Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: What Brad Symes learned on the bumpy road from AFL to financial advisory

Episode Date: April 6, 2019

They say that it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it is how many times you get back up again that counts. And nobody knows that better than former AFL footballer turned financial advisor Brad Symes. Despite breaking bones, being knocked out, concussed and suffering head injuries over 13 times throughout his football career, Brad’s star continued to rise. He went from country footy to playing in the state league, then played in the AFL for both of South Australia’s teams, Port Adelaide and the Adelaide Crows. He played in two state SANFL league premierships and an AFL grand final. His contribution to the game was recognised towards the end of his career when he shared the State league’s top honour, winning a joint Magarey Medal for player of the season. If you watch the video replays of some of Brad’ bone crunching,  body bouncing incidents, and the earth shuddering severity, it just takes your breath away. But this is the measure of Brad, despite repeated injuries he never failed to go in hard, give 100% and put his body on the line – his repeated bravery, work ethic and commitment is testament to his never say die character. And not surprisingly his success has only started on the sporting field, as he has always had his eye on the longer term and the bigger picture. Brad was one of the few players to complete his university finance degree while playing footy, then he ran a business with his wife and is now enjoying success as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. So, if you are keen to hear first hand about what it takes to achieve success regardless of the trials and tribulations that life keeps throwing at you, then you’re going to love this chat with Brad Symes. Brad's book recommendation: The Big Short by Michael Lewis 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.

Preparation is key to anything, and that's kind of, I guess, stuck with me for my, I guess, playing career and also just my adulthood and professional work life in general. 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 getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters Do you want to be successful?

I mean really How much do you want it? How hard are you prepared to work for it? To sacrifice? To give up? To put everything on the line? How committed are you? Seriously

Because I find that Everyone dreams, thinks and talks about success But are we really prepared to do the work? Now, we all envy those who achieve it as it seems to look so effortless and easy. But none of us appreciate just how much dedication, persistence, commitment and constant relentless pressure it requires to achieve and then maintain. It's why I love talking to elite sports people here on Get Invested. I mean, not only does it give me an excuse to spend time with my humble heroes,

but I've found that sport is a metaphor and a microism of life. You see, I've come to realise that sport is a valuable learning ground for how to live your life in the best possible way. And generally, those who achieve sustainable long-term success in the sporting arena often go on to be successful in other areas of their life. Now, I remember reading somewhere that the measure of who we are is what we do with what we've got. And invariably, I've found that in all endeavours, the difference between those that are successful long-term and those that aren't is not a lack of strength or talent, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. That single-minded, no-holds-barred determination to put everything

on the line repeatedly and do whatever it takes regardless of the personal cost. That fearless, limitless and indefatigable spirit that just wears success down one day at a time. They say that it doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up again that counts. In that regard, today's guest Brad Symes is the perfect example of all of these qualities. Despite breaking bones, being KO'd, concussed and suffering head injuries over 13 times throughout his career, Brad's footy star continued to rise as he went from country footy

to playing in the state league and playing for both of South Australia's national league teams with Port Power and then the Adelaide Crows. He played in two state SA and FL league premierships and an AFL premiership. His contribution to the game was recognised towards the end of his career when he shared the state league's top honour winning a joint McGarry medal for player of the season.

Now, I've watched the video replays of some of his bone-crunching, body-bouncing incidents, and the earth-shattering severity just takes my breath away, and it makes me cringe every time I look at them. But this is the measure of Brad. Despite repeated injuries, he never failed to go in hard, give 100%, and put his body on the line. His repeated bravery, work ethic, and commitment is testament to his never-say-die character. and not surprisingly his success only started on the sporting field as he's always had his eye on the longer term and the bigger picture being one of the few players to complete his university

finance degree while playing and then going on to run a business with his wife and now enjoying success as a financial advisor with morgan stanley wealth management so if you're keen to hear firsthand about what it takes to achieve success, regardless of the trials and tribulations that life keeps throwing at you, then you're really going to love this great chat with Brad Soames. Hi, Freedom Fighters. Bushy Martin back with Get Invested. And today I get to spend some time with another one of my sporting heroes.

and again not all because of what he's done on the ground of the sport but more his conduct both in and off the field because he's someone who has had his fair share of challenges both in and off the ground but he's had the courage to give 100% when he has to but also to make decisions that are in his long-term interests of himself and his family so please welcome to Get Invested Brad Symes. Bushy, thanks for having me, mate. Great to spend some time with you, mate. Yeah, mate, you're well known in South Australian circles, obviously, but the listeners are getting invested. Reasonably. Yeah, no, I would say well. You're very humble, mate. But we do have a global audience, so for those who don't know who you are, can you tell us

a little bit about who you are and what you do, mate? Yeah, thanks, mate. Yeah, as you said in the very kind intro mate brad symes i'm a uh kind of born and bred south aussie grew up in gawler about an hour north of adelaide um always keen on my sport as a kid probably early days was a better cricketer um and to this day i think probably still am but uh played a lot of cricket and footy growing up lucky enough to be drafted at 18 um spent four years at port power in the afl Got traded across to their arch rival, the Adelaide Crows, and then spent five years there. So finished up in 2012, finished my official footy career the following year. And yeah, five or six years later, I work at Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor.

Is that enough background for you? That is perfect. And I'm going to dissect that a little bit as we go and sort of dig into some of your motivations on what you did, why you did. But let's go right back to Gawler and talk about your family. and talk about the motivation to play football and the aspiration to play at the top level. Was footy something that was always part of the family, Brad, or where did that desire come from initially?

Yeah, well, I think sport in general was. My dad played a couple of hundred A-grade games out in Fagola Centrals. Mum played a lot of netball out there as well. Sport was always there and thereabouts. As I said, I was a more passionate cricketer. I picked up a cricket bat probably three or four years before I picked up the footy. Okay. And, I mean, I played state under 13s, 15s, 17s cricket,

and that's kind of where I thought my passion and my career was going. Right. Probably not until I was 13 or 14 that I started to play footy at a bit more of an elite level, and then that kind of snowballed pretty quickly. So when I was 16, I had to make the decision between the two. Yeah, let's stop and prop right on that one, actually, because it could have been a very different road if you decided to pursue cricket versus footy.

What swung you in the direction of footy over your love for cricket? Well, I think, like many in that situation, I'd say 19 out of 20 guys in that situation would choose footy. And the main reason is in footy, let's say you're 16 and you're good at both sports. Yeah. Well, by the age of 17 in footy, you are drafted. You're playing at the elite level. You kind of know whether you're potentially going to make it or not.

Whereas in cricket, traditionally, you'll play district cricket for a few years. If you make a few hundreds, by the age of 22, you might get a game for the Shield team. You grind away there for three or four years, and by the time you're 26, 27, you might get your first Australian cap. So that's a lot of time and effort and energy to invest in something that you probably don't know for another eight to ten years if that career's going to pan out.

Whereas in footy, you know, by the age of 18, 19, you have a pretty good idea if you've got it or not. And then, you know, if you do fail in footy, you can always, as a 19-year-old, go back to cricket. You can't do it the other way, which is why you see guys like Shannon Hearn and a bunch of other guys I came through with make the exact same decision. Yeah, no, good call. I hadn't thought about it that way, mate,

in terms of the long-term risk associated with cricket because you can put all that time in and still not enjoy the fruits of it, whereas it's probably a much faster track into footy. Now, you made the draft for Port Power, I think, was in 2003. Started the first game in 2004, I think, from memory. Talk to us about that time, mate, because it must have been a pretty exciting time for you.

But there were some frustrations, I think, that sort of followed from that in terms of how often you actually got to get on the pitch. Talk us through that time, if you can remember it for us. Yeah, well, I mean, a couple of challenges. In my first year as a 17-year-old in the draft, I got overlooked. I mean, I got sick throughout the state carnival that year, didn't play a whole lot of footy, put my name in,

thought I might be half a chance, missed out. So that was disappointing, had to bounce back from that. in 2003 got picked up by the power played my first game about I must have been around nine or ten Gavin Wanganeen was set for his 300th over at Etihad Stadium yeah I think at the time maybe Telstra Dome whatever they call it these days yeah yeah he pulled out with about 15 minutes before the first bounce I was emergency so I got the call up wow made the big debut as a 18 19 year old I think I played 32 minutes and we got beaten by 92 points so it wasn't the best start to my career probably the worst thing is I didn't play another game for about 22 months after that point

so my second game was round four 2006 so two years later so yeah there was a pretty frustrating kind of period in between we had a good team obviously 2004 we won the flag so yeah in hindsight you'd rather work hard to get into a great team than play a lot of a handful of games early for a team that's losing every week yeah um so i kind of appreciated that at the time probably do even more so now but you know you learn a fair bit of a resilience along the way and and how to improve your game to kind of knock some of those guys out that have played you know 150 200 games and won a flag yeah and you're playing sand with the the south australian league for those who aren't aware of the Sandfull and with centrals during that period, I'm assuming?

Yeah. I mean, I was pretty fortunate. They've since changed the rules where, you know, you represent your Adelaide Crows, have a second side, for example. Yeah. When I came through, you got to play for your home club, which for me, growing up out in Gawler Central Districts, and I came through at a pretty fortunate time.

I mean, we played in, I think, 12 grand finals in a row, won nine of them. I was lucky enough to play in two of them. So when I wasn't playing AFL footy, I was playing with a great bunch of guys, a very successful team, great culture, and won a few flags. So, you know, a pretty good silver lining. Yeah, and I probably sustained you through the frustrations of not getting out on the pitch often enough with the power, I imagine. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, there were other guys that would miss out, go down, play at South Adelaide, down at Noarlunga, eight degrees, raining, windy as hell, lose by 80 points and drive back to the city well i mean i was living the dream compared to those guys now the uh you made the change across to the crows uh talk to us about how you arrived at that decision and and why you pursued that because in a in a small town like adelaide where the state tends to be polarized between either you you love the power or the crows and you hate the the opposition that that must have been a challenging thing for you to face in terms of the

the backlash that you might might have got from a lot of locals but talk us through that period if you can mate yeah well not a lot of guys have done it i think maybe four or five but one thing we all have in common is the way in which we transferred we went from port to the crows now i think it'd be a lot bloody harder to go back the other way because for those that don't know in Adelaide you know the Crows have probably an 80 85 percent market share so really um and in very much layman's terms I went from having 20 percent of the town like me and 80 percent hate me to 80 percent like me and 20 percent hate me it was a no-brainer in the end yeah right um but I mean the transition itself one thing I learned in 2007 my last year of footy at the power is that

I'd really just craved um I guess the ability to to control my own destiny um at port I was in a situation where I was playing good footy at centrals um for whatever reason it wasn't really aligning to what we needed in the in the ones at the power and it didn't really matter how I performed at the the second level down it kind of became pretty apparent to me that I wasn't going to you know over the longer term get rewarded there right so um and i was a crows fan growing up as a kid that didn't affect my decision but i sat down with craigie at the end of 2007 really kind of liked uh what he was about his philosophy on you know life coaching footy and just thought that i'm a much better chance of at least getting an opportunity here as opposed

to staying at port for another year or two yeah okay no that's that's fair call and and and the the blockage at port so to speak was that because there were entrenched players in the side that it was obvious we're going to be there for a long period and it just wasn't going to give you even that opportunity to get on the ground is that the it was probably more of a you know horses for courses some clubs require have certain i guess gaps in their list players that they need um at that point in time you know we made the grand final in 2007 um i was actually lucky enough to be caught up yeah late and play in that game yeah i say lucky enough unlucky enough however you want to put it we lost by 20 goals still a uh that's a long record yeah yeah so yeah um it was a it was

a great experience getting to play an afl grand final um but i guess and a lot of people say you know you're playing an afl grand final week later you got traded what were you thinking um i just knew that there are a few circumstances that were on my side that helped me get picked for that game yeah and what were they mate by the way well one that it's pretty late in the season so if you're not playing for the power you're playing for your snfl club yeah if your snfl club hasn't made the finals either well you're not playing at all to be honest you've probably been pissed for three weeks so that guy that guy's not getting picked right yeah so ahead of him and then um i was playing pretty good footy for centrals who were participating in the finals so when it got down

to it really wasn't a it wasn't a choice of 20 guys on the list it was choice of three or four that are still playing who's showing the best form and that was me at the time so gotcha um i think i was i guess i hope i was smart enough to see what's the actual long game here what's the bigger picture great to get called up for a grand final but next year when there's 10 guys back from injury and I go to the 28th, 29th player on the list rather than the 21st, the cycle repeats itself and we do it all over again. Yeah. So what I'm hearing in what you're talking to me, Brad,

is someone who's actually thinking long term. You're putting the chess pieces in the right place and going, righto, where's my best opportunity here? Am I right in saying that? Is that something that's innate in you, that you've always been able to just sort of look forward and go, well, okay, I don't think that's going to take me anywhere, so I'm better off going here? Yeah.

I mean, I really try, especially now that I'm a little bit older, hopefully a bit more mature, really try and live in the moment, but think about the long game. Now, I think if I was to evaluate how I'm going, really good at thinking about the long game and setting up plans, putting systems in place to achieve certain goals. Yeah. But living in the moment, enjoying what I have now, the time, the family, the effort, all of that, there's still a bit of work to do. So I'll keep you posted.

I don't think that's unusual. But I guess that ability to think forward, has that just been part of the fabric of who you are or is that something you learned from your parents? Where does that come from, mate? I'm intrigued. Yeah, I guess it probably comes from my upbringing. I may just be a personality type like I'd love to say yeah no my dad taught me this the amount of things I try and teach my son and he does not give a shit or he absolutely sucks at it when he

tries I'm thinking maybe there's this whole parenting thing I'm not having that much influence at all you'd be surprised but let's pretend I do right um I do remember being taught early days around the benefits of preparation um i remember again going back to the cricket days opening the batting pretty important game under 13s 35 degree day i put sunscreen on 10 minutes before i went out to bat and i think i made two that day got lbw came off the ground said to dad bloody bat slipping around in my hand and i missed the ball and he said well you dickhead why did you put sunscreen on 10 minutes before you went out there like that's something you do at home then you wash your hands when you get to the game you're ready to go and i don't know if that

resonates with anyone else but sure as hell stuck in my head and you know mate after 13 concussions not everything sticks in my head but i still remember that one um so yeah preparation is key to anything and that's kind of i guess stuck with me for my my i guess playing career and also just my my adulthood and professional work life in general yeah okay well you mentioned 13 concussions and mate uh my looking from the outside in what i saw on you as a player was someone who was 100 percent committed to the ball and nothing was going to get in your way and the courage and bravery that you showed and putting your body on the line mate second i've seen some of those bone crunching exercises and I still take a deep breath when I see you lying on the ground there

unconscious. It must have been quite frightening because I talked to us about this but your first concussion happened very very early in the piece and it seemed to be a almost a regular occurrence throughout your career. Talk us through a bit of that mate about your thinking at the time how you were able to recover from it and keep going and then you keep getting bashed around the head. Share with us your feelings on that, if you don't mind, please, mate. Yeah, well, I guess, I mean, a little bit of background. I think I had my first concussion when I was 14.

Tended to get one or two a year through to probably my mid-20s. And then I had a pretty good gap there for a while where I didn't get a lot. But in my last year of footy, I had three pretty horrific ones. each time, you know, woke up 15 minutes later in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, spent the night in hospital on the drip, that kind of thing. So it's probably harder for those around you than you yourself. You know, my mum watching them the whole way through,

my wife watching, you know, the last 10 years or so, especially when your kids come in to play, it's probably harder for those guys. Did it affect your outlook on the game at all? Was there an element of fear on the back of your head Or clearly, from where I sit, it didn't appear to worry because you just kept on going in 100%. Well, it's probably, I mean, your comment around me putting my body on the line

and putting the head over the ball, you know, wear that with a badge of honour because I listened to your podcast with Bix. I thought, you know, he spoke really well. And one thing that he said was he looked at himself and said, all right where's my skill set can i kick 55 meters am i the quickest bloke on the list a lot of boxes i'm not ticking and i would agree with him he would he was a scrubber but he said well what can i bring to the table yeah all these other little things the tackles the shepherds you know diving on the footy the one percenters the leadership the team of all that stuff

yeah and i think i probably did a similar thing where you know my last year footy we did a 20 meter sprint test in the um in the pre-season i was out of 47 blokes on the list 47th um i was slower than the two ruckman so looking at that thinking well i'm not going to outrun anyone i'm not taking five bounces down the wing and lacing out techs at full forward am i so what can i do yeah and so you come back to those other little things that you can control and you know being known as someone that does the team things and puts their head over the footy was kind of what i was most passionate about so um you know if anyone looks back at my career they might have a few things to say whatever it is i'd hope they'd end it with but shit he had it cracked

didn't he so i'll give him that yeah yeah again uh listen to your talk then i'm hearing someone who's taking a situational approach so uh here's a situation here's where i can best contribute so you're thinking about you're thinking forward in terms of okay well my best opportunity if I do this then I'm maximising my opportunity and that in itself is a real skill I think Brad

you may not have seen it or may not recognise that but from someone like myself looking from the inside in what I admire most are players who aren't born all stars but are able to craft and work at a situation where they can contribute

in a way that means they're a very meaningful part of the team and it's that overall team outlook that I think is key, not only in sport but in life, actually. And let's transition there a little bit because you mentioned leadership and you became a part of a leadership group. Again, probably similar to Bix, in recognising that supporting the team

and doing all the things that other people might not necessarily want to do uh is that why you think you were recognized as part of a the leadership group later in your career yeah i think the real the turning point for me um or the point that probably had the most impact was 2009 pre-season broke both my arms at the same time so i mean i was in a i was in a cast on the right hand and a cast on the left hand for eight weeks now you don't have to have a too creative imagination to figure out what i can and can't do not only on the footy field but at home in the kitchen or the toilet or whatever i'll leave that with you join the club but it was you know two of the worst months of my life and i

thought you know i'm probably going to miss four months of footy here i've just established myself as one of the starting 18 fitting in quite well now i'm going back i'm gonna have to do it all again this is pretty flat with that and then i thought well let's control the controllables right what can i actually do rather than sitting around sulking and the one thing even with two broken arms you can do is get around to others help them out um work on your leadership watch guys that are training give them feedback that kind of thing so we had a really good um leadership group at that period of time yeah um goody was a captain had four or five guys under him that really good yeah and then and craig he always really pushed home the point that they're not

the ones that are going to win you the game or a flag it's going to be that that next tier of players that if we can have 10 to 12 guys under them that are all doing their job that all show leadership leadership qualities that play for the team all that kind of stuff yeah that's that's that backbone is where you get the flag win the flags yeah so I thought well why don't I try and head that part up so I kind of took a leadership role in that group and then just through my work there the following year players obviously recognized it and voted me in in the leadership group so that's kind of how it grew and gotcha so so talk to me about what is leadership to you what what what is a good leader in the in that context mate well i guess leadership is the

the ability to influence um hopefully in a positive manner um there are different characteristics of leadership and different ways of going about things you have guys that lead by example on the field by the way they play and attack the footy and that kind of thing you have other guys that lead by example in terms of their communication with the group I'm probably one of those guys that are a little less you know in your face really loud when the cameras are watching I'm going to scream at someone and you know tell them what to do and that kind of thing I really just enjoy helping guys out and building relationships so for me it was more trying to do some of those things on the field but throughout the week getting around to

guys how can i help them out what are they working on maybe talk to them about something that the coaches aren't asking them about that i've noticed and just building relationships building confidence within other guys and i think that's probably what some of the boys appreciated about the way that i was going about things so encouraging them and uh can you give us an example of something that you saw but coaches didn't and you thought i might have a chat to this guy about this um all right well in that period of time there was a kid by the name of mike cook who'd just been drafted it was his first year and he'd had a few injuries in that year and he barely played a game of sanfl he definitely didn't get picked in the crows team and i could tell he was a bit

flat because he'd been here a few of the other guys had debuted already and you know had a bit more influence on the track and that kind of thing yeah um so one night i went home and i had I don't even know what they call it, but it's like an AFL directory of every player and every stat and historically and current and all that stuff. Okay. And I spent a few hours going through that and just managed to find about 50 genuine superstars that played zero games

in their first year. And I can't remember their names now, but let's say it's, you know, Ben Cousins, Sam Mitchell. There were some absolute – there were Brownlow medalists in there. Didn't play a game their first year. And I just said, hey, Cookie, look at this list. I wouldn't be getting too down mate you're not going to win a brand low in your

first or second year but look at these guys I mean they didn't play a single game their first year and now they're 300 game superstars so hopefully someone like that took a bit out of that and I kind of see a bit of a change in attitude and that kind of thing so little things

like that that maybe others don't think about is you know just some of the stuff that goes through my head in ways I think I can help out. Yeah no awesome mate so the And, again, the injury exercises sort of continued throughout your career. You had this sort of role at Central. It was probably the consistent part of your career when I look at it.

That was probably the rock that kept you motivated and kept you active and probably not so disheartened compared to others that probably didn't have that opportunity. But when it came to the crunch, and I think the year, I think it was 2012, you know this way better than I, delisted by the Crows, but you won the McGarry with Centrals in the same season. Talk to us about that time. Yeah, it was obviously a bittersweet experience for me

because 2011, Craigie finished. 2012, Brenton Sanderson came to the club. And obviously, you know, the goal of any player is to play for a coach that really likes the way they play footy and how they fit in, the way they go about it. The path at Sander was taking the team down. I obviously, what my, I guess, characteristics, the way I went about footy, the role I played,

wasn't fitting into what potentially needed for that group. Okay. I am not the only person that has this story to tell. Like, you can feel sorry for yourself. There's probably 50 of these blokes a year that happens to. So it's pretty common. And is that just a philosophy thing or is it what the coach brings to the club in terms of the culture or the style of play that then suddenly means

that some players are a better fit than others? Help us understand that, mate. It's a bit of both. It's, you know, a coach is going to have a game plan. and, you know, I remember when I first started, AFL footy was getting the two wingmen, which position I played, to get back behind the footy, help out the defence, then run the ball out.

Right. And my biggest attribute was the ability to read the game and find the footy. So that just tied in perfectly. I could do that all day, every day. Yeah. And then the bloody game transitioned to a point where, no, we're not getting players back.

We're going to get the footy in our forward line and we're all going to flood our own forward line so they can't get it out. So within a year or two, the complete game plan for most AFL clubs had flipped on its head and had gone from something that completely suited me to something that I had to change with it that probably wasn't as complementary to my style. Yeah.

Okay, that makes sense. Little things like that. Yeah. But then also, you know, you're 27, 28. When you're 21 and you're as good as that 26-year-old, they'll pick you because you've got more years in you. When you're 28 and you're as good as the 21-year-old, well, guess what? They're picking the 21-year-old.

So there's a little bit of that too. If you're a new coach, take over a new group, well, you're saying, well, this guy might give me three years. This guy, if he turns out, he'll give me eight or nine. And I think Bix referenced this as well. And he felt a bit uncomfortable doing it, but it's the harsh reality of footy. You're going to back in the young bloke because if it comes off,

you know that investment's going to pay dividends for more years yeah good call that's a good call so it's i mean life in elite sport is very short uh given that sort of regular run of injuries that that you were incurring at what point did you start thinking right well i need to need to be having a good think about life after footy what am i going to do where's that going to lead me can you talk us through that that period yeah i don't think there was any one particular point um probably the the pros and cons of the way i went about it was i thought about it from before i even started playing footy so i started my finance degree the year before i got drafted um i finished my finance degree four or five years into my

footy career i was always thinking about setting myself up for life after footy okay which fast forward to today so bloody glad i did because the transition's gone really well for me for others it can be pretty tough yeah but at the time i probably spent too much time thinking slash worrying about it to the point where you know when you're signing one and maybe two year deals every time you put pen to paper, you know, there's not a lot of certainty around your future there. So you are nervous a bit about when's it going to finish, what am I going to do, whereas if day one I knew I had nine years

of AFL footy, I probably would have relaxed and enjoyed my time a bit, still would have studied, still would have tried to set myself up for life after, but I wouldn't have lost so many nights sleep worrying about it, knowing, you know, enjoy it while it's here because you're going to be all right afterwards. yeah yeah well in hindsight it's a an easy thing in that regard isn't it but so well let's let's go down that route a little bit uh clearly then and i hadn't realized this but your foray into finance was something that you'd realized early uh you're still at high school obviously when

you made that decision uh why finance what what was the attraction that you saw to great i'm going to go to union and do this yeah well my dad is an accountant he ran his own practice and one thing he said to me is do not ever grow up to become an accountant so no offense to accountants out there that was his advice to me um but he didn't say specifically finance so i was still my mind was still in the numbers space um yeah i kind of thought initially if i'm going to have a footy career and earn decent money i want to know what to do with that money um turns out i didn't earn that much money so it wasn't a real issue for me but i'm glad i pursued my uh my train of thought from year 11 nonetheless and really that's how I kind of my initial mindset and how I got into it

and where did you think the the finance I was going to take you did were you very really clear even then that you'd end up being a financial advisor or where was your head at that point mate no it's I mean it's hard with finance it's a very very broad subject matter so even when you're at uni you're learning all these different things that are going to be irrelevant later on in life but um yeah it's not like i'm going to be a doctor i'm going to study it i'm going to practice it i'm going to then be a doctor you know you don't even know the roles that are out there in the finance industry until you've met people and you've done a bit more research and that kind of thing so yeah for me i was just fortunate enough in my last year of footy um at the crows

i said listen i've got a degree no one else here does um is there any chance you guys given your reach and network in adelaide help out a little guy like me and introduce me to someone like i got things to think about here right yeah and they um they put me in touch with john sutton who's an account at bdo he became my mentor yeah and john introduced me to his financial advisor david leon who i work with today um and i don't think i've said this today before and i hope he's not listening so he doesn't hear me say it but i think i'll look back in 20 30 years and say the best thing about my career was the fact that i got introduced to dave um because you know the direction i followed the business model that he has the business model that we have now together

really i couldn't see myself doing anything else and i really love what i do um which i don't think 100% of ex-AFL players would hand on heart say they still love what they do. So, you know, I'm pretty happy I fall into that category. Awesome, mate. Now, I'm going to come back to that. So I guess I'll park that thought for a little minute because I want to dig into a little bit around that crucial time when you decided to hang up the boots

because that's a really tough decision for anyone to make. You're playing at the elite level. There's all the glory that goes with that. I mean, for those listeners who aren't in South Australia, playing for a premiership team in the local league but also at the national level, you're treated like demigods. There's, you know, you're well known in the street, basically, is how familiar you are to most South Australians.

And it must be a really hard call with the prospect of your lifestyle and your life, as you know it, to fall off a cliff once you decide not to play. Talk us through what your thinking was around that time and how you had the courage to make that decision and why you made that decision actually at that point, mate. So I'll give a little bit of background around the year or two that it all happened. So 2012, as you said, won the McGarry but got delisted same year.

2013 went back to centrals um co-captained um the boys out there yeah had an okay year of footy but we had our first son towards the end of it so life got a bit more complicated than yeah yeah just the footy career um had two or three pretty big concussions one in the last round which made me miss the finals and at the end of the year the big question was you know are you going to keep doing this and i said i'm not ready to give it away yet and when you say the question was that's the club or is that your family internally family club as well you know they're very supportive um but i said listen if it happens again if i get another one this bad you know then i'm done yeah went through five months of pre-season out at you know elizabeth oval four nights a week

40 degrees out there anyone that knows Roy Laird and our training regime brutal like probably harder than

an AFL pre-season sometimes right get through five months of that round one playing the Eagles at Woodville Oval

15 minutes in the first quarter grokey grokes nails me bang and as I said earlier

woke up 15 minutes later career done you know for those that are listening that aren't aware of that incident.

Let me paint a picture for you because I've looked and re-looked at this a number of times and every time I look at it, I go, out. So you're head down, going straight at the ball, running to the centre of the ground and Grokes is a giant. He's like Aquaman if we try and put it in current day terms and his elbow basically takes your head out at full flight

and then you pivot at 180 degrees and go flat on your back and you're out conscious, out cold for what, 12, 18 minutes, did you say? Yeah, pretty close to that. And because it was round one and we're playing at Woodville Oval, I reckon they'd played a semi-final there on that cricket pitch two weeks prior. Like concrete, in other words. When you hit the ground, you'd almost rather hit the pavement than the cricket pitch. Because your head basically whiplashed back onto that pavement,

which is literally like bashing your head on a concrete wall, is pretty much what we're saying. And obviously I'm just going off of the vision I've seen, because it's not like I remember the incident. I bet you don't. You'd have probably no recollection, do you? Nah, nah, of the day, really. I mean, it was grunty stuff.

And your son, Harper, was on the scene at that stage, was he? Yep, so Harper saw three games, round 21 and 22 the year before. Round 22, he watched me go to hospital. And then round one the following year, he came along and watched me go to hospital again. So I thought, two-thirds of the games my firstborn is seeing, he's following me to hospital kind of halfway through the game. It's probably not a trend that I want to continue. Yeah, yeah, okay.

So you made that call, which is a big call to make. And we'll come back to your current career at the moment. But something that I'm keen to investigate, and I asked Bix this question as well, because it's something that I grapple with. I'm one of these old crusty buggers who, I was never good enough to play footy. I was a punk-chested runt asthmatic in Bordertown,

and I used to get carted because I was always a bit younger than everyone else and I never had the physicality, so I started playing hockey. But I'm still playing hockey, and I'll play my 800th game this year locally, and the reason I keep doing it is the camaraderie, I have to keep fit, it forces me to keep fit, and I'm dreading the day when, because I've said to the boys, I will keep coming out here until you tell me not to come out here. Now, I'm nowhere near as good as what I was.

I'm nowhere as fast as what I was. I'm a bit smarter. It's the old bull, young bull thing. But it must have been really hard for you to walk away from the game and never do it again. How do you work your way through that, mate? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think one of the hardest things about the transition for everyone

that goes through it is the camaraderie side of things. Like you're fortunate enough that you get to go to work every day and hang out with 45 blokes that 43 of them you probably think are very, very good mates. Yeah. Then it all ends and you're no longer a part of that inner circle, you're no longer a part of that group. and the thing I've found and others that have finished up even guys finished before me kind

of gave me the heads up is you think you're mates with these guys but if you don't make the effort to catch up outside of footy when you're there well trust me mate it's not going to happen when you finish because you move on they still they still see 40 their mates every day of course unless you're catching up monthly or every couple of months for dinner at your place well it's going to start to fall off pretty quickly so yeah um hearing that you know you probably come out you probably look and say i've got four or five guys that are really over the long term called good strong solid friends yeah start to put a bit more effort into those relationships knowing that if and when it does finish up for me we're still going to

catch up anyway and that's kind of how it's played out for me and i think that's pretty common across the board yeah okay okay yeah awesome mate now uh during that fairly pivotal time there's a lot going on in your life i mean your new son's on the on the go uh how important has your wife danielle been uh to you during that period and and ongoing in terms of uh her supporting you and and you supporting her uh on the journey today mate yeah um i mean i'm a great support for daniel i think given given i give but nah she's um she's been she's a high school sweetheart we've been together since year 12 so she's um been there for the entire journey as you said plenty of downs a few ups along the way it's been a bit of a rocky road but i think we're coming up to year 17 at the

moment um so yeah we've we've been together for quite a while and she's been an absolute rock the whole way through um danielle is we kind of balance each other out well like i'm a really strategic numbers focused type mindset yeah and she's just a creative genius she's you know created her own clothing line um she's run her own retail store she has her own um writing piece in a magazine and she really and now she's a photographer so she really we're opposite in what we bring to the table but together i think we make a pretty good whole yeah um and you know life i imagine we'd be pretty tough doing it by yourself so to have someone like her to not only just you know meet along the way but to really meet in the early days and just to grow with you

and you know and great mom but just an amazing kind of friend and partner to me so without getting too soppy mate and i mean i make these comments assuming she's going to hear them she doesn't listen uh the next question like uh i i uh in doing some research for our chat today i had the the pleasure of uh reading a couple of danielle's blogs and uh she talks very openly and vulnerably about a time when uh you had harper and the uh tremendous challenges she had during that time with postnatal depression although she didn't know it at the time that must have been very challenging for both of you at that stage and you're still playing for centrals I think at that that time from memory maybe even at the end of the end of the crows share with us what that time was

like and how you managed to support her after she'd supported you for so long through what was clearly a really challenging time for her yeah it's a good question and um so your harper was around this all happened in my last year at central so it finished up at the crows um and i mean again to refer back to bix the afl footy is a very very selfish kind of existence um in a i guess in a relationship with your partner um they don't get to make too many calls that trump you and what you want to do because it's all about your journey and your career and that kind of thing. So as you get towards the end of it, you start to think,

well, it's probably time to give a bit back here. She was struggling a bit in that year, obviously quite a bit. Now, in hindsight, that probably made my decision to finish a bit easier. I mean, from a health and long-term point of view for my brain and all the concussion story and that kind of thing, I think I would have probably leant towards giving it away anyway. Right. But, you know, the ability to say,

all right, we've got a newborn. Danielle shouldn't have to do this all by herself. Obviously doesn't want to, needs some help. She's supported me for at least 10 years now. The least I can do is give a bit back. So I think finishing up footy, spending a year at home, um i i spent a year full-time doing my master's okay from home yeah so we did it online obviously yeah so the ability to get back chop out really build a connection with my son whilst still

selfishly you know investing in myself and worrying about my own future but really more importantly helping her out and that kind of thing but i mean over the greater scheme of things the one year that i gave her versus the nine she gave me while i was playing footy Again, don't tell her this, but I think I still owe her a couple. Mind you though, mate, there's not too many blokes who would even have that recognition. I'm telling you right now because I've made a few of those very same mistakes myself early on.

And so a pretty gutsy move as far as that goes. Mate, moving forward then, you've already told me and told us how much you're enjoying your current career and where that's leading to. Talk to us, share with us exactly what you are doing, because when you say financial advisor, it can mean a thousand different things. What is it exactly that you do day to day?

Yes, I work at Morgan Stanley. I've been here for four years now. I'm in a team of three advisors called the Grenfell Group. We're kind of our own little boutique set up here within Morgan Stanley. as i said david leon who i met when i was playing the crows came on as his i guess associate understudy to the point where after a few years kind of joined his partner yeah um we look after a select group of kind of higher net worth clients probably not too dissimilar to yourself we advise on a number of different asset classes what we don't advise on his property so i guess

that's why it's interesting for me to talk to you and listen to your stuff because you probably have a bit more of a property skew and a bit less of equities, whereas I'm the other way around. Yeah. So I find that interesting. Yeah. And, yeah, our client base would be three-quarters Adelaide or South Australia, probably 15 over in Melbourne and 10 in Sydney.

So if I come along to you, Brad, and I say, Brad, help me to retire comfortably, take me through very quickly roughly what you'd do for them. well i guess initially what's your definition of comfortable and that's i mean all these questions around what do you want to do where do you want to go what's your time horizon and i think that's a big thing i mean i'm a big believer in diversification as i believe you are yeah i'm also a huge believer in time horizon um you've got to know the answer to that question before you can even start to talk about investing um which is something that when i catch up with

some of the boys that are currently playing or getting closer to the end of their journey, it's almost the start of my conversation is, you know, because they hear, oh, you know, you've got global access to every equity market on the planet. Like, what's the next Amazon, mate? Should I put five grand in that? Well, that's not what we do, mate.

Yeah. But, yeah, my advice to them starts around, okay, Well, if you have an expense in 18 months' time or if you want to put a deposit on a house in 18 months' time, do not buy shares because in 18 months, who knows what's going to happen to the equity markets? You know, October through December last year showed you that. Yeah.

If you are putting money away continuously over the next 15 to 20 years and you want to grow a portfolio of something outside of your home, Well, I think equities are a bloody great investment because of that time frame. I wouldn't touch property if I only had two to four years to invest. My personal experience, I owned a rental property while I was playing footy and sold it after four or five years and just managed to pay off the stamp duty.

You were lucky. It's a 15-year journey as far as I'm concerned. Exactly. And I guess this is probably where there is a little bit of a breakdown with the boys and the way they invest at the moment. You'll probably talk about tax a little bit later and how do you save on tax and that kind of thing. Negative gearing is something that gets shoved down your throat when you're a footy player and you jump from earning no money to having a pretty high, I guess, tax threshold.

That's not a reason, though, to me. That's a secondary benefit, but it's not a reason. Exactly. So, and I remember guys coming in saying, oh, I got 20 grand back on my tax return this year. Beautiful. And I'm like, well, mate, that's because you paid 50 last year. So your net haven't made 20 grand.

You just understand that. That's right. And negative gearing is, you know, is great if you are getting the tax benefits on an asset that's appreciating. That's it. If it's helping your affordability, if it's making it cheap for me to hold this thing while it grows in value, great.

But it's not the reason to do it. So don't negative gear up on something that isn't going to move. I've got a great accountant. Losing money. Yeah, an accountant has often said to me and other people, but I suggest he has a chat to you, if you want to save money on tax, I'll just charge you more. So it's an easy way to do that.

Don't give me his number. Mate, this is awesome because you're now sort of touching on a subject that is near and dear to me. Let's make it personal for a minute if we can. Because where I always like to start with people is to say, okay, well, Brad, what's your perfect life look like? What's your perfect day, your perfect week, your perfect month, your perfect year?

What are you doing? Who, with, where? Can you paint that picture for us? It's an interesting question. I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about it. But, I mean, perfect life is probably, you know, working, still working. As I said, love what I do. Yeah.

I mean, in the next 10 to 20 years, you'd hope to turn it from five days a week to three, spend more time with the family, the kids as they get older, travel, that kind of stuff. So travel is something that I never really got to do a lot of because I went straight from school to footy to parenthood to work, that kind of thing. So I'd love to travel a bit more. I've got no intention to change jobs or roles or cut back at the moment. Like we've got a really good, I guess, formula business growth at the moment, love what I do, surrounded by good people, happy to come to work every day.

So as long as that stays, you know, why would you want to kind of retire? Not that at 33 I'm looking at retiring or anything, mate, but, you know, if you're talking ideal world here. And, I mean, just to actually see more people, hang out with friends, build relationships, something I used to love doing, that when you're a parent to a five-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, all of a sudden that door closes pretty quick.

So I've been promised that it does reopen at some stage. It does, mate. But it's yet to reopen for me. I think in a few years' time I'd love to actually get out there and catch up with people that I used to call my friends. There'll be no question, mate. There'll be no question. But, okay, that's really good.

Because I guess, like myself, you've probably, in the field of work that you're working, you're probably all cognisant of the fact that while a lot of Australians tend to focus on their work and their income, what I've found, and I've been a student of success in every field ever since I was near high to an ass-cropper, basically, and what I've consistently found is those that are truly financially free and enjoy the sort of freedom that a lot of us aspire to is that on top of their career, their business and their income they also invest in assets that are going to grow in value over time which will eventually

replace that income and then allow them time back on their hands so they can do what they like and i'm pretty sure i know what the answer this question is going to be with you but what are you personally investing in that that's going to help sustain your lifestyle long long term if you're happy to share that with us yeah um i would say and this is of course very general in nature a little disclaimer in there understand um no for me i'd say when you're younger depending on your definition definition of younger but invest your time and money and effort in yourself um yeah you know when i when i came out of footy i think my masters cost me 25 grand now i could invested that in a property an equity portfolio and if i did a really stellar job double that

money in five years now that's an amazing return to double your money in five years 25k goes to 50 well it's not going to change my life it's not going to move the dial at all for 25 grand to invest in a master's to get me a job into a role that i really enjoy and be the incomes exponential um i mean from a financial point of view yeah that makes a lot more sense and that's going to be a lot more profitable for me in the long term than an initial investment in something else so yeah when you're young you know think about the long game don't think about what's going to make you five grand next year think about what's going to make you a million bucks in 20 years time um and that's kind of my philosophy obviously as you get older you

have less time you're probably less about investing in yourself you're probably already getting a bit more income or you have an asset base behind you from there i'd say just start to think about diversification if you even if you don't understand it if you live in a two million dollar home in the you know eastern suburbs and own nothing else well you are 100 invested in south australian residential property yeah now something only has to happen to that asset class and you're going down with it whereas if and when you have the asset base the income to do so just start to think about diversifying into other areas there's another point with that as well which uh i often talk to people about and that is that you know for the average australian over 50 of their wealth

resides in the home but for me the home's not an asset because it costs you money it doesn't put money in your pocket and the only time it becomes an asset is when you sell it and then you've got to live somewhere else. So it's a bit of a paradox and a bit of a panacea to think that my home is an asset. So if you're not putting your energy and your money into other things that are effectively going to grow in value and then give you an income stream that will allow you to reduce work or stop work then uh like a lot of australians you're condemning yourself to potentially a life of poverty when you decide you want to stop work and more likely you won't be able to so uh so yes we've touched on property and it's very near and dear to my heart because it's been very good to me

uh but but i adopt a very long long game this is this has been a 20-year strategy for us and I'm a strong investor in equities as well as shares and property. Where does property fit in your head? And I'm talking personally now, obviously. Have you got a home at Walkerville or...? Yeah, so I guess for our clients, it's all, again, diversification. I'm not anti-property because I work with equities. If you come to us and you own five investment properties

and you don't own a single share, Well, for me, it's a no-brainer to start to look into that asset class. You know, on the flip side, if you've got $3 million in shares and your house is worth $300,000, you don't have any investment property, well, you're pretty light there. So maybe we could trim back here and start to put the funds to work elsewhere. So it's all about balance diversification. Probably everyone listening has heard that a million times.

Yeah. For me, my personal situation is a little bit different than the usual Australian, you know, property lover. So I had a house that I owned. I lived in Danielle for five or six years. And then you get to the stage where you have a three-year-old, you live on 280 square metres and you live in Brompton with no primary schools anywhere near you.

And you think, shit, this is not sustainable. So we decided to sell, to move to Walkerville. We live on the same street as Walkerville Primary. Harper started there three weeks ago and is loving it. We love the area. We love the community. We love the people there. But we probably are three to four years off of buying

our absolute multi-million dollar dream home, never going to move again. Now, again, I'm not anti-property. one thing i do hate are the transition costs so if you buy and then five years later you sell buy another one well stamp duty selling fees totally there goes any profit and then again and then again and 15 years later you go what if i never bought a house and i just saved all that bloody stamp duty and then i just bought this house which i love and i know i'm going to never leave i'd have an extra 300 grand to put into this thing well interestingly enough what you've just said is

exactly what my wife and I have done so we were rent investors before rent investors were even a thing because we realised pretty early that we were far better off not living in the properties that we owned because that then meant that every cent

on the properties that we did own was tax deductible and it meant that they were covering themselves very early so there was no impost in our lifestyle it meant that we could rent in locations that were closer to where we wanted to live at a fraction of the cost if we had a whacking great mortgage around our neck that would prevent us from

doing anything else but it's allows then to be able to enjoy the lifestyle and the style of property that we wanted to at the end of that journey so I actually ascribe to your theory that when people come and say to me I want to buy my Taj Mahal home I say

let's have a chat about that maybe that I agree with your theory but it's when you get the Taj Mahal and if you're able to use your horse power to put it into things that are going to get you where you want to but still live in a great location and a really good home, but at a fraction of the cost because you're paying the rent,

but you're using that excess into things that are going to improve your position, what a perfect way to go. Exactly. And, I mean, I don't know the market as well as you, but, I mean, in my house in Walkerville in particular, I think we pay the landlord, hopefully he's not listening, but probably less than 2% yield.

So if I borrowed the money to buy it, I'm paying probably 5%. And who knows if that's gone up or down, but the rent at the moment is two. So if I can take my capital, pay 2% rent and then make 10% in equity markets, well, for me, it's a no-brainer. So that's kind of where we're at at the moment. And I think, yeah, our long game is still dream home like every other South Australian Australian. We're just not going to get there the same way.

Yeah, and I admire what you're saying there because there's such an emotional attachment to property in this country and when I say that it means, you know, the home that you live in, that I'm very passionate about breaking people's views of that and saying, well, hold on, maybe there's a better way and rather than live on baked beans and dog food in your Taj Mahal now that it prevents you from ever doing anything else, perhaps you can still enjoy a fantastic lifestyle

and live in an area where your kids can go to the best schools but have the horsepower then to build a portfolio that has no impact on your lifestyle and it's set up in a way that's just doing its own thing and then you enjoy all the benefits that at the end of the journey, what a great way to set yourself up. Yeah. Love that.

That's actually, I hadn't realised that you couldn't have said that script any better, mate. So thank you. I'll pay you afterwards for that. Mate, that's awesome. Mate, I'm mindful of your time and I really appreciate you sharing your journey with us so far. I'd like to turn now to the ambush questions that I like to ask everyone that comes on Get Invested and they're the questions that the audience repeatedly ask me.

So if we can sort of kick straight into that. Can I just say two amazing playing words by you there, ambush. bush i mean with a name like bushy you're probably could have taken this segment anywhere i think you've picked the right track thanks mate yeah being a boy from the bush with a name like bushy then uh that was obviously the reason why i went down i call it the bushfire round as well just to put the same spin on it but mate to kick straight into that uh what's what's your favorite quote and why um i mean i don't live and breathe by any but one that i do like is um you know the quote success is a journey not a destination now it sounds very typical and a

bit floggy but the thing i like about it is that i i spent a bit of time a year or so ago watching a lot of ted talks about the concept of happiness and how to achieve happiness and because you know contrary to my job life is not just about getting wealthier and making money it's about getting happier and enjoying your experience here so yeah um one thing that i learned through my obsession with ted talks is that humans i guess wired to um to set goals and then when you are about to reach those goals you just raise the bar and make yourself another goal so in the in the footy example it's when i'm in high school i want to play an snfl game when i play snfl i want to get drafted when i get drafted i want to play my first game then i'll be successful when i've played that

one game well to be any good you'd have to play 50 you get your 50 games you get a little you know spoon or trophy whatever club gives you and you go well anyone could play 50 games 100 games would really make me a good afl player and every time you get near this bloody goal that you think's going to make you happy and feel successful you just never get there because you push the goal further up so if the one thing in life you can guarantee is the destination will not make you happy why not try and enjoy the bloody journey along the way um and that's kind of what i what i try and do um yeah i mean i'm learning more and more about this now i wish i employed it earlier days but i think you know i still hopefully got a few years to live and if i can live by that

mantra i think i'll be doing all right yeah it's spot on mate and it's it's funny you know i often talk to to people that we're helping like yourself and i say to people if you spend a little bit of time thinking about the future and get really clear on what that looks like and then you're starting to take action towards that the peace of mind that comes from that means you can enjoy today because you don't have to worry about tomorrow so much so uh yeah no that's a that's a really good one mate uh flicking into uh next question uh the favorite book that you would recommend people read and why mate all right um i gotta confess i'm not a huge novel reader um probably read anywhere between three and seven books front to back in my journey a lot of them

are just you know cricketer autobiographies but i read the big short a year or two before i started here at Morgan Stanley and absolutely loved it. It was intriguing. It was scary. They made a movie out of it. And, I mean, the movie's pretty good. To put that much information into two hours, I think they did a pretty good job.

They did. The book was really well written. Absolutely loved it. So Michael Lewis, The Big Short, many have probably read it. It's a bit kind of niche-y and specific to our industry and what I do. It's not one of those good to greats, anyone can apply this, that kind of thing um the other one is a book by the name of sapiens which i it's massive and i as i said i'm not a die-hard reader so i haven't finished it you know the i've read the first

hundred pages the next nine thousand might be a snooze but um it's a it's about just it's a pretty in-depth rundown of um i guess evolution and how we got here and why we are the way we are and why we think the way we think so sometimes it's good to know when someone's doing something super irrational or as a group these guys are really doing something i disagree with well maybe it's not their fault maybe just as humans that's where we evolved to get to so trying to understand the flaws in yourself and other people helps to kind of calm you down and put things into perspective so yeah if you can read the blurb of that and if it interests you have a crack and let You know how it goes because I didn't finish it.

It is a cracking read, mate. I totally agree. And it does put some context around that because you can say, oh, yeah, okay, well, there is a reason why that person's behaving that way and it's not just because he's a dickhead. It's because there's evolution behind it. Yep, all good. This one's a little bit left field.

And we've covered some of this already, mate, in what you've said already. But most Australians feel that they pay too much tax. so i'd love you to share you know what's the the best legal way that you've uh come up with to minimize the tax that you've paid over the journey mate well i mean i'm an advisor not magician so i'm probably not going to tell you anything that you haven't heard before but i guess the first thing is to set up your structures get the correct structures in place before you make the money um by the time you've made yourself a mint it's probably too late if they weren't in the right entities and structures to begin with,

there's not much you can do at the end of the chain. Yeah, good call. The other thing is probably to not be scared of paying tax because, you know, the definition, you're paying tax because you've made money. So it is a first world problem to have. I'd rather be paying 400 grand on a million bucks I've made than paying no tax on the 20 grand I've made.

So, I mean, you correct me if you differ with that. Absolutely love that. Yeah, I mean... It's the best problem to have. You pay tax because you make money. Now, the government might not spend it as well as you'd hope, but, I mean, you're still banking quite a bit, so don't be scared of it.

Good call. No, really good call there, mate. Mate, moving back into the investment topic for a minute, if you reflect back, what would you consider to be both the worst investment advice but also the best investment advice that you've ever received? I mean, the best investment advice I have received and would kind of give is that one around time horizon.

So if you are a 35-year-old doctor and you're making 500 grand and you know you're going to work for the next 40 years and if you don't, it's because you got injured at work and you've got income protection in place, well, I don't mind you leveraging up, investing in property, investing in whatever you want to do because the long game for you looks pretty good.

You're going to have income to justify your investments. If you're a 29-year-old AFL player that may play for another two or three years, I would not go out and buy a million-dollar property because the fact of the matter is in three years' time when you retire or get delisted, your income will go from whatever it is to bugger all. And even if you have equity in other places, other properties, other assets you still have to service the loan on that thing and it's hard to service a loan when

your income is zero yeah um so you know while others may be doing it and you want to keep up with the joneses just have an idea of your time horizon what's suitable for you and don't you know debt is what can bring you down so if you can't service that thing if you can today think can you tomorrow or in three years time and if your answer is no just don't do it absolutely good good advice mate and it's it's spot on i mean one of the key things that we'd like to take people through is to look at what's the true cost per week of holding whatever you're investing in not today not next year but the next 5 10 15 years and if there's anything along that journey like sending kids to school or being out of work for a period what impact is that going to have if you haven't

factored that into the mix then you're putting yourself in a potentially very dangerous situation So that's really good. So that's the bad advice. What's the best piece? That was good. That was good. Time horizon good. Yeah, time horizon good.

The bad one is probably one that normally gets thrown in the good bucket and that is it's all about time in the market. So I do agree with that in some terms. There's no better time to invest than now. If your time horizon is the long game, then get in. and, you know, you've referred to it before, the benefit of compounding is tick, tick, tick. But I was kind of told that early days and it was more about,

this was 2007, you know, property in Australia and SA had gone, you know, 10 years of nothing, early mid-2000s on fire. You just got to get in. It's just about time in the market. You've got to get in now because, you know, Property will never go down, obviously. That was sarcastic. It's all about time in the market.

But it's not. It's about if you're going to put that much money to work, it's about buying an asset that has value. I don't care if you buy it in 2000, 2007, 2019. If you're buying something, make sure it's a bloody good asset before you put pen to paper. And I guess that probably is my personal experience of getting caught up, earning a little bit of money early days,

trying to you know everyone else just made 100 grand on their property in 2006 so i've got to get in now um and really probably bought something that even at the time i thought geez you'd be lucky to sell this but you just got to be in the market right well you don't that's the wrong reasons exactly so a bit of my own personal bias there but that's good yeah i 100% agree it's uh and it even talking about property as a market is a is a anathema to me because it isn't it's a bunch of individual properties and uh it's a it's a matter of buying the right asset that's got all the right criteria that's saying this is going to be a consistently growth asset over whatever horizon you're looking at and whether that be property whether that be shares

whether it be kebabs if kebabs were giving me a better return and a better growth perspective than property, then that's where I'll be sticking my money. It's about as simple as that for me. So, no, that's awesome, mate. Okay, well, bringing that all to a head then, the question I would like to sort of bring it to a conclusion on is, and let's take Harper because he's close to your heart. Let's say Harper's just finishing high school

and he's about to enter into the real world. What advice would you give Harper in terms of what he should invest his time, his energy and his money in to achieve whatever he decides to call freedom at some point in time. And we've covered off investing in your schools and that side of it to some degree. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, mate? Yeah, I mean, I have touched on it a bit, but, I mean, I'd invest,

I'd advise Harp to invest his money in travel. I mean, you pretty quickly go from 17 in school to 27 and having kids. so and once you do the travel plan slow down a bit so when you have the opportunity get outside of australia get overseas there's a lot to learn over there um it's a big wide world and i wouldn't want him to miss it um don't worry too much about getting caught up in the in the short term know your long game's gonna be fine we're here we've got your back but go out there and see the world especially because i haven't seen as much of it as i would have liked yeah um invest your what was that money invest your time yeah it can be investment of anything really but time energy

skills money invest your time in yourself so i mean invest your time as a youngster finding out exactly what you want to do what interests you what you're good at yeah don't get caught up in all my mates just finished school they're going to uni so i need to do a uni course don't get caught up in my uh my friend's on 70 grand at his first job and i'm still living with mom and dad like take your time figure out what you want to do yeah because you know what you're doing the next year or two doesn't really matter what you're doing for the next 40 and if you can lucky enough to find exactly what you're good at coincides with what you really enjoy doing well mate going to work is not that bad because when you love what you do sometimes it's worse to come

home and see the kids yeah no offense but that's a great way to end it um mate uh for those that are interested in following you up and talking more about you how you might be able to help them on their journey what's the best way for them to do that mate um i'm not sure how much information i'm allowed to disclose but um i work at morgan stanley we're here in adelaide corner of North Terrace and King William. So many of the locals have probably been upstairs to 2KW or downstairs at Jamie's restaurant. You can look me up on morganstanley.com.au

or hit up Bushy. He'll have my email address and we can cut out the middleman and just get in touch with me directly. So if that's something you want to do, happy to have a chat. No, that's fantastic. Well, look, I really appreciate you spending some time, mate. there's a lot of life learnings there that there's big

parallels between elite sport and life in general I think you've really got us thinking about some of those things mate so I appreciate you coming on and getting to us. Thanks for having me mate Thanks mate Well Freedom Fighters how good was that

to get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested. I look forward to joining you next week

for another episode of the GetInvested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.