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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Susannah Cole, a seasoned real estate investor with a focus on international properties. Susannah shares her journey in property investment, discussing the stages of building a portfolio, the importance of cash flow, and her experiences with financing and investor relationships. She also opens up about how property has significantly impacted her personal health journey, emphasizing the freedom and choices it has provided her. Susannah concludes with valuable advice for aspiring investors, encouraging them to surround themselves with supportive communities and to be prepared to put in the necessary work to achieve their goals.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Susannah Cole (00:00)
Okay, I don’t want to bring like the energy down here and I didn’t tell you in advance but in my late 40s have you met anybody who got diagnosed with four cancers in COVID, all primary cancers, all different cancers at the same time? Yeah, you have now.Michelle Kesil (00:19)
Mwah!Susannah Cole (00:21)
And I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’m super healthy, I do lot of fitness, you know, all of that stuff. So should we just kindly say it was a little bit of a shock?Michelle Kesil (00:22)
Yeah.Mm-hmm.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to chatting with, Susannah Cole, who is a real estate investor working on international properties around the UK and Spain. She’s focused on fix and flips, wholesale, buy and hold, and the BRRRR method. So, excited to have you here today, Susannah.
Susannah Cole (02:33)
really nice to be here and I love talking about property so hopefully people will get something good from this today but ⁓ I’ll respect everybody’s time I could talk about property foreverMichelle Kesil (02:45)
Alright, so let’s just dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is these days?Susannah Cole (02:54)
Yeah, sure. So my main focus is about property changing lives, which sounds so cliche, doesn’t it? And so, but it absolutely does. So from a personal point of view, ⁓ I’ve built quite a nice sizeable property portfolio. And I think there are three stages to a portfolio. There’s the acquisition point when you’re like stretching, aren’t you? You you’re bringing in bank finance, you’re bringing in investor finance. Obviously you’re keeping a super eye on cashflow and profit and loss and all of that. Butknow, property is an illiquid asset, so you’re really stretching to bring in in the early days. know, sleepless nights, we’ve all been there. And then I think the second stage is paying down. Now, some people don’t agree with me. Some people talk about always being leveraged. Me, I’m old school. You know, I’m British. I actually come from Scotland. I’m old school. ⁓ I love paying houses off, and that’s where I’m at for my personal portfolio right now. And then the third stage for me is acquisition with cash.
Now I do appreciate, and again somebody might be like yelling at the mic right now because the return on capital employed or the return on investment is quite low, but for me property is about freedom and I like to guide my own ship. I’m not so keen. You know, when I look at my profit and loss and see how much money goes to the banks, which I’m super appreciative of because they allow me to own millions of pounds worth of assets, I’d rather keep that money in my own pocket.
To be honest, I didn’t get into this to pay banks, even though I’m very grateful. So personally, I’m in the stage two, which is I’m paying down houses. And I love going into the bank and paying them off and walking out all dizzy and kind of like, ⁓ I need to go for tea and cake. And then ⁓ within my business, I’m an investor in other people’s properties at the moment. just ⁓ had some medical things that I’ve come through.
⁓ And I also ⁓ have a tremendous student cohort. I love sharing my 20 years of experience with people. I love seeing other people succeed too.
Michelle Kesil (04:53)
Amazing. Lovely. little bit.Susannah Cole (04:56)
Was that an English accent I heard? Lovely.Michelle Kesil (05:50)
Yeah, sounds like you’re hitting so many levels of your business. How did you get started in the real estate world?Susannah Cole (05:58)
⁓ well, think like many of us, you know, it’s kind of like in our blood and our bones, we know property makes people wealthy and we knowgives people choices, but we don’t quite know how to get started. So I didn’t get started. wrote, I spent 18 months reading books, sitting at home, writing a 16 page business plan, which was perfection, but draft, you know.
So analysis paralysis and then because I was head of household with two children age 10 and 12 when I did get started I started by using other people’s money Obviously good quality legal agreements paying them back and I started by BRRR So buying discounted refinancing pulling the cash out, but I super quickly realized hey What if the bank doesn’t agree with your valuation or you know, there’s just an event hits you How are you going to make sure those investors get their money back?
So then I started deal packaging, is what we call it in the UK, wholesaling. And we ended up doing 45 million pounds worth of source deals, 217 deals in four and a half years. We kind of took off a little bit. But at the same time, I did quite a bit of joint venture flipping. And I think one of the reasons I’m still in business 20 years later is I always had a bit of an eye to cash flow. So brilliant to build wealth, property, brilliant to buy discounted. I always did that every single time.
but you’ve always got to make sure your cash is going to flow okay and you know there doesn’t come a point where you’re hey I’m not sure I can pay for things even if technically you’re a millionaire. So I always did cash generating strategies at the same time as asset acquisition and I worked pretty hard. I do remember, now this dates me, I do remember watching an episode of Sex and the City, was my one hour of television a week I was allowed and Samantha had said something so funny, I fell off the sofa with laughter.
because I was so tired I couldn’t actually stay on the sofa. So I did work pretty hard in the early days to be truthful about it. But yeah, it was ⁓ using investors’ money, buying my single lets, then multi lets, then blocks of flats, paying them back, and just trading deals and flipping deals just to bring extra cash coming in for safety sake. That’s how I got started.
Michelle Kesil (08:19)
Yeah, amazing. And so you mentioned cash flow being one of the most important things. Can you expand on what that process looks like or maybe a little bit about how financing works if there are some like creative avenues that have worked for you?Susannah Cole (08:25)
yes.Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best avenue for me from finance is working with private investors, but let’s just touch on cashflow. It’s not super sexy. I’m sure everyone wants to know how I raised millions, but let’s just keep people in the business first and sleeping at night first and then talk about the cashflow. ⁓ I, when I was much younger, I ran fair trade businesses. So I had five retail shops and I was, have you, you guys heard of Glastonbury, you know, our biggest festival? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
You know, I had like trucks going out, like three and a half ton Dodge trucks going out to Glastonbury and Reading and WOMAD and all the big festivals, like every weekend. And I did that all organically. So on a Monday morning, I’d sit down with a piece of paper and I’d be like, okay, how much money is in the bank? How much money can we spend on stock? Because next week I have to pay the bills again. You know, so, so it was pushing, pushing, pushing to build up from a tiny little business to five shops plus a…
bunch of festival vans, you know, where you’re so, so from an early age, I knew that it, that without managing your cashflow and projecting, you come a cropper and that’s no fun for anybody. So to give an example in my early days, this is so cute now, but at the time I didn’t sleep for three days. I predicted my cashflow for 18 months always,
or just using spreadsheets, you know, what’s coming in, what’s going out, what rentals have I got, what mortgages.
know, 10 % of repairs, all of that stuff, plus any projects. And I noticed in about nine months’ time, I had a 15 grand shortfall. Now, now I’d just be like, honey, but then I didn’t sleep for three nights. But what was cool about it, although it wasn’t cool not to sleep, was I was finding a problem nine months early that I could fix. Now, if, you know, that cashflow showed me I would be profitable, but I’d…
have a negative balance during the process where I wouldn’t be able to pay bills even though the project would be profitable. And we see, and I’m sure you see it, people who go bankrupt or bust, typically they go bankrupt or bust because they don’t have the cash flow right, not because they don’t have profitable projects. So I insist on like always projecting, you know, nine months, 18 months in the future and kind of finding your problems in advance so that you can solve them now.
which then brings us on to how do you solve them? If you’ve got a profitable project, then you can bring in private finance. And I used to do it in two ways. The first way was very simple. ⁓ A formal funding campaign where I was raising loans in the same way a bank would lend you. So proper legal agreements, proper due diligence, proper money laundering, checks, not money laundering, all the good stuff.
and making sure it’s completely legal and above board and as it should be with an interest rate that you’d pay every single month and then you’d pay them back the capital at the agreed term. And I did that for quite a number of years and I bought many, many houses that way and paid back the investors. And the little tip on that one for the folks listening, as you build more assets, you become less risky. So whatever interest rate you offer at the beginning where you’re a little bit risky, you’re quite new.
Every year I used to drop that interest rate by 2%. Six months in advance of the year agreement coming up. So I’d like, hey Michelle, you we’ve got an agreement. It finishes in six months time. I just want to highlight that I’ve bought millions of pounds worth more of property. So my asset base is stronger. So your risk is even less. So just very gently, we’re gently dropping the interest rate by two points. I just want to check with you. That’s going to sit comfortable with you. You don’t need to make a decision today.
You can make a decision anywhere between now and the six months, but I like to know my future funding and I like to know how that sits with you. So you’re not feeling pushed, but I am dropping your interest because I’m less of a risk. So I’m telling you I’m less of a risk, therefore risk and reward. So that keeps your interest quite comfortable. And then the other way I did it, Michelle, was a joint ventures where say it was you and I and you’re the money lady and I’m like, Michelle, I want us both to make some money.
I’d like, hey, I found a great deal, it’s discounted, this is the value of the refurb, this is the value of the property sold, I can run this flip as fast as possible, turn the money within six months, are you in? Would you like to be the JV partner? You can go to the beach, I’ll do the work and we’ll split the money half and half. But you would own the property, not me. It would be tied up correctly legally, so with kindness, you couldn’t run away and rip me off because I’ve got some security against the property.
you’re enjoying yourself at the beach, you’re doing whatever fun things you like in life, your capital is working and I’m putting in the sweat labour. And that would allow me to take 50 % of the flip with none of the financial risk, but of course you have a reputation risk. So I was very dedicated to make sure it would work. So those were my two main routes. And I ran formal fundraising campaign and I was very intentional about it. know, proper brochures.
proper CRM, proper touch points, investor days, with a very clear, hey, if you’ve got some money, it might be great that you might like to work with me, kind of push. Yes.
Michelle Kesil (14:42)
Yeah, amazing. It sounds like you really dialed in the process and systems that work for you.Susannah Cole (14:49)
Yes, that’s why we ended up doing the number of deals because ⁓ like my dad, and I’m very fortunate my parents are still with us. My dad was a maths professor, so he kind of thinks in boxes. You know, he’s much more logical than me,but I think I got a little tiny bit of him. So when you do something, I like to turn it into a system straight away. And once you’ve got it as a system or process, you can do it again. And then you’re like, ⁓ what if we improve this bit? that bit didn’t work. Let’s never do that part again.
And so once you have a system, you can kind of think a little bit in boxes and repeat and repeat and repeat and just get better and better at it. So I think people should stay in their lane, get really, really good at their lane before they jump to the next lane myself.
Michelle Kesil (16:16)
Definitely. So you mentioned how property has saved your life. Can you expand on what that means for you?Susannah Cole (16:27)
Okay, I don’t want to bring like the energy down here and I didn’t tell you in advance but in my late 40s have you met anybody who got diagnosed with four cancers in COVID, all primary cancers, all different cancers at the same time? Yeah, you have now.Michelle Kesil (16:46)
Mwah!Susannah Cole (16:49)
And I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’m super healthy, I do lot of fitness, you know, all of that stuff. So should we just kindly say it was a little bit of a shock?Michelle Kesil (16:50)
Yeah.Mm-hmm.
Susannah Cole (17:00)
And obviously in the UK, in theory, we have free healthcare, but our system is burdened. And that’s a very polite way of saying it. SoMichelle Kesil (16:59)
sure.Susannah Cole (17:11)
one of the departments I was under was strongly dysfunctional. I don’t want to get grumpy about it, but they were. And having been an entrepreneur, you can see the behavior. You you just can see and you notice and you’re like, this isn’t working. There’s too many mistakes. If you were in my team as a business, not as healthcare, but doing different jobs, but doing the same kind of behaviors and mistakes, you would not be in my team. So I can’t keep you in my team.So what I did, and when I spoke to the nurse and said, what if it becomes stage four? Her answer was, we stopped treating you. And I thought, I don’t think so. But when you’re not in control of your own choices, which is why I’m so keen on property, then you don’t have the choice. So what I did was, I some money anyway, but I sold six houses, had a really nice big fund, didn’t work for three and a half years, just worked on my health.
you know, 1 % incremental improvement. My job was to bring the most healthy body possible to all the treatments and went with the best cancer hospital in the UK. You guys have got the top nine cancer hospitals in the world and then we have the top 10th. So I was like, well, America’s great, but I’m gonna go with the British one, which is the Royal Marsden. And I just went private and spent six years on my health. So I think it was a combination of…
being able to have the choices to work with the best people in Europe, but also being able to have the choice to not work for three and a half years. And I’m sure that really helped as well. So property 100 % saved my life. And then I live here in Barcelona. So it was a really gorgeous place to just come and relax, you know, and just, know healing is such a word that everyone use, but genuinely heal, you know, I live near the beach, just go for walks on the beach, swim in the sea, just take it gentle.
take it calm. So yeah, I’m quite a fan of property, both for all the fun stuff and the my lord when something trips you up that you don’t expect, well property can be there to give you the choices that you need to be able to get through it.
Michelle Kesil (19:19)
Wow, yeah, what an incredible story and amazing that you’re able to tell it with such grace and joy and transformation.Susannah Cole (19:27)
YouYeah, well, it’s still, I still, you know, if I see somebody with their hair or with the, you know, they got a line in my heart just hurts for them. You know, I know, I know what it’s like to be in those corridors, you know, and you can’t intrude, but you just want to hug, you know, but, you know, life is for the living. So let’s give ourselves the choices we possibly can. And, and
Michelle Kesil (19:40)
Right.Yeah.
Susannah Cole (19:57)
so that we can direct our own pathway as much as we can within the circumstances that we find ourselves. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I didn’t want to bring the podcast down, though, but there you go.Michelle Kesil (20:08)
No,I think it’s inspirational.
Susannah Cole (20:11)
But I’m so fortunate, you know, I’m on a little study because there not many people that have had full primary care. That means they’re unconnected. So was talking with my professor this morning ⁓ and I just think I’m so fortunate to have the absolute kind of world and top European experts to back me, which I’m really grateful for. And again, even there, I’m trying to currently buy, no, I shouldn’t ever use the word try. I am currentlyMichelle Kesil (20:21)
WeYeah.
Susannah Cole (20:40)
in negotiations with the Lords. So you know we’ve got Lords in the UK. We’ve got Duchesses and Princesses and all of that. And we have Lords who are in the House of Lords. So I’m currently negotiating to buy house near that hospital from a Lord at the moment. Just because again, I’d rather be close to the hospital if ever I needed them again.And it’s gorgeous. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Like an artist’s studio. But we’ll see. What’s for you won’t pass you by. We’ll see.
Michelle Kesil (21:04)
Yeah. Yeah.Absolutely. Yeah, amazing that Real Estate was able to support you on your health journey.
Susannah Cole (21:17)
Yeah,yeah, yeah, very, very fortunate. And I’m super interested in other people moving forward in property for those same reasons. I don’t want anyone to have a difficulty with their health, but when it comes up for them, I want them to have choices. Yeah, as well as enjoying themselves and being able to travel the world. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (21:37)
Yeah.Absolutely. And what advice would you give to someone that is early on in their journey or just thinking about getting started?
Susannah Cole (21:48)
Well, what you guys do is brilliant, giving podcasts, giving advice, giving… It’s almost like having a friend in your living room, isn’t it? So I think the number one thing I see is people get that imposter syndrome that, you know, nobody around me knows how to do this. Nobody in my family has done this before. I don’t know anybody. So then they feel like it’s not for them. So I think the number one thing to do is surround yourself by people for whom…property is kind of normal, like for you and I, property is normal, isn’t it? You know, I could go find a discounted deal this afternoon. It’s super normal with a hundred grand discount. It’s just like drinking a cup of tea for somebody from Britain, you for me. So, so whether they listen to your podcasts or read books or get in a mastermind or get in a community where everywhere they look, people are doing normal things in property that is outside of their previous social norm with friends and family.
And I think what that helps do is that helps to reset the mindset that this is something they can do too. And then I want them writing plans, I want them doing cashflow, I them taking it professionally, running a fundraising campaign, identifying exactly what they want from property and then working backwards and translating it. So I don’t mean like, you know, people are like, I want a hundred houses or, know, this, you know, however much money per month. It’s like, what do you want your life to look like? And then cost it out and work it backwards.
and then be prepared to put the work in for a few years to make it happen.
There you go. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? ⁓ sorry.
Michelle Kesil (23:20)
Yeah, think, yeah, definitely. And thenputting the work in for a few years is probably where people are like, OK, let me dial in.
Susannah Cole (23:26)
Yes.I know, I know. just want, now, if the men are listening, you do not need to fall off the sofa having listened to Sex and the City. But, you know, when I was so tired that I actually fell off my sofa laughing because my, my abdominal muscles were too tired to hold my body together. You know, you do get quite tired in the early days that, you have to, you have to just really, you know, like rock it. You have to put it in, you know, to get it out. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (23:55)
Definitely. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. And before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you and connect with you?Susannah Cole (24:10)
I would love it if people did. I really would. So my name is Susannah Cole. My website is the good property company dot co dot UK just keeps it simple, doesn’t it? You know, we’re trying to be good in property and then, you know, classic things like Facebook, Susannah Cole or Instagram, Susannah Cole UK. ⁓ And we do, you know, we do live webinars and we got lots of free.like a free book that I wrote that people can download. So I would really appreciate it if people would like to reach out and maybe take advantage of some of the free items we put out. I got a YouTube channel. We’ve had a few million views, which is fun. They can always have a good old get the popcorn in and look at that. And that’s Susannah Cole, The Good Property Company.
Michelle Kesil (24:59)
Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.Susannah Cole (25:05)
Thank you so much and I really appreciate the time that you’ve taken and thank you for your questions. It’s really considerate. And I love the fact that we’ve got the same background going on. Exposed brick, exposed brick from one continent to another. Fabulous, it?Michelle Kesil (25:15)
Yes.Yes,
of course. Awesome. And so for the listeners that are tuning in, if you got value, make sure that you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Susannah who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.
