Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: ChatGPT for property investment with Dax Stanley

Starting point is 00:00:00 So look, when I implemented ChatGPT into my team, it literally doubled our productivity overnight, without a doubt. It maybe 3x'd our productivity. So the speed of being able to pull this data into one for our clients has been fantastic. So I've built ChatGPT prompts and processes throughout those five Ps of the Keystone Property investment program to really help them accelerate not only our systems but how they can get to their position their purpose preparing really well purchasing and then prospering from there welcome to get invested on the property hub podcast channel the leading weekly show to help

Starting point is 00:00:44 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 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. How do you make decisions? How many variables, factors, dynamics, trends, facts and figures do you consider before making a decision? Or do you just go with your gut feel and then justify your choices after you've been. And what about property? How do you decide the when, the where and the what of your property decisions? What combination of facts, figures, trends and predictions

Starting point is 00:01:33 do you consider before making big dollar property decisions? Chances are it won't be many because most of us just don't have the time or expertise to consider everything that's necessary. We just don't know what we don't know. So how do you know you're making good sound property decisions based on all of the key drivers? If you're an investor or a home buyer, property can seem simple but in reality it's not easy. As with success in everything, the devil's always in the detail and as I've said before, property performance has more dynamics and combinations than the old primary coloured 3x3 Rubik's Cube, which is about 48 quintillion combinations, and that's 48 with 18 zeros after it. So it's no surprise that predicting the performance of property is about

Starting point is 00:02:23 as easy and reliable as predicting the weather. And we all know how accurate that is. So how can we possibly get our heads around all of the constantly changing macro, micro and micro influencers, analyse them, rate them, and then make good concluding decisions quickly enough for them to be relevant? Well, the simple answer is that we can't. We're forced to make big assumptions and compromises and make a best guess, which is often not much better than rolling the dice. Or we can engage an independent team of property experts who analyse the right data and who have a proven track record or performance. And while this narrows the odds substantially, it's still a bit hit and miss because we simply don't have the intelligence or time

Starting point is 00:03:08 to consider everything. But what if there was a super brain intelligence tool that's way more intelligent than any of us that could analyze all of the data dynamics almost instantaneously to assist you to make much better informed decisions? A super brain that is at least 1,000 times more intelligent than Albert Einstein, a brain that's equivalent to the computing power of the 20 most powerful supercomputers in the world combined? Well, there already is. It's called artificial intelligence, and we can all access it now via ChatGPT and many other sources. If you're not aware of it, and you haven't been living under a rock for some time, ChatGPT is a powerful AI-powered predictive analytics and forecasting

Starting point is 00:03:58 tool that can help you to make much better and faster decisions. ChatGPT is a natural language processing platform that uses machine learning algorithms to generate predictive analytics and forecasting models. So have you used ChatGPT yet? If you haven't, you need to get onto it because the world's about to be transformed forever over the next couple of years by the fast approaching tsunami of AI. And make no mistake, there's going to be a few winners and many losers in the aftermath of the AI pandemic that will make COVID look like a common cold in comparison. And the dividing line between those that thrive and those that don't survive the AI Armageddon will be those who embrace it now and make it happen versus those who ignore it and end up

Starting point is 00:04:43 run over and left in the dust saying, shit, what just happened? And nowhere is the opportunity for AI greater than the wonderful world of property. Property is a massive fragmented industry driven by ever-changing dynamics that's typically slow to change. As a result of the massive take-up of chat GPT since December last year, artificial intelligence and machine learning are gaining prominence across the board and have the potential to transform property investment. So what are the property opportunities and the threats of AI, and what do you need to do to ensure you're on the right side of it

Starting point is 00:05:16 so that you can actually benefit from all this? If these questions that you've been contemplating are on your mind, then you've landed in exactly the right place because today's special guest Dax Stanley is going to open your eyes and ears to the wonderful world of AI property investment. Dax is an author who's currently writing a book on using ChatGPT for property investing to show you how you can embrace this innovative AI technology so that ChatGPT can better enable you with data-driven decision-making, market analysis and informed property selection. Through his upcoming book, Dax aims to empower you as investors to harness ChatGPT's capabilities, optimise your portfolios

Starting point is 00:05:54 and embrace a more prosperous property future. And this groundbreaking work builds on Dax's extensive property and professional background, where he successfully merges his qualifications, experience and expertise across science, engineering, business and technology to create better property investment outcomes. Dax is also the visionary founder of Hera Property Group, and since 2002 he's been actively involved in buying, renovating and developing properties gaining invaluable experience and knowledge along the way. Through his data-driven approach DAX's dedication to incorporating cutting edge technology ensures you have a comprehensive understanding of your investment choices. So if you want to take your property performance to

Starting point is 00:06:36 the next level by riding the wave by eye you're going to love this inspiring chat with DAX Stanley. So welcome and let's get invested DAX. Fantastic. Thanks for having me aboard, Bushy. Looking forward to the chat, mate. So I love the work that you're doing right across the board in property and in AI in particular. So we'll get into that shortly.

Starting point is 00:06:57 But before we do that, mate, can you sort of start off by telling us what you do differently and more importantly, why you do what you do, Dax? Look, it's been, I turned 50 next year. So it's been a long journey, and it's a real big exploration for me where I was in corporate for 20 years and doing some renovations and flips for myself on the side. And it wasn't until I got to a point where one development deal made me enough money that it earned me more than I earned in that year

Starting point is 00:07:32 in my day job, and I quit. So it was a real amazing time to do that. But I did miss that corporate, high-tech, innovative view where real estate wasn't in that space. So, and just now, like you said, in December, Chat came out, ChatGPT came out, and we really dived into it. I started with AI with Mindstorm. Lego Mindstorm had a brick that you could program, and we programmed it with AI to learn

Starting point is 00:08:04 to get around a maze. it was amazing but now the power that we can use with this i was able to combine all my high tech with my property investing to now come up and we've been using this uh tool for since it started and my whole team uses it now that's where i got to the point where i need to tell the world about this yeah well before we sort of dive in i'd love for you to take us back through your journey give us a bit of a reader's digest of where you've invested your own time energy money over the years and why, and how has this now led you to where you are and what you're doing today? And not just the property piece, because we'll dive into that shortly, but given your quite

Starting point is 00:08:44 varied background and the areas of qualifications that you have, I'd love for you to talk us through how you got into that and how that's informed your own investment journey as you've moved through all that. Yeah, fantastic. So I started at Melbourne University in 92. I did a double degree in environmental science and IT and geomatic engineering. Now, geomatic means geo is earth, matic is measurement. So it was a lot about land surveying.

Starting point is 00:09:12 So traditionally a land surveyor, but also remote sensing, satellite imagery, GPS. GPS was not around. I can tell you a story about this a little bit later, where we invented a GPS for ambulances in Melbourne. They used fax machines to get the right readouts. Crazy times. But out of that, I did my honours degree in virtual reality modelling language, which was to map Melbourne University in 3D. I then presented it at a conference at VRML 97 in Monterey, California,

Starting point is 00:09:47 and got my first job with Dell Computers over there. So it was around the dot-com era, if anyone remembers that, where we and also the um uh the y2k bug so i was deep in high-tech innovative uh projects trying to solve this thing that may have ended the world you know covid's not the only thing that could have ended us there's a hot that that y2k bug could have as well but it didn't all our us it geeks nerds that people picked on when we were growing up we we saved the planet I'd love for you to talk to us about Dax because the interesting mix of areas that you were studying, quite unusual in my own exercise

Starting point is 00:10:35 where you're combining environmental sizes with land surveying and the IT piece. What was the attraction that drew you towards getting educational exposure across those reasonably diverse areas? Yeah, I think what really appealed to me, I was always a techie. I got my first computer, an Amiga 1000, when I was 10. And many sleepless nights, many times mum would come down to my room at, you know, one or two in the morning, like, get off that thing.

Starting point is 00:11:06 And that sort of led me into that. And the IT, environmental science sort of stuff, I was always out in the bush, you know, BMX riding and all this sort of stuff. and I just really wanted to combine that you know high school was just sort of giving you that broad view of just little bits and I just loved that idea I didn't want to just go into engineering I really wanted to get into the environmental science as well and we were the first students to go through environmental science at Melbourne Uni so I just love that sort of bleeding edge almost if you if you want to talk that and so I found those alignments where I could create 3D

Starting point is 00:11:46 The environment being, you know, the environment sort of side of things, geomatic measurements and engineering to create these virtual reality environments in that space. So land and environments being very critical, but my geek needed to be satisfied as well. I love all of those and a very powerful combination when it comes to the wonderful world of property investment, Dax, which I'm sure we'll dive into shortly.

Starting point is 00:12:14 But if you sort of look back on your career to date then and the highs and lows that you've been through, what challenging events have brought about your greatest learnings and the best changes as you've seen them? Yeah, good question. So after Dell, well, actually, Dell was a six-month contract. I got a call which was just like out of the movies. They said, you need to come back for your country. And I was like, what do you mean? This is a joke. and they're like no no we saw you at vrml 97 present you're the only person in australia

Starting point is 00:12:49 that knows vrml um we need you to come back to work with the special forces the sasr in perth i've never been to perth uh to work on the counterterrorism for the 2000 olympics and it was like a mic drop situation i was like what you i couldn't say no for the three years leading up to the olympics i worked with the ssr with an amazing team of techies to help them create their back-end it command and support system that if anything went wrong they would use that to to help um solve any counterterrorism issues so that was fantastic and coming off that high um was it's almost you know you you're trying to find another project that were you know that and there's nothing like that so you really got to sit back

Starting point is 00:13:45 and it's like when you're property developing you do an amazing subdivision make heaps of money and then you've got to sit back i can't need another one and say that high and low sort of thing you need to be comfortable with yeah so i got that then i then i started working um uh in other defense areas and that's where i got to experience my first time to actually build an infrastructure so it was a surface to air missile trainer system simulator yeah uh out near handoff in south australia and i got to build my first factory literally it was a warehouse with a hvac it had data center command system a 40-foot dome with projectors on it projecting onto the inside with this missile system to protect australia um i i love the whole project but i love learning how

Starting point is 00:14:38 to build an actual factory and all this sort of stuff and that sort of led me down okay there's something around that for me for building properties and it stayed with me for that whole time i think the next hump was i was at the top of my game there was only two people in australia running the simulation departments in two different competing companies yeah uh and i didn't want to stay it was eight years into it run multiple multi-million dollar projects uh so i did my master's i did my master's of business technology at agsm uh and learned the life and the the pulse of business and how to run businesses so i jumped out of that and started management consulting so i thought i won't start my own business i'll help other people fix their

Starting point is 00:15:25 businesses so i was called a firefighter so business was falling down the ceo would say hey consultants come in and tell me what's going wrong so that was a great journey uh and it was great because you'd come in and go okay this is what's wrong this is and this is some recommendations and they'd turn around and say, well, come in and fix it. And we turned businesses around. So it was, you know, using tech, transformation, all that sort of stuff. I did that for 12 years, literally.

Starting point is 00:15:59 In between, I actually jumped out to the other side. So I got an offer from NBN, another big project that I thought was amazing. I went and I was right at the start and they hired me to put the billing system in. the 22 million dollar billing system and I moved down from Sydney where I was doing some flips in my own personal time and I got there and I said okay so what are we putting in and they said you figure that out I said okay where's my technical expert who knows about wholesale

Starting point is 00:16:30 billing systems and they said you find him and I went yes let's do this so yes it was daunting yes it was, you know, a big thing to put in an infrastructure for Australia. But it wasn't something I wasn't afraid of. So that was fantastic. And in that journey, I then stayed in the corporate side of things. I stayed out of consulting, started working in big companies, ended up in Salesforce for a number of years, helping big companies implement those systems. And while I was in Salesforce, I decided that that was that for townhouse development that made me enough money to jump out. The common thread I'm hearing with what you're sharing with us, Dax, is your creative problem solving abilities. That seems to be a

Starting point is 00:17:23 bit of a common thread. Is that something that's just come naturally to you or something that's been honed and developed because of the experiences? Look, I think underlying, yes, i've got a passion for that and passion for new things um it's also a double-edged sword as well because i can go after the latest shiny thing and get distracted yeah and probably people can relate to that where it's like oh look at that new thing i'll play with that uh i've learned over the 49 years i've been alive is that that's not always good uh and focusing on on what what works and what i know works um and focus on that one thing so yeah i think the creativity over time being involved with amazing projects and new technologies and new things

Starting point is 00:18:14 has honed my skills in that space but there's also an underlying um drive there yeah i understand if we if we look back on uh your life so far then dax uh are there any really stand out uh seriously challenging events that have that have really caused you to rethink what you do and how you do it uh and what was that and what would have been the learnings that have come out of all that yeah the two that really come to mind um was uh my brother's passing away when he was 24 um it was car accident fell asleep driving uh i was 28 in perth uh working on the counterterrorism for the Olympics and it was a real rude awakening how short life is and it was really um sudden you know I don't have any other siblings uh so it was it was quite a pivotal point in my life to

Starting point is 00:19:16 really reassess where I'm at and not take things for granted because up till then you know I was the first son person in our whole lineage that ever finished year 12 did a degree got and then out into corporate and i just seemed to flow from one thing to another um that's when i really started going you know i need to have intention on what i want to do and have a real passion and drive and goals around that um instead of just letting life flow so that's the first one and that really started driving down what i really want the second thing that comes to mind is um uh divorce so eight years ago i got divorced um it was terrible i couldn't see my son um that led me to you know suicidal thoughts and all sorts of things that was really

Starting point is 00:20:15 and you know i i feel for anyone that's going through it now and um and that you know and i'd bought it built up a quite a big portfolio of four properties and um the the and i said so it's about intention i set the intention to have this divorce finished within a year and uh and i i really i spent a lot of my time with my son um and i really wanted 50 there so i paid for that uh if anyone knows that sort of thing so i paid 80 of my portfolio so i could get 50 of my son yeah and it was the best decision i ever made my son and i he's 15 now close relationship with you know we've had our ups and downs and all that sort of stuff that everyone has i lost him a bit when he was 13 but now 15 he's sort of come out of that really well um but yeah money can't pay for

Starting point is 00:21:14 Well, money did pay for that to a certain extent. But, yeah, I think that there are two big pivotal points there. Well, I guess, you know, while making the best out of a bad situation, the fact that you were in a fairly strong position as far as your assets and whatnot was concerned because of the work that you'd started a lot earlier probably put you in a stronger position to be able to negotiate the situation and maintain that intimate relationship with your son that you probably otherwise wouldn't

Starting point is 00:21:47 if you hadn't actually put yourself in that position. I'd love now to sort of dive into that part of the journey and get you to break down, you know, your own property journey. You mentioned the exercise with Defence years ago and that project there in Harndorf and South Oz. Can you sort of talk us through from that point onwards, in terms of your own personal situation, why did you decide to invest in property

Starting point is 00:22:16 and what triggered your interest to make that step? Yeah, good question. So, look, it sounds a bit cliché, but I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In 2000. Because, you know, my brother had passed away and I was really like, what do I want to do? and I was reading a lot and learning and read this book and went, oh, my God, why don't they teach us at school?

Starting point is 00:22:46 You know, it was crazy. So I said to mum, you know, I'm saving money for a house and she had her neighbour that she was helping out. Her son was a real estate agent and then I met him and he sold me an apartment off the plan just straight away. I did no research, nothing like that. I trust him. He's a family friend of a neighbor and thought I'd just buy it.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Worst decision ever. But I did learn a lot. So I really wanted to know everything. I even went to settlement. So I went to the room with all the law clerks, sit around, and the bank sits on a bench and exchange stuff. And it was really interesting to know the mechanics. And then when it was built, I put my hand up to be the chairman

Starting point is 00:23:34 of the body corporate so I could learn everything like that. I was there for seven years, I think, roughly, and built a nice big nest egg so that we could do all the assessments before the insurer builder's insurance ran out. And it was a disaster. It was actually that built the walls too thin. It was going to cost about 80 units. It was going to cost about $1.5 million to fix. And as soon as I got that report, I resigned, put it on the market. I knew when to get out.

Starting point is 00:24:07 I wasn't going to go through that. So in that timeframe, I had saved enough to buy a duplex. Actually, to tell you the truth, that apartment was on one of the top floors and the real estate agent sold it because he kept it for himself. But when it got built, he thought he could see the city. It was in Burwood in Sydney. He thought he could see the city from the distance. But when it built up, there was trees in the way.

Starting point is 00:24:32 when i got her i went up there the first day i looked out to cut the trees down and i could see a little harbour bridge and the whole city beside it so i made 40 grand like overnight that was great yeah so i raised i got a bit more money i bought a duplex as one side old renner old rundown rental with smoke stains up on the wall and ripped up the carpets did a kitchen bathroom renovation made 120 uh and then i was able to leapfrog those into the next one the next one uh and that's where i really got excited you know i have you know i'd go to work in a suit as a corporate management consultant like plaster dust on my clothes and everything but that's what you do you get home you do a bit of work and then go back to the apartment fall asleep you know and

Starting point is 00:25:24 And so I started doing that until the divorce. And once the divorce went through, I had a really small nest egg. I had to sell all the assets and decided development was the right way to go for me. And that's no mean feat for anyone jumping into the development space. And sometimes you go into the development space with almost a false sense of confidence because you've done a lot of existing stuff or whatnot. Did you have any initial fears and concerns around getting into the development space?

Starting point is 00:26:00 And if so, what were they and how did you overcome them? And then what was your first experience in the development sphere like? Yeah, there was a lot of fear because I'd lost 80% of my portfolio for the divorce. I didn't want to lose what I had left. But I had the nuance that I could do it again. I could grow that and I could grow up faster because I've learned from that. So I could go down the usual, the same path that I was,

Starting point is 00:26:26 but I've started shopping around and go, there's a whole lot of property development courses and mentors and just started gathering a whole lot of information around that space. Like I do with any sort of tech or new thing, research, research, research. And I've got a really good mentor. And within that mentor group, there was another person there, another two people that joined me to form a joint venture so we had more money to go some buy some land and do a four lot subdivision now the first strategy is once you've got the subdivision plans

Starting point is 00:27:01 and permits approved we put it on the on the market for a good price and we sold it so really didn't have to do anything to that extent so that was a really good leapfrog just to get a taste of it and then the one after that was we did it completely having confidence um and you know having a joint venture agreement with people i think now we like doing small ones with a small group to test out their stress levels and test out how they react to certain situations because in property development in prop and in property in general you're always going to have issues without a doubt and it's how you manage them how you roll roll with them that makes it successful So you want to see if you've got a good team that will work together.

Starting point is 00:27:47 Absolutely. And, you know, the property game itself is complicated enough, let alone effectively marrying people that you probably don't know that well in the context of it. And then with the dynamics of changing lifestyles between when you decide to do the development and when the development finishes and potentially changing market conditions over that time, then I can certainly see where a really good mentor would have been

Starting point is 00:28:10 instrumental in the outcome of that. and no doubt having a very tightly documented JV agreement would have been an essential part of that too, would I be right? Yeah, my lawyer was amazing. Yeah, really fantastic. And if any of the people in the JV are not educated, they need to be. They need to understand this. They understand the risks involved in that.

Starting point is 00:28:33 And if they're not, they're not for us. You know, this is savvy investing. it's you know it's a lot of money in there you need to be able to deal with the risks and issues that come with it yeah absolutely right so i'm sensing that your investment strategy has evolved and changed over time given what you shared with it can you can you sort of spell out what was your initial investment strategy when you when you first started in property and how has it evolved over time and and why yep so flipping was the buy something renovated but you know didn't really sell them but literally build up equity to buy another one and then equity on both of them to

Starting point is 00:29:15 the third one and then the fourth one i love that i learned over that that i can rip things apart but i can't put them back together and sometimes i rip them apart really badly which costs me more Also, I learned what doing it for the market, not for what I think is worth it. So I would overcapitalize at the first few, buy Dalton toilets and, you know, the best finishings and stuff like that. The markets I was in, they don't need that.

Starting point is 00:29:45 I just thought, well, I like it. So it's a great idea. So I learned all that and cost estimating and making sure I get my numbers right before I jump in. So from there, you know, I was at that point in time that i was ready to do the development side of things uh and also i knew that i could make more money there higher risk higher return um a lot more work more due diligence and things like that so i started doing that and then people started asking me to buy property for them as well so one

Starting point is 00:30:15 of the jv guys goes oh can you buy me a house at this auction um did a couple more and um and i think evolving into then helping other people build wealth in their property really started me looking at a whole range of strategies for people because everyone's in a different situation it's like well what will help them get to retire or how will they get to spend more time with the people they love you know and and have that day off to play golf or what are their goals and what are they trying to achieve very similar to when i was in management consulting figuring out what the company needed to do yeah and i just loved it even more to help actual people you know do this and so that evolved into you know a whole range of projects for people you know looking from house

Starting point is 00:31:01 and land to existing i always loved manufacturing equity and what i what i mean by that you know this is you know being able to put sweat sweat equity time effort to improve the property subdivide create more land um put a granny flat out the back uh it doesn't matter what the market's doing if you do it the right way you're still going to make money so i love that for the current strategies that we're doing with our clients and you make a really good point there what i love about property is you create your own economy if because unfortunately the mainstream media likes to categorise everything and everything's about the median price value.

Starting point is 00:31:43 But as you and I know, every property in every street and every suburb is different to every other one. So there's no real true comparison. Median prices can be quite misleading, I believe, because if you're focusing on the right solution in the right area to satisfy the demand, then it doesn't matter what's happening with the economy, it's always going to do well.

Starting point is 00:32:03 So it's a really good point you make there. Jumping to the future for a minute, Dax, um uh can you tell us what fulfillment freedom and financial independence means to you yeah so well it's always on my mind it's on my board um spending more time with my family experiencing more things um helping the planet environmental science yeah um and look helping other people get there is a really big thing for me uh i i can see myself You know, one of the big goals is, you know, eco-villages with sustainable environments, off the grid, supplying their own energy through their own solar farms, but also supplying the local town with energy and food, building a community where we used to be communities very tight 100, 200 years ago, thousands of years ago. and it's a real passion of mine that to bring that back into our lives so yeah freedom for me

Starting point is 00:33:09 is to you know bring that to fruition firstly to make myself and my family financially free so through passive income through property and then uh and then help the world love it uh we mentioned in the grain room that you're about to turn 50 and you're doing something pretty interesting with that can you share that with us yes so you know everyone usually gets their big party and you know they want all their friends around and stuff like that i i'm a bit a little bit selfish in that instance i i i was meditating and i was thinking about what i'd like to do and really i'd like to experience myself and and who i really am and who i really want to be over the next 50 70 years i think i'm going to live to about 125 at least um so i really want to put a

Starting point is 00:33:59 you know line in the sand so i'm going to take a water cash credit card and a passport to the airport and disappear for 50 days and and just explore and just you know probably off out no in nowhere no talking to anyone maybe might take my surfboard i'm just learning to surf again uh but yeah it's it it's it's amazing i'm really looking forward to it great time to actually step outside of the world and reflect a little bit on where you've come from and where you want to go to and the best way to make that happen there's just no no better exercise and travel in an area where you're not known to actually uh to take the time to really have a good thing mate. So I reckon it's an awesome approach and I can't wait to hear the outcome of the trip,

Starting point is 00:34:50 mate. So make sure you share that with us. But sort of jumping back into the investments for you now, Dax, if you look back on what you've achieved so far, what do you think's been your best and worst investment and what have you learned from each of those? Okay, let's start with the worst the worst just said just finished last friday it was three years of pain and trauma and stress um that was a really bad outcome so i decided to lend the money to a developer so money lending is one area of property investing you can do and i can see you grimacing well they big promises of massive returns but given what's happened in the industry in the last couple of years in particular it's a massive throw of the dice correct correct and what i what

Starting point is 00:35:46 i learned from that i can tell you a little bit about the situation is one due diligence due diligence due diligence that's that's all and you need to have a really good lawyer to really go deep on their financials their history and stuff like that we only found out when we swapped lawyers for six months ago that you know we saw hide the new lawyer and we got off the phone he rang us about an hour later he said oh did you know that this developer was bankrupt eight years ago and we went no and he goes would you have signed the contract if you knew that and we went no and he goes well it sounds like your lawyer didn't pick that up now a broker can't pick that up because they don't have access to that, but a lawyer does.

Starting point is 00:36:30 So I've been through three years of pain because of that one thing. We finally settled on an amount. So we've been getting dribs and drabs over the last three years, but we settled just on Friday, which has been a huge relief, been fantastic. We've never, never, I wouldn't say I'd never money lend again, but I'd never use that lawyer again. Yeah, and so was it really just the lawyer that was the issue

Starting point is 00:37:02 around the exercise? If you had the right lawyer right from the outset, he probably would have said, hey, based on this history, don't do it. Were there any other learnings and approaches to this? Because it's an area that a lot of people are starting to delve into. I mean, the returns on other forms of investment have been a bit challenged. So the appeal of private lending into development exercises and the sort of massive returns that they promised in a very short space of time sounds very attractive.

Starting point is 00:37:30 But it's the old story, wherever there's reward, there's risk. So I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit for us, if you don't mind. Totally. So I think some of the key learnings is don't wait for two and a half years to change lawyers. We shouldn't have believed any of the stuff that he was saying. we should have gone straight to a litigation lawyer or a debt collection lawyer and got him in because within six months we had it closed as soon as he defaulted we should have done that we should have got a lawyer who is not a property development lawyer a litigation

Starting point is 00:38:06 debt collecting lawyer that complete they've all got their different expertise yeah that's the key thing the second key thing is communication between myself and my jv partners that came in on this deal with me was key like you know finances numbers making decisions together um was was was great we we really worked together at different stages one one guy would get overstressed about it we'd say take some time off don't look at it we'll deal with it and then i would and he'd take it over so it was a it was it was great from that perspective but you've got to manage your stress levels and you've got to manage when it's a lot of money and it's not coming

Starting point is 00:38:49 back, you've got to be very careful with that. But we have a look at it. We were very successful. So we made 28% return per annum on that deal. We would have made a lot more if we'd pushed for the whole amount that he owes

Starting point is 00:39:05 us, but we just wanted it closed and that one of my JV partners is now off to Japan to retire. So he actually So you actually achieved 28%, despite all those difficulties, you still walked away with a 28% return on the investment? Yes.

Starting point is 00:39:22 We had caveats on his home and two development sites. So he needed to refinance. So it came to a point in time where we said, okay, we can either pull in these things and start debt collecting and closing things down and selling them all, or you pay us this much and we're out. Well, I've got to say, yeah, If that's been your worst and you still walked away with 28%,

Starting point is 00:39:47 that's a remarkable achievement in an area where there's a lot of dynamic risk associated with the whole development sphere, particularly given the current climate that we're dealing in. So that's sensational. What about your best then? What's been your best investment and the learnings from that? Look, and look, that could have ended up with zero, that deal. So, yes, we did really well, but we could, for three years,

Starting point is 00:40:12 we thought we were getting nothing. So a lot of stress. The best deal was for townhouse development overall and duplexes. But the one for townhouse development we did in Mount Waverley was just brilliant. You know, we worked closely with the town planner and council. It was sustainable and passive solar design. It really suited the character.

Starting point is 00:40:38 It's really just understanding and nailing exactly what the council wants in the area. what the street wants being you know we've talked to neighbors and all that sort of stuff so it's really it was my third one so I was really into it then and and just working with the right people so we it was great because I was close by I had a webcam on the power box and and I could see all the tradies who were there and and I would turn I knew which tradies were there and I knew what coffees they liked and what they liked from hungry jacks for breakfast uh so i would look on the webcam i go there there there i go past hungry and hungry jacks and get it and turn up and we

Starting point is 00:41:25 do like a lunch um around the lunchbox or around the toolbox we call it and everyone would talk to each other while they're eating and it really worked and i've implemented this all the time now that you know the painters talking to the plasterer going hey when are you gonna finish start and oh yeah i'm gonna finish this okay i'll get this guy in to do this and and i just sat back going this is great uh and so yeah we were very happy with that project a lot of we got the pre sales in early as well so finance was was settled and um yeah that's it still had its own issues of course but yeah that was our best project yeah i love it it's a bit of a derivation of the old beer carton currency on the building side, giving them coffees and HJs instead of beers.

Starting point is 00:42:13 You probably threw a few beers in at the right time as well. But it's amazing how that sort of lubricates the whole transaction, builds relationships amongst the tradies who often are digging at each other and having a crack at each other. So I love the way you've humanised that whole exercise to everyone's benefit as a result. So brilliantly done. I now want to sort of switch into subjects that are close to your and my heart. DAX, which is obviously investing in property, but also then we'll leverage into the discussion topic of the moment, which is the future of property as a result of AI. But sort of to set

Starting point is 00:42:50 the scene on that, given the experience you've had personally and with Hira Property Group over time, what common mistakes do you see property investors regularly making and what's the best way to overcome them some of the biggest ones i see is they don't plan they get most people that come to me a lot of people i should say a lot of people come to me they don't know what retirement looks like they don't know what sort of passive income they need to live off uh it's a really key thing fundamental to go if you don't know what you're aiming for how you're going to get there so that's that's probably the first thing that i see the second thing is procrastination i've got a couple of people that keep coming back every three six months you know sort of going oh

Starting point is 00:43:41 i think it might be ready to buy now and i you know help them work out what they need to do and then they then they freak out and go oh i'm too busy i've got other things so not not you know procrastination as well as not making the commitment and i know like you said at the start of the the podcast is that there's still you've got to make you know million dollar decisions with not a complete picture you can't have all the data our brains can't fit it all in so you have to have a bit of faith or trust in in yourself and like look at your intuition to go is this right for me or not and so people that don't make the leap when we're presented at everything we can and we know it's a great deal

Starting point is 00:44:27 and they can understand, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I just don't want to do it, is really sad at some times because, you know, we go back three, six months later or 12 months later and it's made 10%, 15%. You know, and it's like you could have been making that money. Absolutely. On the flip side of that then, given the exposure you've had right across the investment community over the years,

Starting point is 00:44:52 what qualities and character traits have you seen that separate great investors from the rest great investors have a level of self-confidence and self-awareness to know what's right for them it's it's really a solid foundation of this is where i'm going this is what i know this is how i'm going to get it you know they don't know the steps between here and there you know that but they've got that they're directionally correct you know um they have that level of confidence and they also have a level of being able to dive into ask the right questions from the right experts because no one's i'm not i've got a whole team behind me and people i access i don't have only answers but if they know how to ask the right questions we can get them to a certain level

Starting point is 00:45:50 love it love it it's a questioning curious mind again that's not scared to ask any question and keep asking until you get the answer you need love that uh dax you've uh again in my google stalking i came across a great white paper that you put together recently on the six property investment trends that your competitors wish that you kept secret uh given the context of the times Are you happy to quickly break those down for us? Because it's going to be a real interest to the audience. Yeah, look, the white paper's really focused on what's happening at a macro level of what really is influencing the market right now.

Starting point is 00:46:28 And, you know, you can go to the HERA website, heraproperty.com.au, and go to the research section where our white papers are. Look, you know, the media tells you one thing and the facts tell you something else so my team did a whole lot of analysis on it those six secrets are great to learn and understand because you can actually cut through the media noise once you've read it and just go ah i can see how they've spun that to be negative but if you use it in the right way it's fantastic you know i'll give i'll give one

Starting point is 00:47:05 example where we've got massive immigration coming in you know millions of people are coming in over a number of years uh we have a housing shortage we have a rental increase it's hard to get rentals what does that all those factors together mean as a property investor and how can you tap into it so yeah i definitely recommend people to go and have a look at that it's years of knowledge and experience pulled together to make sure that you know you can get make clear decisions yeah it puts a really good perspective around the actual demand supply and sentiment exercise and whenever you've got a shortage of anything which becomes evident in rental vacancies as it's a major indicator and then you're pouring hundreds of thousands of people into the country over the next few years

Starting point is 00:47:55 it doesn't take einstein to work out there's some pretty big opportunities coming out of that Can you sort of give us a little, without going to too much detail, and this is not property advice, but what do these trends mean in relation to what, where and when and how we should be investing in the short to medium term? Yes, this is not financial advice. You know, understanding those six trends and applying them to the, you know, 15,000 suburbs of Australia can be challenging.

Starting point is 00:48:27 a lot of data a lot of information so you really need to niche down into what you're looking for so understanding what your end goal is and what's the next purchase to get you on that run will really help you use those six secret trends to understand what market you want to be in you know depending on your borrowing capacity and stuff like that you know it'll really hone down into those suburbs firstly that you can afford you know secondly what's happening in those from a macro level down to a micro down to the street level even to the side of the street so the one you know if it's on a hill the cheaper ones are down the bottom and the better ones are the top so you know my advice would be to start with what you can afford find the suburbs that sit around

Starting point is 00:49:14 that area deep dive into where the governments are putting money where the immigrants are coming in understanding the the you know go to the bureau of statistics and find out what cultures are in there because we know who are coming in and if there's a large majority and then they've probably got family and friends that are coming in there as well so it's a really interesting mix right now that you know you can really find some hot areas for different cultures that are coming in and then you can find the right street in the right suburb to purchase i love it love it now where we keep talking about the incredible amount of data that you need to try and comb through to make sense out as far as property is concerned.

Starting point is 00:49:56 There's a great segue now into the area of AI. How is the rapidly approaching transformational AI tsunami likely to affect the property industry as you're seeing at the moment? Can I just say, amazingly, it's going to be, it's a new age of property investing. You know, new age of AI. You know, like I said, I used AI probably 10 years ago

Starting point is 00:50:20 with my son we bought a lego mindstorm that you could program ai is just a simple left right forward or back you know and he learned around the maze now we've got they've trained chat gpt on all the internet up till september 2021 now to have that access have that and it's for free you can just go there and get on there you can pay the subscription but you can use it today for free and you just want to get on there and say tell me about property investing in Australia and see what it says this and just start having a dialogue with it to see what it can come up with you know we've gone from December or November when we started using it I used it I think I spent between Christmas and New Year's that's all I did to play with shut down the business and

Starting point is 00:51:11 that's what I wanted to work on and then after that I create standard operating procedures for the team to actually use it in their day-to-day work um and as simple as you know here is yeah this is a prompt here is an email from a client and paste the email in and say okay please respond to this uh client in a friendly professional way and explain and dot point what you're trying to explain and then press enter and you see what happens that's amazing i use it pretty much every day now as a consequence of that it's just the speed and the ability to get clarity very quickly and sit through the stuff to get to the the gems is awesome if we if we apply that to the property sphere then dax what what are the opportunities and risks associated with iia and

Starting point is 00:52:01 how can we best take advantage of them yeah look the advantage straight away is there's a number of ways and the book i'm writing at the moment i'm up to 10 000 words at the moment and there's a whole lot of prompts in there a prompt is where you prompt the ai to respond to you so that's where you type it in um some really key factors ones you can get suburb analysis up to september 21 and we'll talk about the risks about that in a minute but what i've found really valuable for clients is to say hey um and put your bio in there who you are what you know what your goals are if you don't have any goals don't worry just put in who you are you know i'm 35 i've got a wife child this is my job this is my salary um give me some ideas about property investing for someone like me

Starting point is 00:52:48 and you see what comes out and then you can say if you've got the other side of things if you've got a portfolio you can actually plug the portfolio in and say how can i improve it what can i do differently you know we're looking at even doing feasibility studies on renovations and developments to go here's all the stats take your stats plus ours because we we now know how to plug in data from the end of the day to today and get really clear results on it. And then, you know, talking about the risks, risks are very important.

Starting point is 00:53:22 Anything new tech, anything high tech, you really need to know this because you don't want to take it for truth. ChatGPT can make things up, okay? You can say, you know, create a quote and it'll create you a quote, you know. and the least amount of data it just tries to guess to give you the right answer so firstly the data's two years old okay so you've got to be very careful about that when you try and find out

Starting point is 00:53:49 a suburb median price you can't get it okay but if you can say what's the median price in september 2021 it'll give it to you so you need to prompt it with a whole lot of data um and in my book i showed how you can set up the different chat windows with the different data of different suburbs and plug it all in so that you're up you're you're teaching the ai what the latest data is okay so that's that's the first one the second risk which is you know i was just writing yesterday on the in the book is it's not your go-to thing you it is not a professional it is not a mentor it is not an expert okay it has to be driven by a human if you put stuff in you may get the wrong things out so you always need to validate it you always need to check

Starting point is 00:54:43 with your intention and your intuition you need to check facts as well um don't take it on face value at all zero don't do it you need to actually really make sure the output suits and act is is correct before you take any action so that's it i just put a big warning across everything like that you know you may say hey here's my portfolio give me some ideas and it goes and you know you go well it doesn't know the melbourne market or you know didn't indicate brisbane markets going off or things like that so you then prompt it again and say here's some data about melbourne here's data about brisbane please review and then it gets better and gets better and gets better yeah now that's that's awesome are there any uh given the work that you've done so far

Starting point is 00:55:31 any hacks or tips and tricks uh using chatby chat gbt in property investment that uh you're able to share yeah look there's a thing in when you pay for chat gbt the subscription you get access to plugins okay now our team is working on a plugin at the moment to tap into all the property data from September 21 to now. So we don't have to keep plugging in suburb data and stuff like that. So a real hack is to be able to get access to the internet with that sort of data through the plugins

Starting point is 00:56:06 and to be able to tap into our own database with our own data into it. But just a simple hack would be really start a chat window in there and say, hey, we're researching this suburb, go to the internet, take a hold of the data from the internet of that suburb, you know, real estate or domain, take that in, plug it in and say, here's all the median prices from the last, you know, five years, 10 years. This is the sort of houses I'm looking for.

Starting point is 00:56:36 This is some of the renovation costs. Please come up with some ideas and strategies around investing in that. That's a really good one. The other good one I've got in the book is, hey i'm i'm 35 i'm you know in a corporate job busy uh but i want financial freedom uh when i retire i want this amount of money now give me a bit of a strategy a table x and they and it has this it does excel tables really well put in a table with years and how much i should be getting out of my property portfolio so that i can cut and paste it into excel and it just goes and you can cut paste it in then you can play with it yourself really good hacks asking it to put it into excel format or word format and to be able to then use it in your own tools that you've been

Starting point is 00:57:27 using love it now as a uh buyers agent uh dax i'm sure you've probably embedded chat gpt into your processes into helping investors to uh source better quality properties to suit their their strategies can you expand a little bit on uh you know what separates here from a lot of the other buyers agency in the industry and and what can an investor inspect expect as far as the ai involvement to fine-tune exercises when they come and talk to you and the here team yep so look when i implemented chat gbt into my team it literally doubled our productivity overnight without a doubt it may be 3x our product productivity so the speed of being able to pull this data into one for our clients has been fantastic and we've got this model called

Starting point is 00:58:21 the keystone property investor accelerator program kpi accelerator program and that works on the 5p so you know firstly we work out their position so we get all their data and we come up with a strategy and we plug it into chat gbt and we start playing brainstorming around that once we've got that we help them with their purpose sometimes you know people don't know why they want to get that so we go through their purpose and map that all out then we prepare them for the next purchase okay that's the third p and all the data that they need and we pull that in together then they go to the purchase which is all about negotiation tactics i was just writing a chat a prompt in the book saying let's and it can do um role playing so i can say hey i'm a buyer and i'm going um i'm

Starting point is 00:59:11 talking to a real estate agent to sell this give let's do a role play that you're the real estate agent and i'm the buyer on buying a property go and then they'll ask a question so getting them to understand that getting them around the purchase and then after that the final one is prosper so how do we leverage that the manufacturing equity and across that so i've built chat gpt prompts and processes throughout those five p's of the keystone property investment program to really help them accelerate not only our systems but how they can get to their position their purpose preparing really well purchasing and then prospering from there love it love the uh the the five p's and the kpi exercise uh it's it's easy for us to get our heads around uh and

Starting point is 00:59:59 really love that you're inspiring and motivating us to embrace ai as a as a an extra tool that's really going to crunch data that we just physically don't have the capacity or the time to do and can't wait to see the book hit the stands and we'll talk about the links of the book shortly but i now want to sort of bridge into what i affectionately refer to as the ambush round dax which are the you know the podcast fastball where i give you a blindfold and a cigarette and and we get you to do the machine gun dance so we're to kick those off what what's your favorite quote and why my favorite quote is from albert schweitzer it's um success is not the key to happiness happiness is the key to success uh if you love what you do you will be successful

Starting point is 01:00:50 I've learned that over time. That's a great quote. Let's turn back to the literary field. And in addition to your own book that is still in the developing stages, what's the top book that you'd recommend we read and why? My top book that I'm reading right now on Audible, let me have a look for you, is, and it's a great book. I've just started it, but I'm loving it at the moment.

Starting point is 01:01:17 It's called, when it loads up, Psycho-Cybernetics. It's like the grandfather of how to train your mind for success, which we love it. Love it. I haven't read that one, so I'm going to add that to my own Kindle list. So thanks for the tip on that, Dex. Dex, sort of switching back into the property sphere,

Starting point is 01:01:47 for a moment, and now I'm talking about investment advice now. What's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? The worst piece of advice I've received is getting to debt for everything, house, car, furniture, just, you know, live off debt. It's fine. It's what it's there for.

Starting point is 01:02:12 Live off credit card debt. Why not? and as we know there's a whole lot of bad debt and there's a lot of good debt and you need to learn that very quickly I think and it should be taught at school what about the flip side

Starting point is 01:02:29 the best piece of advice well I guess it goes into two one is begin with the end in mind yeah the other one is research, research, research You don't have to research all the time.

Starting point is 01:02:47 It's like if you're going to go buy a car or, you know, even a house. You need to go deep dive on that area of expertise for a short amount of time. And chat really helps you with that to go, what's the latest trends in property investment? What's the latest? Give me some ideas. Give me the legal ramifications in New South Wales about, well, property investing. You know, what should I look at in the contract? just and chat's awesome for that to just come up to speed really quickly um with that domain

Starting point is 01:03:14 expert so i wouldn't even say for property investing but for anything but for property investing as complex it is you can go in there and ask you know what does a conveyancer do how can i use equity in my property to buy another property and you know you may see ads and you can plug that into chat and go what do they mean by that so begin with the end in mind and just knowledge and just research and you only need to know it for a short amount of time three months until you buy the next one and then out. You can go back to whatever you're doing and then we catch up with you three, six months later

Starting point is 01:03:45 and go, okay, we're ready to buy again. Yeah, I love that. It's the old adage of investing your knowledge first so that you can actually then manage your managers is really key because you don't want to totally outsource your future wealth to someone else without understanding at least the basics and then being able to keep them honest

Starting point is 01:04:04 in their endeavours as far as that. So that's really good advice. And using ChatGPT as your virtual mentor in that sense to really bring you up to speed with terminology and language and an understanding of it is a great way to go. So last question in the fast four, what's a personal happy habit, rewarding ritual or daily discipline that you employ that's contributed most to your success today?

Starting point is 01:04:31 I would say the one thing that's really helped the most in the most stressful situations and even the most difficult and complex situations is meditation. So I meditate 20 minutes when I get up. I go for a walk, come back, cold shower, and then just after lunch, after this podcast, I'll go back for another 20 minutes in silent meditation. It provides a gap between the stimulus, somebody saying something

Starting point is 01:05:04 or doing something to my reaction, and it separates that gap to give me time to think about it, to intentionally create the right response that I want to respond back with instead of being snap and things go wrong. Love it. Creating the pregnant pause, which very few of us do because we're always under the pump of actually building in that time to allow the pause and allow the grey matter

Starting point is 01:05:37 to look at an appropriate response rather than the reactive responses. Isn't that awesome? And one point I just want to add, some people might be listening and going, oh, I don't have time to meditate 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. People, it's funny, you know, when you learn a bit about meditation, when somebody says that, it's literally like,

Starting point is 01:05:55 well, you'll probably need it the most. So give it a go. What have you got to lose? what have you got for a couple of weeks and see the difference it's amazing 100 agree but it's been an awesome conversation dax uh but to sort of summarize uh you know the key exercise we've talked about today what are your key takeaways and the immediate actions that aspiring investors need to take yeah i think you know if you don't have that in your mind you don't know where you want to get to at retirement or passive income you know and thinking about why you want to do

Starting point is 01:06:31 that do you want to break the daily grind do you want to get your time back with your family and do what you love really honing on that and solidify that in your mind and have that written up like we do you know uh and see it every day if you do that it comes true and i've seen clients do this over and over again and literally a 10-year plan happens in five years yeah um that's that's probably my key takeaway from there and if you're interested in the the book definitely you know i know bushy you probably put something in the show notes here um but it's on the harrow property website as a wait list uh i just finished 10 000 words i've finished up to the last or a couple of chapters to go uh yesterday so i'm really excited to get that out uh to help people that's called

Starting point is 01:07:24 real estate investing chat gpt edition less human error and more property wealth love that and uh for those listening in if you want to get on the pre-order list make sure you jump on member.hear a property that's h-e-r-a property.com.au forward slash chat gpt slash property slash investing So make sure you take advantage of that. For those of us that have really resonated with your message, Dax, how can we find out more and get more involved with you? Yeah, you can go to our company website or you can go to my Facebook, Dax Stanley, or Instagram, same name, or LinkedIn.

Starting point is 01:08:04 So I'm available on all those sorts of channels, happy to help. You'll see there's a lot of advice, tips. I've got about 170 videos on YouTube as well. If you go there, you'll see some sneak peeks of me doing my morning exercise and talking about the chapter I'm going to write after my exercise. So you'll see those. They actually hit a whole lot of, I think over 7,000 people hit it the other day, which resonated with them.

Starting point is 01:08:33 So that was really fantastic. So jump on there. I think it's in the shorts on my Instagram as well to just give you a bit of a taste to what you're going to get when you get the book. I love it. It's been a great conversation, Dax. We've only really scratched the surface, so we'll stay in touch and talk further.

Starting point is 01:08:51 And when the book actually hits the stands, then we'll get you back to sort of deep dive into aspects of that. But, look, I really want to thank you for being very generous with your time and opening our eyes to the opportunity that AI is going to bring to all of us as property investors. So let's keep the conversation going. Yeah, thank you, Bushy. It's great to be on here and help your audience with this new age,

Starting point is 01:09:18 this new age of property investing. And if they can embrace it instead of just sort of push it away, they're going to make much better decisions with much more data and get a great result. But remember, you're at the steering wheel. So don't let go of the steering wheel. You are driving this ship. Don't let the AI do it.

Starting point is 01:09:37 Love it. Great final words of wisdom and let's stay in touch, Dax. Thank you. 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 busheymartin.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

Starting point is 01:10:18 red-hot property 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.

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: ChatGPT for property investment with Dax Stanley

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