”Transcript”

Question

&#8221;Transcript&#8221;

Accepted Answer

Victor Lagos: 0:03 Welcome to the debt to financial freedom podcast. I&#8217;m your host Victor Lagos, and the founder of Lagos Financial. I&#8217;ve been in the finance and lending industry for 17 years, and I&#8217;ve personally made financial mistakes and learn from them. I started this podcast to share stories and lessons on my own journey, and to share insights that may help others on their journey. And I interviewed people that I&#8217;ve connected with that share the same values and mission to help others create financial freedom. My goal this podcast is to share raw, honest, transparent and helpful stories that you can relate to, and inspires you to take control of your finances and only have debt that brings you closer to financial freedom. Everything on this podcast is general in nature, and for education purposes only. None of your personal objectives, financial situation or needs has been taken into consideration. I highly recommend you seek personal financial, legal taxation and credit advice before you take any action on what has been heard on this podcast. Welcome to episode three of the debt to financial freedom podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Victor Lagos. Today I&#8217;ve got a special guest, a friend of mine, actually we we met a couple of years ago and we&#8217;ve had a lot of conversations and I&#8217;m really glad to meet you face to face in person here. Dr. Dionne Payne, welcome. Dr Dionne Payn: 1:29 Thank you. It was good to pinch you this morning and make sure you were Victor Lagos: 1:34 on camera. But I want to give a quick short intro. That&#8217;s right. So Dr. The unpinch is a founder and CEO of high impact property investments for short hippie. The company specializes in partnering investors seeking double digit returns with projects that provide affordable and sustainable homes. Dan is the author of the number one best selling book ethical property investing, and is a board advisor to a non for profit organization that helps women into affordable homes. How was that? Dr Dionne Payn: 2:05 That was awesome. Awesome. Victor Lagos: 2:07 Well, can you share your story, like what led to what led you here to where you are now? And I really want to understand like, what is your big mission and vision? I&#8217;m aware of it but the audience don&#8217;t know. Dr Dionne Payn: 2:17 Okay, cool. All right. I think really, then I have to start with my mum and my Nan. So my nan moved a both sets of grandparents actually moved from Jamaica, to the UK, back in the 60s. And it was part of a big effort to repair Britain after the war. And as Jamaicans that they think they thought that it was the promised land. And then when they got there, the reality was, it was cold, gray miserable. And they faced a lot of discrimination. So, you know, from that they my nan always had the belief, which she shared with with us as kids was that we had to work harder than everybody else to be able to get ahead. So I&#8217;m like, Thanks, man. I&#8217;m now really driven. So nice. Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, obviously, there&#8217;s there&#8217;s times and places where you need to be driven. But the other great gift that I believe my dad gave me was the gift of wanting to be in service. And that just being a very natural part of my life. My my Nan, my granddad and that side of the family were very religious, Pentecostal Christians had some interesting sides to it. But the two things that I really got from it were number one, that being in service and whatever we had been able to share that with other people to help them to ease their suffering. And the other thing was this sense of community. And I realized that when I did leave the church community when I was in my late teens, I&#8217;d always been seeking that community until I moved to the Byron Shire, which gave me that sense of community that I was looking for. But specifically, I left the UK in 2004 2005, I moved to Australia and did a PhD at Southern Cross University in chemistry, which is so different to what I&#8217;m doing now. Dr. Title, I got my doctor title from that. Yeah. And yeah, well, what that meant for me was that I had enough points to stay in Australia, but also being in the Bible shadow. I was like, Well, I can&#8217;t afford to buy a home here on one income I after I finished my PhD. I decided to have children with my husband. He was working I wasn&#8217;t working because I wanted to stay home and be home with the kids. And I just, yeah, just the one income it was already unaffordable like it&#8217;s gone up a lot since then, but it was unaffordable then. So, for me property was a way of finding, finding a creative way to basically understanding the game of property. So if I could understand how to how it worked, then I might be able to find a creative way to get into it. And so I started off, I did a mentoring course my husband and I did that together, we found a joint venture partner, our very first project was actually an affordable housing project, although I didn&#8217;t realize it. There was a house and a studio that was attached, we detach the studio, renovated both properties subdivided and sold them separately. And that studio was a one bedroom Studio on a quite a large block of land. And we sold that for under $300,000. So in that sense, that was my first affordable housing project. Victor Lagos: 5:47 Awesome. man gave me the capital to really start the next one. Dr Dionne Payn: 5:50 Well, yeah, it gave a guy for capital. And but it also gave confidence in, you know, we didn&#8217;t start with money, we had some money, which was what we used for mentoring, but we didn&#8217;t have enough for a deposit. But what that meant was are we can work with other people to achieve a goal. The joint venture partner that we had was great. He had lots of he had money, but no time. And we had lots of time, but no money. So it was a it was a good partnership. And so it was a really good illustration to me of how we could collectively pool the resources that we had to get an outcome that worked for us both. And from then I did more projects, some smaller projects. I saw after about doing three or four of those, I saw a piece of vacant land, which had development approval for 14 one bedroom townhouses in ocean shores. And I was a bit gung ho to be honest with you, in terms of I looked at, and I was like, Well, I know how to do feasibilities. I, I know how to bring people together to make this work. But it was quite a big jump from what I&#8217;ve done before to doing that. But what actually happened was that I found joint venture partners, we built the 14 townhouses. Three of them were affordable rental housing, which meant that they were managed by a community housing provider, who had them for a period of 10 years, and the, the tenants would pay 80% of the market rent. And then the rest of them because they were so small, I mean, there were one bedroom, there were 60 square meters. But that was an affordable, that was an entry price for that location. So I actually had friends that were able to buy into that development, who may not have been able to buy anything in the area had that not been there. So the benefit that I saw from that was the number one I could meet all my service needs, you know, doing something for the community. But also I got well rewarded for it, we walked away with a 25% per annum return on investment. And look, it was a it was a big thing. It was a big risk, we did work to de risk it as much as possible. But things went wrong, the building went broke and things like that. So but even despite all of that, we had something that had this massive community benefit. And so since then, I just thought I can&#8217;t do property any other way, if there&#8217;s not a bigger benefit to just making money. It&#8217;s not that&#8217;s why Victor Lagos: 8:21 you&#8217;re not connected. And when I heard you the first time talking about this, I wanted to reach out to you because this space, and a lot of people know this that in property development, there&#8217;s a lot of people that are doing it for the money. They&#8217;re doing it for themselves. They&#8217;re doing it for obviously future projects, but they&#8217;re not thinking about the larger community and what impact isn&#8217;t making. So yeah, I love that. And your big mission. I mean, I don&#8217;t want to spoil it, but it is, It&#8217;s big. It&#8217;s pretty Dr Dionne Payn: 8:47 hairy. Yeah. I&#8217;ll explain where that came from. So after that particular project, like I said, I had bitten off quite a lot and burnt myself out. So it took me a little bit of time to just, you know, sort of recoup and bring myself together. As part of that recuperation pro process, I decided to do personal development. And so for the couple of years after that, I did a number of personal development courses. And there was one where we had a task to do, there was a group of us, I think five of us, we had a task to do that everybody in the course was set the task, we were the ones that achieve that task. And it was it was really beautiful because what I recognized from that was the power of collaboration up until then I&#8217;d been doing things alone, but with this group of women, and we were able to collaborate and what that meant was in the times that they were down, I was there to rally around and cheer them up. And in the times that I was down, they rallied around and cheered me up as well. So having that sort of mutual support network was fantastic. And from that I Yeah, just having that power of collaboration was really important. And for me, that&#8217;s just the way that I wanted to move forwards and do all of my, all of my projects. So I ended up meeting a developer who had a lot of experience. And I think that was the person that you met, or that you heard on the podcast initially. And we ended up working together collaborating together. And I just saw that there was such a bigger, a bigger player at hand. And as part of this, sort of moving from this personal development course, where I&#8217;ve met these wonderful group of women, to meeting the developer, I figured out that my role with the developer was going to be raising capital, his role was going to be doing the developments. But when I was speaking to my friend, Joanna, she said, Well, there&#8217;s something that&#8217;s not you know, that there&#8217;s something that you&#8217;re not speaking what is that? And I was like, Well, you know, it just irks me to see that there&#8217;s so many companies that are doing things that are destructive for the environment and destructive for people. And there&#8217;s so much money that gets thrown into that arena, because it does make money. What if I was to divert some of that money? Like, what if I was to raise a billion dollars for ethical property projects, and it was one of those moments where the words flew out of my mouth? I didn&#8217;t think about it. And I was like, Can I retract that? But you know, it&#8217;s I spoke it into existence. And, you know, spoken to my friend, Joanna, I spoke to my developer colleague at the time, I was like, We can do this. And over time, what I found is that the more I speak it, I&#8217;ve got a book, I have put it in a book. I&#8217;ve got it on my website, I&#8217;ve got it in my social media posts. The more I speak it, the more it&#8217;s actually coming to fruition. Yeah, well, Victor Lagos: 11:52 so when is the timeframe to hit the billion dollar mark? December 2026, December 2026. So you&#8217;ve got just under four years? Dr Dionne Payn: 12:01 Yeah. Yeah, Victor Lagos: 12:03 I think it&#8217;s doable. Well, it&#8217;s Dr Dionne Payn: 12:04 totally doable. And one of the things that I&#8217;m working on at the moment is putting together a portfolio of developers and their particular projects in the specialist disability accommodation in the sustainable housing space, and also in the affordable housing space. And with that coalition of projects, or curating those projects, that&#8217;s $160 million worth of capital that&#8217;s needed to make those projects happen. And they&#8217;re all they&#8217;re all fantastic products, and they&#8217;re all going to have such a big impact in the spaces that they&#8217;re in. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re going to do this year. So. So that&#8217;s exciting. It is. Victor Lagos: 12:45 And I wanted to set the audience who don&#8217;t know what affordable housing is, could you explain what is affordable housing? And why is it becoming a bigger problem in Australia? Dr Dionne Payn: 12:55 Let&#8217;s start with the problem. There&#8217;s been, okay, two things that I see. One is that as Australians, and it&#8217;s not just an Australian issue, but certainly here we view property as a vehicle to creating wealth. Fantastic. What that means, though, is that people that aren&#8217;t in on that secret to creating wealth through property, don&#8217;t get left behind, because everything&#8217;s done at their expense. So as an example, and I&#8217;m not bagging Airbnb, per se, I stayed in an Airbnb property last week, it was fantastic. But when you&#8217;ve got people that accumulate properties, and then you&#8217;ve got supply and demand issues, one of the things that happened during the pandemic was because we realized that we could work from anywhere. And it meant that people in the capital cities that were earning capital, city money, were able to go to the regions and then purchase properties for the great value for them. But then it just meant that prices went up because the the demand went up and the supply didn&#8217;t. So that has meant that a lot of people either in renting or in purchasing haven&#8217;t been able to purchase. So we&#8217;re talking about people that may have been may have lived in that community for a long time. And they are now out priced. So that&#8217;s one aspect. And then you&#8217;ve got the Airbnb aspect where landlords realize, yeah, we can make a lot of money through renting our properties through Airbnb, but then that&#8217;s at the expense of the community that live homes. And so then you&#8217;ve got this challenge because the people who are making the coffee&#8217;s who are doing the childcare who are working in the retail shops, they can&#8217;t live in the locations in which they work. And so even though you get a lot of tourism and a lot of tourism dollars, there&#8217;s actually nobody to Really service that tourism industry. So it&#8217;s just out of balance at the moment. And I think that we can bring that into balance. And I know that there&#8217;s definitely moves to doing that. I think that the government is starting to recognize the scale of the problem. And they&#8217;re doing some things about that, then they&#8217;re definitely putting more money into creating affordable housing, and working with industry and super funds to make that flow of capital more available. But essentially, what I see is the problem is if you don&#8217;t have a safe, secure and affordable home, and you&#8217;re spending more than 30% of your income on rent, and that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s the kind of benchmark for affordable housing, then you&#8217;re in housing stress, then you&#8217;re in survival mode, then you can&#8217;t think creatively. And the implication of that on the society in which we live, we then ended up with a lot of stressed people that are not at their best with children who were in an environment where parents are squabbling about money, where there&#8217;s separation, where there&#8217;s divorce, where there&#8217;s mental health issues, this is not healthy for us as a society. So this is the reason that we need to change it. Victor Lagos: 16:16 Yeah, that&#8217;s powerful. And it&#8217;s one of the reasons why I started this podcast, because, you know, it&#8217;s called that to financial freedom. And there&#8217;s many people that have very, very low on that spectrum. They&#8217;ve got that they can&#8217;t even afford their rent. So financial freedom is, is a pipe dream for them. They don&#8217;t even know what it is. They&#8217;re just like you said, they&#8217;re in survival. So what you&#8217;re doing is obviously, really powerful. Because you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re not thinking about how much can I earn by accumulating more property? It&#8217;s how many people can I serve? How many tenants that really need homes that can afford to live in these areas can I provide for, and you&#8217;re collaborating with a larger network that shares that vision that shares that mission, and you can make a larger impact and you&#8217;re waiting for government? No government are helping, but this just allows you to, to reach more and do more. Dr Dionne Payn: 17:15 Yeah, that&#8217;s been 2%, I think it&#8217;s worth making the distinction between different income levels. So you&#8217;ve got people that are on very low incomes. And that would the housing requirements for them are typically social housing. And that&#8217;s an area where government should really be stepping up into, then you&#8217;ve got affordable housing, which is for people that like your essential workers, for example, like your childcare workers, your ambulance drivers, your nurses, your police, that sort of thing. So these are people that have got really good jobs and a decent incomes and stable, but they&#8217;re still being priced out of the market. So one of the they&#8217;re not a developer, they&#8217;re actually a fund manager, they&#8217;re putting together a Shared Equity scheme to help people. So essentially, a police person could be working in Sydney, property prices in Sydney start off at 1,000,001 Point 2 million, something like that. So this farm design will look we will chip in the 20% deposit for you, you get your 80% loan, and then we&#8217;ll share in the capital growth that happens over a period of time. And so it&#8217;s taking that it&#8217;s not a win lose anymore. It&#8217;s a win win. It&#8217;s like we win alongside you. And then what that means is that that police person can live in the area that they work in, they can be more present, they&#8217;re not as stressed. You know, there&#8217;s so many challenges that happen for police, maybe sorting out the affordable housing crisis for police and for nurses and what have you will lead to better outcomes in each of those industries and each of those services. Victor Lagos: 19:03 Totally agree. So that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s really the solution that you&#8217;re you&#8217;re working on? How can how can people and investors get involved in Dr Dionne Payn: 19:13 capital? There&#8217;s always a need for capital. And I look as an example, somebody that was looking to purchase a home to rent out and of course, that there is nothing wrong with renting out property, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with purchasing an investment property. I think the the way that we do it now just has to be different. The way that we do it, rather than squeezing every last piece of juice out of somebody just has to be a cable How can we do this in a way where everybody wins. So as an example, there are property investments that you can get where as an investor, you can be earning a 10% return per annum on your investments and that Is that then means that that property is cashflow positive, it means that the tenants are achieving an affordable rent. And that&#8217;s a win win now that that type of property investing, there&#8217;s lots of them that one example of them is CO living. So that&#8217;s basically where you create a space for create a house where multiple people can live in that house. And in each environment, in each council, the rules are going to be slightly different, but essentially, the the amount of money that you can get, or the amount of rent that you can get, because you&#8217;re going to get from four or five individual people means that your expenses are covered, and there&#8217;s positive cash flow there. But each of those people are paying an affordable rent. And I remember the very first project that I introduced to you, Victor, that was the case where though the house was being built for four older women, each of them were paying $250 a week, it wasn&#8217;t actually built in the end. But the idea was, each of them would pay $250 a week, which meant that the cash flow for the investor that owned that property was was positive. So essentially, they ended up with more money in their pocket than if they didn&#8217;t. And in that way, they were able to support four people in that home. And the impact was greater. Victor Lagos: 21:18 And yeah, I do remember because what attracted me was, you know, you talked about a triple bottom line approach. So obviously, the financial one, that&#8217;s why investors invest, they want to get a financial benefit. That&#8217;s the environmental. And that&#8217;s when he talked about sustainable project, we haven&#8217;t really focused too much about that. But obviously, everyone&#8217;s aware about using materials that are not going to leave too much of a carbon footprint, and, you know, solar power and whatnot, Dr Dionne Payn: 21:52 can I just say, I met a developer the other day, so we&#8217;re talking and I&#8217;m hoping that they&#8217;re going to be one of my portfolio of companies. Essentially, the homes that they build us produce two times as much energy as they can see. So essentially, they could be their parents themselves, their parent one home, they could also power their neighbor as well. Victor Lagos: 22:17 Wow, that&#8217;s powerful, actually. Is that something that&#8217;s already in operation? Dr Dionne Payn: 22:22 Yeah, well tested, already in operation all around Australia. And the developer, this particular developer is in Victoria. And so we&#8217;re in talks as to how we can scale that with them. Victor Lagos: 22:34 Yeah, there&#8217;s no real end, you can put on this. There&#8217;s so much potential you can be I provide the materials for other builders and, you know, investors or homebuyers can start to be more conscious about who they work with, what builders and what materials they use. And the other part was the social impact, right? And that&#8217;s what you talked about earlier about community. Can you expand on that a little bit about how it does help a community and how it can? how communities can work together in these types of projects? Dr Dionne Payn: 23:04 Okay, so I think of the initial projects that I spoke about the 14 townhouse projects, and what that meant for that particular community were that people that had lower incomes could actually be part of that community, which then means that that community is more diverse, rather than homogenous. In that diversity of community, you&#8217;ve got people with different skills. So you&#8217;ve got artists and people that are there to, you know, childcare workers, for example, or care workers for aged care, doctors that were living by themselves or teachers, so then it just supports that diversity of the community, which I just believe is better. That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a very subjective statement. But it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s like everything, everybody&#8217;s got a decent, a different skill set. And when you combine those different skill sets, then so much more can be achieved. And so I just believe that when you provide affordable housing for people, and they do feel safe in those communities, because they&#8217;re not having that stress of not being able to pay their rent, you just get better connections between people. And actually what I think is happening in the world today, a lot of the reasons for the issues that we have are that there&#8217;s that disconnection between this disconnection of ourselves, so we&#8217;re not connected with ourselves. We&#8217;re not connected with other people, and we&#8217;re not connected with the planet. That&#8217;s where I think a lot of our problems are stemming from so once community, or there&#8217;s a really good saying, I can remember Something along the lines of community is immunity from dysfunction. Victor Lagos: 25:08 Even that sounds good. dysfunction. It&#8217;s true. we&#8217;re social creatures, you know, when when people were isolated through the pandemic, it really caused a lot of a lot of stress and Dr Dionne Payn: 25:22 a lot of mental health issues that I know of the number of suicides increased. And, and, you know, communities were really fractured. Because of that it became a, you know, sort of an ash tribe and then tribe and it just wasn&#8217;t a healthy space for us to be in. So that&#8217;s that&#8217;s kind of from the smaller level, the larger level of the vision that I see is in creating communities that incorporate reforestation, regenerative agriculture, work home, and community right at the center. So whether that&#8217;s community gardens, or community centers, or food coops, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m working towards, because I believe that that then does provide that reconnection to ourselves each other. Victor Lagos: 26:19 Yeah, that&#8217;s powerful, I&#8217;ve recently joined a community garden actually, really enjoy it. Yeah, it&#8217;s, you know, you get to, you get to see Mother Nature, again, you get to see, contribute to something great, it&#8217;s organic garden, as well. So got my little, my wife and I, we&#8217;ve got a little plot of land there. So we&#8217;re just going to plant some veggies and, and some, some fruits and, and it&#8217;s, it is a community, everybody shares with each other. Dr Dionne Payn: 26:45 And the beautiful thing about that is that you plant a seed, and you get to see how nature is so abundant. And then you get to share in that abundance with the people around you as well. And I think I&#8217;m kind of riffing here. I don&#8217;t have a formalized thought about that. But when you have that sense of abundance, in a community that has that sense of abundance, because you will get being able to share in that as well. I think that there&#8217;s something really magical that happens there. And I just think that that&#8217;s what we need to encourage that not everybody is going to want to start a garden. But maybe it&#8217;s inviting the neighbors in and sharing food with them. And just having those conversations that reaches, they have proven that for elderly people that are in nursing homes, just having young people come in and you know, sort of sit with them, play games with them, be with them, is really beneficial for those older people because they feel young, and for the younger people because they are able to be in service to something bigger than themselves. So I think it&#8217;s a good thing. Victor Lagos: 28:00 That&#8217;s, that in itself, I think needs to be unpacked a little bit being in service of others. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s ingrained in all of us. But I think the way society has been has pulled people away from that, that, you know, inherent want and desire to do greater good. It&#8217;s like if if an old person fell in the street, you would automatically go and help them 100% There&#8217;s no part of you that says I should I have someone look at me, like there&#8217;s no. But you know, the way business has kind of been, since I guess the industrial revolution has really been about what do they what are they call it dog eat dog world? Or yeah, you know, survival of the fittest. But it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s really about how can I contribute? How can I give more because the more you give, the more you receive? Yeah, that&#8217;s actually my slogan for my for my business, or my tagline giving is receiving, which some people think it&#8217;s strange for financial services, business of giving his receiving, but that&#8217;s what really changed for me, when I started, think about that abundance that you talked about. It&#8217;s an energy it&#8217;s like, when I when I help someone, I&#8217;m not actually losing anything, even if they you know, that idea that they&#8217;re taking my time or they&#8217;re taking my my energy? Well, they will take it if you let them by coming from a mindset of scarcity. But if you think no, I&#8217;m actually sharing and I&#8217;m and I&#8217;m giving, you know, whether it&#8217;s insights, a new connection just by introducing them to someone, even just listening to someone like not listening and thinking about what you&#8217;re saying next, but actually feeling what they&#8217;re feeling, right? Feeling that emotion, that and that in itself is giving. And then if you know that the more you give, the more you receive, then it is abundant. Same way when you&#8217;re planting, right plants help out other plants, right, please help us. We help them, right. It&#8217;s like that and you just got to tap into it and I want more people to become aware of that. and just practice it. Because the more you practice it, the easier it gets. And the more natural it is. And all you&#8217;re doing is going back to how you are anyway, deep down, right? Yeah. Do you do find yourself, you know, operating from that every single day when you when you get up? Do you think you know what, how can I give to the How can I contribute? Or do you have to remind yourself sometimes Dr Dionne Payn: 30:19 I have a practice, that is when I get up and I sort of do my meditation practice. And I actually have to say, I didn&#8217;t expect this conversation to go this way today. Victor Lagos: 30:32 It&#8217;s a natural conversation. Dr Dionne Payn: 30:36 I was like, don&#8217;t be too woowoo do don&#8217;t be too Okay, so I am not some I&#8217;m not some guru. I&#8217;m not some spiritual side or anything like that. I do have a practice. And as part of that practice, it&#8217;s how can I give today? And how can I receive today? Because it&#8217;s it&#8217;s both sides of the same coin? Yeah. And it&#8217;s not natural to me to operate this way. It&#8217;s a it&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m practicing. Yeah. Victor Lagos: 31:09 Well, yeah. So you&#8217;re training yourself to do that every single day. And, you know, because obviously, things happen throughout the day, right? Something that sort of knocks you out, you know, feeling the best version of yourself. So it&#8217;s good to have a daily practice to sort of center yourself and bring yourself back into that into that energy. Dr Dionne Payn: 31:26 And I shared with you, off camera, an experience that I had recently where I decided that I wasn&#8217;t going to work with somebody. And it really was because they were coming from that scarcity place. And unwilling to look at, well, how can we all win, it was very much a, I&#8217;m going to win, you&#8217;re gonna lose, and that that framework just cannot work going forward. So I&#8217;m not just talking about that particular potential client. I&#8217;m just talking about life in general. Victor Lagos: 31:57 And it is a shift that we&#8217;re going through at the moment. Yeah, people have thought that that&#8217;s what was required to be successful, someone else has to lose, you need to win, someone has to lose. Obviously, the focus isn&#8217;t how can I make other people lose? They&#8217;re just focused on themselves, how can I win? But if you think how can everybody win? Then you can say no to people, you can say no to opportunities, doesn&#8217;t matter how much money it&#8217;s going to bring you because it&#8217;s not about that money. Come Money comes and goes right flows, right? It&#8217;s, they call it cash flow, not cash accumulate and not spend. I did want to ask you, because the podcast is called debt to financial freedom. And I, you know, I have a meaning of what I believe financial freedom is, but I want to ask my guests what, what is the definition of financial freedom to you? Dr Dionne Payn: 32:46 Good question. In the context of what we spoken about, it is about abundance. And it&#8217;s not necessarily the amount of money that you have. It&#8217;s just that feeling of I have enough. Yeah. And I&#8217;m being provided for. Yeah, yeah, it is definitely feeling and so, you know, from that space, you don&#8217;t have to come from bull. How do I get get gift? It&#8217;s, you know, like I was saying before, how can I give? How can I receive? How do I stay open to all of that? Yeah. So, you know, in, in, you know, modern world, our understanding of financial freedom is having a decent car, having a home, being able to go on holidays. I&#8217;m not saying like, I&#8217;m not a nun, I love all of that, you know, I love my little 2019, Toyota Corolla hybrid. And I love the fact that I get to spend time visiting family visiting friends going and seeing different places. I love the fact that, you know, we live in a gorgeous place in in the Northern Rivers. But there&#8217;s a point where it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not. You know, I&#8217;m not saying that everything in my life is sorted either. But it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s how do I operate from that space of not fear? Operation, that space of there is enough, and there are resources around me. And if I don&#8217;t have those resources, I can find somebody to collaborate that does. Victor Lagos: 34:16 Yeah, I love that. You, you really tackling that sort of motion or that fear inside that I can&#8217;t do it? Well, if you can&#8217;t, then do you have the resources around you? And if you don&#8217;t, then what can you do to find those resources? Right. And it&#8217;s always about collaboration. Yes. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not about doing it on your own. Right. It&#8217;s about having good people around you. Exactly. And it is a journey to find the people. I mean, that&#8217;s why you and I connected because we had so much synergy there. And I think you actually mentioned what the story I shared with you in your book then. Oh, yes. Oh, you found it. Yeah, I won&#8217;t go into too much detail. I did share it on Episode One. Oh, about, you know, my wire and my, my parents and what they went through, and I am bringing another guest on, I can really share a bit more details around, you know, people losing when it comes to property, because it is such an emotional buy. And there are people out there that really take advantage of people that that are focused on that emotion, they want to provide their family that for their family, they want to set themselves up for retirement. But then the people that are, you know, selling to them are not thinking about them, they think about themselves. And Dr Dionne Payn: 35:31 there&#8217;s a level of financial literacy that we all need to have. And we don&#8217;t get taught that in schools. And so then we have to take the responsibility to find that for ourselves. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad a long time ago. And I was like, Yeah, that&#8217;s interesting. It wasn&#8217;t until recently where I read it again. And I was like, How did I miss this, you know that his whole thing is buying assets that generate cash flow, exactly, my twist on that is buying assets that have impact and generate cash flow. And I love Victor Lagos: 36:03 that you&#8217;re not just focused on the cash flow. Yeah. And that&#8217;s why for me, when I talk about financial freedom, it is about buying assets that create cash flow, and it&#8217;s not 100% passive, but it is reasonably passive. And that just means that you don&#8217;t have to trade your time and labor for the money. And like you said earlier, when it comes to you know, we have to survive, a lot of people were in that survival state. It&#8217;s because we&#8217;re in a society where we have to pay to live, like, as soon as you&#8217;re born, like, you don&#8217;t feel like because you&#8217;re dependent child, but your parents having to work and they have to provide, you know, the shelter and the food. And if your survival. Instincts are kicked in, you&#8217;re not able to be creative. You&#8217;re not thinking about how you can give you thinking, how can I? How can I live and survive the next day? Alright, so I like this, this definition. And I heard it recently, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a simple way of understanding financial freedom I heard it from from Tony Robbins. And he said, it&#8217;s about building a money machine, a money machine that will let you do what you do, without having to work. That&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s not like you&#8217;re not going to work. But you don&#8217;t have to work, right? Because I used to explain away enough passive income to replace your living expenses so that you can, you know, be your best self. It&#8217;s still the same thing. But I think it just makes sense. Like, you don&#8217;t have to sacrifice your lifestyle, but let you do what you do. But you don&#8217;t have to work. If you don&#8217;t have to, you can do what you do. You can have a big mission and vision to you know, to help the world to help the community and collaborate with others to think the same way. So Dr Dionne Payn: 37:49 there&#8217;s a great quote, I can&#8217;t remember who it is, I think it might have been Jim Collins, but it&#8217;s along the lines of the more people that you help, the more money that you will make. Yeah, and it answers that. Victor Lagos: 38:03 You can have everything you want in life, if you help other people get what they want. Yeah, that&#8217;s it. Yeah. Love it. So true. Well, I want to ask you, how can people find you? Dr Dionne Payn: 38:16 Well, I&#8217;m pretty active on LinkedIn. So if they do a search for me, Dr. Dione Payn. I do also have a website, which is hipi.global. And I know that you&#8217;re going to be placing links into the show notes. So I can provide some information for you there as well. And for anybody that is interested in ethical property investing, I&#8217;m very happy to share a copy of my book. And we can make that available through your show notes. Victor Lagos: 38:58 Awesome. That&#8217;s very generous of you. I know you sent me a copy, and it was signed. So thank you for that. So I&#8217;ll put the I&#8217;ll put the notes in, in the show notes. I&#8217;ll give the link. So anyone who wants to get a copy of ethical property investing, you&#8217;ll be able to order that with a specific link. Will it be a physical copy or a PDF? Dr Dionne Payn: 39:17 It will be a physical copy. As long as somebody&#8217;s happy to pay for the postage, there can be a physical copy. Awesome. Yeah, I love it. There&#8217;s something great about holding. Victor Lagos: 39:25 I agree. Right? Yeah. So old school, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s powerful. And you know exactly where you left off as well. Exactly. Gonna get back to it. Well, I want to say thank you so much for coming today. I really appreciate that you came all the way from Byron region. So it&#8217;s a bit of a distance to Sydney, but always lovely to see you. Looking forward to collaborating with you and again in the future. Dr Dionne Payn: 39:46 Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for all of your belief in the work that I&#8217;ve been doing. And once he mentioned that we bonded because of that shared vision. And I&#8217;m really happy to have you as part of that journey. So thank you. Victor Lagos: 39:59 Yep, Me too. I&#8217;m really happy and this is going to watch this space because Dion and I are going to work on another project, and I&#8217;ll mention in the future I&#8217;ll see you soon. All right. Dr Dionne Payn: 40:12 Thanks, Victor. Victor Lagos: 40:15 Well, if you&#8217;ve enjoyed that, please like us on our socials and stay tuned for the next episode.

Ep3: Dr. Dionne Payn

5 Things to stop now to get your Finances in shape

How to leverage property ownership for your future wealth creation

Ep2: Joe Tucker

Ep1: My Personal Journey to Financial Freedom

Services

About

Quick Links

Legal

Sydney Office

Launceston Office

Ready to take the next step in your financial journey?

About

Quick Links

Legal

Launceston Office

Ready to take the next step in your financial journey?