Being on the pension is not your goal. The pension is sh**. Some

people say never to sell an asset like property or Bitcoin.

If you need to sell that asset so that you can leverage the cash to

get alpha returns on something so you can get ahead in life, then you

should definitely do that. This is a wake-up call to people. You

need to be thinking about this. I sat down with my sister recently, talked

about how much money she's got in Super, her and her husband, are

they going to have enough money? Of course, I asked her, I said, have you even thought about this? No.

The way things are going right now, So you're going to have

to make some drastic decisions today. And

one of the things we came up with was... I'm Matthew Fraser and

this is Amazon Ecom Secrets. I'll be

sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from millions in debt

to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If you're ready to escape the

nine-to-five and live life on your terms, let me

show you the way. Hey guys, welcome to this episode of

Amazon Ecom Secrets. I want to delve into, when

is it time to sell an asset? When

is the time? When is the right time? I can tell you, Michael Saylor,

when you were talking about Bitcoin, he says, never ever sell

your Bitcoin. But, If you've got

a health emergency and you're about to die or something, you

need a heart transplant and you need the money, then you've got to sell the Bitcoin, right?

And this also, sort of before Bitcoin was

even around, you would have heard all the property gurus talking about never

ever sell property, yeah? The wealthy never ever sell. But

sometimes, we just find ourselves in situations where

we need to sell the asset to take the cash because

if I give a property as an example, You

might have a property that's gone up in value to the tune of a million dollars. You

might have a $200,000 loan on it. You're sitting on $800,000 worth of equity. And

you could argue, okay, well, you should go to the bank and borrow against the

asset. So you could take your loan, let's say, from $200,000 up

to $400,000 and pull out $200,000. But

the problem with that is you've got to have the

serviceability, which means you've got to be able to afford the repayments. And

that's what the bank is going to count on. if

they're going to give you the extra $200,000. And sometimes

that can pose a problem. And I want to share this

story. The reason why I want to talk about this today is because one, there's something

that's happening in my life right now where I am actually going to

sell an asset at this point, which is a commercial property,

and I'll tell you the reasons why in a second. And there's also a lady

who I met just this past week I'm

going to start with this story actually because this is a bit more interesting. So I met this

lady roughly a week ago, and I got talking

to her about a range of things, including her financial situation,

as I always end up doing. I just delve straight into people's

financial situations, prying in. But

it comes from a good place, and she was happy to share with

me, too, that She has this property

worth something like $600,000. She owes about $200,000. So

she's sitting on $400,000 worth of equity. And

I thought, oh, that's great. I'm thinking, oh, well, you could tap into that because it started talking

about, you know, could she use some of that equity to get into more investments? And

of course, you can. You can use some of that money to go and buy different things. Maybe it's a

business. Maybe it's some other asset. But

then she dropped this bombshell on me. And

she said, Matthew, I've only got $44 in

the bank. I was like, what? $44? Are you

serious? She said, yes. And then it just

dawned on me, I thought, You just sort of think that everything's going

great, you know, for people. And I can tell you, things aren't going great

for people right now. The stat the other day, even on the news, was that 80% of

people are in mortgage stress right now because of the high

interest rates. And on top of that, the higher cost

of living because of inflation, because the current Labor government is

just useless at managing the budget, managing

the economy of Australia. And so, back

to this lady. I said, wow, well,

wouldn't you look at doing something then? Because surely you

can't be in a position where you've got $44 in the

bank, you're a single parent, you've got two kids at home, bills

are just mounting. And so I

said, look, why don't we do this? Come and see me. Let's just

sit down and work out what are some of the options for you. Because

what I realized was that she's stuck in this position. She's

got her blinkers on and she just didn't know how, which

part to navigate, right? And I know after talking to her, she

said, look, I really love my property. You know, it's got a great view

and I just love being there. And so there was a

lot of emotional attachment to this property. So at

the time, she couldn't see this as an escape out

of the financial shithole that she was in. And

look, I've been in this position myself where, as

you probably know, we had this restaurant, I was in a million dollars of debt, and

we had residential properties. And we were of

the school of thought that buy these properties

and we're never going to sell them. We're just going to keep them for like 50 years

and by then they're going to be, you know, $5 million and we

bought them for like 200 grand or something. But

shit happens, and life throws you these

curveballs. And for us, it was the roadworks, which

meant the sales of the restaurant went down. We had to tap into

other resources, other financial resources, to

get money in the door. And what was the easiest one to do? Sell

assets. And so we sold some residential properties

to help prop up the business. We

didn't want to do it because we were emotionally I

guess, attach these properties. It was also ingrained in us that we never sell properties,

right? But like I said, life

throws these curveballs at you, and you're going to have to make decisions to help you

today. And I can tell you, having now gone through

that myself, of course, there's always another property. So

it's sell the assets, get yourself out of

the financial hellhole that you could be in so

that you can now leverage that cash to prop you

up and move on to something else. Now, Of course, as I

digress here back to what happened to me at the time was, you

know, if I hadn't have gone through that, then I wouldn't have then found

Amazon. I wouldn't have then gone on to become the biggest Amazon

seller pretty much in Australia, selling all over the

world, you know, to the tune of now $50 million

plus. $50 million! I mean, it

sounds insane, and I would never have thought that back then. And

so as you can appreciate, if you're selling a couple of houses,

and this is now eight years ago or something, selling

a couple of houses, but then fast forward eight

more years, I can say, yeah, if you sell the houses, but in the future, you're going

to have a mansion and a car collection and commercial properties, you're going

to be like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense. I'm willing to do that. Sometimes

the problem is when you're in the shithole, you don't

know that, hey, things can get better in the future because

if I just said to you, look, things are going to get better in the future if you do this, you'd be like, oh,

okay. Well, let's just do it. So back

to this lady, it was just a matter of sitting down with her,

talking about and just laying out some options, you know, and I wasn't there

to tell her what to do. It was just like, this is an option for you, this

is an option for you, and it's up to you what you want to do. Now,

she ultimately decided that You know what?

Okay, if I can secure a two-year lease in a

rental property, because obviously, she wants to not

have to be kicked out every six months from her home in order to

keep the children in a fairly stable environment, then

she would do it, right? She would sell the property that she's

currently in, realize the $400,000, and

keep in mind, too, it's owned and occupied, so she doesn't pay any tax on that. She

puts the $400,000 in the bank. Now, straight away, she's now not having

to, you know, stretch it every... because she's living

week-to-week, and I tell you, I know

what it's like living week-to-week. In fact, I know what it's like living week-to-week but

going backwards. That's even worse. At

least with this lady, she doesn't have any other personal debt, right?

I had credit cards and car loans and all sorts of things. That was a real big

problem. But she's in a

good place in that sense, right? So she's going to increase her income by

picking up some extra work so she has better

cash flow. And what we're now looking

to do is use that $400,000, not to

just stick in the bank and just wither it away over

the next decade. In fact, don't

put it in the bank, right? Because the bank's going

to, obviously the currency is deflating. and

it's worth less money, right? So putting it in the bank is the worst thing you could pretty

much do. We need to put that money to work, right? And

so the options are, and keep in mind too,

she's got no superannuation at all, which

is scary because she's in her mid-40s, same

age as me. She's only got essentially 20 more years. and

if she doesn't do something, she's gonna end up on the pension.

Hey guys, I just wanna break away from the episode for just one moment and let you know

that I've just launched the Amazon Launchpad mini course. Now this is

designed for people who wanna get started on Amazon really,

really fast. But guess what? I can get you launched your first product on

Amazon with just five hours. You just have to click on the link below, join

my community, and the course is absolutely free. All right, thanks

guys, and back to the episode. And I can tell you, Being

on the pension is not your goal. I know people who are like, oh, I

can't wait to get on the pension, just kick back. The pension is shit.

That's for poor people, okay? And you don't

want to be a poor person. In other words, you don't want to have

to be struggling as a pensioner, begging the government for

an extra bit of pension every year, you know,

and they're like, oh, here's 3%, and they just like throw it at you, here you go,

peasant. That's not you. You don't want to be in that position. So

your goal is to be fully self-funded retiree and

be completely not dependent on the government. So

anyway, because it actually turns out that in about 20 years' time, the average person

is going to need $6 million, the equivalent, right?

$6 million in 20 years' time to

have the average living conditions. Just

the average, $6 million, that's rubbish. And that's

exactly what my parents thought in, I guess, in the 80s,

right? When you said, oh, well, by the time you retire, you're

gonna need a million dollars in the bank. Like, oh

my God, a million dollars, my God, we're gonna be rich. But of course, now

you get to 2024, and a million dollars is

not that much anymore, right? Because the

value of the dollar is decreasing. The purchasing power is

decreasing. and so that's the problem. So

back to the lady. She needs to sort

something out for her retirement. So the idea was

sort of bouncing around is putting $100,000 into Bitcoin,

and just on those numbers, I'm just off the

top of my head now, I think in 20 years' time, based on a 29% average

return rate per year, it was going to be something

like $32 million, okay? and

of course, if it's a higher rate than that, I think if I plugged in 50%, some

people are saying 50% per annum for the next 20 years. We'll see.

It's done 63% per annum for the last decade on

average, so it was going to be something like $100,000,000 plus

if it was 50%. So in any case, $32,000,000 and

thereabouts is going to be enough money for her to retire on. So that's the first

thing is like secure her retirement. Then

the other $300,000, it was put $50,000 as emergency

funds. Yes, in the bank, but emergency money only.

Car, dental, who knows, right? Whatever pops up. And

then the other $250,000, what are we going to do with that?

We need to get that money working for us. And

the idea is to get it into some, perhaps a

business that can give alpha returns or Maybe

she goes into partnership with someone on flipping a property, right?

So she comes up with the $250, someone comes

up with some other bit of money, they go into a

property together, they flip it, they turn that $250, let's

say she puts the end of it in, she pulls out $350, okay? And

maybe she does that every year for

like five years and then she might end up having a

profit of say like $500,000, right?

And then at that point, perhaps she

then looks to getting back into the property market again. The

other option for her was to buy an established online

business. And if you guys have been following me

for a while now, you know that I'm a big advocate of

buying an established business to truncate the

time. If you start a business from scratch, it's going to take time to build it

up. If you buy an established business, and she could do that because she's got some capital,

you're going to start making profits straight away because you're buying a profitable business.

So that is what I would say

is a good reason. Now, just as a side note on this story, the

reason why I got talking to this lady, because we got talking about Bitcoin, and

it turned out that she had bought Bitcoin back

in 2012 or something, about

$1,000 worth of Bitcoin. And then basically, I

think she forgot about it. And then in

2022 or 21, somewhere around there, someone had said to her, have

you seen Bitcoin lately? Bitcoin price was up. And she's

like, that's right, I've got Bitcoin. Checks it out. And

it's now $70,000. And again,

she had to use that money because she'd actually been through this really tough period

through the floods. We had some floods around that time. She was completely

wiped out. And so she tapped into that. And

so Bitcoin saved the day for her. And I think

Bitcoin will save the day for her as well in her retirement. So

coming back to myself and why I'm

looking to now liquidate this commercial property, it's for the

simple reason that one, the commercial property has

gone up in value, and

two, I could use that equity to

make better returns. That's basically it. And

I know one part of my mind is saying, don't sell the property. You were going to

buy that property and never ever sell it. So I don't actually need

to sell it, but when a better opportunity comes

up, it's like, why wouldn't I sell it? Some

people talk about diversification, but I

would be diversifying. Essentially, by keeping it

in property, I'd be diversifying it. to

stay in an asset that's not what I think is the best asset.

And you know what I'm going to say, the best asset right now is Bitcoin. It's

the hardest money. It's probably going to have the best return, certainly had

the best returns over the past 10, 14 years. And

I think it will into the future as well. You should sell an asset when it makes

sense to do so in order to get ahead in life. I've

found that there's people sitting on property, for

example, where they've got hundreds of thousands of dollars

of equity, but yet they're poor. And

I'm looking at it like, what are you doing? And I just don't think they

realise that selling that property, hey, look,

if you could leverage against it, certainly do that because then you keep the property, but

keep in mind that you're going to have to make a repayment now on that extra bit of loan. that

loan, though, if it's for business purposes, it is tax-deductible, the

interest. But why wouldn't you liquidate,

get the cash, and put that into something that's going

to get you ahead? And I'll tell you why people don't do it, actually. One,

they don't even know they can do it. Two, if they do know they can do

it, they're scared shitless. They

are thinking, oh my God, what if I sell this property, take

the money, and put it into a business and the business fails? That

could happen. There is absolutely no guarantee in

life that you get a business and it's going to be successful.

And I know the track record in business too is most

small businesses don't last something like past five years. So,

You've got to really plan it out. You've got to

understand what you're getting into. You definitely have to tap into

mentors, into coaching, exactly in

the space that you want to get into. So if you're thinking about buying,

as an example, a YouTube channel, you

would absolutely go and get some coaching on YouTube channels.

If you're thinking about buying into an Amazon FBA business,

you would go and get coaching from someone who's already successful in

that space in Amazon FBA-type businesses. It's

as simple as that, and that will at least minimise the

risk involved. Don't get attached to an asset. There's

always more Bitcoin. There's always more property. There's always

more vintage and luxury cars for you to go and buy. There's

always more property, okay? And if you can see a way to

maximize the money that's already sitting in that asset to

get ahead, then you should definitely consider it. Look, I sat down

with my sister recently and talked about

how much money she's got in Super, her and her husband, are

they going to have enough money? And of course, I asked her, I said, have you even thought about this? No.

They're mid-30s. This is a wake-up call to people. You

need to be thinking about this. And I know, look, I'm

a victim of it too, right? You sort of, you go through your 20s, you think, oh, retirement's

so long away, I don't even think about it. But

I'm telling you, you have to start looking at the numbers. And the stats are

that in 20 years' time, my sister's got 30 years. In 20 years'

time, for me, the average person is going to need $6 million each, right,

to have an average retirement. She's probably gonna need something like

10, 12 million dollars in super, right? To live an average

life. So the way things are going

right now, they're fucked, okay? So

you're gonna have to make some drastic decisions. today.

And one of the things we came up with was simply putting $50,000 into

Bitcoin and just leaving it. And I've done the numbers on this. It

will set them up to the tune it's expected to

if history repeats. tens of

millions of dollars. So look, they'll be fine. But seriously,

guys, you got to think about your retirement and making some moves now. Thanks

for tuning into Amazon Ecom Secrets. If you

enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is

to give a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And

make sure to subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an episode.

You can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much. Take