Daniel Walsh says having the mindset of delayed gratification, initiative and a thirst for knowledge will accelerate your wealth journey.
Daniel is a renowned property investor, author of ‘6 Principles To Retire Younger & Richer’ and founder of award-winning buyers agency Your Property Your Wealth.
On his journey of transitioning from a ‘tradie’ at 19 years old to creating a $20 million property portfolio in his 30s, it was his mindset driving his successes.
On the Get Invested podcast with KnowHow’s Bushy Martin, Daniel talked about the importance of delayed gratification, expanding your knowledge and being proactive when faced with challenges.
Property success mindset: Knowledge is power
Knowledge not only provides the ability to problem solve throughout the wealth creation journey, but it also allows for new opportunities to be capitalised upon.
“If something goes wrong and I have the knowledge, I can be the person that fixes it. And that to me is powerful. Knowledge is power – you solve problems with knowledge, right? And if not, you live in fear. So for me, it was always about if I have all the knowledge, then I have no excuses. I have to just work hard and I know that I need to do x, y, and z,” Daniel said.
“I was very aware early on that my education was the only thing that would ever separate me to be able to understand how to build wealth. Even if an opportunity hits you in the face, if you don’t have the education it goes straight by you because you don’t have the education to see that it was an opportunity. And so I was always like, the more I learn, the more I know, the more I won’t miss an opportunity going forward.
“I think the only separator in life between where you are and what you want is knowledge. Because if you have the knowledge, then it’s laziness. If you don’t have it, it’s just because you don’t want to do it. And that’s okay. Not everyone wants to be successful and not everyone wants to create heaps of money. But for me, it was just more so understanding that it’s impossible to lose if you have the knowledge.”
Property success mindset: Show initiative when problem solving
Daniel urged investors to have drive and initiative when overcoming the different challenges which may arise across the property investing journey.
“Every investor, regardless of when they invest, they all have the same challenge. The landscape economically is going to change, you just have to deal with it, right? What are you going to do, complain? Like who’s going to listen and who’s going to fix your problems? At the end of the day, you’re the only person who can fix your own problems,” he said.
“So I used to say to myself every time, okay, I’ve hit a serviceability wall and I can’t buy any more property, what’s my problem? Okay, I have an income problem, so now I know what to fix next time to go fix my income problem. I had my second mortgage broker who was a very knowledgeable guy and a good mentor to me. And he said to me, Daniel, just be happy you’ve got four properties, you’ve done really well in life, right? I said, yeah I don’t want to know about that. What I want to know about is what problem do I have? And he would say, well, you can’t buy any more property, you’ve got a serviceability issue. Okay, so how much do I need to be able to overcome it all. All right, give me 12 months and I’ll be back at it. So the biggest thing when you have a problem is you either whinge about it, or identify it and change the problem.”
Property success mindset: Embrace delayed gratification
Above all, making choices based on delayed gratification will maximise wealth creation in the long term.
“I think people aren’t willing to sacrifice these days. If you go back and read my book, it talks about how I lived in a garage, which was converted into a granny flat at the time, till I was 28 years old. I actually had created my first million net worth at 25, but I was still living in a garage at 28. And the reason for it was, I knew that every year that I lived in that garage, I’d bring forward my retirement five years. Now I didn’t want to live there – it was dark and it was cold. And I had a house that I built that was three streets from me and it was a beautiful four bedroom home. I could have lived in that, but the cost of living in that was a lot higher than it was to live in someone’s backyard. So I was all about delayed gratification, right? And I think that people just need to work out what their priorities are in life,” Daniel said.
“The biggest thing that I realised was, as much as people say life’s too short, if you live a full life, life is very long. And I think you can do everything to a degree, but just need to balance it. But if you go and party and blow it all in your 20s, and you know you’re doing that because you’re living with your parents or because costs are really low and you don’t have a family. Just remember, you won’t get back that time, and you will then have more responsibilities when you get into your 30s and 40s, and then you will be wishing you took the opportunity in your 20s.
“What you earn now and what you save now will be very different. Even though you might earn more money in 15 years time, I guarantee you will save less of it because it’s a lot harder to save when you have a family, mortgages, you have kids and everyone’s going to school. So I knew that before it even happened. So I was like, I’m going to have a family in the future, life’s going to get tougher, and when I get to my 30s, I’ll have plenty of life left. So I wanted to make my time a lot easier when I had energy.”
Listen to the full interview here.
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