Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: How Jodie Nevid lives life by design, not by default

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

A few years ago, Jodie Nevid was where many hard working Aussies are today. She was a single mum with a corporate job and a six-figure salary, and life was a game of stress and survival. Something had to change and Jodie knew that it was her. So she embarked on a journey of self-development, transforming her life and building a successful business doing the work she absolutely loves. Jodie is now living her ultimate lifestyle, working three days a week, taking all of the school holidays off and travelling overseas regularly. Her book, The 7 Effect, and her unique life planning program, are quintessential guides to redesigning your life and creating financial freedom. Make sure you get a copy. And join the Wake Up Adelaide conference here: https://www.wakeupadelaide.com/ Jodie's book recommendation: The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch and The End of Jobs by Taylor Pearson. Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For those of you who are laying on the slab, waiting for Prince Charming to come along and save the day, wake up because he's not coming. And I went, holy freaking crap. That really struck me because I literally was waiting for Prince Charming. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money. and the benefits that this has created.

You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default.

I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au

forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters Do you love your life? Do you feel fulfilled? Now don't give me the normal knee jerk Instagram answer and the practice smile with the yeah awesome or the I'm living the dream sort of response

I mean deep down in your gut I mean in the quiet of the night with only your inner silent voice talking as you stare at the ceiling in a sort of a cold sweat have you fulfilled your dreams can you even remember what they are or have you just settled for good and given up on great have decided that it's better to play it safe and now find yourself comfortably numb and sleepwalking through life on autopilot in a sort of a self-induced twilight zone as you run around frantically to satisfy everyone else's demands without ever having time

to think about your own. You know you need to change, but you're waiting for the one day and the when I. One day when I have more time. One day when I retire. One day when I have more money. Well, I've got some bad news. It's time to wake up. It's not going to happen by itself. One day and when I are never going to come. Unless you see the change, make the change and be the change and today's guest is the perfect person to help you make it happen you see a few years ago Jodie Nevitt was where many hard-working Aussies are she was a single mum who felt chained to her corporate job and her six-figure salary life was a game of stress and survival something had to change and she knew that it was her

so she embarked on a life-changing journey of self-development she transformed her life and built a successful six-figure business doing work that she absolutely loves so if you've ever dreamt of breaking free from the rat race but you don't know where to start then you've just got to join Jodie in a few years Jodie's built a successful lifestyle where she's able to just work three days a week, take all of the school holidays off, and she travels overseas regularly. Her book, The Seven Effect, and her unique life planning program are your absolute quintessential guides to redesigning your life and creating financial freedom. Now, I never do this, but I feel so strongly about her game-changing approach that I challenge you, in fact, I dare you to buy

her book, to sign up for her program, and to buy tickets to join me and lots of others at her upcoming Wake Up Adelaide conference in November this year. To make it worth your while, there's a free Get Invested book, and Jodie will give you a free 7 Effect book if you come and join us. Now, Jodie's catch cry is, live life by design, not by default. Now, does that sound a little bit familiar? Well, that's probably because it is. By some freaky coincidence of nature, Jodie and I think the same, believe the same, and we even speak the same.

Now this is by far my most favourite episode today. I think that's because I almost feel like I'm talking to a female version of myself, which is a little bit scary. So I want you to really take the time to soak up Jodie's gold, and then take the first step. So please enjoy Jodie Nevin. welcome freedom fighters well as many of you know i'm always excited about our guests here on get invested but today i'm really super excited why because our guest shares my passion for living by design not by default and i feel very much like that we have been twins that were separate at birth, and have followed very parallel paths and have finally reconnected.

It's a bit like two identical rocks that have been thrown into the opposite ends of the lake. Eventually, the ripples from those interconnect, and the big opportunity is they're going to reinforce each other and create even bigger waves. So let's get invested, Jodie Nevin. Welcome aboard. Hello, Bushy, and thank you so much for having me on board. And I just can't believe the synergies As you were giving that intro, my face was just literally lighting up with the synergies in our purpose and our mission and what really lights up. So it's a thrill to be here. I'm looking forward to getting invested with you.

Thanks, Jodie. Now, it's going to be a great conversation, and I know you're well-known in the Adelaide sphere, but for those that are listening from beyond, around Australia and overseas, can I start by getting you to tell us who you are, what you do, and where you're currently heading, Jodie? Absolutely. So I'm one of the co-founders of The 7 Effect and the co-author of The 7 Effect, a serial entrepreneur by nature, property investor, practicing yogi, and a lifestyle business

coach. I'm also a recovering workaholic and a pottery artist by trade. So I have a background in small business. I kind of grew up in small business, and that's what's in my blood, entrepreneurship. But I did spend some time in the corporate world, my seven years since stint on the treadmill as a leadership and high performance culture consultant and executive coach. Okay, and let's talk about the why then. Why are you currently doing what you're doing? Look, I'm doing what I'm doing because I think I've always had a desire as long as I can remember to be free.

And when I say free, I mean free to make my own choices, free to travel the world, free to live life on my terms and to build wealth, doing meaningful work, doing what I love. And for the best part of my life, I've actually done that. So my first businesses, when I dropped out of high school and I landed a scholarship to study visual arts, I fell in love with ceramics and pottery. And so my first businesses were around making drums and percussion instruments out of ceramics. I had this amazing lifestyle business. I traveled up and down the East Coast and along the way started to realize that I needed to build assets up on the side and started to invest in property. What actually happened, though, is around 2006, my life sort of just turned a bit pear-shaped, for want of a better way of explaining it. everything turned to shit. The catalyst was really a relationship breakdown. And as a result,

I had to sell off my investments. I had to shut down my business. And it was right at that pivotal time where I just, we just purchased a new home. I just put my son in private school and it was like, okay, Jodie, you got to go get a real job. I was really lucky. I landed in the corporate world and I climbed the corporate ladder incredibly quickly and before I knew it I'm working my backside off I'm making 130 grand a year but I was really really unhappy on the inside so the way that I dealt with that was I just was an incredibly high-performing workaholic during the week when I had my son and then when he went off to his dad's I became a binge drinking binge smoking party girl with all my single girlfriends on the weekend and most of the clients I was

coaching in the leadership space were similar so they were complaining about similar things working their backsides off but really feeling like that sense of being stuck in the hamster wheel or on the treadmill and I just had this wake-up moment and the wake-up moment was actually sitting in a leadership conference and it was full of clients that I was teaching and coaching for the leadership company that I worked for. I was the MC of that conference for the day. We had amazing speakers like Janine Ellis, the founder of Boost Juice, John Anderson, the founder of Contiki Tours and these really inspiring business leaders who were truly living their passion. and at the time I actually thought I kind of was living my passion because one of my passions is

lifelong learning I love to learn and study but one of the things that was driving me nuts was I'd go into these organizations and I'd teach the value of leadership and learning and coaching people and you know there was cool content and everyone would have these great light bulb moments and go yay Jodie we love this content they take it back into the workplace but stuff just doesn't stick you just kind of get caught up in the busyness so I'm sitting in this conference these speakers are talking about all these inspiring things and then one of them talked about this thing called snow white syndrome and I'd never heard of snow white syndrome back then and it was it comes from a book called the emotional capitalists and the book is by a

called Martin Newman. So he's a psychologist. And in his book, he says, we are all conditioned by the same types of stories, fairy tales and superheroes. And the common theme in all those stories, Bushy, is what do you reckon? The hero and the tragedy, I'm guessing. Well, yes, there's a tragedy. We take a bite of the poison apple, the shitty thing that happens to us in life which I had the relationship meltdown and all the stuff that fell apart after that and we do get the happy ending but the way the happy ending comes in all of those stories that we were fed when we were young is because someone comes and saves the day and so at an unconscious level and this is what really struck me at an unconscious level we don't knowingly do

this when we take a bite of the poison apple we lay down and we wait and we wait for things to get better and as the speaker was talking about this while I was sitting in that conference I started to get the creeps like my I literally still get goosebumps to this day thinking of that moment because at that time I had put my life on standstill entrepreneur by nature traveled the world, invested in property, had this amazing lifestyle business, landed in the corporate world. And I literally forgot about all that. And I was just busy on the treadmill. Meanwhile, things were building up around the house, jobs weren't getting done. And in the back of my brain, I wasn't consciously aware of this, but my unconscious dialogue was, when I meet a guy,

I'll go traveling again. When I meet a guy, we'll fix up all the weeds in the garden. when I meet a guy he'll help me put my son's wardrobe door back on that's fallen off and sat here in the in the hallway for six months you know it was just kind of this stuff that I was waiting unconsciously for Prince Charming to come along and the speaker said for those of you who are laying on the slab waiting for Prince Charming to come along and save the day wake up because he's not coming and I went holy freaking crap that really struck me because I literally was waiting for Prince Charming but then I thought about all of the clients that I was working with and their language well once that person retires we'll be able to do this yeah once I get this new

job once the settlement happens once the mergers settle down once the new CEO gets recruited Everyone was waiting for stuff and then they would begin. And we do it by nature. We wait for Monday. So the reason why I do what I do is because I had a wake-up moment and in that moment I decided to stop waiting and I decided to start a goals club. So I left the conference on what can only be described

as a conference high and I called a group of my girlfriends together and I said rather than meet at the pub like we do once a month for our catch-up let's meet at my house and I'll share an idea with you and the idea was to start a goals club where once a month we would catch up we would set our goals and we would hold each other accountable and the changes that happened not overnight but over time in our lives were profound physically mentally emotionally financially you name it we worked through the processes and now here I am what is it seven eight years later financially free but I came from a place when I was really trapped and what happened and the reason why I do what I do now

is because as a speaker and as a leadership trainer I just started organically sharing stories of the goals club and people would come up to me and say Jodie how do I get in the club I needed to do something like that and so I went back to the girls in the club it was never a business it was just a club like a book club but we didn't read books we set goals and I said I think there's a business in this I think we can help people sort their life out I think we can help them live life by design not by default and that's our tagline which I hear is one of yours too high five for that absolutely uncanny I absolutely love that yeah where did that just diving in there that life by design not by default where did where did that come from

What sort of incited that as the credo that summed it up for you? Look, it came from me recognising that most people are unconsciously just going through the motions. They've forgotten their choices. And like you, you know, you have a background in design and architecture. I have a background in art, not traditional design, but I love artistic words like design and studio. And I thought, you know what, you can design your life. We can literally craft it up and paint it. But most people are stuck in this place of it's just by default.

This is just what's happened to me, so I'm kind of stuck in it. So it just made sense to me. In my language, that's how I would say it. Absolutely uncanny in that regard. You touched on some awesome stuff that I want to drill into a little bit. and to me it almost seems that you almost did things back to front in the context that most people come out of school and the folks are saying, yeah, playing piano is good

and on the stage is really good but you've got to get yourself a real job and they then race off into the safety of the real job and then in their mid-30s or early 40s go, holy shit, how did I end up here? it appears that and it was obviously uh circumstantial for you with the relationship side but something i'm keen to delve into a little bit is that to have the confidence to do what you did early and that that was to follow your passion on the on the creative side where did that confidence come from that that because there's a level of self-belief and courage

that goes with that, that most people don't have at that early age. Let's talk about those very early years and where that all came from. Please, Jodie. Absolutely. Look, that's a great question. And it came from my beautiful entrepreneurial grandparents. So my nana and papa were financially free by the time they were 40. And papa actually got his hands on an original copy of the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. When he was a young man, he bought that book and he said to my Nana, Shirley, by hook or by crook, by the time we are 40, we are going to be financially free. And so Papa made Think and Grow Rich his Bible. And sure enough, they achieved it. He was the kind of man that if he set a goal,

he just made it happen. And then two years later, when he was 42 and when Nana had just turned 40, I was born. So I came into their life as the first grandchild. And I grew up as a young person spending lots of time at Nana and Papa's. Mum and dad both worked. They were only very young when they had me, 18 and 19, my parents were. And they did an amazing job. But Nana and Papa were very hands-on grandparents. And after me came my brother and my cousin. So they had five grandchildren all together. Papa's words always echoed in my ears is, Jodie, learn how to make money work for you so you don't waste your whole life working for it. Don't go out and get a job and make somebody else rich. Create your own business and make yourself rich. And he really

did have this kind of unique philosophy on life that's actually very common if you're in those small circles of entrepreneurship. But when you go out into the corporate world, what I came to realize is I didn't know people didn't know this stuff. I've been doing this all my life. And then mid-30s, I land in the corporate world. I'm actually coaching CEOs, directors, executives, people who are on double my income, but haven't actually stopped to design their own life. And I've actually had some very profoundly emotional coaching sessions with people, grown men in their 50s, 60s, saying, you know what, I never wanted to get into finance and accounting, but my parents told me I had to, and I've spent my entire life doing this at the cost of my dreams, my passion, and now my relationships and my health. and so for me I'm very very blessed to have had this weird conditioning where I was told from a young age that it's not the school grades that matter but it's what you love to do and then

working how to make money work for you through investing and following your passion and building business and I saw I literally grew up with Nana and Papa right before my eyes they traveled the world they always had time for family they were very invested in natural health you know papa also studied reflexology and massage in his spare time they were very into food as a medicine they were really cool people really cool and I'm really grateful that I grew up with them around me yeah absolutely fantastic you've been blessed in that regard because as you say it's most people don't have that realisation or even exposure to that thinking until they get to the other extreme. That's right. I was actually really gobsmacked when I got into the corporate world of how

foreign this kind of thinking is to most people in the mainstream. Like it literally blew my mind away. And I see that as a huge opportunity to wake people up to say, you know what, there are more choices than you realize it's just that you're missing a piece of education around that so I I've had so many adults come to me and say you need to get into schools you need to teach this to my children do you work with teenagers um and the reality is right now I don't but long term that is my ultimate goal is to create a lifestyle entrepreneurs academy for young people and let papa's legacy live on through that you know we can teach people this stuff when they're young oh absolutely it's it's the big miss from our education where we're taught all the academic

stuff but the the life skills that uh and what we're talking about now it's potential impact on not only the individual but then families and then communities is is or inspiring in its opportunity if uh someone's smart enough to recognize that so i absolutely 100 supportive of your vision there and I think there's a massive opportunity with such a simple thing like some of the stuff that you're now doing through your life planning process. Absolutely. Before we get into that, because I'm really keen to delve into that

to help people understand what life planning is all about because it's something that is second nature to you and to some degree to me as well. But if we put some shape around that, the listeners can start to see how they can start that process and where the opportunities might be to do that. But before I do that, one of the things I just want to sort of delve into a little bit more detail, when you had that sort of aha moment when the speaker spoke about the Snow White Syndrome, at that point in time, you were pretty much trapped in the corporate world to some degree. and the golden handcuffs are often one of the things that stop people jumping

because, well, yeah, I know I want to do this, but I can't afford to becomes the excuse. I need that income. I need that money. When I, if I, then becomes the hurdle and the barrier to them actually taking the leap. What gave you the confidence, given that I'm guessing at that point in time you needed the paycheck?

Yes, I did. How did you jump off the cliff and survive that early time? Yeah, that's a great question. And look, it's interesting because when I started my first business, I was naive. I was a rookie. I knew nothing. And I learned it literally on the job. But I wasn't married then.

I didn't have a child. I didn't have a mortgage. You know, I was literally a dreadlocked hippie. I just didn't smoke much dope. But I looked like I would have. and I loved sitting at my pottery wheel and that lit me up and so what was interesting is I built that business into an international brand so Mud Drum eventually became an award-winning company we we shipped stuff um all over the world and won many different small business and marketing awards

on a state national and international level and that was some journey but what what happened after that was when I landed in the corporate world, I really just buckled down and I brought my sense of responsibility as a business owner to someone else's business. So, I managed it like it was my business. But the golden handcuffs that I was so grateful for, you know, I'd actually never had six figures a year working Monday to Friday and my weekends off and just this paycheck that just showed up every Friday. It was like, wow, this is a real gift. And even my bosses said, we love you, Jodes, because no one of our team has ever said thank you every week when we send them their paycheck. You know, I literally would have such gratitude for it. But what happened over

time was I started to realize, and this stuff happens slowly, it creeps up on you, is I just started to forget about my ultimate passions and hobbies and the things that lit me up. And I just immersed myself into working for this money. And meanwhile, getting a bigger mortgage and doing all the things that I was taught not to do in some ways. I'd spent money on retail therapy because I was single and single women often do this. You go, all right, I feel like crap. I haven't got anyone to have a hug with, so I'll go buy a new dress. That'll hug me instead. So I did all that sort of stuff. And then really, I think it just got to a point where I started to get restless and I knew I had to change so I started to get back into property I started to

going to different conferences all of that was triggered by being in the goals club the goals club over time literally woke me up and reminded me of all the things I actually wanted to achieve in life and then I decided that's it in 2010 I am going to start my own business I've got to break free. But I have to tell you, Bushy, that decision came with a lot of fear, fear that I'd never had before prior to being an employee. Because when you become dependent on the security of a paycheck, you forget about the security that your skills can provide you with. You forget about your ability to go out there and earn a living and be entrepreneurial and creative and just kind of, you know, hustle a bit to make some money. And I used to be great at doing that. And so now here I

am much wiser, much more knowledgeable, much more experienced, but more fearful than ever to break free from the regular job and start my own business. So I really get it when people feel that, especially if they don't even have the background to draw back on. So lucky for me, I had this kind of deeper programming that said, you know what, Jodie, you can do it because you've done it before. So I just coached myself through that. And it was a planned thing. I did Goals Club for five years of sorting my personal life out, my emotional baggage and my health before we started the Seven Effect as a business in 2014. And there was a lot of foundational work done in the life elements before I started to work on the business. And I think that's important. There is

no get rich quick overnight success. What do they say? 10 years to become an overnight success it takes. Yeah. Brilliant. Now, let's jump into the goals club for a minute because I just love the accountability that comes with having to look a friend in the eye and say, I'm going to do this and then have to rock up a week or a month later and say, well, how did you go? It's something that very few of us actually are brave enough to do because we're scared that we're not going to follow through on it. Enduring a group for as long as you have.

I mean, I've seen a lot of these groups start and then fall over within six months. And I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that while people say they want accountability, they really don't. How have you managed to sustain that energy with that group of girls for so long? Talk to us about that. Yeah, this is a really important piece of the puzzle and one that I sometimes forget to mention.

We had some skin in the game. So we run goals clubs now where people pay to be there and so they're invested in it. And we've had people come to our Ultimate Life Planning Workshop and they've gone off to start their own goals clubs and they flounder because they're coming and then they don't show up and this is what I was banging my head against in the corporate world is saying you all know what you should be doing but why on earth are you not doing it why is everyone making so many excuses so when we started the

goals club what we did is all seven of us opened a joint bank account and in that joint bank account each of us were to deposit fifty dollars a month and we all had equal ownership of it but here were the rules we said you pay $50 a month into the joint bank account it's like membership to a gym if you decide to leave the goals club the money stays in the account now when we first started we had no idea what we were going to do with the money and even over the years we sort of talked about it but we never really fully agreed will we invest it in property will we buy some shares will we donate it to charity will we treat ourselves to a retreat what will we do and we did a bit of those things we never really bought any investments together but we did have a retreat

at the end of each year we did sponsor a child in Sudan we did donate quite a bit of money to some different worthy causes but what happened is because the money sat there and we could never agree on what to do with it over over time so all of a sudden we've got 10 grand 12 grand 15 grand sitting in this joint bank account so people kept showing up that one wanted to lose their share of the pie I love it that is awesome yeah and I would recommend for people who are serious about starting their own goals club like join a goals club and learn how to do it get the fundamental foundations because we probably fluffed around for the first two years working it out and You know, we now know we have a framework for doing this.

So we can teach people that. But then what I recommend is if you want to go off and I actually train people now to become goals club facilitators, because I honestly believe if we had more goals clubs everywhere, people would be living a much more engaged and fulfilled life. But once you've got the structure, then do create that sort of invested buy-in. And money is a big way to do that. A lot of people have a lot of fear around money, but I think money is a magical thing.

We can do great stuff with it. I think it's a volume switch. That's how I see it. It's the enabler. It fuels our freedom. I'm like you. What I find interesting is that money is often described as the source of all evil,

but it's only evil in the hands of someone who's got bad intent. Exactly. Whereas, let's face it, it is the oxygen that allows our current society to breathe without it you don't survive very long so that's right i love that now something i guess that's that's fundamental before people start making goals they need to know what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve and i know that with your book the seven effect and the work that you're doing you assist people early to get really clear on who they are what they are and where they

I want to go. Can we delve into that a little bit? Because I know that the listeners would love to start thinking about, well, how do I start to put shape around what my future needs to look like? Absolutely. Yeah. So we have a five-step life design process. And the life design process starts with a smack in the face. It's what we call the reality check or the life audit and in our book we explain the questions that are in the life audit but basically it's looking at the seven elements of life so what we do at the seven effect is we break down this big thing we call life into seven core elements and then we review each of those elements one by one and we give ourself a score of where we're currently at it's very simple and

highly effective way of just getting a benchmark. Now what the life audit is for many people is confronting, challenging, thought-provoking. Some people have said they felt really like it's an interrogation and it's still something worthy of leaning into because it brings stuff up that is probably laying dormant and not being addressed, just being avoided. So we like to start there because it gives us a place to begin. And from the life audit, it doesn't matter how low the scores are, we start to then design, all right, what is the ultimate? So let's say you've got a two in the brain element, what would a 10 look like? Let's say you've got a four in the body element, what would a 10 look like? So what we do is we take clients through a coaching process where we help

them tidy up the life order. And from that information, design what we call the seven wonders of their world, which is their 10 out of 10 version of life in each of the seven life elements. From there, we then create a 12 month plan. And from there, we then create the monthly goals and then the people commit to daily action. So it's very, very simple and highly effective when done well absolutely love it now i just want to touch on a couple there because a lot of us tend to focus on the external world and what i'm picking up from what you just said there is that there's no point tackling the external world until you've you've sorted out your internal world and you've talked there about the the settlement elements and and you started with brain and body

and this is i guess similar to what you and i've chatted about before and that's the concept of self first, then health, then wealth. Can you talk us through when you refer to the brain, what does that mean in the context of what we're talking about? Yeah, what I'll do is I'll give you an overview of the seven elements and why we put them in that order. And you're absolutely right, Bushy. And this is a message that I always would share with my leadership clients as well. The change you want to see in your organisation and in your people, in your businesses and in your lives begins within we've got to do the work on the inside first if you want to get the results on the outside later and unfortunately most people

avoid the inside work because let's face it sometimes it's confronting and sometimes it brings up tears and emotion and i really celebrate um when people have their pop moment and can release some of those emotions because we go great now we're moving forward so what we do is we start with the seven elements and the seven elements I came up with through many many months of meditation and reflecting on the problems people have in their life and it begins in the brain so the first element is the brain oh my head's so full of all my to-do lists I feel overwhelmed I'm mentally fatigued I can't think straight I can't focus on my children because I'm too busy thinking about what I'm not doing at work etc etc so the brain element is all around calming and quieting the

mind and then creating clarity on where you really want to be so under the brain element we do things like looking at mindfulness metal meditation we teach people about positive psychology we also set goals around learning what we feed our brain the type of content that we shove into that thing each day? Is it good stuff or is it bad stuff? And training our brain to have a better self-talk because most people's self-talk is pretty horrific. If you talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you probably wouldn't have any friends. Yeah, love that. Yeah, so that's the first element. Then we move on to the body because what I've found,

particularly for people who are in that grind working like crazy because their brain's so busy and they're mentally fatigued they become exhausted physically as well and so now I'm just grabbing fast food I haven't got time to cook and prepare healthy meals I'm eating on the run I'm not exercising and connecting with nature as much as I could and so my body is starting to seize up or pack up or expand in areas that I don't want it to expand in and I just don't feel like me anymore and so the body is the second element which is really just all about your physical health and well-being yeah then we move on to the third element which is the being element and it's represented by a little icon of a world with a home and a family and a car but it's

essentially the places that we be and in the being element we look at you know your house is it full of clutter and junk are there piles of paper and things building up is there a long list of to-do's and little jobs that haven't been taken care of and and for me this was a big gap in my life my home had literally become a dumping ground and many many people's homes have a cupboard somewhere or sometimes even entire room where you just shove stuff you go I don't know what to do with it so I'll just shove it in there and that's where we go through and say right let's tidy up the being element we embrace minimalism we embrace letting go of clutter and stuff that's just weighing you down the next thing that we find tends to happen is because I've got such a busy brain and

an exhausted body and everything around me is such a mess, I don't feel like showing up in the relationships the way I could. So the fourth element at the centre of it all, at the heart of it all, is the love element. And this is where we help people reconnect back with love in their family and friends' relationship, but even more importantly, love with themselves. Yes.

So it's that relationship-type stuff in the love element. not just romantic love but love our ability to give receive and accept love and come from a place of love over fear yes now before you go and i'd love to just drill in there a little bit because i think that the self-love element is the is the big rock that a lot of people either never tackle and it becomes the self-sabotaging element that sort of gets in the right of everything they know they should be doing and everything that they want to do at the conscious level, how do you manage to break through into that, you know, if the constant message for 10, 20, 30, 40 years has subtly been, I'm not good enough, I'm not fat enough, I'm not good

locking enough, I'm not this, I'm not whatever enough. Yep, absolutely. How do you manage to break through that, Jodie? The most popular problem is exactly as you said, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough. It's very, very popular and it tends to exist in most people's unconscious on some level. So, when I was in the corporate world bashing my head against the brick wall, this was the thing that was really perplexing me. Why?

Because I didn't have that kind of conditioning. Remember, I had the weird grandparents that told me, you are enough. You're more than enough. You can do anything. You can create your dream. So, I didn't have this kind of regular conditioning and I couldn't understand why people were struggling, why they were self-sabotaging. And I went off and studied neuro-linguistic programming, hypnosis, and positive psychology. So, the answer to your question, Bushy, is we need to teach

people how to reconnect with their unconscious mind. Now, you don't have to relive what went on as a child and where it all began. But what you do need to realize is that you can create change at an unconscious level and you can reprogram your brain to believe that you are good enough and that you can do those things but it's about breaking the pattern so first we uncover the pattern I have a process that I take people through called the prescription for change where we literally delve into the unconscious we elicit what their pattern is everyone's is different and then we design a new pattern and there's some really cool work you can do around metaphors and working with the unconscious mind is profoundly powerful and oddly peculiar

it's like one of those well this is weird but you know what it's working kind of thing yeah well i know myself i uh in in my dim dark history when i was sort of uh come through the relationship breakup and divorced destitute and depressed uh i did did a lot of work i did more work after the marriage breakdown than before around really resetting my headset and i remember uh the psychologist at the time giving me an affirmation and he said you're not going to believe a word of this uh but you just you're going to say it three times a day and and i'll never forget it it was uh and i'll still do it i i love myself my love myself and it's okay to fail was how it started and uh and I didn't believe it and I think

I reckon I wrestled with that for 12 months before it really started to without me even being aware of it things started to change uh so I'm 100% on on board with what what you're saying there and I I think that what I've seen because I we get to to uh help a lot of people on their wealth journey. But as I sort of touched on earlier, only about 5% get to the finish line. And I'm sure it's that subconscious messages that are getting in the way. So for those that are listening, if you're wondering why you've tried all these things over the years and it started well but never actually eventuated, if you don't get your headset right and you don't tap into the opportunity that jody's giving you here through the ultimate uh life planning

process and really delving deep into that subconscious to re reset your inner voice then i really think you're uh limiting your opportunity and i'm really going to encourage the listeners to jump on board with you on that one jody because i think that is that is the starting point if we can start there then all of a sudden the world can open up you got any thoughts around that i really do and i'm so glad you mentioned that bushy because it is the foundation that is critical because if we don't get that right and i see this happening all the time people come to um one of our programs is a lifestyle business builder program and a lot of people come into that program with the ultimate goal of you know breaking free from the job and

starting their own business as a coach or a consultant and often they've been through maybe five or ten years of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars and I don't exaggerate here on education courses programs funnels technology you name it trying to get this business off the ground but the reality is there's a seed within their unconscious that needs to be addressed for them to actually succeed and what I often do when I'm teaching in the ultimate life planning workshop is I'll draw up a iceberg and we all know that the tip of the iceberg is the small part we can see and underneath the water is this big mammoth beast of a thing and if we think of the conscious and the unconscious like that under the water the unconscious our unconscious brain

has in it recall stored like a memory on a computer every thought feeling smell sound emotion experience sight every single thing that we have ever experienced is parked back there now we don't have that all alive in our conscious memory because if we did our brains would literally explode it would be a mess but it's all parked back there and some of that stuff that may have triggered a fear in us and really it's all about fear that holds us back that's triggered a fear in us has kind of been burned on or stuck like a little burr like velcro to a part of our brain that's just doing its beautiful work to protect us so all it's doing at an unconscious level there's certain things that are happening that we're not aware of to keep ourselves safe

So, even these self-sabotaging type behaviours are really just our unconscious brain's way of saying, hey, I know you ultimately want to become a property investor and be financially free, but from the time you were a child, you saw how your father lost his entire life savings from that property he bought from some shark up in Queensland or whatever it might be. And so, there's huge danger in that. So, there's this conundrum and with the iceberg, if we have the wind blowing one way and the current or the tide pulling another way, the wind is our conscious voice saying, do this, be free, set your goals, do the right thing. But the current is the stuff we can't hear or feel. It's the unconscious and it always wins. So, the key to success is getting the wind and the current pointing in the right direction

and the same direction. Love that. What a great analogy. That really sums it up incredibly well. Yeah, I've never thought of it that way either, actually. So, fantastic. That's really good. I really want to reinforce that I think if you really want to unblock the blockages that you probably don't even know that are there, then that's where we need to start. And we'll talk at the end of the podcast on how they can start that journey with you, Jo. Absolutely. It's a process. It's a very simple process too. And I think this is an important thing I want to share with your listeners, Bushy. As an NLP master and as a hypnotist, it is an industry where there's a lot of mysticism. People go, oh, it's a bit magical and phenomenal. And you can make people do weird things. The truth is it is phenomenal and interesting, but it's not magic. And what I like to do and a big part of my approach when I'm working with clients is to demystify it, to take the magic away and say, you know what,

it might seem sexy and magical, but the truth is it's simple and it's effective if you just learn it for yourself. So I like to teach people the process so they can go away and NLP themselves. They can hypnotize themselves. They can train their own brain. And I think once you have those tools, you really are set for life. Absolutely brilliant. Now, I jumped in and interrupted the flow there of the seven elements. So, we got to love. Let's move on. What's next? So, after we deal with the love, we look at time because what we find is the reason people aren't showing up in their relationships and giving the love and doing all the stuff they wish they would be doing is they just don't have time in their day or so they are telling themselves. That's

the story they're saying. The reality is there's an abundance of time. It's just about how we use it. So when we look at the time element, we start to create priorities. We look at things like the 80-20 principle and really helping people plan out where their time should be invested to get the results they want to achieve. The next element that's very heavily tied to time is, of course, the sixth element which is money and obviously most of us are spending our time trying to make the money and because we're making all the money with our time we don't have the time to do the things we want so in the money element we do we do things like say you know what go and speak to bushy martin about his freedom formula and start to get some financial plans in place obviously

I'm not a financial planner I share with people my approach and what I understand about money but I love partnering up with people who are going down and like I don't send people to traditional financial planners are you a traditional financial planner because I'm about to poo poo on them no I hate them yeah great between you and I yeah I'm yet to find one who my litmus test for anyone here Jodie is if they don't walk their own talk and they can't demonstrate that to me. I'm not interested. Bingo. I see a lot of financial planners poo-pooing property because they don't get paid for it and they'll shove people into shares and equities because that's where they do get paid and

it's not necessarily in their best interest. So my own interest in people in that sphere is those who take a very holistic view of all the different assets. So business is part of it. Property is part of it. Shares and equities can be part of it depending on how much risk someone wants to take. So yeah, I'm happy for you to dump on financial planners and for all those financial planners out there, you're not going to like the message here. But here's what I will say. I've met a handful of financial planners that do take that holistic view and uh i i send people to them actually because uh they are worth their weight in gold but they are a very rare breed indeed so go on jody great thank you for the permission look

and i i accept and respect that there's always exceptions to every rule and i actually think it's the system that's broken so i advise all of our clients to find genuinely successful people who have achieved the results in their own life, much like you. If they're not walking the talk, then don't listen to what they have to say necessarily. The system says we can send young people to university for years and they can come out the other end having never, ever built a skerrick of wealth in their life and now be legally certified

to teach someone how to build their own wealth. However, someone who has built wealth and who has, you know, built a fortune in property or shares is legally not allowed to give their advice and I think it's good we should give education rather than advice anyway that's that's fine but I would never send someone to a conventional final financial planner as their first point of call because unfortunately what they often do is very much set up insurances and all this scarcity kind of fear stuff and for For me, that's not building wealth. That's actually spending money on ridiculous products

that are going to give commissions to the financial planner. So when it comes to money, I am very much, let's talk with people who have really built wealth, let's remove the fear and let's understand the numbers because it's actually a really fun game, playing that board game by Robert Kiyosaki, Cashflow Quadrant. Yes, yes. It's a brilliant way to train your brain to think about money.

Brilliant, brilliant brain training right there. Yeah. Yeah. So that's six of the seven elements. Yeah. And then the seventh one is represented by the icon of a fire. And the seventh one is the one that trips people up so much. It's unbelievable.

The seventh element is passion. And what we find is when people go through our life audit, the feedback is, well, I was really stuck at the passion element because I forgot. I don't know what I'm passionate about anymore. So we've had people join our goals club saying, you know what, my goal really for this year is to work out what I'm passionate about. So those are the seven elements that we work with people. And I find that they're in a line with the problems that show up in most people's everyday life that's a great framework and again starting from the inside and working to the outside it's a really logical progression and will ultimately if you

start the other end and work backwards that's that's where the wheels tend to fall off so correct love that now how does that then roll into the life by design not by default approach that you take then so we've established where we're at here's where we're at this is we know out of 10 on each of these elements this is where I sit yep take us through the rest of the journey Jodie so now that we have the slap in the face we then go all right that's great because guess what my initial slap in the face was probably even worse than yours so don't feel bad about it we just ask ourselves some really good coaching questions and ultimately work out what does 10 out of 10 look like in each of those elements for you and so through a coaching process we work with

our clients to literally design their 10 out of 10 brain element their 10 out of 10 body element and the beautiful thing about this is it's unique and different for everyone and most people can't get there on their own they need a coach to draw the questions out and help them really paint that picture and it literally is like painting a picture so then we have this beautiful document which we call the seven wonders of your world and that becomes the compass i think that's your language you use a lot yeah well yes so you've got the the magnet which is the vision or the painting that you're attracted to and then the compass becomes the decisions you're making in terms of tracking towards that so exactly the same approach exactly the same seven wonders

then would be the magnet so let me just correct myself there the seven ones is your magnet and the 12 month plan is more the compass which is the next step so we go okay we've got our magnet that's going to attract me to it um we make it very compelling we use specific emotion emotive language and how we can line that up look smell feel touch yeah bring in all of the senses so that people really start to it fires up the sensory responses within the brain and the body then we create the compass with the 12-month plan and we actually just say right okay in the next 12 months what are some steps we can take that will get us closer to that big picture and it doesn't we don't need time frames on the seven wonders but we just need the 12-month goal

yeah and then each month through accountability we catch up and we work on the monthly goals that gets get us closer to that magnet i love that because the danger in putting a timeline around the seven wonders because if you get there and you haven't done it then that can be very disheartening yeah and whereas if the big picture is it's a bit like sailing the analogy i like to use is we know where we want to end up but we've got to allow the wind and the currents as you well picked up to take the course and we will then tack using the sails to inch our way towards that and we're not sure when we're going to get there but we're going to enjoy because we know where we're going to get the the sense the peace of mind that comes from right I know where I'm heading is

can't be underestimated I feel is that has that been your experience around that absolutely and the other thing is so we have our um ultimate life planning workshop and we have some people that just come to that each year they use it as their reset to check in with their their magnet or their seven wonders and sometimes it changes because you know once you get on the path you can't see what you can't see you don't know what you don't know and once you get started you start to realize actually I thought I what that was my 10 out of 10 but now I'm here I realize it's slightly different so the seven wonders gets reviewed each year but the 12 month plan uh it's just kind of that pragmatic steps towards it and we don't need time frames on the seven wonders it's

just the the holy grail we're all moving towards i guess yeah everyone's beautiful that's absolutely awesome it becomes a a loose framework that then allows the individual to to put the flesh on the bones because everyone's goals, needs, values, desires and life's mission are all very different but that fundamental framework behind it is a great underpinning and again I can't emphasise enough the accountability that you're bringing into that equation because it's all very good to have a painting but if you're not looking someone in the eye on a regular basis and saying well how are you going about completing that painting then often life gets in the way and it never happens and i think that's where the wheels fall off so all of the programs that we

run at the seven effect are driven around that monthly accountability check with your monthly goals check with your monthly goals because one of the biggest things that actually drives progress in the human spirit or drives the human spirit to be motivated sorry is a sense of progress if I'm achieving things then all of a sudden I have more energy to achieve more if I feel like I'm just pushing crap uphill all day long every day and getting nowhere then there's nothing in us to draw us to want to do more we want to do less we pull away from our goals so it's very easy to forget all of the things that you achieve in life. Most people can't remember what they did yesterday. So reflecting on what you achieved last month and celebrating those successes

and then setting the goals for what you want to achieve the coming month is one of the best disciplines people could put into their life. I totally agree. And the sort of opportunity then to celebrate with gratitude and starting to see the growth, as you say, is a great motivator to continue doing more. A bit like the difference between pushing a snowball uphill and then starting to push it downhill, I think. The momentum that starts to build then incites you to do more and the ripple effect that then comes from that across all aspects

of your life is quite unbelievable. and I say that because I know it given the journey that we've been on. Yeah, beautiful metaphor there, yeah. Love that. Now, okay, well, let's flip then a little bit back to your personal situation because I'd love for you to share with us what does your ideal life look like, Jodie? Yes. Paint it out for us in terms of your perfect day, week, year, who you're with, where, what are you doing.

put some shape around that for us so when when we launched the seven effect this was the goal work three days a week earn six figures a year take all of the school holidays off and travel overseas every single year so that was back i set that goal for myself in 2010 and then when we launched the business in 2014, that was the blueprint. As a single mom who was a recovering workaholic, the dream was, well, if I could just earn 120 grand but work Tuesday to Thursday and have a three-day work week, and if I could take all of the school holidays off to be with jazz and deal with some of the things that I don't feel like I have time to deal with, jazz is my son's name by the way not the music jazz um that would be amazing because as a single mother the school

holidays when you're working full-time is a is a is a bitch excuse my language not me i can imagine wow what am i going to do with this child with all of this time and my god thank god for my mother um she helped out a lot immensely um so that was the blueprint and and for me travel i wanted to bring travel back into it. Now, my vision is bigger again. I'm still very happy with the three-day work week, Tuesday to Thursday. My income goals are bigger now, which is exciting. And we are in the process of scaling up the seven effect from a multiple six-figure business to being a seven-figure business. So, we've got a 2020 plan in place and next year is the year 2020 when we will hit that seven-figure million dollar turnover. Obviously, a lot of that money goes back into building the

business and supporting our clients. But my goal also is a lot to do with travel and taking, so I'm about to go and spend two months in Bali, taking more time off and doing work internationally. I'm hosting a retreat over in Bali. I'm studying with two of my mentors, tyler tolman in the health space and roger hamilton in the wealth space and so my ideal life now really is built around that same framework of three days a week week school holidays off and six figures a year but there's even more awesome stuff as we go global if that makes sense yeah it does it's something i wouldn't mind having a conversation with you about as well then on this subject because it's something that uh sonja and i grapple with and and we've been

on this rollercoaster a couple of times because there's a, and I guess the grounding question for us is always how much is enough? Yeah. Because I hear a lot of people in business talk about turnover and between you and I,

I couldn't give a monkey's about turnover because you can be turning over tens of millions of dollars a year, but if you're only taking home 50 cents, then who cares? Correct. How are you going to maintain the balance then between the income that will fund the lifestyle you like without it becoming this massive machine that sucks you back into managing lots of people, spending way more time than what you wanted to and becoming a slave to that? Because it's always the conundrum, I find.

Can you talk us through a little bit of that? Yeah, absolutely. And that is something that people need to be very mindful and aware of. So I am 80-20, 80-20 all the way. If you haven't read the 80-20 principle for your listeners, I'm sure you have, Bushy, but for anyone out there who's listening, Richard Koch wrote the 80-20 principle and living the 80-20 way. So essentially, I apply 80-20 thinking into everything and every decision I make in our

business. Now, 80-20 thinking is essentially where are my low-effort, high-reward activities? So, in the business, the seven effect, my energy is best put into content creation and facilitating and working directly with the clients. Everything else, I pretty much suck at. I can do it. But it's better to outsource it. And this is not an easy journey. So I don't want people to feel like I'm saying this in a flippant way, but building the right team of experts who you truly can trust to manage and grow certain parts of your business for you and take responsibility for that is a very pivotal part of that.

The other thing that I would say is my vision in building the 7 Effect and having goals clubs all over the world is not for me to hire them and start a traditional training company where people hire the 7 Effect, but to build a platform that provides the philosophy and ethos of how this is done. So we actually have an accredited coaching program where we train people to become accredited coaches. I will run the marketing and have the people access us and get the tools and then we will send clients to our accredited coaches who have got the tick of approval and are responsible for running their own business and building their own wealth. So our arms and legs will not be our employees. They will be partners in what we do who I coach and train to have their own successful business doing what I know works and that I can't possibly do all by myself.

Love it. And will there be an ongoing income stream that flows from their access to that so that it tends on an ongoing base becomes a passive opportunity to fund your lifestyle? Am I reading that right or not? Yes, you are reading that right. So a big part of my passive income and my, I guess, secure assets are property. So one of the things that I like to do, Bushy, is I make money in business because business is my playground. Like it literally is fun for me.

And the reason I created the Lifestyle Business Builder program is because I love building businesses so much that I started to make too many of my own. and I said, Jodie, this is stupid, stop it. So, instead, I realized people were coming to me saying, you know what, Jodes, my ultimate goal is to do what you've done, to quit my job, start my own business, make six figures a year, working as a coach or a consultant or a freelancer. So, the Lifestyle Business Builder Program is really what I love to do for fun anyway. I do it for free and down the track there are elements of that that will create passive income because there's online components there's programs that branch off of it that I have other people deliver

on our behalf so we have a copy and PR expert that does stuff in it we pay her and we still make some profit so there is this entire framework that I've created where it's not dependent on solely me, but the lion's share of my wealth on paper is in property. Okay. Now, you know I'm going to get excited about having a conversation about that. So, talk to me about your property journey and what you've done to date, why you're doing it, and what does that look like? I'd love to share that with the audience if you don't mind. Yeah, absolutely. So, there's probably three chapters to my property journey. The first chapter was obviously just buying the family home. So, my husband and I at the time, and we're divorced now, and he's a great mate, very amicable divorce. That wasn't the meltdown relationship. Well done.

It was the one after that. We're great mates, which was good. So we bought our first family home and we were living in London. My ex-husband's English, came back pregnant, ready to buy our first property. And we bought the true renovator's delight. And that was not a good idea. Pretty soon we divorced. The good old money bit.

Yeah. But whilst we were doing that, whilst we took our money and bought our first property, Papa started to get back in my ear and he gave me a copy of Think and Grow Rich. No, not Think and Grow Rich. Rift Out Poor Dad, I'm guessing. Yeah, that's the one, Rift Out Poor Dad. I went along to see Robert Kiyosaki.

Just as I finished reading the book, it was like, boom, he's coming to town. So I went and saw Robert Kiyosaki and I, of course, signed up to, because I am one of those people that sign up to everything, I signed up to his $8,000 boot camp where you fly up to Queensland and do the training with him. And it was $8,000 that we didn't have at the time to invest, but I decided, my husband and I at the time both said, yeah, let's just do this. Papa always says, you got to bank your money in property. Let's go for it. So I took my son, Jazz, who was about one and a half on my hip with my mom off to Sydney or Queensland, wherever it was,

we went and I literally devoured all the knowledge that Robert Kiyosaki gave us and I came back and within three months I'd bought three properties with no money down they were all just purchased through a bit of equity and they were all positively geared so the rule was positive geared positive geared and this was in a time and still is today people saying you can't do it you can't make it happen but of course you can so I followed the rules diligently they were all properties purchased out in the northern suburbs and they weren't easy to manage we did make money on them when we finally flipped them but the idea was hold and just get that passive income once I used up all the equity I also then found an amazing deal because I was a big part of my

time at that time was just going to real estate agents and looking at property and just crunching numbers. I spent three months crunching numbers and I loved it. And a real estate agent came to me one day and he said, Jodie, I found this property that I need to sell urgently that you might be interested in, but I need someone to sign today. And it was a restaurant on Melbourne Street, a commercial property. He told me that it would be valued at about 780, but he could sell it 690 if he got someone to sign today. I did the numbers on it. It was very positively geared. I think it was over $1,000 a month profit that we would make, which was great. And so I signed the contract and I didn't have any equity left. I didn't have any deposit. I just knew the numbers

were good. And I thought, if I can get this loan across the ground, across the line, this is going to be a great deal. So, I went out and I found some equity partners. I talked my dad into becoming one of them and another lady that I'd met at Robert Kiyosaki. And we created a company structure and we purchased it through that. But what was really interesting was I had the audacity to sign without the money, and I didn't even have the partners at that time because you could just do and or nominees. And then I just worked my butt off and didn't sleep at night just going, how do I make this happen?

About four lenders knocked us back and said, we'll never finance this, but I just knew I would make it happen, and we did. We got it across the line. I think the really smart move I'm hearing there is actually bringing in the partners because if they contribute to the equity, then the banks will give you the rest. That's right.

That's what happened. Yeah, well done. And I guess necessity is the mother of invention. And there were 30 days probably to make it happen. There's no greater incentive than that to work some magic. Well done. And I am like a persistent, tenacious pain in the butt who just doesn't, when I believe in something,

I will not let it go. So I really knew that we could make it work and most people would have given up after the third one. Most people wouldn't have signed the contract, by the way. Well, this is true, actually. Yeah, so awesome effort. And okay, well, let's talk a bit more about that. So where has that led you to in the properties for you?

What's happening and what's happened since then? We held all of those properties, my husband and I, while we were married for several years, I think maybe four or five years. And after we divorced, we eventually did the settlement and it was all amicable and we sold up and we just split the profit. So we made some good money out of that. and then after that so chapter two was I decided to just buy myself a little flat and rebuild and I pumped money back into my business I decided right I've I'm going to really build this business

which back then was called Mud Drum Australia my pottery business and get that going so I focused then on lifestyle for a while and I put my profits into just one property that I owned then I met a man fell in love and together we bought a house and I kept the other property um as a mental investment yep now here's a warning uh heed this advice listeners when you fall in love my friends pay me out about this it's like oh jodie's got her love eyes on i'm a hopeless romantic and i i used to fall hard and fast bushy and i fall in love and i'm like i'm all in and so what would happen well not not what would but what did happen on this one occasion was we bought a house together I refinanced my property to pay the deposit and because we

were so in love and I honestly believe this was the soulmate for the rest of my life we just fixed everything in for five years fixed rates now this was at a time where interest rates were much higher and I don't know which way it worked but anyway when we separated two years later I didn't look at the fine print I didn't think the right way I was just I acted out of nature I sold my investment and it wasn't until I got the settlement fee statement from the conveyancer that I saw all the fees that I lost in the break of the loan to in excess of like 20 grand well here's the you were lucky I've seen some people who during the GFC locked just before the GFC this is 2008 2009, locked in their loans for five years, and then rates fell through the floor, obviously,

and then they decided, oh, we need to get out of this. I've seen people get flogged 80, 90 grand in what they call them, break fees on a fixed rate, because there's an economic loss to the bank. It can be devastating. So I'm with you. Unless you absolutely have to, and you're absolutely certain about the timeline, fixing is not generally a good idea and it was around that GFC time so the one of them was about so what happened was there was two properties all up I lost about 50 grand in bloody break freeze

because I paid him out put the property in my name refinance and it was like whoa where'd all my profit go shit to the bank so that was a big lesson learned and then I was back to square one at least I had the family home and now it was starting all over again um third time lucky hey so chapter three how's chapter three going then where are you at on the property journey now what's it look like chapter three is going fantastic and chapter three happened because my current partner who is a beautiful man Jason who's also a business owner um and I when we got together after a couple of years of being together we decided you know what let's just try and reduce some of our expenses living in two houses and having the kids and all of that is a

bit messy and I'd been a while I'd been to this share economy conference that was talking about Airbnb and I came back from that and I said Jase I've got an idea we don't know whose house we want to move into but why don't I just put my house on Airbnb and then when it books out I'll come and stay with you you know jazz and i will come and stay at your house so that was in may 2016 it must have been or maybe 2017 anyway put it on airbnb literally within 24 hours i had a booking and it was like whoa we better tidy up this house and then um we we stayed with jace and I pretty much never moved back because it was just booked solid. It was really at that time when Airbnb was kind of the new thing

and everyone was getting around it and I was blown away because my house is in the – it's like a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, but it's in North Plimpton. Like it's not on the beach. It's not in the hills. It's literally – Close to everything though. Yeah, great spot.

Still a good location. Yeah, great location. Yeah, great location. So from that, I decided Airbnb is the go. got another one in Glenelg put that on Airbnb just a little apartment because I love Glenelg and I also have a property in Margaret River that's under the NRAS scheme I forgot to talk about that one but I got that before I got all of these I was going to say NRAS is like a four letter word for SHIT but that's another story it's been a bit of a dog I have to admit um but

But there has been, and particularly because Western Australia has had a huge hit, property prices, so it's gone down. About to turn, though, Jodie. Yeah, I'm hanging in there, Bushy. The blessing in my NRAS is that the tax write-offs have been fantastic. So I haven't been stung by any big tax bills since I've had this business. And it's not pulling a heap of money out of your pocket, which is one of the things that I'm hearing here,

which is on the good news front. And it's something that a lot of property investors don't think enough about is how much is this property going to pull out of my pocket for a week while it's going up in value? And the one good thing about NRAS is that it does soften the blow. So if it's structured the right way, it's actually putting money in your pocket while you're not doing anything in value, but at least it's not hamstringing lifestyle

or dragging money out of the business or anything else while it gets itself sorted out. That's right. It does give me a lovely big chunk of tax time and halfway through the year, I get a couple of grand and it sort of just sits there break even. But yeah, the property value has definitely gone down, but hopefully turn around. I hang in there for my 10 years. And all of my other properties, I live by the rule that Robert Kiyosaki bashed into

my brain is positively geared, positively geared, because the more positively geared properties you have, the more you can afford to have. If they're negatively geared, you're slowly sending yourself broke and we don't want that. But I think one of the key messages, it sounds like you're using this to your advantages, that you still use the negative gearing approaches, but if it's structured the right way, the property ends up being positively geared. So you've got the, you're effectively having the cake and eating it too. so yeah which has worked well for me because i know they um the nres one is a strange one but

it does fit nicely in my portfolio and gives me some good kickbacks as well so yeah and then the final property that i have at the moment is the one that i've just purchased to set up our business in so my family trust bought a property around the corner from our home and i use that as a training center and the seven effect offices um and then the seven effect rents it off of the family trust because i thought well rather than pay rent to someone else uh why wouldn't i own that asset um and i do like having property and it was it's literally around the corner from where we live so it's just a win there yeah love it love it no it's a uh a really integrated and Diverse portfolio, and the take-home message for myself and the listeners there is use the income that you're making in the business or in your job, whatever you're doing, but park it in a growth asset like property and set it up so that it's looking after itself and it's set and forget.

And time, the tax man and the tenant will pretty much do the rest for you. So that's awesome. Okay. Okay. Just sort of jumping in, because it's a question I like to ask everyone. What do you think are the keys for sustainable success? And I emphasize sustainable because success can come and go, and there's a lot of wonders and overnight successes, as they like to call them, but as you've already said, normally it takes at least 10 years. What do you think are the keys to sustainable success, Jodie?

Look, I really do believe in having some roots in appreciating assets because what I love about business is the ride. I love surfing the wave of business and entrepreneurship, but I also know that businesses can come and go and be wiped out and, you know, things happen in the market, trends and all of those things. But property for me creates sustainable success in my life because I know if I shut down the seven effects tomorrow, I could still live a comfortable life off of the rent from the properties that I have. So that sustains me financially. But then there's the other elements of life.

And I think sustainable success really does also require us to look at our health and our happiness, which is really the brain and the passion element all put together, seven elements really. And I think our health is a big one. A lot of people sort of sacrifice their health in the pursuit of wealth. And it's only when we start to have the symptoms and the twinges and the problems arise that we go far out. I better start investing in my health so sustainable success requires us to really value respect and understand how our body and our brain functions and this is what most people really are unaware of you know there's so many things that we do to our brains and our body that are just not sustainable in any way shape or form from the food that you can buy in the supermarket

it through to the kind of self-talk that people tend to ruminate over when they're trying to fall asleep at night. So, sustainable success requires us to clean that stuff up. You know, once a year, do a detox. I've got the 30-day brain-body business detox starting next month. And just clear out the crap every now and then, I think, is really required because crap builds up. A clutter builds up in my life.

So for me to sustain my success, I've got to clear it out and focus on the seven elements of life. Well, it's interesting. I love your thinking around that and we'll probably jump on board with you actually because my good wife, Sonia, operates on the theory. It's almost a Buddhist approach of minimalism and that is – and let's take clothes as an example. If you haven't worn something in the last three months, it's gone.

See you. Love it. So it's amazing how that continual cleansing just sort of keeps you calm and keeps you focused on what's important. And all of that nitty-gritty clutter just doesn't sort of bog things down. And it folds into things like we just don't listen to the news. If something's good enough or bad enough, someone will tell us, but we don't need to rub our nose in the negativity.

So I don't think the last time we watched the news is about, it would have been over 20 years ago, I reckon, Jodie? yep i'm with you on that i don't watch the news and every now and then it's interesting i have my partner and i once flicked over and the news sat on for a couple of minutes and when you haven't watched the news for a long time some of these stories that are on it are almost so ridiculous that it seems like a satire it was like it's like is this is this a joke is this really what they're talking about and making a big deal out of you know it's so dramatized you know there was a the article that was on the news this night that we were saying is this for real had lots of

dramatic music and it had a senior citizen uh with a pipe that had flooded the road and they were talking about how it was causing this poor man to have this terrible day and he couldn't get down to pay his bills at the post office and it's like you know you're just creating a big drama out of something that doesn't need to be a big drama, you know. Exactly, exactly. It's crazy. Yeah, we've got a saying that comes from Sonia's father actually in the business.

If someone comes to us and says, we've got a problem, and they only ever do this once. Yeah. Have we got a problem? And our answer is always the same. Did someone die? No? Oh, it wasn't a problem then.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, perspective is really interesting. And unfortunately, the mainstream, and I won't get on my, soapbox here but the mainstream media is a dying entity and their only way of maintaining relevance is to use fear and greed and controversy so they'll they'll over emphasize and dramatize things that aren't really issues at all and i hope that someone's going to listen and for those that immerse themselves and drown themselves in that uh it it feeds the fear and prevents them from actually doing anything correct and that is it actually makes me quite angry

really because it's a form of corruption and it's a form of control and unfortunately without trying to be all conspiracy theory about it the reality is many people feed their brains with this stuff regularly and so at an unconscious level of course they feel afraid about investing of course they feel like business is a risky thing to do of course they're terrified about leaving their job and breaking free to follow their passions because the world they've been convinced is a terrifyingly frightening place and you've got to be careful go home lock yourself up and just protect your children and your health vaccination quick smart you know and it's like I know we could go off on a tangent here for hours I reckon judging we'll do that next time that we catch up to have a coffee

but I 100% agree with you on all that and that the the really interesting thing is we live in the best time that the world has ever experienced there's more opportunity there's there's better things happening now than there ever has so uh for for me uh i i constantly bless that i'm alive at this time because we've got opportunities to do things that no one in the history of civilization has ever been able to do so quickly so easily and so safely it's a an exciting time but that's a conversation for another time. I want to flip gears then into what I generally refer to as the ambush. And it's, you know, I play on the old nickname there, Jodie,

or the bushfire lightning round. And it's five questions that the listeners constantly ask me to get answers to from people that we speak to like yourself. So to kick that off, what's your favourite quote and why? so it's by Ralph Waldo Emerson and it is do not follow where the path may lead go instead where there is no path and leave a trail love it it gives me goosebumps every time I say it but to me it's about saying you know what if you're following the herd you're going in the wrong way have the courage to stop and look at other alternatives because just because there

might not be a path clearly trodden doesn't mean there can't be a path created by you so to me it's about trailblazing it's about courage it's about innovation and it's about living the life that's in your heart not the life that everyone around you is telling you should live yes that's gold absolutely love that but let's uh sort of transition a bit then uh in terms of uh getting the knowledge that will support that approach to life, what's the top book or books that you'd recommend people read and why? Well, obviously, our books, Bushy. Of course.

Yeah, of course. The Seven Effect, just to reinforce that one, absolutely. The Seven Effect and The Freedom Formula, which is a spectacular book, by the way. But in all seriousness, no, The Seven Effect is a good book. I it's not a literary piece of artwork or anything but pragmatic but I'll tell you a couple of books that I think are game-changing so I've already mentioned the 80-20 principle but one of the books that most people have not heard about that I really think is important for people to understand right now is called The End of Jobs by Taylor Pearson it's not a famous book it's not a book

many people are aware of but it's a very profound book because it talks about the shift that is happening. And like you were saying, we live in the most opportune time right now for anyone to achieve anything they want. The world literally has never been your oyster like it is today. It's exciting. And in the end of jobs, Taylor Pearson presents a lot of very compelling and well thought out data to show us why the safe, secure job is no longer the safe, secure option. and in fact the rise of the entrepreneur is coming and the safe secure option if you want true financial security is to hone in on that skill set and develop your own business and take full responsibility for your own wealth as an entrepreneur so I love that book it's it's one

of my business bibles yeah I think the sad reality of life as it currently stands for those who still hang on to that belief that life is their safety and security is that that is actually the biggest risk because if you're lulled into a sense of I'm okay, I've got a job, but suddenly that job disappears and a lot of them do. That's right. And you haven't positioned yourself in relation to having a skill that people need and only you and a few others have,

then life will potentially get very interesting. That's right. And that is Snow White Syndrome at its worst because I've seen it happen where organisations, when I was a leadership coach and consultant, large organisations would go through downsizing. So, you know, 50 people, 100 people would get laid off at a time and you'd have thousands of people spending months and months on what they would openly call a grieving period. And it's like, you know what, folks, the world is changing around you. rather than spend another three and six months in your grieving period choose to to create your life

the way you want it to be you want it to be you know there's a lot of people sitting on sinking ships complaining about the hole in the ship but doing nothing to fix it or at least jump out and learn to swim you know i love it absolutely love it all right a bit of a shift in gears here and it's this is almost a bit of a left field question but it's something that uh i guess a lot of Australians feel that they pay too much tax. Yeah. So, what's the top legal thing that you've done to pay minimal tax, Jodie? Well, my NRAS.

My silly old NRAS. Your old NRAS. Yeah, my good old NRAS. You know, it's funny. So, there's two things, really. The NRAS has been good from a tax perspective because you get a, I don't know, what is it, a 10 grand tax credit. Yeah.

So as a business owner, that means that rather than me paying tax, ironically, some years I've even had tax come back to me at the end of that time. The other thing is my business is my life, not in a way of being a workaholic like I once was, but it's a lifestyle business. And so the things that I do in my business are tax deductible because they are about what I do in the business. So I went and I studied yoga because I bring yogic philosophies into how I teach business and how I teach life design.

Now, a great love of mine is the study of yoga, but guess what? It's a tax deduction as well. I have a client who's based in Fiji and she brought me over there for her 40th birthday and that trip, you know, some work-based stuff and it was a tax deduction. I have a client in Miami, so I get to travel to Miami as a tax deduction. And so my life, my Bali retreats and my trip over there is my business is designed to fund the lifestyle I want and what I love to do is just happen to be tax deductible. Brilliant. Yeah, that's another one of the old Kiyosaki philosophies if you go back far enough and something that we certainly adopt as well.

So I love that. Yep, some great sharings there. Now, back on the investment subject, and I'm not talking just purely about, you know, physical investment, but more broadly than that, if you'd like, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? Okay, so the best would be, Papa wins there. My best investment advice would be learn how to make money make work for you so you don't have to work for it. And really, that is essentially the art of investing. So when you understand what that truly means and how money truly works, you create freedom for yourself and you are programmed by nature to look for investment opportunities.

Most people are blind to the opportunities around them. So thank you, Papa. He was the winner. The worst piece of investment advice I got was from one of those rotten financial planners who my accountant booked me in with a meeting and I nearly punched this man in the face but I'm not a violent person so I chose not to but he was he was giving me investment advice which was really about really high priced income protection insurance and I said to him look I really don't feel like I need that because I feel like I've got my property as my like if my business

falls down, I have income from my rent. And he looked at me and he was very dramatic at how he did this. This is where the fear training came in. And he looked me square in the eyes. And remember, my son's name is Jazz. And he said, gee, Jodie, what am I going to tell Jazz at your funeral about how he's going to take care of himself? And I went, you bastard. For number one, you won't be at my funeral, buddy. And number two, you won't be talking to my son about any such thing. I'd tell her like his funeral wasn't too far away from what you're about to do. What am I going to tell your wife at your funeral when she learns I killed you?

Dearing me. Yeah, the old fear machine. I thought that was awful advice and I really loathed the way he gave it to me as well. Really sleepy. Yeah, that is ugly. All right, let's flick back to the good stuff, the happy habits that you've talked about. Can you share with us a personal habit that you believe contributes to your investment success? Yes, goals club. Definitely set your goals.

Share your goals. It's one thing to set them and it's a whole nother thing to share them. So I think one of the best things people can get invested in is their goals in life. It's a really important thing. Another thing is investing in your health. So one of my habits is to consume content that teaches me about how my brain and my body work. and so i'm responsible for my health and i'm responsible for my wealth and i think too many

people hand the responsibility of those three things over to the government and they're not to be trusted with health or wealth from my perspective so yeah well pretty much anything just quietly but that's another story but yep set your goals invest in your health invest in your wealth our happy habits around that is educating yourself lifelong learning exercise again it's the day we stop learning is the day we we start dying there's no question about that that's awesome really brilliant thoughts there now to sort of bring it bring it to a close then if how old's jazz how old is jazz now has he left school he has we took him out of school at the end of year 10 and started his own business family legacy he's a personal trainer he's got

his own business as a personal trainer working at your world fitness in the city and he's doing incredibly well tracking to buy his first property by the time he's 18. Well you probably just answered that question because the question I normally ask is if you if you spoke to a school leaver and and normally use your own kids as the example what will you advise them to invest their time money and skills in to create their version of freedom well you've just answered it at a very early age he's getting a feel straight away for uh running his own business and how how to manage money and make money work for him so that's yeah absolutely and jazz is my living guinea pig he knows this and i tell him openly for lifestyle entrepreneurs academy for young people so i've

thought you know what for me to really earn my stripes and have parents entrust their young people with me and my approach to building wealth and becoming an entrepreneur let's put my son in the ring see if it can work love it that's awesome awesome sensational now uh sort of looking to the future then i know that you've got a brilliant event coming up that for those that are really starting to think about the future and taking on board all the fantastic advice and information that you've shared with us today. What is that opportunity and how can people start to get stuck into it? It is Wake Up Adelaide. So this is something that's been a goal of mine for a very long time Bushy and this year 2019 on November 21st and 22nd at the Adelaide Convention

Centre we present you two incredibly life-changing days of wake-up moments that will really help people recognise and realise that there are choices available for you. There are choices where you can step off of the treadmill and follow your own path like Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests and really live your life exactly as you want to and so it's a two-day conference we're thrilled that you're going to jump on board and be one of our speakers for that event and it's really about sharing those wake-up moments every one of our speakers has their own incredible wake-up story. But what I also want to do is make sure that people leave with the practical and tangible tools to go home and implement them. We're trying to create here,

Bushy, a bit of a revolution in Adelaide. I think it's a beautiful city to live in. I think Adelaide's filled with opportunity. But sometimes people forget that Adelaide's a bit small. Adelaide's the sleepy city. It's a great place to retire or raise a family, but there's now. The truth is Adelaide is an abundance of opportunity and excitement and we really want to create an underbelly of lifestyle entrepreneurs and people who are awake and taking full responsibility for their health and their wealth and a community of people who are just living life by design. So, wake up Adelaide is going to be absolutely amazing. You got to get there. Yeah, absolutely. For those that can see the massive opportunity that you're talking about there and to swim in a pool of people, the biggest thing for me, because I'm 100% behind you, I think Adelaide's the best kept secret in the country. And all of the things that we criticise for are actually all of our opportunities.

Yeah. This is the most liveable, we talk about lifestyle business, this is the most liveable city in the country and probably the world as far as that goes from what I've seen travelling a fair bit. But the community is really key. It's when you're swimming in a pool of people who believe what you believe, then magic can happen.

So how do they go about, where do they get a ticket? How do they go about getting on board with that? so if you go to wakeupadelaide.com and there is early bird tickets that go out the speakers will all be announced in the first week of july and there's also a facebook page called wake up adelaide that you can follow and if anyone wants to get in contact with me directly happy to announce the speakers and let them know how they can get their hands on one of our very last two for one tickets i have a couple of those left if anyone wants one and my email is just jody at the seven effect.com with the number seven and um yeah or you can go straight to the wake

up adelaide.com website brilliant brilliant now in the lead up to that you know there's obviously a fantastic opportunity to start with the uh the life audit and start the life planning process so that by the time they get to the conference, they've already got some clarity around where they're at and they're wanting to head. How can they get started on that process? What do they need to do and where do they need to go? So if people are on Facebook,

there is actually a group called Life Design School and it's a free group that we run to give people a taste of Goals Clubs and in that you can get your hands on the Life Audit, which is a free online program. You'll download a copy and you'll find it all there in Life Design School. If someone wants to actually work with myself or one of our coaches within the team or even just have a chat about their goals or ask me any questions, everyone's welcome to email me directly, jodie at theseveneffect.com and we can take it from there.

We do also have our Ultimate Life Planning Workshop coming up towards the end of the year which i can let people know about if you email me terrific fantastic now just to reinforce the merits of doing that for anyone of the listeners who get on board with with any of those opportunities whether it be the through the life design school doing the life audit or booking into the life planning process or more importantly jumping on board with wake up adelaide And I'm happy to give the listeners a copy of my second book, Get Invested. You and I talked before that you'd be also happy to give them a copy of The Seven Effect. Definitely.

Yeah, it's great, great ways to sort of support those opportunities to do so. And I just want to reinforce how life-changing this process can be for you. I love what you're doing around that Jodie as I've said to you we sort of skate across the life planning process as an important part of what we do around the the property and the investment space but it is the the cornerstone and the foundation stone to get really clear on where you're at where you want to go because that does become the magnet and the compass so jump on board with what Jodie's offering. You'll never look back.

It'll be the best. I'll guarantee it'll be the best thing that you've ever done and you'll thank Jodie and I for it in years to come. I have. And your kids will thank us for doing it as well, Jodie. I have no doubt about it. Yeah. So I just really want to thank you for sharing the time.

I'm really looking forward to working much more closely with you to help support and make your vision become a reality. I think the changes you've made in people's lives already is fantastic, but we're only starting to scratch the surface of that. So if I can get as many people as I can to you so they get excited about their life again, you give them the confidence to make the jump and then we can assist them in actually funding that reality

so that they've got the freedom and they've got the fulfilment that we all deserve and have the opportunity to enjoy, then the world is going to be a much better place. So thanks again for your time today, Jodie, and looking forward to building Adelaide and the rest of the country into the place that we all know that it can and should be. Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me, Bushy, and it's so lovely to be reunited with my long-lost twin. That doesn't say it from another mother. That's right. We should go forth and inspire people to live life by design, not by default, and we'll do it together because there's power in numbers. Love it.

Thanks for having me. Great way to close. Thanks, Jodie. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au

forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.