Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: How John Mihailidis became a self-made millionaire

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

John Mihailidis is the Founder of Project My Profit - an online program teaching people how to build real wealth investing in stocks. He’s on a mission to inspire others to build real wealth over time by investing in stocks based on his own personal success in becoming a self-made millionaire. In 2006, for the very first time, John picked up a book about investing by Warren Buffett, and read it cover to cover. By the time he finished that book he was inspired to become just like Warren and build wealth by investing in stocks so he could retire early and live financially free. In just 12 years as a self-taught investor he’s been able to make over $4 million running his own family fund. When you talk with John the first thing you notice about him is his genuine humility, and down to earth nature. John’s not a flashy millionaire that let his wealth go to his head, he’s just a guy who describes himself as an every day Aussie that's really passionate about building wealth with stocks.  So why is John so passionate?  Because he’s cracked the code and developed a simple formula that works. His investment strategy has stood the test of time and continued to work for him and his family consistently for over a decade. What I love about John is that unlike a lot of investors who are polarised as property ‘or’ share investors, John is an ‘AND’ investor – it is not property or shares, its property and shares – he has embraced both at different stages of his wealth journey. He has created multiple income streams on his way to his current lifestyle using his businesses to leverage into property to build his nest egg, and now using shares and other investments to fund his ongoing lifestyle – and we talk about all of this during today’s deep dive conversation. If you’d like to get a copy of John’s ebook dedicated to Warren Buffett, just listen carefully and then email [e-mail] with the name of the Warren Buffett book that John recommends along with the number of pages he mentions it contains during our engaging conversation. And if you like what you hear from John and would like to know more, come and join us at the upcoming Wake Up Adelaide conference on November 21 and 22, 2019.  More info and tickets: www.wakeupadelaide.com John's book recommendation: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder 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.

You know, I think my dreams were, you know, outweighed my fears and I think people get caught up in their fears outweighing their dreams and I had these big, big dreams and my fears weren't going to outweigh my big dreams. Yeah, love that. So I had the courage to focus on my dreams and not my fears because my dreams were bigger than my fears. And I think some people, you know, it's their fear that's bigger

than their actual dream. But if you can dream really, really big, fears are only a little hurdle that you just need to jump over. 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 bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested thanks for listening and now let's get invested hi freedom fighters do your dreams outweigh your fears or do your fears outweigh your dreams

if your fears outweigh your dreams which is the case with many of us who are stuck in our illusionary comfort zones and trapped on the treadmill how can you overcome your fears to realise your dreams? Well, the first thing is to make sure your dreams are so compelling that you'll do anything and overcome any hurdle to achieve them. So you need to get crystal clear on what your dreams, your why and your vision for your life are and how you want to live. Very few take the time to create a magnetising picture of your ideal life, your perfect day, week, month and year, what you're doing, where, when, with who and how it makes you feel. So if you want a very easy to follow way to do this, just grab a copy

of my book, The Freedom Formula, which takes you through how I did it and how we continue to do it. The second thing is to reduce and overcome your fears. Now, that's easier said than done, I know. But I believe a healthy level of fear is actually your friend. It's there to protect you, not by stopping you from doing anything, but to make sure you're aware and prepared for what you're doing. But more importantly, it's a sign that you're moving out of your comfort zone by learning and growing. In my view, doing nothing in our rapidly changing world is actually far riskier. Playing it safe is a new risky. But more on that another time. For me, fear normally flows from a lack of knowledge. Fear equals

ignorance, whereas knowledge grows clarity and confidence. If you understand something, you're less fearful of it because the perceived risk is reduced. And as the world's greatest investor and one of the world's most wealthiest individuals, Warren Buffett, is famously saying, I put a heavy weight on certainty. If you do that, the whole idea of a risk factor doesn't make any sense to me.

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. Now, Warren Buffett is one of my heroes of sustainable success. Why? His approach to investing is based on honesty, values and long-term timeless principles that apply to anything you invest in, be it yourself, your job, career, business, property or shares. So let me share with you a little of his inspiring story as the Oracle of Omaha. now warren was a c grade average student at school but his financial career began at the tender age of just six selling gum and coca-cola and delivering newspapers he bought his first

share at age 11 and now believes he started too late and by the time he was 14 he filed his first tax return having saved a thousand dollars and about the same time he bought a small farm with his savings. Rolling forward to the age of 26, he set up his first investment partnership for family and friends and he put together $174,000 at that stage. And recently, now at the age of about 87, his personal fortune was $84.7 billion and 99% of his wealth was earned after he turned 50. And this is from his steadfast belief in the magic of compounding interest over the long term. To me, Buffett proves that nice guys can finish first. Over the years, he's treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and championed

honesty as an investor. And his goal is to keep helping others invest until the day dies. In all of this, he's my role model. His basic principle is to behave according to his inner scorecard, doing what he feels and knows to be correct, rather than using the outer scorecard and measuring himself by the opinions of others. He's indifferent to the trappings of wealth, and he's defiantly unsophisticated. And his rules of investment are very straightforward. don't invest in something you don't understand

be in there for the long term and build in a margin of safety now when you hear that it's easy to think well surely anyone could do that so why is there only one Warren Buffett the answer is that it demands a resolute independence of mind

and a level of informed courage patience, persistence and resilience that eludes most investors in today's instant world. Now, quoting again from my book, The Freedom Formula, here are some of my favourite Bush Buffettisms. Firstly, focus on long-term value. Second, ignore the day-to-day fluctuations of the market. Third, include a margin of safety to minimise risk.

Fourth, secure a well-chosen portfolio based on reasonable prices, not bargain prices. Fifth, reinvest your returns. Sixth, be financially and psychologically prepared to deal with short-term market fluctuations. Seventh, be able to say no unless all the facts are in your favor. Eighth, be content to hold any investment indefinitely. And nine, don't try to analyse or worry about the general economy. And my favourite Buffett quote is, wealth is the transfer of money from the inpatient to the patient. And Warren Buffett is also the hero for today's special guest,

who himself is a very successful investor. John Mihalides is the founder of Project My Profit, an online program teaching people how to build real wealth investing in stocks. He's on a mission to inspire others to build real wealth over time by investing in stocks based on his own personal success in becoming a self-made millionaire. In 2006, for the very first time,

John picked up a book about investing by Warren Buffett and read it cover to cover. By the time he finished that book, he was inspired to become just like Warren and build wealth by investing in stocks so that he could retire early and live financially free. And in just 12 years as a self-taught investor, he's been able to make over $4 million running his own family fund.

Now when you talk with John, the first thing you notice about him is his genuine humility and his very down-to-earth nature. John's not a flashy millionaire that let his wealth go to his head. He's just a guy who describes himself as an everyday Aussie that's really passionate about building wealth with stocks. But why is John so passionate? Because he's cracked the code and developed a very simple formula that works. His investment strategy has stood the test of time

and continued to work for him and his family consistently for over a decade now. And what I love about John is that unlike a lot of investors who are polarised as either property or share investors, John is an and investor. It's not property all shares, it's property and shares. He's embraced both at different stages of his wealth journey. He's created multiple income streams on his way to his current lifestyle, using his businesses to leverage into property, to build his nest egg,

and now using shares and other investments to fund his ongoing lifestyle. And we talk about all of this during today's deep dive conversation. If you'd like to get a copy of John's e-book dedicated to Warren Buffett, just listen carefully and then email me at bushey at khgroup.com.au, that's bushey at khgroup.com.au, with the name of the Warren Buffett book that John recommends, along with the number of pages he mentions it contains during our engaging conversation. and if you like what you hear from john and would like to know more come and join us at the upcoming wake up adelaide conference on the 21st and 22nd of november where you'll get to rub shoulders with him up close and personal along with 17 other groundbreaking world-leading lifestylers who are driving the wake up movement to help you find your spark and discover a smarter way to work and live There aren't many tickets left, so jump on www.wakeupadelaide.com now to avoid missing out.

In the meantime, enjoy this really enlightening chat with John Mihalis. Hi Freedom Fighters. In the run-up to the Wake Up Conference in Adelaide on the November 21st and 22nd, And I've got the real pleasure of podcasting with all of the successful people that I'll be sharing the stage with at that awesome event. And today, we get to spend rare quality time with a fellow investor who shares my mission to build real wealth over time by investing with intent. So welcome, and let's get invested, John Mihaladis.

How are you, mate? Hi. How are you, mate? You good? Good. And I still think I pronounced your surname wrong, mate. So my apologies for that. You were close.

That's fine. Mate, really appreciative of you spending some time with us today. And we'll be sort of digging in deep to your specialisation area around equities, which is something that we haven't dug into at all in Get Invested today. But before we do that, mate, I'd just love you to, in your own words, give us a rundown on who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do. Well, my name's John Mihalides, I'm an entrepreneur and I've started a program called Project My Profit because I'm on a mission to inspire people to build real wealth over time by investing

in the stock market. And so I've created an online program called Project My Profit where I've created about 135 videos so people can watch these videos from home. and what inspired me to start Project Not Profit was I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and so through my journey we were looking at ways of becoming wealthy and one of the ways was to invest in the stock market and so part-time in the last sort of 12, 13 years I was able to amass about four and a half million dollars I'm self-taught

just through reading and following a certain philosophy and I started to try and teach my son who was 19 on on how to invest and then it hit me that there'd be so many other people out there that probably would like to learn from someone who who's basically self-taught and so I started the program called Project My Profit. Yeah, awesome, mate. Amassing $4.5 million is no easy achievement, and we will dig into that in some detail shortly. But what would be, I think, really interesting for the listeners to enjoy

is your long-term journey to date. So if you wouldn't mind sort of taking us right back to as early as you would like to think of and take us through what you invested your time, your energy and your money in, when, what were the pluses and minuses of that, where did that lead you to and how did that then get you to where you are today? Would you mind just sort of walking through your history on that basis? I think my earliest memory, I've always wanted to be wealthy. I always thought about money.

And I remember even when I was about 11 years old, I remember telling my mum one day, I don't know, I think our family were having money issues. My parents just came from Greece to Australia. And I think my mum was upset one day about some money issue. And I said to her that one day I'm going to become a millionaire, mum, so don't worry. And I remember her laughing at me.

and it wasn't laughing at me. She just, you know, it was sort of a little 11-year-old telling her something that probably would never happen and it sort of inspired me. You know, I felt like my mum was laughing at me. I'm going to show her that, you know, one day I'm going to be wealthy. So I even remember from that age that I was really interested in how to build wealth. And then I was really into soccer.

And I remember at about the age of 16, I got an invitation to go to the Australian Institute of Sport. So I took up the scholarship. I was there for two years. I ended up playing at the highest level in Australia. It used to be called the NSL back then, and now it's called the A-League. Okay. I represented Australia a few times.

And so I was a driven person. I, you know, whenever I sort of put my mind to it, I wanted to achieve. And so always wanting to be wealthy. In my early 20s, I remember back then we didn't have phones. So I remember I read an article saying come to a property investment seminar. And it was in The Age. And so I went to this seminar and it talked about investing in property. So this was my sort of first learnings of investing.

And I was so keen that I went off and I started to – so I'm in my early 20s. The first thing I did after that course was I bought a little one-bedroom apartment in Eastern Kilda. This is probably going back about 30 years now, and I think I paid about $30,000 for it. And then I accumulated two more, one in Prahran and then one in Elsternwick. So I started my property investing. That's how I sort of got going. And I think, as I mentioned before, I'm 55 now and I've only ever worked for someone else for two years of my life, and that was in my early 20s.

uh once i um accumulated these three properties um i decided that i wanted to get into my own little business so i purchased a little cafe uh in queue in a suburb of melbourne um i had my mum as a chef and i committed myself at that age probably you know my sort of mid-20s now um i was doing probably about 90 to 100 hours a week massive seven days i remember working from i think five o'clock in the morning till about nine o'clock at night 9 30. just driving home going to sleep going back to work the next day so i you know at that time um a lot of my friends were going out and you know partying you know that's what you do and my philosophy was I wanted to first build my wealth

and then enjoy my life further down the track, right? That was just my thought process. And so I committed to working all these hours and the business wasn't huge but it was good for me. But then I had two brothers and they'd just finished high school and they didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives, right? So my parents were a bit worried about my two brothers. So I decided, well, maybe I'll – I formed a little company,

and what I did was I put all my assets in there. So I put my three properties and my business into this company. I offered a small ownership to my two brothers, but the deal was that they could come and work for me in my cafe, but I couldn't pay them a lot. Yeah. So they had a little bit of ownership in this company that had a few assets in it but I wanted them to commit to that when I did pay them that we

would just start this um a savings plan and I remember that um every week I would put six hundred dollars into this savings plan and they would put three hundred dollars each that was my two brothers are twins okay and that we would build this savings plan and then we would then buy a bigger business that could carry three of us you know there would be enough profits for three of us right yeah and they agreed so we spent six years saving all this money so we ended up buying a bigger business uh in the city um and uh from there you know we just want to grow the company so we got into property um i did quite a few property deals which we'll probably go into later and then we diversified you know into stocks and and we ended up with about um five

restaurants probably 100 staff um yeah multi sort of property deals that we did um yeah and that got got me to where i am today really yeah okay interesting something i'm just going to wind the clock back a little bit there because I'd love to delve into that driving passion that you had at such an early age. It's quite a rarity to see anyone who, you mentioned at age 11, decided then that you always wanted to be wealthy. Where did that come from, mate? What was the driver that got you started thinking that way? I think it was seeing my parents work so hard. My dad would go to work in the morning in a factory,

work till 4 o'clock. He would go into his car, sleep for two hours in his car, and then go back and do the afternoon shift in the same factory till 1 o'clock in the morning. And he would do that for six days a week. Yeah. And I'm just thinking to myself, you know, like, that can't be, like, one, it couldn't be good for you and it couldn't be healthy,

and two, it's not how I, you know, I wanted to do more, you know. I could see my parents struggling for money and my dad had to, you know, do these hours. And at one stage you got really sick because out of exhaustion you went to the doctors and the doctor said you're running yourself into the ground but he didn't really have a choice you know they came from Greece and this is what he had to do um and I remember my mother uh Bushy you know because they couldn't speak English she got pregnant and um you know she thought she was having a baby and because her English was so

poor uh it was only the day before two days before she was about to give birth that she realized the doctor was saying that she's having two babies wow she was having twins because her english was poor and so so my mom has twins and then now my dad has to do work two jobs because my mom really can't go to work and they were struggling financially and and i think that was a driving force just seeing my parents struggle that i i wanted to sort of you know take myself to the next level and not you know have to struggle yeah well sort of sort of jumping forward because anyone who's you know achieved the sort of sporting prowess that you have in the very competitive soccer arena to get to represent the country that would have taken a lot of

discipline patience and persistence to you know on you know that people talk about talent i guess my own view is you've got to have some talent, but it's the ability to really do the hard yards to make that work. Can you talk us through your thinking at that time and the challenges that you went through to actually go from playing local club soccer right through to the big league and then representing the country? I'd love you to share that with us, mate.

I think you're right. You know, there was probably players who were maybe more talented than me, but the ones that make it have talent and commitment, you know, and it's the commitment part that some people fall over with, you know, when it comes to even life itself, right? So in sport, I, you know, I wasn't the most talented player. All I had to be was the most talented player in my position and I had to be the most committed player in my position.

And so I ended up playing in the A League at 16. So I was one of the youngest players to ever play, you know, at that age. And so I was playing against guys that were 30-year-olds, you know, six foot two with, you know, tattoos and I was just a kid. But I was passionate and committed to my sport, you know, even in the off-season I'd still train four or five times a week by myself. So it's the commitment part, and that's what life and even investing is all about, you know.

To become wealthy is a commitment. You have to be committed to it, you know, on a daily basis, just thinking about it to actually get there. And sport's no different, you know, so. Yeah, so probably, you know, I often say that sport is a micro-wisdom of life. And, you know, there's only 5% of sports people that really achieve the success that everyone wants. And consistently, I see those, they just, it's their every living breath

is focused on making that happen. Yeah, so when I went to the Institute of Sport, I was 16. It was like going to the army, Bush. it was discipline there was commitment there was you know we're in canberra and we had two training sessions one would be at 5 30 in the morning and in canberra in winter it's minus three or four degrees and we had to wake ourselves up and be on the training pitch at 5 30 no one was going to wake you up you just had to be disciplined and i remember we were running around with bell and clavis on just to cope with the cold and gloves.

And so I think the commitment – You'd probably get arrested for doing that now, John. So, you know, it was the commitment and drive that I learnt at the institute that sort of helped me in business. Yeah. Having the drive. So is that – again, I'm just really interested in the drivers there. So that commitment, is that something that's just been innate to you

or you just realised early on that – and probably soccer was a great way to instil that quality because you would have worked out pretty quickly that if you don't have the commitment, it's not going to work. Do you think it's a natural thing for you, and maybe it's a combination of what you saw in your parents, the commitment they made to make your life and your brother's life better? Is that where that commitment came from, you think? I think some people are sort of – I think it was a little bit inbuilt in me,

but then it sort of really grew by seeing things around me, you know. Through, you know, through going through the institute, seeing my parents struggle, that just grew in me to be committed to now changing my life, you know, and, you know, sort of being better, you know, and taking my life to another level. Yeah, so... And at the time, when I'm young, you know, I, you know, I'm seeing my parents struggle, Bushy, and I'm just thinking I want

to become wealthy to help them, right? It wasn't even about me. It was like I want to become wealthy at a young age so I can help my parents not live this life, you know? Yeah. Yeah, so it wasn't at the start. It wasn't even really about me. It was about helping my family, right?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, it's a bigger cause and a bigger drive. Yeah, I love that. Tell me, mate, you achieved the success in soccer in your sort of early to mid-20s. What was the light bulb moment that made you start thinking about it right? Because you talked about going to that property investment seminar. What triggered that thought?

What happened was I hit the top of my sport. But back in those days, it was almost an amateur existence. So it was, you know, semi-professional. So you're making money, but really it wasn't going to be enough to lead a good life. So even, you know, when I represented Australia, it actually cost me money because, you know, I'd have to leave work. There was no money involved.

You know, everything was paid for to get, you know, the trip was paid for and everything. But I'd give up my work to actually go and play, right? So I could just see at that point when I hit the top of my sort of sport and sort of there was nowhere else to go that I could never become wealthy doing this. I had to now focus on outside my sport, right? So I started to take my sport. I decided that one day, okay, well, now I'm going to play soccer, like, socially, you know, still at a high-ish level

and now focus outside of my sport and how am I going to now build me and become, you know, become wealthy, you know, over time. And, yeah, the low-ball moment was one day when I realised that, you know, I can continue playing this sport at this level but it's, you know, where am I going to be when I'm 30, you know, nowhere. So I can't remember the exact date, but I just made a decision that I needed to look outside of my sport now and try and build my life, you know.

And again, a rarity for someone at that young age. I mean, looking back on it now, for someone in your early, probably maybe mid-20s to go, where am I going to be when I'm 30? that's quite revelational for most people that i get to say that people don't aren't even thinking that way so you've obviously always had a fairly forward vision and a fairly strategic approach would i be right in saying that john yeah i remember bushy one day um i i you know i decided i'm gonna now you know i went to this investment um seminar about property and and the first thing I did. I was so excited. I'd saved a bit of money. And I saw a property that I wanted

to buy, so I took my dad with me. And you can imagine I'm just in my, you know, sort of early 20s. I took my dad with me to inspect the property. So my dad came along, and I really liked the property. It was in a great location. It was on a tram line heading to the city uh we left the uh the uh the inspection we went home and i said to my dad i'm going to buy this property right at this stage i'm still living at home with my parents yeah um and my dad convinced me not to um and i remember we had a bit of an argument because my dad was very conservative and he was very scared and here's his young son you know early 20s wanting to buy a property and borrow money and blah blah blah and it just wasn't him yeah and his own fears

you know sort of his own fears then you know he started telling me that i don't want you to do it so i didn't do it but i was sort of angry because i felt like you know i want to progress and my dad sort of being so conservative, which is, you know, that's just his personality. Yeah. So I had to... Put me off, put me off. And, well, I think with my dad and my parents,

they came from Greece and that was a huge life risk for them. Yeah. Right, to leave their country to come here. And so he had risked everything just by coming here. So he was averse to risk anymore. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. If you've made such a big risk, then you want to make the most of it

and therefore that creates a conservative outlook. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And so what I did was then I went to that seminar and then I started buying property on my own without discussing it with him. Yeah, well, let's go right there because most people value and respect their parents' opinions. and a lot of us become our parents because that's the environment that we've grown up in.

Where did you have the courage to step beyond that? Because we are talking courage here to say, right, well, Dad and Mum are saying no, but while I respect Mum and Dad, I'm not going to take that advice. I'm going to go and do this. Can you sort of think back to what you were thinking and how you took that step? I think because I left home when I was 16 and, you know,

I went to Canberra and went to the Institute of Sport, I started to become a really independent thinker and just, you know, playing sport at a high level takes courage in itself just to get there, you know, and I just had the courage to, I wasn't, you know, I think my dreams were, you know, outweighed my fears and I think people get caught up in their fears outweighing their dreams and I had these big, big dreams and my fears weren't going to outweigh my big dreams.

Yeah, love it. And so I had the courage to focus on my dreams and not my fears because my dreams were bigger than my fears. And I think some people, you know, it's their fear that's bigger than their actual dream. But if you can dream really, really big, fears are only a little hurdle that you just need to jump over. Yeah, fears are normally just a lack of knowledge, in my view.

It tends to dissipate it. Mate, yeah, that's a brilliant insight. What do you say to other people now who are in a similar situation where they're starting to look at investing to improve their lifestyle long term and create the wealth that's going to sustain that lifestyle, but they're surrounded by either family or friends or work colleagues who are saying, oh, you'd be crazy to do that. What do you say to those people to say, well, stop listening to it

and make the plunge? I think it's like you said, it's the fear of not knowing. You know, knowledge gives you power. Power then gives you courage, right? So when you're, you know, when you're talking about something like investing and you have no idea about it, it can seem scary, you know. And so you have to invest time to start learning and creating some knowledge for yourself to give you the power, which is the knowledge,

to then create some courage to actually understand how things work and how things will pan out okay once I understand what's going on. It's the lack of knowledge that scares people because they're not sure, you know. That's what I think it is. And no one taught me about investing in the stock market. I think I spent the first 12 months reading everything I could, taking notes, hour upon hour reading articles

before I even invested in the stock market. So I just try to build up my knowledge as much as I could before I even started. So I think it's the knowledge thing that people don't get scared about. They're not sure about. Yeah, well said. Now, just sort of, again, digging a bit deeper around that period where clearly yourself and your twin brothers were doing pretty well. You had the five restaurants and the property deals that you'd done.

But I'm sensing there must have been another lightbulb moment there because I'm also sensing with the hours that you ended up working, you sort of become a slave to that machine, particularly in the business. And I say that because I've been there myself, John, where you build this awesome business but then all of a sudden you're working for it rather than it's working for you. What happened at that point that you're saying, right, hey, I'm falling into this, and I'm making a guess here,

I'm falling into the same old trap. Yes, I'm doing really well, but it's costing me all of my time. Can you talk us through that period and what happened that then sent you in the share direction? Yes, so we ended up with five restaurants, about 100 staff, and I realised that we were growing too quickly. We had grown too quick. And I think, you know, if we talk about some of the failures

that I've had, it was trying to become, sometimes people think bigger is better, you know. I ended up with five restaurants with 100 staff. And it took a toll, one, and, you know, when you're relying, when you're running five restaurants that are probably open seven days a week, you're really relying on a lot of people. and i stopped having fun and it became a bit of a nightmare to try and control this thing that we had we had grown into but it was we just had grown too quickly and and if it was if i've

made a mistake it was it was that trying to grow too quickly um and then um again i was working a lot of hours and i ended up getting divorced because i was committed to my work so um and once that happened it was a light bulb moment that i needed to change um so we we um scaled down we we've sold three three of the restaurants we kept the two that were the most profitable and the better the better ones yeah and i realized that um we needed to diversify out of hospitality right because um it was just getting hard too hard so and we all had all our eggs in the one basket so we we ventured into property uh first off and like i said before i bought i bought three at the start i in my early 20s i'd already bought three one-bedroom apartments around melbourne

but then we got into developing properties so um i bought a um i bought a block of uh bought a house in northcote which is probably about five k's from the city and i subdivided the land and i built three townhouses on that block yeah with my brothers so we were using the cash flow from the cafes to reinvest that money so we never really had money just sitting there doing nothing so We started this little property company on the side and we were using the cash flow from the businesses to now expand into property. So we started becoming developers.

So like I said, I built three townhouses in Northgate and then I bought a property in Pascoe Vale, again, in a city. I got permits for three townhouses there and instead of building them, I sold the property with the permits. Yeah. And as we're going along, we're making pretty good money on each deal, right? So I then took the money and went to Thornbury, which is seven k's from town. I built four double storeys there.

It was one big block of land with an old house. I bulldozed the house and I subdivided the land. And I live here now, but we kept all four. Then we got into commercial properties. So I bought a warehouse in Coburg, again, close to the city. And another mistake I made was I bought the commercial property but it had a commercial to zoning which just meant that there was limitations to this property for the future

on, you know, doing something with it. So I convinced my panel beta mate who was next door to buy my commercial space. So I took the money from there and I went to Clifton Hill and I bought a commercial property there with a mixed zoning. And what that means, Bush, is that I can do anything with that property in the future. I can turn it into residential if I wanted to.

Yeah. So my plan, our plan there was a great location, close to trams, trains, buses, probably 3Ks from the city. um i think we paid about nine hundred fifty thousand dollars for this commercial space and and this was going to be our super down the track we were going to build go six stories and build about 20 apartments or so on it okay but as luck has it um a big builder in melbourne uh bought the property next door to me um and they're massive in melbourne they're huge uh developers and then I'd get a knock on the door about a week later saying,

would I like to sell my property to them? Yeah. And so I had this property for probably two and a half years, three years. I bought it for $950,000 and the developer bought me out for about $2.7 million. Thank you very much. Yeah, so then we went to, we bought a house in Richmond,

which is about 2Ks. Again, being developers, we got permits again for three triple-storey townhouses. Probably made it over a million dollars on that deal because we sold the permit again. It's very hard to get permits in Richmond, so heaps of the developers were hounding me for the permits instead of me building them.

And so we've done a lot, but we got to a point, Bushy, where you're borrowing a lot of money from the banks. The banks were – I was getting pissed off with the banks. Borrowing money was becoming harder. Yeah. And so we decided what other avenue can we take now, you know. So we're still into the cafes. We've got good cash flow.

We've built this property portfolio, which is great. What else can we do? And then I remember my brother one day bought me for my birthday a book on warren buffett and um i couldn't put this book down bushy like it just resonated with me straight away like there was a philosophy i didn't understand the share market i didn't know like even where to start you know i just saw these numbers going up and down on the screen and i had no idea but once i read this book it just resonated with me that was there was a simple philosophy to follow and you know it was around uh compounding money right compound money at the

highest rate possible using the stock market as the vehicle yeah and some of the tenants that um warren buffett talks about uh you know circle of competence meaning you know just focus on on businesses that you can understand right just stay within your circle of competence um intrinsic value and what that means is putting a valuation on a business irrespective of the stock price margin of safety like buying a dollar for 50 cents um you know so all these tenants and it just resonated with me um and because i had been in business i could comprehend what he was saying you know yeah um you're buying into real businesses you're not buying a piece of paper So when you buy a stock in a company,

you're actually buying a small piece of a real business. It's not just a piece of paper. So when you're investing then, if you're going to buy into a small, if you're going to buy into a business, you have to do some research. And just this whole philosophy, and I just thought, you know, this is what I'm going to do. Let's just read up as much as we can and learn as much as we can. And so we opened up our own little investment fund for our family.

and we chipped away for the next 12, three years part-time. One of my brothers and me, we probably spent four or five hours a day just reading and researching on stocks. And we invest in the US. It's just that there's so much more information in the US and all the big companies, all the great companies in the world happen to sell their stocks on the US stock market. Yeah.

And so we started this little fund for our family and whatever money we had, we'd just sort of be putting into the fund there. And like I said before, we ended up with around about $4.5 million over, you know, a 13-year period. Just, you know, part-time. Me and my brother never got it. We never got advice from anybody.

body. We would just buy our own stocks, but with a long-term view. We weren't traders. Yeah, that's important. So just to put a bit of colour in it for the listeners. We weren't looking at a screen for the whole day. We're buying a small piece of a real big business, and we want to be long-term holders. That was our philosophy. Great. Now, I just shed some light on that for the listeners. Warren Buffett, and you probably have to be living under a rock not to know who warren buffett is but for those that haven't heard of warren buffett warren buffett is arguably the most successful investor to have lived and interestingly about warren uh while he uh just like yourself actually john uh was

switched on to uh investment from a very very early age uh and it was a millionaire by the time he was 30 he most of his wealth has come after he's 50 so yeah and what i love about him just as you've said is that it's about long-term value it's not this get in get out routine that a lot of stockbrokers sort of push it towards because they're making money on the on the transaction not on the growth of the the share itself he's smart enough to go right oh we just need to look at long term what sort of business is going to do well and why and then invest in those businesses and once you've invested in them by buying shares get the hell out of the way and allow them to do their work am i am i reading that right is that pretty much your

your thinking around it you see um jeff bezos from amazon asked warren buffett one day warren your philosophy is so easy why don't people just follow it and warren buffett's reply was because these days people don't want to get rich slow, right? And that's the key is that everyone these days wants to get rich quick, you know. And so people, you know, probably don't follow Warren Buffett because, you know, some people don't want to take the long-term view. But the only way you can really become truly wealthy is over time, right?

and the one number one thing that Warren Buffett uses is compounding, compounding money at the highest rate possible year in, year out. Yeah. You know, I think like you said, at 50, Warren Buffett was probably worth $300 million. And by compounding, what it means is you're trying to earn as much money on your money as you can at a decent rate, reinvesting the profits and never withdrawing money

from that account. And so Warren Buffett's example is, you know, at 50 he was probably worth $300 million and now he's 89 and he's been able to compound that $300 million at a high rate and now it's grown to $84 billion, right? Yeah. The interesting thing there that I find about compounding And, again, we both share the same view here.

I think Albert Einstein referred to compounding as the eighth wonder of the world. But what I find interesting about compounding is that it's an exponential curve. And let's face it, no investment goes in a beautiful, smooth curve. But if you look at the long-term exercise, what people sort of fail to remember with that compounding is that if you follow that curve,

80% of the growth happens in the last 20% of the time frame. So the real key there is time, as you've well put. If you take that long-term view, you're giving yourself the opportunity to enjoy that massive growth that occurs in the latter part of the journey versus... And in property, John, I see people who adopt a similar try-and-get-rich-quick scheme and 50% of first-time investors sell their property

within the first five years because it hasn't, to their view, made enough money. Whereas those who go through the full cycle, just like the share market, go through the full cycle of 15 years plus, have the opportunity then to allow compounding to work its magic. So I think you make a really important point there, that it doesn't matter what you invest in, whether it be your business, whether it be shares, whether it be property,

you've got to stay the long term. It's boring. This is the other thing for me is investing is a very boring exercise. It's like watching grass grow. but people want to see things happen quickly and they want to see things happen so they start tinkering with it or making changes and then wonder why they don't get the results.

Has that been the experience that you've seen with people? Well, exactly. I mean, when I talk about us being able to achieve what we have, it was being committed to compounding. So we created our little fund. We were putting money in there as we went along, whatever money we could muster up, we'd put into the fund. But we would never take out any of the profits

and we would never withdraw money out of this fund. And so we allowed, so compounding, as the money grows, it's like a snowball effect, you know, a little snowball at the top of the hill, as it's rolling down the hill, it just becomes this huge monster, right? But you've got to be committed to it and, you know, the problem with today is everyone wants instant gratification and it just doesn't work.

And that's why Warren Buffett becomes, you know, the richest or the second richest person in the world because he's stuck to his guns and he's had a long-term view and a commitment to compounding money, you know. Yeah. That's how, you know, I don't know any other way. I don't know any day traders that are up there in the richest guys in the world's category, you know.

Totally agree. That was our philosophy. And a lot of the successful fund guys that I follow in the US, they all follow the Warren Buffett philosophy. They've got their own funds now that they run in the billions of dollars and their philosophy is the Warren Buffett philosophy. How do I compound my money at the highest rate possible year in, year out? And in the U.S., because that's where we invest, you know, I invest in the U.S., you know, the stock market goes up 75% of the time.

And so if you're talking about compounding, let's just use, if I could compound this year at 18%, the following year at 15%, in the third year 12%, well, the fourth year might be minus five. But that doesn't mean I run for the hills now. You have to accept that the market doesn't go up in a straight line. So it goes up on average 75% of the time, but you have to accept you'll have a loss year and that's just part of the game, you know.

I think people get flustered when, you know, one year, you know, I've had years when I've had minus five years, right? There's years where I've done 25% returns. The last two years I think I did 25% and 26.5%. Yeah. But, you know, the year before that might have been minus eight. You have to accept, you know, the US market in the last 60 years has gone up on average by 10%, right?

But that's not a straight line. Like I said, it could be 12, 15, 18, and then it could be minus 3. But you have to accept that's part of the course. And that's where people start to get scared, you know. When they hit a hurdle, they run for the hills. Yeah, well, I've often said to people, because you and I are very similar in this. Before we even look at what people are investing in,

I say, okay, what's the end game for you? What are you trying to achieve with this? What's your ultimate lifestyle and how much does that lifestyle cost? And therefore, what sort of an asset base do we need to create that's going to give you that? And if you're investing for 15 years, you don't start making decisions at year two, three, five or six

because if you've done your homework and you believe that what you've invested in is going to get you where you need to over 15 years, Why do you start buggerising around with it halfway through the race? So how do you – because this is a really important point, I think. We are so deluged with negative, fear-scaring media these days. We just leap on anything and blow it out of all proportion based on what's happening at that minute,

not what's happening over the long term. How do you help the people that you're teaching and guiding to invest? How do you get them to overlook the media short-term fears and stay the course? I teach my students that fear is your friend. So fear in others is unfortunately what we take advantage of. So the volatility in the market is a good thing, not a bad thing. So when there's volatility, prices of stocks come down.

That's when we're interested in buying, not when stocks are going up, when they're going down, right? So let's just take recently we've got the trade war with, you know, Trump and the Chinese, right? Yeah. And every time, you know, Trump tweets something negative, the market takes a hiding. And so even companies that have nothing to do with China,

just because the whole market is dropping, their stocks drop too, right? And they're not really invested in China. but because the whole market becomes negative and the market's made up of people and when people's psychology changes and they really don't know what they're doing they panic and sell stocks and probably sell stocks at the right time at the wrong time and then that's where people like myself come in and say okay well if you want to sell apple at 95 because, you know, Warren Buffett, you know, because Trump tweeted something, well, I'm happy to buy.

And then, you know, Trump tweets something positive and then the price goes up. And, you know, it's all, the markets, it's around psychology. The market's made up of millions and millions of people around the world. And when you think about it, Bushy, the majority of those people that are invested in the stock market probably don't know what they're doing.

A lot of them probably don't even know what they own. And so when they hear something on the news, like you said, or Trump tweets something tonight that's negative, everyone panics. And so we, who are knowledgeable, unfortunately we take advantage of people that are in fear. Yes. And that's how we get a cheap price. Yeah.

So we have to overcome our fears because we're taking advantage of others in their fears, and that's the perfect time to buy. Going back on compounding, I just wrote something. You know, if I was – my son's 19, right? So if I said to him, look, you know, let's just start. Think about compounding. Let's just start a little fund for you. let's just put some numbers together right so if i was to say to my son look just say you could

compound your money at 13 right and let's just say you you started with 40 000 and let's just say that you're going to be committed and each month you're going to put in a thousand dollars a month into this investment plan right yeah and if my son did that for 25 years part-time just on the side, just chipped away. He's 19, so he'd be, you know, 44. He would turn into $3.3 million. Yeah. Right?

Exactly. At 44. Yeah. Now, let's just say you can't compound at 30 and he compounds at 12. It would probably be about $3 million. Yeah. None of these numbers are wrong. No.

Well, even at 7.2%, the value of your investment is going to double every 10 years. Well, I just said before that the US market has gone up 10% on average per year over the last 60 years, right, if you include the dividends, right? Yeah. Even if my son just bought the market, just say he bought the S&P 500, which is the top 500 companies in the US,

he could buy a product that has those and he didn't have to pick stocks for himself. he just accepted the 10%, the figure would be $1.8 million, Bushy. None of these numbers are – these are all pretty good numbers for – and so the question becomes, does my son leave his $40,000 in the bank and earn 1%, which then he'll be taxed on the interest and probably earn 0.75? Does that make sense? or would you, why would you not buy the S&P 500 and accept the 10%?

Spot on. You know. It's a no-brainer. Why would you just want it? And particularly when that 1%, if you take off what inflation is doing, which sort of varies between 2% and 3% generally, then you're actually going backwards, leaving it in the bank. Well, the power of your money is going backwards.

And guess what? They're talking about, in the future, negative interest rates. What that means is probably in the future, we'll be paying the bank 1% to have our money. At the moment, they're paying us 1%. In the future, you know, they're talking about we paying them 1% to actually for us to put our money into the bank. Do you think that's going to happen, John?

Do you think that's realistic? In the U.S., they're talking about it, you know. I don't know about Australia. And, you know, what really upsets me, Bushy, why are the banks public companies? Why are they there to make money? So the bank, you know, say my son puts in, you know, $40,000 into the bank.

The bank gives him 1%. What the bank does then, they ring me and say, oh, John, you applied for a car loan. We can give you the money for 14%. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So they take my son's money, give him 1%,

and then lend that money out for $14, and they make 13%. Yeah. And that's what you should be doing. Yeah. You know, why should the bank be making 13%? That's where, you know, my son should be doing. He should be making 13%. Yeah.

And so tomorrow when you pick up the newspaper and it says NAB Bank made $4.5 billion, how do you think they made it? Yeah. by using your money and paying you nothing and then lending it out for 14%, 15% and making the $13,000. Yeah. And I think that's a crime. Absolutely.

That doesn't cut it anymore. No, I absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. Mind you, in the early days, leveraging using the bank's money, providing you're doing your homework on the right sort of asset can work in your favour. It's just a matter of setting it up in a way that's minimising the risk factor.

But, John, I'd love to sort of delve a bit deeper now into, let's say I'm someone who's feeling like I'm trapped on the treadmill. Yes, I've got a little bit of money in the bank and I've been putting money into super and all I've been doing is just sort of chipping away at the home loan thinking that that's going to get me to where I get to. If someone was to say, well, yeah, I don't know much

about this share thing, but John, can you help me? How much money would I need to have in the kitty to get started and last the distance? And what would you take them through to get them started in that exercise, John? So if you're talking about Project My Profit, which is my online program, I created 10 modules. In each of the modules, there's probably 10 or 12 little videos

and each video is on a topic. And each video is probably about 15 minutes each. People watch, say, module one for a week. And then the following Monday or Tuesday night, We have a Zoom call, a Q&A Zoom call, so I can jump on one and they can ask me questions about the modules. I'm in front of a whiteboard and we go over the module we just did. And then they have lifetime access to a Facebook page with me,

so they get lifetime access to me after they've finished the 10-week course. um when it comes to money i tell everyone that everyone's at different levels um you know you can start at ten thousand or twenty thousand um you know any everyone starts at a different level it's irrelevant where you start because all we're trying to do um is compound our money at the highest rate so i help people set up from home i use comsec and because i trade in u.s stocks which really are international stocks. That's where all the big, great companies sell their stuff,

on the US market. And so ComSec, you open up a ComSec account for yourself from home. ComSec link it up to you have a US account that's linked and that US account has your money in US dollars and then your US account is linked to the stock market and then you buy and sell. So in the private Wealth Builders, it's called the Wealth Builders Club, which is our private Facebook page, I show people where I get all my

information from on how to buy stocks and what stocks to buy. There's four or five, six fund managers that I follow. They send me their quarterly reports every three months, and they discuss their new investments. and then they write theses on what the new investment is and it might be like a full-page investment thesis on why they think it's cheap and why they feel like they're buying $1 for 50 cents.

All my course does is teaches everyone the philosophy and the fundamentals and to be able to read all these investment quality reports and understand the terminology and have a philosophy on how we can build wealth investing in the stock market. You know, we're using the stock market as the vehicle because at the end of the day, we just want to compound our money and grow it to becoming wealthy.

and we're just using the vehicle is the stock market. And I tell people, especially my students, we don't borrow any money. There's no borrowing of money, so we're not leveraging. We're just starting with whatever pool it is and we're building on it and it's long term. And the beauty with investing in the stock market, I'll say compared to property, is that it's liquid. If you're compounding this money and just say something happens

and you really need to take the money out, you know, it can happen overnight, Bushy. You know, it's a liquid asset. You can get, you know, you can have your money the next day if you really, if something really happens and you need your money, you know. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, so, you know, for me and my brothers, you know, We've been able to source out three or four fund managers that we follow religiously, and every quarter they send myself their quarterly reports on what their top five holdings are and what new investments they've made and what the thesis is for going forward. You see, if a price of a stock bushy is $5, what what's the catalyst for it to go to ten dollars there has to be a story behind why is

this stock going to move yeah and the people that i follow are searching the market you know in the corners of the market where some of these companies that might be mid-cap companies um not many people are following because news these days is instantaneous you know like For example, Apple, if Apple did something, within three seconds the world would know about it. There are certain companies, sort of mid-cap companies, that people aren't following. And so the people that I follow are searching for these companies

where there's no news out there. Something's going to happen. There's a catalyst, but no one really knows about it. and so these people are looking for companies that have a catalyst or there's an event about to happen that's going to move the price of the stock, and that doesn't happen overnight, right? So like you said before, in business, you know, if I had a cafe and I wanted to change the menu, it's not going to happen tomorrow.

It's a process. So if we're looking at a stock and there's a catalyst about to happen, we have to wait out for that to happen. And that could take, you know, three months, four months, six months, who knows, you know? Yes, yeah. And we're searching for companies where there's not much information out there about what's happening.

Gotcha. And that's where you get the edge. Yeah, an unfair advantage there because it's not information that everyone's got access to 100% agree. Mate, a couple of things in sort of doing some research around what you're doing, and again, a subject that I totally agree with you on, which is at odds with what a lot of so-called market exports would talk about, is the fact that you feel that diversity can actually hurt returns rather than the other way around. Can you sort of expand on that a little bit? Because a lot of people think, oh, yeah, I've got to minimise risk by diversifying. Talk to us around your thoughts on diversity and what is a reasonable position to take in relation to where you put your energy and your money.

Yeah, so in my course, one of the topics is diversity hurts returns, right? And it's something that I've learnt from Warren Buffett. and he says um why would you spend money on your 30th best idea and not buy more of your fifth best idea right and so it's funny how the math works but if um if all i'm interested in compounding money and earning the highest rate that i possibly can it actually uh if i spread my money out too far and I buy 30 stocks and I only put 2% of my money into each stock, it's funny how the math says my returns will probably get diminished, right?

But if I focused on my best 10 ideas and I put in, say, 10% of my money in my five best ideas and 5% of my money in my other you know my other five or six best ideas um my returns are going to be greater there's no point spreading your money out to 30 40 different companies and putting one percent in each right you if you have conviction in your idea um so for me uh you know i have big positions and medium-sized positions. So basically, I only have 10 to 15 stocks that I own. I will put, you know, 10% of my money into my best five ideas

and then I'll probably put 5% of my money in my other, you know, six or seven ideas and I'll always have about 20% in cash. Yeah. Right? So I'm only ever owning between 10 and 15 stocks. Yeah. And I'm putting my 10% into my best ideas, so ones that I'm really convinced.

I've got huge conviction on, right? Yeah. Rather than spreading my money thin. It's like saying, Bushy, you know, do I buy 10 one-bedroom apartments in Shepparton or do I buy one nice house in Toorak of Melbourne? Which one do I think is going to grow? So do I spread my money out in Shepparton or do I buy the huge house in Toorak?

Which one do I think is going to grow in value? For me, it would be the Toorak house, right? Every day of the week, yep. Well, there's no 0.1 or 10 in Shepparton, right? So if you've got conviction in your best ideas, you plonk your money, you have 10%. So another topic in my course is called weighting. So how much do I put, how much money do I put into my stocks, right?

And it's 10% for my great ideas and 5% in my good ideas. And that's, you know, when I say 10%, you know, it could pan out to be 9.5%, you know, but roughly that's how I spread my money out. And I always have around about 20% in cash. So whenever the market turns and Trump tweets something negative, I always have cash there that I can use to actually buy something cheap. Yeah, and because you're not leveraged, you don't have the margin calls or any of the exposure

that goes with the volatility of the stock market, which is an important thing. No, we're just plain vanilla. We don't borrow money. We just buy equities. And the other thing is I teach my students about a watch list. A lot of the times you might like a stock and it's not at the right price, right?

So we create a watch list for ourselves. So on a big whiteboard I have my watch list and stocks end up on my watch list because I like the company, I want to own the company, but it's too expensive. So it goes on my watch list and I'll put a price that I want to pay for this stock. And it's a reminder. So I look at my watch list every day because I won't remember

all these things, right? So it goes on my watch list and every day, Bushy, I stare at my watch list and I look at stocks and see where the prices are compared to what the prices are on my watch list. Yeah. Sometimes on my watch list, Bushy, there's stocks that have been there for three or four years that I've never been able to buy because they've run away in price and they just stay there, you know,

Maybe one day they come back. But, for example, during this period with the Trump-Chinese, you know, tug of war probably in the last sort of six months, I probably bought four or five stocks that were on my watch list that I couldn't buy before. Yeah. So when the price dropped to the price that I wanted to pay, I quickly just quickly researched the thesis again to make sure

that the thesis is still there. and then I bought the stock. Yeah, yeah. And that's the sort of thing I teach my students. Yeah, brilliant, mate. So sort of coming back to your personal situation again then, what I'd love you to sort of paint a picture for us is what does your ideal lifestyle look like?

And it may well be the lifestyle you're living now, but sort of put some colour and shape around that for us. and then talk to us around where your portfolio is at. What does it look like in terms of shares, in terms of property and what is that doing towards funding that lifestyle both now and ongoing and creating a legacy for your family? Can you put some shape around that for us? So my lifestyle now is I invest real time.

So I'm sort of semi-retired. And so I sort of consider myself, you know, sort of wealthy because I have time to do whatever I want to do. Every day I just do what I feel that I'm passionate about, which is investing. So I've got to a point now where I'm sort of semi-retired and wake up in the morning and decide what I feel like doing today. And the majority of the time I'm looking after my family fund,

which is investing, and that just takes up doing research. So I spend maybe three or four hours a day just researching and reading. So in the mornings I'll go through the internet. There's certain sites that I follow and I'll print out some of the articles that I want to read. I end up with about, you know, a stack full of things that I want to read for the day. and i focus on on just building my knowledge and investing for my family and and the beautiful

thing is that i have the time to do what i want to do i've been able to put myself in that position going forward into the future i think the only thing is that my daughter's 13 now what i'd really like to do bushy to be honest is i'm from greece so i wouldn't mind buying a little shack on the beach, you know, on one of the Greek islands or, you know, even on the mainland where my mum is, she's from the beach. And maybe spend, you know, three or four months of the year, you know, especially when it's winter here in Melbourne,

to spend in Greece, you know. Nice. That's down the track. You know, my daughter's still 13, so I've got to wait for her to, you know, finish school and sort of. Yeah. But. And what's funding that lifestyle, mate?

Is it a mixture of what's coming out of the corporate portfolio? So, plus the dividends from the shares, can you sort of share a little bit with us how that's being funded? Yeah, so I've got business interests outside of, so I have interest in a prestige car showroom with a business partner. So, the other thing is I invest in people too, Bushy, and I invest in their expertise, right? I know nothing about cars, but my friend and business partner is an expert

and so I've invested in the showroom. I've invested in a small boutique souvlaki bar here in Melbourne with another business partner. So these things bring cash flow to me every week without me having to commit any time. And my fund and my family fund does really well so that contributes to my lifestyle and project my profit with my students.

I run programs with that. So I think, you know, like I said to you, I think we talked about off air that most sort of wealthy people, you know, end up having, you know, four or five, six different income streams coming in, you know. And like for me, that's sort of something that I'm creating. I've got some property that I get rent from. So all these different income streams coming in gets me to be able to just right now lead the lifestyle that I really want

and that is to have the time and the freedom to do what I want. Yeah, and that's the ultimate goal for all of us because time is the limited resource. So sum that up into what you believe are the secrets to long-term sustainable success. How would you sum that up for us, John? um learning how to compound money um being committed and taking it seriously and it's a long-term journey um and you've got to be committed to be to be wealthy

takes commitment and courage and um and perseverance so um you know i think i think Anyone can be wealthy, bushy. I really, really mean that. It's just that they need some guidance, some commitment, some courage, a philosophy, understanding the fundamentals, understanding the maths that we talked about, how the world's really working against you, and then to have the courage to do something about it.

Yeah, beautifully said, mate. Beautifully said. Mate, jumping into the ambush round, which I normally get everyone to machine gun dance with five quick questions that the listeners always like to get your wisdom on. If we sort of kick into those straight off the bat, what's your favourite quote and why?

I think you mentioned it before, compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. Yeah, it is a cracker. Yeah. Einstein was a pretty bright guy and if he felt that, That's a pretty good recommendation. I wish people would just take it a little bit more seriously, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I think, as you've well said, because everyone's short-term these days, they're not even thinking long-term. That's something I didn't ask you. We all talk about long-term. What is long-term to you? What sort of a horizon are we talking about? Long-term as in owning a certain stock or long-term as in, you know, for me bush um because i've always been a long-term thinker you know for me it's like forever

you know so me investing you know i can see myself investing till probably the day before i pass away yeah um it's it's a passion um and i'm committed to it and i don't feel like it's a job bushy it's it's something that i really really really enjoy doing and i i'm i'm i'm learning stuff every day just means that I'm growing every day and that excites me because even though I'm 55, there's so much more I can learn and I am learning every day. And to me, it's a pastime. Investing is a pastime now and a passion.

It's got me to where I am today but I can, you know, I don't feel like it's a job. I mean, I go to Bali, you know, I go to Bali every year and when I go to Bali, I'm sitting around the pool and I can still invest if I want to, you know. So I can travel with it and sit around the pool with it. I can see myself investing probably the day before I pass away. Yeah, I love it.

Mate, let's turn to the written exercise and you've read a few books over your time. What's the top book that you'd recommend listeners grab a hold of and why? I'm not sure if you've read it but it's called The Snowball. Yes, I have. buffett and we're the business of life by alan alice schroeder it's about 850 pages it's a massive book but it's a it's the life of warren buffett and you know it's books like this that really resonate with me and like how he made investing sound so simple you know the whole

philosophy yeah and so i know it's a large book but um it'd be good for people maybe just to grab beholder one and just you know to start with understand you know how warren buffett and how he thinks and how he got started and what are his main tenants in life you know it'd be a good way for people to start to learn about investing uh you know for the long term but uh we're both big fans of warren buffett uh and i know you've uh published an e-book that really uh sums up some of his key quotes. Can you share a couple of those, some of the quotes that really ring large in your mind that you think the listeners would be interested to hear?

I'll give you one. Be greedy when everyone else is fearful and be fearful when everyone else is greedy. Yeah, yeah, lovely. As long as you understand that, I think you're 50% of the way there, Meaning, when the market's going down and people are fearful, that's when it's time for you to be greedy. When people are being greedy and they're buying stocks

because there's euphoria in the market, that's when it's time for you to be fearful. As long as you remember that quote, you're sort of almost halfway there. Yeah, one of the ones I love that's allied to that one is that wealth is a transfer of money from the impatient to the patient. Well, it's exactly, we spent probably the last hour

talking about exactly that, you know? That's right. It's exactly right. No, that's a cracker, mate. Mate, one of the other things that the listeners love to get guests' thoughts around, the top things that you've legally done to minimise the tax you pay, mate.

Can you share with us your lessons around that? Well, I created a family trust, and what that means is I can spread out the profit that the family makes amongst the family members, and that brings down the tax rate that I have to pay. And so creating a family trust, a company family trust, is what we did, considering the position that we were in. And that way, whatever profit the company made through the family trust,

we can distribute the profits individually to individual people and the tax rate comes down. Yeah, great vehicles, mate. Absolutely agree. Mate, coming back to the investment subject, what's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received today? um i think the worst uh advice i've ever received is when someone tells me about a stock

uh that they know nothing about you know when people come up to me say john i've got an idea someone told me about this stock and and then when i say well what is it what are they what does the company do they had no idea so that would be my worst when i get people who know that I'm in stocks, come up to me and say, I've got a tip, right? It's a bit like the Melbourne Cup, mate. When someone comes with a tip for the Melbourne Cup, that's about as valuable as the advice you've just got. And I think the best advice is, again, the one I just mentioned

is be greedy when everyone else is fearful and be fearful when everyone else is greedy. I think really sums up when you should be buying stocks and when you should be selling stocks basically in a nutshell. Yeah, very well said. Mate, coming back to personal habits because let's face it, it's the things that we do day to day that accumulate over time to create that compounding result and whether it be investing

in shares, putting into your business, your relationship with your wife and your family. What's a personal habit that you believe that contributes most to your investment success? um committing myself to learning more every day every single day so every single day um i'm a voracious reader and um i want to build up my knowledge base so um my commitment to learning more on a daily basis um is something i think that um helps with my success in investing yeah very good advice now just to sort of bring it all to a um a good summary in terms of advice

for someone and let's take your your daughter for example that you've mentioned who's currently 13 she's going to be leaving school in a couple of years time uh what advice are you going to give to her in terms of where to invest her time money and skills to create her version of freedom well to um to start understanding how really the world you know the maths you know we talked about before bushy about the maths and how the world really um is working against you from being wealthy so i think uh we've created a society where you actually leave school um and the plan is, you know, the whole education system is about teaching you how to become a good worker, right?

How can you get a good job? And it doesn't teach you anything about entrepreneurial stuff, right? And if I take my daughter or even my son's case, you know, he's just left school and when I think about it, I probably spent, you know, $100,000 in education and he's really unaware about a lot of the things that, you know, he's about to face the world and he really is not, he doesn't have the tools to actually face the world, right?

He couldn't, he didn't really understand, you know, what a credit card is and what are the ramifications, you know? And so I was a little bit disappointed because I say it as a bit of a joke but you know like if you asked him what the population of mongolia is he could probably tell you but if you asked him about a credit card and what what happens he couldn't tell you so um i've had to take over and and educate my son on the financial aspects of life and some of the hurdles you know a lot of the young kids now bushy aren't equipped to face the world and that's probably where they're most vulnerable is in those early years where they're going to

make some major financial mistakes that are probably going to cost them the next sort of five or ten years of their life trying to fix. Absolutely dead right. And so, you know, talking about young people, can we get to these young people and just give them some tools before they face the world? You know, the basics of don't do this and don't do that

because if you do this and you end up in debt, it could cost you the next five or six, seven years. And when we're talking about compounding money, if we can get these people to just, young people to, you know, to not make these mistakes and teach them about compounding money at an early age, the world's their oyster, really. There's no way that they can't be wealthy. but it's those first few years, Bushy, where they're going to make mistakes because I don't believe our education system's given them the tools to face the world. Even in the uni, you know, think about university, Bushy.

There's a Hex debt now. You know, getting a degree is like $40,000. How many kids finish the degree and end up with a job in that industry? Very few. Very few. So you paid $40,000, you're minus $40,000, you're 20 years old, and you end up making coffee in a cafe. Yeah.

And it's a double whammy because you've got a $40,000 debt and you're a low-income earner. It's crazy. It's a double whammy now. It's interesting you say that, mate. I actually talked my son out of going to uni because I went to uni himself would have become an architect but my view on uni is unless it's you're pursuing something's passionate that actually has a a long-term potential at the other end of it don't

bother just get out there amongst the world and and you'll get a far better education on how the world works by getting your hands dirty than you will spending three four five years insulated in a university degree i was in the cafe industry and you know so many kids that would finish uni would end up coming and making coffee in my cafe right yeah and it's a double whammy because now they've got this debt over their heads which is now going to take them five six seven eight years to you know to get back to square one and unless um so i i try and advise people unless you're passionate about the course that you're doing and that's going to become your lifelong dream to become, you know,

whatever you want, then – but if you're just going to go to uni and just cruise along and think, you know, I'll just do this course because, you know, there's nothing else to do, you're making a huge mistake. Yeah. It's going to set you back, you know. Spot on. Very wise words, mate.

Look, you've been extremely generous with your time, John. Really enjoyed the chat, mate. There's a lot of subjects that we could talk more in a lot more detail, and I'm really looking forward to catching up with you at the Wake Up Adelaide conference on the 21st and 22nd of November. I really encourage those listeners to jump on board with that because that's going to be a life-changing event for those that recognise that there's an opportunity,

as John has well said, anyone can become wealthy if you follow the right principles and take some action and have the courage to make that happen. Mate, really looking forward to meeting you face-to-face at that event and very keen for those that are listening and have an interest in learning about the market to get in touch with you through your business. So projecting my profit.

So thanks again for your time, mate, and looking forward to catching up again soon. Thanks, Bushy. Thanks for the time. 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.