Today I would like to introduce you to the lovely Helen Collier-Kogtevs. Helen is an author, educator and property investor. She has had phenomenal success with building her own profitable property portfolio. For the past 15 years, she has also been helping others make a positive difference to their lives by teaching them how to build their own property portfolio through her mentoring program. Tune in to hear her incredible story and be sure to stick around to the end as Helen is giving all my listeners a copy of her book!
Scroll down to the Episode References at the bottom of the page to access the link to the book.
Listen to the episode above or read the unedited transcript below.
Transcript
Meaghan Smith 00:20
Hello beautiful people and welcome to another episode of the Money Mindful podcast this month on the podcast, I have put the spotlight on property investing. It's no secret that Australians love property and for good reason. However, I often hear people say and I have to admit, I have said it in the past too, that the property market isn't accessible to the average person. And this is because to get into the property market, it requires an initial deposit amount, and this can be a barrier for a lot of people. The good news is that if you can put your head down and your bum up and get your first property. If you play your cards right and make educated decisions, it is certainly possible to grow your property portfolio. Today I would like to introduce you to the lovely Helen Collier-Kogtevs. Helen is an author, educator and property investor. She has had phenomenal success with building her own profitable portfolio. And for the past 15 years, she has also been helping others make a positive difference to their lives by teaching them how to build their own property portfolio through her mentoring programme. Helen, great to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 01:42
Thank you for having me, Meaghan. It's a pleasure.
Meaghan Smith 01:45
It's so good to talk to you and I'm so glad that we are finishing off this month with you because I have read your books and I know a little bit about your story. But I think that Yeah, your story about how you got into property investing is really inspiring. And I really wanted to get you on the show to share it with my audience. So perhaps to get started for those who don't know who you are and what you do, do you want to give us a little rundown of who is Helen?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 02:19
So? Well, firstly, you know, I I run two companies My passion is mentoring and educating people. So I run Real Wealth Australia, and I've been running that for nearly 15 years. Real Wealth Australia got created out of a frustration that I had with the industry. As a newbie investor going to seminars, I just got really tired and sick to death really, of being sold a property rather than actually educated. So I created my own company, Real Wealth Australia as a direct result of that. But I'm also the CEO of ELink, finance. Now as an investor, what's the main thing we need finance and again, I have such a beef with the finance industry. And I've gone through so many brokers that I just got jack about one day and I partnered up with a broker who's got decades experience as a broker. And so from from my perspective, finance is about educating the client as well. So it's kind of like a two prong effect. I'm all about education. Yes, I teach people how to invest in property. But I also now teach people about money and money management. Because if you get that, right, it makes building the portfolio really easy. So that's, that's my focus these days, as well as being a wife and a mum to a gorgeous living your old that's my greatest joy. Yeah, absolutely love that.
Meaghan Smith 03:46
I love how you just flippantly say, Oh, yeah, I'm the CEO of a business and I also just happened to start this company because I wasn't happy with the way the industry was running. I and you absolutely encapsulate the kind of women that I love to have on this show, Helen, because I love women who just go out and just do it, just get it done. But you're at the other end of I mean, you're not at the end of your career, but you're very experienced in this world of professional property investing, and you have companies, but let's go, let's go back to the start. Helen, how did you get to where you are? I mean, did you grow up in a really wealthy family and you just like, Oh, yes, I'm just buying all the properties. So let's, let's get down to the details because I'm sure everyone wants to know how on earth do you just go and create a large portfolio? I think you'd better tell us to about your portfolio and, and go on to just be out of start companies.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 04:52
Okay, well, look, I certainly wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. There are days when I wish I had But no, I I had a really, you know, a bit of a tough upbringing, everyone's kind of got a story about their upbringing. So, you know, nothing, nothing different than a single mum. She raised us kids on her own. She worked, you know, two jobs or if she had one job, she would do double shifts in order to earn an income, you know, to feed her kids. And so, for us kids growing up, you know, we're pretty much on our own and, you know, younger brother and what have you. And, you know, I kind of played mum early. I grew up quickly. And the thing is that we always rented we couldn't afford to buy and in growing up, I just remember we have this family saying, when it came to money, firstly, we never really talked about money. Money was you know, you're just a child. It's none of your business. It's for parents and even today, even today as a grown woman. I still can't talk to my mum about money. She If I ask her, how's her super going, or how's her budgeting going if she needs help, or she tells me to mind my own business, so that was the environment, whether it's because I've come from a European background, even though I was born here, whether it's cultural or what, but we just didn't talk about it. But the philosophy we had, because we were always broke. You know, we were literally living hand to mouth week to week.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 06:25
In fact, I remember going down to the local milk bar back in the day when there were milk bars everywhere. And we had an account with the guy where I'd go down and I would get some bread and milk and a couple of essential items, and he'd run a tab for us. So you know, it was that kind of thing that was that was the norm we paid rent each month. And the philosophy we had was, we may do by borrowing from St. Peter to pay St. Paul. And then what we do is we borrow from St. Paul and payback St. Peter, and that was an as an adult now looking back at it, you know, you I can laugh at it and think that's just ridiculous because I know better but that was our philosophy and my belief system around money as a child growing up there was no concept of you know, not borrowing and saving it was always borrow and just keep paying paying paying, didn't matter what the interest was. We just kept paying and, and again, as I look back I think my God, that's insane. How did we do that? But that's what we did, because that's all we knew. So in my 20s, I, here I am finishing school went out into the big wide world. In fact, for a while there, I actually worked two jobs, because mom eventually managed to, to have a job that earn enough money that she could save a deposit to buy a house. And it was during the recession that we had to have thank you Mr. Keating. What he did do by saying that was had me quit uni and then I went out to work full time, but because the interest rates went up to 18% He continued to send me to work because I took on another job working in a restaurant as a waitress doing dishes. So I would work nine to five, finish at five drive to the to the restaurant, start work at six. And then I'd work sometimes to you know, well, most nights till midnight during the week. And then Friday, Saturday, nights still two or 3am. And then at some times, go home, have a couple of hours sleep, get dressed and come back in the morning for the breakfast for the Sunday breakfast run.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 08:27
So that was kind of my life we I have to say what mum did do was create a work ethic in us kids. So you know, you want something you work for it you don't sit around on your ass waiting for someone to give it to you because that's never going to happen. And so once once that all kind of settle down and end up with one job. I ended up in the corporate world. Sure, not on a reasonable income. But I literally continued the philosophy of borrowing from St. Paul to pay back St Peter and vice versa.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 08:59
In doing that, I just wrapped up all this credit card debt. I had a car loan that I was making monthly repayments on. And so I was literally earning my pay packet. By the time I paid all my bills and credit cards, and then I was renting as well. I had nothing left. Now, when you work and you work hard for your money, and I was, you know, building a career, I had this attitude of bloody hell, at the end of each pay packet, I'd have bugger all up for myself. So I used to go shopping on my credit cards. And my belief was, I'm going shopping, darling, because I deserve it. You know, I work hard for my money. So the shoes and the bags and the suits and what have you. I deserved it, but it was all on credit. And it wasn't until I was in my late 20s. And I remember I think I was about 27 I remember I'll never forget this and in fact, I still share this story with my students today. And what occurred out of that of what I'm about to share I now teach today.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 10:02
But what had happened was, I had a guy, six foot three, six foot four knock at my front door. And he knocked on the door. And his name was John. And he said to me, You know you, Helen, yep. I'm Helen. He said, I'm here to collect your car, like, What are you talking about? Because I need your keys. I'm here to collect your repossess your car, you're five months behind on payments. I'm like, you can't take my car, I won't be able to get to work. And if I can't get to work, I can earn the money to pay you back. Anyway, I invited the guy in, you know, this massive, massive beast of a man into into into my home and setting down and had a coffee. And we sort of chatted and you know, he was really pleasant, you know, he wasn't nasty or rude or whatever. But he was just obviously negotiating with me how to get my car keys, so that he could take my car. Anyway, you know, he started talking to me about money and what Sort of debts, I had and he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. And what he asked me to do, he said, Well, what are all your debts? And I was sharing it with you. You know, I had this credit card that I had every store card, Meyer card, David Jones card, you know, every card you can have, I was I had, and we wrote them all down. And he said, How much do you owe on this? And how much do you owe on that? And, and I was bringing out all my statements, most of them said, you know, reminder, bills, reminder, reminder reminder. And, you know, he could see on the statements, the interest rate was, you know, the repayments were racking up because of the fact I wasn't even making the minimum repayment. And what he did was he literally put my debts in order. And then he said, Now, how much is this? You know, how much do you spend on food and how much do you spend on telephone and whatever? And we went through all of that. And he said, Could you could you cut back on this and could you cut back on that and could you stop shopping for a while and could you do this and and and I could see was trying to helped me keep my car. And so I kind of went Yes, sure. You know, I was as I was going through the process with him, he said, at the end of the month, you could potentially save $50 from memory. Again, this is going back a long time, but it was roughly, you know, about $50. And back then that was a lot of money. And he said, so if you took this debt, and you put made the repayment each month, and put the extra $50 on it, by this date, that will be paid off. He said, then what I want you to do is take that repayment and the $50 and put it on the next debt. He said, so every other debt I had, he'd worked it out that I just had to make the minimum repayment. I'd stopped shopping. I've used cash only, but I've made the minimum repayments on all those debts. And basically what he did was he mapped out for me how I could pay off all my debts and get control of my money and start saving.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 13:00
Within, I think it took me about 12 months to do that. And I have to tell you, Meaghan, we're going to talk about property and property investing. But I think what we also need to talk about is mindset. Because to me, or for me, that has been the greatest challenge. Yet the greatest thing I've ever conquered in my life is conquering my own mindset around money. And not just money. I've expanded it to all areas of my life, learning about myself. And the way I think, and why I think the way I do and how I react to things has been the biggest learning ever. And so what this guy did for me on that day was it had me understand how to manage my money and put me back in the driver's seat, because I was not in the driver's seat. Money was driving me I wasn't driving it and so from that point, I was able to start getting controlling I met my my husband at the time ever weren't married but we were dating and you know again you know he was he'd gone through a divorce and so you know he wasn't earning a lot of money because he was paying support for his kids and all that was fine.
You know we were living together renting and as a new couple you know we couldn't afford much so holidays for us were camping so we had you know, four men tend to blow up mattress and you know, few bits and pieces and so we would go camping up near the Victoria New South Wales border. And it was one long weekend. It was the June long weekend, Queen's Birthday long weekend, and I'll never forget it because we were sitting up at Bama forest. And Bama forest is right on the miry and it's all red gum and it's just magnificent. And being the middle of winter, short days by 530. It was dark, but you had the mist rolling in sitting around a campfire, it was just beautiful. And and I remember sitting around the campfire, you know, rubbed up with a blanket, and we had our two little dogs had one sitting on my lap to keep me warm. And we're sitting there drinking a glass of wine. And you know, I brought with me some papers, you know, of our superannuation fund. And you know what we were going to retire on? Because I thought, you know, we're talking about getting married and growing old together and all of that. So I thought, all right, well, let's have a look at what that looks like. And it worked out when I actually crunched the numbers on our superannuation fund and I and I used 8% compounding interest, so I assumed that our Superfund would grow by 8% a year. Yeah, a little delusional these days, but that was the number I used back then. But even back then, when I extrapolated it out, it worked out at 65. we would be retiring on $28,000 a year. Now I don't know about you Meaghan but I certainly couldn't live off that and there are some months where I actually spend that amount of money you know on my portfolio and stuff like that so the live off that over a year, I would be destitute and that was a huge holy shit moment for Ed and I to go oh, we don't want to live like that in retirement. So what are we going to do about it? So sitting around that campfire, we talked about, you know, do we go and buy shares, you know, do we go and start a business but we're both working in the corporate world in which we didn't want to give up our day jobs because you know, pay slips are really good lenders love payslips. And if they as long as they're consistent, you know, they'll lend you money and the thought of quitting the day job to go and set up a business that was I've never run a business before I had no idea whether it would be successful or not. And so, you know, we saw that as high risk. Whereas the idea of investing in property for us, resonated with us and it felt more comfortable. So we started reading magazines, you know, we're buying books, loved going to free seminars. And then we even joined a mentoring programme to teach us because we kind of thought, Well, you know, the thought of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and not knowing what to do scared the crap out of me, especially because I've never bought a house before. You know, I've never had that experience. In fact, when we bought our first property, I got this rude shock called stamp duty. I had to pay the government what $15,000 for step Judy, for doing what exactly
Meaghan Smith 17:45
That old chestnut , yeah. I think that gets a lot of people.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 17:50
Yeah, and no $15,000 you know, 20 years ago was a lot of money. And it was like a holy moly moment for us. So we scrapped the fact we borrowed it off. a family member, and and, you know, to settle the property because, you know, we didn't have that. And, you know, it was just it for us if made that we could continue our corporate jobs while we built our portfolio on the side, but the key to all of that was getting an education and having a mentor guide us through that whole process. And, you know, we thought, though people at the time thought we were crazy. We spent, you know, over $20,000 In fact, we took out a personal loan for this mentoring for this 12 months of mentoring. And, you know, I can understand that our friends and family said you did what are you crazy? idiots? What's the matter with you? But suffice to say that money has paid as dividends time and time and time again. You know, ever since and I've gone on to spend no closer to $300,000 in mentoring and coaches and all of that over the years so I see value in it. But Back back in the day, when we first did it, people Before we were crazy when I say people have friends and family, but you know, it was it was the best thing we ever did. However, you know, that's kind of where the birth of Real Wealth Australia came from. Because I ended up you know, working for one of these education companies and what I'd what had happened was I was I was running a Saturday morning class, you know, doing my presentation on you know, how to buy a property and the owner of the business came and sat at the back of the room you know, obviously to see what I was delivering on no issue and and during the break he come up to me and he said, Now Helen, you're doing really well but you know, you're telling them too much.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 19:43
Can you not tell them too much and, and, and then he showed me this glossy brochure, because what I think you should do when they all come back from the break. I'd like you to share with everyone this new development, we've got its waterfront, it's in Adelaide, you know, if you sell one of these to the group You know, we'll pay you a commission of $20,000. And I just looked at him dumbfound. And I just, I just the adrenaline just pumped through my veins at that point. Because I'm like, I can't do that, you know, I'm here to educate them. That's what that's what you brought me in on not to sell the property. And, and in the end, I said, I'm sorry, I can't do it, you have to do it. And I remember sitting at the back of the room, my husband and I was fuming. I wanted to quit. You know, even though I was just a contractor working weekends type thing in you know, I'm still working in my corporate job. I was absolutely fuming. And so I wanted to quit and Ed said to meet No, these people that are sitting in the room, and there's about 20 people in the room that bought this programme, because of us because my husband and I, they'd spoken to us. They asked us all the questions about the education, what are we going to deliver on? You know, are we going to sell them real estate, we know what are we going to be offering but what Here we are in our heart of hearts sharing. And then we've got, oh, and here's a nice development for you. I just couldn't do it. So it's me, no, no, we've signed a 12 month contract with this company, that we would stick it out. And he said, we're going to stick it out. And we know we're going to honour our agreement, and then at the end of it, we're going to leave. And so I begrudgingly continued those sessions that were once a month, but I was grateful when the owner didn't come, we didn't sit on too many more of my sessions. Suffice to say, probably a good thing. But you know, it'll, it gave me the freedom to just truly educate the way I intended, you know, and freely through experience and what I've learned and what new research I found, and, you know, I, I'm so generous in my sharing, I don't hold back. It's no, it's not a covert operation with me. If someone's got a question, I'll give an answer and give it fully without it being half assed. So you know, it's about teaching People have to do it for themselves.
So anyway, at the end, we left and I was at a point now where it accumulated the property portfolio. And Ed and I agreed that I could retire. So 37 years of age here I am walking out of the corporate job on a Friday I walked in Friday morning it was bucketing down with rain, typical Melbourne weather. It was just, you know, fully bucketing. And I walked into the to the building the tower. And that was my last day. And by the time I left, I think I left early at about four o'clock or something. When I walked out of the building, the sun was shining. And I it was my last day in the corporate world. And our Monday I started my own business. I've retired for two days. Because I don't play tennis. I don't always you know, I don't do coffee. I don't do coffees, but I don't want to make a career career out of doing coffee and another watch a whole lot of TV. I figured if I want to sit home, I'm going to be bored. So, you know, that's what had me kind of go right I'm going to start Real Wealth Australia and it's and it's going to be a true education company whereby I, you know, never sell real estate. I'd never associate myself with a developer who will you know, and you know, with what steak knives for you type thing so, so that's how you know Real Wealth Australia came about, but it was all based on you know, that passion for property and passion for real estate, a start a passion for teaching people real estate and how to do it in a step by step why because I know myself when I get overwhelmed with so much information, so when you're learning about property, you know, you're reading blog articles, you're reading books, you're going to seminars or going to webinars, you're reading magazines, you kind of go well crap, where do I start? It's just all too much. And my personality has me check out I go archive. I just got to put all this down. Now. I can't deal with it. It's just too much on an overload. And then what I do is I, you know, give it a few days a week, whatever, and then I come back to it and go, right. Let's just start from the beginning. Just give me one step. And I chunk it down into one piece and I go, Okay, great. I've done that next.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 24:16
Alright, now what I need to do is read this book. Okay? Let me just read this book. Okay, digest it. All right. Now, what's the next thing? Okay, now let's step it up and go to some webinars. Okay, let me start going to a couple of webinars and asking questions. And, you know, so I just step out the process, okay, now I need to go and do a budget. Let me do a budget. Okay, now I need to go and set my goals. Let me set my goals. And now I need to, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm a very much a tick box girl. So I have my list and I like to just tick boxes. And that's fundamentally how I ended up creating the formula for investing. just tick boxes, you know, just one step at a time. So that way, you're not in overwhelm. And you can do it at your own pace and you do it at a at a rate You learn. So so that's what I did in that space. When it came to creating the education programme. I just broke it down, completely unpacked the process from thinking about buying all the way to settling at the other end. And you know, sipping on your glass of wine to celebrate your purchasing and your tenants moved in and your loans done and insurance in place and all of that. So that whole end to end process has just been methodically stepped out. And so that's what I've done inside of a Real Wealth. And I love it. It's the best thing.
Meaghan Smith 25:36
I love hearing about it. And I've got so many questions I want to ask you now from what you've just said, but the first thing I think I want to do is just step back a little bit and how, how did you actually go about getting the first house? How did you get to go from having your car repossessed? to. Okay, now I'm actually buying a property and then being able to buy another property property? I think often what we do is when we see successful people, we want to know the how. And I'd like to just get, you know, a little bit of information about that. But also, Helen, I want to focus on the mental attributes and the way that you were thinking because I think actually that is the important piece here. But anyway, let's, let's talk about how did you actually get the first house and then the second one?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 26:33
Okay. So to clear the debt that didn't, that didn't happen overnight. That took time. And then from there, it was creating a savings regime with Ed and I living together. Yes, we're paying rent. What we did was we lived off my income, so my income, paid all the bills, including whatever bills he had, and we saved his income. So what was the balance of it because obviously he was paying child support. So whatever was left over, we were just saving, saving, saving saving, we didn't touch that. Now took us a little while to build that up but didn't happen overnight. And when you're buying an owner occupied property you can borrow up to 95%. So that allowed us to save a small deposit. Considering I didn't understand stamp duty, though these days now there's a discount on stamp duty for first time buyers, which is a great thing, but that's basically what we did. We just saved like hell, and we were vigilant about it. We didn't quit. We didn't give up. We didn't make excuses of oh This is too hard. You know, we had conversations around it, you know, believe me are do we want to go and buy another new TV or should we upgrade the fridge or no, did we take overseas trips? No, we continued lifestyle, according to the budget of the day that we created it which allowed for us to save this money. And we just kept the goal in mind, which was to buy our first property and just stuck to it. And within about 12 months, we were in a really good place saving lots of money, had a deposit. Then we found a broker and went to him and said, right, based on our income and how much money we've saved, you know, can we buy a house? And the answer was, yes.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 28:27
Now at the time, I remember, he could understand. I've had no money management skills. I had no control of money. So to then start having control of money was just oh. It was invigorating. It was almost addictive in that it was like, wow, I'm never going to lose this control again. And, and I and I loved it. So now when I picked up a pair of shoes, it was like, Oh, yeah, no, I don't need those. You know, later and I didn't have that urge to spend money on things that I knew were not going to get me the house. So the dream was now becoming a reality that, again, understand growing up, especially in my, you know, younger years up into my teen years was never a possibility. You know, it wasn't until I was in my 20s when mum finally got a deposit to buy the family home. So before that, it was never real. It was never mine, it was never possible. And so I was quite committed to the cause of hey, we've done the budget, we're sticking to it tax returns, we're not bonuses in any kind of windfall, you know, you know, birthday money, you know, whatever any penny we got, you know, we saved in fact, we even had in our budget, you know, that we got what we call pocket money each week. So it might be 50 bucks, you know, to, you know, if you're going to go to work and buy stuff or coffee because you have some of those small little things and have that level of freedom to buy that. But if at the end of the week I didn't spend my 50 bucks and I only spent 30 then the 20 would go into a jar or money box and we would save that. So again, just being vigilant about everything, you know, when we went shopping, you know, we still bought things but we waited for them to go on sale.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 30:23
You know, we didn't pay full price we had that delayed gratification and we're comfortable with that. So when we saved up the deposit and the broker said, Yep, the bank will lend you money to buy a house. You know, we went we went shopping and you know, it took us a few weeks. But you know, we found the property went to auction we negotiated an auction because it got passed in and you know, and we bought it and I have to tell you, I was even talking about it now. You know, I get nervous like I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my body at that oxygen going on finally getting the dream I'm finally buying my own home? Is this real? Is it going to happen? You know, all that kind of thing that memories really strong for me. So when we finally signed the contracts, then I went through the mindset of, Oh shit, this is gonna fall over almost something's gonna go wrong. The bank's gonna change its mind. Oh, you know, and then when we had the whole stamp duty thing of all, you know you need $15000 instead dude, it was like, Oh shit, there's the bomb that, you know I was waiting for. So we were then scrambling to find that money but you know when we finally settled and moved in it was like, okay you know we didn't die, we didn't go bankrupt. You know our mentor told us that this was going to work our education told us that this is how it's done. And it's okay. Okay good. Let's do this again. Now did we do it immediately? No, because we didn't we were still now starting to save up our money again. You know, this time we've cleared a lot of the, you know, cleared debts. Yes, we had a mortgage to pay, but we were still trying to live off my income and save Eds. And you know, we will we were more than comfortably paying off that mortgage each month. So it was manageable, and we were saving for future deposits. And so again, you know, you know, corporate bonuses and whatever else, we kept piling up the money, but also, we bought at kind of, kind of towards the top of the boom. So 12 months later, we had some capital growth in that property, went back to the bank and said, Look, we'd like to draw out the equity and use that as a deposit on another investment property. And that's kind of how we got into our second property. And then we had two properties. We waited another 12 months took the equity out of both of those two properties, plus our tax returns and savings, and then use that to go on and buy 2,3,4 more properties. It got to the point where we had saved in one year had enough Equity and our tax returns that were able to go forth and buy six in six weeks. don't recommend it. It's paper warfare, but we did it. So it's the key is, it takes time in the beginning, you need time in the market for capital growth to occur. But then you draw out the equity and then use that as a deposit on the next investment property.
Meaghan Smith 33:25
I love it so much. And what I take from what you've said, there is, you had grit, you just kept going for it, because it sounds like they were, it didn't just fall in your lap, you had to work at it to save the money and change your behaviours. But also, what I hear is when things came up, like obstacles like the stamp duty that you didn't realise you kept going and I think that's something that is That's not part of the how, in terms of what you learn, like yes. When you when you get a property, you go out and you, you research, you save your money, you get a loan, you buy the property, there's all these steps involved. But there's another layer, I think behind the scenes that goes on, which is the grit, you've got to have the determination to follow through and actually do it. And I, I hear that from you, Helen, I hear that that you have that.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 34:33
Well, I wish grid could be taught at school. Because it's that you're right. It's that determination to not give up and I never, I guess, to say I never had it. I don't know if I can say that. I think I did. But it was used differently. I used grit growing up to survive life. So it was all in survival mode. So you had the grit that If you had to borrow from St Paul to pay St Peter, if you didn't have them putting the money for St Peter, you know, you'd go back to St. Paul and beg and borrow to borrow more to pay backs and Peter and it was that determination to keep surviving. And I think that's where it's come from. But it's not what I want for people, you know, I don't want you to have grit to survive. I want you to have grit to prosper. But even with buying that investment property or that first home, even today with buying a property, there's still challenges along the way, you know, lenders now taking 35 days to even make a decision if, you know, whether they'll they'll consider you for a loan or, you know, you're getting to settlement and and the vendor is not ready and needs to delay settlement or, you know, something happens along the way where you know, you've gone to put a bid on a property but someone Kazumps you, you know, comes in and offers a bit of bidding, you'll lose the property, you know, there's lots of that that happens along the way that can have you just easily go off had enough of this crap, I'm out, I'm done. It's all too hard. You know, property investing is not easy.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 36:06
It is an easy process to follow, but where it's not easy is in the mindset. What do you do when the lender comes back saying nup sorry? We're not going to lend you 95% we're only gonna lend you 80%? Or where are you going to find the other 15% deposit? Bank of mum and dad maybe, you know, ask a friend or joint venture, you know, you've got to think outside the square and you've got to think on your feet to get the deal done. It's all about problem finding solutions for problems all the time and not getting emotionally upset and attached to it. Even though that's harder, easier to say than done. Because when you're got this property of sign contracts, you're proceeding in your mind. It's like I own this it's mine now, so when you get all of these obstacles and hurdles that happen, you know, it's it does play on your mind at times where you're like, Ah shit, you know, am I going to Get this deal done, am I going to lose it? I'm going to lose my deposit. You know is the solicitor that I've got the right one for me is the broker going to deliver on the line at the right time you know what else is going to go wrong? So, you know, you do get the vanilla deals that just go through smoothly. And believe me I've had I've had some of those, but not all my deals look like vanilla. Yeah, I get all I get rainbow colours. I get a technicolour kind of range of issues happening and you didn't need the grit to get you through.
Meaghan Smith 37:34
But what I picked up from what you said, though, Helen, right at the start was that and I think this is the difference for some people is that you were open to something different as well, because you can't I mean, I don't I feel like people don't know what they don't know. So if you've never been educated around finance, I don't expect anyone to be an expert, but if you've got an inkling that that's something that you want to find out about it, and you're an adult, well, then, you know, that's on your own shoulders like you. There's such a thing now in the world called Google. And everything is Google able. So, you know, if you if you decide that you want to make some changes, you can. But I think that that's where the mindset comes in at the start where you were was saying that you knew you wanted to do something different. You knew that the Super wasn't going to get you where you wanted to go. But then you are open to the possibility that you, you could invest, you could do something that could change, change your life, did you? I'm curious, did you think that in the beginning, did you have that bigger vision that you might end up having a really large property portfolio or was it just the one property in the start?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 38:56
The dream was a portfolio to the reality was in my world remember, how I said, Oh, if it's all too big and too much, I shut down or check out, I stepped back and just went, let me just get one. One is a miracle in my world, let alone 30. You know, just give me one. And I'd be really happy with that. When we got the one and I realised I didn't go broke and I didn't die. It's like, Well, why can't I do it again? But you've touched on something, Meaghan, and I haven't shared this yet. But I said earlier that this is a mindset game. But my mindset, like I am a student of life, you know, I believe that, you know, and I share this with my students, I do a little diagram, and I tap into, in what I don't know that I don't know. And the more I tap into what I don't know that I don't know, the more I learn, and I never know everything, and the older I get, the more I realise how little I actually know. So in that journey of mindset, I've done lots of courses on mindset. You know, there's lots of people out there that I've had mentor me, you know, I don't know if you want me to rattle a few off. But, you know, there's plenty out there that people can Google different companies that run mindset courses. And there was one that was really significant for me and I even remember that they know the date, I often say to to people that my life began even though I started investing, you know, 2000 I feel like my mindset switched in July of 2004, where I've done enough mindset work on myself that I had my massive epiphany where I kind of went, I get it, you know, like for example, I lived in a world of perfection. Everything I did had to be perfect. I you know, you know, have to be the perfect mother have to be the perfect wife have to be the perfect employee, you know, and then I started my business had to be the perfect business owner had to be perfect. at marketing had to be perfect at mentoring had to be perfect numbers. Oh my god, it was exhausting until I realised it was a whole lot of rot. That perfection only existed in my own head.
Meaghan Smith 41:13
Yes!
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 41:14
You know, it doesn't exist anywhere else only in my head. And when I realised that and changed the story or the record from Helen, you don't have to be perfect. Just do your best. That's all you can ever do on the day. So whenever I come and start my day, it's Helen do your best today. I don't want to go in the day going on. I'll try. Ah, think about it. Ah, now I'm going it's going to be a perfect day. And when it's not perfect and it goes to shit and then you get so disappointed so angry at yourself. You know, you either beaten you know, you beat yourself in the bum. You know, you're constantly you know, ridiculing yourself and all that was my world based on perfection, when I was when I was free to give that away, you know, even when I was you know as a as a mother, or you know, I caught myself getting into that mode of being that perfect mother after I've given birth to my, to my daughter, it was like I had to be perfect mother. You had to make sure she was well fed. You know her nappies would change. She had enough stimulation. I was reading enough books that I got, you know that that the house was clean that dinner was on the time I had this illusion of perfection of what it would look like for the first six weeks of life. I didn't get out of my pyjamas. If I showered for the day. It was a miracle. So it was like No, no, no, no, no. Because those old those old thought patterns were kicking back in. It was like they don't know how and give up perfection perfections and illusion and you're only going to fail if you hang your head on perfection. So just do your best so did my best was you know staying in my pyjamas but you know, my daughter was feed you know, and I ticked all those boxes great, but didn't get dinner done. I have no problem hubby could do that. And if that failed this takeaway, I didn't, I didn't, you know, measure myself to the point where it was a delusion. And and I guess it's the same with you know with investing. It was it was just really trying to stay real. And but but I ran, I ran the the mindset and the learning of investing in parallel to mindset. And I think collectively that really has made me a student full of life. You know, I love hearing people's stories. I love hearing about people's journeys on. I love all of that. It's a because life is a journey.
Meaghan Smith 43:48
And this is the kind of thing that you have to learn it yourself. Yeah, I mean, people can teach you this stuff, but you have to make those connections for yourself. It has to land for you. Because, yeah, I see that that's a common thing. And I'm definitely no stranger to the perfectionism. Deal. But, but when you when you realise that that's actually just about being afraid to get it wrong, you know, and then it sets you free. And you can just go ahead because for sure, I I know for sure you haven't mentioned this, but for sure you've had mistakes along the way, right. I mean, yeah, of course you have that you wrote the book. Oh, we should talk about that. And Helen has a book called 59 biggest mistakes by a made by property investors and there's 59 mistakes there. So I'm sure you can come up. Give us plenty of examples. But what do you think are the top two let's say that people make when it comes to property investing. I've completely changed tracking but Let's go. That's okay.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 45:01
We can go back to the other stuff but um, look, never getting started is the first problem. You know, if you don't if you don't ever get into the market, you know you'll you'll never grow you'll never learn you'll you'll never create any wealth for yourself. That's that's the first thing and but second.
Meaghan Smith 45:19
Sorry. And yeah and that's the problem with being a perfectionist because you hold back you don't start doing things because you've got to do it perfectly and you don't want to fail. That that ties in beautifully. Look at that. It's like,
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 45:33
That's right. You know, you always want to get it right, you know, even with you know, you're going to find the right property or the perfect property, the one that gives you positive cash flow and capital growth. You know, when clients say to me, Oh, Helen I want a property that delivers on both. I go that's called perfection. Good luck finding it. And I go look, you will, if you if you go at it long enough and hard enough, but it's too painful. Why don't you just focus on one thing and do it really well to the best of your ability, you know, and then and then balance it up with the opposite in the next deal rather than trying to find one deal that does everything, because it literally does your head in. So so it's really, you know, getting getting into the market, from the perspective of perfection really does hold you back. And I'll tell you I only got divorced over that very thing. In our early days of investing where I was finding all these deals, I was presenting them to my husband, and you know, I'm saying, Oh, you know, this deals got, you know, good cash flow. If it was cash flow, we're looking for capital growth. It's a good location. It's, you know, desirable by tenants, you know, I was ticking all the boxes type thing, and he was canning it. And in the end, I just said, mate, I'm doing all this work because I was the I'm the researcher in our, in our marriage in our partnership. And I said, I'm presenting you with all these deals, and all you're doing is canning it. And he's like, Well, you know, he would then quiz me But I didn't have the answers on the top of my head. Because I've been googling and read all this stuff. I never wrote anything down. Or I printed out the odd document or page here and there. It wasn't until Ed and I were doing a mindset course, that I had this epiphany that my husband's an engineer, again, we worked in the corporate world together. What I didn't realise is he was canning all my deals out of fear, however, had I put it together in like a business plan and handed it to him, honey, here's a business plan, and like presenting it to the board, because that's what I used to do in the corporate world. I then pulled my due diligence, together on my research on property in a while 40 page document. I still do it today. And I teach this very thing to my students today still, because my husband is so analytical, and being that engineer needs all the data. So when I pulled it together, what I learned this about him in the course and I went, No wonder you can see all my deals, because I'm just big picture thinker that I am. I'm just throwing all the data at you, you know, rattling it all off in my head, nothing documented. And him being the analyst is going, Well, I can't make a decision on a few numbers in a conversation Helen. You know, you need to give me more than this. So I'd go and do more research and come back and tell him more, but telling him how it wasn't documenting more, and it wasn't satisfying his fear. So he was always going to hold us back. And then anyway, to cut a long story short now with these documents. He just flicked through them now. And goes, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep, asked me a few questions. I might go but go away and dig a little more in a particular area, and come back. And so that question is like, yep, yep, yep. All right, let's proceed with finance, you know, or putting in an offer. And, you know, it was just that whole again, mindset, understanding him, made the journey easier. So again, it took away this whole perfection, getting it right, whatever, I just did the best I could with the information I had on the day. And that's all any of us could ever do.
Meaghan Smith 49:10
And I think you've just without directly saying it, that's another mistake people make. They don't do their due diligence, they don't actually research
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 49:20
The definition of their research is going on to realestate.com and looking at properties. So they just go from zero to 100 kilometres an hour. Just like that, you know, it's like, Okay, what about property honey? Yes, let's invest. Okay, great. Let's go on realestate.com. Let's start looking at you know, they're looking at all these different properties. They're ringing up the agents, the agents, telling them whatever they want to hear. They haven't really done the homework on they might they might go to the bank and say, Can I borrow some money, but they haven't structured a strategy around thier situation in life. In fact, I have thirteen steps that, you know, a student goes through to create the strategy. And that's that roadmap now, got the roadmap. Now let's go shopping for real estate because the roadmap dictates what I should be buying, rather than going on to real estate.com. And just looking at anything that looks good, feels good. Sounds good. It's now a strategic and disciplined approach to selecting a property that suits you your circumstances and time in life. Not everyone else's. It's not a one size fits all that allows you to move forward in any market, purchasing a property based on your criteria. And when people do that, that's easy that that makes investing easy. The jumping on a real estate.com bullshit is overwhelming. It causes you know, has people make mistakes, because they're not fully understanding what they're doing. And but their going on this emotional journey about it feels good. And wouldn't it be nice to own a property? How do I know this? Because I've done that too.
Meaghan Smith 51:08
Yeah, I can relate to that. And I've read your book 59 biggest mistakes made by property investors. And it's, it's the reverse. It tells you what to do by telling you what not to do and how and how do we get a copy of this book?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 51:26
Well, I'm happy to provide your link Meaghan so that anyone wants a copy. I'm happy to give them an electronic copy so they can get it straight away. They can download it immediately and have a read.
Meaghan Smith 51:38
Amazing, that is so good. I am going to what am I going to do? I'm going to put a link in the show notes. And I'll let I'll remind everyone, this book is a really helpful educational book if you do want to go down the route of investing in property, so Helen That's incredibly generous. And I really appreciate that you're providing that link for people to be able to go in and, and read it.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 52:08
And for your audience, you know, listening to this Meaghan, I just want to say that I've written this book in very conversational speak. It's not corporate speak or, you know, it's really simple language. Because I want to make the whole process easy for people to understand, the more you understand, the more confident people will become. But not only that, I go through all the 59 mistakes, but I also give you solutions, like oh, this is what you need to do to avoid that. So there is a solution to every problem. That's in the book. So yeah, I kind of keep it light and fun. And, you know, I'll share a few stories along the way and the old joke and you know, but I'm very, very matter of fact, in the book as well, because I don't want to bullshit anyone. It's just giving you the information. As I said, I call a spade a spade, so don't tell me that a shovel.
Meaghan Smith 53:01
Yeah, and that's what I like about the book is because there's so many things to the process of being a property investor, that you just don't know, you don't know. And this book points it out, which is what I think is really helpful. All those little nuances and things that are involved in investing in a property that yeah, you just don't I mean, I think a lot of people think, oh, you just go out and you just buy a property, you just find one, and that's what you do. But there's, there's other steps involved in terms of where you're going to buy, why you're going to buy a particular place, what type of property you're going to buy. And for what reason. I won't go into it all now because you could read it in Helen's book, because she's generously giving us access to it and I'm, I'm actually really grateful for that, Helen. I really appreciate that. You you're making it available to everyone. I have we're getting towards the end now. And but I do have I've got a couple of more question. for you. One is did you say you have 30 properties? Now? Is that what you said earlier?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 54:07
I've had up to 30 properties. I've sold some over the years. I've got 20 currently.
Meaghan Smith 54:12
Okay, how I have two investment properties? Okay. And
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 54:18
I'll have to work on that Meaghan
Meaghan Smith 54:20
Yeah, yeah. And, and I, I'm certainly not overwhelmed by it or anything but there is a little bit involved with the management of, of the properties. And I'm curious with 20 properties, do you lose track? Like, how do you keep track of 20?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 54:38
Easy, you got software for that? Just keep entering all the data. I mean, we use a simple package called Zero. I do have a financial controller, because I do run businesses as well as a portfolio. So I do have someone in charge of the day to day stuff, you know, bills being paid and recorded for tax purposes. So that come tax time I just give my accountant access to Zero and it's all easy. So that's how you can make it easier but I do pay someone but I'm at a level now where I need a you know a person to look after all of that but for for you, if you use Zero for example, you know to add in a few statements each month, you know, wouldn't be wouldn't be difficult. Or imagine or when guess there's a little bit of work to do but nothing too complex.
Meaghan Smith 55:26
I have a I have an Excel spreadsheet at this stage for my two properties, but I do use accounting software for my business but I find it interesting because I just recently got a invoice for a plumbing job and I was like, I don't remember being told about this and I rang my property manager and it just occurred to me I wonder what people do and they have yeah 20 properties how that how that goes about he getting phone calls every week from property managers.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 55:57
Well, that's that's the I think That's the myth Meaghan pink, you know, I could understand that you would think that but actually no, you know, we get the odd call to say, hey, tenants vacating? You know, we know this is we're going to put it up for rent and, you know, this is what we're going to this is the rent, we're going to advertise it for, you know, we'll do they do the inspections, the exit, expect expansion expectations, and they interview tenants, they take care of all of that property manager does it all and then basically just sends us an email or a phone call to keep us informed. So with them, you know, with some of our properties, the property manager actually just electronically has a has an online system. So we just get a notification online to say, Hey, you know, for example, just recently, the oven in one of our properties stopped working, you know, do you want to fix it yourself? Do you want to do you want us to get a quote, you know, and you're literally just ticking boxes online, submitted, they take care of it and then just update the online system for other property managers. don't have that technology, they just call or email. So it's you know, we've chosen good properties that tenants want to live in. So they don't sit there vacant and the tenant selection process is such that the property managers are finding us good tenants so we're not worrying about our properties being trashed, you know, damage being done, you know, rent not being paid, and we have the odd little thing happened here or there, but they handle it and just keep us informed. So it's it's not really that much work in the whole scheme of things.
Meaghan Smith 57:35
Now that's good to hear when you've got when you've got your processes down pat, and I was interested to hell and what's the byproduct now of having such a big portfolio like is it I've spoken about this on the podcast before where it's you have a goal and you're going towards a goal but actually what happens is all this other amazing stuff that you never, you never knew was gonna happen, but they're just the byproduct. productive that goal that you're going for?
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 58:02
Yeah, well, that that's that's so true me. But with building the property portfolio, I knew one day someday I would retire. I guess I shocked myself when it happened to be a lot sooner than I thought. And that allowed me then obviously to start Real Wealth Australia, which at the time of investing was not on the radar. So when I'm financially free kind of going on, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I really love property. I really love teaching. You know, I've got a real gripe with the industry and all the property spruikers Hey, let's set up a company called Real Wealth Australia. So I had the luxury and the privilege of doing that because of the portfolio. And I knew in my future that one day I wanted to set up a foundation. And so running Real Wealth doing doing my thing, and we have a real close affinity with a country called Vanuatu. We travel there you know frequently you know and we have lots of friends over there and we holiday with our family over there and all that kind of thing. But what what had happened was back in 2015 there was a you know, because they experience Cyclone seasons, and it was March 13 of 2015. That super Cyclone Pam went through. So this was a category five, in fact that we're calling it a category six that went straight over Vanuatu and it absolutely devastated the place and my husband flew into Vanuatu into Port Villa. Four days after Cyclone Pam because it took him four days to clear the runway. And I went in seven days after him and are all you know, I literally just took I had 90 kilos of tarps, because I knew that the people in the village because They live in tin sheds, would have nothing over their head. So I took 90 kilos of tarps that I just I went around to Bunnings and Kmart and Targets and wherever I could have bought them out of tarps. And then and also Qantas, so kindly allowed me to take a chainsaw over as well, because the country they'd sold out there were no more chainsaws and to kind of clear the debris and the damage and to create access for essential services over there. They needed to clear roads so that there were no no chainsaws. Anyway, so they allowed me to take one over. And, and I just remember, because we know a lot of locals, I asked one of our good friends to take me into the village where she lived because I wanted to see the damage and I just remember going through, and I just I was so emotional, looking at how poor they are. To start with, and then like the dog sheds really were just destroyed and they and they and their stuff was just all laid out on the ground because they tried to dry it, you know, there was a metre of water that went through that village and I literally just had you know, bags and you know of tarps that I was just handing out to whoever she, you know, because she could speak Islam or I couldn't.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 1:01:27
So she was, you know, obviously playing translator for me. And then she introduced me to a pastor who owned a ran a church, but also a kindergarten, his wife was the kindergarten teacher. And there was a building that had some bricks around the bottom of it about four bricks high. And what he had done was due to all the debris being everywhere he got some timbers or for be to use were to her and kind of attach them somehow to the bricks And then found a couple of cement share a couple of corrugated sheets and did like a half roof for the kindergarten kids to sit under because it was so hot and dry after Cyclone Pam was like so cool and Pam took all the moisture out of the air for a lot of days. And these kids I could see them all huddled under this little bit of sheeting. And I gave him a tarp to put over so that the kids could sit underneath it and it was a dirt floor. All the books and stuff were destroyed. And I just remember looking at that and I just said to my husband Ed, I can't leave that in good conscience and walk away and sleep with myself you know and be good with myself. I said we have to do something about that. And he was with me. And and as a result of that we um we have a we had a ute at the time and we went and bought bricks and loaded up the ute Took the bricks there and went and bought some cement and stuff. And the locals were just kind of helping us build this kindergarden and in the end, people were giving me money as in expats were giving me money and supporting us in doing this or they were giving us money that were donating timber or corrugated, you know, iron ore or you know, colorbond whenever. And when it comes to, you know, having a foundation in my future, I never thought it would be a foundation over in Vanuatu. It was literally mother nature that said, okay, Helen, it's time for a foundation darling. And this is what you're going to be doing. Because when I went through that village and the devastation around the schools, because the kids were just running around, if they had the school system still going, it would have given the parents the opportunity to clean up, no set up, you know, you know, and regroup as well as maybe continue to do that. jobs and work and what have you for those that had employment.
So word got out amongst the expat community. And I had three other women that said, we love what you're doing, Helen, we want to join you. And that's how Sharm foundation came about. So Sharm is really just our initials, you know, it's S H A R M, but so it's Steph, Helen and Robin Marg, you know, it was just really simple. We just called it a foundation. So we registered that as a charity over there. And I think we've done about 71 projects so far. So we don't just do school buildings now. Like we had steel Blue bluescope steel don't donate hundreds of metres of roofing iron to us, where we were able to go in, fundraise and as well as roof a lot of school buildings. But the ones we've been building we make them Cyclone proof so that the community can use it during Cyclone season. But now what we do is Um, look, I've taken hundreds of books over there, where I donate to the schools, you know, bras, who would have thought that you know, we we wear a bra, you know, us ladies, it stretches and we go, you know, had enough of that chocolate or the wires pop out and we throw it. And we just kind of take it for granted that we'll just go down and buy another bra. But over there, they don't have that luxury. When you go into a store, the bra are really flimsy, cheap Chinese type of things and often aren't big enough for Vanuatu women. So they really struggle with bras and to then go and buy a quality bra like we would buy. They they would have to spend a week's wage on it. So as you can imagine, they don't really have the bras unless unless they've donated so I've made it my mission. Now I think I've got about three or 400 bra that I've saved up so far waiting for my next trip over there. Because I've done this a few times. I literally just set it up with the mummas we use a community hall I get all the mummas to come around so you know young girls all the way through to the older women and they come around we just lay out all the brass good quality second hand bras, okay, they've stretched a bit the wires are still good though. And, and I had one lady oh God, she broke my heart. She um, she tried on a bra. And you know, she just put it over her dress and you know, you could see that it was going to fit. And what she did was she just popped a hand underneath and unzipped it and hooked her old bra and threw it in the air. Like a thank God I'm getting rid of that thing. But when I looked at it, what she had done was the side part of the bra he had cut it and then hand stitched in some Calico to give her extra length around the back because it was too small. But if you know anything about Calico, it actually bunches and it becomes like a rope. And it was just cutting into her. And you know, and I just thought, Oh my goodness. And it wasn't the first time I've seen that lots of the Vanuatu women will go and buy some Calico and you know hand sew it in to their bras to give them what they need. So that's why I kind of went well listen, I you know, I travel frequently over there. I'll take I'll just type lots of bras and women are you know, freely giving me their bras and you know, it's great. It's just great to see them so happy over something we just take for granted.
Meaghan Smith 1:07:37
Ah, Helen, amazing. I love it. Okay, everybody, we need to send out what do we do? What should we send out bras to you Helen? Okay, please. Give me the details of where should we send them and I'll make sure it goes up in the show notes as well.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 1:07:54
Okay, do you want the dress now?
Meaghan Smith 1:07:55
Yeah, yeah, what's the address?.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 1:07:57
Yeah, it's Suite eight of 18 Sherbourne Road in Briar Hill, three zero, double eight. And that's in Victoria.
Meaghan Smith 1:08:07
And so we can just pop our bra in a Express post bag or a post bag and just and send it in and you will take them over. We don't need to do anything else.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 1:08:16
You don't have to do anything else. I'll take them.
Meaghan Smith 1:08:18
Alright, we can definitely do that. And I'll make sure all this information goes in the show notes. So if you're driving the car listening right now, don't worry, it'll be on the website. You just need to go to WWW dot moneymindful.com.au forward slash ep 48. And anyway, you just go to the my website and you'll be able to find it. Don't worry, I'll put all the notes in. I think we better wrap up Helen because I feel like I can talk to you all day. But I have a feeling we've we might have already gone for over an hour. So I want to say what a great story to end on and thank you so much for giving me the time today to tell us your story. I think it's really fantastic for other women to hear what is possible. So, thank you.
Helen Collier-Kogtevs 1:09:14
Oh, look, The pleasure is all mine, Meaghan and I and I'm, you know, when I when you contacted me and let me know what you were doing, and how you really do focus on women, you know, that just made my heart sing. So kindred spirit is what you are. So thank you for doing what you do. Because I have no doubt it certainly helps and inspires others, which is absolutely amazing. So thank you for allowing me to be part of it.
Meaghan Smith 1:09:40
You're welcome. Okay, well, there you have it. What an incredible story. Helen is awesome. And I'm so glad that you got to hear her story. Because I bang on about it all the time on this podcast. We really can do whatever we want to do, but we're just have to pull a finger out and do it. Yes, there's challenges and it's not always easy. But the journey is amazing and the payoff is great just by what Helen was saying about the Sharm foundation that she set up who would Who would have known that that would have come out of that. And I truly believe that we face challenges and hard times whether we follow our dreams or not. So if we're going to feel some discomfort either way, why not feel uncomfortable going for what we really love and what we want to create? Okay, so don't forget if you have some old bras hanging around, please send them to Helen I will put the address in the show notes and also we are super lucky to be able to get access to her book so don't miss out on a copy of that she is generously giving us access to her book 59 mistakes the biggest mistakes made by property investors. So make sure you get on to that you just need to go to WWE money mindful.com forward slash ep 48 to get the book. As always, if you want to get to the bottom of what holds us back when it comes to money and learn how to change your money mindset and connect with your future self, the results that you want to create on purpose, get in touch anywhere that you follow me. If you want to stay in touch between episodes and stay up to date with all things money mindful, get on the month, get on the mailing list, follow me on Instagram and Facebook. All the links are in the show notes. Until next time, have a beautiful week. Bye Bye.
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Episode references
Get your digital copy of Helen's book 59 Biggest Mistakes made by Property Investors here
Send your bras to the Sharm Foundation at 8/18 Sherbourne Rd, Briar Hill, Victoria 3088