One aspect of being successful that we emphasise at Five Years To Financial Freedom is to follow your passion. Laura Timm’s dream was to come to the UK and make it big. First in a job, then as an entrepreneur running her own businesses. You can imagine the types of challenges Laura had to face in just beginning her adventure.
We sat down and recorded our chat with the ever wonderful Laura Timm to see if she would share some of her strategies to make it big in UK. In this video, Laura shares lessons from her life about:
- The challenges of starting in a new country
- How to get promoted in a job
- How to deal with disloyalty and betrayal
- How to vet people
For those with bad connections, we’ve written up a brief excerpt of the stories in note form below the video. However, when you have time and a stronger internet connection, we do recommend you listen to Laura Timm. You will get more out of Laura’s story.
The brief notes from our conversation with Laura are shared below the video.
New country, new language, new culture and successful
Laura told us that one of the biggest challenges she’s faced was moving to London. In her first year, she would spend half of her wages on paying the rent, and could only afford to eat macaroni (which she ate for both lunch and dinner).
Once she’d established her meal routine her next challenge was finding a solid group of friends. One of the toughest things for Laura was finding people with integrity and values, and people who wanted more than to just buy her a drink.
Promotion commotion
In order to break out of survival mode, Laura decided that she had to focus on her career. She worked hard, took on extra responsibilities, and looked for ways to stand out. Laura found that you will significantly increase the chance of promotion if you show a company’s management:
- Exactly what you’re doing to add value
- How you’re contributing to the growth of the company
Laura found that she was quickly promoted when she sat down with her manager and pointed out the things that weren’t working well and how she was resolving the issues.
However! Before you storm into your manager’s office and start telling them all the things that are terrible, Laura says that you need a game plan of how the systems can be fixed or made better to make a real impression. Her advice for those who are looking to further their careers is to know when you’re right and stand your ground.
After progressing in the corporate world, Laura realised that she needed to get away. Despite the positions, pay checks, and perks offered, she knew that she was meant for greater things. After helping a few startups get their business systems in place, she eventually ended up starting a construction business, and working on self-improvement.
Headfirst into the world of entrepreneurs
One business lesson, Laura had for us was that the most important decision you can make in a business is about who you hire. She said “you’re only as good as the people around you,” this was a lesson she’s learned through betrayal, being too generous, and going through some tough times. Strangely, Laura was grateful for all the personal challenges as they taught her who she could put absolute faith in, and who she should spend her time with.
Laura offers some hard-hitting advice about people that betray you. She suggests deleting them from your contact list, social media, and email, because if they’ve betrayed you once, they’ll do it again. Laura also gave us some insight into her vetting process for finding good people;
- Don’t judge people too quickly
- Look at their actions
- Listen and remember what people say
- Allow yourself to trust others to see who is worthy of your trust
Huge thanks to Laura Timm for sharing her insights with us. Do watch the video as there is a lot more content than contained in our brief notes. If you found her story helpful:
- Like the video and subscribe to the channel for more property and financial insights and strategy
- Write us a comment and share the article with your friends to help them become motivated and inspired too
If you are starting your own financial freedom journey, enjoy the following articles from our library which will help springboard you into a new chapter of achieving your life dreams:
- How your positive affirmations hold you back
- How SMALL means big success
- Priming to achieve
- Understanding the gift of betrayal
Finally, if you are interested in the lessons from other successful people who attended the JTFoxx family reunion event check out the following articles:
- Success is about change – JTFoxx
- Property Millionaire in One Year – Daniel Wood
- Undefeeted – One Man’s journey – Peter Allton
- Solve this Japanese Multimillionaire’s Secret Riddle – Chris Okazaki
