Chapter 1: Mr Positive Cashflow - Angela Alonso · Steve McKnight Mr Positive Cashflow ... In one...

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Chapter 1: Mr Positive Cashflow

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 1 Steve McKnight Mr Positive Cashflow

Chapter 2 23 Jo Chivers Property is Blooming

Chapter 3 41 Nhan Nguyen The “No Money Down” Man

Chapter 4 57 Libby Lombardo Leverage Property

Chapter 5 77 Paul Derry The Real Estate Alchemist

Chapter 6 101 Martienne Freeth Accounting Millions

Chapter 7 119 Jennie Brown Patty Cash Millionaire

Chapter 8 139 Carly Crutchfield Developing Millions

Chapter 9 179 Jason Marianoff Infinite Returns

Chapter 10 201 Phil Anderson Lunch Money Millionaire

Chapter 11 221 Sasha deBretton Million Dollar Makeovers

Chapter 12 245 Bob Trask Building Communities

Chapter 13 261 Jason Whitton Positive Real Estate

Chapter 14 277 Stephen Tolle & Cherie Barber King and Queen of Renos

Chapter 15 295 Fiona Herbert Rock Solid Millionaire

Chapter 16 319 Peter Spencer Pay it Forward with Brad Dolahenty & Mark Usher

Bonus Resource 337 Deb Lindner Home Staging

By Eynas Brodie

More millionaires create wealth through property than any other means. In fact the number one industry for millionaires and billionaires in Australia is property.

Being the editor of Australian Property Investor magazine puts me in a privileged position to see month after month the success ordinary Australians are achieving through property. These are the people who take the time to educate themselves by reading the magazine and books, attending seminars and then taking action.

Broadly speaking, there are three main stages investors need to go through on the road to financial freedom. The first one is the ‘accumulation stage’, where we build our portfolio by selecting good investment properties to hold in our portfolio.

Next comes the ‘consolidation stage’, where we allow time to work its magic on increasing our equity while we make a concerted effort to pay down our debts so that our portfolios become less reliant on our income. Then we reach the’ liquidation stage’ where we cash in a part of our portfolio to reduce the loans across the remaining portfolio to produce passive income. There are countless ways aside from this method to achieve financial independence.

This book tells the stories of some amazing entrepreneurs and the various property strategies they use to create wealth. They have shared their secrets to becoming a millionaire through property.

In one book, you have access to some amazing minds, techniques and strategies that have escalated ordinary Aussies to be among a small group of Australians who enjoy wealth from property. This is a brilliant resource for anyone looking to achieve financial freedom through property.

Eynas BrodieEditor, Australian Property Investor Magazinewww.apimagazine.com.au

Foreword

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”

Buddha

“Getting the right education and the right advice will help you to achieve the level

of success you want.”

King and Queen of Renos

Stephen Tolle & Cherie Barber

Chapter 14

www.PropertyMillionaireBook.com278


Cherie Barber and Stephen Tolle met one Saturday afternoon in mid-2000 while driving a car and motorbike respectively across the Anzac Bridge in Sydney. It was a chance meeting that would change their lives forever. From that moment on, both were inseparable, personally and from a business perspective.Cherie and Steve both grew up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, each having basic, humble upbringings. Necessities were there, but luxuries certainly weren’t. Both sets of parents worked hard and instilled a strong sense of work ethic in their children. Neither Cherie nor Steve ventured past Year 10 in School.Within 10 months of meeting, the pair tossed in their six-figure salaried jobs to take up renovating full-time. In the first year, the couple bought, renovated and sold six houses, making a profit of $1.15 million. In total, Cherie and Stephen have now conducted renovations to 36 houses and been involved in more than $48,600,000 in property since buying their first property together. They can earn over a million dollars profit a year by doing just two renovation projects per annum, often simultaneously. With each renovation taking just three to five months to complete, they firmly prove that lucrative profits can be made if you know to renovate the right way. Cherie attributes their success to the unique due diligence system she created to enable Steve and herself to become masters of property values in the suburbs they focus on. Together, they’ve developed a complete step-by-step, foolproof renovation system that enables them to make profits of between $300,000 and $600,000 on every property they touch. They also tackle unrenovated properties that others put in the “too hard basket”, saying a lot of people leave opportunity on the table without ever realsing it. After years of constant requests from people wanting to know how they do it, Cherie and Steve officially established Renovating For Profit Pty Ltd. In 2009, they took to the professional public speaking circuit, and are now teaching thousands of people throughout Australia the secrets to their property renovation success. Unrivalled in what they do, Cherie and Steve are widely acclaimed as Australia’s Renovation King & Queen, and are consistently featured in Australia-wide media across television, print, radio and talk show programs. They were regular TV renovators for Channel Seven’s Today Tonight program, amongst other national TV programs where their knowledge and skills have been put to the test in front of nationwide audiences.

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Chapter 14: King and Queen of Renos

What beliefs about money did you grow up with?

Neither of us had any beliefs about money, nor did we grow up in environments where the concept of making money was ever discussed. Both sets of parents pretty much lived week to week, as most families in Australia do, working in traditional blue-collar roles. No one in either of our immediate or extended families had any concept of wealth psychology and, in light of this, it’s surprising we’ve both turned this situation around considering there were no strong influences in our lives. We have more money together as a couple than all of our combined immediate and extended family members put together.

What we were both brought up with was a strong work ethic, which we can thank both sets of parents for. Hard work has been instilled in our blood from the day we were born.

Of all the people we know, those who have succeeded most are the people who had very ordinary upbringings in families without a wealth mindset. Those who don’t have all the bells and whistles and luxuries growing up tend to have an insatiable desire to get those things and reach that level when they become a working adult. It’s almost like they have a burning desire and drive not to continue at that level of poverty once they are old enough to change their situation for themselves. That describes us to a tee.

What service does Renovating for Profit offer?

Our core business is to provide educational workshops that teach people how to achieve financial freedom by buying, renovating and reselling old houses for a profit. We run four to eight intensive workshops a year across Australia. The workshops are designed to download our 10 years’ experience as professional renovators so our students can replicate our system and work processes into the property businesses they go on to establish after leaving our workshop. A large part of our workshops also cover professional property investment.

We’ve developed an eight-step renovation system that follows the logical sequence of events you need to follow in the property investment and renovation process. We spend 24 hours straight over the course of two days giving our students the ins and outs of each step so they leave our workshop knowing exactly what they need to do and, more importantly, how to implement it. It’s all about consistency, focus



and working to a disciplined system so your projects run smoothly and without all the chaos we hear of all too often with other people’s renovation projects.

We’ve also developed over 100 property investment and renovation templates and a number of tools (legal contracts, financial feasibility software, quick calculators, etc.) to enable our students to put property deals together and get them across the line with people such as real estate agents. In the real world, most people don’t have these tools and therefore hit roadblocks in trying to get past first base. Our students walk away with over 15 kilos of materials and property tools to help them be successful in this field. Our program also includes membership to a national buying group we established to enable graduates to get all of their building materials, goods and services at heavily discounted prices.

In addition to our two-day workshops and the truckload of materials they receive at their workshop, graduates receive one year’s post-workshop support to help them with any issues or challenges they are facing.

We attract people from all walks of life to our workshops: young and old, males and females, married couples and singles, people who have absolutely no money, and those who have a lot of it. Our workshops are popular, as there is clearly a lack of information on the market on property investment and renovation as a business that you can earn a living from. All of our eight workshops this year have completely sold out with waiting lists to get in on most.

What is involved in your mentoring program?

We offer all of our graduates 12 months post-workshop support at no additional charge, a rare thing in the public speaking industry. We don’t have the time to be doing advanced master classes at a hefty pop, so in turn we give our students everything we know in the workshop they attend. After that two-day training, our graduates can email, phone, Skype or see us in person in our office, or quite often we’ll meet graduates in the lobbies of the hotels we stay at when travelling interstate each week. If we have time when travelling interstate, we’ll try and visit our graduates’ projects to throw our opinions into the mix, identifying what they are doing well and where they need to improve.

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We love doing this as we get a thrill seeing all of these reno projects happening all over Australia – in inner city locations, in outer suburbs and right through the country areas. On one occasion, we drove six hours each way in the car to see one of our graduate’s first renovation complete. She was so overwhelmed and grateful for the fact that we took time out of our busy schedule to see her project. We can’t do this for everyone, but if our schedule allows, we’ll be there. It’s good old fashioned service where our graduates are people, not numbers. We don’t always succeed but we try our hardest to make this happen.

We are unique in our business approach, and in a world where everything is automated we try to keep things very real and personal in our business. Our students get to talk to us directly, not to an office junior. If at any time a graduate is unsure of how to do something, or is having issues on site with their projects, we’re only a phone call away to assist in resolving the issues at hand. This gives our graduates immense confidence to know we are there to help and hold their hand through the process.

We normally find our graduates still need some assistance on their very first reno project. By the time they get to their second project, they have fewer questions, and once on the third, they don’t need us anymore. We also have staff members in our office whose specific role is to pump the phones each day, calling our graduates at least once every two to three months to keep their motivation high and ensure they are on track. Sometimes people need a constant push to move them into taking action. We want our graduates to be successful. We’re smart enough to know that if our graduates are successful, our business will be successful through word of mouth alone.

All our graduates have the option of attending one of our current renovation projects as part of their workshop training at no additional charge. It’s important to us that we are still real life practitioners of what we preach. Our graduates are invited to visit one of our sites during the renovation process to see first-hand how we add incredible value to the properties we purchase. They love this, and it adds a new dimension to their workshop training. Some people just want to see deals in real life – to touch them, smell them, see them for themselves. In addition to all of this, we stay in touch via regular newsletters and send all sorts of random things related to renovating.



What property strategies have you used to build your property portfolio?

We have achieved our wealth solely through renovation and property development. We don’t invest in shares or super funds, and we certainly don’t follow a diversified investment portfolio, as many financial planners would recommend. For us, we have became master of one trade and not a Jack (and Jill) of all trades; meaning that we chose renovation as our specialty, and focused and dedicated our time solely on this in order to do one thing brilliantly, as opposed to doing everything less than brilliantly.

If someone wanted to get started in property renovation today, what is the best advice you could give them?

Invest in self-education, first and foremost. Unfortunately, many people think renovating is like the shows they see on TV. It’s not. A good majority of people go into renovating with good intentions, but don’t understand the whole process from start to finish. Quite often, people pay too much for an unrenovated property, have no idea what the market wants, don’t know how to project manage their reno effectively, and hope to sell it at the end. Many people try to “wing” their way through the process and hope luck is on their side. This is the reason why you hear so many renovation horror stories of people losing money, being ripped off by tradies, etc. It’s not the market or the tradies’ fault for this, it’s the owner of the property not having the right education and knowledge on the whole process from start to finish.

“Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats

What is the most profit you have made from a property deal?

We earned $750,000 net profit on a waterfront property doing nothing more than a paper shuffle. We also earned $40,000 in one 10-minute phone call organizing a spotter’s fee for a property – that was pretty cool!

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How do you find great deals in property?

We have developed our own unique property due diligence system, which enables us to accurately work out what we should pay for an unrenovated property and what we will be reselling the renovated property for, all before we buy the property. We’ve also developed an extensive financial feasibility that enables us to cost up a project in order to know what profit margin we will make on the project. We go into our projects with a very clear direction, knowing what the outcomes will be, all before we acquire the property. This is a key difference with professional renovators versus amateur/novice renovators.

We also know how to develop relationships with local real estate agents in order for them to bring us deals before they hit the market. We are also very proactive in sourcing our own deals off-market by way of door knocking, letterbox drops and word of mouth. If you rely solely on acquiring your properties once they’ve hit the public market, it’s almost too late as it’s likely you will be competing with an emotional owner occupier who will pay more for the property as a long term occupier than you will as a renovator.

How do you get started on the property ladder?

Everybody thinks you need money to get started in property these days. While it helps, it’s certainly not the determining factor whether or not you get a start in property. Many people can start in property without having any money behind them by doing creative property transactions that help them build up enough cash to buy their own property. Creative ways include spotters/site scout fees, options, and doing joint ventures where you contribute your time, skill and intellectual property knowledge in return for a profit share on a property deal. We just did a deal where we contributed our time, skill and intellectual property knowledge and made $460,000 without investing a dollar of our own money. People who think outside the square and who are good at networking with people will find this achievable to do.

What is important for anyone to get started in property is knowledge. Read as many books, go to as many free seminars, and join as many online property forums as you possibly can to increase your knowledge so you don’t make costly mistakes. There is a great quote by Jim Rohn:



“A formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.” It’s so true. Unfortunately, school may teach us the basics, but it’s what we learn after school that makes the difference!

What is the most important thing you have learnt about successful property renovating?

If you want to do a renovation project, you have to follow a logical, step-by-step system so you approach your projects in a very structured, businesslike fashion – one that is free from all the chaos and mayhem that we hear about all too often at dinner parties.

As for the physical transformation of the property, treat your tradies like gold and show them respect. Many people think tradies are morons because they have to do physical work. This couldn’t be further from the truth. On our work sites, we provide morning tea (coffees and cakes), and we give small tokens of appreciation for a job well done like $20.00 lotto tickets at the end of the job. We constantly tell our tradies they are doing a great job, and we establish open lines of communication so they know how they fit into the equation and how important their contribution is to the project. At the end of the day, all tradies want is clear communication, to enjoy the process, and to get paid at the end of the project. If you can give a tradie this, you’ll have them on board for the rest of your life.

What have been your highlights in your property projects?

Our proudest highlights come from our time as professional renovators over the last 10 years – our true life passion. Definitely, being publicly acclaimed as Australia’s top renovation couple and the leading authority on property renovation makes us feel proud. Also being asked to be professional public speakers on the subject is a great honour. We know we have the best renovation system in Australia. So many of our students who undertake our workshops constantly thank us for educating them in the way we do. We always receive a bundle of thank you cards after every workshop. Receiving those thank you cards is the best career highlight – knowing we are able to help others achieve their financial dreams through our knowledge and skills. All of our students are genuinely nice, down to earth people from all walks of life, who want nothing more than to get ahead in life. They have no false pretences, no airs and graces about them, and for this we truly do

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care about all of them and their financial welfare. We see it as our jobs now to help them where we can.

What we are now doing is changing people’s lives. There have been people we have mentored over the years prior to starting our workshops who have succeeded. For example, there was a designer who saw the results we were achieving on our renovations and asked us to teach her what we do. We informally taught her what we do and how to go out and do the due diligence. Now she has a full time builder working for her, and all she does is go out finding and acquiring the properties. She doesn’t even get her hands dirty, and just has her builder going from one property to the next. This year she’ll make $1.2million profit. To see someone who was on basic wages go to earning this is very satisfying.

Another person we mentored has achieved success beyond belief. Five years ago he only had $30,000 equity in one property and now he has about five major developments on the go worth many millions of dollars. He went in with an open mind and took action.

In your own opinion, is it better to renovate apartments or houses?

You can certainly make money on both, however you don’t have the 100% control over apartments that you tend to have with freestanding houses. We always aim to do projects where we have total control over the outcome with little to no reliance on others. For this reason alone, we only ever renovate freestanding houses.

How do you pick the suburbs you renovate in?

Renovations don’t work in every suburb, so you need to know what characteristics to look for. In every state of Australia, you have a CBD area, inner city fringe suburbs, outer metropolitan suburbs and regional country areas. Within each of these core rings, you have specific suburb characteristics you should look for when contemplating a renovation project in those areas. This is called a suburb profile. In our system, we have identified many different types of suburb profiles where renovations are ideal. Just one example in the inner city fringe suburbs is lifestyle suburbs – those suburbs dominated by cafe society, trendy bars and boutiques shops. When you know what to look for, it becomes a lot easier to concentrate your efforts on suburbs where renovations will work.



What are your secrets to being Australia’s top renovators?

How long is this book? Honestly, there is so much involved in being a professional renovator. We’re not talking someone who makes $5,000 or $10,000 profit, but one that makes hundreds of thousands dollars profit on every project they touch. Renovating is very easy once you know how to do it. The problem is, people watch all those TV renovating shows and think that’s how it is in real life. What that is called is “entertaining TV”, not reality. We’ve developed an eight-step renovation process. In our workshops, we share hundreds of pointers on each step. We’ve learnt the hard way – 10 years of trial and error on our sites. No one pulls the wool over our eyes when it comes to renovating. One of the biggest tips we can impart to everyone is to have a thorough property due diligence system to enable you to become a master in property values in your chosen suburb.

We also believe in dreams and acting on those. You can read so many books and do as many courses as you like, but if it doesn’t come from inside or you don’t take action, you won’t get the success. We’ve seen people on television complain about seminars they’ve paid for and got nothing out of them. We think to ourselves, “You could go to university and spend $20,000 gathering a pile of papers, too, but if you don’t go out, apply yourself and take action using that education, none of it means anything, whether it’s a seminar, university studies or a book.”

As a successful property renovator, what is the most common question you get asked, and what is your answer to it?

“How do you do it?” People come up and ask, “How do you make all these great profits from renovating?” Unfortunately it’s not something you can discuss over a long lunch. That would only give people one percent of what they need to know. Renovating is easy but there’s a lot more involved than people realise, and that’s the difference between people who make between $300,000 and $600,000 profit on every single property versus those who make a hundred bucks!

“How do you find projects that you make all this money on?” When we first started doing renovations, people would say, “You got lucky on that one.” After hearing that a number of times, we would respond, “It’s not luck!” There are so many questions about renovating, and there are so many elements that go into answering each question, that you can’t answer them over a long lunch or dinner. This is why we have

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started doing the workshops. We’ve seen builders with 15 to 20 years experience come into the suburbs we focus on and lose money (while we were making lots of it). We wondered why and realised there are so many elements in the renovation process that builders don’t take into account. They’re great at the building/construction process, but when it comes to the due diligence phase, they often fall short in those skill sets.

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” Bill Cosby

In your opinion, what are the most common mistakes that new renovators make?

There are 10 clear mistakes that people make when buying an unrenovated property:

1. They don’t research their suburbs properly before they buy, so have very little insight into who the local buyers are and want they want in a renovated property.

2. They don’t fully understand property prices in their suburbs before they buy.

3. They don’t analyse the true potential and ways to add real value to a property before they buy.

4. They don’t do a financial feasibility on the property before they buy, and subsequently underestimate the amount of funds needed from the start to the end of a project.

5. They underestimate the amount of time needed to complete the project from start to finish.

6. They buy the property in their personal name and end up paying more in capital gains tax simply by not having the correct company structure in place.



7. They don’t get the right type of loan in order to finance their project, then pay hefty exit/break fees on their loans when they sell the property.

8. They don’t plan the renovation properly in terms of being an effective project manager.

9. They don’t control time, cost and quality level when implementing the physical transformation of the property.

10. They have no idea when they are going to sell, and for how much.

It all gets back to educating yourself and moving forward with confidence and the correct knowledge on all of your projects.

Do you go on site in a hardhat and pick up the tools?

Yes, we are on site every day but we don’t do any physical work ourselves. As professional renovators, you don’t want to be the DIYer – the person that does all the work themself. It’s a big misconception that you need to do as much of the work as you can yourself to save money. We teach that being a DIYer actually costs you money. There is no way you can be good at tiling, painting, polishing the floors, etc., so in this regard, the quality control level slips on your project, and buyers can spot it a mile away. Also, when you try and do all the work yourself, the project takes 10 times longer to complete, so you’re not buying and selling as fast as you should be. And when your project takes longer to complete, you incur extra mortgage repayments and make less profit in the project.

Professional renovators step back from all of that and either project manage their own sites or engage a builder to do their structural renovations. You’ve got to know what your time is worth and what you could be doing elsewhere that is going to be a better and higher use of your time.

Do you need to adapt to the lingo of the tradies?

You don’t need to adopt the tradies’ lingo, but want you do need to adopt is the manner in which you interact with tradies. You need to become one of them and make them feel as though they are on your level. We certainly adjust our language to be more casual and relaxed,

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and are extremely personable while working on site. At the end of the day, no one wants to work for demanding, pompous snobs on any renovation site. As a project manager, you need to be firm but friendly. We encourage our tradies to take their morning tea and lunch breaks together so we can sit with them all and exchange friendly banter. They can see we are decent human beings working towards a goal. Tradies who like you are more willing to get on your side to help you reach that goal. If they hate you, you’ll get minimum performance from them and they’ll take shortcuts to get out of the job sooner. That is a reality.

What do you believe are the successful qualities and attributes of a successful property renovating system?

To follow a true step-by-step system that enables you to go through the process in a logical and sequential manner in the quickest amount of time possible (without sacrificing quality).

What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about investing in property?

Get a mentor. There are a lot of amazing courses and workshops out there, and some people might think it’s a lot of money to start off with, but we’ll tell you this: To get 10 years worth of someone’s experience in two days when they’ve taken it to the level you want to get to, is so worthwhile. It can save you a lot of money in mistakes if you were to learn the process on your own. You can burn the cost of an entire workshop just by making one mistake with one wrong tradesperson.

Getting the right education and the right advice will help you to achieve the level of success you want.

We know it sounds a bit clichéd, but we think first and foremost you have to be passionate about what you do. It’s the passion that will drive you, and it’s the passion that won’t make your work seem like a job. We don’t have to work, but we still do because we love renovating and it doesn’t feel like work. As a result, if you love what you do, you’ll dedicate more time to it.

Ask yourself what it is that really and truly makes you happy and what you are going to be happy doing, moving forward. Then just go and do it. There’s nothing worse than being in a job that you hate. It’s wasting your life.



Is there a significant saying that you live by?

We’re famous for saying, “We can’t afford to have a job.” It’s true; we couldn’t sustain our standard of living and the number of projects we did if we were to rely on normal day jobs. When we tell people we can’t afford to have a job, we always get strange looks. People can’t understand the concept of not having a job. It goes against the grain of how we are all raised. From the day we are born, our parents tell us to go to school, get a good job, buy one house and pay it off. It’s the worst advice any parent can give their children. Our daughter certainly won’t be getting that advice. It will be more like, “Go to school, get educated, discover your passion, and go out and do that as your own business and buy as many houses as you can along the way.”

CHERIE: My other saying that I always live by is, “The greatest risk of all is to take no risk at all.” In other words, if you always stay inside your comfort zone, you’ll never move forward. Take risks, but calculated, knowledgeable ones.

As a successful investor, what advice would you give to children?

• Focus – have your mindset right and know what you want.

• Find yourself a mentor.

• Take action when you see an opportunity.

• Speak to people who have achieved what you want to achieve.

• Invest time in truly understanding the suburb(s) you are thinking of investing in.

• Spend time attending all the “open for inspections” and auctions within your suburb for at least three to four months before you buy to truly understand property prices.

• Be as creative as possible when doing property deals. There are a lot of creative negotiation techniques that enable young people to get into property without having to save up their 20% deposit. Educate yourself in this regard and then take action. Make sure that whatever you learn, you go out and implement. If you don’t do this, you won’t get past first base.

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Does your business support a charity?

We donate 5% of our net profits from Renovating For Profit to charitable causes. What we’ve decided to do this year is buy a whole heap of wheelchairs for children that need them and deliver them ourselves. That way we know the money has truly been put to good use, and not spent on glossy marketing magazines that we used to receive constantly from the mainstream charities we donated to.

A big part of what we do is give back to those less fortunate. For example, when we see on the news that there has been a car crash and the parents have been killed, we’ll be the first to write out a cheque for the surviving children. Sometimes people end up in bad situations they have no control over. If we can help ease the pain slightly through the work we do, then that is a good thing.

What does success mean to you, and how does one achieve it?

It’s not the actual money; it’s the choices we have as a result of the money. It’s the ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want. The choice not to work if we don’t want to; to take off to New York and go shopping for three months if we want or to stay home every day with our daughter. We’re planning on taking all of our immediate family members overseas this year as a surprise holiday. Most of our family have not been overseas and would never be able to afford this trip. It will be a nice surprise for them.

For us, that’s what success is all about. It’s not the actual money. You can’t take that to the grave with you, but the things that you can do with it can make people very happy. We’re big on sharing the rewards of our efforts.

What do you think stops people from achieving the level of success they desire?

Fear of failure – the fear of having egg on their face if things don’t work. People are scared to lose what little they have, and it’s the worst way you can ever think. That’s why we really live by our saying, “The greatest risk of all is to take no risk at all.” If you always think like you’re going to fail, chances are you probably will.

Also, people’s mindset and the fear of the unknown – the fear of not knowing the result they are going to achieve. If everybody knew



they were going to win a million dollars in the lottery, they would undoubtedly spend $900,000 on a ticket. But because they don’t know, they’ll spend only $20.00 on a ticket.

A lot of it comes down to believing in yourself. We have put everything on the line because we believe in ourselves.

STEVE: My biggest fear is public speaking. I woke up one morning and I looked my daughter in the eyes. I thought to myself that all I want her to do is never become complacent, to face her fears and constantly challenge herself in life. I can’t tell my daughter to do that if I don’t do that myself, so I took on my fear. I want to give public speaking a shot. So this comes down to mindset – believing in yourself, and knowing anything is possible. You just have to have a go.

CHERIE: One of the things I believe everyone should do is have a personal business plan to work out where you want to go, what you want to achieve, and where you want to be in the short to long term. You’ve got to know that, because if you don’t, it’s like walking down a path with no direction.

Put time aside to have a good hard think about what you want to accomplish in your life, get it recorded in your business plan, and constantly review that plan in good times and bad to see how you’re performing. The key is focus. Focus on fewer things, give due time and attention to those things, and go out and make it happen!

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” Marie Curie

What can people do to stay on track, especially when times get tough?

Stay focused. Aim to be a master of one trade, and not a Jack (or Jill) of all trades – focus on one particular wealth strategy/path and give it 100% of your attention and effort. If you spread your wings too far and on too many things, you’ll end up dedicating less time and energy to all of these things and won’t do anything particularly well.

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Cherie and Steve have generously offered two bonus gifts to readers of Property Millionaire:

Free Renovation Riches e-book, valued at $59.95. Download it now at: www.PropertyMillionaireBook.com/moneymakers

Free 2 hour DVD on The 8 Critical Steps of the Renovation Process, valued at $69.95 (while stocks last). Register via www.renovatingforprofit.com.au

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