Chef who lost £19,000 on Bitcoin now cooking up a treat from rent-to-rents..
Former chef Joshua Robinson lost £19,000 overnight in trading Bitcoin but has recovered from that disastrous setback to become a rent-to-rent specialist through his training with Property Investors. He sells deals to investors, as well as profiting from a portfolio of five rent-to-rents himself, earning him thousands of pounds every month. It is a remarkable achievement for someone who left home at 16 and got caught up in the world of drugs before fatherhood made him re-think his priorities.
‘Samuel Leeds videos became my TV’
For seven years Joshua worked as a chef. He had a passion for it and climbed his way up to become a head chef. However, shifts of 14 to 16 hours sucked the enthusiasm for the job out of him, coupled with a meagre wage for the effort he put in.
There came a turning point when he realised things had to change, he says.
“I stood in the kitchen one day and I was thinking I’m earning £350 this week for 45 hrs or more. That’s just not good enough.”
Joshua also resented being told what to do. He didn’t want someone dictating when he ate and slept. He wanted to be his own boss so that he could make money for himself and provide for his family.
Property seemed a natural choice to give him the wealth he craved.
“When I was younger and went on holiday, I would be looking at the buildings and loving the way they’re designed. I’ve always had a fascination with property and wanting to get into it. I know there’s good money to be made. The property market is never going anywhere. It’s as safe as houses.”
The young father-of-two laughs when he describes how Samuel’s YouTube videos became his TV. He watched them for hours at night-time, soaking in all the information.
One of the videos featured a 34-year-old man from his home town of Blackpool who was struggling with debt after being diagnosed with a rare stomach tumour. Samuel chose to undertake a Financial Freedom Challenge with Glen Kirkham who had attended one of his crash courses. For seven days Property Investors’ multi-millionaire founder lived with him and by the end of the week Glen had an income from property which covered his outgoings.
Joshua says he was ‘gutted’ that he had missed out on doing the challenge himself, but it gave him the affirmation that Samuel was really doing what he said he was doing.
“The fact he was willing to come to his house and help him was brilliant. I’d only just started watching him at that point. Seeing him do that with Glen, I thought this guy’s amazing. He’s helped turn him around.
“It confirmed to me that you can do this with the right training.”
‘I lost over £19,000 overnight’
It was when Joshua was employed as a chef that he placed a trade on Bitcoin three years ago. He put it on in the morning and by dinnertime it was worth £19,000. Encouraged by his success, he put big lot sizes on but with no stop loss to protect his investment in the digital currency.
“It was a silly mistake. I fell asleep and woke in the morning to literally a couple of hundred pounds left in my account. It was like discipline your disappointment, don’t cry over spilt milk. This was when I started looking into property, because I needed to run a business and property was what I wanted to do.”
From watching all of Samuel’s free YouTube content, Joshua then enrolled on the Samuel365 online programme which has given him unlimited support.
“It’s crazy value for money,” he says. “You’ve got the Deal Finding Extravaganza and Never Use Your Own Money Again [courses] on that and weekly coaching calls. You get mentoring and can book in whenever you need it. I’m paying £95 a month. I’d happily pay that just for the mentoring.”
Joshua has also taken part in the Mastermind Forum which allows members to communicate via Zoom to offer each other advice, share ideas and celebrate successes.
He also paid £500 to attend one of Samuel’s Discovery Days and get help with his business plan. Joshua told Samuel that he was struggling to get his investors to commit to paying him a fee in his deal sourcing business.
‘Straight up he called me a pussy and I was like, yes I am!”
He smiles at the recollection, but it proved to be a fruitful meeting.
“We went through how to approach it and what to say. I’ve not had an issue since.”
Joshua was also introduced to Samuel’s business mentor who advised him to concentrate on offering one type of property deal. As a result, Joshua has now switched to exclusively sourcing rent-to-rent opportunities, as well as investing in them himself.
In the last few months, he has gone into partnership with another property entrepreneur, Ed Harding. Together they have ‘hit the ground running,’ opening an office in Liverpool and employing two staff to help them run their business.
Joshua commutes every day to the city from Blackpool. It takes him about an hour and ten minutes to get there but for him the effort is worthwhile.
“I’m more efficient working in the office now. At home there’s a lot more distraction and chance to procrastinate. You might say to yourself I need to go shopping for an hour. Then you’ve just lost an hour of your business, or I need to go to the gym, it’s not busy. Then you’ve lost another two hours.
“Being around the right people and in the right environment is key to making a business.”
Joshua has merged his company, Prestigee Sourcing, with his partner’s firm and rebranded it as a new limited deal sourcing company called Robinson&Hardings.
All their rent-to-rents are in the North West, where their deal sourcing activities are predominantly focused, although they do offer a nationwide service.
They package and sell an average of four deals, charging a commission of £3,000 plus VAT for each one, or three per cent of the price of the property, whichever is the greater amount.
Their rent-to-rent properties in Liverpool are all serviced accommodation and they are about to take on another one in Salford.
“The ones in Liverpool are making a profit of between £700-900 a month. With the property we’ve just taken on we’re looking at between £2,500 and £5,000 profit.
“On average, we’re making £4,500 to £5,000 a month. With this one we’re bringing on now that could double if we get it across the line.”
They found their patch by accident after they started their search for property deals in the region and were introduced to a management company. The accommodation in their control is mainly let out to contractors who are working locally. They also cater for people moving house, who need somewhere to stay temporarily, and travelling businessmen and women.
‘Integrity is so important in business’
As an entrepreneur who sells property investment opportunities, integrity is hugely important to him.
“Some of my investors have got hundreds of thousands of pounds to play with. Some have got £50,000 and worked hard for the last five years to save that, so you have to be thinking of these people all the time. You have to present the correct numbers.
“At the end of the day – Alasdair (Alasdair Cunningham, Property Investors’ lead trainer) has said it before – you can spend years building up your reputation and you can be destroyed in one fell swoop by one bad deal and it gets around.
‘So, your integrity has to be there. You have to put yourself in their shoes. Would you be happy with somebody over-inflating the numbers and getting you to invest in a bad deal when you know the money is going to be lost? Me personally, I wouldn’t sleep at night. I say this to my investors.”
Education has been the cornerstone to giving him the confidence to go out seeking properties for his clients, calculating the return on investment and negotiating the price.
“When I set up my business, I wanted to have every understanding I possibly could. I never wanted to get to the point of having a conversation with an investor and not being able to answer a question or find a way around a problem. So, I did spend a long time making sure I got my education first. But you have to be careful you don’t spend too much time educating yourself and never taking any action on it. Then that education is pointless.”
As well as having a job as a chef, Joshua also studied aerospace engineering until dropping out to do a business degree in his quest to improve himself.
He was taught, he says, by tutors who had never been in business themselves and now only wants to be around people who are doing better than him in life
That was far from the case when Joshua decided to leave home because he was constantly clashing with his dad. He stayed in hostels and hung around with ‘delinquents and degenerates’ whose only life ambition was to find the money for drugs.
The birth of his first daughter when he was 18 turned him away from that scene. The realisation that someone was dependent on him made him grow up. She is now seven and he has another daughter aged three.
“I’ve changed now. I’m very anti all of that because I’ve seen what it does to people, and I’ve seen the path it’s taken people down.”
There have been hiccups along the way and times when he has had to walk away from deals but the future is looking bright for him. His ambitions are lofty ones, influenced by the positivity in the Property Investors’ community.
He wants to become a billionaire by taking on land developments and building his own portfolio so that his children and their children never have financial worries. In the short-term, his goal is to buy a house for his mum, who suffers from poor health and struggles with money, so that she no longer needs to work long hours in her prison job.
After that, his target is to help his dad and sisters, including building a house for one of them, and to provide places for the homeless to live so that they can get back on their feet.
Joshua’s tips
- Go out there, educate yourself and take action – and keep going. There will be times when you fail, but it’s never a failure. It’s just a learning experience.
- I’m a council estate lad through and through. You can produce the life you want to produce for yourself with the right education. I’m sending my staff to Property Investors for rent-to-rent training.
- Samuel’s YouTube content will educate you but there will be things you’ll come up against that aren’t on YouTube. The paid-for training gives you that extra push.
Samuel Leeds’ verdict
“It’s easy to judge people from where they’ve been, but actually it doesn’t matter where they’ve been. What matters is where they’re going. Joshua deserves massive congratulations. I look forward to seeing him continue to smash his goals in property going forward.”
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