What’s going on guys It's Jordan de Jong here and today I want to talk about Mentors, specifically how important they are, how much impact they have on you and why it’s essential to surround yourself with people who have walked the path before you and can guide you in the right direction. This Is a property channel so we will be focusing on property mentors but the process and concepts still apply in many different scenarios, firstly I’ll be going over what defines a mentor and the reasoning behind having one, and then we will look at three specific case studies of some good friends that have been guests on my podcast Smashed Avo Property. These case studies include Jack Henderson, Eddie Dilleen & Daniel Walsh who have all amassed property portfolios around 4 million dollars, however, have done it in three completely separate ways, invested in different types of assets and although they have done all the hard work to get themselves where they are, I’ll argue today that the types of assets they have invested in have been heavily influenced by their mentors. A mentor is essentially a trusted advisor, they should provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling, they will also help us explore different paths, help us with our goal setting, build the teams around us and provide useful resources. Mentors these days can come in many different forms and technology has allowed a range of “Virtual mentors” to pop into our lives through podcasts and YouTube and once hooked, we binge almost every piece of content they have put out, until the point where we feel like we know them better than they know themselves. This is a great starting point for some and much better than walking the path on our own, there are no excuses to get it wrong these days as we can learn from the mentors who have walked the path before us and made the same mistakes in the past, the problem comes though when we have several virtual mentors. There is so much content out there and everyone seems to have an opinion, especially in the property space, with multiple peoples opinions, there is generally a conflict of interest or a contradicting statement to counter every argument, being pitched at us quite forcefully on social platforms, and if we're not careful this can lead to overconsumption and may throw us off what we thought we knew all together. Now, I’m not a left or right-wing kind of guy, I do like to still consume a lot of content that gets published, however, I only do so because I feel adequate in my understanding of the sector as a whole and feel confident in my opinion on the assets I choose to invest in. I do though limit the variety of content by who it is published by, I have 3 or 4 virtual mentors I keep up to date with weekly and this allows me to get a variety of others' opinions for me to consider without throwing me off completely. Although virtual mentors are important, today's blog is focused on real-life mentors, and how much of an impact they can actually have. Let’s go over some reasons why a real-life mentor is essential for our won growth, firstly, they provide information an knowledge based on first-hand experience, using this they can often see where we need to improve or might be making a mistake we are not fully aware of. Mentors find ways to stimulate our personal and professional growth, we all go through waves of ups and down cycles, a mentor keeps us on track and encourages us to take the next step, but also keeping us disciplined enough by setting boundaries of how far we step out. Our mentors should be a trusted advisor, we should be able to bounce ideas off them and know that we are getting an unbiased opinion back, they are also incredible connectors and generally can place other people in our lives that will help us grow and develop our board of advisors to help achieve our goals. Now you may be thinking well what does a mentor get out of all this, why would they do all this for me for free, however, mentorship is mutually beneficial and personally rewarding for both parties, they take pride and are honored to be a part of our journey and there’s a great sense of fulfillment through helping others. I do want to re-enforce here that these three individuals have worked extremely hard to get where they are, in no means am I suggesting that their mentors have done the work for them, All I am trying to point out is that they have had an impact on their asset selections and style of a portfolio, also, if your loving this content don’t forget to smash that like button. Kicking off with Jack Henderson, his property mentor is Chris Grey, Chris started investing in property when he was 22 and retired at the age of 31, since then he has built a property portfolio of 15 million dollars and his philosophy has always been, put simply and in my own words, invest in affluent areas where higher-paid working-class families will always be able to afford their rent. You can see from his website the recent purchases he has bought with his clients, and the types of assets he would consider investing in, these are all in extremely affluent areas such a Vaucluse, Coogee, Bondi beach, ect the lower end bottoming out around 800k and the top end going past 2.5 million. Jack went to a charity event where Chris was offering a one on one mentorship package and spent something like $1,500 just to sit down with Chris for an hour, we can see home much of an impact this has had on Jack If we look at his portfolio when he came onto the podcast, he said his 4 Million was spread across only 3 assets, all of which had been secured in the same sort of affluent locations Chris buys in. Our next investor is Eddie Dilleen, which at the time of coming onto the podcast he had 16 properties at the age of 28, sitting around the 4-5 million dollars total portfolio value since then I think it has hit his goal of 20 properties at 28 but I’m basing this discussion of what he told us on smashed avo property. Eddies mentor is Nathan Birch, Nathan retired at the age of 24 and now owns over 200 properties with a net worth of 30 Million according to his website, which, if you do the math, his average property value is somewhere around $150,000, and this has been Nathans game plan from the get-go, He’s invested in lower-end properties in lower social-economical areas as he believes it’s much easier for a $100,000 property to double to $200,000 than a $1M to double to $2M. This video is from 2016 and as you can see Nathan has had an impact on Eddie from a young age and impacted the types of assets Eddie has invested in, if we divide his $4M portfolio value by 16 his average asset value is around $250,0000. Our third and final investor we will be looking at is Daniel Walsh, Daniels portfolio is worth $4M and he is currently running on a 50% LVR and I think that’s a much better analysis than how many properties he has, I think he has at least 5 properties but he didn’t actually go into his exact number, it might even be 9 but don’t quote me on that, and his mentor is Margaret Lomas. Margaret Lomas is pretty much the property mentor god mother, a lot of my virtual mentors had Margaret as their mentor when building out their portfolio and it goes to show how much of an impact she has had in the property investment space. Margaret has recently talked about having 40 properties in her portfolio but I couldn’t track down any exact figures, regardless, talking to Daniel about the impact she has had on him, he says she has provided a more rounded and balanced portfolio approach compared heavy cashflow or heavy capital growth, which has helped in maintaining his portfolio while paying down his debt over time. So not only is a mentor essential to kick start our journey, help us avoid some mistakes and encourage us to be the best we can be, they also have a significant influence on the types of assets we invest in to build our portfolio, this is why choosing a mentor is so critical, but also having other “Virtual Mentors” will give us a second or third perspective to reinforce their methods. Looking at the examples of the mentors in this blog, if we compare Chris’ portfolio of 10 properties at $15M and Nathans portfolio of 200 properties $30M, some commentators would much rather a portfolio of double the size at $30M and others would much rather 10 great tenants than 200 tenants that are bound to contain some bad eggs in, and are a headache to deal with. So as you can see, there are lots of property commentators, including myself, who all have their own opinions that usually contradict each other, and when you're starting off it's very confusing to try and listen to everyone at once and come up with your own strategy, this is why it's so important to understand why you want to invest in the first place, which I would recommend watching this blog up here to determine. One thing I have noticed that most commentators agree on is diversification, or not putting all our eggs in one basket, if we only hold one type of asset in one area and that market crashed, then all our eggs would be damaged, so whether this be through location, asset selection or even price ranges, diversity will aid the impact of a falling market. Another common agreement is the sit and hold strategy because trading property here in Australia is so expensive, usually 5% of the purchase price to buy and 3% of the sale price to sell, we can’t just hold a property overnight, flip it and make money the next day, we have to let capital growth compound over time to see real wealth accumulate. I think this is a better approach, understand the common theories that all mentors agree on, understand your why and goals for investing and choose a handful of mentors to follow that align with them, speaking of, if you have one already, who is your property mentor and why? leave them down in the comment section below. As always, seek your own professional financial, legal, taxation & property investment advice for your current situation, these blogs are just my opinion and general in nature and should never be considered personal advice. Until next time, happy house hunting.

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