Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Sam Buckby on sliding doors moments

Episode Date: March 7, 2020

Maybe you have been thinking about investing in property for years but there has always been something or some reason why you have never quite stepped through the sliding door and onto property train. This has been exactly the case with today’s guest Sam Buckby, who explains why he has almost invested in property over 20 times over the last decade or so. Sam’s a great bloke, an author, podcaster, speaker, consultant, electrical expert and guru at using intelligent design to create a more simple life. Sam is the owner and founder of Buckby Electrical, the creative mind behind Smarter Buildings and host of his hot new podcast Spaces. He has over 20 years experience in electrical contracting, functional design and the built environment. Sam also manages a highly successful contracting business that has shown growth every year since inception and has even appeared on the hit house renovation TV show, The Block. Through his whole working life, he’s seen the evolution of technology become part of our everyday lives but wants to see our built environment evolve so that advanced functionality isn’t just simple, but the norm. Sam’s the expert when it comes to designing the functionality of state-of-the-art buildings and has written a book on the topic called Homes with a Heartbeat. But what I like most about Sam is that he puts life’s big rocks of family, friends, fitness and health first and the rest of life fits in the gaps – he lives a great lifestyle of his own design.  So if you’re like Sam and have been thinking about investing for ages but have never quite got around to it, today could be your sliding door moment – so I challenge you to reach out to me at [e-mail] with the header ‘Sliding Door Moment’ and join me on our Freedom Flight video webinar education series so you have all of the information you need to make a fully informed sliding door decision. Sam's book recommendation: Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler 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.

There's sliding doors through your whole life and I've always said that you will come across those sliding doors that open, but you don't actually have to walk through them. You get to choose whether you walk through that door or not. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on 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 get invested. Thanks for listening, and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters

Have you had sliding door moments in your life? You know, those tiny, seemingly inconsequential moments of the time that can alter the trajectories of your life For those of you who haven't seen the 1998 movie Sliding Doors which popularised that term it's a story that alternates between two storylines showing the two paths that Gwyneth Paltrow's character Helen takes depending on whether or not she catches a train.

We get to see how her life plays out in both scenarios like parallel universes. If you have had a sliding door moment where a situation or a choice you need to make can knowingly or unknowingly take your life in different directions were you aware of it and how did you respond? Let me share a couple of my most memorable and impactful sliding door moments. The first when I met my now wife Sonia and I instantly felt deep down, almost viscerally at an unconscious level

that we were going to be joined at the hip and we were meant to travel life together even though I wasn't mentally aware of it at the time. My second sliding door moment occurred when a mate of mine reluctantly convinced us to attend a Robert Kiyosaki conference in Adelaide way back in 1997 and a light bulb went off. It's what I now call my Kiyosaki moment. I'll never forget his words when he said that the moment you make passive income a part of your life your life will change it totally resonated we instantly realized that we needed to get invested

by creating an income that didn't rely on us so we had the free time to really enjoy the life we were dreaming of and overnight we became what I call passive aggressive we became aggressive about creating passive income and from that day on everything we've done in property and our businesses has been built around the philosophy of creating passive income value growth assets. On both these occasions I saw the world completely differently from that moment on and they've both been life-changing and led us on the exciting path that we now enjoy today. you see for me sliding door moments are those situations in your life where you get to make a choice and deep down in your gut below your logical conscious mind you just know that those

decisions are going to be life-changing so what about you what have been your sliding door moments did you catch the train or miss the train once you were exposed to another way of viewing the world what did you do about it well unfortunately for a lot of us in our current logical science-based and evidence-based world the fear and safety of the conservative head often overrides the deep gut feeling and instinctive intuitive knowing of the heart those situations where you just know it's right but your head won't let you do it and you're often maintaining the status quo because it's better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Where fear of the unknown makes a change seem risky when you aren't sure where it's going to lead. But here's the thing. In my view,

the only thing worse than not knowing something important is knowing something important and then not doing anything about it. It's almost a crime. Retreating to the apparent safety of what we know, many of us continue to make the same key choices and decisions over and over again until we've suffered enough to wake up and make new ones. Enter your sliding door moment. Over the course of our lifetime, we have thousands of opportunities to alter our path, some leading us to positive outcomes and others to negative. But each key decision offers opportunities for growth.

And as we move through life, key decisions remain as a form of protection, safety comfort and often security and the more we value comfort and security that less likely we are to create change now one of my favorite tony robbins quotes is the path of least resistance is the path of pain beginning with a pivotal sliding door moment now may lead you to your greatest life adventure of all like me 20 years ago maybe you've been thinking about investing in property for years, but there's always been something or some reasons why you just have never quite taken the sliding door step onto the property train. This has been exactly the case with today's guest, Sam Buckby, who will explain in our great conversation why

he's almost invested in property over 20 times over the last decade or so. Now, Sam's a great He's an author, a podcaster, a speaker, a consultant, an electrical expert and a guru at using intelligent design to create a more simple life. Sam's the owner and founder of Buckby Electrical, the creative mind behind Smarter Buildings and the host of his hot new podcast show, Spaces. He has over 20 years experience in electrical contracting, functional design and the built environment. Sam also manages a highly successful contracting business that has shown continual growth for many years and he's even appeared on the hit house renovation TV show, The Block. Through his whole working life,

he's seen the evolution of technology become part of our everyday lives but he wants to see our built environment evolve so that advanced functionality isn't just simple but it's the norm. sam's the expert when it comes to designing the functionality of state-of-the-art buildings and has written a book on the topic called homes with a heartbeat but what i like most about sam is that he puts life's big rocks of family friends fitness and health first and the rest of his life just fills in the gaps he lives a great lifestyle of his own design so if you like sam and you've been thinking about investing for ages but you've never quite got around to it then today could be

your sliding door moment so i challenge you to reach out to me at bushy at khgroup.com.au with the header sliding door moment and join me on our freedom flight video webinar education series so you have all the information you need to make a fully informed sliding door decision And in the meantime, enjoy this great conversation with Sam Buckby. Welcome back Freedom Fighters and I'm really looking forward to catching up with today's guest and I'm doing that because ever since I started getting vested, I've been wanting to get him on the show. Why?

Because he's one of the most generous people I've come across and his insights are always straight to the point and right on the money. Now, I first met him during the KPI, Key Person of Influence, Business Accelerator program a few years back, where he went above and beyond to help me without any benefit to himself or expecting anything in return, and I'll never forget it. I respect and admire him because, one, he's got his shit together, two, he's got his priorities right, and three, he walks his talk. So welcome, and let's get invested, Sam Buckby.

Thanks, Bushy. Thanks for having me on. No, I've been looking forward to it for ages, mate. So I always have a lot of respect for the way you operate, mate, both as a person and with what you do in the world. So, mate, for those listening who don't know who you are, can you sort of just start by telling us who you are, what you do and where you're currently heading, Billy?

Sure, sure. I guess like a lot of people these days, it's not as pigeonholed as what it used to be, but I'm an electrician by trade, believe it or not, sort of going back to when i started my apprenticeship quite some time ago but since then i'm now the business owner um i've got a couple businesses i've got an electrical contracting business called buck be electrical which has been running for i think we're in our 16th year um yeah and i've also got a consultancy business called smarter buildings we're in the

same industry in the construction industry but we work with sort of architects and building designers to better use technology to create more highly functional automated spaces, I guess. And then sort of outside of that, I do a bit of speaking. I am the author of a book called Homes with a Heartbeat and I'm also a podcaster as well because, you know, I think you and I are very similar in the fact that we enjoy talking turkey and podcasting is a great way

to make an excuse to turn that into a business decision. Mate, you've given the secret away there, Sam. I know. I just love talking to people, mate, and if I can record it and share it with others, then what a bargain. And I should probably say the podcast is called Spaces, and it's all about thinking about space differently and creating spaces that inspire people to do whatever it is they're trying to do, whether it's live or work or what have you.

Yeah, I'm going to dive into that a little bit later on, mate, because we've got a joint passion for exactly that. But before we sort of do a walk through your history, why do you do what you do, mate? I guess the easy answer is that there's sliding doors through your whole life. And I've always said that you will come across those sliding doors that are open, but you don't actually have to walk through them. You get to choose whether you walk through that door or not. and I guess, you know, it's been a lot of those moments in my life and I still remember I left school at the ripe old age of 15 on request from the teaching staff and management of the school.

I don't think we need to go down there, but I was a rebellious kid, I suppose you would say. I wasn't a bad kid. I was never in trouble with police or anything like that. I never did anything that was, you know, incriminating in any way. i just uh like to do things my own way and and back in the uh 90s that wasn't congruent with with how schools worked so the easier choice was for me to go out and get a job and my dad won't mind me saying this i still remember sitting in the the principal's office on on what was to be

my last day of school and the principal and the assistant principal and there was another another teacher there okay it's quite some time ago i can't remember and they sort of said look Sam, we're only a quarter of the way through the year. If you stick it out for the rest of the year, you're probably still going to fail. I went, oh, okay. I said, your attendance is down. You're not handing assignments in.

You're not doing this. You're not doing that. You're really not subscribing to the school system. So we think you should reconsider what you want to do in the short term. So I turned to my dad who was sitting next to me. My dad was a flat-out hippie back in the 60s and 70s, a very easygoing, sort of love life kind of guy. Yes.

And I said to Dad, I said, well, what do you reckon I should do? Because I was only 15, and whilst you think you know everything, when you get put on the spot, you realise you don't. Yes. And Dad turns to me and he goes, I've been meaning to tell you something for quite some time. And he goes, I think now's probably the right time. And I'm like, oh, shit, it's a big moment.

What's going on, Dad? And he goes, I did year 10 and failed. He goes, I went back and I did year 10 a second time. He goes, I bloody failed. He goes, so I went back and I did it a third time and I got halfway through the year and I cut my losses and left. He goes, I wasted two and a half years of my life. So cut the chase.

Yeah, go on, mate. I read between the lines and I looked at the principal. I said, if you don't mind, I might leave. Were the teachers expecting you to say, oh, no, no, oh, I'm going to pull my finger out and yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir? Or do you think they were hoping to actually show the handle on the door on the way out? I think the door might have hit me on the back as I walked out. Where did that sort of rebellion – is it a rebellious streak

or were you just bored out of your brain? Yeah, no one's ever put it that way, but I think you're probably right. I was probably bored. I don't know. I did a lot when I was young. I grew up in a small sort of coastal town. I'm not far from where I think you are now, over the other side of the bay.

I was in Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale is where I sort of grew up. And I guess I always found something to do that was a bit more interesting than school. So I played a lot of sport. I'll get into it a bit later. But I started working at a real young age. Like I was earning decent money by the age of probably, you know, 11 or 12 years old.

Yeah. and I was I had a lot of freedom to sort of do you know I was probably a little bit big for my britches a bit too mature for what I should have been because I had a bit of freedom with money freedom with time and and I wasn't going to school a hell of a lot so I had lots of time but I guess yeah I got to school and and that um feel feeling a bit caged in and not having that freedom to to sort of do what I wanted I guess just wasn't synonymous with with you know my personality and yeah it made me rebel which i have a little bit of regret about just something you know i probably why why i just think i probably could have been more respectful i don't i don't

think that i needed to change who i was but i just think i probably could have shown you know some people a bit more respect who you know they were just there doing their job and they were trying to get the best out of the kids and and you know i was probably just a bit steadfast in in my way which is which is fine but you know respect is a big part of my whole methodology these days it's you know whenever i'm dealing with people it's you know respect is a big part of that so yeah um maybe maybe i learned it the hard way yeah okay okay well let's let's wind back a little bit there uh as we sort of start the journey you mentioned that you're working at 11 or 12 what were you doing then mate i was giving you the good coin

yeah i mean we weren't an overly well-to-do family we all had to work pretty hard my parents had a milk bar um we grew up in a house out the back of the milk bar so i was working you know in the milk bar occasionally to be honest i'm not sure whether i got paid for that part but you know there was a a responsibility to to work in the family milk bar but then i did have i think i picked up my first paper round which i don't believe they do paper rounds anymore for an insurance point of view but you know back in the day kids got on their push bikes and rode around throwing papers over people's front fences trying not to break windows and uh i think i got my first one when i was maybe grade three or four so i was probably only 10 years old something like that and

i'd get up at 5 30 in the morning and head down the newsagents and load up with you know as many papers as i could fit in the milk crate that was cable tied to the front of my bike and drive around and throw them around and then i remember an opportunity came up for you know a kid there was it's a long time ago i think there was four paper rounds in queenscliff you know it was set into quadrants the the town and yeah and one kid sort of said he was going to stop doing it and i said to the news i said well i'll do that one as well so instead of starting at 5 30 i'll just start at five and i'll bowl them both over and i'll get twice as much money so i did that for for a while And then going back again, there was an afternoon newspaper once upon a time.

So then after school, I used to go back down to the newsagents and I'd load up with the afternoon edition of the Herald Sun and I'd ride around town throwing that around as well. And then in the holidays, I used to finish my two morning paper rounds in the school holidays and I'd ride down to the caravan park and sell them, you know, just ride around the caravan park selling them. Yeah. And I think at one point, I think I was still in primary school. I was probably only 11 or 12 years old, and I remember I was earning about $120, $130 a week as an 11-year-old back in the early 90s. It was a lot of money. It's hard to put context around that, but I remember on any given week,

I could just go down and buy myself a new pair of shoes, and I didn't even put a dit in what I was making. So it was a bit of freedom. It was good. Let's talk about the inspiration for doing that because did mum or dad say, you'd better get out there and earn some pocket money, Sam, or where did the motivation to go and grab a paper and come from? Can you remember?

Yeah, look, I think it was a bit of that. I think, you know, my dad was always a hard worker. Whilst he's a very easygoing personality, very, very hard worker. And there would have been, I can't remember specifically, but there certainly would have been a lot of encouragement there to do that. But then, as we didn't have, you know, a hell of a lot of money, it was just a way for me to be able to, you know, a few other kids were getting the new footy boots every winter

and I couldn't afford new footy boots as a, you know, 10-year-old. I'd be using my brother's, my older brother's footy boots from two seasons prior. If I went out and got a job, it meant I could go buy new footy boots, you know, and maybe when you're young, you don't really know what's going on. Maybe it was a bit of keeping up with the Joneses, but, you know, it was just nice to be able to be, you know,

Not self-sufficient at the age of 11, but certainly have a level of independence that you probably wouldn't expect from many kids these days, that's for sure. And sort of discovering very early that having disposable money that you can put towards what you want to do, there is a level of freedom that goes with that. Was that a seed that sort of continued through in terms of your attitude to money and relationship with money ongoing, mate? Yeah, I think so. Look, I'm not a money-driven person. I never have been, never will be, but I am a very independent person who likes to make their own sort of decisions around what they're doing. And I still remember, you know, I think it was a matter of days after I'd left school at the age of 15. I landed a job that was arguably one of the best jobs I ever had.

It was doing lighting for TV commercials. You sort of get on site, and I was just an assistant of sorts. There was a lighting technician there, and I just got there and basically unrolled extension leads and packed up, and I just loved it. I loved being out of the confines of school. I loved getting around to multiple sites and working in different places every day.

You know, I love being able to get paid for actually getting up in the morning and, you know, working hard and getting that paycheck at the end of the week. And it's a very, very different mindset to going to school. And, you know, I've never looked back from that point. And I'd like to think I'm a hard worker. I've probably restructured my life, you know, in the last 10 years quite significantly. So I'm not working as much. But I've got to say I'm not doing nothing. I'm not sitting on my ass, and I get time to watch Netflix, that's for sure.

Well, let's continue the journey, mate. So you started as the assistant lighting guy. Where did that lead to? What did you learn from that, and what was the next step? Yeah, well, I actually received some fairly sage advice from my boss at the time, Bruce. He was a lighting technician, and what he was finding in the industry, and this is probably mid-'90s, mid-'96, I think, he was finding that the industry was just pivoting slightly

because what had happened up until that point is there was lighting technicians and then there'd actually be an electrician on site as well who was there for an emergency because they're paying big dollars for, you know, some of the venues they're hiring for TV commercials or, you know, sometimes they're having to shut down streets and things like this to do their shoots

and there's a lot of money tied up in that. yeah so they'd always make sure that they had the right people on site to make sure that everything went uh fluently and and they would have an electrician on site for if there was ever any reasons and then a number of these electricians started doing the lighting um and sort of doubling up he was finding that his work was drying up ever so slightly because he was getting um sort of out tended by by the contractors that could kill two birds with one stone yeah and he said to me i'd worked for him for probably a year or maybe a fraction longer and he said oh look he goes i'm going to give you a bit of advice he goes i'd recommend you

go and do an electrical apprenticeship he goes because i know you love working here and and he goes i'm just not sure what my use by date is in the industry that you know a lot of the people who are now getting into it are electricians so maybe go spend four years doing your apprenticeship and then come back, and who knows? And I sort of remember taking that advice home and thinking it was a good idea. So I sat on it for a while. So I was probably only 16 at the time.

I didn't start my apprenticeship until I was 18. I fluffed around. I did what 16 and 17-year-olds do, and I found girls and alcohol and all those things that are top of the list at that age. Yeah. Hasn't changed much, has it, mate? i just i just single girl these days yeah that's right same here but um

yeah i think by the time i was i was 18 you know there was a couple of life lessons there around just making sure that i started to think about the future slightly um certainly wasn't you know the most important part of me but i did have to start thinking about it and so i i went out and landed an apprenticeship with a local contractor and I guess that's where my journey started into the industry that I've spent, you know, the most part of my life in. I'm 30, how old am I? 38 years old.

So I've been in the industry for 20 years and I guess a lot changes, you know, week on week, year on year. So the original concept of going into the electrical industry to do a four-year apprenticeship to go back to lighting probably faded away really quickly. Suddenly I was in the electrical industry. We were doing projects that I loved. I was enjoying work and I never really thought to go back to industry.

And then I finished my apprenticeship and I loved it. And I did, amazingly, you know, I was very, very good at trade school. You know, I would always nail every prac and every exam and, you know, I was very good at school. And, you know, I had a lot of people sort of say to me, how is it that you failed so badly at high school but you're one of the best students we've ever had at trade school? What was your answer to that?

Well, I could never answer it at the time because I was young and dumb. But now I think back, you know, I was actually invested in it. I enjoyed my time there. You know, I saw the future in it. I saw what was in it for me, and so I was happy to apply myself, whereas I just didn't have that connection when I was at high school. Well, you can sort of understand that. A lot of the stuff, if you're doing, you know, reading, writing,

arithmetic, you're going, what relevance has this got to the real world? Yeah. Whereas what you're doing at trade school, which is actually hands-on doing the do, it would be like, yeah, I'm loving this. I can really see where this is going to be handy. It's probably more an indictment of the education system than it is of your abilities, mate, in all honesty.

Yeah. And then I think I was only about one year after my apprenticeship. So I'd finished my apprenticeship. I'd worked for about another year, and I'd registered, you know, an ABN. I'd become a subcontractor, and I'd gone out and I'd done a what's called the registered electrical contracting course. So you can have your own business going forward,

your sort of license to trade. It's different to what is your electrical license. It's basically a license to trade. So I've gone out and done that with no specific time frame around when it is I might start a business, but I just kind of thought, no, I want to have this ready to go for if the time ever comes. And it happened all very quickly because my boss at the time, who I'd worked for on and off for five years,

and I'd consider him to be a friend. I haven't seen him in a while, but we get along very, very well. And he had taken, he'd had a bit of a lifestyle change and he had decided to take over the management of a caravan park, he and his wife, you know, gave him more time with his wife, more time with the kids, gave him the biggest backyard in town. and he continued to run the electrical business you know out of a shed in the caravan park for a little while probably six months or so but yeah you know it'd be i'd be trying to get information out of him while he's mowing lawns and it just wasn't working you know perfectly and his customers were starting to get a little bit frustrated which was the issue that was the main issue his customers were sort of calling me saying we can't get a hold of your boss

yeah and so the conversation happened you know not long after that where you know i sat down with him and and we decided that he was he was going to get out he was um out of the electrical he was going to focus his time on on this new lifestyle change which is you know which was great you know that's i was really um respectful of you know his choices and him being really open but what it meant is he basically handed me a business and i was 20 i was 22 yep and he handed me all these i didn't buy his business per se but but his whole customer base knew me because i've been doing for four or five years and so suddenly i had this sort of um you know business at the age of 22 and i whilst i was good at what i did electrically and i i think

i'm pretty switched on and i've got decent common sense there's a whole next level to running a business that you don't know until you either get taught or you get thrown into it yeah and so i got thrown into to running a business and um you know here i am now it's that business is still going and i've now got other businesses but let's talk about the transition there uh because i think this is important there's a massive difference between doing doing the do so being an electrician that's out there actually doing the work and running the business in terms of finding the business, resourcing the business, managing the cash flows, doing the financials.

It's a completely different exercise. I can imagine you would have gone from working hard during the day doing this stuff to suddenly having very few weekends and a lot of late nights keeping the thing rolling. Am I right? oh there's some funny stories my my wife and i i'd known for a few funny stories that we talk about when business first started i still remember we had this tiny little two-bedroom home at the time we'd probably not long sort of moved in together yeah and uh our daughter grace was

very uh by the time this happened she was probably two and a half three years old i was probably 23 24 years old something like that yeah and we had a two-bedroom home so i was always trying to find somewhere to put this bloody old computer and see they weren't little laptops back then you know i had this massive computer that had this huge hard drive and floppy disks and all that sort of rubbish oh yeah you know it sort of sit on the end of the dining room table until my wife would get sick of that and then it would get moved into the other corner of the bedroom and then that would get in the way so i was always trying to move around and it was uh it was when my my wife fell pregnant with our second child hugh that i had to move out of uh sorry to take it back we had moved into

another house at this point we had an extra bedroom and i did go yes i finally got myself an office i've got the third bedroom my office and then my wife fell pregnant and um when women fall pregnant they very quickly go into that nesting nesting phase where yeah nothing else in the entire world matters except getting that nursery right and so suddenly my computer was in the hallway when i got home um from work subtle hint yes yeah so the only spot left in the house was uh on top of the dryer in the laundry yeah it was on top of the dryer where i had to put a towel down and my computer sat there in the laundry but invariably you know there was washing to do of a night, which happened to coincide with the same time

that I'd be doing my invoicing. And so I'd be trying to work with a washing machine going, a dryer going, and, you know, we got it done. That's how it was back in the early days. Yeah, probably a big difference now. And let's take us through the transition because what I admire about you, Sam, is that you put the big rocks in. And from what I see, you've got your lifestyle sorted.

So you've obviously built the business to a point where it's not totally reliant on you and you've involved others to give you back time to put into things that are important. Can you talk us through what your lifestyle currently looks like and how you've managed to get to that point? Yeah, look, I'm a fairly trusting guy and I did learn at a very sort of early age my business. Whilst I wasn't successful in business, you know, in the early years, I still, you know, there was a good Friday. My wife and I still remember our daughter was quite young and we needed to go buy Easter eggs, you know, for Easter morning. And we looked in the bank and we had $6 in the bank. Wow. And we thought, shit, I can't afford Easter eggs here.

And we had to borrow some money off my wife's parents, which they were always a good helping hand in the early days. But my wife at the time was my bookkeeper. Now, she only lasted a few months. We either got divorced or I fired her. So I fired her and I realised quite quickly that, yeah, in order to be good in business, you actually need to have some really good people around you, which was a bit foreign to how I'd sort of spent the conscious part of of my sort of youth growing up you know i was very independent

and i if i needed something done i did it myself and yeah and that's just how it was um and when i got to that age you know in my mid-20s trying to run business i realized you actually can't do it all yourself and and it was that was new to me that wasn't something that came natural so i i eventually found a bookkeeper and you know i nearly died at the fact i'd have to be paying out you know what was going to be a couple hundred bucks a week for someone to manage my books but it very quickly started to pay dividends because it meant well back then you know I could work a bit more because I wasn't having to worry about the books yeah and the cash flowing would be a lot better too in terms of yeah that's right yep and and I guess that's just evolved and

evolved and evolved over the last you know probably 15 years of business where you know I've got really really good people around me now I've got you know a great office manager I've got great project managers I've got you know great worker bees great staff out in the field and it really frees me up to do the things that I'm good at but be that I enjoy doing well that's a pretty smart transition that very few people get to that and it comes back to what you mentioned before it comes back to that element of trust and control and where did that sort of trusting nature come from do you think uh i i can tell you exactly where that came from i i love my parents but we we had a uh a very sort of disjointed um bringing up i you

know i spent a lot of time walking out the front door for and not coming back for two or three days because i was frustrated at my parents and i ended up you know leaning on my friends my peers quite a lot through my adolescence and even into my sort of very late teens and up until I probably met my wife. I spent a lot of time with my friends and with my friends' parents. So I just became a, I don't know, just a very trusting person where I realised that there was a lot of people in the community that weren't in it just for themselves.

There was a lot of help out there if you just went out and looked for it. And I guess that's just something that I've kept with me through life. I'm still very trusting and if my son wants to go for a walk out the front door and walk around to his mate's house straight after school, I don't say why or how or what time you're going to be home. I say go for it, mate. Go learn a couple of life lessons, come back when you're ready.

I think the real benefit of that sort of approach because it's a similar approach that we adopt in our business as well. If you give trust, then people blossom because they don't feel like there's someone over their shoulder going to criticise them or tell them what to do, and they actually step up and take responsibility and enjoy the responsibility that goes with that. Have you found the same thing? Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I mean, I've got no doubt there's been times in my life where I've probably tried to control certain environments too much and, you know, the life lessons I've always learned is that I probably didn't need to. You know, I got better results once I started using, you know, all the brains in the room rather than just mine. Yeah, yeah, again, it's something that very few, a lot of people talk about it, but very few people do it, mate.

And I guess what I've, and again, this is an outside observation, mate, so tell me if I'm off the mark here, but what I've enjoyed about yourself, and again, I guess similar to my wife's on my own journey, it's not about how much money you earn, it's about getting clear on what your ideal lifestyle looks like and then generating enough income to give you the time to do the things that you enjoy doing.

Would I be right in saying that's been pretty much your underlying philosophy or not? Yeah, I've always said don't worry about your income, worry about your outcome. Yeah, it's gold. Yeah, so, you know, I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. We're comfortable. You know, we make enough money through the businesses and, you know,

we've got a beautiful home and the kids get to go to good schools and we get to go on a holiday occasionally. You know, we get all those things that probably from the outside in people would think that we're more than comfortable. But, you know, we don't have a lot of money in the bank, but it doesn't sort of bother me. It doesn't worry me at all. You know, we're sort of happy and healthy.

and that's what's most important to us. Just put some flesh around your lifestyle for the listeners, mate, because, again, I admire people who make the time to enjoy the time, which I see you doing with your family and what you do. Can you sort of put a little bit of a colour around what your typical week might look like? Yeah, I'm not sure my weeks are atypical, but if I think about today so far,

I got up this morning and I made sure the kids were ready to school and then I quickly whizzed them down to the school. And then I stopped by the office to go pick up some paperwork and I've come back home. I decided that I wanted to get a workout in this morning rather than leaving it till tonight, so I've jumped in the gym. We've got a gym at home, which is one of the best changes we ever made because you don't have to find any – there's no excuses for not going anymore.

So I jumped in the gym for an hour before. Now I'm sitting at home and I tend to do this similar kind of thing most Mondays. I don't sit in my office chair very often on a Monday. I sort of run around and I do work from home and I do a lot of my kind of brainstorming stuff on Mondays and I do a lot of my podcasting on Mondays for my own podcast as well. I just find it's a great way to start the week. It's a good way to get my energy up and it's something I really enjoy. My evenings are quite busy.

I do coach basketball. I'm also the vice president of a basketball club and that comes with being a coordinator of about sort of 400 kids. So that takes up a lot of my time. I probably overcommit to it. It's the one part of my life I do sometimes get a bit caught up in and I overcommit. I think I'm currently coaching four teams, which that's most nights

of the week. And my son and my youngest daughter both play basketball. My eldest daughter, she gave it up a couple of years ago. She might make a comeback. She's just turned 18 and she's off to uni shortly. So with the stresses of year 11 and 12, she sort of walked away from basketball. But I think, you know, that might come back around.

And my wife and I both still play as well, if you can call it that. We sort of shuffle up and down the court. You're too humble, mate. I'm still shuffling around the hockey field too, mate. I'll be 60 next year and I'm still out there doing it because I just love the camaraderie of being out there with a bunch of guys and having some fun and keeping fit. Yeah, so then I guess, yeah, a lot of nights I spend involved in the basketball club

and that's something I do really enjoy. It's sort of my way of giving back to the community, but I also really enjoy working with kids and just teaching them. Because for me, it's not just about the basketball. It's learning how to be in a team. It's learning how to win. It's learning how to lose. It's learning how to hold the chin high at all times.

And so I try and do a lot of that with the kids. and it's something that really sort of fills my cup uh but i guess as far as the rest of my week goes tuesday through friday you know i'm not dissimilar to to a lot of people i do have to get some shit done in the office um but i'm but i'm pretty flexible i probably drop the kids off uh two or three times a week i'll probably pick them up two or three times a week my wife and i sort of share that half half yeah um we are lucky my wife is a school teacher so her hours are similar to that of what the kids school hours are although there's a bit of a myth around that i think people do think that school teachers knock off at 3 30 which is not the case

but um so we sort of share that 50 50 and and yeah my wife and i are both active people so we are both committed to making sure we get an hour of exercise in every day no matter what um so that that happens yeah and look i'm sure it's at the detriment of of some things i'm meant to be getting done from a work point of view like you know god forbid a quote was due this morning i'm not going to get in till tonight but you know if that's the case then it means that i'm getting to drop my kids at school or i'm able to get my exercise you know it doesn't really bother me that was just a change of mindset a long time ago for me yeah but that's an important mindset change though sam because uh you're thinking about the long term not the immediate and what i see

constantly in this day and age given the time pressures on the iphone uh everything instant world that we live in, people will chase the urgent rather than focus on the important and what I admire about yourself is that you've got the eye on the long game so you're looking after your health now at that 38 that'll mean you'll be able to keep doing what you're doing until you're into your 70s and 80s, mate, whereas most people turn their back on that and they go for broke on the urgent here and now, they don't spend time with family, they They don't spend time looking after their own health and wonder why it all falls to bits.

So where did that sort of flick come from? You said, yeah, I'd made a decision a long time ago. What helped you make that decision and why did you do that? I don't think I needed any help making the decision because I'm pretty stubborn. But why did it happen? i mean becoming a parent you know changes everyone if that's not i'll say that as a blanket statement you know it's it just changes your perspective on life and

and i know a lot of people still get caught up in having to work um and work sort of controlling their life and their apparent that's fine i'm not judging anyone but for me i just wasn't prepared to have that kind of consequence in my life. I sort of thought, no, no, no, I want to make sure that I'm there for my kids. And what I will say, and I still remember the first time I did this, it was going back probably a solid 10 years ago. My oldest daughter was in primary school, and I remember going

down to a school sports, you know, basically just walking away from work one morning to go down and watch my daughter at school sports the local athletics track and and i was young in business i was still trying to impress clients and i still remember um at that age you know you you sort of you have a little bit of a lack of confidence because you're going into meetings as a 25 year old with people who are 40 and 50 years old and you can sort of feel rightly or wrongly that they may be judging you and and yeah and so you're trying to have this persona of being a 40 year old when you're 25 and i still remember at school sports you know the phone would ring and i'd run away from the from the athletics track

trying it 200 meters away so i could answer the phone and i'd pretend to be and i'll be like oh look leo i'm sorry i didn't call you back i'll be really busy with meetings i'll be really because you didn't want to tell people that you were neglecting them because you're at your kids school sports and i remember that the one time i was just like oh i'm done with the charade i'm done with it and all of a sudden i started telling people you know what i'll get that quote to you later on i'm a bit tied up at the minute i'm measuring you know long jump at the school um school sports and i won't be back in the office for some hours and suddenly people would be like oh that's amazing oh how are the kids going like there was none of this there was

none of this judgment there was none of this like you're prioritizing long jump over a quote i'm gonna have you they're like oh that's really really good you know what when you get back to the office just keep me posted on on how far away it is and and suddenly it was just this big shift in life where a it was this weight off my shoulders because i wasn't trying to be an imposter but suddenly my relationships with my customers were 10 times better because suddenly they would tell me about their kids as well and and it just became work just became easier it didn't feel like I was, you know, this work monster. It just felt like I was Sam Buckby and the difference was instead of being

at home talking to someone, I was in my office talking to someone, but it was the same thing. Yeah, and what I love about that, mate, is, you know, the Australian psyche, we can smell bullshit at 100 miles. Correct. And if you're standing there on the edge of the track a couple of hundred metres away, they know where you are. Yes.

If you get to the level of comfort of going, well, this is where I am, this is what I'm doing, two things happen. One, they respect your honesty, and two, they're actually starting to get involved in you as a person beyond the work and the relationship strength that comes out of that. I'm sure that's contributed to the successful business that you've built, mate. One would hope.

Yeah, I would have no doubt because, again, not many people who have the courage to go, well, this is how it is, this is who I am, this is how I live. I want to help you but it needs to fit in most people will totally respect that mate

and you'll get more kudos from having that honesty than trying to cover it up so love that mate love that so mate a slight shift because what I've noticed

in the 20 odd years I've been helping people in the investment arena I find that Most Aussies invest in their work or their career and they focus on income. But I've seen that those that achieve freedom also invest in growth assets that replace their active work income

with more passive income. What, if any, growth assets have you or will you be investing in to sustain the lifestyle you enjoy long term? uh so i i guess i could be doing a lot more i'm sure that's fairly a fairly standard answer for you but um my biggest asset right now is my people so if i've got good people around me that you know i'm having to invest in um and to make sure that uh that the business keeps running you know that's certainly my priority to make sure i'm investing in the right people yeah but i mean i

I do invest in systems for the business as well to make sure that because that's been such a, you know, there wouldn't have been as many changes to operating systems of businesses in the last sort of 100 years as there has been in the last 10. It's just moved so quickly. And if you're ready to embrace it, they're amazing. You know, the level of automation and the level of flexibility as well that you can get out of, you know, whatever your business operating system is these days can really free you up and make sure that there is, you know, the business sort of keeps ticking. You have a facade of a 24-hour business even though you're only in there for two. You know, it does work. So I guess, yeah, people and systems on a really sort of basic point of view. But I guess, you know, I am building a new business at the minute, which I won't sort of – it's still in the mind mapping stage and hopefully it's only a few months away.

But that will be a heavily online-based business that basically it sells itself. You know, there's products and services that are there and they're available. And if somebody wants to get on and invest into something I'm selling, they can do it at midnight. It doesn't matter because, you know, the system's there. But, look, there's some people around the world that have been doing this amazingly for the last 10 years. You know, I'm certainly – I'm very envious of them. I'm no expert and I'm happy to join the money-making party. Mate, what about

I mean you're up to your eyeballs in property with your business every day of the week where does property fit into the equation apart from a home that you live in and that'll increase in value over time is property something you would consider investing in at any stage?

Yeah, it's been on my agenda for a long time. Now we've got our own home which we own and we love and we've invested into our home quite a bit. We bought this kind of little californian bungalow um single-fronted thing uh quite a few years ago now i can't remember what year it was maybe 2007 yeah i think yeah and we paid 300 grand for it and it was it did a lot of work now we've done a full renovation we've done all the landscaping

we've put the pool in i've got a gym out the back and i guess i've kind of invested a lot of time and money into our own home over the last 10 or so years, knowing basically that any money spent on this place is good money. We're not going to lose anything here. I have all – like I've nearly bought – I reckon I've nearly bought 20 investment properties and never bought one. Let's talk about that.

What's held you back from doing it, mate? oh sometimes it's it's the the process like it's it's not like buying a new tv where you walk into the appliance store and say i'll take that one and you hand your credit card over and you walk away like it's it's obviously there's a bit of a bit of a longer journey to buying a home and yeah and i guess that i just haven't been able to stick that journey through a couple of times Yeah, or find the time to make it happen, given it does take some time, yeah? Yeah. So two questions there.

Why were you thinking about getting an investment property to start? Well, let's start with that. If you've nearly done it 20 times, what's motivating you to consider property as something to stick your money into? I definitely see the value in property. I like that, you know, with a bit of research and a smart buy, it's a very, very safe investment. um you know i'm a i'm a semi-conservative person i don't mind taking small risks um but when it comes to big investments you know i'm i've never sort of looked at the stock market and thought i really want to get into that you know it's just something i've never thought i don't

want to learn enough and take that kind of risk i thought i would much rather get into property and And I can drive past my investment and I can see it. It's a real thing. And I've always worked in the industry. I've got a great appreciation of buildings in general and I've got a real love for what they give to us. And so property will definitely be part of my investment portfolio going forward as soon as I pull my finger out of my ass.

Well, let's look at the journey. You're building a business which is creating income, which is funded the home and you've put money into the home because you've got kids that you're supporting. You'll reach a stage where the kids are probably almost getting there now where they'll start to be heading somewhere else, doing something else and that'll free up income and free up time which then positions you to be able to build a property portfolio

that'll sustain your income when you decide that you're either going to sell a business or transition out of the business. So, you know, I think whether it's been by design or default, there's sort of been an underlying strategy flowing through that anyway, mate. Would I be right? Yeah.

The dangerous trend for me is I still remember, you know, when I was probably – I think we bought our home when I was – how old would I have been? You know, probably 26, something like that, when we bought our home. So I was young enough that, you know, I wasn't feeling like I'd missed the boat. And then I got to my early 30s and business had turned around. It certainly wasn't, you know, I wasn't flying, but business turned around and it was sustainable and there was money coming into the bank every week rather than, you know, sort of writing every invoice.

And I remember thinking as an early 30 year old, I really should start to invest into the future and get some property. But, you know, at the same time, I'm like, ah, I'm only 30. There's plenty of time. And then I think I had the same thought when I was 35. And now I think right now I'm sitting here having that same thought now I'm 38. So it's, you know, what's that saying? There's never a better time than today or something like that. Yeah, the best time to invest was 20 years ago.

The second best time is today. Correct. That's the one. Yeah. And so whilst I go, I'm only 38, I'm only 38, you know, the last eight or nine years has gone pretty quick. So I'll only be 47 in eight or nine years. That's the funny thing.

Because I wax lyrical about this all the time, Sam, because time is the most important ingredient in terms of building wealth through property. And the ones who are able to put themselves in a position to start early just let Tom, the tenant and the taxman, do the heavy lifting. And on the other end of the scale, I meet those that have what I call an oh shit moment in their mid-50s and go, oh shit, I'm five years away from retiring.

Super's not going to even touch the sides. What am I going to do? So, yeah, but it's not unusual, mate, that thought, well, I've got plenty of time. I'll get around to it when I've got time. and all of a sudden time starts to run through the hourglass. So, no, all good, mate. That's good.

When you're first born turns 18, you start to think, oh, hang on, what happened there? Where did time go? Yeah, doesn't it? You're absolutely dead right there, mate. No, that's good, mate. Well, a couple of things that I'd like to delve into a little bit. I know they're important things to you

and I'm sort of putting on my old architect's hat here because I've still got a lifelong interest in good design. And I know that with your smarter buildings business and the way you're sort of utilising automation and technology to improve lifestyle, can you give us a bit of a chat about that and some of the things that some of the listeners might be able to take advantage of that is ultimately going to put them

in a position where they're trying to save time everywhere else but home, and with what you're doing in that space, being able to save time, money and stress by having your home pretty much drive itself has got to be a major lifestyle benefit. Yeah, look, what I found some years ago, five, six years ago, when I wasn't doing a lot of consultancy work, I was running the electrical business, I was finding we were going into buildings when budgets were set,

designs were set you know it was a it was basically whatever was on that drawing was going to happen in in the building you know it's just a matter of all the the contractors getting it done and for a lot of people who are investing in these buildings be it you know homeowners or be it um property investors or or in commercial residences you know business owners and and whatnot the the building would get built and then they'd walk in and they'd go shit this doesn't work how i wanted it to work or jesus is a hard building you know that there'd nearly be a full time job for someone to micromanage these buildings you know and when it's a home you're not about to employ someone to do that that's your own time so all of a sudden you know you're having

to make sure that you know you're shutting doors so dust doesn't get through you're having to you know open windows and and shut blinds before you go to work in the morning because you know it's going to be a hot day and then you come home at night you have to reverse all that or you know you might get halfway halfway down the road on the way to work you're like shit did i lock the back door did i turn the security system on did i do any of this stuff and you know the place and if we speak about homes you know the place that was meant to be giving us the most solace that place that we're meant to be able to relax was just giving us stress yeah and there was just so many solutions um to having all this looked after you don't need to worry about this

stuff like it's 2020 even back when i started to have this kind of train of thought you know back in 2015 a lot of the technology was there then whilst it was a bit more clunky back then it was there and for by the time as an electrical contractor i'd speak to people and it would just be too late the you know the building would be half built and they there was no more money in the budget and there was no more time to get this stuff done and and there was no flexibility in design at that point so the building had to get done and i'd just have to suck it up and just deal with it and even though you know there was so many easy solutions at their forum um it was just too hard too late and i thought you know what i i just would have this wave of guilt that we

weren't able to deliver on on what you know i thought the potential of these buildings could be but i'd also have the pain because you know these people would be coming to me for 6 12 two years afterwards going shit how do we fix this can we do something here and the whole time i'm thinking to myself i bloody saw this coming yeah yeah um so i thought i need to change it i need to flip this around and and don't get me wrong um you know architects building designers they're they're my best friends in business but mate it's all right i'm an ex-architect mate and and no one ever referred to me as architect it was always effing architect because there's just a lot of a lot of emphasis goes into size shape and aesthetics yeah and not enough thought goes

into how that building can work totally and that was something that i knew some i knew felt i knew a lot about i size shape and aesthetics you know i'm i'm disabled i don't know what colors i'm hopeless but um how the building works was something that i could see it was just you know i could i could look at a piece of paper with a drawing of a building and go here's an issue There's going to be no airflow. Here's an issue with, you know, the convection of heat. And I thought I just need to sort of now merge, you know, my knowledge of how a building works with my background

of technology and construction and be able to deliver a sort of solutions-based design to help these buildings to achieve, you know, what it is that they really should be achieving in this day and age. So how are you doing that, mate? because I'm 100% right behind you there. I think it is when an architect's sitting isolated on his cab machine whacking lines on the page,

he is thinking about the sculptural bit because that might win him an award in the next awards next year. But in terms of the functionality and the actual livability of the space, often quite different. So what are you doing now to that thinking that you've got around the real usability and the efficiency of using that space, using technology as the enabler to do that? How are you sort of getting yourself involved to both educate those decision makers and make much better homes as a result? uh look the industry still needs a bit of a shake-up because whilst the technology and the

thinking's down there now there the process probably hasn't changed um enough whereas people will still go to an architect get a building drawn up and go to a builder get a quote they're locked into you know having fixed price yeah then they go to the bank and they go we need $600,000 to build this place. So they get their $600,000 and then they sign a contract with the builder and then, you know, it's all contracted and it just gets done. And at this point, depending on the size and the kind of, you know,

level of the project, maybe the architect's involved during the build, maybe not. But that's typically they're the only stakeholders at the top end of the tree. so i guess you know we're still trying to barge our way into that environment where um you know unfortunately it happens on the back of bad projects sometimes yeah yeah um yeah where either the architect or the builder or the person who's you know building you know investing in that property got it wrong the first time and we catch them on the second time um and same goes for the

other stakeholders so it's probably not there it's it's probably not there just yet that that there's a need to think about it i mean commercially most projects will have an architect and then they will have a team behind that which will include an electrical engineer and hydraulics engineer these people who specialize in those fields but there's probably still not that one person who's there going right how's this building actually work how do the hydraulics how the hydraulics coordinate with the electricals and how does that coordinate with the air conditioning and mechanical services and then how does that affect

this whole building as a structure I think until the clients are starting to demand it the system won't change so I know you've written the book Homes with a Heartbeat if anyone out there is listening who

really wants to get their home to work for them not them working for their home great read Paint a picture. What I'd love you to do, mate, is paint a picture for me. So I'm an average punter and I've taken on board everything that you've said and I've incorporated that.

I'm really using technology and automation to make my home tick. Describe the experience for me because I think that mental picture, when people realise the capability is sitting there right under their nose and for a few dollars and not much extra spent, particularly if it's a new build, what life would look like. Can you paint out that picture for us? Yeah, a good little analogy I use from time to time is I tell people to imagine coming home from work on a Friday night and they've had a stressful week at work and let's say

this is a young couple, no kids, right, and they're coming home to a home that they've moved into just recently or a home maybe they've just built and their partner's not home yet So they're the first home on a Friday and they get to the front door and, you know, maybe the flywire door is open. The door's still shut but the flywire door's open and they suddenly have this doubt about who's been at their house during the day for that flywire door to be open. But all they have to do is they can pull their phone out and they can look at the, you know, log into their home and they can see that, you know, there's been no sensors activated in the home all day. There has been no movement inside that house and that's fact. so they're confident there's no one inside the home so they can unlock and they can walk inside and they can feel comfortable and relaxed about it even though their partner or whoever it is

isn't home yet so it's just this sense of security and safety yeah walking inside they get inside it's friday night um and it's been a really hot day you know it's a hot climate and they're like and that some people hate this you know coming home that the house might be hot or in the middle or winter it might be bloody freezing cold but but because of the home's you know automated systems it's been able to manage the climate of the home with no need for air conditioning or or heating that's going to you know make big electricity bills they've been able to regulate the control of sunlight getting in and out of the house through louvers and blinds they've been able to regulate the amount of uh cool air entering or hot air you know getting expelled through um high and

low windows opening and the house has just managed its climate all day um for you to walk in and it's you know it's 21 degrees in there and it's it's comfortable and it feels like it should they can then drop their keys you know on their on the hall table as they walk in and they can on their phone just hit friday night favorites and the music will come on you know maybe maybe the blinds will close maybe the lights will dim and there'll be you know just this sense of i'm home the weekend's about to start they can sit down and they can pour themselves a glass of wine and enjoy their home rather than feeling burdened by it yeah yeah yeah yeah i love it mate i just think the the potential is enormous there and i mean the easy bit is sticking into into new

buildings what about retrofitting mate how how difficult and expensive it is to to utilize that technology you're talking about in the existing homes do you know what from a from a technology point of view i wouldn't think there's too many inhibitors it's it's that good these days i mean And the majority of our buildings are existing – sorry, the majority of projects are existing buildings. There are a shitload of new builds going on. But the technology has kind of moved. The only kind of inhibitor is that you're a bit limited

by structural design. And this is where I think that the environment has changed because having an app on your phone that can open and close a blind, that's great. you can but how does that actually help the house because if you think about the home like a like a a person it needs to breathe it needs exposure to sunlight and it needs to do it in certain ways so opening and closing a blind on the south side of your house you know in the southern hemisphere doesn't do anything and it's more about being able to put maybe some external controllable

louvers on to stop the sun actually hitting the window in the first place rather than Yeah. It's a bit of a myth that if you shut a blind, it keeps all the heat out because the sun radiates through the glass, hits the blind, and it can't get back out. It's a different type of heat transfer. So suddenly the heat's in your home, it's just stuck behind the blind, and invariably it'll filter down to the living space at some point.

Yeah. So having a bit more control about having windows that open in the right spots of the house, having on a hot day, being able to have a window automatically open on a shady side of the home and having a window high in the building somewhere where, you know, through convection, crossfire and convection, you know, heat can get out. When you've got an existing building, it's hard because suddenly

you're cutting in new windows. You're doing all these things. It's not just technology. Yeah, okay. Yeah. With a new build, provided you get onto it early enough, a lot of that stuff should be really simple. So I've always used the automotive industry as a good example

because, you know, you can't tell me that when you go down and you buy a new Mercedes or a new BMW or one of these nice luxury cars that they've got, you know, one guy in the back corner of their shed thinking about the air conditioning systems and a completely separate guy down the front who's thinking about the safety systems and a completely separate... But they're all working synonymously with each other to make sure that this vehicle you buy is an automated vehicle

that is easy to use, that lets you know when something's wrong, and lets you know when you're not safe, lets you know if your tyre pressure's down because that's going to affect your safety. You know, it's got the auto climate control. The car just kind of works. It's a really good all-in-one ecosystem and the home isn't there yet, but I reckon it could be.

And not just homes, all buildings. And we're doing a lot of work in schools and office fit-outs because people spend a shitload of time away from their home and there's no reason that you should be unhealthy or feeling burdened by a building that's not your home as well. Yeah, 100%, mate. I mean, I'm a massive fan of quality design and fortunately the building industry tends to be controlled by the builders

and designers are actually undervalued. So they're not really paid at a level where they've got the time to put the right energy into getting the solutions because it's all driven by the dollar. and there needs to be a – I mean, I'll talk more about this to you offline rather than wax lyrical about a soapbox that I've been banging for years but certainly good quality design not only helps the livability of the home but you can save bucket loads of money in running costs

and there's just a heap that can be done without – it's a very simple exercise to get these things right but the psyche of the builders who tend to control the industry needs to change and they need to be incentivised to incorporate that stuff so that it's in their benefit as well as the ongoing running costs for the person who's going to end up living it. Mate, that's awesome. Mate, I'm going to jump straight into what I call the ambush

or the bushfire lightning round, which are just five quick questions that listeners always want to know of guests. And the first of those, mate, is what's your favourite quote and why? Oh, I actually, I'm known for quotes. I tend to pull them out quite a lot just because it's a good way of pretending I'm intelligent. But I guess I've got a couple, if you don't mind, too. I mean, one that I use in business a lot is that leaders pull, bosses push.

and so you know i i like to think that i'm kind of setting setting a good example for for any my team and i'm not pushing them into something i wouldn't be prepared to do myself yeah so that's that's a bit of a work one that i use quite a bit but then one that i use uh maybe not at work so much but just in life whether it's you know in my my sports coaching or even with my own kids is that respect has to be earned and and you know it's a two-way street you've got to you've got to be doing respectful things acting respectful and having respect for all those people around you in order to earn that you know get that come back at you so yeah that's made it so unfortunately something that's at risk these days uh there's a just an expectation of respect without without

earning it unfortunately yeah so um those those that do uh really stand out but um what about on the reading front i mean you've you've written a couple of books yourself uh so an accomplished author in that regard but for the listeners uh what would you suggest would be the top book you'd recommend them read and why i am a big fan at the minute of of audiobooks i i tend to do a lot of audio books when i'm going on long drives or or sometimes i do them in the gym as well it's and one that i listen to which and i would willingly read this book but just by chance this was one that i did via audio a couple of years ago recommended to me by a good friend glenn carlson who you know was a book called stealing fire um the authors were steven

kotler and jamie wheel and it's it's a mindset change book so it's it's all about in their terminology achieving flow which um to sort of dumb that down it's it's about operating you know at your best it's you know there's times in your life when you feel you're you're unstoppable and you're on you know you're coming up with a new idea and you can't stop writing it down or you're at work and you just feel like you're in that absolute flow yeah it's a book about how to achieve that which is basically being able to to really supercharge your focus and your energy and put them together um and it was just a really inspirational book and one that resonated well with me and one that you know i was able to to sort of make changes in my own life very very

quickly based on so yeah no so i haven't read that one mate so that's going to the top of this I'm an absolute rabid reader. So, yeah, I'm definitely going to have a look at that. Great suggestion. Mate, this one's a little bit left field, but it's something that Australians often comment about, feeling that they pay too much tax. What's the top legal thing that you've done

to minimise the tax that you pay, buddy? Say that again. Sorry, Bushy. Yeah, mate. A lot of Aussies feel they pay too much tax. Yep. What's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax that you pay? Oh, as I said earlier in the show, I put a lot of trust in the people around me to make the right decisions.

And so I've got good people, office managers, and I've got a good accountant. And I typically just nod my head when they come up with ideas is all it takes because I do trust them. However, the one thing I have been doing in the last couple of years is just making extra contributions to my super. You know, that's sort of helped with the legal stuff. I mean, I've got a whole range of tips on illegal stuff,

but I probably shouldn't say them. No, I'm only joking. I'm only joking. Mate, getting back on the old investment topic, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? So I did, it was some years ago, my wife and I spoke to someone about just making changes in our life, just trying to put a bit more structure in where our money was going on a week-on-week basis. And it was, I'm sure it's a good idea, and there's a number of these businesses that do very well from giving this advice, but it just didn't work for us.

You know, it was the whole go to the bank, get $400 out in cash every, you know, Monday morning, and then all you've got to spend is $400 every week, and that includes paying this. And it was putting money into plastic pockets ready for them. I'm like, you've got to be shitting me. Like that's going to happen not. yeah i'm like the minute i can't afford to buy myself a coffee on the way to a meeting is the minute it's not worth getting up to go to work anymore so um so and i was saying it was bad advice globally just for us um you know we like to think that we can enjoy life and having having the constraints of you know three dollars 56 cents left to spend on a friday morning

i didn't see that as being great advice yeah for our own lifestyle what about the best mate let's flick the switch to the the other end what's the best piece of investment advice you've ever received oh um i would say one of my best mates who is a couple years older than me but uh we've known each other for since we were you know young teenagers and his parents basically forced him into buying a house when he was 18 you know they were taking money out of his bank he left school young too and and he was working and they used to take money out of his out of his bank account put it in a separate one not by his choice and i think by the time he was 19 he he bought a house and we were all shocked by it and this is a guy that's a bit of a lad and and you wouldn't have thought

that the future was ever on his agenda you know it was it was more about how many beers you can get at the pub on a friday night but i remember sitting down with him one day and he's like he was just telling me you know all the advantages and how going forward and it was probably you know three or four years later when i had this conversation with him that you know the just the the amount of stability and and future proofing that comes with investing in your own you know your first home at a younger age um for for a whole number of reasons um and i that was a bit of an eye-opener for me at a very young age that you know i probably need to get into the to the housing market which you know a lot of a lot of people don't do until

well it's not too late but you know they've certainly missed a lot of the advantages they could have had in those first five or five or ten years of potentially being able to do so yeah at a time when they've got plenty of disposable income generally so it's you know they haven't got kids and dirty nappies to soak up the extra. Yeah, no, that's a good thought, mate. But what's a personal habit that you feel contributes most to your success so far? Ooh, a personal habit.

i think a personal habit would be making sure that i'm very flexible i i hate being boxed in uh i explained that right at the start of the podcast when i you know got shown the door at school because it was very regimented yeah so i like to think that I'm very flexible and what that means is it means that I'm very accessible it means that I'm I'm there for my wife I'm there for my kids um and I've just got time in my life for all the things that are important rather than sort of you know putting things at the top of the tree which which aren't I can sort of move things around in my life so um is that sort of what you're asking Yeah, no, it is, it is, because I've never heard it put that way,

but I think you've summed it up pretty well. You know what's important, so you make time for them, but it's not regimented, it's not stuck in the diary. If something comes up, you have the ability to switch it around, but always with the eye in mind that spending time with your good wife and the kids is paramount and the rest of it will pretty much sort itself out. Yeah, it is. And, yeah, there is some little rules that, you know,

we've put in place as a married couple. What are they, mate? Well, it was, you know, you can go out and have all the fun you want with your friends, but you always sleep in your own bed that night. So, you know, I might, you know, go off with some mates to the casino and you have a big night, then it doesn't matter what's happening in the world, just, you know, we make sure we're home. And it's not because we don't trust each other.

It's so we're there for the kids in the morning. or it's just so the kids know that their parents are sleeping there. I mean, there are exceptions to that. You know, I will have to go away for work from time to time, but that's a bit different. Yeah. Yeah. But, and, you know, little things like making sure we exercise

for at least one hour every day, making sure we eat well, making sure that we spend time with the kids, make sure we don't miss any important events. I can confidently say I've never, ever missed an important event in my kids' lives. yeah i'd say that that right there is uh great rules to live by mate and they're they're rules that you know they're your non-negotiables that uh a reason why you're enjoying and and your family's prospering as a result of that you the relationship with your wife and i don't mind going

to work because i because i know it it fits i know you know everything fits yeah exactly exactly That's exactly right. No, well done, mate. A couple of final questions then. How old's your son? He's just about to leave school, is he? No, no, no, no. My son is just about to turn 12, so he's just in the last year of primary school.

He'll be off to high school next year. Righty-o. And you've got a couple of kids, haven't you, mate? Yeah, so Grace has just turned 18, Hugh is nearly 12, and my baby girl Adelaide turned 10 yesterday. Yeah, righty-o. Well, let's focus on the 18-year-old because she's probably less school. If you were to turn to her and say, what's her name?

Grace. Grace. If you say to Grace, you've had a good chat to her, what would you advise her to invest her time, money and skills in to create her version of freedom? Yeah, I've always, for the last few years anyway, I mean it's a changing landscape now because she's an adult all of a sudden and so those some of the conversations are changing but for the last few years i've always

told her to put a lot of time and effort into her friendship groups because um you know something i learned at a very young age was that your parents whilst they and i accept this whilst your parents want to be the biggest influence in your life when you become a teenager they stop being and and your peers start to yes and so as much as that hurts a lot of parents to hear it's it's the truth um truth yep and so i've always wanted her to make great decisions around how she treats her friends because that's how her friends will treat her and that's going to be just her security net for the first you know you're so vulnerable between the age of 15 and 25 and there's a lot of things that you're not prepared to go to your parents about so you've got to make sure that

you've got this really great um network of friends that you know that you can just trust and talk to And that's been basically all my advice. I'm not about to advise her on how to do well at school because I can't. But that was what I said. And now that she's an adult, I'm starting to give her some advice on how she should be probably thinking about the future with her money that she's now working a bit and she's going to have a lot of uni years ahead of her. She wants to be a vet. So there's going to be a bit of a long process there before she's earning a really good income.

So just managing that. But it's really brand-new conversations as opposed to me just making sure that she's a nice person. Yeah, and I think you hit it. It's funny you should say what you said around the importance of the friendship groups because I've been saying for some time now that be very careful of your children's peers because they are the group that will decide their opinions, attitudes and outlooks on life.

It won't be mum and dad. So try and steer that in a way that they're surrounding themselves with quality people because if they end up in the wrong group, you can turn to shit very quickly. Couldn't agree more. So very sage advice there, mate. Mate, last big question. If I gave you a microphone that spoke to every one of the 7.7 billion people

in the world, and I gave you just one minute to talk, what would you say? Hmm. I guess I'd want to share my feelings on how important every minute of our life is and how, you know, as much as we don't want to hear it, our life is a timer that's counting down to some point where it is going to end and that every decision we make is something that is a decision we're proud of and that this comes down to being, you know,

the best family person you can. It comes down to being the best husband or wife you can. It comes down to making sure that if you're going to be going to work for, you know, 40, 50 hours every week, that you're working towards something that you're proud of, you're working towards something that you think is making change and benefiting not just yourself and your family but maybe the world because if we can all start to be a bit more open-minded and think about, you know,

the rest of human life, not just our human life and what we can work towards, I think or I know that we're all going to be more compassionate, we're going to show more respect and we're going to achieve some pretty amazing things as a human race. Yeah, no, well said, mate. Absolutely well said. Great place to bring it to a close, mate.

You've been extremely generous with your time again, as you always are, mate. But for the listeners there who have pricked their ears up to what you're doing in the smart building space, we've talked about your book, Homes with a Heartbeat, which they can grab a hold of. But what's next new and exciting for you, mate? You mentioned there's an online business coming up.

Can you talk about that yet? Or is it a little bit premature? tour oh i could talk about it loosely yeah so it's basically just an extension for me there's been a little bit of a pivot from from smarter buildings smarter buildings it's been around four or five years it's been a heavily um technical technology based sort of pitch at sort of supercharging buildings to make them you know more automated more functional i guess what i've i've found a bit is people don't want automation and functionality like that's not two things that people are striving for yeah you can't you can't sell that um and just you know in light of changes

in my own life um being being healthy um being happy being more well uh things that you know i'm working towards every day and so now merging that into my my business life i guess that's where the new business will be will be looking at not so much homes but looking at the times where we We spend, you know, the spaces where we spend a lot of our time away from home, so, you know, our offices or, you know, our kids' schools or all these places, is that making these places as healthy and well and making these places help people to be as happy as possible by way of technology. So, you know, using scent, using sound, clean air, good light, all these things that really are the most important things, you know, making us healthy. Because, I mean, if we don't have our health, what have we got?

Exactly right, mate. No, really, and I'd encourage the listeners, if you've sort of got an interest in that area, to jump on Sam's Spaces podcast. It's been running for about 12 months now, so there's some great guests there, some really good listens. So please do that, mate. Apart from that, how can listeners contact you

if they want to follow through on what we've talked about today? Yeah, for sure. The easiest way, you can head to the Smarter Buildings website, www.smarterbuildings.com.au, reach out to me there, or obviously I've still got the electrical business, which, you know, I spend a fair bit of time as well, which is www.buckbeelectrical.com.au or, you know, a whole range of other social platforms

you'll find me on as well. Awesome, mate. I love your brekkie posts. I love my breakfast, mate, and some of the reviews that you've been doing over time there are always worth a look, mate. Always love talking to you, mate. Thanks for being so generous with your time

and I look forward to staying in touch, mate. Too easy, Bushy. Thanks, mate. Cheers. 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 Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.