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In fact, I think the stats are about 13% of the Australian population

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are considered millionaires, meaning they've got a net worth over a million dollars. But

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I would say almost all of them did it through property. And how

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they did it was they bought a property many years ago and did nothing. Well,

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they didn't do nothing. They didn't sell it, which is good. But the growth in the property from

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the immigration and the lack of land supply created that million dollar net worth,

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right? So I did it differently. I didn't do it with property. Back when I started, I

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firstly, I knew that I had to underspend my

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income. Without a doubt, that's the only way you can build wealth.

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I don't know anyone that spent more than their income

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and built wealth. This is not possible because there's a delta. There

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has to be some money left over for you to then buy assets

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or invest in a business or whatever it might be. So that's what I started to

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do first. Rented a cheap car, rented out my rooms, room

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shared. didn't go on lavish holidays, didn't buy lavish clothes,

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and I just underspent my income to save money. I saved about $40,000 to

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$50,000. I repatriated back to Australia, got into business with my dad in property. I

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was selling houses, so I was making more money, but

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it was still a job for me. It was six days a week, and of course, I continued to

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underspend my income. And what I decided to do was that extra bit of money I

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was saving, it allowed me to go into that new career without borrowing

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any money. It allowed me to buy happiness, so to speak, and I talk about it in that book, Money

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Buys Happiness. and I decided I need to put the

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money away. So I could have bought real estate, but I didn't know where I was going

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to live. I didn't want a mortgage to be anchored to. I

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felt like it was going to corner me and hold me down,

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having all that debt. And I don't like stress in my life. I don't like worry.

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So I'm like, well, that's just going to create more of that. So I'm going to avoid that. What should I do is

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I picked up this book by Warren Buffett, or it's actually by Alice Schroeder called

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The Snowball, and it's about Warren Buffett's life. Fun fact, I'm going

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to see Warren Buffett this week. I'm flying out Thursday to

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go and see Warren Buffett. So that's cool. Anyway, I read this book and he was investing in

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shares. And it really gave me this, like the penny dropped

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for me that I understood that straight away. I was like, I get this concept. This makes sense for

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me. Buying pieces of undervalued businesses. Ha ha, this is

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better than buying a house. So I took some of that extra cash I was saving

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from my job initially and then into the property game where I was marketing and

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selling property, running a small business with my dad and I would always, if

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I did a settlement or did a deal and got paid, I

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would get paid about $10,000 or $12,000 back then each time I did a

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real estate settlement and I'd take half of it and pay myself and

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I'd take half and buy shares. And I did that, deal

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in, deal out, deal in, deal out, deal in, deal out, deal

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in, deal out. Every time I got paid, pay myself some, bought shares, pay

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myself some, bought shares, pay myself some, bought shares. And

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like I just played that game for quite a while, I still underspent

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my income. So whilst my wife Alicia and I could go on holidays, she

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was working full time as a paralegal, I was working six days a week. We

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didn't go and buy Range Rovers. We still live in the same apartment

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that we did 12 years ago. We still haven't left it. And there's a real secret

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there with wealth creation, which is pretty much the sameness of sameness of

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same. So the way that I invest my money

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now is the same as what I did 15 years ago. The same place we live

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in is the same we did 12 years ago. The same, the same. You would see

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me in these episodes, I'm wearing the same t-shirts. The same cut, the

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same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same. There's a lot of...

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magic with wealth building, which is the same. Once

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you figure out what works, why change it? And that's

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what happens to people a lot. They'll change direction so

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much. They just don't get any traction. And you see this in how many times

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they shift where they live, what car they drive, what

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clothes they're buying, what type of investments they're buying. They

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do it over multiple businesses. Oh, there's another shiny business. I'll go there.

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And they get no traction. So what happened to me when I was in the property industry and buying

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these shares, I started to see my portfolio grow. And

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my portfolio was probably at about $300,000 by then in 2014, maybe

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$250,000. It wasn't massive because remember, I didn't buy a house. So I had the equity

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that would have gone into a house and I was paying about $550 a week rent.

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But I was also splitting it between my wife and her sister who was living with us at the time. So

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my rent was like $200 a week. When you think about it, that's crazy low,

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right? So I've always tried to keep my costs low It's just

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the most effective way to almost guarantee you're

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gonna get ahead It's easier to manage the

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cost than it is to increase your income in my opinion. You have

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more control over that and so 250,000 roughly

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in the portfolio working six days a week in property and I

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remember one day I sat down and thought oh I

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want to become a millionaire. Now I want to do it. What

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do I have to do? How long is it going to take me? And I remember sitting in the office at 7 o'clock

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at night. I pulled up an Excel spreadsheet and I put in 250,000, whatever

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the portfolio was. I'm saving 25 grand a year, buying stocks.

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I have no debt. This is my income. I think it's probably going to stay very

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similar. Hopefully it goes up if I can do more deals. And I

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realized it was going to take me like 15 years to become a millionaire. And

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at the time, I was probably about 30, 31. I was like, oh my god,

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I want to be a millionaire at 45, 46. Like, what am I going to do?

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And I realized, I can't cut them anymore. I

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still want to have a reasonable life. But I was

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like, well, I need to increase my income. So how was I going to do that? And

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then my sister introduced me to a business model called network marketing, accidentally

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fell into it. And I tried the products, got in shape, actually went on to win a

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bodybuilding competition using the products, which is really life-changing for me. And then

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I helped other people get the products and use them. And so

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my wife and I with my sister built this network marketing business on the side with

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the objective to increase my income by $25,000 a

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year, which is, by the way, only 500 bucks a week. It's not like heaps.

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It's like, what if we could keep doing my real estate deals six

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days a week and then make an extra 500 bucks a week network

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marketing and take the extra money and invest it into shares. And by doing that, I

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was doubling my saving rate and doubling my investing rate, which means I was going to

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cut the time in half. So I was going to be a millionaire when it's seven

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and a half years instead of 15 years. It was simple math.

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So I was like, this is going to be the strategy. This is my strategy. This is

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it. So we got after it, right? I stayed working. I

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didn't jump out of my job. I would do appointments in

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the office and go downstairs and get on the phone, do network marketing, go back upstairs, do an

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appointment, do network marketing. It's just boom, boom, boom. On weekends,

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we'd drive and fly to Sydney to learn more about network marketing. We would do things

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on the weekend. In the evenings, I'd pick Alicia up from work, go home, sit in the car, do

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the work, do the work, do the work. And we did that for four

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years from when we started in 2014, 2018. And in that

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timeframe, we reinvested a lot back into building that business, but

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what we developed is about $180,000 a year of extra money

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on the side while we're in our jobs. And I realized at

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that point, we were able to add about another half a million dollars to

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the portfolio, maybe 400,000. And by the time

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I left my job in the property business in 2018, the portfolio was at about 650,000. And

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as I left that in 2018, by

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the time 2020 rolled around, the portfolio had lifted from

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650 to 700,000 up to a million dollars. So

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I left my job, went full-time in a network marketing business in

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2018. The portfolio was at about 650,000, was paying as passive income

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from dividends, which is what allowed us to get out of our jobs as well. It wasn't just the side

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hustle, it was a combination of that for me to pay my rent and everything, and

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then also the side hustle of 180 grand a year. Alicia left her job.

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So we're basically financially independent. And the portfolio then grew as

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COVID hit. And I remember picking up my phone one day before I wrote this book. I

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was like, I really want to write a book about how we did this. Because if you think

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about it, we became financially free out of the rat race in

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our 30s. completely free, which is

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unbelievable, really, when you think about it. And back then, especially. And

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I had a million-dollar portfolio. I was like, well, this is interesting. Didn't own any

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property. I'd like to be able to get it to a million bucks before I write this book.

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And I remember before we launched this book down in Corumban, I

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looked at my phone, pulled up my portfolio, and it was like $998,000. It was

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just sitting there. I was watching it.

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I was watching it and watching it. I was like, oh my God, I want it to be a million bucks. I want it to be a

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million bucks. I scrolled the phone down, hit the record button, and

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I recorded. I'm sure if I pull up the recording now on my phone and go back

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far enough, I could find it. And I recorded it as it clicked over

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to a million bucks. And I remember sending the video to my little sister and saying, look at this, it's

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a million dollars. And at that time, it's like you kind of, you

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have this fantasy of what happens when you become a millionaire. You're like, oh, my life's going to change

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and it's going to be amazing. And then the marching band never came

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in. And I

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was like, oh, we're millionaires. That's it.

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No debt. Million dollar net worth. Free.

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And then I wrote that book about it, about how other people

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could do the same thing. And I've been helping people ever since to do the same thing, following

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the same system, the same strategy as what we've done. And

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it's in that book. And then beyond that, we do other things. We're

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now multimillionaires. But what's interesting is the strategy really changes.

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Underspend your income, find ways to add extra money with a side hustle

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or business, invest the proceeds consistently into the same sort

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of asset class that you understand, and be patient. And it will grow

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over time. Those three steps of underspend your income, find

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ways to make extra money, and invest in assets that you understand are the three components

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and steps that I talk about in this book. And they're repeated in this book.

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There's two extra steps in here for mindset and mentorship, which speeds things

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up. But the concepts remain

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the same. And that's where the sameness comes into

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wealth building that people really underestimate that gets

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them in a lot of trouble because they get bored. And one of the

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things you got to do when you're trying to build wealth is keep the mundane exciting.

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So all that stuff kind of compounds over time, but it started with

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that decision to make the first million. But

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you see when I did it, there was an actual measurable like,

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shit, I need to increase my income here. Okay, now we need to invest it. Now

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we need to not do anything else. And I think it's in the not doing anything else

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and sticking to your knitting and focused on what's working and

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repeating it, that's where the magic lies. That's the

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story of how we became millionaires initially. That's a

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real-life story. It's in our books. Thanks for listening to Money Grows on

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Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts

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00:10:21,383 --> 00:10:24,745
and Spotify and subscribe to us on YouTube so you never

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miss an episode. And if you're serious about building wealth, make sure to

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check out the links in the show notes and follow me on all social media

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platforms at LloydJamesRoss for more. See