Well the past couple of weeks has flown by as all areas of life have been pretty manic to be honest!
The kids are now coming out of the 2 weeks of Chicken Pox and they coped really well but just as they were coming out the other side Petra caught some viral infection and lost her voice completely for 3-4 days (insert own comment) but they are all ok now which is good.
UKIPT London was a bit of a blow out and as per my staking thread I never got out of the blocks on a table of young guys except me and two older guys one of whom it was his first time live and he asked me a few questions on the first break which I think settled his nerves as they were mainly rules based Q's that he was unsure of and one had found himself unsure of what to do but I think he enjoyed his experience. I just found myself with second best hands on the river early on and in 2 spots where I got rivered having made seemingly ok call downs on run outs to leave me short when our table broke and then having moved to Claypole's table I managed to get my 18bb's in from the BB with AKo after Shaun had opened and got flatted in LP and Shaun got out fo the way quickly folding 10J but my oppo called with 10Jss and we lost the flip when the flop came JQ6 and faded the 9 outs twice on the turn and river to exit
In real life work we still offer our "Sale by Tender" as a string to our listers bow although we have come away from any massive advertising of it and are about to launch our new promotion for the first 5 months of the year designed to get another chunk of listings with the chance of a massive bink for some lucky vendor.
In each of the three towns ours offices are located in we are 1st, 2nd or 3rd in terms of overall market share so would always get a chance of the instruction when we are through the door but then it comes down to if the vendor likes us the most, or likes our marketing, sometimes it's fee orientated but clients will pay a touch more if they actually believe that our Valuer, Team, Office, Company are the ones who will get them the best price and offer the best service so for all the vendors who may have liked the other agent/s a touch more we are going to give them a chance to win a Brand New Mini One in this promo...
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Basicaly all anyone has to do is give us their property to sell for a period of 14 weeks sole agency and they receive one ticket into a prize draw which will be closed on the 1st June and drawn on the 30th June with the lucky winner getting the car which will be available to be seen and touched at a local BMW Franchise that we are in a joint venture with who are branding it up for us and putting it on their raised forecourt with us branding up the 2 minis on our fleet currently.
Even if they are not sold by the time of the draw they can still win the car which after a deal for us of giving us the car at cost means each office only needs an uplift in 5 instructions per month to have made the promo work and gives anyone who was thinking of selling a 250/1 poke of winning a new car.
We are still up to our necks in the restaurant venture and the waistline has taken a hammering eating at different venues to see what others offer in different areas with the latest one being a fairly small family run place where we were served this.
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Chilli Burger
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Chilli Cheese chips
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Combo Platter with Ribs, Baby Back Ribs, Pulled Pork, Chilli and Chicken Thighs plus sides of Chips, Cowboy beans, Slaw and cornbread muffins
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It wasnt bad but not really rememberable either but wherever we go it is easy to find areas that you feel you could massively improve what they do whether it be staff, venue, menu etc and I suppose it is slightly easier to look at when you are not a restauranter or chef but just good business people.
We had a final meeting this week with the landlords of our proposed venue and have now agreed terms with us getting 4 months rent free followed by a 5 year plan that is at a level we wanted and fought for and the landlord who also is on the council is currently helping us to grab some last minute funding from the council where as we are creating between 20-30 jobs locally we qualify for a grant of upto £50k if we can spend £150k before the end of Feb which seems a chunk but when you add in build costs, designers, kitchen and bar fit outs you would be amazed where it goes.
Before we can sign terms though we are just agreeing %'5 with our external investors where there are 4 initial investors (Myself and Dubai inc) plus two other really well connected business people with money to invest who want a piece of the action going forward and under what I spoe about before with the tax benefits it becomes attractive for them.
Basically for £100k they will get 20% of the business with us gifting them the SEIS (Seed Investment Tax Benfit) of 50% on their first £75k each so £37.5k back straight away in personal tax benefit and then 30% on the rest of their investment meaning that for putting up £100k of investment they get 20% for £55k so as long as their personal tax is £45k they get that back in a rebate and then next year if we are succesful and open up a second venue, with the way we are structuring the business they can invest another £100k and get the same benefit back (it can even be split around his family as long as he gives them the ££ to invest if his/her personal tax is not at that level)
This last few months has really opened up my eyes in this investment world as it seems incredible that you can invest in a fresh start business or one trading less than two years and effectively get back 50% of your outlay striaght away and fingers crossed that in the next 7 dyas we have all agreed the equity shares as in an ideal world we want to soft launch this venue in the 3rd week of May so that would give us 15/16 weeks last Friday to the launch date.....
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