Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested - Part 1: PK Gupta on the personal power of property

Starting point is 00:00:00 Property for me has changed my life. I can talk about it emotionally if you want me to, but it literally has changed the course of the life of myself and my wife. And like my son, he's four years old. The opportunities that he's going to have in life because of what property has done for us are the opportunities that I never had when I was four years old. Okay, so like for me, I'm always so grateful to property.

Starting point is 00:00:27 I try to do my bit in terms of just giving so much free education so that people can do it themselves okay by themselves for themselves and if they need help they can reach out the biggest challenge or thing that I have struggled with or I still struggle with is expectations I have this kind of formula that I'm trying to brand in my in my head and it goes that happiness is reality minus expectation the whole concept is don't live your life you know like grinding and hustling just to achieve a material object because when you get there and i've got there in so many instances that happiness that joy that satisfaction is so fleeting it's it's almost not even worth it what's more important like we've already discussed is

Starting point is 00:01:19 hi property helpers i'm jumping in here to let you know that again i enjoyed such a great conversation with today's special guest that we've decided to split it into a two episode special feature part one today deep dive to unpack our guest's personal property investment journey right through to financial freedom which you're going to learn heaps from which in turn is going to whet your appetite for part two next week when he reveals his unique data-led property approach and education program that allows you to research, source, and negotiate high quality and high performing property purchases all by yourself. So buckle up for buckets of investment gold, enjoy, and I'll hear you on the flip side. Welcome to Get Invested, the leading weekly

Starting point is 00:02:08 podcast to help you unlock your full potential and enjoy your version of sustainable success that lies at the intersection of your three elves yourself your health and your wealth i'm your host and guide bushy martin and each week we go deep sharing great conversations with proven experts in all walks of life including the best investors property experts analysts leaders founders sports stars and health gurus to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time their skills and their money and the benefits that this creates to help you find out what it takes to break free from the grind and discover your flavour of freedom to create your freedom formula. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every second of every

Starting point is 00:02:55 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 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 live your legacy by investing now. You'll enjoy the stories and secrets of high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and discover the top tips on how to get started, how to make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's.

Starting point is 00:03:42 As you engage in each episode, you'll glean the information, inspiration and implementation that you need to get empowered and get invested in imagining and actioning the life that you've always dreamed about. And Get Invested is proudly part of Property Hub, your home for property investment insights and inspiration. Make sure you subscribe now on your favourite podcast player to get every episode of Get Invested and Realty Talk, which is Australia's leading and longest-running online property show that's full of red-hot property investing news and insights direct from all of the industry leaders and influencers.

Starting point is 00:04:20 You can also connect with the Get Invested community and fellow Freedom Fighters at bushymartin.com.au or on knowhowproperty.com.au. Now, let's get invested. Hi friend and fighters. Are you constantly searching for that silver bullet that's going to help you get rich quick? Or perhaps you're happy to outsource your financial future to others in the hope that they're going to do it all for you. Either way, I've got some bad news. There is no one size fits all solution and you need to take control of your own future

Starting point is 00:04:58 if you're serious about achieving your long-term lifestyle goals. Because every one of us is different and we all have our own needs, wants, desires, attitudes, expectations, outlooks, timelines and our own sleep at night factor. And if someone actually tells you that they have the secret formula but only they know and you've got to drop everything now and follow them today or miss out, you need to run. So how can you negotiate the maze of confusing and often contradicting options and to invest in a safe and affordable way that's comfortable to you, your capacity and your risk appetite? Well, it all starts by investing your knowledge and your understanding. So rather than outsource this and then just hope that they're looking out for your best interests,

Starting point is 00:05:43 you need to constantly learn and grow as you go. And this means you need to work with actual proven investors who walk their own talk, those that can actually demonstrate what they've done and are looking to genuinely help and educate you without pushing their own barrow. Because this much I know, genuine fulfillment only comes from freely giving to others without ever expecting anything in return. It's why I've written my books and why I enjoy the privilege of hosting this Get Invested podcast and the Property Hub's Realty Talk Show, to help you grow both your knowledge and your understanding so that you can make better informed decisions on what's right for you. And while we're talking about it, if you're enjoying this podcast, I want to thank

Starting point is 00:06:26 you for listening and ask you a very small personal favor, because we really need your help in order to continue to attract great guests in order to have great conversations like the one we're going to enjoy today and that's by hitting the like button as well as the subscribe button wherever you listen to or watch the show because we're on a mission to get to 1 million subscribers and in order to continue to do that and attract the best of the best and by helping me to help you together we're actually going to help those that are less fortunate and have no voice and have no choice because for every new subscriber together we're going to help save lives together because we'll donate a day's worth of life-saving water

Starting point is 00:07:03 to families in Tigray, Ethiopia. So please do everyone a massive favour and just take a few seconds to subscribe now. Now, unfortunately, in the many years that I've been involved in property, I can actually count on an amputated hand how many others are genuinely trying to help and educate others to invest in a way

Starting point is 00:07:21 that's achievable, sustainable and comfortable to you and your sleep at night factor. But lucky for you, today's one of them as we're joined by a fellow property investment educator and enabler, PK Gupta. For those of you who don't know him, PK is a proud father, husband and active property investor with a portfolio of both residential and commercial property, as well as development projects that now affords him a six-figure passive income. And PK and I share the same mission to share knowledge on building passive income through property investing done properly.

Starting point is 00:07:54 through his Oz Property Mastery podcast his YouTube videos and his property investment accelerator course PK helps you to learn free strategies and market insights backed by his data-led system and his work experience he gives you essential tactics to help you buy the top five percent growth and high cash flow properties and grow your portfolio without wasting months doing research without spending all of your weekends sitting in the car driving around looking at inspections, or spending thousands on buyer's agents. And we're both on the same page in relation to helping you to remove financial stress so that you can do more of the things that you love with the people you love. So I'm really excited about deep diving

Starting point is 00:08:37 in all things property. So welcome and let's get invested, Pika. Thanks so much, Bushy. I'm also excited and a little bit nervous. Don't be nervous, mate. You and I have had a couple of chats already and I just love the way you share information freely in a genuine way that's there to help others and a lot of that will come out of our discussion today. But, mate, where I'd always like to kick off is for those who don't know who you are, can you start off by telling us what you do differently and, as importantly,

Starting point is 00:09:12 why you do what you do, PK? Such a good question. what I do differently than and I assume we're talking in the property context is you know generally speaking everyone is trying to sell you something like sort of I don't know they're trying to make a quick buck and it's masked in a lot of things that make sense the wrapper and the ribbon and the card on the present looks amazing but when you open it up it's like oh there's a box inside there's another box and the actual present's just like tiny little thing it's not really substantial so what I do different is I actually just give the contents of the box first

Starting point is 00:09:50 and I let the people wrap it themselves and what I mean by that is I'm so big on education I know you are Bushy as well with this podcast and other places as well but yeah I don't know if it can be my claim to fame but there's literally more than 600 videos on YouTube hundreds of podcast episodes So it's a community on Facebook with over 30,000 people. I just love educating. And if people vibe with me, then I help because they already know, they already learned so much for free. So that's kind of like my point of difference and why I do what I do.

Starting point is 00:10:25 I mean, we could write a novel in this and I don't profess to be like someone that you should look up to or anything like that. But property for me has changed my life. It's I can talk about it emotionally if you want me to, but it literally has changed the course of the life of my myself and my wife and like my son, he's four years old. The opportunities that he's going to have in life because of what property has done for us are the opportunities that I never had when I was four years old. OK, so like for me, I'm always so grateful to property.

Starting point is 00:11:01 And as corny as it cheesy as it sounds. and of course you know nothing is a charity so it's like okay why not just give everything for free nothing's a charity but i try to do my bit in terms of just giving so much free education so that people can do it themselves okay by themselves for themselves and if they need help they can reach out but absolutely i love it when people do it for themselves by themselves even without my formal help yeah i love it love it and such a great way to get the message out there because it's going to be sustainable and I will circle back on the emotional part of how properties helped you because I think that will be really important to share and as part of that

Starting point is 00:11:43 I guess PK what I'd love you to do is take us on a bit of a run through your journey today and focus on what you've invested your time in and your money in over the years and why and how's this led you to where you are and what you're doing now? Sure. Probably, I don't know if it's sensible to start in high school, but I'll just briefly start there because I am a second generation immigrant. Well, actually I was born in India, but we moved to New Zealand when I was four. So it's kind of in the middle. We didn't have a lot, you know, growing up. And the reason is that, you know, when people migrate from overseas, especially in the nineties, you're actually allowed to bring much money into the country that you're migrating to so even though

Starting point is 00:12:28 you might be really qualified in your country of origin you have to start life fresh and for me it was literally like nothing you know my my mom was a machinist she sewed curtains and you know my dad also he was a an engineer and he had to re-engineer his career just to get by in New Zealand where we grew up I remember in high school because I didn't want to live the life again that I had during primary school, I started Googling when everyone else was like, going out and playing touch football or whatever it is, I was Googling, you know, best salary jobs, because for me, it was always in the mind that I have to get ahead to, to get money means to be happy that at least at that time, that was my concept, that was my philosophy. And so what came up was

Starting point is 00:13:15 investment banking, what came up was investment banking, not doctors, not dentists, not accountants, but investment bankers, Google told me when I was 13, got you a six figure salary straight out of university. So I was like, well, that's my ticket, right? I'm good at math. I can do this. That was my ticket. And I literally, I kid you not, I busted my ass throughout high school. I just played sport and everything as well. But my focus was so clinical. I must become an investment banker. It was a very vain thing in hindsight. And I did, you know, went to UQ in Brisbane and I did my finance degree and everything. And I got my first job at JP Morgan trading stocks in the oil and gas sector doing equities

Starting point is 00:13:57 research. And I was making good money unapologetically, you know, six figures out of university, the exact goal that I had when I was 13. But and the reason I say all of this is that, like, it just did not fulfill the expectations that I had from it. It paid well, but my life was really miserable because we're working 90 hour weeks. and like yes i could buy anything and i it could flaunt my ego because i was able to afford things that my friends and family couldn't but honestly i had no time to even utilize that and then i was

Starting point is 00:14:29 like okay well this isn't it this isn't it like this was a massive fake out um what's next and i was like okay well i know how to trade stocks why don't i just try to achieve financial independence through the whole equities you know through the money markets or commodity markets through stock investing and i very very quickly realized that to get anywhere in the stock market you need to have a big lump sum to start because let's be honest if i have 20 grand in the bank and i make even 50 on it which is like highly unrepeatable but that's only ten thousand dollars right so if you do that for like 30 40 50 years the whole warren buffett way of course you know it's it's a no-brainer but i don't want to wait 40 years i don't want to wait 50 years i wanted to like

Starting point is 00:15:12 leave the nine to five so so to speak quickly and so like what works in australia apparently property right that that was what everyone told me that's what i was reading on the news that's what you know was on tv all these property people everyday people i was like this is this is this doesn't sound right this is like if it was that easy then how come everyone's not driving around in a lamborghini and stuff so i did all the seminars and stuff bushy you know where they get you to the back of the room and try to flog you an amazing deal for a limited time and all that and they were talking about things like oh you have to buy close to a cbd and that's where the best growth is you need to be you know in blue chip areas you need to utilize negative gearing

Starting point is 00:15:57 you need to be close to the ocean all of these myths and i was like okay this this appears to be good. But let me not just outsource the thinking to someone else, but let me think about it objectively myself. And because I had a statistical background, I was working in banking, I actually got 20, 30 years of property data, and I regressed it to, you know, what has growth in these suburbs actually done. And you very quickly find that Sydney performs no better than a place like Launceston over 30 years, you quickly find out that a place like Volcluse, you know, premium suburbs perform no better than like a paramedic like a house like a land landed house in paramedic over 30 years you find out that proximity to the ocean that even things like train stations

Starting point is 00:16:46 don't actually have any statistical correlation with growth so i was like that guy or that gal on the stage in that fancy hotel with the suit you know and the mercedes and the powerpoint projector i was like they're actually not telling the truth right that was the aha moment for me and i was like um i can't trust anyone i can't i can't trust people like myself in 2023 right like i can't trust anyone who's trying to sell me anything but what i can trust is that property is the vehicle for me to achieve um my exit from the high five because i've seen people do it let me drill right in there then because what I'm hearing is you were clearly having some reservations around the sort of myths that are being perpetrated by the industry and you've done the data research

Starting point is 00:17:36 which is starting to say well all of these areas that everyone raves about aren't all that flash and what what helped you overcome those probably initial concerns to to continue on that property journey because a lot of people have gone ah this is all bollocks uh i'll i'll give this away and do something else well like unfortunately um i don't think there was so many podcasts or i don't think youtube was a big thing back then like there was no role models like i didn't know about you back then bushy like there was no one in in the kind of media that was that you could look up to necessarily who was objective without them trying to sell you something so what really inspired me to keep going and actually do it was actually just action. So, you know, it's not like I went

Starting point is 00:18:25 out and had this idea of 10 properties in 10 years or whatever thing that people say these days. But I was like, let me just at least buy one and let me be reasonable about it. So I bought one in New South Wales. And that was from Sydney. I was living in Sydney at the time. And I was like, that was in East Gosford. And I was thinking like, let me not go down the negative geared path. Let me buy something that's positively geared and let me use my own data insights that I gained myself and let's see if it works like if it doesn't work you know for a 300k property all right like I've just wasted a deposit of $40,000 okay and it's not going to like crash or anything so and it worked and so that was my biggest driver it actually worked let's let's define what work means because

Starting point is 00:19:10 what works is means different things to different people what was your initial investment strategy and property at that time and and and when you say it worked what does work mean so my my strategy was that i really this is so embarrassing and you're gonna hate me for it because i know that you espouse the opposite i honestly didn't have a strategy bushy i'm sorry to say uh like that was probably a mistake a huge mistake like i said just before it was just this concept of let me just see if this first one works or not, this first property. And so what does work mean? It paid for itself. Okay. So like before jumping in and buying an asset worth $300,000, I think it was $320,000. It was like, okay, I want it to pay for itself. I don't want to buy a property or let's

Starting point is 00:19:59 say a property business, which is what it is really, that I have to contribute every year. So it was self-sustaining. So I was like, okay, from a cashflow perspective, if I lose my high pressure job I don't have to sell that thing and it was valued like when I bought it I got it for 320 and like just within a few months this isn't amazing numbers right but it was valued at 340 so I was like well that's $20,000 gain in three months I was like all right that's going up but then it's like you know for you or for people who are listening that they're probably like well that's kind of negligible growth but 20 grand on a deposit of about 30 to 40 is like a 50% return on investment in three months and i compare that to what we were achieving for clients at jp morgan

Starting point is 00:20:46 and it was i mean it was nowhere near it's like if you can get four or five percent you know it's on a stock it's like you've done well so i was like this this is some on a cash on cash basis this is taking care of itself and it's going up in value that's what worked brilliant great so it's not costing you anything it's looking out for itself and and you know you probably heard me say before that i believe property is a long-term journey so for 30 grand down and using the bank to fund the rest you're getting an uplift to 20 grand in a matter of months that's a sensational result so i can i can see why you're being well this is this sounds awesome where did that lead you to then so that property started to perform well what happened from there so then i got i

Starting point is 00:21:33 started to get excited right because you kind of catch the property bug like in anything in life when you're sort of onto something even if it's like when you start playing tennis and your your forehand start consistently going and you feel rejuvenated you feel a little bit exhilarated by the way mine don't consistently go in but um it was like this property is there's something in this whole property thing um and so then like we moved back to to Brisbane I got a different job something a little bit less high pressure and I continued so I was like this formula worked I tried to refine it a little bit so I added more data factors that I was looking at and it pointed me towards this suburb infamous suburb in in Melbourne or greater Melbourne called

Starting point is 00:22:16 Frankston and this was in 2012 right and so what was next was like okay I had never like been to Frankston but by calling local property managers much I had like I'd done for in Gosford they did all the inspections for me they told me the best and worst parts of frankston maybe it's good that i didn't go to frankston at the time because maybe i wouldn't have invested but once again i bought for 315 it was valued at 340 after a few months so i'm on a cash on cash basis like that's pretty good the rent was 310 so it was kind of paying for itself so i was like oh damn like this is yeah now now we're starting to repeat this right and i then all of a sudden i was starting to form a strategy I was like how many of these can I buy then how long do I have to wait for them to like

Starting point is 00:23:05 marinate in their equity go up and then in the future I can sell some and live off the rest of course borrowing was much easier back then let's be honest it's um it's not quite like that anymore but that was where the strategy started to form in my mind yeah love it so where did that lead you to and and what I'd love for you to share with us as you continue on this journey is how your strategy started to evolve and change as you as your knowledge increased and your experience increased and and what were some of the the highs and lows that you experienced because as we all know it's the particularly the challenges that that we get the most learnings out of can you take us through some of that yeah for sure so i i did one more property before i started to have

Starting point is 00:23:52 some failure. The next one was Kingston and Tassie, same sort of numbers, same sort of result. And then I started to get a bit of a big head, started to tell lots of family and friends about it, you know, like puff up my chest. And then I remember at that time, now we're talking like 2015. So I'd had three properties by then. And there was now like, Sydney was in the middle of a boom. And like there was lots of buyers agents popping up from left, right center. And everyone was talking about Cairns and how there was this big Hong Kong magnate that was buying a casino in Cairns and about how it was going to boom, big infrastructure. I think, you know, like agriculture economy was booming. There was like literally billions of infrastructure spend capex

Starting point is 00:24:37 going on in Cairns. And I was like, you know what, like these experts know way more than me. I've done well, but you know, credit to where credit is due. I got to listen to these experts. I bought a property in Cairns and that was the single biggest mistake of my buy and hold career because like it literally what did I buy it for I think I bought it for around four hundred thousand and save and accept the last two years like a COVID induced boom you could say in Cairns it was it was literally flat and it was costing me not so much maybe like a thousand two thousand dollars a year so I was you know my that was the biggest failure and of course it didn't send me bankrupt or anything like that but for me the the learning or the failure is always two things

Starting point is 00:25:23 from a practical perspective always rely on data like microeconomic data to the lga that you're focused on to the suburb that you're focused on more so than emotive um you know news article stories about big capex spend about big you know like the headline the cans to boom this and that just just kind of like forget all of that and focus on the data that that's a mistake I did I forgot about how I had made money to date and I just kind of got carried away I made a long-term decision based on a short-term emotion and yeah that's probably not the best way to live life and the second challenge or learning for myself because I still planning to learn and still have plenty to learn is more from a psychological perspective you know like no one really cares

Starting point is 00:26:14 about your money as much as you do so even though at that time podcasts were becoming really um like really famous like property podcasts what I almost did was listen to hundreds of them and see what the intersect was of what most experts were talking about okay on the outliers experts might be wrong but everyone's talking about this everyone's talking about that therefore I must invest that way and I must invest there and honestly they no they don't even know that I made a mistake right they don't care about me as much as i care about myself and i can honestly say that as well like even though i produce youtube videos to my audience the audience cares about themselves more than even i care about them that that is the kind of principle um that i

Starting point is 00:26:59 learned from from that fairly fairly big blunder the opportunity cost of that was immense because i could have invested somewhere like in sydney and rode the next two years of the boom interesting so yeah that's really good so your knowledge is increasing your ego starting to deflate a little bit which is often blinds us uh to what's really going on you're starting to ignore the the politics uh as like property politics because there's a lot of puffery that goes on around what's going to happen but until it's actually committed doesn't mean a thing uh where where was your vision starting to head then in relation to your ongoing strategy can you take us take us from there i kind of i kind of got to the conclusion from that point uh bushy that even though i had a lofty

Starting point is 00:27:49 goal um you know to retire by an x number of years on x income as as we all do um that it's not that i will rise to the level of my goals goals are important goals are potent especially if you write them down but i wasn't automatically going to rise to the level of my goals but rather i was going to fall to the level of the systems that I had around myself. And so it's, it's great to kind of go and dream, but I mean, a dream is just a dream unless you have a system to get there. So I kind of fell back for, for want of a better word, um, to the systems that got me my first three properties that were still doing well. And I just refined that further and further now with a, I suppose, like you put it, more of a modest or humble outlook because I'd fail, right? Like it wasn't

Starting point is 00:28:40 a foolproof thing in property investing. It's definitely not. And so my next steps were to just rinse and repeat that. And then I kind of thought, let me get into development a little bit. Can I speed this up? Do I really want to wait 20 years before I start working? I was a little bit greedy in that sense, I guess. Can development fast track that? And so I got into a little bit of development it made money but once again like let's let's be honest development wasn't the pot at the end of the rainbow either and and I'll very quickly take you through some numbers so like we did a project in Kupuru in Brisbane it was a corner block with two sorry with a granny flat at the back old house we renovated the house subdivided it lifted the granny flat chucked it

Starting point is 00:29:28 away we sold it actually for 50,000 and built two townhouses at the back you know when when a property expert comes on and tells you about a project like that everyone's just like salivating they're like oh man that there must have been like so much money in that like you know you're so intelligent this and that but honestly that that ran over by more than a year um than what it should it cost more than a hundred thousand dollars more than what we'd expected we made about two to three hundred thousand dollars but it took three years so you know on the face of it's like oh, man, you did development, you know, you're accelerating your property journey. But it was like, it was a lot of effort, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of headache.

Starting point is 00:30:07 For yeah, I mean, it was profitable, but was it really worth it? I'd probably say just, you know what I mean? Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. The allure of the and the mystique and the prestige around I'm a property developer sounds really good. But, you know, when you run the numbers and those holding costs that you talked about and then if there's any overruns there and then then the tax man coming in to to chunk into the capital gains exercise over a short period of time is a bit of a for many an unforeseen exercise so what did you take away from from that first property development experience and did you continue with that or where did that lead you to yeah i was involved in a couple of more after that but it wasn't i changed my mindset to

Starting point is 00:30:53 away from that is the panacea to fast tracking my way to retirement to that's another ingredient in the recipe to getting to my goal of retiring early. You know, it's almost like we're almost we're always looking for that perfect strategy, that perfect tactic or that perfect project or perfect. It doesn't exist like nothing can replace hard work. You know, nothing can replace. And that was kind of my aha moment my realization again so i was like okay we can do a few projects on the side but let's stick to the bread and butter there's no get rich quick i'm not gonna leave my nine to five as much as i'd love to you know you know anytime soon i just i just gotta you know build the wall i gotta build the bricks i gotta build the foundation i gotta just build this up

Starting point is 00:31:42 slowly and steadily and and honestly like that's that's the truth i'd love to say you know i had figured out this amazing method of like this and that and you should follow me and like i'll get it didn't exist right it was like it was a lot of um it was a yeah it was a lot of naivety it was a lot of vanity and in hindsight um i'm glad i went down it but property investing takes time takes effort it's worth it but not there's no short-term results yeah 100 agree and And I think, and this just doesn't revolve around property, but I think we now live in a world of total impatience that's, I mean, we live on our iPhones, so we've got instant everything.

Starting point is 00:32:28 And the downside of that is that rather than embrace time as our friend and then allow time to do its work, we're in such a gut-busting hurry to make it happen yesterday that we don't see the wood for the trees. and if we just just embrace it as a friend and then do the right things and then get out of the way and let time do its work then we're actually going to enjoy the journey much better because our expectations are set around a bigger result at a point of time what are your thoughts around that i think the journey is yeah i don't want to come across as like boastful or anything but now that i've been on the other side of the fence i can tell you the grass is not greener like the

Starting point is 00:33:13 i've i've uh surmounted the fence i've climbed over the fence and the neighbor's grass is not any greener i'm no long no happier than what i was before so i think the the point is the journey like the journey is what's important i'll just say a really quick story that i i heard recently i don't know if it's like totally relevant but it kind of sticks in my mind and it sort of goes that there was this prince who was going to become king. This was in the east somewhere. I don't know if it's a true story, maybe. But this prince was going to become king. And in order to become king, first of all, he had to go to his guru or to his teacher to learn a thing or two so that, you know, he'd be seen to be fit to rule the kingdom. And so the teacher said to this prince,

Starting point is 00:34:03 this young prince he said go to the jungle go to the forest and just sit there and tell me what you hear okay tell me what you hear and so he went to this forest and he stayed there for like three four hours and he he sort of okay and he came back to his his teacher and he said you know I heard some birds I heard like some animals kind of ruffling around um you know there was like an owl at night that I kind of heard the voice of, that kind of thing. And the teacher just looked at him and said, No, no, not not at all. Go back to the forest, to the jungle. And this time, don't come back until you tell me what you really hear. Okay, so don't come back until you can resolve this. So the prince was like, Okay, let me go back to the forest. And he sat there and he

Starting point is 00:34:55 sat there and he sat there and nothing was coming to me we could just hear the same old you know like rufflings and rustlings of the jungle environment and he was like well i can't go back and i'm getting really really hungry and like you know hangry or whatever i i gotta resolve this so then he really went into a more meditative state he really started to um soak himself in in the atmosphere and he all of a sudden he could he kind of tapped into this space where he could almost hear the sun warm the earth he could almost hear like the grass drink up the mountain dew he could like the finer the more subtle things like the flowers opening in bloom and so when he came back to his teacher the teacher asked what did you hear this time and he said these more

Starting point is 00:35:43 subtle these more refined things like who can hear the sun warming the earth but that's what was hearing and this and the king said yes like now you are the teacher said yes now you are ready to be king it's because now you can appreciate the journey you can appreciate the empathy required to love others and to love yourself and so I don't know if that could completely like parallel story or relevant but for me my realization was that if we're not meditative or introspective or just present in the journey of wealth creation if we're always living in the future for when we achieve that outcome when we get to the future we won't be in the present to enjoy it we'll still be in the future trying to achieve something else and so we'll never be at a point in which we're actually

Starting point is 00:36:32 enjoying all right and so that was my that's kind of been a big takeaway um for me anyway That's great. I love that story. And you tell it very well, by the way, PK, there's a bunch of messages in what you've just shared with us right there. And it's one that is very relevant to what we're talking about, because we're all in such an impatient hurry to get to somewhere that we're missing everything on the way through. and that patience and being able to really listen and really allow time to do its work is a really big miss. That delayed gratification aspect has been pretty much wiped out of most people's memory banks to a fair degree. And for those who realise it, accept it and then run with it and go with the flow of that, life's enjoyable at all stages

Starting point is 00:37:28 of the exercise. So I really appreciate you sharing that. um mate so just while we're talking about it you mentioned that you climbed the fence and i'd love for you to share you know what what was the fence for you in terms of you know at what point uh did you go right i'm now financially free and uh how did your thinking uh and outlook change at that that point in time can share that with us sure sure sure sure let me try my best um so it was kind of at a point where we had reached 120 000 of passive income um like i said to you at the start we didn't really have like a strategy when i first started but you know we're

Starting point is 00:38:12 pretty modest people uh and so like 120 was enough and and i should also say like we got there in around 10 years time and the reason we got there is we were on high income so it's not like anyone and everyone can just take my story and be like i can replicate it we were very very grateful very very fortunate and we worked very hard my my wife was a chartered accountant at kpmg i worked at you know jp morgan investment banking management consulting and um and at virgin as well as the head of strategy so it's because of that high serviceability that we got to our outcome so soon like that's a really important point to make so that people don't misunderstand but that was the the fence it was that 120k and and that you know when we got there it was like like a big

Starting point is 00:38:57 like sigh, like, you know, now, even if I lose my job, because it's always kind of the back of, you know, these days, especially as frictional unemployment so much. Now, even if I don't earn a single more dollar active income in my life, at least I can get by. Yes, inflation will mean that I probably need more in the future, but I can get by. And that was just a relief. You know, it wasn't about a car. It wasn't about a big house. It wasn't because we don't have any of that. Let's be honest. It was just about steady income. Like that that was all it was about and my mindset you know having reached that which was just a lofty goal at the start having reached that really opened my mind to what was possible and so there's

Starting point is 00:39:40 this quote I don't know who whose quote this is but it goes that um millionaires don't believe in magic but billionaires do all right and I don't think you're meant to take it literally but the whole point is that when you reach you make a billion dollars you're like bushy anything is possible like if I can make a billion dollars like anything damn thing is possible in this world and obviously we were just on 120k passive not like billions or anything but it was that similar mindset was like I was telling my wife I was like you know like actually we can do anything like it's not that we have a million dollars in the bank and the war chest to do anything but which is a mindset if we really put our effort and a mind and and talent and skills we can actually

Starting point is 00:40:23 achieve more than what we thought we could we can achieve and and that's probably something that i'm still working on it's not like that mindset is just permanently fixed in my head and and i'm just this amazing motivated person i'm constantly like having to remind myself of it but that's a really good lesson that for for people who are kind of watching or listening and are like i don't know if i can achieve my my property goals like you can like you really can as long as they're realistic and as long as you give yourself enough time i love that and what i also love about what you've just shared is you know the question i think people need to ask themselves is is how much is enough for you to live the way you want to live and for most people 120 grand a year

Starting point is 00:41:06 uh without without any pressure and more importantly having the time then to put into things that are really going to give you fulfillment uh that's a great place to be mate there's a sense of i don't know about you but that you mentioned the word relief that the just the sense of uh being able to do what i want to do when i want to do it without having to do it that your whole outlook on life changes and and what i'd love for you to to share now is a bridge into that because as i talked about earlier in the the intro for me true fulfillment comes from giving freely to others uh so you know talking to you and the podcast and all the work i do i get immense satisfaction out of out of doing that what what tipped you into

Starting point is 00:41:53 the education space so you've you've got yourself in a position where your income needs are being met you'd be able to spend time with your great wife and your family which is again a lot of people miss out on that because they're so hell-bent on chasing the dollar that that's gone before they even know it what what sort of got you thinking well perhaps i just need to start sharing this and opening people's eyes and ears to the opportunity that that property is has given me yeah um for me it was like almost like a sense of gratitude it's kind of weird to say because property isn't a sentient being but like a sense of gratefulness to Australian property so I was like this has genuinely become my passion because how can it not you know if you if you get to your

Starting point is 00:42:36 goal and you it gives you that sense of relief it becomes your passion whether you like it or not and so I was like but how can I best help people and like I said at the start like I'm not some sort of um saint or anything like that but I was like when I first started there was so much so many people out there to just empty my pockets and I I saw through them using I mean I was lucky I kind of did the data analysis and I saw through it and I sort of came to this realization and I've been kind of marinating in it in my mind lately as well as in the world 10 percent of people think 20 of people think they think and then the balance 70 of people rather die than think right so i was like you know these 70 of people they rather die that they're not really

Starting point is 00:43:30 property investors like they're not kind of built for maybe this game but it's the 20 of people who are like innocent they're thinking they're thinking because they're trying to follow the experts quote they're trying to read these books they're trying to consume this content they're thinking they're doing the right thing but actually they're just they're consuming recycled garbage because a lot of these professionals quote unquote they themselves haven't achieved what they're professing they haven't tested their theories they're just trying to sell you like a course or a program or buys agency service or some you know flash off the plan apartment house land package so my kind of passion became to help people who i was when i started those that 20 the people who

Starting point is 00:44:20 know how to think like they're all good like they don't need me right they don't need anyone they already know how to think they already know how to see the forest from the trees like like you know for example yourself we were talking about that before we hit record but those 20 of people unfortunately they're the ones that get taken for a ride they're the ones who their dreams are elevated to unrealistic proportions. And then the reality isn't quite that. And they just get disappointed because of spruikers and this and that. And even well-meaning property professionals who aren't really out there to hurt anyone, but they just, I don't, I really don't want to come across as arrogant, but they're just not competent at what they're doing. Right. And so it's this

Starting point is 00:45:03 concept of teaching those who think they're thinking, but actually are just following sheep. Yeah, really good point there. And I think, as you say, the disappointing outcome of a lot of that, if they've had a bad experience, it's like wash their hands, walk away, never do it again, and miss out on the immense opportunity that property is going to give them if they just stay the course, learn from it, dust themselves off and go, right, I'm not going to do that again.

Starting point is 00:45:31 Let's keep refining this. It's a bit like learning to walk. If we gave up the first time we tried to stand up and decided to stay in nappies and crawl for the rest of our lives, it's no different when we put it in a property context. But for so many who have a bad experience early, the jaundice is at the point where we're going, well, that's it, I'm out. I love that you're now sharing information that's going to enable those people to go, okay, well, this isn't working, but there's a reason this is not working. Now I understand what it is. Now I can correct my action and do it differently going forward and still achieve the goals that they have longer term.

Starting point is 00:46:08 So I love that. Before we sort of dive in full depth into more of what you do, I'd love for you to share, and this doesn't have to be a property exercise, but what's been your biggest challenge in life so far and what learnings and changes have come out of that? uh it's a really easy one to answer and the biggest challenge or um thing that i have struggled with or i still struggle with is expectations i have this kind of formula that i'm trying to um brand in my in my head and it goes that happiness is reality minus expectation

Starting point is 00:46:48 happiness is reality minus expectation and whether it's in the property space or just wealth space or relationships or you know objects of the sense so I'll give you an example like you know I love cars like I'm not like a I don't like expensive cars necessarily but I like cars that feel good that that drive well like I'm a big Italian car guy right so like you know alfa romeos etc um so when i got my first alfa romeo you know when i was kind of saved so much up to to get it and i built this whole thing up in my mind i'm gonna be so happy when i get it and when i got it it was like i was happy for a while but then that amazing car for me it was a julietta wasn't it terribly expensive a 2013 julietta that happiness didn't last very long

Starting point is 00:47:44 And so for me, it was like, what happiness truly was, was the idea of being happy when I got that car rather than the actual relationship between that matter, that car and myself over the long term. And so I thought that was like a massive fake out. And so it was like, happiness is actually just reality minus expectation. I still love alphas, but the whole concept is don't live your life, you know, like grinding and hustling just to achieve a material object. Because when you get there, and I've got there in so many instances, that happiness, that joy, that satisfaction is so fleeting, it's almost not even worth it. um what's more important like we've already discussed is the journey to to getting there and then the kind of yeah the more it's more the people the relationships that you have with people and not even the expectations from them it's just being with nice people that are in that same frequency that same vibe as you so that's kind of something i've shared i still i'm even though i'm coming across as someone who's you know talking hopefully not smack but something

Starting point is 00:48:51 like learned um like i'm still struggling with this on a daily basis myself and and yeah just trying to remove expectations um from my life whether that's money or elsewhere yeah i love it that quote is one that uh i stumbled across it years ago and i think i've whacked it up on my insta page a long time ago because i 100 agree with that it's the expectations that get in the way of enjoyment of anything so realistic and and you're you're not expecting things that by but in putting expectations on anything we're potentially setting ourselves up to fail so it's uh yeah i love that cmr that's awesome now i'm just going to jump in here as we complete this great conversation on pk's personal investment journey and philosophy as we're going to break our

Starting point is 00:49:41 chat now and keep you in eager anticipation for next week's concluding part two, where PK is going to deep dive into his thoughts on buyers, agents, and property professionals, along with his unique data-led property approach and his education that allows you to research, source, and negotiate high quality and high performing property purchases yourself, along with his thoughts on whether you should buy now or wait. And if you're loving what you're hearing from PK, you can also enjoy his insights on my recent chats with him on our Property Hub's Realty Talk Show. So enjoy, get invested, and we look forward to sharing with you again next week. Thanks for getting invested. Now, here's three easy ways you can take action to start making

Starting point is 00:50:29 it happen, to ensure you build momentum and start living by design, not default, so that you're following your freedom formula. Firstly, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already and keep the weekly inspiration coming. Secondly, get a copy of my book Get Invested for free and find out what it takes for you to invest in living more and working less. Just visit bushymartin.com.au forward slash books or knowhowproperty.com.au or click on the links in the show notes. And thirdly, join me and the Get Invested community. Each month I send a free and exclusive email full of practical self-help and wealth wisdom that our current Freedom Fighter subscribers can't wait to get. Just visit bushimartin.com.au, scroll to the bottom of the

Starting point is 00:51:16 page and sign up. And there you have it. In three easy steps, you're on your way to dusting off your forgotten dreams and making them a reality. Get Invested is proudly part of the Property Hub, your home for property investment insights and inspiration. When you subscribe to the show, you get all of your Get Invested episodes along with Realty Talk, Australia's longest running and leading online property show for red-hot property investing news and insights direct from all of the industry leaders and influencers. And finally, feel free to connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as I'd love to hear your feedback, your inspiration, your ideas and your questions and queries anytime. Thanks for listening. Hear you next week. And as always,

Starting point is 00:52:06 dream as if you'll live forever and live as if the day's your last.

Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested - Part 1: PK Gupta on the personal power of property

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