LEIGH GANT | from Australian Shareholders' Association

· Podcast Episodes
There are no fad diets for investing fitness. leigh Gant from Australian Shareholders' Association

There are many parallels between fitness, sport and investing. The traps that people fall into when they are trying to make money quickly are similar to when they try to make physical changes. Discipline, focus and dedication are the same for sporting excellence and successful investing.

Leigh Gant is the Education and Events Manager at the Australian Shareholders' Association. Leigh is an experienced investor, mentor and business leader. After spending over a decade as a founder and advisor to multiple successful businesses in the health and wellness sector, Leigh has a great understanding of the way businesses run. Leigh’s experiences align with Warren Buffett’s thoughts when he said he was a ‘better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor’.

Prior to joining the ASA, Leigh was an Equity Analyst and Writer for The Motley Fool. Leigh has a Graduate Diploma of Finance and a Bachelor of Behavioural Psychology.

 

Do yourself a favour. The Australian Shareholders' Association is offering a year's free membership to listeners of this podcast by using the promo coder SHARES22. Follow this link.

“People have come to me and said, you know, I want to achieve this body shape or this fat loss or this incredible

fitness level and I wanto do it really quickly. And the answer is you just can't, I'm sure you can jump into a short term challenge or try a fad diet and get a little result very quickly, but it's not gonna be sustainable. It's the same as winning the lottery. There's plenty of stories where people will won the lottery and then blow it all quickly cuz they haven't earned it and they don't know how to keep it learning how to generate incredible fitness wealth takes time. It takes education and it just takes doing the fundamentals right over and over again. And then keeping that fitness and wealth for a long period of time also requires you to do more of the basics the same over and over and over again.”

Australian shareholder

"I'm heavily influenced by people like Warren Buffett, Guy Spear, Charlie Munger, Mohnish, Pabrai. They all come from this same school of thought about what a wonderful business is. First. It needs to be in my circle of competence. So I don't understand every industry and I'm not passionate or willing to learn about every industry as well. We've mentioned Markel. I own another company, WR Berkley, again, an insurance company that takes its float and premium money and invests it elsewhere. These things I understand, I understand simple consumer facing businesses as well. If you understand where the revenue comes from, how they make sales, how it will grow, then it's easy to analyse the business. It needs to be in a growing industry, not a dying industry, so that there's a market for these companies to expand in. It needs to have wonderful management. You can understand that from simple metrics like return on invested capital, perhaps growing equity is something as well that I look for."

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chloe (1s):
Shares for Beginners

Leigh (4s):
Learning how to generate incredible fitness, wealth takes time. It takes education and it just takes doing the fundamentals right over and over again. And then keeping that fitness and wealth for a long period of time also requires you to do more of the basics. The same over and over and over again. And you don't have to worry about the, all the noise telling you to do anything risky or out there, or, or if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So just avoid that. But that's the hardest thing like delayed gratification is not something that everyone can harness.

Leigh (44s):
It's really challenging

Phil (45s):
G'day, and welcome back to Shares for Beginners I'm Phil Muscatello. Investing is full of sporting analogies. Markets can be on a sticky wicket. We're in the fourth quarter of a bear market. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Joining me today is the investor education and events manager from the Australian Shareholders Association, Leigh Gant, who has a distinguished career in investing and sports coaching. Hello Leigh,

Leigh (1m 9s):
Good day, Phil.

Phil (1m 10s):
Thanks for coming on. And thanks for joining me today. Fully hydrated. I believe

Leigh (1m 14s):
That's right.

Phil (1m 15s):
Carbed up and fully hydrated.

Leigh (1m 18s):
Yes. I've been rushing to get enough fuel into, hopefully provide a great podcast for you.

Phil (1m 26s):
Okay. And just before we get started, I just wanted to do a quick shout out to a listener and I got some feedback, which I'm just still blown away by. It was so nice. Unfortunately, it was anonymous. So I can't tell you your name, but you're Mr. 35 to 44 in WA and it was about the 4th of August that you left the feedback. So I'm very moved and touched and thank you very much. So Leigh you've recently joined, well, it's not so recent now you've joined the association. What about a year ago now? Is that the case

Leigh (1m 56s):
Bit less than that, but yes, I've been here all of 2022,

Phil (2m 0s):
Yeah. And long term listeners to the podcast will know that I do go on about the association quite a bit in what a great place it is, especially for education of which you're in charge of now.

Leigh (2m 10s):
Yeah, that's right. We're steadily making way in, in trying to improve actually what we do for education. I think, you know, the ASA is a, a fantastic resource, but at the same time could be a whole lot better. And that's why I'm here really to find out how and what we can do to improve investor education for retail shareholders in Australia.

Phil (2m 31s):
And we'll mention at the end of the podcast, we've got a freemium deal going on the, on the moment for listeners of this podcast, the promo code is shares22, but we'll repeat that again. And it'll be in the episode notes. So tell us about your previous career in sports coaching.

Leigh (2m 46s):
Well, I've got a, a long career, I guess, in entrepreneurial pursuits and it could definitely be considered sport coaching. That was part of it. But I, I like to think of myself perhaps a little bit more as a small business owner. And at one point it was expressed as sport coaching. So, sorry

Phil (3m 7s):
I got the, I got the bio information all wrong.

Leigh (3m 10s):
Maybe I I'm just trying to be a little bit more humble yeah. In my approach. But yes, I'm fortunate to have worked with quite a number of professional and semiprofessional athletes. And my journey is owning a couple of gyms and online coaching business before transitioning into finance. So I've had the great pleasure of being around some professional sporting teams and Olympians and more recently. And probably what I was better known for was in the CrossFit space where I've worked with CrossFit games, athletes,

Phil (3m 42s):
What was it like working with athletes? And we working with them in terms of coaching and money coaching as well. Was there a bit of a crossover there

Leigh (3m 50s):
Working with athletes is an incredible experience. It's not for everybody as hards is to be an athlete. It's equally challenging to be a coach. My, my organization, and the way we coached, particularly me, was always to try and make someone, you know, fantastic on the field, whatever sporting field they're on, but more importantly, help them become better humans. And more often than not, that turned into them being able to perform better when someone is able to take care of their inner self, their physical expression becomes unshackled. So a lot of my work had to do with, with mindset, habits and behaviors, right at the sort of base level of their lifestyle.

Leigh (4m 33s):
And then physical expression and training was sort of the icing on the cake.

Phil (4m 38s):
You mentioned about the focus and the discipline of these athletes, and also trying to help them to become better human beings as well. I guess that part of it is, is that a lot of these athletes have trained and done nothing but training and have very little social life for the bulk of their life from childhood onwards and into adulthood. Is that the case?

Leigh (4m 58s):
It's not always the case, there a rare exceptions for people who are just so gifted that they can do exceedingly well, even when they're very social. However, the most common cases that athletes, particularly at the semi-professional level where, you know, they're not earning a lot of money, if any money at all, to follow their passion. They're so heavily spirited and passionate about what they want to do and what they want to achieve. They're so goal driven that it's not a sacrifice to not have a social life. It's really aligned with who they are as a person to put that time and energy into achieving sporting success.

Leigh (5m 38s):
Not everyone makes it in fact, very few really achieved their highest or biggest, most audacious goals that I worked with. And that doesn't mean the others weren't happy with the outcome either. Everyone wants to be a winner, but at the end of the day, there's only one winner. So that's

Phil (5m 56s):
Every, there wasn't any bronze metal syndrome.

Leigh (6m 0s):
Sure. There's, there's disappointment when you don't achieve your big goal. Yeah. But big picture, I think, and, and long term, I hope that most of them will reflect, you know, 10, 15 years down the track and, and know that the processes that they put in to get to where they got to transcended into the rest of their lives and has allowed them to achieve success in other areas.

Phil (6m 22s):
I remember speaking to Ted Richards, who was a footy player with the Sydney swans and who works in the finance space now. And he was talking about some of his co players who were very young and got suddenly very wealthy, very quickly and ended up blowing the money. Have you seen any of that kind of syndrome with, with athletes and people who've made a bit of money?

Leigh (6m 43s):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You see, or hear stories about particularly young professional athletes who get paid well and truly more than your average wave to, to play a game, to, to pursue something that's at the end of the day, really, really fun. And they can get fall into any types of traps, you know, bad business deals pursuing like really speculative assets to try and make a few extra dollars. And, and it blows up on them. And everyone knows that athletic careers don't last forever. And the very few that do have long careers, you know, still at risk of losing what their, their job is every day they go out on the field.

Phil (7m 22s):
You mentioned that you were very green previously when you first started your first business, what was it like being thrown in the deep end?

Leigh (7m 29s):
Really scary. I was very confident. I'm I externally, I, I present a picture of a lot of confidence and that hides that hides all my insecurities

Phil (7m 40s):
As we all do.

Leigh (7m 42s):
I have a, I have a deep faith in my ability to learn. So I don't mind being thrown in the deep end and perhaps putting out the perception that I know a bit more than I actually do, cuz I'm very keen on learning. I love learning. I'll dive into any area that speaks to me and go very deep, very quickly. Yes. It was extremely scary. Cuz the business that I started, we started big. I had a great business partner that played to his strengths and I played to mine and we started very big. Most people start particularly at brick, brick and mortar business. They don't start as big as we did. We went all in and the first six months of actually being opened was extremely challenging cuz we needed to find our feet, not only as a business, but really as who we were as operators and the business took on many subtle changes that perhaps the clients didn't realize all of them as we found who we were as operators and where we fit in the market.

Leigh (8m 38s):
And once we did, and once I figured out how to be a better leader as well, our business, you know, accelerated very, very quickly. So we learnt to swim outta that deep end, as fast as we could so that we didn't drown

Phil (8m 51s):
Having experience as a business owner. Do you find that helps in terms of being able to assess other businesses for investment purposes?

Leigh (8m 58s):
Absolutely. My background at university was psychology throughout high school. I was not a fan of mathematics at all. I much prefer artistic and creativity things. However, when you own a business, you need to learn accounting very quickly and you, you get severely punished if you don't. So that learning curve was steep, but I needed to go on it very quickly and get ahead so that we can operate a business and everyone wants to be profitable and is crucial that you understand how and where profits are derived from. So once learning to read financial statements and do very basic, accounting became more important to me.

Leigh (9m 41s):
I was able to learn it. And now you can look at any size business as a, as a shareholder with that fundamental understanding and get a clear concept of where the business is at, where it's going and where it's been. I like to find businesses that are owner operated companies. There's a, there's a bit of synergy there between, you know, having been an owner operator and, and then I wanna invest in other great owner operators. And part of that is just having faith that they truly understand what's going on with the business.

Phil (10m 13s):
Yeah. Although I'm gonna push back on that owner operator thing as well, because I just had this experience this week. Fortunately, I wasn't invested in them, but I was, I won't mention the company ticker, but they re they delisted and went bankrupt, I think this week, but, and it was an owner operated business and it, they had fantastic contracts with large software providers, large tech firms from around the world. But it turned out that the co-founders were paying themselves huge amounts of money and their self-interest was basically self-directed. So can, you know, can go both ways. I believe.

Leigh (10m 47s):
Absolutely. I, I think, you know, going back to asking why is it so important for me to have, or learned as a, as a business owner? I had dreams of paying myself quite handsomely as a business owner. When I first opened a business we all did. And we quickly realized that that's not the right way. So I think, you know, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger talk about one of their investing tenets needs to be that it has excellent management with integrity. Munger puts it more crassly that, you know, a business needs to be able to be so good that it could be run by a monkey cuz one day it will be.

Leigh (11m 29s):
So as a previous business owner, I, I know what I'm looking for and I due diligence, not, you know, no offense Phil, if, if you miss this point, but I'm looking for, you know, businesses that they have owner operators like myself, they don't overpay themselves. They they're looking to, you know, create a wonderful company for the long run and those that overpay themselves are shooting themselves in the foot.

Phil (11m 50s):
So do you feel like you've got that ability now as a business business owner to do that you've self assessed yourself and to see that other business owners are possibly going through that similar kind of self assessment in how they're running the business

Leigh (12m 1s):
As, as an investor, it's difficult because if you're listening to earnings calls or, or reading reports, management are going to try and always put their advertising hats on, they need to go out into the world and tell everybody how great the company is. The best managers are often very Frank and will be honest about a quarter or an annual performance. You have to take what they say with a grain salt. However, you know, managers are, I truly think are fantastic or owners or, or CEOs are truly fantastic. Some that come to mind like Tom Gayner, CEO of Markel in the, in the US, they're very Frank and honest and, and they they'll tell you exactly what's going on with the company and that comes through.

Leigh (12m 46s):
And I recognize that.

Phil (12m 48s):
Yeah, I'd recommend listeners study up a bit more about Markel because they're, they're kind of a mini Berkshire, aren't they?

Leigh (12m 54s):
Yes, indeed.

Phil (12m 55s):
That's how I've heard them described. Yeah.

Leigh (12m 57s):
Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, Berkshire Hathaway did purchase a small amount of relatively small when we're talking Berkshire a small amount of Markel last quarter so there's definitely aligned interests there.

Phil (13m 11s):
Yeah. Because they focus on management, good management, good business, good accounting practices. And I think they've got an accounting background and that's really what they're looking at as the company really, truly based on the figures themselves.

Leigh (13m 24s):
Yes, yes. And the CEO, Tom Gayner, he's been there for a very long time. It it's main business is insurance just like Berkshire and they, they take their pool of funds from the insurance business to invest in private and listed companies. And Mr. Gayner has a, has a great track record of doing so

Phil (13m 45s):
And some great reading there as well. Just if you wanna get off the, the Munger Buffett route

Leigh (13m 50s):
For sure.

Phil (13m 55s):
Then you, well, I'm sure it wasn't as simple as that, that you went into the Motley Fool, but at one stage in your career, you went to the Motley Fool, tell us about that.

Leigh (14m 4s):
After selling my last business and closing down my online coaching business, I needed to take some time off and, and recover, owning small businesses and, and trying to push for growth for many years, you know, left me extremely fatigued and I had actually achieved everything I wanted to as a sport coach. And so I was left a little bit goal hungry throughout 2019, 2020. Plenty of self-assessment figuring out what I really wanted to do next. Investing had been something that had floated in and out of my life since I was a teenager, very fortunate to have invested throughout that time, but very passively. And I thought it was something you just did a little bit on the side for the future.

Leigh (14m 47s):
You know, I, again, it's really lucky that I had my father kind of school me in long term investing approaches, but, you know, I didn't know that, you know, trading or anything else was something that people did really. I just thought you bought shares and left them alone for a long time. And then when you retire, that's what you lived off. So very, very fortunate there. However, once I had the free time away from small business, I found myself getting more and more interested in reading about great investors and learning more about investing as a career. And suddenly I found myself with, with a goal of making it a full time job.

Leigh (15m 30s):
And the opportunity came along at the Motley Fooll and I swung the bat and went all in and was fortunate to get a role there as a analyst and writer, which was a great place to start a career in investing. So

Phil (15m 45s):
I'm assuming that your dad was from that generation pre ETF where there wasn't a diversification available from an ETF, although maybe there would've been LICs was he the kind of person that would get the old stock certificate and put it away in the drawer?

Leigh (16m 2s):
Yes, he was. Yes. And it it's all been, I think a master plan of his to just perform this inception on me coming in an investor. One of my fondest memories is sitting with the AFR and when all the stock prices were printed in the paper and getting out ruler and finding companies that I understood or knew about Telstra, Commonwealth bank and chatting about the share price changes over time. And, you know, I was a teenager. So now I look back, you know, closing in on 40 and thinking, wow, that's lucky not many people get to do that. So yes, he, he would, he had a pretty concentrated portfolio of individual businesses that he just held for a really long time.

Leigh (16m 48s):
And, and it's worked magic.

Phil (16m 49s):
So your education and learning at Motley Fooll I'm assuming accelerated as well. Were there any key things that you learned there?

Leigh (16m 56s):
Oh, I learned a lot. It's really hard to distill it down into a short conversation. Of

Phil (17m 1s):
Course. Just give us

Leigh (17m 1s):
One, one or two. Yeah, sure. I think the first skill I learned was actually to assess businesses faster. It was like drinking through a fire hose. When I started there being across many services at the Motley Fool, my stock universe was greatly expanded, not just locally, but internationally and working with quite different analysts from Kevin Gandia to Drew Flowers, to Chris Copeley they all have different styles, different strengths, and could teach me different things. I learned more about different ways to value different companies, different characteristics, to look in, you know, smaller companies versus, you know, maybe larger blue chips, being able to condense that down and communicate it in a simple way to perhaps someone that isn't an analyst, anyone to become a better investor.

Leigh (17m 52s):
For sure. It's just simplifying complex ideas is a wonderful skill to have.

Phil (17m 58s):
Let's get back to talking about the sporting analogies. And of course the master Warren Buffett says that the best investment you can make is in investment in yourself or something to that effect on paraphrasing here, because you know, a lot of investors, they come into the market thinking, oh, you know, I'm gonna make a ton of money straight away, especially after Robin Hood and all the GameStop and crypto that's been going on over the last couple of years, but then it comes down. The people who are gonna be serious about it are going to be serious about education. And it's a bit like an athlete as well. That's basically going in doing the same thing, doing the laps every day, doing the reps every day. What are your thoughts on that?

Leigh (18m 34s):
There's so many analogies that transcend fitness and sport to investing. If someone's looking to change how they are physically, you can see really similar traps that people fall into when they are trying to make money quickly. When we hear about meme stocks, crypto, and any other speculative asset where someone somewhere has made huge returns in a really short period of time, it sounds like a shortcut, oh, that's easy. I can take that. And it's kind of the same with fitness. So stepping away from athletes, general population people, they have come to me and said, you know, I want to achieve, you know, this body shape or this fat loss or this incredible fitness level.

Leigh (19m 19s):
And I wanna do it really quickly. And the answer is you just can't, I'm sure you can jump into a short term challenge or try a fad diet and get a little result very quickly, but it's not gonna be sustainable. It's the same as winning the lottery. There's plenty of stories where people won the lottery and then blow it all quickly cuz they haven't earned it and they don't know how to keep it. Learning how to generate incredible fitness wealth takes time. It takes education and it just takes doing the fundamentals right over and over again. And then keeping that fitness and wealth for a long period of time also requires you to do more of the basics the same over and over and over again.

Leigh (20m 4s):
And you don't have to worry about the, all the noise telling you to do anything risky or out there or, or if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So just avoid that. But that's the hardest thing like delay gratification is not something that everyone can harness. It's really challenging for most people. And, and once you can connect it perhaps with something deep inside, you know, your goals or, or your personality, then it becomes easier to do. But yeah, sticking to the basics, like getting eight hours of sleep, going for a walk every day, eating less than you need. If you need to lose body fat, drink water, smile, see the sun.

Leigh (20m 47s):
These are the things that build, you know, incredible health, not crazy six week challenges, just like dollar cost averaging, you know, spending less than you earn. These are really easy ways that you can build wealth over a long period of time.

Phil (21m 1s):
Your dad, you mentioned had a very concentrated portfolio and your own investment style is like that as well. Tell us about your concentrated portfolio and how you invest personally.

Leigh (21m 12s):
Yes. Well, I've gone through quite a few different evolutions of investing as a, it's an exploration process and it's still evolving too, because I learn more about who I am and what's suits my personality. So what I'm doing now is different to what I was doing two years ago. So I don't want it to sound like I'm a guru who only invests in a handful of stocks far from that, but after being more diversified for quite some time, I'm, I'm getting more and more concentrated. So, you know, Joel Greenblatt has explained very well in, in one of his books about how diversification beyond 20 stocks, the benefits are not that great.

Leigh (21m 53s):
You know, somewhere between 15 and 20 in terms of holdings is ideal for diversification. I just don't have that many good ideas like I've got, I've got 24 holdings and probably 15 or really, really good ideas or what I at least think so, and the next 10 need more research. I, I think they're good ideas, but they're smaller holdings and, and I'm not ready to make them bigger yet. And I, I'm looking for wonderful companies. You know, I have quite an extensive checklist that would tell me if a company in my mind is wonderful or not. And I want to get them at a, at a reasonable price.

Leigh (22m 33s):
The, the market's been offering us, you know, different prices over the last year for the same businesses. And sometimes those prices are great and sometimes they're exuberant. So I'm just patiently waiting for, for a good price.

Phil (22m 49s):
What are a couple of the columns in your checklist?

Leigh (22m 52s):
I'm heavily influenced by people like Warren Buffett, Guy Spear, Charlie Munger, Mohnish, Pabrai. They all come from this same school of thought about what a wonderful business is. First. It needs to be in my circle of competence. So I don't understand every industry and I'm not passionate or willing to learn about every industry as well. So things like biomed, like really advanced technology like AI and such. It doesn't really fall into my wheelhouse. So it's not very simple for me to understand. So if it's too complex, that immediately goes in my two hard basket. I, I, I like companies like insurance businesses.

Leigh (23m 34s):
We've already mentioned Markel. I own another company, WR Berkley, again, an insurance company that takes its float and premium money and invests it elsewhere. These things I understand, I understand simple consumer facing businesses as well. If you understand where the revenue comes from, how they make sales, how it will grow, then it's easy to analyze the business. It needs to be in a growing industry, not a dying industry, so that there's a market for these companies to expand in. It needs to have wonderful management. You can understand that from simple metrics like return on invested capital, perhaps growing equity is something as well that I look for.

Leigh (24m 14s):
So you can see how it starts to expand quite quickly. I could keep going

Phil (24m 19s):
Well, it's kind of like you, you're almost trying to make the best decision possible. And the, the more metrics that you've got, which add up and you get a tick and a tick and a tick and a tick, I guess that's more how it confirms your belief in the particular

Leigh (24m 32s):
Business. Indeed. I, I also like to think of it from the other direction in invert the story. So if I was to buy an ETF, for example, something that tracked the ASX 200 or 300, not every business in the ASX 200 or 300 is a wonderful business. So if we think of it the other way, what are the things I want to avoid? Right? What are the characteristics in a business I don't want to own? I wouldn't want to be a part owner in a business that is highly leveraged, that doesn't have a track record of growing revenue and expanding margins. If the share market didn't exist. And I was fortunate to have a pool of money and I needed to buy some individual businesses to grow my capital over time, I'm not gonna buy the coffee shop.

Leigh (25m 18s):
That's losing money and highly leveraged, and can't open more coffee shops in the future.

Phil (25m 24s):
I mean, that's a great thing about it. And I think a lot of investors still forget that we're talking about businesses here and that you can become a part owner of this business and the management and the staff of that business are all working on your behalf.

Leigh (25m 37s):
Here's another element that I learned from the Motley Fool and, and something that Scott Phillips is really big on inside the team is not referring to a business by its ticker code. We, we are talking about a real business here with real people. We don't wanna rent a, a three or four letter code. We, we wanna be part owners in a real company.

Phil (25m 57s):
Yeah. But just feels good. You know, you just say the code, you know, you just say the ticker code and you, you feel more professional about it, but I think that's a great, you great from Scott saying that, that you wanna say the name of the business, don't you?

Leigh (26m 9s):
Exactly. I, I'm not a fan of saying the ticker code. I like to be able to walk around and if people ask me, what do I do? I can say, well, I'm a part owner in Disney actually. And it sounds a lot better than it really is.

Phil (26m 26s):
Yeah. Especially with fractional shares these days. Okay. Well, let's get back to the shareholders association. How are you finding working at the association and meeting the members?

Leigh (26m 36s):
It's fantastic. We had our investor conference a couple of months ago where it was just wonderful to get back to face to face after a couple of years of, of really being focused online and to meet, you know, hundreds of shareholders and, and hear their stories and, and what they want to learn as well is, is just super.

Phil (26m 56s):
Okay. So with the shareholders association, what changes are being implemented in the education space?

Leigh (27m 2s):
Yeah, it's really interesting time because I think there's a rise in shareholder education broadly in the market from beginners or people just wanting to get started in investing. There's so many new avenues from free content in great podcasts. Like this one, YouTube channels, even free online courses. There's so much out there. And then for other markets, perhaps the wealth builders and the self-funded retirees, which is a lot of the ASAs member base. My goal is really to understand that persona or of the ASA member, what, what do they really want to learn? I think we can work with others that already have fantastic courses available and help guide them and almost be like a Sherpa on their investing journey and carry some of the weight of, oh, what do I need to know?

Leigh (27m 53s):
What do I need to learn? Where do I start? And that's what really I'm looking to do is just put a map in front of them and say, Hey, here, here's where you are. Here's where you want to go. And this is the way forward.

Phil (28m 4s):
And I'd commend listeners to go to a member's meeting as well, which you can just turn up at, you know, even if you are not a member for me, it's one of the great experiences of going to these member meetings and talking to some of the, the wiser more mature investors and see how they got to their position, where they are, because, you know, getting to that age, doesn't take as long as you think it will.

Leigh (28m 28s):
It's, it's an incredible resource. There's, there's over 50 local member meetings across Australia from the ASA and inside of those meetings. There's a, my community, that's part of a larger community and so many stories and so much to learn from others. What a great way to learn about investing. Go hear the war stories. You know, it it's really important to hear everyone's mistakes. No, one's got a perfect track record so that I would be my first recommendation and then go and listen to the different takes on what's going on out there and you'll come away a better investor for sure.

Phil (29m 3s):
And they've got such long memories as well. I just always remember, you know, they talk about some sort of manager and then someone will pipe up and say, yes, but back in the nineties, he managed this particular company. And, you know, back in the 2000, she made a mess of that company.

Leigh (29m 19s):
And how handy is that? You know, I, I didn't know about what CEOs were doing when I was in primary school. So as people can tell me what managers were doing in the nineties, that's fantastic.

Phil (29m 31s):
Okay. So like, we'd like to share with listeners that we've got a premium offer for listeners. They can join it's till the end of December. Is that correct? This offer goes for

Leigh (29m 41s):
That's right.

Phil (29m 42s):
Okay. And the promo code is shares22 and you can get a year's free membership and experience the shareholder's association as we both have as being a wonderful institution that we both love and respect.

Leigh (29m 54s):
Absolutely. We hope some more listeners join us.

Phil (29m 58s):
Okay, Leigh Gant, and thank you very much for joining me today.

Leigh (30m 0s):
Thank you, Phil.

Phil (30m 2s):
If you found this podcast helpful, please tell a friend, especially if it's someone who needs to start thinking about investing for their future, you'll be helping them and helping me to keep this show on the road.

Chloe (30m 12s):
Shares for beginners is for information and educational purposes, only it isn't financial advice, and you shouldn't buy yourself any investments based on what you've heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not shares for beginners. This podcast doesn't replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs circumstances or current situation.

Phil (30m 32s):
And thank you for listening to my podcast.

Shares for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Shares for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation