Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Warwick Merry invests in fun, property and presentations!

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

Warwick Merry talks about the importance of presenting and communication for success in business, investing and life.  If you were asked what the critical core success skill is, that has the potential to take you from good to great, what would you say? Financial prowess? Maybe investing insight? You may be surprised that it is none of these things. It doesn't matter how good you are at your job, if you can't engage people you're going to struggle to achieve your dreams. So it is that ability to communicate and present effectively that will set you apart.  And as the world shifts to online more than ever before, this becomes even more crucial. But for many people, public speaking is a major fear. So how do you turn it from a stressor to success-er?  Warwick Merry explains how. He is a Certified Speaking Professional with over 20 years expertise working as an Event Host & MC. As a king of communications and coordination, he knows what it takes to engage and energise an audience and really get your message across.  Warwick talks about the importance of communication for holistic success, as well as the critical importance of making life fun. Connect with Warwick: https://warwickmerry.com https://makingeventsawesome.com Warwick's book recommendation: The Magician by Raymond E Feist Three easy ways to Get Invested right now: 1. Subscribe to this podcast now, if you haven’t already, and get the inspiration delivered to your podcast feed each week 2. Get a copy of my book, Get Invested, for FREE, and find out what it takes for you to invest in living more, working less. Go to: https://knowhowproperty.com.au/get-invested-free-ebook  3. Join the Get Invested community. Each month Bushy sends a free and exclusive monthly email full of practical ‘Self, Health and Wealth’ wisdom that our current Freedom Fighter subscribers can’t wait to get each month. Just visit bushymartin.com.au, scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up. About Get Invested, a Property Hub show Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. Get Invested is part of the Property Hub podcast channel, your home for property investment insights, inspiration and stories from Australia’s top property experts, investors, leaders and analysts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts to get every Get Invested episode each week for free, and also get full access to RealtyTalk, Australia’s top online property show for red hot property investing news and insights direct from property industry leaders and influencers. Property Hub is a collaboration between Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property, Kevin Turner from Realty, show producer Andrew Montesi from Apiro Marketing and Apiro Media, and Australia’s largest independent podcast network DM Media.  For business and partnership enquiries, send an email to: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

if you had all the money and time in the world, what would you do? And it's a very daunting question. And it's one that we continue to have many discussions about. So that's been the journey, so to speak, around the properties. We have really high quality problems. We have same conversations as everybody else, but often our conversations when it comes to money, there's an extra few zeros in there. And that's not a bad thing. And we're so used to dealing in some of these bigger numbers now that we it's it's not a big deal you know people go oh how do you sleep at night with that you know we got a couple of million dollars worth of debt and it's just like well i sleep really well because you know i heard ages ago that if you owe the bank

10 grand you've got a problem if you owe the bank two mil they've got a problem so for me my i'm all about it how do i make events awesome whether the event is a meeting whether it's just a one-on-one with someone, or whether it's a huge conference, which may be online or face-to-face. I'm all about making events awesome. How do I do it differently? Well, I bring a lot of energy to the fore, but I make sure it's fun. I think life's too important to take seriously. And there are so many people who just get wound up in their own stuff and their own sense of self-importance. And I've got to tell you, I just don't get it. Like, I don't buy into it. It's like, if you're going to have to do something, you might as well have fun. In fact,

the Minister for Fun once said to me, if it's not fun, don't do it. But if you have to do it, make it fun. And I love that. So I really embrace that for how I live my life. Welcome to Get Invested, the leading weekly podcast to help you unlock your full potential and enjoy your version of sustainable success that lies at the intersection of your three L's, yourself, your health and your wealth. I'm your host and guide Bushy Martin and each week we go deep sharing great conversations with proven experts in all walks of life including the best investors, property experts, analysts, leaders, founders, sports stars and health gurus to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills and their money

and the benefits that this creates. To help you find out what it takes to break free from the grind and discover your flavor of freedom to create your freedom formula. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every second of 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, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent

so that you can live more, work less, and live your legacy by investing now. You'll enjoy the stories and secrets of high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and discover the top tips on how to get started, how to make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. As you engage in each episode, you'll glean the information, inspiration and implementation that you need to get empowered and get invested in imagining and actioning the life that you've

always dreamed about. And Get Invested is proudly part of Property Hub, your home for property investment insights and inspiration. make sure you subscribe now on your favorite podcast player to get every episode of get invested and realty talk which is australia's leading and longest running online property show that's full of red hot property investment news and insights direct from all of the industry leaders and influencers you can also connect with me personally and join the get invested Now, let's get invested.

Hi, Freedom Fighters. Are you a glossophobic? And in this day and age, what's a critical core success skill that will separate you as either one of the select best or one of the multitudes of the rest? Is it financial prowess or investment skill? Well, you're going to be very surprised by the answers. Because it doesn't matter how good you are at your particular job, skill or business. if the right people don't know about you, don't have confidence in you, and you can't convince enough of the right people to engage with you, then you're going to struggle. So what core skill

will help you overcome all of this? It's your ability to present and communicate from one to many. As I constantly tell our Know How Property Finance team, we're not in the property game or the finance game, we're in the relationship game. And what are all good relationships built on? Trust created through great communications and great presentation skills. They're the glue in a globally connected village that binds the three elves of sustainable success, yourself, your health, and your wealth.

And with the world now shifting to a much heavier reliance on online meetings, events, and presentations, despite beliefs to the contrary, the world of successful communications has now become even more challenging, not less. And with a fear of public speaking or glossophobia, being right up there with death and divorce as our greatest stressors that's actually believed to affect up to 75% of the population. Learning how to get comfortable in presenting and

communicating with the masses across multiple mediums and modalities is a surefire road to success in any sphere, whether it be your work, your business, your investments, or anything else that involves and relies on interactions with others. So where do you go to turn this potential stressor and limiter into a clear advantage? Well, that's where today's special guest comes in. Warwick Merry is a certified speaking professional with over 20 years of expertise working as an event host and an emcee. As a king of communications and coordination, he knows what it takes to engage and energize an audience and really get your message across. As a proven event professional, he brings his energy, humor, and professionalism to the fore to help you connect with the people

account. So welcome and let's get invested, Warwick. Thank you so much for having me. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. No, it's been awesome, mate. So I recently sort of heard about you, which means I must have been living under a rock. But for those who don't know you and haven't come across you on the travels, what do you do differently? And most importantly, mate, why do you do what you do yeah look what i do differently is i've really embraced online so over the last couple of years i've actually won some international awards for some of the work that i've done online not only to present online but to help others present online because let's face it and you and i having a quick chat beforehand there are some rubbish webinars

out there like there's a number of people like oh my god i'd much prefer to watch paint dry than have to listen to this drivel for some reason it's like it used to be you just get cc'd on the email so now you get invited to the zoom session or the the team session and you've just got to sit it's just oh it drives me nuts so for me my i'm all about how do i make events awesome whether the event is a meeting whether it's just a one-on-one with someone or whether it's a huge conference which may be online or face-to-face i'm all about making events awesome how do i do it differently well i bring a lot of energy to the fore but i make sure it's fun i think life's too important to take seriously and there are so many people who just get wound up in their own stuff

and their own sense of self-importance and i've got to tell you i just don't get it like i don't buy into it it's like you might as well if you're gonna have to do something you might as well have fun in fact the minister for fun once said to me if it's not fun don't do it but if you have to do it make it fun and i love that so i really embrace that for for how i live my life mate that's a yeah an awesome way to approach each and every day uh but i'd love for you to sort of take us back on your journey so far and and put as much of the the uh miss of fun into this but i'd love you to share where you've invested your time energy and money the highs and lows along the journey and uh how and why has this led you to what you're doing now mate yeah okay well let's sit back and

like boys and girls and let me take you a long long time ago over 50 years i was born in a small country town called yarum down in south gippsland in victoria uh population 2100 it's been 2100 for all of my life so it either means the population hasn't grown or they don't know who's responsible for changing the sign and i i grew up there the son of dairy farmers and look basically the only reason farmers have kids is they want free labor. And so, but what it meant was I was driving cars from the age of, I don't know, 10, 11, 12, something like that. You drive tractors. You just did stuff. And there was, you know, I grew up in a time where you just, you went outside and you did stuff outside. We had 150 acres. It was brilliant, but I didn't drink or play sport. So

In a small country town, if you don't drink or play sport, I just grew up, no one knew who I was. In fact, my brother, who was a big sports person in the town, he would come up when I was 14, he was 16, he brought a friend home and said, oh, this is my brother Warwick. And the bloke said, I never knew you had a brother. I'm like, I've been here 14 years, what the heck? There's only 2,100 of us.

So after that, I went to a private school, St Annes and Gippsland Grammar School in Sale. So sitting on the bus for an hour and a half each day, each way was fun. and I did the last, what was it, last four years of my secondary schooling there, which was fantastic, that I believe that really helped me get a higher score. So I went to uni and did two degrees.

Why not do two? I did a double degree, one in accounting and one in IT. Mate, with your personality and looking out of that way. I was the nerd who had to be heard. For me it was brilliant because the classes were like, I had a captive audience for 45 minutes to an hour. They weren't going anywhere. Fortunately, I really embraced the learning and I loved what I did,

so I got most of my stuff done. So I was the comedian at the back of the class having jokes and trying to crack jokes in line with what was being taught. So the teachers loved it because it alleviated what was going on. Little did I know that that pointed the direction to where I might head in the future. But anyway, after four years of university to get the two degrees, I got a job in the corporate IT basic for 10 years so I worked for a large

company called EDS electronic data systems and they did IT for a lot of other companies like Holden Uncle Toby's Compass Airlines Mark 2 and during that time I spent time in Waganya which is the Rutherglen and Corowa for two years running IT there for Uncle Toby's I was Compass Airlines Mark 2 I was the fourth last person on site when they got shut down because we were running their IT system and then after 10 years of corporate IT I sort of I was asking the question of myself what do I want to be when I grow up and I just had too much personality for IT let's be honest too much personality and I my wife at the

time came home from a conference and talked to me about this thing called a keynote speaker and I'm like that's it that's what I want to do I want to get on stage and inspire people i had no idea what i wanted to talk about and so it was 1999 i was in it y2k and um i've always been a big believer in professional association so i joined the professional association for speakers gave a little presentation on y2k and i had one of the people in the room come up to me and say mate you've got great energy just what i need i need someone to run my training course and you can build your speaking career on the side and i'll I'll pay you a minimum monthly retainer and I'm like well how could I not take that up and so that

was in you know mid to late 1999 and just went from there and so it's that's been the 23 years changed uh changed places where I lived changed wives changed topics and along the way I found that what really spoke to me was hosting because I'm an absolute control freak and I studied I've studied improv uh with Melbourne Impro Melbourne and for about 10 years they're brilliant and so I really love the idea of playing and having fun with the audience and I actually I've lost some clients because I'm too much fun they just want someone to read a script and I and I will say to people if that's what you want I am not your guy because I will have fun like I will um and it's so interesting one of my clients they're like oh no our industry is very serious

to know yes it's all professionals here and so when i they gave me the chance to host one of their events and when i had the audience just laughing they were like oh yes no we do need this and in fact some of my clients now are saying oh we just need more zhuzh more energy more joie de vivre in our events because life is so full-on at the moment the last three years have been full-on so and will continue to be and so yeah so that's what i've been doing and where i am today and um you know it's it's been a heck of a journey uh running your own business sometimes you're eating two minute noodles and sometimes it's a buffet at crown you know that's just how it goes so and and i love it we have you know i'm very i'm very fortunate my gorgeous wife um

my second and final wife she is a nurse so she's been busy and has she has the regular income and i have the roller coaster income and it just works really really well for us man i love it uh you know there's a whole bunch of things i'd love to dig into there but i'd i'd correct me if i'm wrong here but i'm assuming that given the sort of roller coaster nature of the exercise you're talking about and you're pretty much as only as good as your next gig so you can be uh dining well and then then don't have a budget pretty quickly yeah i know that you you mentioned to me in our offline discussion that you've also managed to build up a property portfolio with about a dozen properties in it and love to dive into that that piece if i could make given that

a lot of real interest there would first thing i'd like to ask you there now is is why property and then can you take us on your property journey as well and in terms of what you bought why and and whether your sort of strategy around properties changed over time and and how important has that been in terms of bridging the gap with the uh the event emceeing activity yeah yeah yeah yeah great um so for me having studied accountancy at university it was drilled into us that when we get older there will be no pension for us and so I knew from a very young age that I had to do something because the pension would not be there for me and just statistically there will not be the tax base that will be able to provide a decent enough pension so don't count

on it. My mum and dad, when they sold the farm, they had to ask the question, can we afford to retire? And I thought, oh, I never want to have to answer that question. I never want to ask that question. That has to be a non-negotiable for me. And so I thought, okay, how can I do this? And what I love about property is leverage. Property will give you way more leverage for your dollar than any other form of investment. If someone says, hey, you've won Tats Lotto, here's a million bucks, you may be better to go into the stock market.

But again, you may want to do leverage. There's a whole lot of things that will go into it. But for me, it was all about I don't have much money, so how can I leverage what I've got? And property was the answer for me. because I'd studied the accountancy behind it and I was interested in it so I'd read a whole lot of books and I've got to tell you there was a whole lot of rubbish books where there was just this oh this I wanted to make money off the books not the property let's just put it that way and I

think I've been to many seminars going oh it's this thing again you know and I'm not someone who's going to flip and I'm you know whatever and I'm lazy as anything so I just want to be able to buy something let it go and then everything's good so with my first wife and i we bought some property but her dad was really into shares so she was not into property and put the kibosh on it when i met my second wife um her very early on her father had said to her actually six months after you started a job said okay you've um you've had six months of freedom with your money your choice now is to give me half of your salary or invest it and buy property and there was no way she was going to give him the money and so she bought she bought a property um as really

interesting because the very first house that she saw was a double-fronted californian bungalow in brunswick which at the time was selling for like 150 000 and she really wanted that house but her dad said oh you can't possibly buy the first house that you you that you look at she's sorry regrets not buying that house i bet she does and so this is that's the first lesson is be really careful who you listen to be really careful who you listen to because everyone's got a different approach your family just want to protect you and if they don't understand the industry or what you're looking at often they will give you uh advice that suits them not you so that was that was a really good lesson so she ended up getting a little flat which was great and that's done well and

uh then her parents uh were getting ready to retire so she bought their house off them okay and so and rent and had some friends living with it and pay rent blah blah blah blah so when i met her she had you know a fairly good ownership in those houses so and because she'd started probably 10 years before she met me uh buying property so what that meant when i came along was there was some nice equity available for us yeah and so before we got engaged we bought our first house um we paid top top dollar in the suburb i remember at the time the guy said oh that's the monster anyone's ever paid for a house in leviton and um we were like okay like we don't care this this we wanted it that was the price we were happy with the price we paid because

our underlying philosophy and it still is to this day it has not changed buy low never sell sometimes you can't buy low but you just buy and never sell and and that that was our plan and so when we were looking at properties we would always look at what is something that's got the core fundamentals that's right close to public transport close to jobs close to schools close to health provisions just close to the stuff and you know laverton was a great start because it's very working class area it's still zone one um i don't think zones exist anymore in trains but it was still zone one at the time it's the last station in zone one it's on the west side of the city but still really close to the city you know so right really close to the freeway so you know and it

was a rock solid house on a big block, you know? So there's the opportunity to subdivide should we need it. And then from there, my wife, I call her the head of acquisitions. She, you know how some people will sit there watching television and play Candy Crush or something like that? She sits there looking at realestate.com.

If she can- So do I, mate, so do I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's just like, it's what the cool people do. Yay for us, yay! So middle of the night, she can't sleep. She's looking. So, you know, when we first got together a few years ago,

she was just looking at what could I get for $100,000? And up came this place in Horsham. And we knew where Horsham was and we're like, oh, that's a bit away from everything. So we went out. Mate, that was a big smoke to me being brought up in Groke. So we're coming in from different angles. But half of my incestuous family still lives there, mate.

There you go. So you went from a two-horse town to a 15-horse town when you go into Horsham. So we went and we were looking there and we had a look at the place and, you know, again, the fundamentals were good. It's not in the best part of town. And, in fact, the one person was selling not just this place but the one next door as well.

And they were $100,000 and we were like, well, it's pretty easy to do that. And for whatever reason, in the back of my mind, I had this vision of I want 10 properties. I don't know why, I just did. And we were talking to the real estate agent. I said, well, I've got another one over in this other part of town. We had a look at it, and it was good.

So we bought all three. They're only 100 grand each. And the thing with them was they were giving 9% return. Wow. And so as for cash flow, we were – and this was back – this was – how long ago was this? Fifteen years ago. So the interest rate, we locked in at 8%,

and then about three months later we fixed interest, and three months later the interest rates went down to 5%, and we were locked at 8% for five years. so um from that and a bit of extra research i've learned that i will not do fixed interest ever again good good move matt that's a great lesson to learn yeah it is it's and there's a mortgage broker friend of mine says yeah you will not beat the bank at their own game i'm like yeah fair call so um yeah so from there and then we bought um well basically we just went accumulating and we bought a couple of different other places again where the fundamentals were good

there was a place in Knoxfield which is a 1400 square meter block so a big block yeah this one had a four-bedroom house at the front and it wasn't a granny flat out the back it's actually a one-bedroom house so it's a bedroom with an ensuite and a walk-in robe and a lounge room and a kitchen and a dining room and a and a laundry so it's this one-bedroom house which is really weird and so what I knew was that I could rent them separately and get a truckload of rent which would pay for it which is what we did so um the final place that we bought was for fun the lifestyle thing um my wife has always had the the dream of the winnie the pooh's 100 acre wood and so we went looking for 100 acres but it had some requirements couldn't be an hour over an

hour and a half from home um it had to we should had to be able to put some kind of place to live on it didn't have to be a house could be a shack or a you know something yeah uh and we ultimately found a really good place in um uh broadford it is under 100 acres it's only 75 acres which means for anyone who's ever looked at bush when you have something zoned farming you need 100 acres to get a permit to buy the house yeah right you can get it under it but there's all these conditions that is messy as so but you can do a weekend uh it's a really gray area so we have a shed and it's called the shed but once you turn up you soon discover that it's actually like a two-bedroom house on the inside yeah it's gonna say it's

not many sheds have two showers two toilets and some of the stuff that we got completely off grid and it's you know we just call that's where we go for the zombie apocalypse so my my accountant brain said very early on i want if i can get five million dollars worth of assets that are delivering me a five percent return i could live off 250 grand a year i reckon i could do that and i wouldn't need a pension i could do it pretty comfortably and so that's been our vision that's been what we've been going towards um once we don't have any kids and so we've we've made the decision to stop investing and to really consolidate um and so what that means is i'm mid-50s and within probably three or four years well truth be told we don't have

to work now but we but we choose to but within three to four four three or five years we our plan is to really slow down the work and just live more um but having said that things have shifted too so there's you know we talk about sustainability and it's so it's like the idea of international travel that's not sustainable environmentally and so we're just we're just looking bigger picture stuff about well what do we do you know if you if you had all the money and time in the world what would you do and it's a very daunting question and it's one that we continue to have many discussions about so that that's been that's been the journey so to speak around the properties and as i as i said to you rather foolishly they're all in victoria so our land tax

bill is uh sensational uh and it hurts every time we're going to pay it and our rates bills uh they're fabulous but it's just like what weeds have is we have quality problems so you know it's just that's what we do we have really high quality problems uh we we have same conversations as everybody else but often our conversations when it comes to money there's an extra few zeros in there so and that's you know that's not a bad thing and we just we we're so used to dealing in some of these bigger numbers now that we it's it's not a big deal you know people go oh how do you sleep at night with that you know we got a couple of million dollars worth of debt and it's just like well i sleep really well because you know i heard ages ago that if you owe the bank

10 grand you've got a problem if you owe the bank two mil they've got a problem so you know it's I'm pretty happy thanks no no I love that I love your whole attitude and approach to it all if we if you look back on what you've done so far what's what do you reckon has been your best and worst investment and and what you but what have you learned from each of those so the the worst investments were apartments so there was a big thing about apartments and it was like oh you get the deductions and you can buy buy now and pay this year's price and not settle for four years and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the apartments that we got into did not increase in value like we thought.

So we actually, you know, our whole thing of buy low, never sell, we actually sold one of our apartments, City Road. Really pleased we did because there was some, you know, I'm like if I'm going to invest that kind of money, I'm going to be on the owner's court because I want to make sure that my investment's well looked after. And, yeah, after being on the owner's court, I'm just like, Oh, yeah, getting out of this.

Airbnb, that's done some damage to the investing world. And my what? I'm not a fan. So apartments, they're a big no-no for us. We've still got a couple. And during the current housing devaluation, yeah, the apartments have just suffered. They really have.

We tried to sell another one earlier this year, and we just did not get an offer, like not even a lowball offer. So we just thought, all right, well, let's just rent it out and just keep going and we'll hang on. And when the time's right, we'll offload it. And, you know, we lost, the first one we offloaded, we lost 75 grand. But we've made way more than that in other areas.

So it swings and roundabouts. You know, it's that whole, you don't make emotional decisions around property. It's all, you know, based on facts and figures. Yeah, totally. What about your best investment there, mate? What's the standout? See, I've got to tell you, the farm that we bought

is just a magnificent and for non-financial reasons and turns out for financial reasons it's done well uh i didn't mean for it to but again it's just how it's gone so that's been fantastic but look we've bought in a couple of inner city locations that financially went really well and that was the plan so it's no surprise with that i suppose the thing that we did really during the gfc my brother-in-law who watches the stock market lots of money if you've got any spare cash throw it in Aussie bank stocks and we're like oh okay and so we I think we dumped I don't know 15 grand in no might have been 20 grand in Aussie bank stocks back then and they're now worth about 100 you know and and again I don't think about them they're just there I forget about them to

be honest all of a sudden you get a letter going oh you've got a dividend reinvestment I'm like oh yeah that's right we got those things but they're nice to just sort of have sitting there in the background yeah the best sort of investment are the ones you don't have to worry about mate if you're creating a second job while you're trying to manage the damn things that's that's no fun at all so yeah no i love that well if you look back on on your overall life so far mate but what's been the most challenging event and uh you know tell us a bit about it and and what have been your learnings and changes to come out of that yeah look um the divorce i had was a bit of a challenge that wasn't that wasn't a pleasant experience and at the end of the day it was all

about focusing to look forward basically I left with the debt and she left with the house the business the dogs the cars the everything and um I sort of fought it for a bit and then I'm just like you know what I'm just going to focus my money going forward and focus my life going forward and what I can rebuild and just let it go draw a line in the sand it's done move on and that's what I did and it's you know and granted for me we didn't have kids so I basically have really not had anything to do with it since then and so that's that was that was a that was a challenging time but I you know dealt with it okay um well there's been a couple of you know little health issues I fell off my motorbike and broke my ankle and so that meant I had to sit on my bum for quite a

while and you know that was comfortable but you know interesting and it just meant that okay well I have to do work differently you know um there's been many times I've been sitting there going how come my business is not doing as well as I want it to and then a part of it's a realization that well how will it ever because no matter what it does it's like oh but it could have done better you know when is enough enough and I think that's that's one of the big realizations I love there's a book called affluenza which talks about you know a lot of people borrow money they spend money they don't have buying shit they don't need to impress people they don't like and the older my wife and i get the less we want stuff like we're just not interested in stuff uh christmas is

coming up and it's like what do you want i'm like uh i don't know you know and and it's but we'll do we'll do things like last night we went we drove two and a quarter hours to bendigo in absolutely torrential rain to go and see a one hour set by kitty flanagan and then turn around and drove the two hour two and a bit hours home it was brilliant we had a great time you know really good conversation with my lovely wife it was a fantastic gig and um you know that's the kind of stuff that we do but yeah it's just we're not into the stuff like you know we have a belief around cars or you drive until they die and so typically we'll have a car for 15 to 17 years and we buy a nice at the time we buy a nice comfortable whatever is appropriate to us you

know i bought a we bought a ford everest you know i think we spent you know just under 50 grand or something on it um i know i don't get me wrong i love the look of the jag and i'm a big fan of aston martin's but i'm a big unit and i wouldn't fit in aston martin and the jag if i got a jag suv you know i wouldn't want to take it to the farm and it'd get dirty i wouldn't want to put stuff in the back of it whereas a ford we don't give a stuff throw in the wire clippers all the stuff with the dogs in the back having a great time well i absolutely love that it's funny you mention that mate because uh the motto that my what my good wife sonia and i are living on at the moment is less stuff more life for that very reason mate that the more crap you have in the

life you've more you got to worry about there's something to that buddhist belief man i'm not suggesting i'm becoming a buddhist but their idea of not having anything so you don't have to worry about it is that pretty good approach to life i reckon well the important thing to remember is he who dies with the most toys is still dead you know so it's just like and let's face it no one's going to give a stuff when you go because no matter who you are when you die they go oh that's so sad next you know they don't care look we churn over prime ministers in this country as does the uk like there's no tomorrow and everyone's like oh that's great yeah nice you know oh it's time to change the smoke alarm battery, better get a new prime minister.

I've often said, mate, the worst two jobs in the country are prime minister or an AFL footy coach, mate. Because if you're right, you're wrong, and if you're wrong, you're right, and most people are going to hate you for it anyway. Correct, correct. Mate, I love that whole exercise. I really appreciate you sharing that with us, mate. I now want to sort of get into the meat and potatoes

of the Minister of Fun, and that's communication, presentation and events, which is right up your alley. To sort of kick things off, mate, and to set the tone, we sort of touched on this a little bit early in the exercise. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make around communication and presentation, both in person and online, given your expertise in that area? Yeah, look, the biggest one by far is people will try

and communicate or present what they want to communicate or present. they really have not taken into account who's my audience and what do they want. And it's really important, that whole concept of you've got two ears and one mouth, so you need to listen twice as much as you speak. I don't know about you, but I am a magnificent mansplainer. My wives have mentioned quite often how good at mansplaining I am. And so it is about what does my audience really need to know?

I don't need to tell them everything, and often it'll be to my detriment if I do tell them everything because I'll just overwhelm them and they'll shut down. So it's really about, listen, just really listen, ask better questions. And I think if you can ask better questions, that makes such a difference because people don't want a dialogue. They don't want a monologue. They want a dialogue. And the same can be said for presenting. It's gone are the days where you're head on the stick. I'm an expert. Let me tell you how you should live your life and do your thing because we don't care we want to we want to share what life is like for us we want you to adjust on the fly what's going on so that

interactiveness is so important that's one of the reasons i love virtual presentations and virtual meetings because i don't have to wear pants but i look professional and i can see you in the eyes and we can have a great conversation so it really is important in my humble opinion to ask questions and get your audience involved in the conversation so there is a dialogue, not a monologue. Yeah, I love it, mate. That is brilliantly said. Well, let's flip the tables then.

What are the keys to successful presentations, particularly online, and why? Yeah, yeah, cool. So I have what I call the Holy Trinity. And the Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity, the first one is make sure you've got good lighting. We need to be able to see you. And, you know, I'm not saying go out and buy studio gear

because I've got to tell you what I've got is I had an old lamp that I put a different light bulb in, a good light in the ceiling of my office, which most people call the spare bedroom, and a little LED light, you know, sort of like what you get at Bunnings that I've just stuck up in the corner, and that's just given me a nice spectrum of light across the range of, you know, the shop. I love the ones where you've got a Zoom exercise

and there's a window directly behind them and it's like this black profile and it's sort of like a criminal prison photo. Yeah, yeah. That's called being backlit. When you have a light behind you, the camera goes, oh, well, I can see all this light so I'll change my settings because most of our cameras are now all automatic, right? And so you're just there, this black mystery person going,

where were you on the night of the 15th, you know? And it's just like, oh, it's not good. And quite simply, all you've got to do is turn it around. if you just sit on the other side of the desk turn around your computer you've got this beautiful daylight that's going to light you up so you know lighting's important the second thing is your composition um and for here it's like i i'm i don't know about you but i'm a bit of a tight ass so i don't want to spend the money to to do a lot of this learning if the learning's there for free and so i just think who is it that gets paid a ton of cash to have really good on-screen

presence newsreaders all the time mate that's the only reason i would waste my time watching the news though mate because everything else that comes out of their mouth is not worth listening to oh it's you know who got hurt and how uh so for me the newsreaders you can look at you'll see they have good composition so they're their heads close to the top of the screen they're typically centered they've got you know a nice you can see the zoom level so they're not a single person standing at the back of the room they're either if they are full-bodied it's because there's something behind them, like a weather display or something like that. So you just get an idea. And if they've got a graphics over the shoulder, the camera slightly moves. So the person's to one side

and the graphics there. So if you do use graphics, that's a, you know, so that's, that's where you learn from the goodness from have a look at who gets paid the big money to do it. So that's your composition. And the third and most important of the Holy Trinity is your sound. Now I will put up with dodgy lighting. I'll put up if your composition, you just, you know, your head's over screen like a muppet i'll put up with it i will not put up with dodgy sound if i can't hear you properly if there's crackling you know um other podcasts not this magnificent podcast but other podcasts where there's dodgy sound you're like too hard turning it off right so you've got to get the sound right so that doesn't and it's not and people will often say to me what's the best

microphone it's got nothing to do with the microphone it's got everything to do with the room that you're in so for example the room i'm in right now i've got carpet on the floor i've stapled some foam to my walls and doors and this is the room i keep my clothes in because i don't have enough space in the master bedroom for my clothes uh so i have my cupboard door open so my clothes are there because clothes are brilliant for uh absorbing sound and in fact a lot of podcasters record their podcast in their walk-in wardrobe because the sound there is so good so sometimes it's this it's the sound another colleague of mine was asking for advice and you know we gave her some advice to we'll close your curtains and put a big rug down and that'll make

a big difference and it did so getting your sound right and the bonus to the trinity to make it well maybe a holy quadrology is look down the barrel of the camera we always want to look at the person but then we're off camera so get yourself a post-it note right look here with an arrow and stick it just under your camera and look down the barrel of the camera that those three things will make a massive difference to your communication presence virtually yeah beautifully you said mate and like you said you're not going to have to go out and spend a million bucks to do that it's using what you've got correct oh use what you've got is so important so important because it's too easy to spend money on the stuff you know oh you need this well and i go

i was looking at cameras and the camera that was recommended to me was a thousand bucks and then you had to buy the lens that was another thousand bucks and then you had to buy all this other stuff i ended up going on ebay getting a second hand dslr for 350 dollars i spent 40 bucks on some cables it has been rock solid for me and i'm very very happy with the outcome so you don't have to have new and that's you know we're tapping back into sustainable as well because it's like well if the stuff's already there why do you need new um and and what i thought was i'm going to try this and if it's not quite right it's a step in the right direction i can always resell it on ebay and then buy the new one but i just wanted to get started now i love that mate well being in the

sort of world of communication one of the qualities and approaches that you see that separate really successful presenters communicators from the from the rest is there anything else that you haven't yeah look one of the big things nowadays really is authenticity you know it's australians in particular man our detector is magnificent and you can tell you can tell if someone's having a lend like think about the last time you went in to buy something and there's you've got that salesperson who you're like oh have i still got my fingers after i shake hands you just you can tell but when you've got this the authentic person who's actually interested in your goals not theirs that makes a massive difference if you've got a presenter someone who's

really interested in how can we make sure that all of us get to where we want to go that makes a big difference so therefore you need to have some vulnerability about it so you have to you know so it is that what i call be yourself amplified so bring your whole personality and just crank it up just a little bit not over the top here we go it's me again that's right because you sound like you're trying to sell something but if you know bring yourself and just just turn it up to 11 you know just give it that little bit extra because particularly if you're virtual because you know they'll take that energy it'll die a little bit and then you know you'll give 150 they'll take 100 and walk away with 30 you know so it's about you've got

to give a little bit extra and and being authentic is a great way to do that and that means being genuinely concerned and caring for the people who are in the audience yeah i absolutely love that mate uh the um other thing i'd like to sort of switch into you know because you've written some great blogs on your website mate which i'll get you to uh point the listeners to uh shortly uh you've talked there and you're clearly just demonstrating everything that's associated with this but why is being easy to deal with uh have such a positive impact on our bottom line generally do you think this i can't emphasize enough how important making it easy to deal with or being easy to deal with is in everyday life from as simple as you want to order something or

you want to find out some information so they want to they want to ask what's your name what's your phone number where do you live blah blah you're just like you don't need this so i'm not going to proceed you know so you're going to make it easy so it's like hey what's your name and email we'll send it to you gold that's easy so it what it does is it that it builds that trust you know as you said at the very beginning is that process of know you like you trust you and so you want to make it super super easy so you want to make sure that your headline is targeted to the person that you want if you're writing a blog and you're writing a blog about let's say people who host events you know or conference organizers put their name in the title so they go that's me they can

look at and go this is for me i want this what it also means is if you've got someone who's let's a finance broker they'll look at the title go that's not for me but i know a conference organizer so i'll flick it to them you know and it's good because it just saves you you know if you try and be everything to everyone you'll end up being nothing to anyone and so making it being easy to deal with really makes it so much easier and there's that authenticity and genuineness and so all of a sudden you become the go-to person let me give you an example over the last couple of years i'm you know i've been the president of professional speakers australia and i've been on the board and i'm fairly well connected into the industry so at the start of 2020 loads of my

colleagues were getting phone calls just cancelling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work and they were like oh my god i will be on two minute noodles for the rest of my life and there was this and because i'd already been doing stuff virtually because i'm a nerd right i did the IT degree. And so I'd already been doing it, not full on, but enough. So I was really confident with it. And so when I started saying to people, you need to take your stuff online, they go, no, no, this will be over soon. I'll wait. So what I started doing was not because I thought, oh, I'll get something from this, but just because I need to help my community. So I started running these free weekly sessions where they could just come along and just talk. I called it What's Up

Wednesday come and talk what's up and during the process I'm like hey let's try the these different things in Zoom we keep hearing about so it was a great practice safe place and all of a sudden people would ask me for advice and so I became known as the Zoom person which I've got to tell you over the pandemic my business went crazy I had some American clients I was doing stuff for all came from word of mouth because I was helping these other people not I didn't start helping going oh if I help them they will refer me and I will make money no it was all about how can I help people around me who really needed at this time and from there it just happened it's to the point where i won two international awards for the work that i've done and so it's that looking at what

do they need and how can i make it easy for them to get there because let's face it when it comes to online stuff you don't need to be a geek if you've got someone who goes let me just do the basic setup you're done click this button you're away then they're going to be so much happier for it and that's that's sort of if you can do that for your client whatever your industry is if you can make it easier for them you will be their go-to person and they will make life better for you just because that's how the world works yeah i love that mate you've written another great blog that's on a sort of a parallel subject on so i'd love to get your thoughts on why and how can we make it easy for others to buy try it try or as you say it say goodbye yeah well that's it it's

the whole it's you're really stretching my memory obviously you've gone through my blogs and i'm just like oh i can't i'm a stalker from hell mate yeah yeah i love it i love it so buy try say goodbye you know for me it's you want to if you're not my target market i don't want to waste my time and i don't want you to waste your time trying to make you my target market like there's more than enough customers out there there's more than enough business out there so why try and force someone to buy something that they don't want so i want to make it you know it's like i want to i love that concept of attraction so i want you you know i want to attract you in so you can check out what i've got on offer you can give it a try and then you go yep this is for me and then you buy it

or you can have a look at it and go that's not what i want you know i want something five times as big or i need something different and now i'm out of here in the same way that if you're looking for a prestige car and i sell you know secondhand five thousand dollar you know old commodores they don't make anymore i don't want to try and wait i don't want to try and convince you to buy it in the same way as if you've only got five grand budget i'm not going to say this rolls royce is really for you you know it's it's we're wasting everyone's time so make it so easy to buy try or say goodbye you know it's that come go just do whatever's going to work that makes it again it just builds on that make it really easy to get the job done yeah i love that man this is the

last vlog that i'm going to really yet test your memory on mate but uh you've written another great one on how do we bounce back and feel fabulous after losing a deal and that's that's really relevant in the property space in particular because for every property buyer you're going to miss out and on another 10. so i'd love to get you to share your words of wisdom look this this is the gift that someone gave me uh years ago and i've got to tell you experience has proven it to be true time and time again the deal of a lifetime happens once a week in real estate the number of times i've seen a property and got oh this is it we're gonna have to buy this this is just amazing this is fantastic and for whatever reason it falls through either

someone else paid more we couldn't get the money whatever it fell through and i'm like i'm gutted and then the following week oh my god this one's even better you know and it just happens all the time and like the number of people who they'll apply for a job and not get it and they're gutted and two weeks later they get a better job that's closer to home and pays more money so having that perspective of the deal of a lifetime happens once a week whether it's real estate recruiting whatever it is the industry you're in and the evidence to me has shown that to be true so how do you bounce back and feel fabulous after losing a deal let's face it i hate it like i hate it when when i put a lot of effort into a proposal i have some big conversations

with the punters and and they make the right noises and then they come back and this happens to me quite a lot well not quite a lot but more and more they come back they said we love you your energy is fantastic we love what you're doing the big problem is you're a white male and we need more diversity on stage because i can't do anything about that don't get me wrong i have hosted gala dinners in a dress and um my wife has said it was really funny she went to the place and said i'm here for my husband's dress and i was um dame edna i hosted a gala dinner as dame edna dressed up as dame edna full voice and everything it was gold it was so good and it's quite obvious when you look at me that i am a six foot three 140 kilo white old bald male so i don't represent

diversity very well and so it gets frustrating so what i do is i let it hurt and i just sit there and go this is annoying this really pains me i'm not happy and it's just it's annoying and then after about an hour ago okay time to let that go and and move on because it's like i can if i sit and wallow over it it's not going to do anyone any good and then i have what i call the two killer questions which are i'll ask myself so what's my part in this and what can i do differently So, for example, if they're after a subcontinental female to host, I never had a chance, and there's nothing I can do about it. If they were, oh, you know, you were close,

but your pricing was too high for us, then I can go look back and go, okay, well, do I need to address my pricing? Do I need to change it and make a decision around that? And, you know, do I have to, maybe if I had a different approach, maybe if I didn't mention the pricing up front, maybe if I went in with three different packages, good, better, best, and then they said well we want the best but we only want to play the good and i'm like well maybe we can negotiate to the better so you know is there something i can do differently there so

those two killer questions of what's my part in this and what can i do differently i find a very powerful because often there's a time when you know what's my part in this none really like a no part and what can i different nothing so it's like okay let it go move on and then you put on frozen play let it go sing along dance around the lounge room and away you go but i just love your energy man it's absolutely brilliant you got a fantastic outlook on everything mate uh just just a final question on this whole communication exercise because there are a lot of people who get very stressed and i mean very stressed at the the prospect of even on a zoom meeting of having to present or talk and can you give sort of any tips on how

or eliminate or minimise the stress of presenting. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but you pull it to there. So here's the thing. In your body, the difference between feeling excited and feeling nervous, your body can't tell the difference. And so often we'll go, oh, my God, I feel so nervous. It would be you're actually feeling excited.

Now, there might be an edge of nerves there, but if you reframe it and go, I'm going to call this excitement not nervous or I'm, you know, feeling the edge. don't get me wrong often when i go on stage and look my biggest crowd's probably 3 000 and and i you know i dream of addressing mcg i love the idea of a big crowd if you can reframe it and just keep breathing breathing is so important and not those shallow breaths a nice big use your diaphragm big diaphragmatic breathing that will make a massive difference and and have that really healthy perspective of you know i'm here to

help these people by sharing this information i've considered what they need i'm presenting what they need and shift your focus to them and not you and you will find that that makes a magnificent difference and you'll be feeling a lot more uh centered maybe not relaxed but definitely more centered about the presentation that you're going to give yeah great words of advice here mate yeah mate uh i don't know whether you've got a sound uh addition for this one but uh i'm now going to give you a blindfold and a cigarette and and put you through the machine gun dance uh fastball questions that you get on every podcast and feel free to make sure you add in some sound effects here mate because i'm loving what you're doing there the first of those is

what's your favorite quote and why ah so there's a philosopher by the name of kierkegaard who said life has to be lived forwards but understood backwards and i love that because there is so much that happens in life that at the time you're like what's this what's this all about and then one two three five ten fifteen years down the track you look back and you go ah so for me i was school captain at my school so i was on stage every monday i had an amateur radio show when i was living in albury did the once before work breakfast show on two rem fm called out wow i had um i did a lot of amateur theater i sing in choirs i've um i've sung professionally and so when the opportunity and i did the the impro study so when the opportunity came to

be a speaker i'm like oh of course everything i've done has led up to this but i didn't realize it at the time and i wasn't doing it because i thought one day i will want to be a speaker so i should you know it was just like this looks like fun and so often it's that you know it really is that life has to be lived forward but understood backwards and sometimes it's the whole shall i do this well why not you know otherwise i'm going to put you know people like why the heck did you drive to bendigo to go and see kitty flanagan so well we wanted to see i couldn't get a ticket in melbourne i'd just be sitting in my bum watching telly at home so why not sit in my bum in the car and go and see a good show you know bit of fun stimulate the economy why not love it mate love

But next one, and apart from your book, which we haven't mentioned yet, so give it a plug while we're talking about it. What's the top book that you'd recommend we read and why? Oh, see, here's the thing. You know, because everyone's like, oh, you must read business books and readers are leaders and you've got to read things. And I'm just like, oh, no, I don't like that. I'm a big fan of science fiction.

and there's a great book called The Magician by Raymond E. Feast. It's actually a trilogy which then goes on to be about 20 books in the series, but the trilogy itself is fantastic. I read it when I was a lot younger and it is a work of fiction. There's no doubt about it. They travel between worlds and as a kid becomes a magician, one becomes a great knight kind of thing. And in that story you see that whole anything's possible

and there were so many trials and tribulations. there was so much that went wrong and during the wrongness right came out of it and there were some morals and ethics that were that were covered and it's one of the reasons i love those science fictiony kind of books there's always a character you can learn a moral lesson from and when it comes to leadership when it comes to success they are these moral and ethical um lessons that are everywhere and i find that i've learned a lot from reading these kind of books and and choosing what kind of behavior that i want to have like at the moment the world's a little bit messy it's a little bit broke out there and i choose to look for the good things i choose to

believe that good will always triumph over evil history does not prove that to be true yet i choose to believe it because that's the kind of world i want to live in i choose to contribute to others because uh you know it's the whole i think it was stephen covey who said when you get to your 80th birthday what do you want people to be saying about you at the party to celebrate your birthday because if that's what you want if they want if you want them to say he was generous you've got to be generous now and so that's what my wife and i choose to do and and we do it not because we want everyone to say what lovely people they are but it is about this is the kind of people we choose to be on an ethical and moral moral approach so yeah that's why those those

kind of science fiction books i just love them i just think they're good and and they're a bit of fun yeah and like i said there's a massive a message wrapped up in in something you actually enjoy reading rather than something that you're forced leading yourself to where and how many of those business books that you're reading you're like oh my god this is just trash like or they're that's just they're very derivative they're just copying something that plato said years ago so i'm not saying don't read them what i'm saying is you know you've got limited time choosing same with i think the biggest lie in business at the moment it used to be the checks in the mail then the biggest lie at the moment is i'll watch the recording and it's like no you won't give yourself

the freedom to go you know what i'm not going to watch it because if it was important enough you would make the time you would make the time and see it live uh you know there may be a recording that you're like i just can't get to it because the kids have got this that and the other i will make the time and i'll put it in my diary and watch it but there's that guilt of going oh i really want to watch this and like give yourself the freedom i'm going i'm not going to watch it it's fine i will live life will go on i love now i'm going to give you another lobotomy mate uh to answer this next question what what's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received and and throw in a sound effect if you've got one yeah yeah for sure um

the the best was probably that um the deal of a lifetime happens once a week in real estate i think that's really helping it's giving me the freedom to be able to to be okay with no when something slipped through my fingers don't get me wrong there's still a couple of deals that um my wife and i look back on going oh if we'd been able to get that place that would have been gold we forget about yeah but we would have been eating two minute noodles for five years and we wouldn't be able to afford it and this that and the other but you know it's it's the whole you know that comparison of our outsides to other people's in other people's outsides to my insides you know you see people got all this stuff and you're like oh look what they've got no we haven't

got it you know so uh that that's probably the best that you know deal of a lifetime the worst bit of investment advice for my wife it was you know you can't buy the first house you look at because the answer is yes you can if it meets all your requirements yes you can um what's the worst I don't know like this there's a lot of advice going on around there and it's it's really up to each of us to to listen and then make our own decisions and be prepared to take responsibility for whatever that session decision is and because everything comes at a cost what sort of cost are you going to pay for it and and sometimes the cost is not financial sometimes there is that cost of the burden going things are going to be tight for a little while but it's going to pay off in the

in the long run and you'll just go yep i'm prepared to have things be a bit tight you know so it is about how can i how can i just you know make excellent decisions and as you know as ted said from you know bill and ted's big adventure uh be excellent to each other excellent i love that mate uh final one in the in the fast four uh and what's a happy habit and i'm sure you've got a bunch of these uh that's you reckon has contributed most to your success so far uh yeah it's really interesting it's that whole you know getting a dog was really good for me and just because i'm i'm a natural i think too much you know and so what a dog does is it makes you present because the dog doesn't give a shit like they're just like be here now pat me take me

for a walk love me love me or i will lick you in the face and and so it's been really good for my mental health to just go you know what i'm stepping away from my desk and i'm just going to take my dog for a walk or i'm going to pat my dog and so because i would take you know i'm what i like to refer to as a nutritional overachiever others call me overweight but let's just call it a nutritional overachiever and i know that exercise is important yet i wouldn't go for a walk for myself but i take my dog for a walk so that's something that's been really important and i think it's really important to laugh you know and not fake laugh but it really is that do something fun you know what are you going to do for you at the end of the day you know and i love

what the flight attendant says like you've got to put your own mask on before you can help others you know so if you can't fill someone else's tank if yours is empty so what are some of the things that you will selfishly do for yourself because there is that need for extreme self-care because if you don't look after yourself it's too easy to give until it's too late you go oh i've given too much and now i have to collapse for a week so yeah that that would be some of the stuff that that well i might that's probably awesome uh final question there mate to sort of and putting on i think you're actually the prime minister of fun not the minister of fun mate i've really enjoyed the conversation what are some of the key takeaways particularly around

the communication and presentation space and and some of the actions that we need to take yeah for sure so the first thing is um give yourself permission to make mistakes you know and it's okay to get it wrong and you just learn from that and move forward the the really important thing that i think everyone should do so get ready get your pen out write this down it's a website making events oh better get that right i'm pretty sure it's making events i'll make events awesome hang on let me just quickly just check i've got the right website because i've got a button here that i can press and it'll tell me yeah makingeventsawesome.com that's a little group where a little group we've got about 400 of us that we just talk about events and different

sides to it how do we and presenting and uh organizing events from you know team meetings to large conferences that kind of stuff but we're just talking there's no fee it's a great conversation group where we talk about events and how to make them awesome the the time of the boring meeting and a boring presentation is just it's over it's time for it to go we want to make it awesome so head to making events awesome and hang out with us because i'd love to i love everyone's voice there so i can hear some of the stuff that they're doing and i i'm a big believer that i don't have time to make all the mistakes in the world so if i can learn from other people's successes and other people's mistakes that'll give me a shortcut i will happily take that and

i'll share mine with others as well so so do that um breathe more it's important to breathe and we get so you know we get that hyperventile just breathe just breathe when you're making big investments decisions just breathe you know then breathe gets more oxygen into the blood into the system into the brain and it will actually serve us better it's not just a flippant oh yeah breathe or you'll die it's actually better for us to help us make better decisions so that would be some of the key things that that people should do mate i absolutely love the conversation mate then i'm i'm going to be jumping straight on makingeventsawesome.com as soon as we've we've uh hit the stop button here today mate that's been really enjoyable mate i really

appreciate your time you've made my week and we need to finish it off with more more clapping and cloud moments, mate. Oh, fantastic. Thanks, everybody. It's been superb. I'm Matthew Vance Ellison. Thanks, mate. Talk soon. Thanks for getting invested. Now, here's three easy ways you can take action to start making it happen to ensure you build momentum and start living by design, not default, so that you're following your freedom formula. Firstly, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already and keep the weekly inspiration coming. Secondly, get a copy of my book Get Invested for free and find out what it takes for you to invest in living more and working less.

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