Retiring filthy rich in Australia is achievable with the right strategy. Drawing from over 11 years of experience in real estate, I share key insights on timing the market, leveraging relationships, and embracing long-term growth. Whether you're just starting out or refining your investment approach, these lessons will help you level up your financial game and secure a prosperous future.
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I’ve been investing in real estate for the better part of 11 to 12 years.
However, for even longer than that, I’ve always believed that personal development is at the core of every decision you make. You can leverage the wisdom from the last 11 years of investing I’ve done so you can go and upgrade your own life.
If you’re interested in my thoughts, definitely keep reading.
In this article, I’ll discuss the biggest lessons I’ve learned to level up and retire filthy rich in Australia in the easiest way.
There are so many people out there, and you might be one of them, who's thought about doing something, and it takes you forever to actually take action.
Now, this is completely normal.
You might be someone with a lower risk threshold, and you might say: Okay, I want to buy an investment property, and I might be ready to buy right now, but I need to gather more information before I make that decision.
With something like real estate or shares and investing:
What you want to be doing is jumping on the train so you can catch as much of the gains as possible.
Now, you’ll often hear: Time in the market is better than timing the market.
However, if you can do both, that’s when you make exponential gains.
The reason we have this saying is to encourage you to just start. But the reality is if you can take on all the lessons I teach in this article, you’ll not only be able to stay in the market longer, but you’ll also know when to get in and when to get out.
If you’re in Australia, and you’ve seen the property market in places like Perth, you would have loved to have bought it a couple of years ago.
However, if you went further back, you’d have hated to be in the market in 2010 or 2011 because that’s when the market peaked and went the other way. This is where timing really does matter.
If you had bought in 2010, and waited for the next 10 years, you would have made no gains, and in some years, you’d have even had negative returns. But if you got in during 2020 or 2021, you would have made a ton of money.
I know this because we helped a lot of clients get property back then, and it was so difficult to say: Hey, the metrics we’re looking at—all the data points we do research on—suggest that we’re going to see a lot of price appreciation.
Unfortunately, a lot of people saw what had happened in the previous 10 years and used that as a guide to say: Well, it’s probably not going to grow in this second half.
What I mean by the second half is the second half of the 18.6-year cycle. If you want to know more about that, check out this video I uploaded on my YouTube channel. If you prefer reading, you can check out the article I posted about this.
Of course, you need to go through the information-gathering stage and research process, but you need to be accountable to yourself.
If you’re taking too long, you’ll miss out on opportunities that pop up, and you might even find yourself stuck in analysis paralysis.
I urge you to think about what resonates with you the most.
Is it what I say in my videos?
Or...
Is it someone with less experience, who hasn’t got the runs on the board, and is still affecting your decision-making process?
These are the questions you need to ask yourself when it comes to real estate investing and personal development.
If you’re someone who thinks about reading a book or going to the gym, but you’re not actually doing it, it doesn’t matter. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’re younger, and you can make more mistakes and still recover. All you need is one opportunity to really work for you.
This is how you’ll end up making so much more money in your 40s and 50s.
Why? Because you took action.
You moved at speed.
I didn’t understand this for the first 5 years of my 20s, and I thought it was all rubbish.
It doesn’t matter who you know, I thought.
You just have to get the job done and work as hard as possible, and everything else will follow.
Now, there’s some truth to that.
Yes, you’ve got to work hard, and no one’s just going to give you things on a silver platter.
However:
If you didn’t know this article existed, you wouldn’t know the information on it, and that’s similar to everyday life.
You might be out there talking to one person, but because you didn’t talk to someone else, you don’t know what knowledge they have to offer you or what value they can bring.
Now, I’ll tell you a story…
I met this one person, and we ended up having a chat. I said: Hey, this would be the biggest waste of my time if I didn’t ask them about X, Y, and Z.
I went on to ask them a couple of questions. They then introduced me to two other friends, and one of those two people now works at my company.
The key lesson is that you need to be out there, having conversations and leveraging other people’s experiences.
Once you can provide value to someone, that relationship is a win-win. Believe me, the opportunities that have come across my table now—simply because of knowing a couple of people and having strong relationships and conversations—are mind-blowing.
I totally believe this to be true, and the only thing I wish is that I had invested in it a lot earlier.
You need to know that when you start, it’s always going to be slower, and the numbers are always going to be smaller.
You just have to trust the process.
When I purchased my first property at the age of 21, it was a really affordable property around $200,000. At the time, I thought: Okay, even if I get 5% growth, I’m only making $10,000. This doesn’t really make sense. How am I supposed to retire in 10 years if I’m only making $10,000?
However, what happens is: It might be $10,000 in the first year, then in the second year, it compounds further.
The year after, it continues to grow.
So, what might start off as $10,000 in growth could end up being $40,000 or $50,000 just 10 to 15 years later.
This is the power of compounding growth.
For reference, that property that was bought for about $200,000 is now worth close to $500,000.
This compounding principle doesn’t just apply to real estate; it applies to your habits as well. One good habit builds on another.
If you read for 10 minutes today, then 10 minutes tomorrow, chances are you’re probably enjoying what you’re reading. By the third or fourth day, you’re compounding the knowledge from the first few pages into the new chapters you’re reading now.
This applies to life in general. It’s not just advice for someone in their 20s—it’s applicable to all age groups.
Unfortunately, everything right now is about instant gratification.
You could sit there on a Friday night, open your phone, and scroll through, seeing so many people out there having a great time. Apparently, they’ve got all the friends in the world, they’re super popular, and you’re just sitting on your couch doing nothing.
You might be in a relationship you’re not happy in, and you’re seeing your friends out there, single, and you think: Hey, the grass is greener on the other side. I want that instant gratification.
The problem is that these things are short-term fixes.
What you want to do is look forward—look at the bigger picture.
I’ve spoken to so many people who’ve said: I just quit my job because I couldn’t handle it.
Okay, but now you want a loan, which you can’t get, and it probably won’t happen for the next 3 to 6 months.
That one short-term decision can cost you a lot of money, and the same goes for relationships, friendships, family, and siblings.
When it comes to instant gratification, I’d much rather invest where I can, while still enjoying life. I’m not living off tuna cans—I love a KFC Zinger box!
But I believe you can do both.
You don’t have to say: I need to buy a house because everyone told me to. You don’t need to invest all your money into one mortgage, then find yourself not living your best life, complaining about it, quitting your job, and going back to square one—a prisoner to your mortgage.
Instead…
You can rent where you love to live, forget about what everyone else says, and buy your dream home when you decide to.
By just kicking the can down the road a little, when it comes to investing and your strategy, you can end up getting so much more.
However, it’s a balancing act.
You need to figure out how to live your best life now, while also manifesting your dream life in the future.
You might expect me to say: Diversification is the best thing ever and that’s what you should do.
But instead of trying to learn about everything, why not pick two or three things that you’re most passionate about?
For me, that was real estate. I knew people made a lot of money in shares, and there were others running businesses, but that wasn’t tempting to me at the time. I wanted to focus on real estate.
So, for a couple of years, that’s all I did.
I learned, I listened, and when I was finally able to invest, real estate was the first place I went.
At some point, I dabbled in diversification, but I ended up selling all the shares I held and went back into real estate—because that’s what I knew well. Now, I have a three-pillar approach:
Now, for me, one of the biggest focuses has been my business.
Getting the right talent to scale the business is key to its success, while the real estate machine I’ve built in the background continues to compound and grow.
Unfortunately, the cost of living crisis, unaffordable housing, and everything else in between means that we often prioritise short-term gains when it comes to money.
We tend to go for a role that pays us more, rather than taking a sideways move or reducing our pay and lifestyle to pursue something we’re passionate about.
We all know people who are in jobs they don’t enjoy, but they stick with it because the pay is good. Sadly, they force themselves to like something they actually don’t enjoy.
To me, that sounds very short-term.
If you're looking for a career, or considering what you’ll do for the next 20 to 30 years, you want to figure out what your passion is.
Ask yourself: What gets me up in the morning? What can I do without looking at the clock?
If you find yourself constantly watching the clock at work, chances are you’re not truly passionate about what you're doing.
Here’s the craziest part that not enough people talk about: when you follow your passion, the money follows. You end up making more than you ever thought possible because you’re willing to work harder. It doesn’t even feel like work because you love what you do.
I know this concept seems foreign to a lot of people, but I’m living it right now.
I’ll work weekends. I’ll work late into the night. And it’s a choice.
I’d much rather do that than sit and binge-watch Netflix. Don’t get me wrong—I love watching Netflix. But right now, working is exactly what I want to do. And the biggest fulfilment for me is knowing that the work I’m doing directly helps people like you move ahead in life. That’s what drives me to keep growing the agency to where it is now.
I used to talk about this a lot back in 2020 and 2021 on my YouTube channel, when I thought I had to wear a business shirt and fit in. Now, I’ve realised the black t-shirt was the right way to go all along.
You need to build a machine.
I don’t care if you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s—if you have to reduce your lifestyle, you need to start building that machine yesterday.
What I mean by “building a machine” is having an investment portfolio that grows passively.
You might have a really high-paying job, but if you lose that job tomorrow, do you have a machine to fall back on? If not, that’s what you need to start building right after reading this article.
Get educated, or outsource the whole thing if you haven’t done it yet. There’s a reason why you haven’t done it yet—and if that’s the case, you’re better off outsourcing it.
Start with real estate as the foundation of your machine, then diversify as you go. You need something in the background that keeps compounding and growing. It’s the concept of compounding growth and delayed gratification.
I know I’m building a machine. And when I want that machine to start pumping out more cash flow or give me more options, it can do that.
Be like a farmer who says: These plants take a long time to grow, but once they’re ready, they’ll provide long-term rewards.
Let’s say:
In this example, Vegetable 1 represents active investments that provide short-term returns, while Vegetable 2 is your long-term investment—your machine that takes time but pays off significantly in the future.
This concept might not make sense to most people at first. You might ask: How do I figure out what works for me?
My advice is simple:
If you’re curious about something, just go out and try it. There are so many opportunities to make money online or after hours these days.
If you’re curious about how something works, you might have to gain some “scar tissue” in the process—meaning you may lose some money, make mistakes, and learn lessons. But that’s part of the journey.
Eventually, you’ll find an opportunity where your passion intersects with market demand. That’s when the magic happens—when your curiosity aligns with something people need.
Spend time exploring now, especially in your 20s, when you have more freedom. As you move into your 30s and 40s, responsibilities pile up, and it becomes harder to pivot. It’s not impossible, but definitely harder.
That’s why the risk is lower when you start early—whether it’s investing in building your machine or trying out different paths.
I always tell people: if you don’t enjoy what you do now, in 5 years your health will be affected, and your attitude will become negative, which will attract more negativity around you. All this just because you wanted to hold onto a house.
I’d say: sell the house, rent somewhere, find your passion, and in 5 to 10 years, you’ll be in a much better position. Yes, it’s a scary thought, but trust me—when you come out the other side, you’ll thank yourself.
I'm not saying you need a detailed roadmap with specific dates, but you do need some kind of plan. A rough flow, a direction you’re heading in.
If you don’t know what direction you’re taking, every shiny new opportunity will grab your attention and pull you off course.
This can cause you to miss out on the biggest opportunities in your life and is exactly why you need a strategy. You need that strategy as well.
Now, the last point I will make is:
The last point I want to make is this: We all have those people around us who love giving unsolicited advice—even when we didn’t ask for it.
For example, I’ve got an uncle I’ve mentioned a few times before who always gives me advice on real estate investing and running businesses. But he’s never actually run a business in his life. He has one investment property, and that’s it—he’s held onto it for as long as I can remember. Nobody really takes his advice seriously, yet he keeps offering it!
I’m sure you’ve got people like this in your life too.
What you need to keep in mind is this: if you follow the average person’s advice, you’ll end up living an average life.
If you want to live an extraordinary life, where you retire on your own terms, you need to do things differently than the average person.
I’ve purchased a lot of real estate in my time and helped countless clients do the same. I’ve seen just about every strategy out there. So, when you decide to leverage someone else’s experience or outsource part of your journey, you’re tapping into not just my expertise but the knowledge and expertise of the network I’ve built over the years.
If you need help getting started with speed, understanding delayed gratification, knowing what to invest in, or figuring out your why, and ultimately achieving above-average results, then don’t hesitate to book a free discovery call with my Search Property team.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and learned something valuable from it!
Catch you all in the next one.
Thanks, guys!
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