Suzette the Wonder Woman Renovator
The power of having someone who has your back when you venture into the world of property renovation is a huge boost – and that someone for me is Bernadette Janson.
One of the first students of The School of Renovating, Suzette discovered Bernadette Janson on social media while on holiday in Italy with her husband.
“I saw a Facebook campaign promoting The School of Renovating training – right away the lightbulb went off for me – this is what I had been looking for. I got in touch with Bernadette online and soon after I had signed up as her first student in the Renovation Bootcamp.”
A bookkeeper by trade, Suzette has a love of numbers and feels most comfortable with a clear structure. She likes clarity and formulas and found both to be the backbone of what Bernadette was offering her students.
“Bookkeeping and renovating are the same. You have a start, a middle and a finish; you’ve got to apply formulas to your product and there is an outcome. A finite life. I like that. A finishing line to cross. Like baking a cake – get the recipe, ingredients, put them together, get it in the oven, get it out, done. Training with Bernadette gives you that recipe to successfully renovate properties for profit.”
While scoping out who to train with, Suzette explored the options and tried a few on for size.
“Some of the competition are energising and informative for sure, but they feel like big machines. Huge seminars, almost like rock shows, which is great for some, but not for me. The fundamental difference between what Bernadette is offering in this market compared to her competitors is her personal approach. You are being mentored and you can feel that throughout the training and afterwards as you work on projects.”
Purchasing A Property To Renovate For Profit
Suzette has always been interested in renovating properties. Over the years, prior to training with Bernadette, she has done both cosmetic and structural renovations on the homes she has lived in. However, purchasing a property to renovate for profit was what Suzette was really inspired to dive into.
“Bernadette’s training isn’t just about flipping properties. It offers mate-ship with it. Security and support in a group where I can be mentored – it’s wonderful – if I don’t know what to do or if I have questions, I have a group who are there with me on the journey.”
In addition to the friendship and support that Suzette found within the Bootcamp training, she also gathered new knowledge and tools that would prove to be life changing. Suzette also discovered that she didn’t need to be a jack of all trades to ‘make it’ in the world of renovating.
“One of the big highlights from the training was realising that you don’t have to be one thing or the other to successfully renovate for profit. You can have skills in so many different areas – a keen gardener or an accountant who loves knocking out a few walls – it can all tie into the bigger picture. You don’t have to be a builder to make this path work for you. Doing Bernadette’s training showed me that. There’s so much information to take in to understand the ins and outs of property renovation for profit, but Bernadette does an amazing job of translating everything you need to know to get the job done properly.”
Joint Venture Renovation Projects With Bernadette Janson
After Suzette completed her training, she worked on a number of joint venture renovation projects alongside Bernadette, which really bolstered her confidence and put her new skillset into action. She also completed a couple of projects on her own, and now six years later, Suzette has returned to do the Renovation Bootcamp training again as a refresh and to gather even more resources.
“Bernadette is regularly reviewing and updating the course materials that she teaches, which is brilliant because it means that I will always have access to the latest insights and tools. It’s a great refresh for me to do the training again – especially the due diligence aspect – that is very important on any job.”
When people hear the word ‘renovating’, many images may come to mind, including rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard labour that is often required to turn a property around. Through the Bootcamp training, Suzette was surprised and pleased to understand that a large part of renovating for profit is actually solid project management.
“On my first project working with Bernadette I learned that you don’t have to actually get your hands dirty if you don’t want to. I had a round with the mallet, but ultimately, using your brain is the key to making this path work. Particularly because the majority of women can get pushed around a bit when it comes to dealing with trades at times, you need to be informed and learn to be a boss without being bossy and project manage without having to actually be on the tools. You’re the conductor.”
Through the training and her experience across a number of projects, Suzette has discovered the power of her natural abilities, those of many women, and how they suit the property renovation industry particularly well.
“We as women really undersell ourselves, when many of us are actually project managers. Some naturally, others who become great at it purely from juggling their lives as mothers and caretakers. We lack the confidence in a lot of ways to take those skills out to the wider world. Fears of all kinds. Of not being enough, or perhaps of feeling that we don’t know what we need to, or that we are stupid. But we aren’t and we very rarely take those fabulous skills out somewhere else beyond the life we created within the home.”
Wonder Women
Suzette is also a member of the Wonder Women mentoring program, run by Bernadette. Within the group she is supported by women from all walks of life who have a shared passion for developing their property renovation skills and experience into long term career paths and, in turn, securing their financial futures.
“The Wonder Women are a great group of people. I’ve worked with a number of them on joint ventures now. We are ordinary women doing wonderful things and most importantly stepping out of our comfort zones. That’s not to say that things roll along easily and smoothly all the time. You might take a break from it for a bit, but then you get enthused again and back you go into the next project.”
As for the future, Suzette is keen to renovate properties for profit full time, with a few projects rolling consecutively. Doing the refresh of the Bootcamp training is paving the path for her to making this a reality.
“I am 60 now and I want to have something on the go for the next ten years. I can do my bookkeeping on site while I project manage the renovations – I can clearly see how I can make that happen.”
Would Suzette Recommend The Renovation Bootcamp To Others?
“Without question. All the feasibility training – the percentages that will show you if it’s worth pursuing a property purchase – this part alone was worth the cost of the training.
Be confident, give yourself a chance and remember, just because you’re not out there in the world running Deutsche Bank doesn’t mean that you can’t run a renovation. You absolutely can.”
Suzette the Wonder Woman Renovator
To learn more about Suzzette Halliwell’s success story, listen to the podcast episode 115 – Meet Suzette, Our Website Cover Girl.
