Inspire & Inform Show – Episode 1

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Inspire & Inform Show where it is our mission to bring people & property together towards their better future. This week we will introduce your hosts Colin Lee & Andrew Koleda, share a little about our personal journeys as well as how this has culminated in them partnering together to lauch Inspire Realty.

Please see below for the full transcript of this video

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Transcript:

Andrew
And we are live on Facebook.

Colin
Well, hello everybody and welcome to Inspire & Inform Show. This is a live broadcast. I must admit, this is the first time I’m doing this. Relatively excited but also a little bit nervous. So yeah, if you’re tuning in, feel free to comment or I don’t know if there’s an ability to ask questions, but you can certainly do that in the comments on Facebook.

Well, I mean, we wanted to do this because we wanted to inspire and inform as the as the title suggests. My name is Colin Lee, one of the founders of Inspire Realty. I’ve got with me today also one of our founding team members, Andrew Koleda, who’s joining me tonight to share his story of his inspiration. So I’m super excited to have Andrew on board. I call him the brains, the genius of Inspire who’s helped set it all up for us. And really the the idea behind this whole thing of live streaming is really instigated and initiated by Andrew. So if we experience any technical challenges tonight, Andrew

That’s right. I’ll blame you for it, Andrew.

Yeah, so I will be sharing a little bit of my story over the next few minutes. Also a little bit of my passion, my purpose, but also the story behind Inspire Realty. And then I’d love for Andrew to also share his story and his passion and also his reason for joining the team. But just wanted to give you some context, I guess we wanted to do this, you know, as as and set this up as a platform to share our stories, inspiration, any relevant information that comes up from time to time some of our ideas thoughts, any current news and updates on property and finance, we’ll be sharing some of our key learnings as well over the years. And also what I’m pretty excited to do is to share some of our clients stories from time to time. Some of them have really built a pretty sizable property portfolio. And we’ve worked closely for quite a number of years. So it’d be good to hear from them at some point. And I’d love to be doing more of this. So. So we are thinking of doing this and we are going to be doing this. I’m challenging myself to do this once a week on Wednesday live at 6pm. So it is going to be relatively real and raw. I hope you can, you know, forgive us if we say some ums and ahhs over over the next half an hour or so. And but that’s that’s really the idea for the Inspire and Inform show. A little bit of my background, I guess I started Inspire Realty back in 2016. So that’s about four years ago. But I I had been presented with some very good opportunities to work with one of Australia’s largest property investment firms. But I decided to get back into this business about a year ago, largely to service a lot of my own clients, but also work with people with you know, my own inspiration and passion to be able to help them to build better and brighter futures. We have a few different product offerings and services which Andrew and I have co created together and we’re pretty excited to launch that. And also really, you know, on the premise in the foundation that Inspire Realty has really started out of the desire to be transparent with our clients, but also at the same time to to remain relevant and to continue to add value to our clients. as well. So, you know, I love this journey. So far and it’s just very exciting to be able to already work with a number of clients recently have gone into financing. So it’s really been able to add value to my clients and help them to look at their current property portfolio. But also look at it from a finance perspective. Inspire Realty is continuing to change. You know, obviously, with the current situation with the pandemic, we find that we have to continue to add value to our clients and to remain relevant in this market. So we’d love to be able to share with you a lot of our key learnings and key findings as well. And so yeah, so that’s just a little bit of a background.

I’m excited to hear

Andrews story. So maybe Andrew, you can share a little bit of your own story and why you decided to join this team and really set set all this up as well.

Andrew
Absolutely. So thanks. Thanks very much Colin that was a very good introduction, we can see you’re very rehearsed there.

One thing, one thing I would like to add, other than sharing a lot about, I guess, in this show about us and our clients, etc, we really want to make this an interactive experience for people. And so we’re very happy to tackle any questions, challenges that people have. Not saying that we have all the answers. But we’re definitely going to try and add as much value as we can. So any challenges when it comes to property, money management or wealth creation, we’re happy to tackle them and try and steer you in the right direction. And also over time, throughout the business, we’re going to be sharing some of the resources that we’re creating, again with that whole mindset of, of adding value. But as far as as far as my story, I, I actually worked in one of Australia’s largest property investment firms. Funnily enough

Colin
We were colleagues before we were there.

Andrew
We were there. That’s where I, where I met Collin. And that was a, I guess, a really life changing moment. For me it was was where I really found something in the realm of property and wealth creation of something that I was really passionate about. And basically, it was the first time in my life where I could actually share with people what I was doing in my own personal life and help them to follow in the same path as opposed to ever selling a product or every other business venture that I come across. So I really enjoyed my time there. And I basically found myself ready for the next challenge in my life, and I wanted something that was that I could call my own and I could genuinely speak to people and speak to people from the heart and try and create something special where I think I saw a lot of different sides of the property industry. And a lot of it is because the property industry is one of the largest industries in Australia, I think it was something around 13% of GDP was the last number that I heard was, was property services, businesses or property business. I wanted to create something that wasn’t just out there to make money and started with the clients best interest at heart. And I spent a lot of time I guess, thinking about what that next move was, I went out and I investigated a lot of different businesses out there in the property industry. And I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. I felt that it was always going to be something that was speaking for, you know, from the voice of someone else. And that’s when I decided to meet up with Colin and we had a lot of conversations around how we could structure the business with a couple of very simple ideals in place and that and that starts With beginning with the beginning with the end in mind keeping the clients interest first and also being completely raw and transparent with people. And that’s one of the other reasons why we wanted to do this live so you can sort of see the less polished version of us. And basically, we came up with Inspire Realty. So that’s a little bit about my journey and Inspire Realty. And yeah, back to you Colin.

Colin
Well, thanks for that, Andrew. I mean, you talk a little bit about property. I’ve been in the property industry for close to 12 years. I started as, as an assistant property manager back in those days. I remember having to work with landlords and tenants alike, managing leases and renewals and routine inspections. You know, really got into the thick of it, but really found my love and passion for property because I got to see how those properties have changed my clients lives. You know, I was working with a lot of owners of properties and it’s given them, you know, quite a lot of freedom to do what they do. They’ve created quite a lot of equity and wealth from property. And so I saw what property had done for the people that I had managed their properties for. And then I got into sales and selling existing properties, worked in the middle of the CBD. And then I got involved with a property developer as well. You know, so working in the back end, just knowing how developers work. So it was really, you know, for the last 12 years, I’ve been in the same industry in property, I’ve loved property investor myself, I’ve made some, some money in property. I’ve lost some money in property. If you’ve watched intro video, unfortunately, I’ve had to offload some of my properties as well. Some big lessons in that. So I’ve seen you know, the nice things about property, the great things, I’ve seen the bad side of it. You know, I’ve experienced it. What I’m keen to know though Andrew is you’ve really only got into this industry about three let’s say three years ago. But why why the transition? You used to run a your own business. But why why did you transition into property apart from you know, the fact that it’s, you know, it’s a trillion dollar business out there? Well, yeah,

Andrew
It’s actually an interesting story. So prior to get being involved in property, I was involved in a couple of other businesses that a little bit strange to most people so one was a courier business at the time, so that’s not so strange and the other business was selling used golf balls of all things. You know

Colin
Andrew is not the one that goes collect those golf balls, right?

Andrew
No, no, no, definitely not. But I was definitely one that built all the infrastructure in the website and sort of started that business off from scratch with it with another friend. And I guess I got to it got to the stage of I guess my business evolution or my my understanding around how business works for me discover that there was a very much a change or a difference in our mindsets. So the businesses in combination got to a point where they were generating a decent amount of cash flow. And my friend decided to maybe take it a little bit easier, which is nothing wrong with that. And and I was in a different stage of life, I had bigger ambitions, bigger dreams. And I decided, hey, look, we’re probably not going to be able to push past that because at that point in the business cycle, it was time for me to push on the accelerator and I wanted to continue to grow. And that wasn’t happening. So I spent, I guess after I sort of exited those businesses, I spent a lot of time really thinking about what I wanted to do next. And it was around about that same time where I was beginning my investment journey myself. And I spent so much time I guess, educating myself I was reading every podcast, I was listening to every listening to every audio book, I was reading every book, I was reading every blog, I was obsessed with this. And I was really struggling with what the next side of things we’re going to be from a business perspective. And it was my lovely partner who, who sort of identified this in me and said, Hey, this is something that you’re really passionate about, maybe you should go and work in this industry. And that’s where I sort of entered into that entered into this and working for that previous company. I really expanded my education and ended up here.

Colin
Well, I would say, you know, that’s an acceleration. Not many people can shift. You know, jobs that easily but you’ve also shifted industry. You know, I think it’s a huge a steep learning curve for yourself. You Bought a number of properties, you know, a couple of years ago and you know, you’re an avid property investor and researcher yourself. So in the last three years, I’m keen to know what you’ve learned. What is your one biggest learning about, you know, your property journey so far. But I’d like to share mine I guess mine for the last 12 years. I see that property is a journey. It’s never going to be a upward journey the whole time. You got to take the good, the bad and sometimes very ugly, you know, with with property investment. But I’ve always learned that property is a long term journey. You do invest for the long term and it’s generally those that give up too easily and too quickly earlier on, are the ones that don’t really capitalize and get rewarded out of, you know, their property portfolio. Sometimes you got to do what you’ve got to do to continue your journey. I just feel like if you can hang in there Just because statistically, property has has always been on an upward trajectory, there are some ups and downs. I mean, including, you know, you know, with what’s happening now, property prices are probably going to be stagnant or plateau for quite a while. But if you if you think, you know, it’s a long term journey, you tend to do fairly well. And one of my other lessons is always to always be curious. Always ask questions, if you don’t know, ask questions, but and to ask the right questions to the right person, and that is to right mentor. So I’ve been very fortunate to have some great mentors in my life, not only from a property perspective, but also from a business perspective. So always make sure that you have the right person to speak with. So yeah, so I’m keen to know what are some of your key learnings from your journey so fine, and let’s let’s get into it.

Andrew
Yeah, you know, it’s funny, it’s funny you asked, I was actually only reflecting on this probably a couple of weeks ago. And it was interesting because one of my key one of my key lessons around property has been mindset. And basically, I really echo your thoughts around the long term mindset that’s very important to have. But the reason why I was reflecting on this a couple of weeks ago, was, you know, in all that research and learning that I did, and that deep dive into not only the technicalities of how to build wealth through property, how to buy investment properties, how to do research, all that stuff, but was also around the mindset of wealth. And one of the key lessons that are in a lot of the books and literature out there is, again, maintaining that longer term mindset and beginning with the end in mind and all those sorts of things, but why I thought about it over the last few weeks is I really wanted I was reading this, I really bought into it. And that’s what helped me to inspire me to take action and to take quick action because hey, at the end of the day, I needed to take control of my own future. But this current environment through COVID-19 has been the first time that that mindset has ever been tested. And you know, sometimes you read a lot of things in books and you say, Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, that seems pretty obvious but when there’s some pressure on you or when the when things are going the other way or appear to be at least as they reported in the media. That’s the time where that mindset and your true belief is actually tested. And, you know, I reflected on you know, this is, I guess, a situation where people can actually falter if they don’t have a big enough vision. They don’t have a big enough Why? This is the time where there’s a lot of fear out there that can be

You’re getting tested and maybe give up.

And so for me in my own personal journey, this is that one moment in that time in time whereby I’ve actually been tested and I’ve been, Oh, hang on, yes. Okay, this has been drilled well enough into my brain into my psyche is become part of me, I can actually take action on. And, you know, a lot of other people, whether they’ve invested a property or not, might log into their superannuation account right now and say, my goodness, I’ve taken a bit of hit a bit of a hit. And so regardless of whether you’re a property investor or not, or or, you know, if you’re looking to build some wealth for your future, you need to have that longer term mindset. And you need to also have that big reason why have a vision of why you’re doing that, because just like any situation like this COVID-19 that we’re experiencing now, this too will pass.

Colin
Yeah, exactly.

So this too will pass which brings me to the next question which I get asked very often, I almost have a rehearsed answer for this, but I wanted to do it. I get asked so often that it’s become, I’m not sure how, how good the question is. I mean, I understand that it is a question that’s very much in the top of people’s minds. And so that invariably, they tend to be concerned about whether this is the right time, you know, to purchase property with the current pandemic situation. So, I noticed that the properties that you’ve invested, or properties that you invested maybe a couple of years ago, maybe a year ago, and it’s starting to settle now and, you know, I know that you’ve had to go through and jump through some, some hurdles to be able to get yourself there. And in your, you know, someone who’s got the right mindset, and you’ve been, I guess, you know, trained or drilled into you that property is a long term investment. But what about someone who’s new, you know, what do you what do you say to them Andrew, someone saying, Hey, is now a good time to start to look at investing in property? Or should I wait? There’s so many things, you know, that’s recently announced. So, you know, invariably, people will will tend to have that question, but I’m interested to know, what do you personally think? I mean, honestly, well,

Andrew
just just like yourself, I probably have a default answer to that. And the default answer, I would assume is going to be fairly similar to yours. And that is, hey, the best time to buy was maybe 30 years ago. The second best time, maybe today. And I guess that that really is mindset because if anyone tells you, I’ll be honest, I’ll be I’ll be really honest here, if anyone tells you that they can predict the bottom of the market, like a lot of people are today and or the bottoms coming, they lying to you. So I can’t be much more honest than that. So the main determining factor of when to buy is really a function of your ability to hold over the long term. So it becomes a function of cash flow becomes a function of how much of a deposit that you have, and how and whether or not you can sustain the cash flow requirements to hold on to that property for long enough for that property to do the job. And the other thing that I guess that frustrates me if I’m honest with you about that question is whether whether or not now is the right time to buy because the two big determining factors of that are well, is it the right time to buy for you? Because that the answer to that question is can be different for everyone. And the second thing is where, because a lot of people are talking about the property market, and I’d love to hear anyone’s definition of what the property market is. Is that Is there one, Australia? Are you buying the Australian property market? Well, no, you’re not you buying a property in a state in Australia. You’re also buying buying a property in a suburb within a state, and you’re buying a property on a street, and then you’re buying an individual property, and each of these operate in a different cycle. So there is always opportunities out there in any market across Australia, because Australia happens to have a very diverse property market. But the real question is, when if you’re in the ability, or the cash flow ability to be able to hold that property for long enough to achieve the goals, whatever your goals are.

Colin
Yeah, that’s that’s a very good point, Andrew. So I mean, if you were in this well, you are in the situation now. And

your idea is obviously to continue to hold the property, but do you think this would be a good time realistically Now, given the choice would you be looking at properties and looking to invest right now?

Andrew
I don’t regret like, even even though I’ve made like so just just just to share throughout the COVID-19 period I’ve already settled one property and am going to settle another property in a month’s time. So if I had to make that I made those, those decisions for two off the plan properties a couple of years ago, and I’m faced with settlements during COVID-19. And I asked myself this question, because I like to be quite reflective. If I had to make the decision today, would I make the same decisions? And that’s a scary proposition to ask even though I’m obligated to sell these properties. And the answer to that question is still yes. And the reason the answer to that question is yes, is well, I could sit here and hold on. Like, I could take the negative view and follow the headlines. There’s a lot of popular media commentators out there saying 30% crashes, 40% crashes, who knows? I could, I could take that sort of mindset. But when, when would I think is a good time to buy. The challenge. The challenge is, I guess I’ve never met anyone in my life that’s got a memo that says, hey, now’s the perfect time to buy. Do you know when you know when you might have got that memo? You might have got that memo, where in maybe 2018 when the Sydney property market was going gangbusters and going up 10% per annum, was that going to be the best time to buy? Obviously, in hindsight, probably not. So you’re never going to know exactly when the right time is to buy. And the answer again, is relative to which property market which suburb, etc. But also, I have reflected during these times around. I guess, the old saying that a lot of people know from Warren Buffett, that is be fearful when everyone’s greedy and be greedy when everyone’s fearful. And it all sounds it makes perfect sense when you say it very hard to act upon. So Right now when I see media headlines stating the doom and gloom that they’re stating, I couldn’t be more happier that I bought that I’ll be settling a couple of properties right now. Because I have confidence in what the future looks like, and I don’t buy for now I buy for 10 years, 15, 20 years time.

Colin
Absolutely. I mean, I mean, that’s, that’s one aspect of it, whether now with the current pandemic, whether this is a good time, you know, is the property going to bottom out a little bit more and therefore, wait, you know, a few more months. But then also at the same time, we’ve got the government announcing, potentially the abolishment of stamp duty by next year, which is what’s causing a little bit of curiosity with people and therefore hanging on to, you know, to whether they want to take action now. So a lot of things that are that are out there in the market. So

Andrew
on the stamp duty front, it’s not an abolishment of stamp duty.

Unknown Speaker
Its actually a replacement. And so just just on that point, from a guess more in a more analytical point of view, what that’s actually going to achieve is, yes, it’s going to remove some of the upfront costs, but you’re actually going to be paying that over time. And then potentially a little even more over the long term. Because what they get what they’re looking to do, what the proposal is, is that they’re going to replace that stamp duty with a land tax and remove the land tax threshold in New South Wales. So you effectively pay off the stamp duty over a period of time, but once that’s once you’ve paid the equivalent of what the stamp duty would be today, you’ll continue to pay that.

Colin
Yeah. No, you’re right is a it’s a replacement of so they are taking away stamp duty or transfer duty, but they’re just replacing it with, you know, land tax

Andrew
proposing

Colin
the cost over time, correct. Yeah.

So so I get a lot of that, I guess. You know, just to give you some examples, some of my clients have bought properties Seven, eight, some nine years ago, and you know, if they bought a property in Sydney back then, you know, two bedrooms, you could buy for 800,000 or even 700,000. And it’s worth, you know, hypothetically, let’s say it’s worth double now at 1.6 million, that that little saving of stamp duty is not going to make a big difference in the long term. You know, I kind of feel like, you know, sometimes you, you can be Pennywise and pound foolish, you know, you’re trying to save here and try to predict the timing. You know, but but like you said, you know, Warren Buffett knows it right, you know, being greedy when others are fearful. So when everyone’s fearful, I think now presents, you know, a great opportunity to look at some good properties out there. You know, firstly, listings are, I was just listening to a blog to the head to to webinar today and one of the commentators was saying, actually, it’s from Corelogic Tim Lawless. He was saying that the listings have dropped quite significantly, which presents a lot of opportunities for purchases to go out there and look at look at properties. So people are not wanting to sell, there are some stock out there. And I think it’s also very much a bit of a buyers market at the moment. So there are some good opportunities out there that you can find during this period. You know, it’s funny, because when the market was going up, I get people, is this a good time to buy? Like, isn’t property too expensive? Now? It’s so hard to answer the question, because I mean, I wish I can predict but I don’t look at the time in the property right now. Whether now is a good time I look at you know, the time in the market and and what it’s going to do over the next 10, 15, even 20 years. Sure, you may save a little bit of money here and there. But in the long term, is it really going to make that much of a difference?

Andrew
No. And ultimately it comes down to working out where you are at where you want to be and taking taking some sort of action. I guess the other the other side of it is okay, well. I think that ultimately most things in life, funnily enough optimists tend to do better than pessimists. This is a little bit of a tangent. But the reason but the reason being is optimists are willing to take some action. If you spend your life sitting here going, is this the right time? Is this the right time? And just like you said, even in the good times, people, still question is this time maybe it’s too expensive? Maybe it’s going to go down a bit. Now in the bad times when it’s actually gone down a bit. Is this is it going to go down more? So the question they’re really asking or what’s not in alignment there is they’re not they don’t have the right vision, the right goals, the right dreams, aspirations, and then not ready to take action, regardless of the circumstances. So if it wasn’t that the property market might go down, or the property markets gone up to much, though, I can I can see with those people in a lot of things in their life and not having a go at them because but that then they’re always going to find a reason why not. And it’s just with just with my properties that are very recently settled, it’s easy for me to find a reason why not? Or why that was a bad decision or why maybe I should have timed it better or why I should have done that. The only thing that’s 2020 in life is hindsight. So it’s easy to look backwards. And it’s easy to be a pessimist because you’re going to find a lot of friends. there that’s going to agree with your opinion. But it’s harder to it’s much harder to take action.

Colin
It is and that’s why we’re here. You know, we we we journey with you throughout this whole process. We we answer all these questions that you may have, from time to time, what i what i want to share before we head off, I know it’s, you know, you know, nearly half an hour already and we did say we’re going to try and keep this to half an hour but you know when we can’t stop. And one of the things I really like is I get questions on a day to day basis from clients and I’d love to be able to just open up and freely share. What are some of these questions are being asked and what’s actually happening within the marketplace at the moment. And invariably, I’m sure some of those questions are also at the top of your mind. So do tune in. If you’ve just joined us, unfortunately, we are ending very soon. But we are looking to do this every week on Wednesday at 6pm answering some questions as well. So if you’ve got questions , please feel free to post them up. So yeah, so visit www.inspirerealty.com there’s some really good information on the website. And also what we have is some free resources for you that you can look at. And then these are genuinely really good resources for you to consider. So I know Andrew alluded to, you know, it’s, it’s, is this right for you. And it’s very hard to know if property or even the possibility of investing in property, whether it’s right for you. There’s so many moving parts to it, including finance, I think that’s a big part and a big foundation of whether you can or you can’t you know get into property. I was speaking to a client today and you know, he’s a Director of Sales and Marketing for a very large hotel chain and even even he’s on JobKeeper and banks are a little bit, you know, a little bit more selective, I suppose on how they, you know what loans they can provide for for clients these days. So there’s a lot of moving parts. But if you’re keen to look at your situation and have your portfolio analyzed, look at some goals and some of your objectives, your long term vision as well. That’s something we can offer you as a free property analysis tool. Actually, Andrew, maybe you’d like to just build on that a little bit because you recorded that video that you presented in the website.

Andrew
Yeah, so so just just just very quickly, on the on a portfolio analysis side of things, we wanted to really give people an opportunity to go behind the scenes and see what It’s like to actually deal with Inspire Realty. So one of the tools that we use that, that we’ve developed is a portfolio analysis tool, which kind of takes your current situation works out, I guess the path or potential paths, we can do some What if analysis around your situation about, okay, well, you know, we assess what you currently have, if this continues to grow at a certain rate, where will you be in respect to your goals that you’re looking to achieve over the long term, and we can look at some of the cash flow implications of holding your property, etc. So the videos really take you through behind the scenes with the hypothetical client. And I think it’s a really good resource, regardless if you deal with us or not, just in the way that you need to approach your investment decisions and the big meaning behind that. That free resource is to help you to begin with the end in mind and then put a plan in place and then Take action. Because again, just wrapping that wrapping that all back to what we’ve been speaking about today, that’s what helps you in times like this to say, hey, the right time is now for me because it aligns with what I’m looking to achieve.

Colin
Absolutely. And it’s definitely worth I mean, I,

you know, sitting through that strategy session, you know, it really does help you to get a better picture on where you’re at and where you want to head it to. It does go into a lot of the mechanics and the nuts and bolts of the operation. That’s right. Andrew created that. And I think it’s very powerful. If, if at all, I think it’s worth doing that exercise, whether you have one property two properties, three properties or you’re starting out, it’s always good to, you know, begin with the end in mind and at least get started with some sort of foundation for you to know exactly how property works, and how you can continue to build your property portfolio, cash flow, positionings a whole lot of things. A lot of detail that goes into it. One of my biggest learnings is always to know your numbers know the details. So I think this, you know, this, this platform really allows you to kind of conceptualize everything all in, in in the, in the analysis that we do for you. So, click on www.inspirerealty.com and go to our free resources page to sign up for the free property portfolio analysis.

Andrew
Perfect. Thank you very much for listening. I think Thank you.

Colin
Have a good evening. We’ll see you next week. To us every Wednesday at 6pm adios!