The solution to the capital gains tax, of course, is never sell.

Well, I only said to somebody last night in the car, like, you bought this two years ago.

You shouldn't have bought it with that time frame or that time horizon.

You should have been thinking about this as a five-year-plus proposition and had factored in.

the economic environment that we're in, because there are a number of headwinds that are putting, you know, property prices under pressure.

The type of property matters, you know, so I had a bit of a Google last night, and for those that are looking for that inner city, central, but yet designer lifestyle, you know, two I found online, one of 12 Gould Street in Turner, Three-story, funky-looking place.

Mezzanine outside, little bit of European flair and a really, really nice finish.

So Luke, what are the key facts that people need to remember about buying a property asset?

And Luke?

Yeah, I'm Luke Smith.

I'm the community leader for L'Arche Greater Washington, D.C., so one of the communities that makes up L'Arche in the U.S. And I'm really excited about this project because it brings, I think, a level of awareness to people who we often forget from our sacred spaces or our spiritual spaces as being leaders in those spaces.

As opposed to often being people who we pray for or people who we want to take care of, but being taken care of by them through their leadership from a spiritual lens, from a real understanding of who God is calling us to be.

Yeah.

Yeah, so maybe I could, I think about, I brought this project with our partners in other ways to L'Arche USA and thinking about how this was a great idea for us to really harness what we'd learned through another project that Michael had done with us on loneliness and then a previous project that my community had done, which was a story, a number of videos on how to support people in the medical setting through the words of people with intellectual disabilities.

So how people should be supported through their own ways and experiences for doctors and nurses and other people to support them.

And Luke's community has really been the basis for that.

What happens to your super when you die? It's a bit of a gloomy subject, but certainly an important one to consider.

Yeah, look, it's quite topical in my office at the moment because we've had some instances where, unfortunately, this has been very front of mind.

And a death benefit pension, for those listening, is just simply discussing what happens to super when you pass.

Now...

To keep things at a very high level, there's two ways your super gets transferred to a nominated beneficiary.

One, we need to keep in mind that we have a nomination inside of super because your superannuation is not controlled by your will.

And then people would be familiar with the term binding or non-binding nomination.

So I guess what are the important things for us to remember about how a death benefit might be taxed and what people need to keep in mind?

definitely you.

And I say that tongue-in-cheek to illustrate to people that cars have a specific purpose and specific features.

So do super funds.

So you need to look and make sure you're in a fund that gives you the options that you want because from an insurance perspective, from an investment perspective, from a pension and flexibility perspective, not all funds are the same.

So understand what you want from a fund and then be in the right structure is probably the first port of call.

I can't use my super fund deductions, can I? Yeah, I can.

You can use any money you want to generate a deduction.

So we're at the point where we need to prompt people about what they need to know once we've cleared up those misconceptions.

... using tr- using a trout for...

But honestly, like yes, y- your pilchards and your squid you can buy from the local tackle shop, perfect.

They will catch fish every day of the week, well and truly proven.

But if you can get a fresh slab of fish or a fresh squid with a, you know, those big squid heads and tentacles-

Oh, right.

My, my favorite bit- I got all the fun jobs.

[laughs] My favorite bit at the end, once, once it all come out, I, um, the, the, that saline flush.

Mm.

And that's not to say that like Keidron Young, Nolan James can't provide more, but he is just such a fascinating player, and I think the rest of the college football world is gonna learn the name Aneyas Williams here in very short order.

No doubt.

As for my pick, you can make the argument that Jaden Greathouse has already had several breakout moments.

But I don't think he's really put it together over the course of a whole season.

Everybody remembers his last two games of 2024, but, I mean, you could even say in his first collegiate game, that was a breakout moment because he had two touchdowns.

But like I mentioned, he's just, he's struggled to put it all together.

In 2023, he had a hamstring issue after being pretty good earlier in the year.

Which one do you think it'll be?

Yeah

... 'cause I think this is where we really offer, uh, real differentiation in the market.

So we are lucky enough to have some incredible brand partnerships, especially around food and entertainment.

So when you look at food, and I touched on it a, a slightly then, but we have the only Nobu restaurant at sea.

So worldwide, uh, renowned chef Nobu Matsuhisa, um, has got, um, a restaurant on board called Umi Uma.

And for anyone who's ever either been to or seen or heard of one of his restaurants in London or LA, New Y- wherever it is, it's the same menu.

Um, so you get the Nobu black cod, you get all of the, the house special sushis, you get all of the, the cocktails.

And your third and final key selling point.

Are

they really? Well, I think the question is it depends, like most things.

I think really what I want people to take from today is to not make the assumption that somebody like me says fixed interest.

I find the retail consumer hears term deposit.

Now, a term deposit has a fixed rate of return for a set timeframe, and it doesn't get revalued over the timeframe that you hold, and a lot of people have comfort in that, and you get a commensurate rate of return for the time that you commit it.

And really, today's about talking about well, what is risk and what matters and what could influence the value of your fixed interest assets? Because the first thing I want to get out there is nothing is guaranteed.

The word fixed is a bit of a misnomer because you can have a fixed interest asset and its value can fall.

These are portable in the sense that unlike a term deposit, you can buy and sell them at any time.

But what, what have been some of your biggest achievements of this year?

I mean, I think for me one of the big things is the team.

Um, so the team I've got around me now are amazing, and not just within my direct reports with, with Michael Young-Richards and Steven Joyner and, and Holly Glazer, um, who are kind of working with me in the UK, but we have an incredible UK-based reservations team, um, who work alongside my team as well.

So having, uh, having those guys in place has absolutely been, uh, a key kind of success.

But I think overall as well, I...

Like, I came in with the idea of- Like widening the distribution for Crystal, growing the brand presence of Crystal.

And I think we're really doing that, and I think that we're starting to become a lot more part of the kind of agent consciousness.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

And that then got us chatting in the office and, and, and in meetings, raising the need for parents to think about, all right, we've got kids, we all love our kids, we'd do anything for our kids.

But do you have the means to help your kids? Now, as parents, you'd do it anyway, probably to your own financial detriment, and that's really what today's topic is about, is getting mums and dads out there to have those conversations when the kids come round for a barbecue on Sunday and say, "Hey, listen, if anything bad happened, have you just sort of sat down and got...

Right, I've got some income protection to secure my, my wages," because that's really important.

And that's handy because the premium you pay for that in your own name is tax-deductible, and everybody loves a tax deduction.

But I'm, I, I put a slant on this in saying that where kids are younger, they're borrowing a lot of money to buy houses, they're committed substantially to financial instruments like a mortgage, investment properties, couple of kids, school fees, et cetera, et cetera.

A lot of younger people now don't think anything of borrowing a ton of money, but then don't go, "Well, let me ensure that it is suitably insured.

it should be standard practice.

Talk me through the thought process in doing that.

So, the property and the numbers were actually pretty good on that self-managed super fund.

It was up in Caboolture South.

I had headaches with tenants and the location and they would always start off good but people's circumstances change and again that affects me at the end.

And again, I had that number in head of retirement and I got some decent growth.

I did buy that around 2018, I believe.

being able to transition that resi into a commercial inside the super fund, bring my wife into the SMSF as well to be able to put our money together to get a better quality asset.

So when we started out planning this portfolio, planning this journey, I had no idea.

Let's talk about some of those reasons.

Look, I think that's a wonderful segue because I often get questions in relation to, well, What are they? How do they work? Are they all the same? Are they new? Are they old? Are they expensive? An ETF is simply an investment product that is created to replicate a part of the market.

And I often explain this by saying to older people, because young people don't watch the news anymore, You know, just after the news, before the weather, they go, oh, and the ASX 200 went up 10 points today.

So the ASX 200 is an index of companies.

And all an ETF does is it replicates.

that index now that index could be just about anything in any market so for example the asx 200 is an index you can buy an etf that will replicate that you might want the top 100 the top 50 the top 20. you might want the s p 500 you might want the nasdaq top 100 companies on the nasdaq on the tech index you might want the asx 300 biggest companies You know, there are ETFs that replicate that.

So an ETF is a passive replication of a particular part of the market.

What are the key things we need to remember?

So can you explain what is the environment in which George Russell enters Formula One? And what is his vibe? What does the public think of him coming into this very interesting situation?

It was a team that had previously enjoyed great success in Formula One, won lots of world championships in the 1980s and 1990s.

By this point, though, years and years and years of underinvestment have caught up with Williams.

So it's a team that is struggling at the very, very back of the grid for the past couple of years before that.

It had two pay drivers, so bringing a lot of funding, one of them being Lance Stroll, who obviously will be known to your listeners today.

The other being Sergei Sorokin, who was a Russian driver who basically was funded by the Russian government's own racing program.

So it was an interesting combination to keep Williams going.

And I guess overarchingly, we started at the beginning saying, who is George Russell? At the end of this conversation, what do you hope people maybe pay more attention to with George as this season where he is a little more in the spotlight wears on? And that doesn't have to be like, you must root for him now, but what do you hope people take away from him? us discussing the long and fascinating history of this man.

How do you feel about it?

[inhales] It's good that they're gonna play the game.

It's obviously a, a very different flavor from what we're accustomed to with home games in mid-October every other year, and finishing the next year out in Los Angeles.

But, um, I think the question really boils down to, did you want Notre Dame and USC to play again? And if the answer's yes, I don't really see any reason why you should be upset about this.

Um, there was a lot of conversation around some of the optics with this and Notre Dame giving in to USC's demands.

I kind of think that that's misguided and a dumb way of thinking.

Um, because if they really gave into their demands, they would've done it this year and played them in week zero.

But would you say that going into this season, you're more confident in this year's group than last year's group? Because I think you and I were also very high on that team going into 2025 as well, although we knew with the redshirt freshman quarterback going into the season, it was gonna be a little bit of a bumpier road to start, and unfortunately those concerns rang true.

And that's what you're getting at, isn't it? [laughs]

Ex- And that's, that was quite the, it was the funny part of it.

Now, Phil was lucky enough that he had that much money.

It didn't matter what happened, he couldn't really get it wrong.

Um, but I found it very interesting, and we had a very sort of robust discussion around the thought process of coming to that comment.

And, and I found it very interesting that whilst there are a number of ways to look at something, it, it really sort of hit home to me that how you have your belief system set is going to impact the investment decisions that you make, the weightings to individual sectors, the exposure to individual holdings.

They all talk to managing risk, asset allocation, individual issuer risk, you know, sector performance.

But what are some of the other areas where somebody should be looking for a more risk-averse approach?

So it's even more complicated than I

thought.

We go toys and contents and then we go financial assets.

Right.

And you might have $700,000 of assets superannuation between the two of you.

They will assume at a set rate that that $700,000 earns an amount of money.

And that gets added to your income test.

But if you're concerned about maybe not quite qualifying for an aged pension, are there steps that people can take to legally reduce their assessable assets or move money around so that they're

... what this is about for McLaren?

Yeah, it's an amazing name, isn't it? It's, um, basically the rear wings, uh, they've got, uh, active aero.

It used to be called DRS, where basically the top flap of the rear wing pops open, and that means the cars can go faster in a straight line.

Then what Ferrari did, um, instead of it basically just lifting up, um, and opening like a, I don't know, like a cat flap or something like that, Ferrari actually designed it where it kind of rotated and the underside of the top plane of the rear wing becomes the top side.

So it's called the Macarena wing 'cause it's a bit like the hand movement in the Macarena dance.

Mm.

I think that when you kinda look at the form he's had, it's a bit like the few races, uh, before he got that motion.

Obviously we know sort of how that went.

... what this is about for McLaren?

Yeah, it's an amazing name, isn't it? It's, um, basically the rear wings, uh, they've got, uh, active aero.

It used to be called DRS, where basically the top flap of the rear wing pops open, and that means the cars can go faster in a straight line.

Then what Ferrari did, um, instead of it basically just lifting up, um, and opening like a, I don't know, like a cat flap or something like that, Ferrari actually designed it where it kind of rotated and the underside of the top plane of the rear wing becomes the top side.

So it's called the Macarena wing, 'cause it's a bit like the hand movement in the Macarena dance.

Mm.

I think that when you kind of look at the form he's had, it's a bit like the few races, uh, before he got that motion.

Obviously we know sort of how that went.

How do you do it? It sounds like magic, Luke.

Well, not really, but, you know, it's just the law and we want to use the law to our advantage.

And, you know, leading into 30 June, we talked about deductions and ways to sort of do things.

And we're just highlighting now that...

there are legislation that's available to us that we can use now because a lot of people go, oh, 30 June's over, everything's finished.

Well, this is just a reminder that now we're in a new financial year.

Now you can look to take another 10% out of your superannuation under the transition to retirement rules for a range of different reasons.

You have the accumulation account and the income account.

Um, is, is that in the sim that they're seeing this? Is, is this gonna be completely different when they finally get this out track and could you possibly see Aston Martin moving up in the field?

Yeah, they've worked really hard on it.

Basically, they've not touched the car since, uh, the start of the season.

They kind of realized that they were in a bit of a tight spot, so therefore they'll just kind of go back to the drawing board.

So while other teams have continuously upgraded their cars, Aston Martin have just kind of kept theirs as is.

So when this package does arrive in Hungary, I think it should be a sizable step forward.

They're reluctant to put too many expectations on how far forward it'll take them.

Are there any other teams that are in jeopardy of maybe not being able to improve this car or, or who's looking already jump-starting looking forward to, to next year's vehicle?

I mean, Gen Z, I'm happy for our American friends and they can carry on mispronouncing it, but I'm going to carry on saying Generation Z. Yeah, all power to

your elbow.

So absolutely, that is a big shift.

with that particular generation.

I think if you imagine, if you've done your GCSEs in lockdown and were given your qualifications and didn't sit exams, when that happened, I remember thinking, I'm praying with our team, going, we're going to have these guys arriving at uni before too long.

That is a significant difference.

So there'll be some fallout there.

It doesn't seem to happen as naturally as sometimes we assumed, does it?

Yeah

... because they understand the customer, they understand the product, and they have the kind of people skills to iterate in that space and find a solution for the customer, but that's like a ridiculous set of skills to expect from someone who's not a founder.

And so what works for founder-led sales doesn't work when you need to start formalizing the sales structure and, and bringing in other people.

And for most businesses, you have to start doing that fairly early because the founder doesn't scale, so y- y- you can't have them just driving all the sales.

So I think that is a, is a very tough stage.

Should every founder raise money, then?

Oh, no.

So I, I'm very vocal in saying VC, when it works for a founder and a business, can be incredibly powerful.

This is a topic that we have come back to time and time again, isn't it?

It is, and it's part of a broader conversation we've had around maximising deductions, putting money into super, and we've talked in the past about concessional limits.

And we know that new financial year, we're at $32,500, not $30,000.

So we've had a little bit of an increase.

It's a life-changing amount of money said by no one.

But this then dovetails into the 30 June contributions that people have been making because I get this question and – confusion about a notice of intent more than just about anything.

You do not have to have had this form to the fund by 30 June.

So what do we need to remember?

What are you guys thinking about?

So we are, you know, we're a digital media agency.

Crowd is a digital media agency, a platform.

You know, we're moving more towards a platform play.

We've had our, the whole Crowd thing is our crowdy network.

So we've got a network of 2,000 plus people.

effectively freelancers working through a platform.

Are you being heavily data driven in your discovery process with creators? I know, you know, there's a lot of audience replication and being able to figure out, you know, if you work with two influencers, do they have overlapping audience? Are you hitting the same people? Are you hitting fresh people? Or can you use similar creators without, you know? frequency capping, for lack of a

Well, we have that happily behind us now, but as it is now the 3rd of July, it is time to think about our financial New Year's resolutions, isn't it?

Yeah, look, I think today's a little bit about, and I've had a lot of questions this week.

Okay, well, what could I do now that will benefit me over the last 12 months? Because people have realised that leaving it to the 28th of June to look at stuff isn't a great idea.

And that's sort of a great segue for today into, well, what could you be doing? I think out of the gates, it's sort of, Look at your outgoings.

I don't like talking about budgets because people don't stick to them and you can manipulate them, you can ignore them.

I think understanding your outgoings is a really good starting point because it can leverage you with momentum into other opportunities.

And you could do that by looking at where your fixed costs are.

It's right