Successful people leave clues. It’s always interesting to ask a successful person what they would do differently if they started over again. Michael Yardney joins me to answer that question.

Transcript:

Kevin:  There’s an old saying I love to use, and that is that successful people leave clues. It’s always interesting to ask a successful person what they would do differently if they started over again. Michael Yardney joins me to answer that question.

Michael, if you had your time again, what would you do differently?

Michael:  That’s a good question, Kevin. I think in hindsight, I would have spent more time educating myself, so I wouldn’t have to make all those mistakes I made in the first 10 or 15 years of my property investing. I’m actually very fortunate, I built a substantial property portfolio now, but it would have been even bigger – much bigger – if I knew then what I know now.

I think for most people, the first step in the journey is to educate themselves, and that is what I still do today. I know you still do. It’s actually what all successful property investors do.

In my effort to achieve this, many years ago, I discovered that my own learnings, my own experiences really weren’t enough. So, I started reading books, going to teachers, getting mentors, even paying consultants for advice.

And interestingly, Kevin, they all pointed to one direction: you can learn from history. Books recount stories, teachers explained research, mentors taught from experience, consultants cited best practice.

I guess the big learning point, Kevin, was I didn’t have to start from the beginning myself; I could learn from other people’s mistakes, not my own.

Kevin:  Did you learn that lesson early in the piece?

Michael:  Unfortunately, Kevin, I didn’t. Initially, I guess I didn’t want to pay for advice, maybe for two reasons. One, I was cheap. I didn’t think I could afford it. I have now learned that advice isn’t an expense; it’s an investment.

But the other is I think I was taught by my parents to learn from experience, learn on your own. And boy, Kevin, that’s a very hard way of doing things. The market teaches you lessons that are costly in many ways – financially and emotionally.

I guess what I’ve learned is experience is an expensive teacher. I love that saying. I heard that experience is what you get two minutes after you need it.

Kevin:  I guess we’re also restricted by our internal wealth programing, aren’t we?

Michael:  Exactly right. What this means is that you can only grow your wealth to the extent that your internal financial thermostat is there. At Wealth Retreats and doing my big seminars, I talk about this concept of imagine yourself as a cup. If a cup is very small, you can only accumulate a small amount of money, and any extra just spills over and you lose it. You simply can’t have more money than the size of your cup. The answer is to grow yourself into a bigger cup so that you attract and keep more wealth.

I’ve heard somebody else say that you can’t drive a Lamborghini with the engine of a Mini Minor. So, what you really have to do is upgrade your wealth programming, the way you think and the way you react about money.

As we often spoken about in our chats, Kevin, successful investing has a lot to do with property, finance and tax, but it has just as much to do with your own internal wealth programming. And that’s a lesson I learned a bit late in the piece, but boy, has it changed the way I move forward.

Kevin:  While there may be no guarantees to success, Michael, there are proven ways for you to be successful, aren’t there? Which is really what you’re talking about.

Michael:  Yes, it is. I guess I learned that concept from Tony Robins. He called it modeling. In other words, what you do is he describes the process of finding proven models, saying that you should look at the very best people in any field that you’re in, how they behave and how they think,