SPEAKER_02: 0:02

Welcome back to Finance Friends. I'm your host, Fabian, and this is season four. This season we're diving deep into the world of investing. Not just where to put your money, but how to think like a professional investor. We are bringing you conversations with highly intelligent, incredibly motivated investors with weekly episodes. Make sure you stay tuned in. Welcome back, listeners. We're kicking off season four with a special rerun featuring one of our most celebrated guests, Chris Judd. Incredibly, since we've had Chris Judd on the podcast, well, actually, over the last 12 months, his fun has returned over 35%. That's correct. Outperforming the benchmark. Listen in and keep an eye out for our future episodes. Today we have the wonderful Chris Judd. Welcome. Thanks, baby.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

Thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_02: 0:56

Looking forward to having a chat. Well, thank you for coming on. So today I want to talk about your career that not only as a footballer, as most people know, but also as an investment manager, because that's what you do today. So what's the name of your your company?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

So I'm the founder of the Serity Macro Fund. Yeah. So we've been in investment markets in different forms since uh retiring from footy about 10 years ago. Um and then founded that uh about a bit over a year and a half ago now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26

Yeah, maybe just give us a quick overview.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29

Yeah, we'll see. So we um we're macro themed investors, so we only invest in in equities and we're long only. Um, and whilst most funds really have a bottom-up focus, we start with top-down dynamics in markets and look for secular themes that we like and pay a lot of attention to liquidity metrics and and then then go through bottom-up analysis, then. So it's how I invested privately before the fund. Um, and I guess you know, from a macro side of things, that that's really around stories and is almost a way of viewing the world and explaining what's going on in the world. So I've always been fascinated by by macroeconomics, and and that's really the part of the market that uh that excites me the most. Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 2:10

And at what age did you become interested in in financial markets?

SPEAKER_00: 2:16

I bought my first shares when I was 16. Uh, got some money for the AIS for an academy that I was a part of, and looked at the old man and said, What should do with that? And I don't know. And uh and so we walked down to the news agency and got a share magazine, and we bought shares. Um, and it was a toss-up between AWA, which was a small OEM manufacturer, or um Woolworths, actually. And we went with AWA, which for children got bought out. It wasn't a great company, and we got out of jail, I suspect, on that one. Um, but certainly Woolworths would have been a good buy and hold from uh what's that, 26 years ago. Um but that was it. I didn't grow up in a financial family at all. My my parents um whilst clever had zero interest in in markets or or finance. My grandfather, my dad's dad, liked his stocks. Um, so I'm not sure if the passion skipped a generation or what happened. But um, I think being naturally competitive by nature, there's an attraction, particularly to listed equities, where there's a real scoreboard every day. And I'm not I'm not the sort of investor that says the scoreboard's wrong. That's the scoreboard, and then you work out if you if you won or not based on on what you hold. And there is there's something about that accountability um that it that I really enjoy.

SPEAKER_02: 3:36

Yeah, and is that stemmed as a child? You talk about always being competitive, having that competitive nature. Was that when you were do you have any do you have any siblings? Did you have a competitive nature or just playing footy growing up?

SPEAKER_00: 3:52

Yeah, and I think that's a personality type. Um and you know, I score incredibly low on uh agreeability. So I'm you know, naturally I'm always have the urge to take the other side of someone's view, uh, which can be an annoying trait when you live with someone, but as an investor, I think that's a useful characteristic because if you believed everything a CEO told you when you meet with them, you'd be investing in every single company that you ever met with. So I think that that high level of uh disagreeability and and competitiveness, whilst annoying in some instances in life, is useful for both professional sport and um and investing. Because anytime you invest, you're essentially saying the market's wrong. You know, how arrogant is that? You're saying that the price that the market has given this asset is incorrect and I'm right because of XYZ. So it it's um, you know, I think it's a really tough career path for people that are are highly agreeable because how do you make that call each day?

SPEAKER_02: 4:58

Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of portfolio managers are quite unique and and maybe aren't easily, like you said, agreeable, but they look, they they look beyond maybe a friendship or a sales pitch to understand the company more deeply and invest accordingly.

SPEAKER_00: 5:16

Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of careers in finance that work if you if you're agreeable. You know, wealth management, you asset allocation, things like that, but picking individual stock names, um, yeah, I think it's suited to those personality traits because, like I said, you're you're making the decision each day that the market's wrong and the price they're allocating to those things. Yep. And what skills did you learn as a if you take a step back?

SPEAKER_02: 5:41

So you were drafted to West Coast as an 18-year-old. So were your biggest learnings early on in your career as a footballer? And then we can help to understand how that's transitioned to being a successful um portfolio manager.

SPEAKER_00: 5:56

Yeah, look, I think um two of the lessons learned, and there's sort of thousands, uh, that probably resonate with investing, uh, one that springs to mind is um, you know, to take notice or the importance of when a football club or a company's culture is aligned with their competitive advantage. Um so often it's easy to to think in life that culture's got to look a certain way. So, an example in the real world would be if you met an accounting firm and their competitive advantage, they said was trust and reliability and compliance, and everyone is walking around with purple hair and drinking booze at lunchtime, and there's bring your dog to work day and loud music blurring the office. That would be a misalignment of culture and competitive advantage. If that exact same culture was alive at an advertising agency whose competitive advantage was coming up with ideas that no one else has thought of and thinking outside the box, there may be good alignment there. And that's something I look for in companies today, and that's something that resonates with my football career, you know, particularly from the West Coast days, where the competitive advantage of that team and why that team was able to disrupt, if you like, using finance vernacular, the Brisbane Lions teams that were much heavier and stronger than everyone else, was just through immense running power, and it was probably the first team to really value both running and being light, uh, which has now become a real focus of midfield groups across the competition since. Uh, and culturally, it was just an expectation that when you come to preseason on day one, you'd be running near personal best times on beat tests and various other running tests that were implemented. Uh, and there was never a point where uh you know a management coach or a psychologist said we've got to have a cultural line with our competitive advantage. It just naturally evolved, but it became a very powerful thing. Uh, and so that's something I think you can take from from both sport uh and investing. And the other thing I think is just the rewards uh the big rewards in both sport and investing go to people prepared to do something different. They're also the major losses, unfortunately. Um and you weigh up the the cost benefits of doing that in in sport because it's so binary, uh I think it makes more sense to take more risk and do something different because following best practice has a habit of getting you to sort of top four at best, but not the whole way to victory. Business is a little bit different, you know. There if I run a listed supermarket business, there can be two, three successful supermarkets. So following best practice may make more sense. So you need to be clear on what game you're playing, but certainly the major rewards, whether it's in sport or investing, go to those that do something different first.

SPEAKER_02: 8:54

Yeah, and I guess it depends on what part of the business cycle you're at as well. You know, if you are a newcomer, you want to disrupt, but if you're maybe a mature business like a Coles or Woolworths, you've got to duopily. Maybe you didn't need to do too much.

SPEAKER_00: 9:09

Yeah, that's right, but it it it still means the major awards will go to those doing something different. It doesn't mean it's right for everyone, but yeah, you're not seeing a lot of 10, 20x companies that are just following the path of someone else.

SPEAKER_02: 9:23

At what age were you when you realised that you are ready for that transition out of professional sport into financial services? Is there is there a certain point in your life that you thought, wow, this is probably getting close to that time, or were you preparing for that throughout your career?

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

I realised when I snapped my ACL, I was ready for a transition out of AFL. Um, and then look, my initial thoughts was I'd become a either buy a small operating company or or start a company, uh, you know, a traditional sort of operating business, a small business, largely because the entrepreneurs I admired the most uh at that stage of my life, that's what they did. And and that just would have been a huge mistake, which I was really fortunate I didn't end up doing. I um and it would have been a huge mistake because I love I love ideas and exploring ideas at depth. I don't love managing large amounts of people and dealing with a lot of HR issues. So funds management is a great business to found for someone like that because you do spend most of your days thinking about ideas. You know, my staff consists of one analyst and a and a lady in administration. Um, but the lion's share of my time is is spent exploring concepts, which is both what I'm good at and and what I really enjoy. Um so yeah, that's how it panned out. I was lucky enough to get a job as an analyst post-that injury at a venture capital fund, which was a a really good experience, and I learnt a lot, and that was my first foray into sort of the corporate world. So, were you still playing professional students? No, that was about a couple of months post-career.

SPEAKER_02: 11:05

Okay, so and did you do any study while you were at I didn't complete anything.

SPEAKER_00: 11:09

I just I did um a media and communications course that I didn't complete, and I started an MBA and didn't complete that either. So I'd done a little bit of study, but I had been investing privately at a reasonably sophisticated level for um well since my sort of mid-20s.

SPEAKER_02: 11:29

Can you share an example of uh an investment you did as a as a private investor? Because I'd imagine as a professional sports person that's in the public eye, you'd probably get a lot of people trying to pitch investment ideas to you. How do you navigate that? Do you have an advisor? Do you navigate it on your own?

SPEAKER_00: 11:47

Yeah, so I did it all myself because I mean I executed through brokers, but I sort of didn't have a wealth manager or someone holding my hand because I I wanted to be uh I didn't want to be dependent on other people post-football and wanted to develop those skills myself, which I'm really glad I did at the time. That meant I made a heap of crappy investments in my early 20s, and then was lucky enough to meet the founder of Euros in my sort of mid-20s, which have broking firms. Which are a broking firm out of WA. So I was in Melbourne at the time. Um, but he really took me under his wing and really, really taught me how to invest in in small and micro cap companies. And what that means is really learning how to sell. Um, you know, it's really easy to to buy listed equities, it's really challenging to sell. So to start to develop a framework around that was useful.

SPEAKER_02: 12:43

So sorry, just when you talk about sell, what do you mean by that? Can you dig a bit deeper? So sell equities is in if you're the company. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

So like like when I make a decision to buy$100 worth of a stock, that's easy. Yeah. What's hard is when to sell that stock. Yeah. Because it might have ripped three times and you're convinced it's going to be the next four diskew, or it might have been down 30%, and the competitive part of you wants to get to break even before it before you sell. I mean, that's a whole psychological emotional connection, yeah. Um, that you need to align with the type of investor you you are and you want to be and and what's actually happening within that company. So that's the real skill set in equities and particularly in small cap equities. Um, you know, if I look at property investing, you know, particularly pre-order different taxes the government, particularly in Victoria slapped on. But for me, property, the skill is in the buying. If you buy property really well, there's really been no reason to sell it. You know, you can leverage against it if it goes berserk and use that that cash somewhere else. Um if you buy, yeah, traditionally, if you bought a good property, small and microcap equities aren't like that. If you um, you know, even if you buy well, the skill is in the selling. So that that's really what I learned in my 20s. Um and I guess my style of investing then was almost akin to a VC investor's mentality where I think this smaller microcap company can do X, Y, Z, and then get re-rated, and then that might be in a liquidity event when I would sell.

unknown: 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:21

As opposed to a VC company where they will say this series A opportunity, they can do XYZ, re-rate, and then we'll raise a new series B round. So um it was that sort of mindset, but always enlisted equities and always place a huge premium on uh on liquidity.

SPEAKER_02: 14:39

Yeah. Because obviously VC, they'll invest early days, not more seed investments, more concept, so that the the business is generally running, and then um, you know, look to whether you say exit through another uh raise or through an IPO or a share trade, a trade sale. So what took me through your time being an analyst within a venture capital firm. What what is what did your job involve? What was the data?

SPEAKER_00: 15:06

So I was the first point of call for all the companies that were wanting capital from that VC fund. So I was the initial screening point, if you like. So I saw every company that came in the door and then would do, I guess, some reasonably basic analysis, um, and then recommend to the portfolio manager if he should commit time to more extensive DD. So it was a good grounding, it's good grounding in in finance and a good ability to see lots of different businesses. Um, but also a good ability to learn. I don't like VC investing, and and particularly in Australia where the addressable markets are quite small. Uh, there was almost a premium on being a liquid, uh, which I always struggled to to get my head around. I was looking at plenty of listed companies at the same time that were trading much more cheaply, yet you could get in and out of them um you know whenever you wanted it, it's at some level, depending on on buying interest. So it just didn't uh it sort of didn't work um for the type of investing that that suited me. And that's the other thing with investing is you can make it uh however you want. Whatever your personality trait is, there's a style of investing that suits you. You know, people sort of assume if you're an investor you have to be X, Y, Z. But you know, if you're a a math genius, you might be building algorithms, if you're a macro guy, you might like stories. If you're a you know value guy, you might be obsessed with bottom-up analysis. If you're a you went to Scotch, you might like bonds, you know, I don't know, whatever you whatever your background is, there's a type of investing that's for you. Um, and that's one of the that's sort of some similarities to AFL as well, you know. Yeah. There's there's generally a spot for you for most body shapes at some level in AFL.

SPEAKER_02: 17:03

So what what are your biggest learnings from AFL that you've been able to move into being a successful portfolio manager?

SPEAKER_00: 17:10

Oh look, I think being attracted to discomfort is one. So um you know, in professional sport, it's fairly easy to work out what people don't want to do because it's uncomfortable. And then when those things that people don't want to do are efficacious for performance, that's where you should zero in. So for example, lying on a massage table isn't is is useful for performance. It can loosen up a lower back, it can get rid of a tight hammy, but it's pretty relaxing to do, so there's no competitive edge in doing it. Um you know, when you compare that to acupuncture needles, which might be more uncomfortable but even better outcome physically, you know, it's to always be on the lookout for things which people don't want to do that can help performance. I mean, social media is another one. Like if you had to do a a um you know, a quiz for which professional athletes are on social media, it would be 99%. Yeah. Um yet those same athletes wear a torrent of abuse from you know all sorts of nufies online who they've never met. And I think there's very few, there'd be a couple of different personality types where it might help their performance, but very few. Yet everyone's on it. Yeah. Because it gives you a short-term dopamine hit and it provides comfort. And um, you know, if you're single, it might be a good way to meet people. XYZ. Um, so they're the sorts of things that often high-performing athletes are attracted to, things that are uncomfortable that others don't want to do, that help performance. And and it's a long-winded way of getting to how does that apply to investment markets, you know. So, as in a as a portfolio manager, you know that that investors hate volatility. So there's a strong desire for portfolio managers to try and smooth out results each month where they can. Um but over the long term, that hurts performance. Um it might it might assist in the short term in getting thumb in the door. But you know, one of the things we're attracted to is to try and embrace that volatility instead of smoothing it out with a shorter term focus, because we think that has the potential to improve outcomes for our investors in the long run. So they're they're the sorts of things uh a bit of a bit of a contrarian, a contrarian approach, a little bit. I think just acknowledging what the pain points are, and if those pain points are in conflict with the longer term outcome you want, be attracted to go through the pain in the short term. I think that correlates between both professional sport and investing.

SPEAKER_02: 19:47

Yeah. And you were a leader at uh West Coast and also at uh Carlton, uh officially the captain. Did you have sorry, maybe can if you can share your leadership traits that you learnt at whilst playing football and how is that transferred to leading? You mentioned you've got one analyst, but obviously leading a business and an admin person, and has that and and also maybe talking to external investors that invest in your fund, how have those leadership traits played out and helped you to be successful in your current role?

SPEAKER_00: 20:25

I think you want the incentives to be aligned. Um and I think one of my learnings, particularly later uh in my time as a captain, that you know, if you want to build intrinsic motivation, extrinsic drivers are the worst thing you can do. Um so for instance, there was a time at Carlton where we would punish people if they were late or sloppy with extra training, and I think that's really the wrong way to look at things. You know, uh on the one hand to say that you want people that are intrinsically driven to want to achieve, but then subconsciously telling them that the training is a punishment is sort of in conflict. So to just be really clear on the different messages that you're sending um and to have those incentives aligned, um, I think it's really important. Um yeah, but there's look, I I think there's some of the lessons. Uh I I think the other thing is just to be um the leader that you are, not the leader that you think the picture in the textbook says you should be, is a really important learning as well. Um because there's lots of different ways to lead and and people will be more attracted to follow someone when they f they feel they're following an actual human as opposed to someone who's who's robotic or is trying to imitate a textbook view of of what leadership should be.

SPEAKER_02: 21:56

Yeah. So your culture within your Current firm? Is that something that you've been able to obviously talk about authenticity? So authentic, and maybe if you could share what is your culture, is it challenging the status quo of the CEOs to make sure that you, you know, are allocating your, you know, you're allocating your in investments to the right company?

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

I think culturally, um yeah, being authentic is really important. Uh, I want to create a fun environment for our staff. Like I've never had to sit down with my analysts and say you've got to be back in the office five days a week. Like he's in the office five days a week, as am I. Um, you know, because I think it's a good environment to be in and one that's enjoyable. Um and then internally I want us to feel particularly fussy about the things we invest in. So the metaphor we will use is you know, we should imagine we're the best looking girl in the world at a bar and we're single. And why would you settle if that was you for a guy with bad breath or a pot belly or a shit sense of humour or a bald guy? Um that's a joke, Fabian. Um obviously everyone's far off, mate. Obviously, everyone has everyone those bald guys are a great man. But we um, you know, if we meet with management and they say they're gonna do something and it hasn't been done, or there's something we don't like, you know, there's been a couple of instances in the fund where we've given them the benefit of that, and we just want to be fussier than that and and to cut it, and you might cut it and miss out on something, that's fine. We just, in terms of probabilities, if we have that mindset of being the fussiest person at the bar, because our capital can invest anywhere. We can invest in any company we want, and actually anywhere in the world, not just Australia. So we just shouldn't settle on management teams that we're not certain on. It doesn't mean they're bad people, but if we're just not completely 100% confident in it, we should be fussy enough to look elsewhere. You want to have that high conviction in what you invest in. Yeah, because our capital's unconstrained. It's so often it's it's easy to look at the portfolio go, well, if we sell that, we'll miss out and it might go up. And it might, but if there's a you know, some half-red flags you've already seen, history will tell us we're better off cutting it and just moving to something that's a higher probability of going up. It doesn't mean the thing you cut won't go up, but we just want to stack the odds in our favour.

SPEAKER_02: 24:32

And like you said, you're unconstrained, I assume you're or you're are you benchmark aware or benchmark unaware?

SPEAKER_00: 24:38

We're measured against the uh Aussie Small Lords Accumulation Index, so the small listed companies in Australia, and that's our focus, but we do have the ability to invest in large cap stocks, and we do have the ability to invest overseas. So it's a really broad mandate, but we are measured against the ASX smalls because that's where our focus is. Yeah. But we also acknowledge we're living in a world where weird things happened. You know, we had a stage where we were locked in our homes for two or three years. Not long ago, we had a period where there was$18 trillion worth of negative yielding debt. So we just want to have that broad mandate because um if there is something really strange happening, we want that freedom to be able to invest in something that we think can benefit from it. We don't want to be constrained by synthetic rules we've created for ourselves.

SPEAKER_02: 25:26

Yeah, and I guess that's with a lot of equity funds. They are constrained.

SPEAKER_00: 25:30

Big time. And that's hard, that's a much easier fund to market because an allocator says, well, right, well, you'll sit neatly in our small bucket, you'll sit in our large cap bucket, you'll sit in our global bucket. Um, from an allocator's perspective, we almost fit more in an alternative strategy because we're not neatly just small caps, even though that's where our bias sits.

SPEAKER_02: 25:51

Yeah. And do you go out and meet the CEOs, it sounds like, in the companies?

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

Yep. Yeah, particularly. I mean, any small company we do. Um, you know, some of the larger cap companies we won't get one-on-ones with. Yeah. Um, but you know, earnings season and stuff, we're sitting on those calls as well. Um and yeah, that's a big part of the advantage. You know, we would there's always someone on the other side of a trade. We would like to think that a lot of the time with us, um, that's a mum or dad that's working full-time, doesn't have the ability to meet management, can get overly emotional, both to the upside and the downside. And that's why small cap stocks can be so appealing. Um, because there are often times where they're when they're under-researched or not researched at all, without a lot of other institutional investors there yet. So that in an ideal world, that's where we that's where we play.

SPEAKER_02: 26:43

Yeah. And what advice would you give yourself as a 21-year-old still playing at West Coast, I believe? Yeah. When what how old are you when you transitioned to Carlton? 23 or 24. Well, let's say 23 or 24, just transitioned to to Carlton. What advice would you give someone that might be in a similar situation to you, 23 at their peak of their of their sports profession, to where you are today? What to start thinking about for their transition to their next career? Or is it too early to start thinking about that? And is it 100% all about being the best professional athlete you can be?

SPEAKER_00: 27:23

I would have said there's gonna be some weird Japanese guy called Satoshi Nakamoto and listen to what he's saying early and uh no, what would I have said? Um you know what? I wouldn't have listened anyway at that age. But um, look, I I think most things they look externally like they're about knowing more about you know, a topic or knowing more about something else. Most of these things are more about knowing yourself. You know, sports are a big one for that, and I think investing's a big one for that. Uh the challenge is more around really knowing yourself, what your skills are, and and what your psychology is like and what you're suited to. And I think if you know that, then you better you'll be able to better work out what game you're playing, because everyone in listed equities is playing a different game. You need to know what your game is. Are you a short-term trader, are you a swing trader, are you a long-term value guy? And and once you know your skills, what game you're playing, you're sort of half a chance.

unknown: 28:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:29

What have been the biggest learnings for you transitioning into portfolio management?

SPEAKER_00: 28:37

Um I'm rapped I did it because I was I was a private investor before starting this. So my analyst was already working for me pre-the-fund.

SPEAKER_02: 28:46

Yeah. Um so just investing your own money in listed equities. And then you employed someone to help you do research for that.

SPEAKER_00: 28:53

Yeah, and so that was going really well. And I would talk to people, they would ask what I was doing, and I'd say I was a private investor, and it sort of looked like I was unemployed. Some people would maybe call it like a family office, like, yeah, like the the large Jewish families would laugh if I said what I was doing was running a family office, but the workload would look similar. Um, so that's what I was doing, and and that was going well, but there was just there just wasn't quite enough pressure for it to be as meaningful as I would like it. And I also was aware that the most enjoyment I'd had investing was when I was investing alongside a group of people, and we'd have a winner, and you could ring up and you know, sort of celebrate it, and and that's what you can miss as a private investor. Um football's a higher pressure environment than most people would think. Um you know, to perform your task in front of 80,000 people, 100,000 people live, and then have, I don't know, a million people watching on the screen, judging your every move.

SPEAKER_02: 30:02

In the papers, during the week. In the papers.

SPEAKER_00: 30:04

You make an error, then you're wearing it on Monday night and social media, and and a bad day in the AFL isn't your portfolio down two percent, it's being driven to hospital with uh an injury that you're then gonna be wearing for the rest of your life, you know. Yeah, yeah. Like I remember I met with um a big wealth group when I started the fund and they said, you know, you're gonna have some bad days. Like, how are you gonna cope with a bad day when the market's crashing? And and it's like, well, you know, bad day in the old job is you you've been driven to hospital with a traumatic brain injury or uh, you know, your leak snapped in half. Like I'll be all right.

SPEAKER_02: 30:43

Um relative bad days, not so bad.

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

Yeah, like we'll be okay. And um, and so yeah, I think that sort of perspective has um has been useful as well.

SPEAKER_02: 30:55

No, that's good. So you you've you've obviously successfully transitioned to to your your current position. Um, what advice would you give for someone that is maybe nearing the end of their their profession, uh their professional sports and maybe looking at transition but doesn't know what to transition to? Now we've seen unfortunately people that are professional sports people and people I've spoken to maybe feel like they lack a bit of purpose. So what advice would you give to people that are nearing the end of their uh career, whether it be forced because of injury or maybe because their performance is not the level it needs to be to continue on and get an extra year's contract?

SPEAKER_00: 31:35

Yeah, I think it's good to get going with something while you're still playing football because people really be much more inclined to help at that stage of your career. Um and then I think it's important they're doing something they're suited to. So to not just do something because their parents said they should do it or because people they look up to that's what they're good at, to actually understand what you're skilled at, more so than what you like. Um because if you're good at something, you're gonna end up liking it. Um I think that's really important. I don't think people often have a clear understanding of of what their actual skills are, yeah. And then that idea of actually starting your own thing, to not go too early at that. Because that's hard, like just start your own business, start your own fund, whatever it is. I just think you want to really be ready for that. Because if you rush in too early and you're not certain that that's what you really like or that's what you're good at, you know, you're pop committed then and you've got to find a way to make it work. So get going early, know what you're good at. Um I think guys that have extended breaks after their footy career can be challenging. Yeah, you know, they have six months off to travel and that turns into a year, and that turns into 18 months. I I think that's a bit dangerous. Um so to sort of get going and to also be give yourself a bit of uh patience that you're not gonna know. So the idea that you know the first thing you need to do after footy is gonna be right, it's not how it works. You know, a really good transition. You've been mucking around for three years trying lots of different things, and then eventually it becomes clear that no, this is what I'm suited to, this is what I'm good at, this is what I'm interested in. Don't expect that's gonna happen after six months, but you need to get going early so you can start drawing the line through different things and get closer to to be doing what what you should be doing.

SPEAKER_02: 33:32

And I guess it's okay if you try something and it doesn't work out.

SPEAKER_00: 33:35

Big time. So I mean that's that's the challenge footy players have, because they've often got a high profile, and people being what they are, there'll be plenty of people rooting for them to fail. You know, for if someone with without a profile tries a new venture and it doesn't work out, no one outside of their immediate friends group knows. You've just got to get over that that potential ego cost and just get going and try things. And if it doesn't work out, who cares? Um, because the alternative is to not try anything, and then you're 20 years down the track and you're you're bitter and twisted at those that that had a crack. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:12

So and is there any, do you have a mentor currently or someone, you know, a couple of people that have influenced your career, someone you've looked up to that's helped shape your career, both as a footballer but also as as a finance professional?

SPEAKER_00: 34:26

No, like I've got lots of people I speak to. Um, truckloads that I speak to and learn off, and lucky enough to mix with a lot of smart people from different walks of life, but I don't have a formalized mentor or or anything. Um, but there's certainly different friends or or people I lean on um for lots of different life lessons.

SPEAKER_02: 34:46

Yeah. And if if people want to invest alongside you, co-invest, can you can they do that?

SPEAKER_00: 34:51

And if so, absolutely we're open, we're only open to wholesale investors. Yeah. Um, they can go to our website, seritimacrofund.com.au. We'll share that on our socials as well. And they can find our monthly reports, which gives you a bit of a feel of how we think about investing and and how we've done, and they can follow performance and reports there. And if it's something for them, they can they can get in touch.

SPEAKER_02: 35:09

Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure having you on the Finance Friends podcast, and congratulations on a successful career on the field and also off the field, which continues to grow. So we look forward to keeping an eye on the fund and um thank you again. Thanks, Fabian. Good bless. Thanks for listening this week. Stay tuned for our next episode and keep up to date with us by following the Finance Friends podcast on Instagram and TikTok. Plus, connect with us and our guests over on our LinkedIn page, all linked in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01: 35:45

Disclaimer. This podcast exists for informational and entertainment purposes only. The personal opinions of the speaker and guests do not represent the view of any other party. If this recording contains reference to financial products, that reference does not constitute advice nor recommendations and may not be relied upon.