Welcome to the mentor. I'm Mark Boris Sam Gordon. Well to the mentor, mate.
Mark, Absolute pleasure, man, absolute pleasure.
You're killing it. You're the founder of I was Property Scouted. We're going to talk about it. And you've got a great podcast called the Top one Percent Podcast and you're the host of it, and we'll talk about that as well. But I just want to get a little bit of background on if you don't mind. Of course, we're just talking about Gold Coast. Apparently you live up that way, but you're a Sydney boy. Yes, Warner Bread yeah, Worn Bread mate, Yeah, where'd you grow up?
I grew up in a tiny little rabbit farm actually Indiandera, which is in the wall and Dilly just before win your Cariby so Dilly Shi, yes, yeah, okay Bargo there Yeah, not far from Bargain made famous by of course someone infamous.
And I actually travel down that way quite a lot, and like every Friday for about maybe ten years. I used to do a lot of work, a lot of business. We had a lot of properties, used to develop in mos File and Barrel and that sort of surround eras and we owned like a big commercial premises in the middle of Barrel which is the Grand Hotel and pedistrian not sort of stuff and nicely love going down there was fantastic.
Made I cut my teet developing in Mosvaw seven years.
Yeah, yeah, so what period was that.
That would have been the early twenty teens. So I bought my first one in two thousand and nine. I started developing twenty twelve.
So you we're going to talk about property, maybe it's a good way to start. So you said you brought up in a rabbit farm. Yeah, actual rabbits. You're harvesting rabbits and selling rabbits.
Yeah. So my boy was a mechanic by trade Sydney. Both both parents from Cayum and Us and George born and bred Sydney guys. Dad was a mechanic by trade, was a detective in the seventies and eighties in Sydney when it was pretty hectic, got out there when everything
was sort of going crazy. And when I bought this little rabbit farm down down in Yandera and at the time and it was dead, like the thing was barely runningruggling, and he did a lot of research into Okay, how can I make this thing big and grow and all the rest of it and end up buying all these parts of a feed meal and build his own feed meal and then the rabbits for the rabbits. Yeah, and then he grew it into one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and sold it.
Oh wow. Yeah, and you you went to school down They're all grew up there.
I went to Bargo Primary, but I actually went to Westfield Sports up in Sydney. So to catch two trains in a bus two and a half hours to and from school every day.
That's in your teens. Yeah, you're a sports person.
Yeah.
I was a soccer player play play Socket. Yeah. So I mean you usually get selected for Westfield. Yes, you have to be pretty good at what you do, you craft yep. So they take cricketers and soccer players and footy players, et cetera. They're like some well known sports people come out of that school. How was school?
School was good. I'm a very competitive person, so I loved that environment. It was something like three thousand kids trial for ten places per year, right, So I love that sort of thrill of a challenge and having to push yourself like that and made every day was we train every day, so especially when you're playing that elite level.
As a teenage, we trained four or five days a week at school, and then we'd be training four days a week with Sydney, like playing in Sydney and then playing on the weekends as well, so.
As in Sydney.
Of no, so this is pre a league was round, but there's no a league youth at the time, so this is like paramount of my leader Sydney Olympic. Yeah. Yeah, I played for Syna Olympics for two seasons there in my youth as well, So yeah, I just kind of played all over. So it was. I liked school for the sports side of things, but I was never I couldn't study just.
A scholarly scholarly site, a scholarly since it wasn't your thing. You didn't go out to university or anything like that. So what do you just come out of school? High school? Robot? Yeah, dropped out as high school.
Yeah, so I just turned sixteen, so heading into year eleven, first first month into year eleven, I couldn't do the workload, plus the massive commute to and from school every day as well.
You mean when you say workload, you mean the training.
School yeah, that they actually they actually like study workload right was too was too big for me sort of back then, and the training and everything as well. I had no interest in going to UNI. I never have. I was never someone that grew up I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or anything like that. I either wanted to be a soccer player or finally enough I wanted to do special forces, like one of the two things, just to like always be pushing myself
to try and go to the top. So yeah, they were my two things that I really but obviously soccer was a big thing when I when I left school, So I left school. My dad pretty much said to me, you got three options. Go to another school and finish year eleven and twelve and get your thing. But geest somewhere nearby. You go get a trade straight away. But all my mates were my mates that had gone out. They're making like four dollars an hour for fifteen hours.
So it was like terrible. I was like, I don't want to go out and make four bucks an hour. And then the other one was all you work on the farm and you start working tomorrow, and so I pretty much did that. So I used to do three days a week with the old boy on the farm, and then three days a week scaffolding around Sydney as well, and.
You travel to sitting In from Bargo or from from where you live. So you pretty much left school at the beginning of year eleven, which is like, as you said, sixteen, did you give up your sport?
No?
So kept I kept playing. Yeah, I kept playing. I was actually saw of my first first grade contracts at sixteen years of age. I was playing for and Sutherland Sharks at the time, and they were like the powerhouse in Sydney at the time. There was a lot of money that came in. There was one big guy that he just loved he loved soccer and he'd rock up in his yellow lamp beginning. It was a funny thing because he'd rock up on his yellow lamb beginning. You
get out walking, you have no idea. He just looked like some punter off the street, shorts, thongs, t shirt, like the most unassuming bloke he'd ever seen. And then he'd walk back out and jump back in his yellow limbo and take off. And so that it was a really really good club. First astro turf in the league as well. And it just brought some really good players to the thing, to the club, and it was I
pretty much played through there. I was doing really well playing even though I signed signed effectively to the professional contract. I was playing in the Razzies as a sixteen seventeen year old. And then Yeah, had hip surgery at nineteen and just never really never really came back properly from it.
And what made you think, Well, pretty immature at sixteen seventeen and eighty enough, you've been let's say, let's say you had your hip surgery what like around eighteen.
Yeah, I justin it was at the end of when I was eighteen, just about a hit nineteen I had the surgery. Nineteen.
That's pretty long for a young bloke. Hip surgery. Well, obviously a sporting career at that stage is probably that's cactus. You're probably thinking, I'm not the sporting career is pretty much over, or I'm going to have a long recovery from his hip surgery. When did you start looking at buying and selling property or getting involved in property at least? And what was it? Think?
What was the thing?
Because I mean, you've got a big property portfolio for a young guy. What was it that excited you about the property environment and what made you think that, yes, you could get involved in the proper environment. And by the way, you probably didn't even have a job, you have a cash flow at that stage.
Yeah, well I was working on the farm, right, so like I was kind of that. Yeah, and that was buba all between that and the and the and the scaffolding. I was making about seven it was seven fifty a week, I remember exactly. It was thirty nine grand a year, seven to fifty a week, gross five eighty four a week in that so not very much, not enough to service definitely, well finally enough. It actually was just right
because my living expenses were really really low. But to answer your first question around like what got me thinking about it was? And I know just recently you had Harry Triggerboff on the show and I listened to it.
Mate.
It was a great episode, man, I loved it. And Harry triggerbov was was the one that tricked it in my mind because I remember hearing about Harry. This would have been fifteen years ago. I bought my first one, I just over fifteen years ago, and I remember hearing about him owning something like three thousand apartments. I'm like, how does some bloke own three thousand apartments? He built them, I know, right, and like the strategy around what he
did with it. And so the more that I looked into it, like, I was just like, and I would have been seventeen eighteen at the time when I heard about this, and I just started researching, and like when I kind of kind of get fixated on something, I get like a little bit obsessed with it, right, and really want to find out as much as I can
about it. So I started researching him. And then the more I looked into it, and the more I started reading about it, the more that like, property was either this thing that people built their wealth in or they made their money somewhere else maybe whether it's it's an athlete or a business own or whatever, and then they park their wealth in it. Yeah, they make their wealth
in it or they store their wealth in it. And I was like, even at that age, I realized, Okay, well, this must be a decent asset class to be chasing. And then I was actually saving for my first car, and the old boy kept talking me out of us. I wanted tour to Super. I grew up in the Fast and Furious era, the two thousands. I went to score on Fairfield, so they're bloody everywhere. And yeah, man, I my old boy kept going to these inspections with
me and talking me out of them. That's a piece of shit, that's a biece of shit.
Just kept like house inspection of the current spections, current inspection, current special.
So he kept talking me out of the cars, right and then offendedly, one day we're driving back from this current inspection, he goes, mate, what he is by property? Stop looking all these ship boxes, just go go buy a property. And then I I remember.
How much would you have saved though at that stage?
How about thirty grand? Saved about ten grand a year?
So okay, so you got thirty grand and your dad's saying to you, maybe you should invest it in property. So let's say you put ten percent into the property, so you're going to borrow another thirty at three hundred.
Yep, it did.
Just at that point, let's say you decided yes, yeah, good idea. Dad. What did you do next? Like, in terms of did you go and get a pre approval next from somebody? I?
Did you?
Did you know how much you could borrow? Did you sort of do some calculations or I did.
I just went to the max. So, like it was, probably wasn't as easy to find those numbers now. And you remember rate City back in the day, they'd compare them. I don't know if they's even still around now right now.
Yeah, yeah, owns it.
Okay, there you go. So, man, I just used to go on Raat City and have a look at the different But how did you find my parents?
They said, look at rat City, Yeah, because.
I think they just done a big REFI in their house right on there to get their loans and stuff down. So so yeah, they just said go look at Raat City. Well I just knew that that's what they were doing, went and figured it out, punched it in. I think it was one Direct, which was a subsidiary of ain Z. They had the best rate and then they kind of had the best serviceability at the time for me as well. So I could buy up to two hundred and seventy
five grand with ninety percent land on it. I could borrow hundred and fifty more insurance.
Yes, yeah, had to cough up a bit. So so basically what you did is you worked out pretty quickly. You know once you find a comparison website. There's lots of them out there. Rate City is one of them. Still exists today, by the way, but that's just one example of them. You got and all the lenders say, tell us how much you earn, tell us how sort of deposit you've got, and they'll give you what servicing ability you have. They'll say, your servicing ability is alliwsure
to borrow two seventy fargument seet. Then you've got to go back and sort of work out, well to seventy plus my thirty three hundred stamp duty, bit of more insurance. I have to find a bit more dough What did you do?
Then? This was my lucky part was at the time. It was when they were aggressively trying to stimulate the market. The government was which you were talking about just after the GFCS. It is two thousand and nine, yeah, okay, And and mate said there there was no stamp duty like six hundred or something. Yep, no stand duty and a ten and a half thousand dollars grant first first
home and grand first time grant. So it used to be seven and then they doubled it to fourteen fourteen I got the one in the middle, which was a ten and a half.
Yeah, right, so that helped me. How did you know about that?
I was just researching it. I was just trying to find everything.
So, but were you were an aver read of their thin review? I can't imagine you were definitely not, But would I don't know. I can't remember back then, like in terms of two thousand and nine, but I guess eachnet was probably as popular as it is today. I mean, and therefore you just type in buying property, where'd you go? Did you get some advice?
So the only advice I ever got really from my parents' side of things were just my old boy making that comment you should buy a house instead of instead of buying a card. When I started looking into it, I started getting really really obsessed with it, like I was kind of saying before, and just trying to find everything I could add about it. And I think like I went looking for I don't know if someone had mentioned to me around grants. Maybe someone had mentioned to me
something around the grand side of things. This has gone back over fifteen years, was two thousand and nine, so I can't remember exactly what led me down that route, but I remember I didn't actually have quite enough of a deposit except for the grants that I was going to get as well, I pretty much would have been fully exhausting the bank account. So the ten and a half grand was big to me, and obviously they no stampty allowed it to make it happen as well.
In those days, there's no stampture as long as you're brought under a certain price. So you were buying something probably a six or one hundred thousand and six fifty, I think it was around that time. It was, so you knew that you could buy something out of six fifty. So all of a sudden, you know how much you can borrow. Yes, you know that you've got enough cash because of all the grants and all the other things
that existed out there. You knew that you had to buy something under a certain price because otherwise you don't qualify for the grand. So that's sort of pretty much triangulated for you where you should buy yah or where are the possibilities that you can buy it. You could
buy something in Adelaid. You buy something Melbourne, parts of Melbourne, Victoria, some parts of you said, well, parts of Queensland and parts of Northern Territory, Darwin, How did you then bring it into finding the exact area that we should buy and what type of thing you should buy? We should buy an apartment, a terrorist or whatever.
Yeah, this is to me. At the time, I was looking to stay close to home. I didn't know it. I didn't know it well enough. I look it Campbelltown because I was kind of halfway between Campbelltown and the Highlands right smack bang in the middle, but then to the east as well, you have Woollongong, and so I looked at Woollongong and I was like, well, out of the two, most people see Cambletown, it's a bit of a shitter in reality, right, whereas Woollongong, well relative perhaps, Yeah,
it's amazing in Campbelltown. I spent a lot of time there when when I was younger. But I looked at the two and okay, maybe restaurants, but I think what I could afford at that time in Campbelltown wasn't the sort of place that you and I would would probably want to live.
And were you thinking about living in it?
Yes? I had to for the grants.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I had to for the grants, and so I kind of like looked at more at Woollongong, being like, well, there's a big university there, so there's always that rental demand.
I knew it was still works a bit of a mining precinct sort.
Of slicity, so people had jobs.
Yeah, and it's not maybe at the level of what it is now, Like obviously now it's quite seen. It's quite a nice, a nice place to live. At the time, it's still probably a bit more run down than the other but.
That's always good actually because if it's going to get better and you write it up.
Yeah, And so that was my idea. And so I was looking for something a bit run down that I could renovate. And that was pretty much the thing. What could I afford what looks a bit run down that I could renovate. And I was always able to sniff out a discount and so and Stiff had a deal, and I was I was just always wanted to get
something for good value. Even now I got to I'll go to Woollies and if I look at the two peanut butters on salm, so we're going to buy the one on sale, just because I like, I like getting something half priced, right, So and I was exactly the same when I was younger, just trying to get trying to get something that was a good deal. And yeah, that's pretty much it led me. There a lot of opportunity there effectively at that time as well.
And yeah, so you did you decide on whether and does someone give you advice should you buy an apartment or a house.
Or couldn't afford a house down there? Couldn't afford it?
So good an apartment, So that's interesting. So how important is it that you could add value to it? So you know in your decision making process you just said something I could renovate. What do you look at when you're buying a property in terms of particularly when you've put your first property and a lot of people you know, trying to buy the first property that proposition I must
be able to add value to this. In other words, you don't want to go and buy is it correct from your point of view you want to go and buy a place set if you pay three hundred and fifty grand for a fraguments sake which probably ran about what you paid, or three hundred thousand dollars, you want to go buy a the department that's completely deck, brand new, new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpet, new walls, new everything's new looks beautiful, But you can't need value to it.
Is that an important factor for you? Add value? In other words? And where are the areas you want to add value? Do you want to add paint the joint or do you want to to the kitchen in the bathroom? What was your thought process?
Maye back then, I probably was was I definitely obviously wasn't as hyper focused on it as I am now and from the results side of things. But I want, I just want to saying run down that I knew I could sort of bring back to life.
To me, where did you get that idea from?
I don't know, a man just renovating, probably watching shows all that sort of things, or wanting wanting to have a crack at that side of things. And I think the big thing man, I was making next to nothing. Yeah, so I thought I can make money out of property. I probably didn't realize quite the extent of how much you can make out of it if you do this incorrectly. But I just knew in my head, if I get if I get something that's at a good price, if I can get a discount and something and then force
value through a renovation. It was going to be better than.
I had him into a discount. So it was advertised for price.
Cheaper than like what was comparable around.
It, right, okay, And that's because it was run down.
Even just like sell the circumstance. And that was a big thing with this one that I actually bought. To kind of jump to the actual property that I bought. I remember I looked at one in the same block as it, and it was straight right behind Crown Street more in Wollongong there right in the guts of the
of the city. And there was one that I looked at and ended up selling for like three it was three ten or three fifteen or something like that, and it was you walked in, there was like eight mattresses on the floor. It was just packed out with UNI students. It was grubby as it was very average. And looked at that one sold at like three ten, three fifteen whatever it was. The one I bought ended up it was actually a level up. Paid two seventy five for it and it was actually it wasn't in too bad
nick and need a new carpets needed to repaint. But other than that, it was actually a pretty good nick whereas the other one was really grubbing that sold for like thirty forty grand more so. Yeah.
So in other words, the original border because you sawt of arbitrarges the value you knew that something worse. It's sold for more and more than the asking price of upstairs and middlely that sort of encourage you to buy that one at a lower price. And when you choose the location of where you want to buy, and I'm talking about Wollongong, by the way, how important are men? It is so? And I was just only talking to
someone about just before you came in. He was saying, for people in the twenties, what are the sort of things they should be looking for? When did they go to buy? And I said, we'll buy in regional areas like you did in Wollongong. Probably not so much originally now, but it was then I said, not all original areas are equal, so the regional areas that I'd always be looking for. That I always advise young people to buy in places where there's airports or transport access near the water.
And it doesn't have to be the waterfront, but you can go, you can drive to the beach, hospitals, schools. How much of those things are do you think are important in terms of you being successfully very first purchase.
With that one, I probably put a pretty big emphasis on it. So it was walking distance to obviously the city was right behind the city center, it was walking distance to the hospitals, it was one and a half ks to the beach, all that sort of thing. Amenities on this one were really strong, and I thought it
was a really important thing. The only like, probably what I would throw in on this as a caveat is a lot of people get very hung up these days on the amenity side of things, and like, how much does it have From that perspective, Now, you need, especially if you're going regional, you need things. If it's an aging population, you need things like good schools, good transport,
that sort of stuff as well. But these days I actually don't place anywhere here as much as an emphasis on it as I used to do back in the day.
So what would you do today? I mean, if you're your you know, your twenty year old self back then, yeah, but you're you're putting your current head on your shoulders. What would you have done, would you've done exactly the same thing.
I would have gone on board in Campbelltown. I would have gone on board the stuff that I was scared to buy back.
Then, Now tell me why that's that's interesting.
So Wollongong kicked off about a year after Sydney and Campbelltown itself, right and in the twenty thirteen boom when Sydney started, both the Southern Highlands being like moss Fower, Barrel and Woollongong Newcastle, all the regional outskirts kicked off around about a year later.
Now what do you think that? Is it? Because it was they were cheaper, then they kicked off later. Yeah, I know that they kicked off. In fact, just they did kick off at at all? Is it because like people from Sydney said, it is too expensive in Sydney therefore I got to go to these other areas where and then they started supporting those other areas like like like Barrel.
I think it's a ripple effect kind of like a flow on, right, So exactly like that, like people especially that younger or they're not as wealthy sort of demographic, if they can't afford to buy in their local area, it starts to will use the term run. They wouldn't probaly see it like that. But let's say it goes from a three hundred thousand of the house to four hundred thousand dollars. If there are all of a sudden like well, I can't act ford this side of things,
so I'll go out there. But the same as investors. Right, So, if investors are buying that sort of product and then the return dips because they've had that growth, and this is a cool thing about now, they could pull the equity out of that deal. So so refinance the equity back out of it, and then go and buy in that next ring of where it looks affordable, the.
Next adjacent suburb or whatever it might be, or it might be adjacent regional area.
Yeah, yeah, like this example here, so and yeah, so that's what I definitely would have if I could wind back now, one hundred percent would have go on a board in those areas instead.
Let's go back to Campbelltown. Yeah, why do you think Campbelltown would have been a better investment, say today relative I mean, it's always good look back in hindsight, but why would Cambelton be better place today relative to Woollongong back.
Then Sydney had better drivers as a whole.
And Campbelltown and Sydney, Yeah yeah, yeah, So what you're saying is include Cambeltown in the greatest Sydney.
And so that's how I'd probably look at it, right, Like Woollongong and the Southern Highlands being like an hour further out, Sydney had all the drivers to get it to kick off and start running, right, And so because that was there and Campbelltown was within that basin, Kemptum was always going to start earlier. And so as an investor, what you always want to do is like, where's going
to go next? Like it's all well and good to go, let's say in that sort of timeframe, even buying there at that time in Sydney, it's like, is there anywhere else that maybe could have had a growth run in twenty nine and twenty ten rather than when it started
in twenty thirteen. If there was, I would have preferred to buy in those locations well, like earlier, because for example, yeah, well, I mean Paramata started the same sort of time, but even other regional areas or different cities all these sorts of things as well. So it's kind of having a look at it from a much broader perspective of what's going to give you a better return now as opposed to if something's potentially going to pop off in three
or four years. And looking back in hindsight, it's just because Sydney the drivers were coming together for Sydney a lot quicker at that time frame. It was still obviously a little bit off starting it's run, but yeah, that would have been Kempbeltown would have been a better Kempletown or Paramatta or anywhere in that more direct Sydney basin.
Because it started it's run twelve months earlier, you could have pulled the equity out of it and then gone and built another phase of a portfolio in either Woollongong or Highlands or Newcastle, those sort of further out. That took another another year before they started kicking.
Well, I've got to get a break. We want to come back out. I actually you said something really important. You keep mentioning the drivers. I do want to talk about the drive, what the drivers are in terms of I mean, obviously you've got a big portfolio. How many problemy you've got now one hundred and eighteen, one hundred and eighteen, So that was your very first that was the first. Yeah, he still got it.
The first time I bought for some hosold.
First one you bought, the first one is old. But you've got one hundred and eighty in properties across Are they mostly in Sydney or across Australia?
Six five, five or six different states? Now?
Yeah, okay, I want to talk about why you're diversification, but we'll come back and talk about in the second half. But when I come back from the break, I want to do. I want you to explain to our audience what you considered to be the drivers. What does that you know, we're talking about population growth, wages, incomes. What are we talking about we go to the break. When it comes straight back, I'm actually back from the break and I'm here with Sam. We've been talking about and he's,
by the way, founder of Australian Property Scout. We'll talk about what that is in a second. Would sort of in a deep dive in terms of his portfolio and is also the host of the Top one percent podcast, which is a very heavy, high trending podcast and I'm not sure if it's beating straight talk, but it's close. But and we're talking about right, really we're talking about is your property portfolio of one hundred and eighty properties,
but we are talking about your very first property. And you said that maybe in hindsight, if you look backwards, you would have preferred to buy in Campbelltown because Campbelltown was part of the greatest Sydney Sydney area. And then you kept talking about drivers. What do you mean by drivers? We're talking about drivers of growth, drivers of demand. Yes, what are you talking about when you talk about drivers?
So the biggest thing that we look at, there's two ways of looking at You've got your macros and your micros. So your macros are you things.
Like your population macro drivers are micro drivers?
Yes, yeah, yeah, so yeah, exactly exactly that. So from a macro perspective, you've got population growth, you've got big projects coming into areas pretty much what's happening from an economic, big standpoint that's going to have a direct impact on that location. One of the other big ones that most people can I.
Just stop there. So when you talk about if someone's trying to identify macro drivers, and let's say call the population growth, where do they find out what the population of growth is in Sydney and perhaps Campbelltown. Where do they find where did you? Where do you and your team find this stuff out?
A lot of the time that stuff, for one, is comes from a forecasting perspective as well. It comes from like build numbers and what's what's being forecasts for an inventory pipeline of what's actually being built and brought into an area. You can you can track it in real time because the only thing as well is a lot of the time it's lagged data. So you want to have a look like quarterly. You want to be tracking that quarterly and annually in terms of where's getting that actual inflow.
So we're looking at Strain bio statistic too. About core logic.
ABS is a big one. Poor logic is another. There's a lot of.
Different So just so the mystop because people don't know these places. So the ABS is ABS dot dot dot A. You Strain Buer Statistics and you just look through their menu and you can see the chapters whatever they cover off. But like one of the things building approvals, blah blah blah,
population growth, they do it by region. They by state, country, state, city, region and you know, you can actually get this information out of correct and it gets it gets printed once every at least once every couple of months, and so you're on top of that stuff. So and that that's free. He's very easy to read. Actually, do you subscribe to call logic as well?
Yeah? Yes, obviously as a business perspective too logic.
But they're back in those days. I mean, there's proper tech. There's a few different things around, different ones around, but core logic is one of the good ones. There's a proper tech core logic, and what's the other one, I can't think what it's called now for the moment, and research is sqms correct. That's a good one. Actually, the guy behind that's bloody fantastic. He's like his great talent is actually good to listen to. So but you subscribe
to one of those, which makes sense. But you can actually get free stuff out of cool Logic as well. By the way, But so you and you triangulated all this information. You're always looking at the stuff. Where's the population growing, you know, and government bringing in Like in Sydney, for example, we just must have had of that million people that came a million half people coming Australia, probably
three hundred thousand must be living in Sydney. And what do you think is the reason why people come to Sydney? Is it as simple as this fundamentals, that's where the jobs are.
It's where people know as well. So when you see so much from an immigration perspective, you have so much where people they know, cities like Sydney and Melbourne. And so the two biggest splits with Sydney and Melbourne that came in from that that massive population growth that we had. From that perspective, what I found really interesting was actually the flow and effect to the other states of internal migration.
So the amount of inflow that went to Perth and went to Adelaide even from an example, but Perth and Brisbane, southeas Queensland were massive during that period as well. We actually found a lot of Aussies moved on. So was that internal migration.
So Australians moving, Yeah, but people because a lot of people move out of Victoria the whole series of reasons, and a lot of people moved out in New South Wales up to Queensland, and but then a lot of people moved austraight as well. Yeah, so and this stuff st digital stuff. You've just got to track it to get a sense of where the demand's going to be.
You need to be continually on top of it. So it's ever changing, it's always it's always changing from that perspective, and you just need to be on top of it. And the project side of things, well, the other thing we're alluding to a lot of the time, when you know projects are coming into an area, especially big projects.
What do you mean by projects?
Infrastructure projects? A lot of airport, Yeah, airport tunnels, big plants being built, all these different sorts of things. Shopping centers, yeah, yeah, all that's what's depending on the magnitude. So shopping center is a big They're not like, you know, a ten ten billion dollar tunnel system or the Inland rail Link, you know, which was a multi tens of billions dollars projects.
As so, what are you trying to do. Let's say, for example, the airport. So we're looking at the airport, the new airport out at West Sydneydris Creek, Yeah, Badger's Creek. Like you know, it's pretty obvious there's billions and billions are being spent there, invested there by governments and various other people. And you've got to have your whole lot of infrastructure to support it, roads, shops, factories, housing, what
have your trains, et cetera. Do you take a long view on it because these things can take five ten years to get completed. Do you start hunting around the area, so saying, well, well let's go buy five houses or four hours or two hours or one? How do you bunch you in your face? What do you do with it?
Here's the other thing that you've got to overlay. And this is the thing, so it's not just having like a couple of boxes ticked. You need to stack the deck. And that's where I find you really win is when you stack the deck and you understand this thing really intimately. The other massive thing from a macro perspective that I like to really understand is affordability. So the big issue with Badgery's Creek Airport having a huge influence on that area and whether it actually will or won't have a
massive influence on it, it's the actually affordability ratios. So what's the median income to house price ratios in the area.
How do you find the medium income.
Media income same places.
We're not talking about medium where he said mediam, which is the I A in strain bureau ABS dot dot. You can find out it's pretty simple. You look up real wages or whatever the case may be, the incomes and they'll actually tell you by by district, by suburb.
Yeah. Yes, So you can literally drill down to that point as well. And what you can do is you effectively can create your own heat mapping. Is what we do. We create heat mapping around affordability ratios in different areas.
So affordability ratio being that the asset to income ratio. That's a very important ratio which in economics used across all categories of asset classes, many asset classes, shares, et cetera. But what you're saying is what is the what is the asset relative to the income. So if the assets of average average powers or a bit of real estate, there is five and grand and if the income the average income is one hundred thousand, so the ratio is five to one. And so what are you looking for
in terms of racio? What sort of ratio do you look in? Because I mean, there are some rules of thumb out there in terms of ascid income ratios, what are you looking for?
So the biggest thing is really understanding within this. So the one issue that we're in Australia right now is a lot of Australia's had growth because purely because of COVID is one piece where most of the country did have a spur to growth. And then the other side of things is you also have to take the actual
city into account as well. So metropolitans like Sydney and Melbourne they have a bit of a different waiting compared to a Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth because the desirability to live in a city like that, and again the regions would be then another step lower beyond that too. So it's understanding it more intimately than just putting a specific number on it, if that makes sense. So we've drilled down a lot deeper on it from that end to
then make a decision around it too. But if you look at like most of Sydney, even out there in Western Sydney, most areas are probably sitting at a ten to fourteen x of income to house price ratio is crazy, right, like absolutely regid.
So let me stop you there for a seconds. So because generally speaking, the rule of thumb is if the asset value to income, that's a bit of misleading. The average asset versus the average income specifically for the area is more than six times its six hundred thousand dollars property for one hundred thousand dollars income, generally speaking, is starting to get into the hefty like a bit too heavily price. It's a bit too expensive if you get
under seven or six. Usually that's sort of saying, well, you know, those people can afford to pay more, And as a result, you would expect the house price over time to adjust upwards.
It has the ability to increase.
It might not, but it has the ability. It has potential for us side. So the ascid DO income ratio is really good income, a really good ratio to know about. But by the way, you're right in Sydney, a lot of these ratios like a ten to one crazy So can I just because on that, and I've often wondered about this. Do you go and say, well, you know what, it's ten to one, let's say in Campbelltown, but the next suburb out, which might be let's call it Leppington,
I don't know. Do you know what is an except whatever that's called Leppington. Just fragument's sake, Let's say it's in Leppington. It's the income was actually higher than higher than the asset price. Does it all of a sudden sort of suggest you that people from Leppington my start buying up market and getting into Campbelltown because let's assume me Campeton's better than Limpington for a moment. Do you
see that happening? Do you like? In other words, the normal people live in the area can't afford really live there anymore, so they all move out to a lower area, and then other people move back. Then other move people move from a more expensive area currently back down to Campbelltown. In other words, it's sort of like the backfilling all the time.
Is that?
Does that happen?
It's it's that's the ripple of facts.
You might not have be abt Ford, limb Bondai, but your on your income, but you might be afforded to buying Clovelly. And then because you can now afford to buying Clovellly you couldn't before you could before, but you can't afford to live in Bondi, the house price in Colvellly go up, which pushes a whole lot of people in Clverly who are currently they're out and they say, okay, I can't live in Cludelium, or maybe I'm going to
move from Rubra. But what you're trying to well, I think what you're saying is I'll buy and Ruber day one.
That's it. And so that is the exact effect of a ripple effect, right, So what you're saying there of like it pushes the next bracket out, their next bracket out, their next bracket out. All of a sudden, these areas start to gentrify that are further out because people that have decent money but they're getting pushed out of those
areas get pushed further and further out. The other thing that we see a lot of the time though, is like what happens what the ability of your Leppington example before example, is it just has the ability to actually increase now because there is affordability in the tank there. Just because someone has the ability to move doesn't mean they always want to move. Oh, you might find people that are a bit further out that are trying to jump into that area as well. But what we find
is as a market starts to take off. You'll see extremely rapid periods of growth. So if you look at if you even look at there's a child out there. I can't remember who it's from. It might be prop track at someone. And it's over the last thirty years of the housing market, from ninety ninety four or whatever to twenty twenty four. We had a summit last year ran through this whole piece. And I think the market's always in this like linear up sorry, this upward trajectory
over time. They talk about six seven percent perandum average annual growth. It doesn't work like that almost always.
Because beverages are taken over teny period exactly. They might have had a twenty to ten and it mightivated one.
Yeah, And so often, like take Sydney for example, everyone thinks like Sydney's king, it always keeps growing. From twenty three to twenty thirteen, Sydney did nothing, if anything, it actually came back. But then in twenty thirteen twenty seventy
in the market more than doubled. So it's looking for like where are the opportunities and where where because in that timeframe of debt of no growth, that's where the affordability ratio start to increase again, incomes increase in that timeframe, Areas change, you know, gentrification comes through, places become nice to live, all the rest of the sort of thing. So
affordability actually increases. If anything. A lot of the time, the house bruces will come up, come back a bit, other areas, other cities, other regional areas, all the rest of the stuff. They have their runs. It comes back to being a point where that is now affordable and where we really what we really want to do is we want to stack the deck, Like I said before, stack the deck with okay, sweet, what else is there? Is it just affordable or is there also you know
a couple of big projects coming through. Is there were also strong population growth that's going to come off the back of that. Has there been strong gentrification? You know, all these different things that start stacking up to then go okay, Well, when is supply and demands start to balance out and go back in our way in our favor of supply being limited and then demand being strong, and you want to try and time it before that happens, because that's when you can get the best buyers. But
when your time that run. A beautiful case in point of this is when we went really heavily into Perth in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. The markets are running properly at the end of twenty twenty one, and everything stacked up there everywhere. Every other location had been having a crazy run during COVID, but because they'd shut their borders, wa hadn't really been doing anything. Perth hadn't
grown in fourteen years. And I was looking at everything there and house is the houseprius income ratios was sitting at like two or three to one, Like it was cheap, crazy, cheap man. We're buying five minutes from the beach, forty minutes from the city for three hundred grand for a full bed, two bath, Like that closed for three hundred thousand,
five minutes to beach. And like when I got over there, I finally got myself over there, we're able to get on the ground look at all these properties, cause I like, there must be something wrong with it. It just wasn't making sense right. I went over there, got on the ground, started speaking to everyone. We're already seeing rents increasing, vacancies were dropping through the floor. There's this big hit in migration that was starting to happen.
And from these states by the way, Yeah, migration people.
Trying to get out and get over there as well. And then yeah, man, it popped at the end of twenty twenty one, so everything sort of stacked right, and I think that was a big things. It's stuck in the deck because it's not just looking for like one or two things, it's how many of these metrics align for it to then have the run that they're anticipating.
And you keep saying we So I presume the Australian Property Scout yes, is a group of people as a business.
Yes, Yeah, So I've obviously got a decent team on that. So I've got a research team within within APS as well. And then when I say we talk about I'm kind of referencing our clients to be honest with that guy, because that's where we'rebviously.
So what does that do? What does a train probably scout do? I mean your advice agency and so you you you buy as a by's agency, you buy a property for or people come to you to go find me probably Perth, Gon find me a property Annade later wherever it is. Yeah, well I want to buy a property. Where do you advise? That's what is that? What they say?
Pretty much, Yeah, pretty much. They come through and say, yeah, we want to buy a property, we want to build a portfolio. We're all about building portfolios as well. So one of the businesses I built off the side of this was School of Property, and so pretty much everything I learned over the last fifteen years in a course in terms of how to scale a portfolio. I do monthly Q and A webinars and those things ago for
about three hours. I do buy annual summits, so we get like six seven hour to seven hundred people at the Star Convention Center in November last year. We pretty much just do all the training, you know, teaching people how to scale the portfolio, what things are changing, how to apply these even strategies to scale your portfolio. Because you can't retire off one or two properties like you have to build a portfolio. It actually gets a retirement
and effectively the combination of the two. The education course shows them how to do it. We strategize it then for clients, and then we go out and execute from the buying process well, and we do things like this like time markets before they.
Go yeah, so you're a sort of bit of a full package. So you hold a seminar, you'll big instructions and explain to people your experiences and sort of sort of advice as to how to not advice, but sharing
with people how you build a portfolio. Then if they want to build a portfolio and they say, look, here's a million bucks or I have the capacity to spend a million dollars on might have one hundred and I can borrow nine hundred, do you pre qualify them in terms of borrowing or do they do it themselves?
I mean when people come on, When people come on the books, we obviously we do a strategy session with them. First, throw them out to what's one of our brokers to get them assessed, assess what we can actually do with them from that perspective. They have to qualify effectively from a capital position initially because they need to have a certain amount of cash to be able to or equity
to be able to buy our property. And then once once they have that, we pretty much strategize the whole thing from there.
Where to buy and what to do with the existing portfolio. And do you talk to them about things like land tax, stamp duty, because you know, like if you bought all, if you bought all your proberties in New South Wales, you'd be playing paying crazy amount of land tax. Do you do you talk about lantax in a diversification through states you know might allow you to not avoid landtax but just not heavy to have as heavy as lantax burden.
Yeah, minimizing it for sure, y. Yeah, So the strategy takes everything into account. Structures is a huge piece of that as well. So New South I was is probably the most exposed was in Victoria. The probably the two most exposed states for lantax in Victoria. Yeah at the moment, since it changes last year.
And what are you seeing Victoria as a result of this new land tax imposition that they brought in this in other words, they've lowered the threshold. So it's I think fifty grand or something, and you paid lantax for every dollar after fifty thousand on everything other than your own occupy your home. What are you finding is the response of owners and or buyers into Victoria.
I think the thing to throw into the account with Victoria is the affordability is actually crazy down there at the moment. Good so, yes, very very strong, and so I think it's that, so it's it's almost equal sized population in Sydney, but it's the six most affordable capital city in Australia. It didn't have the same sort of runs that a lot of the other capitals had and regionals had during COVID, so it's become very affordable. That's
kept a floor under it. I think if it was the same sort of unaffordable city levels of say Sydney, mat I think the market would have been decimated. They would have been blood on the streets for sure. But because the market was so cheap as it was, and it was almost at this almost like a bottoming piece for where it had been over the last seven years. Since it's been finished in twenty eighteen, and it has been on a little bit of a slide since then too.
It's still affordable, so that's holding up the market. Vacancy rates are tightening. Yields have always been average down there, but they're kind of evening out, so it's it's yeah, it's not as crazy as I thought it would be as well. I thought there'd be some serious blood on the streets last year. It did. There were some areas that went down by fifteen percent, but they've all sort of bottomed, and it's it's very much in a bottom
phase at the moment. Isn't dropping any further. It's gonna be interesting to kind of watch out.
They've got plenty of jobs down there though. That's the issue. If people work down there and they're going to get paid down the Yeah, and if employees want people to work for them, they're going to have to pay them enough that they can afford living now. Otherwise they're not going to live there, which means employees have got to pay more. Perhaps you've got to pay more relatively speaking, can I just I do? And you've had an amazing right rise in terms of your own personal portfolio. You're
building this business it's advise agent. But I do want to talk before we close it. I do want to talk about the Top one Percent podcast. What you're the host, but it's your show, of course. What is the concept behind the Top one Percent podcast?
It's actually very similar to straight talk. I've always been a big fan of straight talk, made always be usually I'll followed you for Nate since you saw a Wizard for half a billiyone half a Billy back in two thousand and four. Mate, I've followed you since then as a young fellow two.
Thousand and four, that's twenty years ago, twenty one years ago, hundred percent.
And man, I think I wanted to do that or something very similar to that in my own way as well. And I really wanted to get inside the minds of athletes, business owners, entrepreneurs, people at the highest level in their fields and really sort of unpack and see, for one, what their journeys were like at the very very start, what they've achieved to day, pretty much the learnings and everything they went through as well, and pretty much is unpackable.
What you learn, what maybe some of the things you have learned, What are there some observations at least perhaps not learned, but some observations that you can come out of. You must have a lot of episodes by now. So while we are there, are there any common denominators?
Almost always the common denominator is hardship early, so really, yes, so many people they go through. We had, like one of the first episodes I did was Macro and Mike the protein guy came over from came over from England and just like it took him eight years to get this thing off the ground. But also that hustle piece for eight years, non stop, going through doing it again and again and again, constantly improving, refining, never dropping that
quality piece. I think that's so often I see these guys, especially in business, that dominate, and they keep dominating. It's that piece. Look at a meal jurisdic Man. Last year they did three billion dollars worth of sales at energy, you real estate in Brisy and you know, unpacking these guys journeys Man and so many others as well that I've done so far. Specifically the guys in business, they
do everything they can to not drop quality. And if I look at the biggest thing, the biggest reason we've had so much success to date and what we've really done. I spend no money on advertising, probably the biggest buys ency in Australia. I spend no money exactly. It's all referrals, all doing a great job by someone, and you give someone your word on something that you're trying to do, and you follow through on that and you take ownership if something goes wrong, and you help people as much
as you can. And so much of my competition, and when I look at other people's competition as well, when something happens, they bury their head in the sand, or they block the number, they block the hemails, these sorts of things instead of like facing things head on trying to fix it. And I think what I found is like watching these guys so often and how interviewing so many of these guys as well guys and girls. It's it's seeing that resilience, resilience through everything, like pushing through.
If you can't, if you don't keep pushing through, you don't have that grit determination perseverance to keep pushing through. From that perspective, you're not going to get the result, right, it's not going to come.
But as you develop that grit, that resilience perseverance.
It's when things come up and hit you, you get up and you keep going on, you keep going forward. And so there's two there's two outcomes. There's two things you can do on that you can you can lay down the ground and not do anything, or you get
up and you keep pushing forward. I'm sure you've had a ridiculous amount all the businesses you had over the years, and they still keep coming and looking You're still going strong man, you know, And I think like I can only imagine the strength that you would have internally of something popping up. These days, it would be very hard for many things. I think to rock someone like you
with the amount of stuff you've been through. And I look at all these guys and girls, man, and they all go through the same thing, and that's all different levels. So what seems hard this year, you know next year you look back, would be nothing. And what was hard two, three, five years ago? And I look it for me now looking back too, three five years ago? What was hard back then? These days a walk in the park, it's
so easy to fix. But when these things pop up, it's handling them head on, taking these things, taking these things on and winning and finding out pressures. Or if you lose, I don't look at anything as a loss as long as you learned from it. So as long as you learn from anything, a mistake or a lesson or anything that happens, even if you lose money from it, as long as you learn from it, you can reiterate
and be better as you move forward. And that's how I've seen every single one of these guys and girls that I've interviewed with this thing. They've all had losses and they've all just picked themselves, dust themselves off. They maybe they hurt for a year off the back of it or six months off the back of it or whatever, until they could keep, you know, keep that thing moving, improve, reiterate, you know, the new iterations being better, and then succeeding from there.
It's funny, You're right. I mean, I was thinking as I was listening to you then, and there are certain characteristics of these successful people that are common and it's not they don't make mistakes. Everyone, I'm including Harry how trigger Off, will tell you how he makes mistakes. He's
made mistakes. But he's ninety two this year's actually just turned ninety two last couple of days, and he's still at it, and he's probably still up against it, like council giving approvals or not being able to get the pre sales and he wanted to not the price he needs, or problems with the building, with the builders, the excavation,
whatever it is. There's always there's always a problem. And if every day you work go to the office knowing that I'm just kind of to solve some stuff today, that's the way to look at it.
Solve.
Yeah, solved, I.
Think that's the biggest thing. Solutions based thinking, solving problems. Ye, that's that's what it's all about. I'm here to solve exactly. That's my job and that's how you look at it and everything exactly.
Okay, what are we going to do today? Okay? This problem? Also because people ask me what do I do, and I say, I spent my life putting up bush fires, and because that's that's what I'm I'm a firefighter. I'm putting our bush fires. That's what to do. That's my daily Apart from this, my daily job, My duty is to put out bush fires. Because I don't give a
shit what job you're in. And if you're successful, you're going to one percent good stuff, and nine in nine out of one hundred things will be problems if you're sitting at the top of the business. Yeah the business doesn't mean business, not making money whatever, But if you're sitting at top of business, that will be a lot of things you got to solve, and you will never solve more. You'll go home and go to bed every day with things that you didn't fix. The trick is
to say, okay, park that, what do you do? I park it and I try to forget about it. What do you do when you know that you haven't solved everything for the day? How do you get to sleep at night?
I always put together a list around what are the most important things that need to be fixed and then the things that can rightise? Yeah, and what needs what can be put off and fixed in because if you're trying and fix everything at the same time, you're going to employ it, right you go nuts, exactly, And not a note of itting can be f at one time.
So it's what could be delegated to someone else to handle, and then if it can't be if it can't be handled by them, okay, sweet, what's the time frame it has to be fixed within? And then you prioritize the most importantly, delegate what you can delegate, and if things have to be done by you, it's by prioritization because ultimately, yeah, exactly, you say they're not going to be able to fix everything in the same day and get it all done, So yeah, prioritization must different tasks.
If you develop some sort of skill though, Sam, that allows you to park the problems, because like, if you've got an obsessive type personality, everyone can obsessed with these things, which means you don't sleep, then you don't know, you don't perform if you don't sleep. How do you park it? I mean, and did you ever go through a period when you couldn't park those things at the end of the day? And when is the end of the day
for you? I mean, how do you sort of real align in the day and say, Okay, I'm now I'm going to go to bed or I'm going to go home and have my dinner with my family and then I'm not going to think about this sort of stuff. How do you how do you re align the day and park stuff? Is it a conscious decision or is just something you do at the subconcient your unconsciously.
It's I think it's probably a mix. I think it depends on the gravity of what the situation is and how important it is. If something is really important, I don't get to bed until until I get it done, or and I don't I don't finish up work until I get it done, or at least put the pieces in motion to get a result so I can fix something. Because you're a hundred percent right, like it's most of what we do is putting out fires and handling problems
and all the rest of it. One of the other big things I've got is I've got a massive white boardom office and it's like my you know they do like a brainstorming session. Yeah, that's it. So I'll throw heaps in myself on the boards, whether it's something i'm coming to or different ideas and stuff that I've got, and whether I'm drotting that down something later i'll have something something where I'm on the phone or someone I just have an idea of me, I'll go write it down.
And one of the one of the columns all the way on the right hand side is things that need to be fixed and things that are a priority that need to be sort of taking care of as well and need to stay top of mind, and I write it there. So if if it's not something it needs to be urgently done, because it's urgently done, will alway jump on and do them as quickly as I can with those sorts of items. But things that I know that need to be fixed but aren't like a crazy priority,
I'll put them on there. So then every single time I walk in the room, I'm seeing it straight away. Every time i'm finishing something up. I'm seeing it straight away, and I hate having unfinished business like around, especially if they're things that I know are either going to be needle movers or create a solution that is going to take that piece out of my mind, because I'm very much someone. Yeah that Like, if I'm going to bed with something that's important and I haven't fixed it, I
don't sleep. You know, I won't sleep.
Well, what about it if you can't fix it today?
If you can't fix it and it's super important.
Yeah, because it's important, I can't fix it. It's on the top writing corner my whiteboard. I can't fix it. If you've got a technique that helps you go to sleep, But what do you do?
I strategize how I'm going to fix it. That's normally the best way because otherwise otherwise I got to sleep strategizing it, and I'm writing notes in my phone at one am, you know of or speaking to Siri at one am to send myself messages on to on how
to fix these things. But yeah, I'll normally try and like actually strategize it before I leave the room or before I go to bed, and my notes in my phone is all is so much of a hit list of all this sort of stuff because exactly what you said before, like solving problems and solutions based thinking and that sort of stuff, Like, I try and apply that
to everything everything I do. Whether it's something within the business you know that we're trying to optimize for, or a service that we're trying to maximize, or a problem that's popped up and all the rest sort of thing. I'm always trying to solve it from that perspective. So if I get to the end of the day and I couldn't get someone on the phone, or I couldn't take care of this or that or whatever, I will, yeah,
effectively strategize how I can do it. So if I can't do it tonight, well I've done all that I can now, And but here's a strategy or he's he's runing to implement tomorrow to take care of this thing, whether it's getting someone on the phone, top points I want to run through with with whoever or whatever it is, or if there's something specifically needs to be fixed maybe from a service position within the business. Well bang writing
out all my different little things as well. And we're going through so many changes in business right now as well. Right there's so many different things evolving. So I've always got these different ideas come into my head and same thing bang throwing out there, taking all the notes of it and putting into place whether it needs to be tonight or or then it first thing the next day.
It's very interesting. I often say to people, excuse my off sead of people, that solutions in the business means is an action as word of action. It's like say you've got to do an action. Solving something is an action. It's not a thought. You're not thinking about solving something. You are. I come up with a strategy, that's the thought, but there's an action that associated with it. And part
of the action I think is taking notes. I mean, I'm a big note taker, and I see people in things work place where do talks and stuff that they don't take notes. And you know a lot of people have great ideas, but they never reduce it to writing. And I think that if you've got a solution, if you've got a problem that you don't know the solution for, but you think there's some strategy, here's a few strategies
around a way I might solve it. Writing it down actually helps you, Like you've sort of put it away for the moment and you can pick it up the next day. But if you go to bed and have not written something down, you continually keep thinking about it. So writing things down, reducing things to writing can put a full stop in your day and lay your brain to rest and go to sleep. Then tomorrow morning when
you wake up and you're fresh. You might wake up three o'clock, four o'clock a months that's okay, no drama, but at least you can get to bed and get some sleep and then started on it again after you refreshed. But writing notes is part of the action required to solve a problem instead of just ruminating over a problem.
That's the worst thing you can possibly do. Write shit down and or your cereal however you want to do it, and it doesn't matter, like and if you wake in the middle of night, you're right, just speak how you do it, just be to cereal or write down, but write down and then go back to sleep. Yeap, don't sit there ruminating over it.
You're what I think is the golden part of this that I absolutely love me because that's exactly how I look at it as well. And It's worked so well for me over the years too. I find that when you take that action piece of writing, not just like thinking about it whatever, but actually writing it down and even a couple of little dot points, it might go wizard of like what you're sort of thinking of. I find you when I've done that, my mind percolates on it.
Whilst even whilst it's like a subconscious you know what I mean, it's like, well, I've done everything I can today, I'll do you know, I'm going to I'll take care of it first thing in the morning again, right out sort of thing. Your mind will percolate on how to actually fix it during you got a plan from yeah, and it starts to come up with stuff. So then when you start thinking in the morning with the fresh mind, it's like, well, all these things start coming to me.
And a lot of the time it's actually from that. It's putting that out there of like this is what I'm trying to solve, especially making it a priority. From that example, and then it comes up.
I'm just a big believer and I like what you say. I'm just a big believer of taking notes. Sometimes you really know what the fuck was thinking about? What does that mean, but just taking notes and just to close your day down. There's no better time to refresh, you know, or to summarize what you've been doing all day or working on the problem and put it into context. There could be ten bullet points or three bullet points, and you look at it again tomorrow and you start again. Nothing.
There's very few things that are solvable over time. Yes, very few things, as long as you're prepared to give yourself the time. So when you're not prepared to give yourself the time, you think you're in a hurry, that's when you really stress yourself out and you can cause yourself problems and you will make bad decisions, you know, Like, it's not just a lot of people think it's about money. I think it's having the funds to do something or fix something. Yeah, sure, if you've got lots of money
that they fixes most things. But you know, you really shouldn't worry about that. Think about it that way. It's a game, and the game is the solutions to the problem. That's the game we play. And if we accept that that's the game we're in, then it's such a big deal. And in order to accept it, you just write it down and write down moves. In a game of chess, I'm at a point where it's a difficult game. I look like I'm getting the other guys getting on top
of me. Before I finish the game. Offer today, before I resume the game tomorrow, I'm going to write down a few ideas about a few moves I might make tomorrow. And that's it. I'll go to sleep, and I wake up tomorrow morning, I'm set to go again. Businesses like playing chess. You just got to write your stuff down and that's it. Put it to bed, get up the next morning, work on it again, and keep going. Buy self time, make moves that buy you time. Eventually, the
answer will present itself. We don't really think of the answer. I don't think. I mean, the answers present themselves. Once you've exhausted all the various alleyways and avenues you're going to go down. They present themselves a lot of times. That's eliminating what.
Is not an answer?
And then the answer reveals itself.
It's like a different solution you hadn't already been thinking. It was already in your mind a lot.
I mean, I'm you're and by the way, Sam you're right. I don't care of a shit who you are. You know, you could have been Kerry Packer, you me Rupe Murdoch. Business is about being prepared to accept the problems and being really excited about coming up with solutions. Look at Murdoch now, he's in his nineties. He's still dealing with issues and he's still alive and the reason and he's still doing it, and I think it drives him. It
keeps him alive. I actually think keeps him life. You're a young man, but you know when you're my age, you know it's actually the game of chess. The solutions are actually the game. That's what will keep you young. Very true, keep your brain young and a lot of times you can be able to deal with these things for you've since it before or some variation of it. Sam Gordon, thanks very much, made and by the way, congratulations on your Top one percent podcast. Appreciate it doing a brilliant job.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I just want to say, man, honestly, like I said, I've been watching you for a very long time. So to finally meet one of my idols, imperson mate, Honestly, it's a massive very humbling moment for me to be able to meet your mate, so thank you so much having me on.
Thanks Sammy, you've been on my tail. So in terms of your audiences you've caught have been on a long time and bla Helen you've caught up so quickly, but well done mate, Thank you, Matte really appreciate it.