Loyalty, discipline and courage, along with a focus on education, are key qualities held by top property investors, according to military officer turned property expert Lachlan Vidler.
Property investing is about more than strategy. If you don’t embody the right core qualities, Atlas Property Group director Lachlan Vidler says you’ll struggle to succeed.
“If you can’t get your mindset right and you can’t get the underlying qualities and attributes right, you’re not going to have overall success. You could have a million dollars a year and you can put in the bank $900K of that, but if you don’t have those qualities to maintain it, eventually you’ll be blowing it and you’re just not going to set yourself up for success,” Lachlan told Bushy Martin on the Get Invested podcast.
Lachlan is a former Royal Australian Navy Officer and said successful people in the military and property investing share many similar attributes.
“I think the number one attribute would probably be discipline. From my perspective, discipline is what’s going to set investors apart from one another,” Lachlan said.
“You just have a look at the ABS statistics about property ownership … the stat is basically that the majority of property owners never make it past their second property, and the reason for that is discipline. Whether it’s hard to be able to keep buying property, whether that’s discipline to buy the right property first so you get that equity growth to help out with deposits down the line, or maybe it’s discipline to maintain control over your expenses so that you can keep borrowing.”
To have great discipline, investors also need the courage to sometimes seperate themselves from others and stay strong in their lifestyle.
“You need courage, because it really is a lonely journey. You’re going to have friends out there who are buying cocktails every single time you go out or they buy the next coolest bit of tech. So it takes a lot of courage and again discipline to be able to say no and stick to your path and sort of almost be that tall poppy and not let yourself get cut down to be able to achieve overall success,” Lachlan said.
It will take time to build these key qualities, just as it takes time to see the fruits of a solid and sustainable property investment strategy. Having the dedication and patience to see your investments through is crucial.
“It’s a long journey, everyone knows Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nobody’s going to build a $10M portfolio or $5M or even a $1M portfolio overnight. It’s something that takes a lot of dedication and to know that you’re not going to have those results overnight. In fact, you’re probably not going to have them after five or ten years,” he said.
“People often think ‘we can build up this portfolio, we can retire in our mid forties and we can do that in ten years’. But the reality is you’re probably not going to be able to and it’s that dedication to keep going.”
Further, loyalty to yourself and your team will ensure everybody is committed to your goals and best interests.
“It is so hard to build a good team around you. With loyalty, we talk about how you can have loyalty to yourself and your plan. But one of the most important things is loyalty to your team, and what I mean by that is it is so hard to find people you get on with on a conversational level but then also do a good job,” Lachlan said.
“Everyone has a horror story about a mortgage broker they haven’t worked well with and people also typically have a story about an accountant who maybe just weren’t really receptive to their calls or didn’t really help them out … but when you find a great team and you stick with them, you’ll know they’ve got your best interests at heart. The value my team bring into my life personally and on a business level, I can’t even measure it and I want to have the utmost loyalty to them because they show it to me as well.
“So to have the loyalty to yourself to know what it is that’s important to you, to know what your plans are and to keep going forward and don’t try to be somebody else, and make sure you embrace those team members that support you on that journey.”
Finally, a drive to better your investing knowledge will always contribute to your high performance.
“I’ve invested my time in good education. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to gain knowledge about how to invest, where to invest, looking at properties, looking at equities, looking at all sorts of other instruments that you can invest in,” he said.
“And for me, that was a really good use of my time, because even if I don’t get it right all the time, at the very least I can make sure when I do get it wrong, I’m the first to put my hand up and say ‘I’ve done it wrong myself and that the repercussions aren’t as bad as it would have been if I wasn’t educated’.”
Listen to the full interview here.
Want to Know How you can build wealth with the help of leading, qualified experts? Talk to the team at KnowHow, now.
