Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: How to create wealth by stealth with Bushy Martin

Episode Date: February 23, 2020

What’s your relationship with money? Is money your friend or your foe? How much do you focus on spending versus saving? On your income versus your investments? On your work versus your wealth? How proactive are you in managing your money? My old man Bushy Senior always used to say that it isn’t what you earn its what you spend that counts. So how sticky are you with money? How quickly does it slip through your fingers? How difficult do you find it to save money and set it aside when you are inundated with one cost after another with expenses always increasing? What if there was a way to automate your money management that creates a saving system by remote control without you having to do anything or worry about it once it’s set up? Would this make your life easier and reduce your stress and worry about the future? Would you be interested in learning more? If so, you are in luck as today we’re re-releasing my interview with Josh Blakeley on his popular Master Your Money Show where I outline the kick ASS Money Management system that I detail in my book The Freedom Formula, as a foundational starting point to anyone who is looking to build wealth by stealth. In our engaging discussion, I also share my views on: Where you should start The importance of the right money mindset and what your money mindset needs to looks like if you are going to achieve sustainable success Becoming passive aggressive and what this means The criticality of having a rainy day war chest How you can grow your parallel savings shadow  How I earned my first dollar and where this led to I’m also interested to hear your best saving techniques, so email me at [e-mail] and the best and most innovative approach will win a copy of my book Get Invested. 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.

Money is really the oxygen of our existence in the Western world. And rightly or wrongly, there's a lot of people who almost treat money as an evil perpetrator. Whereas if we embrace money as the oxygen that will fuel our freedom and then master that money, then life becomes a lot easier. it's a 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 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 get invested thanks for listening and now let's get invested Hi, Freedom Fighters.

What's your relationship with money? Is money your friend or is it more a foe? How much do you focus on your spending versus your saving? On your income versus your investments? On your work versus your wealth? how proactive are you in managing your money now my old man bushy senior always used to say to me that it isn't what you earn it's what you spend that counts so how sticky are you with money how quickly does it slip through your fingers how difficult do you find it to save money and

set it aside when you're constantly inundated with one cost after another and expenses just seem to be always increasing? What if there was a way to automate your money management that creates a saving system by remote control without you having to do anything or worry about it at all once it's set up? Would this make your life easier and reduce your stress and worry about money and the future? Would you be interested in learning a bit more about it? Well, if so, you're in luck, as today we're re-releasing my interview with Josh Blakely

on his popular Master Your Money show, where I outline our kick-ass money management system that I detail in my book, The Freedom Formula, as a foundational starting point to anyone who's looking to build wealth by stealth. now in a quite engaging discussion i also share my views on where do you start the importance of the right money mindset and what your money mindset needs to look like if you're going to achieve sustainable success becoming passive aggressive and what this means the criticality

of having a rainy day war chest how you can grow your parallel saving shadow and quite amusingly how I earned my first dollar and where this led to. Now, I'm also interested to hear your best savings techniques. So feel free to email me at bushey at khgroup.com.au. That's bushey at khgroup.com.au. And the best and most innovative approach will wear a copy of my book, Get Invested. Now, in our current time poor world,

effective money management is absolutely foundational and critical. as what you do on a day-to-day basis will determine your level of long-term success. So to gain some really easy tips, enjoy my relaxed conversation with Joss Bakley. Welcome listeners to the Master Your Money Show. Today we're focusing on how to build your entrepreneurial and your financial mindset so that you make more money and accelerate your business. Now, I've put this show together because I wanted to really dive into some experts and some key leaders in the industry, both on how they've thought as an entrepreneur in pursuing business, but also how they've thought financially along their journey and really use that to leverage

and build wealth as well. Because I hate seeing entrepreneurs stuck with money or feeling like they're not sure how to get ahead with their finances, even though they started their business for that purpose in the beginning. So we're going to dive right into it. Today we have a really incredible expert by the name of Bushy Martin. Now, Bushy Martin is a property investor. He's actually been able to live a financially free life through property. He's a mortgage broker.

He runs a business. He does business mentoring. And he also runs a really incredible podcast called Get Invested, which is all about some really cool interviews of people who've invested into areas of their life to get where they are. Bushy, we just want to thank you for joining us on the show. I know there's going to be so much you're going to share with us. And thank you for being here.

Why don't you tell us a little bit more about, I did a quick recap then, but tell us a little bit more about your journey so far and then what brought you here. Yeah, thanks, Josh. I really appreciate the opportunity to join you today and the listeners there around starting to master your money because I guess it's one of the things I've learnt along the journey is that money is really the oxygen of our existence

in the Western world. And rightly or wrongly, there's a lot of people who almost treat money as an evil perpetrator, whereas if we embrace money as the oxygen that will fuel our freedom and then master that money, then life becomes a lot easier. So I'm really excited to contribute to this event. I think it's going to be of awesome value to entrepreneurs, also entrepreneurs.

I think there's a lot of people who are aspiring to do things. I think there's a definite way to approach that. And I say that because I think I've probably made every mistake you can make early on, both in terms of my own investment journey, but also building our business. So we're very keen to share some of those exercises. Just to, I guess, add a little bit more to your really good introduction. Thanks, Josh.

You didn't leave much untouched there, which is great. I guess what I've realised through the School of Hard Knocks is that a lot of us invest our time, our energy, our resources, our money in our career or our business, but we tend to forget what I call wealth by stealth or growing our shadow. And what I mean by growing your shadow is that if we take on what I call a passive aggressive or an aggressively passive approach to life, then we're generating income that doesn't require us personally to make that happen. So everything we need to be doing in our business needs to be orientated around creating passive income. And what I mean by that is rather than get a client to pay a lump sum for your product or service, get them to pay it on a monthly basis over a period of time. It also means, though, taking the income that you're generating from your business to invest in growth assets outside of that. So this is a bit of a sliding door moment. You can sort of keep down your current path.

I don't know whether you know the movie Sliding Doors, which Gwyneth Paltrow featured in quite some years ago, where her whole life changed by a sliding door. She made the train and her life went in one direction or she missed the train and her life ended up in a completely different place. And I think this event is a sliding door moment for a lot of your listeners

because they can either continue down the struggle street and I know there's a lot of people who've jumped off the cliff over the chasm into self-employment and suddenly found themselves in the desert working a lot harder than what they were before they decided to take that big step. Their enthusiasm, their energy and their vision gets faded by the massive hours that they're putting in

just to survive whereas if we adopt a mindset around being passively aggressive right from the outset and everything you do is orientated around that vision both inside the business and in parallel with the business then over time you're going to be much more successful so uh does that give you a bit of a flavor at this stage mate definitely definitely that's um That's great and that's a key area that some of our other experts have touched on there as well. And I like that you mentioned one that takes time as well. And you said you learnt that through some of the school of hard knocks,

which I know that you've been able to step out of relying on a day job through that investing as well. But take us back through a bit of that journey to get to that place and what it looked like along the way. Yeah, okay. Well, my very first venture into business, Josh, was I think I was 23, 24, and very naive. So I jumped into business with another architect. We went in partnership.

And in a very short story, he took me to the cleaners. So I won't go into the nitty gritties of it, but he effectively wiped me out over a two or three year period and I ended up with no business and a massive debt and a massive, massive learning curve. So I was forced to go back into full-time employment as an architect at that point in time and then rebuild my corporate career along that journey.

But one of the major learnings I took away from that was to, if you're going to start a business start with the end in mind get really clear on what the end game needs to look like and if i use the parallel in investing terms josh get really clear on your freedom numbers what i mean by your freedom numbers is a develop a really crystal clear vision driven around your values so get get really clear on what's important to you in terms of your values and then develop a lifestyle vision around that so what is your perfect day perfect week perfect month perfect year look like both personally and professionally so it becomes a very clear picture and that becomes a both a magnet and a compass then to help you make decisions day

to day so if that if that vision is strong enough then two things happen you will push through the speed humps and hurdles that are inevitably going to be presented to you when you build a business because that's one of the very key mindsets that i think people need to have is it's going to be tough so get ready for it and success is a long-term journey uh and it's an elite team sport and it's a game of finance business is a game of finance let's let's not uh think it's anything else a lot of people get dazzled by developing this fantastic product and they focus just on the product but if they don't focus on the cash flow and the affordability exercise they're just not going to get there they won't be around long enough to actually deliver the value and the

benefit that solves the problems for the people they're looking to do so one of the take-homes I think for any solopreneur or entrepreneur or even entrepreneur is to make sure that the cash flow affordability of the business is very clearly set up right from the get-go and so I'm sort of tackling a number of things here but this is one of the key things that I think kills up a lot of businesses as you would know over 60% of businesses don't survive past three years so one of the key things I really suggest your listeners focus in on is to build up a a cash flow reserve before they start the business so for those who are looking at this i often say you've got to wake up then you've got to fire up before you start up and and what i mean

by those three things is uh the fire up piece is the most important piece because there's no point jumping over the cliff without a parachute a safety net or a balloon and uh i believe if you're really going to survive that that three-year desert phase while you're ramping up the income side of the business you need to have a number of things on the go so if we look at a safety net side of the equation then maintain your employment income while you're building the business or have a side hustle that is producing the income if you want to parachute then a way of doing that if if you've got a partner uh then and this is what my good wife and i did we we actually did what i call a baton pass so uh when my wife and i got together and had learned a lot of lessons from

our earlier experiences in in establishing our business we consciously decided that one of us would continue in full-time employment to pay the bills while the other built the business and then And when, so as a concrete example, our first entree into business was a property management business because everything, I had what I call a Kiyosaki moment when I went to a Robert Kiyosaki conference here in Adelaide over 20 years ago, Josh. And that was a massive light bulb moment for me because it was like, okay, that's, I talk about passive aggressive now, that's where this passive aggressive light bulb came from. It's like, okay, everything I do now must have a passive income

component to it. And if it doesn't, I won't do it because if you're starting a business and you're only as good as getting a lump sum for a product, then you're just back on a different treadmill because you've got to keep selling product to keep producing income. If you monetise in a way that means you're getting a regular flow of income over a period of time and you're building

that income flow progressively to a point where that income is completely covering your expenses and then you've actually got time on your hands and you've got freedom on your hands, life becomes a very different equation. And that's exactly how Sonia and I built it. So to give you a concrete example, we started a property management business. So Sonia drove that wholly and solely while I actually still consulted as a project manager and as an architect to government. So I was paying the bills while Sonia built the business.

And then when the property management business got to the point where it was sustaining our costs and income needs, then I jumped ship and started our property investment advisory and finance business. And then that business went extremely well to the point where we then sold the property management business about three years ago so that Sonia and I are now working together in the business, which is part of our lifestyle vision, was to live, eat, work together, work from home, work from anywhere, and put our time and energy into things that give us a lot of fulfillment. So I can't emphasise enough the importance of that cash flow piece. That is the oxygen that you'll either die from lack of oxygen, which a lot of people do, or that oxygen will fuel your freedom if you get that cash flow right. So embracing cash flow as your friend is a very important part of making sure you survive long enough to thrive.

yeah yeah that's excellent pushy there's a couple of things i like that at the beginning there and as a real practical example for anyone listening who hasn't done that to look at what what does their ideal lifestyle look like and uh you know starting with the end in mind for their business goals so that they can actually um pull those dreams to life as you were saying too and then next step stepping over into having that cash and that safety as well which i'm curious of because you know i you hear a lot sometimes in in business circles entrepreneurial circles people talking about burning the bridges and if you don't have a plan b then you can only focus on plan a um i have an interesting thought on that too but i'd love to hear i'll tell you what you think

about that one well i've heard that expression uh you should jump off the cliff and then build the wings as you as you fall uh some people have have managed to survive doing that they they haven't uh had a tremendous crash at the bottom of the cliff but statistics would tend to suggest otherwise so i'm a i'm a very conservative uh person by nature josh uh so i like taking calculated risks yeah a lot of due diligence i do my homework and i guess it comes from my architectural background i i start with the end in mind and then work backwards today to look at what do i need to do today that's going to build that vision in the future and uh that means that i design things on paper before i do anything so i'm i'm pretty confident around jumping off the

cliff and i've normally got a as i say i've either got a safety net a parachute or or the ultimate is to have a a balloon that's actually going to carry me upwards once i jump off that cliff yeah and that's and that that balloon is is passive income so if you build up a passive income stream and one thing i didn't mention in that is to what i call have a war chest so for those that are about to enter into business if you've got some existing assets So let's say you've got some property, then one of the cheapest forms of money you can get your hands on is to actually use some of the equity in that property to fund the establishment of your business. And if you can work out what your monthly costs are and you know how much equity you can access, that tells you how long you're going to survive before the business has to stand on their feet. So again, no rocket science with this.

But if we come back to the start again, and I've just put some shape around your freedom numbers, one of the questions I always ask people is, how much is enough? Because a lot of us just chase money for the sake of chasing money, and that becomes a never-ending cycle. The more you have, the more you spend, the more you have to do it and keep doing it. Whereas if you get really clear on what difference you're going to make in the world, what personally and professionally are you doing that is going to help people and also satisfy your lifestyle goals, it's pretty easy to work out how much that lifestyle costs. Again, it's something we do with people all the time is monetise your ideal lifestyle and then you know that all you need to do is grow your business to a certain asset level and or park some of the proceeds

from your business in other growth assets like property and shares and other areas so that you're building that. And once your business or your other investments is giving you that income stream, that's game over. That's job done. you then have the time and the freedom to put into things that are really important to you, and that may be continuing in your business.

But generally, fulfilment comes from freely helping others. So that might be helping others in your business or it may be solving other problems in the world, which, again, as an example, my good wife and I, as you know, Josh, are very big supporters of B1G1. So we're using the savings we're making for our clients to for every dollar we save them we're giving a day's worth of life giving water to people in ethiopia but we're also using the proceeds of the book and other aspects that we're doing to

eliminate homelessness by keeping the pets of the homeless with the homeless so that they both have companionship and hope and get back in their feet a lot earlier so if we start with that really clear vision of what we're trying to achieve and you know if we talk about our own business everyone in our business we have one very single mission that is to create happy homes because if you create happy homes you create happy families you create happy families you create happy communities so that that's what drives us in terms of of what we're doing so you know i keep coming back to having that really clear vision in your mind's eye starting there and then working backwards to to where we are monetizing that so how much is that going to cost me and then just building an

asset through your business or through other investments that's going to give you that and then life is pretty sweet and that's and i've got to say that from that mindset perspective the one thing i have found over time josh is a sustainable success and i'm talking about sustainable not overnight success or the one hit wonders that we often hear about sustainable success is going to take you a minimum of 10 and more likely 15 years so if you're going into your business knowing that that's going to be the case and you're embracing time as a friend and not putting massive expectations on yourself that's got to happen in one two three or even five years time then you're going in with the the right framework to last the distances and then if

you're going to expect issues which there inevitably are going to be issues and you embrace them as learning opportunities knowing that this is another further step along the road to that 15-year journey you can actually start enjoying it more so i think that that money mindset that you talk about josh is a really key fundamental one in terms of starting with the with the right aim in mind and with the right expectations in mind so that you can then roll with the punches as you as you work towards that yeah yeah i really like that what you just shared there it's like you're stepping back um you know i i find at times i can get to to tunnel vision to focus on the business and if if there's one specific thing isn't going how i

wanted to go i expected it to go that's that's right it it does but uh i like that because it forces you to to step back a bit and and to think long term and to um yeah enjoy the moment enjoy time as opposed to thinking you've got to cram all this stuff in and you're maybe not doing enough or whatnot as well. In your story, because you've just shared and I know that process you've just talked about, you and your wife have walked through that and you just shared the journey too and I know you teach other people and you guide other people

on that journey as well. What was that timeframe like before the property management business got to a place where you could then start focusing on what you really loved? yeah so well and it yeah i've to put us in a position where we're living a very comfortable life which we are now took 15 years josh it took 15 years uh so and that started with uh we i call it living by design so uh my wife and i sat down at a restaurant uh not long after we'd got together because I came out unfortunately out of a broken broken marriage which which I found

pretty tough and I was determined not to end up in the same place and a lot of that was because I've become a workaholic I've become so obsessive about architecture consumed every living waking moment of my life that uh understandably I burnt a lot of key relationships as a consequence of that and that was that was a massive wake-up call for me Josh and started us on this journey to where we are now so when i got together with sonja uh the first thing we did was okay let's start with how we actually truly want to live uh we we i've got a vision board that i still refer to today uh that's got all the key aspects of how we want to live visually there and uh we started on that process with as i say the the property management business but to put us in a position

where we've now got the freedom to give back, that took 15 years. So, and we did this baton pass thing along that journey progressively until we're now safely in that position where we're working together and enjoying life on the farm with the dogs and the wildlife around us. Excellent. Yeah, thank you for just sharing so much of your journey there because there's tremendous insight into that for other people listening and watching who are at different stages of that journey there.

So dive into that again, starting with the why and the vision board as a practical way of working that out. So that's great. Thank you, Bushy. One other question I've been really diving into with my experts is around that money mindset and how it all starts And, you know, everything we do with money is a result of how we think about it, how we've experienced money subconsciously, consciously as well. I'd love to dive into what was the very first experience that you can remember having with money?

Yeah, I was pretty miserly as a kid. Scrooge McMartin is what they used to call me when I was a kid, Josh. So, you know, I had two brothers. And our hobby, I'm a country boy. So I spent a lot of my time in country Victoria when I was growing up, actually. And mum and dad were hardworking. There wasn't a lot of money to throw around. So any money that we spent, we had to find ourselves.

And I mean, literally find. So I can remember from a very early age, after school, we would be riding around looking for empty soft drink bottles. and the soft pink bottles we would then cash in at the local shop and that bought us, you'll find this pretty interesting, but I used to be able to buy a bag of lollies for one cent. This is back in the 1960s, so I'm showing my vintage clearly here, Josh. But what I learnt pretty early on about money is that you've got to go and earn it yourself.

so uh right from the get-go i was a very uh very studious around money so i remember i wanted to get a record player it's again this is the vintage i'm talking about this is back in the days of lps and 45s uh my brother and i saved up 40 to buy a brand new record player and i managed to find a secondhand one for $10, which meant that I had $30 to spend on albums. So that was an absolute bargain. And then to put us through high school, we started a sticker club. We were in a country town and stickers, great big stickers

on hotels and all the rest of it. We started making stickers and selling it to the other kids. okay and then one of the things we used to do on weekends uh was to go to the golf club uh we'd we'd go up there with our rubber boots and our gumboots jump in the creeks and fish out and out of the dams fish out all of the balls that the players had lost and then sell it back to them at the clubhouse so uh i guess that was our pretty much our first taste of money but because money was pretty tough the i guess the subliminal message is if you want money you've got to go out and get it and you need to be creative about it and you need to work hard to do it now that was

good uh and as i say to a degree that led me in the path that i went through with architecture but what i hadn't twigged on was that passive aggressive approach that that then dawned on me when i was lucky enough to go to see robert kiyosaki at one of his live conferences in adelaide and if it's one thing that I would like to impart on your listeners is pick up that lesson early your parallel self your shadow grow your shadow was the analogy I like to use so you continue to focus on your career and your business but grow your shadow by investing at least 10 percent and preferably 20 percent of everything you earn in that so one of the really simple things to start off with because people often say oh look i don't know where to start with all this how do i start

really simple in this day and age i i and i talk about this in my book the freedom formula set up what i call the the kick-ass money management system and uh the the ass the a a double s is an auto saver system and it's really simple josh and it revolves around just three really simple accounts so you have what I call a freedom account yeah which is where all of your income goes into that now if you've got a home then that's your offset account so everything that you get goes into that offset account and then you transfer 50% of that into what I call your everyday expenses account so that pays for all of your normal expenses so that can be your your rates your taxes your rent it might be school keys school fees for the kids all of the all the

stuff that's tangible and regular uh and then the third account is your what i call the living account or your discretionary account and 30 percent of your income goes into that and it's a debit card so you set it up as a debit card so once that 30 percent's gone between payments whether that be pay from your employer or pay from your business there's no more until the next round and what that does is if you've got 50 going into that and 30 going into your living discretionary account that means that 20 is accumulating progressively in your freedom account yeah and that's going to get you'll be amazed at how quickly that accumulates over time and that will form the deposit for a property or a lump that you can put into shares or equities

you can start growing that parallel self so I can't emphasize enough the importance doesn't matter what position you're in and how much you're earning keep 20% aside stick that in the freedom account and don't touch it that's your untouchable money that's just going to slowly grow over time and the exponential impact you know I often refer to as giving yourself TLC so it's a different form of tender loving care it's using tea for time so embracing time as your friend leveraging other people and other people's money and then the magic of compounding interest which is an exponential curve over time is going to produce massive results and as i say magically and magically and not so magically whether it be in nature or everywhere else that takes 15 years so if you go

in knowing that and you just stick that money aside and it's growing progressively over that 15 year period and suddenly you've got a nest egg at the end of the 15 years that can fund every other aspect of your life so that you're doing stuff because you want to not because you have to life changes substantially at that point that's great i love that name freedom account this gets you excited thinking about it doesn't it it does yeah absolutely and it's so simple The really good news now is that with the apps and the banking systems that are now available to us, once you've got it set up, it's set and forget. It's automatic. It just does it itself.

Money goes into the Freedom Count. 50% goes into your living expenses. That can be a credit card because it gets paid off at the end of the month and you might take advantage of some of the rewards, but that can be dangerous too for some people. and then the debit card, which has a fixed limit, once it's gone, it's gone. Once that's set up, the only thing you need to focus on is that 30%. And once you can only spend that 30%, that drives your habits

because you're not thinking about the 100% anymore. You're only focusing on, gee, I've got to make this 30% last until the next time I get paid. Yeah. so no rocket science it's it's pretty simple but it's the simple things that we're doing on a regular basis that's that old story if if you just make a one percent improvement today that means you're going to be 356 better at the end of the year yeah that's right so uh adopting that success takes time approach uh and giving yourself plenty of tlc then you're going to be in good

shape long term yeah that's great yeah look there's there's so much in that as well um i'd also like to talk about uh and we talked about money we talked about business we talked about entrepreneurship as well um i'd love to focus in on just the one key thing in each of those areas that have made the biggest difference um you've shared so many kind of key insights along this journey too so So for you, what has been your number one driver for your financial mindset? Passive-aggressive. Yeah.

I know I've said that a number of times already, but that really is the absolute key. For those, I think it was Einstein who said that compounding growth is the eighth wonder of the world. those who embrace it will master it those that don't it will master them now i'll slightly paraphrase that it might be absolutely spot on but that is that the eighth wonder of the world that's what he uh classes compound the magic of compounding returns and that's just that's uh doing something consistently over a period of time

and letting that compounding growth do its work yeah i mean the one of the one of the very simple examples i use when i i talk to people josh is uh if i was to give you a choice of giving you three million dollars right here right now or i give you one cent today two cents tomorrow four cents the day after doubling for the next month which one would you take you take the second one when you understand the power of compound interest yeah i mean the temptation for most people in our day and age is to take the money and run for those that are smart enough to recognize that the time impact of that 31 days is going to give you uh over 10 million dollars then uh that's the mindset we need so it's not the it and it's

this is about delay gratification i think that one of the biggest things we're missing in this A delay in age is everything around us is instant. So I call it the iPhone instant everything age that we live in because we're used to pressing a button and bang, we've got it. Or if we want something, bang, we stick it on credit and we've got it. There's no delay gratification in recognising that, you know, I thank my good father for this. He always said to me, you can have anything you want in life

as soon as you've saved the money to buy it. so little lessons early on i said to dad can i want to get a car he said yeah you can get a car tomorrow as soon as you saved up the money son okay and i've got to thank him for that actually because that that approach then pretty much uh approached everything we've done it and i when we started our business josh now i've had a few a number of iterations as it's grown one of the premises of the business was we will not go into debt so if the business can't fund itself we don't survive so we we deliberately set the business up on that that basis because i've seen a lot of people who will leverage themselves quite strongly into what they think is an absolutely

fantastic fantastic idea but because they haven't mastered money and they haven't cash flowed the business properly they don't last long enough to actually see that through so uh yeah and that that meant we started very slowly and very very humbly i mean very humbly to start with uh but the good thing about that is if you start humbly and you live within your means it means you're honing your craft so uh you're getting better and better what you know the the old malcolm gladwell 10 000 hours to expertise and for 10 000 hours that's 10 years of someone's life to become a real expert in something well you need to be able to survive long enough to do that so if you're if you're honing the craft and doing it pretty mean and lean initially while you're building up your skill

then all these things are growing together so that when when they come together you've got the expertise it's got the skill you've then got the cash flow to be able to really invest back into the business that's great that's great and that's touching on the entrepreneurial mindset there we're doing things there as well so two really key key concepts there to dive into now as we kind of finish up there's just been some incredible incredible insights there passive aggressive I love that you talked about yeah building your safety net before just jumping out and And, yeah, I know you've got to understand your personality profile for that as well, and the key areas starting with the end in mind

for your business and discussing it with your partner if you're in it, with a partner, particularly if you're doing a business together. There's some incredible things there too. And I know you've written a really fantastic book that you'd like to share with our readers today as a free gift to them. So tell us a little bit about that. yeah so the book's called get invested and it's exactly the same name as my podcast get invested as well and it's got a very similar mission it's the it's the why why do you need to

invest in yourself why do you need to invest in your skills and why do you need to invest in other things that are going to create the wealth that's going to give you the time so that you can enjoy the freedom to have a fulfilled life so uh and i the reason i've written the book and the reason i've got the podcast josh is that i'm both frustrated and fearful for a lot of uh hard working time poor professionals who mistakenly still believe that working hard buying a home paying it off and living off your super is going to be a way to a sustainable lifestyle people who continue down that path are going to be in for a massive shock their lifestyle is going to fall off the cliff when and if they can afford to stop work and a lot won't and to quite a quite

a pretty scary stat the most recent abs figures suggest that over 70 percent of people who have retired over the age of 65 are surviving on an average of $15,300 a year, Josh. Wow. That's $295 a week. Now, I don't know about you, but $295 a week doesn't go very far. No. So what I'm really wanting to do is for hard-working,

time-forged professionals to lift their heads and start living with intent. And what I mean by that is every one of us, you and I, every second of every day we're investing our time our energy our resources our money in something whether we're conscious of it or we're not all i'm asking you to to be is be conscious of that to start taking control of your life so you're making it happen rather than letting life happen to you because a lot of people use i'm too busy i'm too busy as an and it's an excuse it's a straight up excuse we are in control of our time we decide where we're going to put that time

uh if if we if we don't have the courage and the bravery to get clear on what's important to us and then start building a life around that we've got no one else to blame but ourselves we don't need anyone's permission for that we we can make that call and uh get invested is going to help the listeners to start opening their eyes to what those opportunities are so i take you on the journey of this is where life is heading for you if you don't start to do something differently but here are some options for you to start considering that are fundamentally going to change that. So it's really I want to whet people's appetite

to the opportunity that I have and then they can go in a thousand different directions. They can start their own business. They can invest in property. They can invest in shares. There's a whole number of ways they can start to build that shadow but I just want to wake people up to get them to start taking some action to move towards that rather

than get to the end of it and I get to see a lot of people josh who are 55 coming on 60 going and i excuse my french but i call it the oh shit super moment oh shit my super is not going to be enough to uh sustain my lifestyle i'm going to have to keep working until the day i drop or i'm going to have to survive on next to nothing so i would rather have that wake-up moment now in your 20s and 30s than have that wake-up moment in your 50s, which a lot of people tend to do, and quite often it's too late by then. Yeah, yeah.

Look, that sounds fantastic, and that's exactly the theme we've put together here for the Master Your Money show. So listeners, be intentional with that. Yeah, take control of your time to really invest into that Get Invested book. It's going to be incredible, and we just want to thank you, Bushy, for being on the show as well and sharing your journey and sharing what you've learned and also what you're doing

to help other people and what people can do practically moving forward today to really help improve their situation as well. Listeners, we've got more interviews coming as well. So, again, be intentional. Take time out to really get into that. We're going to keep diving into this area of business and money and keep exploring it from these different angles. So we know you're going to get heaps out of it.

Again, Bushy, thank you for joining us on the show. My pleasure and really appreciate the opportunity, mate. You're doing some great things and people are going to get a lot of value out of what you're sharing. Thanks, Josh. Fantastic. And listeners, we'll see you soon. Bye. 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 getinvested. 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.