From Olympian to $13 Million Property Portfolio: The Mindset Behind Long-Term Wealth Creation

When you are assessing risk, you always have to flip it on its head. To be a successful investor, you need to be a successful person. I think that's true, but I'll say that not all successful people are successful investors. Nerd alert! Property nerds.

The home for data-driven property investors, where we uncover Australia's hot and cold markets, latest headlines and trends. Former Olympian Hayder joins me on the episode today, representing Australia in Taekwondo at the Olympics back in Rio. We're going to chat to him about life after sports, into the world of business, and then talk about his property portfolio that we've also helped him build. Hayder has gone on to purchase seven properties, expanding it currently as we speak for the next three to take it to ten, and in total built a portfolio worth just over $8 million currently, but by the end of 2026 will be worth well over $11 million with the purchases planned to make. So it's a special journey to go into the life of a successful athlete who's made that transition and brought that same mindset on from sports to business, running the Justice Group, a portfolio of legal firms and companies that have come together to transform his wealth, transform the lives of his clients, and been able to actually build a property portfolio all alongside it.

We're going to get into his journey personally, we're going to get into his journey as an investor, and the key common traits that I've noticed as well with other business owners in spaces like this and how they can actually transition all of that success they've had in the past to investing and what that actually looks like. So let's jump into today's episode so you can hear from a high-performing individual into how they've built a high-performing portfolio. Welcome to another episode of the Property Nerds podcast. My name's Arjun Paliwal and this time we're in for an investor story with my good friend, our valued client, Hayder. Welcome to the show, mate.

It's amazing to be here. I've watched it many times and it feels a little bit surreal to be on the show. Well, mate, you're now one of the property nerds, man. When you're on here, you're officially stamped. But Hayder, I wanted to say, personally, this is us meeting outside of the paddle court for the first time in a long time.

Yeah, I know. We have really good battles on the paddle court. You've gotten exponentially better, but I think there's still a long way to go. Yeah, definitely a long way to go. I think it's real easy to get exponentially better because when you're zero, to get from zero to three is exponential in every way because it's zero, right?

Absolutely. When you're starting at the bottom, then the gains are massive. And once you start getting a bit better, then each gain is a little bit harder to get and the increments become smaller. I think that rule applies across sport, property investing, business, everything, really. Well, man, speaking of all of those, they're really good segues to life in general for you.

For those that don't know, you're a former Olympian and a Taekwondo black belt representing Australia in the Olympics. Was that the Sydney Olympics? No, it was Rio 2016. Rio 2016. I just made you a whole lot older.

Yeah, I'm not that old, man. I was like 10 years old when the Sydney Olympics were on. Hey, you never know. The age of these black belts, they're coming out early, they're super skillful. I'm like, you never know.

But 2016 Rio representing Australia. So, man, what a special thing that would have been. I know. I often reflect. I've recently just had a daughter.

She's almost three months now. And it's given me a lot of time when she's crying, I'm changing her. Babies take up so much time. But it's given me a lot of time to reflect. And I do think about the different versions of my life that I've lived.

And sometimes I think back and the Olympic version of myself, which was 10 years ago now, 2016. I think back to that version of myself and I think I can barely recognize that person in a lot of ways. Like the lifestyle, the way I was living, the decisions that I made. Not to say it in any negative way, but it was just such a different person. It's such a different life after 10 years.

And I just think how often you completely change in terms of your life, how you evolve through different stages. Or you'd be hoping to be evolving, I think. And when you think back, it's almost like a different person. It's hard to kind of conceive that you were that person and you're now the same person 10 years later. Well, I mean, there's always that sort of like life after sport or these different parts.

But just in terms of like the different person, that's such an interlinked person, though, at the same time. What I mean by that is there's so many successes that you would have built during that time of achieving a pinnacle in Australian sports where you're able to go and represent on the global stage. And how much that has positively impacted you in other parts of life from the motivation, the discipline, the execution skill. Just the very few humans in the world can ever be world class good at something. And when they are, like I can see that's just carried through to so many parts of other parts of your life.

And I'll give you an example. We were talking before about some of the business success you've had. And people might be wondering, hey, Arjun, property podcast. We're talking property. We're going to get to that.

It's coming. Everyone's frothing. But I mean, from Olympian to business success, from business success to portfolio and property investing success, from property investing success and to paddle success. And obviously, from what I hear, I haven't heard any or seen any things that suggest otherwise to successful father too. So, man, I just look back at all of this.

What do you feel when you take a look at life for yourself, this transferring of things that are coming through? Because everything like you're touching is getting to these pinnacles or growth rates. It's all transferable. All of the lessons, they continuously go through life with you. And for me, sport, it is really the most important thing that I've done.

It really set the foundations of my personality. And all of the developments that I've gotten through my life is purely a result of my sporting focus, I truly believe. The schools here in Australia are great. Don't get me wrong. But the lessons I learned in the dojang, in the club, in the gyms, traveling, competing, those lessons really have 100x in terms of value to me.

There's constantly looking for different improvements that you can be making, constantly looking for gains, constantly challenging yourself as to why you're not pushing yourself harder. That can drive people insane. And it's something that all sports people have, that constant look for self-improvement. And so when that ends, I think you have a kind of fork in the road for a lot of sports people. And that's when you hear often about going off the cliff, what's next, not having that purpose in life.

And you have that one direction, but you also have the other direction, which is how can you channel all of those lessons that you've learned and build it in a kind of positive pathway. And for me, the natural progression was business. And deeper than that was in the law as well. Because in the law, you have so many similar kind of structures as you do when it comes to competing or fighting, really. They're both on court or in a courtroom.

You're versing an opponent when it comes to litigation. And when I remember my first cases, my first big cases that I ran, I would think to myself, I'm 26 years old. This is when I was first getting started into heavy litigation matters. And I'm up against another solicitor with 30 years of experience and a KC barrister, top elite level type of lawyers. And I would be freaking out here, sweating profusely and really worried about going into a courtroom.

But then I would just think, hold on, this is just a one-on-one that I've been doing my whole life. Yeah, they've had more experience in terms of courtrooms, but I've been on court so many times. I've been on the highest level you can be, which is the Olympic stage. And that gave me so much reassurance and it gave me confidence. And probably the biggest lesson that it gave me was, if I lose here, what's going to happen?

And the answer wasn't, I'm going to get knocked out. I'm going to get my head kicked off. It was, I'm going to lose the case and it's okay. And I think out of all the lessons that sport teaches, it's that when you lose, it's not the end of the world. You get up and then you look for the next challenge that comes in front of you.

So all of those lessons are completely transferable. Absolutely. And that legal space that you're in now when it comes to the business and all those lessons, I'm intrigued and curious about whether it was the lawyer hater going through life and then becoming an Olympian happened alongside it, as in it was a journey of being that legal professional, getting into law, the degrees of study, or was it, no, no, I'm all about Taekwondo and reaching pinnacle and mastery here. And then this law thing sounds interesting. I might jump into that too.

Which one was the first? Which one was the first thing that you kind of went into then added the other? Yeah, it was definitely Taekwondo because I started when I was seven. Okay, that's easy. That's an easy answer.

I was absolutely obsessed, you know, but I think I did have a rare kind of characteristic and that was to and then they end up separating. So yeah, it definitely has an impact on the family home. Now, being on the family side of things, you've welcomed your daughter recently. Congratulations, man. And I know that would have been a big moment for the family.

And when it comes to family and building wealth, they come hand in hand because it becomes that first part of like doing it for your future. Now you've got this little baby girl and there's a financial future there. But that dynamic isn't just you and your daughter, it's you, your wife, your daughter. And when you're building portfolios, that being on the same page together is so important. Now, I want to just talk about the portfolio really quickly because this is so in line with your business moves.

We've got a portfolio at over $8 million now. So congratulations, man. And I know you're one of those people that goes, Arjun, this is your space to look after for me. Like you let me know. And so like you're probably getting these stats for the first time in some time, right?

It's a shock to hear when you say it out loud. So over $8 million in assets across seven properties. And these seven properties are across South Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland, and then Tasmania. And then with the seven properties, we've also onboarded recently for another three purchases to take it to 10. And those 10 purchases combined with the portfolio plan we're designing takes it to over $13 million in assets by the time those assets get secured.

The growth of the current assets keep going and together. And if I take you back to when you first started that journey, it was the property that you had in New South Wales. How long ago did you purchase that now? It's about five years ago. Five years ago.

So this is just after COVID you'd kicked off? Yeah, it was during COVID, I think. During COVID? Yeah, during that period. So coming back to that family dynamic, this is a real special moment now for you to go, hey, like you all got to come together or you got to kick something off and got to keep committing to a journey because this journey for any investor, even those who've been investing for decades is special.

But then for someone who's done it in half a decade and committed like you have committed in life through business and through personal, talk to me about the dynamic of the family in this decision making. How are you two on such a good page together, aligned together? What are some of the things that you do at home? Because I just feel like that's another part when it comes to alignment that needs to be there to succeed as a couple and as a family. What do you do with each other to align there?

Yeah, I love that question because it's actually an interesting answer. And so there was, I guess, a period where I was thinking about this, like how do I align with my wife, you know, in terms of our responsibilities, in terms of what we're doing on a weekly basis, daily basis, all that kind of stuff. And so then I realized sources of tension can kind of occur if there isn't a clear direction as to what's going on. And where did I see that? I saw that in my workplace.

Okay, so in your workplace, if people aren't clear about what their responsibilities are and about who's responsible for what, then it can cause problems with other team members. Why? Because they're going to be like, well, no, you're supposed to be doing this. No, you're responsible for that. You know, so that is something that I've seen in the workplace.

And so I understood that that needs to be clarified. All of these kinds of rules and responsibilities need to be clarified. So with me and my wife, we actually have weekly meetings that we have in the weekly meetings. And it's like a check-in, it's to see how you went this week, anything that you want to raise about me, anything I want to raise about you in that kind of way. And I feel like by doing it in that way, you can't really do so much with it unless you act on it.

And I can tell you from experience, it is hard to act on that information. That's the second part of this information age that we live in, because there's so much information as well. And sure, if I listen to Arjun's strategy, which is like, you know, buy in these areas, that's great. And if I listen to the next podcast in one of the other property podcasters, they're going to have a different strategy, which is, you know, buy in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. And then somebody else is going to have another strategy, which is, you know, buy a knockdown and develop or renovate.

So if you then start looking and hearing all of these perspectives, it can be an information overload and it's analysis paralysis, and you probably end up doing nothing. So that's also another big problem that I think that people can kind of go into. But look, from the practical side of just, okay, I want to purchase a property somewhere that isn't in my backyard, that I can't go and drive and see, it becomes really hard. It becomes really hard to understand the area. It becomes hard to do various checks on those properties because you're not there, you're not there on the ground.

So I think I would say this, the first step is understanding that purchasing in your area or in your city may not be the best move for you. You might not receive the best gains. And so from an investment perspective, you want to make the most money. And you want to make the most money quickly. Once you understand that, then you think, okay, so I need to purchase somewhere which isn't where I am.

I need to purchase in an area which is likely to grow quickly in the next few years. When you truly understand that point, then you start thinking, well, how am I going to do that? I'm just here. I haven't got really experience in those other areas. Being on the ground there is completely different.

I don't really understand. I know you've got a whole due diligence checklist. I'm not going to be able to do that by myself because I don't really have the capabilities to do that. And so once you understand that, you say, okay, well, who can do that for me? Oh, there's buyer's agents out there.

What do they charge? Of course, if buyer's agents were free, I'm telling you, everyone would use a buyer's agent, right? So it's like, what do they charge? They charge this. Okay, can I see that amount being of value to me?

Am I going to get that in terms of my investment? If I factor that into my whole investment journey, am I going to get that back? Am I going to recoup that amount? If I can see that I am, then sure, yeah, let's do it. If I can't see that, then it's going to make me hesitant.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And look, and that's no wonder why you've done it so many times over now as well, right? But I think one thing that many people don't recognize as well is that dangers of the information age that we're in isn't just the available information and the paralysis analysis part.

It's the fact that you're still not getting all these other components of accountability partner. Because when you think about our chats, we have our regular reviews, we have our discussions, we have our reviews of the assets, we have our discussions of the paddle. The accountability piece is so important to getting going. It's like, okay, if I don't take action, who's going to be there to remind me, push me, tell me the lay of the land, what's happening? And just from people who've been in similar careers, businesses, circles, and the person that had that accountability partner on the journey with them versus the one that didn't.

But then also I've looked at your journey and I feel like what's been most important in certain times has changed as we've gone on our journey. So if I go back to when we first kickstarted, I felt the most important thing to you at that time was like research and data. Because when we first kicked off, you're like, you'd made a couple of decisions in New South Wales and what you were seeing was happening out there wasn't rising as quickly internally in your portfolio as what you've seen was starting to happen elsewhere. And so we were like, hey, this thing's happening in Brisbane and Adelaide that are going to go crazy, are going crazy, and we capitalized on that. And then that was that first kind of transition over from DIY to do it with the team.

And when we did that together, that to me was the most important thing to your portfolio at that time. It's like the data. Then after that, it was like strategy. That became more important for you than anything because as a business owner progresses their business and their financial means, it's stronger. It's not about the data as much as it was because they can cover all bases of the country eventually.

And then it gets to a point where the data doesn't matter. Like example, my wife and I, the data wouldn't matter for us. We need to get execution, accountability, strategy, taxation, finance, all these elements come together and data is just like an element of, I know you can do that. And also I've got enough depth in my portfolio to be like, you could add some, where are you going to add something that I don't have? Like, is this going to grow?

It's like an asset class now of wealth and it's just a compounding number we seek to continue to rise. And to rise that compounding number, it's not going to be the performance metric, it's going to be how much total assets I have. So strategy became your next thing because for you, you'll probably notice one more thing as we go through the seven to go as aggressive and as fast as possible because I really am concerned about what's happening on a day-to-day basis in the world. I don't know what's going to happen with our jobs when it comes to AI. I'm concerned about the future of now my child and whether she's going to be completely locked out of the property market.

So those are really my big motivators. I almost feel like if I don't get in now, then things are going to change dramatically. You don't know what's going to happen around the corner, really. And so that's one of my big drivers. For me, do I look at the amount of properties that I have on a daily basis or the amount of equity or the amount of this or that?

No, it's not something that is my consideration. I'm on the business treadmill every day, juggling all the balls of someone that runs a business. And yeah, that's my concern on a daily basis. But I know for a fact that if I don't sit down and, like you said, spend that bit of time to plant those seeds and scribble on those pieces of paper where I'm making these decisions, then years can go past and you haven't done anything and you haven't made any moves and you're just going to regret it and you're just going to kick yourself. So yeah, interesting comments about what was more important five years ago as opposed to now.

I think I never really thought of it that way, but you're spot on. Also, I was going to add to that is just the practicalities and the time that's involved in purchasing a property. Obviously, it's not an hour that you take. There's a lot of time involved in terms of searching and all of that kind of stuff. So that's a big one for me now because time is so important and so limited that I'd rather...

I can see the value in paying somebody else to do it. You'd rather change a few nappies, wouldn't you? Yeah, that's right. I'd rather spend the evening with my daughter than searching realestate. com for all of these properties and negotiating with agents and all that kind of stuff.

I don't want to do that. And so you're right in saying that it was different five years ago for sure. And it's almost to the point now where... Well, it really is at the point where I just say, look, I want to purchase something, Arjun, here, take care of it. And then a property gets sent to me and it's like, do you like this?

And I think it's passed all of our checks. And I just say, yeah, if it's passed your checks, then it's good. Whereas five years ago, I wouldn't have done that. I guess there's an element of trust as well and the results kind of. So it's also a big props to you and your team in terms of getting the results that you have.

And so, yeah, it just made me realize I don't know what I'm doing. And sometimes, not always, I will say, but sometimes it's better to live to the experts. I see that in my area when in the legal sphere, we get self-represented litigants that try and represent themselves in court all the time. And I see literally across my whole network, Arjun, thousands of court cases in a year. And the ones where you have self-represented litigants, I'm not saying that they don't have a chance, but you rarely see them get good outcomes.

The ones that think that they can take it on themselves or the ones that can't afford lawyers or they're stuck in a tricky situation, they think they're going to give it a crack and they're going to use ChatGPT to generate their documents and they're going to do this and they're going to do that. And yeah, sure, it can be helpful to a certain extent. I've seen that, but it's very rare that I've seen them get any positive outcomes when they're acting for themselves. Well, it's very much in line with the information age we're in. I think the dangers are not that the information isn't out there.

Even with the information being there, people can struggle with the interpretation. Oh, for sure. And even if we just take everyday use, if two people were to sit side by side on the property research part and just ask the models around the questions, one person who knows the questions to ask, the things to counter it with, the things to... That person, even just like all professionals aside, just the ability to understand, interpret, and take action on subsequent questions, subsequent insights, subsequent learnings, layering, that comes in our professions or any profession in any part of the world, that itself there will showcase the difference. And so we see it all the time.

Someone will go, I want to be in this suburb because of the rental yield. GPT said it's higher. And so then we said, okay, let's bring this together. The rental yield here, when we unpack this area, has these rates, water, insurances, and council bills. Did you know that this area has that?

Oh, no, I didn't. Okay, let's look at that. Secondly is, did you know that whilst the yield's higher, you actually had an 800K budget that had to come down to a 400K unit in a certain area just to take that yield that's higher? But the council, body corp, and everything that we already showed you wasn't anywhere near it. It's much higher, represents such a high proportion that that high yield of this cheap purchase price is nowhere near as a low yield of a much bigger purchase price.

And then the next one was for those scenarios that they like the yield on, I said to them, great, so instead of searching in these 11 cities that an 800K budget allows you to do, you're going to be searching for the units in this one city, which, by the way, we don't do units in here. I'm just giving an example of what they were thinking. This one city here with these units and this corridor only that are run down with a risk of building defects just so you can chase this yield. And then to top it all off, let's divide it by 52. It's 30 bucks a week.

Right? And so the thing is, this arbitrary or this number in front of you just of 3% versus 7% just looks so wildly different. You'd see it all the time in your world. But I mean, that's just the power to what you were saying before. We have an information problem.

And what you can do right now is cut through. And even just I think the general world of success in general is that there's never been a greater time for a focused individual to achieve things in this world than there has now. Focused individuals go back 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. That was a lot easier to be focused back then. So remember, I'm not saying people had it better or worse.

I'm just saying people had a much better time focusing many decades ago. And today, it's a superpower. If you can focus in the world we're in today, I think in any career you're in, any business, any investing journey, you can go far. Yeah. I completely agree with you.

And I think just adding on to that overwhelming information that kind of comes through and this concept of having access to this information is enough. It really isn't. It truly isn't. I gave the example of self-represented litigants. They think that they can get the information and apply it.

But when it comes to practice, it's so different. We're talking, it's like one day you're a pastry chef and one day you're cooking steaks. They're not even related. They're completely different things, I think. I'm not too sure, but it sounds like they're different things.

We have steak pastries at home. I don't know about you. You're a steak pastry expert. That's right. Connoisseur, actually.

Then you're handling both. Okay, but yeah, they're seriously so different. And I would take the example of conveyancing, okay? And my brother, he works as a software engineer, and he's very doom and gloom about the world because AI is taking over and it's eating up everyone's jobs and that's the end. And it's the end for the white-collar worker.

We're all done. And I just think about the area of conveyancing, and you've done a lot of conveyances yourselves, right? And I just think, like, how much is involved? Like, you can know what a conveyance is. You can know how to do it, okay?

You can understand, like, okay, I've got to do a review of a contract and I've got to get this property to be sold or purchased or whatever it is. You can understand the theory of it. But in practice, do you know how hard it is when you are going to battle with the banks that are involved, you know, multiple banks that are involved? Each department has their own way of communicating. Each department has their own style, okay?

When you're going to war with the land and titles office, which is a government department, when you're going to war with the solicitors on the other side, when you're trying to get information from the agent about certain things. So just think about all of the little nodes that you have to get information from and how they deliver information in different ways. It's impossible. You know, there is no way that AI would be able to handle this type of work because, sure, there's theory, there's understanding how to do something and doing a process, but when you're on the ground and you're dealing with people, communication, different departments, different styles, it's impossible. It's impossible.

You need a human there to be pushing it along, to interpret, to understand what to do in practice. And I think it comes back to this, which is you can have all the information in the world you want. You can understand the theory.