Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Bushy Martin on why 'the Australian dream' is dead

Starting point is 00:00:00 The old Australian dream is a broken model, mate. The idea of getting a good job, focusing on your career, paying off your home loan and sticking money into super and then assuming that you're going to be able to live comfortably later in life is going to see and is seeing a lot of Aussies see their lifestyles fall off the cliff and trying to survive in penny-pinching poverty in the golden years when you would expect that you're actually kicking back and enjoying it It works so hard. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show to help you unlock your full self-health and wealth potential. I'm your host, Bushy Martin, and each week I go deep with the best investors, experts,

Starting point is 00:00:43 leaders, and founders to find out what it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom, and live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life you really want. Let's get started. Hi Freedom Fighters, welcome to another episode of the Property Hub's Get Invested podcast. I just wanted to jump in to let you know that today we're running a special episode where the tables have been turned and I'm on the receiving end of some great questions. I was recently humbled to be a guest on the Finance and Property Survival Guide podcast with Damien Hoare and on the strength of our great conversation, we've decided to reshare

Starting point is 00:01:24 it with you today. Now, this is a really important interview because I got to share a lot of advice that I wish I'd received when I was starting out. It would have helped me to avoid a lot of my early mistakes and I hope it helps you to do the same. My chat with Damien is full of insights on investing, finance, budgeting, superannuation and a whole lot more. And while we focused on the younger years, the lessons learned are just as applicable to you and anyone at any stage and at any age. I particularly enjoyed our conversation around superannuation and the common perception that your super is going to be enough to live on long term when you retire. So you may be surprised by

Starting point is 00:02:04 my response, so keep a special eye and ear out for that. And before we get into it, I've got a very small favour to ask you. If you've ever liked or enjoyed any of the videos or podcasts that we've posted wherever you enjoy watching or listening to get invested can you please do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button now it helps the property hub platform and the likelihoods and livelihoods i say of our entire support team that all work hard to bring you the shows every week more than you know and the bigger the property hub gets the bigger the guests get and for every new subscription you're also helping to make the world a better place because by helping each other We're also helping those less fortunate that have no voice and have no choice as we donate a day's

Starting point is 00:02:52 worth of life-saving water to families in Tigray in Ethiopia through B1G1 or buy one, give one. So thank you in advance. Always get invested and enjoy the episode. Welcome back to the show, people. Hope you're all doing well. First time guest on the show. He's got a podcast of his own that I'm sure we're going to let people know about very shortly. His name's bushy martin how are you sir absolutely uh great damon and all the better for spending some time with yourself yeah that's awesome well thank you so much for the time for people who may not be aware of who bushy martin is could you just give us i guess the cliff's notes of who you are and what you do yeah well with a name like bushy as you'd expect i'm a boy from the bush mate

Starting point is 00:03:33 and uh was born and bred in the tiny two-horse town of garrote in western victoria many years ago i won't say how many years ago mate because it was a long time back and i've spent many years my life's actually been in two halves damien so i often say ad bc it was bc was before my early life crisis and ad was after my divorce okay okay so uh so it's been very much in that aspect but what i if what i do now uh given the journey which i'll tell you a little bit about shortly but uh what i really do now is i'm on a mad mission after investing in uh property and other things for many years now and now join the fruits that that come out of that i'm a bit of a mad mission to wake up and shake up as many hard-working aussies as i can of the need to

Starting point is 00:04:25 invest because again we'll talk about this more shortly but the old australian dream is a broken moral man the idea of getting a good job focusing on your career paying off your home loan and sticking money into super and then assuming that you're going to be able to live comfortably later in life he's going to see and is saying a lot of us aussies see their lifestyles fall off the cliff yeah trying to survive in penny pinching poverty in the golden years when you would expect that you're actually kicking back and you enjoy it and you work so hard so you're really on a admission do that and i guess we myself and our business know how we do that in in four key ways mate uh so the first part is uh information and inspiration so it's it's talking to great people

Starting point is 00:05:11 like yourself damien to share knowledge and to wake people up on the opportunity they have and the need they have to start getting invested now uh and then for those that we work with individually there's four things we do so one of those is really helping people get clear on exactly how do they want to live what does that lifestyle cost what sort of a nest egg do they need to create to get there and then what sort of an investment strategy do they need to adopt to make that happen so that's the first thing right then beyond that we support that with a i've got a team of finance brokers in behind us uh because uh as i've learned the hard way property is definitely a game of finance and the strategy the structure the capacity the risk

Starting point is 00:05:54 minimization and the cost of whatever you invest in is going to be very much driven by the essential need of finance. And then the final bit, which is something that we're doing a lot more of now, and it's really emerged out of need rather than anything else, is that for a lot of investors, we become their independent eyes, ears, arms, and legs to sit on their side of the table and then keep everyone honest in relation to the independent professionals that you're going to need to surround yourself to make all this happen because there's a lot of vested interest in investment and in property in particular yeah and the average person uh might be very good at what they do but when it comes to uh understanding the ins and outs of investment and the devil's always

Starting point is 00:06:41 in the details then uh there's a lot of people uh who talk a good story in property yeah the fruit doesn't match up with it you know the walk doesn't match the talk so we've we've become the john west of property i guess is the best description you know that old john west ad where it's the it's the tuna that john west rejects that make sure they give you the best i feel terrible but nah well it's it google it it's still around yeah i'm so old but they yeah yeah okay and we we we adopt that uh exercise yeah okay so we'll we become your we sit on your side of the table as the client record and then we vet the the properties and advice that's been given yeah making sure it's actually is truly in alignment with what the investors achieve so so that's

Starting point is 00:07:29 become a real value and again i'm a shock of a bad analogies uh damien but uh i guess we've sort of positioned ourselves as people's orchestra leaders so we'll help you yeah your life symphony in terms of yeah yeah and then we'll become your orchestra conductor to introduce the right instrument and the right player at the right time to use the results that are going to help you get to where you want to be when you want to get there. Yeah. Okay. It's interesting, right? Talking a bit of, I guess, insider baseball with the mortgage broking side of things, right? I heard another broker tell me at a luncheon once when I first sort of got into it alongside my dad who runs the business, it's like a Sherpa. You have the expertise and you have the knowledge to sort of

Starting point is 00:08:13 work walk the right path to get to where they're trying to go because you've done it hundreds of times and people for some reason there's a mindset that you can handle your money by yourself there's a bit of a diy attitude in in in money uh but there isn't for like getting your car fixed so i i sort of get where you're coming from with that aspect do you yeah yeah the two aspects that today uh which you've well pointed out because you need to surround yourself with independent professionals and i emphasize the word independent here who walk their own talk so you know i don't never have listened to anyone who doesn't do what they're suggesting i do that's the first thing but also you don't want to outsource your accountability either so you need to invest enough in your

Starting point is 00:09:01 knowledge so that you can manage your managers yeah and stiff the bs from the rest to determine whether what they're telling you is actually going to be in your best interest. So it's a bit like that old analogy, mate. If you needed life-threatening surgery from a brain tumor, you wouldn't go to Bunnings, grab a scalpel, some coppel, and some methyl and have it practically on its way to home. And same, I'm a bit of an AFL fan, so I don't hold that against me, but if you were trying to win a long-term game of footy,

Starting point is 00:09:32 you wouldn't rock up yourself and try and play the best players in the league. you'd own the team and have the team strategy and make sure you've got the best possible player to be kicking your goals not not someone else's do you before we get into i guess some more of the the questions do you find that a lot of people are really really not aware of the direction their life is going does that make sense like people i don't know the right word i don't want to say sleepwalking but like you notice that a lot of people just don't really think about this much until it matters too much and it's a bit too late? It's generally too late, actually, Damien, in our experience. So the very first question, when we help people in the property

Starting point is 00:10:15 or finance sphere, the very first question we ask them is, what's your ideal lifestyle look like? Okay. And we normally get crickets or tumbleweed or very strange expressions like, what's that got to do with the uh getting a loan or buying a property and our response to that is everything you're not clear on where you're going and not clear on where you want it when it went up then you're at the mercy of the next best thing that comes along yeah and i get to say you know you can tell by my creases and gray hair damien that i've been having those conversations for a long time yeah we get to see a lot of people have what i call their oh oh shit super moment it's like oh shit my soup is not going to be enough to to sustain my lifestyle yeah uh bushy

Starting point is 00:11:05 pull a rabbit out of the hat for me and retire in five years i always say i've got some bad news for you yeah i'll be working for at least another 15 years to put yourself in a position where you can even consider reducing your work yeah okay and like to sort of blow up my own spot here i do mortgages for a living and it's how i make money but i also feel like there's a bit too i i wonder sometimes if uh there's a lot too many people in this industry that say property's the only thing and they're a buyer's agent and i just go all right like yeah i get it property's great all with you but like it's not the only thing is that sort of along the same line of thinking you have where like it's not going to suit everybody and everybody's going to be different 100 and

Starting point is 00:11:51 And, again, it's going to be determined what you invest in. And let's be straight up here. I think it's property and equities and super and other investment classes. Diversification is really important. It's not an or decision. It's not property or this. It's and. Because you need to, at the right time, you need to invest in the next thing that's going to get you to the next step.

Starting point is 00:12:18 So, you know, let me talk about my own example, mate. when i started uh you know i had a a that early life crisis at the tender age of 33 i was on bones of my bum damien i i had i had an old beat-up car and a bunch of cassettes to my name at that stage it was a round zero start again moment for me which was a massive wake-up call i really spent a couple of years uh looking myself in the mirror and going right what are you going to do differently to not end up in this again and uh i actually started in uh i started trading uh i was actually a day trader for a period doing cfds to actually build up enough money to to then put into property because i did enough research and i'm a mad reader mate so i was

Starting point is 00:13:03 like how can i make this safe affordable and easy uh to actually put me in a position where i've got my time back so that uh my income needs are not relying on me to generate them okay and uh property is certainly in terms of growth is a really good vehicle to do that but once you get to the once your nest eggs are the size that you need it to be you then need to rationalize that and and turn it into more cost effect cost effective income streams so uh and their index funds commercial properties uh there are other uh assets at that point in time that are actually going to be more effective than than leaving your money sitting in property necessarily yeah okay okay um and it was a question i wanted to get to but it feels like it's probably pertinent to do it now um

Starting point is 00:13:47 with the superannuation conversation i'm like the type of people that you'll work with what's the age range is it too varied or do the people who have the oh shit super moment do they tend to be on maybe the closer to retirement side of the spectrum age-wise yeah well yeah they are so the ones that go oh shit uh they're generally early sort of late 40s early 50s and they've actually sat down and either spoken to someone or had to think about it and going yeah we're going to be way short the real danger for someone in their 20s is and this is this is something that i'd really encourage people not to do is is fool yourself into thinking that you've got time because i'd say i often hear yeah that's okay bushy i'll get around to it when i've got time

Starting point is 00:14:36 or when I've got more time or I get that excuse all the time. If you really want to secure your future and put yourself in a position and make it a safe, easy walk rather than trying to climb a cliff at the end and put yourself under all sorts of risk, then start now. Yeah. Absolutely now. And we can talk about how to start now shortly because it's part of what I thought might be useful to you.

Starting point is 00:15:05 Yeah, for sure. yeah and i think so like my history about super is not super great so i'm pardon the pun so i'm not sure whether it's um completely correct but my idea was that i think super came out in the 90s with keating yeah okay so i think of super almost as a financial asset so like keating and whoever else came up with it is almost thinking a lot of people are not going to protect themselves by saving enough money so we're going to make sure they save so they've got a nest egg and a lot of people that might be realizing oh shit my super is not going to be enough in retirement are people that didn't have super throughout their whole working life they got it in let's say their 30s

Starting point is 00:15:49 let's let's guess so i wonder like the average balance for super at the moment tends to be around a million dollars at retirement and then they say you know do i think it's a million i might be wrong on that stat but uh then they say you know divide that by the number of years you're going to be out of the workforce and hoping to be alive you get that figure and they say is that going to be enough to suit your lifestyle and it's this big you know wake up call do you think people my age who are going to have a lot bigger i'm assuming a lot more sizable super balance do you think that my generation might be one of the first generations that doesn't have to worry about investing the same way because of where super balances might be for my age when i hit 60 i've been putting super

Starting point is 00:16:34 money away since i was 15 i think does that make sense it does well that's a really good question actually damon because uh and i want to put some shape around this yeah so that that we can start to see how this fits into the okay jigsaw but uh you know i've done a lot of research on this over the years and in my book the freedom formula i've sort of broken this down uh blow by blow to look at well what does a a comfortable lifestyle cost in today's dollars and uh as i say i've done a lot of research on it i'm not a financial planner and so you know everything i'm talking about here is just general information so yeah it's gospel but uh about 100 for a couple that don't have a home loan about 120 grand a year is what you need to have anything uh even closely

Starting point is 00:17:24 approaching a comfortable lifestyle comfortable lifestyle for me is being able to travel overseas at least once a year and have a number of holidays during the year to have a decent car a nice home and actually be able to renovate and upgrade it over over time it's being able to eat out uh with with uh friends and family uh when you need to so you know i'm talking about a comfortable lifestyle not a a tight tight ass lifestyle yeah okay uh yeah because the super if you rely on the let's look at the pension the age pension right now the age pension for couples about 35 grand a year now mate if you do your maths on that uh that's not a lot to survive on no and and and you're back to no car and relying on coupons to get the occasional cutting your own hair

Starting point is 00:18:13 it's that's a pretty grim existence mate yeah so if 120 grand's about the figure that that means that your income producing nest egg that's going to give you 120 grand based on a sort of a five percent return needs to be 2.4 million dollars now so a million dollars of super uh that you mentioned before if you actually look at where people's supers are at and where they're projected to be not many of them are going to get to million dollars either by the way right okay so i think there's a bit of a gap in the equation and one of the other fallacies i think with this with what you mentioned before is okay well you're going to have this million dollars when you retire at 67 it used to be 60 65 went to 67 it'll be 70 okay longer just keep pushing out and changing yeah

Starting point is 00:18:57 yeah yeah uh then the danger is if you're going right i'm going to live for 20 years uh so i just to portion out and divide it and that that's enough all right that's a scary way to live mate because with where medical science is heading uh you know a lot of us will be living to 100 and more yeah so if if you're just dividing up my view is if you build a nest egg that you never spend the nest egg that you live off the proceeds of the nest egg you can effectively live forever yeah you've also got a massive legacy that you can pass on for sure when you pass away so So sort of circling back, if $2.4 million is what you need to give yourself 120 grand a year, then let's have a look at,

Starting point is 00:19:38 because I did a bit of maths on this, mate, because I'm just out of interest to see how this actually sits. And the average super balance of 18 to 29-year-olds in Australia at the moment is between 7,000 and 25 grand. That's the current balance today. Right, right, right. Do you know what yours is? 29.

Starting point is 00:19:55 I checked it yesterday. Okay. So you're a bit better than the average. so yeah you're doing all right but let's say it's 25 grand yeah yeah and the average salary of 21 to 34 year olds in australia right now is about 62 400 bucks a year yeah now there's going to be people below that there's going to be people above that yeah but if we just use those as a bit of an example and we plug that in into some super calculators to work out what sort of a a super balance you're going to have at retirement age at 67 currently then what do you think that number's

Starting point is 00:20:26 going to be if you if you put 11 into your super every year uh as inflation and everything else does work over over the next i wouldn't say more than two i'd say under two yeah well you're you're dead right there do you know what it actually is no because i've done this i've plugged yeah yeah how much is 481 000 mate that's the that's the balance at retirement yeah based on a seven okay shit okay so that's that's based on a seven and a half percent return yeah right again that's that's fairly average yeah now i find an 80 grand super balance based on preserving that nest egg and just living off it okay so a five percent return it's going to give you about 24 grand a year to live on yeah okay you think that's for sure and

Starting point is 00:21:12 no no i agree with you there and like um another part of it too is when from what you mentioned with the 33,000 a year for the age pension and a couple um that's that's that's a uh that's a that's a what's the word that's a terrible amount of money to live off if you own your house and you don't have to pay a mortgage or anything so no i'm with you there so that's that's interesting i didn't know i haven't done those figures like i'm it my my ideas about it are purely based on i guess just how i've developed it in my head so it's interesting to put numbers to it and even if they raise the amount of money from your income that goes to super, I'm not sure that's going to make up a huge shortfall. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah. I'll cop the L on

Starting point is 00:21:58 that one, Bushy. That's fair enough. Yeah. So when it comes to, I guess, the other parts of this conversation I wanted to have, we'll switch over from investing for a bit. You obviously went through, I guess, the biggest life change for yourself in your thirties. So maybe the advice you would give that person would be different to someone who was 25. But if you could go back to the 25-year-old version of you, what would you say to that person? Really simple, mate. I'd say get invested in yourself and your future today.

Starting point is 00:22:31 Don't put it off because later never happens, mate. We all know that later is a date that never eventuates. And the one thing that I really want to reinforce is that time is your most valuable and scarcest resource, Damien. So the question that I would be getting myself to ask myself every day is how can I invest my time now to get more of my time back so that I can then achieve whatever version of fulfillment you define to do things that are really important that give you joy and help others. So to me, a lot of people talk about financial freedom and all the other stuff. uh i and that's a pretty loose generic exercise yeah yeah i i think life's actually about fulfillment mate and and i've come to learn through the example of my good mother uh who

Starting point is 00:23:29 was the most giving person that i've ever had the pleasure of meeting apart from my my now wife sonia and and i i think fulfillment's really about giving freely to others without ever expecting anything in return and you don't know how fulfilling that is until you do it i mean And I was in some ways blessed because my good mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and was given 12 months to live about, this is back in about 2014. And I'd had the, I guess, the good fortune of following my dying father's advice 10 years earlier to say, son,

Starting point is 00:24:06 stop working for money and getting money to work for you. I was able to take 12 months off and look after mum and take her through the highs, the lows, the tears, the laughter and the reminiscing to see her pass comfortably at home with myself and my brothers around her. And the sort of takeaway home for me was that being able to give back to her. I took 12 months off and just spent that time with mum

Starting point is 00:24:32 because, you know, I was born into a family where I was extremely well looked after and I felt that I needed to give back in a way that was meaningful to her. I would never have been able to do that if I hadn't of taken dad's advice a fair bit earlier in getting invested so that money was working for me mate because I always had the privileged position of being able to do that so I'd really encourage people to really wake up and shake themselves up to get some urgency around getting invested firstly in knowledge and then secondly investing in things beyond just savings and

Starting point is 00:25:07 spending money because it's a real issue and I really like to get people to develop what I call the power of parallel vision to have one eye uh very focused on what your ideal lifestyle looks like in the future so that's your tomorrow eye and then your other eye is the today eye so that and and that means that what you're doing today is based around that question uh is what i'm doing today and the choices i'm making taking me closer to where i want to be yeah or further away so i really encourage people to to start doing that and keep asking that question what can i invest my time in today that's going to give me more time back down the track and i guess the other thing that i'll be saying to everyone and this is this is the big learning for me when i hit 33 i

Starting point is 00:25:53 got dragged along by a mate to a robert kiyosaki conference in adelaide he was actually there live at the time and he said that the the moment uh passive income becomes part of your life your life will change forever and and almost overnight i became what i now affectionately refer to as passive aggressive i became aggressive about pursuing passive income opportunity so everything i did from that day onwards whether it be in business in my career and in our personal and professional investment lives had to had to tick three boxes everything i did had to create residual income had to be something that grew in value and had to be something that was saleable so how we We got into property management.

Starting point is 00:26:34 We grew a finance-breaking business. All of those, as you would know, the good thing about being a mortgage broker, Damien, is that you're building a trailbook that gives you an ongoing income stream and is also a saleable asset when and if you decide to sell that at some stage. So everything we've done since that point is doing that, and I would very much encourage everyone to start thinking that way. yeah switch their switch their thinking from spending to saving from income to investment

Starting point is 00:27:03 and from work to wealth there's a very different way of looking at life when you start to take that and the easy way to do that and everyone can do this right right here right now is just to start saving 10 to 20 percent of your income yeah it's really as simple as that and and what i mean by that is uh just set up a uh what i call a freedom savings account and i in my book the freedom formula i go into a bit of detail on this damien and i again another really bad analogy but i call it the kick-ass auto saver system where you just need three accounts that are going to remote control manage your money so you don't have to worry about it right and the way of doing that is if you start thinking about splitting your money up into what i call the 20 50 30 rule

Starting point is 00:27:48 and then just have three accounts that capture those uh the first being the freedom account where all of your pay goes into uh and 20 of that stays there to accumulate over time uh 50 goes into an essentials account yeah which is a credit card that never leaves the house it never ends up in your wallet and you you've never got it there to spend it on things outside of setting up direct debits and that yeah yeah so to pay your utilities your phone your your rates if you've got a home, all of that stuff goes out of that. And then that leaves 30% ending up in your living account, which is a debit card, and therefore the only thing you need

Starting point is 00:28:25 to focus on is how much is left in the debit card between now and the next pay. And you can spend that how you like, but when it's gone, it's gone. You don't touch the other two accounts and they start to do their own thing. Once you've got that set up, that Freedom account, once you've got, say, $1,000 or thereabouts built up in that freedom savings account, then the next thing I would suggest you do

Starting point is 00:28:47 is simply open an index fund or an ETF, you know, a Vanguard index fund. I'm not a financial planner, so you can get more information. And then to put half of your savings into that and then just do it forever. That becomes set and forget, and it'll do a couple of things. It could become the deposit for a property if you go down that road. If you don't and you leave it there, then that's going to go a long way uh towards uh contributing to your lifestyle down the track so you know a vanguard index for example and i've got nothing to do with vanguard i've just other than uh looking at it personally

Starting point is 00:29:24 they average about nine percent returns over the last 40 odd years and as you probably know a 7.2 percent return is going to double your money every 10 years so uh so that that you know that that would be advice i would i would take uh if i was back in 25 those are things i would yeah okay and And again, if yourself or any of your listeners want the details on that kick-ass SATA system, just email me at hello at knowhowproperty.com. I'll just spare you the chapter. I've devoted a whole chapter of the book to it.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Yeah, no, that'd be cool. That'd be cool for sure for the listeners. Can you speak towards, I guess, or speak on, you've mentioned on this podcast and other things I've listened to you speak on that you read a lot, like you're always trying, you're always curious. and i've noted that that is it's uh it's almost been invaluable in my own life to be curious and

Starting point is 00:30:15 to be okay being wrong and being challenged on my views to sort of form my own views in a different way that's a little more nuanced and a lot slower like i don't have very set opinions on anything because they change every couple of months feels like but could you sort of speak on that that aspect of you and your life and how valuable it's been for educating yourself and how that's helped absolutely critical uh jamie and i'm an absolute lifetime learner and uh and that curiosity that you talk about is an absolute essential i think okay because if you're you're continuously questioning things then you're continuously learning things and and let's be honest someone quoted once i love this quote i've never learned anything from someone who agrees with me

Starting point is 00:31:03 so i actually like being challenged yeah i like talking to people who have different views to what i do because it gets me really thinking and if you're going with an open mind and without prejudging the exercise you might just learn something from that experience so i'm i'll give you an example when i first got into the finance breaking arena you know i went from being an architect and a project manager into into finance breaking i knew zero about finance breaking damien and so i i spoke to every finance broker in adelaide that was living in adelaide at the time every finance broker in town until i found uh the guy that i thought had the same sort of values and approach that i was comfortable with and then i said i want to come and work for you uh and we

Starting point is 00:31:51 ended up being in business together but i said to him from the outset i'm going to be an absolute pain in the ass i'm gonna ask you questions and keep asking until i understand it so get ready for it and sure enough i was a pest mate i was an absolute pest i i don't how he put up with me i'll never know yeah but but the more questions i asked him where i took it on the more comfortable i was the the my fear reduced i got easier with it and that applies to investing as well i just don't take anything for granted i question the hell out of things yeah and keep questioning it until it feels right and i get a sense of what is right for me because there's no one way to invest it's what's the right way to suit you and your service and your sleep 100 yeah okay yeah and like i've

Starting point is 00:32:34 also noticed that most people i reach out to to ask for help or ask to learn from like yourself or a lot of other people most of them are super passionate about passing on some information and helping do you get what i mean yeah i i at the moment you think you know it all you're in trouble because there's a very, very fine line between arrogance and ignorance in my experience. So if you can sort of embrace that childhood curiosity that we all came into this world with and keep assuring that, you know, what you'll learn.

Starting point is 00:33:12 And the other thing that's important too, I think, is that one of the big mistakes that people make around money and property and investment generally is they'll make a mistake and then they'll get burnt fingers and walk away and never do it again. My view, and we go back to that childhood example, if we took that approach to learning to walk or riding a bike, the first time we fell over and we stopped doing it, we'd still be in nappies crawling around on the ground.

Starting point is 00:33:38 Yeah. So my view is the mistakes that you make are actually your biggest learning opportunities. Yeah. Because if you take the time to reflect on, well, why did that happen? what i need to do differently next time and and take it from there then that that's really going to put you on the right path and this might sound crazy but and while it was devastating for me at the time when when i lost my marriage and i lost my family at 33 having been an architect for 17

Starting point is 00:34:04 years and putting my heart and soul into that and i was a workaholic mate so i'm not surprised my wife got sick of me and and pulled the pin i deserved it actually because i was an absentee father it was totally focused on work and worked seven days a week 14 hours a day for years on end which is held off when i think back on it now but uh when when that came to grief that was my biggest wake-up call and i spent two years almost as a recluse and i had i had more counseling after the marriage went belly up than i did before because i wanted to really understand who i was what i needed to change yeah i needed to do differently not to end up back in the same position sometime down the track yeah yeah it's crazy how um i feel like there's a book talking

Starting point is 00:34:51 about this or there might be several but pretending that everything that happens to you is your fault has been a really valuable thing for me uh and it also gives you a more nuanced way of looking at the world to then be able to humbly know when something wasn't your fault does that make sense because you really i really analyze things to know whether i'm at fault or i could have done something better so then when i know when i feel like i haven't done anything wrong i'm so confident in it because i think about it so much but that's super powerful that you can look back on something that's a quite traumatic experience to at least understand your plat your your role in it there's a lot of people that can't do that well unfortunately there's a lot a growing uh a growing

Starting point is 00:35:41 concern i have in australia and elsewhere is the is the you know that it might be too hard a word but the victim mentality that's growing up where we've always got something else or someone else to blame that the thing is always going out but you know as you know if you're pointing the finger at someone else's at least three fingers pointing back itself and my belief has always been if there's been a an issue or a problem uh with me and someone else i'm at least i'm at least the problem so so and the other thing is if you think that uh leaving one situation and going to another is going to be any different you're taking yourself with you so yeah you're still there and unless you're having a good look in the mirror and really yeah on uh your attitudes outlooks

Starting point is 00:36:22 beliefs and what and what you're doing then nothing's ever going to change yeah 100 i feel like the last 40 minutes has gone really quick and I've got more questions, but I also understand you've probably got busy things to do too. So if you're happy to do this again, I've got way more questions for you. Do you want to just let people know if they enjoy listening to you speak and listening to your ideas about the world, where they can find more of you and plug the book and all of that as well, if you'd want. Yeah, well, a couple of things, I guess, like yourself i'm a big believer in the power of podcasts so because you know if you're in someone's ears for a period of time the knowledge can can grow on the level of comfort can grow

Starting point is 00:37:03 so reach out to the property hub where we've got a short form pod segments under the realty talk show and i've got the real pleasure of co-hosting that with kevin turner who's just an industry giant that's been around for donkey's years and then i do the long form chats like this on the get invested podcast but just search for property hub australia and you'll be able to access both of those if you want a free copy of my book get invested uh which is part one of the freedom formula then just jump on our website knowhowproperty.com.au and you can get a free download electronic version or just pay for the postage to get a hard copy and then if you want to learn a little bit more about the property investment uh space and and the sort of process

Starting point is 00:37:50 and the fundamental principles that surround that, I've done a free seven-part podcast series that people can tap into called the Property Wealth Bootcamp. And again, you can access that on knowhowproperty.com.au forward slash property wealth. And that's just a free resource that people can start to immerse themselves in and decide. Because ultimately, Damien, all I want people to do

Starting point is 00:38:13 is at least expose themselves to enough information to make a much more informed decision on whether this is right for them or not because it's not going to be right for everyone as you said at the outset yeah but a lot of people make that decision with zero information or just talking to mom and dad or a couple of friends and they may not have done it themselves if you at least give yourself the opportunity to to soak it all in and understand how the jigsaw works and then make a decision whether no this is not right for me or yes it is i want to know more then you've done the right thing easy easy thank you so much for the time i really appreciate you you're doing

Starting point is 00:38:48 this and uh yeah we'll be sure to do it again i hope my pleasure man i'd love to come back and talk any any time i can talk about property i'm there with uh all bills are ringing man easy mate easy thanks for tuning in to get invested on the property hub podcast channel your home for property investment insights and inspiration and don't leave yet until you've taken the next step towards living by design by getting my award-winning book get invested absolutely free when you sign up at knowhowproperty.com.au or bushymartin.com.au and finally make sure you subscribe to property hub to get your weekly dose of get invested inspiration along with every episode of realty talk australia's leading property show for red hot property

Starting point is 00:39:33 investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers Remember to always get invested in your knowledge and I look forward to seeing you next time.

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