 Good evening and welcome back to the first time home by a show. I'm your host, Esti Klaasen. I'm sitting with the absolutely amazing Toray Jack, entrepreneurship, author, property mogul, the list is endless. Good evening, TJ. How are you? Esti, how are you? I'm very well. Thanks and welcome to everyone else who's watching us and greetings to your viewers. What is TJ doing to ensure that there is going to be a legacy left behind? Oh, dude, there's quite a lot. We have time. Oh, Lord, where do I start from? So there's a great book that I like to read very often. And within this book, it says that if you have to leave a legacy, your legacy should surpass the third generation from you. Right. So where's the third generation? So I'm number one, my kids are number two. Their kids is number three. So what am I doing to ensure that the legacy surpass them, not touch them, surpass? Right. So number one, I now that I'm in business, I have structured things. And when I say structure, I just didn't go out and buy a house. Yeah. Right. I've also ensured that when I'm buying my house, where is it sitting? Who owns that house? So S.T., I don't own anything, right? My trust owns everything. So the house stays within the trust. So if ever I die, SARS is never going to touch anything in my estate because it's in the trust. So the trust is going to live for a longer time on the terms that I've put in. Not on the terms that my kids have put in or their kids, but on my terms. So I am crafting the generation. It's intentional. Yeah. That's number one. Number two, I've got a business. Within this business, I don't own anything. I control everything. Control is power, fever. And with that, everything again sits within my trust. And whatever that is happening within the business, when I die, it's going to continue within the same part of that generation. So when I started doing properly the correct way, I then started doing, I started researching, what can I do, which is that's intentional, that can help me to get to my goal? What's my goal? Legacy. But how do you do it? What is the practical? How do you move from one step to the next step to the next step? And you know, when I talk about all these trustings, what not? A lot of people then want to go out there, create the structures, ha, ha, ha. Five years they've got the structures, nothing has happened. I'm the reverse. I actually started having structures not so long ago. Yeah. So I'm a doer. So I'm like, let's do it. So I started buying, buying, buying. And then somewhere along the line, my legal team was like, you got a problem. Yeah. You're talking about creating legacy, but the way you're doing business, it doesn't do it. You won't get there. Yeah. What's going to happen is that if you're dying, size is going to come in, there's an estate, they're going to take X percentage, is that what you want? I'm like, hell no. But how can we do it? They educated me on how to do it. And then I started implementing it, whilst I'm in the game. So we speak about people going back into go through for conferences, go read books and attend whatever podcasts and you know, get information to grow you. I'm anti that. Right. I preach it, but I'm anti that as well. I might be saying, TJ, but you contradict yourself. Yeah. Learn, take action. Okay. Right, because if you're just learning, you're just in information junkie, that's what you are. Now, being information junkie, what are you going to do? At the bride, you are the guys who are like, you know, you can do property like this. Okay, how many do you have? Nothing. Nothing, yeah. But you have all the information in the world. But you haven't applied any of that. 100%. And I'm also all for real, loved experiences. How can you talk about something if you haven't experienced it yourself? 100%. So from creating my legacy as team, it's about putting the structures in place. It's about leaving them now whilst I'm still alive. And over and above that, within our business that's called M5 Property Addicts, we have actually created a school. Right. Which is called M5 Property Varsity. And within there, I take time every quarter. Whatever I've learned, we put it in there as a course and anyone who's out there, they will come in and they'll learn. My view is that that won't die. Maybe the processes might change, but the foundation, the principles of how you can buy a property correct way and things like that, that won't die. So anyone else out there who's wanting to do it in the correct way or the TJ way, they can go and learn. And my view is that it's creating a greater legacy. I've got a community and within that community, people come in and we plug in. And besides just creating a camaraderie, we're always talking about property. And the other thing that I've done, I've written a book. Yeah, that was actually one of my questions. Sorry to cut you off TJ, is about how are you giving back to the youth? And you just answered my question, is that you need to keep recycling knowledge. 100%. So for some of the stuff that I learn, you know, I'm a trained change management person. So I look at complex stuff and it works in my head and I'm like put it out there in the simplest manner. That's how I'm trained. And with that ST, I look at some concepts in the US, in the UK and things like that. And when I was starting off, I was looking at those things, I'm like does these things apply in South Africa? And yes, they do. But maybe the naming is just different. The principles are the same. So with that, wherever I am, whether I'm at a conference, I'm talking to you now, I really like to take some of those things that are making other people win and how can I just dilute it into a digestible manner to my grandmother? Yeah. Is it Einstein that says if you can't explain it to a five-year-old, you don't know it well enough? That's it. And that's exactly what you're doing. And you spoke briefly, but just before we go to the book, this is the first time home by a show. And I want to talk about your first home. I want to talk about the first time you did this. No, let's not talk about that. Come on, TJ. Was it a bad? Was it a fun experience? Was it, I think it's so important because like I mentioned, we have a lot of young viewers who come in and tune into the show. Right. And TJ from Property Mogul himself is so, it's educational and we can avoid making some of the mistakes. Well, look, as I think for me, I was in love with the time and still am in love right now. And my then-girlfriend, who is now my wife, she had bought one or two properties on her own. I had done the same, but we didn't have a house. We were just about to get married, but we didn't have a house. Yeah. Right? So I think, you know, there's plenty of people that are like that out there. So I want to talk about that house. Sure. Because I think that was our first house between my wife and I. And we went right round searching for properties and we had a budget. And that budget was an amount that the bank had given us to say that we qualify for X. Right. But we never looked back into, but what can we afford? Right? And I think that was the biggest mistake. So we went with what the bank can give us and we started looking at areas. So let's look at a million rand. Right. And we said, we want to stay in the north and everybody wants to stay in the north. Yeah. And we looked at pricing and we're like, oh, a million rand would give us a two bed. Then we started looking to different areas. And in a different area, a million rand was giving you a four bed. Right. So we're like, no, hold on. Let's get more space because we want to have kids. Yeah, we have a family. We want, yes. Yeah. And there we are. We changed our mindset from the north. I was like, I'm still like the north, but my wife was until the north. So we ended up having a compromise in where we stay. And which was kind of like in the northwest. And we bought a place for a million rand. However, I think this is where the lesson comes through for me. Yeah. We bought a house and that house, we used to call it the red house. I didn't like it. It's the house that I now stay in. Yeah. And basically we bought it on the basis of does it fits what our basic needs are and what we are going to do in the next five to 10 years. Right. So we've been in that house for 10 years. That house is saved as well. Yeah. However, let's go back. Could we afford the house? At the time. At the time, yes. With what I know now, no. Okay. Right? Was the bank wrong to give us one million? No, they're not. The bank sells money. Right. That's their job to sell money. So for that reason, they give you the top part based on regulations. And if you are to take that, what happens if my wife get retrenched? What happens if I get retrenched? So we never looked at those dynamics. Had we done that, I honestly think that we could have gone for a 500,000-pound, you know, looking at the benchmark of a million rent. Why am I saying that, especially with what I know now, is because I would have looked at the mitigations of if my wife get retrenched. And by the way, I've got retrenched three times also staying in the house. Right. So this is real life. Right. But once we are talking about that, ST, the thing that we then want to jump in to say, it has saved us well in the last 10 years, but when we bought it, what was the purpose? So here's the thing. We don't understand, or should I say, at that time, I didn't understand. Right. Asset and liabilities. Yeah. Basically put, assets needs to put money in your pocket. That's what an asset is. And liabilities is something that's taking money out. Exactly. So when we bought this house, immediately it became a liability. And it still is my biggest liability at the moment. Hey, TJ, you bought this property 10 years ago, so it's not really, it is. Because it's taking money out of my pocket. Yeah. Right? Now, with what I know now, ST, I could pause and say, I qualified for a million rent. Could we have, with what I know now, could we have bought in a different area? Maybe a further west, maybe east, maybe south, I don't know. But what would have a million rent given us to create an asset? Okay. With what I know now today? Yeah. Because with what I know now today, ST, I've got some of my students, they actually live in a property for free. So they go out there, they buy the property, but because the property comes with more living space than what they are using, they're still using the one million, but maybe there's got a cottage, another cottage, that cottage is 5,000, that one is 5,000. It's paying the bond, so they don't pay the bond. Yeah. But they're staying in the property, or potentially they're the ones staying in the cottage and somebody else is in the main route. Yes, in the property, yeah. So with what I know now, I think I would have really gone through that option and I'm like, why didn't I do that? But I did buy that first property, we still live in it now, a beautiful house, it has really become a good home for us. We've changed a whole lot of things to make it fit for purpose for us, comfortable for us and our kids. One of my kids got some allergies and things like that, so we've made that home to be like that. However, ST, with what I know now, and the reason why I'm emphasizing on the fact with what I know now is, before you do buy your first property, kind of like go out there and find the education. Right. Why are you buying this property? It's not just about living in it, it's not about it's the red house, like it was for me. It's not about, it's closer to my transport to go away. Yeah. For me, when I now look at a house, like, okay, fine, now that I am where I am, my next house, ST, is about, I want a house where I can go in, it's got my office, it's got a wing of my office because I want to work at home, it's a choice. But my business is going to pay for that rent. That's number one, right? So I can write that off. Number two, I also want to have a place where I can stay in a very nice, secure environment, but I want to have a wing so that when my partners are traveling through from wherever they are coming through, they stay with me. Why am I doing that? I want to create a symbiotic relationship with my partners. Exactly. Right? But they will have to pay for it, whether it's an Airbnb, formula, whatnot. But the point is that I am crafting intentionally the next house and how I want to do it to make sure that it's not a liability for me. That's it, yeah. That's it. I like that. There was so much information that you just gave me and came at the very right time in my life, TJ. Let me tell you that. Let's move to the book. Let's talk a little bit about the book. I read it briefly. And I want to talk about, you've told us a lot about your journey and how you got to where you are. And the book, I think, obviously explains, I mean, the title is From Bad Debt to Property Mogul in two years. Yeah. Let's talk about that journey. I mean, two years is a very short time to be in bad debt and then become a property mogul like that. No, so that's a long time. Is that a long time? It's a long time. It's a long time. I've got one of my friends who's called Joey Evans. And Joey Evans is a, you finish the Dakar race. And he says, TJ, when you've fallen off a bike and you're not so sure whether you've been hit, you can't breathe for like a few seconds, but it feels like a year to get that grasp of air. So it really depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on. So yeah, the book, I think that it was just me pouring out my heart on the fact that if I can do it, I'm of the view that I live in the same South Africa. Anyone else can do it. So the book is really written from a perspective of, this is who I am from Tarai Anon, son of the Anon. And who has no backup, who has no foundation and who is coming into the system of being employed, who is wanting more, who loses money, and how do you get out of that? And from there, when you're to partner up with people, it's an open secret. I've never, like all these businesses that I've got and the properties that I've got, I've never put any of my own money in it yesterday. It's all other people's money. I've got a certain skill that I've got. And within that certain skill, people come to me and say, TJ, here's a million rand, here's 500,000. We want to get involved with what you're doing. So that's my skill. But what's your skill, right? What's your thing, right? So if you're to figure that out, the rest in terms of how you can win is pretty simple. Easy, yeah. Right? And the book I've written in that way so that whoever you are out there, you can then replicate the secret source, right? It's a recipe that I've given you and you can go out there, implement it and make it win in your own area. It's not about property only. Exactly. And I think that's so important is, what is your thing? Finding out what your skill is, what you can bring to the table, because earlier you gave an example of, there was a time where you couldn't put money in as an investment, but you could put your skill down as an investment, you know? Not everything holds monetary value to it. So find out what your thing is and I think that's what I want the viewers to go home with tonight, but I'm not done. There's so much I wanna talk to you about. You won Invest of the Year, right? Yes. And I wanted to find out, and after this I have one more question, which is completely off topic, but you won Invest of the Year and you've told us your story in depth and I wanna know what that prize means for you and the sacrifices that went into being the Invest of the Year. Yeah, so Invest of the Year, I think it's not even about Invest of the Year. Any accolade that's going to come through it's something that you're probably not expecting. I wasn't expecting it. And for me, Invest of the Year was, it came at the right time. And the reason why I say that is is because at that time I was still trying to figure out do I leave my job or do I continue running the business as a side hustle? And then I got nominated. But I got nominated also and this was something, a lot of people don't know this, but people within my clique does. And I got nominated along people that had trained me. Oh, wow. So when I got nominated, I got a shock. I'm like, well, this is great. And I think I'm gonna stand at the nomination because the guys that have trained me, they're going to win because they've been in the game for a long time. And then on the night, I get to win it. I was like, whoa. But the whole came from a very humble space esteem with the fact that number one, I was being recognized with fellow people that practice what I do. Right. And with the fact that they were recognizing me, they also understand all the struggles of getting to where I was on that day. And also, number two is winning such kind of an award. It's not a competition, but it's just recognition. And for me, what it did for me at that time, I was ready to resign. And over and above being ready to resign, I was ready to take on a bigger challenge because I realized at the time that my peers were seeing that I'm doing great. Exactly. But I wasn't. And then it gave me that stepping stone on like, dude, you're amazing. Yeah. Right? And I get that step. I'm like, I'm amazing. But I'm like, no, but last week I wasn't. And this week I am. So I'm like, but how best can I be more amazing? The following week. And I realized that amazing is only amazing at that time when you have achieved it, but it's gone. But what's the next thing now? Right. So in my core team, there's two ways that we're always talking about esteem. Well, that I talk about. What is the next thing? Right. We have achieved, we have achieved right now. But what's the next thing? Because you can't leave in your past successes. Hey, we built, we built a complex, yay. We bought a 10 million round building, yay. Okay. What is the next? But what is the next thing? Yeah. Our life grows by taking the next step. And the moment we stop taking the next step, we stop. And for me, the book is the book. I've written it. I'm very proud that it's going out there. It's helping other people to get into the next step. I get lots of emails, many texts, and people that have started buying properties on their own. In small towns, small towns have never been. And that's another bigger win as close as winning the investor of the year. Right. It helps someone that I don't know. I might never meet them, but their families have been impacted with what I've done. And that's okay. Yeah. That's okay. For me, that's the biggest win. Yeah. Yeah. It's a priceless one. And I enjoyed that. But going forward, SD, I am taking this more intentional. So I am actually creating a clicker people where we can drive to bigger goals together. It's intentional. We meet regularly. We are pushing our own boundaries. Your boundary, SD, could be one property today. Can we push it together? Get you into a one. And tomorrow, can we get you into a five? Right. Because you have overcome boundary number one. And that's me in a nutshell, SD. I was going to ask you a completely different question, but you gave me an amazing question. So for TJ, last question, what is the next thing? Yeah. When I came into property, I was trying to find a way to get out of there. And property worked for me in two ways. But it didn't work in multiple ways. Yeah. The first one was, it worked for me because when you buy a property, SD, if you're buying in the correct manner in the right way, the government from a tax perspective, they can pay you instead of being an employee and you pay the government. I'm not anti the government. I'm just saying that understand the rules of the game. That's what I'm saying. Put more money in your pocket. So that's number one. Number two, the moment you buy properties, you're buying correctly, you get what is called equity. So you're getting, for some of my properties, this building that we're sitting on, we bought it for 11 million. The value is 16 million. So by just buying it, I bought 4 million. Right. So I'm 4 million richer before I bought it. There is no any other asset that does that for you, right? So what does it mean? It means that. And I think don't be scared with the numbers. We can take these numbers to as low as possible to say, I bought a two bed one bath for 160,000, but it's worth 500. The difference there is your equity. So for me, ST, when I looked at property, I said, it can give me more money. It might not be hard cash on the table, but it's my balance sheet. So I am getting more money by working as opposed to, if you're exchanging your time for a job, and you're getting paid, the value is different. So in terms of growing your legacy, if you're exchanging your time here, but if you're buying assets here, how soon can you get there? So for me here, it makes sense in the property space. And above that, I can have tenants on top of it, and they pay me regularly. And out of that, I have food on the table. And there's something so powerful you said to me just before the show about the system. And I said, we need to change the system. What did you say? There is no system. Yeah, so the whole thing about the system, ST, is that my view, and this is Taurai, you can quote this Taurai thing, the system is you, right? And we live in South Africa, and I just want to be as blank as I can, and to the point, we live in South Africa, it's a multi-racial country. My wife is mixed, so I've been exposed to both black, white, Indian, color, you name it. Some of my business partners are within that space. I am, the way I'm trained, and the way my head works, I observe people. And when I observe, I start bringing in the stuff out. It's a good thing. It's a good skill and it's a bad skill. Now, with that ST, if you're really looking at a system, we can look at a path that is a system. It is a system, right? We long passed a path, but the system of a path that still lives. However, it is a choice to then live within that system. Why do I say that? I choose to have Jewish friends today. It's a choice. I choose to have white business partners. It's a choice. I choose to have friends from Cameroon. It's a choice. From Ghana, it's a choice. Or how do you have that? Hey, you're on social media all the time. Why don't you DM them? Yeah. Right? Why is it a choice for me? It is a choice for me, because I can understand who they are. Hey, you guys, you're on the Jewish thingy. Why are you having a Burmitzvah? What's a Burmitzvah? Tell me. They tell you, okay, 21, you give someone else, what, what, what. Okay, nobody ever did that to me. So can I now create my own Burmitzvah? Yeah. I can for my child. Yeah, why not? It's a plant that has been seeded. It's a seed that's been now planted in my head that I can go implement tomorrow, isn't it? But if you're only in your circle of where you grew up and where you are, it is that only thing that you all grew up in, understand, that's what you're going to know. So for me, the system is you. You are the system, and you decide what you want to do. You decide you have the choices to define those, that system, and you have the choice to break it. Right. Apart, totally. Mm-hmm. Right? And create another one if you want. Yeah. So the next thing for me is that when I came into the property business, it was solving a problem. And that problem was getting me out of debt. And when you buy properties, it gives you a couple of things, which is number one, you end equity, you know, you buy the property, and also you've got a business on top where you can rent out the property and things like that. But for me, I've achieved this now. I can do this. I can buy properties, good deals in my sleep. I can figure it out, boom, we're gone. The really next big thing for me is that we're figuring all of this esteem. Property for me, it's a vehicle to get where I want to get to. So as a vehicle, my vehicle doesn't just work on its own. It's working as I buy, it's giving me money. It's working as it lives on, it's giving me more money. But now there is a business that's on top of that. And this is the business that I'm after. So the next big thing for me is now esteem is, I've already created multiple businesses out of this. Student accommodation, we run that very well. And the aquaponics, we do what is called aquaponics. It's a farming system that we do, and we're doing that. And then the other part is our no-mountainating that we do. But esteem, the big thing now is scaling this. I've scaled it. I mean, we've got 300 students, 200 tenants, 42 employees. I've scaled it from a guy who's coming as an underdog. Yeah. But I can scale it bigger. The big thing for me, esteem is, there is people out there who are like me, who knows that they can do it, but they just don't know how. Right. The big thing for me is, I've actually started putting up a program together where people like me, who have the hunger, they can do this. They don't know how. We're putting all of this together. For one year, we run together. But for me, it's not just about running to create the business. There's more to it. There's the family to it. There's the you improving you. There is the running of the business. But I don't want people who are going to come in and they're going to struggle in terms of how do they manage to accommodate it? How do they, all of those things have already got them. Now it's about, can I create a community of people that understand the mission of creating a legacy, that understand the fact that they want to create a business for themselves? It's not about business, they are business. And that understand that they can do more. Right. And that's what, that's the next big thing for me because not only will I be able to teach and give, but I'll be creating a force, Estie, of like-minded people who are going into business, stronger in the head, financially stronger. With that, I think we can change the face of South Africa or even Africa. Who knows the wealth? Yeah. Thank you so much, TJ. And that's exactly where I want to close it off. And to the viewers at home, I have a question. What choices are you making to keep fulfilling, to keep fulfilling yourself with knowledge and educating yourselves to be in different circles or just let's think about the choices we're making. And that's how we leave you this evening at the first time home by a show. I've been Estie Klaassen and this is to write Jack also known as TJ. Thank you so much. See you guys again next week. Same time, same place. Take care.