Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Natalie Stevens on the Benefits and Risks in Building Your Home

Episode Date: September 2, 2018

When it comes to the topic of your future home, the age old question is sure to come up - do I buy or build?  In our experience at Know How, building can save you tens of thousands of dollars and unleash huge value into your property portfolio. But some investors are put off by the horror stories shared by those who have had nightmare experiences with building. There are few people better positioned to address the risks, uncertainty and complexity in building than our guest Natalie Stevens. Natalie is the founder and CEO of Build In Oz, an online membership based platform that shares the benefits of building with Australian families who are looking to upgrade their existing home or break into home ownership for the first time.  Natalie, who is also author of Building Home and Better Business, Better Life, Better World, reveals her step by step building process, which is guaranteed to save you time, money and stress. We also discuss how to get a better lifestyle for less, how Natalie gives back through her charitable ventures, and much more. Build In Oz - www.buildinoz.com.au Natalie Stevens - www.nataliestevens.com.au  Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You need independent advice because it's just the only way to stay 100% safe and it doesn't have to cost you anything. It doesn't cost anything to get land, the ultimate guide, but you should not buy a block of land without reading it. The information, I want to make sure that every Australian family has access, free access to the information they need to have a happy, safe and successful land building experience. So it's there if you know where to look. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts

from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the

top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. And today's episode is going to focus on your future home. And it revolves around that age-old question of, do I buy or do I build? Because it's a question that we very regularly have with people that we help at KnowHow.

Because we're constantly letting people know that building your home can save you tens of thousands of dollars and unleash mountains of value that you don't even expect. But we also realise that while there are very significant benefits in building, there are also a lot of people who have major fears around the risks of the building process. There's the uncertainty, there's the complexity, and there's the challenges of who to trust, where to start, and where do I find the time. It's that normal exercise of just not knowing what you don't know. So where do you go to get trusted, independent information, along with a step-by-step guide that's going to help you follow a proven process? Well, up until now, nowhere.

But this is where today's guest, Natalie Stephens, and her fantastic new business, Buildin' Oz, comes to the rescue. Because Natalie Stephens is a country girl who combines her 20 years of property building expertise along with her visionary creative planning skills to create Buildin' Oz, which is an online membership-based platform that shows families how building can give them more lifestyle for less. it gives you a really easy to follow process that takes away the fear, the confusion and the frustration of building and gives you the guaranteed ability to save time, money and stress

Natalie's recent book Building Home communicates this into a very easy to follow five step journey that then translates into her home build-in-a-box system. As Natalie says, building a home doesn't take a dream, it takes a plan. And this is the plan you need to live the dream. And Natalie and her team operate on a very simple but profound philosophy, and that is that the happiest of families are not the ones who have the best of everything, they are the ones who make the best of everything they have.

now away from work and on top of raising four very busy kids natalie's a proud mumpreneur and she's also a founding director of the layla rose foundation which is an australia-wide charity that assists families who have a child diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer she's also a lifetime member and a big supporter of b1g1 a global business giving movement where she has co-authored another book, Better Business, Better Life, Better World. Natalie's a warm, down-to-earth, yet highly energetic and a very passionate outfester. So please join me in enjoying Natalie Stephens. Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. It's Bushy Martin with the Get Invested podcast. And today, I've got the real pleasure of talking to someone I've

known for quite some years, and someone who very rarely we share a common interest in helping people to improve their lifestyles for good, hardworking Australian families through going through a home building process. So today we've got the real pleasure of introducing Natalie Stephens. Welcome aboard, Nat. Hey, Bushy. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I've been looking forward to having a chat to you for a while. It's, as I've already said uh quite rare to come across someone who shares the same passion and belief in the benefits of uh assisting people go through the home build process and keen to delve into that later but

before we do so for those who don't know you can you share with us some uh by telling us who you are and what you do so pushy you know the most important thing to me obviously is i'm a mum to four beautiful kids and wife to my husband, Sam. But what I'm really passionate about from a perspective of sort of my life's purpose is I've created a platform called Building Oz that shares a process that helps families build a brand new home, you know, the best home that their budget, environment and personal circumstances can allow.

Awesome. Yeah, and the why behind that? Where did that passion to help people in that area come from? Well, I have the philosophy that the happiest of families aren't the ones that have the best of everything, but they're the ones that make the best of everything that they have. Love it. And my five-step journey, my home building the blocks,

aligns with that philosophy in that it shows families how they can build a home and spend their money on the areas of their home that will bring them the most happiness. Yeah, awesome. Well, I'm really going to dig into that quite deeply shortly. But just so that we've all got a bit of an understanding of your life journey so far, can you sort of take us back to where it all began? And you can go back as early as you like, in terms of at what point did you decide where you're going to take your life? What was the motivation and what was the feelings and the thinking at that point in time? It can be at the end of high school or it can be whatever point you feel that you suddenly had a fairly clear direction on where you wanted

to take your life. So from a really young age, I knew that all I wanted to be in life was a potter. So I'm a potter. I was the kind of kid that spent every recess, lunchtime, after school until they kicked me out in the art room. Right. and I've always loved building things.

So it was only natural then when I finished school, I went to uni and I did a degree in architectural ceramics and then I went on and did my honours and then I also did my teaching. So my life was, you know, six years 100% enthralled in the art scene and I loved every minute of it. Okay. Architectural ceramics, that's a term I've, again, never heard of. tell us what that is so basically it's sculpture like if you were to go and do ceramics or clay or

if you would if you were to study fine art just as a ceramic designer you would learn mainly just about clay however architectural ceramics brings elements of glass concrete stone um you know it's more for large-scale industrial sculpture things like that things that will withstand the elements um really exciting stuff yeah and it was a lot of fun and it gave me so so much that I saw you know brings such an amazing quality to my life even today but the biggest gift that that gave me which I didn't realize at the time was that it you know studying art for six years gives you an incredible appreciation of sort of seeing, you know, looking at the world in a way that not everybody sees, you know,

looking at things differently and having a completely alternate perspective to something that doesn't exist to anyone else really except you. You've been taught over years and years of analysing artworks and analysing intention and purpose and all of the stuff that's gone into creating this amazing thing, it's not just what you see. There's so many other things behind it that have led to that existing. So I felt like it gave me a pretty amazing gift to view the world

in a really unique way. Absolutely. And I'd share your parallels because, as I think you know, I started life as an architect and was an architect for seven, eight years. And while I had a natural tendency to go that way, I'm guessing that sharing a similar approach to you, the ability to visualise something that doesn't exist and then to creatively make that happen is something that was inherent right from the get-go when you started playing with clay. Am I right in saying that, Nat? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, it goes right back to childhood, doesn't it?

you know building a cafe in the backyard it was just I just always loved tinkering around and making things um and in and in a you know in a way that's still what I'm doing now you know involved in building houses and it's creating something from nothing is an idea that really excites me you know whether it's you know a ball of clay turning it into a pot on a potter's wheel or you know a whole development it's the transformation in something is is pretty cool for me yeah that creative process which is as you say a lot of people uh don't get that opportunity to really explore that and develop that unless they go down one of the sort of creative arts or or allied opportunities so so you did that at uni and and then where to from there what

what was the next step and what were the thoughts and motivations at that time okay so I was I was born and bred in Warrnambool and went away to school when I was about 14 and then went on to uni. So I never came back to Warrnambool. I was never going to move back to Warrnambool. I sort of had probably, you know, big ideas and big dreams of where I was going to end up. And when I was about 22, I fell in love with a Warrnambool boy,

which brought me back home. And he's very, very ingrained in the community. And I sort of reluctantly just kept spending more and more time here. and then inevitably we settled down, we ended up getting married, we bought a house, we had a family and I was teaching at that time, I was an art teacher and loving life and I, because of my creative background, I spend a lot of time, I'm really into graphic design and, you know,

solving, you know, communicating messages and, you know, in creative ways was, you know, it's all part of it. So at that time, what I didn't mention back then is that while all this was happening, my life, my entire life, had been heavily cemented in the civil construction industry. So I was born and raised in the civil construction industry, and I grew up in a family business where my father and my mum, my parents, involved us in their everyday business activities all the time. And our holidays involved, you know, driving around the state or the country looking at jobs, seeing what other people were doing. And we did, we spent a lot of time, we'd sit on Dad's knee all day on excavators and things like that.

We were just really amongst it in those days. And so I grew up with sort of taking for granted that whole industry and I knew what I knew and I didn't really give it a lot of thought. I didn't have a particular interest in it growing up. Yeah. But when I was at home, I had my four kids in six years. Wow. And I've never been able to keep still,

so I always love to be working on different things. It occurred to me, so I've missed a bit there. Let me go back. So we had both. Let me take you back and paint a little bit of a picture about how this came to be. So my dad, when he was really young, he was a plumber. Yeah.

and he was working in a town called Colac, which is a small regional town in southwest Victoria, and he met a man at an auction sale, and my dad always loved, he always told me he loved spending time with older people. He could learn so much from older people. He wasn't as interested in people his own age because he didn't feel that they could teach him anything. Love it.

So he was very, very, all of his friends that he had growing up, the people he would you know drink beers with the people he would spend time with the older men and he was chatting to a man by the name of Jack Brown and I was about I was probably about six months old or one yeah and he got chatting to this man and this man told him a sad story of how he had a civil construction business in the town of Warrnambool but he had recently been diagnosed with cancer and how heartbreaking it was for him that he didn't have the body to take over his business. And by the end of the auction sale, my dad had agreed

to purchase his business and went home and he told my mum, who was at home with it also, she had her six kids, four kids in six years, and she said, honey, we're packing up, we're moving to Warrnambool. so they moved to Warrnambool very very quickly and that's how he got into um you know civil construction because Jack Brown had new machines and that's when he got into doing drainage and plumbing and I mean sorry large-scale plumbing drainage yeah um and then eventually as the years went on then he got into you know earth moving and started to to dabble in property buying land

And, you know, then he went on to complete, you know, to construct, sorry, complete subdivisions from sort of buying raw land right through to actually, you know, selling the land himself. Right. So he's had a lot of fun doing that and he's been good at it. So I'm at home having babies. Let's fast forward now. Yeah. To me at home having babies. And it occurs to me that by this stage dad has a lot of land around the place.

Yeah. and all of his land was being sold by real estate agents in town. Yep. So different real estate agents could sell the land. Okay. And, you know, land didn't sell great. It was always a bit of a struggle. And then it occurred to me one day in my little creative mind at home,

having babies and doing all that stuff, that I calculated at the time that there was 78 real estate agents in Warrnambool spread across 12 agencies in a population of only 34,000 people. Good grief. And every single one of them was paid three times more in commission to sell someone an existing house over a vacant block of land. Yeah.

and i said to dad what incentive has anyone got to promote the advantages of building everyone's frightened of building nobody wants to build it's there's so many horror stories everywhere i turn yeah i don't think we can sell our land because nobody knows why they should buy it yep nobody knows the advantages of buildings oh well not nobody you know few people everyday People weren't particularly aware of it. So I came up with a little plan in my spare time that I would harness all of my creative energy and I would remove the vacant residential land. I would move it away from its only competitor, which is existing houses. And I created a little brand called Land Immortable and had a lot of fun doing it.

Awesome. And that was something I did in my spare time. And then I got pretty passionate about it. It was, you know, it gained some momentum. We got great traffic. We had great response. Things started moving. And then I thought, righto, now the next step is I need to work

on the market and, you know, really deep dive, as you would say, and I need to find out, you know, what their pain points are, what their fears are, what are the mistakes that they're making. Like how can I make this home building thing a better experience? Yep. So I was really caught up in the creative challenge of solving that big problem. And then I created another website called Building Warrnambool

and it focused on, you know, sharing the advantages of building. Yeah. And then it just had an enormous amount of traffic and it became a really well-known brand that people were turning to and people were, you know, I became a little bit well-known for someone who's passionate about building, which I absolutely was because it was in my blood. I always knew all this stuff.

I just didn't realise nobody else did. Yes, exactly. Awesome. Yeah, and then I just, it just grew legs and I just went crazy and I just started, you know, reading and writing and going through all of the, you know, experiences I'd ever witnessed and all of the experiences my dad had ever witnessed and the people around me had ever witnessed and I thought

If I can help this many people in the small regional town of Warrnambool, why can't I help everybody anywhere? And that's when I started thinking about I'm going to create something that no matter where you are in Australia, I can help you plan to build a house and avoid any of those big mistakes, the fears, the risk, the uncertainty, the money wasting, the time wasting, the whole thing. I'm going to strip it all back and in my simple language,

just like I was talking to one of my girlfriends or cousins or brothers or sisters, I just wanted to strip it back and I wanted to make it really clear, simple and safe and I'm really excited that that's what I've managed to do. Yeah, brilliant. That's awesome, Matt. Tell me, you've sort of touched on and you and I have sort have been in similar situations on this over the years where there's an inherent fear of

the unknown that's surrounded with building a home versus buying something you can already see, touch and feel. What are some of those fears that you have seen in potential home buyers and how is Building Oz overcoming those and what are the benefits of building? So there's three parts to that question, I guess. So let's start with the fears. Can you just expand on those a bit because I'm sure there'll be a lot of listeners that have similar views around whether they're building it for their own home or building it for an investment property that has the same basic inherent concerns. Well, I think the main fear comes from the uncertainty. and you know this is you hear the horror stories or you hear you know where people have had a bad

experience and I believe that that experience has occurred because people haven't known exactly where they should be starting so the number one mistake the number one biggest mistake that I believe people make when thinking about building a house is they start with the builder yeah i want to build so i'm going to go and see a builder and what i find often happens there which leads to the fear the second biggest fear is that they are going to get um you know that the building's expensive it's going to be too expensive i can't afford to build but when you go to start with the builder the chances of you falling in love with a dream that you can't afford yes a huge yep so what i tell people and

what my home building a box system tells people that before you do anything else whether you're a first homeowner and an upgrade an investor it doesn't matter who you are whether your budget's 300 000 or 3 million until you have set a budget don't even bother because that budget sets the scene for every single decision that you make yeah so if you go through a planning process and then you know figure out or start to think about well hang on a sec what can i afford yeah you are going to have wasted copious amounts of time you are going to have felt so much stress you're going to feel fearful that you've been ripped off. It's just a bowl of spaghetti and that's where people get really confused

and fearful at that point. Yeah. Yeah, totally agree. You're absolutely singing my language given that we've got a finance breaking arm of know-how and we always say, well, get your money right first. Property is a game of finance. So if you don't get really crystal clear on what you can not only afford to spend but more importantly afford to uh repay ongoing through all of life's trials and

tribulations then you're setting yourself up for failure so uh yeah absolutely spot on and love the insight that you've been able to uh bring to the fore the fact that you need to get really clear around your budget and your affordability from the get-go and then go and find a solution that's going to reflect that because it helps with expectations as well. As you say, people always want the Taj Mahal off the bat and they'll race off and talk to builders and get all excited and then their hopes get dashed when they suddenly realise that they can't afford to go anywhere near that.

Yeah, and then they just throw out the idea altogether and miss out on the benefits. Well, let's talk about the benefits then. Expand on, you know, if I was lining up to look at buying an existing home versus building one what are the benefits in your mind of going down the build process well it kind of goes back to what i said earlier about having grown up in an industry where i took it for granted that everybody always knew excuse me that you could generally with all things considered equal of course yeah you can usually build something for less than what it's going to

cost you to buy it yeah because you know no one's going to build something new and sell it to break even or lose money yeah that's how people make money yeah and using if you if you use a process and you eliminate some of the risk i think that rather than making money for someone else you should be making that money for yourself yep and not only there is that you know um you know you build a house and if you if you're sensible about it and i mean if you go and build you because in in my book i talk about there's two different you know if you're going to go and build your dream home then you're sure you might over capitalize and you know that's a different thing yes but if you're building to maximize your budget and get the very best home that you

you know finances environment and personal circumstances will allow then there's certain rules that you can follow that will enable you to create instant equity yeah and that equity is really really powerful right yes absolutely not only securing a home that's going to better your lifestyle but you're effectively making some money right off from the get-go because you've created equity on completion of that home yeah and the obvious the obvious one that surprisingly not many people know, which stumps me every time because, you know, I try to flash it up in bright lights, but I think I'm the only one that does.

Of course, you don't pay stamp duty. You pay stamp duty just on the land when you build. So just in case people don't know, stamp duty is obviously a land tax transfer, you know, land transfer tax, sorry. So when a property is transferred into your name, you know, the stamp duty is calculated on the value of the property. So if at the time you buy a block of land, that stamp duty is only going to be calculated on the value

of the block of land, you know, your house doesn't come into it because, you know, there's nothing to transfer, it doesn't exist yet. Yeah. So it can be, you know, even if that was the only benefit of building a loan, that's a really significant saving, you know, on an average, you know, home here for about 400 grand, you know, it can mean around $15,000 in savings, which is really significant. Absolutely.

You know, the stamp duty situation is a little bit different. We operate nationally, but obviously, given that we're in South Australia, a lot of our work's in South Australia. And the stamp duty costs in South Australia are generally a bit more expensive than most other states around the country. And it's very easy to save $15,000 to $20,000 in stamp duty on an average home. So, you know, that's money back in your pocket before you even start. So, that is a massive benefit.

What about others that you talk about, Matt? Well, I think just the other really significant one for me is being able to actually spend your budget. And it's one of my favorite little phrases that I use, on the areas of your home that will bring your family the most happiness. Yeah. So, for example, some people really get caught up in, you know, the shiny parts of the home, the things that are going to date, the things that are going to be really awesome for, you know, they're going to feel good to have, but are they going to bring any more value to your lifestyle?

Probably not. So, we really focus on helping people identify the things that can bring real value to their life and it's often in the floor plan um and and how that home functions for that family because people who can't visualize bushy and I actually always thought that everybody can visualize it took me it was like probably when I started getting involved in helping people buy land and stuff that oh you know choose blocks of land that I went on they can't see it oh they can't see it and then I realized I had to go you know be a bit more understanding in that in that you know sphere that people not everybody can look at a floor plan and visualize themselves

standing in it and thinking about what their life would look like sitting in that floor plan so I want to help people who can't do that I want to help point out what really matters what you need to consider when you look at a floor plan don't just go oh yeah that's got this that's got that cool awesome no no no there's so much more to a home enabling you to live a great lifestyle than just what it's got it's got to be about how it functions yeah can you share a couple of specific examples for those that might be just trying to get their head around what you're suggesting there oh you know just mainly the layout of the home there's things like the way So for me, I mean, I use the word cautiously like feng shui.

Yeah. But it's not that. I don't, you know, particularly think about that. But a home, it has to have that sense of balance. There has to be a certain element of the way a home flows. Yeah. It's hard to describe without actual visual examples in front of me. Sure.

But it might be as small as that there is, you know, a window could be far better off. I mean, I'm a big supporter of the custom home build process for many reasons. Yeah. And what I love about the custom home build process is that even me, I can go into a home that I'm building and go, you know what, that window right there, if we, you know, cut that window in half, got a different window that's half the width, and put it up high, they'd be able to use two walls for that bedroom instead of just one that doesn't need to be there it's only staring at the fence let's put it up we get the same amount of light but the room is going to function so much better yep just very small things like that but when you analyze a floor plan overall you'll see that there could be 10 or 12 things that that floor plan might be

doing really badly it might it just i just don't think that um anyone should just just jump in and unless they can visualise it, it's good to really know what those little rules are. Yeah, totally agree. And with Build and Oz, do you assist people to interpret floor plans so that they do get a better handle on what works and what doesn't? Yeah, so it's the five-step journey, which is the home in the box system. Yeah.

That's the element of Build and Oz that's an online course. so um after you've identified your budget you know you know exactly or you know round about how much you have to spend then you set about you know setting your priorities um and your priorities are really important because that's when you start to think about those things so instead of once again instead of going and spending all this time and wasting all this time looking at all these floor plans you've nailed down your priorities you know what you're looking for so then when you by the time you get to step four and you're choosing a floor plan you've eliminated so much time wasting you already know what to look for yeah um and yet that we do cover

that in step two and step four so step two is about identifying the things in your home that will bring value to your lifestyle and then step four is about how you go about choosing the right floor plan okay okay and the um i know from i've been doing your online uh course with building home and uh the choosing your builder element uh what just give us some of the hot tips that you suggest there in terms of helping because that's quite a fearful exercise uh in choosing a builder because being able to compare apples with apples and know what one's doing what's not and what's fixed price and what's going to be extra cost, how do you assist them to negotiate through that maze?

Well, one of the biggest mistakes people make, again, Bushy, when they go to see builders is that they go and tend to have, you know, like a verbal conversation, kind of like what we're having now. Yeah. Where, you know, they think I've got to speak to three builders. Now, which is fine. They should get quotes from three builders. However, everybody interprets things different

and you're having three different conversations with three different builders and in much the same way as an artist will paint a different interpretation of every landscape, a builder's going to interpret what you've said differently. So we provide a tool called a builder's brief template so that we take away that sort of all that grey area and really nut down what you want and what you need

in your new home. and then if you give that brief to three different builders, then you're going to be, you know, you're not going to be one of those people that's sitting down in front of three quotes with a 60 grand difference between them, not knowing, you know, who's ripping you off, you know, there can be 60 grand worth of windows. Yes.

You don't know what it is because you've never seen this before. Of course. And it can, again, that's another fear that causes people to go, oh, I'm not doing this, it's too risky, it's too scary. when i'll tell you an example i spoke to somebody recently and um they were struggling to find a builder and they gave me a call and i said well who have you spoke to you know so far yeah and he gave me the name of three builders one was a luxury home specialist who builds incredible homes overlooking the ocean yeah magnificent yeah um that's his niche the other

one was a um a volume builder who specializes in budget builds and another builder was somebody who specializes in home renovations wow so you can see he just got three names yeah or he knew someone else who built with those so he was just going to build as a builder's builder yeah but he virtually came to me saying that i don't really care who i get can you just get me someone and I'm like oh mate you know you've you've and he said he's been he's been going through this process for months and months and he's ready to throw in the towel and I said no no no let's go back let's just go back and we went through the process and you know I mean he was he was talking to a volume builder who won't build on a slope block and he had a slope block so he'd spent maybe

I think he'd had two or three consultations with them so for him for them to build on his block was going to cost him astronomical sight costs. Of course. So it's all about, you know, there's so many stories like that, Bushy, where people just go into the process unaware and that's where the horror stories come from, just because they haven't actually followed the right steps because they simply don't know what they are.

Yeah, absolutely. So the Build and Oz exercise then clearly gives everyone the process. It gives you the principles, provides you with the information you need and the inspiration in terms of breaking down those barriers around the build process. Are they then left to sort of work through that themselves or do you and your team then provide additional service to enable them to make sure they're getting the right end result? so that brings up a good point is one of the people think that to build a house they need to know about building a house and you actually don't need to know anything about building a house to build a house but what you do need to know is how to plan to build a house because it's during the planning phase where the biggest mistakes are made and it's where all the big

decisions are made so particularly if you're working with say a volume builder the decisions that decisions that you make during the planning stage they are set in concrete or it's going to cost you a fortune to change them yep if you're working with a custom builder you can adapt a little bit here and there as you go i do that all the time and i love it and it does it can make the process really fun um like my example of changing the window or going oh hang on a sec i think that we should put big sliding doors into our living area instead of that pokey door or you can you as you can start to visualize things you can change them yeah but sorry back to that point i got a bit distracted there you're on the point is that your builder is really good at building

houses if you choose the right builder they're good at it so you need to be able to trust them so we building knows itself um since people once they've introduced it we pass the baton onto the builder and we wave goodbye and say, all the best, you're going to have a great time. And they say, thanks so much for your help. See you later. Here I go. And that's a beautiful thing because their job is done.

Your job is to plan to build that home effectively. And if you plan for it effectively, then you're going to have a happy and successful home building experience most likely. It's the best way to have it. yeah yeah okay so the so that because that that choosing the builder is a is a crucial one what what uh tips can you give people that are going to help them to ensure that they're getting the right builder for their particular need well the very best way to choose the right builder is of course to get a recommendation from somebody who's built with them yeah but that can be really

hard to do because you might not know anyone yeah so um one of the the things that building oz is working on at the moment is um a partnership with with a group of um really experienced builders who have been in the industry for many many years who are similar to how building oz is to help people plan to build a home they want to help people advocate to build a home so they want to walk alongside them so the baton will get passed from building oz to them and they can help them choose the right builder but if you're on your own and you want to choose a builder then the things that you need to look out for first and foremost is you need to do your research on the type of builder that you need and i'm really passionate about helping people identify the type

of builder that they need because a builder is not a builder like they're different and they think differently and they work differently and if you get a quote if you put in um if you have a builder who's a luxury home specialist and you ask them to quote your job their quote's probably going to come back expensive because it's got to be worthwhile for them to do that job yeah and it's the same thing if you've got a really really expensive home you're better off um you know if you're building your absolute dream home no expenses spared and you want to get quotes of luxury home specialist guys and you've got to know who they are you've got to be able to do your homework and that's that's the purpose of building ours we help people do that homework

know how to do that homework and we also actually offer a service where we can those three builders that i talked about we have our own network of builders so if you don't know of a builder or a preferred builder that you want to use you can send us your builders brief template and we'll introduce you to three of our partnering builders that that we've come to know and trust right so it can kind of eliminate that that element yeah okay okay because i in in the way know-how operates just as in parallel with what you're talking about because predominantly we we're assisting investors to build uh rental homes given that for the same reason you've spoken about there's very significant advantages in building over buying and even more so now with the recent

change in the budget last year where depreciation now has disappeared from existing properties, but you can still claim full depreciation on new build, which from a cash flow affordability perspective is about a 10th of the ongoing cost of an existing property. So, and the way we've learnt nationally now to be able to protect the interests of the investors is that if they're building, we'll find and identify an independent project manager in a location who effectively then keeps the builder honest. And we add an additional layer to that by then employing independently a building inspector who looks at each progress claim to make sure that what's being claimed is on spec, it's good quality, there's no insulation issues. And

So it gives the buyers then complete confidence that they've got some professionals that are looking after them from end to end. So it sounds like a similar exercise that you're looking at in the context of the moves that Built in Oz is looking to do from a home ownership perspective. So no, that's awesome. Awesome, okay.

Any other thoughts on that, Nat? No, I don't think so. One other story, you asked about the fears that people feel. It's really important to talk about that because that is the underlying motivation behind what I do. Yeah. And I'd like to share a story, something that just happened to me just this last week.

Excuse me for a minute. Sure. A family, an older couple, came to see me and they were looking at buying a block of land. They'd sold their home. They were coming in off the farm and they were looking to buy a block of land and they were desperate you know they needed to they they saw the advantages of building so they're pretty passionate about building but they were stressed out about the time factor you

know we're gonna have to rent how long they're going to be yeah so we were able to provide them with some realistic timelines which is which is really good yeah and they said Natalie it's really exciting we've found a block of land and the real estate agent has told us that titles are going to be in in two months and i knew that construction had only started there the week before which i knew construction was going to take at least five months yeah and then you know certification and you know it can get caught up in red tape a little bit you know yeah i i was so upset that again because of that whole pressure sometimes it sells people feel to to get the sale um i really felt like you know when i hear those horror stories it breaks my heart because i feel

like it i'm it undoes so much of my good work where i work so hard to educate people in the process and instill trust in them or entrust in the process um so i gave them a copy of my land guide which which showed them it's called land the ultimate guide which goes through the whole process and from reading that they understood the reality of you know buying an untitled block which, don't get me wrong, there can be huge benefits of buying an untitled block but you need honesty. You really, really need honesty and it's not that hard to give and that's what I'm really passionate about creating.

I really want people to have a safe experience and I believe that if they follow the right process, they can have that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, awesome. And it's about setting expectations. I'm picking up on your point.

I know from an investment perspective, I've built investment properties where I know that the land settlement's going to be a long time off, but if I've only put $1,000 down and I'm getting effectively free capital growth, one particular property that we built, it took them 18 months before they finally were in a position to register titles and then we could settle.

but I'd only put $1,000 down. I'd locked in the build contract so the build price was fixed. So I'd got all of that free capital growth. It hadn't cost me a cent. So from where I sat in that context, they could take as long as they like. Very different when it's an owner-occupied, of course, because if you're making plans and you're locking into, if you're renting a property for a period before you move in,

then you need to have clarity around that because then if it doesn't happen, then that's where the wheels fall off. But, yeah. Yeah, I've always said that some people have got time to waste and some people don't, and this couple really didn't. So it's all about just, you know, being true to people. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I guess, and you probably have the same conversation,

but we always say to people, have a think about when you're talking to anyone in the building game and building, like anything, is an elite team sport. So you want to make sure that you've got independent professionals in each and every position related to the building process from end to end. They need to be transparent. They need to be open. And if they do that, then your expectations from all sides and that communication process becomes fundamental to make sure that everyone's clear and comfortable on that journey. If it's not, though, I always say to them, what vested interest does that person have in doing something?

Now, if it's a salesperson just trying to clog the block of land and get paid and gone, and he just needs to lock up that sale, then some of them, unfortunately, will tell you what they think you want to hear versus what, and they would know what the reality is. Thankfully, there's enough honest people in the game to avoid those, and with the extra protection that Built in Oz is giving them, then that should eliminate that potential I'm hearing. that's right and i really love the idea and something that i've introduced to build in oz and it's something that my gorgeous husband sam does so well he's just a beautiful human being in terms of his authenticity and he helps people find the right block of land which is why i've come to learn so much as well in that australia needs more of them yeah that he's not you know working particularly for anybody but people come to him and he'll answer all of their questions he's i guess he's he's a land buyer's agent for lack of better word yeah okay even though we

haven't formalized that but he you need someone who isn't that commission-driven real estate agent or somebody that has got an arm's length you know that you need independent advice because it's just the only way to stay 100 safe and it doesn't have to cost you anything you know it doesn't cost anything to get land the ultimate guide but you should not buy a block of land without reading it yeah the information i want to make sure that every australian family has access free access to the information they need to have a happy safe and successful land building experience so it's there if you know where to look yeah awesome the uh the other area that we haven't quite touched on or drilled into in relation to all this is just identifying

what the risks are with building and how do you mitigate or or minimize those risks and you share a little bit of that with us sorry to say that again yeah so we've touched on some of these but one of the big concerns around that uncertainty factor that you mentioned is really understanding what the risks of the bill process are and then what measures do they have available to be able to minimise or eliminate those risks. Can you share some of the common ones that you've come across in that regard? Well, I think I kind of feel like over the stories that I've just shared, I do touch on that a bit in terms of the fears are actually the risks.

Yeah. And in terms of the way to avoid those, I think it's about education and being informed because you don't know what you don't know. Yes. So people only regret the things that they didn't know to look out for. Yes. And, you know, building is a wonderful – I mean, I love building houses and I build them with all sorts of builders and I'm not a builder.

i pay the same as anybody else to build a house but i really enjoy the process and touch wood i haven't had a bad building experience but i believe that that's because i'm really aware of what to look out for and i'm not afraid to say it when i know something's not right and when you have when you have knowledge and information it gives you courage to stand up and say hang on a minute that's not right so to give you an example uh one day I was building a house this is probably um one little example where something didn't go right but because I had a little bit of an idea what I was doing um I was able to you know set that in its tracks and fix it so it was just basically a measurement was out they'd put the pipes in the kitchen in the wrong

spot and because i'm able to visualize things quite well even though it was just a concrete slab with a pipe in the ground i went i'm not sure that concrete i'm not sure that pipe's supposed to be there i think it's supposed to be like 500 mil to the left yeah and the builder um said well you know now it'll be all right it'll still still be fine like i said yeah but that's what's on the plan mate like we're changing that and he's like oh you know really we're gonna have cut the concrete i said no problem let's cut the concrete yeah just it's it was it was just a small thing and it wouldn't have but it wasn't perfect and it needs to be perfect because you're paying for it to be perfect so when you just have a little bit of knowledge don't have a lot just

a little bit it empowers you to speak up and and identify if something's not right um so it's all about just you don't have to know a lot you just have to know a little and when you know a little make a huge difference and be surrounded by people who if you don't know then surround yourself with people who do know so that uh you're getting the benefit of their knowledge to assist you on that journey yeah it's which is clearly a big part of where building oz is coming in awesome i want to pivot a little bit now and sort of come back to your personal journey if we can and and given that get invested is really focusing on uh how people invest their time managing money. Can I just sort of explore what was the first dollar that you ever invested and

how did that go? Well, I would probably have to say in terms of like we all, I don't know if everybody did this, but I did. I used to love when I was a little girl, it wouldn't matter whose house I was at, I'd have this really bright idea that if we went out into the backyard, we would find enough things that their parents didn't want that we could sell on the street, just like a little stall out the front. Love it. Did you do that? Yeah, similar.

I was into stickers because I'm a country boy as well. I spent my high school days. I was born in Garoke in Western Victoria, so I know most of the areas that you're talking about down there, the Colac, et cetera. But I spent my later primary and high school days in Bordertown near the border with Victoria and was writing to stickers. So I used to get stickers from pubs from, you know,

the great big stickers and then I would sell them at school because everyone else wanted them. So stickers was my thing. But tell us a bit more about some of the gear that you managed to find and then sell on the street. Well, I think the big ones that stick in my mind were actually plastic, like pot plant containers like the ones that the plant comes in and we never sold anything like I can remember my auntie coming out one day she was quite cross because we we had a few of her

favorite things out there and I was hoping to get some big bucks for those but um it was more you know there's a lot of ladies that would just grab a plastic empty pot with a rose in it or something to um you know we could usually manage to scrape up enough money to go and buy an ice cream from the corner store or something like that. But, geez, we keep us entertained for hours on end, days, school holidays. We used to ride around looking for empty bottles because in those days, I think you're still getting – I'm going a long way back. I'm showing my age now.

This is in the 60s. We used to go around riding the district looking for empty bottles, and you'd get one or two cents for the bottles, and for that you'd get a full bag of lollies at that particular time. So that funded our lollyholic passions in those early days. Well, they were fun, weren't they, just riding around the bike all day? Exactly right. No, awesome.

Okay, well, look, sorry, go on. I was going to say, then, of course, because I was a potter at a very young age. Yeah. So I spent a lot of time at markets, and I'm also a lifecaster, so and i still do that today i take molds of body parts really wow um babies or pregnant bellies or anything that people want to keep um and i i really love doing that it's it's it's hard to find the time to do it these days yeah but i spend a lot of time at markets doing things like that selling pottery and um doing light castings and yeah living the dream really taking

pottery classes at night time all beautiful things beautiful parts of my life that I really cherish yeah love it awesome okay so to continue that investment theme then Matt I've sort of found over

you know the last 15 odd years of assisting people look at things that most Australians tend to focus on investing in their work or their career and the focus is always on the income But after all the reading that I did on writing my book, The Freedom Formula, what I realised was that those who actually achieve freedom also invest that income in growth assets that then help replace their active work income with more passive income over time.

have you looking at yourself and sam have you um up to this point invested any growth assets and if so what and how's that going well to be honest bushy we're very cash flow driven at the stage of life that we're at yeah kids i could get that yeah but i i have actually i realized we brought we were very very lucky when we purchased our home in that we, even though I'm a big advocate for building brand-new homes, I love renovating old homes. Now, that's not necessarily a smart financial decision and it certainly wasn't for us.

You know, if you've read my book, you know what a nightmare it was. It was an absolute, you know, three years it took us to get the permit for starters to do what we needed to do. It was a horror story. Wow. But in saying that, we purchased one of the very few undeveloped blocks right in the heart of town, and it's a magnificent block of land that, you know, I've sort of felt like this was the best investment

we ever could have made, 1,600 square metres, right smack bang in the middle of town with views as far as the eye can see. It's a really beautiful property. and of course the work that we did on it um you know it's it holds a lot of equity so i i feel i feel nice that we've we sort of always will have that it was a really in terms of you know um investing in your home um it is a really really great nest egg for future if ever we wanted to you know um not that we do it's sort of just like a you know one of those backstop things that you kind of feel good about having but if ever we needed to do anything in the

backyard you know we we have a large piece of land that we could do something with yeah however what we we are very cash flow driven so we build a lot of properties and we sell them and um that is a really good formula for us and it works really really well however we need to start thinking about building and holding it doesn't have you know developing is developing for the brave you know it's it's and that's just the space i come from my my father once said to me and i he actually said it many times and he'd say natalie you're either a developer or you're an investor you need to choose one and stick to it yeah not always go okay um yep okay i'm a developer i'll be that yep whereas now i'm thinking hang on a second i'm you know i'm not i don't feel that

I'm getting old but I've got to start thinking now about should I um I need to start thinking about building and holding doing a bit more investing um because you know I'm probably not as much of a as a risk taker as he is and I certainly don't want um he's led a very you know well you're not developing like it's it's it's it's big business in terms of you know it's high risk um it's very it's very very you know on this i mean not so much the scale that i do it at personally but i think i would feel a little bit safer if i was investing um it's something that sam and i know that we need to do more of yeah yeah okay yeah because i i mean i talk to developers and investors and whatnot all the time.

I'm personally a very strong, Sonia and I are build and holders, there's no doubt about it. And the reason for that, I guess, is that unless you're in a pretty strongly rising market, by the time you take your selling costs and, more important, the capital gains tax impact out of it, you have to have a very significant improve in selling price to make it worth its while,

where for us we've just let the equity increase and then taken that equity and used it to leverage into other property without ever taking or paying the tax. So it's longer term, it's very boring, but for us it's been extremely successful. And that's not to say that people that go down the development road can't do well as well, but I tend to agree with you. It's much higher risk because you're expecting a need to achieve a very significant profit in a very short space of time. Whereas if you've got a 10 to 15-year horizon, then the natural state of market assisted by inflation and other things is going to mean that you will enjoy sustainable equity down the tracks.

I know that's awesome. Well, just sort of revolving around that then, can you share with us your picture of what your dream lifestyle is with yourself and Sam and the kids and then compare that to how that looks to your current lifestyle and then the third part of that is what are you going to invest in to bridge the gap between where you are and where your ideal lifestyle would be? well i mean first of all it's it almost sounds cliche but i really really love my life i live a life of purpose every day as in nothing really for me happens by chance i'm very i set i visualize in terms of what i invest in i invest a lot in visualizing my future yeah i pick a place that i want to be and i visualize myself really clearly in that space yeah and if it feels right then i can reverse engineer it and do what i need to do to get there

and that's how i've lived my entire life awesome and if i can't if i can't sorry i kind of always feel quite content and happy that i've made the right choices because I've already made a decision about whether it's the right choice for me and then if it doesn't turn out right, I really believe that that's how it was sort of meant to be. Like any deflection from that, well, then I'm a big believer in that, that there really are no mistakes, that everything in my life

is exactly how it's meant to be at this given time. Brilliant. And I make the best of it no matter how I'm feeling about it. i make sure that i find a way to make the best of it yeah very passionate great way to live life that's an awesome way to live life because it means that you're never suffering disappointment or or have this expectation that you're supposed to be somewhere else so it's a really good way to enjoy the moment and then look forward to the the future that's awesome that now the um if we look Back over your journey so far then, what are the best

and most worthwhile investments you've made to date and why? Well, I really have to say, going back, we've covered it, so I won't go into it, but my education, I really, I thank my parents every day for, they were big on education. They sent us away to school for a better education. They never had an education in terms of they both left school very young and both sort of self-made people and they really wanted us to have that. And I knew, as I said, I knew I wanted to be a potter from day dot.

I was always going to be an artist and my dad couldn't have been prouder. My parents, you know, my mum, I could have gone home and said, you know, I could have been going on a path to be a doctor. They just want us to be whatever we needed to be. Awesome. And I think, you know, when I sort of finished uni and I started to think about, you know, what I was going to do, it's pretty hard to make a living as an artist, might you?

Yeah. Luckily, I was very passionate about teaching as well. Great. But I always thought, oh, gee, I don't know, if my kids came and said that they wanted to spend six years at uni, how would I feel about that? And I am so grateful because they trusted me and I really believe that that was where my life was meant to be because there is no way

that I could be doing what I'm doing now if I hadn't have been conditioned to see things that other people don't see. And that's my greatest gift. I love that I have that. It is a gift. Yeah, very few that have that visualisation power and then the planning ability that goes in behind it, Nat. So that grounding is exceptional in terms of what you're doing

with Build and Oz, no question. I'm not sure I quite answered your question then. No, you did. No, you did. No, absolutely you did. Well, let's take a slightly different angle here as well, and if you were to speak to someone just about to leave school, given the experience you've had today,

what would you advise them to invest their time, money and skills in to create freedom in their terms? i would say that you need to be true to who you are like with your truth and that's i give that advice because it's what i did and it worked out really well for me i never knew if i never thought about whether i was going to make any money and i probably didn't from that particularly but look I did, ultimately I did, but you need to find what you love. You don't know what you want to do yet, just do what you love because your subconscious mind is so much smarter

than your conscious mind and it knows the way and you've got to trust it. So listen to it and follow it and look into yourself and discover what you love and do something in life that you love. Yeah, love it. Love it. That's awesome. Just on a slightly different tack to then and coming back

to your own personal experience, what life event has brought about your greatest change to date, Matt? Oh, that's a tough one, Bushy, because there's so many. Do I come at that from a mother angle? I mean, wow, you know, the greatest thing I've ever done is I've got four of my most beautiful people to travel life with. I've got five, including Sam, but in terms of ones that I affected coming into the world, I mean, wow, anything more amazing than actually,

you know, I kind of feel like I get to, when you've got kids, It's like getting to relive your childhood all over again. But this is how you wanted it. You know, I was younger before, so I was always, I've just been on a little trip with my sister, and she goes, why, you just got in the back. Why did you get in the back? I said, oh, I did too.

Put me in the front. I just, you assume position because you're so used to, as the youngest child, being, fitting in, being sort of told what to do. And my poor oldest kids, they hate it because I think I, you know, there's no such thing in our family of, oh, because you're the oldest, you sit in the front, or because you're the oldest, you get to do this, because you're old. It's like, ah, no way.

I had a lifetime of that. And I just, how cool is it getting to do things your way? I love growing old. I love it because the older I get, the better I get at just being who I want to be instead of who God wants me to be. Hail to that. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm right with you.

The more rings around the tree for me, the better. The laugh lines and the wisdom lines, it's like fantastic. It just gets better every day. I totally agree. It's awesome, isn't it? Hey, all right, I'm going to flick now into what I call the ambush, and it's a bit of a bushfire lightning round just playing on my nickname really.

So there's a couple of – some very quick, simple questions that I want to – what's that, Matt? Sorry. I love that. There's a lot of that with you. You know, it does. You see that stuff pop up everywhere. It's great. I love it.

Yeah, I love playing with words. But so let's kick it off. What's your favorite quote and why? And it can be one of your own. Sorry, my favorite. Quote. So what's your favorite quote? And it can be one of your own or one that you've heard from somewhere else that you can share with us.

And why is it favourite? So I love probably the one that I find myself saying to my kids and often telling myself is, you know, be the tall poppy. Your playing small does not serve the world. Yeah, love it. Yes. Yeah. That's really good.

That's really good. There's too many – yeah, go on, sorry. Going up in a regional town, I was really aware of that. It was one of the things that I found really difficult growing up. Sorry, I found really difficult growing up because my, say, for example, my dad was quite, he's a very, he has a strong background in construction. So, you know, what you see is what you get. He doesn't hold back.

He's a strong, resilient, self-made man, yet he was also very influential influential in shaping you know Warrnambool in his day in terms of he was on the council he was you know chairman of the local water authority he did he was he was a man who did a lot of firsts and very very aware um I'll never forget when I was a kid and I was in like year seven or something and my dad was all over the paper the mayor of Warrnambool at the time was a catholic and my dad was saying Graham Roger wants condom vending machines in every public toilet and I'm just like no I spent a lot of my life my childhood going no don't say that out loud you know you know he was a very big advocate for standing up for what he believed in

which I'm so proud of now yeah yeah and I realized that my whole sorry no go on sorry I cut you off go on i'm sorry i cut off i realized that's one of the other things i love about growing old is that i realized that i've spent a lot of my life being afraid of being a tall poppy of of any of being any different to anybody else or or crossing that i talk to my kids about the courage to cross the imaginary line so society puts in place this imaginary line and nobody really wants you to cross it because you know it's much more safe and comfortable if we all just stand back here and no one sort of jumps forward and stands out in the crowd because it might make others feel inadequate or whatever i i think i did that my life i reckon i wasted probably a good

16 to 18 years of my life being that person that was too afraid to cross the imaginary line and you know my dad wasn't that and i didn't appreciate it but now i do i'm so proud of him to that yeah that's that's that's a great uh insight and it's i mean often the case so if you've you've got someone in the family who's you know way out there and one end of the spectrum in whatever it is then quite often you get an opposite and equal reaction because it's like well i'm not sure they want to be like that but you've you've now got the life experience to go well actually uh it's my time in the sun uh i like what my dad did i'm going to do more of that I think that's just a really good sign of someone who's growing with time.

That's awesome. Let's talk about reading matter on podcasts. So what's the top book and the top podcast that you would recommend people to both read and listen to? Well, that's probably Bushy because I really don't listen to a lot of podcasts because I feel like at the moment for me it's kind of a luxury that I can't afford in the sense that I'm building, building Oz and I'm one of those people I really love to have my head around everything that I'm doing even if I'm not the one doing it.

Yep. So, for example, my CRM system or, you know, marketing or whatever it is, I love to watch training videos. Yep. So at the moment and probably realistically, and you know the journey I've been on because, you know, we've had a few parallels there in building a scalable business and I need to get my head around so much and with the kids

and with everything, I do have a cheese board over my treadmill that I can sit my laptop on and I can watch training videos while I walk. Awesome. I love you. That's awesome. What about the reading material? You probably don't have time for reading material either,

but in the past or in the future, is there any particular book that really springs to mind that's added some value to you and that others would be interested in having a look at? Oh, yeah. I mean, I've read a lot and most of my readings are, you know, they've taught me a lot about the kind of life that I want to live and probably one that stands out for me would be, you know,

A New Earth or The Power of Now. So Awakening to Your Life's Purpose and, you know, that whole thing around to find yourself, you've got to lose yourself and letting go of the ego and they've been pivotal. Those type of books have been pivotal in my journey from probably around the age of 20, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

And a business note, there's this really cool book, I think that you would love it. It's called Rocket Fuel and the author's name escapes me just now but it's really funny and you'll learn so much about yourself in terms of it talks about that every business to be successful needs a visionary and an integrator. And the visionary is kind of like the crazed founder that's full of these big, bright, crazy ideas.

but then the integrator is the person that makes them happen he's the boring sensible one that um you know turns all the founders crazy ideas into a you know realistic idea with an execution plan you know it's and it's hilarious reading it because you go oh it's me oh it's me oh that's me or oh is that really me do i do that you know i'm definitely gonna get that because what you've just described there is Sonia and I because Sonia and I own the business and that's just nailed it. I'm always out there with these thousand ideas and she goes, we're just going to park that one and we're going to do this one and then we're going to do this one. And it works really well. Yeah, Rocket Fuel, is that the name

of the book? Yeah, Rocket Fuel. I'm going to go and have a look at that and we'll put that in the show notes. I'll think of the guy's name in a minute. No, all good. We'll research it and stick it on the show notes because that sounds like a cracker to have a read. Now, this next quick question sounds a bit oddball, but I ask it because it's something that just about every person I talk to when we help them, one of the first things they say is, how are you going to help me pay less tax? So, what's the top thing that you've done to pay less tax on your journey so far?

oh well that's um well for me it's probably stuff we've touched on about the advantages of building are why i build yeah um things like you know saving stamp duty and depreciation um different things like that however um i'm not the best person to ask because i tend to just put all of my faith in my accountant yeah right um we do i mean i know that we you know the family trust thing, all that kind of stuff, which to be honest, my husband probably has his head around a little bit more than me, but I'm confident that they're all looking after my best interests and that I am hopefully saving tax. But it's not, look, it's not, I'm not an authority on that.

I'm not good at that. Yeah, that's good. And that's awesome. And I think you hit on the head. I think one of the best things you can do to pay less tax is just get a damn good accountant because they'll know the ins and outs of it. That's spot on. All right, now what's both the worst and the best piece

of investment advice that you've ever received? Well, I probably until recently, investment advice for me, like it's a tough one because everything I've done has evolved. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't ever remember a time where I made a decision to do something or not to do something. Yeah.

So opportunities present themselves to me and then I sort of get advice on whether or not I should do it. Probably the best advice I ever got was to probably buy our family home. Yeah. Because I think, you know, you always think in life about that worst-case scenario. And for me, if ever, you know, I feel I think this gives me really good security that we have this.

Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, every small-scale development that we've done, Touchwood has been a good one, and I've always sought a lot of advice from my father on those things about whether something's going to be worthwhile. He's somebody that can just do the figures without actually thinking about it, just rolls off his tongue. Yeah.

And it really hasn't let me down yet. Brilliant. So it's really now that I've probably got the confidence to go out and start thinking about forging a new path. Yeah. That's completely separate to any advice or the way that he's probably done it over the years. Yeah. And, yeah, I'm looking at that at the moment, which is exciting.

Yeah, exciting. Okay. Lastly, on the ambush then, what's a personal habit that contributes to your success, Nat? It would absolutely be meditation. Yeah, okay. It's a really big part of my life. I do that. I can do that anywhere, anyhow, no matter where I am.

I don't need a special place to do that. And it's what I do when I need to find answers. I can go into myself and I put it out to the universe and I always know that I'll get an answer. and that hasn't let me down either. So I think that's the best habit anybody can get into is learning how to be still and it goes back to that thing of trusting your subconscious

because, you know, it's really clever. Yeah, love it, love it. Yeah, a lot of us keep ourselves so busy that we don't take the time or allow the time for meditation to allow the answers to come. and I've been doing a lot of reading recently on the benefits of meditation from all sorts of emotional, physical, you name it

and let's face it, the Tibetans have been doing it for thousands of years and they seem to live a pretty happy and enjoyable life so there's got to be a lot to that. So no, that's awesome, awesome. All right, what's next new and exciting for you then, Nat, for yourself and build an Oz that people would be interested in hearing about?

Well, in terms of probably me personally, one of my, if I think about something that I'd really love to invest in, a little dream of mine, something to think about, I remember you mentioned once about whether you're an investor or an outfester. Yes. And I thought about that because an opportunity that I've got to build a significant development of about 17 three-bedroom apartments

on a 4,000-square-metre block, as an investor, I think, okay, I'm going to build those apartments and I'll either sell them or now we're thinking about maybe holding them and investing. Yeah. But then there's that thing about the intention that you bring to something and how it can shape that. So am I an investor or am I an outfester? I can be both because that bores me I think I am because the way I've been brought up too

you said you mentioned the word boring not me but you're just recording something and sitting on it can be quite boring and and and that does kind of feel a bit dull to me you know even though I might be really safe and smart yeah and I thought but so to do that for me it needs a purpose or an intention so I thought what if I was to do this project instead of just renting it out and being boring what if I brought an intention to it and themed it so that it became something really special that had a purpose and that that that left a bit of a legacy in the sense that um something i am really passionate about is old age as in looking after um the elderly it upsets me that in life we can end up living with people that are like my like-bodied but

not necessarily like-minded um and when i think about my big game something one day that i want to do that that is my kind of soul work i think i would love to create a space like a twilight that village where people who bring alternate perspectives to the world can come together in one place and, you know, live out their days, you know, instead of playing bingo. They can be, you know, in a planetarium looking, you know, mapping the stars or just, you know, I just think because we grow older, you know, we shouldn't all be pulled.

You know, we have that freedom our whole life but then it seems to get a bit lost in old age, and I don't want that for me and I don't want it for anybody I love. So I thought, what about this boring development? It's not boring. I'm just using that word because you used it. Yeah. What if, you know, just this thing and you just rent it out,

but what if it became a little bit of a test run, not a nursing home, not a retirement village, but just a twilight village where it had a certain feel about it that if you wanted to come and rent a place there, then, you know, it felt like nowhere else. It was a gated community that was themed and people that were older and looked at the world differently could come together and live and support each other and live a full and meaningful life even though, you know, they might find it hard to still hold

on to some hopes and dreams. Love it. Love it. Yeah, it's – I know you and I have spoken about this before, But one of the things that really annoys me about our society is that rather than value wisdom and age, which a lot of Eastern cultures do, we sort of discard them and leave the old and frail and lonely on the outskirts and just hope that they'll go away, which is a very sad indictment of our community. But with what you're talking about there and surrounding yourselves with the like-minded, in an age where our health is continuing to get better as we go on, we're all going to live longer, then why shouldn't we still be able to enjoy a fruitful life? and if we can't depend on the support of immediate family in some instances, then we can shoulder to shoulder help each other

to still enjoy a great quality of life. No, I love it, Nat. That's awesome. That is awesome. All right. Well, I think we've covered most things there. Is there anything else that you'd like to share that I haven't touched on that you think listeners will be keen to hear about?

uh not particularly bushy i think you've done a great job of um covering off lots of stuff we've covered some ground and yeah it's it's amazing what you're doing with this i think it's really important to to shift the focus on you know living a purposeful life and living with intent because we all know money doesn't buy happiness money buys freedom but at the end of the day you you know that's financial freedom brings emotional freedom and you know but if you don't have that sort of inner purpose or you can't have happiness so i love what you're doing i love the approach that you bring to everything that you do bushy and i'm thrilled and honored to have been a part of it thanks no i don't have that similar respect to you nat having

I've seen you in action over a lengthy period during the Key Person Influence Program just in awe of what you do and how you do it, given that you're juggling a very busy and growing family and business and everything else. Let's take my hat off. But look, for those that are interested in learning more about beard on the nose and those that can see the benefit of getting you to assist them and walk them through and give them the confidence around a building home journey, how can they contact you, mate?

They can visit buildinoz.com.au and feel free to contact me personally anytime just by the contact page on the website. Brilliant. Now, the only one thing that I haven't touched on and it looks like something that you're embarking on, you mentioned that you're now co-author of better business better life better world tell us a bit about that to close on so better business better life better world is an initiative of b1g1

the um which we have a lifetime partnership with it's a pay it forward movement yeah and the theory behind that is that every time something happens every time something good happens in our business something good happened somewhere else in the world yeah and i was given the opportunity to submit a writing i i wrote a meditation for that book awesome um and it was based on the advice that i would give my grandchildren and it was one of the most beautiful things i've ever been part of because um i am passionate about building and i am passionate about helping people live their very best life and a really big part of that for me is the same the same reason why it's a big part for you Bushy like it's that's just a means to an end but it all comes from within and to

be given an opportunity to write about that and to have you know a place for my thoughts on that was really really powerful and it's a beautiful it's a beautiful book and remind us all of what you know what the most important things are in life yeah yeah I just love everything that B1G one are doing we're big supporters of b1g1 as well and uh for those that are listening who aren't aware uh just just google b1g1 and that's that's capital b number one capital g number one the ability to be able to do good in business by creating impacts that are improving a whole raft of opportunities all over the world is just absolutely exceptional

I love what they do and full respect Nat for both having the courage and the opportunity to share your thoughts on that and I hadn't realised that but

we'll certainly be recommending people get their hands on a copy of Better Business, Better Life, Better World and we'll make sure we include that in the show notes as well. So look Ben Awesome having a chat, Nat. I want to stay in touch on your journey because I think what you're doing in demystifying the building process, given that we do have a significant housing shortage in Australia and will continue to do so given the massive ongoing population growth, to be able to allow people to build with confidence and to really get the home that suits their lifestyle. There's no better way of doing it than building a home. So congratulations to you and Sam and your team in doing that.

We'll keep in close contact and thanks again for spending some time with us today. Thanks so much for having me, Bushy. Okay, thanks, Nat. Bye for now. Take care. Bye. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au.

That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. Or check us out at www.bussymartin.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'll die tomorrow