Step 7 of the 7 Steps to wealth is ‘Be all you can be.’ For me, like Custodian, this is a way of life. The genesis of this step is the question I ask myself every day: “Have I reached my full potential?” The answer is perpetually an emphatic ‘No.’ Therefore, today and every day, I must take one step forward. That sums up our philosophy and culture. I recognise life can be a struggle. I embrace the struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

I’ve posed this question of potential to clients and thousands of others, aged anywhere between 8 and 94 years old. I’ve only ever had two answers; ‘No’ and ‘Not even close.’ It baffles me, then, to see so many people literally stuck or standing still. If you’re standing still, you’re practically going backward.

The second question I ask myself is “What is the one truth that I know that the rest of the world doesn’t — or doesn’t recognise?” The answer is Step 1: Buy land for growth. The truth very few know and even fewer practice is that land appreciates while buildings depreciate.

In 7 Steps I speak about buying my first investment property in 1984 and paying $16 per m² for my land. Our first clients paid $66 per m² for their land in 1998. In 2019 that same land is worth a staggering$750 per m². That’s a growth rate of 45 times in 35 years and 11 times in 21 years. There is simply no other asset class in Australia that has grown by that much. And yet— most property investors waste their money on apartments.

Even more impressive than these growth figures is that our clients bought their original properties using just a $20,000 deposit, paying a mere $180,000 for both house and land. Today those properties rent for $23,400 annually, and grew in value by roughly $50,000 last year alone. That’s an astounding return by any measure, and it has our clients laughing all the way to the bank.

More to the point, though, our clients have used their original investment properties to duplicate, many with enviable portfolios of more than 10 investment properties. Even more relevant, these clients can each own more than 5,000m² of land — in high growth areas that are still appreciating better than any other asset class.