Mega Conference 2012 – Who went, who did you learn from most?

had to wait to get home, didn’t fancy posting this from my phone

Essentially Steve McKnight focussed on two broad areas for investment success: building your capital through either your career OR an income accelerator (or both) and then investing in RE through your chosen strategy/ies. If you’re goal of financial freedom has a deadline of within 5 years he said you really need an income accelerator, and as Marty Ayles pointed out the only real way to make money is through business, shares/markets or property. So there were a range of speakers on improving your existing small business, or creating your own online business to sell and make $$, as well as day traders or those profiting off the stock market.

One really useful thing for me that came out of Marty Ayles was the concept of loan portability and substituting security of your loan. What this means is you take a property, add value + sell. but when it comes time to sell, rather than get your bank to discharge the mortgage to release the title, you deposit funds from the sale into a fixed deposit account and have those funds acting as security for your loan and keeps your loan alive. You then can find another property and move the security to the new property. Caution – not all banks do this, some require a transfer of title to occur on same day. Its best to discuss this with a lender/broker prior to setting up loan.

Marty Ayles is a very successful property developer, yet he said he is really in the business of FINANCE, not property. He said our job as property investors is to become an expert in finance. We need to know what is possible. He spoke about the possibility of getting valuation on completions to release your own funds from a project on completion rather than waiting for settlement. This was also brought up by Dean Parker who is a successful renovator. He manages to get his $$ out of the deal as soon as the reno is complete, so by the time the RE photographer comes through, the ad goes up and it sits on the market he has very little of his own money left in the deal and can move on to the next one quicker.

Diana Nightingale presented on motivation/mindset. The key to her message was simple: “The secret to success is this: You become what you believe you are / what you say you are”. Believe in yourself, set your goals, know you can achieve it and you will. Earl Nightingale, her late husband, is an inspirational speaker and we were privileged to receive a CD recording of possibly his greatest speech. He’s worth looking up if you need to work on your mindset/goals/self belief…

Troy Harris was there sharing some of his recent successes with Developments, the numbers in his profit column were inspiring to put it mildly. He spoke about the importance of due diligence and number crunching and tried to dispel the myth that a LOT of cash and experience is needed to develop, with the right education its achievable earlier than you may think. Julie & Dave Siacci WOWed us with their creative ways to use Vendor Finance in conjunction with ANY strategy to add value and cashflow. They really know their stuff! They have used VF successfully with buy & hold, renovations, flips and more. a JV lawyer was there in a separate workshop to remind us all about the importance of a very solid JV contract that covers everything, a business plan detailing who is responsible for what and timeline of measurable steps. Ideally a good JV contract gets written up, signed, and put in the bottom drawer and not seen again.

Steve mentioned its a waste of time to spend hours on realestate.com.au searching and encouraged us to write our “shopping list” for our perfect deal/property and farm it out to 50 agents and get them looking.

A licensed value spoke of the importance of attending auctions to gauge market value and sentiment, and how market value is essentially just three opinions – The VENDORS / The other buyers and most importantly YOURS.

Katrina Maes presented on the importance of staging, she has some great ideas to share and stressed the importance of using double beds instead of single beds whenever they’ll fit. Plus pillows, everywhere, and artwork on the walls. She said to remove any evidence of “work” in the house, eg pests, cracks, chips, stains, rips, weeds etc and to modernise things like light fittings, knobs, curtains, glass panes.

My mind is still spinning after all the info. Was my first mega conference and I was very impressed. Sure there’s still a bit of sell-fest going on, but the speakers are all high calibre and they do impart with their knowledge. There’s less HYPE at the end and more of just what they offer, and Steve did also remind us all the importance of getting quality education, which tends not to be the free kind…

I just had an image in my mind – any Harry Potter fans out there? I feel like Dumbledore – have just pulled out all these silvery wispy thoughts from my head and thrown them down into a big bowl here for others to share. I would love to hear from others who attended to share some of your key learnings or takeaways.

I couldn’t attend this year, but should be able to make it in Sydney next year.

Last year’s Marty Ayles presentation changed my life, it was so inspiring. In the 12 months since, I have progressed towards developing 3 townhouse sites with close to $2 million profit. The first development site starts construction this week and have 2 others going through the DA process at the moment.

In 12-18 months I will be able to chuck in the corporate job and do what I want with my time, being semi-retired before 40 and just pursue what I am interested in.