Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Rob Newman on choices and decisions

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

In uncertain times it is important to remain calm, separate facts from fear and fiction, make clear committed choices and take action – not wait for something to happen. And today’s guest is a great example of exactly this thinking and approach during times of threat. Rob Newman has stared death squarely in the eye in life threatening situations and near death experiences on a number of occasions and lived to tell the tale and go on to survive and thrive.  Today you will find out exactly what happened, how he did it and the lessons he learned that you can apply to help you tackle challenging times and make good committed choices - not knee jerk decisions.  Like me, Rob is a boy from the bush who has made it in the big smoke. His early passions took him around the world in motorsport including being part of the Australian Formula 1 team, competing at Bathurst and being part of a winning team that took out the Australian Grand Prix. After hanging up his race helmet, Rob has turned his passion to property and for the last 30 years - his company Blackford’s Property has specialised in helping investors. In recent times his unique buyers agency approach now also assists first home buyers and their parents as well as up and downsizers and custom builds. After recovering from his last sudden unexpected life threatening incident, Rob’s road to recovery has developed into a passion for overall fitness, mind and body.  On the physical side yoga, walking, pilates, cycling and swimming are all regular activities and on the mental front a never-ending diet of self-development including meditation and working with mentors who continue to bring out the best in him. Never resting on his laurels and always challenging himself, he has taken his long term interest in comedy and public speaking to the next level and  performed at the recent Adelaide Fringe, and he’s been selected to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. His passion for life is infectious and you’re really going to learn some great lessons and enjoy this great conversation with Rob Newman. Rob's book recommendation: To Hell and Back by Nicki Lauda Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A choice you own, you own it, it's yours. The decision, you know, you can blame someone else or you can be picking the lesser of two evils or you're unsure, you know, should I do this, should I do that? But it's only a subtle difference. It's only a slight difference between decision and choice. But the choice deep down is you have chosen this and you're embracing it 100% and you own it.

You own the outcome no matter what and you'll be a lot happier with yourself. Even if it doesn't go well, you're going to be a lot happier with yourself. 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 of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, 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

Do you make habitual decisions or take informed choices? And are they the same thing? And if there's a difference what difference does it make? Well, I personally think it makes an absolute world of difference and the difference between a hard decision

and an informed choice is particularly relevant in our current uncertain times. In the current climate, you can make quick, fear-based, near-jerk decisions by following the perceptions, as opposed to the realities, of the stampeding herd, or you can remain calm and make calculated choices

based on the real facts, not the panicked perceptions of the mainstream media fear factories. So to see the difference, let's start by clearly defining what is meant by decisions, choices, and the subtle but significant impacts that differences make. Let's start with decisions. If you have two options and you decide, you discard one over the other, and in doing so,

you actually kill the other option. And it often feels good when you say, I made a decision. But when we decide, we base our decision on certain considerations. Our decisions are related to a favourable situation or a condition. So when the situation changes, the same decisions may become wrong or inappropriate. Let's look at one of my personal examples. When I first got into property investment in my early 20s, I was absolutely gung-ho to get rich quick. At that time, I was an architect, so I thought I knew absolutely everything about property.

That was my first mistake. So without doing much homework, I made a quick decision to rush in and do a one-in-four apartment redevelopment in good old Alice Springs. My theory was to design award-winning apartments that cost a lot more, but everyone would love them because they were so good and so different, and therefore they'd pay a lot more for them. Mistake number two. On completion, the reality of my foolhardy, ill-conceived decision bit hard.

No one would pay anywhere near what I needed to break even and I ended up renting them out and selling them progressively over a number of years for much less than I expected. On completion, my considerations changed. I resented my own decision. I became unhappy in the same situation which made me happy earlier. I end up hating my decision. This is often the result of many decisions.

Often your preconceived thinking or the situation you're in virtually makes the decision for you. You have little or no control over these types of decisions. Let's look at another example of a person in a restaurant who can't make up his mind what to order, so he just has what everyone else is having. In these types of situations, deciders become victims because they allow other people

to effectively make decisions for them. Those who go along with the crowd are doing the same thing. on the other hand the five percent who achieve sustainable success in their lives aren't afraid to choose and they're responsible for their choices so stating the bleeding obvious choice is something which you choose out of one or many options there are still considerations but the choice is yours the consideration is for a yes or no and not so much on the why when you make a choice, you don't kill the other options. You make a choice because you want to do it, or you desire to do it, or you're committed to it. Let's return to the example of my first property development

analysis. If I made the choice to build the award-winning high-cost apartments in Alice Springs because of their positive contribution to the environment, despite the fact that they were a bad investment because the design was more important, then I'd made an informed choice. In that case, no matter how the properties performed financially or what other changes occurred, then I still would have been pleased with my choice. Alternatively, if my choice was driven by the need for the development to be financially profitable, the design and construction would have been tailored to a tight budget driven by what the properties would actually have sold for. With either of those choices, I would have been pleased with my choice. In both instances, I make the choice and I'm in control and I'm committed to those outcomes.

In other words, to choose is to select freely and after consideration. This is different than just deciding. In choosing, you select freely. In deciding, considerations, reasons and past-place patterns or peer-driven pressures and norms can often be the basis of the selections. So in light of the current uncertain times that we find ourselves in, making well-informed choices rather than knee-jerk decisions will be the key to our ongoing success and survival.

And it's important to stress that making no choice or no decision is still making both a choice and a decision. A choice and a decision to go backwards. Because if you stand still and do nothing, you'll be overrun with the rapid changes and the opportunities that will occur around you. In uncertain times, it's important to remain calm, separate facts from fear and fiction,

make clear committed choices and take positive action, not wait for something to happen. And today's guest is a great example of exactly this thinking and approach during times of personal and real threat. Rob Newman has stared death squarely in the eye in his life-threatening situations and near-death experiences on a number of occasions and he's lived to tell the tale and go on to survive and thrive. Today, you'll find out exactly what happened, how he did it

and the lessons he learned that you can apply to help you tackle challenging times and make good, committed choices, not knee-jerk decisions. Like me, Rob's a boy from the bush who's made it in the big smoke. His early passions took him around the world in motorsport, including being part of the Australian Formula One team, competing at Bathurst and being part of a winning team that took out the Australian Grand Prix. After hanging up his race helmet,

Rob has turned his passion to property and for the last 30 years his company, Blackford's Property, has specialised in helping investors. In recent times, his unique buyer's agency approach now also assists first-time buyers and their parents as well as up and down sizes and custom builds. After recovering from his last sudden unexpected life-threatening incident that he shares with us in detail today,

his road to recovery has developed what has turned into a passion for overall fitness, mind and body. On the physical side, yoga, walking, Pilates, cycling and swimming are regular activities. And on the mental front, a never-ending diet of self-development, including meditation and working with mentals who continue to bring out the best in him. Now, never resting on his laurels and always challenging himself,

he's taken his long-term interest in comedy and public speaking to the next level, and he's performed at the recent Adelaide Fringe and he's been selected to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. His passion for life is infectious, and I know you're really going to learn some great lessons and enjoy this awesome conversation with Rob Newman.

Hi Freedom Fighters. Now, I'm sure you've all heard about the famous actor Paul Newman. Well, rumour has it that today we get to interview his long-lost brother Rob Newman who shares his love for fast cars and hot sauces. I've had the absolute pleasure of knowing Rob now for well over a decade and as the MD of Blackford's Property Group, Rob has lived, breathed, and eaten property for longer than most people can remember. In fact, he knows so much about property that he's forgotten more than I know.

So welcome, and let's get invested, Rob. G'day, Bushy. How are you? Yeah, really good, mate. I've been looking forward to getting you on the show for a long time. You've got an absolute wealth of experience across the property sector and do it in a way that is really relatable and makes everyone feel comfortable. So I know we're going to get a lot out of today's chat. But, mate, before we do that, for those who don't know you, can you start by giving us a quick rundown on who you are, what you do and where you're currently heading, mate? Yeah, sure. So, obviously, my name's Robbie Newman.

Rob, to everyone that knows me, I, in a nutshell, help people buy a property. So, I like to think of myself as a buyer's agent. I've been in the industry for 30 years, and goodness knows how many people I've helped in that time. I don't see myself as a general list-and-sell type agent that you'll see on a Sunday afternoon open inspection. I tend to work a little bit under the radar, so to speak, hold people's hands and find things that potentially they would not find themselves and connect the dots, basically.

Yeah, yeah. A growing need in that space, given that, you know, And for most people who buy property very seldomly, having someone on their side of the table helping them to find the right property and then negotiate that right property is a rare skill in this current marketplace, Rob. So certainly for those who know me, very big supporters of the need to have a buyer's agent on your side. And we'll come back to that later, mate, and drill a bit more into how that all shakes out. But why do you do what you do, mate? I think it probably boils back down to people. I know you'll hear this probably very shallowly or from a shallow space from a lot of agents,

but I actually really enjoy helping people. And the people you meet, I love sharing their journeys and finding out what's the road they've gone down to get where they are and how did they overcome their adversities the issues they face what did they use to help make them successful and so forth in fact it was quite funny just 30 seconds ago when you were when you asked me that question I was reliving a meeting I had with a client and I remember it was an hour-long meeting and we spent 50 minutes talking about And all the things we've done in life and we actually did the property transaction in the last 10 minutes of the meeting. So I think it's all about relationships predominantly.

I think that's probably my main driver, regardless of what you do, where you come from, whether you're from the bush, whether you're from the city, what sort of work you do. predominantly I really enjoy talking to people and finding out about their journey, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that real interest in caring people is the thing that shines through, Rob, and the more you understand about who you're looking after, the more likely you're going to get the right result for them anyway. So, yeah, that's awesome.

Well, look, we'd love you to take us back on your journey. I mean, you obviously like talking about other people's journeys from what you just said, But we'd love you to share your journey so far in terms of the adversities and successes and the trials and tribulations that you've had along your very interesting path, because I happen to know some of that, which I'm really looking forward to you sharing with the listeners. So going back as far as you would like, can you sort of take us back through that journey and focusing in on what you've invested your time, your energy and your money into, when and why, and what it did for you and others along that pathway? Sure, okay.

I'll go a fair way back. I was brought up on a dairy farm, so certainly hard work and working in the elements were the order of the day you know that's a job that doesn't matter how hot it is how cold it is how wet it is uh that's a job that gets done twice a day and there's just no no excuses so um but being on the land i i love driving i love i drive anything trucks tractors you name it um somewhere in the in the family photos there's a photo i'll be standing at at the the steering wheel of dad's car when you know i needed the steering wheel to hang on to uh i could i couldn't even even stand yet and um so i just love driving and and i i i want to be a racing car driver that

was my lifelong dream okay and um so working in that environment actually enabled me to hone the skills of of controlling a vehicle um and when i left school i went to work uh as a spray painter okay or um for a a guy who's been a lifelong friend of mine and still is a chap the name of john walker who at the time had a um it was an australian formula one car was for those people that are listening that that have got an interest in motorsport it was it was a formula a 5000 car it was a lola and i remember going for the job interview uh and i while i was waiting to see the manager i walked out the back and saw this car on stands and i remember saying to myself no matter what lies i've got to tell i am going to work here

i want to play with that thing right and at the time i didn't know who john was i'd actually hadn't hadn't heard of him and uh anyway i i uh i was put on i got the job and i was put on probation and um of course i worked my ass off during that time because i was going to be next to that thing no matter what yeah and uh anyway and that was the beginning of what's turned out to be a oh blimey 45 50 year friendship so um over the course of my apprenticeship i learned all about running this car and believe me when you're a teenager uh looking after a uh and these were a genuine 200 mile an hour car uh you learn you are holding someone's life in your hands you know when you when you put a nut on the bolt when you put a wheel on or whatever

But, you know, things can go wrong. So you really learn about being extremely particular. And over the journey of that apprenticeship, by the end of it, I was actually running the car. It was actually just John and myself and our engine builder from Melbourne, a chap who, unfortunately, we've just recently lost in the last 12 months or so, a chap by the name of Don Halpern, who actually built Jack Bradman's engines. So we were really connected to motor racing royalty.

And so in 1979, John with Don and myself, looking after the car, won the Australian Grand Prix in Perth. And that was a highlight of his career. And that same year won a game for the people that sort of know a bit about motorsport, the Australian Gold Star, which is the highest award you're going to win for open-wheeler racing. and um so that was sort of the peak of john's career and then after that he started to sponsor myself so i'd already bought bought my first open wheeler and um i'll never forget uh uh this night

i'd been driving for whatever it was a year or so and uh with quite an old car and um uh this was back in the days when there used to be tow trucks going around and John had tow trucks to obviously pick up cars, take to the crash shops and so forth. We were in a pizza shop in, I think it was either Great or Goodyear Street. I was trying to remember the name of it, which we used to congregate at. And I'll never forget this. John, I've done something reasonably impressive in a recent meeting

and he leant over the table to me and he said, he's a real man's man, quite a gruff guy, and he said, Robert, if I bought you a new car, would you beat all these pricks? And I thought, there's only one answer to this question. Of course you are. Of course I'm going to. And right then and there he said, right, sell that thing, I'll buy the chassis, you buy the engine, and we'll go for it.

And we did, and we bought, you know, went and bought all the things, and I'd collected all the stuff, and we bought the best we could. And, yeah, we had two years where we won everything, broke lap records, won championships, you name it, and they were fantastic years. Mate, there's a couple of things I want to circle back on there with what you've shared with us already, and the first is to perhaps highlight the contrast

between life on the dairy farm and life in the racing car world because, you know, I'm a country boy myself. A couple of my mother's brothers were dairy farmers and I'll never forget how, having spent a lot of my school holidays out on those farms, getting up before 4 o'clock in the morning to do the first milk and then not finishing until 10 o'clock at night because the evening milk doesn't start until the sun goes down and doing that for 365 days of the year because there is no rest

when it comes to that whole regime. It's a pretty intense, hard-working and relentless sort of a lifestyle. What did you, you know, in terms of looking back now, Were there things that you took away from that sort of discipline and that sort of regimen that have helped you in your life so far? Very good question, Bushy. I think it's a two-edged sword. The good side of it is it certainly prepares you for a life of hard work and to not shy away from it. And certainly the motor racing world is, in fact, most of life, it's just as bad.

And certainly motor racing, I can give you a hundred stories where, you know, we would work all night for two or three nights before a race. You know, you would literally not sleep for 48 hours. But certainly back in the farm days, the job had to be done. There was no excuses. You couldn't say, you know, and back when you were a teenager and you got home from having way too much to drink at four in the morning or whatever. And you got an hour's sleep. Dad didn't care. You know, it was like, get up.

And you got up at 5 o'clock and you went and did the job. So you learnt that there was just no excuses. You had to do it. And regardless of the conditions you were under, as I said, the heat, the wet, the cold, the rain, the ice, the amount of – in fact, one of my fondest memories is bringing the cows in, walking over that frosted grass that would crackle under your feet, you know, and by the time you got back to the dairy,

your feet were frozen and you'd stand in a bucket of boiling hot water to try and thaw them out so you could move again. So, yeah, look, it's certainly that, the motorsport, very much hard work, long hours, commitment. that comes first those sorts of things are the positives the downside when I look at my father's life he never gave himself enough time to enjoy what he did all he got to know was just work and so when we had the family holidays they weren't that far away he would always be going back to check he couldn't he couldn't let go of it that that sort of thing he was always worried

about it so very much a double-edged sword but it's something that um your your work does become your life and trying to turn off from it is is extremely hard so yeah yeah that would be ingrained to uh change the subject slightly i know in some of the the comedy work that you now do you share a great story about uh the the farmer's code how to uh how to differentiate cow poo from Do you want to share that with us? So my comedy experience, oh, the cat's out of the bag now. It's trying to be my biscuit secret. So you're asking about that particular story or why?

Yeah, no, no, I'd love you to share that story, mate. So I've recently decided to do some stand-up comedy, which is a great Freudian question as to why, but bottom line was I thought that I wanted to reach more people so I'd do more public speaking in terms of helping first-home buyers, investors, getting the message out. And as everyone knows, public speaking is an extremely nerve-wracking thing to do. So again, with my background, I thought, well, let's go one harder

and then walking on stage and talking about the subject matter should be easier. So I thought, well, I'll do stand-up comedy, which a friend of mine by the name of Steve Davies introduced me to, and it's just been an absolute ball. So in my first appearance, I went back to some of the farm stories and I tell a story about how if you've lost your bull when you're trying to track it down,

a way to find it is that you... Are you sure I should be telling this story? Yeah, I know. I love this story, mate. You've got to share it. So when you're trying to track down your bull, the way to know if you're on the right track is that you pick up a cow paddy off the ground and you throw it up into the air

and if it comes down, it's cow shit. So you're on the wrong path. If it stays up, it's bullshit and you know that you're on the right path of the bull. And given the industry that you ended up in the property, you get to be deciphering a fair bit of bullshit from the reality as well, don't you, mate? There's a fair bit hanging in the air, I think.

Well, just while we go there, I think this is what I love about your approach to life, Rob, is that you're not scared to get up and have a crack. And for those listeners out there, for most people, any form of public speaking is, you know, if you look at the major stressors of life, death, divorce and public speaking, you've put yourself right onto that. But then to add the additional part of being expected to make people laugh,

I can't think of a much more challenging environment, mate. If we traced your background back, hard working on the dairy, but you got into car racing, and again, car racing in terms of life-threatening and putting your life in your hands every time you get behind the wheel, there wouldn't be too many sports that are as extreme as that. Where is that sort of ability to go, right, I'm just going to have a go at this, come from? um i learned something very early uh i i did a course and one of the one of the facilitators said to me work on the rule of so what in the sense that if you bomb so what the sun's gonna still get up tomorrow morning it's not the end of the world it happens to the best of them um and getting into this environment i've met some again some fantastic people with some fantastic stories i've met some very well-known comedians and international comedians just with the fringe

just happened and some of them will tell you some unbelievable stories about how they're bombed badly how they've turned up to gigs uh um and there's been virtually no one there i'll tell you a really quick story i was talking to uh the guy in an international comic only in the last week he turned up to a gig there was six people there right in a room um where there should have been 150 and what happened was he'd he'd he'd missed out on an award by one and he was playing to rooms that were 150 seat rooms they were full they were full he missed out on this this good review in the paper and he went from 150 filling 100 seats to six and and so he said look um let's go around the corner to the pub i'll put my card in the bar and we'll chat for an hour right i love

it so so they did and they loved it and was all good and he said and not only that tomorrow night will be fantastic here's some free tickets to all to you six people come back tomorrow night and you can you can see the show for free yeah and he'd given them an hour's worth of comedy yeah so so the next night he turns up there's four people in the audience two of them were from the previous night and

one of them gets up and says don't worry mate I'll put my card on the bar tonight so the four of them go to the bar and he talks which two of them he'd done the night before So, yeah, so that rule of so what, and I try and keep that in the back of your mind, but I can assure you it's a way to go. Within 60 minutes, it's a way to go from absolutely scaring the hell out of yourself and having your stomach churning and looking in the mirror and screaming at your wife going,

why didn't you stop me, through to when it all works, absolute elation and going, oh, you know, that was just fantastic. Yeah, there's a level of resilience. There were two things that I'm reading from all of that. There's a level of courage to do it in the first place and a level of resilience to take the knock. So it would have been the same in car racing too, I'd imagine, because everything's focused on winning. If you don't win, then you might as well come last.

And comedy's the same. To get up there, you don't know who's going to be there, you don't know who's going to laugh, you must have a lot of personal resilience in there and self-belief in behind that to be able to suffer some of those challenging times. Would I be right? Again, I think it's about a question, a lot of it is about looking in on yourself and exploring yourself.

So the writing is a huge part of it and it's interesting. One of the things, I've done quite a few workshops on this now, and there's a bit of a, what's the word, a bit of a belief, if you like, that most comics come from a terrible, broken family and they had a rotten childhood and that's what drives them and they're depressed and so on and so forth, which I don't believe is actually the case.

And most of the ones I've met, yes, there's one or two like that, but the bulk of them haven't. But like all of us, they have an issue that needs to be addressed, and they address it through their comedy. So, again, one of the rules is if you suffer from it, then you can talk about it and you can joke about it because you're being authentic. So what most of – well, one of the things I've learned is if you,

for example, I joke about my OCD, right, um because i own it if i am challenged on it i can answer a question about it all right and that's what i believe in if you try and be someone you're not you won't come across as being authentic yeah okay so if you try and make out your you're someone you're not um yeah that that's when the audience will will pick you up as as um yeah not not not being true if i'm making sense yeah Absolutely you are. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, okay, that's really interesting, mate.

And again, I admire the way that you're just prepared to challenge yourself like that. And a lot of people talk about doing it, but very few people pull their finger out and actually do it. And if I trail this back to sort of a common trait when you said earlier that at the moment you laid eyes on that $500 sitting in a spray painter's shop and it's like, I don't care what I have to do,

I'm going to be working here, that laser focus and commitment to making it happen is quite a rare facility because I remember a lot of kids, every kid says, oh, I'm going to be a race car driver but there'd be less than 1% that end up doing it. So what is it you think that in terms of your outlook, your attitudes, your approach that has separated you from those that talk about it versus yourself that's done it? Oh, pretty good question, because what I would have liked to have achieved, I haven't.

So whilst I've had a crack in the sense that my goal was to be Formula One world champion, as would have been hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of other kids around the world. Did I do a lot more than a lot of them? Yes, I did. Did I achieve as much as some? No, I didn't. but I had a crack. So I think it's really about going, that's what I really want to do. So I really want to, whatever it is, challenge myself.

I really want to see if I can do it. I really want to, while I have the opportunity, which the older we get in life, we have to go, I don't know how long I've got left. Yeah, it's a really hard question to answer, actually, Bushy, but I think it's all about having the passion to go, I'm going to have a crack at this. What would you say to people who have similar, you know,

because I get to talk to a lot of people and, you know, the first question I ask them is, you know, tell me about your perfect life, what would you be doing? And they share lots of things with me but very, very few have had the courage to say, well, not only would I like to, I'm going to. so whether that's come from the farming background or where that's come from I don't know

because I mean you're clearly very different from your father and perhaps looking at your father you go well I'm not going to end up like you dad I want to be getting out there in the big wide world and therefore maybe there was more subtle motivation to do that because being glued to a milking machine at the beginning and the end of each day was probably not going to be your thing from what I'm reading there.

But what's your thoughts around that? Yeah, there's a few things there. So, I mean, I guess I was born at a time when there was an evolution in change. So when I was born, it was still something that this is what your children did. He went on with his father and so forth. But the world was changing quite quickly. So when I look back to my parents, as it would have been also with your parents and a lot of the listeners, they had to live through quite a lot of change,

quite a lot of social change, and we could talk at infinitum about how in the 1970s, you know, for example, the United States, Vietnam, all those things just caused social upheaval and huge change. But I think it was probably about laser focus and not being challenged. I mean, I remember deciding that, okay, if I'm going to take this the next step i need to move to england okay and i landed in victoria station in what was it 1970 uh sorry 1988 i think it was yeah and i had a thousand dollars to my name that's all i had all right and i know if i'm gonna take my motorsport to the next level australia is not

the place to do it you need you know and back then that england world's the place to go yeah And I remember standing in Victoria Station with more people than I've ever seen in my life with $1,000 in my back pocket going, now what do I do? And luckily, my now wife, who was with me, had the foresight. We had a room for a couple of nights. She'd bought a package, and then we had a car for a couple of days. And the idea in this package was if we had to, we could sleep in the car. Yeah. We couldn't find anything.

And they were the things you do. You know, if you needed to, you just slept in the back of cars, you slept in the back of trucks, you know, all that sort of stuff. So I think it's about looking at where do I want to get to and trying to cut the noise out on the way through and going, well, I need to do that. That's what I need to do. yes that that's a problem but not not not i'm going to ignore it i'm just not going to let that

stop me yes yeah yeah and and that that's the key differentiator i think and then being prepared to to put up with whatever that what that means in the meantime but but stay focused on on the end goal am i am i reading that correctly i think so yeah i i think it's a matter of going yeah okay this is going to hurt a bit i'm going to put up with some pain i'm not going to be able to enjoy this or that but if it gets to allow me to reach my goal get to this person whatever it is you're trying to do um then yeah it's all it's all worth it it's a matter of of um how much is this worth to you to to achieve that am i going to just drift through and go oh well i should have done this 10 years ago, which we all do, but you're only here once.

I mean, it's just not a practice run. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Okay, so continue us on. So you landed in the UK, really wanting to get amongst it there, given that England was a place to be in car racing. Take us on the rest of the journey moving forward to then leveraging into interest in property and how it's led you to where you are now? Sure.

So I came home. I lived there for about two years. And upon returning home, I thought, what am I going to do? And a friend of mine said, you'd make a fantastic real estate agent. And I didn't really have a lot else to do. So by that stage, I'd gotten probably past the age of being able to turn professional. which is, again, an extremely hard thing to do. So I went into the property industry.

I did normal list and sell for certainly no more than six months and absolutely hated it. Tell me, why did that guy say you'd make a fantastic real estate? What did he see in you that made him think that? Great question. I would say it's the way I relate to people. um i think it's because uh of my yeah just the way that i'll i treat people i like to help people yeah probably a desire to help people yeah yeah yeah i'd say that's that's why um why i got the

start but um i really didn't enjoy the list and sell type um type of sales and at the time the company i was working for had a product that specialized in investing um although they were using it as a way to sell products they had listed nonetheless i began to learn the mechanics behind it so they had their own software in terms of being able to work out holding costs projected rents yeah sorry rents projected rents potential for capital growth depreciation And that started that journey. And then soon after that, maybe a year or so after that, I actually went out on my own and started a company

that specialised in investment property. And there was a whole host of other software you could buy and so on and so forth. So that ran for years and years and years. In fact, it's still going now, which is the company I run now, but that's been going pretty nigh on 30 years now. Yeah, awesome, which is Blackford's. Correct, correct, that's right.

So that started in its first evolution, yeah, about 30 years ago and was based on helping people buy an investment property. Yeah, so let's talk about and dive into that because I'd love you to sort of share with the audience I guess the skills that a really good buyer's agent brings to the table and why someone would consider using a buyer's agent versus trying to find and then negotiate the purchase of a property themselves? Great question.

We'll need more than one podcast for this. The number one thing, with the greatest respect to every other agent out there who listens to this, the number one thing everyone needs to realise is an agent can only wear one hat and that is you are either acting for the vendor or you're acting for the purchaser. So whoever's paying you, that's who you are acting for and you're trying to negotiate the very best deal.

So when you meet someone on an open inspection and they're giving you all the positives and so on and so forth as to why you should buy this, they're also not alerting you to the issues that you should consider that might not be as advantageous. Of course. So a buyer's agent will go, yes, it's great, it's got this and this and this.

However, we also need to consider this and this and this. So it's a much more balanced approach. You can obviously negotiate the offer, which is made up of numerous things. It's not just about the money. There's numerous terms and conditions involved in an offer. It's something I love to sit down with clients and talk about what makes up an offer.

Yeah, let's dive into that because this is something that hasn't been touched on before and you're right, the average punter thinks, okay, I've found the property, all I'm doing is negotiating the price. Yep, yep. And that's about the start and the finish of the thinking around that. Let's expand our visions a little bit if you wouldn't mind sharing some of the secret tricks

that you've got around that process. Sure. Very secret sauce. I'll loosen the lid and let a bit drip out. So a lot of it is knowledge. So first of all, it's about knowing who you're dealing with. So obviously for a lot of, especially first-time buyers, investors, a new property will be on the shopping list, okay, for obvious reasons.

Again, that would take a whole other podcast to talk about why, but let's, for the sake of this discussion, we're talking about you. So looking at what you're buying and what is that current vendor's position? Where are they in that development? Are they in the very early stages? Are they in the late stages?

Has it been going stale? Is it off market? And that knowledge that sits behind that in terms of how many pre-sales do they need to get their funding, to get their construction started and so on and so forth. So that starts to,

And there's a whole host of things at the back end of that that you can research to try and weigh up how badly, how much in need of sales are they. Yes. That's going to give you a lot of leverage in terms of your negotiating power. Yes. So number one is a lot of background knowledge. But there's four things that I always talk about with people. obviously number one is the consideration so where do we where are we going to sit around the asking price are we are we going to be at the asking price are we going to be above the

asking price and if so why and are we going to be below it and if so by how much yeah um there's the deposit the deposit is an extremely strong signal to the vendor of how serious you are yeah okay so a very low deposit means uh you know you're willing to lose it and this their their financier may not consider it what's called a bankable contract for the purposes of getting their finance got it there's other terms and conditions e.g um finance yeah there's obviously one you there might be a building inspection it might be subject to another sale a whole host of things yeah and then of course there's obviously if it's if it's already existing there's the settlement time so those four things can are the ingredients to for the recipe to put the cake in

the oven to make it rise and it's not necessarily one of those is the overarching so for example if you were going to offer a lower consideration you might consider offering a bigger deposit and if you've already got your finance organized um you may be able to reduce the uh the fear the vendor may have of you not getting your finance substantially and settle very quickly. Yes, yes. All right, so again, there's no one rule fits all. There's no, you know, you must do it this way.

It's all about getting the knowledge at the back end, which is all part of the work you do before you sit down to go, right, how are we going to formulate this and how are we going to make it all work? Yes, and as you've very well said, it's about understanding where the seller is at to know where the potential weaknesses might be or where the leverage might be to better your own position as the buyer.

And the average buyer just will not know that. They'll rock up to a property and have a look at it, but they'll get no information from the selling agent on where the actual owner-seller at Strike Vendor is in that whole journey. So, yeah, anything else that you think is critical in terms of opening up a potential buyer's view to why they would use you as their buyer's agent to secure a property versus them trying to do it themselves? One of the other main things is obviously time. So to get the knowledge that I talked about is time and exposure.

You're continually out in the marketplace, you're learning about things, you're meeting other developers, you're hearing what's going on, you're constantly researching, you're constantly doing the studies you need to. So it's a full-time job. Yeah. Any one time, even if you do have a normal eight-hour-a-day job, let alone if you're time poor, you're a professional that has long days, getting the time to do this is just very, very hard. So I'd say the other thing you can do or ask yourself is, am I better staying at work and focusing what I do to make the income to pay the buyer's agent, and I'll actually be a lot better off because I'll get a better deal, I'll find out more, and financially, I'm certainly no worse off, but arguably a lot better off. Yeah. So I'd say the main thing is time, Bushy, is the main thing. Yeah, and let's face it, with the current pressures,

people have got less and less time. And what I see with those that try and do it themselves is they'll try and shoehorn it and end up with a pretty average result because of the fact that not the appropriate time particularly is put into that negotiation piece. They might be able to find the property, might be able to, if someone else doesn't grab a good property before they've got a chance to

because of that work interruption. But where it does fall down is they, you know, I've always felt that a good negotiation on anything, whether it be properties, cars, you name it, takes time. And if you can build time into that exercise, then you've got a much better chance of getting a result. But, you know, one of the key skills over and above just that exposure that you have to knowing properties that never hit the market. You come across – I've seen it where you've come across properties that haven't even been listed, but you're aware of what people are doing in advance.

The negotiation piece is absolutely key, and you've touched on some of those four things in relation to the offer component. What else do you think separates you as a good negotiator as being the absolute critical part of being a successful property buyer? I think getting the purchaser educated, ready for action. So making sure that by the time, for example, they're walking down a diving board, that they've got to the edge of the diving board, that when the time comes for them to swing the arms up and do the swanton dive and leap forward, that they can do that with as much confidence as they possibly can.

So that, you know, things like, for example, the finance and all that sort of those issues, the conveyancer, So we've got the whole team behind you. So we're all standing on the diving board behind you. We've done all the work we can. We've done the best job we possibly can. And you can take that next step with confidence. So I'd probably say holding the buyer's hand through that maze of when you first meet someone,

they say, well, what's a conveyancer and why do I need that? Can't I do that myself? And you go, no, you can't. We need to get this done. We need to get that done. And doing that sequentially, not just having a smoke haze in front of you going, which one do I do next, and doing them out of order. It's these are all the things I need to do.

This is the secrets I need to do them in. It's being able to stay focused. Again, sort of time management weaves back into this, being able to stay focused on what I do from nine to five, and allowing you to step up to the edge of the diving board, knowing that you've got everything in place. Yeah, no, it's very sage advice there, mate. Mate, I know that along your journey to date,

you've had some, you know, you've looked death in the eye on one particular occasion, which not many people have either been faced with or survived. Would you mind take some time to really share with us that experience and what you felt and what you went through and how you've managed to come out of it and still be as full of life and as positive as you currently are. Sure.

Again, we should have another podcast for this, but... We might do that yet. Yeah, yeah. So this is an amazing story, and I do actually, in all genuineness, would like to write a book about this because I say this maybe with tongue-in-cheek and joking, but dying is the best thing that can ever happen to you. And I was on the brink of that twice.

So for those that know or have a bit of a medical understanding, I suffered an aortic dissection, which is where your aorta inside your body that carries your blood toward your organs, mind split. Okay, so they're normally fatal immediately. Wow. And so I was lucky enough to survive that and – How?

Given that most people die instantly, how did you survive? Yeah, so it happened at home actually. It was one morning. It was 7.02 a.m., which is what I think I'm going to call the book. I looked at my phone and I needed to be at an appointment And my inner monologue said to myself, come on, Bob, which is my nickname for myself, you need to get cracking. And I put the phone down and then the next thing was it felt like someone put an axe through my thoracic spine and I just collapsed. And there's still a dent in the back wall of the house where my shoulder hit it.

And luckily, everyone was home and my wife ran out and called an ambulance immediately. um the biggest thing the biggest thing was that you couldn't breathe like i just could not breathe and every breath was about 30 percent less than the breath before um so mentally i'm trying to think what's gone wrong um have i ruptured a disc in my in my back have i what have i done and my son was sort of rubbing my back trying to give me some relief and it was like you were drowning and I was trying to find a position that I could breathe in. I was actually hanging on to a door handle and I got to a point

where I couldn't take the next breath, that I really could not. So you were virtually drowning, suffocating there in front of your eyes. What was going through your head? Do you realise how close you were potentially to death? Yes, yes. No, I actually thought, so when something happens like this, you know, I remember having an accident in my racing car once. Everything slows down and you sort of start, you know,

the vortex around you spinning, but where you are is very calm. and um so all of a sudden everything went calm and quiet and i remember thinking well this is how it ends i'm about to draw my last breath like then it's i'm gonna die here with surrounded by my family and um because i just could not take a breath could not take a breath and right at that point in time i heard the ambulance and the other voice on the other shoulder we've got an angel and a devil in us, started screaming at me. I won't use the exact words, but it was screaming at me, saying, no, you take that breath.

You take it. You effing take it, no matter what. You just take it. And I took the next breath and thinking, right, any second now they'll be able to help me breathe, which when they arrived inside the house, it did help. Not a lot, but it did help. What did they do, just whack you straight on oxygen?

Yeah, and then, of course, the pens to start to relieve the pain, not that that did a huge amount. But, yeah, that was a real edge moment where I actually thought it was all over. So then I got into the Royal Adelaide very quickly and scanned. And I remember a surgeon at the base of my bed telling my wife, saying, look, this is what we're going to do. We're going to sedate him heavily.

He'll be in critical care. We'll see if he's here in the morning. Did you know that at the time? No, I heard him say that. And at the same time, a nurse came up to me and said, we're going to be giving you these drugs. Don't panic. I'll be here.

And you know how I find the humour and everything. so they gave me these drugs and um i swore for four days that the cast of the movie roger rabbit were at the door of my icu room you know the the cast of toontown and because i had you in the high-flying drugs that were hallucinating basically but they were yeah they were really and I only have snapshots of those five days in my mind. But, yeah, so that's the sort of stuff you're on. I remember telling the nurse one day, they're going to get in, they're going to – like Roger Rabbit, he's trying to get in the door.

Again, I'm pretty ignorant around the human body and the aortic dissection and everything. Once something like that's – so that's one of the major valves going into your heart, I'm assuming it has split. So are you internally bleeding? Is that what's going on? So aorta has got – it's got – if you can imagine a line inside a line. So you have what's called a lumen.

So you have one line going down the middle, and then it splits off or allows the outer line. line so you can imagine one one garden hose inside another garden hose okay yeah um and then blood flows off to various organs and feeds those organs so the outer one was still intact but the blood was flowing through a line that it shouldn't have been right however what happened was i started to grow aneurysms in the outer line so it blocks the well or not No, so if you can imagine a cut in a tyre and the tube in the tyre starting to blow out through the cut, that's what the aneurysm was like. So about six months after, quite a substantial aneurysm, not far from my heart, was diagnosed, and that was quite long, and they wanted to – well, the advice was to replace the aorta.

So if you can imagine to do that, they've got to get right inside you. So we're talking about, in essence, splitting you in half, taking out all your ribs and splitting you in half. So do a cut from your neck down to your navel, basically, and then disengage your ribcage so that it actually folds out. This is what I'm imagining. What they described to me was we start cutting you behind the shoulder and we come down underneath your armpit,

take out all your ribs and split you in two like so. And so the advice was, A, if you survive it, that's number one. B, if you don't have a heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and whatever we don't hook up because we can only have you open for so long, it won't work again. So any other organs, including your spine, if that doesn't get hooked up, then so be it. So what's a survival rate on this sort of surgery, mate?

Can you share with us? No, I don't, to be honest. I don't think I even asked that question because by that stage I was pretty much a block of ice in front of the surgeon. What was going through your head and what were you feeling as he's telling you this thing? Because you've just spent six months, and I'm guessing that six months you weren't doing much other than trying to recover

because if you've had such a sharp and life-threatening episode like that with that dissection, were you back on your feet by that stage? No, I'd never really recovered. I was either in hospital, in bed or on the couch. I really hadn't improved, which had them all a bit phased until the aneurysm was discovered. Right. um so yeah i really wasn't i i'd improved enough to come home but not you know like for example i

couldn't drive i couldn't walk up to the shops um you know in fact i couldn't walk far at all um so what was your state of mind like at that stage mate what were you thinking um i thought i i thought i would beat it i didn't think it would be something that would that would get me i whilst you had your moments, I thought, you know, this is just a matter of time and I'll get back to normal and we'll all be, you know, it'll all be okay. But when this hit, I must admit, that started to really make me think, ooh, this could be the end. So the surgeon gave me another option.

He said, we might be able to make an implant to put in you. And so this was in Melbourne. They sent me to Melbourne for this. and he said go home have a think about it i'll do whatever you want you can either have the operation or you can have the implant and um we walked out of there my wife said i need a drink so we actually went straight to the airport and um uh because she was actually my carer at the time so um we came home and i next morning i said look i'll have the implant this is great it'll take a month to make it you come back here your wife stays in one of these you know sort of

hostile type things and we do it so i was waiting and i actually said how long have i got and he said if you don't he said that ruptures that's it like that could rupture tomorrow yeah but he said six months max he said but if that ruptures that's it it's all over end of story there's nothing anyone can do so two weeks late sorry go on yeah that month must have been horrific mate Well, I didn't get to a month because two weeks later, it was a Thursday and I just wasn't feeling well and I thought, oh, it's okay, it's okay. And the next morning, the Friday morning, I woke up at 6 o'clock and I really was not well.

And my wife walked out to the back room and she said, I'm calling an ambulance. And so I got rushed in and the aneurysm was starting to burst, to burst which is if that had happened that that would have been um lights out so that was one of those sort of code red type things in the it was in the old royal adelaide in um emergency there and while they rushed around and um and put a team together um and uh there was a indian chap by the name of, Prabhu was his name, who was the coordinator. And I'll never forget this moment.

He, and he'd become a really good friend. So back in the old days, you had everyone's direct phone numbers in the Royal Adelaide. You could ring them up and go, oh, you know, this, that, I want to change this time, because I was in and out of there so much. Of course. And Prabhu walked in. It was just great to see his face.

He's gone back to India now, and we still stay in touch, actually. Yeah, brilliant. And he walked in, and he gave me a man hand, and he looked me right in the eye. We were looking at each other's souls, and he said, he said, Bob, what are you doing? You know, and he said, have they told you what can go wrong with this? And I said, no, they haven't.

And he said, all the things that the surgeon in Melbourne told me, you can still have a stroke. Well, first of all, you can still die. and so that actually told me get your family in and say goodbye right so you can still pass away from this you can still have a stroke you still have a heart attack um you still have kidney failure and they could still block off accidentally a blood flow to whatever a limb your spine whatever so i thought okay so when the time came i actually got out of bed and i hugged my family i thought

well, this could be it. So I said goodbye, no matter what, you know, if I come out of it, what it looks like when I come out of it. How did that feel? Take me to that moment where you were hugging your wife and you're hugging your son and daughter and saying, this could be it. Very few of us have faced that, mate.

I would love to share what you're thinking and feeling at the time if you can. It's very funny. And I didn't work – it took me years to actually process this feeling, and I was actually at a self-improvement course, and it dawned on me when we have to do something, it doesn't matter what it is, whether we're buying property or what we're doing in life. As I said, again, I stress I didn't know this at the time.

With hindsight, I worked it out. we normally make a decision and the decision is based on the options that are in front of us and we take the decision that's the least offensive the one that's going to hurt us the least um so it's normally what's the lesser of the two evils we have to choose you know we might be in a restaurant going should i have the fish should i have the steak oh what if i haven't done this what if i haven't done that and then if you get it wrong you're angry with yourself because i should have chosen that one or you know the person next to you chooses the chicken when you chose the pastor and you're upset with yourself because you feel you've made a wrong decision yeah

what i did in that moment uh what i learned that i did in that moment was i made a choice so a choice the the difference when you choose you commit to it and whatever the outcome is you own it right it's not anyone else's fault it wasn't a bad decision it's just that you own it and you are going to be happy with the outcome no matter what it is and you'll deal with the outcome yeah and so i was actually remarkably calm uh you know it wasn't sobbing or you know why me or whatever um got out of bed gave them all a hug told them i loved them um and got put on the bed and wheeled off, and I remember actually thinking, why am I so calm?

And as I said, it took a long time to process that, but it was because I believe I'd made a choice to go, well, I'm choosing to go down this hallway into the operating theatre and whatever the result is, that's the result. Yeah, that's a big learning in what you've just shared with us there that can be applied to anything you're doing. And if you're able to go, right, I'm not going to make a decision, I'm going to make a choice.

A choice you own. You own it. It's yours. The decision, you know, you can blame someone else or you're picking the lesser of two evils or you're unsure, oh, you know, should I do this, should I do that? But it's only a subtle difference. It's only a slight difference between decision and choice.

but the choice deep down is you have chosen this and you're embracing it 100% and you own it. You own the outcome no matter what and you'll be a lot happier with yourself. Even if it doesn't go well, you're going to be a lot happier with yourself. I think that is applicable to so many areas of life because what I'm hearing there, Rob,

is that a choice comes with commitment where a decision is often a choice between alternatives and where you're making a decision based on the pros and cons versus a choice of saying, well, I don't care what the outcome is, I'm committing 100% to this and accepting where that goes. The mindset in that very subtle difference in thinking is massive in terms of how you're going to feel about it

and how long you will stay the course to whatever it is that you're making a choice on. It's huge. The course I was at where I learnt this and it dawned on me in reflection what I'd done, the facilitator of that course told a story of a dear friend of his who actually passed away from an illness and told the story of how they were, you know, hugging and crying one night and that he said,

no, I choose this illness. And it made him happier and was able to enjoy the time he had left because he said, no, I'd choose it. And as I said, I wasn't aware of it at the time. It was in reflection. And so I try and – it's always hard, but I try and use that in day-to-day life to go, no, I choose to do this. If it doesn't work out, I own it.

No, I love that. That's a big insight to be making that could affect every major option that we're confronted with. If we're going right, well, I'm going to make a choice, which means I'm committing to this holus bolus. I think the world would be a happier and better place as a result of that, mate. Mate, tell me then, because I can see going through what you've been through there, that the road to recovery must have been long, arduous,

very painful, often tentative and quite scary. What kept you going? Because a lot of people mentally would fold in at that point and they'd still be sitting in a wheelchair, whereas you're bouncing around the place, climbing mountains and doing yoga and watching your diet and jumping on stage doing comedy acts. Very few people would go from that black place

to where you're at. Can you share with us what it is about what you thought, felt and did that enabled you to recover from that near-death exercise? Yeah, okay, there's a couple of things that spring to mind. I remember lying in hospital after the op and unfortunately I got meningitis during the op. So that added another dimension and certainly extenuated the recovery process a lot.

So it was a long, long, long road to recovery. But certainly I remember lying in bed and I was in a ward where it happened a number of times and it was very hard to sleep. Quite often you'd only get two or three hours sleep in one hit in the middle of the night. And you know what those hospital wards are like? It's terrible. you know, two, three, four in the morning with, you know,

nurses walking around with flashlights pointing at the ground. But you'd doze off and the person diagonally opposite you, that bed was empty. So they'd passed away, which sort of had me a bit worried, thinking, hang on, they've put me in a ward where we seem to lose a lot of these patients. They can't hold too much hope for me. But anyway, but I remember thinking then, I just want my life back.

I just want my life back. So as I came out of that, I started to research and focus on, because there's actually not a lot of help, which is one of the reasons I want to write the book one day, is there's actually not a lot of help out there once you've come through something like this. Pretty much once you get thrown out of hospital, there's there's no process or course or or very few people to turn to to go well what do I do

next hence why it's very easy to fall back into your old habits but um luckily I was able to be put into a couple of rehab programs um the start of it and then I just kept researching diet and health and uh and I remember you know walking was was uh one of the things I love to do um And because by the time I came out of hospital, I couldn't walk from the front door to the front gate. And so every day I'd go, okay, I'll do that. Then the next day I'll do it twice. And the next day I'll walk to the next door neighbours. And over a period of time, I ended up walking around the block.

And so everything I did, whether it was to swim or whatever, it was just set a little goal. reach it, and then extend it. So I remember the first time I walked around the block, I stayed on the phone to a friend of mine saying, if anything goes wrong, you know, come and get me. And once I did that, it was, okay, well, can I get to the – go around the block and then go to the end of the street? The first time I actually got into the pool at the gym,

I got into the pool, I walked a length, I got out. the second time I managed to walk up and then walk down and you just keep going and going. I love it. So what I'm hearing here is that you are, again, making a choice that you are going to be able to walk freely again. So you are committed to that end goal and then it was a matter of saying, okay, well, as long as every day I'm doing a little bit better

than what I did yesterday or at least achieving it consistently and extending what I'm doing. I know that I'm going to get there eventually. Is that what you were thinking? It was all about, yeah, just being better. So if I boil it right back, it's about being a better person today than what you were yesterday. So there was the physical component of that.

There was also the diet component. But there was the main thing and probably the biggest, biggest, biggest thing that I took out of all this whole journey was the mental aspect. which to me is the key for happiness, and it's being grateful. So one of the things you certainly learn very quickly is that there are, and probably one of my favourite quotes is, there's always someone worse off than you.

No matter how bad things are for you, there's always someone worse off. And being grateful for what you've got, being grateful that, A, you were born and you live in this country, being grateful for your family, being grateful you've got food to eat, even those real very basic things, what I learnt from all that was that was the key to being happy. So that's why I say when people say, you know, I said it was the best thing that ever happened to me,

having the dissection, they look at you really weird and you go, but that took two and a half years of your life. You nearly died twice. How can it be the best thing? The best thing is that I learnt so much about it and it brought me back to being grateful, grateful for everything that you've got and that to me that's the key to being happy.

Yeah, mate, you've shared some absolute gold there. Mate, given that, I mean, this podcast will be evergreen, so there'll be people who listen to this in years to come, I'm sure, given the reason you've been generous enough to share with us. But right here, right now, as we speak, we're in very uncertain times with the global pandemic and the prospects of all of that. And there's a lot of people that I see reacting to,

probably overreacting to fear and making, and I'll call them decisions, not choices in the context of what you and I have been just talking about, that aren't necessarily in their best interest. What would you say to people that are facing this level of uncertainty in terms of how to negotiate that and to come out of it better and stronger rather than cave into it and fulfil self-fulfilling prophecies that the fear-mongering press want us to all hang our hats on? Again, I suppose getting back to what I said a minute ago,

is first of all, being grateful. So here, we're in Adelaide, obviously, so we're extremely lucky in the sense that, you know, we're not in the epicentres in cities that are a lot worse off. You can wrap yourself in cotton wool, or you can manage the issue or you can make sure that you're washing your hands regularly, that you carry hand sanitiser.

I personally have not gone out and bought umpteen rolls of toilet paper. I just refuse to buy into that. I think the only reason people are doing that is to clean up the shit that the media keeps promoting anyway, but that's another story. Yeah, yeah. So, look, I think it's all about just understanding,

like most things you do in life, understanding where we sit in the whole journey and protecting yourself without being paranoid about it. So does it stop me meeting people and showing them houses? No, but we're not hugging and shaking hands. So it's that sort of thing. Being careful and courageous but not cowardly is, I guess, what I'm picking from that.

And I think you said something earlier in a discussion today that I think is relevant, and that's the rule of so what. So what? What's the worst thing that can happen here? Rather than fold in and crawl up in a ball, there's still a lot to be happy about. And as you've well said, by being grateful but being careful at the same time, then there's no reason why those things

should get in the way of where we're heading. No. Again, for those Adelaideans and also the bulk of Australia, we've got a fantastic health system. And again, if you're being careful and you're just heeding the advice that we're being given about looking after your own cleanliness and not doing things that put yourself at risk, you know, and especially if you do have a personal situation

that you're an at-risk person. For example, I don't have one at the moment, but if I did have an elderly relative in a nursing home, I would think really carefully about should I go and visit them. For example, who had I been in contact with the previous week or two and is it worth putting them at risk to go and visit? Just that sort of mentality, I think. Yeah, I think the careful mentality.

What about the – and they're the actual exercises. What about the mindset? Because I think we can draw a real parallel here to what we're dealing with in terms of the level of hysteria and the level of fear whether it's being generated around this versus the mindset that tackles that and being able to shut out the noise to what's real. And you've shared with us today some very real life-threatening situations you've been in. How have you been able to shut out the noise of the fear?

You know, you talked about the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other and the devil shouting, you're going to die, this is it, you're gone. How has your mindset been able to see through that? and if you can draw parallels to how we need to be thinking now to get through this short-term storm. It's obviously a day-by-day, and it's a little bit of a moving target. I think, again, in the very media-soaked world we live in, there's an enormous amount of information given to us.

I'm connected to a couple of people in China, and I've been posting videos about how they're starting to come out of it now. In fact, one chap I know who's in the comedy scene has been posting videos of aisles of toilet paper in supermarkets in Beijing and he's sort of going, hey, Australia, you don't need to panic. Like, everything is okay.

We've still got lots of supplies. And he's posted some very interesting stories about how things have gone on there. But I suppose the underlying thing, when you boil it all down, is just being careful and going, okay, for a while, if I know someone's been overseas, I'm not going to visit them. I'm not going to go overseas myself. Do I really need to catch a plane here? Do I really need to do this? No, I don't. Okay, well, I won't go to that gathering.

I'll balance it all out. You know, and again, keep that self – don't put anyone else at risk by risking yourself. So, again, the hand sanitizer, I've now got a bottle of that in my car. Do I still go and meet people? Yes. I just don't – you know, we do the elbow number or the ankle number and, yeah, all that sort of stuff.

It's going to create some great dance moves in the next couple of months. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Mate, I want to sort of jump into the old ambush round, which is the five quick questions that the listeners all want to learn your words of wisdom on. And you've shared some of these with us already, but kicking straight into that, what's your favorite quote and why? But I think I've already said that one, Bushy, and that is that there is always someone worse off than yourself. And I think, again, that leads on to the gratefulness and being happy, which, you know, I totally get it. It's very hard.

In fact, it's impossible to be like that 24-7, and I certainly don't profess that I am that 24-7. But, yeah, when you can slow the whirlwind down around you and take a big, deep breath and go, you know, is this going to matter in five years? Probably not. Is it going to matter in five weeks or five days? Probably not.

and there's someone worse off than you, then, yeah, is it really worth your time and stress and energy being devoted to this issue? So, yeah, I guess that one boils back to your mental state and managing your energy. Yeah, yeah, it's spot on. Mate, turning to the literary field, apart from the upcoming bestseller, 702 AM, that we can't all wait to read, What's the top book that you'd recommend people read and why?

There's probably two books. One I read when I was a young man, and it was Nicky Lauda's book, To Hell and Back, which I read in one sitting. I read it, my now wife bought it for me, and it was about 11 o'clock at night when I picked it up, and I stayed up all night and read it. And the reason I liked it,

you don't need to be a motor racing person. What I'm getting at here is I love stories of inspiration where people have faced adversity and I've just said, no, you're not going to take me. I'm going to beat you. And that's certainly what Nicky did back when he had his big accident at the Nürburgring. And for those of you that are interested in motorsport will know

that he actually had a lung transplant later in life and that's actually what caused his early demise. So that was any of those inspirational books, and that one in particular. And the other one I do like, it's Simon Sinek's book, Why. Looking in the mirror and going, okay, what's my why? Why am I doing this? What's really driving me? And that works on a lot of levels.

Obviously, that's a business book. So it's talk mainly about people that have got their business and why are they doing it, what's differentiating themselves. But there's a few extra levels on that to me that boil down into a personal level. So probably those two. Yeah, they're a couple of crackers. I haven't read To Hell and Back, but you've inspired me to go

and do that now, mate. I've always had a lot of time for Nicky Louder but never really delved into his story in any great depth. So given the inspiration that clearly comes through from the passion that you bring to life, mate, given what you've overcome. If that's inspired you, then that's going to inspire me, mate. So, mate, changing tack here a little bit, and this one's a little bit left field,

but a lot of Aussies feel they pay too much tax. What's the top thing that you've legally done to minimise the tax that you pay? Property, without doubt, property. So over the years, just whatever I've bought and sold has, during the time that I've owned it, save me tax, without doubt. Yeah, no, that's a cracker.

Switching back to the sort of investment scenario for a minute, what's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? Probably the worst is trying to squeeze the last droplet out of a deal. um you'll you'll risk losing it so get get to a point that you're comfortable with and do the do the deal um trying to squeeze the last bit out of it is uh is i found to be bad advice yeah um probably the best advice um getting the knowledge which will give you the confidence which will take

the fear out of making a decision so that process that i did talk i did sort of touch on a bit earlier in the podcast but bottom line with property time normally overcomes all ills so even if you don't make the choice that was the absolute best you could have made on the day time normally or quite often will overcome that ill. Yeah, that's really good advice, mate. Really good advice. Finally then, and again, given the journey you've been on, I think this one's going to be a good one.

What's a personal habit or habits that you believe have contributed most to your ongoing success? I think living a life of being grateful. which is not easy to do. But, yeah, the more grateful you are, the more you want to help others, which makes you feel better. You tend to attract the people you need to surround yourself with. So it's not a matter of going hunting for them.

They'll seek you out. So, yeah, that gratefulness leading to helping people, being surrounded by like-minded people. Yeah, so that gratefulness, gratefulness is that something that you wake up in the morning and and you start by saying thank you to as many as things come into your mind how does that wrap into a into the sort of that personal habit of gratitude yeah great question actually and uh what i'm finding is and i love doing um self-improvement courses um it's a bit of a joke of going well how do you know when to

stop but um uh near what i'm finding is there's a component of these nowadays where uh most of them will end with a book and an exercise so that and they'll vary some will say do three some will say do ten but when certainly when i'm in the zone um when i'm living my life the way i really really want to i'll get up and i'll write between three and ten things that i'm grateful for that particular day. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. And I've got a similar practice. I don't lift my head off the pillow until I've gone through a gratitude routine.

And they can be really simple things like thanks for the dog smile. Absolutely. But the feeling you get and how you're thinking after doing that, it only needs to be a minute or two. Your whole outlook on the day has changed. You sort of see the world better and brighter, don't you think? Absolutely. Like, it's not being thankful for having the Mercedes

versus the Holden Commodore. It's being thankful for the sun, for the weather, for the rain, for the heat, for the cool, for the fact that you were able to sleep in a comfortable bed, that you've had a great night's sleep, that you have actually woken up, you know, all those sorts of – the cats jumped on you and purred or, you know, all those sorts of. Yeah, and I love that, mate. And, I mean, I often say we live in the best country at the best time ever

in the history of the world. So there's actually a lot to show gratitude for. Mate, final question, and you've shared some absolute with and withs today, but if I gave you the microphone that hooked into speaking to every one of the 7.7 billion people in the world at the one time and you had one minute to talk, what would you say? What would I say? I think I would, again, get back to this being grateful,

help others, certainly as parents, if I relate that back a property for a sec, encourage your children to get into property as soon as they possibly can, which is certainly something I've done with my own children. But, yeah, look, going to regurgitate that bushy, I really think it's all about trying to be one, be helpful, be kind to each other, be grateful, be happy we're all here. None of us get out of this alive.

So help each other as much as you possibly can. Yeah, some great thoughts there, mate. And that means a lot for someone who's looked death in the eye on more than a couple of occasions and lived and smiled and joked to tell the tale, which is, again, that outlook of yours, that sort of underlying optimism and positivity is very energising and very inspiring, mate. I really appreciate you sharing that with us today.

For those of the listeners who want to get in touch with you, Rob, given the inspiration you bring to the table and given the awesome skills you have in terms of being able to assist them in selecting a great property through your buyer's agency business, Blackford's Property, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? The best way is to send me an email to Blackford's Property B-L-A-C-K-F-O-R-D-S, property at bigpond.com.

Yeah, brilliant, mate. Mate, been a really energising and interesting story. Love you spending some time out of your very busy day to do so, mate. Look forward to delving into and revisiting this in the future. and as soon as that book, 702 AM, has been released, mate, we'll get you back on to talk us through it in more detail. Thanks for your time, Rob. Pleasure. Thank you, Bushy.

Thanks, mate. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. or check us out at www.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.