Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 2: Mark Carter on investing in value

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

Continuing the conversation from the previous episode, Mark Carter breaks down the elements of value and how they can be applied in your life. Mark is an expert in human behaviour and value creation, which has resulted in him being one of the most sought after speakers and professional trainers in Australia. For Mark, it’s all about understanding people and how we create and add value. Understanding how we behave, think and make choices, both professionally and personally. Mark has pulled together many of these experiences and learnings into his second book, Add Value, as well as his online academy … which you can find out more about at https://markcarter.com.au.  So in the concluding part of this high value chat, Mark talks about: How he defines sustainable success The risks of adopting a Blinkist approach to life He defines value and breaks down the five main elements of value that he has crystallised in his latest book And if you’re ready to find out how investment can support your growth goals and create the life you were meant to live, join our unique KnowHow Property Freedom Flight program, where I’ll personally guide you through my proven process for property investment success.  To book your ticket or find out more, click here https://knowhowproperty.com.au/freedom-fighters. Mark's book recommendation: Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain 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. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let's start from a business or a wealth kind of piece in this thing. The reason in business it's an important one is if you're going to build or demonstrate value for somebody, you better be able to describe what value is. If you can't even describe what it is, how can you prove it? How can you build it? So to not have an answer to that question is fundamental. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time,

their skills and their money and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute, every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream, not

someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now in continuing the theme from last week's part one on investing in value, let me start by challenging you with some more value questions with a slightly more investment focus. What is value creation? Why is having a small piece of something now perceived as being more valuable than waiting for considerably more in the future? Or in other words

why does now have greater value than the future? How can we learn to save and invest more in the future despite ourselves? why don't we value more the need to save and invest for our future now and instead we ignore it and put it off even though we all know we should be doing it more and how do we overcome this what's the difference between value and price and what is intrinsic value and why is this important for investing These are the value questions that we're going to dig into today, as many of them are the

questions that continue to plague me in my attempt to motivate and inspire you to see and appreciate the long-term benefits of saving and investing in your future now. Let's start with the question of valuing our savings decisions. the difference between what we intend to do and what we actually do because there's generally a big gap between our intentions and our actions when it comes to saving and investing it seems that we're always going to get around to it tomorrow next week next month or next year but as we all know in our frantic busy lives driven by the urgent rather than the important tomorrow just never seems to come and according to richard thaler the 2017 nobel prize winner in

economics and the author of nudge there are four behavioral factors that impact your savings decisions firstly there's what he describes as hyperbolic discounting which is a tendency for people to choose a smaller sooner reward over a larger later reward. If I offer you a bar of chocolate now versus two bars of chocolate in a month, then chances are you'll grab the mouth watering chocolate right now. However, if I offered you a bar of chocolate in a year or two bars of chocolate in a year and a month, you'd probably be happy to wait until the year and a month to devour both bars of chocolate. If a reward occurs in the distant future, it ceases to be valuable. In a nutshell, we love instant gratification and are not good at

delayed gratification. We lack the self-control and the willpower. Then comes bounded rationality, the idea that people have limited time and cognitive abilities to make decisions. Complexities in a saving program can make it hard for us to decide how much to save. We feel this in decisions about which super funds to pick and how much to save, as well as compulsory superannuation. Thirdly, the procrastination of making a savings decision often produces inertia. This is your tendency to stick with the status quo and accept your current situation rather than think about different options. This is a problem in our superannuation system because most of us are defaulted into a fund or multiple

funds without any thought. By sticking with the default, we might be missing better savings opportunities. And lastly, we also face loss aversion biases. We generally have a tendency to care more about losses than the equivalent gains. Thaler describes how loss aversion means people tend to view less money to spend now as a greater loss than the equivalent gains to their future savings. As Thaler and his long-term collaborator Cass Senstein put it, saving and investing for retirement

is challenging for most of us. We need to know how much to save, then exert a whole lot of willpower for a long time to follow through with it. So how can we overcome our inbuilt tendencies to downplay the value and avoid saving and investing? Well, FALA has come up with a great approach and a program that makes it easy. It's called Save More Tomorrow, which is beautifully summarised by fellow behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman. As he points out, traditionally, if we want to change someone's behaviour, including our own,

we generally adopt one of three main approaches. We're socialised to argue, to promise and to threaten. We use arguments to convince people of the errors of their current ways and the great benefits of doing things our way. We promise them rewards if their behaviour changes as we wish it to change and we warn them of the bad consequences if they don't change. These are all natural ways to answer what seems to be the relevant question of how do I get this person or this group to do what I want them to do?

But what if there's a fourth approach which starts with two different questions? The first one is why isn't this person already doing the wonderful thing that I want them to do? What is keeping them from doing the right thing? And secondly, how could I change this person's situation so that it would be easy for them to do what's good for them? and according to Kahneman this approach has been around in psychology for a long time and in recent years has been adopted by the thriving field of behavioral economics and it's quite a new name that has become part of everyday language it's called nudging and the

best application of Thaler's nudging has to do with how to encourage people to save more for the future now it's widely known that people in the west save less than they want to and indeed they plan to save more starting next year but next year somehow never comes. So again why is it that people don't save more than they do and as much as they would like to do? The answer is human nature. Most of us are much less interested in the future than in the present. Most of us also dislike the idea of cutting our consumption or sacrificing our lifestyle now and we're basically too lazy to take the actions that are needed to organise a higher saving and investment rate.

And this, on top of the delusion of just paying off your home loan and surviving on your super, has contributed to the situation in Australia where over 73% of retirees over the age of 65 are surviving on an average of just $15,300 a year, which equates to just $295 a week. So the inventor of the concept of nudging, Richard Taylor, has come up with a brilliant idea to create a situation in which our inherent laziness and our lack of valuing the future

can be harnessed to make it easy to adopt a higher rate of investment saving. In the test cases that he's run, employees in an organisation were offered an investment plan that is now known as Save More Tomorrow. In this plan, they don't increase their saving rate immediately. They only commit themselves to increase their saving rate by 2% of their salary the next time they get a raise, with the savings to be deducted automatically from their paycheck. A series of automatic increases then continues until the employee decides to stop it, at which point the saving rate will stop increasing.

Now note how effectively this works. The increased savings take place later, not now, and it doesn't involve a cut in consumption or reduction in your lifestyle, because the savings increase is associated with a pay rise, and it requires no action because it happens automatically. And in fact, on the contrary, our inherent laziness will work to increase the saving rate because an action is required to opt out of the program. Now the investment savings rate in the test organisation actually increased from an average of just 3% to over 11% and nudging's a very powerful force with millions of workers now in several countries now willingly enrolling in Save More Tomorrow plans

and interestingly people are actually happy to enrol in a plan that will cause them to do what they've always wished to do which is to save and invest more without putting any load on their willpower. They save more when it is made easy to save more. So subtly, slowly and surely they're learning to value tomorrow more than they do today. And this leads us to another aspect of value

that's particularly relevant in the current climate where the frenetic activity and fear of missing out is driving investment asset prices that are way above anyone's expectations and seem to defy logic and just don't seem to make any sense. This is why Ramana Kesa believes that fundamental valuation of investment assets is so important. It gives us a guide as to what the price should actually be. It doesn't mean that investment markets will agree with us. Many of the forecast models disagree with one another.

but it does give you a fundamental idea of where real value lies. And the key thing to understand is that price and value are very different. Price is driven by market sentiment. People are driven to buy assets and sell assets due to emotion but also due to narrative stories. And many in the media are simply making up narratives to fit the price action. At the beginning of the year, the narrative was that markets are not the economy. So even though we were seeing a global recession, it made perfect sense for equities to be rallying.

Another narrative is that prices are justified by the huge amount of predictable central bank support which is out there. The fact is that people don't want boring models. They want a story. And it better be a good one. So the question is, can we do better than that? can we move away from this narrative-driven justification of the price to something which gives us a much better handle on the true value of an investment? If you're investing, how do you determine the value of what you're investing in?

Or, in investment speak, how do you establish the intrinsic value of what you're looking to invest in? Intrinsic value is a measure of what an investment asset is worth, and it's very different from the current market price. Intrinsic value refers to an objective fundamental value contained in an investment asset in such a way that if the current market price is below that value it may be a good buy.

As the world's most successful investor Warren Buffett has repeatedly said the only reason for making an investment and paying out money now is to get more money and value later on, which is what the game of investing is. Investment is putting out money now to get more money back later from an asset and not by selling it to someone else, but by what the asset itself will produce. If you're an investor, you're looking at what the asset is going to do

and what value it's going to create, which in Buffett's case is businesses, and in my case, has historically been properties. This is the difference between an investor and a speculator or trader. If you're a speculator or trader, you're primarily focusing on what the price of the object is going to do, independent of what value the asset can produce. It's why Buffett doesn't consider crypto, gold or silver to be investment assets,

as they don't produce any income or cash flow. They're speculative assets reliant on their market price value. And on a similar basis, your home doesn't qualify as an asset either because it doesn't produce an income that actually costs you lots of money to hold on to it. So in this context, an investment is an income-producing asset that grows in value and cash flow over the long term. And on this basis, the intrinsic value of an investment asset, whether it be businesses, company shares, equity indexes or properties as examples, revolves around the future cash inflows or outflows from the asset over the long term, say 20 to 30 years,

and then discounted back at an appropriate interest rate to cover risk and a margin of safety. so assessing the intrinsic value of an investment asset revolves around future cash flows and as i've already said the only reason for putting cash into any kind of investment now is because you expect to make more cash and take more cash out later not by selling to somebody else because that's just a game of who beats who but by what the asset itself produces this is true if you're buying a farm, it's true if you're buying an investment property, and it's true if you're buying a business or shares in a business or sector or index. So the critical question you need to ask when determining the intrinsic value of an asset is how much cash is the asset going

to give you over the life of the asset? It isn't a question of how many analysts or advisors are recommending it, or what the volume of trading in that location or stock is, or even what the chart looks like. It's a question of how much the income producing asset is going to give you long term. Intrinsic value is about investing your cash now to get more cash later on. And the question is how much you're going to get, when you'll get it, and how sure you are of getting it. To further illustrate this concept of investment intrinsic value, Buffett often uses the illustration of the ancient Greek philosopher Aesop, who, in addition to the story about the tortoise and the hare, also came up with the fable about birds, which

is just as relevant today as it was over 2,500 years ago. Aesop famously said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Now, according to Buffett, that isn't quite complete, because the question is how sure are you that there are two in the bush and how long will you have to wait to get them out because that's all there is to investing. You just need to figure out how many birds are in the bush, when you're going to get them out and how sure are you. So if interest rates are 15% roughly,

you've got to get two birds out of the bush in five years to weakle the bird in the hand today. But if interest rates are 3% and you can get two birds out in 20 years, it still makes sense to give up the bird in the hand because it all gets back to discounting against an interest rate. The challenge with investing is often that you don't know how many birds are in the bush

and in the case of internet companies in the early 2000s and now meme stocks and some of the cryptos, there weren't and aren't any birds in the bush but they'll take your bird that you willingly give them now. So I hope it's now evident that there's a big difference between price and value. In the investment sphere price is about current monetary worth

while value is about future growth and cash flow. And there are some tried and proven ways to calculate the intrinsic value of an investment but they're too detailed to go through on this podcast. Intrinsic value is just one aspect of value that you need to consider. And to shed further light on all the other facets of value and how important they are to you and your future, today we continue our deep dive discussion on adding value with Mark Carter.

Mark's an expert in human behaviour and value creation, which has resulted in him being one of the most sought after speakers and professional trainers in Australia. For Mark, it's all about understanding people and how we create and add value, understanding how we behave, think and make choices, both professionally and personally. Mark has pulled together many of these experiences

and learnings into his second book, Add Value, as well as his online academy, which you can find out more about at markcarter.com.au. So in the concluding part of our high value chat today, Mark talks about how he defines sustainable success. We talk about the risks of adopting a blinkist approach to life. He defines value and he breaks down the five main elements of value that he's crystallised in his latest book.

And if you'd like to discover your values, find your worth and gain fulfilment in your personal and professional life, then do yourself a favour and grab a copy of Mark's latest book Add Value just jump on www.addvalue.markcarter.com.au or just click the link in the show notes

and if you're ready to find out how investment can support your value growth goals and create the life that you're meant to live then feel free to join me on our unique know-how property freedom flight program where I'll personally guide you through my proven process for property investment success. To book your ticket or to find out more, just click the link in the show notes at knowhowproperty.com.au

forward slash freedom fighters or just visit knowhowproperty.com.au. And before we get into today's great chat, remember these valuable words, price is what you pay, but value is what you get. if you don't know your own value somebody else will decide your value for you and it'll be less than your worth and knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice

so make sure you put into action all the gold from today's guest so get invested in the conclusion to this great chat with Mark Carter and we pick up the conversation where we left off last week, commencing with a discussion on the value of sustainable success. Everything used to be about success, but I've found myself now

focusing more on significance in terms of the impact I'm having on helping others than I used to, say, 10 years ago. If we sort of look at that in the context of sustainable success, uh mark how would you define sustainable success that is a really good question i i think sustainable success and i'll talk this from that kind of self because this is where i come back to quite a lot success is a relative term for the individual but for me it's am i fulfilled in myself no matter what is going on outside am i feeling fulfilled and happy and content even if there's what we're going to call resistance and challenges outside of myself

so sustainable success for me simply is a feeling of fulfillment and content no matter what is going on in my world yeah that that that's the simplest way i've learned to break it down and i guess to that point i know like i know freedom is something you asked about that idea of freedom the same thing and in fact i'll share a story here i mentioned earlier about the you know in europe upon the tours you'd go to concentration camps and places like auschwitz and you know there was a couple of things that really caught my eye in that experience and you know graffiti that was left by people in the the worst scenarios you can imagine of humans doing other things to humans where they would literally script and write things like they can beat our bodies and break it but

they can't take our mind they can't um do anything with that and and in fact one of my favorite books is by Viktor Frankl. I don't know if you've read his book, Man's Search for Meaning, right? Brilliant. And that's a great one in itself as well, because, and there's a quote, actually, I'll say Viktor Frankl would say,

everything can be taken from a man but one thing, and it's the last of human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And that really talks to me because it ties into what I see as being that definition.

for me at least of sustainable success freedom and comfort and fulfillment within one's own mind regardless of what's going on choosing our own attitude and i i mean i absolutely resonate with that because it's the key word there for me is choose you can choose your attitude doesn't matter what's happening around you it's your reaction to it and what you decide to do with it that is the is the key to it and uh if you're adopting an attitude of well this is regardless of what it is this is happening for a reason what can i learn from this and how is this going to help me in the future then nothing nothing ever looks as bad as was it what you might think it to be absolutely and the worst doesn't have to happen you know it's a curious thing of

brain and neuroscience you know we can let our minds go wandering down so many paths and painting the worst picture and it's not even happened yet it's not even happened yet it doesn't have to you know and learning to choose our own mindset and choose our own thoughts in the same way we choose our own clothes that is one of the greatest talents and skills and it's a continual journey you know no matter how good you get um you you keep having to do that so learning to really choose your attitude and learning to look for what's good and what's the lesson and whatever's going on around love it love it sort of in and around that topic uh because it's sort of a good segue in a way to, you know,

focusing on your most recent book, Add Value. But there's a lot of talk at the moment around self-worth and it sort of bridges the self-value and it comes back to what you were talking about in relation to, you know, for finding fulfilment and freedom in being comfortable with yourself regardless of what's happening around you. what what are your uh continued thoughts around that in relation to you know this this whole

because a lot of people talk about now they talk about value our own self value our own self-worth what are the keys to that do you think in terms of being in in a world that's dominated by instagram everything and oh you know the beautiful the rich and the famous uh and everything else the the ability to actually stand back from that and go well actually i'm okay i don't care what anyone else thinks or anyone else does i'm actually pretty comfortable with what i'm doing that that takes a bit of work to get to that place uh talk to us about your thoughts around that yeah you know as you're describing it there's two words spring to mind one is blinkists and the other is comparison i'm going to tell you a story for both so blinkist you would know blinkist is

an app right and it's an app i i like and i appreciate i think it absolutely has value yeah um because it abbreviates books but i'm also torn right as an author i'm torn because i know as an author like i you write your book three four five times it's heavily edited and so when you put the bouquet if you already lost gems and you've left your babies behind right so it's already edited so to blink is that down again you go ah does everything need to be blinkest and ist is actually a tribe right an ist you have papists you have therapists it's like a tribe of people so now i realize and i've written about this we're in a time to your point with heavy digital and social of blinkists is no longer an app it's a tribe of how people go to world

they try and blinkist everything i'm gonna blinkist my learning i'm gonna do a weekend course and now i'm a guru now i'm a coach now i'm an expert i'm gonna blink is this i'm just trying to accelerate on everything but the reality is that you can't just shortcut everything you've got to slow down and actually absorb and put into action that's where the learning comes in place so the first thought the first answer to your question is to eliminate to realize that there's blinkers thinking is applicable to make life more efficient in some ways yes but to blinkest your thinking and trying to abbreviate and shortcut everything is actually not helping you with the success and it's catching yourself on that save time where it's relevant appreciate the journey

where it's relevant slow down where it's relevant does that make sense so that's the first part of that i would say love that love that and it's it's a part i guess uh we spoke about this off air but my own continuous study of success in any any environment uh continues to tell me that it's a it's an exponential curve that normally takes at least 15 years and uh once we accept that and embrace that and we can then enjoy the 15 years and actually be happy and present in the moment knowing that if we we continue to do what we need to do then the success is going to come rather than what i said a lot of people do is bust their guts because they think they've got to do it yesterday which means times become time becomes your biggest enemy not your friend and

then you set yourself up for continual disappointment and uh the bad feelings about yourself. But I agree a hundred percent. I think you've articulated beautifully. And the thing I'd say as well to that, that Blinkist is we actually get it in some parts of our life. So you wouldn't Blinkist go into the movies on date night because you wouldn't get through a big tub of popcorn in five minutes. If it was, if the movie was only five minutes, you want the one hour, 40 minute, two hour experience with the surround sound for that long with a girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever, right? But so you don't, and, and try Blinkist thing and telling your favorite rock bands, you're going to abbreviate their best hit to just two lines of a chorus and you'll get their guitar

wrapped around your own neck probably right so there's aspects of our world we don't blink us but it's the critical ones we do let's blink is my learning worse let's blink as these relationships how fast people connect or disconnect follow one follow because they're leveraging they're thinking this idea of popularity the surface currency of popularity and mistake it for credibility it's not the same thing so slow down in that mindset of your relationships take work take time depth and quality you know in the book actually in our value this is part of that model you know there's neuroscience out there that shows that we're actually only equipped in our brains to handle a certain number of limited meaningful relationships any moment in time if we're trying

to befriend a million people at what cost yeah where are we breaking or sacrifice so that's the first one, like slow down on our thinking where it's needed and don't think everything needs to be now in a hurry. Progression is moving forward. Progression doesn't mean achieving it today. Progression is progression. That's it. The second word I used was comparison, meaning let go of that. As we know, social, and it's no secret now, so many people will filter a very curated life to put out the best and they're facing the same hurdles and obstacles and in fact some situations where they have meltdowns they got more worse things going on behind scenes and putting on the face is ultimately what breaks them stop trying to compare your own success to that of

others because we're on our own unique journey and so if i relate this in the model one of the five elements of value the first element being and it's what i call the fifth element anyway as well is personal value it's you as an individual what really how are you made up how do you like to function what's motivating you where's your skills where's your competencies work on your intelligence and let go of your fears and limiting beliefs that is an individual path and the more you master and know thyself which used to be a sign above the temples in delphi right know thyself yeah then you're equipped to go into the world and add and absorb value for yourself but that's your journey that's the start point and the reason i call it the fifth element g are you a movie buff

i am absolutely do you know one of my favorite directors luke besson french director did the movie le grand blue right the big blue yes but he also did the movie the fifth element yeah and mila jovovich was the fifth element the person she was the element that brought the other elements to life and my book is built in these five elements so that's why as an individual we're all the fifth element we bring all these other elements to life tangible value service value relationship value but we bring those to life work on yourself the layers of yourself slow down don't be a blinkist stop comparing beautifully said and a really nice entree into today into your book, Add Value, which you've started to touch on, because I really do believe

that it's become one of the most overused but least understood words in the English dictionary, and it means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Yes. Would love you to expand on that subject, because we're constantly told we've got to add value, what's your value proposition, and they've become very hackneyed terms that that almost become devoid of meaning after a while. Oh, completely. Completely.

And I know this is right up your alley. Can you get to talk us through that and then talk us through in the context of the book and the framework that you started to touch on because I really enjoyed your TED Talk that sort of preempted the book. And you've come up with a fantastic framework and a very easy way of understanding

the whole map of the value exercise and then understanding how to negotiate and navigate your way through it. Can you sort of expand on that for us? I can. You know, I love what you said as well, how you flag bushed it. It's one of those terms and words that's become devoid. So, in fact, one of the lines in the book more or less is selfies are usually about as purposeful in value as chocolate mirrors or ice cream teapots, right?

It's like this idea of selfies. They don't add value, right? Not really. So I like the background. What got me on this journey? so about 16, 17 years ago, I was coaching sales leaders and trying to help them get more from their team and work with their teams. And I just reach in for learning and being creative. I asked this manager, define value for me. And it was their answer that kind of caught my attention

because they struggled. And I wasn't making them right or wrong. They said something and I would say, what else is it? Is that all of it? Without making them right or wrong. And they kept scrambling to find and not quite feeling they had the definition. And that sent me down this journey of going that's interesting i'm going to keep asking this and i'm asking dozens then hundreds of people and then in businesses and the same thing happens and i would go and look at the definition in the oxford english dictionary and there's there's the point right that's where you and you again you frame this really beautifully is value even when you look at the definition is perception because it's based on the individual yeah now but the reason it's important let's start

from a business or a wealth kind of piece and this thing the reason in business it's important one is, if you're going to build or demonstrate value for somebody, you better be able to describe what value is. If you can't even describe what it is, how can you prove it? How can you build it? So to not have an answer to that question is fundamental. And then what I found is these perceptions are broken down into what I've now classified as very Aristotelian in its thinking. We've got these classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Aristotle came along and added the ether now in my model to simplify i've identified five main elements of value and each one has four causes those five elements personal value that's like the ether that's the special

magical one tangible value is like the earth because it's very grounded and tangible value is the value language of business dollars percentages numbers and time is the tangible value nursery rhyme but the metrics that matter are yours not mine don't assume somebody else's numbers are going to be this important ones are the same as mine not everybody's driven by dollars maybe they're driven by time ask the right questions so that's like the grounded earth element um water is the universal symbol for emotion in all meanings and so water is emotional value and how do we build emotional value you mentioned my ted talk there which my tedx talk And the one thing people comment on and maybe watch it, you'll get it, is my teddy bear story.

I use teddy bears in my TED talk because it highlights the power of storytelling. And emotional value, storytelling, senses, personal and unique like wow, like innovation. You want to tap emotional value, these are the four ways how. And then add a touch of creativity for that extra wow, right? So emotional value, storytelling, sensory engagement, personalization, innovation. service value we're in a world and you would have seen this people would you know 10 15 years ago people didn't mind as much what you were paying people in overseas countries making your products now they do 10 years ago people didn't look at the impact your products or you were having on

the environment now we do so that's really part of service value service value is looking at dichotomies of what problems am i solving and what's the solutions i'm putting in play am i thinking about myself as well as others you know thinking about yourself is not selfish it can only become so when you put too heavy a focus on it am i also then thinking about the long-term possibilities and consequences of my choices and actions and am i thinking about my impact on the environment so and this links to a quote i love there's one of my favorite quotes is service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth i'm sure we'll come back to that but service to others is the rent we all pay so focus on solutions and possibilities others

and environment every day the trick is to not let short-term thinking get in the way so that's service value that's that element of service value and and the final one and i know this is one you love british and that's relationship right relationship value and and service value is like the element of air because it's an airborne elixir we do it person to person relationship value is the element of fire because it is the warmth in our relationships that really are the only thing that matter in life in fact my favorite ted talk by robert waldinger the fourth or fifth director of the longest study of adult development out of harvard they found this was the secret to a happy life was feeling supported and nurtured with quality of relationships love really is the

secret to that so relationship value and when i was doing my research on this this was one where there was kind of more options you know the others were pretty clear but this was people might equate certain things to relationship value but there's definitely some common ones and i would say this that for relation relationship is the ace one for relationships ace traits choose your own if you must but be candid and brave with two common languages kindness and love because quality character and value fit together with those like two hands and gloves so that's a kind of simplified version of the five elements with the causes mate i'd love the poetic way that you've actually uh instilled those they roll off the tongue beautifully they're very memorable as a

as a consequence of the way you've uh boiled that language down mate uh are you a musician you talk a bit about musicians and there's almost a musical quality to the way you've threaded those together mate so it's that creative brain of yours that's uh that's working very well to come up with a framework and terms that are very easy to digest, very easy to imagine, and therefore very easy to remember. Yeah, you know, there's a couple of – I am like a flag. I've always done this creative side and I keep doing it. But poems are actually a learning tool, right?

And a lot of people don't necessarily realize this. So that's why in school, if you think back to school and young children's education, they use a lot of poem. And why is because the alliteration that happens with poetry can help us learn as well. So when I wrapped up the book, I wrote that poem. So that's the kind of whole poem for the VAD value poem or rhyme that helps anchor all the main themes of the message in a simple rhyme. That's why I built it in and wrote it in at the end.

Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant, mate. A lot to think about and you've already started to provide a great framework for us to start tackling that. And I really do recommend that the readers reach out and grab a copy of your book, Ad Value. you uh they they do that through the normal bookstores or off your website what's the best way for them to do that mate yeah it's books published globally um by wiley and so you can get it online through any preferred retail in store you can on my website you can get it and i think this is the thing the model is the the tip i say and i flag this in my tedx talk as well is we have our own filters for that model we all have those filters but we favor some

which might give us blind spots in others and therefore when i'm communicating with others the more i fill that what i call fill in the value buckets the more you can by default fill all those value buckets that's where you really start to reap the reward personally and for others so it's understanding the full framework and not assuming or going into our world by default that's where the growth pattern lies and so you know that the book is written for individuals and then i take that and work with businesses on you mentioned value proposition there's business tools you can work with to bring that stuff to life but yeah the book itself any major store or online on my own shop and what i love about it is the the framework that

you've defined there initially is something we can apply directly to ourselves but more importantly given as you very well summed up that value is actually about perception so what i value is going to be very different to what you value but what you've done is given us a measuring stick to say well if i'm working with mark carter uh thinking through those lens that you've just given me i can now see that mark's uh perception of value is in these areas so you know using your love language as exercise i'm a person is tell me tell me what i need to hear and and i'll flourish whereas my my good wife sonia is a show me person yeah so that we use very different ways of actually uh demonstrating value the mistake we often make is that i'll try and tell sonja

how good she is and that's like yeah whatever show me show me don't tell me show me uh and and i guess you know that's a very simplified version of the of the the map that you've painted out for us and a template that we can then apply to any any relationship or any interaction whether it be individual social business or otherwise it's a means of us uh helping ourselves but also then starting to add true value to the interactions we have with others absolutely m1 it's it's exactly that it's it's a you know something you go back to and you'll get something out of it each time but it's really helping you see the world more holistic and how you can adapt and there's tips for each idea so you'll you'll get the ideas from the um elements

itself and there's tips that help bring it to life you know it's not about eating but what do they say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time not the whole thing at once so you dive back in you see your gaps keep working on those well and as as you've said already too we change with time so where i am today and what i value today is going to be very different to what i might value next year even so the the benefit of what you've given us and the tools that you provide in the book enable us to keep revisiting where we're at and revisiting where other people at because they're also going to be dynamic and change as their life progresses. So it really does give us both a compass, really, in terms of how to negotiate ourselves

and our relationships and interactions as we move forward, mate. So awesome work, awesome work. Can I just say I love that? I actually built my own currency, and you'll see this visually, and I'll build it into activities like for those – like I treat those five elements as a currency, like literally cash, right, the five. But what you just said there gives me another creative idea already, the compass, the add value compass i'm already you're giving me ideas bushy for my next creative piece to add to this

to give value to the add value compass i can see it beautiful beautiful i'll give you credit mate i'll give you this is a big joy for me in the podcast is the synergy and the creativity that actually comes out of our conversations uh it is a lot of fun mate so um uh and if i've added anything at all to that conversation then uh it's been a great conversation for me mark so mate uh i'd love to switch into the ambush round if i can which is just the yes the five quick questions that the listeners always want to draw on your words of wisdom on and you've shared a wealth of knowledge with us already on some of these so it gives me an excuse to get a get something uh else on top of that uh from you if i can but uh first one is what's your favorite quote

and why actually i just said i think as part of my rhyme and poem here's the quote and i'll tell you who it's by now service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth and it was by muhammad ali the boxer and that you know my favorite quote might change day on day but that's like a staple that just lives with me because the world would be a bloody lonely place if i was here all alone and we're all being of service even when we don't see it i'm that annoying guy that will yell thank you down the bus to the driver because he's servicing me by taking me safely to a destination or you know it's the watch i wear that was made by somebody in switzerland decades ago keeps me on time that's a service to me we're all being of service to each other and most of the

we don't see it or worse sometimes we forget so service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth have you paid your rent lately love it have you paid your rent lately i'd but i like you uh operate on a very simple philosophy and that is if i just treat people the way i want people to treat me so if that's you know when i go and order a coffee i'll have a conversation with the person that's making the coffee because nine ten nine times out of ten i see people on the line treating them like they're a robot uh the only only thing they hear is complaints about why the milk's not hot enough or there's not enough chocolate on top yeah but but by using their name and then every time you catch up with them you you address them good morning natalie

or whatever it is it snaps them back snaps them back into the present as well because they can get into this automating sort of an exercise if they're being treated like that completely don't you think i just said as well can i by doing that bushy so linking it back to the model and book you're tapping emotional value why personalization i know your name personalization that's emotional value you're adding to the value bucket of personalization emotional value see very good love it love it it's such a simple thing but such a powerful thing is is is remembering someone's name and then using it uh you know i've just seen how people's eyes light up uh when that happens and um because what you're really showing and i think it's probably an under undercurrent to

all the work you're doing around value it comes back to how much you care and you know our business know how our credo is no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care yeah and uh if you if you're caring in everything you do both to yourself and and to those that you're working with and for those that you're serving then uh the fulfillment that comes out of that uh you just don't know it until you've done it is my i guess my when it took me a long time to learn that but uh what's your thoughts on that mate well yeah actually there's a there's a story i've written a few articles on this lately and and there's one that's coming to mind so i'll share that i wrote a piece and i cited about

david rockefeller so you know from the rockefeller family he was apparently legendary and actually there's a company i love called qualtrics who do experience management tools i remember they used this years ago and it kind of got on my radar but uh rockefeller david rockefeller when he was in the war he was an intelligence officer and he learned two things or he cited learning two things and that was the quality of information the importance of relationship and he applied them and when he died he died like 100 years old or something like wealthiest man around yeah but he was legendary and what what the financial institutions couldn't wait to get a glimpse of his bespoke custom-built rolodex he didn't have mobile phone to keep everyone in he had

literally built these customized rolodex with three by five inch cards with handwritten notes personalized from all the meetings with people there was over 200 000 of these cards and people would be blown away that he would remember what they'd given as a gift last time. Now he, he apparently had maybe his assistants would help him remind him who was in the room, but they kept that as a source and him being able to anchor those bits of wisdom and telling people are remembering somebody's son's name that was in business with would make them pay more attention to him because the quality that that demonstrates is just unfathomable. Right. And that's what you're talking to there. It's simple things, you know, it's that personalized, they can make in that

effort i concur a hundred percent and apparently so did david rockefeller yeah exactly you know what you're doing the little things becomes uh magnified in the big things so you know that little thing we don't have an office anymore because we've moved into the virtual world actually pre-covid but covid's really exacerbated that but we used to make sure that we found out what people like to you know what flavor of coffee what flavor of tea how many sugars how much milk and then when they arrived, it would just be there on the desk. You didn't have to ask. It would be there.

It would be exactly how they like it. And just that little surprise that sort of – that wasn't expected, the amount of connection that flows out of that because, again, you're showing that you care, exponential in terms of the impact on building relationship. Completely. That's why I learned to learn everybody's names on my tour in the first hour and a half of them being on the coach i'd know everybody's first name and they'd be blown away

they could move seats but i'd still know their first name love it uh yeah exactly so that was that was one we got sidetracked a bit there but i did sorry man i yeah i'm enjoying the conversation i'm loving it mate uh you've mentioned some great books already during the conversation but what would be the top book that you'd recommend the listeners have a read of it and over and above add value of course but uh what else should they read and why yeah you know i've always loved books My mum's a librarian. She features in a couple of my books. She's my informal editor.

I've always loved books. Always used to get the Asterix, the Gould books, and Tintin books first at the library growing up. Yeah, me too, me too. And Asterix and Obelix, yeah, I've still got them on the wall behind me, mate. Exactly. But so I have a pretty stable,

and I've got what I call the classics, and I often draw back to classics. So here's one I would go that's classic wisdom that I love and I go back to time and time again. Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. originally published in 1979 i think republished various times but certainly 2002 and it's if i equate it to your three things of self-health wealth it's self right it's mindset and it's a really about it's what the book suggests creative visualizing visualizing the world we

want it's it's almost like visual um meditations for yourself as well it's a simple small book with some techniques and tools that you can apply to help get your head into a better space love it I actually haven't read that one, mate. So that's going on the list next. I'm a rabid reader. Lots of small activities, small exercises, different types of meditation, visualizing meditation practices you can get into.

I've always liked it and I pull it off my shelf often if I feel I need to get back out, yeah. Brilliant, mate, brilliant. All right, this one's a little bit left field, mate, but a lot of Aussies feel like they pay too much tax. What's the top legal thing that you've done to minimize the tax that you pay, mate. I'm going to be a bit cheeky here

because the first thing that springs to mind, and I've got to really, this comes back to what I said, is in some ways I'm a novice. I think the best thing I've done to not pay too much tax right now is I haven't reached my full potential. I haven't earned enough to pay the tax.

Or you've got a very good account to make sure that you don't look like you're earning too much, mate. Exactly, exactly. So I'm a bit cheeky, but that's probably the reality. So I think I will. but um and i i might have alluded to this before but ultimately the only thing i i

bought is literally a creative yet ethical accountant that i trust and get along with and i get them to do that for me because it's not my bag yeah it's smart smart part of the mastermind that's it exactly right mate uh back on the investment arena for a tick uh looking for what you'd consider to be the worst piece of investment advice you've ever received as well as the best piece yeah the best piece is one i didn't listen to and now i am and that is to start early and to you know there's another great book you're talking about books the richest man in babylon by george classen yeah right um and the theme throughout that book is your first 10 of everything you earn you pay yourself yeah and you tie that to yourself and you're cute

you accumulate and accumulate so the reality is that was great advice i didn't listen later in life but that that would that is and i would say to anybody that really is right and the old and as you get on you realize that was actually really smart advice so the best thing is start early but start as soon as you can and make sure you pay yourself first with that in mind the worst um actually unless there's two ways then because one like fiscal or financial was listening to the wrong person to put money into cryptocurrencies when maybe they weren't the right person to listen to so that's so again it really reiterates the importance of who are you listening to to get advice from and do they know what they're on about so that's part one but i think

part two which is probably i think more important actually the worst one the worst investment i made is where i've continued to invest time and energy into situations that i can't control and where those situations don't value me and learning to realize and not fight it and appreciate the resistance and let it be and how does that equate sometimes we we invest so much time and energy into things like relationships trying to get people to see our value and worth if they don't they don't it's okay and i think that to be quite frank that's the one so the financial one i shared but i think the one that really hits home for me is the worst one and what i've really learned is I'm really more mindful as to where I invest my energy because that's the thing I've got.

That's the currency I've got. Where am I really investing that and being more mindful who and what I invest that with. I love that because it's interesting. I've got to that old crusty age, Mark, and we're quite open about this both within and outside our business. I say to clients that we're about to do some work with that we have a no wanker policy and that no wanker policy means that – and I say to them, I expect you to be using this on me because I'm going to be using it with you

because if we're not going to like, respect and have some fun with each other on this journey of helping each other to achieve your lifestyle goals and where property fits into that, then we're better off shaking each other's hand and wishing each other well because if we're not going to come out of our interactions energized with a smile on our face then then let's go find people that are going to help us do that i i love building a culture of it right i love it yeah we we don't live long and the older you get you realize that the time is short and the last thing you want to be doing is interacting with people that that suck suck your energy and the same for them it's just not worth it for them

either so yeah no I love that mate love that if you if you haven't seen that Robert Waldinger TED talk watch it uh Bush I think you'll love it because the way he closed it I don't want to take his thunder or steal his thunder but he uses a Mark Twain quote to exactly that effect exactly what you're describing there it's a beautiful TED talk it's like 12 minutes or something Robert Waldinger so it's cool it talks to exactly that point you've just made yeah brilliant mate awesome now last one then in in the the quick five what's a personal habit that you feel contributes most to your success today? Yeah, cool. So it's kind of a compounded one is I have some daily habits. So it's a daily habit. And within that daily habits, there's different

habits, right? Yeah. So I meditate to get myself in the right headspace. I actually do a brain training app, go through periods where I do that daily. It keeps me mentally fit. And I also make sure that I've curated to my investment success, better curation of my mastermind circle of people i ask and seek for input on those are things i do kind of daily what's my daily practices to keep myself mentally um healthy yeah i'm mentally fit i've actually i told you in the pre-talk i gave up alcohol and became pescatarian vegetarian a year and two months ago so my health is important i make sure i look after that daily and daily i'm curating and making sure i'm checking in with the right people from my mastermind crew to keep me still and keep me honest and keep me straight and

keep me smart as well i see i see input from those limited people yeah brilliant mate absolutely brilliant well it brings us to the the final big question that sort of gives you an opportunity to really sum up what we've talked about today if i gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people that are roughly currently alive in the world and i gave you 60 seconds to talk what would you say mate yeah i would say that those 7.7 billion people live on a planet with over 7,000 languages. And amongst those 7,000 languages, 10 are the top 10 that half the world speak. And yet none of those 10 are the two common languages that every one of those 7.7 billion understand. Because the two common languages that all of us understand

require no words. You show them in action and they are kindness and love. Kindness and love bring light to the dark spaces. It's a language deaf can hear. And, you know, so those are the ones I would say two common languages is what you're doing aligned every day with those two common languages. Am I being kind? Am I doing it with love? Am I loving myself? If you do those things, I think you're destined to have a really nice life. And the second part to that would be, you know, and it links to my book of add value. When you really look at the definition of value, I love the etymology, and you take it back to the Latin valer, or middle-aged French voila, and if we all lived aligned with the definition of its origins, we'd all be a lot better off as

well, because the definition is moral worth. Those are the things I would say. Yeah, brilliant, mate. Brilliantly summarized. And at the end of the day, it all comes back to those two things, doesn't it? Kindness and love. I use the word care, but it's exactly the same thing that you're talking about there mate uh been an awesome conversation mate and and i can see why people say uh where do you get your energy from i feed off that energy i love creative people uh it just really puts a smile on my face like this is the big joy of doing a podcast for me mark is uh spending time with people like yourself because i always get off doing the toyota jump once we stop the record button mate uh for those who want to do some more work with you we've

talked about the book so uh i'll make sure that we give them the links in the in the introduction to the episode for them to do that but if there are those individuals or those that are part of organizations that can see working with you is going to be a big assistance to them what's the best way for them to get in touch yes through my website it's always a good one i've also i you know back to the investment to close on i invested heavily in my own tech i was actually a learning manager for a web conferencing company years ago so this world of you know hybrid and digital is what i'm used to and i actually invested to build my own online learning management system and academy and so people can connect with me through there too you know you can anybody can grab a

profile in fact bushy what i'll do is i'll create a code and give you a code for your audience and listeners you can share um that will give them access to some stuff comp i'm very respectful in terms of all of that as well i don't use it to do and i'll then give add value and walk the talk So either my website or through my digital academy are good places to start. Brian, mate, it's been a great conversation, mate. I've been looking forward to catching up for ages. So you've been very generous with your time, mate. I know that we're going to get a lot of very positive feedback from our discussion.

So very keen to stay in touch, mate. But thank you for getting invested with me today. You know what? Likewise, I've really enjoyed it and we've gone over our time. I just love, like you said, I really appreciate, first, the invite, Ian, and I love you sharing your own perspectives. I draw my energy as you get from other people.

I've really enjoyed the conversation, truly. I've done a few of these, but it's fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on. I look forward to catching up as well. Definitely. Actually, we're just south of Melbourne as we speak. We're normally in South Oz, but we're actually over here with some family,

so we'll make sure we create an excuse to rub shoulders. We won't have a drink, but we'll have a beautiful coffee. No, look, your respect, Tim, I'll go for you. And I moved to Melbourne from Sydney only not quite two years ago. You know, like great time to move. We're in lockdown for a year of that. So I'm super keen to get out and catch up now. Let's make sure we do it.

All right, mate. Appreciate your time. Talk soon. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mark. To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. It's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au.

or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the GetInvested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.