As you all know, I love talking to people about developing. It's something I'm extremely passionate about myself, and so I love to see that same passion in others.

Often, though, it's hard when someone talks to me about how they're looking at this deal and that deal, in this suburb and that suburb, but they just can't find the right deal. They're completely overwhelmed with everything they're looking at, but frustrated at the same time.

So what do I tell them?

Stop being so busy.

Okay, I know right now you're scratching your head thinking that doesn't make sense. Given the multitude of distractions in our modern-day world, isn't it a good thing that this person is actively spending time looking for deals?

Well, yes - it's a good start. They're putting time and energy into pursuing their goal of finding a development deal.

The problem is that most of that time and energy is being wasted. Becoming a successful property developer isn't about chucking lots of hours at it until it happens. It's about using your time strategically to get good results. In other words, it's about the effectiveness of your effort, not just about putting in the effort.

You might feel “busy,” but are you actually taking intentional steps that move you forward? Or are you simply running in place?

Let's take a look at this diagram:



When you're looking at lots of strategies in lots of different places, the amount of time you allocate to each one is small, otherwise you just can't get through them all.

If you look at less things then you can start to get a little bit more productive because you can allocate more time to each one. And if you look at even less things you're going to find that you get deeper into each one and deepen your knowledge and that's what I want you to do.

The interesting part is that if you look at the effort that goes into working on strategies in a mile wide and inch deep way, then just spin it on its head, the effort is almost identical to the inch wide and mile deep approach. But the results are very different!

Looking at all those strategies in all those different places, it's about how many things you can look at. Whereas the inch wide strategy is about how deeply you can think about one thing.

Now that we've got that sorted, the obvious question is - how do you apply this concept of effort vs effectiveness to become a better property developer?

One of the things I talk about in my course, Property Development Formula is the Rapid Elimination Method.

Basically, I want you to completely flip your idea of how to find a development site. Most people find a potential deal, then spend hours and hours trying to make it work. What I want you to do is spend as little time as possible to identify if it's a dud.

Okay, take a deep breath, I know it sounds crazy! Rather than go into it in detail here, I recommend you grab hold of my FREE course - The 7 Step FORMULA to Financial Freedom.

But even before you get to the point of using the Rapid Elimination Method, you need to narrow your focus - find your inch wide.

Let me walk you through what I'm talking about.

You're starting at point A, and you want to get to point B, which is a profitable deal. Everyone thinks it's a straight line between those two points. But in reality, there are hundreds if not thousands of decisions to be made along the way.

So one of your first decisions, when you're at point A, is what is my development strategy? If you've spent any time following my content, you'll know there's quite a few to choose from. Certainly more than you can count just on your hands.

Next thing, based on the handful of strategies you're interested in, is you need to work out which Councils support that type of strategy, and the numbers generally work out to be profitable. So you've now got a couple of Councils for each strategy.

Councils are pretty big and so then you need to work out which suburbs are the best for your strategy. So now there's a few more choices to think about.

All of a sudden it starts to get very confusing very fast, because you're not focussed. You don't know exactly what you're looking for and yet you're looking for it in lots and lots of places.

Overwhelm, anyone? Look at all those options. And the big mistake new property developers make is to start on the right hand side of the matrix.

Sure, you've got lots of deals popping up, but because your effort is so scattered, every time you find a deal you essentially start from scratch. You need to find out how that Council works, what the numbers are like for that suburb... and the list goes on. Hours disappear. You're putting in a lot of effort, but not being effective.

Instead, the very first decision should be much simpler - pick one strategy. That's it. All the rest are now shiny objects that you need to ignore.

Next, pick one Council. That's it. Go a mile deep on that Council so you know everything you need to know in order to implement your strategy in that area. In other words, become an Area Expert.

Finally, pick three suburbs. Again, take the time to become an expert in that suburb. You should know which are the good streets and which are the ones you should never buy in. Find out how prices vary from street to street. Know it like the back of your hand.

This is what your process to find a profitable development deal now looks like:





That doesn't look anywhere near as overwhelming or scary, right? And that's the advantage of being an inch wide and a mile deep.

Yes, you need to front load a lot of work to reach this point. But it's worth it, because once you're an Area Expert, then you can analyse deals super fast. You can look at a site's size and price, and instantly know whether it's worth doing any more digging to see if it stacks up.

That's way more effective than just looking at everything, everywhere, all the time. Your effort will be laser focussed on identifying deals with potential and putting in the hours in to see if they stack up, instead of bouncing from deal to deal to deal with little result.

Trust the process, and you'll soon see how effective your effort can be.