Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Hunter Leonard on Investing Your Resources Wisely and Making a Real Difference

Episode Date: April 1, 2018

Our focus is always on how to invest your resources to the greatest effect, but this particular instalment of the Get Invested podcast comes in a noticeable shade of altruism. This is because my guest in this week’s show is Hunter Leonard. Hunter is the founder and CEO of Silver & Wise. He is known for helping large businesses with marketing strategy, including Bluescope Steel, NAB, Bendigo Bank, Melbourne Brick and many more. He is also the author of several acclaimed books, a successful businessman and someone with a sharp eye for giving back. Sitting down with Hunter and picking his brain was a real pleasure. In our chat, we covered his early investments/career, how he thinks about money, definitions of success, how to allocate your resources, the productivity potential of older folks and the importance of giving back to your community. Listen to the full episode to hear all this, plus: Why an investment in yourself is often the most important one to make The lessons and teachings of Hunter’s first business Hunter’s advice to his 18-year-old self Different perspectives on what it means to be successful The difference between an ‘investor’ and an ‘outvestor’ What Hunter would do with 10 million dollars The intangible benefits of altruistic work Why so many people in Australia feel unfulfilled, and what they should do about it Links: LinkedIn Silver & Wise FacebookSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ladies and gentlemen and fellow Freedom Fighters, this is Bushy Martin from Know How Property Finance and welcome back to the Get Invested Podcast. You know, in our lives, we tend to focus on how to invest our resources to get the greatest effect. But this particular installment of the Get Invested Podcast comes in a noticeable shade of altruism. This is because my guest in this week's show is Hunter Leonard. Hunter is the founder and CEO of Silver & Wires.

He's known for helping large businesses with marketing strategy, including Blue Scope Steel, NAB, Bendigo Bank, Melbourne Brick, and many more. He's also the author of several acclaimed books, a successful businessman, and someone with a sharp eye for giving back. Sitting down with Hunter and picking his brain was an absolute pleasure. In our chat, we covered his early investments, his career, how he thinks about money, his definitions of success, how to allocate your resources, the productivity potential of older folks, and the importance of giving back to your community.

As we go through the episode, you're going to find some absolute pieces of gold, which include some great topics like why an investment in yourself is often the most important one to make, the different perspectives on what it means to be successful, the difference between an investor and an outfester, the intangible benefits of altruistic work, and why so many people in Australia feel unfulfilled and what they should do about it. I know you're really going to enjoy this conversation. I've got a lot of time for Hunter. He's a man with a real passion and empathy, very clever in his communication, and is doing

some fantastic things in helping the mature employees start a business after being retrenched late in their working life. So sit back now and enjoy a fantastic conversation with Hunter Levin. Before we get into it, if you're a time poor professional who's interested in investing but don't have the time, you don't have the expertise, you don't know where to start, you don't know who to trust, then grab a copy of my book The Freedom Formula that gives you all of to know how. You can check it out at www.bushymartin.com.au or email me at hello at khgroup.com.au that's h-e-l-l-o at khgroup.com.au and mention Get Invested for a special bonus. I might add that all

of the proceeds of the book are going to Living It Rough and Doing It Tough, a really dedicated a group who provide for the needs of the homeless and their pets. So please get involved. And now, I hope you enjoy this interview. Yeah, and I think it's really, you talk about the word true value, and I think that's what we've got to have people understand is the true value of wisdom and experience goes well beyond what you're paying someone in a salary. 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 will hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more work less and leave a living legacy by investing now listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream not someone else's more episodes can be found on itunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now, let's get invested. Okay, well I'm here with Hunter Leonard.

We're about to get invested. Welcome aboard, Leonard. It's been looking forward to catching up with you and have a chat for a while. No worries, Bushy. Very happy to have a chat, buddy. Excellent. Now, I'll kick straight into it, Hunter, and I'll just sort of get you to start by telling about who you are, what you do, and where you're heading at the moment, mate?

Yeah, sure. Well, I guess top line, I'm a husband, a musician, a cook, a business owner, an author, and a philanthropist, which kind of summarizes what I do in life. That's massive. And where I'm heading at the moment is I'm right in the middle of starting a new business. We've been in the pre-launch phase for the last couple of years, and I'm now just starting to roll out the first of the products and services, which is pretty exciting. Awesome. And the reason why you're doing that, mate, what's the driver behind that?

Well, there's two reasons. One is obviously my own financial security for myself and my wife and being prepared for the future, but also because we have a bent in philanthropic endeavours is to create something that makes a difference in a social sense as well. Yeah, awesome. Okay. Okay. Well, that sounds pretty exciting, mate. What I might do now is just sort of flip it on its head a little bit and we'll go back to where it all began for you and I'd just like you to take us through your life journey so far but focusing on what you've invested your time and your money into,

when and why, and what has it done for you and for others along that pathway? Yeah, okay. So, born in Canberra. I'll do the same thing as you say and don't hold that against me but my father and mother were running or dad was running his own business in Canberra when I was born and so I was born into a family of business owners, if you like. Then they moved when I was about four to Sydney

and I grew up and did all my schooling in Sydney and lived there till my early 30s. I guess investing when I was younger, it was about really when I reflect back on it, it was investing in myself and my friends. It was time outdoors and playing sports and, of course, education, although when you're in school it's kind of sometimes more of a chore than something that's particularly inspiring.

But my report cards at school were often things like inclined to be talkative. I can't imagine why. so so but then going to uni i definitely i definitely look back on uni as being an investment in my my skills and my education which is probably where i really first started investing it wasn't about money yeah though i did um while i was fortunate to go through in the in the phase of free university education i did put myself through uni i paid for i worked three days a week and went to uni four days a week so i paid for all of my books myself and all my

petrol and travel to and from home and all that sort of stuff. So that was an investment of some money, not a large amount, certainly not as much as people have to pay these days for their education, but that was probably where I invested my time in was the university degree, which has been very useful right through my life, even though I'm not working in that field anymore. Yeah, absolutely. So moving forward from there, as you progress through,

Take me through – we're sort of talking your early 30s. Take me through the journey from there and what you then invested in and where that's led to. Yeah, so probably the first thing we invested in – actually, my father died quite young and I was fortunate. My mum loaned me some money from his superannuation, I suppose, and I bought a small farm out in Nimitabelle in New South Wales. and that was more of an emotional decision to have a bit of space

and have somewhere to go and go skiing with mates and stuff and when we're talking a farm people might be thinking something grand and glorious but it was basically 60 acres along the mountain highway in Nimitabel and cost me about 70 or 80 grand or something so it wasn't a particularly big amount of money but it was a great property and it was 45 minutes from the ski field So I used to go down there three or four times a year and basically just chop wood and cut plants down and go skiing.

That was kind of a place to go and get away from work, if you like. Yeah. You still got the property, Hunter? No, no. We sold that after 20-odd years and got about the same we paid for it. So it was a great investment from a commercial return but obviously had lots of great time down there with our family and things like that.

A lot of fantastic memories there. and from then on really it's been nicole and i got married in our late 20s um we we bought a series of houses first in the blue mountains and then a place in summers in victoria and then more recently a house in bentley in in victoria about four or five years ago so okay so we've always had houses um they started off as being houses uh more holiday houses and we rented closer to work, and then we'd go to our house on the weekend. That's smart. But now we own our house that we live in.

We don't have holiday houses or anything anymore. We go on holidays to wherever we decide to, but it's kind of switched around in the last sort of five or six years, I suppose. So the switch to investing in your own business, when did that kick off? I started my first business at 35, so I had an opportunity to come out of employment. It was a contract signed on a napkin with the husband of a friend of mine who needed some help with his marketing, and so I came out of running an advertising agency

and started Blue Frog in 2001. Okay, okay. Yeah, and what was the – at that point in time, why did you decide to invest in your own business? Well, I had always thought I would probably own one at some point. um having grown up with my dad running his own business at various times during my my early years he did work for other people but at times he ran his own business and i used to go and help him um put floors down and all sorts of stuff like that so when the opportunity came

out it came up it was kind of seemed like the right time to have a crack i thought if i'm gonna have a crack i've got to have a crack now otherwise i'll never do it so um and and the time and I was sort of pretty much overworking for somebody else, and I thought, well, I might as well go and have a crack and do something myself. Yeah, and that's obviously gone pretty well for you, mate? Yeah, look, it's been challenging, but more fun than challenging over 16 years.

We've certainly had some times that would challenge anyone, I would have thought, but we're still going after 16 years. Yeah, that's a destiny in itself. Yeah, and I certainly love being able to take it in whatever direction I decide as opposed to having to worry about somebody else's thoughts on it. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Let's dig in a little bit deeper on the investment front

and let's talk about the money side. What was the first dollar that you invested, mate? Was it that property that you spoke to me about or was there something... Yeah, I'd say it was probably the first real dollar of investment was into the farm. Yeah, okay, okay. And if we look back now from where you currently sit, you're feeling happy about how you've invested your time and your money and your resources to this point?

Yeah, I think generally. I think I would have probably thought twice about buying the farm. Although we had a lot of time out there, it was pretty hard to sell after when we went to go to sell it. It took a long time to sell and then we didn't make any money on it. So it probably cost a fair bit of dough, but then you've got to balance that against having, you know, four weeks of holidays a year for five or ten years for free. Exactly. Except for a bit of firewood and cutting things off the property. It's actually a pretty cheap holiday in that regard.

Yeah. So it probably wasn't the best investment from a financial perspective. But then, you know, the recent one in Bentley has been awesome the last three or four years. Bentley's done really well. It'll be brilliant. Swings and roundabouts. Yeah, awesome. And so if you were talking to your 18-year-old self now, looking back,

what would you advise him to invest his time, his money and his skills in? Anything different to what you've done? I'd probably say buy in the city, not the country, from the farm perspective. But in terms of the education and investment in skills and stuff, I would do it exactly the same way I did. So I'd be saying just do what you're doing. because I still use my science degree skills in my daily work now. The thought process of test and measure and experiment with things

still runs very strong through the veins of the way we do our marketing with our clients. Yeah, I agree with you. We had a food for thought session just the other evening for a bunch of our investors and it was an on-the-couch, fireside chat type exercise and and someone asked me to talk them through my investment journey and i said look the first thing that if if i was talking to myself as i was 18 i'd invest in your skills first yeah get really good at something whatever that is might necessarily be your

passion because quite often your passion isn't going to give you an income not always sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't once you've got to a point where you've invested in your skills then then you put yourself in a position where potentially you can build your own business or drive a very strong career and that gives you the opportunity to invest in things that are going to place that income and then sustain your lifestyle long term. So in the context of all that, what does success mean to you? Everyone's definition is different. What's your definition of success, Hunter?

For me, it's really just being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it and that could be anything from, you know, 15 minutes having a play of the trumpet as I was showing you to a day's bushwalking, you know, on a Monday, not a weekend, if you know what I mean. So for me it's small. It could be small things and large things. It's not about – and, of course, that does relate to having the money to be able to do that or creating the time to be able to do that,

but really it is just at any moment in time being able to do the things that really light your fire rather than somebody else's. Totally agree. Yep, that's spot on. And one of the terms that I often talk about is the difference between an investor and an outvester. And an investor is someone who invests in themselves.

An outvester is someone who invests in helping others. And you can be both, or you can be one for a time and then become the other. Where would you sit on the spectrum of investor and outvester? Definitely more interested in helping others than myself, I'm a very extroverted person from a perspective of not mean, I don't mean that by outgoing, I mean my focus is on helping others

and the flow will come back. And I've always worked out that if you invest your time in helping others, then you do get a flow back. It's a bit of that rubbish in, rubbish out. Like if you give crap out to other people, you're likely to get crap back. And pretty much in running my businesses, I'm kind of doing both. at the same time because i'm i'm investing in uh delivering a service to someone but that service is always helping someone as well if you know what i mean so i'm kind of fortunate in the way

we run our businesses is that that we get both at the same time well the the silver and wise exercise the the transformation that will bring potentially to the lives of people who quite often at that that age uh starting to wonder uh what the future holds for them i can see that being the satisfaction you must get out of uh seeing the light go on for those people must be quite amazing oh yeah and it's um it's kind of mind-blowing actually how how much difference we could make just by helping one person at a time so i was in a conversation the other day with the age discrimination commissioner who's been appointed to oversee some of the rubbish that's going on in not just mature age but in many age groups.

And they're in possession of some data from a major study that was done that shows that putting just 5% more mature age people back into productive employment, and I include business ownership in that because that's a component of what we're doing, could add something in the vicinity of $50 billion to the economy. So we've kind of worked – yeah, we've worked out that it's roughly a 200 to 300-fold return on investment in our program and also in programs to put people in employment because – and when you think of businesses, if you said to any business owner, give me $1 and I'll give you $200, they would just go any day. Are you kidding? Yeah, exactly.

Where's the cat? Yeah, but when you look at the model, the fact is if you help an individual, let's say take a very specific example, you help somebody get a job for $100,000, then that person will go and spend that $100,000 on maybe a deposit on a property or they'll go and buy food, they'll go and pay taxes. So when you actually see what happens with that money and how it then flows through the economy, we can see that just helping someone and inspiring them to start a business or inspiring someone to employ them for their maturity and their wisdom can create this snowball effect that actually does return quite an amazing amount of positive return in terms of revenue or wages or taxes paid. but it also has the obviation of the negative side too. So it stops them going on to social benefits. It stops them going to see the doctor because they're feeling emotionally challenged for some reason related to losing their job or whatever.

So the – and when I was talking to the commissioner, she thought I was low-balling the estimate. She thought it was probably double what we were thinking. So I can't think of another business where I can make some money myself because we are a for-profit enterprise. We're not a social enterprise. Make money for myself, help somebody else make money and be financially secure, and as a result of helping them,

help the economy. So there's a triple win. Absolutely. And I think this sort of leads me neatly into another pet subject of mine and that is that a lot of Australians have this thing about money and it's sort of seen, it's painted as this evil thing that a lot of us are too scared to talk about. We sort of brush it under the carpet.

My own view is, and if I was to paint someone who I have a fair bit of time for is someone like Bill Gates who made a fortune putting computers on every one of our desks and home studies, but what he's done with that to actually improve and save the lives of he saved something like six million lives to date through his foundation and he spent 28 billion dollars of his own personal wealth to help make that happen and he's come out and said that he will spend 95 of his wealth by the time he leaves the planet for me uh and i'm interested in your thoughts on this hunter uh i see money as a great

enabler for good and yes i'm not i'm not scared of that at all i'm not going to hide that fact that if i can build a successful business that can help people achieve their goals and then put that towards things they're going to make a difference why should i feel uncomfortable about what about that what what's your thoughts around that subject yeah totally i look i i agree with all that i think that um as a as a society we've got to enable productivity and then we've got to encourage those that are productive to do as well as they possibly can and then to give back. So I see there's four categories in society.

There's those that make money for themselves and they become rich and wealthy at the expense of others and I think we've got to minimise that group. We've got to maximise the group of people who are productive and have the capacity to make millions in a business and then go away and give millions back just like Bill Gates. yep um we've got to optimize the ability to support those who can't be productive for whatever reason disability or or abuse or discrimination but we've also the fourth category

is the unproductive that are able to do something and don't they choose not to so this is the ones that could get a job or could be productive in something but they choose to live off others and we've got to minimise that group as well. So I think there's only two we should be pushing and that's the ones that have a capacity to make money and are willing to give back or invest in philanthropic things and also maximise the opportunity

to help those that can't help themselves. Yeah, the area that you're drilling into with Silver and Wise, I think there's a massive need there given that a lot of corporates, when they start to look at the bottom line and where to chop, It's that middle management line where a lot of sort of mid-40s to mid-50s senior personnel seem to sit. Why do you think it is that we – there is an almost underlying ageism that flows through for whatever reason. But what do you think – why do you think that is?

And given what you're doing yourself and WISE, what do you think needs to happen to change that perception to respect the true value that those individuals actually bring to the table? Yeah, and I think it's really – you talk about the word true value, and I think that's what we've got to have people understand is the true value of wisdom and experience goes well beyond what you're paying someone in a salary. Now, I can totally understand corporates saying, well, okay, I can get that same job done by somebody else or I can remove it using technology or whatever, and that's fine. So you can't knock a corporate for trying to make money because if they don't make money, well, we're stuffed anyway. But I do think as a society, we've got to be more Eastern in our approach. Now, if you look at the Eastern philosophies like China, Japan, and a few of these other countries, they revere people of an older age. They revere the wisdom, they revere the experience, and they make sure that there's a place in society for those individuals. Totally.

So, however we do it, and I choose to not focus. I've done enough research to know what the problem is, but I'm not going to focus on that any further. I'm just going to find a solution and just do my bit to change it. but as a society we have to consider the the risk of not using the experience and wisdom of that person and allowing them to be productive and make money and pay taxes because if they're sitting unproductive at home uh getting sick and then drawing on the social purse then you know who's going to end up paying the tax don't you it's you and me bushy if we're still working we're going to be paying 70 tax and that we know there's no one going to be left to pay tax so exactly we have to

optimize and i'm not just talking about mature age we actually have to optimize them the productive proportion of our population those that are doing well enough to pay tax because i think the other day i heard the figures that something like only i think only 40 or 50 percent of the population pays any net tax is that a fact the rest are either breaking even in other words they take as much out of the economy as they're giving, and a whole bunch are obviously, for whatever reason, having to draw on it, and that's okay because we know there's a percentage

that we'll always have to draw on it. But we can't hobble the productive ones, and we certainly can't waste the mature age group who want to work but can't work because somebody thinks they're a bit stupid because they've got a bit of grey hair. Exactly right. Yeah, it's spot on.

Yeah, absolutely so true. this worship of youth, a pretty scary concept in the context of where it's going to lead us as a community long term. And I agree, I don't want to get off on a tangent too much because what I like about what you're doing is you're recognising the issue and you're actually doing something proactively about it, which is awesome. Let's talk a bit, switch to the future for a minute, more on a personal level if I can, Hunter.

You've covered off to some degree your future dreams and goals. What about personally? Where do you see yourself personally heading over the next 10 to 20 years? Well, I'm the kind of guy that's probably never going to retire, so I've got to make sure I'm funding a working lifestyle for the next 50 years. Yeah, join the club. Yeah. Look, really my passion I think now is I'm going to keep investing my time

into the business and into solutions to handle this problem. I think this issue of mature age productivity is probably going to be the thing that I'll spend the next 30 years handling because I realise there is such a huge thing that needs to change and it may take 10, 15, 20 years to change. It's a bit like an ocean liner. It's big and it needs to, you know, the direction of it needs to change but it doesn't happen at the moment.

You spin the wheel. Yes, yeah, no, good call. very good ball it's sort of starting the momentum to move it in that direction your what's your ideal lifestyle when if we talk about that uh in the context of what you're doing is it is it what your is your current lifestyle your ideal lifestyle look i'm the thing i'm like everyone i'd probably like a little bit more free time sometimes but then i i get i get bored pretty easily so i can't sit on a beach for two weeks at a time my my ideal holiday is probably two or three days but um look it's yeah it's probably going back to my point about being able to do

what you want to do when you want to do it um it's about just expanding the moments the moments of time to be able to do that so if i can um build my business up and bring people around me so that i can step out for a month and go and it won't be a month of holiday it might be to go and actually go across to meet people like these guys in the u.s that are philanthropic and learn from them or to do a workshop or to, again, invest in my skill and ability to do more so that I can come back and we, you know, spin the wheel a bit faster with silver and white. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If I was to give you a cheque for $10 million today, mate, would you be doing anything differently and what would you do with it? Mate, I can tell you what I'd do. I'd speed everything up and we've just designed this collaborative program with about seven other businesses and the concept is to put a thousand mature age individuals through this process, the process being first step, what's your plan as an individual

the second step being to stream them into either interim work, volunteering or running a business or a mix of whatever the above and we've worked out that it's going to cost about $10,000 per person to put in, which is kind of fun because it adds up to your number that you've got, which is $10 million. If we increase $10 million in those 1,000 people, we'll end up with a half billion to $1 billion difference in the economy. So that's what I do.

Massive. Yeah, that's massive, mate. So that's a nice segue into what legacy do you see yourself leaving? I would love the legacy that there was no age discrimination in Australia. as a societal attitude, if you like. So I would love it that it doesn't matter how old you are, whether you're five years old or 95, that someone took you on face value and judged you according to your ability to make a difference to others.

And I'm sure you've seen this. Kids of four or five can make a difference to their parents and grandparents, and grandparents of 95 can make a difference to the four or five generations that they've got as descendants. So if somebody just went, you know what, Bushy, you're your age and you've got value and I don't consider your age to be a negative, that would be an awesome outcome. Yeah, yeah.

So what do you think is going to need to change for that to start happening though? It's got to be, I reckon, a focus on what people do and what difference they make. So if somebody is productive and doing well, I think we've got to just enable that as much as possible, not hobble them. So you don't want to be taxing the productive more than we do. And I think we've got to then also take those that aren't able to be productive

and just make sure we look after them, and that's human rights and social support. and the ones in the middle that are unproductive but could be need to get off their arse and do something. Is it also part of trying to re-inject levels of respect back in the very early education process? I just see from my own son going through school compared to the environment that I went through and admittedly I was a country boy

so I went to a very small country school where everyone knew each other and I think in my year 12 class was five of us so very intimate very personal relationships probably not the same way in the in the city but i what i've sensed is even the the student to teacher relationship there's no respect for the teachers and this sort of ethos then seems to permeate all the way through so So for me, I'm starting to sound old now, Hunter, because I think if we can sort of reinvigorate respect at an early age,

working its way through, then those that are forgotten about on the edges of society, and there's a lot of old people who have a wealth of wisdom at any age, right through to their 90s, they've got so much wisdom to give, but there's this perception that if it's not brand new and funky and technology-based, then it's all hat and useless and who cares? Yeah, that's true. So I think we've got to have less focus on things and goods

and consumerism and more focus on what used to be called citizenship, which is that you have a responsibility amongst the borders of society. And as an individual, everyone should be allowed to have the freedom to do what they do and to be what they be, but they also have a responsibility to others beyond them. And I think if we just kept those basic values in place, we would be fine. It wouldn't matter how much technology we had or how much new stuff we had. We would always remember the fact that, yes, we have a place

and everyone else around us has a place as well. Yeah, totally agree. Just following on from what you're saying there as well, I mean, we live in a lucky country, there's no doubt about it, and we've got everything. Let's face it, we've got everything. And yet all the research I do suggests that there's only a very small number of people in Australia who feel happy and fulfilled.

Yes. Why do you think that is and what do the happy and fulfilled invest in that the others don't, do you think? Yeah. Well, I think it's about investing in moments of happiness, not trying to go towards some top of the mountain of happiness exists at 70 when I've got everything going well and I don't have to work and I've paid everything off,

if you know what I mean. So I think we would be far better off if we focused less on physical objects and buying shit. Yes, spot on. Not saying that buying some things isn't worthwhile, like investing in things, as you talk about with your listeners and your book and your approach to business. Investing in a house is great, investing in business is great,

investing in skills is awesome. But if you think we're going to find happiness by buying the latest shiny car or the latest shiny object, then I think most people would say that we've got another thing coming. I saw a video the other day by George Lucas who was explaining the dark side and the light side of Star Wars and he said it beautifully. He said that the ways that focus on compassion for others

are the ones that have happiness. those that focus on selfishness in themselves never get it so that's gold yeah nailed it there mate i i've always felt that happiness is a it's a choice it's a decision not a circumstance so i get up in the morning decide to be happy and then if you made that decision it doesn't matter what comes at you it's a matter of how you respond to it that counts whereas there seems to be as you well elaborated on there this sense that well i can only be happy when i've got this or I've got that or I've achieved this or I've achieved that. Well, I actually think it's reversed.

If you decide to be happy, then success, however you define it, because it is different for everyone, is more likely to occur because you've decided to be happy than I'll only allow myself to be happy when. So, yeah, okay. That's always a future proposition, whereas if you think about, you know, life is made up of X number of seconds, X number of minutes, X number of days, X number of weeks.

And so what you've got to try and say is, okay, how can I find a way to be happy for five seconds? And then once you get good at that, we'll find a way of being happy for a few minutes. And then once you get good at that, we'll find a way of being happy for a few days. And that really is, as far as I'm concerned, the puzzle. And it's not worrying, not trying to think about trying to be happy when I'm 70. Yes. When I buy a new car because, you know, new cars become old and new watches become old. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad.

There's nothing wrong with having things, but don't think that that's where happiness lies because it's not there. No, absolutely dead right, mate. Okay, so if we look back on the conversation that we've had today, Hunter, in the context of your own situation, what do you believe you really invest in? I think I really invest in other people and myself. It's not in things. If I invest in other people and myself, then things come from that. Yes. Yeah, nailed it.

Sort of coming to the conclusion of things, if you could bring one person back from the dead, mate, who would it be and why would you do it? Probably my dad, just to give mum a companion, basically. Okay. How long has dad been gone? Since I was 20, so 30-odd years. Wow.

Wow, it's a big hole in her life and a big hole in your life too now, Dad. yeah for sure yeah no that's that's a good call my uh my own father he was bushy senior i was bushy junior and um the reason i've kept the bushy tag is to keep his legacy alive hunter in actual fact because when someone says bushy i think of dad and uh very similar i i was blessed with my parents a lot of people aren't i got very lucky with mine and uh dad was an absolute legend I still bump into people who go, oh, you must be Bushy's son. And I say, yeah, I am. And he said, oh, he was a great bloke.

He was fantastic. And that's been, I reckon that's, yeah, it's been nearly 30 years, mate. So, yeah, I can see that you'd feel the same way in that regard. Okay. No, that's awesome. Something for the listeners now. If there's a book and or a podcast that you really enjoy, what should they be reading and listening to?

Well, mate, I'm probably going to go a different angle to what most of your interviewees would say. And I would say that if your listeners went to the United Nations website and they read the 30 human rights articles, as defined by Eleanor Roosevelt and all her friends in 1947, and if they were able to apply those to their life, they would find things much easier for them and would be making it every day easier for someone else.

That's gold. That's gold. Any of those actually spring to mind that you can share? Well, there's 30 of them, and I actually posted something the other day about it, and there's a lot of debate going on in society at the moment about various issues, which I won't mention here on the podcast, but everyone will know what they are.

And the fact is that both sides of the debate are ignoring people's human rights, and those are things to which we all have the right to live and be free and to make our own choices and to have our own opinions. And whilst I'm paraphrasing there, the freedom to be an individual and the freedom to make your own way in your life is really the fundamental of what the human rights are all about. Totally agree.

We can't, no one is allowed to make us a slave of their opinion. and no one's allowed to stop us from being free to do what we want to do and to be the individual that we were meant to be. And so for me, that is something that I've supported a lot, the human rights. And I think it's something that most people actually don't know what those 30 articles are. Say I have a right to do something, but most of the time those things that they mention are actually not human rights.

the 30 human rights are the 30 human rights and they're the 30 that we're defined by and some of the things people say they have a right to blah blah blah they actually don't have a right to do those things yeah that's a good call, that's a very good call actually

to vilify or to racially discriminate or any of those things they actually don't have a right to do those things, they have a right to express an opinion but they don't have a right to take those things away from someone else so yeah. Absolutely 100% agree i think there's if there's one thing that i would like to see removed and this is probably pipe dreaming hunter but it's judgment judgment in all of its forms because every one of us is

individual every one of us has a right to live the way we want to live without someone judging them from some artificially predisposed or or ancestral thinking just doesn't make any sense to me uh never will but but the the funny thing is it's the the ones quite often it's uh those that are those most vocal about being judged themselves who are in fact very judgmental in the opposite direction it's i find it a really interesting paradigm and and the sense of entitlement that i see a lot of uh australians adopt for whatever reason i'm not sure how it's come come to be yeah is a bit scary in the concept of where that might lead us to yeah totally mate absolutely so anyway that's a good place to go it is no i totally agree a great way to wrap it up

mate and i will actually go and read those now you've pointed them to me and i don't think i've read the 30 so i'm going to make sure i do that and i'll be encouraging everyone else to do the same but uh really appreciate you spending some time with me i know sylvan wise is going to do very well. There's a massive need for it out there. There's a huge number of people who at that important stage of their life are losing confidence in themselves and the hope and the transformation that you give to their confidence, to their health, to their emotional wellbeing, just about in every sense and its contribution to the community and economy is fantastic. I haven't seen anyone who's recognised it and been prepared to back themselves

and do something with it. So very keen to support you as much as I possibly can moving forward with that, mate. I know it'll do well and appreciate you spending some time with me today. You're most welcome, mate. Thanks for the opportunity and really great to chat, bud. Thanks, Hunter. Cheers, mate.

Cheers. 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. you Thank you.