Mastering Financial Literacy and Wealth Creation with Andrew Woodward

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Mastering Financial Literacy and Wealth Creation with Andrew Woodward

Mastering wealth creation insights from Andrew Woodward of The Investor’s Way. In this episode of Biz Bites, we discuss the importance of mentors, financial literacy, and proactive investing strategies. The conversation also provides some insights into managing personal and business finances to achieve both financial security and retirement goals.

So Andrew’s journey alone from CEO to financial educator is also going to give you some fantastic insights. It’s an episode you don’t want to miss. Check out some of these excerpts before we get into it. Understanding what type of lifestyle they want to have both now and in retirement and what it’s going to take to fund that.

In the event that you’re no longer working. So a lot of people will come with the idea that they don’t want to work till they’re 65. I’m very much about trying to get people to think about their money far more consistently and be more proactive so that they’re growing their wealth consistently every month.

Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly brought to you by CommTogether, the people behind Podcasts Done For You, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance. Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out Podcasts Done For You as well in the show notes. Now let’s get into it.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites and Andrew, it’s so great to be able to finally do this. We’ve been, we worked out, we’ve been, we can have a bit of a laugh about it. We’ve been backing and forthing for what, probably two years on trying to make this happen. And then for whatever reason, now is the right timing for it to happen.

Welcome to the podcast. Anthony, thanks so much for having me on the podcast and being polite enough not to mention that it’s probably been my fault more than yours that it’s taken this long to get here. There’s always something that gets in the way. We all know about that, but but all good.

Great to have you here. And I suppose we should start off by asking you to explain a little bit more about who you are, what you do. Yes, Andrew Woodward, founder of The Investor’s Way, which is a business that effectively is an educational business teaching people how to manage and grow their wealth. And came about from a business mentor challenging me to teach people what I’d done for myself when I was complaining to my business mentor, that I wasn’t loving what I was doing.

And I was the CEO of an organisation here in Sydney and look, we were doing some good things, but I just wasn’t loving it. And this business mentor basically hit me between the eyeballs with the reality stick and said he was part of multiple businesses. And I just had one job and he basically said to me, surely you can do more.

And so I started it as a side hustle and now it’s the main gig of what I do to just keep me off the streets and occupied because I do live what I teach. I love that. And I love the fact that sneaking away in there is having a mentor. Can I just unpack that for just a second before we get into the main bit?

Because I’m always fascinated by that. I’ve had some interesting discussions with people online about this whole idea of mentors. And some people have found it. I found out are vehemently against the idea of a mentor. I’m not quite sure why. That’s certainly not my stance on things. I’ve valued the mentors that I’ve had along the way in my business.

And there’s probably, two or three that stand out particularly. I’m interested. How did you find the mentor? Or did he find you? And or, and also, you don’t have to say who the person is, but I’m just interested in their approach and what they’ve actually meant to you for over a period of time.

Yeah, look it’s actually a long and interesting story, so I’ll give you the shortened version though, but I joined a cycling charity to raise money for cancer research after my mother in law passed away from cancer. And I got quite proficient at raising money, and so I became known to the board of the charity and ultimately the chairman of the charity who became the business mentor and we just connected well and got friendly with each other.

And anyway, I was having conversations with him whilst we’re out riding our bikes, raising money for cancer research. And he just said to me one day, look let’s keep this conversation going beyond, The bike ride. And so I’d go and see him initially pretty sporadically, just every month or two, and we’d have conversations about what I was doing and what I wanted to do.

And over the process of having those conversations, it was where he discovered that where my passion was and what I was doing were not aligned. And that’s where that question or that not really a question, but a. A very direct statement about, go and do what it is that you love doing for yourself, but teach others to do it as well.

That’s where that all came about. And it was effectively an informal arrangement that became more formal over time and more consistent over time. And he just really found that what I was, Yeah, struggling with was I just wasn’t in alignment with what I was doing and what I love to do.

And so he put those pieces together for me. We’re still friends. We don’t necessarily catch up as often anymore from a business. Mentoring perspective. But he was a very important factor in driving that development of my business. Hey, we hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Buys Podcast.

Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world? Come talk to us at podcast. Done for you. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you. So all you have to do is show up for a conversation, but don’t worry about that.

We will do everything to design a program that suits you from the strategy right through to publishing and of course, helping you share it. So come talk to us, podcastdoneforyou. com. au, details in the show notes below. Now back to BizBites. Yeah, they are. I love the fact that what you’re talking about, there is purpose and and you met with purpose.

That’s what I love about that story particularly is that there was a purpose in what, led you down the path of actually meeting in the first place. So when you’ve got those shared values and ideas in the, it makes. Complete sense that those conversations continued on and went further and clearly that person has had a significant influence on, how you’ve shaped your business and the ability to do that.

And I think often there are those people in our career that don’t. Necessarily always get the wraps and they don’t necessarily stick around for the long term either. I, I’m not sure if I’ve shared with listeners before, but I had a, I’ll call it more of a colleague rather than necessarily a mentor in the early stages and we had been talking about things and I’d been working in a couple of different jobs over a number of years.

He’d come across with me as a, as an external person. And he knew I’d taken on this contract and it was short term. And we were having a discussion one day over coffee. And he just said, you’ve got to take the lead, go out and do it yourself and do this, and this is how I got started. And he got me started in a networking meeting.

That was his first thing is come in and do this. And whilst, it was. very sporadic and not official, never became officialism as a true mentor in that specific sense. It had that kind of influence on me in the early days. So without giving his full name out there, shout out to Chris, if you’re listening in.

And I think you touch on a really important point. There is a time and a place for certain mentors. And, with this particular mentor that I’m talking about, he was very much, in the right place for me at the right time. When you know that conversation started, I’ve gone on now to have other people that are helping with the development of my business, which is not necessarily where his skill set necessarily is.

So I think you’re right in that they don’t have to be around for the long term, but there’s a time and a place for each skill set that you need when you need it. And so You know, for those people that are, open to the idea of having business mentors that you don’t need to be married to them forever to get from them their skill set and their benefit for you or your business.

I think it’s a great little insight into mentors, and I’m glad we explored that a little bit, but we need to get into the main part of what you’re doing and this whole idea of wealth creation is something that it’s lovely. It’s a lovely common phrase that is used. It’s a phrase that I think people aren’t genuinely in touch with.

And I think it’s about as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a lot about how people are brought up. And, being restricted by their own sense of their own limitations. Yeah. And you’ve touched on probably the biggest component of why I do what I do and why there’s a market.

And that is that. Financial literacy, wealth creation, money management, whichever one of the terms you want to use, is not taught at school. And therefore, we develop those skills, good or bad, from our parents, who develop theirs from their parents. And we have to keep in mind that our parents and their parents didn’t learn this at a school either.

And so if they’re good at managing money and growing wealth, then that you might be successful in doing it yourself. If they’re not so good, or it’s not something that is talked about because, we grew up in an era where you didn’t talk about money, politics, or religion. Then again your capacity is going to be very limited when it comes to what to do with your money and how to grow it.

So it’s those factors have led to any number of statistics that I could throw at you about why people need this knowledge. The biggest one being that only 5 percent of Australians will retire with enough money or assets. to support their desired lifestyle. The other one is that 80 percent of people are going to have more life at the end of their money.

Yeah, that is, it’s some scary statistics and I definitely, and we’re going to come to that in just a moment. But I’m, I want to establish as well is that the challenge is having this financial literacy is so important for any of the small business owners and operators out there as well because often people start a business because they’re good at what they do.

That does not mean that they’re good at the financial side of things. And I’d have to say to you that my eyes glaze over when it comes to the financials. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people sitting me down and explaining. Balance sheets and all the rest of it. And it is just it’s a challenging thing for, someone like myself, who’s more of a creative side of things than a financial side of financial understanding, but I’m intrigued as to, as, as far as the stuff that you’re doing is concerned, do you focus more on the personal?

Do you bring in the business side of things? Where do you find that? I think the simple answer is it’s both. because a lot of my clients are business owners and There’s another statistic I’m going to throw at you that there’s a very small percentage of businesses that are saleable or sell. And most business owners have wrapped their entire wealth into their business, both their time, their energy, and what it’s going to be in the future in terms of creating or selling that business and materializing that into cash that they’re going to use for retirement.

And they discover too late that they haven’t got it. So when I’m dealing with business owners, it’s very much about let’s, Have a plan B. So the business might be salable down the track and you might be able to generate a large sum of money and use that for retirement. But let’s in the meantime, use some of what you’re generating from the business now to grow your wealth.

Over the long term. So there’s a backup plan just in case so they’re very much aligned. But when it comes to the work I specifically do, it’s very much about what’s coming into the household income and expenditure scenario and helping people manage that from a money perspective and then grow it.

From an investing perspective, from a personal scenario, but we’ve always got the business out to the side as a part of the equation. Yeah, I, and it’s a really important lesson for people to understand exactly what you’re talking about in that businesses, Don’t sell, not easily.

And there’s what is the statistic? It’s in excess of 300, 000 businesses in Australia will shut down every year, less than 5 percent available. Yep. And it’s scary. And what’s even more scary is, by the way, that I’ve talked to a number of business owners where they’ve actually Got something that strangely would be salable if they did a few things about it, but decide not just going to shut it down when I’m ready to shut it down.

And that’s the end of it. And so it’s a really interesting dilemma on that in that space. And, so how much is, is it giving them that reality check, as you’ve just done and saying, look, Your business is your business and I’m not, that’s not necessarily your space of where you’re helping them with, or is it a case of saying, look, you need to do stuff.

You need to also be investing in your business to make it more potential for more saleability in the future. Or is it purely just looking and saying, let’s put the business aside and let’s look at something else. Yeah, I’m very much about letting other people coach. Mentor, help grow, whatever the right terminology is, consult in terms of the business profitability, growth, salability, all those type of things.

I’m very much about let’s take what you’re currently deriving from your business. and put it to work so that in the future, if you need a plan B, you’ve got one. And understand and appreciate that, the ability to draw out of the business is another aspect of owning a business that a lot of people struggle with.

And that’s the dilemma of how much do I leave in the business versus pay myself. I don’t want to pay too much personal tax. And then they get all this cash in the business, but it’s doing nothing. It’s just sitting there doing nothing. So we’ve got to, we’ve got to balance. The management of the business and the personal, money management and investing for growth and for security in the future.

So yeah, so it, I’m very much separating the personal financial wealth scenario versus. The wealth that’s tied up in the business, but we’ve obviously got to recognize that it’s there. Absolutely. And I think one of the scary things that you spoke about before is the fact that most people, when they retire, will not have enough money in their superannuation to last them very long at all.

And that is a very difficult thing that we as a society have to cope with as well, because it’s, I think the we could probably talk for hours about this whole idea of superannuation and whether it works or not. I personally am not convinced that it does for the overwhelming majority of people and that perhaps there’s more benefit in being able to invest that money in a particular way to benefit your lifestyle rather than putting it into a fund.

Per se, but that is a an argument for another time. Don’t give me started on that argument. Yeah it’s, yes. Let’s let’s pipe that one and have that another time. And perhaps we’ll have that in a separate podcast, but. I’m interested in then that reality that people are facing.

When is the right? I suppose the right time is the earliest time possible. But when do people start coming to the realization that they need to work with someone such as yourself? I think the easiest way for me to answer that is by just looking at the demographics of my customer base, and 90 percent 40 to 55 years old.

And so I think they’re coming to that realization in that age demographic where they’re starting to, move past the, I guess the growth of their family and looking after kids and all those type of things and schools and high schools and all that type of stuff. And the entering that age demographic where they’re starting to look ahead and go.

Hang on a minute, I’m doing all of these, crazy things with my time and working really hard to grow or just keep my head above water. But hang on a minute, retirement’s only just around the corner. What have I done about that? And they look at their numbers and go, Oh, they’re not where I’m going to need them to be.

I better actually start getting proactive and do something about it. And no matter how old somebody is, whether they’re 33, 43 or 53, Every one of them will tell you, I feel like I’ve left it too late, but can you help me? And it’s never too late to do something. It might be too late to get you, your ultimate dream, but it’s never too late to do something and get some things in place to try and improve your position because, the thing we were just alluding to, soup is not the answer.

So where does it start? What is the, what are the, some of the basics that people should be thinking about? Oh the initial thing is really just understanding what type of lifestyle they want to have both now and in retirement and what it’s going to take to fund that in the event that you’re no longer working.

So a lot of people will come with the idea that they don’t want to work till they’re 65. and want to be able to retire when they choose to retire. So you gotta put some numbers down on what does that look like and where do you need to be to get to that point. And then it’s really just about what resources you throw at it as to what, speed you’ll get there.

So the real initial, uh, conversation people are having in their household is I just don’t feel like I’m getting everything out of my money that I could be or should be and that normally comes by just looking at your For most people that’s you know, their tax return and going you know it’s just I just don’t have the assets that I think I need in order to support myself down the train and They get a little bit more proactive as a result, but that conversation can happen any point of the year because I think we should be investing consistently, but for most people, they don’t think about it until they’re forced to do their tax return.

Yeah, it is an interesting dilemma, isn’t it that most people, their relationship from a financial point of view, whether it’s a financial advisor or an accountant, is generally Four or five times a year, and it’s all, tied up with between Baz and tax. That is, and the negatives, right?

That’s the hardest part is that we develop this negativity with money because that is it’s. Yeah. The only time that we start, really thinking about it and realizing how much is going out all the time and not enough going in and, you, and I think that whole idea of when you want to retire I’m sure that age is going to go up.

The average age of when people retire, forget what the legal age is, but when people want to retire is going to go up as life expectancy increases and importantly, as inflation and other other things that are happening in the economy, particularly at the moment where it’s very difficult to keep, on top of the cost of living.

What you need to retire and what you need to be doing. It can be feel like a mountain. Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right. Like the those relationships you were describing a transactional. And it’s all like compliance and so forth. I’m very much about trying to get people to think about their money far more consistently and be more proactive so that they’re growing their wealth consistently every month and not making it something that gets buried.

And I come back to that comment I made up front, which was, we only think about these we’re not, so we wouldn’t. Brought up to talk about our money. And so it’s something that’s very much in the background of day to day living, whereas if more people would have that conversation and realize that there’s things you can do to grow your wealth without having to slug 40, 50, 60 hours a week for somebody else’s wealth, or even if it’s your business and you’re putting those type of hours in we’ve got to get the balance right.

And life’s about now, not down the track. And there’s too many people that I see who are getting to retirement age and they’re no longer got their health to be able to enjoy whatever they’ve created in the meantime. So I think that getting that balance right is really important. The only way to do that is to be proactive with your investing so that you can have choice as to when you retire or when you reduce the amount of hours you work because you’ve got the funds and the assets to fund your lifestyle.

So when we talk about investing, that’s the interesting thing for me as well, is that we’re not really taught the whole ideas of the ins and outs of investing itself. In, in school you may have been lucky and your parents may have Talked a little bit about investing, whether it be on the share market or be it in a property.

But that’s usually about the sum total of what people know, if they know any of that at all. And I imagine that in this day and age, investing goes beyond those two basic ideas as well. Oh, look, there’s a lot more options and there’s even within, the stock market or the property market, there’s a lot more options.

So when I first started, so yeah, you’re absolutely right. There’s a very broad range of products as such out there that or strategies even that people can use. And, if you’re not taught them, then you’re completely oblivious to them. And getting a financial literacy education and taking control of your money and your wealth is what I’m all about.

Because nobody cares more about your money than you do. And so you need to be proactive in managing that money and learning. That always overwhelms me with the number of people that are fearful in this country around the stock market. And it’s mainly because if you look at the media, what sells media is fear.

And so if the stock market’s having a bad day, it’ll be all over the place. If it’s having a stock standard day and just doing its thing and continuing to grow, you won’t hear about it. And so that does, generate a lot of fear in the stock market, which we can dispel pretty quickly when you understand how it works and, the fact that it’s just driven by humans anyway.

And without wanting to go into a big discussion about it, the modern approach, Bitcoin and the like where do you stand on those kinds of investments? Look, I I’m not convinced with Bitcoin. I’m one of those rare people at the moment who I don’t teach it because I just don’t believe the risk profile matches what most people would be comfortable with.

And You know, if people want to own Bitcoin, I always say to them don’t make it much more than five and maximum 10 percent of their portfolios because you could wake up tomorrow to be worth half of what it was the night before when you went to bed and not too many people can live with that type of risk.

And so I don’t teach it. I’m not, I do believe it’s around for the long term, but maybe not, in the current structure. I think banks and governments are going to have to work out how they can get they, they’re working on ways to find out how they can get more control of it. And once they get control of it, then it might settle down from a risk perspective.

But it scares me a little bit and therefore I don’t touch it. But I know plenty of people who do want to touch it and, love it. But I just haven’t got there yet. Yeah, I think there’s there’s a lot of, um, stuff out there that is goes beyond that. I think that I think the difficulty in that space is that it’s incredibly complex and that it goes beyond.

the simple idea of do I buy Bitcoin or some other currency that you’ve heard of? And then you start talking NFTs and a lot of other things that I think make it incredibly difficult to follow and understand. But I think what is perhaps here to stay is is particularly the technology around it, that idea of trading in a different way and not having the restrict.

Having different levels of restrictions, I guess that it’s a more fluid 24 7 market and trade in different things, not necessarily just in straight, version of the currency. That’s right. I think you’re right. The technology behind it is very much here to stay. Just, at the moment, some of the things I hear about, the foundations of, Bitcoin in particular, scare me a little bit.

So I just, I caution people to just be mindful that it’s a, an asset class. It’s an emerging asset class. We don’t know enough about, you know what it’s done in the past to know what it’s going to do in the future. And I know there’s plenty of people out there who would probably disagree with what I just said, but, it just doesn’t have the longevity yet to know exactly what it’s going to do.

And therefore it’s susceptible to, major risk events. And that’s not something that you want to tie your wealth up in over the longterm. Absolutely. I think it’s very good advice to be cautious, depending on how much and how much you’re prepared to risk.

And that’s which I suppose is the same with anything in fairness, it’s, if you’re convinced you want to invest in the Sydney property market, then you’re going to do that, even if I turn around and tell you, you should, you’re better off investing in, pick another city. And it’s what you know, and what you’re comfortable with, that’s always going to make a big difference.

Yeah. And that comes from confidence. And so that’s a huge part of what I do is about teaching people to have confidence in their decision making and confidence comes from understanding what they’re working with. And so that’s what I, that’s what I educate people on is understanding the assets that they may choose to invest in because they make all the decisions.

I don’t make any of their investing decisions. I’m about teaching them how to make decisions and understand what it is they’re investing in and why so that they know when it does. Go up in value or fall in value. They know why and they know how to react and and that’s a huge part of it is the confidence side of things.

Yeah. And I think it’s such an important area because it really is, confidence is a hard thing to get into something like this, it’s, I still recall in my early days of corporate life, I worked with a company that listed on the stock exchange while I was there. And we were given the opportunity to buy in as before it was released to the share market and it was easy in hindsight to look back and go, Oh, I should have invested more, at the time we were about to renovate a house, we had already borrowed the money and we were a while away from having to use the money if we’d have invested that money In for that period of time that we had for that, we’d have paid for the renovation With it, but it’s easy in hindsight and that’s the difficulty and I think the dis in and I look back and I go why did I make that decision? Because I’m incredibly conservative to because I didn’t understand very much about the share market. And three, because, it just was a complete lack of confidence in the ability to do that. However, that’s the biggest thing. And looking back on that is going well, if I’d have had an opportunity to have been educated a little bit more and to have developed a little bit of better understanding and therefore confidence in it.

It wasn’t actually a difficult decision. It wasn’t as big a gamble as it might sound to have made. Would I have done it or not? I can’t tell you, but it’s certainly as again, easy in hindsight, but it’s, I can totally appreciate having that there and having that education process and I imagine is that the difficult thing with a lot of people coming to you is them firstly recognizing that they have this deficiency?

A little bit, but most of the time when we’re talking to people, they are fully aware. that they just don’t have the knowledge. So there’s two challenges that we hear in different words that people might use. But the two main things that people are looking for a solution to is the time and the knowledge gap.

So they want, they believe they don’t have the time to learn or learn how to invest and or they’re running out of time. And then from a knowledge gap point of view is, I don’t know what to invest in, I don’t know how to select it, how to manage risk or, come up with any of those other variations of that.

And ultimately, that’s what we help people solve is the time and the knowledge gap. And ultimately, that gives them the confidence that they can do it themselves. But most of the time, the people that are coming to us are aware, and that’s normally because we’ve been there. Potentially, we have, triggered their pain point in our content or our advertising to get them to think, Hey, where am I?

And where should I be here? And it’s piqued their interest. Yes, I totally understand. That’s the case. And I think at a time when we are really struggling, as far as keeping up with pricing and keeping up with the cost of living all those lovely terms that are out there and, flooding the media at the moment.

How much of that is also driving people towards you. How much of that is actually making a difference in. What you do and how you go about doing it. Yeah, we absolutely cost of living is huge, and it’s a very strong motivator for people to get proactive on being able to get more from the dollar that they’re earning on.

We did some survey work both in our business and through my business coach and discovered that there was three main things that are really triggering people at the moment. One is how do I pay less tax? How do I pay off my debt more quickly? And how do I grow my assets to produce a passive income?

And. I believe in particular with the paying down debt, that is very much driven by the cost of living. So we’ve seen these massive increases in interest rates at a rate, far quicker than ever, anyone could have planned. And therefore there’s lots of people who are in mortgage prisons, as I, use that terminology, is that they can’t go and refinance and get a lower rate because they would fail the current, assessment for the loan that they already have.

So they’ve got to just live with the one they’ve got on. It’s making it very hard for them to manage all their other costs, given that they’re going up as well. So cost of living is huge as to why people are looking more closely at their money and thinking, I need help. How do I get out of this scenario?

And yeah, we’re having to tailor a lot more of what we do at that front end page, which is the money management phase before we can dive into the investing phase. Yeah, it’s a difficult one. And again, a conversation for another time, perhaps, but it can certainly see how, sitting in and you’re thinking, when is it going to bottom out?

When are things going to turn? Which is an interesting one. As far as investment is concerned I had a conversation with someone very randomly at a event I was attending. And I’m not even sure how it started because we were actually leaving the event and it had nothing to do with money And he was just adamant that Sydney property prices were going to drop.

And I said to him, look in, I’ve lived in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney my entire life. And I don’t recall prices ever dropping. There’ve been times when they may have flattened a little bit. But even then that’s for a moment, they’ve just continued to rise. And this idea, and I think in many respects, property in Australia has been the primary investment that people have always seen.

I remember being brought up and saying the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to pay off your mortgage. Now, the reality is you probably never pay off your mortgage. You just get to the point where you downsize. Yeah, and I think what I’m also observing and, I’ve got kids in their mid twenties who are living this experience, but the younger generation, and in between my kids and my generation they’re not as fixated on owning bricks and mortar and paying off a mortgage if it impacts their lifestyle.

So there’s more and more people who are happy enough to rent and live where they want to live. And then invest elsewhere and have the freedom to be able to move around with their living experience. Rather than being tied to a property and a mortgage, because that’s what our parents did. And that’s what everyone told us we should do.

And I actually believe there’s a lot of merit in that and that like you said, with the current interest rates, current property prices, the fact that wages are still probably 10 years behind in, in terms of purchasing power, it makes a whole lot more sense to live where you want to live.

And, invest where the market’s growing so that you have the best of both worlds. As someone who’s having to rent at the moment while I’m building a house rent prices are insane. And that’s where the that’s where you have got a problem. They’ve continued to rise at such a ridiculous amount.

I know in my area, and I spoke to several people in the area that earlier this year, they went up by 23%, and quite specifically by 23 percent in everyone’s case. I’m not going to say there was collusion amongst anyone there, but it’s coincidence. Happy coincidence, but and it’s not sustainable.

That’s the hard part is that the flow on effects of that are either forcing people to move out of the area and that comes with its own consequences because it depends on whether there is accommodation to go to in the first place. It also is a practicality. And so you’ve got people living beyond their means or having to cut lots of other things in order to be able to sustain rents.

And so again, this whole idea of investing and being able to get out of that out of that situation is a difficult one. I’m lucky enough that I did, invest in property very early on in the piece. And so, the rental idea is a short term one while we build, but it’s it’s a painful one and it’s eaten massively into our budget.

It’s money being thrown away for. What will amount to a good couple of years? Yeah. Yeah. And it is a challenge. We’re in a very challenging environment. We’ve seen a massive amount of migration to catch up for COVID and everyone’s looking for properties. We just, and the cost of building going and you’d be experiencing this yourself with the cost of building going through the roof raw materials and all of that going through the roof.

It’s just, it’s become this snowball. I often do videos where I’m looking at news in the financial. markets and pulling apart the story. And the unfortunate part with interest rates is it’s a sledgehammer approach that becomes self fulfilling. And so we’ve got a, an arrangement where interest rates have kept going up, which forced prices to go up, which forced rents to go up, which forced, property prices to go up and it just became self fulfilling and still is.

And, interest rates aren’t necessarily the answer to bring prices down. It’s a sledgehammer to stop us from spending. But, if interest rates keep going up, then rents are going to keep going up, which is going to just fuel more inflation, which they’re going to say what, how do we get control of this inflation if everything keeps going up?

So I get quite on my high horse on that one. But you’re right, like there’s an absolute shortage of properties which is causing rents and, property prices to keep going up. And. It’s something that’s going to have to be dealt with at much higher levels than what I do. I just try and help people manage their way out of the scenario in a way that they’re comfortable with, whether it’s renting or buying or both.

It’s about what works for them. So talk to me a little bit about as well. I know we spoke about before we started recording about you’ve got a wealth tracker. Tell me a little bit more about that because we’re going to make it available for people to to download access to that. But give me a little bit of insight into what that’s all about and how it helps people.

Yeah, so the wealth tracker is a workbook designed to enable people to track how they’re going with their money and their wealth. and ultimately great tool to see how you’re going month after month and a little bit of ninja built into it with a dashboard that is designed to tap into our money mindset.

So we’ve got three parts to our brain and there’s one part that if it sees us doing something good, actually encourage us to keep doing whatever is getting those good results. So the wealth tracker and the dashboard in particular is that tool we use to keep us motivated to keep doing what’s getting the positive results.

So it’s our support mechanism to keep us going because investing is not something we do for eight or 10 weeks of the year. It’s something you should be doing all the time. And so that wealth tracker, Whilst it’s a great place to see all the numbers, it’s also tapping into that motivational tool in our head that says, I like what you’re doing, keep doing it.

And so yeah, it’s a way to track your shares, your properties, your superannuation, your personal household budget, your cash balances, and see it all in one dashboard and hopefully see it going upwards month after month and therefore motivate you to keep doing what’s getting those results. I love the idea that it’s built on that whole idea of that dopamine hit because it’s one of the reasons why we are unsure of what we’re doing and not don’t do the things because we don’t get that.

And if you’re just relying on looking at a share market every day and going, has it gone up? Has it gone down? You’re setting yourself up for failure really on that, isn’t it? Because there aren’t many stocks that you’re going to say if I invest today, it’ll go up tomorrow and the next day and the next day.

It doesn’t work that way. Being able to find ways to get that hit is incredibly important and absolutely it’s like I said, it’s a great tool to use, encourage people to use it when they’re presenting their numbers to banks and show them that they’re in control of their numbers.

They know what they’re doing and all that. But at the same time, using that dashboard, I use the analogy all the time of diets. The diet industry is worth trillions of dollars a year around the world. And it’s not because diets don’t work. It’s because most people go into a diet and use willpower as their sole tool for success.

And we know from science that willpower on its own doesn’t work over the long term. So the same with wealth. If you’re going to stay the journey and do it month after month, year after year to get the results you want, you need something to keep you motivated. And so the dashboard is designed to, like you said, give you that dopamine hit that says, wow, I’m getting, I’m going forward, I’m making progress, I’ll just keep doing what’s getting those results.

And eventually you’ll get to where you want to be. Fantastic. So thank you so much for making that available to people listening to the podcast, and we will include that in the show notes. So before we wrap things up I just wanted a couple of things that I wanted to ask you. One is that, we talked a little bit in the beginning about how you got to where you are, but what was the dream when you first started out when you were in school where was the career going at that point?

That’s an interesting question. And. I was explaining this to somebody the other day about how I, became so passionate about what I now do. I played squash against men at a young age. So I was playing men’s comp midweek at the age of 14. And I played a season of squash, which was over about four months.

There was two seasons a year, and the season went for roughly four months. And the guys that I was playing with, the team of five people, three of them were in the financial markets. And so for the entire season, they got in my head as a 14 year old about why it’s important to get your money working for you.

So you don’t have to work for it. And that was just. drilled into me for four and probably longer than that because there was preseason and so forth. So I just copped this message at a young age and I then became fascinated by initially the stock market and how you could invest today and then in 10 years it’d be worth more and 20 years even more and so forth and I just got completely engulfed in the idea that I could invest and not have to work for anybody and that really triggered that That genie in the bottle type of thing and got me into that.

And I ended up working as a chartered accountant for a long time. So I was always dealing with numbers and numbers just seemed to flow for me. I can, I see the world often in numbers. And it just became a passion. And so when I first started out I didn’t really want to be an accountant, but that’s where I ended up going, and being a chartered accountant and working in one of the big firms and doing all that type of stuff.

But I knew that wasn’t what I really wanted to do. And I guess that training was spectacular for what I’m now doing in terms of I can read numbers, I can dispel the, the mystery of numbers. But it all came about all the way back from when I was 14, just having these people in my ear week after week about, you don’t want to have to work for the rest of your life.

Amazing. It’s amazing those influences and what they have on you from such an early age. Here’s a little bit of trivia wrapped around all of that. First of all, are there many squash courts around anymore? Because I can’t remember the last time I saw a squash court or anyone talk about squash, but my first property that I bought.

Was a converted squash court. I converted the squash courts into an apartment and I remember people thinking it’s squash court into an apartment, but actually a squash court was, as I learned was 65 square meters, which is a very big one bedroom apartment. As that was my first investment. I did have a wonderful housewarming party.

All my friends decided to dress up in squash gear and bring the Gatorade and everything along to spark the memories of it. But it was a wonderful first First apartment to have so there you go. So I had a similar experience, my junior, I played my junior squash on Saturdays and the squash courts I played out of were threatened to be taken over many times by developers.

And eventually it happened. And then now, there are a combination of, retail space and apartments, and we had to go and find new courts to play in. And Yes, the number of squash centers in Sydney and Australia is rapidly diminishing because, as you said, the real estate is very valuable.

Yes, I think it’s, and what’s interesting is those squash courts disappeared because they started living in it. The other squash courts that I used, I didn’t play squash all that often, but became a consulate. Here you go, different uses, but the real estate is nonetheless quite valuable.

Final question that I wanted to ask you before we go is a question I like to ask all of my guests is what’s the heart moment that clients have when they start working with you that you wish more people knew about in advance? I love that question because I love the aha that comes up and that’s when they realize that investing is not that complicated.

And I often say in my sales presentation to people that my strategy is simple and it’s simple for two reasons. One, it has to be repeatable by people other than me. And the other one is that I believe banks and financial institutions overcomplicate wealth. So we feel obligated to pay them to do it for us.

So they make all the money and us not so much. So the aha moment I get to see is when people realize that they can do it. And they’re making money off the decisions that they’ve made from what I’ve taught them and. They realized that they could do it for the rest of time. What a fabulous way to finish the program.

Thank you so much for being generous with your time and giving us so many insights. I really appreciate everything that you’ve given over in that. And of course, the link to the WealthTracker spreadsheet, of course, will be available in the show notes as well as All the information on how to get in contact with you as well.

Andrew, thanks so much for your time. Anthony, thank you so much for having me. We had a great conversation. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by Podcasts Done For You, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance to the world.

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