Investing ahead of the Curve

Alright, so Jim, listen. You know one funny fact that most people probably will be very surprised with is I lived in Australia for 20 years, right? And do you know how many times I've actually surfed?

Okay. Um, I'm kinda guessing with the way- this is like, off-script, I had no idea you were gonna say that. I would say... none.

I've surfed twice in my life. I took two lessons and it's embarrassing. Right? I go to Australia, people are like, you must surf. Come to Portugal here, like, oh, you must be surfing. I'm like, no, I've only surfed twice in my life. And it is embarrassing because it's something that I always wanted to do, but I just never did it. I lived right by the ocean, like literally a few hundred meters away and never surfed. And now anyways, this is not about surfing, it's not about me, but I want to bring this point.

Twice, okay, but in Sydney? Yeah. I'm glad, because I thought that's what we were going to talk about today. So, okay, I'm...

No, so the time I one of the things I learned about surfing the two times I've actually tried was the importance of actually do you search gym by the way?

Does body surfing count? Yeah, so yes, every time I go, yeah, I've been up on a board several times I've surfed, but I enjoy body surfing a lot actually.

Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I think there's several analogies I love to kind of start today's podcast and the topic that we're gonna lean into with surfing, even though I don't surf. Couple things, number one, one thing I learned right away in surfing was that there's a lot of waiting game. Like it's waiting for, you know, not the perfect surf, like the wave, but it's just a wave that you can actually catch. And one of the, and the second thing I learned was by the time you think you need to act on things,

Okay.

that way, you're already too late. Right? So you literally need to see it a lot further ahead and you gotta start paddling faster and a lot sooner than I thought I had to. And I think this is exactly the same type of mentality or the mindset we need to consider based on the topic that we're gonna talk about. So Jim, why don't you introduce the topic? Oh, thank you, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. What a great introduction. I was like really enjoying the, because I know what we're gonna talk about. And I went, okay, I'm curious now, tell me about the surfing, tell me about, and I went, okay, great segue into it. So yeah, really today we're talking about investing ahead of the curve, or in your example, investing ahead of the wave. And I think that's actually a really good example of what we're gonna talk about, because I guess as a catalyst to our discussion today, you know, we quite often will have ideas

Mmm.

talk about, a lot of it's intuitive, to be honest, and a lot of it comes up with recurring themes in our coaching clients and the like. So during the week, we reached out and said, Lawrence, how about this as a topic? And it was stimulated for me because I've just hired someone for our team, and it's within one of our businesses. And I've recruited this person probably six months before I needed to, which is a perfect

Hmm.

segue from what you had said about the wave in that I've anticipated where I believe things are going to be in six months, 12 months. And I had a choice and an option. I could actually start paddling early and when I'm starting to get up off the board, onto the board, I've got the full weight of momentum behind me or I could start trying to do it as it was on me. And I've chosen to go earlier than later. So I think that was a really good for us to discuss today.

Yeah, I think, you know, it first of all, I think the most important thing, you know, when you're talking about investing ahead of the curve and anything ahead of the curve itself is that you have to really it's a mindset thing. Like it's such a mindset. And the reason why I think such a mindset thing and we got to talk about mindset, not about and we'll get into some executions and tactical things. It's because it affects everything. It affects every part of your life. And for you, for me, like I think we know we have if you think about it, right, all

Mm-hmm. Yep.

the majority of the things we've done, we kinda done it before it was, I think, before it was sexy, before it was the thing. And I think that's important, it's being able to, I don't know, like do you think you need to be a futurist? Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead. You know, yeah, yeah, no, no. So there's that curve, I can't remember the exact name and maybe you know the name of it,

Yep. I was going to say, would you say you're an early adopter? No, sorry, I just had an early adopter or...

right? And there's like that section of like, early innovators or innovators, early adopters, you know, or, you know, and then early majority, late majority.

Yep. Yep. the main body, the mate body, and then the laggards. The people who, yep, yep.

Yeah, exactly, and the laggards. And that's a great curve. So anybody who's ever seen, had never seen that, you should really go check that out. Because it's something that I think is worthwhile. And I would put myself as an early adopter. I wouldn't say I'm an early, I'm not an innovator. I wouldn't say. Because innovators like before the early adopters, the people like just really ahead of the curve. Those are the people who've been, let's pretend, they're the people who are maybe into VR 15 years ago. You know what I mean? For example. I'm not like this on all cases.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

but I tend to like being the early innovator. I don't tend to be an early majority. What about you?

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm probably similar, and it's interesting you said about futurists because I actually do look at trends and mega trends. I actually think they're really important. So I always looked at them from the perspective of health. I always looked at them from, now that there's specific trends and other businesses that we're in, one of which is finance, I look at the trends that are occurring. And so I wanna be ahead of what is going on. Or, you know, I'll give you a classic example.

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

to you about a couple of books recently that I'd read. One was, I've got it here, Humans Guide to the Future, which was talking about automations and the like. And a book I read a couple years ago called The Rise of the Robots. I didn't realise that up until you said that, I actually want to see where things are going. So I want to look at this and go, okay, there's no point in me deciding I'm going to become a farrier now. I'm going to start

Yeah, yeah.

and go, where are we moving as a society, as a chain? And I wanna position myself so that you've got momentum that you're growing into.

Yeah. Well, let's maybe start with the conversation with this thought process. Why do you think it's important to, you know, invest in and head to the current? Like, what's the benefit of that?

What will definitely for me is when you're investing in, in ahead of the curve, I believe you're actually at the forefront of where things are gonna go. You're not waiting until it's too late because sometimes what happens if you wait too long, if you wait till everything's certain, if you wait until all the ducks line up, that momentum, that shift, that opportunity may have come and gone. So I think it's really important to be

Hmm.

any moment, but then also never getting so comfortable that you don't ask questions or keep asking questions of this is great, this is really good, how can it be better or where's this going and how can I stay ahead of the game rather than at the effective.

Yeah, for me, I was listening to Howard Marks. I think he does like a lot of financial stuff and And he he kind of mentioned something. I was listening to one of his um, I can't really call it but he I was listening to his podcast. He was talking about How if you want to be average like an average investor? Then you just do what average investors do but don't expect all of a sudden like you will be better than everybody else So if you want to be like that, you know better than the average investor

Yep. Yep.

across the board, you're going to have to do something that is contrarian to what normal people are thinking about. That's in the definition itself. So I thought that was really interesting. And the second thing he sort of said, like you can't expect it. You also have to be okay. If you're expecting higher returns or higher returns for whatever thing you're investing, then you also have to expect that you could be wrong. And which means that, you know, there's going to be a chance

Yeah. Totally.

you know, mention that because oftentimes, we're not I know, I'm not saying this. And I know you're not gonna say this is like, we're not saying that just because you invest in ahead of the curve, you're going to be perfectly right. Chances are you're not going to be 100%. Right? If anything, it's it's a percentured probability game. And the reality does that but you got to be willing to take the chance. And I think that's where the mindset step comes in, right? The mindset needs to be that you have to be willing to take a chance for something that may go wrong. And that is what

Yep. Yep. Yeah.

is what most people are not necessarily have the courage to do. And that's what because they kind of revert back to the mean.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Courage is definitely a big factor. And when you say investing, one of the avenues is investing financially, right? So a classic example, I mean, we've spoken about this previously, and this is not a financial podcast, and we are not giving advice, but a really big trend that's occurring at the moment. You've just got to look at it and say, okay, well, you know, electric cars and Tesla are basically, as a trend, they're increasing. decrease emissions. Okay, so we need more electric cars. What do they need? Batteries. So if you reverse engineer it, so part of the reason why I invested in lithium stocks was for that reason, right? Because I'm aware of culturally what's going on. And is everyone right? No. But it's trying to identify where are we growing into and what needs will society require? And can I position myself to benefit from that societal trend

Hmm.

find a new market in areas that people are uninterested in.

Yeah, I think the danger when you don't invest ahead of the curve or even investing, you know, along with the curve, um, is sort of like, uh, it's sort of what's happening right now in cards to, I think in education, for example, you know, like I, my kids are 14 and 11 at the moment. Your kids are a little older, you know, going through university. I mean, the stats are ridiculous. I mean, I remember reading the stats somewhere. This is going back like 10, 15 years ago. So this is the old stats or it's even way worse now, I'm sure.

Yeah. Yep.

of course, like computer science, for example. You know, from what I heard is like, what you learn in computer science in the first year, by the time you get to like second or third year, that whatever you learned is now no longer relevant. And because that's how fast technology is moving, especially in those types of fields. And you start to think like, well, what's the point, you know, to learn like getting a degree. Of course, there's a point in getting degrees because degree allows you to have the thinking power, like you would hope, but if you're just regurgitating, then that's not gonna be helpful.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Mmm.

But I think something like education where if you don't invest in yourself, if you don't take the time to watch what's happening around you in the environment, at least take a stab at trying to stay ahead of the game of where the world is moving towards, you don't have to be an expert at it. You just need to know where it's going. I have no expert in technology. I have no expert in social media. I'm not an expert in all these things, but I have to kind of keep up as much as I can

Yep. No.

and the overall marketplace because they all kind of tie into the society that we're living in and also in towards the future and we will shape the direction of where we're going. You know, who would imagine that, you know, someone, you know, where we can get into someone's car, a stranger's car, take us to a place that is a stranger's house that I don't, you know, with no transaction of any like credit cards, facilities and stuff, it's all done, you know, virtually.

you HIP

take their house and rent out a room to some stranger to let them in. Like you would think if I talked about that 10 years ago, you'd be thinking like, that's crazy. Why would you do that? But yet, that's exactly what's happening. And that's what the thing is disrupting the whole entire hotel taxi industry. As an example, what's going on.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And disruption is definitely one form of investing ahead of the curve is seeing things and seeing where the trends are or asking different questions and going, you know what, we always do it this way. What would happen if we did this? Or would that be different? So that's definitely one avenue. But another area that we haven't touched on yet, Lawrence, I think investing ahead of the curve is particularly in self. You know, a lot of the times,

Thanks for watching!

So I'm not sure, one of the biggest things that I've noticed when people have come aboard coaching, and I know I did as well when I first hired a coach, is I saw it as, okay, this is an additional expense, particularly if you're looking at it from a business perspective, where you're analyzing it based on where you are right now, and you've suddenly gone, great, I've got this additional fee or expense that I've got to go. But investing in self and investing in a coach in advance, supplier effects. And so within a short period of time, our business doubled and tripled because I put in principle, I put in practice the principles that I was being taught and what I learned about myself, but I had to invest before I was ready. I didn't have, and that's the, there's an element of faith, there's an element of courage, there's an element of, do I back myself? When you're talking about yourself, but ultimately investing in self is as much investing ahead of the curve as anything else.

Yeah, well, I mean, we're obviously very biased and I want to be very clear on that, you know, we're both of us being coaches for our clients. But however, we also are letting you know that

Yeah. Or will we be transparent and go and say why?

Yeah. Well, because I mean, at the end of the day, we are, we practice sport with beach. We all have coaches. Like, I mean, I had a, you know, at one time, like just, not just last year, I had a financial coach. I had a marketing coach. I had a business coach and also had a mindset coach. You know, they all, they're all different people. Um, I hired all those coaches for a particular reason because they all had a different skillset. You know, I remember there was a, uh, someone actually knew Tiger Woods, uh, that I, that I knew. And he was telling the story.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tiger Woods practice one day and he was there, went to the hitting, you know, the course was just hitting these balls. And basically he hit three balls and there was like four or five people behind him. And then, and that was it. He walked away. They had a conversation with each one of them and no hitting the three balls that took like maybe 20 minutes or something. And it was like, okay, well what just happened? And someone explained to him, it was like, no, that guy is the swing coach. That guy is the, you know, body coach. is the, you know, like it was just like a different coach for everything. And it's not, that's really interesting, you know, the best of the best, you know, having a coach to observe a particular mechanic or, you know, um, you know, focus on or whatever. And it's just not that that's exactly sort of what, you know, that is required because none of us are expert at anything. And you know, when people hire myself and I'm sure they hire you, it's that they, they, they probably, they want someone just to give them the answer. However, what they really get is the transformation in themselves to figure out like who are they going to become in the future?

Yep. Yep.

to actually perform at that result. What execution or whatever strategy that you provide. But the first thing it's gotta be is within yourself. And that's the whole thing about investing in the head of the curve in regards to coaching is that you do need to have the courage and also execution to execute you, your mindset and your ability to go towards the future where you wanna be, know where you wanna go, but just don't know how to get there. And a lot of this has to do with the mindset of getting there and actually becoming

Yep. Yep. Thanks for watching!

because otherwise you'll be doing it right now. If you were ready, you'll be doing it right now. But usually it's not the strategy that makes you different than anybody else. It's who you are now versus who you will be. That's the difference maker. The strategy could apply to now or later, but I guarantee the strategy wouldn't work much better, say three months from now, because you have changed. And only if you have changed that will make the massive difference.

Yep. it. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. And, you know, actually bringing it to another example in the military, they've got what's called the 70% rule. And I love this rule because, you know, the biggest temptation or a lot of the times for people when they're trying to make change, they don't know all the steps. They don't know what, you know, like they're trying to get from where they are where they want to get to, like you just said, and they're hung up on step 17 when they really should be just focusing on step one. And what I love about the 70% rule which the military uses, they said if you have 40% of the information that you need, you don't have enough intel to move, to take action. Otherwise, taking an action at that point is reckless. So that's akin to going, okay, I'm going to go out there and I'll trial and error. And that may work, but it may not. So when the military then say, look, when you've got about 70% of the information that you've probably got enough to get started, but you don't know the rest of it, you'll work it out as you're going along. So really when they're focusing on momentum and speed, the currency they're looking at is execution, precision and action and momentum. Because what they found is if you wait until 100%, you have everything line up and it's perfect and the left column balances the right column. For them, it's life and death situation, but for a lot of the times the

Too late. Yep.

curve is a little bit like going, I've got 70%, I'm good to go. I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't know what it's like around the corner or over the hill, but I've got to go now. Whatever that is, energetically, whether it's investing in self, whether it's leaning over to someone or reaching out to someone and go, hey, would you go on a date? That's investing ahead of the curve because you don't know how it's all going to line up. It's perfect. It's going into that uncertainty and being prepared to adapt to it.

Well, it's just like it's anything right, whether it be a workout sport, you know, you just talked about, you know, the military and it's all about really figuring out investing the time to be able to know how you're going to react in those moments. You don't want to be figuring out understanding the theory and you know, learn from the top of three and then you put in the practice and real life situation and then not realizing that you know, you never considered all the emotional things that have come across that you have to know what that feels like.

Yep.

or the endurance you have to go through. These military people, they put them through torture. Like during Hell Week and the Navy SEALs and stuff, I'm sure everybody's read those stories. You go, why did they do that? Well, it's because when that happens in real life, you're gonna know that's how it feels, right? And the teams that have practiced brutally for practice, like really tough, in real game situation, there's not gonna be that bad. Like this morning I did a CrossFit workout, which is called Fran.

Yep. Yep. you

basically is basically thrusters and pull-ups. That's it, thrusters and pull-ups.

You know what I always love about you always love about CrossFit sorry to write is You've always got these sweet sounding names, right? They're just Fran and something, you know innocuous and it'll just Mowley, you know, I've always loved That's what I mean Fran sounds like your grandmother, you know

Ha ha. It's the ladies, it's the ladies. It's, yeah, they make it, yeah. Oh, it's the ladies and it's Helen's and Cindy's friend. Oh man. It felt like torture to me, that's for sure. But you know, like it's interesting. So like the weight was, I think, 43 kilogram thrusters or 90 pounds thrusters. But what was interesting going to the same point was that before we did Fran, of as high as you can go thrusters on three sets. Meaning like you wanna add the weight and you wanna add more weight so that when by the time you come back to doing the frame workout, by the time for the workout, the whole point was the workout weight felt easy. So for example, let's just say it's 43 kilos, like you wanna stack up to almost 60 kilos and try that for three reps and go, oh my God, that was tough, that was my PR. And then go, okay, ready for the workout now. It's like that 43 feels like featherweight

Hmm?

to what I just done. And that's the point, psychologically preparing your body that you can do more and then realizing that, hey, okay, like we're bringing it back down this level, like, okay, so now I can actually pump this through. So the same thing about investing, it's like, you have to learn to invest in yourself, you have to learn to invest in every aspect of your life. And I'll come back to you in one second, like one of the things that I just started doing, just not only two years ago, and I wish I did it earlier, and we can talk about that in another podcast about investing in sell, like just investing period,

Yeah. Yep.

I was a late starter. I started early, lost a lot of money, but anyways, come back, we'll come back. But anyway, two years ago, I started back. I'm like, I need to get back in the game in investing and really put my mind onto this. And what is the interesting thing about the last two years? We've had a lot of highs, we have a lot of lows, right, we're sort of in that moment right now. And what was interesting for me was like, yeah, there's a lot of money earned, a lot of money lost, but what was for me is preparing what I never expected was all the learning I'm getting in my own emotions.

Hmm.

around money, investing, how I feel when things are going up, how I feel when things are going down, and all those emotional roller coasters, because like, wow, I can theoretically think about what they're doing, but when it happens, when you see a stock or crypto goes up, and you're like, ah, and then you're like, oh, do I buy more? And then when it goes down, like, oh my God, everything's gonna die, everything's gonna crash, I'm gonna lose all my money, and it's like, wow, I'm watching my emotions like all the other people, and it's like, but you gotta put yourself through that,

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yep.

with lower amounts than when we're dealing with bigger amounts, right? So it's like, that's what I was learning, but you almost have to be in the game to feel those emotions when money's at stake or when something's at stake. Doing it theoretically on a play account just doesn't have the same feeling, if that makes sense.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, totally, mate. I think what I was taking out of, because to me, the functional benefit of CrossFit is that they're functional movements, and you're investing ahead of the curve. Because basically, you're saying, I'm replicating these movements because if I ever need to, I've got it. I've got it done. So you're investing ahead of the curve. You're doing the reps before you need it. And you may never need it, but you've got it. So that, to me, is a practical. So I was looking at that going, you know what, Lawrence?

That's right. Yep.

about that is exactly what we're talking about in that context. And it's interesting you say about investing because one of the areas that I did a certification in is called neurobehavioral modeling where it's actually models the best in the world at a particular task and then breaking it down and coding it to understand why and how they process that. And what was really interesting, you know, you talked about investing, a lot

Yep. Hmm Interesting. Mm-hmm.

is the control over your emotions. And so I interviewed Forex traders who pretty much are people who basically have got a market that's open 24 hours a day, six days a week like that. I also interviewed people who were first responders, people who firemen to go, how do you switch off that fear response? When there's a fire and everybody's running this way, you're running into it. How do you do that? And basically, in a nutshell, the forex traders were saying, it's emotional regulation, it's investing ahead of the curve, it's keeping control of your emotions so that when things go live, this is new, I've done this before, there's nothing that's that, and I just adapt to it. The first responders were also investing in it because they will simulate scenarios where they had to override their physiological responses to fear and find it. So they were prepared. And one of the things that I learned out of particularly in martial arts and what was drilled into us always was you don't rise to the occasion, you defer to the level, your highest level of preparation. And that to me is exactly the same thing as you are investing ahead of the curve. You're doing what needs to get done before you need to because when you do need it, it's there.

That's right. Yeah, and the problem is, I think most people, you know, including myself, sometimes we just do it because we're trying to get a tick on a box somewhere. Like, for example, when you just mentioned about first aid, right? Think about how many people, especially in the health industry, you know, we have to go get a CPR, you know, a, you know, like CPR certification, because that's the thing that you know, the government requires us to, for example, and you go in there and you do it. And what do you do most of the time? You're you're there? Yeah, of course, you might want to learn awesome. But most of the time, you're there because you need to get a check because it's something you

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

you have to do. But the problem is when you go in with that type of attitude, you also realize that you're not you're taking information in, but are you taking enough information that if someone actually did need CPR from you right now, will you remember all the core elements that you require? And I and it's sad to say like, I mean, I just took a CPR course probably maybe a year ago, you know, just because I wanted to. But you know what, because you don't practice it every day, not like jujitsu, you're not like, you know, you're

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Like you don't practice it every day, you're going to default to the preparation, which was the one day I did it, which was like a year ago. Luckily, one of the things I did, you know, we can get to this in later podcasts, but like I had to do CPR on my father-in-law. It was going back about 12 years ago. And it was on Christmas day and it all came back to me, you know, but I think the only reason why it came back to me was because I was used to be a lifeguard when I was a kid.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

of CPR, AR, you know, training that I did as a lifeguard, you know, all those years when I was about 14, like about 12 to about 18, like, you know, you just, you just do it so much. But what I've noticed is CPR has changed a lot in terms of its rhythm. It's like the timing has all changed, you know, updated to be better. But you know what? At the end of the day, why I guarantee you, if someone, you know, something happened to me, I'm not going to remember. I know I will not remember. I don't remember what I learned

Alright. Yeah. Yeah.

but I'll default to the rhythm that I did maybe 30 years ago. Now it's not a bad thing. Like I'm sure it may not be as good, but I'm still trying to save this person's life. But the thing is, is that having that preparation, as you mentioned, was from 30 years ago, but it was drilled into me and I did it so many times in practice. I never did any CPR when I was a kid, but it came back like 30 years later to save a man's life. And that's the level of, I believe,

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

you're investing is like, it's not just about investing time and energy, but it's like, you got to be able to put it into practice, right? If you don't put into practice, you're not going to get that feedback. And if you don't get that feedback, you're not going to be able to learn and sinking into our brain. And I think this goes along with self, you know, self development we talked about in financial investment, you know, your coaching your business, all of those things are theory, but then there's practical. And there's a fundamental difference in terms of how how that happens.

Yep. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And to me, the biggest thing that I've benefited from having great coaches as well, unlike you two, Lawrence, I've had them at various times in multiple areas of my world, right? Spiritual coaches even, just who challenged me to ask life's biggest questions, right? Who has that? But yet that's been sometimes when I was, when there were recurring patterns that were showing up,

Hmm. Yep.

that weren't being sold by a particular type of mindset. I think I have someone who went, dude, we're gonna go meta on this. We've got to really, and that really helped me, right? So to me, that was investing in a different direction. But so the thing is, sometimes people will highlight, like you can invest ahead of the curve consciously in that you know that you need a particular skill so that you don't have, but sometimes it's your blind spots. You don't know what you don't know. wax on, wax off the Mr. Miyagi scenario from the karate kid where you're like, why the heck am I doing all these things? They're ridiculous. I can't, and then the moment they happen, bam, you've got them, right? So there were probably times where you were learning your lifeguard skills going, this is inconvenient. This is horrible. When am I gonna use this? And suddenly 30 years down the line, you're thrust into a situation where you're going live and you default to those. So to me, sometimes investing in ahead

Yep. Yep. Yep.

is things that you know, but then it's also deferring to someone else who knows better, who goes, dude, this is why you need to do this, this and this. And let me guide you. Let me illuminate the path for you that you don't already know.

Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the things that, regards to the training aspect and also like wiring in your brain, the hardest part is actually, really being geared up for the challenges that you put yourself in, right? Because if you don't put your thing, I know I'm being, just saying the same thing over and over again, but it's such an important element that you gotta be able to put yourself in that situation where you have to be challenged and force that intuition come out of you. And putting yourself in that position is really tough sometimes, that people just kind of don't bother with that step. And I think that that's a missed opportunity. Like it's such a missed opportunity when you don't put into real life situations to test whether that's gonna come out of you. And we talk about coaches, for example. When I hired my coach, one of the things that I did, I'm really thankful for, was hire a coach before I needed him.

Yep. Yeah.

And I hired a coach before I needed him and it was just like, I know this is gonna pay off at some point. And when I did hire him, it was like, you know, I didn't know, I didn't even know I was getting the benefit until much, much later, you know, that this was all because I've actually hired him beforehand. I wasn't hiring like, oh crap, I'm in trouble right now, I better go call someone now. No, no, no, like I've actually hired him to get me prepared

Yeah.

Like when the situation did come to a rise, I was already ahead of the game. And that moment was, it's such a, it doesn't mean there's no trouble, doesn't mean there's no obstacle, doesn't mean like there's no challenges, but I know that I'm way better off because I was prepared, you know, in that moment. And I think that's such an important element for us to kind of think sometimes like you don't know what you don't know in the future and where it's going to be and what challenges you're going to come up. I think that's why it's really helpful to have those navigation rather than always being

Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yep.

If you can be proactive on certain things, I really highly recommend that. Be proactive and just seeing. That's why seeing the future or knowing that these are just some of the challenges that's going to come up and doing it beforehand is such an important element.

Yep. Yeah, and particularly in scenarios where you are involved in teams, because, you know, a lot of, you know, we've both been around a lot of people and groups and teams who recognise that for us as a group to keep progressing, we need to keep changing, we need to keep upskilling, we need to keep training. And, you know, you know, no one likes the term role-playing, but so we changed it to scenario training. And that just totally helped a lot of but effectively what you're doing investing ahead of a curve is scenario training. You're as a group, as a team, are training and skilling and preparing for situations so that effectively when they come, you're ready for them. And to me, I think investing ahead of the curve quite often will be a case of not being complacent, because you talked about it as a mindset, but it's a dynamic model as opposed to a static model, basically saying, great, things may be awesome, things may be great,

Yeah.

but if we want them to stay great, I mean, you know, you can be fit and healthy, stop training and exercising for a little while, see how that goes. Or if you've got a relationship with someone, start neglecting them and see how that goes. So it's essential that we keep putting energy and effort into things, even though they're great, you know, and particularly when they're great, because that to me then is saying, if I'm gonna get to the next level, if I'm gonna be hanging around this person and with this person for the rest of my life,

Hmm. Yeah.

in that and never take it for granted. You know, I don't know that's a, you know, we've both been happily married for a long time. There's probably a podcast, we'll talk about that and how important that is to us and what we've learned in that journey as well, but to me, it's investing in things to keep them staying well as opposed to, as you said, because you're at crisis point.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's anybody who, and I don't know, I can't really say what that feels like, but I've been married for 20 years and if someone gets divorced, it's usually not because something just happened. It's usually been years leading up to that point and where a decision has to be made, that forced that decision to happen. So I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's not usually one thing, it's usually things that, all those things

Yeah. Yeah.

small decisions, big decisions that had led up to that point that causes a couple to go into a separation, which may be a good thing for them, more or not, but it's not the one instance just before that. You know, we've got to go right back. And I think that's exactly what you're saying. It's like all these things have to lead up to those points.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's not to, it's really just to try and say, because I always look at the principle of how you do one thing is how you do all things. And if you're a person who, as a way of life, always challenges yourself, invests, always trying to get the best out of myself, the natural extension of that is you're gonna look at your primary relationships and your relationship with your family and go, how can I keep doing this better? You know, I know we've spoken about this offline as well, experiences that you're sharing with your kids, informative years of their lives. You know, like, and you could look at them and go, great, awesome. We've done a really good job until this point. Now, let's just, you know, see how the rest of it goes. That's the whole thing. It's like there's a constant adaptation and a constant process of doing that, anticipating things, finding what they're

Yeah.

I think this is a principle that's transferable to multiple areas of life.

Absolutely. Everything is, we have a strong belief, you know, you and I is that however, whatever you do things, one area is always going to be translated to other areas. So I love to shift gears a little bit and, you know, put us on the spot here. Let's, on this whole front of investing ahead of the curve, what do you think, and it's not financial advice or any advice whatsoever, but you can take for what it's worth, but I think it would just be playful, be really kind of cool to see different, maybe, maybe similarities or

Yeah. Let's shift gears, yeah? Yeah.

be investing in? What do you think that happens over the next two, maybe one to two years ahead that they should be kind of at least consider looking at?

Okay, so once again, because I do have a credit license, I have to be really clear. So I have to throw in the disclaimer. So this is definitely not, honestly, man, the fines from ASIC are just huge. So I have to be really clear. So this is a disclaimer. Okay, I will answer, as you say, this is not financial advice, but this is investing ahead of the curve. So I'll give you an example.

Okay, do you want me to handle that part? Because I'm not licensed. Absolutely not. Mm-hmm.

So you look at what's happening now in society, we're in a high inflation scenario, and I'm seeing that within our financing businesses, we're seeing the impact and implication of that, right? So we're at the coalface of these effects. So you've got inflation at a high level, you've got wages that are going up, they're being met. So, you know, like increase, there's labor shortages, those kinds of things. Societally, what we found is a lot of people cities and went to the rural areas. And so really, investing ahead of the curve for me was to look at that and go, okay, if there's less money going around, and if I'm an investor, and I'm purely just talking investing, and big mortgages are scaring people off, and, you know, if I've got one house and I put all my money into that one house, that's riskier, right? What would family unit. So if I had a group of apartments that were one bedrooms, people are conscious of cost, so if they're going to do that, they're going to try and live somewhere closer to the city, smaller place, less rent. And what I'm saying is supported by the data that's out in the property data that's showing that multifamily units, one and two bedroom apartments are going gangbusters because they're running on yields. And whenever society basically

No.

pressure, if you invest in middle of the road apartments that pretty much most people can afford or are looking at, you're effectively going to have a huge demand on there. So it's identifying and saying interest rates are going to go up, people are going to feel a bit stressed, if they're going to look for apartments they're going to look for... So that is an example of basically investing ahead of the curve metaphorically and literally.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great. Like I think that's a great example of like how someone should be looking at, you know, say in this case, like real estate investing and, and, and how to think about that. And if you believe in certain trends and looking at it and rationalizing that out and it goes, okay, well this leads to all of these data points leads to this particular thing. I'll shift gear. Yeah. I think, I think we'll shift it around and we'll, because we'll move around because we're not necessarily have to be financial. I think for me, you know, with the trends of of what's happening with regards to,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what about yourself, Lawrence? What about you? No.

You know what happened in Cove in the last two years and lockdowns and everything else you have what I see anyways This is just what I just from you know observation is that you know the summer travel here in Europe was was huge like chaos chaos in terms of airports and airlines and people couldn't keep up with staff and you know Retraining staff and hiring new staff all that stuff became a problem, right? And you know, I don't know about you But the amount of people from Australia traveling this year into Europe or anywhere anywhere to get off that island

Yeah. Yeah.

was incredible. And so what does that tell you? Well, people are, you know, after a two-year lockdown, they will go, I don't care about this inflation thing. I'm going out and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go live my life. I want to go and do these things. And what are they craving for? Well, I think number one, they're craving for experiences, new experiences that I think a lot of people like ourselves, me, you and I included, you know, we saw a reset within ourselves. So I think there's going to be more

Yep. Yep. Yep.

reset in their lifestyle, reset in their family life, reset in terms of their business and how they think about things. I think with the two year lockdown all across the world, I think people started to reevaluate what's important, what values they hold. And so I would kind of look at that and go, well, what does that mean for each individual and groups of individual, where would that lead to? I think there was a time where we just kind of go, well, we'll go back, we wanna go back to how it was pre-COVID.

Yeah.

scenario has ever been and anything that major that changes do we ever go back to how it ever was nothing happens going back to how it was. We're always moving forward and you have to learn to to adapt to the new changes and it'll be great to I can't give you specifics because I don't know where they're going to go yet but I would just say be aware that the world that in the next two years I feel it's going to be a very different world than in how it was before COVID and so you know those trends are going to be massively affected.

Hehehe Yeah, so taking that one step further, for everybody who doesn't know, Lawrence has got the unofficial welcoming committee title for Portugal because pretty much everybody who has moved to Portugal or has visited Portugal has been warmly welcomed by Lawrence in there. So let's use that as an example, Lawrence. So if you were going to capture that, if you were gonna invest ahead of the curve, if you're seeing a trend that, hey, there's more Australians that are traveling,

Hehehe Yeah.

like Portugal and Spain specifically, we're basically spit balling it here. We're basically just going, okay, so let's go live. What would be something that if you were going to follow a direction, it doesn't have to be financially, it could be, well, where would you put your time, energy, effort or money if you saw this trend before everybody else realized it? What would be an example of something you could do?

Sure. Yeah, you know, one of the things I've been doing, you know, unconsciously and slightly consciously and I don't know where it's going to take me. So this is the key thing, right? So sometimes when you invest into the future or ahead of something, you don't know where it actually is going to take you. I see this a lot in startups, for example, a lot of startup companies or startup, you know, entrepreneurs, they go, I got an idea and I'm going to start it. I'm going to just go down this road. And then what ends up happening is like one to two years down the road, they adapt and wasn't the one that they started off with. And I find that really interesting. So because they basically test, they go out and really test really, really quickly, and they test what the market needs and wants, and then they adapt accordingly. The investors typically, when they invest in those those companies, or those entrepreneurs, they invest in the founder, not the business. Right? So in those early days, it's like, you know, the idea is a good idea. But they really putting the

Yep. Yep. Yep.

And they really believe in that. And so I feel like from that perspective, what I've been doing is, is communities, like connections. You know, one of the first things I've done here in Portugal is like, yeah, I don't know anybody here. So therefore it's like, no, I just going to get involved and as many things as I possibly can get involved with, and just try to get to know as many people as possible. You know, it's funny, because like, I've only been here six months. And, you know, the

Yep. Mmm, perfect.

month or two, especially like parents that I meet, you know, they're looking for houses. I'm like, yeah, sure. Hey, listen, do you have a real estate agent? No, here, use this person, right? You need a lawyer. Well, hey, I've gone through two or three of them. Use this one, you know, and it's like having those connections and then and I don't know what they're going to turn out to be like, you know, but I know these are good because I went through like at least, you know, two or three versions of each one of those. And I kind of sift through them. And I know that I'm giving referrals to those people and hopefully something will happen. Like I'm just trying to make their life. I don't get

Yeah.

I don't care, but I'm just in f-

Yeah, it's relational capital that you're investing in, really. Will you forgive it? You're investing in connections and people.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's a really important, with this trend of reset and moving, it's gonna be who you know, right? It's gonna be who you know and who you're connected to that might give you a head start in certain areas. And I wanna, like, you know, a person who just moved from Australia to here just recently in the last two weeks, and we got together for lunch, and the first thing he said to me was like, he just wanted to say, thank you. I go, thank you for what? He goes, just like, us out with all these logistics and answering questions. I'm like, of course. And I'm like, I'm just paying it forward, just as you said earlier. I'm just paying it forward because I mean, there were people, like I mean, I didn't know anything, like six months ago, it's eight months ago, but someone helped me along the way and I just want to return the favor. I just want to pay it forward to make sure that your life, it doesn't mean that you have no obstacles. Of course you're going to have obstacles. I can't solve them all, but I just want to lower the burden. I want to just take some of that easy pressure off because I think that goes a long way. And you know,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Those relationship capital is such an important element. You don't know what you're going to need. And I think the future is right now is about communities because we have lacked that community, we lacked face to face. And these connections and networking is such a vital component that, you know, having these, knowing these certain people will serve you someday. We just don't know how or when I think, but that is something you don't want to be investing in relationship when you need someone because then, then that person is going to know like you only talk to me because you need something for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct, correct.

relationship prior to like for you know, three months, six months, a year, two years play the long game. It's like, hey, I need someone from something like that. Now it's like, okay, you know, you've already built that relationship. And I think it's, that's one of the most important thing to invest in.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I'm really glad you highlighted that because we talk about relation capital. That really, you know, basically comes down, even in terms of family as well. You know, like you just said, it's all well and good to say, hey, when my kids grow up, I wanna have this great relationship with them and I want us to get along. But you can't expect that you're gonna parachute into that and it's all gonna be okay. You have to have invested. And one of the biggest things we haven't spoken about, but to me, I think is one of the most critical things,

Hmm.

is time, right? Investing time ahead of the curve. So, you know, how many Saturday mornings, on cold Saturday mornings, we driving our kids to sport, hanging around, taking them to training, whatever, listening to, you know, how annoyed they were with the coach or how they didn't play. And it was investing time and in that relationship. And so, you know, one of the biggest joys that I have is the

there. Hmm.

and we relate to each other as adults. And I've always treated them like that. But I had to invest the time into that relationship because I couldn't ever take it for granted. I can't just say, I'm your dad, so I'm always gonna be right. That's not, I wasn't the basis of what I wanted. I needed to invest time in that. And to me, that's out of all the investments I have, if everything ever blew up and I've got my family, I'd still feel fulfilled because that to me,

Yeah.

gift and greatest achievement and greatest investment I have ever made. So I couldn't finish up without saying that.

Yeah, and it's gotta be such intent. You gotta, it's gotta be so intentional too as well. You know, like I, I, I do feel it. I really catch myself when I don't do enough of it, you know, and, and sometimes like, you know, we all make not mistakes, but he's just all know like, Hey, some weeks are going to be better than others. And that's just where I go. Yeah. Like I haven't invested my time with my wife this week. Cause you know, I'm out there doing other stuff or, you know, meeting too many other people. And it's like, okay, and I gotta, it's like a bank, right? It's like, you got, you take too many withdrawals.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You've got to write it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not good, right? It's not good. And, uh, you want to make sure you put enough credits in there before, you know, they realize the balance is out of balance. So, um, but I think it's the same thing with kids. Yeah, go ahead.

And it's good with, yeah, it's good. And what's great about family and kids is that they'll let you know. They'll let you know if those deposits are basically being made. Because there's one example that I have specifically, Lawrence, and I'm going to share that with you just to show you that we muck up. And if there's anything that I've learnt along the way, it's purely because I've found, okay, that wasn't really cool. But the power of presence and being,

Yeah.

present is really, really important. And we always empowered our kids to call us out if they felt that we were incongruent, right? So we've had this transparency with our, and we've invested in them to go, hey, I trust you. And I want to hear if I'm not living up to how you want me to be as a dad, right? So there was one time, you know, my youngest son, Xavier, he's 22 now, but when he was six, he was mad keen table tennis player.

Mm-hmm.

table and every day we were playing. We played for ages and ages and ages and no sooner had I come home from work he'd have the two, the basically ping-pong rackets, dad can we go? And I went okay. There was a day that I was really busy. I had calls to make and whatever and I'd play it and then the phone would ring and I go hang on Xavier and I'd stop and blah blah blah and I do that, I did that three or four times right? And I go okay I'm ready to go and Xavier said put the and he goes, listen, dad, if you can't focus, if you can't be here, at six, man, at six, if you aren't going to be present, then I don't wanna do this, right? So you're either gonna be here with me or answer your phone. And I'm like, you're six, man, how did you learn that? And yet I learned the biggest lesson about being present. And so to me, investing in that relationship

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

grown up and we've had challenges and we've had to talk through, we had the basis of the relationship where we could be honest with each other and accept it when the spirit was given. And to me that was huge. So you're right. It's a hard one, but I'm grateful for it because we invested in the relationship so we had faith and trust and honesty so that when some big life issues come up, you've invested the time to know that the relationship is there and it can handle that.

Yeah. It's a hard lesson. Yeah. Yeah, and it comes to, especially like my kids are turning, you know, in towards teenager years now. And, you know, I can't just expect that my daughter is going to come and ask me questions or, you know, have trust me to have those intimate conversations. If I didn't invest the time and created the psychological safety that she can, you know, just because she's my daughter and just because I'm your dad, if I didn't spend those years and I hope I'd done a good job, I don't know what's it will, we'll talk in a couple of years time, but if, you know, I really do hope

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

trust in her to be able to feel safe and have a safe conversations and some of the things that that's going to go through her mind and we just can't turn it on and off. So for those parents, you know, who have younger kids, man, like just, you know, you just like just invest as much as you possibly can. You don't pay off is not going to come for years to come. Right. So but it is going to be there.

No. Yeah, and they're watching and they're watching and then they're aware of that. Yeah, and you know, like my eldest son is 26 years old, right, and two weeks ago, this is phenomenal in terms of one of those investing forward. So when the boys turned 13, as a rite of passage, I said to them, anywhere you wanna go in Australia, you and me, we'll go, we'll go and do whatever. And it's you and I and we'll have an experience.

Hmm. Thanks for watching! that.

said, I want to go and do the bridge climb. So we did the bridge climb in Sydney. We flew up to Sydney and Sebastian, my son and I got on the bridge climb. And while he was going, I let him go forward and I stood behind him, right? Because to me, in my mind, symbolically, I wanted him to lead his path. He's the captain of his own ship and I was behind him. So if he needed me, he knew I had his back, right? And I knew why I was doing that, but he didn't get it, right?

Okay. Mm-hmm.

understand the significance of that. And really recently there was a scenario where at 26 he suddenly went, holy smoke, there was another action and I followed through and I was just backing him going, mate, I'm all in with you. And he said, he just had this pause. He goes, I get it. He goes, what? He goes, you've been doing that forever. He goes, well, because we went to the bridge climb, you always said to me, it's, I'm the captain of my own ship

Hmm

and now I see it, right? And honestly, man, if the earth could have opened up and swallowed me up, then I would have gone mission accomplished because you know that I've got you covered, I've got your back. And for him to know that, other than from words, it was through an action, to me it was like awesome. So same thing, it's not, it's just, you know, 13 years and he remembered that. And you know, I just, I got really emotional at the time

Right. Yeah. That's a beautiful story. Hmm.

suddenly went, you know, like, that's what I want. You know, I just want that's you do it according to your highest values in life. And that to me was the, the personification of something put in practice. So.

Yeah. That's great. And so just for clarification, did you do that one time? Like it was like a one time thing at 13 for each of them? Or is it that you did that like every year?

No, no, no, no, no, cause they, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I did it once, it was once at 13. And I said to my youngest son, okay, what do you want to do? We did the bridge comedy. He goes, I want to go to wet and wild. And so we went, flew up to Queensland to a theme park. And he, he, he, he got the jackpot because when we flew up to wet and wild, it was raining that day. And the theme park was empty except for us. And we were just going up and down, up and down, up and down the slide. And yeah, so we had a cracker at a time,

Yep. Right. That is awesome.

is they had this massive storm in Queensland and we got locked in to sit to Queensland for four more days. We couldn't get a flight out so he was going for one two days he got six and so Xavier still believes that bridge climb or not he got the better deal. So I just gave him an opportunity to go what do you want to do it's about you it's not about me and one wanted the bridge climb and

Alright Oh wow. Hahaha. That is awesome. Like I'm gonna take that on board. I'm gonna take that on board. I really liked that idea a lot.

It was all because it was beautiful. And it was, it just gave us an opportunity to spend some time together, but just to them go, I'm all in and I'm doing what you want. So I've got heaps of stories. We'll come out.

Yeah. The only problem is I think, you know, right now it's like, my problem right now would be like, anywhere, yeah, I'm gonna go to Paris or I'm gonna go to Venice, which is a lot closer.

What do you wanna do? Yeah. It's, but you know what? It's practical. It's, it's practical now. Like my son and listen, we're going to, we're going to wrap up. We're going to wrap up. But, um, my son, our son's flying from London to see us. Um, the day before I fly out to come to your mastermind, right? He's flying out and I'm flying on the 16th. Sebastian goes, I'm flying on the 15th. I go, dude. And then my oldest son, my youngest son is flying in the day. I get back. So they're like on either

Yeah, I know. It's so good. Oh wow, yep. Right.

really cool but Sebastian is flying from London to Barcelona for five pounds. Five pounds! That's it man like five pounds. I'm serious. This is like we're in a different side of the world where possibilities and magic happens Lawrence. I said to him dude I just bought a cup of coffee and it cost me that much and he said no I'm literally so he's got a round trip for ten pounds.

Come on. Come on. Sheesh. Wow. Okay. We're going to have to look at some flights. That's he's, I'm sure he bought well, he's because he investing in the curve, right? He's ahead of the curve. He was investing before the play tickets, basically before the plane tickets go up.

Yeah, yeah. So you know what, that's why I threw it in there, Laurence, is to go. He's investing. No, no, you know what? I'll tell you, this is the, this is the final thing is they grow up right. And you think that they're going to get the sibling rivalry stops. So he knew that my youngest son's coming on the 21st. And I said, listen, guys, we've got one big room and one smaller room. And so I reckon, I believe that my youngest son's gone. Okay. If I get in earlier, I get the bigger room. So, you know, that, that kind of stuff, that, that don't outgrow, right? It's just, it's just, you're just playing

Ha. Oh, he's coming in. Yeah, yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. That's hilarious. Well, I hope that you guys got a lot out of this, you know, this video and are also on podcast itself. But I mean, I got so much out of it too. And thanks, Jim, for sharing, you know, some of those intimate stories. I think they're really powerful, you know, and the point of it is that it's really just about investing in everything in all aspects of your life. And I think that, you know, most practical thing you can kind of maybe will leave with this is sort of like think about all the most important areas of your life, you

games.

business and then figure out like how can I, you know, out of those say five categories, what are the things I should be investing in, in each one of those categories and then start putting some time and energy and focus into making a decision and going, okay, this is what I'm going to do because don't wait until you need it, invest in it so that you're riding the long curve and thinking long term and then by the time you need it, you probably won't even realize that you actually created that investment and that is already paying off without even knowing it. energy when it comes to life and creating a life of success. So Jim, great episode and guys if you know someone who, if you love this episode, please like it, comment wherever you listen to these podcasts or watch these podcasts but please most importantly share this with other people. We'll love to have more and more people listening to these and if you have some ideas on particular topics you want us to kind of cover, maybe put it in the comments or send us an email

Yeah, great way to cap it off.

We'll get to it and we'll you never know we'll be able to hopefully do a podcast or an episode on that particular topic Until next time we'll talk to you soon. See you later