There’s always a Plan A, and everyone thinks that their Plan A is going to work out, but what is my Plan B?

It’s a shame because you do put so much trust into people, and sometimes that can be taken advantage of.

I see other men that have done far less than I have that are out there talking far more about their achievements than I do, and other women in my situation do.

So yeah, it’s sort of getting out of my comfort zone now and saying, well, maybe I should talk a bit more about this.

No Bullshit Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.

There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.

This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.

Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.

Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Nicole Bremner is a chartered financial planner, a bestselling author, an investor, and one of the country’s most successful property developers.

After leaving her career at Goldman, Nicole embarked on the journey to obtain a more fulfilling way to achieve financial freedom.

She now helps to inspire others on their money journey through her book, her podcast, and her financial coaching.

I present to you this week’s guest, Nicole Bremner.

Welcome to this week’s episode of No Bullshit Talks, where I have the incredible Nicole Bremner with me today.

Hi.

Thank you.

Would you like to introduce yourself? Because I feel like you’re multifaceted, so I don’t want to butcher it.

Do you want to tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who don’t know you?

Yeah, I do quite a lot

actually, and it’s hard to, I guess, give me a title of what I do.

But I guess for the last decade or so, I’ve been involved in property and property development.

I’m currently doing property number 125, which I only just realized yesterday.

So I do that.

I also am an angel investor.

I’ve invested in a number of different companies.

I also am a chartered financial planner in Australia and currently becoming one in the UK.

Yeah, I think that’s probably about it.

Podcast host, author, yeah, mom as well.

Well, we’re going to come on to all of those bits, but I think I’d like to just talk about property and investment because, for most people, it’s kind of the dream.

People say, “That’s the life.”

You know, invest in property or make sound investments, and you’re just making money while you sleep, right?

So you are literally living a lot of people’s dream.

How did you get into this?

How did you find your way, and how did you become so…

Successful at it as well.

My goodness, there have been lots of ups and downs, so I will say that.

I’m not going to hold back, as the title of the podcast says, No BS.

I think that a lot of people go into property thinking that they’re going to make huge amounts of money while they sleep, and actually that’s not the case.

It is really hard work.

I’m not going to moan about what I do, of course, because I do feel very privileged, but it is really, really hard, and there are a lot of pitfalls that can come along, as I have learned.

Got into this is I did my first property in 2004, which was just I bought a flat and renovated that and then moved.

To the US, came back, sold the flat and realized that the flat had doubled in value at that time, and that was partly due to where it was.

Got very lucky, so that was my first sort of range of first property then.

Bought a, we came back from the US and I had one baby plus another one on the way and that flat was just too small.

We sold that obviously, and so we looked to buy another house and I found this derelict vicarage in Hackney and I fell in love with that property.

I walked in the door and just went, “Oh, I have to have this.”

I had to have it.

And it was derelict, but it was so beautiful, much like the club that we’re in now with lots of beautiful features.

So bought that in 2009 and spent the next couple of years renovating that into what was my dream family home.

And it was beautiful.

I just sold that in January 2024 actually.

So that only just sold.

Yeah, that was very, very difficult to say goodbye to that home because it was my dream, but that’s all part of the story.

So yeah, that was my first foray into property on a bigger scale.

And the builder that I met through that process, we just got along really, really well.

And it was at a time where I had two children.

I knew I wanted another one, and then another one was born while I was renovating the property.

And it was, what can I do?

I’ve worked in banking.

Most recently worked at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street in the US, and I felt like I couldn’t go back into banking anymore because of the children.

And I just didn’t want to be one of those moms who was absent and had a nanny bringing up the children.

So I was looking at different options.

I looked at photography.

I looked at food blogging, which you may remember was a big theme back at that time.

I looked at crocheting, knitting.

I taught crocheting and knitting lessons in New York when I was there.

So I looked at so many different things.

And it was my partner at the time, my ex-husband, who said to me, “Why don’t you look at property professionally?”

You’ve done this house, you’ve really loved it.

You’ve done our flat, you’ve done another place for us in Austria.

Why don’t you look at doing this as a job?

And then I started watching Homes Under the Hammer and Grand Designs and thinking, yeah, I can do this.

But I really didn’t know anything.

And so this was now 2011–2012.

I found a property in the London Fields area.

It was probate, it was really run down.

I renovated that, bought it for 1.1 million, sold it for 1.8 million and thought, this is really easy, I can just keep doing this.

And I did for a little while.

And I think in hindsight, and it’s probably skipping forward a bit too much, but in hindsight I got very, very lucky.

Because at that time Hackney was the best performing borough in the whole of the UK.

House prices over about 15 years went up 900%.

So I got very lucky.

And I think I probably mistook that luck for skill.

So that was probably my biggest learning, I guess, looking back at my career since that time over the last 10 years, is that yeah, there’s luck and there’s skill and they should not be mixed up.

That is, we were talking about earlier, we were talking about gambling and the gambler’s mindset.

That’s exactly what every gambler does and thinks they’re really skillful at this game.

But obviously you can’t take away everything that you’ve done because you have had continual success at this.

So of course the market plays into it, of course there’s different economic developments, but there’s definitely a lot of skill there.

A lot of people have come to you for advice and done well out of it themselves.

So what did you learn along the way?

And for example, a lot has changed in the market since then.

Massively.

It’s so difficult now.

There’s so much talk about when’s the right time to buy, what’s happening with house prices and all this sort of stuff.

So for those who are looking to get into property right now, what would be your advice?

So before I answer that, I will say that not everything I touch has turned to gold, and not every project has been successful.

As I said, I’ve done 100—this is my 125th that I’m doing right now.

I actually stopped buying in 2016, so I bought between 2009 and 2016, and then I stopped because, at that point in time, the market completely changed.

We had a triple whammy of changes to the way that landlords were taxed.

We had the change in stamp duty, where there was the additional rate applied to second homeowners, and then we also had the Brexit referendum.

So it completely changed the way that the UK property market was made up.

It wasn’t until COVID in 2021 that people started buying again, and there was all this activity in the market.

I used that opportunity to sell as much as possible in my portfolio.

But I will say, not everything has turned to gold.

There have been some less than successful projects in there, and there’s one in particular now that I bought in 2015 that still hasn’t increased in value since 2015.

So I think, to go back to your original question, for people looking to get into property, I guess I’ve distilled down my advice into an acronym.

I know these are quite cringey, but I was sitting down thinking, “What would my advice be to someone coming into it right now?”

I think that I’ve come up with what I call the SAFER system.

It is: Strategy.

Just be really sure of your strategy.

I will say that you’ve got to make sure all of these things are in place before you even look at purchasing a property because there are so many minefields.

So, strategy.

What is your strategy?

Is it buy-to-let?

Is it my initial strategy, which was develop and sell?

Is it HMOs?

Is it holiday lets?

There are so many different strategies out there, and I think a lot of people just teach one strategy and say, “Yeah, everyone should be doing lease options,” for example.

That’s not true because what might work for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another because of tax situations, because of their available capital, whatever it might be.

So it’s strategy.

The next is acquisition.

Where are you going to acquire?

How are you going to acquire?

Have you thought about your various areas?

You might be based in London and think, “I’m going to buy up north because it’s really cheap.”

But what do you know about property up north?

You know nothing.

So many people have come to me and said, “I wanted to buy this whole street up north because it was so cheap.”

I didn’t even look at the properties. I interviewed a lady, a lawyer, last week, and she bought three houses in a street that she’d never even walked into.

Then she got there and thought, “I’m too scared to even leave my car.”

There’s a reason why they’re selling for £60,000 under auction.

So just be really, really clear on your acquisition and your area.

The third thing is funding.

How are you going to fund it?

Debt?

Have you got the ability to raise a loan?

Do you have the ability to put the equity in?

Just be really clear on that beforehand because, again, like other people I’ve spoken to and I’ve seen along the way, they’ll put down a deposit, but they won’t have the rest of the money lined up for completion.

So many people lose their deposits because they believe that they’re going to get—

Oh my gosh, that’s so irresponsible.

I’m just like, “Wait, what?”

I can’t even fathom that.

They’re like, “Oh, I can do this,” and then suddenly, “Oh crap, I can’t.”

That’s terrible.

I’m really quite surprised.

But there’s someone right now I know who’s going through illegals on a project, and they don’t even have the funds to complete the purchase.

You just think, my goodness, this is frightening.

So that’s the funding.

Then the second last is exit.

How will you exit this project?

I think this is the hardest one because there’s always a Plan A, and everyone thinks that their Plan A is going to work out.

But, in my scenario, for example, I prefer to buy, renovate, and sell.

What happens if I can’t sell?

What happens if I have to rent?

That means I become a landlord.

I really don’t like being a landlord.

I don’t like evicting people.

I don’t like dealing with people.

I have too much of a heart to evict parents with children, and I’ve unfortunately had to do that.

It’s the most horrible thing I’ve had to deal with professionally.

So I don’t want that.

That’s not my Plan B.

So what is my Plan B?

You’ve got to think about all these things and make sure you’ve got that Plan B, Plan C, and make sure that it’s palatable for you.

Because for me, that’s not palatable—to be a landlord.

So that’s your exit.

Finally, it’s repeat.

Is this worth repeating?

If you do repeat it, what’s the structure you’re going to use?

Do you realize that the people you leave behind, if you pass away, have to pay inheritance tax if you sell these things?

There are all these different things.

I’ve summarized it into this SAFER system.

All of these have to be thought about before you even purchase a property because if you think about that after you’ve purchased, it’s far too late.

There are too many things that can go wrong.

It’s funny listening to it because it sounds so crazy that people would jump into this without even thinking about all those things.

But then I know how many people jump into running a business without making a business plan.

I spend a lot of my time advising businesses on how to make a plan and going back to it.

Or even just marketing strategy.

They’re saying, “We wanted to do this, this, and this,” without a strategy.

So I just think people want to jump and do because the doing is the fun part.

It’s exciting.

People are talking about flipping houses.

They see all these shows like Homes Under the Hammer, and it seems fun.

But they forget about all the boring stuff, which is actually terrifying and could get you into a lot of trouble.

Which it’s crazy thinking about it.

But I really like it.

Personally, I love it.

So I remember that SAFER—it’s brilliant.

There are just a few things in there that I was listening to, and I was thinking about people who do want to go into this because I still think that it’s still…

A lot of chats and property always comes up. It’s the safest investment and all this nonsense.

Like he said like you know I’m calling it nonsense because I feel like there’s nothing so safe about it, and if it was that safe, everyone would be doing it.

But I guess the barrier that everyone has is money.

So he talks about funding, and obviously I would love to know a bit more about that because, say if people weren’t very serious about this, say if people were just doing it on a whim and lose their deposits, that’s crazy.

But say people were very serious about this, what is the funding situation like?

Do you need to be already well off to get into property?

You stumbled into doing it by buying a house, so what does your financial situation need to look like to be able to invest in property?

Yeah, well, I’ve been very open and honest about my situation.

I started with £1.1 million plus the capital to invest, so it was a bit develop sorry it was a lot.

That came from a property sale plus savings from working in the US for a couple of years.

So my situation people always say, “Well, look at you. You started off with this money.”

Yes, I did.

I am very open about that.

How much do people need?

Well, it depends on where they’re going to buy and what they’re going to do.

If they’re doing a rent-to-rent, then obviously you don’t need much money.

You need to be able to demonstrate to a landlord that you are good for the rent and have the agreements in place to rent and sublet it on.

You need to be able to meet those rental payments.

So you don’t need that much.

If you’re going to buy a property and renovate and sell it, often you’ll need about 30-odd percent of that property value to purchase it.

Plus, you’ll need a bit extra for all your legals and your stamp duty.

Usually, you could borrow 100% of your development costs.

So let’s say you’re buying for £100,000 and developing for £50,000.

You will need, say, £40,000 for the purchase of that property.

You might need a little bit extra for the legals and stamp duty, so let’s say £50,000–£60,000.

You should be able to borrow that whole £50,000 in that example for the development.

Obviously, it’s going to be very difficult to find a property in those numbers, but it’s for illustration.

So it does depend.

If you’re doing a buy-to-let type strategy, again, you can get buy-to-let mortgages where you borrow 75% of that, so you will need to find the other 25%.

Again, it depends where you’re looking.

If you’re based up north, where properties are cheaper, it won’t cost as much.

I’ve just bought my house.

I’ve got a four-bedroom house.

It’s quite small, but I want that, and it was £600,000.

So it’s a lot less than buying in London.

In London, you’d be lucky to get anything that size for less than a million.

Well, you wouldn’t get it for less than a million.

So it depends on where you’re going to look.

I think you do need money.

All of this talk that I see about using other people’s money and no money down, I call BS on that because it’s just not true.

You have to have money to put in, and if you don’t, then I’d argue that perhaps you’re not acting with scruples.

I would say the other thing about property is that people do view it as really safe, and that’s because they know it.

Everyone lives in a house, a flat, or a property, and so they believe that they know about property investing.

But we all have a heart, and we don’t all know how to operate on our heart if it goes wrong.

What surprises me is that people would never go into a bookshop, buy a book on open-heart surgery, and think that they could operate the next day after reading it.

Yet people will buy a book on property developing and think that they’re then qualified to go out and develop a property the next day.

It’s not actually true.

It takes a lot of experience, knowledge, and a really good team around you to be able to do property properly because so much can go wrong.

I totally hear you on that stuff, and it’s crazy when you actually think about it.

Yeah. People are not going to do medicine and suddenly think that they can be a doctor straight away.

But in my industry, people do the same thing.

They watch one video on YouTube and they’re just like, “I’m a marketer now. I can do this.”

It’s the same sort of thing, and they don’t understand it.

It is really frustrating.

But you mentioned team, and I really want to touch on that because, again, people think they can just come in, do it themselves, and go.

You mentioned earlier as well about having a really good builder.

Who are the key players in this in order to make it work?

Who do you need as like in order to like non-negotiables I need these people in my team to be good at property?

I would say that one of the first things you should have is a good architect because a good architect can then introduce you to everyone you need on that team.

So, I think the architect is the cornerstone.

With the project that I’m doing now, I don’t need an architect because I can pretty much draw up a plan and get something working really well that flows, and I can come up with an interior design package.

I worked with the architect, Office S&M, because I wanted some new ideas.

I wanted something that was completely different, and I wanted their trusted structural engineer and all the various consultants that come along with that.

If I needed it, they would also help me tender out to a builder and find a builder.

Even if we didn’t decide to go down the tender route, they would have contacts that I could tap into.

I haven’t done a property for some time, so my contacts have shrunk.

So for me, that was the most important thing.

I would recommend that people find a really good architect and ask for recommendations from people.

That will be the cornerstone of your team.

Also, which is I guess a step before you even get to the architect, is to have a good broker.

People can go and raise finance on their own, but having a good broker in place will explore the whole of the market.

They’ll think of things that you haven’t necessarily thought about.

They’ll also put you forward as the very best version of yourself to the lenders.

So I think a good broker is essential.

I’ve got a great broker.

I’ve been working with her for years, a decade now, and she’s very good.

I know you know a good broker.

Yeah, I do.

I mean, I’m not exactly biased on this one, but yeah, my partner is amazing.

I was told for ages that I could never get a mortgage.

I’m self-employed, and my income comes from totally different sources.

He was telling me that you had to put together a story that’s what they were saying in order to present it.

He was able to help me get my dream home too, so I’m very grateful.

Obviously, I think he’s the best broker.

Well, there you go.

We’ve got two recommendations if you ever need them.

Commercial side and, I’m assuming, he does domestic regulated piece as well.

Yeah, so that’s good.

We’ve got two recommendations.

So yeah, get a good broker and get a good architect.

Again, I could have drawn up the plans on my house myself, but every time I got the plans through from my architect, I thought, “I didn’t think about that.”

Things like having diagonal hallways—I thought, “I didn’t think about that. That’s amazing.”

It’s been really good working with Office S&M.

I’ve worked with Amita Mahindru from Drew Projects many times.

She’s been great.

There are other really good architects out there.

Once you get a good architect, they’ll introduce you to their power team, which is great.

The other thing is that a good builder is really, really hard to find.

I had a really good builder that I really trusted, and it worked very well for six or seven years.

Then things went sour.

It’s a shame because you do put so much trust into people, and sometimes that can be taken advantage of.

I’ve got a friend who’s a developer, and he has a rule in his business that he never works with the same builder twice in a row.

That way, he always keeps them on their toes.

He might go back to them, but never consecutively.

He’ll never use the same builder project after project after project.

He feels they get complacent.

So he’ll do a project with one builder, then go out and find another builder for the next one.

For the third one, he might say, “Well, I’ll go back to builder one.”

He’s got a whole list of builders that he can now work with and dip back into.

I can see that works quite well.

Sometimes they can get complacent, and things get a little bit too easy.

Yeah, I guess so, because then you feel like you don’t need to earn that role anymore.

You’ve already got it.

I think there’s not as much to work for.

It’s an interesting concept.

I think a lot of what you said was also intriguing in terms of you know you’re saying that I just think that you really appreciated the work that the architect did, and like you said, you didn’t have to have it.

I think that’s the same with lots of different things.

This is why we hire experts. This is the actual reason.

I find it so crazy when you hire an expert and then question everything they did.

They’re the expert for a reason.

It actually saves so much brain power.

Everything’s better.

I think it comes down to trust and respect, right?

I think that’s a key thing.

So yeah, building our team is hard in every aspect, but it’s great to hear that a builder, architect, and broker are the kind of key components.

I will say with the architect that because I’ve always trusted my architect on every project, every project’s been so different.

It was interesting with this new one.

I was thinking, “I’m going to go with really muted natural tones, and it’s going to be really calming.”

Then we thought, actually, I did that when I renovated my partner’s boat. Refurnished his boat.

I went for those really muted tones.

I thought, “Actually, this time I want something really different.”

Katrina at Office S&M she’s known for her very bright colors, so she’s pushed me so far.

I’m having a kitchen that’s—sorry, not white.

There’s no white in the whole house.

It’s yellow, it’s blue, and it’s stainless steel.

I’ve got two worktops.

One is yellow terrazzo, and the other is emerald green.

I am so out of my comfort zone with this house.

My kids think it’s awful.

Katrina has just really pushed me, so I’m really excited to see this because every project can be different.

That’s what’s exciting.

All 125 of my projects are different, and that’s what comes with working with an architect rather than just doing it yourself.

Yeah, because you’re limited to what you’re probably going to be able to do in terms of that sort of thing.

They’re pushing you out of your comfort zone and then bringing you to new levels.

That’s really nice.

I like that.

I guess before we move on to other topics, I wanted to find out from you, because you’ve got such knowledge in the property industry, are there any areas at the moment that you think are worth investing in or interesting to explore?

Obviously, people need to go there and feel it themselves, but are there any places that people are talking about at the moment which might be quite good investments out there?

I think it’s an interesting time right now because I can’t understand how the property market is holding up given the wider economic conditions.

For me, interest rates are high relative to where they’ve been over the last decade or so.

I just cannot understand how property prices keep increasing.

I keep thinking that they’re going to fall, they’re going to fall, they’re going to fall, and they don’t.

I look at property prices every month for a special podcast that I do with a buying consultant, and they just keep going up.

I still think that they’re going to fall.

I think that if interest rates stay where they are, and if the number of people who need to remortgage is as everyone’s saying it is, it can’t help but place downward pressure on prices.

I actually think that is good.

It’s good for first-time home buyers.

It’s good for people who want to downsize and free up some of the larger properties for families who need them.

I actually think that our property prices are too high from an affordability perspective.

So I think if people are prepared to be patient, and if they are looking to perhaps buy their first home or buy, renovate, and sell, and provide a better-quality property back onto the market, then soon is…

I think soon, and I keep saying this, property prices have to come down.

As far as area, I still think that the best area for you to buy in is the area you know.

It might be where you were brought up.

It might be where you went to university.

It might be where you live right now.

But the very best investment you’re going to make is your home because that’s capital gains tax-free.

Anything else you buy, you have to remember that you’re going to be paying capital gains tax on that.

It’s just increased this tax year as well.

I can’t remember now what it is—35% or 30%, whatever it is.

It’s high.

So yeah, it’s a lot of money.

I think that you’ve just got to be really careful.

The best property investment is your home.

The best area is where you want to live.

I think property prices should come down if interest rates stay where they are, or they could increase depending on what happens with inflation in the wider economic market environment.

So yeah, I don’t know if that answers your question.

Well, it’s funny because my final question was going to be what do you think was going to happen to the market, so you just answered that, which is great.

I feel like that’s a big question that everyone’s asking.

No one knows.

Everyone can predict, and you’ve obviously given your predictions.

But I also find what’s interesting is that people say that property is gonna have to crash or prices are gonna have to come down.

From what I understand…

A crash in a property market sense isn’t even that big.

A crash could be up to 8% or something, right?

So it’s not like prices are suddenly going to halve, which I think people imagine when they hear “property crash.”

Lots of people say the same thing—that prices have to fall because they’ve been rising for this long.

But they’re still going to be a lot higher than they were when you started buying back in 2007, or whenever it was you said.

I feel like that’s important because prices are still going to be quite high.

So from an affordability perspective, I still think it’s going to be difficult.

Yeah, it’s interesting because there are still some areas of London—and I can only speak for London—that have not recovered to their 2016 levels at all.

As I mentioned, there’s a property I bought in 2015 that’s still not at the level I bought it for then.

It’s maybe slightly above, but it’s basically flat.

You look at a lot of the places in Battersea, where there’s just so much supply.

Or Nine Elms—that area.

There’s so much supply there that property is actually cheaper than it was many, many years ago.

People are in negative equity in their homes in some areas, especially some of the new builds.

Kensington, South Kensington—those sorts of super high-luxury areas.

Some of those areas and some of those properties have not recovered to their 2016 prices.

That’s because the whole foreign buyer…

The market was just wiped out.

They’re talking about adding additional taxes to foreign buyers as well.

So I think that people say, “Yeah, a crash will only be a little bit, and then prices will recover.”

Prices haven’t recovered.

That crash that I’m talking about in some of the super-prime properties was 20–25%.

That’s a big haircut.

A huge haircut.

We had a property for £5.25 million that we ended up selling for £3.2 million.

So that is a big hit on a property.

That’s what I’m saying— not everything I have touched has turned to gold.

There are some properties where I’ve learned so many things throughout my property journey, things that I don’t want other people to have to repeat.

But this all comes down to area.

The reason that happened is because I bought outside my area.

My area was Hackney.

I knew Hackney.

I knew every street in that little area that I looked at.

The moment I went out of my area, I lost money.

I will not make that same mistake.

That’s why it’s taken me years to buy another property in Kent, where I am now.

It’s taken me years to know that area, watch the prices, and see what happens.

The property I bought was on the market for £720,000 a year ago, and I bought it for £600,000.

That’s a very big drop in prices.

So I think that while we might not be seeing a cut in official house prices, if you scratch beneath the surface, a lot of people might be asking £1 million for their properties and selling for £850,000.

While it’s not necessarily a drop because the price might be stable from what it was five or ten years ago, we’re not seeing huge increases.

I think there’s a bit of manipulation of the numbers going on there to report what people want to report.

Wow, that’s really… I.

But it also just makes so much sense.

It’s the same as anything that people specialize in certain subjects for a reason, because you do it over and over again, you get good at that.

So then when you branch out into other areas, you’re not going to be as good as you think you are.

But actually, it’s often not an essential thing with property.

Like I see in life, we should just be applying those sort of things.

It’s amazing that something so obvious could be like that, but it’s not so obvious when you’re doing it and you get distracted by shiny things.

But it’s crazy.

I love that.

And obviously, you do know your stuff, and you’re so… shy away from property at the moment.

Which you know we’ve been talking about it a lot, but you’re still clearly passionate about it.

You know a lot about it, but you’re moving towards more like financial advice now.

And I’d love to understand what’s kind of taken that turn and why you’ve done that.

I know that you’re a child panel planner in ours, right?

But now you’re over here.

So what’s making you turn in this direction?

Yeah, so it’s interesting that I keep trying to leave property, and property keeps bringing me back.

And I think I’ve spent 12 years, 13 years, 14, 15 years of my life in property.

That’s a huge chunk of my professional life and my identity.

And I love property.

And yes, I’m a little bit probably… people accuse me of being a bit negative, but actually I think I’m realistic.

And that’s because I’ve been through a downturn.

And I think people who haven’t been through a downturn, they may be a little more evangelical about property because they haven’t experienced the downs yet.

And so once they have, then they will have to be a little more jaded like me.

But to go back to your question, yes, I became a chartered financial planner.

I was actually the youngest chartered financial planner in Australia at the time.

I was 22.

Thank you.

I don’t know if I am now, but yeah.

So I became chartered in Australia and then moved to the UK and never used it.

But I’ve always had a real interest in financial planning and just the issues that I incurred in my property portfolio made me realize that I was so invested in property.

That I couldn’t sleep at night. I was really stressed about it, I didn’t have a solid foundation of all that assets that I could fold back on.

And I thought this is ridiculous, I know this stuff I’m a financial adviser and yet here I am in my portfolio so out of balance.

So it made me think I don’t want anyone else to go through what I been through it’s been really really tough for just being…

Overinvested in properties. There are these other pillars of a balanced portfolio there’s your stocks and shares there’s your cash there’s your fixed income and there’s your property and it all of those things need to be in balance in order for you to sleep at night and not get as gray as I have become over the last few years so that’s when I thought okay well why not become chartered in the UK as well it won’t take that much I think within a year and a half I’ll be chartered so I’ve started down that route and the whole idea really is just to make sure that people don’t go through the same experience as I did and people put together a more balanced portfolio and sleep at night that’s really it.

Obviously like you said you mentioned all those sort things that are going on and other than property and I just think again investment is a scary sort world for a lot of people which is I’m guessing why you also decided to specialize in helping women mainly is you just see help women or is it just or it is it mainly women is it?

I like working with women I do but I work with men as well and I’ve got a few male clients that I work with so I’m not going to say no no men

How do how do the men respond to your financial advice?

I feel like you know things have got better but there’s still a lot of misogyny out there there’s a lot of misconceptions that women don’t necessarily know much about finance and property and there’s not that many female financial advisors out there compared to men and property experts so how have you found a respect from men out there?

I think that my projects speak for themselves and this is something that I struggle with and I haven’t really I don’t make too much of my experience in property and it was only yesterday that I sat down and worked out that I’ve done 125 properties how many other people male or female have done that many and perhaps I should speak a little more about that because I kind of know what I’m talking about so I think the men that I do work with they know my background they’ve known me for 10 years and they say actually I really need some help with this particular aspect it might be getting me on board as a financial director on a project basis or might be helping them with a funding issue that they might have just coming up with the investment presentation and putting together their investment pack their spreadsheet whatever it might be so it works because they know my background.

I just think that what we don’t do well as women is talk about our successes and I see other men that have done far less than I have that are out there talking far more about their achievements than I do and other women in my situation do so yeah it’s sort of getting out of my comfort zone now and saying well maybe I should talk a bit more about this.

I guess I wanted to talk to you about you know what constitutes financial advice which has a ridiculous question but I feel like what do most people come to you worrying about what stage are they at in their lives where they’re just sort of like I need advice I need help with things and what do you do most of the time to help people?

Sure well there are two aspects where I work with clients the first is on the property side and I think that’s think of me there as a financial director or a non-exec director which is something else that I do for my startups so yeah think of me as a project property FD and I just come in and I help them with a specific project usually.

So that’s on the property side on the financial advice coaching side because I’m not fully qualified here in the UK I can’t give financial advice but what I can do is I can coach and actually this is really interesting because there’s what they call the advice gap in the UK and in many countries and that is that in order to get financial advice from a regulated financial advisor you need to have a certain amount of wealth and most people don’t actually meet that level of wealth in order to have a financial advisor and so what it means is there’s a whole group of people who may be earning pretty decent money but they might be in the building phase of their life and so they can’t afford to put aside a 20,000 a year in their ISA consecutively over a number of years and be able to have a financial advisor so that’s where coaching comes into it and I’m a certified financial coach and what you can do is you can look at budgeting you can look at asset allocation you can look at anything that doesn’t give specific product advice and there is a really gray line a gray area and you’ve got to be very careful not crossing over that line into financial advice.

So let’s just say you came to me and said okay I want to buy my first home but I’m really struggling to put aside money for that and actually I don’t know where to put this 20,000 that I’ve got that I will want to deploy in the next 5 years what do I do and so then we look at your mindset around money which is a really big issue that often a financial advisor won’t look at they are more and more now but often they won’t okay what is your money mindset are you a spender are you a saver why is it that when you have emotional triggers you go and blow a ground on a handbag new hypothetically or read so we look at the mindset and what might be stopping you from saving and it is often there are quite a few emotional triggers there which is fascinating.

And I’ve been both a spender and saver throughout my life at different times and I used to have this thing where I used to order Net-a-Porter I’m sure while I was asleep and the next day Net-a-Porter the lovely black Net-a-Porter car would arrive at my house and hand over a bag and I’d go I can’t even remember ordering this and for me it was an emotional trigger that I would do that and so I had to really look at my relationship with money and spending that was a long time ago I will add I’m definitely in control of my spending now my neighbor used to get it too and her and I used to be looking out the window going is it for me or is it for you and then we’d wave to each other it’s for me this time.

So yeah so looking at spending looking at budgeting and then looking at okay you’ve got this 20,000 if you need it in the next 5 years that’s a medium-term investment so let’s look at what we can do there do you have enough cash so that if something awful were to happen to you you had enough cash for the next three or six months to look after yourself so it’s just looking at those sorts of things and then if you needed product a specific product advice referring you on to a regulated financial advisor

But for me I’m really passionate about working with people who are in that advice gap who are other advisers just don’t want to touch because it’s not profitable.

The question of the financial gap because it’s actually quite remarkable that it’s probably the people who need it the most but even get access to it which is super bizarre and so from where you’re at and the people you’re helping you know what are the most common things that pieces of advice that you can give to people in that sort of demographic like I would say the average person more like than the high net worth individuals who might be doing something different you know what sort of the basic things that they could be doing to help save and you know save for the future at the moment.

Yeah it’s interesting actually because when I speak to most women they they just say to me but saving is so boring and that’s the thing is that it’s you get that dopamine hit when you get that new handbag or whatever it might be but as one client said to me she really regrets having a wardrobe full of handbags and not having any money in the bank and so my advice mostly is how can you get that dopamine hit from your investments now for me I get that dopamine hit when I do my daily tally of how much money I’ve made that day in my little investment portfolio so I’ll go through my apps and I’ve got a few apps that I check and I go oh I’ve got 18,000 pounds in that account and I’ve just made 250 pounds today

Oh what did I spend 250 pounds on yes that coffee whatever it might be I’ve just made that coffee so for me it’s about almost gamifying your investments because I think as women we don’t get that dopamine hit from that so for me I just think learn how to and work out ways where you can gamify your investing so that you can make saving fun.

And I think with interest rates as high as they are now to levels that they haven’t been in about 15 years or so you can get some really good returns there are a number of accounts out there offering 5% returns that’s above inflation actually now because inflation’s come down a bit so that’s really to me that’s exciting and I like shopping around and looking at what accounts I can find that are I found one for 5.2% the other day so I quickly shift some money into that and again I’m getting my little dopamine hit when I do my tallying each day and go oh I made this amount and that and so it is it’s about gamifying and finding something that you find interesting and exciting it might be premium bonds for example and we’re doing this at the beginning of a month and we know that the premium bonds prizes are drawn at the beginning of each month and so for me that gives me a little flutter of excitement.

Oh how much am I going to win this month one day it’s going to be the million

So it is about gamifying it and finding something that gives you that dopamine hit and makes that saving and that going without spending worthwhile for you and I think that comes that’s probably the advice that we have to tackle for 90% of people that I speak to.

Yeah you mentioned 5.2% that I was thinking I wonder why that is because I do the same I’m definitely gamification person I also do find saving boring but shopping so much more but yeah I feel like finding accounts have a bigger percentage is almost like a win you feel like oh actually I earned that much money by doing absolutely nothing and it’s quite nice when you think about it and you can even think like for example I had one account and it’s maturing in November I’m using that for my honeymoon and it’s literally paying for my entire honeymoon yeah which is nuts when yeah it and I’m like I’ve just got a free honeymoon from just deciding to be a bit more sensible that’s a win win exactly but I wanted to ask you what is your opinion on for example like Martin Lewis’s site because I feel like a lot of people use it and do you think it’s good do you think people should be on there what do you think of their advice.

Well it’s so Martin Lewis is amazing what he has achieved and the way that he’s got people thinking about money and money saving so remember he’s the money saving expert and I think that what he does is very much minding the pennies and which I think is great and you can get a lot of really good resources there and sometimes when I Google various things money saving expert comes up so I do think it’s worth looking at I think once you get to a certain level of savings though you’re thinking a bit bigger…

Not necessarily about budgeting and saying look you can save 10 if you do this. It’s more about, okay, let’s think a bit bigger than this.

How can you put money aside so that you can get a free honeymoon from the interest or the return that you’ve generated in this portfolio? So it’s a little bit bigger than that.

And, yeah, so he definitely has a place and he’s a guru, he’s amazing, he’s a great resource I think, get a hold of people. So I think it’s nice to hear about from someone actually in this business too.

So I think on my browser more so there are some I like, like YPower Account, they’re quite good because it’s all in one place and you get to see everything. So I do think those are good.

And yes, obviously there’s other little ones, but there are some bigger things in there which are nice.

But I want to talk about the other strands, which is investment in general. I talked at the beginning that many people want to get into investment and property and investment.

You’re now an angel investor and this is rated for so many reasons, obviously startup culture is even bigger now.

But how did you get involved in angel investment? What made you switch and what did you do? Because I feel like there are people who have a bit of money here and there and angel investing doesn’t need a lot.

There are people who raised like 5, 10,000. I’ve seen in businesses and a lot of people do have that as disposable funds to be able to invest.

What would be your recommendation there? I guess how you started and what you would recommend really,

Yeah. I did it by accident, and it really was an accident. My very first investment, and I didn’t even think of it as angel investing really.

So I’ve done four angel investments or purchasing of companies, and I’ve got a fifth that I’m working on at the moment.

So my very first one was quite a large check into an auction property company, and it’s Bamboo Auctions.

And it’s been a great company that really thankfully benefited from COVID lockdown because no one could go to auctions live anymore, so they all went online.

So he is one of the larger players in the online auction market, and it’s run by a fantastic guy, Robin.

And I will say I always invest in people, and I know a lot of people say this when they’re talking about it, but for me it’s all about people.

And when I look at the two that have not done so well or failed, actually I got the people side wrong.

So that was the first one, Bamboo Auctions.

The second one was called Terrible Group, and it’s not as the name suggests.

So they started life as a music merchandise company, and they have now grown and evolved and they will do everything to do with a band touring.

So tour complete management, complete merchandise management from their online retail through to the in-person sales at various events.

They’re again run by two fantastic people. I bought into it, and the co-founder contacted me on Instagram and said, “Can we talk? I’m a female-led business and I really like what you’re doing and I think that you could add value to our company and also you can invest in us.”

So that was really exciting, and it was really interesting for me to look at something that was completely different to the property market, and they’re doing a great job and that’s doing well.

I then invested in a bathroom startup, which I thought would be fantastic because when you go to buy a bathroom you’ve got to go to about 10 different places to get everything that you need.

And the solution was that you go, you design your bathroom, and then everything gets delivered on one pallet. I thought fantastic. It didn’t work for many reasons, unfortunately, so I lost my money in that one.

And then the other one I lost my money down to me. So I bought a company called Morel, which was a women’s fitness wear company.

And I bought that whole company for around £6,000, which is, as you say, for a relatively small amount you can buy companies.

This company is great—15,000 followers on Instagram, 20,000 worth of stock, mailing list, everything.

And my idea was to branch out into the women’s fitness wear industry.

And then my life turned upside down. This was in 2018. I went through a really tough time in my property portfolio, my marriage broke down, everything happened.

So unfortunately I was just not able to put the time into that, and it’s still there.

I’ve rebranded it as EO, which is Eat Drink Exercise Repeat.

I’d love one day to come up with some idea to take that forward because I still think it’s a really good brand.

The branding is brilliant. I think the concept could be interesting. It doesn’t have to be athletic wear for women, it can be so much more than that. So one day I’ll do something with that.

And then I’m looking at something right now in the financial investment space, the financial coaching, the empowering women with investing.

I’m looking at something quite seriously. I’ve got term sheet and things like that that I just need to sign and get over, and that’s very exciting because that’s an area that I’m very passionate about.

And I’m looking forward to joining their advisory board. So that’s what I’ve done.

How other people can get involved is join women’s networking groups, or it doesn’t have to be women’s networking, join network groups.

And if you’ve got a bit of spare cash, say to people, “I’m looking to invest in companies,” and you will be inundated. Put it on LinkedIn that you’re an investor.

You will—I get so many messages a day. I’ve had to just close my LinkedIn pretty much because I get too many messages.

Some of them are interesting, some of them are really not, but you will have so many inbound requests.

And it is interesting, but there are businesses for sale, existing businesses that you can buy, and there are many brokers online that offer those.

Someone I know just bought an online drinks company where you can get cocktails delivered through your post.

So there’s all these, and she’s excited about turning that company around.

I did kick the tires on another couple of finance companies that I found through online brokers, and none of them came to anything.

But it’s just interesting to look at those.

So when you’re looking at them, have some really hard boundaries about what you will and won’t invest in.

Make sure it’s an industry that you know.

So for me, I thought I knew bathrooms being a property developer, but I didn’t. I didn’t know the other nuances of that industry.

Terrible Group I knew nothing about music merchandise, but I really trusted the founders.

Another thing I would say is never invest—and this is just my opinion—never invest in someone who wants to raise money to pay themselves.

I got a pitch through the other day and I spent an hour and a half on this call that I’ll never get back again with these people pitching me, and then they were saying, “Yeah, and we’re going to pay ourselves £5,000 a month each.”

That’s £10,000 a month that’s gone already before you even do anything.

I went, no, that’s not how it works. That’s not what I’m going to invest my money in.

For me, I loved Robin at Bamboo and Jack at Terrible because both of them were on a shoestring, and they really did bootstrap their companies for the first few years.

And to me, that’s what it’s about. You should be prepared to really work hard and not take investor money to pay yourself initially.

That should be your own contribution into that.

So you should still pay yourself, otherwise it’s just a hobby, but that should come later on.

Yeah, I think that’s a really really refreshing thing to hear from an investor because I’ve seen so many people wasting money, and I’ve seen so many founders who just throw away startups and they work so hard to get funding or they just blow all the money.

I remember being in a WeWork office for about 3 years, and I was in my office next to a company that just received £25 million funding.

They suddenly opened up—they took all the office space. One was for a golf course, so they’re all gone.

The next one was for PlayStation, and oh my God all they did was play FIFA in there all the time.

And then another one was like a studio which I never really used.

And I was like, what is this?

And I asked how much this was—it was basically about £30,000 of office space, but one of them just turned into…

It was the most inefficient thing. And one of the guys was like, “I’m just going to go space six months in and think what I’m going to spend the money on.”

And I’m like, how are they okay with this?

And I just think that all startups like this—it was so irresponsible.

But it’s so nice to hear that people now don’t actually look at it because I think people have forgotten the hustle in startup life, because hustle has now got a negative connotation to it, and I don’t think it needs to.

Obviously hustling to burn out, which is not healthy. But hustling to actually get stuff done because you believe in the brand and you care for it and working hard on it, I think it’s admirable.

Absolutely.

And I would not invest in a company where there wasn’t hustle. While I don’t want to hustle—I’ve been there, done that—I want the people that I’m investing in to hustle, and I want them to work hard, and I want to see that my money is being put to good use.

The other thing I look for though is cash flow. I want to see positive cash flow coming through. I don’t invest at idea stage where there is no revenue yet. There has to be revenue.

And the one that I’m investing in now, they’ve got really solid revenue, and they don’t have profits because they’re reinvesting everything back into the company. That’s fine. I don’t need to see profits yet, but I need to see really strong revenue.

So some people might say, well that’s not actually seed, that’s more the next round. Yeah, it depends on how you look at it, but for me I want to see strong revenues already.

So I thought that they’ve got so much great advice from this conversation, which is amazing. So I want to know a bit more about your book, because you’ve actually written a lot of this in a book already, and I want to know what’s more to come as well because I’m pretty sure you’ve got so much more to give and what other books are on the horizon.

So tell me a little bit about what you’ve got out at the moment and what you’ve got planned.

Sure. Well I put up on Instagram yesterday that I realized I’d built 125 or renovated 125 properties, and someone said you should write a book. Funny that—I have.

So in 2016 I published “Bricking It: From Stay-at-Home Mom to Millions in Property,” and now I look back at it and I cringe, I really do, which is not great. I look back at it and oh my goodness, it was such a naive book.

When I read through all of it, it just feels really naive because I’d never experienced a downturn. I hadn’t experienced a tough time in my property portfolio. Sure, I’d had hard times in my life, but never anything like what I experienced after that.

So what I wanted to do was almost set the record straight and say, right, that was over naive, that was the evangelical person without the battle scars talking. Now let’s set the record straight.

So I’ve just finished writing my second book and it’s called “Bricked,” and I wanted it to be called “How to Lose Millions in Property,” but my editor said no—“How (Not) to Lose Millions in Property.”

So it’s kind of the story from 2016 onwards and the lessons that I’ve learned from nearly losing everything. Spoiler alert: I nearly lost everything I’d built up, and I built up quite a big portfolio at one point.

And I nearly lost everything, and that’s why I have the grey hair and the wrinkles that I do.

So for me it’s making sure that no one ever has to go through that, and just showing people this safer system that I’ve come up with and why you must adhere to that if you want to build a really solid property portfolio.

And it goes through a little bit of my experience as well of what I went through.

So that’s book number two. I’m sure there’s another book in me too because I’ve absolutely loved writing that. I’ve really enjoyed the process.

So I’ll put links of the books in the show notes so people can be able to read those.

But where can people get in touch with you if they want to ask a question? Because you’ve had so much great advice, and where’s the best place people can reach you?

Probably Instagram. I’m most active there. So NS Bremner.

And I’ve got my website nico-bremner.com, and occasionally I’ll go on LinkedIn. I need to do more LinkedIn, but Instagram’s the main one.

Thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been amazing. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you.

Bye.