When Kurt and Niqui tell the story of how this all started, it doesn’t begin with spreadsheets and strategies. It starts at the kitchen table, late at night, staring down the barrel of a relocation to Brisbane and asking the same question so many families ask: “How on earth are we going to afford this?”

Between them they had four kids, credit card debt, a negatively geared position, and that old Australian default setting: if things are tight, just work more hours. Work harder. Work weekends. Work nights. There was no plan beyond “do more.”

Then one of those “suspiciously well-timed” Facebook ads popped up. I Love Real Estate. They clicked. They watched. And Kurt did something very simple and very brave.

He said, “I’m going to give this a go.”

He picked up the phone, spoke to Yani, joined Ultimate in May 2025… and that was the moment everything began to tilt.

Before ILRE: Two Lives, Two PPRs and a Lot of Baggage

Before they became “Kurt and Niqui”, they were two separate people doing what most Aussies do – muddling through property with a mix of instinct, luck and a few painful lessons.

Niqui had already done the long-haul PPR journey. Her first home had been lovingly renovated and eventually sold, giving her a taste of the value you can create with good design and hard work.

Her second PPR got a full makeover courtesy of an insurance renovation after flooding – one of those strange silver linings where disaster forces an upgrade, and the insurer foots the bill. When she sold, she walked away with cash but also a lingering sense that she’d been reactive, not strategic.

Kurt had his own history. He bought his PPR in 2008, right as the GFC hit, with very different intentions for his life. Then he did what life does to so many of us – he built a family, got busy, and the house just became “where we live”. Over the years he added a fifty-thousand-dollar shed, a seventy-thousand-dollar renovation and solar, but never really turned it into a wealth vehicle.

When divorce hit, everything was re-cut. His self-managed super fund was wound up to get through settlement. He walked away a single working dad in an old PPR that needed work, carrying the emotional and financial baggage that goes with it.

By the time they met in August 2023, they were a blended family of six – two boys, two girls, one tired bank account, and a lot of unresolved “stuff” around property, risk and starting again. They joke about being the modern Brady Bunch, but the truth is, life had knocked them around.

Separations, settlements, lost properties, fear of failing the kids – it all sat like a weight on their shoulders. Their “original position” after both settlements was tight: some equity, yes, but negative cash flow, credit card debt and very little room to move.

They could have stayed there. Plenty of people do. Instead, they cleaned the slate. They sold the old PPRs, paid down what they could, and decided that if they were going to build a life together, they were going to do it with their eyes open this time.

Diving In: Foundations, Subdivisions and a Whole Lot of Late-Night Study

Once Kurt joined Ultimate, he didn’t dabble. He buried himself in the modules.

He worked through the Foundations first – the boring-but-beautiful basics: finance, structures, numbers. Then he zeroed in on subdivisions, because carving up land and creating value out of dirt appealed to him. While he was studying, he was also searching – looking around Mackay and Central Queensland for something that could be their first “proper” deal together.

At that point, they still had Kurt’s old PPR, which he describes as carrying baggage: past relationship, past life, past identity. They made a conscious decision to sell it, take the cash, and start fresh. That in itself is a powerful move. Sometimes the best first “deal” is simply letting go of the asset that emotionally glues you to the past.

With some cash in hand and a new mindset forming, they went shopping for something they could shape deliberately, not just endure.

Project One – The First PPRs: Learning to Let Go

It’s worth pausing on their earlier houses, because they’re not just footnotes – they’re training grounds.
For Niqui, those first two PPRs taught her that she could live through renovation chaos, juggle kids and dogs in a flooded Mackay house, navigate insurance claims, and come out the other side with a home that was worth more than when she started.

Even if she didn’t have a strategy at the time, her nervous system was learning: “I can do hard things to a house and survive.”

For Kurt, that 2008 GFC purchase showed him the cost of delay. Years of “just enough” maintenance and a big shed did add value, but not the way a structured plan would have. When divorce forced a sale, he got clarity in hindsight: that property could have done so much more for him if he’d known what he knows now.

Those experiences – the wins and the missed opportunities – are exactly what made them ready to do their next project differently.

Project Two – CQ #1: The Corner Block That Changed Everything

Their first real “we’re doing this on purpose” project is what they now call CQ #1 – a property in Central Queensland that is, quite literally, doing triple duty.

Initially, they bought it as an investment property with a plan: renovate, rent it out, and work towards a subdivision and new build out the back. On paper, it looked great. Corner block. Big shed. Driveway access. Sewage line running neatly across the back fence in the neighbour’s yard. From a town-planning point of view, it was a sweet, straightforward subdivision candidate.

But there was a practical headache: how do you run a subdivision while tenants are living there and not become the landlords from hell?

To subdivide, they’d need access to the yard, trades onsite, and potentially sewage re-runs away from the existing house and shed. Trying to do that with long-term tenants would have been messy, slow and full of conflict. The deal was starting to feel like a compromise: either sacrifice rent and leave it empty, or annoy tenants and drag the project out for years.

Then came Bootcamp.

They headed to Brisbane in September and did what so many of you have done – sat in the room, took in a firehose of strategies, and tried not to let their brains explode. Somewhere between the subdivision sessions and the warning “don’t try to DIY a subdivision, get a proper company to run it,” Christine jumped up on stage and started talking about short-term rentals.

That was their lightbulb moment.

They looked at each other with that silent couple’s telepathy: “Hang on. We could Airbnb this.”

If they could turn CQ #1 into a short-stay property, everything shifted. No more dancing around long-term tenants. No more half-baked compromise. They could block out stays when they needed access. They could keep the property working for them while they pushed the subdivision through. And if they did it well, the rent wouldn’t just cover the mortgage – it would flip the property from negative to strongly positive cash flow.

They basically stalked Christine off stage, caught her the moment she handed over the microphone, and peppered her with questions. Yes, it would work. Yes, other students were doing exactly this. Yes, it could turn what would have been a negatively geared property into a cash-flow machine.

So they went home and did it.

They set the house up as an Airbnb. They styled it, photographed it, listed it and went live. As we sit here now, that property is online, taking bookings and turning into roughly forty-plus thousand dollars a year in positive cash flow – about forty-two thousand by the time the dust settles – instead of draining them every month.

That’s not theory. That’s food on the table, school shoes paid for, Platinum memberships more than covered, and a whole lot of breathing room they simply did not have before.

All from one decision: don’t long-term rent it. Short-term it smartly.

“We’ve gone from nothing – in fact, from a negative position – to around $47,000 in positive passive income.”

Subdivide, Build, Repeat: Turning One Corner Block into a Launchpad

Now that CQ #1 is pulling its weight as an Airbnb, they can slowly and strategically unfold the rest of the plan.

Because it’s a corner block with a driveway already running down to the shed, the physical subdivision is relatively easy. They’ll sell the shed – and if you’ve ever met a Mackay local, you know someone will happily pay good money to come and cart off a decent shed – run the new sewer line, put up a fence and create two proper blocks. Out front, the existing house keeps operating as an Airbnb. Out the back, they’ll build a new dwelling once the subdivision is complete.

The projected numbers are very tidy. By the time they’ve subdivided, built and tidied up, CQ #1 is forecast to deliver around $229,000 in profit, on top of the forty-plus thousand a year it’s already spitting out as income. That is not just a “nice result” – that is a complete rewrite of their financial trajectory in a very short period of time.

Remember where they started:

Negative cash flow. Credit card debt. Fear of stuffing it up and failing the kids.

Now? They’ve doubled their equity position, gone from effectively zero (and actually negative when you count the cards) to around forty-seven thousand dollars in passive income, and they’ve only just joined Platinum.

This is why I wanted them on stage so early. Not because they’re “done”, but because they’re proof you don’t have to wait five or ten years to see a turnaround. Sometimes all it takes is the right sequence of decisions on just one property.

Platinum, Boundaries and Saying No to “Shiny”

They joined Platinum at that same Brisbane Bootcamp.

It was scary. Of course it was. Four kids, a relocation on the horizon, a business to run, long work hours for Kurt, and now they were committing serious money to coaching. But they could see, very clearly, that the cost of trying to figure this out alone would be much higher.

They wanted access to coaches. They wanted someone to say, “Do this next, not that,” and to have a blueprint they could follow rather than a Pinterest board of property dreams. They also didn’t want to miss opportunities simply because they didn’t know what they were looking at.

Their Blueprint session locked in the immediate plan: stabilise CQ #1 as an Airbnb, push through the subdivision with professional help, build, create that first big manufactured chunk, and then roll the equity into their next deals once they’ve relocated to Brisbane.

Along the way, they’ve had to learn a new kind of discipline: not chasing everything that glitters.

They know about “shiny thing syndrome.” They know how easy it is to see a deal talked about at an event and think, “We should do that too!” Instead, they’ve made a pact: focus on this one project first, give it their full attention, and only then move on to the next. With four kids, a business and a demanding job, their bandwidth is not infinite. The power is in sequencing, not speed.

The Brady Bunch and the Bigger Why

The slides in their presentation that made me smile the most weren’t the numbers. They were the family photos.

Four kids making faces. A very newly engaged couple still a bit shy about flashing the ring. Talk of a future honeymoon to Europe once the Airbnb and subdivision have done their job. A proud “Brady Bunch” who can leave the teenagers in charge for the weekend and sneak away to talk about property and possibility instead of just bills and stress.

Their eldest is eighteen. Smart as a whip. You can already see her eyes lighting up at the idea of property as more than just “one day maybe I’ll buy a house.”

They watched Katherine’s story earlier and felt that little jolt: their kids can start this game so much earlier, with so much more support, than they ever had.

This is what I love most about these “early days” stories.

Yes, Kurt and Niqui have big numbers on the board for the future: they’ve set their sights on about $280,000 a year as their income replacement figure, and in two years they’re aiming for over two million dollars in equity and around $880,000 in total passive income when you factor in the deals mapped out in their Blueprint.

But underneath all that, the real transformation is this:

They no longer feel boxed in by their past decisions.

They’re not stuck in “work harder” mode, hoping it will somehow all come good when they hit retirement age.

They are teaching their kids, by example, that you can reset your financial life in your forties with a blended family and a messy history – not by winning the lotto, but by learning, taking calculated risks, and using property intelligently.

Just Getting Started

Right now, they’re packing boxes and planning the move to Brisbane. There’s a family home to find, school runs to rethink, new deals to sniff out. They’re building a life where income doesn’t rely purely on clocked hours or overtime, but on assets they’ve shaped with their own hands and brains.

They’re still nervous. They’re still learning. They still have late-night “what are we doing?” moments. But they also have a plan, a community, coaches on speed dial and a corner-block Airbnb in Central Queensland quietly paying the bills while they work on what’s next.

Kurt and Niqui are not at the finish line. They’re at the beginning of Act Two. And that’s exactly why their story matters.

Because if you’re sitting where they were – blended family, tight cash flow, one property that “sort of” works but mostly feels like dead weight – you don’t need to wait ten years for a miracle.

You might only be one smart strategy, one Bootcamp, one Airbnb conversion, one subdivision away from turning the whole thing around.

They chose to back themselves, to invest in their education, and to treat their next property not as “somewhere to survive” but as a launchpad.

The question is: are you willing to do the same?

“This has been an absolutely mind-blowing and amazing experience so far — and we’re only at the beginning.”

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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.

“We were absolutely amazed by the coaching, mentorship and guidance. It was exactly what we needed.”