Behind the Scenes! Real Life Renovations- Creating "The Ultimate Guide To Renovation"

On 4 November 2013, Australia's first online video renovation course will be launched to the general public. This single event is the culmination of over two years worth of development which included over nine months of filming, two real life renovations, three months of rigorous testing and of course years of hard earned knowledge from one of Australia's most respected property educators national Jane Slacksmith. In this short video, the second part of creating the ultimate guide to Renovation, we take a look behind the scenes at the making of Australia's first online renovation course. We also meet the course testers themselves.

Yeah, well, I was delighted to be picked. You know it was good. I was worried I hadn't put enough information in.

I remember running in and telling Tanya and going I'm on the course, I've.

Got the 12 modules.

And she said oh, well done.

It was like I got a job quite exciting and I'm quite feeling quite chuffed getting selected as well. Awesome.

It's going to be great. And when it has been, it's just like I can't even explain it to Tammy.

I was so excited when I got that email because I knew from Jane that there was 250 applications. Oh my God, there's a sea of people.

And Jane discusses the biggest reasons why renovations fail to make money.

I've seen time and time again people have actually done an incredible renovation but it just didn't fit the market.

And her unique approach of using renovation to build long term wealth. Over the years Jane has gained a reputation for her no nonsense approach to property education and has recently been recognised as one of Money magazine's top 10 Australian finance gurus. In 2012, Jane became a first time author with the release of her book youk Property Success with Renovation.

When I was approached to write this book, it was actually very similar to when I was approached to do Australian Story. It took them a year to convince me that I had a message that people wanted to hear and was interesting. So the publisher was very determined that people wanted to hear someone who had done renovating. So for me, if I was only ever going to write one book, which is what this was ever going to be, I wanted everything to be in that book, but really gave people a system and a step by step process to go through what I had been through, learn from the mistakes I'd made and understand the importance of finding the right property. So I squeezed everything I could into that book. However, once the book was out and I was getting this great feedback from people about how much they loved the book, they were still voicing some concerns that they didn't feel that they had the confidence to take the next step. What happens when a trade turns up to, to quote, how do I know they're not ripping me off and how do I understand how to add value? I found that people really wanted to have that hand holding and that's why I looked at creating the video course way after the book was ever published, because it came out that that's what people wanted. They wanted to have more hands on how to actually do a renovation. So this video course that I created allowed people to actually see it live. Doing the video course was pretty epic. When I first started talking about it, it seemed like it was going to be, you know, maybe four or five hours in the studio and a few hours out on site and that would give people all the information that they needed. And to be honest, I thought this is something that we wrapped up in a couple of months and quite, quite an easy process compared to writing. But you know, it just turned into this epic thing. And every time we filmed something I was so excited about the content and so, you know, we kept adding to it and it was hundreds and hundreds of hours in the studio and even more time editing it.

On 27 July 2013, a call was put out for volunteers to test a new online renovation course. The response was immediate and overwhelming with over 250 applicants within days of this message going out. After a very difficult selection process, 20 lucky testers were selected.

I'm Bridie Hankinson. I'm a wife and a mother of three boys and I live in Brisbane. I'm from Sweden so I moved here six and a half years ago. So back in Sweden I did like a couple of renovations, but not for investment purposes.

Craig Patrick Trethewey. I'm 43 years old, currently working in Emerald with the police service in Queensland. Been a police officer for 24 years, primarily for 15 years of that. I was a police dog handler on the Gold coast of Brisbane.

I'm 55, married, couple of kids, currently running a small IT business of my own. Looking after small businesses and home computers and such like. Well, I'm Derek Lack, 44 years old right now, living in West Ryde in Sydney.

We've got two kids, 10 and 8, a little girl and a little boy.

I'm originally from the States. I married an Australian, migrated here nine years ago.

Steve Perich. I'm a part time property investor, full time employee.

At the moment I work at a freshwater research centre. I guess you'd call me a freshwater biologist.

Did business, business marketing and corporates and sort of project and consulting work.

I'm a property valuer so used to sort of looking, going through the figures and doing all that.

I've got my training assessors program. I thought I could probably give you that feedback. I mean I work in banking so I'm an IT person in banking. Some of these guys were really experienced renovators and some of them were novices. So we really were getting both spectrums of their experience.

I've done six structural Renaults, one knockdown and rebuild and about five cosmetic Renaults.

I've done a dozen renos.

I purchased ex housing commission properties.

I've never done a renovation project before.

Small cosmetic Renault on a house in Tarneet.

I've only renovated my own home. I haven't actually done a renovation.

I've done a bit of diy, but I have never done like a full blown house.

Start to finish some basic renovation skills.

On 20 August 2013, the Ultimate Guide to Renovation was released to the test group for their feedback.

I was terrified because having spent months in the studio filming all of this information, I started, I guess it was kind of like buyer's remorse when you buy a property. I started wondering if this really was good enough.

I have really blown myself away at what I didn't know.

Probably highlighted what I was doing wrong.

I guess I thought I knew about that sort of thing, but I didn't.

In hindsight, out of the 14 or 15 I've done, I reckon six have.

Been.

Really, really good deals and good cheap Renault and done properly. Whereas the other eight I probably should have stepped away from.

I got so much out of Jane's course, you know, pages and pages of notes and ways to improve the things that I do. And you know, I learnt so much. I really am just now so aware of what I didn't know, you know, and I, like I said, I thought I knew a lot, if not everything.

When you actually see that and you go down to that level of detail, you just go, how come I didn't.

Do this before I did that module? And go, oh God, I knew nothing.

To take that away has just made me rethink everything that I'm doing.

For me, you know, that just validated and every time a module was released to them and the feedback that we got, it just validated that we were on the right track, you know, I was probably going down the wrong path.

Of buying the wrong property as to where I want to get to with My goals and that when I look.

Back, I've been doing everything half baked.

When I'm doing other sort of stuff. I was doing it in the wrong place before because I didn't do enough research on the suburb to begin with.

Wow, that would have been quite useful before I bought my other properties. It just, it gave a depth of information I didn't even know was available.

I said, oh look, I'm in the wrong suburb, I've got to go back.

And do this again.

So if there is something that's come out of doing this course, it's the fact that it stopped me buying the wrong house.

I feel like I wasted so much time on the process at the end and it was like, that was just so wrong and so, yeah, like I really didn't know how stupid I was.

When you look back, the amount of money you burnt just torn up.

Yeah.

The test group were asked to be rigorous in their feedback. Every section of the content was closely scrutinised. No feelings were spared and no stone left unturned.

We created a private Facebook page and said, you know, seriously, we're here to make this the best no holds bars, give us all the information that you can so we can together make this a fantastic course.

So if you had at the beginning the explanation that says, okay, so these are the modules, this is what you're going to learn. We're going to take you through these steps, then we're going to move into actual renovation, then we're going to move.

Into structural, maybe even just calling it out.

That this is just a fly through.

At the start and then going into.

Stuff in more detail and keeping chunks.

Of material together rather than doing it.

In a mobile places I think would work a bit better. Yeah, look, it was really interesting when the beta testers came back with some of the information on how we could improve the course. It kind of surprised me that I was so interested in the content. Some of the information came back that they felt that there could have been extra checklists for some of the things that we went through once that's all.

Consistent and the bonus material isn't like the actual hard stuff, is there? I think it's going to be fantastic.

I mean in all honesty, that's an easy fix. You know, that's something where, you know, if you got that right, because the.

Quality of the information is far superior. I mean that's just the bottom line, the quality of the information, which is what you want.

Some of the surprising information though was in some instances we got feedback to Say that there was so much information they needed to have a stop and.

If the videos were shorter, then, yeah, it would. It would be much easier to go. That's the bit I want to refresh on now.

Also, that breaking some of those up with exercises, you know, things like that I think we talked about in the early sections.

Like I was trying to write down all that. So in the bonus material, I'm assuming you're going to provide something with all the websites listed.

The amount of information, particularly for someone who's maybe new to this, is going to be overwhelming. And so how they organize it going to be critical for success, ensuring that.

The learner doesn't get lost, because the.

Moment they get lost, they disengage. So, you know, we cut the videos down, we created a stop for them and an exercise. So it was actually creating, I guess, a bit more content and a few more breaks so that they'll just short little videos that people can consume quickly think about it and then move on. That I hadn't expected. But obviously that's what people. People wanted, so that's what we delivered.

Another unexpected outcome of the testing process was the manner in which the course would be delivered.

You know, one of the things that I would. That I would really like would be some kind of peer review, peer mentoring.

Something where when as we're doing it and we've got questions, we can knock the questions out while it's there.

That's something that I think a lot of people would be interested in, because even myself with a lot of experience, I'm really hesitant on the structural piece and that's why I'm hungry for more knowledge on it. Right. If you could handhold me through the first one, that'd be it. I'd be off like a rocket.

I reckon it's a Facebook group because then we can post and put it down as we're doing it.

I'm looking at this property, you know, do you agree that it actually fits all the criteria that we've learnt to identify or learnt to look for, you know, and just getting that reassurance that it's okay to take that next step and not just not getting kind of that, you know, that fear that then just takes over everything that you do and you don't move forward at all?

It's been proven to be more effective because you've got the Facebook groups, you've got the support arena in the background that is helping people learn at the same pace with their peers and also present ideas and things like we've been doing in the Facebook group group from.

The beta Q and A calls that people call in with their concerns and you know, a private Facebook page that they could, you know, support each other as a community as well. So it was really about not getting people in and out the door.

The ultimate guide to Renovation includes ongoing student collaboration and support through a private Facebook mastermind group. New video modules are released weekly and are also accompanied by group Q and A calls for the first session. Seven weeks. So what's needed to build wealth through renovation in today's market?

Renovation looks easy on the TV and there's jobs that I've seen done in a 30 minute show that I know would have taken months to organise and to complete and a team of professionals. And so I think there's kind of a perception that renovation is easy. The reality is it's a lot of hard work. And what I find more and more is the people that I speak to, especially since my book came out, was that they were so keen on renovating, they were down to choosing the color schemes before they chose the property. So, you know, a lot of people concentrate on renovation being the key to a renovation strategy. In actual fact, the amount of time and effort to find the right property is worth so much more than spending the time on the color schemes or what type of tiles to choose, which is kind of the fun bit. And that's the glitz and glamour we want to get into. And that does come. But as long as you do it to the right property, that's where you're actually going to make the money in renovating. There's so many different types of renovations. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people have walked into a property and thought this is just really dirty and needs a good clean. And sometimes that's all it takes. People cannot see the opportunity because it's so dirty or smelly in some cases. But in other cases there's a whole structural renovation opportunity. When we're talking about knocking off the back of your property and putting on the extension and there's a lot in between, I think that it's often rules of thumb and how much you should spend on a kitchen or bathroom as a percentage is thrown around. Really, it depends on the property and more so where the property is, the demographic and what they will pay for that. So you're not over capitalizing. So when it comes down to it, there are so many different renovation strategies. Everything from the nice cleanup through the structural renovation. However, for a lot of properties there's only one renovation that will really work and create money for you. So it's about determining what renovation suits the property, where the money is to be made. Because I've seen time and time again people have actually done an incredible renovation, but it just, it didn't fit the market and it didn't fit the property. And in actual fact they end up losing money. So, you know, and that's, this is a travesty and it doesn't need to happen. And that's why it's so important to actually know the market that you're in, know the suburb, know the demographic, know what renovation strategy works for a particular property and what the money is at the end.

Coming up in the next video, we go inside the ultimate guide to renovation itself and find out what all the fuss is about. Also, how a fast cosmetic renovation completely transformed a down and out property for under $25,000.

I was really just blown away, to tell you the truth, by the quality of that cosmetic renovation and how much she spent and really what little she did.

And we reveal a low cost, high impact structural renovation, creating a massive open plan extension for maximum wow factor.

I was just blown away.

I was like, wow, that box on.

The back, the box on the back.

It's a really good option.

Such a cost effective way to create space.

So keep an eye on your inbox. Thanks for watching and here's to your property success.