Rocking One Business at a Time with Hadley Nightingale

[00:00:00]

Tim Melanson: Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Today’s episode, we are talking to the director of New Zealand Property Buyers, and what he does is he reduces the complexity, uh, of purchasing property. So I’m very excited to be rocking out today with Hadley Nightingale. Hey Hadley, are you ready to rock?

Hadley Nightingal: Hey Tim, ready to rock. Thanks for having me

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, I mean, I, I think probably where we, where we are at the moment as a business, and as you say, working from home is, is probably that, that success story. Um, you know, starting out COVID time and, you know, obviously things were locked down, things were pretty tough, and just decided we were gonna go on and start something.

Um, and then the, uh, the day that we decided to start something, everything was good. Three days later was, was lockdown time. And so it’s just been a case of, you know, starting from there, working out how to, uh, you know, set up work from home as a, as a thing. Uh, and then grow a team and the, the background with that at the same time.

Tim Melanson: Wow, [00:01:00] that’s quite the timing

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah. Yeah. Couldn’t have, couldn’t have picked it any better

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well, I mean, I guess you got to start from nothing, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Tim Melanson: create something that’ll last anything, that’ll l- right?

Hadley Nightingal: Let’s, let’s, let’s definitely hope so. I mean, still figuring out what Zoom was at the, uh, at the time, and now it’s like, it’s commonplace. So yeah, very, uh, very interesting, uh, start to things

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause I, I mean, I started the podcast, uh, about 11 years ago, and I remember saying that, you know, at some point, you know, I think, I think almost everybody will be working from home, and I didn’t see that that, that that’s gonna be forced on us like that. Um, but yeah, it’s, uh, it’s kind of interesting ’cause it, it did actually, uh, do some good things.

It, it ended up, you know, developing some of these tools, these Zoom tools that, um, I mean, they help just about any business owner now. I mean, you can, you can have some really good, uh, productive meetings now that we have these tools, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, 100%. I mean, a, a number of our [00:02:00] clients are, are overseas, uh, or ex- expat Kiwis, and it, it’s great to be able to jump on Zoom, see them face-to-face. And I think without that technology, it would’ve made growing the business and reaching them, uh, a heck of a lot harder, uh, as opposed to, you know, trying to pick the phone up and, uh, and do business without the, um, the details in front of you, or at least meeting the person as, as face-to-face as you can

Tim Melanson: Yeah, exactly. So now along with the good note though, sometimes there are things that don’t necessarily go as planned, some, some bad notes that we hit. I like to talk about those because, I mean, the whole point here is to inspire people to start their own thing, and a lot of people don’t do it because they’re just afraid of making some mistakes.

So I like to talk about those ’cause we’re still here, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah,

Tim Melanson: And I’m wondering, can you share me with, with me something that didn’t go, uh, super well that we can, we can learn from?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, I mean, I, I think the biggest thing for us that it, it’s come right now, but at the start was probably a mistake that, that could have been fatal for us, um, was, [00:03:00] was we went way too wide way too early. So we started out with the core business that we’ve got, and then, uh, one of our clients said, "Hey, look, if you start, do some property management, then I’ll give you some properties to start, and then you can grow a property management business."

Then the same guy said to me, "Hey, look, can you do… I’ve got these projects going on. Can you start a project management company?" Now, at the time, the, our, our main thing was doing, like, 350 to 400K a year. Uh, and then I had an employee that I was paying sort of 80K a year too. So most of the profit from that was gone.

Then I decided I was gonna start something else. So then I split myself between two, which is never good. Uh, and then we ended up trying to split myself into three with then trying to hire people for those other things. So my theory was, was, like, if I can hit 350K or 330K in each, then, you know, there’s a million-dollar business and I’m, I’m laughing.

But the, uh, the thing is that the math doesn’t quite work like that. When you, uh, actually run it out, you find that one [00:04:00] makes money, the other one goes okay, and the third one sucks all the money out of the business. Um, so yeah, that was, that was probably the, the bad note. But like I say, we’ve had… That was sort of four years ago now, so we’ve had time to, to outgrow that

Tim Melanson: Okay. And have you made any changes? Like, what, what would you do differently if you were to do it again?

Hadley Nightingal: I had to, if we were to do it again, it’d just be like one course until successful. So get one to a million bucks and then put the next one in. I suppose that it’s like that journey between zero and, and a million is like you can’t do everything yourself. You’ve gotta hire some people, uh, and you’ve gotta learn to, to grow a team.

And then so get that to a million bucks, get one functioning, and then start the next thing, because then you’ve got some excess cash flow to go and start that as well. Uh, as opposed to, you know, just being in a situation where you, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul and then back again when the other one starts doing a bit better to, to try and keep yourself afloat

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well, you’re spinning multiple plates at the same [00:05:00] time, right? You’re, you’re diverting your focus from one thing to another. Uh, th- this has come up before because, I mean, when you look at some of these, uh, you know, super successful entrepreneurs, you see that they’re running all these different businesses, and you’re like, "Wow, I could do that too."

But I think what you find if you really do read the stories and learn about them is that they build one at a time, right? And it was just they got it to the point where they could walk away from it. Now they have all these different businesses, but they didn’t build them all at the same time, right?

Hadley Nightingal: No, exactly. And I think the other thing is too though that they’ve also got the cash flow to be able to go, "Right, cool, I’m gonna start this new thing. I’m just gonna go hire a CEO off the bat." Uh, whereas when you’re, when you’re fresh and you haven’t got that, you haven’t got the money to, you know, you’ve hardly got the money to hire an EA, let alone a, uh, you know, a CEO for something

Tim Melanson: Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk a little bit about the band then. So w- what, you know, uh, you’ve got a team now. You know, who was the first hire that you made actually, out of curiosity?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah. Yeah, so first, the first hire that we [00:06:00] made was someone that took over the delivery of, uh, my role. And I suppose in hindsight, at the time it was, uh, you know, the, the right hire. But I look back now from like a, a view from where we are and go, "Well, that was actually the wrong one." Uh, ’cause we were paying someone way too much for…

Or we weren’t paying them so much, we were paying them the money they, they should’ve been on at the time. Uh, but the issue was the business was still too immature to be paying someone that amount while I’m, was still doing the calendar, the emails, the, uh, you know, the basic running around, booking whatever I needed to be booked.

Uh, and then that person was out doing my job. So that was, that was how the team started, was myself and one other person. Uh, and then as we brought on the other parts of the business, we’ve added people in. And then now we’ve got a, uh, a full back office team in the Philippines as well. So there’s about 13 of us, uh, at the, at the moment.

Tim Melanson: Well, how was your experience in hiring overseas?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, [00:07:00] it, it was definitely an experience because at the time, uh, I didn’t have SOP sorted out. I didn’t have proper systems. It was once again, like, just if, if I’m gonna employ you, and this is just how naive I was at the, the time, it’s like, you know, look, if, if I employ you as a, as a, an EA or as a salesman, you should just be able to know how to be a salesperson ’cause that’s what you’ve applied for and that’s what you do.

Uh, and, and turns out that doesn’t, that doesn’t quite come to, to fruition and, and translate directly. So, uh, probably the, the first couple of EA or overseas, uh, EAs that I had w- were, uh, didn’t work out, and that was more so probably on me than them. And ju- just from that perspective, ’cause they had no basis to work off.

It was a case of like, "Well, look, you’re, you’re working with us. Here’s, uh, here’s Slack, here’s your Zoom link, here’s Google Drive. Go for it." Um, without near that sort of true direction. So it’s, it was challenging at the start. We’ve got a lot better now ’cause we’ve got the systems and the processes in place, and we’re just going through another [00:08:00] hiring round, uh, overseas at the moment.

But it’s, it’s just a thing of, like, taking your time, making sure that the, the people that you’re interviewing, uh, are gonna do the job, um, and then trial tasking everything that, that they do before we actually get them on board to, to know how… Well, to get an idea of how they think

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it’s, it’s, um, it’s more challenging than you think, right? You, you think, "Oh, I just need to get this off my plate, and, you know, they’ll just be able to figure it out." But it turns out you… ‘Cause everybody does their business differently, right? You mean, you do have to do some training on that stuff, right?

And be prepared for it.

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, I mean 100%. It’s, it’s a whole lot easier now with the, the likes of Loom or a screen recording tool and, and AI to be able to just record yourself doing the task, give it to AI, or give the transcript to AI, get it to write the, um, the SOP for it, and you, you’ve got something there as opposed to…

I had, I had a mentor, uh, a few years ago, and he said to me, "Look," and this is before AI was really a thing. He’s like, "Look, just get up at 4:00 o’clock in the morning." [00:09:00] He said, "This is gonna be painful for you. You’re gonna hate it, but just write everything down so you start building up some SOPs so at least some of your team know what’s gonna happen."

Because, and I couldn’t see it at the time, but he was like, "The better systems you have, the better people you’ll get. You can’t expect to have rockstar people with rubbish systems." Um, yeah

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, and, and, uh, and I do find that as well, the other thing is when you start to record yourself doing these tasks for these SOPs, sometimes, like, you, you… Uh, it’s almost like you uncover some issues that in your own process, right? ‘Cause when you’re trying to teach somebody else what you do, you’re like, "Why do I even do it that way?"

Right? And, and you sort of clean some things up in the process, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, 100%. And I think when it’s with video as well is that it also makes it easier for people to change, or that, that process becomes easier so that when someone owns the task and they own the SOP and a software changes or the software’s updated or we find a better way to do something, then it literally is a case of just record another video, [00:10:00] give the transcript, get things updated that way as opposed to, uh, yeah, like when we first started, we hired a full-time SOP lady, and it was a case of like open up a tab, screenshot, screenshot, screenshot, copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste, uh, as opposed to now it’s like video link SOP and it, it’s there and it’s easy to, to change when needed.

Tim Melanson: Mm, right on. Cool. So now talking about, uh, like the cashflow, I mean, depending on your business, I mean, for a service business, you know, uh, you know, y- it’s your time that’s mostly being spent. I mean, there are some things that you have to buy as well. But I mean, in a, in a thing like real estate where you’re actually putting some money out there, how do you make sure that you’re gonna make it back?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, I, I think the, the big thing with that is just, like, it’s time, it’s skill, it’s, uh, getting the right help, getting the right teachers to, to know that you’re, you’re going in the, the right direction. And I, I think the thing with real estate too is, like, there’s so much information out there. Uh, everyone’s got an opinion on housing because they’ve obviously lived in one, and, um, [00:11:00] that’s the, that’s really the, the tricky thing is, like, boring generally tends to be the thing that makes you money in this game, uh, as opposed to the, the s- the, you know, as opposed to the sexy property that, uh, the developers or the person selling it to you generally tends to be the one that’s making the cash, and you get left, um, you know, holding the can

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah. Well, and I, I think that that’s the thing is that the more, hmm, the more common the, you know, product or services that you have, the more opinions you’re gonna have from people out there, right? So it’s probably very, very difficult to find the, you know, proper experts. And, and, and how do you find the proper expert, I guess?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, I, I think the biggest thing i- is finding people that are telling you about what they have done in their own personal experience. Um, because it, it’s really easy to be a charlatan and say, "Hey, look, I’ve watched 500 YouTube videos and, and now I’m an expert," but they haven’t done anything. They don’t own anything.

Uh, and I think that’s the, you know, the other side of it as well and, and finding people that are relatable to, you know, to you, to what you’re [00:12:00] doing, to what you’re looking for. Um, as, yeah, as I say, as opposed to a, a YouTube expert who, you know, is out there telling you about all these things but actually haven’t done anything themselves.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, g- yeah

Hadley Nightingal: I was gonna say, sorry, the, the other expert you’ve gotta be careful of is also your drunk uncle, uh, and your, and your family members that have bought a house 20 years ago, uh, haven’t been in the market and, uh, you know, they’ve, they’ve also got very strong opinions on, on everything as well obviously with, with, you know, wanting your best interest at heart.

Um, but that’s, you know, sort of not always the, the best advice either

Tim Melanson: Well, I mean, the, uh, even the intention when they buy a house, I mean, when someone buys a house to live in versus a house that they want to rent out or they want to flip or whatever it is, it’s just, I think it would probably just be a different process, like, of, of what you go through to do that, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, a hun- 100%. They’re, they’re completely different, uh, completely different things, and it’s, it’s one of the things we find where we’re like, "Hello, we’re gonna go and buy a [00:13:00] house in this area." And they’re like, "Oh, my auntie used to live there. My parents grew up there. They’d never touch that, that part of town."

And it’s like, yeah, but that was, that was 20 years ago. Uh, there’s a, there’s a suburb probably five or six kilometers from here that back in the mid-’70s you wouldn’t have gone near, and today it’s one of the most expensive suburbs near us. Um, and so I think that’s the thing with, like, gentrification, with things changing, and, and looking at, at where you get your, your information from, um, and who you’re listening to.

‘Cause I think that’s sort of the, the thing of, like, we have a legal problem, we generally tend to go to a lawyer. We have a, a tax problem, we generally tend to go to an accountant. Uh, but, uh, it seems to be property is like, "Well, I’ll just go and talk to my work mate ’cause they bought a house six months ago and, and they’ll know what to do."

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and that’s a really good point. I mean, when, when it comes down to it, there, it’s gonna be a number of different people that you’re gonna talk to for different advice in different areas of your business, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, 100%.

Tim Melanson: And like, so for you, when you, when [00:14:00] you look for people to help you, are, are you more or less looking for a specific skill that you wanna learn?

Or do you sort of look for maybe even like accountability partners or anything like that? Like how, how do you hire coaches or, or mentors?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, on the, the coaching side is like where, where do they sit? Where have they been? And have they, they done the thing that, that I wanna do? Um, and I also find it really important that, that they are future thinking. Um, like I’ve, I’ve had some, some guys, some people recently that were like, "Hey, look, here’s my, here’s my coaching thing.

Here’s what I do." And you ask them questions, they’re like, "What, what are you doing with AI? What do you know about that? How integrated is that in your, your coaching system?" "Oh, we don’t know much about that." And it’s like right, okay. You’re probably, you’re probably not the, the person for me for, for where we’re at.

And I think it’s important that, uh, you know, when you get a coach, then they’re probably not gonna be with you forever. They’re, they’re gonna get you through a stage gate, and then you’re gonna need to go and find someone that’s gonna get you to the next level. [00:15:00] Uh, and I think that’s the, that’s the important thing too is like there’s, you know, people feel loyalty to a particular person, but it’s not always the, the place that’s gonna get you to where you need to go

Tim Melanson: I think that’s a really good point, and you do see that quite a bit, and it is very difficult to let go of a coach. You know what I mean? Like, you know, especially if they’ve gotten you to, you know, a certain stage in the game. So, like, h- how do you… Do you normally, when you initially talk to somebody, you know, do you sort of set those expectations up front?

Like, "I need you to do this for me, and then we’re gonna be done," or does

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, no, I, I never go into these things with pre-set expectations of what’s gonna happen. Um, it, it’s sort of like you, you never know how you’re gonna work with them until you work with them. And so it’s like, right, cool, this is what I wanna work on at the moment, this is what I need some help with. It’s something you can help me with.

Let’s, let’s start there and see where we go. Um, and then if, if it gets to a point where, uh, they can’t push me any further, they’re, they’re [00:16:00] running out of expertise in the area that I need, then it’s a, a case. It, it might also be the thing they surprise you, and they’ve, it’s, yeah, they’ve got an arsenal of, of tricks that, that weren’t sort of previously discussed, and things keep going for a while.

But I mean, there’s always a, a case of like you’ll, you’ll get to the end of your, uh, usefulness isn’t quite the right word, but like the end of where their expertise can push you, and you need to go off in another direction, and their expertise doesn’t, doesn’t quite align with that. And I think that’s just like natural in, in everything

Tim Melanson: It is natural in everything, and, and that’s, I think that, uh, you know, part of what we talk about in a lot of businesses is that you’ve gotta sort of niche down and figure out exactly what you do and how you help people and who you help. So, you know, as someone’s going through a journey and growing their business, if that’s their goal, I mean, maybe their goal is to kinda stick around where, w- exactly where they are.

But if they’re growing and growing and growing, well, then, uh, it, it would make perfect sense that [00:17:00] you would outgrow that specific mentor or that specific coach because they should be niched down and focusing on businesses that make, you know, between this and this amount of money. And then once you grow past that, then it would make perfect sense for you to move on, away and, and, and to somebody who focuses on that, on that level,

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah. Hun- 100%. I mean, it, it’s like I can remember, um, sort of one of my first coaches that I had was, like, okay, okay, so they were really good at getting the business established, understanding numbers, knowing what’s going on there. But as, as soon as you start talking about, "Hey, look, we wanna grow our social media, we need to start doing this," it’s like, well, uh, I’ve, I’ve seen some stuff, but I don’t know a whole lot about it.

So it’s like, right, cool, who do we need to go and find that’s gonna, that’s doing exceptionally well at that, that can then go and show us that side of things? Um, and how do we, you know, how do we find someone that’s gonna teach us how to grow our systems? And we’ve, we’ve found, uh, someone that’s helping us out with, with that and getting that sorted, and it’s like, right, our systems are up to date.

Um, social media’s [00:18:00] about where we wanna… There’s some other stuff that we need some help with now, so it’s like how do we then shift to find that person that specializes in that? Um, and I think that’s just the, the natural progression when you’re, when you’re growing. But like I say, if you’re, if you’re stagnant and you want someone just to have a chat to, then, um, obviously different, different story with that as well.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, it’s funny. I never really thought about the, about it this way, but technically I would imagine that a good coach would have a lot of good turnover, right? ‘Cause they should be getting people to where they wanna go, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yep. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose too at the same time if, if the coach is also growing their own business, um, ’cause I, I think that’s probably one of the other things that, that happens from a, a coaching perspective is that people stop running their own business, start coaching. They get themselves to a level in, in their business where all they do is coach, and they, their, their ex- their today’s experiences come through the, the experience of others as opposed to, uh, you know, their own experience and their, [00:19:00] their own sort of skin in the game with, uh, with what they’re doing

Tim Melanson: Yeah, right on. Cool. So let’s talk, let’s talk about your business a little bit, getting into your solo. So what’s exciting in your business right now?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, I, I think the opportunity and the growth is the, you know, the exciting bit. Growing the team, uh, getting our sales up and running, uh, more than, than what they sort of have been over the last sort of 12 months. So, um, we, we’ve just brought on some new people that, you know, are really helping on the, the operations side of things, so I’m not trying to wear six or seven hats is, is really the, the key and exciting thing there.

And, and just building that team out, um, is where we’re sort of focusing most of our, our energy at the moment.

Tim Melanson: Oh, right on. And so if somebody wanted to work with you, like tell me a little bit more about how that process works

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah. So in, in terms of working with us, um, we’ve got a few options, is basically we can sit down and strategically have a conversation around, uh, where you are at the moment, where you wanna go, uh, right through to, "Hey, look, I need you to go and purchase me [00:20:00] something, uh, manage the renovation for it, plus property manage the, the property."

So we do sort of everything in between those two, um, those two guardrails. And it’s, it’s really about sitting down, having a conversation, figuring out where people are at now, where they’re heading to, and, you know, what, where that gap is and, and if we can fill that gap for them and, and help them out. Um, and so as, as per everything, just starts with a conversation and, uh, and take things from there

Tim Melanson: And what, what are your typical client, like what, what would be the typical person that would be getting the most out of working with you?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, generally tend to be time poor people that, um, professional people, uh, full-time job, family, uh, haven’t got the time, inclination to go out and, and look for property. Uh, they, they value other people’s time in terms of they understand that what they do and what they specialize is, is, is their thing. Um, and that they, they value other people’s advice.

There’s probably the, the people that we [00:21:00] don’t particularly work with well are the, the extreme DIYers that are, are like, "Right, cool, I’m just here to suck some information out of you, but I, I can do this myself." Um, it makes, yeah, it makes life pretty, uh, pretty tough. So, um, yeah, those, those people that know what they want as opposed to the, either the DIYers or the, the vague, ambiguous people

Tim Melanson: Okay. And so w- what would be what… So, so they would just have the, the capital, they wanna get into it, but they need somebody who’s gonna kinda like run it for them

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, 100%. So got the capital, got their financing lined up or cash or however they’re gonna purchase whatever they’re looking to, to do, um, but they just don’t wanna go down the, the line of actually having to do it themselves. Um, or they, they don’t fully understand the process. Um, and they just wanna also make sure that, that what they’re doing is gonna be the thing that gets them ahead, um, as opposed to the thing that, that keeps them stationary

Tim Melanson: Right on. Okay, so how do they find out more then?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, best place is on Instagram, uh, at hadleyNightingale. And we’ve got [00:22:00] obviously a heap of information there, and, um, yeah, you shoot me a DM through there, and, uh, we can have a conversation and, and see where things go.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. So let’s talk a little bit about music before we go. So tell me, who is your favorite rock star or band?

Hadley Nightingal: Favorite band Do like a bit of Luke Combs. At the, him and Jordan Davis at the moment are the, uh, the, the two that I’ve been listening, uh, listening to a lot of, uh, lately

Tim Melanson: Right on. Have you seen him in concert?

Hadley Nightingal: Uh, yeah, actually that was how I found, uh, sort of found Jordan Davis was, uh, him, Luke Combs, and I forget the, the opening act’s name, uh, were in New Zealand a couple years ago. Um, and so yeah, hadn’t heard of Jordan Davis before, but were there for Luke Combs, and he was like the, the opener for, for him. Um, and yeah, that was the, uh, the sort of doorway into, into that

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. And do you play music at all?

Hadley Nightingal: I used to. Used to play the, uh, the saxophone [00:23:00] back in, uh, back when I was in, in high school. Um, but I just haven’t had the, uh, yeah, the, the time of, of late to, uh, to get back into it.

Tim Melanson: Oh, yeah. One of these days, right?

Hadley Nightingal: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s still s- as it still sits in the corner gathering some more dust

Tim Melanson: Right on. Well, thank you so much, Hadley, for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun

Hadley Nightingal: Awesome. Thanks so much, Tim. Really appreciate it

Tim Melanson: Cool, and to the listeners, make sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for more information, and we’ll see you next time on the Work at Home Rockstar podcast