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Turning a flop into gold.
Sport as a teacher.
For those of you who know me well, you know I’m a sports nut. A lot of the wins I’ve had in my life have come from lessons learned from sport: preparation, discipline, teamwork, consistency, legacy, leadership, courage are a few that come straight to mind. My childhood hero was Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh, and his leadership formed the foundations of the way I built the Blue Wealth culture and have evolved and maintained it over the past 17 years.
A golden moment.
Like many of you, I’m a sucker for any success Aussies achieve on the world stage. We punch above our weight. On Sunday, Australian high jumper Nicola Olyslagers, from the Central Coast of NSW, won gold in the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo. How bloody good! It was her first gold medal at a major meet after winning silver at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and again in 2024 in Paris. Watching her jump for that gold medal was so exciting. Watching her win was even better!
The strange genius of high jump technique.
When you watch the high jump, you have to wonder how the hell they came up with that technique as a way of getting up as high as possible. Seems counter-intuitive. Prior to the early 20th century, athletes used a scissor jump, which was replaced by the straddle, where they jumped over the bar in a forward motion to straddle over the bar.
The technique remained this until a young American civil engineering student caused a stir by experimenting at his high school meet, with a jump where he curved his run-up, went over the bar backwards and headfirst, arching his body and landing on his shoulders. Spectators laughed. It looked awkward. It was unconventional. But the results spoke for themselves. He could jump higher than ever before.
Fosbury carried this strange, self-taught style with him through high school and into Oregon State University, where coaches initially questioned it but couldn’t ignore his steady improvement. By the mid-1960s, he was winning college meets and attracting attention as “the guy who jumped backwards.” What began as a quirky experiment had become his trademark – and it was about to change the sport on the biggest stage of all.
When the flop went global.
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the ‘Fosbury Flop’ went global. Fosbury ran towards the bar at an angle, leapt backward, bent himself into a “J” shape and catapulted his 193-centimetre frame over the bar, landing headfirst on the mat. Fosbury cleared 2.24 metres to win the gold and set an Olympic record.
The Fosbury Flop completely changed high jump forever and today, every elite high jumper in the world uses the technique.
What does this have to do with property?
So how does this relate to property? Well, sometimes solving an old problem requires completely new thinking. Doing things the way they’ve always been done rarely leads to better outcomes.
Rethinking the Great Australian Dream.
For generations, Australians grew up with one vision of success: The Great Australian Dream. Buy your own home (on a quarter-acre block), pay it off over a lifetime, and pass it on to your kids. It was a philosophy that served many. Real estate was cheaper relative to income, people lived shorter lives, and retirement planning was barely factored in, because it didn’t need to be. It made sense.
However, it was a philosophy started in the 1800s that in 2025 still strangely forms the foundation of property planning for many Australians.
100 years ago, life expectancy in Australia was 59–60 for males and 61–62 for females. Even in 1950, life expectancy was under 69 years old. To put it bluntly, Aussies worked until they died. They didn’t really need to have an investment or a retirement plan. They just needed somewhere to live, raise a family and play backyard cricket.
Life is different now and we can’t expect to do the same thing and get a different result. If we retire at 65, we need to have a plan to support ourselves for another 20 years or more. Science is telling us that anyone born this century will live to be 100. 100! We’d better have a plan.
So, what’s your plan?
How will you support yourself in retirement to execute that plan to travel, eat in nice restaurants, support your kids and grandkids, drive a nice car and pay for health care? We know the pension isn’t going to cut it. Right now, it’s $30,642.20 a year. A combined couple is even less per person: $46,202 a year. That won’t pay for much and we’re definitely not going on an annual international holiday on that budget.
Unfortunately, the data tells us that most Aussies don’t have enough money in superannuation to sustain them at a comfortable level in retirement either. It certainly makes no sense to me that I work hard for 40+ years, pay my taxes, look after my family and then have to compromise on my lifestyle in my twilight.
Like our old mate Dick Fosbury, we need to approach the challenge differently.
New questions for a new world
Should your first step be buying your first home?
Should you buy an investment property if you haven’t paid off your mortgage yet?
Should you buy your home first or invest first?
Should you rentvest: rent where you want to live and invest somewhere else?
Should you buy brand new or something older?
Should you buy close to home or interstate?
Should you buy inside or outside super — or both?
So many questions and so many opinions. The truth is, most people get stuck because they don’t know which way to turn. What we do know is that we need different strategies for a different world.
You don’t have to jump alone.
And just as Nicola Olyslagers has a coach and a support team behind her success, you don’t have to go it alone either. Property may look like an individual journey, but the right guidance, research and strategy make all the difference.
Think differently, aim higher
The truth is you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But you do need to embrace new approaches if you want to clear the higher bar that today’s financial realities set.
Like the Fosbury Flop, thinking differently will bring gold.
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