In the last 2 days, I have done about 15 one-to-one calls. But 6 people out of 15 have basically said to me, look, Rob, I’m trying to get into a new market. One guy who’s in the army wants to get into leadership. Someone else who’s in a corporate role wants to get into a consultancy role. Someone who’s in property, wants to go into a new area. And they all said, ah, but I think my market is saturated.
I’m gobsmacked at how many people say that, because they don’t have any evidence. They haven’t done any research. There is no proof. I think, it’s because they’re scared. I think, it’s because they see a few people doing it, and then it makes them worried that they’ve not been doing it long enough. They’re not good enough. They may fail, et cetera.
This is going to be quite a simple answer to the question, is your market saturated? But before I talk about the saturation of a market, I want to talk about you and your perception of your market. Because I was talking to someone who runs a property group like myself. He runs a property community. And you would think that everyone is in property, when you’re in a group of 27,000-28,000 people who are in property on Facebook. Yeah, out of what? 75 million people in the UK. How many of them have more than one buy-to-let? Out of 75 million people, how many of them have one or more buy-to-lets? Well, I don’t know. It can’t be more than a couple of hundred thousand, I wouldn’t have thought. Surely, not.
What you’ll find, is, we have myopia, in that, we have this cognitive bias. What we see we believe, is, what there is all out there. When in reality, it’s hardly ever at all. And where you spend your time, is, what you will start to convince yourself, is, the real wider world. You’ll see, you’ll be a property investor. You’ve been in a property group. You’ll see 6 people who are property trainers, or deal packagers or sources. And you’ll say, everyone’s now a property deal packager. Everyone is now a property deal sourcer.
How many people are there in the UK, have 75 million people who source deals on a professional level to other people? That would be a few thousand, tens of thousands, not even hundreds of thousands. I don’t even know. I’m guessing. But not that many. Even in the most mature of industries, I still believe that a market isn’t saturated, unless there is absolutely zero, and I mean, zero demand for the product or service anymore.
The simple answer to the question, is your market saturated, is, no. And here’s why, because there’s always, always room for the best. If you are the best, if you are the most prolific, if you care the most, if you offer the best service, if you offer the best value. If you’re a property investor, and you offer the best kind of property in the best location. You did the best refurb. You make it look the nicest inside. You’ve got a competitive rent. You’re a good landlord to rent from. Then you win. And if you constantly evolve and improve, and seek feedback, and grow, then you continue to win. And it’s that simple.
When I started in property investing, I probably had been buying buy-to-lets for 2 to 3 years, and I wrote a book called, Property Investing Secrets. Were there a lot of property books out back then? Yeah, there were loads. And then I launched a course called, The Property Investors Masterclass, which is, a 2-Day Property Course. Back then in the property groups or the forums that as they were back then were there, did it seem like there were a lot of people running property courses? Yeah. Were there? No. Could you convince yourself that there were? Yeah.
Fast forward 12 years, we do 850 training days a year. Does it seem like there are more people, and more competition in the property market? Yeah. Are there? Probably not. Do we know more of them now, we’re more mature in the market? Yeah. And then when I started, I had one book and one property course. Now, I’ve written 14 books with my business partner, and some of our trainers. You’ll probably going to add another 10 to that. Then we do 850 training days a year.
And what started as a 2-day Property Investing Course, it’s now Serviced Accommodation Course. A No Money Down Property Investing Course. We’ve got Deal Packaging Course, HMO Course. We’ve got a Podcast Course, a Social Media Course. We’ve got a Speakers Course. We’ve got various Masterminds, Academies, Mentorships. We must have 30 different courses.
And if I’d have said back in 2008, ah, there are loads of people writing property books, I’m not going to write one. I’m not going to get into property. Or, if I’d have said, ah, there are loads of people doing property courses, I’m not going to do property courses. I’m not going to get into them. That would have cost me more than £100 million in gross sales. If I’d have not gone to property, because I thought everyone was a landlord. That would have cost me millions in capital value and rents.
I’ve written a book called, Start Now, Get Perfect Later, which talks about getting a minimum viable product with feedback from your market, your ideal clients, the clients who’ve used already or people that you could go into Facebook Groups and ask their opinion of problems, and pains, and solutions. Then you add your level of expertise, whatever experience you’ve had over the years or decades. Then you launch that product or service to a small amount of people. You do some competitor analysis to work out what they do well, and what they do not so well. You pick the best bits that and the worst bits, and you take away the worst bits and you keep the best bits. Then you put your own unique bits. Then you take feedback from clients and Community members and put those bits in. And you create your own unique hybrid. Then you put out to the market. Then you continually evolve version 2, version 3, version 4, version 5.
I don’t know how many Apple phones they have made. It must be 12? I don’t know, if you can count the Ss and the bigger ones, might be 15-20. Then how many versions of IOS, their operating systems have there been? Oh, dozens, dozens, and dozens, and dozens. Was the phone market a competitive market when Apple launched their phone? Yeah. Did they do something different? Yeah. Was it disruptive? Yeah.
So, even it might seem to be the most saturated market, if you are the best, if you seek feedback, if you analyse your competition, and you do what the best do well, and you don’t do what the worst do. You add in your own flavour. You keep evolving, and improving, and iterating, then you win, and everyone else loses. Those that ah, the market’s saturated, they’d never get in. Those that don’t evolve and improve, they’re like, ah, my market has changed. It doesn’t work anymore. Then they lose.
I don’t have anything more to say on it. You can do Google searches. You can do trend searches. You can do all manner of research about your market. But you’d never really know what your market is, until you’ve got a real people paying real money to you. Whether it’s a property that you rent, or whether it’s a product that you launch, and you physically sell. The feedback of the demand, are, the buyers. Then if it doesn’t work, you improve. If it doesn’t work, you improve. If it doesn’t work, you improve.
But I cannot think of anything on this planet, where there’s not room for one more, that’s more disruptive like taxis, Black Taxis in London. You’d think that’s pretty good monopoly. And then all of a sudden, Uber come along, and they disrupt. So, if you’re worried that your market is saturated, look at what everyone else is doing, and do something completely different, and remove the middleman. Reduce the price. Increase the speed. Increase the value. And then you win.
So many people are asking me, Rob, I think my market is saturated. Is my market saturated? Should I even bother doing it in the first place? Should I bother doing something else? I think they’re asking the wrong question. I think the right question actually, is, am I really passionate about this? Do I want to do it? Would I do it for a long time? Would I enjoy the challenges along the way? Could I even enjoy the challenges?
Will I not moan, not complain, not blame, but roll up my sleeves and get what needs to be done, done? Will I constantly have this desire for improvement? Will I take full responsibility? Or, am I looking for a quick out, a quick win, or a get-rich-quick? And passion is a commonly used word, but it’s not just about enjoyment. It’s about longevity, endurance. It’s about a little bit of grit. It’s about a sadistic pleasure in pain and solving problems, and dealing with challenges.
I went to meet my accountant today with Mark, my business partner. He had this piece of paper, with this big flowchart all over it. And it was something like out of rain, man. You know, when you scribble all over the paper so hard, there are all these circles and squares, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and all these writing and crossing out. And I could see he hasn’t slept. He’d been figuring out a way to sort out a potential accounts problem for us. Yeah, it looked like, he’s probably come up with something that even our Accountant didn’t know how to do. This could save us 6 or maybe even 7 figures in the next 3 years.
Mark had a smile on his face. He was like, what do you think? Have I solved the problem? His face was a bit like, am I a genius, Mr. Accountant? I pay you to do this work, Mr. Accountant. But am I a genius? And he’s got a pleasure out of solving a huge problem. And that is passion, my good friends.
You don’t care about the market, and the saturation, and the fear. Oh, can I do it? Have I been doing it long enough? Am I good enough? If you’ve only been doing something for a short amount of time, and when you say the market is saturated, what you’re really worried about, is, not being good at it. Or, maybe, being perceived that you’ve not yet credible enough to go out there and put yourself on social media, and shout out about your new product or service. Or, just find your place in your level, and ratchet it up over time.
If you’ve got 3 buy-to-lets, so, you don’t want to come across like some property guru, then write a little course, and price it accordingly on how to get your first buy-to-let property. Now, that’ll be massive demand for that, by the way. That’s a very good niche. Now, if you’ve got 3 buy-to-lets, you can safely navigate someone buying through their first one, who’s never bought one before. Now, that’s not going to work for somebody who wants 100 properties. But then once you’ve got 5, and 10, and 20, and you build your credibility over time, then you can obviously increase the reach, the impact, and maybe, the depth of what it is that you do.
All right, cool. So, I hope you’ve enjoyed that, a nice quick one. if you thought it was useful to you, hit me up with some stars. I think that’s it, really. It’s a nice quick short one on, is any market saturated? I honestly don’t believe any market is saturated. I’m looking around here for the laptop market. Well, Apple came it and kicked everyone’s arse. But still the Nova is still there. Window is still there.
If someone came and did something disruptive and new, looking around here. Speakers, well, an AV, an audio equipment. Well, there’s definitely always room for great audio equipment. If you can make something sound better than everybody else, it doesn’t matter, if there’s 100 hi-fi companies. Look at Vinyl. Vinyl is back. You can see my Vinyl over there. It has a resurgence. I’m trying to think of a business model, where it’s completely saturated, and what I am saying is wrong, and I just can’t think of one.
If you want to try and prove me wrong, I’m all up for that. T-shirt printing, is that oversaturated? What if you are a better price? What if you create better quality materials? What if you get some really cool quotes? I’ve been getting a load of people asking me for Disruptive t-shirts. Loads of people. I’m not planning on launching any Merge. But how many t-shirt providers out there? How many t-shirts with quotes are there out there? How many people sell Merge? And I’m still getting ask for it. So, something to think about.
Fidget spinners, bring them back. Retro fidget spinners. All right. So, thank you for the stars. Let me do some shout-outs now. Have you got any questions, fire them away, by the way. Because I feel like, it’s quite a short livestream for me. I always like to give you value. I don’t want to waffle on for the sake of it. But I do want to help you out.
Photocopiers, what if you go out and provide one that is infinitely quicker, and infinitely smaller. I get this, Paul. No, it was Collin. We have got a massive industrial photocopier in the office. In fact, we’ve got 2. And the f**king things always go wrong. And the poor engineers, they might as well just come in and pitch a tent or request a bed, and just live in our freaking office. If you could have a photocopier that never went wrong, man, all other photocopying companies are going out of business. Job done. A fact.
So, Kurt has said, my area, Berkshire is saturated. Well, I would go and find out how many, what’s the population is. And I’d go and find out how many houses there are. I think you’d probably there isn’t. If you do a higher quality of serviced accommodation, or if you get to know the estate agents really well, and make it easy for them to buy from you, or you find a nice little area with the best yields.
I drive around my street. And I walk around here a lot doing calls. I mean, I’ve lived in this house for what? 5 or 6 years. I’ve lived in Peterborough for 20 years something like that. I would say, one in 3 times when I walk around and drive around. I do that a lot. I always take detours around all the streets, just to see what is what. I always like to drive around the nice streets, just in case a really nice house is up for sale. And one in 3 times, I spot a new house. Even on my street, I spot a new house. You know, no wonder. Ah, there’s a drive down there. A private road there. Or, I’d go and sneak down there. I’d look. Ah, I didn’t realise there’s a house behind there. So, you can’t tell me that Berkshire, a whole freaking suburb, it’s almost a county, you know, it’s not. It’s saturated. I don’t believe that.
Kamilla has just said here, I think every bloody person is teaching SA now. Apparently, there are 67 million people in the UK. There might even be more. So, Kamilla, are 67 million people doing serviced accommodation? The answer is no. It was funny, because you’re in the Inner Circle Mastermind Elite, and you were talking to someone about doing content in the Progressive Property Community. You said to them that they should, because in their niche there is no competition. But everyone is doing serviced accommodation. But I think you were talking about 1, 2, 3 people. So, you know, when people say, everyone, they mean 3. So, when people say always, they mean once every 10 years. Or, when they say never, they mean actually, it happens 30 minutes ago. So, people tend to exaggerate over or under.
So, how many people in the Progressive Community are doing serviced accommodation. I bet you out of 27,000, I bet you, it’s not even 250. I’d be surprised. By the way, there might be 500 learning. But how many are actually doing it? A couple or 300 maybe. How may doing? Like you’ve just said as well, Kamilla, you focus on your service. You focus on how you’re different and you’re unique. That’s exactly the right thing to do in a busy market. So, there’s always room at the top, or the cream of the milk always rises to the top.
Anything else I can help you with. It looks like we’re good. So, thanks for tuning in. Have a great evening. Remember, it’s all about being great. It’s all about continual improvement. It’s all about honouring your own uniqueness and greatness. It’s about being creative. It’s about being disruptive. It’s about being innovative. It’s about listening to feedback on finding out what’s going on in your market. It’s about understanding your market better than everybody else. It’s about having good relationships with people who are in your market, who are at the top of your market. It’s about being able to maintain those good relationships over many years, do partnerships and ventures and collaborations, your continual service, and being a student to your market.
I’ve just given you 20 things there that be, the me-to markets and saturation all day long. So, go and be great at all of those. I believe in you. Thanks for tuning in. Remember, if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything. And if you’re watching the replay, hit me up with 500 stars, and you can shout-out yourself or your books, your podcast, your brand, your Facebook Page, whatever it is you want to shout-out. Disclaimer, I’m not able to do any DD or research on them. You should always do your own
