Working with family
Natalie Ruda
Partners No place like home
Platinum Property
P
latinum Property Partners’ head of partnerships Natalie Ruda, along with husband John, teamed up with her
auntie, Sue Windsor to join the property investment franchise at the end of 2019. They are now just weeks away from launching their first HMO property. Natalie explains…
Why did you decide to go into franchising and why this brand? I’ve worked for Platinum as head of partnerships for just over five years now and I really believe in the business model and have seen, first-hand, how the franchise can change people’s lives. We weren’t in the position to join
before because of the investment capital needed. We’d planned to in the future when we had enough equity in our own home to release. But around two years ago now, my auntie Sue moved back to the UK
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from California after a pretty major life change. She had a pot of cash, but she was unsure of the best way to invest it, so while we were out walking the dogs one day and chatting about her options, we started looking at joining forces and joining Platinum. From mine and my husband John’s point of view, we saw Platinum as a great way to build a legacy for our children, but for Sue it’s more about her regaining a sense of purpose after a big change in her life as much as it is about making her money work harder. Platinum works for all three of us on all those levels and more.
Why did you decide to go into business with family members? It was really about forging our passions and our areas of expertise as much as it was about combining our financial clout. Although I’ve learned a huge amount
about how the franchise works and how to get the best out of it as a Franchise Partner, I knew we’d still need all the help and guidance that Platinum offers and now we’re getting close to launching that first property, I wasn’t wrong! Sue is very passionate and strong on
the renovation side of building a property portfolio and genuinely cares about
creating a great home for people, so we knew that would help our first property stand out from the crowd. John is the yin to my yang and is a
fantastic sounding board for everything. Of course, we don’t always agree on
everything, but as a family we’re working towards a common goal with different benefits for each of us along the way. The dynamic between us works really well.
How do you divide the work? What do you each bring to the business? John and I have been largely managing the site during the renovation and feeding back Sue’s ideas to our team of contractors and to Platinum’s renovation mentor who we’ve been working with on this first property. When it came to originally sourcing our
first property, all three of us were involved 100 per cent alongside our buying mentor and we viewed dozens of properties across an initial two-day period. We had an offer accepted on one property but unfortunately the vendor pulled out. The following day, though, our buying
mentor was back with a plan to find another property and that, alongside our support for each other as a family, was key to us finding that property.
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