The More Successful you are, the Greater the Opportunities that become available to you.

My wife and I are now at the point in our lives where money concerns do not exist for us.

We have more passive income than we need, and we can live for the next 30 years and NEVER have to to sell an asset to fund ourselves. In fact, we have so much passive income that, if my projections are correct (and I don't see why they wouldn't be), we will have a higher net worth in 10, 20 and 30 years time than we do now!

Our investments produce passive income returns that outweigh our expenditure by a long way. At the time of writing this, we are getting over 15% pa returns on our investments, when the average person cannot even get 0.5% return on cash in the bank!

It's all about financial education. It's about managing your money, understanding the financial system as best you can, and investing wisely.

In Australia, most investors are "retail investors", meaning that they invest in property and equities (shares) at "market" rates - which is the most expensive way to invest, as they pay "retail" prices. This is not a bad thing, and retail investors are so much further ahead than people that do not invest at all. In fact retail investing is where we all start - I know I did.

However, there is a small percentage of investors that are classed as "certified wholesale" investors (this term is one that the Australian Government has adopted).

Such investors meet certain wealth criteria that allows them to invest in "wholesale" opportunities and get above market returns.

For the average person (such as me) to become a wholesale investor, I needed to become a successful retail investor first in order to build up my wealth enough, so that I had the net worth in assets to qualify as a wholesale investor (as per Australian Government requirements).

As a wholesale investor, a whole new class of investments are available to that offer greater returns (and risks) than the retail side end of the market. However, if you are able to perform your own analysis and due diligence on the available wholesale investments, in order to mitigate the risks, then the returns can be much higher than retail offerings.

In other words, the more successful you are, the better investor you become. The better investor you become, the more successful you become. At some point, you success opens opportunities that may acelerate you success and wealth creation by allowing you acceess into the wholesale investor market and products/opportunities therein.

There are plenty of information on the internet about wholesale investing opportunities. It may surprise you that such investments can generate returns of around 20% pa - which is made up of income and capital growth (currently, at time of this writing, about 7-8% income and 10-13% growth per annum).

Never accept what is taken as the truth by the masses!

When someone starts a sentence with the words "Everybody knows....", then you know they just blindly follow the masses. They are part of the herd, and never think outside the herd mentality. Those who are part of the "herd" and the "masses", are mediocre at best - so why would you listen to them???!

Think for yourself, do your own investigation and find out what most people don't know!

Listen to those that say "Most people don't know this, but....". Such people are "insiders" and they know stuff that the vast majority do not, and that is why the insiders do so much better than the masses.

I have been in a position of being a wholesale investor now for a number of years. Truth be told, I have not actually considered investing as a wholesale investor - until recently.

Wholesale/Sophisticated Investors are NOT protected by the regualtions put in place to protect retail investors. ASIC assumes that once you meet the criteria for wholesale investing, you are already established and have a good idea of what you are doing investment-wise.

I recently decided to invest as a wholesale investor, and for the last 6 months I have been doing my research and due diligence to learn as much as possible, and decide what investments are more suitable to met our expectations. This meant I had to take time to look at things such as:

• Entity Structures to put the investements into

• Tax implications of the entity and investment

• Whether I am looking for capital growth or passive income

• How much I am willing to invest this way

• The investments themselves and the relevant risks

• The exit strategy of the investments

Once all the above had been considered, it was time to "pull the trigger" on a couple of wholesale investment opportunities and to see how they go over the next 12 months.

I will report back in 12 months with what I have learned and how my choices are performing.