Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 1 - Dr Simone Boer on a fresh approach to brain hacking wealth creation

Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm a coach that blends the neuroscience as well as the strategy and I absolutely work on the unconscious self and the reason why I work on the unconscious self is as you as you have said around the elephant and the rider the unconscious self is absolutely the seat of all of our decisions and we may think that we make our decisions 100% of the time consciously actually only 5% of our decisions are made consciously and 95% of our decisions are made subconsciously. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show to help you unlock your full self-health and wealth potential. I'm your host, Bushy Martin, and each week I go deep with the best investors, experts, leaders, and founders to find out what

Starting point is 00:00:53 it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom and live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life you really want. Let's get started. Hi Freedom Fighters. Today I want to return to an important topic that's been plaguing my thoughts for actually quite some time now because I keep seeing a lot of hard-working investors fall short of their ideal lifestyle goals and it revolves around questions that you may be quietly asking yourself. Things like, why do I feel stuck? I know what I need to do and I know what I want to do, but when push comes to shove, I just keep falling back

Starting point is 00:01:33 into the same old bad habits and nothing seems to change. Well, this answer to all of this is the crux of what separates the 5% who achieve sustainable success from the rest. Now, as many of you may know, I'm a big believer that sustainable success in anything lies at the intersection of your three elves, yourself, your health and your wealth. And the foundation stone for your success, however you choose to define it, revolves around your mindset, your core beliefs, outlooks, attitudes and expectations that silently guide your behaviours like an invisible hand. And our

Starting point is 00:02:12 mindset's driven and deeply embedded in our emotional subconscious, beyond the reach and realms of our rational conscious mind. In this way, our conscious mind and our subconscious mind a bit like a rider on an elephant. The conscious rider bobbing around on the top thinks he or she's in control of what's happening and where they're going, but the subconscious emotional elephant mind is actually the one that reacts to situations and goes on its own direction regardless of what the rider thinks or tries to do. So how can we reprogram the subconscious to achieve lasting transformational change that will allow us to go the distance to achieve our goals without self-sabotaging ourselves because of our limiting subconscious beliefs that we're probably not even

Starting point is 00:02:57 aware of. For me, when I hit rock bottom in my early 30s and suffered my early life crisis when I ended up burnt out, broken and broke and was forced to start again from absolutely nothing, I did a lot of mirror time, soul searching and working with a psychologist to reprogram my subconscious through a continuous mix of hypnosis, creating a clear positive vision board, reciting daily affirmations out loud in front of the mirror and recording it on my phone and replaying it every day when I was in the shower. You see, the cold hard reality is that if we're serious about making lasting transformational change that will allow us to attain and maintain our ideal lifestyle goals and turn our dreams into reality, we all need to do the work and keep doing the work on

Starting point is 00:03:42 ourselves so that our subconscious doesn't revert to our safe and familiar childhood patterns like car wheels stuck in the well-worn ruts of an old macadamized road. Now this has worked well for me personally but it can also work on a very large community scale. As many of you may know I lived and worked in the red centre of our great country in Alice Springs many years ago back in the late 1980s and early 90s when I was an architect and at the time a town like Alice was doing it tough with business struggling and many locals harbouring very negative thoughts which became self-fulfilling because what we think about and talk about is what we bring about. So myself and a great creative friend of mine, Colin Cowell, who was a journalist,

Starting point is 00:04:26 created the Alice 2000 Community Vision Program that collaboratively created a positive vision using Geoffrey Robertson style future hypotheticals that leapt over the narrow short-term negative focus on problems and the blame game to lift everyone's sights onto a long-term unified positive solutions that acted as a magnet and a compass to guide future community decisions. We hosted a series of monthly community events over a year that brought together all of the key stakeholders in the town, including all levels of government, that painted a series of limitless positive visions of how life in Alice could be, which is backed and communicated continuously by the local media, all based on the return to the roots of our Indigenous heritage

Starting point is 00:05:07 and our adventurous pioneering spirit that originally created a town like Alice in the first place. Now the collaborative and committed unified vision that evolved from this community vision program turned the perception and sentiment of the town around and created the impetus for a period of unrivaled prosperity for a decade on haul and as all of the various community groups embraced the vision as their own and took the action to turn the dreams into reality with pride they do this all by lifting and changing collective beliefs and driving a new narrative it's about instilling my lifetime motto that i've been talking about for over a decade now of living by design not by default of living with intent to make it happen not let it happen

Starting point is 00:05:52 starting with a very clear vision of the future now this might all sound a bit woo woo but as you're about to hear from our very special guest dr simone boar today it's all based on and backed by neuroscience. And Dr. Simone is living proof and a walking, talking, shiny example of transformational change in action through her impressive property investments that now enable her life-changing coaching work. As you're about to hear, Dr. Simone's career path has been anything but a straight line. Think of it more like a thrilling rollercoaster ride through the worlds of neuroscience, business strategy, and now life-changing coaching. Alongside her nine-to-five adventures Simone's been a savvy player in the property game for over 15 years. She's juggled

Starting point is 00:06:38 an investment portfolio across Australia's varied landscapes, she's finessed three subdivisions and rolled up her sleeves for four renovations and her latest move stepping into the commercial property arena. With an investment portfolio that's worth over six million and a relatively low level of debt she's not playing the game she's acting it. Yet the true spirit of Dr Simone comes alive in her coaching work. Imagine combining the braininess of a neuroscientist with the vision of a business strategist, all channeled into coaching that turns lives around. That's where her signature brain hacks come into play, giving you the tools to live your best life. Simone's property investments have given her the financial runway to focus on her passion, using brain science

Starting point is 00:07:22 to help you unlock your fullest potential. And she doesn't just tinker with her mind, she transforms lives, helping you to find inner confidence and deep and meaningful satisfaction in your life and your wealth. So I'm really looking forward to unpacking all of this in our two-episode feature with Dr. Simone Boer. So welcome, and let's get invested, Simone. No worries. Thank you for that intro, Bushy. Amazing. Well, you've inspired that. You've been doing a lot of Google stalking of all of the work that you've been doing over the years and you know it's a real rare privilege to actually spend some time with someone who clearly thinks very similarly to me but you've taken it to another level so

Starting point is 00:08:06 I guess Simone just to sort of kick things off in terms of personal introduction can I get you to sort of talk us through what you do differently and more importantly why you do what you do. Yeah, perfect. So I couldn't have put it even better with that intro there, Bushy. I'm a coach. However, I'm not just any type of coach. I'm a coach that blends the neuroscience as well as the strategy. And I absolutely work on the unconscious self. And the reason why I work on the unconscious self is, as you have said, around the elephant and the rider, the unconscious self is absolutely the seat of all of our decisions. And we may think that we make our decisions 100% of the time consciously. Actually, only 5% of our decisions are made consciously. And 95% of our decisions are made subconsciously.

Starting point is 00:09:06 And as I'm talking to you right now, Bushy, you're currently taking in and processing 40 to 50 pieces of information right now consciously and subconsciously you are processing 11 million pieces of information. So rounding that all up, what I do differently is when people say, oh, you're a coach, I actually call myself a neuro coach. And the reason why I call myself a neuro coach is that I bring in the neuroscience knowledge with the coaching to really go to the subconscious, which is the seat of transformation, not the conscious. And most coaches will go to the conscious self. I'll go to the seat of the transformation and really upgrade that architecture that you've

Starting point is 00:09:58 built as a child and gently dissolve parts of it and move parts around so that you can upgrade it as an adult and why I do that for me it is all about living your best life and your best life is determined by you and you alone and for me why I do this this is what gives me the zing and passion every single day is to see the unlocking of others to also live their best life. I love that. I can't imagine how satisfying and fulfilling it must be to see someone who's probably been struggling for years

Starting point is 00:10:38 without knowing why to suddenly be able to change their outlook and their mindset and start to really take big strides in what they're doing. I don't think they'd be much more satisfying than that. Yeah. Yeah. And the satisfaction comes in little moments. And those little moments are either text messages, voice messages, wins of the week that my clients have had, or a year or two down when I randomly meet the matter function, they'll come up to me, give me the biggest hug and say,

Starting point is 00:11:10 you won't believe where I am now as a result of the work that I did two years ago. and and those little moments that come quite as surprises throughout the course of my life and my journey that's what that's when I go yes that I've made a difference absolutely love that uh this is going to be uh really inspiring from that perspective but I guess to put it in context then uh Dr Simone I'd love you for for you to take us on a bit of a reader's digest of your journey so far in terms of personal, professional and property to some degree. Talk about what you've invested your time, energy and money in over the years and why and how has this led you to what you're now doing? Yeah, perfect. So I'll take it back to when I was a child

Starting point is 00:11:56 because it's fantastic. You can read all of these credentials of what I've achieved and all these achievements now, but I didn't start off like that. And I started off in a home that was broken. I was in a single parent household with a mother who worked so hard to put food on the table and that instilled in me very much a drive to not end up like that. She was barely able to get the bills to be paid and so that really hard-working ethic really helped instill a lot of values and so when I went to university I was the one that was working three jobs because I'd seen her work the work around the clock to try to put food on the table for myself and my sister and so for myself I worked three jobs to put myself through uni sometimes four

Starting point is 00:12:58 jobs I think even at one stage it was just I was always working studying working studying as a way to pull myself out of the environment that I naturally came out of. Why I chose neuroscience, well, that's another good question. Really, I've got a way of looking at myself and being able to reflect on myself and the decisions that I make. And I sat there, I went, I feel like no one else really does this. so why do we make these decisions why do we choose those decisions and is there really a choice

Starting point is 00:13:38 or not and I went I'm going to study I'm going to study psychology and that then led down to the neuroscience pathway as well and went let's let's give it a go let's see what we can do and so there I was in neuroscience working in a wet laboratory in the largest brain bank in the southern hemisphere um looking at uh places or people who had passed away that had had a psychiatric illness and i and it was a very it's a very lonely job and you pretty much pour your whole life into that i sat there um one day in a windowless room for six weeks by myself cutting up brain tissue going is that all there is to life and this isn't this isn't quite why I've gone into neuroscience and the neuroscience was absolutely to have an impact on people and the

Starting point is 00:14:38 world but I went is that all there is to life and with that I packed up my bag and started to look at well what other careers could I have what other transformations could I have and from that career perspective I went into data and analytics into strategy into the coaching of where I am now the the other component that I just wanted to talk about in terms of my background and who I am is the property now as you can see or as you've heard from my background we didn't have a lot of money now my mother was a saver she saved and saved and saved and saved as much as she could until she could afford for things so the Christmas dinner she put aside five dollars every single week so we could have a lovely Christmas dinner her thing was you know make Christmas a special

Starting point is 00:15:36 time so that instills a set of beliefs and that set of beliefs really for me was around saving I must save I must save I must save work hard work hard save work hard work save and it's it's really curious because that's pretty much where I would have been probably even to now except for a few things the first thing one of the boyfriends that I had in my early 20s who um whose parents were just a traditional working family had four properties and I went what's going on here how have they were the very first people I'd ever come across in my whole life that had had had an investment portfolio and that was enough to pick my interest going how are they doing that and therefore the potential life choices that enabled their family

Starting point is 00:16:38 as a result of having four properties the one thing and I do think that particular ex is he said to me you'll never be able to handle a mortgage because you're a saver and I was that frugal I was I was a tight ass absolute tight ass but by him saying that allowed me to start with my psychology and neuroscience background to look at myself going, hang on a sec, there's a set of beliefs here. How do I break that apart? So I went through a process of breaking that apart. And when it came right in the middle of the GFC and everyone was calling out doom and gloom, I was actually in a position at that time in order to buy my first property. And that first property was absolutely going to be my principal place of residence okay so we i looked in my local

Starting point is 00:17:37 town found a tiny little unit at the back at the back of a set of three put in put in an offer and as real estates do they try to get the best price yeah the thing was this real estate agent probably haggled too high and because they haggled too high I spent a good week could not sign the paper just could not sign the paper and we're only talking 5k this is this is this is not a huge not huge biscuits at all 5k I just could not sign the paper and I was just looking around going what else is there and I found a property on 650 square meters small house and I went 20k cheaper and I went which has more value and which could be potentially subdivided and create a lot of value so we went down the path of purchasing the larger block small house

Starting point is 00:18:42 same size as that unit that I was going to purchase 20k cheaper and so started our property journey down down the path of subdivisions and investing and it was so called so easy that first subdivision that I went why is it to create the value from basically getting a free block of land through the process of subdividing I just went why isn't anyone else doing this yeah love it I want to jump in there because just circling back, given that, you know, the sort of embedded outlook and mindset you would have had with the mother who was so, you know, watched the pennies and it was all about saving, I'm assuming there were probably

Starting point is 00:19:27 some initial fears and feelings of concern about taking a leap into borrowing money to get into the property exercise. How did you overcome those fears to actually have the courage to step beyond that and make that happen? What process did you go through? I went and got myself another job. I had so many fears with that property purchase, and it was well within what I could pay from an interest perspective

Starting point is 00:20:03 and my partner could pay but I've had so many fears and and we're talking that initial unit that we're going to buy 5k over our budget and I went I need to make sure that we have a really comfortable lifestyle I'll go and get by that stage I was down um down to one job um and it was a science a neuroscientist role at that time and I went I'm gonna get another job and because that was exactly how my mother had had raised me so the fear absolutely crept in and I went and got another job and I was I was working in that job that second job for about three months and I just went what am I doing and it was after the settlement had gone through and we'd certainly had the money to pay for this,

Starting point is 00:20:58 but I just went, what am I doing? I've just purchased a property that is well within our range. We have the ability to create value through a subdivision. What am I doing working through this second job? And I'd already worked out and done the sums that through the creation of this subdivision, the original property that we had purchased was actually going to be even though it was only on half a block of land this time

Starting point is 00:21:26 was going to be the exact same worth the exact same value as what we had purchased i went i've just created some amazing equity here why am i why am i why am i working a second job uh so it was through the process and it was the actual act of doing that helped to dissolve some of those really ingrained belief systems and the day that we moved into the property in the back which was a brand new townhouse in the back and rented out our front townhouse our front little house yeah we're like we have just created something for ourselves and that and it was incredibly tangible and all the beliefs in that moment absolutely dissolved yeah love it love it so you clearly you're a a learned by doing uh sort of person and we all learn quite differently

Starting point is 00:22:25 in that respect but but having to actually take the action i can see would have had a big impact on on as you say dissolving some of those uh cautious saving versus investing exercise so as we both know there's a big difference between saving and investing it's a it's a very different exercise in that regard so i love that and so take us on the rest of the journey then so this first subdivision clearly as you say it felt easy and i'm guessing that that then triggered similar exercise to rinse and repeat talk us through the journey from there absolutely it it was and when i say it was easy we were going to and at the time we were talking 2008 2009 there were not necessarily these boutique builders out there as there are now

Starting point is 00:23:12 that do that specialize in subdivision so we were going to all the builders in the area going do you build small houses do you build small houses do you build small houses and we got to a particular builder that said yes we absolutely do and we had our little picture of our block and he goes this is what we can put on it um you've got a choice of this one or this one and we chose the bigger footprint and and he goes and we said what this is what we want to do we want to subdivide and he goes i can manage i can project manage the subdivision for the same cost or the investment of the house and we went fantastic so we went so we went through that builder who was willing to manage the subdivision so that's what i mean by it was easy so we went well why isn't anyone else

Starting point is 00:24:02 doing this and we were looking around at all of our friends at the time who are going into the large loans and the large houses and we were in a a reasonable we weren't in any mansion but we were in just a two-bedroom townhouse that's all we needed and we're like why why isn't anyone else doing this and one of the things that that particular builder said to us at the time which has stuck with us is small house equals small loan throughout your whole life and I went bingo and so we kept that mindset to then do rinse and repeat so property number two we found um we went to two lot subdivision we made a fair amount of capital from that we've got a rental yield coming in had got created some value property number two we said let's do a three

Starting point is 00:25:00 lot subdivision two lot that seemed relatively really easy let's do three lot so we went on the hunt we found a three lot subdivision and went this is fantastic and the um the built the builders that we engaged to do it in the time between settlement and then when it was time to do subdivision building prices had increased about 150 200k in that time and we're like what happened three months ago to now and materials had increased and we're like oh priced us out priced us out too much would have created some financing challenges too i would have thought absolutely we didn't we didn't because it was our second project and we were still quite young and we didn't necessarily have the income to to enable that we were stuck

Starting point is 00:25:56 and so we went to our original builder who'd managed the subdivision and they were like we do um we don't design if we did design it would be a couple hundred thousand dollars more and we're stuck again and we're like what do we do so we decided we'd take on the subdivision ourselves because we went well we know the process enough we've done it once we'll do it again and we certainly did not know our stuff enough to be dangerous a bit like that absolutely absolutely so we had to do a sewer main extension we had to put in stormwater pits we had to do all sorts of additional cost into this three lot subdivision that you just do not need to do for a two lot yeah and uh we we ran out of money and we're like well what do we do

Starting point is 00:26:53 we've got two little blocks plus the existing house what do we do so we sold off one of the blocks of land in order to fund the the second um the build of the so we then had two little blocks one with an existing house one on behind and we found by this stage a builder that had come down from melbourne so we were in geelong and he was just breaking into the geelong market who could do small builds on small blocks so we found him and went ah we found we found our next builder fantastic built that up um recoup some recoup some of the money and went brilliant and so our strategy at the time was really around find a place with an existing house small house subdivide find a place subdivide yeah find these little houses and renovate

Starting point is 00:27:53 and so that was our strategy what that enabled us to do was to to go out and look again and by this stage the real estate agents had caught up they'd caught up with the market and they had started to price all of these existing houses that were subdividable that those particular blocks had gone up significantly in price because they'd gone there is a there is a market and those markets are investors who are subdividing and so once again we were priced out yeah so we sat down and went right what can we do we like this subdivision we like to create value so we thought let's go with a block of land not necessarily in a state but could be subdividable yeah did the exact same thing again subdivided it down the middle built two townhouses and by the by the

Starting point is 00:28:49 time we had subdivided down the middle built the two townhouses when it came to the financing of it our um our bank manager said you don't actually have to put any deposit into this because the equity that has been created through the subdivision enables us to fund all. We're like, once again, why aren't people doing more of this? Exactly, exactly. Using the sleeping equity to fund the ongoing redevelopment. Yeah, love it.

Starting point is 00:29:23 Yeah. So then we decided, well, just for fun, let's just buy a little unit and do a renovation. Okay. Why change direction at that point? Was it something in your mind that go, okay, well, we know this is working, but what attracted you into doing the reno exercise?

Starting point is 00:29:44 We wanted to get something close to my mum in case things happened and she needed to go into a smaller place. And that was the only reason why we thought let's make this an investment as well. Okay. This is all in the Geelong sphere? All in the Geelong region. yeah absolutely yeah go on that one was probably a mistake but we were able to get money out of it

Starting point is 00:30:09 and the reason it was a mistake was the idea being let's get something close to my mum yeah there was emotion in that yeah and by having and by having that emotion into that meant that we probably didn't choose the best property uh and it was more based on specific location to where her current house was and it was just a whole lot of headaches from the tenants that we attracted and these are you know university students with rats that chewed through the cornices and the carpet and all of that yeah through to the toilet that kept getting blocked because the tree roots had grown and this is a typical 1970s tiny unit in a group of five that was just it was it actually wasn't a really nice place to live in yeah probably had strata and buddy corporate and all

Starting point is 00:31:03 those headaches attached to it absolutely absolutely so we um offloaded that off within about four four years or five years of purchasing uh we still made some some equity and some capital on it but not as much as if we um invested somewhere else but we learned from our mistake and went right numbers only well yeah that's a really good learning because i i see so many investors uh dr simone who go oh yeah we're going behind the investment property but eventually i want my kids to uh live in it or there's some other as you say emotional attachment to the exercise that blurs the the vision in terms of the the cold hard uh numbers associated with the investing that ends up compromising both doesn't quite work for what they intend it doesn't work

Starting point is 00:31:51 that well as an investment either so that's that's a pretty good learning uh fairly uh early in your journey but and and again i'm hearing that that there's a lot of understandably because i was no different backyard investing in relation to it was all stuff that we you could walk and talk and you uh where did it where did it go from there ah so at that point we were in our little back unit. And my partner and I have the belief and the way that we want to live our life is don't get too comfortable. Now, the reason why we have that is both of us have parents who've lived in their properties for 30, 40, 50 years. And we've seen, I guess, the entrenched mindset that comes with that and so one of our our the ways that we live life is don't get too comfortable

Starting point is 00:32:48 so we'd been in that back unit for about five five years and he said let's move let's move close to geelong regional center and i went sounds great to me let's be the inner city um chief couple going out for dinners and all that because we can we've got a property portfolio of four or five by now we can we can certainly do this absolutely so um on and once again backyard investing we drove past we looked at a lot of different properties and we found a property in um east Geelong because west Geelong was Geelong west was too expensive and Drumcondra and Rippleside were too expensive for those who know Geelong and east Geelong was relatively unknown but we'd walked around it we'd seen some shops and literally on the highway we saw a for

Starting point is 00:33:39 sale sign of a property all right let's go check that out and this was on the way to a massage out in the ballerina peninsula type of thing so i thought why not let's go let's go check that out And the property we found was a 1911 Edwardian that had beautiful property that had pretty much all of the guts ripped down. And when I say guts, dirt floors and no internal walls. Wow. And we went, this is right for renovation.

Starting point is 00:34:17 We can do this. We've done renovations before. famous last words yeah it was absolutely famous last words um because all the hard work's been done it's all been ripped apart let's let's go ahead and purchase this so we certainly did purchase this property and we lived in it um and uh dirt dirt floors on a main road you hear all of the cars go past and the trucks but that that was fine because we're like this is this is great we had a house warming because we thought we'll have a house warming for this particular house and all of our mates came and said geez this is not your style guys and you could have purchased

Starting point is 00:35:02 a house with at least a floor and some walls what are you what are you doing and so we got we got to work on our renovation after one weekend in we realized that the renovation was much more extensive than any of the facial uplifts that we had done before and we better call in some professionals and it wasn't until the builder said uh we need a we need to crane in a beam that we went and that's why we that is why we could not uh do the renovation ourselves yeah yep there's probably uh and again uh without knowing the details here but but if you're borrowing money against that property banks don't like uh incomplete or or gutted buildings they tend to down value them so you're having to rely on equity from your other properties to

Starting point is 00:36:01 contribute to the the cost of doing that one absolutely 100 that's exactly what we found we had to get a um a builder's uh we had to get a builder's valuation of how much the works would take to complete and the builder's valuation was um 60k we were oh 60k not a problem um and so the bank accepted that we obviously had to put in a fair amount of equity as well yeah that renovation itself was actually 200k. And so that was a significant stress on us, but we were up for the challenge. And this is the thing, Bushy, is that with each and every one of these property purchases, it's created a challenge and a stress from a money and equity point of view each and every time that that very first subdivision that we did whereby we built the two-bedroom townhouse

Starting point is 00:37:03 on the back we didn't realize at the time because we had we worked out our finances and we didn't realize that when we started the build we would have to cough up with our component of the deposit first yeah through the construction phases yeah and then the bank would be able to put in their components yeah so there was a point when i think the slab and the frame went down for that particular property and we're left short because we knew in three months time we'd have it all saved but the bank said no no we're not funding it until you funded that component of the deposit so we were at the point at that time of literally looking for spare change in the couches we were pulling the we were pulling we're pulling the pillows apart we're looking for the spare change

Starting point is 00:37:51 and would come up with the decision that we'd work via our credit card and we'd live on credit for those three months and pretty much eat rice for those three months in order to save the money. And so we funded a part of that bill just with our credit card, knowing that our income would come in as it normally does. And so people, when they look at us now, and as I said, you know, over $6 million of property now, go,

Starting point is 00:38:20 geez you guys have had it easy but but they don't remember or no one knows the times when we've been kept short and that particular um renovation that i've just started to speak about the 60k that turned into 200k that was another time when we were kept we were short and we'll and we're like how how do we make how do we make it so we literally had to pull money out of the other properties and that was when we sold that that um i don't call it a mistake that learning of a property in order to create the the the um equity or capital to fund that renovation some great learnings there and again if i if i'm reflecting back on where you came from was which is that very conservative save and don't spend what you don't have that must have been very challenging

Starting point is 00:39:16 for you so to to move through that uh you know other people sleep easy with that sort of stuff but to to go through that given uh your starting point i can imagine it being quite stressful a lot of sleepless nights and as you say people always look at the end result and go gee you've done it you've had it easy no one understands the trials and tribulations that you have to go through and the wars with yourself in your head that you're struggling to to maneuver through that and come out of it but but i love the learnings as well uh that you're taking away from this so so once you move through that uh 60 come 200 000 renovation and where to from there well we were like you know what that's stretched us enough let's just rest and so we so-called

Starting point is 00:40:03 rested um for three years now when i say rest we didn't necessarily let rest um i had my daughter she came along in 2017 and at that same time work was incredibly busy and i was working for the local government and i was also in a way like um your alice spring story there bushy i was building a community owned vision for the for the whole of geelong region and that in itself is the largest local area engagement uh nationally uh to build the a 30-year long-term vision that really galvanized the community changed the community sentiment and you can tell that it changed through the media articles and really kick-started the regeneration of the geelong region wow look at it now look at it now oh i mean it's just going

Starting point is 00:41:09 gangbusters and will continue to by the way and i and i just just for those that are listening to this uh on a on microism of what you've just just talked about there uh trying to massage all the disparate groups who had different ideas and and often didn't like each other and and it's a an orchestra orchestra leaders nightmare uh trying to pull all that together and get some sort of unified exercise that everyone's going towards i can't even imagine how challenging and time consuming that must have been to actually bring that together oh thank you bushy thank you for the recognition it it was um incredible we had 160 events attended across 10 months 180 000 data points that and those data points are specifically people's voices people's voices

Starting point is 00:42:05 what they wanted for for the region and it was to create um this is one of my legate very proud to say one of my legacy pieces um and the thing is people forget in 2015 the sentiment around the region was the closure of all the manufacturing totally and so this vision that the work that was done in 2016 and 2017 absolutely kick-started the regeneration of the region allowed for government funding a united voice a united voice of all of the parties because they were very much not on the same page beforehand saying this is what we want our region to look like feel like be like and so many since then so many of the businesses and the advocacy voices keep coming back to that vision and again a great example on a very large scale of the importance of mindset

Starting point is 00:43:05 and the narrative, the self-talk that becomes our outward talk and reinforced by the media, having the media. That was the thing that made or braved it for us in Alice Springs is the guy I did it with, he's a journo. So he was very good at crafting the message and getting the message repeated right across the board. And that was what carried it, I think, at the end of the day. It sounds like you've had very similar success

Starting point is 00:43:32 with what you've done in Geelong. but I'm old and crusty, I don't know what Geelong used to be like and there was very negative feelings about Geelong, not just in Geelong but generally. If you jump forward to today, it's just done a complete 180 backflip and everyone I talk to, even around the nation, talks very highly about the potential and the prospects of Geelong and where it's heading.

Starting point is 00:43:55 So, you know, hands down, what a great legacy that we created. But also I understand that that wasn't a three-year break. uh that you would have been up to your eyeballs uh making that happen so uh really interesting i love it and the psychology that sits at the base of that given your your own focus uh i can see why you would have made that success i take my hat off to you thank you yeah and it was all based on appreciative inquiry which is really going well what is it that you appreciate about the area and that each and every conversation that I had around the vision really changed people's perception because I'll go what do I appreciate I've never been asked this question

Starting point is 00:44:40 before and what a great question and again it sounds simple but asking the right question prompts the right answer so masterstroke in coming up with that question because it forced them to focus on gratitude and the positive they didn't have a choice with that question so brilliant master strike love the work on that that that's awesome yeah let's jump back into the the property arena then so you had a three-year break where to from there what happened yeah so it got to 2020 and I was just getting I guess uh my head together after being a mother for three years going because that in itself was a really significant um oh yeah it was a really significant change in my life and a really significant change in my beliefs and my mindset and so that was you say it was like a

Starting point is 00:45:34 i say it's like a three-year break it wasn't because there was a lot going on from a personal perspective of trying to understand how to um not only love this little person but also bring her up and so it would have brought back all of those uh your own childhood beliefs in the way you were brought up so i can imagine there would have been some tension there uh in yourself in relation to uh what i experienced and and what i think i should be doing and the and the what was happening in between that all and all of that and so we get to uh 2020 and uh mid 2020 and we'd been living in our inner city house that we had renovated for a couple of years now and we made the realisation

Starting point is 00:46:24 that we were no longer the inner hip, inner city couple. We were actually a family and, you know what, those motorbikes going past at 1am that were waking us, sleep was now very much a valued resource and we decided that we'd go and purchase this house where we are now and it was really instigated once again by my partner who said I think we need a move and I found just the spot and because we'd already lived in Lara through our very

Starting point is 00:46:59 first purchase, we only looked at one house and this is it. And we looked at it and we went, looks like we'll purchase this, sounds great. and so we moved in october 2020 that's really important that i give you that date um because we were i was still combating with the belief and the mindset that hang on a sec we're no longer the inner city um hip couple and that particular block that we had bought there was also potential for subdivision too right so we said right once we move out let's subdivide rent it out subdivide it once again still with our mo yes uh and you know then

Starting point is 00:47:48 the one that we build on the back in our retirement we can always move but we can always move back in our retirement perfect idea that was that was the plan now remembering we moved out in october 2020 a very significant event happened in 2021, January, February, March 2021. And that was when we were all thrust, basically put to work from home. Now, if we were still in that renovated house, I would have been working out of the bedroom. and you know it was quite a small house and we would have been all over each other's toes yeah also during that time we started down our renovation pathway

Starting point is 00:48:41 and in the in the four to five years that we'd owned the property um being in a heritage area a lot of the rules had changed and we were unable to subdivide the property due to a whole heap of reasons from the telstra pit that was in the spot where the crossover would be and would cost um thirty thousand dollars to move that and so the feasibility on that to be able to subdivide just wasn't there as what it was yeah five years ago yeah it's probably some heritage uh constraints kicking into that style of property too i would have thought absolutely some significant heritage constraints that had come through particularly in those past five years so december 2021 we made the realization that we would stay in this particular property where we are

Starting point is 00:49:37 now today and that we would say goodbye to the property that we had renovated that was the best location ever but it was time to say goodbye and we were the first option on the open weekend when Melbourne opened up. And we ended up with Melbourne Purchasers who basically had an open chequebook. Yep. And the amount of capital that we made paid off this property and started the domino effect of paying off our other properties too.

Starting point is 00:50:14 Wow, that's lovely. I mean, as you would know, what happened post-pandemic has been the second highest rise in property values in the 230-year history of Australia, Dr. Simone. And what I love about what you've done, you've taken advantage of that. A lot of people, um and ah, they'll be emotionally attached to a property and then they'll miss the boat. Again, I'm hearing your investment glasses coming on going,

Starting point is 00:50:47 no, here's an opportunity too good to refuse. is it doesn't work for us now, let's take advantage of it and put it towards something else. It's just brilliant. What a great windfall. Yeah, and it all came down to numbers at the end of the day. It was bringing in I think about 2.5% versus the amount in capital and we just went it's time to say goodbye.

Starting point is 00:51:10 As much as we wanted to subdivide it, it was no longer feasible due to the introduction of additional heritage overlays. We said it's time to say goodbye. As much as we'd love to move back in, let's move on now. Smart. So where do we go then? So we've eliminated a lot of debt. We've been doing a lot of backyard stuff,

Starting point is 00:51:35 and I know from Google stalking you went a bit further than that, so I'd love for you to take us on the journey from there. Perfect. So the freedom that it created to eliminate the debt in this house, it shifted mindset completely and we're like, what do we do now? We literally went, what do we do now? We don't have to pay a mortgage anymore.

Starting point is 00:52:01 Hang on a sec. What choice? And it really came down to choice. What choices can we create now? and it was at that point whereby this property had been paid off alongside um one of our other two of our investment properties at that point we owned um six investment properties plus this house and i went i think i'm ready to retire and i think i'm ready to go into coaching and so that's that's literally what i did because i went those investment properties can fund

Starting point is 00:52:38 themselves we did have some issues with where we had invested in that three lot subdivision it it is in the lowest uh one of us in the lowest of the um bottom 10 socioeconomic areas of the whole of australia and what that means is that the pool of uh people that live in those areas uh result in a lot more wear and tear of the of the properties yeah and we made the decision to offload at least one of those at that time yep yep just what led to us deciding to offload this was we were going out for um basically buying some socks on a date my partner and i and I'd been sort of starting to look around and I looked around at some of the seaside coastal towns,

Starting point is 00:53:32 lifestyle towns, versus some house and land packages in my area that had done really well. Yep. And we're out buying socks and we bought our socks and we're like, we don't want to go home yet. What are we going to do? And I said, look, there are some properties that I've been thinking about.

Starting point is 00:53:52 I went, right, let's go have a look at these. So we went and had a look and we went, all right, let's have a discussion. We were driving along in the cars. We're looking at the vacant land of the house and land packages and stuff. And my partner said, you've done the sums? I said, yep.

Starting point is 00:54:13 He goes, how many can we afford? I said, one, two. He goes, if we were to really push it, how many can we afford? I said, three. so we put the deposits down that afternoon for three house and land packages when was this this is in uh this was april 2021 okay okay very brave very brave very brave i'm i'm unlike a lot of players in the property space i'm a big fan of of building properties because there's some amazing uh stamp duty savings because they're only paying on the land not the full price

Starting point is 00:54:50 and the full tax appreciation is still on offer for new builds. So from a cash flow affordability perspective, they work really well. If it's in the right location and everything else is right, I'm not suggesting buying it in acres of undeveloped greenfield stuff where they can build houses forever. But in the right location, I think they are a good model. But at the time you went into it,

Starting point is 00:55:16 there's some challenges around the construction industry, although I think probably what was working for you, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you put that deposit down because of the fact that probably titles weren't issued and the builders weren't going to get in sight for a period of time, you can ride the wave of free equity uplift on the strength of the deposit, which is just an absolute gimme. Was that the case?

Starting point is 00:55:38 That was exactly the case. And there was some issues around the construction industry at that time around supply, but that was it. that was all we had heard at the time none of the builders or construction agencies had gone under at that point yeah it was just some issues around supply and we're like well we can write this out this there is no problem about this let's just put the put the deposit down for three and and um we said how do we fund that when they actually do title so we said all right we're to say goodbye to one maybe two of our lowest performing in the portfolio which was the two

Starting point is 00:56:18 that was located in the lowest socio-economic um suburb and we said that's our plan awesome fantastic so at that time i decided to finish up a life of corporate servitude and my first project was to do a little mini facelift up of one of the one of our properties and in that two month two month period uh it had grown by about sixty thousand dollars so that particular area had gone up in sixty thousand dollars based on when i got valued in the april 2021 to the june 2021 when we sold and I went well this is this is curious this is very curious and because it had gone up so much we sold the second property and said right what do we do now and through the release of those two properties it then paid off the last three properties so we had basically had our current

Starting point is 00:57:21 property and four residentials fully paid fully paid off and we're like we've made it now what do we do now you don't want to get too comfortable remember that's it exactly uh awesome so there's obviously some other steps beyond that because uh you know i know you were sort of starting to dip the toe into the commercial arena so let's round out the journey absolutely so rounding out the journey we had um the four properties and i thought let's get some financial advice so found found a financial person in Sydney that was offering free financial advice so had the meeting and they laughed at us they literally laughed at us and said you're not our clientele you're not even working and and if you're going to make it anywhere in life you've

Starting point is 00:58:22 to do a lot more work than that now i actually thank that person once again because it was another wake-up call going you know we could actually do more with with the capital that we have so what so what do we do and it was at that point whereby uh my good mate who's also been on the on the on the show brian and lisa hat yep said have you thought about interstate and that started the journey to start researching interstate because i was up until that point i was the backyard investor got had through creation of value um through subdivisions or renovations and uplifts but at that point i went let's go interstate and i had the time because i was no longer working full-time so i researched and i researched and i researched found a property in

Starting point is 00:59:17 townsville and what i sold the property that i sold in the lowest socioeconomic area in all of australia which was a tiny two-bedroom cement house i was able to purchase a duplex in townsville four-bedroom and one-bedroom apartment duplex and bought in instead of my 3.1 percent For the exact same price yield, I was able to bring in 9.2% yield. Dual income, great cash flow. Yeah, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I love that.

Starting point is 00:59:56 And I'm picking here probably where a lot of the stuff that you've been doing before doing this is all yourself and your partner. You're probably using a buyer's agent and some other players to assist in the road, which, again, is a big step for a lot of people in trusting others to be able to be looking after your benefits. But as you know as well as I do, I believe that property

Starting point is 01:00:22 is an elite team sport. You need to know enough to make sure that you're managing your managers, but if you've got really good independent professionals helping you, they can actually open your eyes to things that you probably wouldn't have come across otherwise. That's exactly what happened. And the buyer's agent that we chose, I dismissed initially. and i went i can surely do this i know enough about property but to dip the toe in in interstate

Starting point is 01:00:51 and thoroughly research um the areas i spent three months i gathered my stats i looked at every i looked everywhere and i went you know what i still have no idea about where the best place is to purchase yeah interstate because what i knew in the microcosm of the geelong region and and if we go a little bit further out of of victoria is nothing compared to the multitude of markets and by this stage i'd been investing in the geelong region for 12 years 12 13 years now so i knew knew it back to front i knew i knew some of the um regional markets in victoria because I've been following those, but you can't build 13 years of property knowledge in a matter of months interstate

Starting point is 01:01:42 because there's just too many places. Yeah, brilliant. So you got that one under the belt. Tell us about your start of the commercial exercise. Absolutely. Tell us about that one. Yeah. So after that one in Townsville, Western Australia was just

Starting point is 01:02:00 about to awaken to the world. And so in a space of six months, I purchased three places in Western Australia to really ride off the back of opening up to the world. And it got to the point where I went, I've done a lot of, I have done a lot of residential and I've conquered the interstate thing. Where to next?

Starting point is 01:02:26 And once again, my good mates, Brian and Lisa Hatt said, have you thought about commercial? so I started to think about commercial I went too hard and it was once again that mindset belief because throughout my whole life I always saw commercial as being for those people who were big in property and I still don't I still now don't see myself as being big in property and and I've got a fair reasonable portfolio of real estate but I still don't see myself as as being big so i always had the belief that no commercial is not for me it's way too complex way too complicated and not no and what happened was um an opportunity another opportunity for

Starting point is 01:03:15 subdivision came this time through the family again and with that there were some um really clear rules because it was going to be potentially from family and the rules was must be single story i did the feasibility and the numbers didn't stack up and just looking at that i went for that amount i could actually buy commercial why would i be going down the path of another subdivision when the numbers clearly don't stack up and for that same amount of money i would invest let's go down commercial yeah love it what can you put a bit of shape around what that looks like absolutely so i did some research and and and look it was a going to be like a 1.2 to 1.4 mil um subdivision in a um in a lot in melbourne uh which would be

Starting point is 01:04:15 purchase of the land and the old house demolish it split it down the two build two houses and so for 1.2 to 1.4 even 1.5 mil i just went commercial is worth that okay let's let's go so i then spent a couple more months really researching reading books looking online talking to people that i knew around this idea around commercial once again got another buyer's agent and said this is my portfolio currently where do i go with commercial i'm thinking about something around the one mil mark and uh that buyer's agent was able to purchase a property on behalf of of myself in uh northern queensland that has ended up being a pool a dance studio a hairdresser's salon a beauty salon and two residential so it's one head lease with six sub leases so six six forms of

Starting point is 01:05:18 income to diversify the exercise so if one tenant drops out you're not not exposed yeah i love that i love that and and what i love about commercial uh in particular is that you know the yields are generally better because the the tenants are paying most of the the overhead so from a cash perspective and a long-term exercise as part of the the portfolio what a brilliant addition at that point now that that is awesome i feel like we've only scratched the surface here and we could talk for hours about this but i i really love that you've broken it down and i love the the journey that you've been through uh in your head uh because what i always say is that a person's portfolio is only good in terms of that evolving is only good as the evolution of their

Starting point is 01:06:01 mindset and their knowledge and comfort and clarity around what they're doing so uh over that journey as your portfolio is increased so so has your comfort level and awareness of what doesn't doesn't work which is a really important part of the process that a lot of people looking in from the outside don't appreciate sadly but just before we sort of jump into the the topics that are near and dear to both of our hearts if you're starting out again uh Simone what would you invest in differently if anything oh this is the thing I've I have pondered that um because each and every investment has been a leap and a challenge for myself and that leap and that challenge has resulted in growth and new learning so if I didn't invest in that property um that was close to my

Starting point is 01:06:52 mother's house i wouldn't have realized the impact of emotion if if i hadn't invested in the lowest socioeconomic um uh suburb in in lowest ten of the socioeconomic suburbs in all of uh australia i wouldn't have been open to potentially investing interstate so i look at that i go it needed to be that journey and i i actually um thank myself each and every day as well for not signing that original little apartment or unit at the back because my life would have turned out very very differently at that point and i actually also thank that original real estate agent for haggling for that extra 5k that resulted in me not being able to sign sign that sign that form I absolutely love it. Well, I really want to thank you for sharing that quite extensive journey, both work-wise and in the property fund.

Starting point is 01:07:56 Stay tuned for part two of this interview next episode. Thanks for tuning in to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, your home for property investment insights and inspiration. And don't leave yet until you've taken the next step towards living by design. by getting my award-winning book, Get Invested, absolutely free when you sign up at knowhowproperty.com.au or bushymartin.com.au. And finally, make sure you subscribe to Property Hub to get your weekly dose of Get Invested inspiration along with every episode of Realty Talk,

Starting point is 01:08:33 Australia's leading property show for red-hot property investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers. Remember to always get invested in your knowledge and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 1 - Dr Simone Boer on a fresh approach to brain hacking wealth creation

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