Gian Paolo Aliatis

Co-living Expert, Serial Entrepreneur, & Managing Director of BRKV . Check out my website  https://gianpaoloaliatis.com/

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Quote of the Week!

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Quote of the Week!

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Quote of the week!

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Quote of the Week

#success #ambition #inspiration #BusinessMan #SuccessMindset #Entrepreneur #quoteoftheweek #paoloaliatis

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Quote of the week!

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Real men are responsible.

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You never know a person until you put them to the test.

#quoteoftheday #quotes #paoloalitatis #gianpaoloaliatis

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Look forward to the next adventure. 

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Live as you believe. 

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Smartphones – The Poison and The Antidote to Our Modern Brains

Are our thoughts really our own?

This wicked, little device liberates you whilst simultaneously enslaving you, and it does it all right under your nose. It liberates you because it is helpful in so many ways, it allows you to run your business and stay in touch with everyone and everything, whether you are snowboarding the highest mountain peaks in the Alps or sailing on your boat in the French Riviera. However, as good as that may be it is also very destructive because you just can’t stop yourself from repeatedly checking texts, emails or apps. It is the only thing that I have ever been addicted to, and I find it quite challenging to maintain a healthy balance between purposeful usage and increased stress.

Using a smartphone for work often means taking your work at home and in your personal life. You feel the pressure to be available, never out of touch with work. This need to constantly check and respond to emails can contribute to higher levels of stress and even burnouts.

The endless stream of notifications and information from a smartphone will overload your brain and makes it difficult for you to spend longer than a couple of minutes on something that doesn’t provide as much pleasure, without needing to move on and do something else.

It is even crazier how this addiction attacks kids more so than adults. I see them playing outside for a few hours then all of a sudden these regular games become dull and boring, I sense their need for a dopamine rush, their brains feeling the urge to go inside and play games on a smartphone or watch videos on a tablet, this stimulates their brains much more than socialising with each other. It is very similar to the consumption of drugs and alcohol, which also trigger the release of dopamine, the “feel good” hormone and brain chemical that makes you happy, that then changes your mood

What is even more problematic, we build up a tolerance quite quickly, so it takes more and more time spent in front of those screens to receive the same pleasurable reward, it keeps us coming back for more. Furthermore, this addiction makes you neglect other crucial aspects of your life like real-world relationships, hobbies and social activities. The rewarding feeling of always checking your socials, different apps and addictive online gaming is ever powerful.

This smartphone addiction is multiplied tenfold because you always have your phone with you. The size and comfort of smartphones and tablets make them inseparable from our daily lives. We can take them anywhere and keep our compulsions fulfilled at all times. Indeed, most of us always have their smartphones at hand’s reach. They are a never ending flow of news, informational videos, music. They provide us with access to our office from anywhere, to our colleagues and employees. Uninterrupted access to our loved ones, friends and family... which is not always the best thing!

Honestly, I am not sure if this is the best invention in the world or one of the worst, but I have this impression that like the mousetrap is for mice, the smartphone is for humans. You will always find a reason to check it, just to look at the screen - maybe someone has texted you, maybe there is something of huge importance happening in the world and you are missing out, or that tingling urge to check how things are going at the office, you can even make fast market research from your phone if the idea pooped on your mind, or purchase things online. My phone is something I haven’t quite yet mastered how to control while running a business. Because it is nearly impossible to run a business successfully without having your phone on you 24/7.

Now another struggle that I have regarding this subject is - are our thoughts even our own anymore? Writer Richard Foreman asked the same question a few years ago in an online magazine I read, implying: “Are we becoming Pancake People — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button?”

American writer Nicholas Carr is suggesting that the internet is not only influencing our lives but it is also physically altering our brains! We simply absorb information as it is served to us, without really knowing the true background of the story. The media companies broadcast whatever they want us to watch, whilst Google algorithms decide what “truths” we should not see vs. what “lies” we should. Sadly, it has been given unprecedented power to the media organisations, and social media as well, run by the conglomerates and megalomaniacs behind the scenes. They understand that once they control what we can see, they can control what we think. Then when they have control over our thoughts, they have the same control over our actions, our consumption behaviours, political views… you name it.

A wise man once told me - “People don’t have ideas, but ideas have people”. It resonated with me because all these ideas we think we have created with our inexhaustible brains are actually someone else’s ideas planted in our heads decades ago - very subtly and without us even realising it. This level of indoctrination requires special attention, that way at least you can make an effort to try to establish what is logical and what is not, really. In my opinion, the best way to keep safe is to have the conservative values at hand as some broad measurements. These values have guided humanity hundreds of years backwards and through religion, they have provided peace and order so today we can clearly see the results, which are definitely not perfect, but at least our society today has found the sufficient time to delve into notions such as all these different dimensions of sexuality and “which toilet should transexual people use?”.

It all comes down to the fact that the biggest problems nowadays are actually those each of us has in their own head. I feel so lucky having grown up in an era without so much nonsense, rules and regulations. Those were the times when we were actually free, unlike today when we have all these “woke”, politically correct lefties trying to dictate what we should think and how we should behave. All this political correctness is absurd.

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This art was personally made for me, all the details were upon my request. Look at the details of this art. Amazing! 

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This  art was personally made for me, all the details were upon my request. Look at  the details of this art. Amazing! #gianpaoloaliatis #paoloaliatis #sketchart #sketch #art #drawing #sketchbook #sketching #artist #artwork #draw #sketches #illustration #sketchoftheday #artist #drawing (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDQy7AIAOd_/?igshid=1rflenn0oy9a5

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Gian Paolo Aliatis Journey

MY JOURNEY STARTS HERE

After 15 years experience in multiple business ventures across different countries, My current main target of investment is real estate with primary focus on flat shares, which has proven quite profitable, generating over 7 figures annual profit.

Gian Paolo Aliatis Flat Shares Journey

"I started young when it came to entrepreneurship. I want to tell you my story so you can understand how I ended up in the shared accommodation industry and how this industry changed my life." - Gian Paolo Aliatis

Beginning, Present, and Future of My Flat-Shares Journey

I started young when it came to entrepreneurship. I want to tell you my story so you can understand how I ended up in the shared accommodation industry and how this industry changed my life.

Even from a young age I have always found that I can make things go my way. Most of my business ventures before my 20’s were lifestyle based and they involved catching the attention of people in a space that didn’t belong to me. My friends had my back as I had theirs. Those were the good times. “We roll where we control and we control how we roll”, that was the only rule we followed.

By the time I was finishing university, I couldn’t even imagine life as an employee and I started to realise that life was very quickly going to get serious.

You spend years in university supposedly “learning” how to start a successful business, only to finish and find out that you know nothing and you are essentially a nobody.

Those “lifestyle” businesses I had as a student simply didn’t provide enough money to finance a decent living anymore. Suddenly I had to find something else that actually made decent money. This is where the struggle began. No one in school warns you about this part.

Most of your friends and classmates scramble to get a job, yet you stay put. Ready to start a business and make it big on your own but not knowing where to start or WORSE - smugly thinking you have it all worked out, then the dawning realization you really have no clue knocks you sideways.

My first bright idea was to try to replicate a successful restaurant model that started in a neighboring city. However, having little understanding of how to run a restaurant chain, control costs, waste management, maintain standards etc. it ended up in failure. The business barely sold for enough to cover the debts I had incurred in the process of setting it up

I later moved to Barcelona with my then girlfriend and started a pharmaceutical distribution company which collapsed during the 2008 recession. I decided to rent the 3 spare rooms in my apartment, which ended up covering the cost of the whole apartment, meaning I lived rent-free.

When I moved in with my girlfriend I rented out the fourth room and was making 600 euros a month. At the time that sort of money was 60% of an average monthly wage for a person my age, the famous “mileuristas”.

I heard stories about a friend's cousin who was running flat-shares, once we were introduced a partnership was born and we went from having just a few properties between us, to having 250 across 4 different cities. In 2009 we started to get calls from agents in Barcelona and London offering us their properties, turns out acquiring properties wasn’t the challenge, renting the rooms was. At that grassroots time, I was even agreeing to pick clients up off their trains in the early hours of the morning just to secure a deal.

Portfolios grew and time flew by. Profits multiplied and work forces expanded. My role in the game began to change dramatically. No longer was I preparing and showing rooms to people fresh to London or waking up at all hours to chase tenants withholding rent who had been dodging us during working hours. My challenges rose to managing teams, finances, lawyers, accountants, contractors etc.

The game changed and a fresh flat-share system started to flourish around us.

We ditched cash in hand and opened offices and business accounts. Disputes were no longer solved on tenants doorsteps but through the courts, with lawyers involved every step of the way. My skills multiplied, I gained an understanding of property law, recruiting, marketing, pest control, operation management and much more.

Eventually everything fell into the right place, people started doing their jobs, international expansion happened, in house software was developed and new acquisitions became a priority.

With every positive or negative experience encountered, our foresight expanded. As time passed, our contracts grew to include every possible eventuality, giving us complete legal coverage against troublesome tenants, landlords and contractors.

Working with such diverse landlords, from established property tycoons to former gangsters, Jewish to Muslim, those with 1 flat to those with 100 flats in their portfolio, we have been through it all, but most importantly, we have seen and solved it all.

Now I am no longer involved in the day to day activities of flat-shares, my focus lays on how to take portfolios that are yielding a 5% return, to a 12% return. From time to time I will have a former competitor contact me with properties to take on. It doesn't take long to see why they are trying to offload with most of them being structurally flawed and unprofitable. Timing and know-how is everything, especially in the flat-share business.

There have been points when I thought to diversify my business interests. From import/export of seafood, a ceramic tiling company, a geo-social networking and dating platform and a South African goldmine, my interests grew wide. How did I finance these new ventures? Flat-shares. What did I ultimately learn from all these different business interests? That whilst they were all feasible and could have flourished into something much bigger for me, flat-shares remained the least risky and involved the least investments to see a large return of profit.

During the years I have made a lot of mistakes that have cost me time and money, millions sometimes. However, from mistakes comes wisdom, in the long run my mistakes will save me 10 fold in profit compared to what I lost making those initial mistakes.

I am still surprised by the level of business and industry knowledge that I have managed to acquire, which is especially evident when I am talking with people that previously used to be my idols. I feel very proud that I myself am now in a position to teach those idols on aspects of our business they were not aware of.

At the time when we had started to run flat-shares, you could barely say the industry actually existed, it was still operating in the shadows. We learnt the hard way, trial and error. The industry was still a grey area where sub-letters or people running flat-shares were considered crooks whilst conventional estate agencies saw us as amateurs. Fast forward to where we are standing now and those same estate agencies are the ones hounding me for loans. We are the ones running the game, with portfolios those agents could only dream of having. It is very apparent that we are no longer amateurs.

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A #formal look for #gentleman #gianpaoloaliatis #gianpaolo #paoloaliatis #gian #paolo #aliatis #fashion #fashionmen #menswear #mensfashion #fashion #menstyle #style (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDJBYQ5gY7w/?igshid=dc5mbikjktis

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Gian Paolo Aliatis Story: How Complications Lead to Success

THIS IS HOW MY STORY BEGAN

We all make plans about the things we want to achieve and succeed at, be it business related or personal. We take the time, create strategies and consult with others, however things rarely go as smoothly as you wished. Complications happen all the time especially when it comes to business, they are unexpected and can impact you and your business in different ways. There’s nothing you can do to avoid them so that’s why you should expect them to happen and be prepared for anything that might come your way. Everyone thinks of complications as something negative, something that can destroy everything you’ve worked for and that in turn creates fear. In business, there’s no room for second-guessing because that’s when everything will start to fall apart (and you start to lose money).

Sometimes complications just happen, it doesn’t have to be someone’s fault or mean that someone has made a mistake. There are factors and situations that are out of our control, for example, a problem happening right now, the Coronavirus. Not only as a virus itself but the impact it has on the global economy and on people’s lives in general. Hundreds of businesses are facing the same issues, and unfortunately not all of them will manage to pull through. Now, some businesses might not pull through because they simply don’t have enough finances to cover their expenses and pay their employees that cannot work in this current time, but a lot of people create these complications for themselves without even knowing it and there are a lot of reasons why this happens.

We all have habits that "feel right" because they have become custom to us, but when we examine those habits, we may find that they just don't provide the value they once did. People tend to overcomplicate things for themselves and the people around them. Some people create unnecessary complexity while others just want to simplify things. For example, one of the biggest complications in business is when people don’t communicate with each other properly or to the level of detail necessary. While relationships and partnerships aren’t normally accomplished overnight or as an afterthought, the hard work that results in building productive relationships isn’t difficult to understand. In fact, if you have a successful relationship or two in your personal life you already know the process.

Running a business can give you the freedom to do what you enjoy and to be your own boss. Unfortunately, life as a business owner is not always easy. Business, leadership and life come with complexity and complications. Businesses are subject to all kinds of complications that can harm the end result in ways you can’t even imagine. Taxes, credit, economics and inner conflicts like owner disputes, mismanaging etc. are serious problems that can crash your business to the point of no return. According to a report by global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the business environment is changing rapidly and in their attempt to stay competitive, companies tend to introduce new rules and new processes which in turn increases complexity. "When internal complicatedness is not addressed, tangible value is destroyed. This can be reflected in increased costs, slow and poor decision making, low employee engagement, dissatisfied customers and declining business results," are the words by a reporter on this issue. Be aware of these complications so that you can avoid them or manage them as well as possible. On the other hand, the worst thing you can do when things become complicated is to try and control everything. Keep it simple by knowing you may not be able to always control what goes on outside, but you can always control what goes on within yourself. The more we can simplify our complications, the better we can focus and the more effective we can be.

I’ve been in the business and the flatshare industry for many years and one of the most important things I’ve learned is that we need complications. Do you know what complications bring you? They bring you more business. They are what push you forward, make you adapt to unexpected situations and keep you on your toes. You meet new people that you never knew you needed, the right people to collaborate with, to partner up with. These people see that you are working so hard, that you are miles ahead of the rest, quick on your toes, determined, pushing your own limits, using your time productively, effectively and efficiently and not wasting their time. By trial and error, you learn along the way. A lot of my successful business deals came from complications because they bring you more work which makes you active in different fields, makes you go places, meet people and do new things to make you advance, gain knowledge and experience. That’s how you do business, that’s how you make money. If you want a life without complications, then don’t start a business.

No one wants to work with someone who doubts themselves and is afraid of what might happen. Those people are not reliable and you can’t be sure that they will get the job done, let alone make deals and negotiate. “Negative Nancies” will never help you move your business forward. You will have to work without them or fall with them. Through complications, you lose fear and gain confidence. That confidence radiates from you when you do business and that’s why people will want to give you what you want, make deals and work with you rather than someone else. People love that attitude, they are naturally drawn to it. They trust you that you can get things done, and they want to join forces with you, they start to give you the authorization to run their properties, which is a great deal of responsibility for their own business. All of that comes from overcoming complications and that is how success is achieved.

Maybe the thing we need the most isn’t more things to do but a thorough cleaning of our mental and physical to-do lists. When you’re doing so much in a day that you can’t remember anything you did and you don’t feel any better or more fulfilled having done it, then you are simply too busy and your life is too full and complicated. Yet there’s nothing a person can’t do when they’re determined, hard-working and fast. All of that comes from overcoming complications, THAT is real success.