This snippet is from one of our previous episodes: How to Prioritise Your Property Investment Journey and Still Have a Life — Sydney LIVE Podcast ft. Q&A. 

Property investing is a long-term game, but what happens when it feels like nothing is happening?  

When life gets in the way, distractions pile up, and the market isn’t moving as fast as you’d hoped—it’s easy to start questioning if property investing is worth it. 

In this TPC Gold soundbite, we tackle one of the biggest challenges investors face: staying patient, focused, and motivated when progress feels slow. 

Here’s what we cover: 

🕰 Why property investing feels slow & why that’s normal
📉 How fear, media noise & market cycles can shake investor confidence
🛑 Why distractions & procrastination can cost you big time
🎯 How to stay committed to your investment goals—even in the “messy middle”
💡 The importance of understanding your ‘why’ to push through challenges  

So, Is Property Investing Worth It?

Absolutely—but only if you stay the course.  

Property investing isn’t about overnight wins; it’s about playing the long game and making strategic decisions. The most successful investors know how to cut through the noise, ignore the short-term distractions, and keep moving forward—even when progress feels slow. 

Want to Stay Focused & Build a Rock-Solid Property Portfolio?

🎓 Join our FREE Masterclass and learn how to build wealth through property the right way—without making costly mistakes or losing momentum. 

👉 Register here: https://masterclass.thepropertycouch.com.au/how-to-build-a-property-portfolio 

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If You Enjoyed TPC Gold | Is Property Investing Worth It? What to Do When Progress Feels Slow, You Might Also Like:

• Ep 287 | Why Buying a Harley Derailed Bryce’s Property Portfolio & Ten Tips We’d Tell Our 20-Something Selves 
• Ep 362 | Investing through the Telescope, NOT the Microscope – Q&A on Equity Release, Retirement Purchase & Mistakes with Borrowing 
• Ep 435 | Should I Sell or Hold Right Now?! 

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Transcript

Bryce Holdaway
Hey our first question is from Louise who is one of our guests later today. She says: My single biggest challenge with my property investment journey has been keeping the momentum and not getting distracted or bored along the way. Property investing seems to sometimes move at a glacial speed and it’s easy to get a bit disheartened when you don’t see obvious progress. Ben, I wish I had this printed this a bit bigger.  

Ben Kingsley
I was going to say… 

Bryce Holdaway
It’s also easy to let life get in the way and not prioritise my investment journey. I delayed on a purchase by two years, Louise. Missing out on some great capital growth in Sydney because I was distracted by family and work life. Lou, Ben.  

Ben Kingsley
Lou, there’s a couple of things in there. The first one is, and we’re going to get distracted more and more around the sentiment and the confidence piece that’s happening in the market. We’re already seeing, you know, credit squeeze, Royal Commission, APRA, those types of things are going to get worse and worse. And papers sell on fear, and so we’re going to see more and more of this sentiment and confidence challenge. So what’s interesting for me around that story and around timing and having patience is I’ve always believed that you should invest in property when you can afford to invest.  

And we’ve also talked about there’s different times in the market and there’s different markets within markets. So we still believe that there’s going to be really good buying opportunities but it comes back to this position that if I listen to the noise, I’m like the 95% of people who don’t create financial wellbeing.  

So if I follow that noise and I take my eye off the prize, why should I be taking advice from people who haven’t got successful? Why should I take advice from a journalist who needs to put out a story around that? So if you can maintain the focus on the long journey, and in my case, yes, I’ve been investing, as you know, since I was 23. And here’s an interesting fact for you, because I haven’t publicly stated this before, but I’ve bought six properties, that’s it. Six properties.  

Now a lot of people might be thinking, wow, I would have thought he might have 10, 12, 25, 30, or I could have bought 20 properties on my credit card in Detroit in the GFC, because I could buy them for about $800. But you’ve never heard me talk about my number, because it’s not necessarily relevant to the story of my success. They’re just damn good properties.  

And I’ve timed them out accordingly and you never hear or see our business gloat about 500% returns on investment and all those types of things. Because each of you are in different stories and every property that we try our best to buy is a challenge. And it’s usually under competition because if we’re buying property that aren’t under competition, we’re shopping in the wrong location. So I think from that point of view is: be patient. The greatest investors are patient; but strike when you’re in the position to strike and that means don’t procrastinate, don’t let the noise disrupt your view. And there was another great question from Nick. We read the questions guys and so I don’t know whether we’ll get to Nick’s question… 

Bryce Holdaway
We will. 

Ben Kingsley
…but it was about how do you cut that noise out? Simple, don’t be a sheep, don’t follow everyone else. The trailblazers are the people who see opportunity in these markets. And that’s what’s going to be happening because yeah, if we take a macro generalistic view, I think property is going to be sluggish for probably the next 36 months. Now if it’s like that, well do I just wait? The answer to that is no, because I’m not buying the Australian property market. There’s still going to be opportunities inside that market that if it meets my brief, I go.  

Because if I’m going to be buying, I know that economic cycles are real. They’re based in academia, they’re proven, they move in cycles. We’ve come off the top of the cycle in Sydney, we’re getting to the top of the cycle in parts of Melbourne, so that’s okay. And then once the next cycle moves through, because remember, we’re not speculating in property. We’re buying property for the long term so we can live off the passive income that it’s going to generate for us once we get the debt in order.  

Bryce Holdaway
How many people in the room are goal setters? I mean, sort of set them at the beginning of the year, write them down, and follow them. So we’ve got a few, which is great.  

Ben Kingsley
It’s probably consistent with most people who plan to become what they plan to become.   

Bryce Holdaway
But I guess the reason for saying that is because I’ve been a frustrated goal setter for about 20 years now. I remember my little Datsun 323 at university. Air conditioning…we had the windows down and the roof open down the freeway. And I had a little Zig Ziglar tape. Who’s Zig Ziglar? Anyone? Yeah, put it in. It was goals. And I remember listening to that. And I thought he had the framework, the way that you’d set it out, what you had to do. And I thought, this is it. I’m going to do this. And because I’m a perfectionist, I thought, well, I’ve got to fully plan it out and make sure I know what I’ve got to do… and by nature that was a frustrating exercise and I never got around to it but I think each year I’d have to do it.  

Long story short I finally nailed the process this year. I’ve set nine goals – they’re all date stamped, they’re specific, they’re measurable, they’re actionable, they’re results driven. And what the difference was for me is part of that process is I had to go to the why of each goal and really drill down into the why of each goal, because there comes a time when you get to what’s called the messy middle. And that’s where you’ve got all this enthusiasm when you start your investment property journey. We love it, we’ve read the books, we’re fired up, we see it’s a better future. And then at the end of it, we hopefully get to passive income. But somewhere in the middle, Louise, is the messy middle.  

And so what happens is I now review those goals every day. It takes me 90 seconds. But then once a week, I look at them at length. And what I do is I go through these four or five bullet points on every goal. And it reminds me why I’ve set those goals. And it helps me when I get to the messy middle to remember why they’re there in the first place. So what I’d say is a lot of people come into our business and they see our book and it’s got $2,000 per week and they go, that’s what I want. And we can get to work and say, okay, let’s do what we need to do to get to work, but we need to realise that at some point you are going to hit the messy middle. So we need to ask better questions, right? So if someone comes in and says, I want $2,000 a week passive income; it’s our job to go: What for? Well, I want financial freedom. Okay, what for? I want to spend more time with my kids. We’re starting to get close now. We go, okay, so next question, if we’re skilled enough, we’ll go, what for? And the person will come in.  

Ben Kingsley
They don’t go exactly like this by the way.   

Bryce Holdaway
It’s a bit more subtle than that. But ultimately we’re trying to peel back the layers, right? So the person who comes in and says I want $2,000 a week, who then wants financial freedom, who then wants to spend more time with their kids, if we get to the crux of it, it’s because my dad never spent any time with me and I don’t want to be that dad with my kids, right?  

And I’ve just described a little bit of my own journey and my own why, because my dad was born in 1939. He’s a very wonderful father but he wasn’t around, right? And so I make it a priority each morning; I’ve decided that the breakfast meal is the meal that I want to spend with my kids every day because they’re most energetic, they’re most vibrant and they’re most up and about versus dinner at night where my wife is in the front row. She has to deal with that every single day.  

So for me, I’m always trying to work out the why. So that would be the first thing I’d be working with you Louise, is what’s the why? And I know that’s a real sort of statement “what’s your why?” but I’d really want to drill down as to why it is you’re building portfolio and what it is that’s driving you, so that we could remind you of that when you get into the messy middle.