Public speaking is one of the most common fears and for entrepreneurs and business owners, the opportunity to excel your business often comes with some form of public speaking (for example Catherine Turner, Director of Turner Invest, has spoken and inspired thousands of people on stage at the Entrepreneurs Bootcamp among many other stages).

Whether you are selling to a new customer, pitching to investors or selling yourself and your business at an event in front of thousands, your ability to enthusiastically and clearly communicate your message will directly influence your closing success rate. The following are a few tips to help you succeed at your next speaking opportunity.

“All speaking is public speaking whether it’s to one person or a thousand” – Roger Love

Tip 1:                Mind-Set
Going in to a speech with the right mind-set will greatly increase your chance of success as you will be confident and be able to sell yourself in the best possible way. You should: 

• Visualise yourself giving the perfect speech with the audience cheering you
• Remember that the audience have travelled to the event to listen to you and they want you to succeed. They do not want to hear a bad speech and will therefore be supporting you.
• Remember that the worst possible outcome will not be the end. You will have other chances where you will be able to take the learning from this speech to improve the next so do not panic, over-think or stress.
• Relax and enjoy it - the more you enjoy it and be yourself, the more you will connect with your audience and be successful in your speech.

Tip 2:                Plan     
You should plan your speech but not try to memorise it all word for word. Your speech needs to have interaction and feeling and a totally memorised speech will lose this. You can however memorise the very first part, this is so you know exactly what you are going to say straight away without any hesitation and then this will get you into the flow for the rest of the speech.

Tip 3:                Practice
Practice makes perfect. The more you practice your speech the more you will be comfortable presenting it. Practice the content, the message and the speed of your speech. Make sure you breathe throughout your speech, keep at a moderate pace and pause to emphasise important parts.

Overcoming the fear of public speaking and practicing will help you sell yourself and your business to realise your full potential. These have been just a few tips to help you get started.

Great learning resources are also available including the audiobook ‘Speak to Win’ by Brain Tracy and a great course that we have attended and fully recommend (to be put in touch with this course, email pa@turnerinvest.co.ukwith the subject Speaking Course Recommendation).

We hope you have found these tips useful and are able to use them to improve your business and investments. Don’t miss out on future tips - subscribe to Turner Invest newsletter and follow us on social media.

Thanks, 
Turner Invest
Empowering People to Live the Life of Their Dreams

Whether to report on progress, set new goals, come up with new ideas, pitch for finance or motivate staff, every business requires meetings. However, a lot of business time and resource can be wasted through poorly managed meetings (as can be evidenced by the number of negative quotes for meetings compared to positive!). The following tips will help you run effective meetings to get the outcomes required.

“The amount of meetings I’ve been in - people would be shocked. But that’s how you gain experience, how you gain knowledge, being in meetings and participating. You learn and grow” – Tiger Woods

Tip 1:                Specify Objectives
The first step for any meeting is to specify the purpose and to know exactly what outcomes you want from it. The topics for discussion should be prioritised to address the purpose and get the required output first. If possible, you should tell the meeting participants in advance of the exact goal required from the meeting so they can prepare themselves to address the area/issue quickly and effectively. 

Tip 2:                Set a Strict Time Plan    
Tell participants that the meeting will be no longer than half an hour (or whichever the minimum time is). This will drive them to address areas quickly knowing that the meeting end is in sight. When setting an end time, stick to it. Failing to do so consistently will make attendants dread the meeting due to it always overrunning and therefore come to the meeting with less energy and enthusiasm. 

Tip 3:                Minimise Meeting Admin
The administration of a meeting can often last longer than the meeting itself. Do not fall into this same trap. Do not write minutes for the meeting, only record decisions made if they require it. Depending on the type of meeting do not spend time on arranging comfortable conditions, coffee or lunch. The idea is to get areas addressed quickly and for everyone to get out of the meeting and back to work, some organisations conduct stand-up meetings for even quicker results.

Obviously customer and investor meetings would require extra niceties so do not always apply the same strict rules you would for internal staff meetings.  

These are just a few areas of maximising the output and efficiency of meetings that you could implement in your business. Remember do not hold a meeting just to have a meeting, ensure there is a set goal. 

We hope you have found these tips useful and are able to use them to improve your business and investments. Don’t miss out on future tips - subscribe to Turner Invest newsletter from our home page and follow us on social media.

Thanks, 
Turner Invest
Empowering People to Live the Life of Their Dreams

Project work requires close management in order for them to finish on time, to the specification and on budget. Whether you deal with projects as part of your job, for personal projects or seem to be doing projects continually as an entrepreneur building their business, project management requires extra skills than normal management. Following these tips will get you closer to running successful projects.
 
“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things” – Mother Teresa

Tip 1:                Assemble a Power Team
A project usually requires many skills and if you or your team do not have these it is best to outsource to trusted suppliers/contractors. Therefore building relations with suppliers and contractors prior to you needing them for a project will help you when it comes to choosing and hiring them. Having a strong power team will help you run your project smoothly as they will be able to deal with the issues you are unable to, such as legal or building etc. (unless that is your business). 

Tip 2:                Plan & Review Progress
With a strong team around you, you will be able to delegate parts of the project for their management. Ensure you have scoped the project elements in detail, breaking them down in to bite-sized deliverables so you can easily track progress. Forming exact specifications or schedules of work will assist in achieving the desired result and assist with planning the budget and timeline. Identify any critical paths in your project, those tasks that if delayed will delay the whole project, and ensure enough resource and time is allocated to them in both planning and managing the tasks. 

Tip 3:                Communicate
Not only do you need a good plan and a great team to achieve it, you need to be able to communicate with the team in order for them to stay motivated and on target. Remember this is your project and not theirs so if they have no stake in finishing on time, it is unlikely they will. Therefore tie in rewards or final payments based on accurate work that finishes on time. You will need to form a balance between ‘hard’ project management such as risk and schedule control and ‘soft’ project management such as leading and motivating your team. 

There are many tools and techniques to project management that can be used and in some instances you can hire a specific project manager which, again, you should link rewards into finishing on time, to the quality expected and on or below budget. 

To enhance your general project management skills, PRINCE2 may be beneficial, or if you are running large scale property development projects then we can recommend a great course we have completed  (to be put in touch with this course, email pa@turnerinvest.co.uk with the subject Property Development Course Recommendation).

We hope you have found these tips useful and are able to use them to improve your business and investments. Don’t miss out on future tips - subscribe to Turner Invest newsletter on turnerinvest.co.uk and follow us on social media.

Thanks, 
Turner Invest
Empowering People to Live the Life of Their Dreams

When you have your business up and running, it is good practice to ensure the health of your business is in good order to ensure it remains profitable and growing and that it is ready for any market change that may affect business. Some business owners can get caught up working ‘in the business’ and neglect to work ‘on the business’. With this attitude, growth will be hindered and market or business changes will not be forecast, let alone planned for. These few tips are to help ensure your business is in business for the long-term.

“If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan not the goal” - Unknown

Tip 1:                Use Accurate Information
Small business owners can often waste valuable time in working with inaccurate or not up-to-date information. Ensure your data is being collected and recorded accurately and efficiently before you analyse it. Real time financial, sales or processes information can greatly assist in making right decisions and planning the future based on trends. If you can report real time decreases in sales consistently over the last 6 months then you are in a better position to explore the reasoning than if this data was unavailable, inaccurate or available too late. 

Tip 2:                Standardise Processes  
One great recurring tip, that has proven successful for many businesses, is to standardise processes. A few of the advantages of documenting business processes and procedures are as follows:

• Standardisation of processes across the business
• Efficiencies and improvements can be made on an ongoing basis
• Staff can be trained easily and be part of the improvement process
• Your business becomes more scalable
• Your business becomes more saleable
• Your business becomes more able to react to changes

Tip 3:                Business Model Re-Examination
With accurate information and standardised processes you are able to tell where your business is at any point. As the world, technology and markets change rapidly, re-examining your business model should occur at least annually, preferably quarterly. You must ensure that your business is still relevant for the current market and it is still producing you the results you expected, if not it is time to change. This may not need to be a wholesale change of your business model, but could be changing from shop-front selling to online selling or expanding or niching the target markets you sell to. 

​Assessing your business health and business model may not be on the top of your agenda when you are busy filling orders or making sales, however, it is much better to be pro-active and check so you can plan rather than be reactive and lose revenue as you attempt to change. 

These tips do not cover all the areas you should be checking, cash flow (see our blog on Improving Cash Management) and your ability to expand are also important when assessing the health of your company.

We hope you have found these tips useful and are able to use them to improve your business and investments. Don’t miss out on future tips - subscribe to Turner Invest newsletter on turnerinvest.co.uk and follow us on social media.

Thanks, 

Turner Invest
Empowering People to Live the Life of Their Dreams

Today I thought I’d share some tips for people looking to get into Serviced Accommodation and the key partnerships they need to make the business a success.
 
In the last 2 years we have expanded from 1 SA to 18 SAs (mix of owned and R2R) and we couldn’t have done this without these top 5 partnerships. 
 

1. Landlords/agents - easy to expand and grow when you have landlords & agents on board. However, don’t try and force a deal that doesn’t feel right, you especially don’t want to be stuck with a difficult landlord for 3 years!
2. Fusion furniture - simple to use, quick to install, has created a set standard across all of our SAs. I know some people might say you could source individually yourself for cheaper, but for us to expand at the rate we have, it is all about leverage and getting each property set up quickly after we take on the keys. Fusion Furniture have been invaluable and we are happy to pay the premium for their excellent service. Contact james@fusionfurnituresolutions.co.uk
3. Landlord Smart - again they have been very simple to use and not just because they are good friends of ours, they have enabled us to get quick finance in place (sometimes 2 per month) for our furniture, saving us capital to be able to move on to the next deal quickly. We also love the added benefit of using Landlord Smart - being able to give back as part of the Buy1Give1 initiative. Contact traceywoods@landlordsmart.co.uk 
4. A Cleaning company - do not underestimate finding a good, reliable cleaning company. We went through about 5 in the first few months and can now finally say we have found a fantastic company willing to grow and expand with us. Having detailed processes in place and not ‘making do’ with companies providing below your expected standard service is a must. Also have in place back-ups and triple back-ups!
5. And above all a great Property Manager – our amazing Property Manager has and continues to manage the growth and day-to-day running of all SAs, allowing me to focus on strategy, direction and team KPIs (and our other businesses).

 
I hope that this helps. If you are looking to get trained in running a Serviced Accommodation (SA) business or just looking for your properties to be managed as SAs, feel free to get in touch.
 
Have a great weekend,

Stephen Turner
Director 
Turner Invest & Pure Luxury Living
www.turnerinvest.co.uk
www.pureluxuryliving.com