that, guys.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: If your D class clients are not paying you on time, you do not treat them the same as your A-class clients.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the other thing because a lot of business owners just want to do the right thing.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just want to be helpful for their clients.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So guess what?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's treated the same.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to treat your A-class clients with a red carpet service.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your D-class clients can wait.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: They can wait because they quite often will make you wait for your money and not getting your paperwork back in time, all of that kind of stuff.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't want our A-class clients to fund our D class clients.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you know what every team member really costs you?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: How much are they actually costing you against the billable hours they're doing?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's a little bit different if you've got contractors and what they invoice you, you invoice your clients directly.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the way you're doing it, generally your costs are pretty much covered with that.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a full-time employee and they're doing billable hours and you're not really sure what billable hours they're doing, you're just kind of uh doing your invoicing and you're paying your bookkeepers and you're not really sure what billable hours they're doing.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're doing great work and they're amazing at what they do, but you're not really sure how that translates to your profitability.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking at clear information or simply just trusting that everything is fine?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I believe I had done everything correctly.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had landlord insurance, I had a property manager, and eventually, with my little story, a legal judgment in my favor.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I went to QCAT, the small claims court, and I had to gather I had to get all the um quotes.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the insurance company told me that if I get all the quotes and I actually get them done, that I would be more likely to be in it would be more likely in my favor.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: The insurance I I did get the lost rent for from the insurance company.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get any of the repair stuff because it wasn't.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Malicious damage.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Cooking meth in your house is not malicious damage, apparently.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there you go.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you ask the right questions for your landlord insurance.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so I was awarded$25,000 from the small claims court, which is the maximum you can claim.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to go to the high, uh, to the next court, the bigger court, to be able to claim more than that because obviously it was about 40 grand that was out of pocket.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, you know what, 25 grand, I uh, and I did get my the rent back.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So have I seen a cent of that$25,000?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, I haven't.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently, for me to get that$25,000, it's me that has to chase it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go and get a private investigator to go and chase this person to.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know what?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I made a conscious decision to not do that for personal reasons that I won't go into, but I made a choice not to do that.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: So out of pocket, 40k.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I'd done all the right things, my insurance claim, as you know, was declined because under the wording of the policy, methamphetamine contamination was not accepted as malicious damage.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was told that deliberately throwing around a paint all around the house, like on the floor and up on the walls and on the curtains, is considered as malicious damage.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if they'd done that, if they opened a tin of paint and threw it all around the house, I could have claimed the lot, but not meth.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's have a look at the comparison.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: On paper, I believed I was protected.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, none of those protections recovered my money.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Business owners can make the same mistake.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: We assume having the insurances, the clients, you know, those A-class clients, a few that you might have, and you've got some B class and C class and D class, but mostly, you know, you're getting some good money from those A-class clients.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: You've covered yourself, you're a Bass agent, maybe, maybe, or you're starting to be a BASS agent, or you're under a Bass agent, making sure that you're doing the right things there, you're doing your professional development, your hours where you're learning all the latest stuff, you've updated with QMS, you've done all the things with that.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're covered, you're right, you're doing business well.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is incredibly important, but ultimately understanding what's happening inside your business still comes back to you.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the lesson in all this?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Never, ever, ever confuse what looks good from the outside with what's actually going on underneath.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Problems rarely begin as$40,000 problems, they begin with small warning signs that we can explain away, tolerate, or fail to investigate.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Know your numbers, guys.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ask better questions, insist on clear information and act when something doesn't feel right.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to do your own numbers, if you don't want to look at your own numbers, get somebody to look at them.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: If it's your accountant, if it's another bookkeeper friend or somebody that you know that can be looking at your numbers every month, you need to be able to know your numbers every month, at the very least, every quarter, to make sure that you're checking your numbers, that they're you're making um making the kind of money, you're covering your cost, and you're making profit.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you uncover and address early may become incredibly expensive to repair later if you don't uncover it early.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this has been helpful.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my little myth story that's I'm still recovering from, to be honest.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty uh, it was a very, very time-consuming uh process that we went through.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's behind me now.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: We actually ended up selling that house and moving on because I could not handle what went after that to rent out that place.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just I couldn't handle it anymore.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: It really kind of broke me with owning investment properties, to be honest.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think share investing is where I'm at next.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully this has been helpful.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: If there's any questions, please feel free to reach out, Sharon at Sharonfrancisco.com.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, talk to you soon.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.