In today’s episode, I’ll unpack with you why I’m taking a group of clients to New York at the end of next month.
I’ll also explain why this experience will completely transform their future financial outcomes.
What I want you to get out of this is an understanding of my motivation for putting this trip together.
I believe this event will change my clients’ understanding of how alternative investments work and will take their confidence and ability to execute deals to the next level.
Why Wouldn’t I Just Keep Running Events Here In Australia?
The first question I want to address is, “Why wouldn’t I just keep running events here in Australia?”
Don’t get me wrong. I run events here roughly every quarter, and they are next-level awesome.
They are mastermind style, so I do a bit of presentation.
If you’ve come to any of my events, you’d know that I’m a catalyst for deeper conversations around money and wealth that either sit on the back burner or people are too embarrassed to talk about.
We also hear from keynote speakers who are experts in different alternative investing strategies.
It’s an opportunity for people to rub shoulders with others on a similar journey.
These people range from small investors to high-net-worth individuals doing amazing things with their wealth.
As much as I love those events, I’ve recognised through my experience that there’s no substitute for face-to-face contact with dealmakers and advisors in the daily trenches.
That’s why I thought it would be useful if I could share a bit about my story that I haven’t really shared before.
My Discovery of Alternative Investment
When I discovered alternative investments back in 2008, moving into 2009, I realised that we live in such a tiny pond here in Australia.
The truth is that it’s a big world, and some amazing opportunities exist outside of our borders.
As the world moves into this global community where travel, commerce, and trade are like second nature, I thought back then, “Why wouldn’t that extend to investing?”
At that time, investing in foreign markets was the playground of the ultra-wealthy or corporates.
My challenge back then was that I had small kids, and my husband worked a heavy workload.
But I was determined to make it work, and I knew that if I was organised and made it easy for the family, I could have my cake and eat it too.
Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of compromises, but they were not as frequent.
I remember I would cook meals for a week, stick them in a freezer, jump on a plane, and fly overseas, predominantly to the United States.
I would land on the tarmac and head to my first, second, and third meetings, starting early and finishing late at night because of the time difference.
I’d be exhausted by 9 or 10 in the evening, and I’d attempt to go to sleep.
Unfortunately, I’d be woken by the time difference at about 1 am, so I’d just get up.
I would do that maybe two or three days in a row. Then I would get on a plane, fly home, and return to being a mother of small children.
I probably did that several times a year, and I know it wasn’t ideal.
But what I learned from experience is that what you could achieve in two or three days of getting boots on the ground, meeting and talking to people, seeing real deals, understanding the process, and getting a sense of who was the real deal and who wasn’t is something you couldn’t achieve by simply having a Skype or phone call.
It’s easy for some people to pretend they’re awesome when you’ve only got a sliver of time with them.
But when you’re spending a reasonably long time with these people, it’s much harder for them to sustain that facade.
My journey has not been the smoothest. I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours getting boots on the ground, talking to people, getting cuts and bruises, and levelling up.
With where I am right now, I still believe that commitment to travelling and continuing to build relationships is very important.
The network of relationships I have now has not come about by accident.
It has come through grit and determination to build deep relationships with people who live far away, and that’s not easy.
The Reason Why I’m Taking My Clients to New York
The reason why I’m taking this group of clients over is that I want them to have a taste of the same thing.
My theme for this event is called Level Up.
This word represents my experience of travelling and meeting people. So, it’s all about levelling up as an investor.
From a metaphorical perspective, it’s like drinking from a hose where you go from theoretical to very practical knowledge.
You start to see the flaws in the way you think, the way you behave, and the way you take action.
As you spend time with people who are so at home with investing, your habits, thinking, and ideas shift across the board.
I’ve been able to apply a lot of strategies, thinking, and learning that I’ve gleaned from these people over the last 12 to 14 years to every other aspect of my investing and even to my life in general.
The value of developing a network that you can call on for support if things are not going well, a network that you can call on when you have spare capital, and you’re looking for a killer deal, a network that’s running the deals and getting insights ahead of whatever the media spouts, is immeasurable and invaluable.
Key Takeaway #1: There is No Substitute for Personal Relationship
That’s like my pre-frame to this particular episode of why I am taking my clients to New York, so let me break that down into three solid keys.
Whether you’re flying to New York or trying to kick-start your current investment portfolio, these principles are really important.
The first key or principle is that there is no substitute for a personal relationship.
When we started working together, my clients’ journey with me was very intimate.
We’re sitting together dissecting their situation, their personal aspirations, what they currently have, what opportunities to optimise, looking at their stewardship, and essentially building a plan.
Once they’re at the point where they understand their plans and strategies and are ready to execute, there’s a buffet of opportunities for them to choose from.
I’m very clear that I don’t tell people what to invest in.
Once they get to the starting gates and are ready to do deals, they no longer want my opinion.
They’re ready to pull the trigger on deals because they either like a trusted adviser’s track record, how they speak, or how they run their deals.
People get to know who’s who in the zoo by consuming content from my membership site, and they hear from them during live sessions.
What I stress to people is that there’s no substitute for building a personal relationship.
When my clients are ready to do deals, I facilitate a personal introduction so that they can have a direct relationship with those specific people.
Over time, they can build a pipeline of great deal flow that will be there for the rest of their lives.
There’s a level where they get to consume videos or pre-recorded videos of interviews that I’ve done with these people.
There are also opportunities to participate in live discussions where they get to ask questions.
There’s the next level above that, which is speaking to these people, one-on-one predominantly through Zoom or other technology.
Then there’s the ultimate level where you spend time with someone, get to know them, and ask them questions about who they are, what they believe in, and their track record and experiences.
I believe there’s no substitute for that.
This trip to New York is important because many of my clients, especially during COVID, have been starved of direct personal contact with their trusted advisor networks and people who supply deals.
This is their opportunity to take it from being a slightly steroidal type experience to being deeply intimate.
In my personal experience, the major inflection point in my wealth journey came when I invested time in these face-to-face catch-ups.
Key Takeaway #2: Have Sideways Conversations
The second principle I want to share is that when you spend time with people, you can have “sideways conversations.”
When you get to rub shoulders with like-minded people on a similar journey, you learn so much about how they think and behave and what life experiences have influenced their decision-making.
You will also understand why two people with seemingly similar financial aspirations are at completely different points in their lives.
Again, these sideways conversations allow you to go much deeper than interviews, where I just put someone in the hot seat.
I mean, it’s great, but sideways conversations are much more intimate and much more personal.
Growing up in households, it’s very common for us to adopt the attitudes, thinking, and preferences of our parents, family, and friends.
It’s not until adulthood that some people think about starting to challenge those.
What these sideways conversations made me do is question some of the wealth values that I have and reshape them.
They allowed me to redefine who I wanted to be around money and wealth.
Who I was in my 20s and who I am now in terms of my relationship with money is chalk and cheese.
These sideways conversations can be impactful because they can overcome a lifetime’s worth of poor or lazy thinking in a split second.
They also allow you to go deeper and transform habits and experiences that you’ve been stuck with over your life.
Key Takeaway #3: The Value of Seeing, Feeling, and Touching Deals
The third and final principle or key that I want to share with you today is the value of seeing, feeling, and touching deals.
I mentioned a while ago that when you can get boots on the ground, see these property deals, look at the paperwork, and talk to the attorneys and accountants, it will completely change your view from being theoretical to being very concrete.
When I started to do all those things, I got better clarity on what deals I would and wouldn’t do.
There’s this one side of the equation, which is how profitable the deal looks.
As we all know, it’s easy to manipulate the potential profitability of a deal on paper.
But as I started seeing and touching these deals for myself, I could put them together with the profitability piece and discern the difference between a good deal and a bad one.
From an investor’s point of view, that is how you build safety and not by investing blindly just because someone showed you a great pro forma of a very profitable deal.
It’s also not because someone handed you a glossy brochure and said, “Look, this is definitely something you should invest in because it makes sense, and everybody else is doing it.”
You build safety because you can take in all the information needed about an opportunity, like who’s running and sourcing the deal, how they’ll manage it, and what’s happening in that neighbourhood, and use it to discern whether this stacks up as a great deal.
What you’re looking for as an investor is a way to stack the odds in your favour.
From my perspective, seeing, feeling, and touching deals will transform your experience of stacking the odds in your favour because your confidence around doing deals will be very high.
There’s a tendency for many investors to hope and pray that things go as they want them to.
But what we want to do as investors is evolve from hoping and praying to having confidence that you know exactly what you’re doing and that you’ve done as much as possible to stack the odds in your favour.
Again, I’m taking these clients to New York because I want them to level up.
I want them to transform their experience of being an investor who generates strong, predictable passive income through association with a network of A-grade investors regarding their ethics, transparency, and how they talk and relate to clients.
If you’re a business owner feeling frustrated that despite doing everything right in the property investing playbook and you’re no closer to financial freedom, then head over to www.inkosiwealth.com to learn more about how you can use alternative investments to catapult your investing income and blend strategies to shave decades off your timeline to financial freedom.
If you’re interested in understanding how to create wealth through alternative strategies, please check out my programs, where I help you catapult your investment income and blend strategies to shave decades off your timeline to financial freedom.
Or, you’re welcome to get in touch today, book a call with me, and I would be happy to talk you through it – no obligation!