Interview with Adrian Investing Trading and Relationships

Hello. Hello. Hello, everybody. There we are, Adrian and myself. Hi, Adrian. Great that you're here.

Hey, Katie. Great to be here. Nice to see you.

Yes. So we're going to talk about relations and in general, investments, but of course, also the link between the both of them. And I just like to know from the people who are watching, do you know anything about investments? Do you want to know anything about investments? I do. I do. Because I think it's very important that in a relationship you invest, of course, but also in the money part. So that's why Adrian and I joined up, because Adrian is a specialist about money. I'm not so much. So I learned a lot from Adrian, I hope, in this meeting. So Adrian is a stock trader, but is also an investment. And we don't dive too deep in it because then I don't understand it anymore.

Let's see how we go along.

So let's start with a question, Adrian, about investment in general. What does it mean for you and.

How long did you. Perhaps you can introduce yourself a little bit about it.

Sure. Okay. I mean, let me give you a quick background, because one of the things I want to stress in this is a lot of people, a lot of couples, are scared about money. Now, they may not be. You may not be consciously scared, but there is a hesitancy to talk about money and finances and investment in society in general. And, you know, one of my missions in my training business, so I teach stock trading, and I've been doing that for several years now. One of my missions is to really help people get through that stigma and that fear so that they can face their investments and take action and be empowered. And that's true for individuals, but it's also really, really important for couples.

Because generally everyone comes to a relationship with a money blueprint with different beliefs about money and investment and different levels of risk tolerance. And it's very challenging to be able to align two people on something as emotionally charged as money. And so I hope today what we're going to be able to do is tackle a lot of that or at least start that journey. So let me step back a little bit and just tell you a little bit about my journey. So I've been trading stocks now for 15 years, and I started very small, basically, with a dream that. That I didn't want to work forever. I just wanted to be free. I saw what my dad did early in his career, and he just worked his guts out. And he was a slave to the corporate machine. He traveled all of the time. He was Always away. Whenever he was at home, he was working hard, up late and short tempered and frustrated and all of those things. I saw early on that, that the lack of financial freedom was a problem in life. Now it wasn't a problem for my parents relationship. My parents had an amazing relationship which I absolutely aspire to replicate and to build on. But I could still see that there was tension and issues because there was a lack of financial freedom. So early on, 15 years ago, I decided that that wasn't going to be me. So I started learning to invest and I basically fumbled my way around for about three years just trying different things, losing money, up and down, up and down, up and down, not really getting anywhere. And then one day I stumbled across this book which changed everything for me. And I won't bore you with the details of the book, but basically what it was is a series of interviews with a whole bunch of different investors, in fact traders. And what I learned was all of those amazingly successful people had their own method which fit their personality and their personality and their objectives. The great thing about that is they were all at peace, they all found it easy and they could make their decisions in flow.

You could just see in their words and in their interviews, they just loved it.

I realized at that point that if I was to be successful, I had to have that too. I had to find my method, the approach that fit my personality and the lifestyle I wanted.

That became my journey. As soon as I found a method that suited me that fit my personality, fit my lifestyle, fit my objectives, it all became easy. The stress came out of the money conversation. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And it actually is the same in relationships. Of course.

Yeah. Because when you have the same values and you have the same or you have objections but you align them, then the relationship can grow and flow just as the same as she said about the money.

Yeah, absolutely. And in, you know, if we just tie the money in the relationships piece together.

I've taught countless traders, I've helped hundreds of people with their, with their financial decisions and their trading decisions and trading strategies. And what I see over and over again is lack of alignment between partners. Now it's all very well and good for me to say I'm going to trade and I'm going to invest in, you know, the Nigerian stock market and I'm going to take, I'm going to borrow money against my house because I'm going to make it big because I see this amazing thing happening. Don't do that, by the way. Okay, that's just using it as an example. But if my partner, if my wife is completely freaked out by that idea, rightly so, because it's a stupid idea. But if she was, then you can imagine the tension, right? Because I've done something I believe in. She has a completely different set of beliefs in this example. And every single little thing that goes wrong is going to cause friction in a relationship. Every little up and down it's going to be, see, I told you so. And then there's going to be. But hey, look, it's working and I'm going to make it rich and you're not supporting me and this and that. And that sort of conversation is what we absolutely want to avoid in relationships when it comes to money.

Yeah, that's very cool because it's. Well, I just see it in my coaching sessions that money is a big item. Talking about money at least and what you said, objections. But also the blueprint we have there. Sex is one, of course, and the children. Those are three very hot topics.

And depends on yourself and your blueprint and what you learned so far. So how did you get aligned there? Did you had a system or did you just talk about it or what is it, what you did there with your. For instance, within your partner relationship, how did you find blueprint?

It was kind of, yeah, it was kind of by accident that I realized that I had missed this. Right. Because I was always going along trading and my wife and I, we were, you know, we were happy now relationship. Things were going well and I was being pretty conservative in my, in my trading and I got to a point where I wanted to increase my risk just a little bit. You know, I just want to be a little more aggressive. But still, I'm a pretty conservative kind of investor. My risk of exploding and losing everything is very, very low. And so I sort of tentatively approached this conversation with my wife and said, look, I want to change what I'm doing a little bit. And she's like. Her response was, that's fine as long as you don't lose the house.

My response, what do you mean don't lose the house? Whatever you do is fine, I trust you. Just don't lose the. I was like, how would I lose the house? Well, like, I don't know, you're the one doing the trading. Just don't lose the house. And I, you know, when we dug into it, we actually, this actually started the dialogue. And I think that's the key is deep discussion about what do you want? What do I want? You know, what do we understand about each other and what we're actually doing? It's the same as your other conversations, Katie, that you're having about relationships. You know, when you talk about sex, when you talk about children, all of that, it's about alignment.

We had this situation, and we actually dug into the conversation about risk and risk tolerance. And I had always assumed that my wife was very conservative, and she is, but I'm more so, I think, when it comes to investing. And so she said, look, I'm okay as long as you don't lose the house. And I figured out what I would have to do financially to lose the house. You know, how much risk I would have to take, how much I would have to borrow and how badly I would have to trade and all of those things. I was like, there is no way in hell I'm ever going. That's just not going to happen. I couldn't imagine remotely taking that much risk. This would never happen. And that, for me, was a good realization because I was way down from the threshold of pain in the relationship. You know, if something happens, like there's a. There's a. There's a level of event or money loss or volatility that would cause friction in most relationships, I would say. And I was operating way down here, well below that threshold, which was great. Right. So we didn't have that sort of argument. But you imagine if it was the other way around, if I was the very aggressive one and she was a very conservative one, and we didn't realize that's the problem, because that's when you're constantly banging up against someone else's threshold of pain, fear, stress about money. That's what we have to avoid.

Yes. And you said one very important thing, because you said, I assumed that she was as conservative as I am. And that's the big, big issue, not only in your conversation there, but in everything. Because we assume our partner knows us, and after a couple of years, it's likely that they know us. But still, when we do, those assumptions, it's killing. Just like you just explained. So. Right. So with a good example. So great. But why do you think it's so important? Because I really want to know this. So important to be financially free. Because that was your journey. Your why went along, actually. But why is it so important in the relationship to have this kind of freedom? Because I'm not yet. But I'm still very happy in my relationship. So why do I. Yeah, I think I can say that.

You should ask my husband to check it, but.

I'm very happy.

So why is it important to be financially free?

Look, in the relationship? Because that you want it. Okay, but why as a family is it important?

Okay, cool. So look, I.

Most people are unwilling to talk about money.

Openly.

In our relationship and in our family, we try very hard to have open conversations. The kids know about our net worth, the kids know about our investment strategies, the kids know about stock trading. And I've actually taught my two younger kids a lot of the fundamental principles of stock trading.

If we have that sort of open conversation about money.

The stress goes away. So I'm going to talk about openness about money, then financial freedom because they're two steps in the path. So by having that sort of open conversation regularly, it makes it easy for us to talk about any money related issues. You know, a new investment opportunity pops up that we hadn't dreamed of taking. And we had one of these just a couple of weeks ago where an investment opportunity was presented to us that was so far outside our comfort zone. But boy, it was an amazing opportunity. And so we had the conversation. We agreed, look, let's dig into it and see if we can make it work. See if we can get the finance done, see if we can get the deal. It was a big property development project. And so because we have such a good history of open free money conversations where we share our issues and concerns in a family without holding anything back and without fear of repercussions, it was very easy to explore this big big deal. Now it was probably.

Almost 100 times bigger than anything else we'd looked at. Now we could have done it, the deal fell through, someone else took it. But the fact that we could have that conversation easily was amazing. We took the kids through the deal and they asked a bunch of questions because the kids have played the cash flow game and looked at property investments and all that sort of thing. So we took them through it as well. So they're now comfortable having that sort of conversation. So I think the first for financial freedom and finances in the relationship, the first step is to get comfortable talking about it and sharing. Because it's only by being comfortable doing that that you can raise your uncertainty or your fears or your.

Or your concerns.

If you can't do that, then money is always going to be a stress point in the relationship. I would say the first step is to deal with that, get comfortable discussing it. I mean, money is just money, you know, it's, it's just little bits of metal or paper or plastic. It's Not a big deal. It's what we make it mean.

Yeah. It's the worth we give it.

Right. And the worth we put on ourselves because of how many of these things we have. Right. Which is ridiculous because we're all. We're all amazing, intelligent, incredible beings, and we're not measured by how many of these we've got.

No, not at all.

No. So, you know, let's get past the fact that the stigma and everything about money and just be willing to discuss it with our loved ones, with the kids. Because if you can discuss it with the kids and they don't grow up with that stigma and those issues, how much better off are they gonna be? Right?

Yeah. Yeah, they are. A lot. We're teaching our son the steps we learn now, and we take him along. So I hope he doesn't have those stigmas later on when he's investing or making his money work for him. Because for me, financial freedom is also very important. I'm not there yet, but working towards it. So what's the next step you just talked about? Because one was openness and talk about it, and the second one was, well.

That'S about then using that to go and get financial freedom. Go and achieve financial freedom. You need to. I believe in a relationship, you need to have the openness so you can discuss and do the things you need to do to get free. If we weren't able to have those discussions, we would have made very different decisions in our relationship, which would have probably caused us to be trapped and not be free. Which house you buy, which car you buy, where you live, what trips you go on, where you spend your money, where you invest your money. All of those things are critical for achieving financial freedom. So why do we want to achieve financial freedom? Well.

I. For me, it's gonna be different for everyone. But I think fundamentally it's about choice. You know, do we want to have to get on the bus for an hour and sit in traffic every day to go and sit in a cubicle and do a job that someone else tells us to do and then go home, eat, sleep, and do it again? Do we want to have to do that? Well, many people love their job, and that's great, okay? And I fully respect that. But you can love your job and also have the choice whether you do it or not. That's cool, right? It's a game changer, because the year that I made more money trading than I made money in my job.

The whole world changed for me. In my mind, it was just like, oh, I have so much more choice now. Cool. And that is a. It's a sense of security. It's a sense of, for me, a sense of kind of possibility. Like, okay, cool, I'm loving what I'm doing right now, but I can imagine that in six months or 12 months or whatever, I might go do something totally different. We might jump up and move country. We could quit our job and just spend six months together hanging out and being a family.

The financial freedom for us has allowed us to experiment with the way we run our family. You know, we've done. Most people have husband goes to work, wife stays home, or husband and wife both go to work. We've tried husband goes to work, wife stays home. We've tried wife goes to work, husband stays home. We've tried both go to work. That really sucked because the nanny did all the work with the kids and now we're both at home. And so there's a whole different dynamic in the family, in the relationship, because we get so much time together.

Yeah.

And it's just, you know, and I love that. I'm very happy and I think we're very blessed to be able to do that. And. And I would love for everyone to be able to do that. I think that's why financial freedom is so important. Because if you're people in your life you love, don't you want to spend more time with them? I mean, that would. And if, you know, if you're on your own, because some people are, that's cool. If you've got financial freedom, you've got the choice to do whatever you want. You can travel, you can experience different things. You can, you know, there's all sorts of freedoms that open up to you. When you don't have to get on that bus, sit in traffic for an hour every day, and then do the job 8 or 10 or 12 or 15 hours.

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. I love this freedom that I can choose every day where I want to work, what work I want to do, with whom I want to do it, etc, etc. So that's the freedom. I already have the financial freedom. Something next, because for us, it would be that we can show our son also how it is in other countries and how other cultures works. And that's important, to have respect for each other, et cetera, et cetera. But also that he learns how it works and have the freedom also to choose later and to spend time together more time than indeed what you're saying. Everybody went away own ways and work and go to school, et cetera. So, yeah, that would be really awesome. And next to this, help other people with the money I earn with my financial freedom. And I know it's important for you too.

Yeah, I think the next, the next thing, that's a good segue into the next thing, which is legacy. I mean, you know, we could work our whole lives and if we, if we never invest and get ourselves free, there's only so much you can do for the world when you're no longer here.

Yeah.

But if, if we can achieve financial freedom and then grow a legacy, there is just so much more impact we can have on the world, both on our immediate family and also on the world more broadly, depending on, you know, where you want to kind of put your emphasis. So, you know, I was asked by a close friend many years ago, why is this investment thing so important to you? It's just money. Like, why do you want so much money? And, yeah, she was, my friend, was very much into.

You know, social causes and, you know, volunteering and helping people and all of that. And my response was, look, you can, you can do this work and it's wonderful. But if you had $100 million, how much more impact could you have?

Yeah.

Or, okay, $100 million might be too big a number for some people to imagine. Okay, what about just a million? You know, it's, you can still leverage, you know, and get so much more impact once you're free.

Yeah.

And if you want to, if you want to, if you want to volunteer your time and help more people, you've got more time because you're free.

Yeah.

So money and time is a pretty amazing combination. And, you know, that's, that's another reason why it's important to me to be free and to help people be free.

Yeah, I totally agree. What is then the.

What is important in investment or in trading or how to start, of course. And how to keep learning. But also, should you have a system or just look in the papers or what is it what you can recommend to people who don't know that much about it yet?

Yeah, absolutely. So for anyone watching in the comments below this video, I've posted a link to a PDF document that you can download for free. That's 10 lessons I learned reading 150 books about stock trading. I call it the Ten Commandments of Enlightened Stock Trading. So some of it's in there, but let me kind of give you a quick overview. The most important thing is understand yourself.

Because with all investment, no matter what anyone Tells you there's a degree of risk. And we need to understand our own risk tolerance and levels of comfort so that we can choose a type of investment that matches that we're going to be comfortable with. Let me give you an example. If I am comfortable with a certain amount of risk and I take an investment that has a large amount of volatility, and the value of that investment goes up and down much more than my level of comfort, how do you think I feel?

Not so good.

You get worried, you get stressed. You get fearful that you're going to lose all your money. What happens when you so your emotion is going up? When your emotion goes up, what happens to your intelligence goes down?

It's the same as in the relationships.

Also, of course, if we're fighting in our relationship, we say the most stupid things. We don't say the most intelligent things.

No, not at all.

And if we're fighting in our relationship about money, it's even worse because we're emotionally charged about money and we've got the relationship stress. Right. So the first thing is understand yourself. And when I teach stock trading, one of the first exercises I go through is a game to help people understand their risk tolerance. Okay. Now, the mistake a lot of people make is that they do it for just themselves. Now, if, Katie, if I was to teach you how to make money trading stocks, which I could certainly do, and I only talk to you and you only think about you, we've missed a very critical part of the equation. What is it?

Yes. My partner.

Your partner. Right. So not only do you need to understand your own kind of risk profile and objectives, but also your partners. Because we need to come to some sort of match that will help keep the relationship that the family unit comfortable.

Yeah.

Now, it's not about being complacent or about taking no risk, but it's about making sure that no one is freaking out and no one's emotion and fear is out of control. Because as soon as that happens, the couple starts making bad financial decisions. And if that happens, you're never going to get free. Ever. Yeah. Yeah. So first step.

Get awareness and comfort with your own level of risk tolerance and objectives and with your partners. Make sure that you can form a set of objectives that is right for you as a couple, not just you individually. Make sense?

Yes. Yes, it does.

Cool. The second step is to find an investment strategy that you want to learn. Now, a lot of people think, well, my wife isn't interested in shares or my husband isn't interested in shares or you know, I don't like property. My wife wants to do. You don't need to necessarily align on the vehicle. I don't believe.

Okay.

But you do need to. Someone needs to take the lead and do it. And the other needs to trust.

Yeah.

Now, part of that trust is having clear, open, honest communication and being aligned on your objectives and your risk tolerance. Yeah. So if one person wants to trade shares and the other person isn't interested in trading shares, this is the case for me. Yeah. Stephanie, my wife knows all about what I do, but would never do it for herself if I wasn't around. So I do the share trading. I communicate with her about how it's going and what my strategy is and where my risk is and all of that. And, you know, she asked questions to get comfortable, and I continue on. But the share trading is my passion. It doesn't have to be her passion. No, I think I can. I can help us get free by doing something that I want to learn and keeping her informed and in the loop and having the discussion. We don't both have to do it, but she is great and interested in other things. So she will focus more on property. I would focus more on shares, for instance. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, we share. We. We share. We. We both do a little bit of each, but, you know, someone has to drive each piece.

Yeah.

And part of it is the discussion about who's going to do it. And, you know, it's no, it's no good trying to do something that you hate because you're never going to do it consistently.

No. But that's also the same in the rest of the relationship. Some people like doing the garden, for instance. I hate doing the garden. So we also. They are split tasks. So that's the same in the trading or the investments.

In investing. Absolutely right. So, you know, someone has to keep track of the finances. Someone has to do the stock market decision. Someone has to kind of manage the properties. And someone has to decide when to buy and sell gold and keep track of the precious metal. Like, whatever you do, it can be divided up between you, but there needs to be a meeting of the minds, a conversation regularly to check in on how it's all going. Because it's important for the family unit that, you know, everyone understands what's going on.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Clear.

What is it?

How do you learn about it? So we can read books, we, of course, download your tips.

And then where to start? Do you need a lot of money? That's my blueprint. You need a Lot of money to make investments.

Ah, yeah, right. And look, that's so common as well. Okay, where to start? The first thing is to start with your own education. No matter what investment strategy, if you're looking at, you know, buying properties or trading shares or, you know, choosing a fund manager or, you know, any sort of investment that you're going to do, you need to choose that vehicle and set. Set some objectives and you need to learn about it. Because if we're not, I mean, have you ever made a decision, have you ever made a decision without.

A good level of understanding of all of the different implications of that decision?

I think I did, but then it was the wrong one. And if I invested first, then the chance was very likely that it succeeded. Yes.

So a lot of people will jump to invest quickly because I know I need to invest. I'll just buy some stocks. I know Facebook, I know Google, I know Apple, whatever it is. But that early investment is far better placed in your learning than in the market.

I would much rather see someone buy some books, study a course, get a mentor, get some coaching to learn the foundational principles so they can then launch with confidence.

Yeah.

Because you don't make that investment in your learning education. First you're going to launch in all excited, all enthusiastic about you going to be a millionaire next week, and then you start losing money and you wonder what happened and you can't follow it through. You don't just don't have the confidence. The learning and the education, the mentoring is what's going to give you the confidence to follow it through. Because every investment strategy has its ups and downs, right?

Yeah.

And if you want to follow, if you want to push through the downs to get to the ups, you need to have that confidence, and that's where you need the education. So if you want to learn to trade stocks, you need to find a mentor or a program or a course to learn stock trading. You can, of course, learn from books, and people can do that. I taught myself from books, but it took 100 books and three years. And that's like a fate worse than death for most people. So I don't recommend people do that. It's cheaper and quicker to just do a course and get some mentoring. But some people like to learn themselves through books, and that's fine. But for me, one of the big principles to think about for financial freedom, opportunity cost. I could spend five years learning it myself, and that'd be amazing. I'd feel pretty good about myself. But it's five years if I Spent months learning under someone's coaching or by doing a program or course, then I've got four and a half years to invest, I'm going to be way ahead compared to if I'd spent five years trying to teach myself.

Yeah, I agree, I agree.

So if how to do it, I would suggest people choose a vehicle, property, real estate, commodities, whatever it is, and then start to educate yourself, do a bit of reading to find the areas within that that you're particularly interested in. And then once you know where you want to focus, go deep and learn that and then start.

Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. But then still, you need a lot of money. Adrian isn't there.

Right, I forgot about that piece. So look, I think that's a common perspective, but I would say it's never too early to start because if you start investing in your knowledge and education about financial freedom and investing now.

Once you've got a strategy that you're comfortable with that you understand, how much easier is it going to be to find that money in your life to put into that strategy and to invest in it because you've got the confidence.

Right, yeah.

Contrast that to the person who doesn't do any training or learning or education, doesn't have any confidence, wants to invest. It's very easy to say, ah, I want to buy a property. Well, I need heaps of money to do that. So yeah, I'll do it later when I've got a pay rise, when I get a big bonus check from my boss, when I get an inheritance, when I, when something else happens externally.

But the education is cheap, typically, I mean, you may have to spend a few thousand dollars to learn, that's fine. But it's cheap compared to what you're risking being uneducated. And it's cheap because by doing the learning you can get the confidence to go find the money to invest.

Yeah, I mean, I started, I started trading with very, with very little money, just seven half thousand dollars. And as soon as I was confident, I was very easily able to change my lifestyle, to save more money, to put more money into my trading account, to make it grow faster, because I had that confidence.

Yeah, so you had a mindset that you knew that it was going worthwhile. You learned already about it and then you saw the importance of putting money away or aside for that part.

Right, right. So I worked, I mean, I worked very, very hard early in my career to, to put money aside, to say, to save money, to invest with, to get free, because that was my objective.

Yeah.

But I would not have been able to do that had I not had the confidence in my strategy. Had I not learned a strategy. Otherwise you're just saving money and putting in a bank account. I mean, that's never going to get you free because money in a bank only gets less and less valuable over time. You need to actually put it somewhere where it can grow. And so.

You can do that with confidence once you have the education.

So do you need a lot of money to invest? No, you need a lot of education. You need to invest in your education so that you can then find the money. Because you can trade with very little money. I mean, you can open an account and trade forex or, or CFDs or anything. A few different instruments with a few hundred dollars. If that's all you had.

Yeah.

Now if you want to, if you want to trade stocks, you probably need a little more money. If you want to buy a property, you probably need a little more money. But let's say you learn a lot about property. This is a great example. Because a lot of people say I can't get into the property marketing. It's market. It's too expensive.

Expensive, yes.

Right. But did you realize that if you had the knowledge to go and find a good deal and you came to. Came to someone who has money with that deal, you could split that deal with them or you can sell them the deal?

Yeah.

So you can invest without having any money if you have the knowledge.

Yeah.

So I think it's, it's a tempting excuse. I don't have any money, how can I invest? But everyone can invest in their education and learning and everyone can have start having money conversations to open this up in the household and those two things that will change the game.

I totally get it now. So I just have to start investing in my learning there and the same as I do in relationships. I learned there are heaps. So I start doing that in investing too. And then I get the confidence. And then actually everything you're talking about, the blueprint, actually about talking with each other, the openness, the trust, the confidence you need in yourself, actually that is the same blueprint as you need in relationships. In total, completely the same, actually. Yeah, I like this very much. But I never realized that for me it's in relationships. It's very clear. I also see it in business. This, you can do the same step in business. But I never realized that for the money part and the investment part, it's actually completely the same too. So I had my learning already.

Yeah. So I mean, let me ask you this.

We could argue about lots of things in our relationships, right?

Yeah.

For most people, money is probably right near the top.

Yeah.

Why? Why is that?

Because the same as children and sex, it's. They feel that they are.

Just. They have to justify themselves in their actions, in what they are doing because it's so loaded with emotions and they are afraid of the attack of the other persons on them. So they already start to attack first so that they don't get hurt. But if you do that at the end, both are get hurt actually. But. Okay.

So I think it's because of all the emotions attached to it and everything we learned in the past about it. But you. You agree or do you see different?

No, I absolutely agree. And you know, you imagine if you could take all of that charge out of it, out of the money conversation, if you could just talk freely about what you want to do, where you want to invest, what your fears are, what you know, what your concerns are, and get that from your partner and then come into an alignment. You know, eliminating the money stress goes a long way towards improving a relationship.

Yes.

You know, you know, when things go well financially, it's easier and when things get. Go bad financially, it's harder. It's just. I mean, I don't know why. It's just we need money and we're depending on our spouse or our partner to work with us on that. But if we eliminate that by dealing with it, by getting free, by investing well and by aligning with each other, the whole relationship becomes better.

Yeah, it is, it is. Actually, we're on the same spot as in our last discussion with Mindy. That.

The same conclusions, actually, that you have to start together and talk together about what is important for you, which values are important just the same as you said in money, what is important there in values? Do you want to invest or what's the word? Do you.

Want to take high risks or low risks? So talk with each other what is important for you and decide on that, and then you take the next step and then you say, okay, what's the goal? And then take the next step by putting actions to it. So actually it's the same there too as in relationships, as in money. And I think in our next talk about sex, it will be the same steps.

It probably is too. Yeah, a little bit similar. Let's hope you don't have to talk about money and sex in the same conversation because that just wouldn't work at all.

I want to pick up on something you said about, About. About the risk because, you know, it's very easy to gloss over some of this. Now let's say we're having a conversation about risk and you say, well, you know, I'm a very conservative person. I don't want to invest in the stock market. Well, I'm a very conservative person. I don't want to do a property development. Yeah, I think what I would encourage you to do, not just you, but everyone listening, is separate those two statements. I'm a conservative person and I do or don't want to invest in the stock market. One doesn't follow the other.

Now, I would say it's the way you invest that determines the riskiness of the investment. It's not necessarily the instrument that you're investing in. I've had countless people come to me and say, I'm kind of interested in the stock market, but I'm really conservative. So I don't think trading is the right thing for me. I'm like, are you kidding? Really?

The reason people think that trading is risky or aggressive is because of these crazy movies that they watch like the Wolf of Wall street and that sort of crazy stuff where there's this perception that the stock market or some other financial instrument is hugely risky. It's not. It's the behavior that's risky. So what I would encourage you to do when you're having a conversation with your partner about risk and riskiness and objectives, is just be really clear. If you say to me, I'm conservative.

Yeah.

Okay, good. What exactly does that mean? You know, if you, if you were to invest 10,000, 50,000, $100,000 euros, whatever you, in an investment, how much volatility would you be comfortable with on the way on the journey to making money? Not just, I'm conservative, I shouldn't invest. That's a cop out. Because that person will never be free because they'll leave their money in the bank and they'll die broke, which sucks. You know, that's not good for you. It's no good for your relationship. It's no good for your kids. It's no good for the world. It doesn't do anyone any good. But if you take it a little further, you explore, okay, yeah, I'm conservative. What that means is I'm willing to put up with, you know, a 10% fluctuation in the value of my investment, or I'm willing to have a very small probability that I lose my money.

Yeah.

You know, whatever it means for you, explore that more deeply. Because by doing that, it frees you up to then design a strategy that you. That you can do. You know, I've. I've designed trading or investing strategy, trading strategies with all sorts of different objectives. You know, I've had students who can only make 10 trades a month, and we designed an amazing, fantastic trading strategy for that student. I've had students who come to me completely scared and freaked out by the idea of putting money in the stock market who are now trading actively because they figured out what was their risk profile in detail. Like, specifically. Not just, I'm afraid, you know, don't. Don't be that person. Be willing to dig into it. And by digging into it, you can get clear. And by getting clear, you get options.

Yeah.

Alternatives become clear to you that, okay, well, I can do this. This one doesn't fit me. That one sort of works. And you can then start to take action. And that's what's going to drive you towards freedom.

Yeah. Yeah. Because both are not connected, the vehicle and the decisions about yourself and the risk you want to take. Yeah. That's actually what you want to say.

Yeah. But most people tie all that up together and go, I'm afraid I can't invest. I don't want to risk my money. But, you know, we got to separate all that out. Yeah. Yourself, the vehicle, the strategy, separate them all. And then find a combination that works for you and your relationship. And then you can start the path towards freedom.

Yeah. Cool. I can talk for hours and hours. Yes. Because it makes sense and you are so passionate about it. I like that very much. It's very inspiring to listen. And I get this feeling like, okay, let's start this.

Yeah.

But what I learned first from you now is to invest in talking about it, but especially about learning about it.

Right. Yeah.

So do you have some good tips where to learn about it? Because you said books, but for me, books wouldn't work. Some people do, of course, difference on communication styles. But.

They can do it with you. Of course. Because I know you have kind of. You have courses, trainings, but also for people who doesn't know anything yet and want to start.

Yeah. So look, I mean, one of.

When you start the research process, what you're really trying to do is find an area that appeals to you so that you can go deep.

Yeah.

So you want to stay pretty shallow until you find that area of interest that you're going to actually invest yourself in. Right. Yeah. So, you know, there's countless resources online for this sort of thing. But.

If you started just by looking at, say, something like Investopedia. It's a website that's got information on all sorts of investment strategies and all sorts of investing concepts. You could just do a little bit of reading and just take some notes about what is appealing, watch a few videos on there, read a few articles about different styles of investing in the share market, about property investment, about precious metals, and just get a bit of a feel and see what catches your imagination and your attention. And once you've got that, you. Then it's about refining the Google search, if you like.

Okay. Investing is very, very broad. I want to invest so I can be free. That's great. Okay, let's get more specific. So the first thing is figure out where you're going to focus and then drill down. And then once you've drilled down, there's probably another decision where you do a bit of learning. Okay, I want to invest in the stock market. Good. Do I want to be like Warren Buffett and buy good value companies? Do I want to be like Adrian and have a systematic approach that takes me five to ten minutes a day and it's basically driven by rules and software, or do I want to be like someone else? You know, there's lots of different ways, but if you do a little bit of learning across the spectrum, then you can decide on the one you want to drill into, then you drill down and that's where you go and invest to get your education. Because at that point, you know what you want.

One of the things that I see often which really upsets me about the financial education market is people will go to a seminar and they'll see someone speak who is teaching trading or teaching property, and they'll get all hyped up and excited. They'll spend their two, $3,000, $4,000 on that course and they'll get to the course and it's completely not what they need because they haven't done a little bit of research themselves to understand the spectrum. They've just been enamored by this guru on stage.

Yeah.

Okay. So I like, I like to encourage people to kind of understand the spectrum, choose their niche, and then drill down and then invest in the, in the courses of the education.

Yeah.

Another great source is Udemy, a online course. Maybe, maybe you can put a link below, but it's a, it's an online aggregation sort of site for courses and trainings in all sorts of things. And you can get a lot of courses very, very cheap or free on there. And you know, if you get a cheap introductory course and you get into it and you hate it. It's a pretty good deal that it's not worth investing $5,000 in a deeper course on that topic. Right. Because you're going to hate it. If you hate the shallow stuff, you're going to hate the deep stuff with a passion. So you can use some of these sort of things to figure out your niche. You know, where do you want to focus, what you really want to learn? And then you go and invest in the real course. You put your couple of thousand dollars into a program to really learn and master that thing so you can get started and make some money.

Yeah, cool. Cool. I have heaps of questions, but I think we're already 45 minutes ahead, so. So I just want to say if you want to know more about this subject, just write down in the comments your questions and Adrian and I will repeat to them. And you can also see that we put a free download there. So Adrian already told about the 10 tips. It is about investments. If you want to have more help about the communication part, just give me a call and just reach out to us. We are really glad to help you.

So let us know what you're wondering about, what you think about it. Just get more comments. If you only see this later, just keep on writing the comments. No problem at all. I think, Adrian, it's the same for you, that you really would love to help other people to get started and if they have questions.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I'm super passionate about getting the finances right in relationships. So if you've got questions about how we do that, then post them below in the comments. And if you've got questions about a particular investment vehicle or how to deal with a particular issue. This is not a financial advice column. This is just to people who have had a whole lot of experience about relationships and money. So we can give you some direction and guidance, but ask your questions and we'll give you some direction about where to look and where to learn more and certainly adding our perspective. So please do that and I'll watch the thread and answer questions as people post. That'll be cool.

Yeah. So thanks very much, Adrian. I love to listen to you. I will come back to you with more questions. Already know that now, so be prepared.

Absolutely. Yeah, my pleasure.

Yeah, I'll speak to you later. And thanks for today. Have a really great evening. Because you're in Australia, aren't you?

I am, yes. It's about 20 past 9 in the evening right now, so almost time to sign off. Got a little bit more work to do, but yeah, it was great.

So thank you very much for your time. Your free time in the evening then, also. So thanks a lot and see you next time. Bye.

Okay, bye now.