Ep346: Bushy Martin – Focus on Your Health Because It Is Your Wealth

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to give you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. And I bet you're exposed to investment risk right now. To reduce it, go to my worst investment ever.com and download the risk reduction checklist I've made specifically for you, my podcast listeners, based on the lessons I have learned from all of my guests, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests bushi Martin Bashir, are you ready to rock?

00:46
I'm ready to rock and roll.

Andrew Stotz 00:49
I know you are. And I want to introduce you to the audience. So wishing Martin helps others to work less and live more. Through his contributions as an award winning author, media host podcaster is one of Australia's most highly respected property investment and finance experts is the author of the freedom formula and get invested. He is the newly appointed anchor of Australia's number one and longest running property program, real estate talk. And he interviews some of the world's leading investors and high performers. Each week on his podcast get in vested pushing, take a minute and filling in further tidbits about your life.

Bushy Martin 01:34
Great rundown and awesome voicemail. Love you BJ tones, the dulcet tones are all suddenly, yeah, I guess some just to focus on what we're really about our life and mission, that business is really synonymous with lifestyle, Andrew, and I met that fortunate stage of my life where it's about giving back, because I've taught me a long time to learn that true fulfillment is about giving freely to others without ever expecting anything in return. And you can only do that if you've got the freedom to do it. And you can only have the freedom if you've got time on your hands. And you only get time on your hands if your income later being fulfilled without relying on you to do it. So I guess in that context, everything we do is really about admission or waking up hardworking type poor professionals to actually get invested in themselves. And to start doing what we call with by design, not by default. So to live with intent and have a clear vision of how they want to live, and then make sure everything you're doing on a daily basis has taken them towards that. And I guess what it means is that everything you described is all about helping others to see that and get invest in themselves. So the books, the business know how it's all about, really what I'm finding is a lot of people know they want to get invested, but they can't see how. So a big part of our mission is really to help people to be able to do that by giving them know the know how they need to make decisions that are going to achieve their goals, whatever they are, because everyone's different. And I guess the other big benefit of what we're now doing is that in partnering, the people that we assist, we want to be able to help others that are less fortunate than any of us. So one of the things that we're doing at the moment is for every dollar that our clients invest, or for every dollar we save them, we donate a day's worth of life saving water to the families and tea gray through the bhiwandi one by one give one charity group. So it means that by helping each other we can help others that just don't have those opportunities that we often take for granted.

Andrew Stotz 04:01
eautiful and, you know, I there's two things that I'm thinking about when I been talking with you before we turn on the recorder. And now and the first one is that you said something when we talked earlier about self health and wealth. And I'd like you just to talk for a moment about your perspective on those three things.

Bushy Martin 04:23
Yes, well, it's actually going to wrap into my worst investment ever, as well actually because that was one of the big learnings that I took away from what I what I will be talking about. But I've spent many years that I've had a bit of a what I call a car crash. And I had my midlife crisis very early. Andrew at the tender age of 33. And I immersed myself in self reflection and read everything I can get my hands on on true sustainable success. Yep, and it all came back to those three Things that they the people who achieve sustainable success are those who invest in yourself, invest in their health, and they invest in their wealth. And the thing that applies to all of those three years is what I talked to talk about in my book, The Freedom formula has to say. So everyone's heard of TLC, it's about tender loving care. So give yourself a tender loving care in terms of yourself. So it's about getting your mindset, right. It's about really getting your expectations and your attitude, right. And it's also about the family relationships, and the intimate relationships, you build around that because they are fundamental. In relation to health. The TLC translates into trust, into loyalty into courage. And what I mean by that, is that by focusing on your health, and that's your sleep habits, your breathing habits, your dietary habits, and your exercise habits, what comes out of those as you build the disciplines, that what I call the daily disciplines on the happy habits, that then become the foundation stones for believing in yourself, for trusting yourself, and then having the courage and the right persistence approach to then be successful in your wealth activity? You know, the foundation stones, and then and only then can you be successful in your wealth, which is the tail say there is time, because six, six, I believe, and in my experience, it's sustainable success takes at least 15 years leverage by leveraging other people in terms of their expertise and other people's money, so that you can actually expand your opportunity. And then letting the magic of compounding do its work. So time leveraging compounding in terms of your wealth, but that triangle of self health and wealth, if you ignore one of them, then the whole thing implies a lot of people chasing wealth and ignoring their their health or their self, and they they self sabotage. I'll say others who just focus on self and, and health and put nothing into their wealth and end up in Penny pinching poverty, when they try and stop work. Like down the track. It's really a matter of combining all of those three to achieve a sustainable success in however you define that and whatever lifestyle that means to you.

Andrew Stotz 07:33
So podcast listeners, why don't you take the bushy Martin challenge. And I'm going to phrase it in my own way, by challenging you to think about that one person, it could be a daughter, a son, a wife, a friend, think about that person that you love, that you want to bring tender loving care to. And now turn it around, and bring that to yourself. Treat yourself as though you are the most important person who you love the most. And I never really thought about turning it on myself. But you've now made me think about that. So I think that's a great challenge for all of us to think about that today about how do we bring more tender loving care to ourself.

Bushy Martin 08:21
So that's a great insight. And because our self talk, I mean, we wouldn't talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves.

Andrew Stotz 08:30
But that's just so I mean, you're blown me away. Because you know, it's so true. If you think about all the doubts and fears, and I always, you know, there was a guest podcast guests on this show, named Mike mattoni. And he happened to be my counselor when I was 17. And in drug rehab. And Mike used to say, Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. And it was such a profound thing. Because you know, when you look at yourself, you're feeling all of your doubts and fears, you see everything negative about yourself, there is nobody that sees you as negatively as you do. Even that person who hates you, they're hating you, because of one thing, probably, and you see five things that you're frustrated about about yourself. And the point is, is that what Mike taught me through that saying is that other people are just, you know, putting on their best face. I mean, I think Robin Williams is, to me the best example of a guy that had it all. And now he's gone. And he took, you know, and that just like, so, I think the lesson is, you know, really focus on loving yourself. And for the podcast listeners out there, I'd say why don't we make today? The bushi Martin, TLC challenge day one.

09:52
Love you thinking,

Andrew Stotz 09:53
well, let's do it. Let's do it. Now I want to I'm going to ask you some other stuff about get invested, but I want to get into the story. So Let's get into it. Now it's time to show your worst investment ever. And since no one ever, ever, ever, ever goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Bushy Martin 10:14
Yeah, I kind of played an important on this question, because it's a really good question. Because I'll be honest, I've had a lot of my despite every mistake you can make, and I've had a lot of black noses in relation to investment over the years, but I've focused on what's been the biggest loss that's come out of those things. And which means I'm going to put a slightly different slant on that question, because it's, it's not what I it's what I didn't invest in, actually, that's creating the biggest loss and the most collateral damage for me and that that was my first marriage, Andrew. Yep. And, you know, I was one of those I say doors country boy, I brought up to believe it's, you know, one one wife and life, but not very good model. Because the father who was a workaholic, his belief was, he works hard. Mum looks after the house and brings up the kids. And I that's a flawed model didn't work then actually in less time now. But I was also one of those that was brought up and wasn't actually very, not very talented. And my way of either coming out was just to work harder than everyone else. That's if you work hard enough, then you were a damn was my, my view of life. And that worked very well when I was at high school and worked pretty well when I was at uni. And worked okay, in my career as an architect while I was single, because I could be all concerned and I was all consumed in being a world leading architect, I was gonna have award winning projects all over the country and, and to some degree, I achieved that level of success in that regard. And I was working on some fantastic projects all over Australia and through Asia. And some big tourism resorts. I was the project architect on the airdrop resort, which is an iconic resort in Central Australia, here in Australia. And on the outside, I you know, had a great career and I got married and beautiful sound and we lived in a wonderful, wonderful home. But on the inside Andrew I was actually dying on the inside I felt absolutely trapped on the treadmill. I became obsessive about work I was working seven days a week, 14 hours a day for years on end and nice surprise I lost everything and that's because I focus on one thing and that was my career was self obsessed. And that really hit me hard Andrew I I couldn't believe that I didn't happen that position I lost everything literally everything and I was burnt out broken and broke at 33 it was an absolute Ground Zero start again moment and the damage that it did to my first wife and to my son they'd lifelong scars come out of that exercise and all everything that I've worked for him to that point was gone it was gone.

Andrew Stotz 13:33
can just curious, can you go to the day that you really recognize it? You lost everything you know the real Ground Zero can you think about a day when you really realize I really messed this up?

Bushy Martin 13:49
Yeah, it was the day that our relationship ended and I was absolutely distraught at the side myself and angry at myself Andrey for allowing that to happen because I just it wasn't part of the equation for me it's like well How could this happen? And but but out of that rule determination Andrew Island, there's just no way I was going to allow that situation to happen again. I basically withdrew from the world for two years I call it my Howard Hughes years where I did my masters in business but that was just a guy's really the get my shit together. Because the one thing I do know about that in a lot of I've seen a lot of other people who they didn't have a blame game when the downside of the relationships I I take full responsibility, fair and square for all mistakes that contributed to the downside of our relationship. And what came out of that was an absolute resolve to Never allow that situation to happen again and most importantly, to make that intimate relationship that is the most important relationship in your life. Ultimately, never to allow anything to get in the road of that primary relationship with everything else around that site. You know, I read, studied it and had nicer say, I was like I was clinically depressed, I was actually on any depressants at the time, needed quite a bit of help. But I took that two years to really do some hard work on myself. And, and at the same time, look at role models for others around through the ages and in around the globe that I felt had achieved that balanced level of sustainable success of health and wealth. realization came into play. In NC interesting night, my good father at the same time, it's funny how these things happen the same time his health collapsed. He was at a stage he was always when I retired under this when I retire, I'm going to do that. And he never got there, Andrew. He had bowel cancer. He had a whole series of strokes. He spent the last 10 years of his life huddled in a wheelchair dribbling out the side of his mouth, couldn't use the right hand side and mum became his full time nurse, he needed a full time carer nicely yet to make them happen. And I'll never forget not not long before he passed. He looked me in the eye. He said, Son, I want you to learn from my example. I want you to stop working for money and start getting money to work for you. That was a seminal moment for me because a dad was always you know, put that on the pedestal he was a person I was always trying to impress and trying to follow. And that set me on a course and about the same. But at the same time. I met my now wife, Sonya, and we went along to a Robert Kiyosaki conference in Adelaide, which is where I was at the top. And so what I now refer to as like Kiyosaki moment, because he said, the moment you make passive in investment upon your wife, your life will change. And I literally starting to see the world differently, the penny completely dropped at that point. And everything we did from there was around focusing on self health and wealth, about giving ourselves the TLC that I spoke about becoming passive aggressive. And what I mean by that is everything we did had to be about building an asset. And whether that be a relationship, whether it be your business, whether it be an equities, whether the property that grew in value, gave your income, but most importantly, gave your time back. And time is the one resource that we never get any more often. In fact, it's a diminishing exercise in that regard. And so we got very active in our business in our investments. We started on shares, we bought a red roll, we started a finance, business, all of these with a passive income under time. And thank heavens, I took my dad's advice, Andrew, because about five years ago, I got the phone call that you never want to get. And it was a family doctor telling me that my mother had 12 months to live, she had stage four, terminal cancer. And mom was one of these. She was one of these children amazing woman I was blessed into the family I was born into, but she spent her whole life giving to others. And she was absolutely devastated. Not for our own condition, but the people that you wouldn't be able to continue to help. And I made that decision right there. And then that your mother given her whole life to myself and my brothers, I took the 12 months out, I spent the time with mom, we had all the hard conversations Android. Laughter tears. Nothing was left unsaid. And mums dying wish was to die at home in her own bed with myself and my brothers around her. We were able to allow her to die with dignity in doing that. And the only reason that we're able to do that Andrew is because I followed the father's advice from years before. And we invested to a degree where I could afford to take 12 months out and not impact us in terms of income and other things. So for me, it's all about time, Andrew. Yep. It's all about lifestyle. And it's about it's about becoming schizophrenia and developing triple vision are the words I like to use. Now, because I was so focused on one thing, a lot of Australians had this myopic focus on career and the view is that my job is going to give me everything in life will happen. And what I guess, came out of that was that we were able to put time back into things that are really important and put the big rocks in. And in addition to the self health wealth of what I like to say to people now is, the three factors in becoming schizophrenic in your pricing life is focus on your personal life, focus on your professional life and focus on your passive life. And if you focus on all those three, then you'll have a you'll enjoy life now. But you'll have a great life later on as well.

Andrew Stotz 20:57
So if you could summarize the lessons you learn from this journey?

Bushy Martin 21:04
Yeah, I'll probably kept them there. And I talked a lot about them in my book, The Freedom formula, because if I, if I gave you the headlines is get invested. Yep. It's become schizophrenic, and develop that triple vision of self health, wealth and personal, professional and passive. Yep. It's recognized that sustainable success is a long term journey, and applied TLC to make that happen. And it's our use of words, wealth, by stealth, I think is a sustainable way of doing it. Until you also recognize that success in whatever it is, isn't a light team sport. So be the dumbest person in the room. And surround yourself with people that are better than you are, and then just manage your managers. That's, that's about us. Because if you're getting time back, if we're putting time back into things that are important to us, which are friends and family, then you've got to separate yourself from the doing.

Andrew Stotz 22:05
Yep. So maybe I'll share a few things to summarize what I take away from your story. First of all, I want to tell the story about an architect. And that is my grandfather. He was a successful architect in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his father before him was also but my grandfather probably fit the design of what you've described, have a focus that, you know, he wrote books, he did, restorations he did architecture. But I would say the one thing he didn't do was bring a lot of TLC to the family. And I looked at my father, and I didn't know about this till my father, and I started to build a closer relationship. That, in fact, you know, my father was in the shadow of his father, and his father, you know, didn't treat him with TLC. He wasn't abusive, but he was, you know, and that made me think about something that you mentioned. And I wrote down, you know, things die of neglect. And when you neglect a relationship, when you neglect a person, when you neglect anything, it dies. And I think when my father and I were driving to the funeral of his father, I asked my father, why didn't you cry, I haven't seen you cry. And he said, I cried, years ago, I lost my father years ago. And it just reminded me of that story that also touches on, you know, the, the focus of an architecture, but also, what was two things came out of that, for me, the first one is that my father never told me any of that till I was about 26. So bizarrely, you know, he managed to allow me to have my relationship with my grandfather, that didn't have anything to do with his relationship with his father. And the second thing is that my dad changed. He changed himself. And it's a little bit like what you've described about what you've done. And this is the challenge, really, to the podcast listeners. You can change yourself. And my dad demonstrated that he did not want to treat me the way that he was treating for all my life, all my life and all my dad's life. My dad always took an interest in me, he asked me questions. He gave me support. And he was always there, always. And that's what I really one of the big things I take away and I challenge all the listeners out there to say, you can change yourself, and it will leave a legacy. Now, there's two other things that I'm going to add in. And that is, you mentioned that time is our limited resource, and it's really all we have. But also we have to think about it even more deeply because you mentioned about your father's conditioning things last 10 years, he had time. But he also lost the ability to be able to contribute the way he wanted to contribute. So it's both time and ability and what I've learned with, you know, as, as people get older, you lose some of that ability. And so today is the day you got to live today. And the last thing that I would say is that my father passed away five years ago, and I brought my mother to live with him here in Thailand. And we've had five years together. And she's 82. Now. And just like you said, we've had all the hard conversations, we've had all the discussions, we there's nothing left unsaid. It's a challenge. But what I can say is that the memories of this time will live for the rest of my life, and the contribution and the quality of the relationship will be something I will never forget. So boy, a lot came out of that. Those are some of the things I'm thinking anything you would add to that.

Bushy Martin 26:05
Yeah, I love your insights. And I and clearly Your father was a very special man. And clearly Your mother is. And the one thing that I feel very blessed about Android is that I had the joy of spending time with my dad, and my mom, I actually made that time I came back to Adelaide, and then that had the police having his issues and spent that time with him. And similarly with Mum, we had we had some very precious time in that last 12 months with her. I'm very fortunate I don't I have no regrets. Because I see so many people who If only I had If only I'd spent more time with Ronnie, I'd spent more time with dad, not not one of my brothers is like that. He wasn't able to spend the time but I ended that down STAY with Him forever. So you know, at the end of the day, family is everything. It really is. So if you've got disagreements with mom or dad or your brothers and sisters, to give them that, don't forget that forgive them. Because if you don't the person you're having most as yourself. That would be my thoughts on that word.

Andrew Stotz 27:26
Yep. As someone said to me many years ago, resentment rots the container. It's in eautifully say, yeah, so based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate? Yeah,

Bushy Martin 27:45
it's the one thing I do every day that I suggest everyone does. It comes back to the importance of time I call it the time question. So every day I start the day with what can I invest in today? That's going to give me more time tomorrow. And I everyday I asked that question. In every and I've been doing that for years now. And every time I do that, again, it gets easier, I get more time back and it becomes compounding, you know, we talked about TLC, you can then put more valuable time into things that have a big impact, like sharing time with you on this podcast and talking to fantastic people on another podcast. It's so one thing on question, what can you invest in today, that's going to give you more time tomorrow.

Andrew Stotz 28:32
And I think that brings me back to when I first heard you talk about get invested, it made me think about like one of the courses that I teach is, you know, let's say finance for non financials, people, which I call finance made ridiculously simple. And in it, I talked about the difference between an expense and an asset. Both of them are an outflow of money, whether you're an expense in a business could be marketing expense, or salary expense, but it's gone. Whereas an asset is something that exists and tends to appreciate in value. And so for all the listeners out there, I think, you know, this concept of get invested means to me invest in assets. And you know, those assets, could be books, they could be computers, they could be equipment, it could be intellectual property, they could be the time that you spend with others. But the idea is invest is different investing an asset is different from spending on an expense.

Bushy Martin 29:34
These are beautifully said and I don't know what it's like in Thailand or other parts of the world. But everyone's time poor and Australia these days, and they want to happens is this day, I'm too busy. I don't have time and therefore life happens to them rather than making it happen. The concept of getting invested is living with intent. It's actually starting to get clear on how you do on live and then then using As a magnet and as a campus so that everything I'm doing today is leading me closer to how I actually want to live who I want to spend time with what my ideal day, week, month year looks like, get really clear on that vision. It's an architect, I'm used to conceptualizing and imagining what the endgame is, and then taking the steps from here to there to actually build and create that. But as a habit, as a way of starting to shift from the victim mentality that we say a lot of us is always blaming something or someone else for our condition. Now, let's get clear on how we want to live and then work towards that.

Andrew Stotz 30:39
So speaking of living with intent, last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Bushy Martin 30:45
I love it Well, again, to be a contrarian, Andrey, I don't, because I have this tribe vision, I have three goals that are really key. Yeah, if I break them down into the personal professional and the passive. The, in what raps more together is helping and giving other to others is really the focus on making a shift from what I call, from success to significance, I'm sort of at that stage of life where I, I know, I'm getting into the legacy stage of my life. So I want to help people. And so on the personal front, my wife and I are going to be spending three months traveling the east coast of Australia, identifying the site for what we call our reflections family tree, we'll be running our living by design linens. And as an architect, I've got to design it's not Yeah, that's going to make that happen. So that's on the personal front. On the professional front, it's really about bedding down the real estate talk host anchor roll on loving that role, and looking at how we can evolve that and integrated between the good investor podcast and the real estate talk show. So I was adding real value and giving great takeaways to the listening audience. So that's on the professional front, as well as further developing that the B one g one concept a concept of you know, for everyone we help whether it be by every doorway invest or every dollar, we save them, then we're giving a day's worth of life saving water families in Tigray Lake, Ethiopia. So this concept of helping each other to help others less fortunate is a key on that front. And then finally, in the passive side of the equation long on, I won't have it finished this year. But I'm working on my third book called Get inspired, which is actually taking all the gold out of the podcast episodes that we've been doing over the last three years because I get to talk to some fantastic people of ships shared some excellent gold in terms of their insights, and boiling that into a down into a book that gives readers some really good quality insights with some actionable takeaways.

Andrew Stotz 33:02
eautiful lots of clarity. Alright, listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. And I just thought, what my number one goal? Well, my number one goal for the next 12 months is to help my listeners reduce their risk, the whole purpose of this podcast. So if you want to reduce your risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com and download the risk reduction checklist that I've got and see how you measure up. As we conclude bushi I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Bushy Martin 33:45
A lot of love experience. Excellent God. It's really simple for me just getting invested in if the listeners want to know a bit more on the heavy offer a free copy of my book getting invested, which you can get from the Nighthawk property.com that IU website, you can download a free copy, you can get a free hardcopy you just pay for postage, and that'll that'll whet your appetite and wake you up to start taking steps to actually taking control of your life and living the way that you want to live. Beautiful, great offer.

Andrew Stotz 34:19
And I'll have a link in the show notes so that you can get that for the listeners. So ladies and gentlemen, before I close this episode, I want to challenge you to think about the person who you love the most. Think about that person. And now I want you to take the bushi Martin TLC challenge and love yourself just a little bit more than that person. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.