Rise to Greatness Event

I'm sure we've all wondered how to grow wealth faster, create more money, more time, and/or more freedom. But there's always that question in how you take luck, how you take luck out of the equation. So taking us on a journey into wealth is an international educator and trainer in wealth creation with over 9,000 one-on-ones, $2 billion invested, With the people that he works with. We'll learn how to move from profits into portfolio. The core philosophies and principles which is going to change the way you think about wealth and challenge you, challenge you around— now you've figured out how to earn it, can you keep it? And more importantly, can you grow it? It is a pleasure to pass to the author of— The Wealth Effect. Escape the Middle, a ripper book, it's outside, and, and the CEO and founder of Portfolio Wealth to show you why most people, why most people think about wealth and why the way they think about it is the reason they will never have it. So make some noise for Todd Polke.

All right, all right. It's so good to be here, everyone. I want to take you on a bit of a story today. I want to take you back to the year 1988. I was a 5-year-old boy running around with my 2 brothers causing absolute chaos for my mother. And as we were tearing around the house, something stopped me in my tracks. And I noticed something on the shelf that, to be honest, had probably always actually been there, but it was the first time I'd ever taken notice of it.

What is it?

And it was this little golden man sitting on the shelf over here. And as I got closer to look at this golden man, I noticed he was wearing some funny kind of suit, and he had a belt wrapped around his waist, standing on this wooden lectern. I didn't know what he was wearing. I didn't know what he was doing. The little place where that little plaque was on that little wooden shelf had long been gone. Little was I to know that that one experience there was gonna change the entire course and direction of my life and was gonna teach me skills and understandings and a learning and a way of life which have served me every day since then. And also taught me to be a better investor and how to teach other people to be able to take control of this thing called money in their life and use it to build wealth and create freedom. Now, I spoke to my dad about this a little bit afterwards. I was 5 years old, and he told me that it was Well, it was a trophy that he'd won playing the sport of judo. Now, my 5-year-old mind didn't really grasp what the hell he was talking about at the time. I grew up in a little place called Tuggerlahwa in Southeast Queensland, and there was 500 people living in the town, so we didn't really have a lot of judo mats floating around. It took me 3 years later until I moved to a place called Toowoomba, and where I was all of a sudden standing on the edge of my very first judo mat. I was 8 years old. Shit, I was nervous. There were all these people rolling around the ground and slapping it and people were bowing to each other. I didn't know what they were doing. I didn't know why they were doing it. There were these people with other belts and they were throwing people and people were going smash on the ground and it was a really nerve-wracking experience. The next 2 decades I spent with a big part of my life playing this sport of judo. I earned my black belt after 10 years of playing it. And those skills that I learned in there changed everything in how I think about wealth and how I think about investing. And this is what I've been teaching people for the last 2 decades of my life now, being 43 years old, I think is what I am, in order to be able to teach thousands of people how to take control of this money and build wealth in their life. Now, what I want to share about that is really important. Because the skills I'm gonna be talking about, the principles I'm gonna be talking about of wealth creation is probably different than what you've actually heard before. A lot of people have this idea in their mind that in order to be— create wealth, well, you have to have a lot of money to make money. You might have to be really, really smart. You might have to be born in the right family, have the right parents or something like that. I wanted you to know that's absolute utter bullshit. It is a lie that we're taught along the way. And I'm walking testament to that 'cause I grew up in a very middle-class family. Anyone else? Middle-class family, middle-class parent, middle— well, I'm not gonna say middle-class parents, shouldn't say that. But like, they had middle-class jobs in just a middle type of home. That's what it was. I had a good education, but I was a terrible student. I graduated on the wrong end of average. And I can tell you right now, those are the things which do not— they don't dictate wealth. So as I got out of school, I was standing at the, the mat of life as a white belt. And I had this script that I'd been taught in life. And this script, probably a lot of you actually already know. I call it the script of the middle. Now, let me know if this makes sense to you. Who understands this path of life where what you do is that you go to school and you study hard so you can get out of school and you get a safe, secure job? Then you can exchange time for money for the next 4 decades of your life, buy a home with a fat mortgage on it, pay it off, make the bank a shitload of money, put money away in a super and hope that's gonna save you, and just rinse, wash, and repeat decade after decade. Who's heard that rule of life and how we're supposed to follow it? Who's gotten to a point in their life where they go, this is a load of crap? Has anyone gotten to that point in their life at some point? I know that to be true, otherwise you would not be sitting in this room called Rise to Greatness. You've realized it's a load of shit, and you're looking for another pathway. Is that true for anyone in the room? You want another pathway that has a lot more options than the path that we're taught in school?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. That's why you guys are here today. And so I started off as a white belt, like what we always do in life, not knowing what to do, just following the script of life. Now, as a white belt in life, we go out and we get a job, and what do we do when we, um, we first have our job? We get a job, we earn some money, and who's had this experience of money in their life where money comes in, then it just magically evaporates? Has anyone had the mystery of the universe called evaporating money in their life? Has anyone had that?

Yes.

Yeah, I know you all have. We all have. Dollar comes in, dollar goes out. Now, somewhere along the way, we have this understanding that, well, working harder isn't a wealth strategy. Who's played that game where your philosophy of life was the harder I work, The more successful I'll become. Has anyone tried that philosophy? Right, where does it— if that's your only strategy, where does it lead? Burnout.

Burnout.

Who's done that to themselves before? Who's done it more than once, you haven't heard or learned the first time? Yeah, me, I've done it a few times now. And so that's what it is. It's not a wealth strategy, it's a survival strategy. So what happens? We move to yellow belt. When we wanna get ahead more, what do most people do? They work harder. They hustle more. They get a side hustle. They grind it out. And so they go and start get— to increase their income. But the problem is they increase their income and then they create this income trap at the same time, 'cause they've increased their income. As people's income increases, what happens to lifestyle expenses?

Rise.

They magically rise at the same time. Has anyone had this experience? Right, they magically rise at the same time. And then sometimes even more than that. And so you then, you can't go back from lifestyle, so you create this income trap. So you've got high income but low control. You don't have the freedom you want, you don't have the control you want, you don't have the time that you want to be able to have in life. Now then a lot of people, what they do is they go out and let's start a business because that will give me more freedom. Did anyone think that when they started a business? I'm gonna start a business, I'm gonna be my own boss, and I'm gonna have all the freedom in the world. Did anyone do that? Who got humbled quite massively after having that experience? Yeah, me too. So this is what I did. I was a personal trainer working 17 hours a day, running a small business 6 days a week, 50 weeks of the year, running the script, the harder I work, the more successful I'll become. And I burnt myself out. By the age of 20, I felt like I was broken. My body was broken playing judo, you know, for Australia at that point in time. Not sleeping enough, not recovering. Was a personal trainer, had leg surgery on both my legs, couldn't walk for about 6 months. Go Todd, winning the game of life, well done. My relationship was broken because I wasn't investing in it. And at the end of the year, the one area which I thought should be working really well for me given the amount of hours I put in, my bank balance, well, I was broke there as well. And I learned this important thing that if you don't get your money working hard for you, Then you're gonna spend your entire life literally working hard for money. And this is where I fell into the world of investing.

Oops.

But most people, they didn't escape the middle, they just upgraded it when you start a business. 'Cause a business can be like a black hole. It can take all your money, all your energy, all your time, all your freedom if you allow it to. One of the reasons you are here today is because you're gonna learn some skills not to get caught up in this black hole. 'Cause a lot of us have been there. And then we start working for the worst boss in the world, which is ourselves. Right? The problem isn't your work ethic, it's your dojo. You're playing by the wrong set of rules. You're on the wrong mat. And so at some point in your life, you've gotta step away from the script that we're taught. You've gotta step away from the middle. And you've gotta get a brand new set of rules of how you're gonna play the game of life and how you're gonna play the money game of life. Because you will never create wealth, you'll never create freedom by following the script that society teaches us. Society teaches us that the script which is designed to turn us into functioning cogs in the economic wheel of society, good boys and girls who do what they're told and pay their taxes. Yes? Who thinks that's a load of crap?

Yeah!

There's a better way to do things, right? And this is what we're gonna be talking about. Now we move into the world of Orange Belt. This is where you get started and you start, you get your first investment. When you buy your first investment, do you think most people have this well-thought-out plan strategy with the end destination in mind? You know what everything's going to be doing. You've done your due diligence. Is that how most people get into the world of investing? No, it's not. Certainly wasn't the case for me when I first started. Most people's strategy is they buy something and they hope like hell it goes up. That's what most people do. Now don't get me wrong. It was such an important moment in your life if you've gotten to that point, and when you get to that point, it's such a critical moment because you take on the identity of being an investor, and that is really critical, really important. But if you just keep playing this strategy, you're gonna get to a position of being stuck. Now, who's investing in the room already? Who's already an investor?

Me.

Okay, great. Now, has anyone had the experience where you've bought a property or 2, or you've done some shares, you've done some stuff, and then you've gotten to a point where the brakes felt like they'd been put on, you can't move forward at the pace that you really want to in your investing. Has anyone had that experience? 2 of you, come on, sure, come on. I've worked with thousands of investors, I know the truth, right? And it's because they play the strategy of buy and hope. Now, what you need to understand about investing, and this is really important, every asset needs a job, but most people's assets are underemployed. Unemployed or underemployed. Every element you install in your portfolio has to serve a purpose. If it doesn't, then what the bloody hell is it doing there? The people I meet that have properties in their portfolio which aren't performing for them, they're actually holding them back, is significant. Everything has to earn its place, otherwise get out of it. So when it comes time to getting your green belt when it comes to the world of investing, Every asset has to earn its place. Now, I bought my first property at the age of 20 years old. By the age of 26, I had 5 properties within my portfolio. It was cool, right? It was great, but I was still an orange belt when I was doing it. So at the age of 26, there was this event that happened in 2008. Who remembers what it was? The global financial crisis. The global financial crisis. Does anyone remember this type of thing? And so I went from 5 properties to 0 properties in the space of a very short period of time. Fail. And the reason is, is because I thought investing was about buying shit. I thought it was about buying assets. I didn't realize that investing is about building systems. You don't buy assets, you build systems. And so every element has to serve a purpose within the portfolio. Wealth creation isn't about buying assets, it's about building systems. After I lost everything and started rebuilding again, that's where I got my green belt because I started becoming intentional. I realized that building a wealth system, well, I had to protect what I was building. I had to learn how to keep what I was actually building. I had to learn the psychology of building systems as opposed to just buying some things. I had to learn about how to take control of my personal finances in a greater way, learn how to manage debt and leverage effectively. Systems, there's 7 different areas of your wealth creation system you gotta take it on. It's not just buying some things. If you just buy some things, then I can pretty well guarantee you're gonna get stuck along the way, and I meet thousands of investors and this is exactly the place they are. But along the way in investing and also in the world of judo, as you get to going from green belt to a blue belt, this is where a lot of people leave the sport. Because when it comes time to getting your blue belt, it's not just about learning some more throws or learning some more grappling and then demonstrating it. You have to earn competition points. You have to have actually stepped onto the mat and applied what you know in competition. And this is the same in life. You can't just learn some things from a book and hope that's gonna work out. You have to actually step onto the mat in life and in your finances and wealth and actually take action on it and be able to implement it at a deep, deep level. And then you have to compound over a period of time, because that's what investing is. The strategic deployment of capital compounded over a period of time. Who's heard that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world? Has anyone heard that type of thing before? And it's really true. But if you give up at the first sign of challenge, you do not even give your portfolio the time to get into that compounding type of nature. This is building resilience in your portfolio, because wealth isn't built by one great decision. It's built by 1,000 boring ones which stack up over time. When we move on to brown belt, this is where we have to convert our assets into cash flow. Because really importantly here, accumulation of assets builds wealth. Cash flow brings freedom. So we have to get to a point in our portfolio where we start converting all everything we've done into a cash flow which can actually support our life. And when you do that and when you lock away your wealth, This is where you step into the world of earning your first black belt when it comes to the world of investing. Now, I've got a very short amount of time left. I wanna tell you a quick story about when I was playing judo in Japan. In Australia, you go from white, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, black. In Japan, they have 2 belts, white and black. That's it. So I was playing judo in Japan as a brown belt. And there were these white belts which were kicking my ass. And I was— my ego was just taking a big, big hit, right? And I thought, these aren't like the white belts I face at home. What's going on? And here's what I learnt. In Japan, you only get your black belt after you've mastered all the skills because they now consider that you are now ready to learn. Whew. When I learnt that, when I took that on board, it changed everything in my world. And I wanna share with you, when you create your first level of financial freedom, there's 4 levels by the way, when you create your first level of financial freedom and your portfolio covers your cash flow, and now you have your most valuable asset back being your time, how you think about life and what you do changes. You're now ready to learn because we're not caught up in the day-to-day of exchanging time for money. You wanna build wealth which outlives you, and this is what's really important. And I'm gonna finish off with this. Who here wants to be able to give back to something bigger than themselves?

Woo!

Leave something for their kids, leave something for generations, have a cause that you truly do believe in. Build wealth which outlives you. That's what the bigger game is about. Make as much money as you possibly can, handle home base, live an extraordinary quality of life, but then finding something bigger than yourself to be able to give back to. That's what true wealth really comes into, and that's what it's all about. Now, the question you've gotta ask yourself is, have you stepped on the mat right now, or are you still watching from the sidelines? I've got a little gift that I wanna give you guys. It's a wealth diagnostic. It's gonna give you a personalized 21-page report which is gonna tell you what belt that you're actually on right now in the world of investing. It's gonna give you specific action steps including a 90-day plan of what you can start doing about the 7 different areas of wealth, how you can start plugging the gaps in it, And you can start compounding your capital, start earning your first black belt in judo. In, well, judo if you want to. In investing and in wealth. And if you want some help earning your next belt, we've got a booth at the back. I'd love to have a chat to you guys later, but make sure you get this. It's gonna be absolutely invaluable for you. Thank you guys so much. I hope you have an incredible next couple of days.

Todd Polke! Thanks, buddy.