Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 1 - Sue Williams on questioning yourself to success

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Childlike curiosity is key to competence, says Sue Williams. Sue is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and best selling author with 32 books to her name and counting. During her around the world story telling journey, she has met the Queen and interviewed the likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Russell Crow, along with great thinkers like Edward de Bono and Geoffrey Robertson. And at the other extreme she has covered war, murder, riots, earthquakes, road crashes, lifestyles, film, fashion, soccer and even a top race-writing award for a feature on horse racing, and last but not least, the housing market.  What brings her to Get Invested is her journalistic special interest in property and apartment living, which has led her to founding and ongoing involvement with the Flatchat strata advice website and podcast of the same name, along with her regular story contributions on property for all of Australia’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Australian Financial Review and Domain. Today we unpack Sue's incredible personal story and property journey, where you'll learn that curiosity is key to lifelong learning and sustainable success, the importance of asking good questions and so much more. Connect with Sue suewilliams.com.au Find your Freedom Formula Success in property starts with your 'why', and then the 'what' and 'how'. Let me, Bushy Martin, lead you through it! Sign up for my Freedom Formula program. The first session is absolutely free, and it only takes around an hour! Find out more https://bushymartin.com.au/freedom-formula-course Subscribe to Property Hub for free now on your favourite podcast player. Take the next step - connect, engage and get more insights with the Property Hub community at linktr.ee/propertyhubau Book a personal solutions session with Bushy to go deeper on your specific property needs or challenges Continue the discussion with likeminded investors and experts on The Property Hub Collective Facebook group Get a copy of Bushy's book, Get Invested, for FREE, and find out what it takes for you to invest in living more, working less Get all Property Hub info here linktr.ee/propertyhubau About Get Invested, a Property Hub show Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube to get every Get Invested episode each week for free. For business enquiries, email [e-mail].  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I think it kind of demonstrates a bit about me, it's not really fearlessness, it's kind of stupidity really, not a thinking head, but sometimes I think life's journey is really important to be able to think of the outcomes, but sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and just go for it and have the confidence in yourself that you're going to get through. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the leading weekly show for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their 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 it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom

and to live by design. Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life that you really want. Let's get started. Hi, Friend of Fighters. What's the critical underlying approach and foundational skill that separates those that achieve sustainable success from the rest. Now, you might be thinking that the answer revolves around intelligence and having all the answers. But how do you get all the right answers in the first place? Well, you need to be prepared to ask all of the right questions first

and keep on asking them of the same and different people until you fully and finally arrive at and understand and appreciate what it's all about. Because sustainable success grows out of the power of creativity and innovation that arise from the merits of asking what might be perceived by some as naive and dumb questions. As renowned investor and famed podcast host Tim Ferriss says, very often the dumb question that's sitting right there that no one seems to be asking is actually the smartest question that you can ask. Adding that not only is it the smartest and most incisive, but if you want to ask it and you're reasonably smart, it guarantees you there are other people who want to ask it but are just too embarrassed to do so because they

just don't want to be perceived as dumb so in the context of sustainable success and improved understanding and the enjoyment of our ever-changing world i suggest that questions are becoming more valuable than answers because research on a lot of the innovations and breakthroughs that we continue to enjoy today confirms that if you trace them back to their origins at the root of it all is a great question or a beautiful question. And thanks to the inspiration provided by a recent video by Big Think on the art of asking the right questions that I'm going to draw on, questioning enables us to better understand the world by organising our thinking around what we don't know. So in a time when the noise of so much knowledge is all around us and answers just

abound at our fingertips, now more than ever we really need great and better questions in order be able to know what to do with all that information and then find our way to the next solution. In this way the art is taking things that you may already be familiar with and then sharing a story that arises from asking curiosity driven questions that allows you to see things that you've been seeing differently by challenging our assumptions. For example why does this type of tree grow successfully here but never there? Now this is a curiosity question that a child could come up with. But behind this, we need to ask more fundamental earlier questions and get beyond our assumptions. So what is that treaty? What does it do? Why is it here? These kid-like

questions are the key to discovering new ways to see and understand things. So do you still maintain your childlike curiosity? Or has it dulled and died as we just accept our long-held assumptions about our frantic world. Well, research shows that four-year-olds ask as many as 300 questions a day. And if you're a parent, I'm sure you've experienced the frustration of the never-ending trail of whys. Why, why, but why? Interestingly, there's a steady decline in the number of questions asked by children. And by the time they hit high school, questioning drops to almost zero as questioning is replaced with accepting. This is probably because schools put much higher value on answers and there's almost no value placed on asking a good question.

In fact constant curiosity is often treated as annoying and I know this firsthand as I've never stopped asking why and over time many people get frustrated with me as a result. On top of this teachers and students are stretched and stressed trying to cover so much material but there's just no time to entertain a lot of questions. So if you want to achieve sustainable success and wisdom in any area of your life, I suggest that you rediscover the beauty of asking dumb, naive, childlike questions and constantly testing the status quo to break through our learned stigma that dumb, naive questions are somehow inappropriate or that we look stupid if we ask them. So questions are at the root of innovation, which is why many in Silicon Valley are now saying that

questions are the new answers. But asking questions is also a critical survival skill for us in our times of continual exponential dynamic change. If we're to continue to survive and thrive we need to adapt which means we need to solve problems in order to deal with and take advantage of change and uncertainty and our ability to question is one of our primary tools to help us do this. But as social creatures we constantly fear shaming or humiliating ourselves in front of others. But by getting comfortable with asking what many perceive as dumb questions, the superpower that you gain from getting comfortable with all this allows you to zig while others are zagging because it's always the different that make a difference. Referring to one of my virtual mentors

again, Tim Ferriss confirms that when he was interviewing incredible outperforming world-class investors, entrepreneurs and writers for his Tools of Titans book, the differentiator that repeatedly distinguish them was the art of asking dumb questions. And this takes many forms. For example, Tim indicates that one of my author heroes, Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point Blink and Outliers book fame, is a master at asking so-called dumb questions. Apparently, he learned that from his father, who was a mathematician who had absolutely no intellectual insecurities and just didn't care about looking stupid. So he would just keep saying, I don't understand. Please explain that. I don't understand. Up to 10 times in a row.

Similarly, Ferris found that one of the most common patterns he spotted with overachieving high performers was their ability to ask absurd questions. For example, starting with a question like, how can I double my investment results while only working four hours a week? If you had a gun to your head, how could you achieve this? These types of absurd questions don't allow you to fall back on your default assumptions for answers and solutions. Absurd questions force you to think laterally and break through the boundaries of your spheres of comfort so that you have no choice but to get creative and then think outside the square. It's why my wife and partner in all things Sonia came up with our power of two relationship relay interchangeable worker and

wealth builder approach to building wealth that I've actually talked about a fair bit here before and it's why we became rent festers to fast track our investment growth way back in the 1990s which was years before rent vesting was even a thing because we started by asking ourselves a series of dumb absurd questions like how can we find the time and money to create residual income that funds our lifestyle when we have no time or money which was the case at the time and our why questions were always followed by what if and how can we questions you see very often it's the dumb absurd question that's right in front of your nose that no one seems to be asking is actually the smartest and most incisive question that you can ask because there are sure to be lots of other

people who want to ask it but they're too embarrassed. So I encourage you to override any fear of embarrassment in order to rekindle your indefatigable sense of childhood curiosity and get good at constantly asking dumb and absurd questions so you can question your way to success because it's the free secret superpower of the successful that's just waiting there right in front of you right now for you to take advantage of. But sadly, in a world that's increasingly limited by our fears, shame, and the perceived need to be politic, correct, many people are not saying what's on their mind or asking what's on their mind. So I encourage you to swim against the tide of the conforming ordinary and start questioning yourself to the extraordinary by

the road less traveled. Challenge yourself to speak up and start asking questions. Despite being a closet introvert for as long as I can remember whenever I attended an event conference or a gathering I would push and challenge myself through my discomfort and always ask the speakers or presenters a question and the more I did it the easier and more rewarding it's become and if you're wanting to explore your questions on the why what and how property done properly to achieve your lifestyle goals whether you're an aspiring investor or an existing investor where it just isn't working for you, feel free to join me on our recently released Freedom Formula program by clicking the link in the show notes now, where the first Y module is

free for a limited time, so you've got absolutely nothing to lose. And if you're looking for a living, breathing, and shining example of the power of questioning and curiosity to create a never-ending life of wonder, and the ability to understand amazing experiences through engaging stories, then you're going to love getting invested with today's guest, Sue Williams. I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Sue for a story she wrote for Domain on the apartment market last year, and after questioning her background and then googling her experience, I was amazed to uncover a wide, diverse, incredibly varied and extremely interesting person who personifies the benefits of the inexhaustibly inquisitive and creative storytelling mind. Because below her cool, calm, mild-mannered and well-spoken exterior, like a swan on a lake,

there appears to be a rapidly questioning mind that constantly paddles hard to explore, understand and interpret the world around us so we can all better appreciate it. You see, Sue's an award-winning journalist, travel writer and best-selling author with 32 books to her name and counting. As an inveterate traveller who describes herself as an accidental adventurer, Her prolific writing covers a really wide array of subjects, including travel, Outback Australia, which is near and dear to my heart, best-selling biographies, women's health,

true crime, and historical fiction. And during her around-the-world questioning and storytelling journey, she's enjoyed a glamour of red-carpet celebrity with rare opportunities to meet the Queen and interview the likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Kate Blanchett and Russell Crowe, along with great thinkers like Edward de Bono and Geoffrey Robinson. And that's at one end of the spectrum, while at the other, she's cheated death reporting from war zones and created tens of thousands of stories about everything from murder, riots,

earthquakes, road crashes, lifestyle, film, fashion, soccer, and even a top race writing award for a feature on horse racing. And last but not least, the housing market. So it's no surprise that what brings us together today is her journalistic special interest in property and apartment living, which has led her to co-founding the Flat Chat Strata Advice website and podcast of the same name, along with her regular story contributions on property for all of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines, including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Financial Review and Domain, just to name a few. i'm exhausted just talking about all this let alone doing it now many have said that i i'm a bit of a man of many hats but clearly sues a woman of many pens his childlike passion for questioning everything in the world along with an unquenchable thirst for understanding and interpreting and storytelling has helped to create a colorful sustainably successful life that's been built

on constantly asking why so i think her surname should actually be changed from williams to Williams. This week, we're going to unpack her incredible personal journey and property journey so far before we dive more deeply into the wider world of all things property and apartments next week. So welcome and let's get invested, Sue. Thank you very much. What an amazing introduction. Thank God. I think you've done it all for me. You don't need to hear from me. And I've only just specks the surface, Sue. But the more I dug into your background, the the more interested I became it's uh you know I'm sort of in awe of people like yourself who almost I'm guessing here but have almost a limitless fearless approach to life and in many

aspects and as I sort of mentioned in the intro it's and it's a thing that I think sadly a lot of Australians are missing out on uh just because they they're limiting themselves but I I guess where I'd give giving you such a great storyteller I'd love for you to just sort of start with one of your favourite stories that you tell about yourself or someone else tells about you that really best captures who you are and what you're about? Well, I guess when you say I'm quite fearless, like you, when you go to a conference and you kind of still yourself and ask the first question, I think that's fantastic. And I often do the same thing. And I often kind of leap into things and don't really think about what's going to happen.

And I think sometimes that's a really good thing. Sometimes it's not such a good thing. But one of the things that I did, I was writing a book about the outback and it was a travel book about the outback and I wanted to experience the outback and you're a real kind of bush person and I'm a real city person. So it was kind of like it's a very foreign world to me, the outback. But I decided to see as much as I possibly could. I went cattle droving even though I'd never ridden a horse before, which I thought was one of the worst experiences I've ever had,

especially when the horse decided to roll in a dry river. and I had no idea what it was doing. But luckily I survived. But one of the bizarre things I did when I was doing that, I heard about Fred Brophy and his old-fashioned boxing tent and that was one of the old-fashioned tents that would travel around the country with a set of professional boxers and people would challenge them to a fight for money

and I thought this was fantastic that it still survives. I mean, it started on the goldfields of the US and the goldfields of Australia. and I thought it would be fascinating to see that and I phoned up Fred Brophy and he lives in Outback, Queensland and he only really operates in Queensland and the Northern Territory now. It's been banned nearly everywhere else because it's so dangerous. You know, health and safety, you know, there's nothing like that there.

So I phoned him and said, oh, I'd love to come and see your Outback boxing tent. Is that okay? And he said, yeah, sure. And without thinking I said, oh, it would be nice to actually have a fight in the tent as well. And then I realised I'd actually said that out loud. I wasn't just thinking and he said well have you ever fought before and I said well no and he said

how old are you and I think I was just in my 50s and he said well there's no way that you can fight in my tent and the more he said there was no way I was too old I was a woman and I hadn't been used to fighting the more I was just determined to actually do it and that's one of the things you kind of invest in yourself and you think let's just go for this and you don't really think about the outcome. So I went up to Outback Queensland to Kirk Even where he has a pub and he has his boxing tent out in the backyard. And when he saw me, he said to me, you don't look like a fighter at all. And I said, oh, yes, I do, which I'm obviously not. But I spent the last two weeks before I'd gone up there going to boxing clubs to see if I could learn how to box, which,

you know, is a huge skill. And it's ridiculous to think you can learn in just two weeks. And it was a horrible two weeks because I was covered in bruises and people would say to me what you have to do when you're watching tv just sit and hit yourself with your boxing gloves just so you get used to the pain so you don't actually cry because that's a terrible thing that's the worst thing you can do and so I kind of I was battered black and blue by the time I actually went up to the to the boxing tent but um I kept saying no I really want to have a fight and when the lights went down we everybody decamped into the backyard I mean it's a big backyard it's a big tent it contains 200 people and he stands he stands on an old plank and very high up and he rings the

boxing bells and says who's going to challenge my fighters and then he introduces each one butter bean commando and then he introduced this female fighter the beaver who was a really big woman and i found out afterwards she was the um she'd just been runner up in the middleweight championships of queensland had i known that i might not have volunteered to fight her but i was determined after two weeks of hell and pain to actually fight. I didn't want that to go to waste. So I put up my hand and said, I want to challenge the beaver. And he said, oh, anybody else?

And he kept just ignoring me completely. That's right. But no other woman wanted to fight the beaver. So eventually these guys around me, they were all kind of bikers. They all had leather on. They were all drunk, really. They wore chains and tattoos. They were saying, give her a go, give her a go.

So he rolled his eyes and eventually said, yeah, come on, come on up. so I went up onto you kind of climb this ladder which is really quite scary because it's very high and walk across the plank and he shakes your hand he says okay what's your boxing name I hadn't really thought about that so I said well Sue from Sydney and he said what do you do for a living and everybody been truck drivers and carpenters and building workers and I said oh I'm a writer and everybody started laughing so it wasn't the best start but then he accepted me and we all went into the tent we filed into the tent and i'm sorry this is turning into a bit of a long story isn't it sorry it's a good story we turned into we went

into the tent and the challengers kind of sit down there's no boxing ring it's just um a circle of sawdust and the 200 people stand around you so that when you fall out of off the sawdust they just push you back in so it's really quite awful and you just sit there cross-legged on the floor and then you watch the first fight. And that's when I started thinking, God, this was a really bad idea. No kidding. Yeah, you can see somebody being hit and you can hear the thud of flesh on flesh. Blood and saliva flying in all directions.

Exactly. And it's actually quite terrifying. And I started thinking, how did I get here? And then I was thinking, well, I can't really get out of this situation now because I would have had to crawl between people's legs and I'm sure they would have dragged me back. so I just watched the first fight then the second fight and then the third fight they said okay you're up Sue from Sydney so I got up and uh yes it was pretty horrific really um I rang the bells

and we started fighting and she came at me with a big right um hook and um she hit me straight in the face and I fell down and everything went black and I thought that's fantastic I've been knocked out that's the end of it I don't have to do anything else and then suddenly all the lights flickered back on and they'd had a power cut so they just they decided to start again so i had to go through the whole thing again so we had three rounds a minute round and it was awful i mean she was obviously a professional fighter and there are a few rules in outback boxing you can't have any protection um so you don't have a mask or anything like that and they can come and they can hit you from behind um they've got old swainsbury rules or whatever they call i'll

know boxing so I don't know no way no way they don't have any of those rules at all and they love doing this um they have um the buffalo where they punch both fists in your ears and then they have the hammer where they kind of hit you on the head on the top of the head and uh that really really hurts I can't tell you how much that hurts but yeah so yeah so we we had the fight I mean I tried as hard as I can because that was the name of the game it's all about entertainment and I just kind of went for it really and I only got a couple of punches in probably really but um it was kind of by the end he stopped the fight we we lasted the three rounds and then he said and the winner is and I thought oh because everybody had been on my side because I was

so obviously the underdog they were all shouting for me and I kept thinking maybe I've done enough to win of course I hadn't there's absolutely no way at all so I lost the fight but afterwards it was really funny because fred brophy he's a really tough guy and he really hadn't wanted me to be there he was fantastic he said that was great you know you did really well you're the and he made me a t-shirt later on that said the oldest sheila in fred brophy's tent you know it would have been nice if it was something else but and then lots of guys can't these guys came around me and said oh you've got more balls than most of the men here you know let's let's buy you a drink unfortunately i don't drink so i was saying i'll have a lemonade thing so sue from sydney just ruined her

street cred really and afterwards i i got out of there as quickly as i could because it was actually my birthday as well and i had the worst birthday ever because i hadn't eaten anything all day because i didn't want to be punched in the stomach and throw up and i didn't want to cry i just wanted to get through it and so we disappeared and i went to the nearest mcdonald's which was a long way away and i had some chips because i don't eat meat And this little kid came up to me and said, did I just see you in Fred Brophy's tent? And I said, yeah. And he said, can I have your autograph?

And I felt like, you know, this star boxer, really. It was just amazing. It was a great experience. But my partner said to me, look, don't ever do that again because that was really dangerous. And years later, I was up in the Birdsville Races. Okay, yeah. and the the tent was up there and uh beaver was there and she saw me and she came over and said let's have a return fight and i phoned up my partner and said well i'm gonna fight beaver

again he said if you do i'm gonna divorce you i'm never gonna speak to you again you were lucky the first time you don't want a chance at the second time so we never had the second fight which was probably a very good idea i think it kind of demonstrates a bit about me it's not really fearlessness is kind of stupidity, really, not thinking ahead. But sometimes I think life's journey is really important to be able to think of the outcomes. But sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and just go for it and have the confidence in yourself that you're going to get through. So I think it was kind of a really good journey for me. It was a really good learning experience. And I was lucky, though, that I wasn't knocked out and I didn't lose teeth and

you know nothing terrible happened and later on it was so funny because i went back to the boxing gyms where i'd been learning how to box before this and everybody was really keen to hear what they'd saw i'd survived and they were keen to see how it was and one of the boxing um trainers asked me if i'd like to take up boxing as a veteran um because he said i have terrible technique i'm absolutely useless but i had a lot of heart and i said no thank you i don't want to become a boxer So, yes, it was a fascinating experience. It was a look at life on the other side, really, but that was my lot, really.

Well, I think you couldn't have picked a better story because there's very few, including myself, who would have stepped into that ring. Well, a lot of people were still getting hurt. Oh, my goodness. I'm more of a Michael Jackson, love another fighter type of routine. I mean, I would have hightailed it, I think, at the even hint of that going on. I'll say without their favour, but sort of circling around that,

because having looked into your background, you've had a really diverse background. I'd love for you just to share some of the highlights in terms of where you've invested your time, energy, money over the years and why, and how this has led you to where you are and why you do what you do? Sure. Well, I guess after university, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Like a lot of people, we kind of go to university. It's great to have an education. It's great to have a qualification, but we're not quite sure what to do next. And so I decided I would really love to travel. And so I worked in lots of odd jobs and then I spent a lot of time traveling. And every trip I did, I'd come back home and then

I would work, earn enough money and then go away again. And I spent a lot of years doing that. And my parents, I think, despaired of me because they kept thinking, when is she going to get a proper job? But, you know, I really, really love travel because on one of the awful jobs, it was a night job in a factory. And I met this amazing woman there who was also working there and she had traveled enormously and she was actually doing that. She was working in the factory, then she'd go off for six months and come back and i thought wow this is a fantastic way of living although the factory work was horrible but um i kind of thought i really want to travel like that so i um went off the first time and traveled from britain because i was living in britain then

and traveled through europe um down through north africa um down through central africa and to kenya um and i it was on a it was on a um a truck it was it was on a converted dust truck that someone had converted into like a a truck that 10 people could sit on and travel through africa and it was a disastrous trip because we ran out of money we ran out of food we ran out of water everybody got ill it was just it it was interesting and it was a fascinating taste of travel and the worst kind of trouble you can have. But it wasn't terribly successful. I got sick as well. I got hepatitis, had to go back to Britain. But the next time I decided I would be much better off traveling on my own. So the next trip I did was I hitchhiked from Cape Town to Cairo in Africa because there

were still lots of Africa I really wanted to see. So I really, really loved that. Went back again and then came away again and traveled through Latin America. And then I decided I need to get more qualifications really and I'd always loved writing and I'd always kept diaries of where I was traveling kept a journal and so I I thought it would be fantastic to be a journalist and my parents when they were both factory workers really so I was a bit of a mystery to them because they'd never known anybody to go to university before so and then they thought that was a terrible waste of time because obviously I was just wasting my life traveling but um then I said to them well I'm going to go to journalist college.

So you go for just a year. And my mother said, oh, well, that would be great. So you do typing, do you, in shorthand? I said, yes, that's part of the journalism training. She said, that's fantastic. So you can be a secretary. And I said, no. Pulling himself a bit short there, see.

That's right. So it's kind of interesting. I always had this upbringing. I had great parents, fantastic parents, but they were never particularly supportive of my dreams or anything I really wanted to do but they were great parents in so many ways um but I think um I was very lucky but at the same time I was very keen to try and break free because they had certain expectations and I really wanted to be away from those expectations and that's why I tended to live as far away from them as I

possibly could I went to the furthest university I went to the furthest journalist college and then I came to Australia just like to escape them really but um I just carried on I did my journalist course I worked for a big newspaper in Britain and then I decided to travel more I went to China and then I came over in the end to Australia well I came to New Zealand lived there for a year and then came to Australia and worked as a journalist in New Zealand and Australia and I've been working as a journalist ever since and doing lots of other stuff doing lots of travel I started writing books about my travel and then other books came from that really so that's that's it in a nutshell so it's just a very scattered approach to a career but I think

really my determination got me through all the time and I'd never really thought about money money was always something that you could gather so it would finance the next trip so I was used to saving and used to living cheaply, but I'd never actually thought about investing in my future until I came to Australia. Interesting. Well, something that just listening to you talk about that, there's a level of self-belief that sits underneath all of this. A lot of people just don't have that confidence or a level of self-reliance to go from the

top to bottom of uh or bottom to top of africa on your own you know travel is the great level you really get to understand yourself when you travel uh and being able to do that totally independently not many people uh have the courage to do it quite frankly uh where did that come from is that something just inherent in you sue or is it something that that's developed i'd love to sort of understand that particularly given the the background of of your parents that you spoke about. You've sort of, and that's why I mentioned the word fearless and limitless at the start, because you've overshot the average expectations and they're not scared to have a go is what I'm hearing. Sure. Well, I guess it's the same thing, not really thinking about outcomes.

I very much believe that whatever you want to achieve, you can always give it a really good go. and I really wanted to travel a lot in Africa. So all I did was buy a rucksack, buy a ticket, make sure I had some savings and then just take a deep breath, close my eyes and go. And then you can kind of work it out while you're there. And I think, you know, too many people, I mean, now there is so much information around. Back then there wasn't so much information.

And sometimes information can be a real problem because we know too much about the dangers that await us and we're very careful. if you just kind of take a deep breath and go for stuff, I think it can often work out really well. I mean, sometimes it can be bad, but then you just get yourself out of those bad times as well. I mean, I've had difficult, real difficult times too. But, you know, you can't, once you're in that difficult time, you just have to get out of it. There's no alternative, really. It's not like you think, am I going to enter this difficult stage? Because it's going to be too hard. You just, you're just in it and it's too late then by then. So you're just working out ways of getting

out so i think just just just going for it and investing in yourself is a is a huge um way forward it's a big driver and a big motivation and i mean i've never really had much self-confidence i've always suffered from maybe yeah not so much self-esteem but um i'm kind of quite resilient i do bounce back from from knockbacks i think and uh i just think too many people now research everything and look at all the difficulties and all the things that can go wrong and then you just end up not doing anything really you end up being static so there's there's a a great delicate balancing point between working out doing research not going to too many dangerous places not doing dangerous things not investing in really risky projects but kind of looking a little bit but

also thinking i'm going to give this a go because i want to be somewhere and i want to achieve something and i want to go somewhere and and see how you go with that love it i've got there's some there's some really sage uh learnings from what you just shared with us in that regard uh because you're right that the i sadly i think we live in a very fear-driven society sure and and you know I might be off the mark, but I sense that, you know, we're pretty much 24-7 on in terms of media in some manner or another. And, you know, I feel for the major newspapers because with their revenue drying up because everyone with an iPhone

is a journalist these days, then it means that the thing that's most likely to engage people is fear. If we keep people scared, they're more likely to tune in and have a listen. So I think we're in an interesting phase in that regard. And it's, you know, for that reason, to some degree, I haven't really stuck my nose into mainstream media in any serious way for 25 years, Sue, because I just don't want to rub it in the dirt.

I'm glad I don't have to rely on you for a living. Well, I tune into stuff that I have an interest in properly, but I curate that. I get the stuff from sources I know and rely on. don't don't rub myself in the fear because if it's going to keep me awake at night for stuff that i've got no control of i can do nothing about what's the point what's the point of being so i know that i love that so i'm sort of going back to what i what i talked about in the introduction and again major assumptions and guesswork by me there but how important has

the power of asking great questions been to you in your life so far been hugely important because I spend my life asking questions of the journalist and as a travel writer. And it was interesting because you were saying, you know, don't be afraid of asking naive or dumb questions. That's exactly it. And as a journalist, it's easier to ask those naive and dumb questions because people expect it of you in some ways. But always you do fall into the trap. Sometimes you're interviewing somebody and you want to create a good impression and you ask them a question, they only answer it half and you kind of say oh yes yes yes I understand and you don't really understand you have to you have to get rid of personal pride and be ready to ask those questions even if you

look stupid because you need to know the answer which is exactly what you were saying before and sometimes I can read an interview only occasionally but these days I can read an interview I've done I thought I really did that badly because I was trying to impress that person rather than trying to find out the truth of their life or the advice that they were given or what they were really saying. I didn't really quite understand it. So I think asking questions is enormously important. And most people are really keen to answer questions, even if they look a bit stupid to you, really. They're really pleased that you're interested in their life enough or interested in their views. So they don't mind stupid questions. I mean, occasionally somebody

will say will be quite rude to you but you get used to that you know well it's more if more of a reflection on them i think than it is on you totally so i'm i'm very used to being thought stupid and sometimes i'll go to press conferences and you have to ask really dumb questions to get the best responses and you kind of get used to that really i mean i've been to the can film festival a lot and you do um what's called a round table you have a star like george clooney or brad pitt or um anyone really and there's there's maybe eight journalists and you're all clamoring to get your own questions asked and you don't want to ask a question like did you enjoy this latest film that you've made because you're not really going to get much of an answer but you're going to ask

a question that's going to give something more meaty back so that you can actually write about it so you know i think that advice about asking dumb questions is absolutely spot on there's nothing nothing like it really at all yeah but it certainly worked for me and i and you know i say to people that i work with there's no such thing as dumb question and if you don't understand the answer i give you keep asking until you do because uh that's right you're not learning anything otherwise so i love that turning to the other side of that given how prolific you've been as a writer, both in novels and journalism. Why is storytelling so important to you, Sue? I just, I love telling stories. I love engaging people in stories and the power of the imagination

is so strong. It's fantastic to be able to take people on a journey with you. And it's all very well to have a good experience yourself, but if you can convey that experience and give somebody else a taste of that experience. There's nothing better, really. And, you know, writing books, you're writing about people's lives or you're writing about different places or experiences or adventures. And it's a fantastic thing to be able to share those. I mean, most of the traveling I've done has been on my own. And sometimes I've watched a beautiful sunset or a wonderful sunrise and thought it'd be nice to be sharing this with someone. But often you're on your own. But it's great to be able to share it afterwards.

And I think people are genuinely interested in those things and it can kind of encourage them to maybe travel more or it can encourage them to read more or learn more about their own Australian history. And there's no better reward, I think, than somebody becoming as enthusiastic as you about some of those things. And I just love that.

It's a great way to connect with people and to share lives. there's nothing better, I think. It's great to be able to tell people's stories. I mean, my dad tells stories and he's really bad at it. I mean, this is no reflection of my dad. He's just not had that experience really. And it's very hard for him to hold conversations with people because they don't quite follow what he's trying to convey. And I really feel for him and I really feel for people who struggle with the language in lots of ways. But if you can make a story accessible and and experience accessible that that's a great way of connecting and of creating community really and it's it's just a wonderful thing well it's it's an incredible skill i think

actually that not not a lot of people it can be learned yes i i agree it's 100 well again you touched on something that you know i don't want to go off tangent too much but i think any can be learned if anything can be learned if you work hard enough so i'm not a big believer in born talent i think telling this crowd and over over time by constant diligence and persistence and patience that's right and if you want something enough and you'll you'll make it happen it might take a bit longer but hey absolutely i'm a big believer in that and yeah and i was reading something about um authors of books and what you need and do you need talent do you need skill do you need luck well you need a little bit of everything but the main thing you need

is bum glue the ability to sit on your on your chair at a computer and look at chapter one and think oh my god what am i going to write here and just sit there and sit there until you've written a few paragraphs and then suddenly it starts flowing and i actually think you're right that diligence and dedication is the most important thing, really. Determination to see something through. And it can be really hard. I mean, you touched on the introduction. You said I've written 32 books. Yes. But every single book I write, I start off chapter one. I think, oh my God, how am I going to possibly start this story? And I sit there and sit there, but I just make myself sit there until I've started. And then, you know, things get easier

and easier as you go along. And people find that hard to understand because you've done it so often. but every new book is a new beginning and so it's just as hard for me as it is for somebody writing their first ever novel or their first ever non-fiction book and so we're kind of sharing that and so they should take heed really because it's hard for all of us and I think the people who say it's easier lying so do I and I'm I'm I'm latching on to your term bum glue I think uh Absolutely sums it up. I mean, I've not even a scratch on the writing week you've done, but the two books I've written, they were painstaking, Sue.

Blood, sweat and tears. Because for someone who's very, very early in the whole process, you know that people are going to read this, so you know that it's going to be a reflection and people will judge you based on what they read or I leased up too much time worrying about that, to be honest, but I did. And the 18 months of writing my first book, it was absolutely painstaking. It's like having a baby.

Looking back now, I can go, yeah, it was a great experience and I communicate way better now than I ever did because I was forced myself to sit down and get really clear about what I was trying to get across. But the process is, that is a challenging process. So to write 32, I absolutely take my hat off to you. I think like having a baby, although I've never had a baby so I don't know, but I'm sure it's incredibly painful just like writing a book

but much more painful than writing a book really. But you forget about the pain afterwards because you're so pleased to have the baby or you're pleased to have the book and then someone comes along and says let's have a second book and you think actually it wasn't so bad and you get lured back into it and you obviously wrote your second book so you were lured back into it too and I'm exactly the same every single time. Yeah, I must admit I haven't done any fiction work but I can imagine that the escapism that comes from perhaps taking something

that's almost true but then adding colour and flavour and character and depth to it would be very fulfilling and very enjoyable. I'm imagining because I've never done it but in a world where everything's right in front of us to actually get lost in our imaginations, I think, is a beautiful thing. It can be, absolutely. But it can be hard work. Yeah, I know that's hard work.

Hey, turning to a different subject a little bit, I'd love for you to share what challenging event in your life do you think has brought about the greatest learnings and the best changes to you and who you are? That's a hard one. I actually think it was going back to that trip, the second trip in Africa, travelling around. I was in Uganda during, it was just after the war.

They'd just unseated Idi Amin, the horrible dictator. The Tanzanians had come in and got rid of him. And I went into Uganda from Kenya and I was warned it was a really dangerous country at that period because there were still lots of troops running around. They hadn't been paid. They were still armed. And on the border, a nun had gone missing,

and then she'd been found murdered very close by the border crossing. And I went across the crossing, and I thought, look, surely this is going to be okay because there's a train station there. I get the train straight to Kampala, the capital, and I won't attract any attention. But, of course, you know, a white woman travelling alone does attract attention, really. yeah but it was really quite weird because i got onto the platform it's just open air platform

and there were lots of africans there waiting for the same train but they usually in africa people are very friendly and they kind of want to know why you're traveling why you're on your own where you're going to and that they kind of really embrace you and and and look after you and these people just shrank away from me and i kept thinking what is going on i just don't understand the situation and then two guards came two military men two army men came with their guns and um said they were going to arrest me and they marched me off at gunpoint to their hq which was a tiny little shed across about a kilometer away across waste ground and as they were marching me away i could see the fear in everybody else's eyes and i thought this is a really bad this is

really bad news maybe i should never have come here um but they marched me away to the shed it was too late by then and um in the shed um they played a game of russian roulette with their guns and they spanned the guns on the desk there was just two chairs i sat on one one of them sat on the other one on either side of the desk and the guy just the other guy just stood there and they put one of their guns on the on the table and they span it and said if it points to you we're going to shoot you and the first time it pointed to them so I thought oh great and they said no no best of three the second time they span it and it it went on the ground and the third time it had pointed to me and they said okay now we're going to kill you and you kind of think well

this is probably one of the worst things that can possibly happen really but always when you're in that really difficult situation it's amazing how you find the well you've got no alternative you either you're going to survive or you're not so your life does flash around along in your mind through for you sorry your your life flashes through your mind but um you start thinking very coldly and calmly about what you can do i tried crying because i thought they might feel sorry for me but they didn't that made them feel much more powerful so then i started threatening them saying that my husband will be here and they said no no you don't have a ring on we know you're not married and after that I always traveled with a wedding ring on because that's a really useful

thing and if you say you're widowed people really are much nicer to you sometimes good point and um that was a learning and uh then I tried to bribe them and it we just went round and round in circles and in the end they took the Ugandan shillings I had which were worth absolutely nothing about 10 US dollars and they finally said I could go which was fantastic and I kept thinking we'd been there about two hours and I kept thinking why didn't they just say they wanted my money for the beginning I would have given it to them but I had some US dollars which I hadn't declared so I had to make sure I couldn't give give them those because I knew that then they would have something on me so I gave them my Uganda shillings and they let me go and as I left

the the hut they started firing over my head so I ran back to the station and when I got back to the station, all those passengers were still there. But this time, they all kind of came around me and said, are you okay? We saw they took you away. Is everything all right? What did they do to you? And they really looked after me and supported me. And then they hid me. They hid me under a pile of their possessions. They had lots of blanket bags and cases. They had chickens. They had a goat. They piled everything on top of me and hid me on the platform. And finally, I felt the the platform um shaking the train was coming and then they just lifted me up all these people I've never known them they were strangers they lifted me up and put me into a carriage and

then put me up on the on the um luggage rack um just swathed in all their blankets and things because they said the guards will come back and I said oh no I'm sure they won't they've let me go they've got my money and they said no they'll come back and they did come back and they patrolled the whole train looking for me and they kept asking everybody have you seen this gringo and and and everybody to a person said no and i thought that was quite amazing really um because they you know it's one thing to kill somebody from another country it's another thing to kill somebody from their own country but everybody to a person just denied that they'd ever seen me and and and then finally they gave up the train pulled away and everybody clapped and cheered

And that was a huge life lesson for me because, A, it made me feel that in lots of difficult situations I would be able to cope, and B, it convinced me about the essential goodness of humankind because I really do believe that people are genuinely well-intentioned and they are kind and they want to do their best for other people as well. And they sometimes can be quite heroic in doing that. And I think that's a really important belief to have when you want to travel so much, because I think maybe I could meet one person out of 200 people who is badly in tension, but everybody else is going to be great. And I mean, I'm not too naive. You know, I don't put myself in dangerous situations too often, but I do believe that if you've been in situations… I've been blocked by the minute you're 50s, but that's okay. So, I mean, that was a really life-changing episode for me, I think, really. I mean, it was, you know, it was very difficult.

And when I was writing about it afterwards, I thought, I don't know if this is going to be cathartic or not. And it wasn't really. It was quite traumatic. But it taught me an awful lot about myself and about other people. And I've always carried that experience with me, really. And I hold that quite dear because those people were just quite amazing. Yeah.

Incredible on both sides. the the treatment during the time when you're policing they wonder how much longer going to be on the planet uh and a good will from them that did beyond what you've shared with us did it change your approach to risk i mean nothing would seem bad after that i would you can't get much worse than than staring down the barrel of your life yeah did it did it free you up in that regard from that point onwards yeah because i think really to be honest when i travel i think many things now you know you can cope with things go wrong you lose luggage you know all those minor things as well they don't phase me at all I think you get over that the only thing that would really

worry me is kidnapping and that's a big thing now in some parts of Latin America some parts of Africa some parts of the Middle East and kidnapping is really really difficult um I um went over to Iraq during the war and I was embedded with the Australian troops and then the American troops And before I went there, I went on a hostilities course and you learn how to cope with being kidnapped. I mean, really, there's not an awful lot you can do, but it teaches you some tactics on how to survive, really. And that was really a valuable learning too.

So I'm kind of cognizant of risk, but I certainly don't miss out on too much because I'm fearful of things I don't know that's going to happen. I'm always careful. And I think when you walk overseas, if you walk in a certain way, you walk with confidence. Even in Sydney or Melbourne, anywhere, you walk with confidence, you're much less likely to be attacked.

If you're sure of yourself, bad people are looking for people that are going to make it easy for them, I think. I've met people overseas, certainly in Latin America, I met women who had been attacked and I could understand why maybe they were singled out because they were nervous, they were anxious, they were kind of, and they would, you know, they wouldn't be careful about their possessions or where they went or what time they went. And it's awful that women have to be careful, but men have to be careful too. But if you walk around with confidence and you take, you know, you dress appropriately,

In the Middle East, you wear a headdress. You kind of have to go with what's expected of you. And I think if you obey most of the rules, you're going to be mostly okay. Yeah, and I love that. That's some, yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's a, well, I can't even imagine what that must have been like. So, and just thinking on your feet, the stuff you were sharing at the time, would you like cry and say that?

No, that's a sign of weakness. I mean, you're learning on the spot. What's working and what doesn't in the heat of a life-threatening situation. That's amazing. If we look back now then, Sue, is there anything that you, if anything, that you struggle with these days? Oh, look, sometimes I still struggle with self-confidence. I think a lot of people do really. And maybe a lot more women than men.

Men tend to have a lot more confidence in many situations. I think that's bravado at times, I just quite love it. Sure. And we could learn from you in that way, really, I think. Because I really believe in being proactive in everything, being proactive in your career, working out what you want to do, going to your boss saying, how about I do this this way? How about I take on this project? And, you know, you get knockbacks and you have to be prepared for that. As a journalist, I'm a freelance journalist now. I've been a freelance for a long time. You pitch stories, people say, no, we're not interested. And you think, that's such a great story. How could you

possibly turn it down but you have to learn to take the knockbacks along with the acceptances um so i think um just i mean being proactive i think is a great thing and having confidence to be proactive is really important too and sometimes you don't have the confidence and that's hard but i just try and take a deep breath and really try and go for it still and and hopefully it works out so far there has yeah well yeah well you continue to do great and exciting things which and i i love that that spirit so because again i think there's a lot of australians i think we're too too comfortable in australia and they they use excuse of getting old uh for reason not to do things uh and miss out on on the the fantastic joy that life is as recently but uh changing

gears all together. I noticed when I was researching, you had the opportunity to sit in front of some of the world's great thinkers. And Edwin De Bono always admired his lateral thinking ability. And Geoffrey Robertson, I love the way he's been able to just run those scenarios and make them up as he goes and keep gauging of the times so can you share what can you share from the the time you spent with both of those

guys i think the thing that they both taught me was how important it is to be accessible because both of them are obviously extremely intellectual men very clear thinkers but they didn't use that as an excuse to to mystify their concepts they used they managed to explain them in a way that was incredibly accessible and i i think that is a real gift to be able to do that you know really difficult concepts often especially edward bono but he manages you know his his hats theory and stuff he manages to to to bring it down to your level so everybody can understand it and i think that's great because it's sometimes easy for intellectual people to look down on the rest of us and make us look stupid and feel stupid but they're very keen to lift us up to their level

And I think that's amazing for both men, really. Yep. Yeah, great takeaways. I remember years ago, I lived in Alice Springs for many years, and we were trying to regenerate the community because the economy in Alice Springs was suffering at the time. So I hosted a Geoffrey Robinson-style exercise with all the key leaders in the town and tried to emulate Geoffrey,

Geoffrey, which was a lot harder than it looks. Yeah, I bet. But that style of thing, again, in terms of getting creative and thinking outside of the square, that approach to life is an awesome way to get people engaged in looking at the future rather than complaining about the problems, which we do left in isolation. So I love that.

I'm going to jump straight into, because I know we both have a passion for property from various aspects and experiences. Can you sort of talk us through your property journey and talk to us about what you did, why, and what worked and what didn't, and again, what have been the learnings from what you've done in that regard? Sure.

Well, as I said, I was never particularly interested in money, only where it could get me to. But when I arrived in Australia, I came here about 1989, just after the bicentennial. and I was renting an apartment and I've always loved apartment living you know I just love being able to live in the center of town and I like the security of a high-rise apartment I like the views I like being able to see the skies I really am a huge fan of apartment living so I've always lived in apartments but I always rented apartments and renting as we all know can be awful it can be okay

um overseas it's it's a way of life in australia it's still seen very much as a second class way of life i mean i'm really interested in the build to rent sector because build to rent uh apartments tend to be you know much higher quality than others than in a private rental market and they have great facilities they're often a bit more expensive but they're really well managed and well run and i think if i was a renter i'd go back to there but in the private rental sector um we had a series of apartments that that weren't great and they had problems and you'd have those awful inspections every few months to check that you were tidy and keeping the apartment well and we had a cat and we weren't really allowed to have a cat and one time um there was an inspection

and the cat who was really shy and spent most of her time under the bed for some reason inexplicably came out and saw the real estate agent in his suit and climbed up his leg and over his his body and then went down the other side of him like a quick visit no I've never seen anybody do anything like that before and this real estate agent stood there and went what the hell just happened and then we all laughed and then he said I'm just going to pretend nothing happened and then we moved on. So we knew our time was limited. But things like, you know, we had a terrible carpet

and we asked if it could be replaced and they replaced it with an even worse carpet that every time you stood on it, you got an electric shock. And eventually we kind of thought, we're going to have to buy an apartment, really. And apartments back then weren't quite as expensive as they are now too. So we bought our first apartment and really loved it.

It was fantastic. But with our first apartment, it proved a really good investment. it increased in value we loved living there but it was a two-bedroom apartment there was me and my partner and we were both working from home it was a two-bedroom place so I had one of the bedrooms as my study yeah and he had the other bedroom as his study so we basically lived in the lounge room we had a fold-down bed in the lounge room and it kind of worked well for a while it when you folded it back up it just looked like a bookcase so we kind of thought that was quite neat yeah and then we went to a party on another floor of the building and I was talking to somebody

and they they said have you heard there's a really weird couple who live in this building they sleep in their lounge room and they and and he was really laughing then everyone else started laughing and I thought oh my god he's talking about us so I kind of thought well look this is and we were getting a bit sick of pulling the bed up and down again so we thought we really need to buy a bit of a bigger apartment yeah and this was the the biggest learning of all really because we bought an apartment off the plan um in 2001 when there was a rash of new buildings in sydney coming up yeah and then we bought it off the plan and we had no idea what we were getting into and what we actually got into was an absolute disaster the building was ridden with defects

um the building management company was the developer so the developer was refusing to do a defects inspection and um the strata manager was in cahoots with the building manager and unbeknownst to us i was on the executive committee from the very beginning i was the secretary and the strata manager signed a new building management contract with the building manager and affixed our seal without any of us knowing so we couldn't and that was for a 10-year contract so we couldn't get out of a 10-year contract so everything kind of that could have gone wrong went wrong and we were desperately trying to sort everything out the the the building manager developer put in place a concierge a building manager who was the concierge who didn't

know how to use a computer and who used to call an electrician whenever a light bulb need needed changing in the common property. So he was running up huge bills and managing the building very, very badly. He had a key to all apartments. He had a master key. And one person came home one day from work and he was sitting there reading their magazines in their lounge room. He also went into another person's apartment when she was having a shower. He obviously hadn't realized she was there and she came out the shower and saw him there so there was all sorts of terrible things happening and it was really hard to get anything worked out because buying off the plan was kind of a bit of a new concept then developers um were really many some developers were really taking

advantage of new apartment owners not really understanding what the rules were yeah and we In the end, we just didn't know what to do. We tried to cancel the building management contract and the building management people, the developer, said that they would sue us if we tried to. We tried to get some publicity about defects. They said they would sue us for defamation. You know, every way we turned, we had problems. And so there were other buildings that were kind of around the same vintage. So I contacted their executive committees and started talking to them and arranged a meeting with them.

And we all got together around a round table and talked about our experiences. And we all discovered we were having exactly the same problems with building management, with defects, with everything. And from that, we formed an organization called the Owners Corporation Network, which is now the peak apartment owner's body in Australia. and it was fantastic because we could share our experiences and work out together ways of getting round round it the chair of one of the buildings was a lawyer so he could tell us about legal things I could instruct people about how to maybe get some publicity in the newspapers for their issues so we all really came together and helped each other but it was it was really difficult we ended up going to court about the defects and we won the court case but then when we tried to

prove how much the defects were worth um we lost that battle because our expert kind of went to water under cross-examination so dramatically we kind of thought maybe he'd been paid off by the developers who knows and we cancelled the building managing contract and just walked the building manager out of the door um and said to hell with the consequences yeah and unfortunately the building manager, when I say walk him to the door, we walked him to his car. And as he drove out the car park, his car broke down. We had to push his car out of the car park in the air. The whole thing was a disaster. We tried to cancel the strata management contract. They refused. So we said we were going to go to the press about some of the terrible things they'd done because

we engaged a forensic accountant and discovered that we were actually paying not only our own bills but the bills of other apartments they also managed it was quite incredible and they put all their money into a trust fund one single trust fund instead of separate trust funds per building incredible so we threatened to expose them so in the end they walked so it it was a it was a terrible few years really um it was really really hard but the good thing that came out of that was the owners corporation network and now um owners and people who are thinking of buying apartments can look on their website and there's fantastic questions and answers they have great seminars um they they really teach people they have a voice in parliament they can tell people that they need

we need changes to laws and we actually got some laws changed you can't have 10-year contracts anymore in new south wales for building management yeah you still can in queensland and other parts of the country that's a bit sad but I'm sure they're catching up eventually yeah so that was a good thing that came out but it took in a lot of energy and emotional strength to get there really and I think a lot of us were quite damaged by the the experience but I think now buying an apartment is so much easier than it ever was yeah I mean there are problems buying off the plan and you There are real difficulties you have to look out for. But now we've had a fantastic building commissioner

and he's put in place the ICERT rating process where you can go to a developer and see what their rating is so you can see who it's going to be safest, hopefully, to buy from. So lots and lots of things have changed. It's a lot more transparent now. Yeah, well, sadly, as the guinea pigs in a way that have really fought the good fight and the work that you've done through the network

and all the other work you've done, which we'll talk about in the next week's episode with the Flat Chat Wrap podcast that helps educators and the strata site that you've developed as a consequence of that. I think there's some pretty exciting things that are happening in that space as a result of some of that pioneering work that you've done in people's eyes and as a great communicator, being able to get those key messages out there

to the people that matter. So I love that. If we look back on your journey so far then, Sue, before I jump into the ambush round where I'm going to give you a blindfold and a cigarette and ask you the quick questions that people ask. And if you were starting out again, what, if anything, would you invest your time,

energy and money in differently and why? I think I still like investing in property. I mean, I obviously do invest in shares as well, but I love investing in property. But I would be a lot more careful about what I was investing in. I would still buy off the plan because lots of experts say it's not a good idea to buy off the plan because the price falls immediately. It's like buying a new car. As soon as you drive away, it's lost 10% of its value. Yes and no.

Depends. Yeah, sure. But it's nice living in a brand new apartment. and but you have to be very careful of the developer you choose so if i were doing it again i would be much more careful about which building i was buying in and i would do a lot more homework on the developer who was developing it too yeah yeah i'm not that's a very good call i i think you know there's a lot of people again it comes back to that fear factor but a lot of people poo-poo building anything uh and again i'd sort of that washes off me to a certain degree because

I've spent many years as an architect so I'm very comfortable with the whole building process it's just a matter of making sure you've got protections in place great contracts good people on board to manage make sure that the time quality and cost aspects are really being looked at to your benefit and then it's a really good process because like you said the benefits of living in something new and if it's designed well it's just a great way to live So I love that. Well, I'm going to jump now. We've only really just scratched the very surface of I know what would be some very entertaining, engaging stories from you.

So I'm hoping I can get you back at some stage to expand on some of those. But if I jump into the bushfire lightning round, Sue, what books and podcasts have changed your life the most? well in books i guess um as a kid i loved enid blyton the five on treasure island those kind of books that really got me interested in the life of the imagination and reading which which has become you know one of the great joys of my life really and i love books like um paul thoreau i thought he was a fantastic travel writer um the old patagonian express um and uh i i write historical fiction at the moment I'm doing I've just had my third historical fiction novel out and I got really fascinated by that when I was reading Philippa Gregory the Bolin inheritance

she writes a lot about Henry VIII and his wives and the Tudors and I just turned that and looking into Australian colonial history so I've been really I found that absolutely fascinating and podcasts, I love The Rest is History because I'm really fascinated by history now. Me too, me too. Yeah, and also The Rest is Entertainment. That's good, good. Yeah, what I love about The Rest is History podcasts

is they make history fun. It's a bit like you. You tell really engaging stories that bring colour and life to it and they do it in a light way that makes it easy to absorb. but they've got to skill those guys the way they communicate it because, you know, most of us who've had to drudge our way through history at high school can't get away from it quick enough. But when you actually bring it to life and you suddenly start

to draw dots on why things happen and where things are and why they are that way, I find it absolutely fascinating actually. But, okay, well, let me change direction a little bit. But if you could have a coffee with anyone or a cup of tea, whatever your preference is, whether they be alive or dead, who would you choose and why? Well, I've just finished a new book, which isn't out until next year, but it's on the Duke of Wellington.

Okay. And I feel like I know so much about him now. And I would love to meet him for a cup of coffee. I don't think he drank coffee. He probably drank port. but um i'd i'd love to ask him why he was such a womanizer he was an insatiable womanizer and i mean he was a war hero so women flocked to him but um a fascinating man i mean he was a you know he was a great military leader and he had so much experience in the peninsular war the battle of

waterloo his last battle yeah but i would really quite like to meet him and talk to him because um this this last book i mean it sounds a weird subject for me but um we have a family legend that we actually related to the duke of wellington because we do have an ancestor who was a maid in his household who mysteriously had a child and the father was never named on the baptismal records interesting and so the idea we think that the duke had his way with the maid and her daughter when she grew up she worked as a maid in his household as well so the next book is about that so I would actually love to meet him to find out if it was all true because the only way I can prove it is DNA and the DNA is proved a bit elusive although the circumstantial evidence is all there so

that would be kind of really interesting to meet him. Oh I love him and he's a great figure and And as you say, clearly a bit of a womanizer. And it seems to be that a lot of men in particular during those times, whether ego and popularity becomes a volume switch, that they just start believing their own press. I don't know, but certainly not uncovered. But that personal connection there and the question mark of that curiosity would be very interesting. So if you ever find out, I'd love to know. Changing gears again, what superpower do you wish that you had and why? I'd love to be able to, what's it called, where you kind of, you know,

like in sci-fi movies where you can kind of go under a transporter and then you can just click your fingers and you can end up in another country immediately. That would be fantastic. I mean, I could go to Cambodia this afternoon for tea and I could go to, yeah, Germany tomorrow for listening to some music and, you know, that would be great. I think that would be a fantastic superpower.

One hundred percent. I mean, you've done way more travel than I have, but some of those trips to the States and South America, it's like, spare me, kill me now. It's so long and painful and you're so wrung out for days. Well, I am at least days up. But teleporting would be an awesome superpower, I reckon. It's really good.

I'm a big believer in, as we touched on during the chat around, the power of discipline and habit to make things happen. Can you share a personal happy habit or rewarding ritual that you've employed over the years that's contributed most to what you enjoy life? Sure. I'm a gym junkie. i go to the gym every single day and it's become a bit of a religion for me really

because i i spend so much of my time sitting writing and kind of within my own head i think it's really important to get out and do something physical and so that sounds a bit pathetic really i mean you kind of think meditation would be much better really but i just go to the gym and do a class and just you know let out all that kind of frustration and energy and really and and go for it and that's been something that's kept me very sane over the years and it's funny because I often do step classes where you step on and step off a step and a friend to me whenever I make a mistake she says oh you're thinking about your next book aren't you you're not actually but it is kind of quite good meditation as well especially when you're doing weights too so yeah I think the

gym has been a bit of a savior for me a lot of the time 100% agree and I'm very similar that But long COVID has knocked a bit of a dent in that for me because there's some health issues that are making it painful to reach people, sadly. So focus on working through that. But there's just nothing like, I think, as you say, clears the head. You just feel better generally.

Yeah, absolutely. Mass amount to be said for her, I think. So I'd love you showing that. Well, again, I'd love to talk for hours yet, but mindful of your time so we'll jump back next week to talk about it but i just want to thank you for taking the time to share your incredibly inspiring personal journey so far so it's been a pleasure thank you and absolutely awesome for those listening before we close if anyone listening would like to confidentially question and explore your personal situation

or unblock any challenges in regard to your specific property or investment needs that not have been sparked by a great conversation with Sue. Feel free to book in with me for a personal solution session by clicking the link in the show notes, where we'll have my complete, dedicated, and underbought attention to take advantage of my decades of experience to help you for a full hour. We now look forward to continuing our conversation with Sue in next week's episode, where we're going to unpack Sue's passion and interest in the ins and outs of buying, investing, owning, and renting apartments that we've started to touch on today. So in the meantime, remember to always get invested in your knowledge and your network before you invest in assets

and we look forward to getting invested with you again then so thank you thanks very much thanks for tuning in to get invested on the property hub podcast channel your home for property investment insights and inspiration make sure you subscribe to property hub for free get your weekly dose of get invested inspiration along with every episode of realty talk Australia's top online property show for red hot property investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers and finally I'll see you next time