AUSTRALIAN WEALTH BUILDERS WITH OPENCORP – AFL’s Matthew Lloyd on setting yourself up for success

Then, hear from former Essendon player and Australian Football Hall of Famer Matthew Lloyd as he’s interviewed by OpenCorp’s Michael Beresford on his property portfolio. They break down his journey into the property market, how this marries up with his AFL career, and the lessons he’s learnt along the way about maintaining success.

TRANSCRIPT:

Australian Wealth Builders, helping time poor executives build financial independence through property investing. Welcome again, podcast powered by OpenCorp. I'm Cam McClellan, your host, and I've got with me Matt Lewis, and a good friend and business partner. Matt, how are you? Good, Cam, good to be here. Yeah, fantastic. We've got a special guest on today, which we've got an interview. I'm really excited to be able to bring people new names and faces and new insights into property investing, because I think it's important for people to get multiple sources of information. Matt, give us a rundown. Who have we got and why is it pointing to the discussion we want to have today? Yeah, I guess really excited to have Matty Lloyd, who's obviously an ex Essendon AFL football player, and I mean, played hundreds of games, one of the all time leading goal scorers in the AFL, and it's absolute superstar and a little bit like as well. So, yeah, I think the audience will find it really interesting, perhaps not what people expect of a, I guess a sporty person who's not just, I guess, played professional sport, but played at the highest level and had a long career in that sport and moved on to other things outside of that. I must say, he's probably one of the most humble guy and the nicest guys. You never know with TV personalities and sporting athletes get that perception of being untouchable and you're not sure how they might interact, but I mean, we've got a box at Marvel Stadium and our clients are blown away when he just drops in there and has a quick says hello to everyone and he's happy to sign anything or chat about footy or any sort of topic and he's just a really down to earth bloke. I think he's kept a very humble manner about him over the years. Yeah, absolutely. And as I said, it comes across, but I think what surprises a lot of people when they start to hear his story is that it's not what they expect of an AFL footballer to put their mind into post career.

And yeah, I guess having been around other footballers in like in my time, that many of them are retired during mid to late 20s if they're lucky to go beyond 30 and it's a very short career if you kind of imagine for most people starting going, I know that in 10 years time, this income stream is going to dry up. Would you do something different with your, I guess, investment strategy or how you treat your money in knowing that the career has an expiry date? Yeah, and we deal with a lot of different sporting athletes, professional athletes at OpenCorp and we've helped many of them build property portfolios. And we do take a slightly different approach when we build those portfolios as opposed to our main traditional clients that we have coming through. So we ensure that we're looking at those contracts, how the property is going to perform at that risk period at the end of the contract. But I think it's a good point that you make that a lot of people look at someone's sporting career and I do a lot of speeches, as you know, with year 12 kids and a lot of different sporting codes. And one thing that I'll talk to even the year 12 kids about is follow your dreams. You know, out of life, we only have one go at this life, we need to follow our dreams. Now, for me and for you and for a lot of our clients, our dreams are enabled by our property portfolio. So that's the reason we build property portfolios. If coffee cups would give us capital growth and good yield like portfolios do, we'd be experts in coffee cups, but property is the subject that gets us through our life. But a lot of people look at, you know, sporting athletes and like you said, they'll think, well, they get to, you know, the mid 20s or early 30s and their career's over and what have they got? Because, you know, the top earners earn really well, the middle rung earn enough to get by. But the way I explain it to the year 12 students when I'm sort of telling them to follow their dreams is at least those athletes, they followed their dreams, they had a red hot go at something they really had passion about and they've got the rest of their life to go on, you know, to better themselves or leapfrog from what they've built so far into a new career or a new investment strategy. The way I look at the majority of Australians, 99% of Australians is that they plod along by the family home and get to the end of their working career, some of them on really good salaries and get to the end of it and they've got nothing anyway. So at least the athlete followed their dreams and had a red hot go at life. So, you know, I applaud them. Yeah, absolutely. I just thought you were talking there, I started thinking, I reckon you and Al, pretty much I remember from the time you became mates with Al and you both started your investment journey. So this is Al, your brother, Al, who's our business partner? Yeah, Al, my brother, yeah. You approached it like AFL, like footballers, like there was, I know absolutely with absolute certainty for Al, there was no way he was working past 30 and he, every decision he made and the way that he approached it was about making sure that he was ready to go out for, I guess, a paid career by then. And I guess a lot of investors, if they took that approach, would change the decisions that they make early on. Yeah, very true, very true.

Just on that, we'll get into the interview with Matty Lloyd, which is actually done by Michael Beresford, who's the Director of Investment Services, OpenCorp. But first I wanted to talk just briefly about and give listeners some real value today. One of the, I mentioned before that I do talks for the year 12 kids and I do those, you know, once a month and have been for many years and the talk's not on property, it's really on Money Smarts and that's the name of the course. And I got asked during this lockdown period, can I create that and turn it into an online course, which I've done for, you know, kids who are obviously in lockdown and I can't get to the auditoriums or out to the different schools. So that's available on our website. It's a six part short video course and it goes through the difference between ambition and goals, it goes through the number one reason, there's a really valuable lesson there on assets and liabilities that everyone must learn regardless of whether they're gonna invest in life. This is the number one reason why people have become poor in this country at the back end of their life. And there's a huge amount of good value there. I actually recreated that course when I was asked to go to the different sporting clubs and we got down to the point of analysing some of the contract dollars. So there's a bit, there's a few numbers in there. So the blend on the website is a blend between the year 12 and the sporting code courses I've done, but that's been presented to AFL players, NBA players, all the A-league soccer or football teams, all the NBL teams, got, you know, huge amount of clients, especially in the basketball area, you know, Mitch Creek and Andrew Bogut as clients. So the athletes get some real value out of it. And I think because they're getting value out of it, the year 12 kids do as well, you know, and they love seeing that sort of that star glamour, but if it gives them motivation and makes them think about money smarts, I'll use it to motivate the kids. So that's available. You can go into our website and the resources section. It's free. You can get on there and watch those videos, get your kids to watch the videos. They're good for anyone who wants to invest or anyone who just wants to know about money.

But we've got the interview with Matty Lloyd. Louie, before we get into that. I was just gonna say, I mean, it's pretty well documented that I was really fortunate and now we have a father who was an investor who taught us, talk about it at dinner table, had his house plans out on the table, pouring over them at night as his second job and taking us out to building sites when we were sort of young kids. So we grew up with that education and we were immersed in it. And it was something that obviously like becoming, I guess, part of our extended family cam as well. And you started to get to absorb all of that stuff as well and just sort of run with it with your, I guess you just immense, you're like a sponge just wanted to absorb as much information as you could. But very few people actually have that exposure. I guess that's the gap that you're feeling there with the material that you provide to schools. And it's not the sort of thing that kids are gonna learn at school anyway. Yeah. And similarly with sporting, they've been immersed in a sporting context where they're absorbing information about how to play sport. And that's their sole focus for so long. But yeah, often even through schooling, they ignore a lot of the content that might not necessarily relate to what they perceive is gonna be their future career. But once they're making money and once they're earning good dollars, but they realize the brevity of that career, then it starts to really change their, I guess, their mindset. And they wanna learn about these things. And anyway, yeah, I think that's a good content to come out of. This is a many-void interview. Yeah, no, no. I think you're a hundred percent right because I was probably wasn't exposed to the property knowledge from my parents when my parents were in business. And I saw my business parents build a small business and use agents and then leverage that, sell their family home and go and buy a motel out in the country and went broke in that. But I was exposed to them living out of baked bean tins and as a kid, you just roll with it. Do you know what I mean? But being exposed to that, I think that was a light bulb moment which I realized I wanted something better for my kids. So when it came to trying to desperately trying to find a reason why I didn't have to wake up to an alarm clock, once I realized property was a means to an end, yeah, you're right. I was like a sponge. I think the Money Smarts course is really valuable because like you said, people get to a point where they realize they need to do something, but what it does for kids is stops them making the financial mistakes that sets them back for decades if they made wrong mistakes with bad debt. So it's really important that people watch that.

I had a really humble introduction. It was a really flattering introduction from the head of house at Knox College one day, which actually stumped me for a few minutes. I didn't know how to respond to it when the way he introduced me, I've been doing it for a couple of years there. I had a new grip of year 12, coming through in October, I usually do the course out there. And the introduction, which we put it on the website because I felt so flooded by it, but it really rang true to why I'd made the course. And he said to the kids, in all of your school years, in all your high school and anyone that goes to university, in all the hours you're gonna spend in schooling and learning, this next hour is the most important. And it really knocked me back that a head of house, that's what he does all day long. He'd recognized that what I'd taught the previous kids in one and a half hours or thereabouts was so valuable. And it brought me back to year 10 when I realized I was just frustrated with the crap I was learning at school because it was valuable and I should have worked harder at it, but it wasn't teaching me about my goal about wanting to learn about money. And so, yeah, hopefully we filled a gap there for some kids and definitely sporting athletes. I'll just take my kids out of school now and just get them to watch that video. You should. Well, part of the presentation is actually about money smarts versus street smarts. And I do outline in there that they both compliment each other. One is not higher than the other. So there you go. The Matty Lloyd interview, we're gonna go through Matty's number one financial goal, how property investing gave him peace of mind during times when he was unsure. And he's got four big takeaways, four key takeaways of what's really important when it comes to investing. So, but in reaching his financial goal through property was really very much. So most people would know him as a footy player, as a TV personality, but he's a property investor. So enjoy the interview with Michael Beresford.

Hi, I'm Michael Beresford, Director of Investment Services at OpenCorp. Big thrill for me today is an Essendon fan. I've got 270 game AFL player, superstar premiership player, Matthew Lloyd here with us today. And funnily enough, we're not talking about footy or at least not for the whole session. Matthew is a successful property investor and has been investing over 20 years. So keen to pick his brain about what he's learned through his footy journey, what he's learned through his property journey. Matthew, thanks for joining us. Great to have you along. Thanks for having me, Michael. Yeah, great to be here. Excellent, so let's start at the start. Everyone knows that you kind of had a long and successful AFL career. How did you get into footy and how did you reach the top? Yeah, my dad played 29 games for the Carlton Football Club. That's a pity. Yeah, I was pretty much born with a footy in my hand. I had two older brothers who loved the game of AFL footy too. So pretty much from the age of three, that's what I wanted to do. And worked pretty much from 15, 16, pretty hard to get there and got on an AFL list at 16 years of age. So it all happened pretty quickly. Yeah, right. And I guess, how did you get into property and how did that start? So I remember how nervous I was when they said you'd been drafted to Essendon and Essendon had a golf day, had a golf course around the Essendon area and I arrived and Kevin Sheedy was there waiting for me. I was there with my parents and I expected him to start talking to me about forward craft and how to play the footy. And he actually sat me down and said, you know what, I wanna tell you something. I want this to remain with you for the rest of your life. I want you to own a property out of this football career that you get. Don't blow your money with gambling or whatever else you're gonna do with it. I want you to own a property. And once you've done your first, I want you to own your second. Once you've owned your second, I want you to own your third. So actually, he taught me so many things but that stuck with me forever about being smart with your money. It's a short career, make the most of it. Yeah, right. Would you say Sheeds was the biggest influence on your life, I guess, not just your career? Yeah, obviously outside my mum and dad, Sheeds was massive, you know, from a footy perspective, I'd never played full forward before. And he had, from day one, plans for me to take over as full forward. And I was 16 years of age. So he just took me on my first session and just started hammering balls at my hands. And I wasn't allowed to mark on my chest for my whole career. He said, if you want to be a great full forward, you must mark out here. You're not allowed to mark on your chest. So everyone else was allowed to mark on their chest, but I wasn't because he said, very grateful boy, you got to mark here. And then on the same conversation, he's telling me that I've got to invest in property and I've got to own property. So he taught me two critical things for the rest of my life on field and off field that stuck with me forever. Yeah, right. So I guess, were there any consistent messages or processes that you took to improve in your footy career? And clearly you did it very well. Into property investing, were there similarities there and kind of flow over? Yeah, I think there is. I know for me, just no quick fixes. There's no really something that you can do today that suddenly you're going to be the best tomorrow. Or, you know, there's no, you're going to make a thousand, hundreds of thousands of dollars by buying something and hoping you can sell it in a year. I knew I was 78 kilos when I walked into the footy club, I finished at 94 kilos. So that's 16 kilos that it took me 15 years to put on those 16 kilos. And like the property, she'd spoke to me about, you know, about pretty much the, go to the worst house in the best street, just things like that, that I go, oh, worst house in the best street, I was 16 years of age. I went, oh, what's he mean by that? They didn't teach me this as well. Yeah, they didn't teach me that, but I'm thinking, okay, what's he mean by that? Okay, let's just get in a great area. If I can get in a great area, I'm earning.

So I started, it took me probably, I started at 16, but by 19, I'd established myself as a regular, playing every week. And I started to earn probably more than my parents at 19 years of age. And I thought to myself, okay, I reckon I'm ready to buy my first property. And yes, I bought an apartment in Moonee Ponds, a great area around the Eston area when I was 19. At the same time, a small weatherboard, a two-bedroom place in Ascotdale. And I had them for seven or eight years, both of them. And yeah, it was just a great introduction to property at 19 years of age. There you go. Yeah. Was it nerve-wracking getting started in property? Yeah, it was. But my manager at the time, he had a property background. He was a property lawyer and things like that. So he would go and do the auctions for me and assist me in what he thought was the right number to go to. And he knew the market back to front. So it was just great to pick the brains of my manager at the time. And he would go along with me and go. I showed a lot of properties. There was times where I was too eager, wanting to get a property and go, no. I'd walk that flat because he said, no, that's not the property you should be buying. So yeah. So I learned along the way, don't just jump at that. You've got to pick the right one. Yeah. So I had some great people around me in the early days. Yeah. Outstanding. And so you talked about the first couple of properties that you bought. What motivated you to kind of continue along that journey and not just stop with one or two? Yeah. We were having a chat off there about what you'd like to do if you were in what you're doing. Property for me, it excites me. I can pick up the paper every Sunday and go, oh, what did this go for? I live in the Bayside area. So I love just seeing what things are out there going for. I often think about some houses that I've sold. What would they be worth now? Should I have held on to them? So I'm always thinking about property. And I just, for me, I sometimes think if I didn't play footy, fitness industry and the property industry is sort of two loves that I have outside of football. And I often get asked that and property comes up a lot. And when I was 21, I was ready to move out of home. I felt it was the right time. And again, like there was a big decision on where, and because I grew up out that way, Moonee Ponds, you know, there's a street in Moonee Ponds that I would drive up and down and go, okay, I reckon that's the street I need to be in from a long-term investment perspective. And that's where I moved out at 21 and bought a home there, which was good for me as well. Awesome.

And we're talking off air, I guess, around what your portfolio has allowed you to create now. Did you have that kind of clarity when you started out or did you just kind of know that through the influences that you had, that property was going to be good and work for you long-term? Yeah. I think that's how I realised pretty early on from those two I bought at 19, that I could just see the growth and the rental returns and all that sort of thing. It was just great to have something. I just felt good about myself, that I had something that I could say, yeah, I'm working hard on the football field, but as a result, I'm able to get into the market and I'm doing things that all my mates I went to school with and they're working hard at uni. I'm at 19 years of age, sort of back to front in footy, like my mates are all striving to get to 30. Suddenly they've done all their studies and they get a job. And whereas for me, I'm sort of back to front. I had to make as much inroads and I didn't know what I was going to do after football. So I used to think to myself, I've got to make the most of this while I can. So like I used to with my footy, I'd think the same with my property. How can I make the most of it while I'm earning this money? And I used to think, the better I go on the footy field, the more opportunity it's going to create for me in the property market as well. So as every few years went by, I just looked to, not the stakes, but the investments would get bigger and bigger, but not silly investments, but the bigger land size, better strength, better area. And I'd probably use that, the growth in the property that I'm looking for from the previous one sometimes to sell those and upsize to the next one. So I always liked to have the one I was living in plus some rentals as well. And it's really helped me to get to where I am today in regards to the house, the dream home that I'm living in now as those small stepping stones from that first couple at 19, make growth on them. And I'm pleased to say that I haven't lost out on one just by not looking to just try and get in and out nice and quick. I've sort of done the long-term, sit on it for a while, let time take place and get that natural growth and return to the investment. Yeah. It's so cliche, it doesn't take a long-term approach, but it's true and it works. Yeah. And it's probably quite similar to the economic times that we're in now. Not every player plays 270 games and plays in a premiership team. And I'm sure not every one of those 270 games was getting eight goals and being in the Brownlow votes, right? So I guess over the long-term of your investing journey, how were the lessons that you learned when you were having kind of your low periods in your career or maybe struggling or coming up against an opponent that had you measure? What were the lessons you took out of that, I guess, into economic times and what that meant for your portfolio? And I guess why I ask that question is we help our clients understand that being greedy when people are fearful and fearful when people are greedy makes sense because supply and demand drives markets. So yeah, Ken, I guess- Yeah. I know, like for me, the first footballer I ever laid eyes on and thought, wow, now I realise why he's so good was James Heard. So probably for my first 12 months, I just watched him. And I know everyone remembers when he hugged the fan after he kicked the goal. I watched James with a bucket of balls for every training session. He'd grab a bin and he just practised. He practised that shot after every training session. And I thought, people see him and go, what a freak. But I saw him do those things at training and he rehearsed it time and time and time again. He was just so diligent and everything he did was at 100% intensity. I thought, no wonder he's so consistent because he's doing it time and time again. I sort of feel, for me, I try and be consistent.

So I know I had a lot of teammates who, one minute, yeah, they're just doing things brilliantly. And then two weeks later, they've dropped off and they're very inconsistent. And I just felt like, for me, that the parallels, just be consistent. You've got to have some down points, but your lows aren't going to be as low. And that sort of thing, I just felt like I was always trying to be level with footy. And across the course of the season, 22 games, I'm going to have four or five bad ones, but my bad ones aren't that bad. Whereas for other people, their bad ones are shockers. And then they'll play a good one every four weeks. And I think relating it to this, I'm not looking to be, oh, I've got to buy now, I've got to sell now. I just feel like it's just being a model that you ride out the bad times and you just make the right decisions at the right times with a clear head. And because I'm not looking to chase that quick fix or anything like that, that you've just got to, yeah, you'll come out of things okay. Things ride themselves out. That's sort of how I view the parallels. I'm not sort of an irrational person, sort of try and be pretty clear and know that if you've done the work and you've done the research and you're speaking to people like yourselves who know more than you do, and you're not trying to make crazy decisions yourself, I think you'll always be okay. And that's with footy. Always ask questions of people who knew more than me, who I respected, and same with property. I don't make a decision myself. I'll come to guys like you, Michael, that know more than me. And get that key advice from. Yeah. Awesome. So, we kind of touched on getting advice from people that have done it themselves. Be consistent. Don't panic. Stay focused on the long-term. A whole lot of great messages there, I guess. I started a little bit later than you. I probably wasn't earning what you were earning at 19, unfortunately, mate. But I bought my first property when I was 21. Bought my first investment when I was 25. It's been a great long-term journey for me. I still remember when I bought my first investment, though. I was really nervous. It was something new.

As someone that's, I guess, been there and done that, what's a good takeaway message for people that may be looking to get started for the first time? How did you feel about it? And what would you encourage them to do? I sort of suppose I have a lot of people who might say to me, what do you reckon? And I won't name a suburb, but what do you reckon? I'm thinking, and I'll just say something to them. Okay. Would you consider just holding off? Or could you stretch yourself a little bit more to get to this area or that street? Or that's just because I just feel like, as I said, because I'm looking at that long-term, not trying to say, okay, I could, but I've whacked those two apartments on there and I can do this and I can do that. I just say, I reckon you're asking for trouble. Whereas I feel that if you just can make the right decision and you know that the area or that street has stood the test of time for decades and decades that you'll be right in the long run. Whereas I just feel that, yeah, some people might go for, yeah, as I said, an investment, or yeah, they might be looking to change clubs for an extra 100 grand. I'll go, well, you're at the club you're at is a wonderful club. I've looked after for a long time. So I just feel that, yeah, it's about that, where you buy, the time you buy. And as I said, just speaking, getting advice before you do it. Now, I think that said Kevin Sheed, I've still talked about him to this day, whereas, because I've picked the brain of those people. So I think that's probably the main message for me, is that investment the right one for you? As desperate as you are. I talked to family members of mine, I reckon, I just reckon, oh, you're excited and all that's like when I was excited back when I was 19, but I walked away going, you know what? He was spot on. That wasn't gonna be the right decision for me. So I think it's just can really, yeah, you work pretty hard for every dollar you get and that's how it is at the moment. So don't have your tail between your legs in a few years time, you know, making the wrong call and an irrational call. I guess you used to play footy in front of, you know, sometimes 90,000 emotionally charged fans, right? And we talk to our clients about detaching emotion as much as possible, understand what you want to achieve, understand the right kind of properties to get you there, you know, achieve the goals that you're after and make sure that you're able to enjoy your lifestyle in the process. Yeah, that's interesting you say that because you've got to be so clear in your focus and your mind, 90,000 people. And when you're on, you actually don't know the 90,000 people are there, to be honest. You can only see your teammates and you hear the calls and that sort of thing. And I think it's right with the property of the emotional decisions can often get you in trouble. It's just those ones that you're clear of head, clear mind and I think, yeah, holds you in good stead. Awesome. Well, it's been great to chat to you today, mate. Some really fantastic lessons there around get some help, do what you can, when you can, start early, play the long game, you know, follow a proven process. Some really great messages there that echo what we talk to our clients about. Thanks very much for coming in. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

The information featured in this podcast is general in nature and may not be relevant to your personal situation. You should seek advice from a licensed professional before making any investment, insurance, tax, property, or financial planning decision. Guests appearing on this podcast may have a commercial relationship with the companies mentioned and opinions and views expressed may not reflect those of the Smart Property Investment Network.