Nisha & Jas

“We were trying to fish for everything, and it became really overwhelming!”  

Nisha & Jas joined the Deal Maker Accelerator Programme with Jackie and the Property Strategy team in Spring 2021 in order to work on their short-term focus on growth and acceleration. 

We caught up with Nisha & Jas to get behind the scenes on how they have levelled up their property business and are able to focus on serving their tenants, investors AND their own goals better than ever. 

WHO ARE THEY? 

Nisha and Jas are the proud owners of Castlewood Homes, a property business they started back in 2016.

This dynamic duo boasts years of experience in investing in property, developing homes and a wealth of knowledge ranging from your vanilla buy to lets to multi million pound  development projects.

They specialise in creating luxury HMOs, where they build beautifully and carefully designed homes fit for kings and queens. 

At Castlewood Homes, Nisha and Jas treat their tenants like royalty, so that these tenants can experience living in a place where they can call their home their castle, and feel like it is not just another rented property. 

WHY DID YOU START INVESTING IN PROPERTY? 

Nisha: The reason why we do it [property] is because we just want to get out of the rat race - for ourselves, for our family.

"We want to be able to just do what we want, whenever we want, without having to be in a job where you need to ask permission for someone to go on holiday or spend time with your family."

What's driving us is just to be able to have that kind of freedom, and to actually have it backed up with a really good and strong business. 

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR SUCCESSES SINCE JOINING DMA? 

• Finding clarity and focus on their Property Strategy 

Nisha: I think the biggest thing at the moment is the FOCUS. We've been doing that through time blocking and the business model. We’re really honing down on what we want to achieve, and how quickly we can get there.  

The 121 with Jackie where she asked, “What do you guys want to achieve?” and working through the modules gave us that clarity. 

Jas: It was the 121 with Jackie that unleashed the clarity, and got us laser focused on the one thing that we knew all along, but just didn't come to terms with. 

• On learning how to say NO 

Nisha: Before, we had to analyse everything to make sure it was a definite NO. But now we automatically say NO to things that are not part of what we're doing [our business model]. 

That headspace really helped us focus on what our end goal is. We've always known what it is, but we just missed the bit of trying to get there. So having the confidence to say no to stuff that doesn’t really matter is such a key thing.  

• On breaking down big tasks into achievable goals 

Nisha: Before, we always say that we've got to do this, we've got to do that...[but] It's the breaking down of bigger goals into milestones and...[and] putting them into a system of weekly actions, like what your goals are and what you have to do that week, is what actually makes things happen so that it doesn't just sit on a list anymore.  

• On focusing on strategic tasks 

Jas: A big thing for me was the differentiation between the operational tasks, and the strategic tasks that will move your business forward...[we’re] focusing on things that actually matter rather than just being busy.   

Nisha: Yeah, I spend less time on the operational stuff and do more strategic stuff now. If a tenant does message me, I'm not off to answer straight away. I know what to prioritise. I've let go of that overwhelm of being really operational. 

WHAT CHALLENGES DID YOU FACE AND HOW DID DMA HELP YOU WITH IT?  

Getting clarity around the investors they want to attract 

Nisha: We always held on to people because we kept on thinking that they might be able to help us somewhere. But now, we've got ourselves into a place where they [investors] have to fit into what we want to do.  

Before, our messaging was a little bit misleading so we ended up with a lot of investors who wanted us to build up their portfolios. Jackie helped us get clarity on who our ideal investors are, and our messaging. Through that, we ended up getting a few more leads through social media.  

Jas: The clarity in terms of the different types of investment, the equity, and the learning agreement type investor really provided us an indication of what gap to fill, in terms of what we want to do right now and how our investor type might shift later on.  

One thing that was holding us back were the FCA regulations - what you can and can't say. We didn't really go out there looking for investors on social media because we weren't aware of some things. And whenever we asked anybody, they just told us to go on a website and have a look at this. 

Nisha: When Jackie saw that it was one of our needs, she pointed us to the right module. And the answer we've been looking for the last like 18 months was just there! It was crazy because this is all we needed to know, and it was just there in black and white. Doing that module just really made us more confident on how to approach investors and how to work with them, because we didn't want to get involved in something that we didn't really understand. 

On streamlining deals 

Nisha: One of the challenges was trying to streamline the deals. In a lot of masterminds and property groups, you get taught top level stuff, but when you come to doing HMOs, there's a lot more stuff in between that isn’t taught to you. There are more regulations and legal fees involved, and you're not taught how to analyse them.  

But with the HMO analyser [that DMA provided], we've tweaked it to make it work for ourselves... so that we could analyse deals quicker.

"Now, rather than spending a lot of time trying to analyse deals, we're so much quicker at sending offers out because the numbers are there. "

On rewarding themselves 

Jas: I'd say the biggest thing is that sometimes when you're doing property, you feel like you've never got enough money to spend on yourself. So a big point that we took away from Jackie was to pay ourselves, even if it's something small. It's that little bit of reward which can make you say that you’re enjoying your life because you’ve a got property business. 

Nisha: Yeah, I don't think we were very good at rewarding ourselves because all we thought about was hustling and grinding, and then we kind of burn out a little bit. And then we get on each other's nerves because we're not celebrating a win. But I think we're getting quite good at celebrating now. 

On project management and organisation 

Nisha: I think one of my challenges was streamlining and getting organised off paper. Now everything seems so nice and organised.

"It just gives me a lot of headspace that I didn’t have before."

Nisha: I was kind of confused about where to start, what to do, and how to do it. But now, I've got a system that actually works...and a process where both Jas and I are accountable. That's the biggest thing when we’re working together.