Being a supporter to the organization, understanding that your role is not to boss people around and tell them what to do, instead, your job is to show them the vision and then being a servant leader as my mentor always says — help your team, help you.
As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gisela and Daniel Wood.
Gisela and Daniel Wood are investors and entrepreneurs. Together they have started 7 companies, done over 100 international property deals and through their property education company Momentum Property Education, they have helped hundreds of people start investing in Property and creating financial freedom.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you two to your respective career paths?
Wehave both been in large corporations in leadership positions but always felt that the corporate ladder was restricting in that we were always building someone else’s dream rather than creating our own future. What made us change our path was when we had our first son, William. We realized that with us both working 9–5 he would actually spend more time awake with his teachers at kindergarten than with us. That is when we knew we had to make a change.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you two got married?
A fun story is how I, Daniel, introduced Gisela to the start of our property investing journey. We had been recommended and read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and we were very excited to start investing in property, but we didn’t know how to begin.
A couple of weeks later I saw an ad on LinkedIn for a free property workshop. I called my mother and asked her to take care of William that Saturday and told Gisela that I had planned a romantic day for the two of us.
We started with brunch, followed by a walk through the Stockholm archipelago, when we stood looking over the water I told her I had planned a surprise for us — we were going to a seminar about property investing!
Luckily she was as excited as I hoped and that event started us on our property journey.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We made a lot of mistakes starting out, at the time they were not very funny but in retrospect it is ridiculous how many mistakes we made. One that stands out, is one of our very first property investments. We decided to do a joint venture with a local UK company who had been recommended. We hadn’t done our due diligence, we just trusted the recommendation. Well, the project ended up a disaster. Among other things, when the architect designed the building we were converting, a terraced house into three flats, he didn’t take into consideration that the upstairs apartments needed to have their own entrance. Instead he had designed the property so the entrance for all three flats went through the bottom flats living room.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I think the big difference between Momentum Property Education and other education companies is that we are very honest and transparent. We don’t pretend that all our deals have gone perfectly, or that it is easy to become an investor. Instead, we share our story, our setbacks, our challenges and what we have learned from them so others can avoid our mistakes and have a simpler path to success.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
The most exciting project right now is our partnership with a crowdfunding platform. We teach our students how to successfully invest in property, we connect them to quality partners that will help them achieve good deals. With the crowdfund we can finance up to 80% of their entire project cost as well. It makes their path to success much easier and smoother.
What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?
I think the key is communication. Make sure everyone in the organization understands and shares the company’s vision. Make sure they understand what they are a part of and why THEIR role is important. They might feel that all they do is fill out a spreadsheet, or make tweaks to a system, but if you show them how every action they take will impact someone’s life, it will help them feel involved, important and motivated.
How do you define “Leadership”?
Being a supporter to the organization, understanding that your role is not to boss people around and tell them what to do, instead, your job is to show them the vision and then being a servant leader as my mentor always says — help your team, help you.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Our first few deals went very badly, in fact we ended up losing about 400 000 GBP. We were very lucky at that point to meet Kim Kiyosaki — Author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. She helped us in how we could turn our company around, restructure our debt, restructure our deals and go out and do new deals. She was a lifesaver.
We were supported by many, many amazing people.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We have tried to give back in as many ways as possible. Momentum Property Education is one way we support others so they don’t have to go through the same challenges and setbacks as we did. We have set up a foundation that works with various environmental causes.
What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.
- I think communication is key, we have been through a lot together but we have learned that if we communicate it is easier for the other to understand and accept when one is going through a tough time. I remember once, I was so tired and was in a bad mood, it didn’t matter what happened around me, I was going to take it the wrong way. But through this fog I was able to communicate that if I am in a bad mood, please give me space so I don’t say something I’ll regret later, just let me be.
- Another important part of our relationship has been setting goals together for the future. Making sure that we are in sync with our goals has made a huge difference for us and it leads to the third “thing to thrive”, being aligned in our journey.
- We have had so many setbacks and losses, if we were doing this alone we probably would have started blaming each other for the setbacks, but as we have both been involved, in charge, and running the projects we are a team, we have succeeded as a team and failed as a team.
- The fourth point we would like to share is making time for each other. Make sure you get a little time for each other every day (at least if you aren’t traveling) so you can reconnect with each other.
- And finally, keep the romance alive. Try to do something for the other person every day, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, it could be writing a short note of affection, cleaning up when the other doesn’t expect it, buying flowers, anything, something, every day.
You are people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
It would really be two things. One is the personal empowerment of individuals. To teach them how to take control over their financial future and start creating their own opportunities. The second would be to support those successful individuals and teach them to give back 10% to charity. That way we would, as a community, be able to solve more issues than any one person or organization could ever hope to.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There are no unreasonable goals, only unreasonable deadlines.
This is to us a powerful saying, we have set goals for ourselves that no one has thought reasonable and we have had setbacks that have had our entire families saying “I told you so”. Yet we have persisted, our families have suggested that we get “a real job”, yet we persisted, and today we have a property portfolio and don’t need “a real job”.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Can I only pick 1? With so many esteemed people reaching this column I would want to add a few — Sir Richard Branson, Oprah, Vera Wang, Tony Robbins, Sarah Blakely and Warren Buffet — if one of you is reading this and is available –we’ll pay for the meal 😉
How can our readers follow your work online?
Easiest is to visit our website https://www.momentumpropertyeducation.com or follow us on social media by searching for Momentum Property Education, if you enjoy podcasts we run the Momentum Investing Podcast where we interview top industry experts every week https://www.momentuminvestingpodcast.com
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!