When I first heard Diana and Matt’s story, I thought, “This is exactly why I do what I do.”

Two young professionals from Romania land in Australia with twenty grand, two suitcases and a head full of warnings from family about kangaroos, snakes and sharks lining up to eat them for breakfast. They arrive anyway.

No family safety net. No super. No fallback plan.

Just a decision: “Whatever challenge we face, we will overcome it.”

And that decision has now translated into roughly $1.9 million in profit and equity from their property journey so far.

That’s the real story here. Not luck. Not timing. Choice, courage and follow-through.

Let me walk you through it, project by project, because there are gold nuggets in every single deal.

Before the Deals: The Visa, the Bullying and the Burnout

Before we dive into the numbers, you need to understand the emotional backdrop these two were living in.

Diana grew up in a family where business went badly. Not once, but repeatedly. At one point, her parents lost the family home and had to move in with relatives. She made a private promise as a young woman: “I am not going to repeat this.”

Matt’s family also had painful business losses. So both of them arrived in Australia with two competing forces running in the background: a deep fear of debt and losing everything… and an equally deep determination never to live like that again.

They got good jobs – IT for Diana, finance for Matt – and did what “good migrants” are supposed to do: keep their heads down, work hard, tolerate things they’d never put up with back home, just to “get ahead”.

That included discrimination, bullying and toxic workplaces that chewed up their health and spit it out.

At one point, Diana was in a high-paying but poisonous job, grieving her mum’s passing and heading straight into burnout.

She resigned and spent six months stabilising her health and sanity. Matt quietly carried the financial load and backed her decision, even though every dollar still mattered.

So if you’ve ever thought, “I can’t invest because my life is too messy right now” – just know, they didn’t start from perfect either.

The First Big Leap: The Brick Fortress That Became Their Launchpad

Their first serious step into property in Australia wasn’t some fancy development. It was a principal place of residence in Perth.

No prior Australian property experience. No sophisticated strategy. Just a belief that they needed a solid foundation.

They bought land, then built a full brick house because, in Matt’s words, those Queenslander homes on stilts just looked like they might blow away in a decent breeze.

Brick felt safe. Brick felt permanent. Brick was their way of saying, “We belong here.”
They did it the “normal” way: credit cards for furniture (because someone told them it was great for points), no idea about staging, no strategy around valuations. Just instinct.

Later, after joining our Platinum program, they went back, staged the property properly, revalued it and realised just how powerful that first decision had been. When they eventually sold, that little brick fortress had manufactured around $440,000 in equity over just a few years.

That equity became the springboard for everything that followed.

Lesson in there? Your home doesn’t have to be “just a home”.

With the right thinking, your PPR can be a powerful wealth engine – not a dead asset you just emotionally cuddle for 30 years.

Project 2 – The Block That Looked Perfect… 
Until It Didn’t

Flush with confidence, Diana and Matt did what most Aussies do when they start making a bit of progress: they listened to friends.

“Just buy land and build. Do it five times. Hold. The market will look after you. You’ll retire in the Bahamas.”

So they did. They bought a block with big dreams to build… and then the red flags started waving like it was New Year’s Eve in Sydney.

The driveway was narrow – about two-and-a-half metres – with not one but two electricity poles flanking it. No builder wanted to touch it. Council was difficult. COVID hit. The BA dragged on. They cross-securitised. The whole thing turned into a slow-moving headache.

By the time they joined Platinum and showed the deal to Tam, the instruction was simple: “Clean it up and sell it.”

They did some basic clearing, fixed the marketing, did a property energy clearing for good measure and within weeks it sold for a decent profit – about $55,000.

Here’s the kicker though.

Earlier, they’d knocked back a strong offer in the 600s because they wanted just that little bit more.

By being “a bit greedy”, as they put it themselves, they watched roughly $150,000 of potential profit evaporate while the market cooled.

They still made money. They still walked away ahead. But they also walked away with one of the most valuable lessons in property:

When you’re making a good profit, you don’t have to squeeze every last dollar out of the lemon. Sometimes the smartest play is to take the win, bank it and move on to the next opportunity.

You can’t go broke making a profit – but you can sure delay your freedom by holding out for the last twenty grand.

Project 3 – Turning One Block into Two New Homes and a Half-Pipe

Now we get to the deal where education really kicks in.

After joining I Love Real Estate, Diana and Matt committed to learning properly. They dug into feasibilities, negotiation, area research – not just “have a crack and hope”.

Driving along a main road one day, Matt spotted a property that ticked a lot of boxes. Big block. Existing house. Potential for subdivision.

They called Tim, got told to go back and do the numbers properly (after doing the training they’d skipped!) and once the feaso checked out, they moved.

They negotiated a 90-day settlement and secured a 1-into-2 subdivision DA literally one day before settlement. That’s the power of knowing how to structure a deal.
The fun started with the pool.

Out the back was this massive 15.5m x 5.5m pool – an absolute magnet for mischief and, as it turned out, skateboarders. Council would usually force you to fill a pool like that if you’re chopping up the block, but Diana wasn’t having it.

She went hunting through previous DAs, found a precedent where another owner had kept their pool in a subdivision and used that to argue her case successfully.

At the same time, council wanted a shared driveway because it was on a main road. So they brought in a traffic engineer, got proper data and demonstrated that two separate driveways would not materially affect traffic.

Council basically said, “You’re right… but we’re still making you do the shared driveway.” Sometimes you win the argument but not the war – that’s property.

And then, while they were overseas in Vietnam, a neighbour called.

“Are you renovating the pool? There’s a guy in there cleaning it.”

This “guy” had drained the murky pool, cleaned it and turned it into a private skate bowl – complete with professional filming gear – and uploaded it to YouTube.

All of this on the exact day their insurance expired. You can imagine the heart rate when they got that news.

Despite the drama, the deal did what it was supposed to do.

Old house gone. Two new homes built. Pool retained. Challenges around stormwater, main road, driveways and bunker parking all navigated. The end result? A profit of about $533,235 – their biggest single win to that point.

That’s what happens when you move from “hoping” to “knowing your numbers” and backing it with solid negotiation and planning.

Project 4 – Reno, Build, Strata and a Whole New “Family”

If there was one thing both Diana and Matt had in common from their childhoods, it was this belief: “You can’t trust people with money.”

Both families had been burnt in business. Partners disappearing. Deals gone wrong. Money lost.

So when we started talking about joint ventures, they were understandably nervous. It took a fair bit of mindset work – and some gentle persistence from Tam – to help them see that not everyone is their parents’ old business partner.

With the right structures and the right people, JVs can accelerate your results dramatically.
At one of our events they met a couple who would eventually become their JV partners… and then, more than that, their extended family.

The deal itself was classic value-add.

They had already done over 50 feasos in the area, attended auctions and open homes and knew the local numbers inside out.

That meant when the right property appeared, they could move fast and confidently.

They bought a property with strong development potential. The front house got a quick cosmetic reno and was rented out for six months to help with holding costs.

At the back, they designed and built a new home, navigating sloping land and cost blow-outs by finding a more creative builder who usually did relocatable homes but was willing to build on site to their specifications.

They even future-proofed the design by giving the new home extra height underneath, allowing the buyer to further develop downstairs later if they wanted.

When it was all said and done, both front and back were sold. The total project profit came in around $247,414.

As 50/50 JV partners, Diana and Matt’s share was about $123,707.

But the money, as good as it was, wasn’t the only outcome.

That JV couple? They are now godparents to their child, part of their “chosen family” in Australia.

Real estate didn’t just give them profit. It gave them community, connection and a sense that they truly belong here.

The Scoreboard So Far – And Why It Matters

When you line it all up, from that first Perth home to the subdivision and the JV, Diana and Matt have created around $1.1 million in equity and realised profit from just four key deals, with their overall equity position now sitting around $1.5 million.

When you add in growth and other gains, their mentor’s estimate of total financial benefit is approximately $1.9 million.

They started with $20,000, no super and a history of fear around debt and business.

Now they’re firmly in Stage 2 of the I Love Real Estate journey – the “build and compound” stage – and actively positioning themselves for Stage 3: true passive income.

Diana is already lining up a commercial property that will replace her income.

Once that’s in place, she plans to retire from her job and focus on mindset training and real estate full-time.

Matt has moved from “numbers guy in a job” to “strategic investor who uses numbers to design his family’s future,” not someone else’s.

Owning Your Life (Instead of Letting Life Own You)

There’s a line Diana and Matt shared that I absolutely love:

“If we don’t own our life, life will own us.”

That’s not just a nice quote. That’s exactly what most people are living.

They outsource their destiny to employers, governments, the market, “luck”, excuses and the opinions of friends who’ve never done what they want to do.

Diana and Matt stopped doing that.

They changed almost all their friends, keeping only the people who truly shared their values and dreams. They defined the kind of community they wanted and then built it – through I Love Real Estate, through their JV partners, through our trips to Cambodia where they discovered what contribution really means.

They chose courage over comfort.

They chose education over guessing.

They chose action over fear.

And every time they stood at a crossroads – burn out or back themselves, sell or hold, trust again or shut down – they chose the path that expanded their life rather than shrank it.

That’s why their story matters.

Because they’re not at the “end” yet. They’re not sitting on a yacht sipping champagne, looking back from Stage 4 or 5, saying, “Wasn’t it all marvellous?”

They’re in the thick of it. They’re building. They’re still learning. They’re still stretching.

And because of that, they’re the perfect reminder that you don’t have to be “finished” to be inspirational. You just have to be one or two steps ahead of where you used to be… and willing to share it.

So if you’re sitting there in a job that drains you, in a life that doesn’t quite fit, with a little voice whispering, “Surely there’s more than this,” please hear this:

You don’t need the perfect starting conditions. You don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to be fearless.

You just need to do what Diana and Matt did:

Decide that your past doesn’t get to write your future. Learn what you need to learn. Take the next intelligent step.
Repeat.

The kangaroos, the snakes, the iguanas, the market, the headlines – they’re all just background noise. The real power is in your decisions.

And as Diana and Matt have shown so beautifully: when you choose to own your life, your life starts to work for you.

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These stories and the results in them were captured at a specific point in time. The real estate market and the investing strategies used to succeed are constantly changing. The achievements and results of these investors may have changed since these stories were recorded. Each of these investors engaged in in-depth training, coaching and mentoring to be able to achieve these results. Their results are not typical and should not be taken as a guarantee of the results you may achieve. Your personal results will be in-line with the training, education and hard work that you personally conduct.

“If we don’t own our life, life will own us.”