Plus, he reveals his own personal goals to write 100 books before he dies! With his 3rd one coming out just next year, he might not be too far off…

Timestamps:

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And I just couldn't get this deal over the line. And I got the sheets, I just got frustrated, like I'm done. This is it. And I booked a trip to Thailand, and I blew half of my deposit now. And if I just had just a bit of patience, I could have kept saving, or would it take me six months to get that extra amount of money and get the next property. 

But I just got so frustrated that I threw my hands up and walked back. 

This is Property Investory where we talk to successful property investors to find out more about their stories, mindset and strategies.

I’m Tyrone Shum and in this episode we’re back with Jackson Millan, founder of Aureus Financial and author of three novels. Utilising his 15+ years of experience, Millan shares vital advice with listeners: financial knowledge, the value of mentorship and common mistakes to avoid. And, he humbly shares that failure is a normal part of success!

Tyrone Shum:  

Cultivating his 15 years of business entrepreneurship experience, Millan imparts his wisdom to listeners. Narrating the lessons he acquired from his first company, Millan reveals his formula to success: his four core parts of business.

Jackson Millan:  

Because these things get neglected, right. And it's because they're doing it manually. And because they have done at the time, they are time poor, we need to implement systems and frameworks and automations that basically sit their money on autopilot.

So our whole value proposition is about helping our clients manage their money, and about 30 minutes a month. And so who can't find 30 minutes.

Tyrone Shum:  

[00:00:42] That's the time you spend having coffee and maybe playing [with] your kids. That's a great philosophy. So you've taken the business quite substantially and very, very successfully. So that turning point where you said, 'I'm going to sell the franchise and then move on' to I like to sort of just touch on that just to understand the emotional feeling. 

Do you still have a memory of how because the thing is, you could have done something else? If you had sold your business, there could have been so many other things. Why jump back in and start another business?

Jackson Millan:  

Yeah, it's really interesting. My, although I've had ADHD and one of the symptoms of ADHD is like chasing shiny objects, right? People with ADHD struggle to defer gratification because we chase the dopamine, right, we chase the things that are exciting, and give us the thrill. 

However, once I've set my mind on a track, I very rarely deviate from it. So other businesses weren't even an option, I realised that I had a successful formula. I'm passionate about my purpose, I want to change the world in regards to how wealth education is provided to business owners, because I realised that it's an endemic, it's an issue, it's a substantial issue. 

But there's just not enough work in this space. So I realised that I'd come to the capacity of that pathway, I just needed to create the next best pathway that would get me to where I want to go. So other options weren't even on the table. But we realised we wanted to build a more holistic philosophy of having all of these businesses working together. 

And really, my vision is to create a horizontally aligned professional and business services group. So for business owners, anything they need around building their profit, buying back their time, and building wealth, we want to have business services that can support them with that. So a big thing I do now is acquisitions of other businesses, which has been a big wealth building strategy for us as well. 

Tyrone Shum:  

Definitely, can you sort of elaborate a little bit on that in terms of how that works, the flip plan for the customers or clients? 

Jackson Millan:  

Yes, for sure. So my whole philosophy, if we chunk it up a little bit, is there's basically three ways to build wealth in this world, there's business, so you need to build a valuable and saleable business. And if you have the appetite for it, acquire other businesses, which allows you to magnify your wealth substantially. 

Second, is property. As we know, property is an amazing asset class, particularly here in Australia. And with leverage, we can maximise our cash on cash returns in order to take a relatively small amount of money, put that into a great asset, that even if it has modest compounding could substantially greater wealth, and the third party shares, property and business is illiquid. 

And so we need to acknowledge that we can't sell a portion of it quickly if we need to raise capital. And shares allow us to own fractions of other companies that provide us with liquidity and the ability to drip feed money into the market over time. So those are really the three main asset classes. 

So we teach our clients the same for our clients who get their business to a point where it's under management, we also teach them how to go and acquire their competitors, and use that as a way to magnify their wealth over time. And it's basically using [a] value based process and understanding opportunity cost evaluation, in order to allow them to accelerate their wealth a whole lot faster.

Tyrone Shum: 

Failure is merely success in progress. Though it would be easy to just brag about the most successful properties he’s worked with, Millan humbly shares some of the failures he had to learn from. After all, the road to success is a bumpy one.

I actually want to tell the story of the first property that I missed, okay. And I think this is a really important thing because the reason why this is important, Tyrone, is that people who are successful tend to talk a lot about their achievements. And for people who feel like they're behind on their journey.  

I feel that that often creates more invisible ceilings that hold them back. So I like to be very vulnerable and talk about my mistakes very openly and honestly. Now I was 19 years old, and I wanted to buy a property and it wasn't really about the property itself. It was more about proving myself to my family that I was an adult, because I was basically the youngest out of all of our cousins and everything. 

And I'm like, I want to be the youngest in my family to buy property. So I was looking at a property. And my budget was about 200,000, right? And I'd save up money at about $30,000. And I was looking around the southwest of Sydney, and I was trying to buy this property. 

I didn't know what a mortgage broker was, at the time, I'd bank with CBA, my parents bank to CBA. So we got a mobile banker to come out, try to look at different options and whatnot to get that done. And I was about $10,000, short on the pre approval. So I ended up only being able to get a maximum purchase price of about 190. 

And I just couldn't get this deal over the line. And I got the sheets, I just got frustrated, like I'm done. This is it. And I booked a trip to Thailand, and I blew half of my deposit now. And if I just had just a bit of patience, I could have kept saving, or would it take me six months to get that extra amount of money and get the next property. 

But I just got so frustrated that I threw my hands up and walked back. So that $200,000 property today is worth $750,000. Right? Yeah. Time. In another situation and look, I bought a property. Southwest Sydney did quite well with it [and] had some equity. 

And then I went to buy my second property. Very similar story property was in Dallas. Shil went to the auction. I was prepared to pay 750,000 for this property, or thereabouts. And the guy selling wanted 760. Funnily enough, the same $10,000 gap, right? 

And I go, 'No, it's not worth it'. I've got the evaluation, it's 750 I'm not going to pay it, that property is worth $1.5 million today. And it's this hindsight, right? We sweat the small stuff. And like I heard this analogy many years later, and I wish my younger self knew this. Our parents talk about buying their property in the 80s for like 30 grand, right? 

My whole 20% I paid 30 grand, whenever he ever said, I wish I negotiated it to 25,000 instead of never. So I've made a lot of mistakes around property, it's cost me millions. And I've been fortunate enough to accumulate a number of properties. Now my philosophy is if I can accumulate one good quality property a year, for the next five to 10 years borrowing capacity [is] pending, then I'm going to be fine. 

And my strategy is very, very simple to run. I focus on fundamental principles based on net migration, based on diversified employment of infrastructure spending of kept future supply and understanding affordability in the market. And if I can understand those five fundamental principles, buying good quality blue areas, and set and forget for the long term, then the market does everything else for me. 

Exactly and that's what I love about that that's, you know that that key fundamental principle that you said there is spot on to what most successful investors have been doing. It's not about you know, as you said, negotiating that thing is like 510 grand, in hindsight. It's small, it's nothing. 

But the thing is, ultimately getting into the market is the challenge, because everyone says that [it] is so hard to get your first one. And once you get your first one, the next one for you in the future is so much easier. Exactly. I love that story lesson because I resonate with that. And that's I think we all do it, but we just don't talk about it. So I'm glad that you...thank you for sharing that.

Jackson Millan:  

I like to remove these taboos and look, if anybody can leave with this, taking that lesson away from our costly mistakes, then I think that helps. And look at the last thing that I'll share that made my next biggest mistake in terms of property was buying an off the plan property. And that's interest.  

And it was one of these things that the property itself wasn't bad. But it was just the analogy of buying a new car and driving it off the lot and lock when we understand that in my situation with this nice property that paid the new car price for it. 

And we understand that property is normally driven by the appreciation of land value, and the asset value is depreciating. And I was caught up and sold on this whole depreciation benefit, obviously earning high income and getting the deductions on it. 

But what I didn't realise is that through the depreciation, there is actually a reduction in the cost base, meaning that although I'm getting a cash back on the cash flow as a result of the depreciation, it lowers my cost base, meaning that it's increasing my capital gains tax when I sell and that was the next the next big lesson that I learned. 

So my principles are buy properties based on their fundamentals and never buy an asset based on the Tax Benefits Tax is a consequence of making money. And although it may be nice as an added benefit, if you buy a good quality property that gives you some tax benefits, great, but it must be a good quality property first. And that was an expensive lesson for me as well. 

Well, it's a very important lesson because I've heard it for many, many years, many people in the past, and this is when they had negative gearing and were actually buying property for the sake of negative gearing. To me, it didn't make sense. 

It's like, you know, you're paying to the government, they gave me $1 back, like, you must give that to me, I'll keep the dollar, thank you. But people were doing that left, right and centre. 

And then they got themselves in a position where in the future, they just had so much debt in so many properties, but they couldn't service it because it was so needed for the cash flow that [it] really, really hurt them. I don't mean, I still see it happen. 

But I don't hear it as often as we do now. Because I think with all the wealth of knowledge and coaching and stuff that's been going around, people have actually changed their perspective. And you're right, it sticks with the fundamentals. And as long as your property is in good locations, it meets those criterias. It's [a] blue chip, you know, you just hold it for its wealth creation tool. 

Exactly. And look, I think that's obviously more challenging now with interest rates the way that they are, because there are a lot of people that are in pain and trying to get a positively geared property in this market is pretty challenging. 

But I think the important part is understanding the accrual of your cash losses, and ensuring that based on the property that you're looking to acquire, the capital growth assumptions are going to outweigh the cash that you're losing along the way. 

Because I think one of the big parts here is we need to afford to be able to hold on to this property until we get that appreciation. And we need to ensure that at the end of the day, if we do realise that and we get the capital gain, has that compensated us for the cash losses along the way? And if not, what's the point?

Tyrone Shum:  

Of course, we’ve all heard it a million times: buy property. For those of us listening who don’t really know why, Millan explains perfectly.

Jackson Millan:  

Yeah, so I think the big part is that wealth creation and financial freedom for me is very simple. There's two things we're trying to achieve. I believe you should own your home and have it paid off in full. 

And the idea behind that is that if you own your home, and it's fully paid off, not only does it give you confidence and peace of mind, but it's going to free up at least 30 to 40% of your household cash flow, which either can be repurposed towards more discretionary spending and more lifestyle stuff, or drastically reduced how much you need in terms of financial freedom. 

And the second goal is that you need to build enough wealth that produces passive income that allows you to have freedom, how you choose to spend your time. So for me, personally, we're in our dream home, we still got a mortgage, but on track to pay that off over the next few years. 

And my passive income goal is $200,000 a year, which basically means that I need to accumulate about four to $5 million in investment assets. And if I achieve that, then I'll be able to produce that 200 grand a year in perpetuity. 

Now, the big thing for me is that property is an ancillary part of my overall strategy because of the returns that I achieve in business, particularly through acquisitions. So typically speaking, in my business acquisitions, we produce anywhere between a 30 to 100% year on year return. 

And that's mainly because of the way that we use leverage and the way that we structure those deals. And, and also, because I can be actively involved in that I have more control over it than a property. So my focus is business acquisitions first, and that's where I've built the majority of my wealth. 

And then the second component is that where there is extra free cash flow, that I utilise that to buy good quality blue chip property that I set and forget. And then thirdly, any remaining surplus goes into a diversified index fund. And essentially, that allows me to build the three components of my strategy. 

I've got my active wealth, I've got my property strategy, and then I've got my liquid diversified strategy. Strategy.

Tyrone Shum:  

Yeah, that's wonderful. So you mentioned that you're one of the key things that you've been doing successfully is acquiring businesses. So what type of businesses are we sort of referring to just [on a] general basis?

Jackson Millan:  

So all of the businesses that I acquire are what I refer to as strategic acquisitions. And they all aligned with businesses that offer services to our ideal client avatar being business owners. 

And so primarily, they are financial advisory businesses, accounting businesses, mortgage broking businesses, outsourcing businesses, those have been our main main focus in terms of acquisitions, because that ultimately is our core suite of services. 

And most of our acquisitions have been basically tuck in acquisitions, small acquisitions that we can roll into our group and deliver substantial service above and beyond what those clients we used to do, and then be able to cross sell the other services that we offer, once we've been able to show that we can deliver a lot of value. 

Tyrone Shum:  

Oh, that's very smart. So basically, that's, that's mainly one of the quickest way from what I can hear to accelerate your business is basically you're able to, I guess, acquire another business to be able to get the clientele and from the client to be able to cross sell all the other services that you have in your business. 

So that really rolls into a very, very smart strategy. How long is that? You said six years when you first started? So well, how long ago? Did you start acquiring businesses?

Yes, we actually [own] our whole value proposition because we realise that selling out of the previous business, we're going back to dollar zero, right. And we wanted to build up steam quickly. So acquisitions were actually a part of our original business strategy. 

So we actually did our first acquisition, I think, within the first three months of launching aureus. And our aim has been to try and do at least a couple of acquisitions a year. Last year was a big year of acquisitions for us. I think we closed five. And so were so yeah, it's been some, some, some pretty good growth.

Tyrone Shum:  

Yeah, absolutely. And how do you find these because I, I've got a lot of curiosity inside this, this realm of acquiring businesses, but I personally haven't done it myself, I've always bought or not bought to build a business and then sold it off, but never bought one. So just if you could just touch on, they'll be really fun to share with our audience and listeners to hear about. 

Jackson Millan: 

The best deals, and not businesses that are listed on the public market. And the reason for it is because businesses that are on the public market are largely going to sell for a premium, because those people are typically ready and primed for sale. And like any transaction, it's all about supply and demand. 

So when it's on the public market, there's typically multiple people bidding for it. So a lot of our best deals have come from our network. And individuals who have wanted to get out or have had a change in circumstance will have believed in our vision, and had wanted to join on board with us by way of a roll up strategy. 

There's multiple ways to structure deals. But yet most of them have come through networking. So what's really important around this is understanding from an acquisition standpoint, how do you develop a philosophy? What are you actually trying to achieve in business? Then work out? What are the types of businesses that meet that criteria, that philosophy, then start building a basically a list of individuals much like you would with a client list or a prospect list? 

And then how do you approach those individuals, facilitate the conversations and then start working out how you structure a deal, and then doing your due diligence, it is a very time consuming process. It can be frustrating as well, because there are a lot of deals, you end up saying no to more deals than you say yes to, as we probably know, the small business space, particularly for the owner operators, they can be cowboys sometimes, right? 

So you may not necessarily want to acquire [it]. So being able to have a really robust methodology around due diligence and deal making is really important. But it's definitely a skill, and you've got to have time to devote to doing it properly. Definitely.

Tyrone Shum: 

And the other thing I probably would say is a lot of these are usually individual sole operators, you know, they've been in the business for a while, and they've got a lot of motion behind it. So they think that the business is worth a lot more than what it's actually worth. 

So that's the technology challenges they have to deal with. And it's actually very similar to property, when you think about all the property is the same when you're actually going to say, look for a development site, and you want to find, you know, you got to go find them. It's not like they're always listed on the market, you go and door knock, and so forth. 

And a lot of people have been living there for a long time. They don't want to sell, but there's an opportunity there for [a] development site. And you got to get that over the line to look at the numbers and make it worthwhile for everyone to win. So very similar. 

It's all about that feasibility, right? And it's, once you get that philosophy right, when you can sell people on the vision, you can show them what's in it for them, then it's actually not that difficult. And bad deals fall over.

Sometimes at the last minute, which can be very frustrating. I'm sure you've seen the same in terms of the development site situation. But it's part of the business. It's all part of the journey.

Coming up after the break, Millan explains the most vital educational tools one must possess.

In fact, it's probably more important to understand the game of finance, because in all of those deals that I explained that fell over, were all due to lack of understanding about finance. And what I mean by that is how blending structures work. How servicing works, how equity works, how bank assessment policy works, all of these things I just didn't understand. 

He reflects on the importance of mentors…

And that's been the most integral part, and following my curiosity to find people who have done the things that I want to do, and then pick their brain and get access to their knowledge, and then go and implement it and basically make them proud. 

He warns listeners of the common mistakes that block individual success. 

And for most people, they have low motivation to manage their cash flow and high perceived difficulty, which means that they inevitably fail, they do not pass the action threshold and they don't do the right action. 

And that’s next. I’m Tyrone Shum and you’re listening to Property Investory.

Tyrone Shum:  

For Millan, the learning curve was large. Sharing some of his struggles, Millan encourages listeners to have the right tools before pursuing their own property journey. And, he starts giving them to us right now!

Jackson Millan:  

The big part was, I was laser focused on the property piece. And I wasn't interested in the finance piece, right. And you need to understand the game of finance before you understand the game of property. 

In fact, it's probably more important to understand the game of finance, because in all of those deals that I explained that fell over, [they] were all due to lack of understanding about finance. And what I mean by that is how blending structures work. How servicing works, how equity works, how bank assessment policy works, all of these things I just didn't understand. 

My first interaction with property was going directly with a bank. I didn't even realise a mortgage broker was a thing, like, and I'm certain another mortgage broker could have found me another lender that had more flexible lending policy that could have got me the extra money. Then, in the second scenario with the dollar chill property, I took the word of the broker, and I didn't challenge him. 

I didn't say, ‘hey, what can you do to find me other deals? Could we go to a specialist lender and then refinance later on down the track?’. I didn't speak the lingo. I just took his word. So because I didn't take a vested interest in understanding the game of finance and looking to learn, that's where I lost the money. And that was 100% my fault. 

So fortunately enough, as owning a mortgage broking business, I've been intimately involved in this, and I've understood it. But more importantly, we've built a philosophy to teach our clients the language of finance, and help them play an active role in learning how they influence their borrowing capacity. 

For example: How does servicing work? And what can you do to influence servicing? And how do you structure entities, particularly your business? So how do you use special purpose vehicles in order to maximise your long term borrowing capacity? How do you structure equity? Do you cross collateralize? Do you cash out and they have everything independent? 

Family guarantees, other types of deal structures, learning this kind of thing, and equipping our clients would [make] that toolkit a better client, because they're coming to us and seeking value. And then we can talk the same language as opposed to them getting upset when they don't get the particular outcome? 

It's okay, where they get the outcome, or this is what you need to go and do over this financial year. So then we can go and get that outcome next year. Right. And it allows us to have a proactive strategy irrespective.

Tyrone Shum:  

Yeah, I love it. It's so important to really educate yourself. I mean, from what we're having this conversation, I think the key thing is a lack of knowledge, because that's where it brings up fear, and last, and so forth like that. 

But actually, when you educate yourself, and you learn all the principles and understand how it all works, actually, it makes sense. And it's like, I guess riding a bike, if you've never ridden a bike, you're going to be scared, because you're thinking you're going to fall, you're going to crash and all that. But as soon as you learn to ride and balance, it's like, oh, this is the best thing in life. 

Get around. It's really, really amazing. Education is so important. And it's also feeding the mind with the right things as well, which is actually the perfect segue into talking about mindset stuff, because that's [the] reason why I wanted to talk about [it] as well. 

So I guess, looking at all the mentors and resources, because you said you've had some numerous mentors, tell us a little bit more about some of them that have been able to influence you and maybe share what you've learned from them as well. 

Jackson Millan:  

Yeah, I've always been a big believer in having mentors, mainly for accountability, right? I've found throughout my life, I've always wanted to find people that inspired me, and then rise to their level. 

And that's been the most integral part, and following my curiosity to find people who have done the things that I want to do, and then pick their brain and get access to their knowledge, and then go and implement it and basically make them proud. 

That's always been my whole philosophy. And it's always been on this idea of rising tide lifts all ships. Now, the big thing for me in terms of mindset, is that early in my career, I was chasing tactics, Mike, like most people I touched on earlier, people are asking the wrong questions. And I was asking the wrong questions, too. 

And I thought that wealth was created by building 60 portfolios and outsmarting the market and getting all the timing right. I'd probably watch too many Wall Street movies.

Tyrone Shum:  

And I think we all do it.

Jackson Millan:  

Yeah. And there was a moment for me which kind of came to a head where I was working with this particular group of clients, high income earners. living hand to mouth, right living on credit cards, just not getting ahead very much Keeping Up with the Joneses and succumbing to that cashflow creep as their income had increased. 

And I designed this amazing strategy for them. Very complicated with lots of moving parts, but it guarantees they're going to get to their goals, like if you follow this plan, you will do all of these actions, you implement this, you will achieve all of your goals. And [a] wonderful three months in that stuff that up. 

And I always wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake them like what's wrong with you? And it was that moment. Their mindset wasn't ready. They were not capable of following the strategy because they hadn't expanded that invisible ceiling yet. 

And then I started going really deep into behavioural finance. And one of the most fundamental lessons that I learned was loss aversion bias is the understanding that as human beings, we feel the emotion of loss twice as significantly as the emotion of again it. 

And it makes sense when you understand that we go back to caveman times, we didn't have any certainty of a roof over our head, or whether we're going to have food or whether we were going to be eaten by a sabre toothed tiger, right? So when we had resources, we guarded it with our lives. And we still experienced this today in the modern day, right? 

That unless you've got a significant reason for why you are foregoing your peace of mind, you will never move past that invisible ceiling. And what I basically said is, well, if I feel the emotion of loss twice as much as the emotion of gain, I must put twice as much energy and effort into pursuing the game and the purpose behind pursuing the game. 

Because if I don't, I'm going to stay where I am. And this is a lot of our philosophy, how do we increase the purpose and the perspective of the future, but raise the ceiling, the floor in terms of the systems that we fall back on. And this allows us to constantly create what I call money, muscle memory, we are reinforcing positive repetitions that allow us to progress our position.

Tyrone Shum:  

Helping change our mindsets, Millan shares the four key things needed to be successful. 

The first thing we did was brutal transparency. So I forced them to come face to face with their shortcomings and name them. And, okay, we stuffed up, because we blew out the credit card. And we chose not to take action on the plan, because of XYZ. Cool. 

This is what we called a feedback loop. We had a perspective, imagine that as a circle, we had the reality of another circle, and they weren't overlapped basically at all right? And what we're trying to do is through reflection, we're trying to get these circles overlap calibrated. 

Secondly, we spent more time defining what it is that they wanted, and why they wanted it. And this was like, Okay, I want to buy a house in Mandalay, I want to be able to travel with my family every year, I want to be able to retire at 60. I want to be able to have my home paid off in 10 years, all of these things and then we determine significance around these things. 

Why is this important? Like why do you really want that. Then third thing, we implemented [a] cash flow structure. And what we did is we segmented all of their cash flow, fixed expenses from discretionary weekly, Lumpy bills and holidays, and then surplus. 

And what that did is it used Parkinson's Law to limit the means they had available therefore limiting the means they had available to us. And then the fourth thing is that we allocated surplus in advance, we set up as soon as they got paid, allocating the surplus out of sight out of mind, once again using Parkinson's Law because they didn't have the money to spend. 

And we removed the credit card because the credit card is the worst financial mechanism ever created for wealth building. I've actually done an empirical study on this, and I've proven that for most, the vast majority of people, even those who pay off their credit card monthly and never pay interest, their credit card cost them in excess of $300,000 over a decade to hold. And the reason why they spend more than they would if it was their own money.

Tyrone Shum:  

That's right. That's the problem. Well, that's how credit cards make money, or credit card companies make money.

Jackson Millan:  

Exactly, that they aren't in the business of giving away things for free.

Tyrone Shum:  

No way. You know, they think that yeah, you get this nice, shiny credit card interest free, blah, blah, blah. No, that's a hook line sinking caught? Yeah. Correct. That is really, really amazing. I love that story. I think that's really for me, it's been impactful just to hear that, because it's so slight changes. 

 

And I think the biggest thing is accountability and transparency, because a lot of people usually just bury their heads in the sand when they hear oh, man, this is too hard. And I'm spending too much. I don't know what to do. They'll just put their head in the sand. And it's like, no, it's okay to actually confront it. Because that's how change and growth happens. Without that you won't make any change. And that's why you're stuck in that situation. Exactly.

Jackson Millan:  

And the hard part is that we are ambitious, that we tend to rely too much on discipline and ethics when we haven't done the reps to do that yet. And there's actually a book called Tiny habits by a guy called BJ Fogg. And he created a model called the Fogg behavioural model, which is basically an axis of consideration around perceived difficulty and motivation to do a task. 

And for most people, they have low motivation to manage their cash flow and high perceived difficulty, which means that they inevitably fail, they do not pass the action threshold and they don't do the right action. 

So through implementing these things implementing these systems, we presuppose that we get over the action threshold more often than not, which means that we start creating positive habits and behaviours, which means that we can rely more We're on discipline over time, because we've got a process that is manufacturing discipline as a byproduct of following the system, as opposed to an exception to the rule.

Tyrone Shum:  

Absolutely. And I love it. But it also to, in many ways, like I implement a lot of what you've just said, as well already as a habit, because it leads me 100 Think I don't want him to think at the end of the month, how much do I need to put aside for this fixed costs and all that stuff, I just wanted to be all done. It's all there. 

And if it's out of mind, out of sight, out of mind, so I don't have to worry about it. And that makes life so much easier. And you can actually have a mind free to do the things that you enjoy, rather than worry about cash flow stuff that goes on day to day. 

That's wonderful. So let's take a step back. And I think you've kind of touched on this, but let's, let's talk about anyway. But if you took yourself 10 years ago, and you met yourself, and you said Jackson, you know, I'm here, just to give you some advice, what do you think you would say to him?

Jackson Millan:  

I think it's about being competent, and backing yourself. And I struggled with a lot of self limiting beliefs when I was younger, and feeling like I wasn't worthy, and that I wasn't good enough. And I didn't have what it took. 

And I wish I had developed that amount of self confidence earlier, I think I'd be much further along. But frankly, I wouldn't be where I am right now, if it wasn't for everything that I learned along the way. So, I think I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Tyrone Shum:  

Wonderful. Yeah, I love that. And then let's talk about the future. Exciting things that are happening. So what are you most excited about for the future now that you've achieved a dream home, you've got these, you've got your goals achieved? 90% of it, your business is growing and so forth. But what are you most excited about now?

Jackson Millan: 

Yes. So my whole philosophy now is about defining the difference between enough and extra. And once you have enough choosing to pursue extra for fun, and that's where I am so big, my big focus is thought leadership. 

My aim is to publish three books a year, for every year for the rest of my life, I want to write 100 books before I die. So I've already got my next two books mapped out, I'm working on my third one that's going to be released. I had my last fall come out in December, which was great. 

So I've published three books now [and] three more this year. And basically focusing on trying to grow and scale the business to 100 million, which has been going to put us in a position where we can look at a stock market listing. 

And the main reason for that is one, I think it'd be awesome to be a publicly listed CEO, and just understand what it's like then what it takes to be a publicly listed CEO, and continue to grow and scale the business from there and try and create as much impact as we possibly can in the world. So that's what I'm most excited about.

Tyrone Shum:  

That's amazing. It's so cool. Well, I definitely am looking forward to being there on the day you listen on the stock exchange, make sure I'm there to turn him on the belfry. Love that. Wonderful. Well, you've achieved so much, Jackson in the very short space of time. 

I guess how much of your success do you think has been due to your skill, intelligence and work and how much of it do you think has been luck?

Jackson Millan:  

It's interesting that I wrote a post about this the other day, where I said I'm not smart enough.

Thank you to Jackson Millan, our guest on this episode of Property Investory.