Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Jim Smith on living by design

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

All the traits and behaviours of the most successful people who live by design can be learned and inculcated – it is just about mirroring these people and developing your own set of happy habits and rewarding rituals. And a great place to start is by mirroring the approach of today’s guest Jim Smith. Jim has successfully set up his life so that he is now devoting his time to building Focus Tours. Focus Tours is a fusion of Nepali and Laos charm combined with Australian focus on detail, creating a truly unique and personal experience for travellers looking to enjoy trekking, sightseeing, volunteering and unwinding. If you’re looking to travel to Nepal or Laos and really enjoy the local culture then check it out at www.focustours.com.au.   You’ll love Jim’s down to earth genuine, generous and very caring approach to helping others in everything he’s done and continues to do. Jim lives a very fulfilled life of freedom where he combines his love of travel with the ability to teach others and help others less fortunate. And he’s done this because he’s lived his entire life by design and with intent – you’ll hear how he’s always been very clear about what he did and didn’t want to do with his life. He’s had the courage to try and do completely new things and make major changes without apparent fear.  And he’s achieved all of this by making his money, living below his means, and saving and investing it in property in a way that now funds and supports his ideal lifestyle. Now as you enjoy his entertaining journey, don’t only learn from what he’s done and how he’s done it, but listen out for where he demonstrates the seven lifestyle wealth building characteristics of confidence, frugality, responsibility, social indifference, focus,  planning and delayed gratification, so that you can start learning these traits as essential to your future success. Jim’s book recommendation: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 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.

The reason I've chosen the lifestyle I have is because I always wanted that little bit of independence and be in control of, you know, the way we wanted to live our lives. I was never that fond of just being on that treadmill of day after day working for the man sort of thing. So very early on I always, you know, I was pretty handy with my money and I've always worked and I've always saved so that I could have that independence and over time you know I've come in and out of teaching but I've always you

know loved that connection with kids and you know I've liked the idea of helping people kind of reach their full potential and so that's sort of why I got ended up with the travel business taking people to Nepal. 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, sometimes for no impact. get invested will help you to start living by design not by default i'm going to help you to make it happen not let it happen you'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more work less and leave a living legacy by investing now listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream not someone else's more episodes can be found on

iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freight and Finers. Let's start again with some questions. What does living by design really look like? And how much is enough? And as author Jeff Gaines cheekily asks us, Why are so many of us too fat, too broke and way too busy? It's another question that continues to plague me. In a world of unlimited knowledge and opportunity, why is this still even the case? And the stats are really scary. Repeated research demonstrates that nearly two thirds of us are obese, two out of three

of us are in a bad financial position and a big majority are way busier than you'd like to be. Now, while there are stacks of reasons why this is the case, what is it that really separates those that are healthy, wealthy and free from those that are fat, broke and busy? If I was to boil it down to just one thing, there are those that make it happen and those that let it happen. As I discuss in my book, The Freedom Formula, there are a few that choose to live by design and a lot that allow themselves to live by default. Now, you're probably thinking, yeah, yeah, I've heard you say this before, Bushy, but what does living by design really look like?

Well, to give you a much clearer picture and a living example of living by design, today's guest, Jim Smith, is the living epitome of what living with intent and living by design looks like in the flesh. And Jim's a great example because in many people's eyes, he's probably the antithesis of what most expect financially independent people to look like. Jim lives a very fulfilled life that flows from his financial freedom, where he has time on his hands because the majority of his income needs look after themselves without relying on him to generate them. And for me, this is what life is all about. Enjoying the fulfillment that only comes from giving freely and helping others without ever expecting anything in return.

And this fulfillment flows from the freedom of being able to pursue your passions and interests. and this freedom results from having time on your hands and time on your hands can only be created when the majority of your income needs are generated independent of you. Now the key measures here are income and time. So just imagine a graph with increasing income being the vertical axis

and increasing time being the horizontal axis creating four separate quadrants. So in the bottom left-hand square are those that have very little income and very little time. A lot of hard-working Aussies unfortunately fall into this group. In the bottom right quadrant, you have those that have little income but plenty of time. Part-time casuals and pensioners often fall into this area.

Those that have time on their hands but don't have the income to do much about it. Then we have the top left quarter, the higher income but no time group. The majority of hard-working, time-poor professionals all fit into this category. They're earning good incomes but sacrificing their free time and their enjoyment to fund and maintain their high-cost lifestyles. And then finally, in the top right corner, we have the elusive nirvana.

The select few who enjoy lots of free time with lots of income. This is where everyone wants to be. What about you? Where do you want to be and where are you on the scale of income and time? Which quadrant do you fit into? How much free time and income do you have to pursue your passions and interests? How much time do you spend earning your income and how much free time does that actually leave you? Do you feel stuck in that never-ending rat race and don't know how to get off?

where do you want to be and what are you doing to make it happen how are you creating your ideal lifestyle and how have others done it what's different about them and the way they think the way they believe and the way they behave how can you start to follow their example well this is where today's guest jim smith comes in as you'll hear in today's conversation In simple terms, Jim has designed his ideal life around what's important to him and everything he's done over the years has been driven around making this happen. His lifestyle goals, his beliefs and his behaviours are all in alignment. So to put it into a sentence, Jim has actually become a modest millionaire

and that's what you can and will become if you follow his example because it's never too late to start but it's always too late to wait. And while we're on the subject, how did you feel and what did you immediately think when I mentioned the word millionaire? For many of you, I'm guessing you might be thinking, millionaire? I'll never be a millionaire. I'll never be in a position to be one and I certainly don't want to be one of them. Now, when I used the millionaire word, did you imagine someone in a big McMansion driving flashy cars and living the high life? If so, you're probably way off the mark because the greatest majority of millionaires are average Joes or Jodies, or in today's case, Jims, and most of them are like the guy next door. And if you want to shift from being rich but time poor to wealthy with time, freedom and fulfilment in your hands, then like it or not, but you're going to need to become a millionaire.

And anyone can do it, and I know you can do it. I'm not talking about flying private jets and being driven around by a chauffeur sipping on champers and scoffing caviar. Even a modest lifestyle where you have time and freedom will still require you to be a millionaire. Let me explain. If $100,000 is enough recurring passive income a year to fund your preferred lifestyle so that you've got the time and freedom to give freely to others, then you're going to need to invest in creating an income-producing nest egg of at least $2 million. and this is based on a 5% return from your income producing investments which is actually pretty ambitious given our current climate.

You're more likely to need $2.5 million if you only get about 4% yield on your nest egg from interest, dividends and rent. So how's your superannuation balance looking against this? The current average combined super balance for a couple nearing retirement in Australia is between $400,000 to $600,000. That's according to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.

How does relying on paying off your home loan and hoping that super is going to fund your lifestyle look against this? You'll need to invest beyond this if you're going to enjoy and sustain anywhere near a comfortable lifestyle long term. And the good news is that it's not hard to do if you've got enough time up your sleeve. If I can do it, then anyone can do it. So the core question you need to ask yourself is how much is enough?

How much is enough to fund your preferred lifestyle? Or is this the right question? Because every time I ask one of our new clients how much is enough, I get very vague answers if I actually get an answer at all. In fact, most people respond by saying, well, gee, Bushy, I never actually thought about that before. Well, perhaps a better question is how little is enough? How little is enough to fund your preferred lifestyle?

As a rough rule of thumb, approximately 80% of your current income will fund your current lifestyle if you don't have a mortgage, assuming that you're enjoying your current lifestyle of course. So to get your head around how little is enough, how about trying this experiment over the next three months? In month one, live off 80% of your net income. In month two, live off 60% of your income after tax. And in month three, see how well you survive on just 40% of your current income.

And to make it sustainable, make sure you bring forward the reward by shouting yourself for something you like at the end of each month. This will give you a very clear picture of what your income will allow you to do and if this is going to be sufficient to sustain you long term. Now, you may find that you're struggling on your current income and you actually may need more. But this is a great place to start because all you need to do

is multiply your preferred lifestyle income by 20 times up to 25 times and you know what your income-producing SD number needs to be, excluding, of course, the value of your home because your home doesn't actually put money in your pocket. It costs you money. and for most of you this means you'll need to become a millionaire by the time you want to be able to stop working for money or to work less and how do you become a modest millionaire what characteristics traits beliefs and behaviors does the millionaire next door exhibit that the

majority don't good old jerry harvey of harvey norman fame is a great example his current net worth these days is about $1.8 billion. Now my younger brother Ian or Bushy Jr has been a franchisee with Harvey Norman for many years and he's currently driving the Malaysian expansion out of Kuala Lumpur. I'll never forget him telling me about the very first time he met Jerry when he was interviewed to join Harvey Norman. Jerry was reclining back in his old chair with his feet on the table with cracks in the soles of his shoes and one of those old brick mobile phones by his side while he was eating banana. The absolute antithesis of what most people would expect. And the world's wealthiest living investor, Warren Buffett, with a current net worth of

over $78.2 billion, is no different. He still lives in the same humble home he's lived in for decades, and he drives his car through the local McDonald's every morning to grab his burger and cake. And today's guest, Jim Smith, has the same down-to-earth, easy-going and very generous approach. So what are the common traits and behaviours that characterise these modest millionaires? Stanley and Danko's classic book, The Millionaire Next Door, and the follow-up, The Next Millionaire Next Door, provide some great guides based on their extensive survey of millionaires. They identified a number of common traits among those who've successfully built wealth and funded lifestyles of freedom and fulfilment. These accumulators

all exhibit the same qualities. Firstly, they live well below their means. They spend less than they earn and they invest the rest. They also allocate their time, energy and money efficiently in ways that are conducive to building wealth to fund their lifestyle. Creating their financial freedom is actually a hobby. In other words, they live by design. Thirdly, they believe that financial independence and freedom is more important than displaying high social status. They're independent thinkers and they don't care what other people think.

They don't feel the need to follow the herd or to keep up with the Joneses by spending money they don't have on things they don't need to impress people who don't care. Fourthly, their parents didn't provide what they call economic outpatient care. In other words, overbearing gift giving or hand holding. In my case, my good father, the original Bushy, is an absolute classic example. Every time I'd ask him for something when I was young, he was famous for telling me that you can have absolutely anything that you want son, just as soon as you've saved up enough money to buy it. Now while I was quite disgruntled at the time because all

my schoolmates were getting cars and getting looked after by their parents, this very simple early lesson in appreciating and respecting the habit of saving has been absolutely foundational in our journey. Number five, they recognise the influences as others have on their financial attitudes and behaviours, and they learn from those who are equally committed to financial success and accumulating wealth over and above just appearing to be rich. They're careful about who they spend time with. Number six, they make consistently good consumer decisions,

starting with where and how they live and understanding its potential effect on reaching their lifestyle financial goals. Seven, they're good at assessing their strengths and weaknesses and improving in the key areas of frugality, owning responsibility for the financial outcomes and developing the confidence to make decisions based on knowledge. Frugality, responsibility and confidence are key. Number eight, they decide early on a philosophy for work and their careers

that doesn't fall into the traditional view of work that dictates working from 8am to 6pm from ages 25 to 67. And they have the confidence and the courage to change their work and their career paths without fear if they need be. They're not scared to try something new and back themselves. And lastly, they all recognise that successful investing behaviours can be learned and improved

and that the fruits of effectively investing what is saved over time provides the security for more important aspects of their lives. Now, if we boil these behaviours down, we come up with seven key lifestyle wealth-building behavioural characteristics. Number one, confidence. Investing in knowledge is the first step and embracing discomfort as the pathway to learning.

Number two, frugality. Living below your means and investing the rest. Three, responsibility. that's 100 personal accountability and no excuses four social indifference being comfortable in your skin and not needing or trying to keep up with the joneses five focus taking action on the important and the long term not getting distracted with what you should do with the urgent and the immediate. Six, planning. Starting with the end in mind and having a mental GPS that's going to get you there. And finally, number seven, they all demonstrate delayed gratification. That elusive

trait that so many ignore. And as I continue to ponder and research why so many of us continue to go for instant gratification now at the expense of our long-term benefit later, I stumbled across a brilliant insight from Jeff Gaines. He's observed that our ability to delay gratification is driven very much by how we feel about ourselves and our lives now. He believes that no one's good at delay gratification. But if someone's feeling good about themselves

and their life right now, in other words, they're feeling gratified right now, then they're happy to wait for a different gratification later. But if we don't feel good right now, then we'll grab the fast food or we'll spend the money. We'll do whatever we need to feel better as quick as we can now before worrying about anything in the future.

So the key here is to get yourself in a place where you're feeling gratified now as a precursor to investing in things that create a much bigger reward later. And for me, this comes back to feeding myself and health before we can create wealth. By feeding your mind, your soul and your body to create your happy habits.

daily gratitude affirmations and meditations for your mind and soul reading great books and eating healthy food with good sleep and exercise for your body they all put you in a position of feeling gratified and satisfied with where you're at now you're then emotionally and mentally ready to invest in your long-term delay gratification just try it and see how the integration of self then health

will create your wealth in an upward self-perpetuating cycle of growth. So what about you? How do you rate yourself against these financial freedom characteristics? If you want to test yourself against these seven characteristics for a bit of fun, feel free to email me at bushey at khgroup.com.au with wealth potential test in the subject header. And I'll send you the link to a free quiz that you can do in about two minutes that'll let you know where you're at as a really good place to start.

Because the great news is that all of these traits and behaviours can be learned and inculcated. It's just about mirroring others who've done it and developing your own set of happy habits and rewarding rituals. And a great place to start is by mirroring the approach of today's guest, Jim Smith. Jim has successfully set up his life so that he's now devoting his time to building Focus Tools

Focus Tools is a fusion of Nepali and Laos charm combined with Australian focus on detail creating a truly unique and personal experience for travellers looking to enjoy tracking, sightseeing, volunteering and unwinding If you're looking to travel to Nepal or Laos and really enjoy the local culture then check it out at www.focustours.com.au Now, you'll love Jim's down-to-earth, genuine, generous

and very caring approach to helping others in everything he's done and everything he continues to do. Jim lives a very fulfilled life of freedom where he combines his love of travel with the ability to teach others and help others less fortunate. And he's done this because he's lived his entire life by design and with intent. You'll hear how he's always been clear about what he did

and what he didn't do with his life, about his courage to try and do completely new things and make major changes without apparent fear. And he's achieved all of this by making his money, living below his means, and saving, investing it in property in a way that now funds and supports his ideal lifestyle. Now, as you enjoy his entertaining journey,

don't only learn from what he's done and how he's done it. But listen out for where he demonstrates those seven lifestyle wealth-building characteristics of confidence, frugality, responsibility, social indifference, focus, planning and delay gratification, so that you can start learning these traits as essential to your future success. Please enjoy my great chat with Jim Smith. Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. Now, how often have you met someone who seems totally comfortable in their skin and appears to have the limitless and fearless courage to continuously shift their life direction with what appears like a paranoia, to move from job to job and location to location, following their purpose, their passion and their interests,

to enjoy a life of fulfillment and for freedom? Well, I'm guessing not very often. So today, you're in for a special treat with Jim Smith, who's someone who continually shows us that he can do exactly that. And I guess I'm really looking forward now to sharing how he's lived by design and how he continues to do it. So welcome and let's get invested, Jim. Morning, Bushy.

How are you, mate? You're enjoying some holidays up there on the top in the New South Wales, you're telling me? Yeah, that's right. I'm up in northern New South Wales, and, you know, it's mid-20s today and glorious. The beach is nice, and we're on holidays from school, so everything's going well here. Good to hear, mate. Now, mate, for those who are probably intrigued a little bit and want to know a little bit

more about Jim Smith, tell us who you are, what you do, and most importantly, why you do what you do, Jim. um i'm uh in my mid-50s married to my wife anna and um we live as we said in northern new south wales i teach casually and also run a small um boutique tour operating company taking people uh to nepal and more recently we're investigating tours in blue and probank I'm the youngest of five boys and grew up in Adelaide and had to battle it out with my four brothers growing up so, you know, I can be a bit rough around the edges

Mate, the big question, why do you do what you do? I think the reason I've chosen the lifestyle I have is because I always wanted that little bit of independence and be in control of, you know, the way we wanted to live our lives. I was never that fond of just being on that treadmill of day after day working for the man sort of thing. So very early on I always, you know, I was pretty handy with my money and I've always worked and I've always saved so that I could have

that independence. And over time, you know, I've come in and out of teaching but I've always, you know, loved that connection with kids and, you know, I like the idea of helping people kind of reach their full potential and so that's sort of why I got, ended up with the travel business taking people to Nepal. Kids were asking me, you know, about Nepal when I'd come back and they'd say I was always on my soapbox about, you know,

how great it is over there and a group of kids asked me to take them over there when they finish year 12 as a schoolies alternative so that's how it all started and I just wanted to show them another world when when they're at a point in their lives when they're making decisions about their future and I just wanted to expose them to life outside the ordinary in Australia so that sort of that's sort of crystallized a lot of my you know yearnings from an earlier age of which is wanting to travel, wanting to experience and now sort of wanting to share that with other people. Yeah, awesome, mate.

It's a great evolution and I'd love to now sort of delve into the details of your own journey, mate, so that the listeners understand some of the twists and turns that you've taken in a number of directions and how that sort of led you back to what you're doing now. Can you sort of give us a run through on what you've invested your time and your energy and your money in from as far back as you'd like to start and probably start back with your family,

given you one of five boys. I'm one of three boys, and that was fun enough. So one of five would add some complexity to it. But let's start way back then and then talk us through, you know, how that led you into teaching and whatnot from there. Okay, yeah, as I said, youngest of five boys. so there's 11 years between me and my oldest brother and a smattering of brothers in between.

And we grew up in Adelaide. I went to a Catholic secondary school, a primary and secondary school, and my mum worked at the school as a laboratory technician. And my father died when I was only eight, and I think that sort of woke me up a little bit in terms of, you know, having to sort of stand on your own two feet a bit. So I got my first part-time job when I was about 12 and that was just, you know, collecting money for people who had their papers delivered to them. So I would, you know, go door to door and, you know, get them to reconcile their accounts and collect their money and that sort of gave me a bit of independence.

I always wanted to, I always liked the idea of having, you know, decent things. So, you know, like I saved up and bought the pushbar that it was easier to do the paper around. And, you know, when it came time to leave school, you know, I saved up to buy my first car. So I always had those little goals along the way. When I finished year 12, I was quite lucky. I got a job with the RAA, the Royal Automobile Association. It's like the NRMAA or the RACQ and other stuff. And I was sort of like just in the right spot at the right time

because they rang the school and they were after someone, a male who'd just finished their exams and had their driver's licence and I got my driver's licence as soon as I could. So I fit the bill. And, of course, because my mum worked at the school and they knew that we hadn't had the easiest of upbringing, that the deputy principal was a friend of hers and so he put me forward for the interview

and I got the job really much to my dismay at the time because all my mates were having a great time partying after things in Year 12 and there was I. A couple of days after my last exam, I had to start work. But I didn't know how well I'd go in Year 12. I had to take the job because I thought my mum's going to kill me if I don't take the job and I didn't do well at uni. And anyway, so that was a great introduction to working life

and it really gave me the idea that I do not want to work like this for the rest of my life. There were people who had been at the RIA and they were doing a great job and they were very happy and it was a good organisation, but they'd been there for their whole career and I just knew that there was more to life than just sort of working for the one boss. anyway I did okay at year 12 so I knew I'd get into uni but I decided to you know get a bit

established financially to get me through uni so I stayed there for a year and then I resigned and went to Teachers College at University of SA after that and a couple of years through that I took a year off and travelled around Australia, made it to the National Parks, just me and a mate, you know, camping in our tents. I just wanted to experience – I never wanted to go straight into teaching not having experienced a bit of the real world because it's such an important job. You want to have a bit of life experience to share, I think, with kids.

So I always wanted to expose myself to a bit more. So I thought I'd have this really difficult, challenging year away from home, traveling around but to be honest it was just a lot of fun and um you know met some lots of younger people traveling around from overseas that you never would have met normally and um often we would meet older people you know what's known now as the grey nomads i suppose but we'd meet these people and you know often they need a bit of help with their caravan or their tent or whatever um it was tricky terrain sometimes because we're in national parks and um you know so we'd give them a hand because we had plenty of time and you know then they'd always be wanting

to feed us i think it was just like you were like their kids they were missing um so we uh you know we're always taken in for you know the odd meal or scones or something like that um then i came back i went back to uni after that year and um i remember one of my lecturers actually commenting on the change in my approach to uni like i just did much better at my assignments and my exams and stuff after that first year uh the after the year of traveling um and i think it was a bit of maturity i suppose i just sort of prioritized my time better and wasn't just about the socializing that sort of stuff actually put a bit more effort in and particularly just the science subjects that i was interested in and um you know so i i actually ended up condensing the

last two years into a year and a half and um you know then went off to my first teaching job over in uh victoria yeah before we go in there there's something i wouldn't mind just uh delving into it a little bit more depth if we can mate because uh what i'm picking up from a very early age there was there was a you've got this ability to understand the merits of saving saving money and and a couple of things you mentioned there like you're sort of knocking on doors collecting money for the papers for someone at 12 years old that would be fairly confronting for a lot of people uh one to knock on the door two to ask for money uh where did that sort of there's a resilience that comes out of that and there's also

you know i can i can pick up that you were careful with money and and and use money uh in a means by saving it to do things that were important to you where did that sort of grounding come from at that early age, mate, do you think? I think in terms of the money side of it, I think it was probably from my mum because, you know, I could see that, you know, we weren't flush for money, but, you know, I didn't particularly feel poor and I think she just prioritised it.

And so it was having that role model that was good with it. And, you know, I just knew that there were some things we could do and if if I wanted to do them I had to earn it myself so that gave me the drive to get the job I was I was given the opportunity because um my brother was doing a paper round as well and when we say we knocked on doors yeah yeah you had to knock on the door but they were expecting you because they had an account that they had to pay so it wasn't so much cold calling which was good but um so my brother's boss knew i was around and he um and he said does your brother want a job so um i started off with that but i must i'm quite a small fellow and i must admit i

had quite a few um of the customers who used to say you know is your mom or dad waiting for you in the car as you're carrying around all that money. And it's like, no, no, I'm just on my pushy. And so, you know, I must have been psyched, I suppose. In terms of the confidence to go and do it, I suppose it's just from, you know, living in a, you know, reasonably large family and having to hold your own a bit. It's, you know, it gives you the confidence to do that.

We had great family networks around us. I had a lot of aunties and uncles and all that. They were all, you know, very encouraging and, you know, would ask questions and stuff. So I suppose I was used to, you know, having to deal with a lot of people. We weren't sort of an isolated family. We had a good network around us. And I think the teachers at the school I went to,

because mum worked there um admittedly when i arrived a lot of teachers took a look at me and i looked like my brothers and it was like not another smith was their reaction um but it was you know that was sort of done in jest and you know they i think took a little bit of an extra interest in me because you know then my mum worked with them and so i suppose i developed those you know the ability to talk to people and chat and confidence from that network that we had around us. Yeah, got it. And when you dipped your toe in the water at the end of high school

and did that work with RAA for a stretch, what was it, do you think, that you saw those guys, men and women, had been there for a lifetime almost and, as you say, were quite happy with that. What was it in the back of your mind going, no, this is not for me? I think the idea of working for someone full-time and having four weeks holiday a year just wasn't enough. My brothers, a few of them had done various activities, gone to uni and then maybe not continued and some did continue.

They tried a couple of different things. So I knew there were other things out there. One of my brothers was really, had worked for a couple of years, saved up a lot of money and just went traveling so I just think having those people being exposed to people who had done different things other than the ones at the RAA that were staying put made me think you know there's a whole world out there bigger than just you know working full-time and having your four weeks holiday a year I just knew it was never going to be for me yeah okay And when you went to teacher's college, you focused on science.

What was appealing about science to you, mate? I had a really great biology teacher in year 12, and she was a family friend as well. And she was sort of inspiring as a teacher and great sense of humour. And I think she instilled an interest in it for me. I just enjoyed it a lot. And so when I went to uni, I did science and environmental studies and, you know, went down that, sort of drifted into it more than anything.

And I enjoyed the units of work we did there and so I sort of did more of them. Yeah. Interesting you say that because I know this myself, that how much of an impact a good teacher has at that very formative age on the rest of your life actually. and was part of that the inspiration for you getting into teaching and as a consequence of that, have you enjoyed the same satisfaction out of seeing your own students inspired by what you're doing

and the impact that you've had on their lives? Yeah, I would say it's been twofold with going into teaching in the first place. I suppose because, like I said, mum worked in the school, We were exposed to a lot of teachers and, you know, you could see that they led pretty good lives. And I remember even having a grade six teacher who I really liked and even then I could do this, you know, because you have the opportunity to make kids enjoy

or help kids enjoy their learning. And as a science teacher, I always try to do as much prac work as possible doing experiments because they enjoy it so much more and they're engaged and they learn it a lot. And even now, you know, as a casual, when you're taking science, it's optional to do pracs with kids when you're a casual. You don't have to because you often might not know them or how the class runs, but I'm always willing to do it

and then I get requested because of that, which is a good thing. And I think it's just a great opportunity to engage the kids more and help them enjoy their learning and develop their sort of, you know, the best they can and try and switch them on to science. And the other thing associated while we're on teaching, And the other thing I find, you know, sometimes I get questions from people about, you know, you're just a casual, you know, don't you miss getting that academic satisfaction out of kids learning your subject? But I really find that there's a lot of room for people like me in a school who you have a little bit more time because you're not doing the marking and the preparation and all the extra stuff. You have a bit of time to invest in kids in your class.

You can wander around and ask them how they're going. You can chat to them in the playground when you're on yard duty. So you might not be responsible for them achieving so much academically, but, you know, I'm a stickler for manners because I think manners helped me get my first job and plenty of others, and they cost nothing. So I put energy into a lot of the social sort of stuff associated with kids in school and I think you get a good result because so many kids just need that little bit of extra, just someone being interested in them.

And so there's room for people in schools who are just swamped with all the admin and marking and preparation that goes with being an ordinary teacher. Yeah, I think you've hit on something right there, mate, because there's an impression by a lot of people that teachers have got it pretty easy, but the ones that I know and have been mates for years, they work damn hard. There are a lot of nights marking and a lot of weekends preparing, and it's pretty full-on. What I love about what you're saying there, though, is that you're recognising that, yes, while academia is part of life, becoming good humans is a much better part of that because that's going to assist them in all areas of their life, whether they go on academically or they don't, and a lot don't, of course. so having the the freedom to do that given that and we'll get to this later that you've you've sort of gone down the casual teaching rather than the full-time teaching exercise for a bunch of

reasons uh it must be must be quite satisfying to to see the kids where you have had an impact where your your interest in them is creating an interest in in life for them and would i'll be right in saying that yeah definitely and and it's i've seen results of it twofold like there's been um you know the the tours that have started happening as a result of kids asking me to take them to nepal and you know we still keep in touch and in a chat group and stuff like that on facebook and um you know you've exposed them to another side of the things and that's come about by being in this, you know, meeting them through the school. And another, you know, I had one kid a few years back,

I ran a reading program within the school when I stopped being casual and ran this reading program to help. I refer to them as slow progress leaders, readers, and it's not people with disabilities, it's just they might, for whatever reason, they might have trouble with dyslexia or something. And this kid, NAPLAN isn't the be-all and end-all of everything, but I did use it as a tool to help me to, you know, work with the kids and select them.

And this kid was getting band fives in maths and you wouldn't, band five's pretty average, and you wouldn't expect maths to have so much of an, a reading program would have so much of an impact on maths. But anyway, this kid really achieved good results in the reading program. And the next time he did NAPLAN, he jumped up to a band eight and no one knew that he was good at maths. And it was because he couldn't read the questions.

And so just something like, you know, it's so frustrating when you think of how many other kids might be out there who, you know, just need that extra help. So I was so grateful to the school that they put energy into all forms of kids that need education, whether it's the top end or the kids that need a bit of extra help. But, you know, and then just like there's only a couple of weeks ago when they had the Year 12 graduation, you know,

it was adjusted because of COVID and stuff. But this kid stood up there and he got an award for academic excellence in technology. And, you know, I just thought, you know, So if the school hadn't put resource into that program, there's a chance that it never would have got anywhere near that, and it was so satisfying. Yeah, yeah, awesome, mate.

Awesome. All right, sorry I took you off on a tangent there. Sort of coming back on line with your journey so far, you finished Teachers College, and why Victoria, mate? Again, I'm interested in why the easy thing to do would have been jumping into the Catholic ed system or the public school system in South Aus and working from there? What was the enticement to look further afield?

Look, I was always after, you know, different experiences. Even when I was at Teachers College and we had our prac placements, I only did one in the city. The others, I went to Alice Springs. I went to the southeast down near Mount Gambier and I went to Ceduna over in far western South Australia. And, you know, I was always after something different. Most people just went in their second year to the country.

And as it turned out, when I finished, you know, like I said, my mum had, you know, close relationships with the Maris brothers and we had people in and out of our homes our whole lives and this brother was over visiting mum and I, you know, went out and said hello to him and he asked me what I was doing and I said I'm in my final year of Teachers College and he said, well, let me know when you finish

because, you know, you never know if I've got jobs. And as it turns out, I did find it hard to get science teachers over in the Gippsland and so I wrote to him And he, you know, in those days, you know, you wrote letters and, you know, it wasn't even fun. Even phone calls were a bit expensive. So he offered me all these, a variety of sort of a mixture of jobs,

which was some long service leave for some staff. And it wasn't what I was trained in. It was my English and RE and geography. And the geography is pretty aligned with what I did because of science and environmental study. And he said, take your pick out of this and we'll create a load and you've got two terms worth of work. And so I was just working through that and the next thing,

the phone did ring and he said, when can you start? And my science teachers just left. It wasn't the easiest of school and this young teacher had just left because she wasn't out coping. and I said, I've got, you know, two months of my final block of practising as a junior, I've got to do first and this principal took my classes for me until I could get over there. So I was lucky, you know, I think, you know, he knew the family

and, you know, when you're employing someone, knowing someone's going to fit in is important as well as assuming they're going to be able to do the job. So that's how I ended up over in Victoria. and I looked at, I'd never heard of Terralba before and I looked it on the map and saw that it was, you know, an hour from the beach to out on the ski field and an hour and a half from Melbourne and thought,

well, you know, looks good. So I went off with my camping gear that I used, that I thought is what I was going to use in the share house that I was in but I arrived and I was sharing with another girl who got a job there also from the same teacher's college as me and she promptly put my camping gear in the shed and brought out her own gear. Classy, mate.

So how long did you spend in Traralgon? 18 months and it was – so I just really wanted to work long enough to save up enough money to travel overseas and also to get enough teaching experience under my belt to know that I liked it or whether I wouldn't like it. I nearly stayed a bit longer because I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of good friends there. Considering I was only there for 18 months, it's had quite a big impact

on my life, and I've still got good friends from there and my wife's from there. And so, you know, it was a great, great starting point. Awesome. And did you meet your good wife in the teaching or just in the social, the local social arena? Through the school she was a secretary in the front office They often say that you end up

marrying your mother mate, it sounds like a bit of the same story there To be honest they are quite different but I think we did have that similar background, she was one of five as well and brought up in the Catholic system and all that so there's you know although we and she's of an Italian background and um although you know quite different upbringings really with a lot of similar values I think and that's what's you know kept us in good stead yeah let's talk about values because I can see that you're a person having done some homework around your journey that

values are pretty important to you what what are they when you talk about family values but What are the important values to you, Jim? I think being able to trust people, you know, is really important. And, you know, people with integrity who, you know, do what they say they're going to do and not so much the do as I say, not as I do. I think that's been important. um recently when when we cut we were overseas when covid hit and came back and we were in that

window where you didn't have to quarantine but you had to self-isolate so you weren't in a hotel we went straight home and we did it by the letter and just stayed home i didn't like the property even though you could have walked on the beach and not seen anyone and all that we were told not to so we did and i was shocked when we maybe sound a bit naive but i was shocked when the stats came out and they said that a quarter of um people i think it was a quarter of people weren't doing it or a quarter of people were doing it i'm not sure which way around that is but um i was just shocked at the number of people who weren't doing the right thing and you because we do try to do the right thing you assume everyone else does as well um you know not it's sort of not necessarily um

putting your own needs ahead of everyone else it's it's like you know being we're all in this together and trying to act with integrity and trying to um you know be good to people help people develop their best potential you know those are sort of the values that i hold true um you know not necessarily always you know you've got you've got to look after yourself to a certain extent but you know bringing people with you rather than trampling them up over them to get to where you want to go yeah it's a great way to put it being bringing people with you that's yeah that's awesome mate yeah terrific mate so you spent the 18 months there saved up some money and then it sounds like you headed off overseas tell us tell us where that led you and why

um yeah i just wanted i really wanted to go on my own and so i left gippsland went off to um Greece and Turkey or Thailand first, a couple of months in each of those places. So I travelled through Europe, just meeting people along the way and staying in hostels and really went around far eastern Turkey, which you probably couldn't do it now, a bit dangerous, but really we're met with such hospitality everywhere I went. You know, people just – I think when you're travelling on your own,

you get a little bit – people tend to be a bit more friendly. And, you know, I'd team up with people for a while and then your paths would separate and they wanted to go somewhere else and you were going somewhere different. And as I got to more central Europe, I really travelled a bit cheaper, um more a bit of hitchhiking and you know um tossing down wherever i could and stuff and you know i stayed with some people who would you know mow the lawns and do jobs for them to sort of pay your way and then i got to england and um caught up again with a bloke i'd met in

indonesia years before and um i'd send him a card from thailand and said you know and when I rang him he said I knew you'd turn up one day and he said I've got a spare room if you want to come you can rent it you don't need to pay rent till you get a job and so I went and stayed with him and I was looking through the paper to try and you know look for a job and it was really difficult because I had no concept of the geography so you know one job would be five hours away

and, you know, another one would be two hours away. So I was wasting a lot of time. And I'm reading through it and I was just yelling out to him, where's so-and-so, where's so-and-so? You know, of course, no Google Maps in those days. No, the old street directory, you feel lucky. And anyway, I said, where's New Malden? And it was West Surbiton.

And he said, oh, it's about half an hour bike ride away. And I said, this is my job. and it was like middle secondary science teaching and it said to write away for the application and I thought, look, it's starting in two weeks' time and, you know, by the time you write away. So anyway, I rang the school and the number had been put through to the deputy principal and he answered the phone.

He was in the middle of painting his house and he started chatting and, you know, we sort of had a semi-phone And then he said, look, I'd like to bring you in for an interview. You know, what are you doing? I said, I've just arrived, I don't know. And he said, I could tell from your accent you're not from around here. And he said, look, I'll come and pick you up tomorrow. Or how are you going to get there?

And I said, I'll catch the train or ride a bike. And he said, look, I'll pick you up. It's on my way. So he turns up at the house and the mate who I was staying with is like six foot six and i'm you know five foot seven and the clothes i had after being traveling through europe were like hardly had any the one pair of long pants i had i had washed in hot water and they'd shrunk they'd never been washed like in hot water before and so i had a pair of dunlop volleys with the toes worn through these short pants these long pants that had become like

three-quarter length and just the only shirt I had was like a leery shirt and so he turned up at the front doorstep and I couldn't borrow my mate's clothes and I didn't have time to buy anything and um so I just had to apologize as soon as he arrived and um anyway he took me around the school and it was sort of a bit like on one hand I didn't look the part because I didn't look like a teacher looked a bit like a you know someone who couldn't afford their clothes and they'd be showing me around the science labs and they were halfway through being renovated so he didn't have a lot to sell me either so um he was assuring me they'd be finished by the start of next term which didn't look like i would be so and anyway at the end of it he offered me the job so

yeah i um i had a great time there teaching these um english kids in a it's a middle secondary comprehensive school which was the system that they had in place there and I wasn't with the Aussie Kiwi groups in London, I was with English people and I really got to sort of immerse myself in

the English lifestyle and made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun What I'm picking up here there is that sort of limitless fearlessness about you I mean again A lot of people travel, but there's not a lot of people that travel on their own and are comfortable travelling on their own.

That sort of fortitude and then that, she'll be right, we'll just, I'll let the wind decide where I go and just sort of free will. Is that something that's always been there? I'm sort of interested in where that sort of approach has come from, mate. well i suppose it has always been there really i i i think you like i said you know i got my first job quite young and i've always had money in the bank and that's sort of been a bit of an underlying thing that you know it gives me the choice so you know when you were traveling and

you're on your own you know you could always afford a decent hotel if you needed to or a hostel or whatever but you know you might do things you might camp or whatever to save a bit of money on that but I always had the choice um and I think I suppose the confidence side of it just came from slowly building upon you know job upon job upon job you know with the the you know the initial um paper round and then you know working at the RAA and dealing with people there Nearly all of my jobs have been people-orientated, and I suppose it's just as you've gone along, you've built the confidence up.

You made another really good point there, I think, that a lot of people miss, and that is the peace of mind and the choice that having put some money aside gives you because it removes a lot of stress and uncertainty from your life. If you've built up a little rainy day reserve that you know I've got something to fall back on. Talk to us a little bit about that if you don't mind because I think it's something that there's still a lot of Aussies

that are living week to week and just don't appreciate just how much impact having an emergency fund or a rainy day reserve or whatever you want to call it has on your outlook and the peace of mind that flows from that. Can you talk a bit about that in terms of your thinking at the time around, right, well, I'm going to save up enough so that I don't have to worry too much about money. And yes, I can pick up work as I go,

but I'd love to understand your thinking around the time if you don't mind. You know, an example of that in London was when, you know, like I got that job but I hadn't run out of money. I still had enough money to keep travelling but I wanted to keep it as a reserve and so I topped up the funds there and then kept travelling afterwards. But in terms of day-to-day lifestyle and stuff, right from the beginning,

I always saved up for stuff that I wanted, like camping, good quality camping gear was important to me. So I didn't go out and buy my own credit card. I saved up for it because I know that you're going to pay more for it if you buy it in credit. and so I have always tried to save for the things that are important to me and sort of not what I would say waste money on bits and pieces that I don't really need.

And then having said that, I do borrow money. I've borrowed money quite heavily but it's always been for things that I think are going to appreciate. so for example I've you know saved up for camping gear I saved up I've always saved up for cars um because you know they're things that they're going to depreciate or wear out over time but the things I have um borrowed extensively for has been for real estate so um I you know looked for opportunities that would arise that would help me eventually to develop a passive income and so that's where i suppose the the real estate journey started yeah okay well we might come back to that

one because we'll finish finish the the sort of the journey as far as the the career side it goes then i'll circle back and talk about uh what you did and when and how and what you continue to do in that area, if you don't mind. But all right, so you enjoyed the work there in, was it, Surveston in the UK for a stretch and then went travelling again, I'm picking up. Yeah. Yeah?

Talk us through the rest of the journey. From there, I went to East Africa and, like, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, had a lot of great experiences, a lot of time there. that was for about four months and um a mate of mine who i'd worked with in victoria he quit his job and came over and traveled around there uh with me so that was good to have someone to travel with especially a country like that yeah um we still still in touch and still you know bring up you know stories of experiences there and then we went to america after that and traveled around

met up with a both of us went over there and met up with another friend of mine who had been working there and we all traveled around in you know it's like we call it the brady bunch mobile it's like the old brady bunch big old malibu classic station wagon and there was four of us him and his wife and uh two of us and um we just went pretty much from national park to national park very much like i'd traveled around australia um in the early days and um just america has amazing national parks and so we just did that bushwalking all the time and occasionally would you know meet up with people we knew here and there not that there was that many of them um and then came back to Adelaide and you know I'm very lucky to be able to you know waltz back

into South Australia and um you know I went back and stayed initially at uh at my old family home and I just started doing casual teaching and then picked up contracts. And at the end of that year, so this is a year after coming back, just doing casual teaching and contract teaching, there was a job advertised for someone to run retreats in Catholic schools. So I'm not sure how familiar the viewers are, listeners are with that, But in a lot of private schools, they run Catholic retreats

where the kids go away for two or three days on camp. It was mainly year 11s and 12s and some also day activities for the younger ones. And if you're not familiar with Catholic education, you might think it sounds very, very religious, and there is a religious component, but it's also about, you know, developing the kids' potential and peer relationships, parent-child relationships, dealing with drugs and alcohol

and whatever issues are arising. And I really enjoyed it when I was at school and I actually went as a volunteer. After I'd left school, when I was at Teachers' College, I went back to my old school and volunteered there and I think that put me in good stead to get this job. It was advertised in The Australian and it was based out of Sydney. And, anyway, I got this job.

It was pretty funny, actually, because I went to the interview and I've got curly hair and the family friend knew the sort of place that ran these schools and, you know, that we're interviewing for the job. And this lady is a formidable character and, you know, she was probably in her 60s then or something and all her kids had gone through the school. She knew them all back to front.

And so she takes me down to this job interview and I'd said to her, look, I just had a haircut but I still look untidy, da-da-da. Anyway, she waits out in the foyer where I'm waiting to have my interview and the priest walks out and she introduces me to him because she knows this priest so well. She says, this is Jimmy. He's from a good family and his hair's not untidy, it's just curly. That's a good intro to the interview, mate.

Yeah, and I think it was pretty much her way of saying, if you don't give this guy this job, you're in trouble. So anyway, I got the job and it was such a great experience. Travelling around Australia, I didn't need my own accommodation because it was all either staying in schools like they were mostly boarding schools so there was always somewhere they'd give you a room somewhere adjacent to the boarding house i'd play sport with you know tennis or squash with the kids after school um it wasn't one of those jobs where you um ran the camps the retreats the whole time you you worked in the school for

also about three weeks a year in addition to the um retreats where you would interview you interview the year 12 students and they did a personality temperament test okay and it was it was really an affirmation type exercise where you're just getting them to talk a bit about themselves and in relation to how they fit in with this personality profile and it was really to especially for the kids who didn't see themselves as being popular it was you know i'd say you know when you go into a you know a room or a party you know do you tend to sit back a bit or do you tend to be the life of the party and so, oh, no, I'm one of the ones that sit in the corner or whatever.

And I'd say, you know, that doesn't mean you're, you know, a better or worse person than the person who's the life of the party because, you know, you might be better at having one-on-one or small group friends and that person's better at having lots of friends but it doesn't mean they're better or worse, it just means they're different. And it really used to, you could see the light bulbs going on with these kids and it really did make a difference to them.

And so it was, again, it was a great thing that these schools invested in this team, me and a priest that went around and ran the camps and, you know, because it was a considerable amount of money to pay a teacher to do this. And, you know, five schools around Australia, so I got to go to Darwin and Toowoomba and Hamilton, Victoria, Canberra and Southern Highlands. And, again, it's that developing kids' potential and, you know, we solved problems within the school sometimes where there had been issues.

You know, you'd come back a year later and the kids would talk about how, you know, things had changed as a result of the retreats and the interviews. Yeah, really, really impactful work, mate. I mean, again, what I'm hearing is that you're not scared to have a crack. You'll sort of put your hand up. There's not a lot of self-limitations here, but I'm also sensing that you get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of those lightbulb moments that would have occurred for a lot of kids

who, you know, there's a lot of kids at school, as you say, who would feel like they're not the centre of attention and therefore don't have the same sense of self-worth as a consequence of that. To talk to someone outside of the loop that says, no, no, you're just different, there's a relativity there, that would have had a major impact. And I know myself, mate, I was lucky enough when my son was at Catholic school, we had a fathers and sons retreat and it was a really good three days.

We did a lot of physical stuff, but we had a lot of campfire chats and really great bonding activity that sort of reinforces really important values in life, mate. So I can see that would have been extremely rewarding for you. Yeah. Look, it really has been, and it's like it sounds like, you know, I've got all this confidence or whatever to do these jobs, but it's actually, you know, it's quite terrifying

when you're starting new jobs. So, you know, it's not like I've sailed into them and found it easy. I've been lucky enough to get through the interviews and get them. But, you know, standing up, especially at the start of those retreats the first time, it's quite nerve-wracking. And, you know, that's what I think with the viewers, the people listening at the moment, it's like don't not have a go because you think you aren't good enough or you can't do it, you know.

I think it was said in one of your other podcasts that I listen to, fake it till you make it. It's like sometimes you can do better than you think you might be able to. Yeah, very well said, mate, very well said. Okay, so again, obviously enjoying life there, but I'm guessing something else pricked your interest. Talk to us about where that led you to. That was a really good opportunity to save

because I didn't have many expenses at all and I was on a teacher's salary. So I knew that that was going to set me up for the future. And so while I was there, we'll touch on it probably later in the real estate, but while I was travelling around, I bought a house in Darwin as a result of that. But following that, I went to Canberra for a short period of time and got a job in a school there, one of the schools that I, well, nearby one of the schools that I had been working in. And that was probably one of the hardest periods of my life.

I, you know, the school was very much fully orientated school. It was all boys and coming from running retreats and there was a lot of, you know delving into um you know getting kids to develop their potential and that sort of thing i really struggled in this school and um uh i lasted two terms and then i just ended up quitting um so it was really quite you know i just knew that i couldn't do i couldn't stay there it was just um grueling every day really difficult school and i'd had difficult kids in london and stuff but I just did not fit in with this um this sort of environment so I quit that went back to Adelaide with my hand with my um tail between my legs and I thought right I'm not I'm not going to teach

I'm going to do something else and so I looked around um for what opportunities were out there and I can remember this friend of my brother's in Sydney and she was a medical rep and I rang her and I didn't know what that sort of job was at the time but she'd talked about it a bit and I thought maybe I could do it and I rang her and she said, yeah, with your medical background, with your science background, you might be right but you don't have any sales experience, you never know. Anyway, so I applied for a job, several jobs

and I ended up with interviews and I got a job as a medical sales rep with Glaxo, it was Glaxo Welcome, or Glaxo at that time, then Glaxo Welcome, then we turned to GlaxoSmithKline, a major pharmaceutical company. And that was just a fantastic experience because they put so much energy into you. You know, it's really hard to get the job. Once you've got it, they want to keep you and they train you

to within an inch of your life. And you're always doing courses, whether it's computer skills or conflict resolutions or problem solving, whatever, and I just absolutely thrived. And, you know, when you're doing one of those jobs where you don't feel like you're working, I don't know whether you've ever had that opportunity, but that's how I felt initially.

Yeah. Made friends. I was going around seeing all these doctors and, you know, you're talking about your product. I sold asthma drugs and they were great. drugs they did well and they helped people and if they're well prescribed so I spent a lot of time on asthma management and protocol stuff that my doctors do know a lot and they have an extensive amount of training but when you're a rep you're only you're dealing with your drugs

100% of the time whereas doctors might see 10% of their patients that are asthmatic so you often will know the latest developments and the intricacies of your drug and that so you you can be helpful to the doctors and their patients as well as being um doing your job and selling the drug so it was it was a good job um and uh then i i really was enjoying it and then jobs came up in head office and I was ready for a change and so head office is in Melbourne and so I applied and I got a job as like an associate product manager in marketing and that was also fantastic great experience and met some amazing people and one thing that really struck me about you know the workforce there was I always thought these people in marketing

were whiz kids, you know, like a really bright, you know, cut above. And look, there were a lot of bright people there, but a lot of them were just slogged it out. They were just hard workers and had good work ethics. And that's what got them success. And also good people skills went a long way as well. um and so i was recruited to run this program um that wasn't so much a drug but a program to help doctors engage patients who had asthma and um so it wasn't talking about how to use the drugs

it was talk about talking about how to communicate with the patients and um it was really interesting I worked with some great people who owned the program and licensed it to Glaxo, and, you know, really great mentors for me in terms of developing life skills and developing, you know, conflict resolution skills and, you know, problem solving. Older people who had a lot of experience in pharmaceuticals and in various jobs in the world, and they really, really helped me a lot.

But I knew when I moved into marketing, as soon as I got there, I knew that I was not going to stay in a head office forever because I just did not like being cooped up in an office. I did not like having four weeks holiday a year and I was quite unhappy initially and then I got stuck into the job a bit more it got better but I knew at the start I thought right I'm going to do this I don't want to bail on it well I don't have the experience but I'm going to stay long enough that so that I've ticked the box as having done this marketing job and then um I'm going to change I didn't know what

to at that stage but um so I stayed in that job for 18 months or nearly two years and um and then i resigned and in that time i had i had a major lift up at northern new south wales and i love the area and i i actually we bought a house up here when i was when we were still living down in melbourne and um and then once i bought the house i thought it might be a few more years but once i bought i thought oh we've got to move up here so um i resigned from glaxo and then moved up, and funnily enough, I didn't plan for this, but, you know, the relationships I'd built with the people who licensed this product, the partnerships program,

you know, they approached Glaxo and said, can we put this guy on me as a trainer of the program? Now, all the other trainers were psychologists and counsellors counselors and people who with you know quite high qualifications there was only six of them and I was you know my qualifications was in teaching but they said you know the company turned to Glaxo um you know he knows the program back to front and you know his doctors he knows the repping world and stuff so you know let's give him a go so they put me on as a trainer and it was consulting work which I'd never done before

but it was fantastic because I started establishing myself up in northern New South Wales. We moved into a house and I was able to start doing relief teaching and I also did contracts then and at the same time was starting to do the consulting for Glaxo and it went from strength to strength because the program was going really well and they were running a lot of sessions and they did have a bit of trouble with the Queensland trainer

and so I got all the training work for Queensland. So you'd be going to Cairns and Townsville and Mackay as well as Brisbane. I went to Perth. I'd go back to Adelaide. So I was training all over the place. It was really good money. And then what also happened was a lot of my colleagues

down in Melbourne in head office needed work done for them, training reps or, you know, the training department were short on staff. And so I was getting given work by my old colleagues because they knew I knew the work environment where I had just come from. And it's sort of like, you know, Johnny on the spot. You can go down there and fill a gap for a while

until they could employ someone who wanted to live in Melbourne. And so I did a lot of consulting then for the training department and the marketing department down there as well as running these training programs. So I had a really good time economically. I was able to, you know, save a lot of money and pay down my house mortgage and then at the same time establish myself in teaching up here.

And it slowly, it sort of almost died a natural death, the consulting. I just slowly found that as I was doing two jobs at once, teaching and pharmaceuticals, I just realised it was so obvious how much happier I was in school when I had a school work day than I did working in the corporate world. So I slowly just wound it down bit by bit, just sort of looked for less work and then concentrated more and picked up the teaching more and I've only worked in two schools up here

and now I've cut that back and I just work at one And, you know, I've continued with that up until recently when I started doing the tour operating. Yeah. Before we sort of delve into that a little bit, what I'm sort of reading between the lines here is you come across as someone who obviously gets along with people at any level. And I'm guessing that the reason why they wanted you to deliver the training program over the academics and psychologists and the heavy hitters in that regard is that you would talk in a language and in an approach and a style that everyone would relate and feel comfortable with you straight away. You'd build rapport very quickly. So you'd be very effective at doing that. but I'm also sensing someone who doesn't like to have a leash around their neck

and that having a bit of freedom and variety is clearly something that's pretty important to you. Is that sort of what sort of under-rowed that approach, do you think? I would say definitely. I've always been like that. The longest I've actually stayed in a fixed job has been about five and a half years and that was the pharmaceutical company and within that I had two different jobs.

I think it's just inbuilt in me. I've always been like that, liking to have variety and liking to have a choice about what I'm doing and not being tied down. I don't want hard work but I like it sort of to be on my own terms. Yeah, awesome. Now, I'd love to take the opportunity now, if you don't mind, to sort of delve into your property journey because I sense that part of the freedom and the confidence and the choices that you're able to make has been built on the fact that you've been clever with your money or you've done things with your money rather than spend it and lash it up on a lavish lifestyle. you've put it into things that have then in turn enabled you to get more time back and do other

things can you talk to us you sort of mentioned property a little bit early on talk to us about when you started to think about investing in in other things and putting your money into things that are going to you know sort of give you an income later on to tell us about what was it that that gave you that thought and then what did what did you do and then where does that led to you led you to on the property journey um i think i first started thinking about it when my brother one who's nine years older than me he bought a house i think and then sold it a couple of years later and i remember it having doubled in value it was probably back in the 80s or something and i remember at the time thinking you know it was the grand sum of 150 000 and i remember

thinking oh i'm never i've missed the boat i'm never going to be able to buy a house it's too expensive and um you know you laugh about it now uh but i just remember thinking you know i i want to i want to be able to have the security of my own home but i also want to um you know work on getting property to help me to have a bit of freedom you know and i wanted to go hard young so that I could relax a bit when I'm the age I'm at now. I'm in my mid-50s now and I can, you know, like we talked about earlier, I've got a bit more choice. And so, like, I did put it aside while I travelled.

I wanted to work and travel and I didn't want to have any ties then. But as soon as I came back from overseas, I think I was in my mid-20s, my next objective was to buy a house. And so when I had that job, I mentioned earlier, and I had the job running the retreats. I didn't have many outgoings. I didn't have, you know, to pay rent or anything like that. So I saved a deposit and because I was travelling around

to these five spots around Australia, one of my brothers had said to me, you know, consider Darwin because the rent returns are really good. So I looked up there and, you know, when I was there and I think it was the second year I was on the work trip up there. There was a house there, it was $90,000 and it was bringing in $200 a week and most of my other mates were starting to settle down and buying houses and I didn't want to be left behind but I wasn't ready to settle down at that point and so I thought, well, this is, you know,

it's probably got as much capital gain in Darwin as anything but I can buy this house and it's not going to affect me, my lifestyle because I'm going to be able to steal. I'm not going to have to put much money into it because the rent return was so good. And so I bought that house and rented it out for quite a few years. Then when I moved back to Adelaide and was working with a pharmaceutical company, I was living in this house

that was a big old 1920s bungalow that, you know, you get in the sort of eastern suburbs of Adelaide, a beautiful area, lovely tree-lined street, a lot of the old houses. It wasn't flashy but it was, you know, solid and it had been converted into three apartments. So it had a building, it was on a corner, it had been built on the side and built on the back

and I was living in one section and the owner decided to sell it and my brother and I had been looking around to buy something and we because we had worked out that you know at the time you know I probably had about 125,000 I could spend on a house and um if I combine that with my brother we got more than way more than double the value in the property so if you bought something for 250 000 you were getting something really substantial whereas to spend 125 you might have just got a mason and or you know duplex style place yeah so phil my mother and i decided we would go in together anyway this house came up there's a bit more than what we wanted to spend

but it had a really again like darwin it had a really good rent return and i was always looking for properties that were a bit different or a bit unusual whether or not you might be able divide the backyard off or whether you could convert it into get two rents things like that so this property was perfect and as i said to my brother you know i'd pay not to have to move you know and um so um we we put in an offer and he let us he gave us all rights to put offering before he actually listed it with an agent um and it's interesting like

It's something for you listeners to consider. I was limited with how much money we had. We couldn't really go much higher. But one thing we were at when we had our finances ready, so we were ready to make an offer, so there weren't a lot of strings attached, so that put you in a strong position even though you might not have as much money as other people. So we were ready to go.

But also this fellow's sister-in-law lived in one of the side flats and I think he was weighing, you know, that, you know, she would be kicked out if someone took over, you know, when he sold it. So I think that weighed on his mind a bit. So we said, you know, well, we can't give you any more money but we can guarantee you we won't, you know, change the living situation of your sister-in-law and he knew we'd gotten along well with her.

And I think that actually swayed quite heavily. So sometimes when you're trying to buy a property or sometimes you have things that don't add up to money that can help sway the vendor or the person selling the house. Anyway, so he accepted the offer. We offered to put it in a contract that we would, you know, kick this tenant out but he didn't need that. That word was enough and we took it over

and she stayed there for quite a few years and then eventually left of her own volition. What I love about what you've just said then is the recognition that there's more important things than just money. Often you've tapped into the emotional needs that are attached to the relationship for the owner that recognised the need to protect the sister-in-law, where the average punter, one, wouldn't even know that was the case,

and two, wouldn't even think of discussing that. So you've been smart enough pretty early in your investment career there, mate, from that side to think way beyond just price in terms of let's negotiate a win-win that's going to work for us but is going to work in other ways for the person selling the property. Yeah, and also if it's, you know, work for both of us, but also, you know, she was a good tenant as well. So, you know, if you've got an opportunity to be decent to people, you know, and there's

no reason not to take it. And I've taken that view all the time with property. I really find it hard to, when you hear the stories of the conflicts between landlords and tenants, I don't understand people not maintaining their properties. And if you've got a good tenant, it's better not to have, you know, the most expensive rent. It's better to be a bit under market so that they're not feeling

like they're being taken advantage of and they value staying where they are. and, you know, nearly every time someone moves into a property, there's always something that they would like that other tenants necessarily don't care about. For example, probably I've got at the moment, you know, we were talking about doing something and this tenant said, look, I don't care about that but I'd really like overhead fans

and so we put them in, you know, probably I think it was 700 bucks for two fans, all done, and, you know, you've got a happy tenant. And all it takes is for that tenant to change once or twice and there's that $700 gone anyway. Spot on. You've only got, you know, there's a week's rent at $500, $600 a week. You don't have to have many weeks vacant for fans to be soaked up very quickly. So that's, again, really smart thinking and having good regular tenants

for a length of period that are happy in the property is gold if you're a property investor. That's the holy grail in terms of making sure you've got an enjoyable property experience. So, yeah, love the thinking around that, mate. That's awesome. What else have you done in the property sphere and what's it looking like now?

Just a little bit of a side thing on the property in Adelaide. We switched over to short-term accommodation quite a few years ahead of Airbnb and we did quite well out of that for quite a few years and then had to upgrade it a bit to keep it in the market. So that was a good way of going for a while and it also gave, when I moved away, gave us the flexibility to be able to come back and stay there occasionally.

But when Airbnb hit initially, the bottom fell out of that so we converted them all back into permanent rentals which they are now, I have considered making maybe part of the short-term rental again now that there's agencies, Airbnb agencies that run things. So when looking at property, it's good to have, you know, properties that are flexible, you know, that you can think, right, we're going to make it all Airbnbs or part of it Airbnb

and part of it mainstream rental. and so it gives you – you spread your risk a little bit and also gave us some personal flexibility in having somewhere to stay when we came down. Sensible, yeah. Yeah, and so from there moved to Melbourne. So I was working pharmaceuticals in Adelaide, living in eastern suburbs, then moved to Melbourne and rented in Melbourne

And then the next place I bought was probably the most emotional one. I knew we didn't want to stay in Melbourne. I travelled around Australia when I was younger and loved the northern New South Wales coast. And a mate lived down in the section where we've ended up buying. And it backs onto National Park and it's walking distance from the beach. I grew up walking distance from the beach, so that was sort of my benchmark. And I said to him, look, if you see any properties,

before real estate dropped off and all that, and I said, if you see any properties come up along this stretch, will you let me know? Because, you know, I want to buy something. I want to move to this area eventually. And anyway, he rang and said, look, this place has come up. It's similar to mine. It's just an old sort of beach house. and I was really going for the position more than anything

and I put an offer in for it without even having seen it because he said it was like his. I knew the block. I knew the street. You know, I knew what I wanted and in those days, you weren't really paying a premium for the National Park. The newer houses at the other end of town were more popular and anyway, the next week I came up.

I hadn't signed anything before seeing it, but came up and purchased that one. And my thinking at the time was even though I'm sort of buying it really as a personal thing rather than investment, I had a feeling that this area was going to go up as much as anywhere else anyway in terms of value. And maybe it might have been good to invest in Melbourne, but, you know, this was a bit more of a personal choice rather than just buying for investment. And so we purchased it and we've never looked back. Yeah.

And I thought it'd be a few years before we moved up but in reality once I had it I couldn't wait to get up here and that's when I resigned from the pharmaceuticals and went into the consulting and the teaching and we moved into it and it's just slowly fixed it up over the years. Yeah, I love it, mate. That's awesome. And what I'm hearing is the remaining properties have got to –

because they're such strong gilding properties, they'll be giving you a good rental income to take the pressure off having to work a five-day permanent job anyway. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And, you know, while I had several – like I had the Adelaide property, the Darwin property, and the Cabarita Beach property, While I had all them, at one stage I wasn't living in any of them,

so I was able to take advantage of negative gearing and while I had bigger mortgages, that was helpful and I also had higher salaries, so it was helpful. But when I moved in here, I was talking to my accountant and his advice at the time was, you know, you've got to have a significant capital. I had a big mortgage on Cabarita where I was living, which wasn't tax deductible.

and I had a small mortgage on the property in Darwin because I'd paid a bit of it off and it had grown a bit in value. And also I didn't go to Darwin very often and it was a bit inconvenient and it was a bit of a high-risk area. So I actually sold that property and paid off as much of my mortgage as I could on the Cabarita property where we were living so that I transferred, you know, so I had a smaller mortgage that wasn't tax deductible.

Yeah, smart. Yeah, and then I just made it my mission from there. You know, I still had the Turok property but I made it my mission to pay off this one as soon as I could where we lived. So I worked on that and it was good when I was consulting so I just powered into that. Didn't lead a lavish lifestyle. You know, time is more important really.

for us than having too many whiz-bang things and anyway we paid this off and then pretty shortly after that a duplex came up in the same street and where we are in Cabrita and I knew that it was a growing area and you know access to Koolangatta Airport growth in the area and so then we borrowed again and bought a duplex down the road. And with that one, we had to substantially renovate it in order to get a better rent return. But, again, it was better to spend money, borrow more money and renovate it and add a couple of bedrooms

and increase the rent than it was to have in terrible condition where, you know, tenants aren't really happy. Well, yeah, and you're investing in your future, mate, because you're upgrading the quality, you're restarting the clock on depreciation and a lot of the fixtures and fittings, so you're sort of getting a benefit from that and you're in an area that's, and right now, mate,

given what's just happened with COVID, the regional living where there's a perceived space and safety are going to become even more valuable. So, locations like you're in, they're going to become extremely popular, even more so than they have been. So, you're sitting on potential very strong capital growth as a consequence of that. So, pretty smart thinking there, mate. Mate, thanks for sharing that. That's been awesome.

I'd like to just, I guess, conclude the journey talking about what I see as a real passion of yours and obviously been a passion right through your life, which is travel. and the ability that you have to have combined your passion for travel but also with helping particularly young people and others to expand their appreciation of the world and their appreciation of giving to others through the quite unique boutique travel company that you've created. I'd love you to share that story with us. um yeah over the years we've had you know groups of people that have just sort of tagged along with

uh anna and i on holidays and um shown them around places where we'd been in the pool and here and you know that that that was just something we did for fun and to share the experience with people um and then when i was it's you know working at the school i operate at I would always come back and if the kids were complaining about anything I'd always get on you know the kids say you're always on your soapbox when you come back from Nepal talking about how you know how they have it and how we need to appreciate things more and all that sort of stuff and anyway these kids that I'd had them through from grade seven right through up until year 12 and you know just those type of kids that you know they don't want to go

to the Gold Coast and get drunk for their schoolies, you know, after they finish Year 12. They're after a bit more and something a bit different. And so this group of five kids approached me and said, would we take them to Nepal? And I thought, oh, yeah, great, very enthusiastic about it, dah, dah, dah, they want to do some voluntary work. Yep, that sounds good.

And anyway, as I looked into it, you know, everyone, nearly everyone i spoke to people said it would be a good experience but anyone in the like lawyers and stuff like that that i was trying to get advice from they were just like don't do it and it was really quite deflating and i actually you know i was overseas at the time i wrote to the the main girl who was organizing it and i said look i'm sorry it's just you know there's too much liability i'm not going to be able to do it but you know and i gave them plenty of time so they could organise something else. Well, in true fashion of kids at school,

they only hear what they want to hear. Anyway, so a few months later, I get an email and it's like, what's happening about Nepal? And then I had to explain it all over again and felt terrible because it was closer to the finishing. It was still well ahead of finishing, but, you know, closer. And anyway, her dad got on the blower and phone and he said, you know, and I could tell he was sort of,

are you saying this because you don't want to do it or are you saying it because it's a real concern? You know, fair enough either way. And I said, no, I really want to do it, but, you know, it's just not worth me losing my house over if anything goes wrong. And he goes, well, leave it with me. I'll see, you know, we can work out something with lawyers. And he got in touch with a mountaineer who had, no,

a lawyer he knew who had done a contract for a mountaineer who had done something similar except for mountaineering is way more um strenuous than what anything we did and so he put me in touch with this guy and and the parents at all because i was donating my time to do this and covering all my own costs i wasn't a business at all and um so the parents said they would pay for the cost of the lawyer to draw up a contract an indemnity letter and anyway as it Turned out the lawyer thought it was such a great idea that we're offering this to kids that he did it pro bono anyway. And so they signed this indemnity letter.

Look, it doesn't protect you completely, but, you know, it's the best you can do really. And so off we went. And, you know, some of the questions that we talked about earlier or I've read about in your other podcasts is, you know, some of the mistakes you've made. And one of the mistakes, we got away with it, but I made here was that I just didn't charge the kids enough money.

I was trying to give them as cheap an experience as possible and, you know, as I said, I was covering my own costs and my airfare, everything, and volunteering my time. yeah um but of course my you know good mate over in nepal who runs a trekking company he runs treks but he's not used to running all the rest of it and um all the costs i'd got from him were just way under what they really were and i was lucky that i built enough fat into it to cover it but it really you know it more than broke even but it really it helped me learn a lesson that you really have to do your homework if you're going

to be running a business. And these kids, they were fantastic because when they realised, I overheard Rummy and my mate over there talking about the costs of things and all that, and they straight up said, look, we have to pay more, you know, we'll pay more for this and that or we'll pay for our own meals or whatever. They were amazing. And it didn't come to that.

But I got very vigilant at keeping records of costs and so for every year since then, I did it for three years completely voluntarily and I kept records of it all. And my main thing was that I wanted to make sure the people over there were getting paid well and were getting a good deal. So I was able to make sure that happened. but what it did do for me when I actually wrote to the lawyer again and said, oh, you know, things are going really well. I've been doing this for three years, da, da, da, and he nearly had a fit because he said, oh, you know, that was supposed to be a one-off thing.

You know, you can't do this indefinitely. You've got to set yourself up as a business or not do it. And so my wife and I sort of sat down and, you know, we loved doing it. she'd been on some of the tours and um you know do we want to keep doing this or do we have to give up and of course so you know i thought right let's let's make it into a business and then but what went with that was that it really had to be expanded because the cost of the insurance and the you know asip and all the extra things of running a business really add to the cost of the trip which and all that all that fair money used to go to people in nepal and to

various charities and stuff um whereas all of a sudden you know they're still getting well paid over there but not not what they were not the cream on the top that they were and the trip the cost of the trip has had to go up so that i'm not out of pocket i mean we're still not making um it's not something that makes us a huge amount of money but it contributes to our lifestyle but what i have realized is that if if i expand and do more variety of tours then that helps me particularly keep the cost of the school this trip done so that's what we were in the middle of um we just finished researching a tour for luan probang in laos yeah and it's it's almost the opposite of nepal in terms of the type of tour it's for people in their mid 40s

maybe over people who want to travel with a group but not be on the move every day um it's slow sightseeing um and for someone who you know they might be single want to be in a group of other people and have a little bit of time on their own but some group dinners and things like that and so we my wife and i had gone and done all the research on that and put the two of us together and um that's covid hit so and something that really helps with this sort of stuff is finding people and surrounding yourself with people who are enthusiastic about what you're doing and we met this lady um who had run tours um associated with um quilting uh people people who do sewing and stuff like that.

I didn't even really know it existed. And she had been a bit like me, just running a couple of tours a year, just a half a dozen people or so, and she got approached by someone about Facebook marketing, and she thought, oh, right, I'll give it a go. Now, she was going pre-COVID, she was going to be running 10 tours with 20 people at each tour. This is to a, not to Nepal or Lamprabang, but somewhere else.

And so she had embraced this and it really made me think, right, this is a similar model to mine. This could work. And so I was just looking around for someone to revamp my website and all that when COVID hit. You know, I'd already branched out a bit in Nepal. We'd run a mothers and daughters tour. We'd run a couple of different, two different schoolies tours.

and anyway so when we came back after the COVID hit I'm like right well what happens you know because we can't do anything but I did decide what I had a lot more time because I had no working at the start of term two because of COVID then school was online I had no work for casuals and so I thought right I don't want to spend much money because on the business because who knows where it will go but I did decide to invest in getting someone to redo my website so that I could set it up to take payment and to make it a lot more slick than just um just for being schoolies groups where I you know I know them all and um you know it's easy to for them to pay and stuff I wanted to expand the types of tours offered in Nepal and to add Luang Prabang so

I did invest the money and the time to update my website so I've got that all ready to go and I've got a variety of different tours listed branched out from just being like I'm just running the school these two are mainly for the group the couple of schools that I'm associated with and other than that we've got a nutritional outreach tour which is partly voluntary and and part trekking, got a photography tour where people can have the time to take photos and doing also a photography tour in Luang Prabang as well and textiles in Luang Prabang. So really expanded the what's on offer but with the aim being that, you know,

that way I can cover the business costs and can continue. I can start to make a little bit of an income, but also I can make sure that contributing to the two cultures that I'm working in being Laos and Nepal. Let's just finish on that because I think that's the sort of invisible ingredient here that I love about what you're doing is one, you're respecting the local culture and making sure that you're looking after the local culture by virtue

of the way you're pricing the exercise so that, you know, the crew in Nepal, for example, are, you know, making appropriate money out of what they're doing. But you've taken it further than that with some of the programs you're doing with the, you know, I think you've, correct me if I'm wrong here, mate, but there's a school that you're supporting with donations and voluntary work from the participants in the tours.

Can you talk to us a bit about that? Because I think that a lot of people miss the satisfaction we get out of, you know, giving freely to others without expecting anything in return. Can you sort of expand on that a bit for us? Yeah, it's twofold, really. On the side of the trekking and the tours, particularly in Nepal, it's been about teaching the kids that I've been taking or any of the people I've taken over how it can be win-win with how you operate in a country like that.

Now, our porters on the trek carry about half the legal weight and we walk very short days. So they get a really good run and get good conditions. We make sure they, you know, you can be on these treks and the porters won't eat because they might have to pay for their food themselves and it's very expensive up in the mountain. So I just factor that in separately and make sure they get good dahlbart every day, usually with meat.

So the conditions are good. We try and we play games with the porters. We, you know, muck around with them rather than separate. Sometimes people keep them quite separate and they might only just talk to the guide, but we try and make it a real fun experience for everyone. Awesome. And then so it teaches the people that come with me that, you know,

it's not about getting what you can out of something. It's how you can have win-win. And I like it better than just donating money as well, I prefer to try and donate work where I can and just give everyone a good deal. And I know that they're happy with their environment, their work environment, because there's always a queue to try and come with on our tracks.

You know, my mate over there runs lots of different tracks, small operator, but he's got a lot of international guests and he puts different porters with different groups and they're always wanting to come with us. And I know that that's a barometer for knowing that they're getting well treated behind the scenes by his family as well as what bits that I can have control over. Yeah. And then with the children, we've been associated with that children's home for quite a few years, probably about 10 years. And I liked the model that they used because some children's homes, and you see a lot of bad press about them, particularly in Cambodia.

where they sort of embrace tourists to try and get money and it's just a survival tactic and I can understand why they do it. But the group we work with, Hands With Hands, it's an Australian lady who founded the organisation and it's on the outskirts of Pokhara, which is a tourist town, and they don't have many tourists come through at all and they're very closely vetted. you're not allowed to stay after dark um i she's happy for my um i only take the groups of kids

there i haven't been taking other groups of adults i don't want to start churning people through um so it's just the all these groups that go there and um we factor in a donation that the kids can raise money for themselves i don't encourage when the kids are my students are you know saving up for their trip i'm not a fan of them raising money to fund their own trip some groups do do that but i say you know work for your trip and any money you um that are that you any money you raise through donations goes to the children's home doesn't go towards giving you a cheap trip so that's sort of a stipulation I try and put in it

encouraging the saving and the self-reliance to fund the exercises as part of the learning as well mate, that's absolutely brilliant that's right and it's been good to see the way the parents have embraced that too because some

of them will say well pay half if you pay half, save half and things like that to give them a bit of encouragement Some parents pay for the whole trip and one grandparent paid for his granddaughter to come along because he had a connection with Nepal and saw the value in what we were doing. But when we give the donation to the children's home,

it's with no strings attached. They use it for whatever they want to do. And the beauty of what's come out of it is being quite a lot of sponsorships of kids within the children's home. So the first group I took over wanted to give me a present for taking them and I said no, I didn't want one. I was happy to do it. So they decided to sponsor two kids and they've done that.

Even though they're all uni students now, my kids, they've sponsored two kids right the way through. And, you know, that adds up to about $400 a year each, which is a fair bit for a uni student. and they've kept doing that, you know, and it's like 2016, so it's like, you know, four or five years later. So we get that spin-off of helping to support the children's home. They have a great philosophy.

They grow nearly all their own food and the Australian founder lives in Berlin and she's really good at networking and, you know, helping them to become as self-sufficient as they can. They've bought land and they're building an environmentally friendly rammed earth brick house, which is earthquake resistant. Wow. So they're really looking towards the future,

how to avoid a disaster from an earthquake. I really fit my philosophy fits really well with what they try and achieve and going back every year to the one place and seeing the kids again each year and even when I'm not on tour, my wife and I go out there and play table tennis with the kids and maybe help them with a bit of homework. It's just great seeing them all grow up from young kids to now they're starting to leave the home and get jobs.

There's a real sense of satisfaction and I've seen it with the people I've taken with me that, you know, they keep in touch now on Facebook with the kids that are in the children's home and stuff. And they've had a lot of satisfaction knowing that they've helped give these kids an education and keeping giving them a safe place to live. Mate, it's absolutely brilliant. There's so many benefits in what you're doing there for everyone that's involved.

And I love, you know, that sort of win-win approach that you've adopted and thinking about the learning experience for all and sundry and having a positive impact and creating lifetime relationships as a result, which ultimately, you know, life is about experience and life is about relationships. So, mate, I take my hat off to you. But I'm going to switch into the old ambush round if I can

because I'm mindful that I've used up a lot of your time today. And there are just five quick questions that the listeners love to gain your words of wisdom on. Mate, first of those is what's your favourite quote and why? My favourite quote, and I think it comes from being, you know, around kids and the types of jobs I've done, is you don't have to be the best, but you should try your best. Love it.

And I think that's because, you know, like at schools and in the workplace, wherever you are in your life, you know, there's always people with good skills and better skills than others and lesser skills than others, but it's about each of them reaching their full potential and you're not necessarily going to be competing with someone else. It's sort of being the best person you can be. Yeah, and I love that, mate.

It gets rid of that whole comparison thing which creates a lot of issues. Mate, on the reading front, what would be the top book that you'd recommend people read and why? um i've this isn't a financial one but it's um one i really love is called is a suitable boy by vikram seth and it's uh about someone who's it's about arranged marriage and you know the typical thing of a young lady and um the experience she has she's going through with um being in the environment where you're going to have an arranged marriage and whether or not that's for you or whether it's not so i like it because it it takes you into a world that's so far removed from ours

and to try and put yourself in someone else's shoes and um really i think it really does a good job of helping you understand why that even still goes on to the in today's environment and why sometimes it can be an acceptable way of life. And in terms of the other, on the financial front, I like the Barefoot Investor. Yeah. Scott Page, I think. Yeah, I just like his no-bones approach to it and his common sense.

Yeah, common sense. Easy to read. Exactly. Yeah, awesome. I made a slight shift in subject because a lot of Aussies feel they pay way too much tax. What's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax you pay? Negative gearing with property is probably the main way I've paid less tax. Yeah.

And then other than that, as you would know, like over the years, apart from the career journey stuff that we talked about, My wife and I have taken a year off without pay several times throughout the last 20 years, and sometimes we structured that so that it was across two financial years rather than one calendar year, and that way you got a better tax return each year. Yeah, it's such a simple thing, but it can make quite a meaningful difference. No, it's very smart, mate.

Love that. Love that. Mate, back on the investment front then, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? The worst is probably, you know, it's too risky, you know, to buy something. You know, it's too risky or it's too run down.

It needs a lot of work. when really this is in terms of real estate, obviously, whereas the main thing I was after was the position. So it's almost irrelevant and often you're getting that advice from people who aren't prepared to take the risk on any extra property anyway. So that's probably the worst advice I've had is people trying to hold me back and saying, no, don't do it. Yeah.

So the best piece of advice I would say has been people telling me start early, start as soon as you can. Yeah, that's absolutely golden advice which you've taken, mate. I mean, you know, to be buying property in your 20s, there's still not a lot that have been smart enough or brave enough to do that, mate. and you've only got to look at the fruit of the richness that it's given you in everything that you continue to do, mate. Very, very sage words. Mate, final question in the series then. What's a personal habit or a daily sort of ritual

that you believe has contributed most to your investment success today? A little bit along the lines of look after the pennies and the pounds, look after yourself. um i think i touched on it earlier um i if you know i do like good quality products i'd rather have you know one of something than five that's good quality and five are going to break so i do i save up the money and i buy good quality stuff um rather than buying it on credit because i think a lot of people don't realize that they just end up paying a lot more for things when they are buying it on credit that they can't pay off at the end of each month so you know you you you can

go out for dinner more often if you're actually paying cash for it spot on spot on if you're paying and credit cards you're paying up to 24 interest so it doesn't take long for that to chew its head off and you're absolutely right mate when it comes to those those day-to-day exercises can make a massive difference and that it's it's just instilling the very slight delayed gratification that it takes to save the money rather than have it right here right now mate love that mate uh final question then if i gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people in the world today and gave you a minute to talk what would you say um i would say look around throughout your personal life and your working life and find

people um that are role models that that you want to be like or that you are that are living a life like the one you would like to live um and then quiz them non-stop for you know what steps did they take to get to where they are now and then you know work your way towards it because nothing happens overnight um sometimes people here think i've got a pretty cruisy life but they didn't know me when i was working down in melbourne so it's like don't think it's going to happen overnight but if you work towards it set realistic goals sometimes you make some sacrifices to get there but um look for where you want to head and look for the steps you can take to get there by you know quizzing people and um surrounding yourself with people that are positive

and supportive and you know share your dream absolutely love that mate it's uh there's you know a whole bunch of gold and what you've just said there but you're absolutely right success takes time and and you don't have to reinvent the wheel you just find someone who's already done it and then and just keep asking questions and and i've always said there's no such thing as a dumb question the only dumb question is the one that you don't ask so uh mate you've summed it up beautifully mate it's been a real pleasure having a chat to you mate i have got a lot of admiration for what you do and how you do it and and the tremendous gifts that you give the people you teach, the people that travel, the people where you travel.

I think you've got an awesome mission, mate, that's making a big difference and appreciate you sharing that with us today, mate. It's been awesome. Thanks a lot. I've really enjoyed it. Great. Thanks a lot, Jim. We'll be in touch, mate.

Thanks for your time. Talk soon. Okay. 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 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.