Erwin  

Hello real estate investors! This is Erwin bringing you the truth about real estate investing show and this is not a normal episode either; This is a solo podcast. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with just me today. I wanted to do solo because I shared an article on my Facebook my Instagram last week from an article from the CBC about epic alliances collapse. The link to the article you can google real estate company collapses 500 homes affected 10 million from investors across Canada missing. Again, it’s an article from the CBC. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here’s some points from the article. The founders of epic Alliance, Rochelle aplomb and Lisa Thompson they were everywhere podcasts, webinars, real estate groups, real estate groups you and I know I don’t belong to you, either of them. I know many people that do. Quick side note. Neither Rochelle or Lisa has been featured on anything that Cherry and I have hosted not my read up groups moment not my podcasts ain’t like that. I agree. They were everywhere and on the show. We I do I put my own guests and I deliberately don’t book guests who’ve been everywhere. Bad and also I reference check everyone that I don’t know everyone that I know personally. In the art world has mentioned of affordable housing in Saskatoon which I find odd. Again, side note, there’s a pretty decent size Reddit string on on the on the story of a client’s one person’s example is to achieve the cash flows that they’re promising. The rent would have to be over $1,500 month on a property worth just over $200,000. So it sounds great for the investor. I’d invest in stuff like that doesn’t sound exactly affordable for the people of Saskatoon. In January, the whole founders hosted a 16 minute zoom call. So January this this past January, they hosted a 60 minute zoom call to investors to let them know the business have collapsed. And the private the borrowed money was gone. And blaming the local Securities Commission the provincial Securities Commission for further reason that the money was gone. Provincial Securities Commission issued a cease and desist order. It was temporary back in October 2021. And accounting firm has since been appointed to investigate. They’ve been appointed by the courts and they’ll report their findings later this month in April, over 500 properties are affected. I see varying numbers, just over 500 Some like five or 20 or so properties, it’s a lot of properties. And there’s numerous out of province investors involved again, again, this is me not only articles, they I know which organisations they were close to the theme of real estate. The event organised real estate investing is I find most people, most people generally stick with the groups that were they learned how to invest. So if he had sampled the popular groups would be like, No, this is Rich Dad, there’s T spire there’s rain, there’s Rockstar, right? There’s all these communities that are out there and in most stick to their own groups. Just because that’s you know, those the people they came up with I know epic Alliance was promoting it one of the other groups as well. And they’d likely got a lot of their investors. They’re very, very sad. I first learned about epic alliances, public alliances problems back in December. So if you follow the show, you’ve learned something good. On December in December, I had the gentleman from the financial independence garage on the show. If you heard that show, I had the mechanic and the accountant on I can’t remember which one of them one of them so they have pseudonyms, right? You saw the names because they still have day jobs so they don’t want their employers to know that they’re about their investments. And so anyways, they want privacy. But one of them did share with me how they were having issues with their investment with epic Alliance. He didn’t go into details but just didn’t go into details which is fine. But I put that away in my mental database for red flags, red flags, hopefully all 17 of you listeners did the same thing. Because personally, I’m I’m extremely risk averse. I have new I have the luxury of having opportunities come my way every week and I’ve been around for a while I know exactly how the best of the best invest thanks to my decades plus some networking interviewing a successful folks in the here on this podcast you know I mastermind a lot with other six eight figure entrepreneurs investors with a eight 910 figure net worth. Remember, I had Grant Cardone on the show, I’ve looked at his CARDONE CARDONE investing model. You know, I’ve had some great apartment building investors on the show.

Erwin  

You know, when you’ve looked at a lot of things, the term, it’s all relative, it means something, because I’ve looked at a lot of deals. And I’ve looked at a lot of deals since I started being a part of organised real estate since 2008. And I’ve, so I’ve looked at a lot of deals, and again, it’s all relative. If you look at a lot of deals, you’re not gonna do them all you’re gonna do, you’re gonna cherry pick the best ones. And that’s kind of what I felt I’ve done. Anyways, since 2008, I have witnessed some epic collapses of real estate investment companies, some small, you know, to be an investor with like 135 properties. Sometimes even one I’ve seen, I’ve seen Yeah, in this real estate market, can you imagine still failing on a single property, there’s gonna make mistakes. People can be blinded by greed and make mistakes. Some of these, some of these collapses are still in court for hundreds of millions of dollars being deemed it’s being disputed and hopefully can find it. There’s several private lenders out there. Even mortgage brokerages who originate private lending have had deals go bad. I know people personally that are problem. Which leads me to think of the Warren Buffett quote, only when the tide goes out. Do you see who’s swimming, swimming naked? So my first exposure to an epic collapse was a a husband, wife, investor a couple. It was mostly the the husband that was driving that business. So we’ll focus on them. We’ll name him, we’ll call him Mark. Mark had an over 50 property portfolio with mainly almost entirely with joint venture partners. It’s hard to have that many properties on your own. I’m sure over 40 of them were with joint venture partners, Margaret speak from stage of his experience and how to in raising capital and investment. This was in Hamilton that he was investing in our contributed to an organization’s joint venture education programme. That organisation sold a binder and educational binder with lots of materials and samples. Mark’s own materials were featured in that doc in that binder. And it wasn’t very expensive. So it was more of like a volunteer thing, I think. Anyways, then as Warren Buffett describes it, the tide went out. This was in 2009, during the financial and credit crisis in recession. That then the swimming naked moment was what everyone found out, sadly, was market taken out a blanket second mortgage on many of the investment properties. And he used the lawyer who was the sponsor of the organised real estate networking group. Can you believe that? You believe what a what a violation of trust that was. So this was 2009. So pretty early in my career of being a professional investor. I started to invest in real estate started investing really seriously in 2008, even though he owned a couple properties with my partners. This event opened my eyes to how even influencers cannot be trusted. Right? Like I’ll listen and listen and again. So it’s not all sunshine and roses. I don’t think everyone tells the truth on our successes and losses. In speaking with friends who hadn’t personally invested with it before it’s the these these passive investors are now actively scrambling to take control of their properties, their experiences working with sorry, so back to back to Mark’s story. The passive investors they meant they didn’t have to scramble they had they have their own title as per being joint venture partners. So the the mortgage money probably all went bad partner that was paid and their experience in But then semesters shared me with working with their experience working with Mark was. And I’ve seen it repeated many times, investors and business owners, business owners, lots of great ideas and visions. Executing small, like 510, even 20 properties is doable. Obviously, the bigger you get, the harder it gets. Because you add tenants, you add contractors, you add staff, or each of those variables are a challenge in itself. It’s not easy to be a general contractor, it’s not easy to be an employer, it’s not easy to be a landlord of 510 20 different tenants. Add to that the time and cash flow pressures. So for example, if you are a private, but if you are a private borrower son have made this mistake of starting the interest payments, starting the clock for when interest is starting to be earned. When the private mortgages are signed, that places a lot of pressure on the borrower to be doing business. That’s no different than having salaried staff or salary contractors. The lesson is to only start the interest clock, when there’s actually a deal in place.

Erwin  

And I’m sure all general contractors would like to do the same thing. They’d like to have their salary staff start getting paid once there’s actually a job to be done. So yeah, not the easiest thing to do. Put yourself in the place of a private bar, private borrower. Understand like, you can see the pressures. There’s many big investors that I know they’ve shared, shared with me the pressures of needing constant deal flow, constant properties that they have to work on, so that they can keep their salaried staff busy, their salary contractors. And some of them will even take on a break even project just to keep their staff and to keep them busy. So that they don’t leave, they leave their teams go working elsewhere. Right. That’s just the reality of things. That’s the truth about real estate investing. This is the truth of having a scale where you actually have employees doing work for you. And add in, you know, it’s not like it’s been easy to last two years adding tenant problems and the pain related pandemic tenant problems and supply chain issues. And think of how it would tell it would take to scale to a 500 plus portfolio property portfolio. Like epic alliances, you have a lot of moving parts. In chatting with the with the flipper client of mine, he flips in Hamilton, he flips only a handful of properties like less than six in a year. I told him I was telling him about epic alignments. And how Rochelle, one of the owners of epic line shared on her Instagram, how in one day, she bought 10 houses in one day. I flipped her friend could not wrap his head around that. And he didn’t given he flips for a living. So he makes a living. You have trouble getting his head around how many trades you will need to pull that off. If you’ve never done before, it’s probably not that easy to understand. But if you’ve ever done a significant renovation before, like say like your kitchen in your house and see a tent never had any of 10 kitchens to renovate, how easy would that be? And the thing with tradespeople are? If you haven’t I think everyone almost everyone has had had trouble hiring people for anything. For anything landscaping fence deck anything trades people were in the middle of the housing boom, this housing booms are going for a while tradespeople are in high demand. And they can go get great jobs with great benefits working for any union, any local union. Right? It’s not an easy time to be a general contractor. So Oh, and also just to note, this property is that epic Alliance, they’ve advertised that they’re usually need work. From the articles I’ve been reading some some of these have been boarded up. Right, so they’re not even occupied. No one’s taking care of them. They’re not tenanted either. No one’s paying rent. So I’m not saying it’s not impossible. I never want to step on anyone’s dreams. Maybe you can be the one that go do it. I just don’t know anyone personally who could pull this off. And I know quite a few people operational. Needless to say, operational excellence would absolutely absolutely be needed. And that’s rare to have without exceptional talent, often high priced talent. I know because I pay these high priced out. If anyone wants to trade places with me, I pay several six figure salaries on this from operating this business. So from friends who’ve shared with me their experiences, working with epic lines, one, one investor sold a property to them. They sold it to them privately for under $200,000. And then add a Curia curiosity, they wouldn’t pull title to find three mortgages that total to over 30% more than he had just sold the property to sell the property for two epical lines. Sounds like a red flag. As an investor that’s enough for me to know I don’t need to learn any more. I’m not I’m not. I’m not saying anyone’s guilty of anything. I believe in innocent till proven guilty, but for me too. You know, spend my time to research and investment or to put up, let alone put up money. This is that’s enough for me, another client of ours, a new stock hacker, she shared with me that she had joint ventures on a house with epic lines. And then when, you know when the tide went out, she felt deceived by the appraisal that she had received. That was 20% above market value on a house that was boarded up, non tenanted needs a lot of work. She’s now having to take over control the property in the town of Saskatoon where she’s never been before. Not the easiest thing to do. And again, there’s, I don’t know for sure, but from the articles I’ve been reading online, there’s 200 or more properties that are not tenanted within this portfolio, and they’re all pretty close together. And understand like Saskatoon is it’s just over 200,000 population. So it’s not even that big a town. So to hire staff to take care of all this, the hire contractors take to take care of the whole this will not be the easiest project to do.

Erwin  

Yeah, so now there are many lessons to be learned. And questions. I always have questions. That’s what keeps me up at night. I always have questions. I do believe again, I do believe in innocent until proven guilty. But again, one red flag is enough for me to say no to learning more about an investment, let alone invest. So like, like Warren Buffett says, this is a different quote, I promise. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation in mere minutes to destroy it. Some of my questions we get would be as follows. securities laws are quite clear around not soliciting investment from from the public. Unless you’re licenced. Right? Speak to your lawyer about this. And then the next question is, how’s sorry, the question is then how, as a company with 500, plus plus properties, not listening to good legal advice. I imagine that a lawyer must have said something. And if it didn’t, if not the best lawyer, maybe a different lawyer. How many investors have never inspected these properties. So I’m not going to poopoo just on Epic alliances, the investors at the do level of due diligence as well. So how many of them out of these out of how many of these out of province investors actually went to see the property. I personally have passive investments. I invest in a REIT using registered funds. And I personally toured three of their apartment buildings, I think they only had 11. At the time, I knew where they all were to because they’re mostly in Hamilton. I personally toured three of the buildings after I’ve been friends with the owners for over 10 years. That’s, that’s my level of trust. And also, I only invested what I was willing to lose. I’m also told that in epic lines advertises This and other marketing as well, a lot of the properties that they do that they transact on they’re done privately, as in they’re not on MLS or realtor.ca, which can be great for saving commissions. But those who participate are doing so without the help of licenced professionals represent who represent their best interest. So not just realtors. But what about the appraisers? For example, when myself or my client goes, goes to a mortgage gets a mortgage from a bank? The bank chooses the appraiser. And these private deals and private borrowing, who chose the appraiser? I don’t know the answer. But I think someone should look into it. And also, if you ever dove into one of these deals with private lending deal, which was the appraiser can you trust them? Can you send your own? If I wanted to know, for example, for example, if I know so I’ve hired a priest, you know, I’ve had appraisals done on brown properties. And the bank never lets me choose. And that’s for done for a reason. Again, I don’t have all the details. But there’s more than enough red flags for me to ever invest in a project like this, any of these projects like this. And again, a lot of due diligence needs to be done. Over this, many of the people learn their lesson here. As I said, if repeated several times for charity night, our investing will remain the same boring, predictable stuff will mostly own duplexes or sells with or without partners. Cheering I have enough clients in our lives. We don’t need investment partners to be married to some we have some passive investments in our registered accounts and land development and apartment buildings. We stock hack for cash flow, we also invest in dividend stocks, dividend paying stocks, for our stock hackers in 2021. If they’d followed the shared trades to a tee, they would have received between 12 to 15% cash on cash returns, as of course does not predict the future. But that’s pretty safe, boring stuff, especially in relation to a lot of real estate stuff I see out there. And also this is not the market. I really won’t be over exposing myself. I’m already very exposed to the real estate market. If you see any sort of if you see any sort of slowdown, it’s not really a market. I want to be getting to For private lending on flips, I know this all sounds slow and boring. But I’ve never found a more repeatable path, repeatable path for myself and my clients to get rich and for retiring for planning to retire comfortably. If you’d like to be educated on slow, best practice, best practices to get rich, I can’t recommend I recommend enough that you’ll be on our email list newsletters, and attend our events, real estate or stock hacking. Take your pick your future you will thank you. And that’s enough for me. Hopefully, it wasn’t too boring. And if you don’t like these shows, we have plenty of more interviewed guests coming up. And if you’d like to hear something else, or you have another show topics you’d like to hear me talk about, reach out, and we’re happy to do it. All right, stay safe out there.

Erwin
Greetings friends welcome to another episode of The Truth about real estate investing show hosted by me Erwin Szeto. Where since 2016, where we’ve invited on the show investors of varying success, including some mega successful folks, like Grant Cardone, best seeling author, Don Campbell, Dmitry Buterin and has recently and several everyday investors as well. Some just starting out some of my clients, many of whom are were able to create seven, seven figures of net worth.

Erwin
Apologies for my ramblings, second time you listen to this, I will have turned 43 years old. This will be my third birthday since the pandemic began and celebrations will remain muted, which is fine by me. We had a family dinner that was bit over the top in terms of what we get back Portuguese scorpion fish, lobster and steak yes all in one seat. Cherry paid for an Apple Watch for me for my birthday present. Actually, let me pick it out though because I’m picky. There’s a lot configurations to choose from. I’ve always wanted one an Apple watch that is can never justify paying that kind of money for what’s mostly a toy. That to me, those are the perfect types of gifts. Stuff People want to pay money for. Speaking of my brother, he’s taking me to lease game versus the New Jersey Devils. But what’s super awesome is Mark to Dino our new deadline trade acquisition, we making his debut which is exciting. That reminds me I need to make your dinner reservations. And yet the rich food court keep things simple and cheap. I don’t need much. We did just returned from a March Break ski trip in Muskoka. And we all had a blast, Andy Tran and his family joined us for a couple days. And it was great to chat with someone who’s so like minded about what’s happening in the world, and how investors should prepare for it. It’s several ideas several crazy interesting and likely quality ideas. It’s no secret either. There is a method to my madness and the guests that we have on the show and Cherry and I are honestly quite transparent our investments are doing with our money we think the best thing to do is a crazy thought in training even updated me on the latest in garden suiting during our trip a building in addition or tiny home in the backyard apartments and properties to rent a separate apartment apartment. This is what I’m inviting my team and my clients is the next leg up real estate prices like we saw in Vancouver with laneway houses were first approved. It is not all roses out there in the real estate market though, it does look like we’re taking a pause or a bit of a breath here. More listings are coming out. fewer of them are holding offers because some of them remain on the market after offer dates, we could see a dip that 2017 Which to me is just presents a great buying opportunity and likely the only buying opportunity would get for the next 5,10 years beyond that. We’ll go into more detail at our monthly real estate meetups as of course. We are back in person meeting up so you don’t want to miss out from my understanding people are tired of COVID and what to do back to back in person meetings. If you’re on my meal email list and you know how to register if you’re not well, that’s just silly. You can go to www.truthaboutreal estateinvesting.ca. Just enter your name and email address. You’re good to go!

Erwin
On to the show, George and I used to work at the same real estate brokerage called Rock Star real estate owned by my good friends Tom and Nick Karadza. I’m still a rock star and George has since moved on to Keller Williams, which is totally cool. He is on the show today to share his journey from getting fired from his first job out of university interested in transitioning into real estate full time as an investor and realtor. He’s hustling and you’ll hear from his interview, he’s driving around and targeting small multifamily properties to acquire with his partners. He shares how he sold his wife’s home, which was a condo during the pandemic and use the proceeds to buy two multifamily properties for a total of seven doors in St. Catharines, Ontario, Jordan shares how he’s finding deals, we get really specific specific, because you know, the point of the show is learn. So I’m going to ask detailed questions, how he do it, so that we all repeat the same success. And yeah, this is the show The show is about truth about real estate investing. So I do ask himm about success rate as well. What kind of success rate in the strategies so that we only set reasonable expectations? No, it’s not easy, but it’s worth it. GEORGE does make it look easy, though. That’s why he’s on the show. Sharing the truth about real estate investing. Again, it’s not all roses out there. It’s not easy money by any means. But with hustle and resiliency. You know, like, please enjoy the show.

Erwin
Georges?

Georges
Georges. Yeah, sure.

Erwin
We spent some time working on your name before the show.

Georges
Yeah, no, it’s not. It’s not the simplest name, I’m sure.

Erwin
Oh, dude we look you’re talking to me? It’s always been a thing a thing for me too, because it’s in the book, Win Friends and Influence People get people names right? Yeah. Right first of all know their name. Yeah. And then even better said how they say it.

Georges
Yeah. Well, just to clarify for anyone listening if you ever meet a George and there’s an S at the end it’s silent. It’s the French spelling.

Erwin
Right? Let’s American then. Yes. I don’t like he’s we’re talking about like Georgia St. Pierre like, Yeah, I’ve seen American St. Georges. us know, I’ve seen saw seen lots of people.

Georges
Yeah, which is incorrect. Yeah. And whether you’re American or anything else, that’s not the right way to say it.

Erwin
All right. So how do you say your name full name?

Georges
Georges El Masri is the way I would say it, I don’t know if you want to hear the Arabic version of it.

Erwin
I like the Arabic version.

Georges
The Arabic version if you were to say it legitimately would be Georges El Masri. Don’t Don’t try to search for Romania. George, yeah. Yeah. I’m named after my grandfather.

Erwin
This is the same grandfather we were talking about?

Georges
No different

Erwin
Okay. We’ll get to that. Yeah. So what’s keeping you busy these days?

Georges
Keeping busy we have a baby at home. So I’m a new dad just getting used to all that getting back into working out to had a little little break from that when he was born. It was kind of hard to to have the energy to do that. But yeah, been running a little bit set up a little gym at home, going back to lifting and working hard on on the investments. We’ve got a bunch of renovations happening. We have some some townhomes that we tied up in welland that we have under contract. So bunch of stuff.

Erwin
So you had I was doing the math in my head. That’s when he was my shop. So give it a pandemic, baby.

Georges
Yeah, we did. Yeah.

Erwin
How is having a baby in the pandemic?

Georges
For the most part, it was fine. The only thing was the hospitals really short staffed. So when we were when my wife was in labour, she didn’t get like she didn’t get the epidural right away. They had to kind of wait and then it was painful for her. And you know, it’s a little bit more challenging when the they’re short staffed. Right.

Erwin
I remember when Cherry before she got her epidural, she had my hand for our first child when Robin was being born. As wear my wedding ring I don’t wear I rarely wear just for I have eczema. So that’s why I can’t wear a lot of jewellery. She had it, she got a hold my hand, the contraction came and she found the way to manipulate my hand to make to maximise the pain. And I was not going to say anything. Yeah. Cuz I did not deserve any empathy.

Georges
Yeah, for me was a little different. She was like, in so much pain that I felt bad for her. Yeah, like, I wasn’t even worried about anything other than like, Oh, I hope you’re okay, you know, this looks like it’s really excruciatingly painful.

Erwin
I remember being at the the prenatal classes where they teach you like breathing technique and stuff for like, natural birth. And then I was like, I put my hand up. Because, you know, I’m not the brightest. So I have questions. So I asked the nurse who’s given the lesson? How many people get the take the epidural versus natural? She was over 90% of the epidural. Yeah, like, Okay, well, we need to pay attention, just like the epidural.

Georges
We can hear women from the next room screaming. It was the loudest scream. I’ve heard from like three different women after our son was born. And it was obvious they didn’t have the epidural. It was crazy.

Erwin
There’s no doubt to me with the stronger sexes. Happy International Women’s month this is. So how’s the investment going? Can you start with? What was your motivation? So I take us back to the year you started getting motivated to buy real estate.

Georges
Yeah, I think I’m going to start a little bit before that because I think it’s a kind of cool part of my journey. But when I was studying at U of T, I had this part time job. I was working for a tech company called Flip. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, you know, the app where you can kind of like, look to see what’s on sale at different stores, whatever. So anyway, I worked for them.

Erwin
And oh, cool, like a retail Groupon.

Georges
Yeah, it’s similar to that. But like, let’s say you’re looking for a chicken that’s on sale at different grocery stores. You just pop in chicken, and then they’ll show you all the stories that have been on sale that week.

Erwin
Are they still around?

Georges
Yeah, yeah. They’re one of the top apps, I think, on the Apple App Store or whatever. But anyway, after graduating, I just took the easy route. They offered me a full time position accepted, even though I didn’t really like what I was doing. The company’s great, but I just wasn’t happy. And after working there for a couple months, I think they noticed that I wasn’t too happy doing what I was doing. And they called me in 4:55pm on a Friday. Oh, no, I get the phone call at my desk. And I’m like, Okay, I know what’s about to happen. I walk in the lawyers there. He’s got the documents in front of them. The managers there and they very nicely, let me go. So I felt like a huge like weight off my shoulders. I just felt although I was kind of you know, nervous about not having a job and whatever. It gave me an opportunity to really reflect and think about what I want to do and it took me a couple months but I realised I wanted to be in real estate and my intention was to invest. That was always kind of like since I was a I had this idea of owning homes and renting them out and whatever. So, yeah, I got my licence. This was in 2013. And I started in I think 2016 really considering buying because I had some income now and a bit of a track record. So I just reached out to a bunch of people, like I Googled, we buy houses, whatever, I was just trying to get in touch with investors. I called like, 10 people, they all turned me down. Nobody wanted anything to do with me, except one person. I had lunch with that person, hs named Sandy Mackay, by the way. He he was nice enough to like, sit down with me. And tell me about the BRRR strategy. And from that point on, I was like, Wow, this makes so much sense. I’m going to do this. And I bought my first rental in 2017 and Hamilton, little fixer upper for 215,002 and a half storey detached home, still have it to this day and kind of just kept going from there, refinanced it and moved on.

Erwin
Who gave you the idea, like not many kids think about owning real estate?

Georges
My mom, my mom, I remember as a kid, she just said, Hey, did you know that some people buy homes, and then they rent them out and the rent they get covers the mortgage payment? Really, you can do that. Cool. And then I just kind of you know, let the idea slide and later on, ended up doing that, right.

Erwin
Did she own investment property?

Georges
No, my parents never owned a rental. Actually sorry, no, they they had they bought a condo in Lebanon at some point, which they were gonna they were thinking about, like maybe moving to when they retire or whatever. And they rented that place out. But that was the only only rental experience they have. Right? Yeah.

Erwin
So you have your roots in Lebanon. You’re not just like, you know, OG Canadian. But the name like alabaster?

Georges
Yeah, yeah. So I was born here, born and raised in Canada always lived here. But my parents left because of the conditions in Lebanon back in the civil war broke out in 1975. And my parents were both really young at that point. It was really tough for them. Like they grew up with people killing each other, and missiles going off. You know, my mom lived close to Beirut, close to the Capitol. And it was really tough for her as a kid, she I think she still like has trauma from her childhood. So yeah, they decided to leave in 89 came to Canada, and I was born a year later.

Erwin
Any parallels to what a route was like to today’s world?

Georges
You know, I don’t really know like, personally, I don’t I it was a political thing. There were political parties that were, you know, going to war with each other. And there was also some religious aspects to it. So I guess there would be but I’m like, I’m not really a political person. I don’t I don’t understand too much of what’s going on today. I don’t I don’t read too much about it. So I can’t say other than what I just shared.

Erwin
So So Civil War, so his fellow country people, yeah, fighting because they have different ideals in religion?

Georges
Different religions, different political beliefs. So yeah, like, it got to a point where, basically, if you entered, sir, because they have checkpoints in Lebanon, and that they’re short soldiers that are carrying like these rifles and whatever. I think my dad was telling me that at some points during the war, if you went to certain pockets in Lebanon, and you said your name, and let’s say you had a Christian name, then you might get killed. Right there. You know, it’s it was crazy. Like, just to just to think.

Erwin
Seems like a nice place to raise a family.

Georges
Yeah, definitely not.

Erwin
Lucky for you to be Canadian.

Georges
I’m definitely grateful. Yeah, it’s, it’s totally different. I never had, I mean, the only experience I know I’m kind of rambling here. Just let me know if I’m talking too much. But um, the only experience I have that’s somewhat related to my parents experience was we went on a trip on a vacation to Lebanon, I think it was in 2006 or 2007. And a war broke out between Lebanon, Israel. So there were actually like missiles launched towards Lebanon, and we would hear them and we were terrified because I was a young kid. I was like, I don’t know. 15,16 years old. Yeah. So I remember we had to take a, like Canada, the Canadian Embassy sent a ship to take us to Cyprus to evacuate us because they had bombed the airport, we couldn’t fly out. When we went to Cyprus. At one point, we were staying in this place with a bunch of other Lebanese Canadians. And the lid of a garbage bin dropped. And it was a loud sound. And I just remember kind of being scared like, oh my god, or there are the bombing this area too. So that was like the only traumatic experience that I had, that I can kind of relate to my parents. But that was it. Nothing, right. Like in Canada, you don’t ever experience anything like that.

Erwin
I had my air pods in the other night. And Putin had just declared war on Ukraine. And then I don’t know what time in the morning, but that emerged another emergency, you know, Amber Alert. Yeah. And that’s all I hear like, Oh my god. Putin’s probably doing some shit. By launching a missile, because you know, you get waking up at 4am in the morning, you’re from a deep sleep. You’re not rational. Yeah, for sure. That’s That’s my closest to so grateful to be living here.

Georges
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Erwin
So you shared before we were recording you talked about your your grandfather still lives in Lebanon.

Georges
He recently passed away. But yeah, yeah, he was there his entire life. Yeah. Right.

Erwin
And he had saving his life savings were in the local currency.

Georges
Yeah, yeah, that’s crazy. My grandma used to be a saver, she saved all her life. And they were living off of their savings. So they were, they had their money in the Lebanese currency. And they were earning an interest. And I think they were living off the interest that they were earning. But Lebanon experienced hyperinflation, I think around two years ago, it started. So whatever money they had, basically became worthless, almost worthless. So my grandfather who was counting on this money to live out the rest of his life, now everybody’s worried, is he gonna have enough, you know, cuz he’s only got like, maybe he was able to survive for five years from the money before 5,10 years. But now he’s only got a couple months left. So it was a very scary thing and makes you realise how important it is to have assets have something to counterbalance against inflation. I don’t know if we would ever I don’t know if we would experience hyperinflation here with the Canadian currency, but you never know. Right? You got to protect yourself right?

Erwin
Before recording, we’re talking about like hyperinflation versus inflation. Yeah. Because, you know, Canada’s law, we’ve spent a lot in the pandemic, I think, rightfully, and then we’re gonna experience inflation. And I keep reading headlines that we’re we’re investing or donating military resources to Ukraine. This is all gonna cost money. Yeah, someone’s got to pay for it. Yeah. Right. I’m not gonna argue right or wrong. But just, there’s going to be inflation, more than ever. And, yeah, so of course, no one gets their questions in advance. Yeah. How would you advise your grandparents to invest?

Georges
I don’t know. It’s, it’s a little bit tough for me to say what they should have done over there, like, or even translate the other way.

Georges
I always like to translate. The usual question I usually ask is, What are you teaching your kids? Yeah, I know, you can’t really have that conversation today. But looking back, before I’ll answer your first question, looking back, I think they would have been much better off had they converted their Lebanese currency to US dollars, because US Dollars are accepted in Lebanon. So that would have been a lot safer for them. I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t have invested the US dollars in Lebanon turn an interest? Maybe that’s why they didn’t do it. But the treasury bills 2%. Yeah, yeah, anything would have been better than what they had. But for my kids, I mean, I just have the one the one right now. But I want to make sure he understands that saving for your entire life, and then living off those savings. That’s not a very strategic way to live in this day and age. And you have to get creative and find other ways. And don’t worry about what most people are they’re doing or what most people are doing. Just do what is strategically make sense for you and maybe follow our model, right? Because we’re we’re doing pretty well with our investments. So yeah.

Erwin
Statistically, most people won’t be able to ever retire. Now, if you don’t have a pension, then then there’s different quality of pensions. So not all pensions are good. But yeah, statistically, I think it’s somewhere around two thirds, two thirds of teens will never be able to afford to retire. So don’t do what most people do.

Georges
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I don’t know why people just like if most people are doing it, you just feel like it’s the right thing to do kind of like what you said, when you said 90% of people are getting the epidural. So you’re like, oh, okay, let’s do it. That’s a different situation. But when it comes to finances, that’s not not a very good way to go about it.

Erwin
Well, the I brought up the epidural thing is like, I don’t think most people know what most people do. Yeah. So ask questions. Yeah. And like, for example, if you want to be rich, find out what rich people do. Yeah. Yeah. But we talked about most people, most people say they want to be rich, they’re not willing to put in the work.

Georges
And it’s not just that, I think a lot of times fear gets in the way because you have to take a risk when you’re investing. And I guess maybe sometimes people need more a lot of information before they can take action. And one thing that I think I’ve been either lucky or stupid and doing is that I don’t I’ve never had too much information that I was just reflecting on this but every single real estate investment I’ve purchased so far, I felt like I wasn’t ready for it in that moment. You know, like you’d never be ready yeah, you just you just do it and it somehow doors open. Like I’ve experienced it so many times where I didn’t feel like I had everything in place but I committed to it and like the doors just open for me. Obviously I took took action but it just works out all right.

Erwin
The analogy I give is no different having your first kid. Yeah, you’re never going to be ready. Yeah, you know, I’m talking Yeah, you’re sure you’re never be fully prepared.

Georges
You can read all the books you want when that baby comes There’s gonna be a lot of surprises yet…

Erwin
You can be as rich as you want, you still won’t be fully prepared. Yeah, that’s true. She’s things do not go smoothly. Yeah.

Georges
But that’s that’s what separates people being able to figure it out. I think that that makes a big difference. Like if you have obstacles in the way some people might walk away or might be afraid, but I think people who are successful, take on those obstacles and just move forward. It’s not just being just not knowing that you can take it on. It’s also knowing that you’ll figure it out.

Erwin
Yeah, just no different than the analogy of having your first kid. You’ll figure it out. Yeah. It’s not like all these booklets, not like all these people have failed as parents. Yeah. It’s not rocket science. You will figure it out. Yeah. And how did people figure it out? It takes a village. Yeah. That’s the beautiful thing about the investor community. Like we are a village and we’re very open. You have a podcast, I have a podcast. Like when we started, there were no free resources. Yeah. That were quality. You still You said you’d all these people turn you down to teach you. Yeah. Versus we just give the stuff away for free. Yeah.

Georges
And yeah, that was funny. That reminds me one of those guys I think is like website was Mr. Nice Guy, real estate buyer or something. And he yelled at me because I called him he’s like, Do you have a house to sell? I was like, No, I’m just trying to learn for you. Is it good? Don’t call me again. He just hung up on me. I don’t remember what it was. Exactly. It was something along those lines was the nicest salesperson.

Erwin
I know who it is. Do you know who it is? Or not?

Georges
I don’t even know who it is. So I never had I never spoke to him again.

Erwin
Okay. Yeah, I think I know who it is. False advertising. You want to talk about your wife’s condo? Yeah. Tell me Tell me about your wife’s condo.

Georges
Yeah, she she bought a condo few years ago that she lived in. And North York by the subway line. Nice building nice place. When we moved in together. She rented her condo. And then when the pandemic hit, I don’t know if you remember this. But there was a time where rents just dropped in Toronto. The drop significantly. So the tenant that was there was like, hey, I can just move to another building down the street or even in this building. Yeah, yeah. And pay like 600 bucks less a month. So I’m leaving.

Erwin
What percentage? Is that? Like a like a third. I didn’t drop.

Georges
She had it rented for like, 2300. And they went down to like, 1700.

Erwin
That’s pretty good. But yeah, big drop. Yeah.

Georges
So yeah, he left and then we just got together. And we’re like, hey, what do you think we should do? Because if you’re renting right now, for 1700, it’s gonna cashflow negative, we’re gonna have to be paying out of pocket and who knows what’s gonna happen with the market. So we decided to let’s sell it. So we put it on the market, got a decent price for it. And we took that money. And we bought a four Plex in St. Catharines. We ended up doing really well on that four Plex, we also used some of the sales proceeds, and we put it into a triplex and Hamilton. So we basically were able to take her her condo, and essentially turn it into seven units. And that was so beneficial for us. So I think it’s just, it’s just an idea for some people who might have a rental condo. I think if you keep an open mind, you can end up doing a lot better by reinvesting your funds into something different. Everybody’s different, but that was our experience.

Erwin
So this is a conversation I have with many new investors. Yeah. I think part of the first level of challenge is often that, let’s let’s take a step back in my own head. Sorry, there’s a lot of realtors who just focus on pre construction condos, because to be honest, they pay very well. And you have a large supply of them to sell. Yeah, right. Which versus when we do regular real estate, there’s not much supply. No, right? It’s a very, it’s a very lucrative business. Most of the most successful realtors are in the industry. For like you and I, we want scale. So we’re often having to educate investors around that, including my dad, who does buy new construction condos. So when we’re comparing investments, he says, oh, like my condo did just as well as your duplex, like no dad. Because I get all this extra rent. I can refinance that house and go buy another Yeah, you will never be able to do that with your condo. Yeah. And then also my next leg up is I mean with the guard, maybe the garden suite, some of these duplexes? Yeah, yeah, right. I’ll be able to add more more value to it. I’ll be able to cash 1000 bucks a month. Now again, my credit will look better. And I can go buy another house. Yeah, right. You can’t scale your new construction condo portfolio. Right. And you’re just your example exactly that because what could you have done with that condo? If you held it? You just wait. That’s it.

Georges
But yeah, you’re waiting but like in that situation? We’d be we would have been short 200 bucks a month. Yeah.

Erwin
You would have been fine. Yeah, we would have been okay, I’d rather but you did. Yeah. Uh, yeah, if you run for the person who’s willing to hustle, right? I always tell people there’s nothing wrong with owning preconstruction condo. And if that’s your goal for someone wants to hustle and scale, then that’s not going to work.

Georges
Well also if you want to compare values, so let’s say that condo today, okay, she sold it, or we sold it, I think for 530 or something at the time lesson a pretty nice condo. Yeah, yeah, it was one plus 10. And then we bought the four Plex in St. Catharines. For 465. The legal fourplex we refinance that four Plex a year later for 840. So we did some work to it. Like we renovated two of the units, actually, sorry, three of the units we renovated. So we put some money into it. Yeah, 840. If you look at like even today, I don’t think that condo is worth 840 Today, I think it’s worth less it’s probably worth 750 would be my guess somewhere in that range.

Erwin
Can you rewind the condo? Can you share what you originally paid for it?

Georges
I think she paid maybe 425 or something in that range.

Erwin
So still fantastic investment.

Georges
Yeah.

Erwin
Alright, so just to recap the condo north, you’re paid around for 25 as a pre con pre K.

Georges
No it wasn’t pre con it was like Sorry, relatively new was like three years old. Just kidding at the time.

Erwin
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Time to get it.

Georges
Yeah.

Erwin
So bought 425 sold for 530. Yeah, in a pandemic.

Georges
In the pandemic at the height, like just maybe three months before we sold it. It was worth like, 570-560-5570 came down. Yeah. Yeah.

Erwin
And you decide to put more money in the real estate market?

Georges
Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I had seen what was going on, because I had sorry, and we’re kind of jumping all over the place. But I had bought a place in well, and that did really well as well. So I’m like, Hey, let’s just take this money, put it in that area where we’re doing well, there. So but yeah, anyways, keep going with your numbers.

Erwin
I think I’m good. So I paid 425. It went up in value to 570. Because the market was hot. Yeah. And pandemic hit. Yeah. But yeah, condos were among probably the worst performing asset during that time. And then for anyone who listened to me, I was saying, you know, while we’re early pandemic, like, to me the best investment is condos and student rentals. Yeah. And even if you can’t buy a condo, if you’re a renter, like go rent something, lock it lock up that new rent. Yeah. And that would have worked out well. Because if someone who rented if someone got that rented your condo for 1700. Lock that in?

Georges
Yeah. Yeah, we would have been stuck. And that tenant probably wouldn’t leave me to see what rents are now. Yeah.

Erwin
Wouldn’t for the tenant. Sucks to be because the market rent was likely bounced back.

Georges
I think it has Yeah, yeah. I’m pretty sure like, I don’t really monitor that area too much. I’m not really in that market. But last time I checked, it was a lot higher than 1700. or

Erwin
Pretty close to previous.

Georges
I think so. Yeah. I think it was in the mid 2000s. Maybe low to mid 2000s. Yeah.

Erwin
Because we’re seeing it now. I’m seeing a lot of headlines about the back to work. Yeah, people are being asked to go back to work. Yeah. So let’s see lots of pain on that.

Georges
Oh, yeah. And condos are hot right now. Like we had a client that was looking for a condo we looked in Vaughan, Mississauga, Oakville, everything had multiple offers on it. So we know that that condos are back now is just, you know, like for our model, we prefer these multis, it’s it just works better for us.

Erwin
Yeah, again, is I need I need higher rents to in order to be able to get refinancing. Get more.

Georges
Yeah, it’s more sustainable over time.

Erwin
For growth.

Georges
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Erwin
Yeah, cuz the condo models not gonna work for growth unless your your income is exponential, like our real estate is.

Georges
Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.

Erwin
Cool. Cool. What’s your wife think about all this? She’s supportive. Imagine Yeah, she sold her house. She sold her home.

Georges
I sold mine too, by the way. Just just to be fair to live in the triplex four Plex? No, we don’t live in it. I sold I had bought this little bungalow in Hamilton in a pretty bad area. North End. But yeah, so I had this place and I had it rented for 1350. Then we were just kind of looking over everything and I’m like, Hey, I lived in this place for a bit but it doesn’t really make sense for us to keep it as a rental anymore. So ended up selling it got a good price and dumped a bunch of that the sales proceeds into a renovation that we had going on I one of our multis, so I’m not just telling her what to do. I’m kind of doing it myself, too. So yeah,

Erwin
Where do you live now?

Georges
We live in Brampton.

Erwin
Bounced around.

Georges
I grew up in Brampton, my wife’s family’s in Woodbridge. So she wanted Brampton because it’s close to my family and close to her family. I didn’t want to be encrypted. If it were up to me, I would have been in Oakland.

Erwin
Not bad. I’m obviously biassed. Yeah. So what other investments do you do? Actually, let’s go let’s killing to deal with this with this real estate. So what’s the plan now? Are you looking to buy more Multis?

Georges
Yeah, the goal is to buy some more Multis. We have a cash flow goal that we want net cash flow.

Erwin
Would you share?

Georges
yeah, our goal is to get to 15,000 a month in net positive cash flow.

Erwin
Can you share where you’re at now?

Georges
It’s kind of hard to say we’re not because we have a bunch of vacant units. Like we I have one building a five Plex that’s completely empty because we’re renovating it. We have a triplex that has two empty units. So if I gave you what our cashflow is now owed wouldn’t be terrible.

Erwin
In the last year, well, thanks. Appreciate sharing, because that’s the reality of a growing portfolio. Yeah, no, definitely like a growing growth stock. Like, say, robots, for example. They don’t make any money. Yeah, they’re supposed to grow. Right? Like you’re just doing your growth stage not expected that cash flow.

Georges
Not right now.

Erwin
You’re speaking to negative cash flow?

Georges
Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of challenging in that sense. Because like, when you have a five Plex that’s totally empty for months and months, because you’re renovating it. It’s not easy. But you have to set money aside for that kind of thing. Right. But yeah, I think it’s important to say there’s all this glamour around having cashflow. And some people think, well, I’ll just replace my income right away. I think it takes a couple years before you get to that point. And you’ve got a depends on what kind of properties you’re buying, but we’re buying fixer uppers and those ones, it takes a few years to really get them to perform at their highest level. So something to keep in mind for investors.

Erwin
Can you share how you you’re finding these deals?

Georges
So some of the ones that we found a couple years, two years ago, roughly, I did a marketing campaign directly to owners. And we picked up the the five Plex that I just mentioned in well in we picked up the four Plex in St. Catharines. That way, sometimes we find deals straight off the MLS. And recently I actually picked up a nice deal off another realtor, an exclusive or a pocket listing. I got four side by side townhomes freehold with a 73%, VTB 1% interest.

Erwin
Sorry, he owned these who did the realtor own the more and all his or her client? Yeah. And they’re willing to give up the VTB. Yeah, in this market?

Georges
Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

Erwin
What was the motivation that they would take a VTB?

Georges
The rents were really low. And the owner owns a lot of real estate. So he understands the game. And he just said, like, I’ll do it for one year. I’ll help you out. Because I know there’s a lot of work to be done here. So I think that was the motivation. He was kind of helping out. Your fellow investor.

Erwin
Isn’t it nice to work with people to speak the same language?

Georges
Yeah, it’s awesome. I love it.

Erwin
And let’s just let’s, let’s give some context. How you Realtors you think know what VTB is level negotiate? One? I’ve actually negotiated.

Georges
I think a lot of them have heard of it, but they don’t understand it. I’d say like 95% of Realtors don’t understand it yet.

Erwin
So they’re naturally going to be afraid of it.

Georges
Yeah, for sure. They’re gonna, they’re just gonna say no, you’ll be like, Have you even discussed this with the client?

Erwin
Lawyer and the lawyer is gonna say no to yes.

Georges
It’s true.

Erwin
That’s awesome. Sorry, when you mentioned them, when you send the marketing campaign to owners of fire. Google AdWords.

Georges
It was a flyer.

Erwin
So very targeted, like you dropped people in the door.

Georges
Like, yeah, actually sent to in the mail. Yeah. So what I like to do sometimes I used to do this, maybe more, but I would just drive around, pick out certain properties that I liked. Either drop off a flyer or mail it to them.

Erwin
Driving for dollars.

Georges
Yeah. Yeah. So that I’ve had some good success with that kind of thing. Nice. Yeah. Cool.

Erwin
Do you do this for clients too?

Georges
No.

Erwin
That’s what people need to understand that how much work this is. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because you’re investing a lot of time. Yeah, to do this. And then it’s not like these deals match to this happen. You someone flyer doesn’t deal with this happen. Right? Like, how long does it take to do a deal? Can you share some metrics? Like how many flyers yet? So you’re driving for dollars as a highly targeted?

Georges
Yeah. Even even with that I still get depending on the campaign, a one or 2% response rate? Yeah, even recently been on the direct flyer. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So one to 2%. And then out of those I call, I might get, like, one out of five of those calls, leads to an opportunity because four of them, either the owner is not that motivated. They’re overpricing it, or they’re just curious to know what you’re gonna you know what what price you want to give them tire kickers. Yeah. And then you’ll have that one out of five that’s like, Hey, I’m actually thinking about selling. So yeah. And then you might go over there. And you might see like, this place is in really, really rough shape. And I just, I don’t see how this doesn’t fit my, my portfolio. So it’s pretty rare. Like it does take a lot of work and a lot of screening to get to that one property that you’ll actually buy.

Erwin
So I can’t just offer to pay you a commission and you do this for me.

Georges
I mean, I would do it but I’m not that focused anymore. I’m not as focused on like, just finding deals for other people at this point. I’m finding I’m just reaching, trying to reach our goals for now and I help people along the way, but yeah, it’s kind of a different phase of my life at this point.

Erwin
That’s pretty cool. happy for you guys. I tell I tell beginner Realtors all the time, like people who are interested in getting in. I always start off with, please understand investors make more money than realtors. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If you want to be a realtor, it’s purely cashflow play. Yeah, right. It’s a job. Yeah, it can be very lucrative. But I know lots of real estate investors will make more money than us for sure.

Georges
Yeah, that’s really important to know. Like, I wish more Realtors would understand this and spend more time investing because it’s going to change their lives. I know tunnel.

Erwin
We don’t want them to do that. Then there’s some competition for us.

Georges
It’s yeah, yeah, maybe maybe stick to the north there somewhere like Barry or something. No, I hear all these great things about Sudbury. So yeah, North Bay. But yeah, it kind of makes me sad to see that 75 year old realtor that’s still working because they have to, you know, it’s you’re in the industry, you should be investing at least by one one rental property. But again, it’s harder than it looks like dealing with tenants. You know, we all made mistakes. When we started investing. We’ve all got, we’ve all put ourselves in a position where we had a crappy situation. And it was stressful, and you have to dish out a bunch of money. And then you never make that mistake again. It’s just part of life, right part of investing.

Erwin
Yeah, I have conversations with all these people that want to be entirely passive. So they’ll tell me about, Oh, this guy’s offering this and he’s guaranteeing that rent for however long and I’m like, I don’t trust that guy. Want to just buy a property yourself? buy anything? Yeah. Right? Because I wanted us to call me. Like, do you understand that your worst case scenario versus losing your investment is my worst case scenario? Yeah. If you invest with someone else. Yeah. Like, people just don’t want to put in the effort. Yeah, yeah. The worst case, which is possible, you and I know people who’ve lost all their money on passive investments. Like that doesn’t sound worse than attended calling you. Yeah. Yeah.

Georges
Yeah, they’re both stressful, obviously. But one is worse than the other. But, I mean, you could you could lose everything. If you make big mistakes in real estate investing, like we’ve gone to the tribunal where we’ve experienced a guy who had three separate cases with tenants. And among the three or across all three, he was owed over 100 grand in rent. Like that’s, you’ve gone way too far. If that’s how much rent the tenants oh, you should have filed and hired a paralegal and done it properly. Way before. Don’t let yourself get to that point.

Erwin
But you said it though. Do it properly. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re exposing 200 300 grand, isn’t that worth doing it properly? Yeah. Pay pay a paralegal three grand or whatever. Hire property managers, screen tenants. Yeah. Use. Use landlord credit bureau to screen tenants. Yeah.

Georges
And I was I made that mistake when I started. When I bought my first property. I found the tenants and I did a terrible job. I found really bad tenants. And I had to go to the tribunal and lose 1000s of dollars. And it was part of the experience and I never made that mistake again. I use a property manager now I work very legal. I do everything the way you’re supposed to do it now. And we it’s been so much better, obviously. Right.

Erwin
Sorry. You share you live in Brampton, your property sound like they’re all Hamilton further west of you.

Georges
Yeah. Niagara.

Georges
And so they’re all under Park Management. Okay, so we’re high managing the ongoing stuff, but we have a property management to fill our property manager that fills all our units. Yeah.

Erwin
Anything else you outsource? Are you unplugging toilets? And oh, changing them?

Georges
No. No, I don’t do any of that. We’ve got plumbers, electricians, everything. I don’t want to drive out to well, and to fix it to I don’t even I think it changed the toilet once. It did a terrible job for you if it was in my own house. I put the bolts in the wrong place. And the tank was leaking. And I had spent so much time trying to fix this that toilet. So after that, I said I’m paying somebody to replace toilets for the rest of my life. Never doing it again.

Erwin
Yeah. Anything plumbing related to our high risk if you do it wrong. Yeah. Well, you know, in families, I’ve had leaks and properties that can cause a lot of damage if done wrong. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. Don’t mess with it. No, for even in my own home. Maybe if it was in the basement, so like, you know, so it’s near. It’s not that far from a floor drain. Yeah, dare risk it, doing it myself. But yeah, I categorise that with electrical. The worst case is just too much for me for sure.

Georges
Yeah, yeah. But I thought changing a toilet would be easy. And I was like, Hey, I just want to learn how to do this. That’s why I’m just curious. I want to see how hard it is to change a toilet. Right? I don’t want to do it every day.

Erwin
Just watch YouTube.

Georges
Yeah, you can watch YouTube but the bolts I don’t know, it was just too similar bolts. I put them in the wrong place. And it caused the leak. So I have to pay someone like 200 bucks just to replace the bolts later because I rented the house after and the tenants are like, hey, it’s leaking. Okay, so I got to spend 200 bucks on where I could have just done that originally.

Erwin
Wherever you’re lucky as always. 200 even cause any damage. Yeah, like a ceiling leak or something. Yeah. Inexpensive, inexpensive problem. Anything else you wanna chat about?

Georges
Anything else?

Erwin
I want to ask is your realtor. Yeah, we used to be along the same one. Yeah, you left not me because people always ask me if I’m still at rock star. I think you own rock stars. Because of stuff that I’ve said, that implies that I own it. I’m gonna go home rock star real estate and you’ve been to different real estate brokerages. Yeah. So I only bring this up because I know there are aspiring realtors who listen to the show. How did you choose? Where have you been? And how did you choose?

Georges
The first office I went to I picked it. It was a real page office because it was a nice office. They had like glass doors, and nice little offices, whatever. So I was like, Okay, this looks like a nice place to work. I’ll work here. Second place was Rockstar. And I picked it obviously, because it was investor focused. And that was my goal. And I had to fight to get in Nick didn’t want me. I was like, Nick, I’m not taking no for an answer. I just kept pestering him until he said yes. And then I eventually switched because there was a an investor at KW. That was like, recruiting me pretty, pretty heavily. And I really respected this investor. So I wanted to learn from him and be close to him. And that was the reason that I left and then I stayed. I’ve been with kW ever since my wife and my mother in law, they’re both realtors and we all work together and word of the kW and Vaughn. So that’s the reason. But to be honest, rockstars one of the better experiences that I had, I loved the morning meetings, just talking to investors all the time making Tom and Nick’s brains on marketing. They have so much knowledge. It’s an awesome place.

Erwin
Yeah, if you’d stick around, you’re playing some bitcoin.

Georges
Yeah, probably for better or worse. I know. Yeah.

Erwin
Yeah, I appreciate being around Rockstar. And to add to that, you know, be able to talk about economics with Tom and Nick time, you talked about being a business owner with them as well, and then even talking to like, the other successful realtors that are around what they’re seeing in the market. And I don’t have I don’t know what it’s like in other brokerages. That’s why I ask people like yourself, you know, what is the grass really greener on the other side?

Georges
Well, if your goal is just to sell homes and not work with investors, then maybe Rockstar is not the best place like you can find another brokerage that’ll serve you better. But for investment focused, I don’t know if there are too many brokerages that focus on investors other than Rockstar.

Erwin
Maybe small ones that are started by people that we know.

Georges
But yeah, yeah. There’s a couple of maybe I’d Yeah, it’s this one. No, yeah. Cool.

Erwin
And then oh, the your, your wife and your mother in law. Was that more recent? Were you the agent first? Or were they first to be licenced?

Georges
No, they were. They were licenced before me.

Erwin
Oh, you’re recruited these people?

Georges
Yeah. Yeah, they were they were looking for a change. We were all gonna join forces. And yeah, I just told them kW has been good. And I think it offers room to grow. And at first they were so against it, because they were Remax. And, you know, ReMax is all about the marketing and whatever. And they’re like, we can’t change, people aren’t going to work with us anymore. And whatever. And we went had the meeting with kW, and they they liked it. And so.

Erwin
Yeah, that’s interesting, because I mentioned to my marketing team, that we have to push a personal brand. Yeah. Right. Like people don’t even know I worked for a rock star. Yeah. And then some people actually think I own it. That’s a much smaller number. That’s the only thing it because I haven’t heard of it before. Yeah. So it’s the first time you hear it, they think that you own it. Right. Right. That’s my experience. When I mentioned I were a rock star like, oh, I never heard that you own it. You’re a broker? It’s like, No, it’s not my brokerage. Have you never heard of it before? Yeah, but because we’re small. Yeah. And the goal is never been to make a huge Yeah, I can’t speak for them, because I’m not an owner. But again, the point was, their focus is investors. And it’s not for everyone. That’s true. Because, you know, investors can be hard to work with. Yeah.

Georges
And you’re always on the buying side with investors, right? For the most for the most part, like Yeah, you get some listings, but in a market like the way it is now, it’s a little bit tougher for buyers. So you face some challenges in that sense.

Erwin
Yeah. Yeah. That’s like doing someone who’s interested in getting their licence just yesterday. Just you know, like, I love investing in laptop investing. Good. Lots of will do. And lots of investors will take your time and they’ll be nothing in it for you. Yeah, they’ll gladly waste your time because people don’t have to invest. Part nearly as motivated. Like when people when you work with homeowner homebuyers, for example, they often have a really motivating reason, job change. They need to upsize because there’s a baby on the way you know, you know, the feeling. Yeah, right, versus an investor’s. It’s really, you don’t have to do this It’s true, right? At least bless the masses think, like from from from your background like, like knowing what inflation hyperinflation looks like. To me, that’s incredibly motivating. You have to do something to hedge against inflation.

Georges
But that’s the nice thing about working with investors. If you get that one investor that’s driven, you might do five, six deals with them in a short period of time. Right? So you’re not maybe not working with as many people, but you can group them all. Or sometimes it’ll buy a full portfolio and you just do like five transactions at once.

Erwin
Yeah. And then if you have other investors, like they want to buy when, so I have investors want to exit because I’ve been around for a while. So they’ve gone they’ve aged with me. So now they’re exiting. Yeah. You know, taking some profits too. Cuz they’re near retirement age. And then we have clients that will buy them. Yeah, nice.

Georges
Oh, yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, you’re a good person to be in touch with for that.

Erwin
Well, yeah, like you said, like, you had to do a pocket deal to do an exclusive deal. Yeah. Do you know wants to fight over property on MLS or realtor.ca?

Georges
And I wouldn’t have gotten a VTB if it was an MLS deal. Most likely?

Erwin
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the wild part. Yeah. For me, I always try to list everything on realtor.ca. I don’t know.

Georges
I didn’t ask him any questions.

Erwin
Of course not. To deal. Yeah. Yeah. What some? I’m always I’m always it’s I think it’s funny. Why. Yeah, there’s pluses and minuses, because if you put on realtor.ca You’re gonna have a wave of people going through that those four townhouses? Yeah. So were they all rented?

Georges
Yep. They’re all rented.

Erwin
Okay. Yeah. I don’t know if people appreciate how hard it is to show property that is rented. Yeah, that’s right. The tenant has no motivation to allow people in

Georges
Actually not during a pandemic or during whatever, right. Like, yeah.

Erwin
We have a high incidence of properties that were trying to sell attendance, high innocence, they already have COVID. And they can’t allow showings.

Georges
So I find some tenants say that, like, there is one tenant I had in my building every single time I’d see him. He says, no, no, don’t come close of COVID. And this was like, you know, every couple of weeks had seen him. I think part of it was lying, because he didn’t want anyone to enter his unit. But whatever.

Erwin
Yeah. Having tenants does not actually help resale value. No. But yeah, it sucks to hold a property that’s not as vacant. Yeah. So why did you choose these areas to invest? What markets are you looking to expand in now? You mentioned Hamilton, St. Catharines? Niagara, welland?

Georges
Yeah, just Yeah, well, in St. Catharines. And Hamilton, those are the three areas I don’t really think I’m going to go anywhere else. I don’t want to. If I have to funk driven out for whatever reason, then yes. But yeah, those are the areas I like and really well into was introduced to me by another investor. A few years ago, he bought an apartment building there. And he bought it for like a million bucks. It was 21 units. So that was my first introduction to Welland. And I went to see this building. I’m like, wow, this is nice. This is like I can see this area kind of growing. I understand that it’s close to whatever this and that and, and then, yeah, I started exploring opportunities.

Erwin
A million bucks is hilarious.

Georges
I know, for 21 units crazy.

Erwin
How’s it? Is there any way? It’s not under over $2 million?

Georges
I don’t know. So it’s got to be probably a 3 million I would guess.

Erwin
That’s pretty good.

Georges
Yeah. And this was, I think, around 2017, that he bought it.

Erwin
Oh, during the correction in 2017.

Georges
I don’t know if it was an off market deal as well. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t remember. But the correction was mostly for like residential homes. Right? Because it was the first time buyer. They hadn’t they had put in the stress test. Right. Yeah.

Erwin
It doesn’t take much to spook the market. Because neither of those things bothered us. Yeah. So actually looked back. And as a business, we actually did left way less transactions after the fair housing plan came into effect. And the stress test, even though really didn’t change anything for 99% of our clientele. Right. They just got spooked.

Georges
Yeah. And it also kind of could trigger some people to sell. Like, we have some clients now because of this interest rate hike, which was almost nothing, point two, five, and this lady calls us and she’s like, I think it’s time for me to sell this. I’m kind of worried that this interest rates going to impact the market. Okay, that’s interesting that like that tiny thing caused some people to sell their homes. But yeah

Erwin
We’re seeing some softness now. Yeah. So I’ve told our clients if you have plans to sell them in 12 months, next 12 months, this would be the time Yeah, right. Just in case we have to 2017 is it’ll take some time for the market to recover. So for anyone who’s buying holding long term like I am, yeah, yeah. Holding stuff for my kids, right. Like, I plan on holding stuff for like over 10 years. So this doesn’t faze me. You’re not selling anything. Yeah, yeah. But if anyone, like for example, I have a client who has a flip. I’m like pushing them. Get it. Get it ready. Yeah.

Georges
Yeah, that makes sense. or maybe for some people who are downsizing it could make sense. capitalise on the market now and yeah.

Erwin
Or even the refi is done now. Yeah. Right. Like, take advantage of this. The worst seller’s market I’ve ever seen. Yeah, get your reifies now get your appraisals done now at these all time all time all time highs.

Georges
Yeah. Crazy Crazy

Erwin
And be ready for in case it does dip has metadata available for sure. George, anything else you want to cover?

Georges
I don’t think so.

Erwin
You don’t ever look.

Georges
I don’t have a book. No, I have a podcast.

Erwin
And it’s called the well off podcast.

Georges
You’ve been on it.

Erwin
Thank you for having me on.

Georges
Yeah, my pleasure.

Erwin
Hopefully people aren’t worse off for having listened.

Georges
I doubt it.

Erwin
Where can people find it? Welloffpodcast.ca, Spotify, Apple podcasts

Georges
Would you recommend Realtors do so what is your goal with the podcast?

Erwin
Actually, I really just want to like motivate people and and help them improve their lives by investing not just sitting on the sidelines.

Georges
So you think people should still get in? Interest rates are going up? Absolutely. Absolutely get in. If you can get in you won’t regret it and 5,10 years.

Erwin
Do you have a lot of people that challenge you on that opinion?

Georges
No, not really.

Erwin
Yeah, even newbies?

Georges
Okay. Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t say that. I think some people, they create these excuses for themselves. Like I’m not going to invest now. I’m just gonna wait because I think the markets gonna dip. I think there’s gonna be a correction, I’m just gonna win. That I don’t know, they wait a long time. And by that point we’ve made how much in equity and cash flow and all these things. So I just don’t think it’s a good strategy to just sit and wait.

Erwin
The reason why I mentioned that. When I look back at our stats for 2017. A lot of people did not buy the dip. Right? They actually waited to the market recovered. We sold way more properties till after the recovery was done. Yeah. Right. So all this dip buying in reality people say it. They don’t actually do it. Right. That’s true. That’s true. True. Oh, we’re gonna wait for the dip. We for the dip. The dip comes. And you find another reason to wait. Yeah. Then they get cold feet. Not not. Like, I understand. No one knows what the bottom is. Yeah. But my point is, they don’t do it.

Georges
Because you start building a habit of waiting. And then, you know, the people who are buying they build a habit of buying. So they’re buying before the dip they’re buying during the dip. They’re buying after the dip. And they’re just their portfolio is growing.

Erwin
I have no interest in showing off to anyone. Yeah, I bought two houses in 2017 in the fall near the bottom of the dip. Yeah, right. In the pandemic. We bought two houses last year, like well into a dip. Yeah. Very well for us. So even in the stock world we teach I teach people that you need to exercise that muscle of buying dips. Even if just one share. Soon as soon your favourite. You have an iPhone, you have an Android or an iPhone, iPhone. So you’d like apple?

Georges
I do.

Erwin
So my suggestion to someone would be buy one share of Apple during this dip. Yeah. All right. If you don’t if you start that still doesn’t make you feel comfortable. Do it on paper. Yeah. Right. So then you you build that muscle. And then at least you’re not waiting. Yeah, right. build that muscle being an action taker. Yep. And then then look back. How did it go? How did it feel? You regret it? Are you happy with it? And then learn from that move forward? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I want to buy some bitcoin this week. We’ll see if I regret or not. Yeah. Adam Bitcoin time. Oh, yeah. This is not a financial advice, folks. Please. This is just our experience and some really idiotic ideas. If you’re licenced, or licenced, George and I are licenced in real estate. We didn’t talk about real estate all day. So you’re not you’re not capital raising at all?

Georges
Yeah, yeah. I am. Like these townhomes. They have individual titles. So I was able to get separate partners for each nice. I have one left that I don’t have a partner on. But I have the three of them with our partners.

Erwin
Fantastic. Yeah, they have to be happy.

Georges
Yeah. Well, I think it’s pretty good deal.

Erwin
May I ask did you based on? So did you have to sell it to them? Or before the deal closes? They got put on title type thing?

Georges
Oh, it’s a VTB. So okay. Yeah. So like, I’m on title and the owners trusting me. Right. So I’m not gonna start like swapping names and doing this and that. So yeah, we just have a co venture agreement.

Erwin
Got it. Yeah. And then for that CO venture did did the price go up for each individual unit? Or did you just give them a deal at the same? Yeah, the same that as a sweetheart deal.

Georges
I got a pretty decent deal on and two, I think like there’s a decent discount on on the properties.

Erwin
So these properties built up equity on day one. Yeah. They made money on the buy. Yeah, it’s pretty sweetheart deal. Because I bet you most deals like this do not happen like that.

Georges
Yeah. I never even thought about increasing the price on our agreement. That’d be pretty smart. Actually.

Erwin
I’ve ruined George for everyone. Oh, I bring I bring it up because other passive investments I’ve looked at, that’s what they do. Yeah. Right. All the power to them. Like, I’m a bit of a capitalist as well. If you can do it, why not? Yeah. Right. So, you know, make your money. So you have money for rainy days. Yes, there will be other there’ll be other rainy days going forward. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, you bear lots of risk. Yeah. Do you on the BTB? Right. So you’re bearing lots of risk. Cool. George, something to think about? Thanks. I always want to allow my guests to have some time to share what it’s like to have an open mic. Yeah. That’s the first time I’ve called it that. Any other final thoughts? Maybe something for beginners? Maybe something for people afraid of? Anything?

Georges
Beginners, don’t overthink? You’re not going to have all the answers. You’re never going to have all the answers. We talked about this earlier. Every single purchase I’ve made so far. I felt have never felt like I was 100%. Ready. So if you’re gonna wait for that time, it’s probably too late. So just go just go for it. Do something. Don’t wait.

Erwin
So I have this habit of always thinking overpaid on every single deal. Yeah. And so as a team, we do a well over 100 deals every year. I think we overpaid for all of them. Yes. It’s It’s laughable. But you know.

Georges
I feel that way too. Yeah. And then I look like we bought a place in September at the time I thought. I was like, oh, man, I kind of think we overpaid for this. It’s gone off like 300 grand since then. Did so I don’t think we overpaid anymore.

Erwin
Yeah, we’re paying around 840 For duplexes last fall. And they’re all over a million now. Yeah, very between 1.1 1.2 Yeah. Right. So yeah. I thought, well, I can’t go any higher. I’m not saying people should chase prestigious appreciation. But I do think there’s a chance of a dip, there could be a great opportunity. And that can be the life like since 2017. It’s been five years. Yeah. Right. Who knows when the next opportunity to buy is. So this, you know, I’m preparing our clientele and our team. But you know, this could be the next buying opportunity and buying opportunity for the next person the next 10 years. 5,10 years. Right? It’s true. Because immigration ain’t going nowhere, right. can’t build nothing.

Georges
Yeah, it’s not like the supply is increasing. At a very slow rate.

Erwin
I actually saw this I went to a presentation this week. So it was never explained to me this way. I actually don’t know why I didn’t know this number. But we have over 1 million job vacancies in Canada. How do you fill that? Right. And so you have no option but immigration? Sure. Right. So yeah. So then if we know we have to have immigration to fill these job vacancies, and we know the government, what the government’s plans are, where these people are going to live, right? Crazy. Yeah. Magic grandpa saw you now forming all these hard assets?

Georges
Yeah, I don’t know what he would think. I don’t know. I know my parents are happy.

Erwin
That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. This is not like didn’t go through a lot to get here.

Georges
Yeah, for sure. My life was a lot easier than theirs. That’s for sure.

Erwin
Pretty cool. All right, George, thanks for doing this.

Georges
Thank you appreciate the time and you have me on.

Erwin
Don’t be a stranger.

Georges
All right, cool.

Erwin
Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate from cash flow, but with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there. Forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself but so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

Erwin  

Hello, friends, welcome to another episode of The Truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto. And for those with kids or had kids or still have kids, are you planning on doing private school? It’s a question that Cherry and I have discussed several times. And we decided that our kids would go to the public school that’s only four minutes walk from our home. We want our kids to be close to their friends so that they could have really healthy social lives outside of school, and to invest heavily in extracurricular activities. The kids might actually be a little bit too busy. At this time, they have math and English homework, which is private five times a week, that also includes two of those two of those sessions are private tutoring, one on one and four times a week, they have two boxing. And then once a week, they have swimming, skating, public speaking domestic classes, and we just had a basketball recently. Nothing was too much is it? Maybe a touch, I know there could be they could be doing so much more. But then the dreaded moment happened. report cards came home, but two weeks ago, and between the two of them out of 12 categories, they only managed to receive 11 excellents. And there’s one good, but to my surprise, my daughter received a B plus in math, I was confused. So I go and check Robin’s math homework. She’s been, again, she’s been doing she’s been doing math for since the pandemic started. So she wasn’t doing extra homework outside of school, five days a week for the last two years. So check what she’s currently doing. She doesn’t have a challenge. She rarely asked for help. Maybe once, maybe once a week, twice a week, she asked for a little bit of help on her math homework. She’s doing three digit division. So she’s dividing three digits by one digits with remainders. And then I asked her to show me some of her schoolwork. And they’re still adding double digits together? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m no teacher. I’m not an expert in this area. At the bottom of a report card is blank field to write into questions and to sign and return it. The first question is, what area did my child improve in the most? Second question is, how will you improve your child’s education? Like you’re the parent, you’re the Guardian, whatever, how will you improve your child’s education? So I didn’t know how to answer that. And I was just thinking, like, if teachers know what my kids do, what kind of grind they’re in? So if they asked me that to my face, I wouldn’t have an answer. My answer would probably be private school. And yeah, I had pretty uncomfortable parent teacher interview last class time for it for parents came home. So I email my teacher let her know I was disappointed with the B plus, I shared some pictures of Robins private math homework, because I believe in showing, not telling and asked what she thought would help. Her response was more playdates with her classmates. Yes. Right. That’s professional opinion. So I was done talking to the teacher. It’s, it’s cool. It’s it is what it is. I even offered to ask her what her favourite gift cards were for, to buy school supplies from so I’ll continue to donate and support my kids school that way. I pulled some of my successful friends about their experiences with their kids. Some of them have kids older than mine as well, which is helpful. Most of them rolled their eyes at me when I told them that we only got 11 out of 12 excellents, and, more importantly, how the public system is not ideal for over achievers. And they I think they actually give me advice which are not supposed to be said, as either private school, or load up on extracurriculars. For Cherry and I, we will continue with the latter as it’s always been our plan to keep to teach our kids a lot of things not taught in school for emotional quotient items in an IQ item such as marketing, entrepreneurship, investing in stocks and real estate anyways, again, this stuff they’re not going to learn in school. So we’re just gonna suck it up what public school has to offer, control what I control and as always, not rely on the government for anything, aka the status quo. 

Erwin  

Today’s episode, we have an apartment building investor, multifamily investor, Seth Ferguson, who I met back in 2019, when he invited me on this podcast at the recording, Seth told me about his relationship challenges with his romantic partner. It was also his investment partner also investment properties, and then the related financial challenges when she wouldn’t cooperate in signing documents, to sign to sign leases with tenants so that they could you know, have rent coming in to pay for these mortgages. Anyways, it was not a pretty situation, many mortgage payments were missed. Seth had to be in regular contact with the bank. Not pretty. So here’s the time you have as many problems and relationship problems. I suggested he take our beta stock hacker Academy course that weekend. So Seth interviewed me on a Friday say What are you doing this weekend? He takes me up on the offer. And we’ve been friends ever since. Other than being on YouTube. He podcasts, he’s a realtor business. He’s a real estate investor and apart buildings focuses more there in the southern US markets. He is the father of an energetic young boy. and newly engaged. This is a joke. But Seth has plenty to do as you can tell. And he also took on a quote unquote full time job as a conference host, event planner, of the multifamily conference that is coming up soon. It’s only something like two months away, May 14 and 15th 2022. So that’s this year folks at the CAE centre near Pearson Airport. There’ll be plenty of parking because I include that because some advisory gives up all conferences should have plenty of free parking. It’s important it’s important. It’s not like free parking journey. I literally have tickets front row centre that we pay for as one of the earliest to buy. The headline speaker is I’m not going to spoil it. I’ll let Seth tell you who it is, anyways, be talking about structuring deals right, right and wrong way, especially with all the all the deals, all the businesses, real estate businesses that are going sideways these days, both in private lending, and joint venturing. We’re talking about due diligence began there. Sadly, there’s a lot of investors being caught up with local Securities Commissions. So folks, please stay safe out there. Yeah, doing one’s due diligence, even if the property is far, far away from you. And you can’t see it personally. Seth has some some concrete examples of what he does. If he’s not if he can’t see properly personally, because again, he’s buying property in like Texas and Florida. So he needs his own team. But he can trust on the ground to see check on his investments, assess shares his losses, and also his successes with stock hacking. The show is a good one. Thank goodness for stock hacking. And I’m sure assess back agrees with them. Maybe his fiancee too. And it all makes sense when you listen to the show. Please enjoy the show. 

Erwin  

Seth, thanks for coming back on the show.

Seth  

Thanks for having me back. You’re not fed up with me. So… 

Erwin  

You have a lot going on…

Seth  

Well, we do have a lot of going on. I enjoy coming. I like the new digs here. This did a beautiful job. 

Erwin  

It’s not nearly as nice as your studio. 

Seth  

Wow. No, this this is nice. So I like the bookshelves and everything. The fireplace. I do not have a fireplace.

Erwin  

Well, it’s not assembled. inspected, because it’s likely original. So this place I think isn’t built 1989.

Seth  

I was just my say 80s. Yeah.

Erwin  

I think 89. And the quick tip for investors, it’s in the window. Inside the windows, I can see where the manufacturing date on the windows. So I believe it’s 9019 89. So there’s buildings around that time. And yeah, when we bought the place, we’d haven’t had inspected the fireplace. So try to keep it safe, not get blown up. Have it inspected before we turn it on.

Seth  

But at least Santa Claus can come down and leave presence for you. 

Erwin  

Yeah, because we will move in if all this real estate stuff doesn’t work out. So Seth, what’s keeping you busy these days?

Seth  

Oh, lots going on. We got like the multifamily conference coming up. I’m sure we’ll talk about that. So that is basically a full time job and a half as you know. So we’ve got a really good team working on that. And then yeah, just, you know, talking with people about the multifamily real estate stuff. And that’s, that’s a whole lot of fun as well. So between the two right now I am, I’m working nonstop.

Erwin  

So when did you decide to do a conference?

Seth  

It was at the start of last year. So we were in the middle of the pandemic. 

Erwin  

Oh, good time to plan a conference. 

Seth  

Great time to plan the conference.

Erwin  

And start selling Tickets. 

Seth  

Yeah. And here’s me thinking, hey, you know, we should be good, you know, COVID will only last a little bit longer and then we’ll be fine. But, you know, things are opening up now. You know, vaccine passport requirements are gone. masks should disappear. Maybe by the time hopefully we’re back to more normal than not so. Yeah, it was but it was funny. Like we’ve got Kevin O’Leary coming as the keynote. And I was sitting beside my fiancee now on the couch, and we were watching Shark Tank, we love watching the show. And I turned to her and I said, You know what, I’m going to have Kevin at my conference and she’s like, Yeah, sure, whatever, whatever. And the conference was just an idea at that stage and you know, I played the telephone game. And so I made two calls got in touch with Kevin’s people so I was thinking it would take six calls like the six degrees of separation to and sure enough we had Kevin on board and then everything else just kind of fell into place.

Erwin  

Can you share how you got a hold of him? Like did you just go Kevin O’Leary.com and call the number was there?

Seth  

No, I wish it was that easy. I ended up knowing a guy who knew a guy and so I got connected that way. And then honestly, I just DM his executive assistant to because it was being a little slow the other way so I I used Instagram and slid into the DMS and got it done that way. Yeah. 

Erwin  

You won’t tell your fiance about that story. Obviously. 

Seth  

No, no.

Erwin  

She doesn’t listen to the show anyway, so she you’re safe. And yeah, I find when people ask me about the speakers that I booked before, they think it’s complicated. My experience is that if you’re willing to pay they will come. Yeah.

Seth  

Money Talks. It’s like anything. It’s like real estate too, right? Money Talks. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, like the thing I wanted, I wanted to have, like a really good roundness to the speaker lineup where we cover like every aspect of multifamily, so like financing to underwriting to structuring to everything. And then Kevin obviously fills in the the celebrity component and the capital raising component. He’s gonna, yeah, oh, for Well, I thought of it this way, like, he has been pitched more times than most people, like in a month more time. He has been pitched more times in the month, the most people get pitched in their lifetime. And, you know, when you’re raising capital for deals, like it doesn’t matter if it’s for your first joint venture or your 10th fund, you know, your competitions, trying to take your investors money and put them in put in their deals. So what better guy to talk about the capital raising process, the nature of capital, how investors look at you? So you can, you know, shore up your pitch and make it really, really tight?

Erwin  

Yeah. And so the show is the truth about real estate investing. Like you said, it’s a full time job.

Seth  

Full time job and a half full time job. 

Erwin  

I’m lucky because cherry and I mostly her perspectives together. Yeah, we’re two people. You’re one person.

Seth  

Yeah, one. First of all, you know, I do have a really good team behind it, like running a conference of this size. You can’t do it on your own or even two people, you need people behind you. But yeah, I think first and foremost, you have to have really solid speakers. I’m also really excited to have my friend Joe Fairless. Speak, Joe controls over a billion dollars of multifamily assets. So when that guy talks, you want to start taking notes. So whether you’re brand new, he can kind of show you what’s possible, or if you’re, you know, your fifth deal in his scaling frameworks obviously work because he’s done it. So he’s the guy you really want to take a lot of notes with to then Joel block with structuring, you know how to structure your first syndication. Joel actually, I was sitting beside some well known real estate, people who had a fund, and they were operating their fund. And Joel took a long look at how they were running things. And he figured out that they were leaving about 2 million bucks on the table every year in profit with how they had structured their fund. So where was the money being leaked to? Well, it wasn’t it was just in the minutiae of how everything was being calculated, and how the preferred return was set and everything like that. And so Joel took the luck and helped them restructure it. And yeah, there they launched a new fund in his 2 million bucks a year in profit. So structuring is so important. And so Joel’s a wizard when it comes to syndications and funds. So if you’re looking to really raise capital, like Wall Street does in a really efficient way, he’s a great guy, somebody like he Bouchard is coming in from out west. And he’s doing some really cool things with creative deal structuring. And Delia Barsoom is coming in to talk about financing. We’ve got so many top speakers. Like I obviously I’m a little biassed, but I’m so excited to have everybody in the room. Like it’s going to be amazing.

Erwin  

It’ll kind of like be like the the event that announces the end of the pandemic.

Seth  

Yes, yeah. And and we’re talking with everybody who’s like signed up for the discounts and our free VIP ticket draw. And everybody is so excited to get back out there. 

Erwin  

There was free ones? I had to pay for mine. 

Seth  

So yeah, if you go to multifamily conference.ca/vip draw, you can actually enter to win the draws in April, but at the end of April, but we have a draw for a free VIP ticket.

Erwin  

They better not be sitting next to me. I know a lot of money for my seat. Back to be front row centre. 

Seth  

If they gotta sit next to you will have to raise the price, right? 

Erwin  

You’re gonna get a refund because they’re like, I guess like the next visit.

Seth  

Yeah. Yeah, so like, the thing is, I’m sick and tired of zoom. I’ve lived on Zoom for two years, like lots of people. And this is why I love coming to do your podcast because you’re really close. We can do this in person. If this was over zoom, like it would have 10% of the impact and would be way less fun. You get everybody together in one room. Like the get more deals done the connections I future partnerships. It’s just way better for everybody.

Erwin  

Yeah, the energy in the room. Let’s be crazy. Oh, yeah.

Seth  

And we’ve got some cool energy coming. We got like fire on the stage. Yeah, we’ve got some cool stuff.

Erwin  

Fires bad.

Seth  

That’s, that’s right. Yeah.

Erwin  

Okay, so I’m gonna determine what I’m going to dress because I’m close to the stage. So you mentioned some of these American speakers. 

Seth  

Yeah. 

Erwin  

And where’s their focus? And are there still deals out there to be heard, because you’re an investor too. 

Seth  

Yeah. Yeah.

Erwin  

You’re not you’re not just trying to do conferences, you invest as well.

Seth  

No, I do. After running the conference. I’m sure with you guys, too, you know, yes. Yeah. And you don’t want to become a full time event promoter. But, but yeah, we’ve got a pretty good split. We’ve got about half Canadian, half American for speakers because we do have investors from both sides of the border. And I think that’s a cool thing too, because we can learn a lot. The fundamentals of investing remain the same whether it’s in Canada or the US. And I think we do ourselves a disservice if we strictly focus on only I’m only going to listen to Canadians. So I’m only going to listen to Americans, because there’s so many incredible people doing things in place. 

Erwin  

You know, if you and I waited for an electric car and made in Canada, yeah, waiting a while.

Seth  

Exactly. Yeah. So so the fundamentals remain the same. And so like, you know, Joel, like, really, really interesting guy. He’s coming, Joe, but on the Canadian side, we’ve got Pierre Paul Turgeon, on the underwriting insider talking about underwriting. Mike Reed, actually, Mike Reed’s Australian living in Canada, so so we’ve got three different countries.

Erwin  

Right. And all these multifamily investors, they focus in different markets do they not?

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Like, I’m good friends with people who are investing in probably almost every state in every province in the country. Obviously, everybody has their own niche, but yeah, right. Yeah. And, you know, people will choose their markets for different reasons. You know, there’s, if we’re talking about the US, there’s some really good Midwest investors who, who like the strategy, their goal, but less in terms of capital growth, but the cashflow is stronger. There’s other investors who are going with, you know, I even know investors are making a killing in California. Yeah, that’s, that’s a pretty, you know, competitive, very competitive. It’s like here in the GTA.

Erwin  

And the laws. The tenant laws are…

Seth  

Yeah, so it’s, it’s very, so I was just on a guest on another podcast right before this. And we were talking about California and Ontario, because California has ranked control. It’s not as tight as Ontario’s, but it’s, it’s still there. So there’s a lot of similarities between the two. 

Erwin  

Interesting. 

Seth  

Yeah, yeah. But there’s markets for everybody. That’s kind of like, you know, here in the GTA. There’s some people who will buy like, right in the centre of Oakville. And then there’s people who will buy in Woodstock. And then people who buy in St. Catharines. Like it’s all over. 

Erwin  

So there’s still deals out there, then? 

Seth  

There are, the competition for those deals is definitely there. And especially on the multifamily side, it’s not just putting in the biggest number on your offer. It’s your ability to close, because…

Erwin  

Some of these aren’t closing?

Seth  

Well, yeah. So what happens with the, you know, to take a syndication, for example, the sponsor will put the deal under contract and they go out and raise the capital. I know of a couple instances, recently where the syndicator was not able to raise the funds necessary. And sure the seller gets to keep a couple $100,000 In deposit, but then they have to go back on market. So when we’re dealing with these multifamily properties, yeah, sure. Like you have to have a good purchase price. But you also have to be able to close. And that’s where having a track record, or the track record of people on your team really, really comes in. 

Erwin  

Okay. Having cash on hand? 

Seth  

Yes, yes. proof of funds? Yes. 100%. Yeah. So, yeah, markets competitive. But you know, that there’s absent flows, like I talked with guys who were really active in 2008. And the challenge, you know, there were a lot more deals, but it was a challenge to get financing. So in every market in every stage of the market cycle, there’s challenges, you just have to be a little bit more creative, in how you’re going to tackle that. So you know, whether the markets at its peak, or is slumping, or is recovering, like, there’s always you can always make money in real estate.

Erwin  

Where do you think we are in terms of like, well, things have gone up? I don’t know. I can’t really speak for the states. But I’ll speak for like the GTA, it’s been this reminds me a lot of 2017. You going up so fast in such a short amount of time?

Seth  

Yeah, we talk about that a lot. So I’m not sure if people know that I actually run like a small residential sales team to and we talk about that a lot. Where, you know, in terms of inventory for the residential product right now in the GTA inventory is less than it was spring of 2017, sales volume is higher. So I would argue that we’re even probably worse off than we were in the spring of 2017. 

Erwin  

Affordability is worse. 

Seth  

Yeah, for sure. So we are watching, like on a weekly basis, because you know, a couple months ago, because we do these, like weekly market, or sorry, monthly market updates. And I kind of drew everybody’s attention to the fact that yeah, we’re seeing very similar patterns. And just to keep an eye out, like nobody has a crystal ball. But I think, you know, we may see something similar to what happened in 2017. What happened before will happen again, so I’m not sure what your thoughts are, too. I’d be interested in hearing.

Erwin  

Hard to say. It’s just recency bias. And just to make it easy for my brain to compute, is we could just see the exact same things. 2017. Yeah, yeah. But like for my market, Hamilton, we were recovered. you’ve recovered every single loss, every dollar loss by the following March, for sure lasted 12 months.

Seth  

Yeah, yeah. 100%. And I remember in 2017, you might have had people to where, you know, you see the pricing, drop, drop, drop. And it’s like, okay, now’s a great time to buy. But like, it always happens, like, like, I broke into real estate in 2008. And it wasn’t a slow like, in the States. It was way, way, way, way worse. We just had a little blip here. Yeah, I remember telling people Yeah, this is a great time to buy people sit on their hands, and they miss it. And you know, whenever, something happens again, you know, just don’t sit on your hands because like, you only know the true bottom after you’ve passed it. Just like you only know the true peak. Whenever, you know, when you’re looking in the rearview.

Erwin  

I know, I’ve been staring at the Bitcoin chart for a while. 

Seth  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Erwin  

I think I missed the bottom. But there could be another one. There should be a new better bottom.

Seth  

Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t know who knows what’s going to happen. But yeah, like you said, like, it’s very, very similar. And we’re keeping a pretty close eye on it. Yeah.

Erwin  

My regret was we only bought one property in 2008. But the key was that our group was had enough people and enough capital enough income, that we could get financing. Yeah. So I think for folks that need to get ready for this is, you know, have all your ducks in order. Yeah. Right. Don’t go leasing a new car or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, whatever your priorities are my priorities are I talk to Cherry about this all the time is like to have some cash on hand. Yeah, just in case anything happens. So I’m trying to refi the heck out of everything. 

Seth  

Why not? Like, it’s a great time to do it? 

Erwin  

Yeah. It’s just to get some line of credits, for example, in case we need it, yeah. We’re gonna go spend it, but just to have some available capital, without having to sell something and pay all those taxes. 

Seth  

Yeah, for sure. 

Erwin  

So actually, we’re talking about structure. So I’ll share a story. A friend of mine sold a decent sized building, and then I’d see the seller side, the buyer hadn’t closed yet. And they’re raising money on Facebook. Pictures of the property. So I know, I know, the same property my client owns. And they’re saying like, you know, like, guaranteed returns like eight to 12%. So it looks like they’re trying to raise they’re trying to borrow privately. And one of them actually literally had the word guaranteed returns.

Seth  

Are they raising for debt? Are they raising debt or equity?

Erwin  

I think in that case, I think bad case. Debt. Okay. But also just think from a seller’s perspective. Yeah. You’re raising money. It wasn’t that big of a purchase price. Yeah. But, and I said, I sent a screencap to my lawyer. He’s like, That’s not even grey.

Seth  

Yeah, you have to be so so so careful. And like you and I hear of situations all the time.

Erwin  

I know. No, I would say there’s more these days than ever, of people getting busted over securities violations.

Seth  

Oh, 100%. And like, one thing I see frequently is, okay, so I think the past episode, we talked about the difference between active investing in passive investing, and how syndication really allows you to passively invest. That’s true passive investing. 

Erwin  

But that’s not syndicated borrowing or lending. 

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Syndicated mortgages, very different. We’re talking private equity. 

Erwin  

Right, right. Yeah, we actually own shares. 

Seth  

Correct. 

Erwin  

So you, you lose, and you gain as, as the value of the project grows?

Seth  

Yeah, it’s just like, you know, you own your piece of that property, or the entity that owns it. 100%. But what people will do, and I see this happening a lot is because you know, syndication and private equity that’s governed by the Securities, you know, legislation here in Ontario, it’s a provincial thing. So what people will do to bypass that is, they’ll say, Okay, well, I’m just going to raise, you know, let’s say $100,000, from 10. Investors, but we’ll structure it as a joint venture. So I’ll say, oh, yeah, everybody’s active. But if everything goes, right, nobody will say boo. But the minute something goes wrong, you’re toast, because the way that is structured is you’re basically syndicating the deal without actually calling it a syndication. So you are violating the securities laws, and you will get shut down. And I see it happen, like, you know, we’ve got people in our circle who do it. And like I said, if everything goes, right, it’s great. But the minute something happens, your neck is toast.

Erwin  

And the deal, the investment could be good. It could just be someone’s complaining about it could even be a competitor who calls the Securities Commission complains about you.

Seth  

100%. So like, whenever you’re raising capital, you have to be so careful that you’re doing it the right way. You’re just like guaranteeing returns, you know, you can’t do that. But I guarantee Yeah, and like, you know, just because you you say yeah, it’s a joint venture, while by the time like the Securities Commission takes a look at how you do things. They may decide that even though you call it a joint venture, it’s not your syndicating. And, you know, now you fall under the securities laws and then you didn’t do X, Y and Zed. So yeah, you have to be so careful.

Erwin  

And then the punishment for one group is the cease and desist order. Yeah. All right. So now, what are you supposed to do? Like say you’re in the middle of a flip? Even still the cease and desist? Yeah, you can’t finish the project, right? Yep, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble.

Seth  

A lot of trouble, and it’s not worth it. Like, like the price of a good lawyer who’s experienced with this kind of stuff is it’s well worth their hourly fee to go sit with them and find out exactly what’s happening. Yeah, I think a lot of people like from the people I know who are kind of in the grey area, either they got bad advice, or they’re, they’re trying to use a JV structure that they were familiar with doing like a duplex conversion and trying to make it fit into a larger raise. And it’s just not designed to do that. Like that’s not what it’s there for.

Erwin  

Yeah. A friend of mines cousin posted something on Instagram, just him talking to the camera thing. And I said, I messaged him like, hey, please do me a favour. Have your lawyer review this before you post this? Yeah. Right. And he took it down immediately. Thank God. All right. Hopefully it did have like, yeah, just ask you have your lawyer review it.

Seth  

Yeah. No. 100%. And like, you know, I think Instagram.

Erwin  

He was blatantly raising money. 

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Okay, like Instagram, like, sure. Okay. Besides twerking on Instagram. Like, you know, people like to post everything they’re doing, but you have to do it in a way that’s compliant. And whenever we’re raising money, especially, you know, if we’re accredited investors only, we can’t be seen as soliciting funds from non-accredited investors like your toasts at that point. So I think in terms of marketing message, you know, hey, contact me to learn how you can invest in properties like this. That’s totally okay. But you can’t say this is my deal. Invest in it right now.

Erwin  

And we’re not lawyers. So your lawyer for sure. Yeah. Don’t take advice from us.

Seth  

So of course, if you do an offering memorandums, like everything changes. But if you’re working in the exempt market, where you don’t have to do your filing, you have to be very, very, very careful.

Erwin  

You, you spent a lot of time researching this.

Seth  

Oh, yeah, well, I’ve had to do it for the Canadian stuff, or in Ontario, as well as the US, because we’re kind of on both sides. So yeah, it’s like rule number one, like, just get good advice. 

Erwin  

That’s not the easiest thing to do. 

Seth  

No, well, yeah, danger devices hard.

Erwin  

First, I’d probably pay for advice. Yes. That’s probably, you know, making at least 80% of the way there.

Seth  

Yeah. Yeah. Don’t Don’t go. Don’t rely just on YouTube. 

Seth  

And don’t listen to a free podcast either. 

Seth  

No, no, exactly. 

Erwin  

Talk to your lawyer. 

Seth  

Even though when you do get give pretty good advice on this podcast. We try. We try. 

Erwin  

But we’re not perfect. 

Seth  

No, no, definitely not. I have many flaws. Yeah.

Erwin  

I have more like your hairs at least done. So before we were recording, I mentioned it, I’m seeing more people in trouble than I’ve ever heard of. 

Seth  

Yeah. Oh, yeah. 

Erwin  

Financially in with regulators. Yeah, maybe because our industry has gotten bigger like this, because there’s so much money being made in real estate these days. It’s been it’s been such a long Bull Run, especially more recent bull run that, you know, I’ve always I always give people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen many people fail as investors. So I give them enough doubt. My assumption is they fail for operational reasons. It’s hard to scale. You try to do 50 properties and like even five years like that, that’s a lot. And then when the when the when you find out whatever they happen, you’d like, Well, those are some morally unethical business decisions that were made. Yeah. Like, literally, I know, someone like their sister invested. And she lost her house. It was that bad. Yeah. That was back in forget, listen around. Oh, wait. So the credit crisis exposed all these issues with that portfolio with all these people that had put money in and like that went to crap. And yeah, nothing’s really triggering it right now. But yeah, I think Securities Commissions are just cracking down. 

Seth  

Yeah, and I think too, like, there’s definitely a lot more, there’s less forgiveness in the deals today, because there’s more competition for them. So if you’re really, really tight in a deal, like some people are paying ridiculous money for deals that should never have sold for that, and there’s no way to add value, like people are buying dumb stuff. Let’s put it that way. So if you’re buying a dumb product, like there’s no way you’re going to make money, like we’re seeing stuff, we look at deals every week, and you know, some of the stuff we underwrite. And then we find out how much it sold for it’s like, whoa, either we’re totally out to lunch with our numbers, or, or somebody has magic fairy dust. So and it’s always unfortunate to hear like, the impact of of one like sponsors bad decision or the person running the deal, and it just has like that. You know that epicentre and the impact like just spreads out. So like, you know, now that investors hurt and the That means their kids are going to be impacted by it. So it’s just I just wish people were a little bit more careful before they start bringing other people in.

Erwin  

Yeah. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Securities Commission is going to start regulating a lot more products, like syndicated mortgages, for example.

Seth  

Yeah, yeah. Well, syndicate mortgages got a bad rap. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just gonna say a couple years ago, but I forget I’m old now. So it’s probably like, 10 years ago, there was a lot of bad stuff going on. And as bad actors. I, for the most part.

Erwin  

Bad actors, bad deals. Yeah. Yeah. Selling bad deals.

Seth  

Yeah. But it’s like in anything like you have a small group of bad apples in it, but it spoils the whole bunch, right.

Erwin  

So one commonality I see among deals that go sideways is the investor has no idea about the property. So for example, it’s way out of town. Right? And it’s not I’m not saying that’s always gonna happen, because you’ve made it work for yourself. You invest way out of town. Yeah. Right. So can you share about like, what your diligence processes? So say, the properties in Texas or Florida? What’s your diligence process?

Seth  

Yeah, well, number one, we need to know our market like the back of our hand. So we have to know what’s driving that market, you know, the market influencers market drivers, we also look at how the market performed over the past three recessions. Because we want to see how it’s going to, you know, whenever the next recession happens, we want to make sure we know kind of how it reacted in the past, we have to know the sub market as well. Because you know, you have your macro market sub market, then you have to walk the deal. So you have to have boots on the ground. I know people buy properties with like, sight unseen, but you have to have people they’re looking at it because real estate, everybody seen the pictures, and then the real products different. And also you always you also have like a feeling your gut when you’re walking a property. So and your guts very rarely wrong. So if you get like an uneasy feeling, Something’s just not right. You know, it’s something to think about. Also, you know, if you’re there during a weekday, and the parking lots full, why aren’t people at work? Now is different that now it’s a little bit different, but like, it’s like, okay, like, something’s off here. Or, you know, just looking at the cars in the driveway, if it’s being advertised as a class A property, and you have some not Class A type of cars, you know, that’s something to think about too.

Erwin  

Non Tesla’s Yeah

Seth  

Yeah, exactly. 

Erwin  

That’s a good point. there should be a charging station if it’s a Class A builder, your tenants probably won’t demand it

Seth  

That is a great value add, that you can add to your property

Erwin  

Yeah, mine will be a paid one. 

Seth  

A paid one, there you go. Drive that noi up a little bit more. But, uh, but yeah, so so just understanding the market. And then I think where a lot of people are making mistakes now is their, you know, in their underwriting, they’re using 2% for inflation, when you know, we’re at, you know, let’s say 6% in the US. So you just have to make sure when you’re underwriting the deal, and you’re doing your modelling, you’re actually using realistic numbers, or being a little bit too rosy for when you exit the deal. So using the same cap rate is when you purchase the product, versus when you exit Well, no, okay, hold on, let’s make sure the markets worse. And so we’ll we’ll use a higher cap rate. So we’ll expect the softer market. And yeah, and you just have to find the true value add there and kind of think outside the box sometimes. So like, what can we see in the property that nobody else is going to see or realise we can do in order to get an extra X amount per month in rents or or revenue?

Erwin  

Yes. Yeah. And then we talked about boots on ground. So one of these one of these, like, big real estate folks that have issues. I’m not there. I don’t invest personally. But I’m, what I’m being told is that the realtors involved and even the appraisers are were not honest. So for boots on ground, like what do you do for boots on ground? Yeah. Do you ever inspect these properties before you invest?

Seth  

Oh, yeah, like, we’ve got guys in a couple different markets. So we’re, we’re kind of spread out. So depending on who’s closer, they can hop in the car and go for a drive. Got it? Yeah. And I think someone’s separate from the deal. Right, but well, like on our side, not on the seller side, not on the broker side, not on the lender side, like on our side, because like, we want to have that frank discussion without any other bias. Right. But yeah, like, they get that the situation you were talking about. If somebody doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the deal, they don’t know why they’re investing what makes that a good investment. I don’t think you should invest. And same with the apartment stuff. A lot of people I get I get DMS and messages like every single day, which which is amazing. But people say well tell me hey, I have like $150,000 I want invest right now. They say okay, well, like, Do you know what you’re looking like? And then we have that conversation to figure out if it’s the right fit for them. And some people are not at the stage yet where they understand how multifamily deal actually makes money. So I’m very uneasy, you know, accepting capital from somebody like that, because they need to be able, like nobody, if you’re passively investing in a deal or investing in a deal, Nobody’s expecting you to become or be the true expert like that. That’s why you have a trusted person running the deal. But you should at least have a basic foundation of knowledge. So you can at least have the right ask the right questions or understand the basics of the deal. You know, for example, with apartments, if you don’t know that the NOI is what’s driving the value, then operating income, you know, is it the right time for you to actually invest in an apartment deal? Probably not, you might want to take a month or two, and just learn how that works? Before you start putting your money in, because then we end up with examples, like you mentioned, where somebody is investing in the deal, they don’t understand how it’s going to make money. And if it was a bad deal from the start, there should have been a bunch of red flags, even with basic level knowledge. Right? So setup there. Yeah, but But that’s why it’s important just to find people who, you know, have a good reputation have a good track record, who come recommended, rather than just finding somebody on? I don’t know, like Reddit, or whatever it is. Yeah.

Erwin  

And then I agree with everything. And then I would just like you kind of said, you have someone on your side. Yeah, that the deal, like drive through it drive by it, you know, no different than when I’m screening a tenant. Exactly. Right. They’re gonna give me a rosy picture, and you’re gonna be rosy references. So when they give me a working reference, I’m going to call I’m going to Google the employer and call the number that’s given there, and then ask for the person they’ve they’ve given. Yeah, alright, because I can be a bit cynical. And assume, like, there’s people trying to make money off off this investment, find this totally cool. I appreciate it. And I encourage them to they need to earn my trust. Yeah. Right. If I’m gonna put money into it. 100%. So I’m going to, you know, for these deals, for example, when I was talking to this investor, that’s, that’s, you know, she’s underwater already. On this investment. I should just keep my mouth shut sometimes. Because, you know, hindsight is 2020. Like, no, I wrote, I wrote a post about it. Don’t have a realtor friend that can double check for you. That’s not a part of this deal. And can tell you, if that makes sense. That’s a good neighbourhood. If it’s worth what they think it’s worth, if a tenant profile profiles who you would they think it is, alright, you just blindly took what the people trying to sell you as truth? 

Seth  

Yeah, yeah. And that’s why you know, whatever investment there should be, like a deal package where it gives you the the demographics of the neighbourhood. Yeah. You know, what’s the business plan here? You know, what, what are the the numbers we’re looking at? Just so you can look at it, read it. Okay, this makes sense. You can double check it, verify it. But if it doesn’t add up, then okay, well, start asking questions. Don’t just blindly invest.

Erwin  

Here’s another thing that I’ve noticed is like securitized investments. Yeah. seem to be more. I can’t recall off the top my head of deals going bad. Versus it’s still like smaller scale investment projects that seem to be going sideways. Oh, well, scale, even though it’s still hundreds of properties, but not like 30 unit apartment buildings at a time yet? 

Seth  

Well, my circle, I know of a couple of messy situations where one sponsor things didn’t go out, they they firmed up on the deal, then there were issues with financing the property, they couldn’t do that that hurt their capital raise, and then they ended up losing their their hard money deposit. So we’re talking like $400,000.

Erwin  

Whose money is that?

Seth  

Well, that’s the sponsors money, right? So almost half a million bucks up in smoke. So yeah, it can’t happen. But I typically when you get into the larger properties, you’re the lenders underwriting the deal, because they want to make sure their money’s safe. You know, you’re underwriting the deal. The seller actually usually wants to see your underwriting, and what you plan to do with the property. So there’s a whole bunch of different sets of eyes on the deal. And you know, if you’re shopping three different lenders as three different lenders underwriting it, so between the lenders, yourself, or the insurance company, you’ve got more eyeballs on it, rather than like with a smaller residential deal. It’s just the person so there are some fail safes kind of built into that system. But yeah, like it can, it can happen, it could just be a lot harder. Yeah, it would just you would have to, you know, the lenders that are giving you the debt for the deal would be wrong. And you know, when you’re we’re talking about a larger scale, like, there’s some very smart people who are underwriting these deals, the insurance company would be wrong. You would be wrong. The broker would be like, their red flags should be popping up at some point in that process. If something’s not right.

Erwin  

Yeah, interesting. Speaking in crazy, yeah. How’s your stock hacking going?

Seth  

Well, the stock acting was good. peloton kind of hurt me a little bit. So… 

Erwin  

Hurt a lot of people.

Seth  

Like a lot of people. Yeah. But that was actually, that was really, really interesting. And when when I saw when I woke up the next day, and so I had plummeted so much. I thought back to the stock hacking course I went to. And the message there was no, there was a phrase about companies just like plummeting overnight, and it can’t happen. And like that, you know what this is? This is this is it? Yeah. But yeah, besides that, I think last time I was on here, or two times ago, we were talking about my back surgery, I had a herniated disc. So stock hacking, thankfully, you know, I had that going, I paid for my surgery in Mexico, because everything was shut down here. got engaged over Christmas, and stock hacking paid for a very, very, very nice ring for Darcy, my fiancee. So she’s very happy with that, so, you know, I’m still hiding the insurance, the valuation on it, so she doesn’t see it. But yeah, so So stock Hacking has done a lot. And it’s been awesome. So I think, you know, eventually, I may use it for some other stuff. But it made two pretty big purchases for me over the past year, so yeah, it was awesome. So happy for you. Well, I should I’m so happy that you told me that you were doing this course. And then I’m actually happy with myself for saying yeah, I’ll go.

Erwin  

No, it’s like we got engaged. 

Seth  

Yeah, that’s right.

Erwin  

When’s the wedding? 

Seth  

Probably September next year. Oh, okay. Long engagement. Yeah, well, like just like, the thing is, like, you wouldn’t know because you’re not in the wedding planning business now. But we’ve got basically two years of brides who have not had a wedding. And they’re all all trying to compete for, like the real estate market right now. All these buyers, so few properties. So the planning business is ridiculous. venues are ridiculously busy. And like blocked.

Erwin  

And prices? 

Seth  

Prices are ridiculous. 

Erwin  

Inflation. 

Seth  

Yeah, inflation. Yeah. So. So yeah, so we just figured we don’t want any stress. We’ll just do something September. Hopefully things aren’t out. And kind of calmed down. Since then. Yeah.

Erwin  

It’s nice that things are getting back to normal, which is nice for your conference.

Seth  

Oh, we were so happy. And like, I’m such a big proponent of like, doing things in person that like I told everybody on the team, I’m like, There’s no way we’re doing a virtual event like this has to be live. So now that vaccine requirements are gone, mass should be gone too. So it’ll be so nice to walk into the building. And it’ll just be like it was three years ago, or like at your conference, when you ran the wealth hacker conference, like just regular people, like doing what they love to do, like networking and having a whole lot of fun. Like, it’s going to be amazing. And then Where’s where’s it going to happen? We’re at the CAA centre. So it’s actually a hockey rink. So it’s not like your typical convention hall or something like that. So we’ve got the CAE centre. So it’s 15 minutes from Pearson Airport for people flying in. We chose the location just so it was really accessible for everybody. Because we’ve got speakers flying in from all over attendees coming in from all over. Say, we’ve got like this 20 foot like LED screen. It’s going to be insane. We got fire on the stage. There’ll be a couple pictures after Yeah, I can show you some renders. Yeah, yeah. It’ll be cool. And then what’s the date? May 14, and 15th. I should already know it to my count. Yeah. And I think you’ve got a special code for all your listeners. Oh, yeah. The code is iwin.

Erwin  

Oh, wow. You thought ahead. 

Seth  

Yeah, so use your code and send Erwin a thank you message once you do. 

Erwin  

And I’ll be in front row if anyone wants to join me. 

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Well, actually, so let’s talk about the VIP stuff if you don’t mind. 

Erwin  

Yeah yeah. So, please, What did I buy? 

Seth  

I’m so excited for the VIPs. Because basically, what we’re doing is, it’s about 200 people, we’re very limited. But if you’re really serious about the networking side, we’ve got a special VIP lounge. So the VIPs will be rubbing shoulders with each other the whole weekend. So I guarantee like every person coming to VIP will walk out with at least one like potential deal or partner future partnership. And that’s like we’ve designed it that way. So if you’re serious about the net plus you get all sorts of like, bonuses, you get to meet Kevin like after and have your picture taken and you get all these other perks. But just from like the networking side, the very deliberate networking. Like if I wasn’t running the conference, I would be in VIP, because I’d want to meet the other top performers there for sure.

Erwin  

Yeah, I’ve been to other VIP events, and the conversations you have are just inspiring.

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Like I see who buys tickets and stuff. Like we’ve got some really cool people coming. So not saying like, you know, the other texts we have aren’t great. But like if you’re coming to really network like VIP 100% 100% And there’s a Ember 30% sold out, so you gotta hurry. And if First slo Oh for sure. My experience is the first solo. Yeah. For most people’s experience. It’s the first. Yeah. Why funny? Because it’s the most expensive. Yeah, but I remember for your conference, like the second it went live, I bought my VIP ticket.

Erwin  

Which was smart, it was the cheapest price. 

Seth  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Erwin  

Cause it sold out.

Seth  

Yeah. Well, actually, our prices will end up going up. We have some secret targets once we hit them prices go up. So yeah, don’t delay.

Erwin  

Does Kevin have any books? I know only on the surface about Kevin. Yeah. It’s like when a band band you like is having a concert. And you haven’t heard the new album and the touring the new album. Like, I need to listen to the new album before I go see them. Yeah. Is there any recommended books of Kevin’s that you like? 

Seth  

Yeah, he’s written a couple bucks. And we are kind of working on a special gift for all the VIPs team. I can’t say anything. But there may be something special there for me after. I can tell you after.

Erwin  

I’ll make it on the next episode.

Seth  

Okay. Yeah. But, but yeah, so um, yeah, Kevin has a couple bucks. So you can get them at chapters. And ones more about like, like life in general, and how that impacts money. That sort of stuff. So, but yeah, like, and a lot of people like some people have asked me hey, like, is Kevin really like he is on Shark Tank is not like super nice guy. So if you’re a VIP, and you’re meeting Kevin, like very personable guy, and really cool too.

Erwin  

And before the recording I shared with you another time about how all these speakers come out of the woodwork. I don’t have an event. 

Seth  

Yes. Yes.

Erwin  

I don’t know how to frame this question. Are you looking for more speakers?

Seth  

Yeah. So we actually have a couple speakers we haven’t announced yet. Okay. But we have a couple more announcements to make with that. So our speaker roster is full. Okay. 

Erwin  

So no one needs to reach out? 

Seth  

No, no. But you know, like, we’ve had some very great people reach out. And we’ve certainly put them on the list for 2023 For the next year’s conference, but for this year, we are I’m very happy with lineup we have like we hit all the major components of multifamily. And, like I’m really happy with the energy everybody’s bringing to so yeah, no, we’re full for speakers right now.

Erwin  

Awesome. Is there gonna be a VIP party, like Saturday night or anything?

Seth  

Oh, boy. Okay, so speaking of…

Erwin  

This is the end of the pandemic, like people are gonna be, is gonna want a party. 

Seth  

So the budget we have for the VIP party is insane. Insane. So it’s just so the VIP party. It’s Saturday. So basically what happens is Kevin does his keynote, we have meet and greet, you have dinner and then you come to the VIP party. So we’ve got only the VIP tickets and the platinum ticket. So it’s very, very exclusive. You know, for food. We’ve got like a sick taco truck, like coming in. And the budget is ridiculous. So it’s just going to be party VIPs get open bar, if you’re into that. If you’re into that. It’s just gonna be insane. All right, insane.

Erwin  

Looking forward to the end of the pandemic party.

Seth  

Yeah, actually, we should rebrand it as the end of the pandemic party 

Erwin  

End of the pandemic real estate conference. 

Seth  

Yeah. Yeah. So and that’s, that’s the thing, like we’ve been cooped up behind computers. Like it’s time to get back out there.

Erwin  

Yeah, yeah. Are you doing a live stream option?

Seth  

Right now? No.

Erwin  

Because sorry, I skipped customer listeners in context, It costs a lot of money to be able to simulcast.

Seth  

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we looked into it and like, here’s the thing like, I think, I think by not having the virtual option, it kind of gives people a nudge to actually show up in person again because like you will get so much better experience showing up in person like the connections you make the conversations you have after are so much better, like you know, rather than going on your computer and then you’re probably making dinner and listening at the same time or making lunch late it’s not the same so I want somebody to come to the conference and get the most they can out of it and then showing up in person doing the networking and having those face to face conversations. 

Seth  

Yeah, awesome. Well, Cherry and I will be in person front row so you can’t miss us.

Seth  

No, yeah, I’ll be I’ll be waving from the stage. 

Erwin  

I get my laser pointer trying to get in your eye and Kevin’s eye. Seth, thanks so much. One more time. Where can they learn more about conference?

Seth  

Yeah, go to multifamilyconference.ca Make sure you use code iwin. I w i n and if you want to enter the free VIP ticket draw it’s at the end of April just go to multifamily conference.ca/vipdraw.

Erwin  

Fantastic. Thank you Seth. 

Seth  

Thank you, Erwin.

Erwin  

Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already and set up the mind usually Letter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin Chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate from cash flow, but with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there. Forget that cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more, but stir for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself but so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell, I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

Erwin  

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to another episode The truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto, and I trust everyone’s had a great weekend. As the work goes on in Ukraine, and checking in with my Ukrainian and Russian friends on social media, I can’t help but be grateful. I don’t have to explain to my kids what’s happening like I would if I lived in Kiev, or the capital of Ukraine. Quick FYI, I know most people, including myself, just a few weeks ago thought the pronunciation was Kiev, but actually Russians who say Kiev, locals to Ukraine from my understanding, pronounce it Kyiv. Here I am waiting for the day that my social media feeds will no longer be filled with trucker convoy news. Now, it’s all about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. This is so incredibly sad, this is not what I wanted. As always, I prefer not to dwell on anything, either do something about it or move on. So Cherry and I have made a donation to the Canadian Red Cross where our government is matching donations. I run my own charity, so I understand that many charities, we run our own charity because we wanted it to be an efficient charity. Just doing some quick research. This made sense since my dollar is being matched.

Erwin  

On the brighter news, this past weekend was the beginning of another stock hacker Academy beginners course called months FOMO programme starting with a weekend Crash Course. One real estate investor shared with me that he owns a foreign investment properties that he plans on holding forever, as a hedge in case the real estate prices go even more out of control. He actually happens to be a mortgage broker and he’s taking our stock hacker Academy course for his daughters, as he doesn’t know how the next generation will get into real estate investing without significant financial help. Him being in mortgage in the mortgage space. And also, it’s funny enough, with the a few mortgage people taking the course. And they shared the same thing. No, I actually asked the question: what are young people doing for financing? And the consistent answers seem to be everyone’s getting financial help from parents or grandparents or some sort of financial help from outside, it’s not all of them. So again, he’s learning how to Stock Hack because she needs a side hustle that will be accessible for his daughters. From my experience of working with hundreds of investors, over 90% of our clients are borrowing from their homes for down payments and renovation money. Of course, this is not financial advice. I’m just sharing my experience of working with a lot of successful real estate investors. So without the help of parents, I don’t know how any young person supposed to buy a home, let alone invest in investment property. If anyone has ideas, besides real estate in the stock market, I’m all ears, bankers, private equities, insurance, whatever else you got out there. I am keen on listening. Of course, cryptocurrency should have mentioned that the none of this is advice. 

Erwin  

We hosted 25 New stalk hackers in person, which is the most we’ve done a lot in the last two years, since we’ve been in a pandemic. So it was really nice to see people in person. And I think I’m not the only one who was so so tired of COVID. I am fully vaccinated and boosted. So my kids. So I’m not saying don’t take precautions, and just so so tired. 

Erwin  

Quick public service announcement. Also from the weekend, I’ve been speaking to at least one investor week, who is not having the best experience investing with organised large scale real estate investments or private mortgages. Again, I’m getting at least one personal story a week on deals going sideways. This current one sounds pretty bad as these investors, this specific investor was sharing how they lent money in the amount in excess of the market value of the property. I’ve never done that. And I never would. That’s my own threshold. Also, after the deal went sideways, that’s what always happens is some people don’t do much diligence going into the deal. And then they’re doing a lot of diligence when things go sideways. So from what they’re telling me is that the assessed value of the property so the what the tax man or woman thinks the value of the property is is actually above market value, which is highly uncommon. This market being in central Canada, it’s a different market than I’m used to, or I invest prices have gone up, maybe not this market doesn’t seem to be the same as mine. I’m partly an expert in central Canada investments. But anyways, the deals sound terrible.

Erwin  

I don’t think any investor would get into them, knowing that they are lending at values above above market value and above assessed values, as the assessed value doesn’t matter. Sort of matters. I think you get my point. It’s actually the investors opinion that the appraisers that we’re working with the investors directly may have been influenced because these are not, you know, for example, typically when I’m investing my clients invest or going through a bank, and then the bank sends their own appraiser. We can’t influence who that is right? So the bank has a bit more control on the quality of the appraisal comes back. So we have never seen these types of problems before. personally, again, just hope everyone out there is being careful doing their diligence. You know, if you know the property and you’ve seen the property and you’ve had it inspected in you are not cutting corners in the process, it’s really tough to pull the wool over your eyes. So do your diligence out there. I’ve shared it before, I personally don’t private land, because I believe there’s a lot of diligence that goes in. For my own purposes, I can be a bit controlling over my own investments, which is why I choose not to private invest private lend, because I’d much rather just own property straight out, if I’m going to do that much diligence. So just quickly, though, know your market well know your prices. Worst case, it’s not hard to have a trustworthy realtor to ask questions of, and then you can avoid a whole lot of scams. Again, I’ve repeated this many times, my preference is to still own real estate, I’m going to do my own stock hacking thing. If it’s passive, I’m only investing what I’m willing to lose. For example, private equities, or with my RSP. And everything for me is worked out, not everything. But generally things have worked out for me, and I’m no financial advisor, enough about me. On to this week’s show.

Erwin  

This week’s guest is Ben Oosterveld, a former real estate agent having sold his business; we talk about why he sold it, and how he sold it. At the peak of 2008 real estate market. Ben owns 61 properties across four cities, and 20 plus investment partners. And he was living the dream, at least he thought it was until the market came tumbling down thanks to falling oil prices and the credit crisis in the financial markets, which was a pretty significant recession in the world. Ben is here today to share how he coaches business owners, including realtors and investors to better understand themselves, break down wall so they may find happiness and have more energy to push towards their goals. Ben’s an old friend, we go back quite a ways quite a few years. He’s been on the show before so help yourself. I’ve included the link in the show notes and on this email alert. And also it’s on the website as well on our website truth about real estate investing.ca Make sure to sign up for my real estate newsletter and be notified via email when we have new episodes that come out. Ben also shares about his new book. He’s coming out with the richest real estate agent and I look forward to buying copies for my own team and I I was a guest that was kind enough to have me on as a guest of his podcast the richest real estate agents so check that out as well. And you can find Ben at www.benoosterveld.com/. Please enjoy the show! 

Erwin  

Ben Oosterveld, is that right? 

Ben  

Osterveld,  Oosterveld, Oshterveld, whatever. 

Erwin  

And that’s Dutch. 

Ben  

Dutch, yeah. 

Erwin  

Have you been to Holland? 

Ben  

No, no

Erwin  

No, it’s off the run one of my retreats there. 

Erwin  

That’d be cool. I’ve never been there. 

Erwin  

Yeah, for sure. I never been either. Lots of people know me there, though. I know the Oosterveld family there. So there’s some connections on hasn’t really been a first on the list. You know? 

Erwin  

And where you living now?

Erwin  

West Vancouver. 

Erwin  

Oh, how recent was that?

Ben  

I moved here in May. May. So today, May 2021. I moved there. So we it’s part of my whole life philosophy. Build a life you love, love, where you live, love where you work, love who you’re with love who you are, love what you do. And we I build everything according to that compass. And this is one of the dreams and we pulled it off living in one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods in Vancouver. Look at the ocean every day

Erwin  

Isn’t it one of the most expensive? Like #1 most expensive?

Ben  

I think so. There’s a house down the street at $8.9 million listed. It’s ridiculous. But man is it pretty? So but what do you do a limited edition. You look at the ocean every day. You know, it’s crazy. 

Erwin  

Yo, you can see the ocean?

Ben  

I’m looking at it right now. Well, it’s a little foggy.

Erwin  

Can you turn the camera around?

Ben  

It’s really foggy, let me just see here.

Erwin  

See then the view is not worth it then you overpaid. So that’s for the benefit of you guys watching on YouTube. We are on YouTube. I’ve ruined everything for Ben made everything. Go for him. That’s awesome.

Ben  

Know what I like? It’s that perfection? Perfection is definitely the goal, but it’s impossible. So whatever. Whatever happens on the shows, whatever happened, I literally don’t care if it’s perfect. So that was beautiful. My camera’s probably crooked now. 

Erwin  

No, you’re great and beautiful. You sound beautiful.

Ben  

Thank you. Thank you. Oh, yeah, man. Now it’s a huge change for us. We got five kids and COVID was a huge help for that, everything got shut down.

Erwin  

You’re saying COVID was a good thing for you?

Ben  

Yeah, yeah, it was because it actually few things happened that were good and COVID Yeah, might when your kids are we have five kids. Half of them are still a teenagers and you’ve got kids in horse riding horse jumping hockey, you got gymnastics, and then all of a sudden COVID shuts everything down for like a year and a half. They’re homeschooled. All of a sudden when we were saying we’re thinking about moving, all of a sudden the kids are pumped. And it used to be like we’re never moving here. We’re not leaving our friends. So Just a such a time as this, it just put together. We had a beautiful acreage market kind of popped, we just renovated it. And it was a miracle man, someone just came over one of my buddies, and he’s like, when you were thinking, selling, I’m like, we’re listing it tomorrow. He’s like, I’ll buy it, what’s your price, literally just happen. So sometimes you wonder about being in alignment. And life doesn’t have to be so hard. Maybe there’s a little bit of a flow in life, when you align to the true desires of what your your heart is. It’s like someone that plays piano without even practising like, I think there’s a piece of us that have our thing. Everyone has a thing and, and I think if we look at our desires, what we really want a lot of times where we don’t allow ourselves to dream don’t allow ourselves to have what we want. We always look at the best freaking ROI, or the best logical financial plan, test me it was not a good financial plan to come here. But can I tell you, I wake up every single day happy. And that’s that’s where we value that. So I think getting yourself to a place where it’s a little bit out of logic and more into following your heart. I think there’s a magic involved in that. It definitely need to we need wisdom, obviously, and logic and good financial sense. But there is absolutely something about doing something that just pulls you toward it.

Erwin  

Bet your West Vancouver has gone up in value. You know, you’re on the ocean.

Ben  

Well, I’m not on the ocean, but no, it’s I don’t care.

Erwin  

So you don’t look. Look, I look. I still care about what the price of my house is and what the neighbours are selling for.

Ben  

You know what I like looking at the ocean. I like going for walks. There’s Lighthouse park. There’s just absolutely beautiful man. Just beautiful. Cool.

Erwin 

Cool! Where were you before?

Ben  

Sherwood Park, Alberta.

Erwin  

So Edmonton really? Edmonton, Alberta? Canada. Yeah. And your kids wanting to move. They didn’t like having all that property?

Ben  

You know, we had a beautiful acreage. But yeah, no, it’s uh, you know what, it was scary. Everyone was worried we but we now we have amazing schools and everything turned out man, it turned out amazing. So now it’s, uh, yeah, it’s it. And to be honest with you, I don’t know if it’s energetically but man, we make friends here fast. Connect with people better. Like even in the hometown where we were for a long time. I didn’t feel fully connected. And I knew everybody. Here it’s so easy. It just it just a different energy can explain it maybe it’s me probably is. But my wife has a whole new friends group. All the kids have new friends groups, like it’s already better than where we live for for all those years.

Erwin  

Interesting. Sounds like the Western cultures are pretty similar.

Ben  

I don’t know if it’s I don’t know what it is. I think we bring an energy to our life. I think that’s what we bring to our life. I never wanted to be an editor every day I didn’t like it. So

Erwin  

Oh, you’re gonna piss off some people. I;m gonna get all these negative reviews now. There we go. Hey to be fair. I have Pierre-Paul Turgeon on just last week. So us all talking about Edmonton. So okay. 

Ben  

All good, dude. 

Erwin  

Was most of your realtor business in Edmonton?

Ben  

Yes. All there. Yeah, the team Oosterveld real estate was there.

Erwin  

So, you were selling crap. I’m kidding.

Ben  

We were selling cheap real estate. Let me tell you, I’ve been I didn’t sell for a few years. So my, my I built a team. We had everything all automated. And you had multiple assistants, you know, we had, we had a few team members. And it was good. We built out an amazing referral base. And that was most of the business. So yeah, no, and yeah, my brother in law actually bought the company, quarter MacEwan. It was awesome. He’s fully trained everything I’ve taught him, you know, and he’s obviously even taken it farther. And so yeah, he got my assistant, he got my team, I had a couple of really big agents leave beforehand. So it definitely changed the value at one point, but happy to have a setup where I’d my brother in law can take over the entire company and I get a bit of money for that, which is very exciting, nice little exit for, for selling my, my business really focused on on trying to build a business that sellable as a real estate agent. And that’s not that means that you got to have automated systems, you got to have things because no one’s going to value your business at all, if you’re the person making all the sales. So that was what was my focus is how do I get out of selling. And honestly, the real estate business was always on the side. For 10 years, I was just I was always coaching. The whole reason I became an agent was was to prove the systems. And it was fun. It was a it was a fun challenge, you know, build it came around to the year sold a whole hell of a lot of property, got all kinds of cool awards, and but it was more of the challenge of actually putting the system together and doing it differently. And yeah, super proud of what we did there. But ya know, it’s definitely was never the plan to be a real estate agent to be honest.

Erwin  

What year can you start? Cuz I remember you’re on the show and you had just started.

Ben  

Yeah, that’s right, man. 2012 I got my licence K. And so So I sat on it because I was coaching. And then finally I’m like, Okay, let’s let’s do this. So it was August 2012. The first six months I made $16,000, first six months, the next 12 months. That’s why you’ll hear me say the first calendar year. I made, 440 grand in Edmonton that would have been a million for sure in Toronto or Vancouver. But then the next so I hired an assistant literally within the first month of me getting a job because I was building a company, I wasn’t building a Sales Machine, I was building a company, and I knew being dyslexic, ADHD, and all kinds of like my like, literally I look like a child when I write anything. And even what if you watch me read something I literally can’t read. And lets him like ridiculously passionate about it. And then the Add hyperfocus kicks in and I can crush reading it’s a really weird problem. But with all these different ailments, I just hired an assistant to do the work for me, you know, three hours a day at 15 bucks an hour. And that was the hack. And so that’s what I ended up getting a buyer’s agent. My first year I made $97,000 My very first year in one month Sorry, I had my one of my biggest month like $97,000 my first year. And yeah, went and built a one of the top Western Canada real estate teams within three years and rock’n’roll. And in the whole time was coaching full time. So it was really cool. So yeah, no, I started in 2012, halfway through.

Erwin  

And your coaching was focused on who?

Ben  

Before I was an agent, I coached businesses, I coached individual entrepreneurs, I coached national companies, I was just all over the place because I was a real estate investor and going through the crash of 2008, which we definitely should talk about. And, and the thing is I reposition my life I it was actually really difficult time to go from being seven years straight real estate investor owning, you know, 61 properties, I had four different cities going 20 Some investors legit real legit business, and having a 2008 crash happened where we were you can, you know, I didn’t realise it was the probably the biggest crash we’ll ever see in our lifetime. And I was young in my 20s really late 20s and trying to navigate that we ended up okay, you know, but it was definitely definitely not easy. But I reposition myself to a sales and marketing coach. And I started coaching companies in sales and marketing and then it evolved to business and then involve to deep personal psychological growth, emotional intelligence over the years. So that’s, so that’s that’s what happened. That’s what I did. And I focused all in on real estate agents because I realised this business is ridiculously easy. People are just like doing the same old thing. Like you look at the competition, it’s almost like I looked at it, I’m like, everyone has like Toyota Camrys. And they’re all trying to beat each other. I’m like, we go into like, world class service, we go into long game systems, we go to automations, there’s all kinds of different things that that are brought to the table that just completely put us to the top that people weren’t doing. Like when someone would buy a property, they’d say, Thanks, we roll out the full red carpet, give them wine, customised gifts, according to the things that are nostalgic values. And three months later, we send a picture of them on the red carpet not a picture of us, we never branded ourselves once we branded the experience. And then what happened was within the first year, we were probably 20% referrals out of the gate. And we just focused everything we could do on client experience building up the referral base, and I realised nobody was focused on keeping their clients zero. Like I think about it your your shows about investors, it’s the same philosophy. If you’re an investor, and you if you have people’s money, like why are you not creating a long game, you know, a relationship programme that keeps them in the game for 20 years, you’re gonna get all your business from referrals if you keep a relationship, and it’s just like in real estate, they get so busy because it’s sales focused, I realised everyone was just sell, sell next deal. Next deal, every single coach right now is teaching how to find sales. But what happens when you do get sales? What happens you get freakin busy, and your service and all the different cool pop buys and phone calls, video messages and all these cool things that kept the relationships at scale, at full speed fall apart because they didn’t build an actual business. It’s just one of those things. So I realised Yeah, it’s it’s it focused everything on coaching real estate agents, because because it was a massive need. No one was a business owner, everyone was salesmen and saleswomen. And they still are. That’s why we call this real estate reboot programme is literally taking hard working salesman focused real estate agents and turning them into real business owners that actually can have a business they can go on a holiday or leave a computer at home and still make money like it’s business.

Erwin  

So sales and marketing doesn’t solve everything. Because that’s what’s being sold out there. Best script.

Ben  

Oh man, that’s like for sure.

Erwin  

The best CRMs I get all the ads too.

Ben  

Erwin, it’s like it’s almost like the magic diet pill. Best Selling thing you can buy, you know, why do you think millions of different ways to lose weight is out there but everyone’s fat. That’s because there’s something else other than than that they’re looking for the hack, and it’s almost like everyone else on all the other coaches sell ice cream. And I’m like, Yeah, I got ice cream too. But you’re going to eat your vegetables. And that’s what changes lives. That’s what for real results happen. It’s just a little bit different, a little harder to sell, understanding that like you’re in your own way. I remember Erwin standing on stage and at a keynote when I was speaking and I love to ask this question when I talk and it’s simply saying this a how many people in the auditorium right now? Loved to ask for help. You’d like to just look at this. I’m so deep into the psychology of what it takes to take action. Why don’t we do what we’re supposed to be doing? We know that The answer, but why are we not doing it? And so this is a really big question. It’s like so the psychology is that nobody likes to ask for help. Guess what? The most successful people on the planet? Find who To help, not how. But do you think Elon Musk is sitting there reading a book on freakin rocket engines? And how to fly a rocket? No, he finds the people that are the best. And they put the people together. That is how the billionaires are doing it. And you got a bunch of real estate agents turns out Oh, no, I don’t need help. I can do everything I can. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And that’s why you haven’t frickin paid your taxes. That’s why you’re not doing follow up, you miss over $150,000 of lost revenue from simply not following up because you’re too busy doing everything. And so when I love to bring that example, because when we’re sitting on stage at a keynote, and everyone’s like, Oh, and then I say, Okay, let me ask you a question. If you had someone to remind you every single day, and it would take a one phone call. So let’s pay this person $15 A day, call you and say hey, did you call that person? That’s it, literally. And I’ll keep care of your client list. So this one person at a one hour a day, let’s just say it’s what $3,500 A year, I always ask how many deals Did you miss last year from a lack of follow up? Right. And so let’s say 10 deals. Ewrwin, what’s the average in your area for one sale? Average commission?

Erwin  

It’s getting pretty big 16,000? Somewhere in there.

Ben  

Let’s say it’s 10,000. Here’s the thing, or what if you do that this was that 10 sales is 100 grand. So I could spend one magic me saying Why don’t you get someone for $3,500 a year to remind you to call them that would make you $100,000. Like people are not thinking this is so easy. They’re complicating it. They’re just it’s just not but you have to ask for help. You have to build a team, you have to get people to help you. That’s a big deal. Really big deal. That’s why I coach real estate agents. It’s a huge hole, like solving that problem

Erwin  

Real estate agent, I know it look shiny on the outside because so many people are getting into it. Are you seeing that too? Lot of people getting into it. 

Ben  

Totally. Like it’s a lottery mentality now.

Erwin  

I think like the grass looks greener on the other side people it’s easily low barriers of entry.

Ben  

While also people aren’t happy on the inside, Erwin. Yeah, because you’re looking at big well think about this big commission checks. You kidding me? You just told me 16,000 For one house. Oh man, all I need to do is sell five houses and I’m set no clue. No clue. They don’t understand what it takes 90 days to get momentum at the fastest maybe six months and then when it there’s no such thing as a sale a month it comes in like nine sales and then no sales like it’s a it’s a really tricky business that way. So to be honest, the Erwin this reminds me of 2008 Like if you think about it like this is we talked about it earlier. And I had 61 properties 20 Some investors millions of dollars of real estate, I had four different cities staff, the whole bit property management company, to manage all of them myself, and 2008 hit. I had never seen nothing like it. I didn’t have any perspective of bad okay, this is what’s happening Erwin, when people getting into the market in the last few years, they don’t understand the negative that can happen. I am the last person to say don’t risk I love taking risks. But I’m also understand what it’s like to go through a crash when your investors calls you and says I’ve lost all my money on the stock market. Can you remember how we were gonna sell that property? Can we sell it? And I say no, we’re stuck. And I’m a young man that’s never never gone through something like this. It was a horrifying being a people pleaser at the time.

Ben  

What year is this? 2008?

Ben  

2008 to 2009 like it was a cliff man. It was like off in what happens.

Erwin  

This was in Edmonton?

Ben  

Yeah, Alberta. i had four different cities red deer, hinton, alberta i mean um edmonton and calgary. so we were heavy in alberta.

Ben  

Then we had the oil crash 

Ben  

Let’s financial crash right 

Erwin  

Yeah double whammy 

Ben  

I got a mortgage without even know what my credit was back in the day way way back and i got it 107 mortgage i didn’t even i just said i want a property and like how about 107 like thanks so i bought all the furniture i needed furnished it called every single oil company in hinton and said do you want a hotel alternative do you want a hotel alternative what are you paying for hotels like 20 grand a month i’m like how about 7 000 for mine i bought the property for 100 grand it was like i was making five six thousand dollars like literally every single month clear on these i had 10 of them in that town at that time it was wild but remember like that’s a scary that’s a lottery dude so what happens is i just bought whack of them right i didn’t i went through the lessons learned are huge because all of a sudden the market stopped and that’s what it means when warren buffett says you’ll only see who’s swimming naked when the tide goes out but there’s never been a boom that’s lasted what 10 years never like i don’t know what the history is but i bet you maybe there is somewhere but this it has to change and what is crazy now that i’m old and wise because of that i went through it and i paid the price is that right now is the best time in the world right now to take the extra money and do things that play the 20-year game so let’s just take real estate agents right now man it’s so easy put a sign in the lawn it’s sold it’s a bidding war it just depends on how to navigate that and it’s like okay something is way too easy erwin there’s more people right now coming to me like i coach agents all over north america and it’s every single agent like most of them are having their banner years and they think that they’re better than what changed from last year to this year did you get better as an agent nope you’re the same person the difference is free sales are coming your way you don’t have to market that much because everyone every coffee shop like this morning i’m sitting in starbucks and there goes another guy walking by talking about property value it is the hottest topic in the world and this is what it was within when i was investing in 2004 five six and seven it was wild you were in the game we were probably doing the similar things here when just thinking let’s make our money this is amazing and so this is what’s happening again i’m not predicting a crash i’m predicting a mentality that they’re going to be blind to the future so what they’re doing is they’re playing the present game and they’re people at night the people are taking 90 degree turns on their life plan to get in the game they’re literally abandoning their life plans so they can make sure they don’t miss the the real estate boom and i’m like man i’m watching it happen again you know how easy it was to raise money in this market it’s you know much it’s so easy every it was so easy to raise money because you’re like you want to get into the game i got an investment you know people people lining up on condo builds that are going to be two years out and they’re just lining up and off of what a napkin drawing here here’s the building oh i want in like we’re losing our wisdom and i would not know this unless i went through a horrible year or two in the crash and understand what it’s like to look at someone and say i know you invested your money but i can’t get it out it is the most and i didn’t you know i have two properties irwin that are dogs still from those times yep do you know your idea still got them they’re like break evens they do nothing i’ve got other ones that i’ve done really well on obviously i’ve got about nine properties still now i’ve got it down to a handable easy portfolio but the thing is uh those properties are like it’s one of those ones they’re like you know like you to get out of them you need to sell but they still like they’re almost break even so you’re kind of like sitting on this property and uh the point is not the details of that investment the fact is i’m still in a couple of those that aren’t exciting to me like attempted just to just take a loss and get rid of the stupid things.

Erwin  

So they’re underwater, you’re saying they’re underwater still? Yeah. Okay. So there were today they’re worth less than what you paid for them.

Ben  

They are two of them. That was the absolute peak we were buying. And that particular property 

Erwin  

14 years.

Ben  

I don’t like Erwin, this is why I’m saying I never thought that could happen. So I’ve got other properties that are diamonds, right? Like I’ve done really well in real estate. But the thing is, I know both sides. I feel so freakin lucky because now I feel like a wise man looking at what’s happening. I’m not scared, dude, I think it’s amazing time to begin in real estate, but not not in with blindness. Like real estate agents are the side effect like that’s where I live helping agents. And they’re they have a chance right now they’re making 50 to $250,000 more in their budget. How much do you think is going to building infrastructure, hiring staff building out their long games, client gifts, like actual things that are going to actually drive business for next 20 years? They’re just looking at making money right now they’re getting new cars, holidays, are they even knowing how to put their tax money away? If they are that’s great, but reinvest into the company right now. reinvest into staff waste money trying to build out your infrastructure wasted, I don’t care take a don’t don’t start buying more marketing. Right now. You don’t need to spend much money on marketing, go long game, long game connection with your clients, making sure that that’s good. hire somebody to just manage a prospect list, hire feedback manager, raise your experience. So when the market crashes, you’re still the very best option in the market. It’s absolutely simple. But right now, because of the boom, people are starting to get a little bit complacent. They’re losing their customer service because they don’t need it when you’re making a half a million dollars without even freakin trying. See this his times will change and the people that set up their systems and set up a real business and challenge their mindset that way. They’re going to be the ones that last the 20 year plate. They’re not just going to be like remember the good old days we used to make all this money. That’s what’s coming. That’s the feast and famine cycle. We are in the feast right now.

Erwin  

I heard happened to some realtors and realtor teams just even during the pandemic was they were like in a wait and see mode. Yeah, like versus like cheering our let’s go we’re hosting like we three webinars on like what to do in this situation.

Ben  

But you know, watch this, okay, watch this. You have infrastructure. So watch the power you had, like me too. I was I had friend zoom that was with me in your new zoom 10 years before anybody else. We were ready. We had infrastructure. We had an assistant to put out the email. We had the team to go do the sales while you’re running your team to have the time to set the vision to talk to your wife. Bam, you got instantly because you have a list Erwin, that you’ve been nurturing. So guess what, you had those things ready. So COVID hits, you turn it on instantly and grow. And this is the message this is exactly what I’m talking about. Erwin, you and I won in COVID. In some level, it could have been a lot worse, at some level, right?

Erwin  

Where’s all the people who are all these people who are miserable?

Ben  

I think people like I know a buddy of mine. He owns the largest boxing gym in all of Western Canada. Hmm. He had built all of his online training programme that he was going live and it was sitting on the shelf. Guess what? He invested in effin infrastructure. He had it ready. He turned it on overnight. He didn’t miss a beat. It’s been hard as hell for him. And he’s any but guess what? He ran the whole time. Other gyms are like Sorry. Like if it’s because he invested when the time’s right. In infrastructure. He had mentioned if you had to film your imagine that people going I guess I gotta do online training. What zoom? What camera do I get? Like if we can as real estate agents have a list if you don’t have your list, manage pay someone to handle that less like there’s infrastructure things that are basic, and people aren’t taking care of. But guess what they do? They take 10,000 more dollars, and they crank it the lead gen. They take another bunch of money you get into magazines you do door knock every single decision is based on sales, when they should be making some of their revenue and allocating it to infrastructure, but there’s no real teaching out there. Erwin, it’s frustrating. They hire an assistant to be the number one thing every agent should be doing. If they have extra money, take 15 grand take one freakin deal and invest it into an assistant just to help you. It’ll shift your mentality

Erwin  

How many people have you yelled at for not getting an assistant?

Ben  

Yelled at?

Erwin  

Yeah. When I started I had an assistant within six weeks because I hated the paperwork that much

Ben  

Everyone that’s won the game in that there’s still people who don’t Carson Briar. He went through my six months real estate reboot camp. He’s a I don’t know, it’s gotta be close a couple million dollars. The guys is one of the top agents in Edmonton. And yeah, same thing. He hired an assistant within six weeks, eight weeks like it just understanding business pays more than understanding sales.

Erwin  

Oh, we are gonna piss off some people

Ben  

Bring it on. I’m the top sales guy everywhere I’ve ever gone to so I got the right. And I only got me it got me freakin busy. I got big paychecks. But it led to Chaos. It led to hurting my relationship with my wife, it rent to a place where my kids wondered where I was. When I was in freakin Florida. I was sitting there dealing with brokerage issues because I didn’t have there’s times where the times where I outsold everyone it covered my sins. It just look really really bad money manager is no problem. As long as you keep on selling a shit tonne of stuff, you don’t need to worry about money management. But the moment the sales drop, you find out where you’re at,

Erwin  

Cause we got lucky because the government bailed us out this last time. But like 2008 no bailouts, was there?

Ben  

Dude, it was scary, man. It was scary. I calculated the money we had we thought okay, we have to we have a literally a timeline, because the money dried up. And we had no sales like meaning I made money with my investments. And I had structured deals where I made money while I was investing, like and so we had to kind of keep investing as we built our portfolio. We had different things. But everything stopped. Nobody was investing. Like it wasn’t like, Dude, it was literally like June of 2008. I remember exactly. It was literally felt like the next day. And every single person was interested in investing in real estate. It was literally I’ve never seen nothing like it because it was like the market it was the stock market started plummeting at so fast. Every single person panicked. And I remember, dude, my dad, my dad was a financial planner, when, during that time, my dad and I had parallel lives. But you know what, he’s a people pleaser. He was always a performance guide. And guess what happened? He ended up having a really hard time he put money into into an investment that fell apart. And it was it was insured. It was safe. It was everything. He went through a really difficult time people were coming going I have no money now. And it was like their investments are gone by 50%. Like how do you look at people? And I realised now looking back, is that I was in real estate and yes, we did get some underwater stuff. And yes, we did. But we never lost anything. That’s why real estate is really cool, because you still have bricks and mortar. So that cash flow, you still can pay it down. stock market is a little bit different. So I like the diversification. I like having a little bit of relative real estate because even when a crash happened, I still got real estate. I still got real estate. A lot of people lost everything. In the market if they were in the wrong place, but I remember people killing themselves during that time, financial planners were killing themselves. Like, I didn’t realise how intense that was being in the position it was early or late 20s trying to navigate being an advisor with money for all these people like it and so I don’t think I’m jaded from and now because it’s like it’s it literally was a process to get through that mentally have gone through a lot. But reality is reality as I smell it again, starting to smell that that hyper hyper blind jump in the game focus right now. And it’s it I don’t scare that we’ve wait different economics. I don’t think it’s gonna crash. I really don’t. But I think we got to be having our head up. Let’s not make stupid moves. Right now we got a great opportunity to get ahead right now.

Erwin  

Yeah, it’s just this past weekend, similar properties of this type of properties I buy had 23 offers on it. So I mean, I remember I remember I’m closer to now than I ever was. So I’ll keep tabs on how many offers are on stuff. And then maybe I’ll decide to sell something when the when I think something might turn.

Ben  

You know what man, I know a guy right now a friend of mine, who’s he invested for as long as I have and I just met and had a coffee with them. And he’s a real estate agent just became one. And he made a half million dollars last year on the island first year, like, really, but he’s a good dude. Okay, he’s a salesman, but also a really good, wholesome human being he liquidated. And he’s repositioned he probably because he did go through the harder times. So now you see a boom, you’re like, I want to take the money. And so he made that choice. I think logically, it’s going to be a loser on ROI. But it’s but the thing is, that was his choice, and he now can reposition his money into whatever he wants. And he’s in the best places ever been in this entire life. Vancouver Island, you’re saying when you mean? Everything you sold was in was in actually, Ontario? I think it was kind of in in your area, to be honest. You had about three or four houses gone. He’s got a whole block of cash. And now he’s going to do whatever he does, but mentally that was really good for him.

Erwin  

Oh, sorry. Does he live in Vancouver Island, and he sold it? Yeah, I’m not a fan of investing far away from me personally.

Ben  

Yeah, we don’t actually calculate something or when is called mental cost. And relationship costs. Like I just I just I paid the price. My friend Wales got divorced. I’d had a lot of troubles in, in marriage by chasing the dollar. And I learned some major lessons, man, and definitely can say I don’t do that anymore. Clear as they realise I’ve already won the game got amazing wife, kids live in an amazing place. I get to coach people, I get to run retreats, I get to do adventures. Like there’s just so crazy. I get to talk to you today. And middle the day, I don’t have a I don’t have a job. Like there’s just something about building that life. So I realised very long time ago, I had already won the game and I was still chasing. And it’s a lesson that’s so massive. I would love the fact that we got this on the podcast, because it’s like, it’s like, what are you like, I used to play the game as if it was overtime, or when. And so this is the energy I used to bring to the table. I couldn’t sit still I couldn’t I had to bend dude in overtime, if you’re playing hockey, or any game. That’s the time where if you have a broken link, you keep working. If you if you have anything that happens, you keep grinding because one slip up, you lose. And that mentality almost cost me my marriage. It almost cost me so much it cost me a lot of chaos because I tried to leverage too much because I wanted to keep going. And that was the day I realised when when my wife was really sit down and talk to me about leaving in why I don’t want her to leave me I realised that was more important than almost anything in the world. And that’s when I started changing my life and I realised I had already won. Why am I playing the game in overtime? I’ve got money, got opportunity. I’m on a really great trend, that kid’s life. It just was one of those days like I won. And so I live life from when I’ve won the game is a different life in a different perspective now, so I don’t ever get I don’t chase anymore. But can I tell you something? I’m as ambitious as the day who ever was. I am so ambitious. But it can’t be let go in nine seconds when it gets in the way of what I want. So my ambition didn’t change my priorities did.

Erwin  

So what did you do tactically? So actually just give me some give the listeners some context. Yeah, sure. I don’t have stats on it. But divorce rate among Realtors is pretty high. It’s gotta be you’re closer to it than I am. You’ve talked to more from different brokerages. 

Ben  

I’m coaching very closely with many people I’ve even got a client right now that’s actually asked me specifically just to work with him, him and his wife on a relationship level

Erwin  

Is the wife a realtor?

Ben  

They’re actually a real estate agents to be honest there. Okay, you’re just this odd, odd random person that came to my retreat that one coaching and, but very close to the real estate game. Okay, so very close. But they’re not actual real estate. But the thing is the biggest conversation, I have my one to one with all of real estate agents that are in my high ticket, like my mastermind group that I only take about 15 people a year, but these every single one of them is 65% talking about relationship, probably 75% of our conversations is relationships. Why? Because that’s what that’s the part that that’s the most important to them. I think the divorce rate is tough now, because marriage is secondary. It’s not almost it’s not even. It’s not marriage is not necessarily the heavy measure someone not married, but they lived together for like it’s common loss. It’s almost as normal. I mean, same thing. Yeah. So I don’t know the stats either. But I know that it’s rapid, rapid everywhere. I just know that 100% of people I talked to that real estate is putting strain on their marriage and on their family.

Erwin  

So tactically, what can someone do?

Ben  

You know what I really like? Okay, so this is personal, right? So this I run a programme that’s 50% personal growth, and it takes six months through there. And I take them through a process with training them in real estate, the first thing I do is ask them, what makes them happy. And it’s a really weird I do a two hour session, what makes them happy? Okay. And I asked them, so let me let me just give you I’ll give you the actual exercise. So at least there’s something that your listeners can take, what I would do is, I would say this, give me your financial goals. So one of the first questions I asked them is a good old coaching question, what’s your financial goals? So I set them up, I set them up, though. So anyone joining my programme, you’ll know I’m going to set you up. So here’s what it is. So I say what are your financial goals? And you can imagine, right, like, what do they say? Like their, what their financial goals are? Like, in real estate terms? It’s always the same thing. Okay? I need a watch 250 grand or a million or 50 deals, or 80? Deals? Okay. So they they put a monetary value, either it’s on volume, number of deals, or gross income. And then I asked the next question. Okay, so I set them up. So I’m asking people to do this. Write down your financial goals. The next question is describe, you know, hour by hour, your your day when you hit those goals. So not like, what are you doing in your life? I’m talking specifically, what are you doing in your day? You know, what happens, Erwin? I could literally open it up right now I won’t, and show you 100 Times have probably done this, I’ve got all that homework in a file. I’ve got a lot of data. And so what it is, is this, you’ll have this, you’ll have the first question, and everyone talks about money. And they say, what’s your goals? And the next question is this? Well, what I want is to wake up in the morning, and sit on my balcony and have a tea, or have a coffee, maybe go to the gym, and maybe do a deal here and there. But I just, I’m like, hold on a second. And then I stop and go, can’t you do that today. So you think you need to make a million dollars to go to your mother effing patio and have a tea. What I realised or win over years of coaching is that it’s an emotional thing they’re looking for, and they’re trying to solve it with the money goal. You know what they’re trying to solve, Erwin? Worry, that’s what they’re trying to solve? Worry, I don’t want to worry about money. So if I get lots of money, I won’t have to worry, nope. The more money you have, the more worry you have. And it’s the exact wrong solution. So the psychology needs to be looked at. And then the next step is this or when people need to look at their fuel. Okay, so I’ll give a little bit of practical things to start the journey of getting the obviously this is we could do a 10 part series on this. But here’s another one. So first of all, that’s the question you’re out of alignment, you’re trying to solve an emotional need. You’re trying to stop worry by getting more money, but that’s not going to work, I promise you and you can keep trying until you you know, feel like the pain is enough. And then you can come talk to me. But the reality is that does not work you need to solve the most Why are you worrying? Like this is the better question. It’s like, I want to wake up and not worry, sit on my balcony have a tea, it’s not about the tea, it’s just that I don’t have stress, I don’t have worry. And the very thing they’re doing is creating more stress and more worry by solving it the traditional financial planning style way like your goal setting bigger goals, more sales. That’s all we’re getting taught in real estate, and it’s creating more stress, creating more worry, the very thing they’re trying to get out. And now the definition of insanity fits. Do the same thing over and over again, you get the same results, just hopeless. That’s where you know, marriages break and stuff. So here’s another tactic that I think that’s shifting people massively. I think we’re not looking at our fuel. We’re not valuing our fuel. Okay, so let’s talk about this. When you wake up in the morning, how’s your energy? See, we spend so many, so much time thinking about tactics, okay, and systems and how to be number one, or whatever it is. We don’t ever spend enough time on going, how are we going to fuel ourselves to get the goal. So the bigger the ambition, the better energy you need, but that’s not a conversation. That’s some very, very fufu stuff. But let me just explain it in a real practical way. Let’s say you’re a racecar driver, right? And the thing is, you’re What do you need, you can have the best machine, you can have the best driver, best tires, best brakes, best engine, you could literally have the best record in the world. But if you don’t put fuel in the car, you literally lose. It’s the number one thing that can take out anybody is low energy. Understand if did you get COVID? Oh, Irwin, and get COVID Conway. Oh, yeah, that was so many people, right? So they get COVID Right? No, it’s the number one thing they lose energy. I got a guy right now. It’s got long COVID. That’s one of my coaching clients. 43 days. He’s into it now. And he can’t get his energy. He’s one of the best sales guys and best closers best team leads and I’ve ever met, and he’s sitting there at half energy and none of his skill matters anymore. Why are we not focusing on energy first? Now let’s go flip it out and say what if a guy’s got more energy but less skill who wins? Most likely that guy with more energy because he’ll pick up the skill. Connor McDavid is the best hockey player upon the planet, to serve us the most is wild, anyone should look them up and watch the highlights is absolutely insane what he can do on the ice, he’s better than 10 times better than most most everyone on the ice. But here’s the thing. What if he shows up hungover. But literally, it doesn’t matter how good he is, he’s gonna lose 50% of his skill. Because of energy. I’m making a very long point. Because I’ve worked with people like I’ll give you an example. There’s a guy that owns a royal a page that I that I coach and his whole team, we started working together and exactly in the real estate reboot, we have a thing called setting your compass. And one of the things is what are you neglecting out of your life that that does not drive business. But that would fuel your soul. He said, I’ve always wanted to sing. And like, I’ve always wanted to sing. What a dumb thing in a business coaching element to be like, well, let’s talk about like, literally how many calls you making? Let’s talk about your team development. What kind of training do you do a morning meeting? Like we could be?

Erwin  

What are you doing to maximise GCI? That’s right. Right? Correct commissions. I mean.

Ben  

whatever, yeah. And it’s like, but that’s not why he came to me, came to me because he wanted a deeper conversation. And so he said, and I said, What can you commit to for the next 12 weeks that is going to feed your soul that does not feed your business? And so we booked a singing lesson. This was one of the greatest breakthroughs in his life. He booked a singing lesson start singing, and he had the connection. He goes, what else in my life? Am I holding myself back from her with fear? It was this unbelievable connection that happened? Oh, I’m scared of singing because I look stupid. But once he’s overcame that, everything else in his entire life that held him back because of fear was now on the table to be removed.

Erwin  

Sorry, about he was afraid of singing?

Ben  

 Yeah, he’s like 59 years old. And he’s just a, you know, a very professional man. And he’s gonna go and singing and he’s like, so he he got a singing lesson. And next thing, you know, he steps up and he realised why did I not? Why didn’t I not be who I was designed to be earlier? Because I was scared. Then he got the new brain data that says you can overcome your fears. So now what happened was he stepped in? Oh, my goodness, man. It’s crazy to see he’s had the biggest year he’s ever had. His team has had the biggest year, he’s now implemented a new assistant got rid of someone that didn’t match, he started making way better moves. And guess what the thing was connection was the result. Because when you’re withholding from who you really are, you’re hiding, you cannot be in a relationship and hide. So now he is connected to his team. The conversations are 10 times deeper about with his team, his culture is better. Now he comes on all my retreats with me and he’s still working with me. And it’s amazing to see this guy. He’s now done karaoke for the first time he levelled up, he went to karaoke. And he walked into the bar. And he’s like, Okay, I’m gonna do this. He thought no one would be there, I’m gonna step up my game have never sang in front of anyone. And he goes to the bar, and it’s loaded with like, rough and tough guys. And there’s the karaoke mic. And he’s like, Screw it. I’m doing it. Now. That’s what I call emotional strength. He didn’t have that he needed to take those steps. But guess what’s happening? So he sang and to be everyone was cheering them on and just this huge breakthrough. But why are we talking about a man singing a real estate agent singing? Do you know what it is? Fuel, he wakes up in the morning happy. He’s now collecting records. Now. He’s now doing what else he’s doing. Because he started challenging everything about his life going, where am I not aligned? Nobody want nobody does. Three months of the year, he lives in a cabin with his wife running his real estate team three months of the year. He’s not even in the game. Now that was designed custom designed life. But it started with asking what are you withholding that you love? It seems so simple now that I’ve been doing it hundreds of times with people. And it’s cool to be able to really appreciate you letting me even share this because I think this is the message. And it’s practical. Like what do you feel like? What do you feel like after you go fishing? After you go wakeboarding? What do you feel like after you go sailing or whatever it is? Don’t you think you show up with your team better? Your family better? You’re better sales guy your energy’s high. Why are we not putting that on a pedestal rather than a GCI? gross sales. That’s not even profit. That’s what we’re Why don’t we celebrate? How many vacations did you take in relation to your profit? I can take more vacations I can get more profit and how that be? It’s a different question. We can change the metrics on our success. redefine success is really important. 

Erwin  

It’s pretty cool. Because I remember I’ve always been shy person. And then there was actually a real estate networking meeting. Because I read I read. I think Brian Tracy wrote about it that those who public speak will be more successful in business. So I forced myself.

Ben  

You know why you overcome the fear? It’s just the fear. It’s a fear Crusher.

Erwin  

I had to overcome that fear first? It’s weird. I had to. I basically had a blackout moment to ask the coordinator for speakers if I could give a talk on the City of Hamilton investing in Hamilton. And as I was so nervous. Oh, so again, I had to block myself out to be able to ask to speak in front of 300 people.

Ben  

Right? It’s intimidating man. First time. Yeah. 300 a big room. It actually looks really big. Yeah.

Erwin  

Right. And then she said, Yeah, of course, no problem. Just send me an email some ideas, and we’ll we’ll pick a date and like, wow, that was easy. That was easy first, and then you actually have to get on the stage.

Ben  

To make sure you go to the bathroom first, because you might just be your pants are so scared. My business has boomed after that. 

Erwin  

Interesting!

Ben  

Yeah. Because I think the energy you bring changes and people saw you again, they actually saw you.

Erwin  

But conquering that fear, not what enabled me to go after other ones? Because then the next one I attacked was my fear of heights. Right? 

Ben  

You jump out of a plane? 

Erwin  

I jumped out of a plane? Yeah, I’ve done bungee jumping than the CN Tower at work when you’re in Totonto, let’s do it. 

Ben  

That sounds terrible. 

Erwin  

Yeah, bring it bring your masterminded. Do you guys want to close?

Ben  

We actually retreat in October in Oh, yeah, we’re supposed to cinch information throughout without it next week. We Yeah. We we’ve got this amazing place that’s off grid. But at the lodge has a Wi Fi connection, but no phones. No Wi Fi. You know what, you know why? Because we are in business. I think there’s some level of like connectivity that that can be there. And plus, mentally I don’t think people can take all of it. I take baby steps. We don’t need to go to black belt and go to blue belt. That’s fine. Sometimes we greater accomplishes against top a type big times winners. And I don’t think we need to do that. I think we need to greater success on the 1% steps that we need to take. And so one Wi Fi connection is a pretty big deal for when you can’t use your phone in the cabin. You got it like you know, it’s a good step for most but anyways, yeah, no, we’re gonna go deep dive into who you are what you want, get clarity and get connection. 

Erwin  

When is it?

Ben  

Go to www.benoosterveld.com/ ans hit the retreats. It’s a mindset retreat. 

Erwin  

It’s a name like honestly, yeah, it’s like Smith.

Ben  

www.benoosterveld.com/, the retreats there. And it’s 3500 bucks a person. And it is probably one of the biggest game changers I’ve ever seen in my life. When it comes to business and relationships in the combination. 

Erwin  

How many days? 

Ben  

It’s three days

Erwin  

Who’s it for? Who should go?

Ben  

You know what, this is an open one. I’ve been running these retreats privately in my mastermind, this is the only time I’ve opened it up to like, it’s the second time I’ve only opened it up to anybody. So personally, Erwin, I’ve seen fathers and sons, husbands wives, real estate agents, the wife coming on their own, have other agents that have actually worked with me for years, they sent their wife and they were into that. So that, to be honest, Erwin it’s it’s humans, right. And I think I think real estate is always a big topic in my world. But it’s nothing we don’t actually talk about real estate, unless it’s in relation to how are you in your own way? And and where are you going through so i i get everyone out of their heads. By leaving your environment or when things are psychology completely changes. It’s I think even chemicals in your brain changes dopamine, like there’s all these different things that happen stress, guilt, shame, all of these emotions show up when you have to leave your family, you have to leave your team. It also is a really good place to test if you’re a business owner to find out where your business falls apart when you leave for three days. So much benefit from just going just if I just go and we just hung out, it would still be a massive thing. But at the retreats, what we do is is a we examine you, and if the safest environment in the entire world you’ve ever believed and I facilitate the whole thing I we figure out what you want where in your own way. And there’s times we’re most of us are telling our story to ourself that isn’t 100% accurate. Because we don’t want to face the bad feelings so we avoid them. And so we look at them. And we have massive breakthroughs. That’s when that’s what happens. And that’s where I can tell you story after story after story about life’s have been. It’s like the catalyst for these massive changes in their lives. And increase is a very big theme. If you go to the website and watch the video, you’ll you’ll see the actual location. You’ll see some of the guys that went on this last retreat in northern Ontario. It’s north of it’s an hour and 45 North East of Sudbury.

Erwin  

Oh, that’s far. Yeah. And it’s in like 3500 includes meals and accommodation, everything just go make your way there. That’s it.

Ben  

Just get there. You know, I don’t think it’ll always be that price. So we’ll see if someone’s listening to this and it’s been a while double check. But it’s uh, honestly, it’s it’s the it’s just I just know what it is. And we’re branching out to opening it up. It’s just too many. Like I just feel like it’s a we have this beautiful thing that we’ve been doing for years and years and I just think so many people would love to just jump on a retreat that aren’t wanting real estate coaching or they want to develop a like bring it bring their team and that’s the area that I can kava because I don’t need to coach everyone so but like for example, if you brought your team or when you go coach them after but the conversation on your team will change That’s the difference, you’ll have a deeper connection you want. Like it just they just love the culture of your team is just an absolute game changer. It just changes everything because you actually get real we break down the barriers and you can act like put it this way growing. How many people get you? Like I’m talking buck naked? Know who you are not ever naked. But you know what I mean, metaphorically speaking, every single thing is on the table with or when they get you how many people?

Erwin  

I don’t know. Very small number. I can be pretty closed off.

Ben  

So two?

Erwin  

Sure, sounds fair. 

Ben  

What if there was a place where I could get to where I really got you were, what would happen to me in your relationship but truly got to that place where I got you know?

Erwin  

We get to kill each other.

Ben  

He’s like, he’s like stay away. If your team if you could give that to your team. Yeah. And like you get them like you like that’s you? We talked, oh, retention, well, let’s offer all these things for retention. And let’s let’s invest in our team. I’m like, what if you just got them that’s the most limited edition place you can ever be with a human being as they get me. I’ve probably got three people, my crew, my business from within mastermind, I think they get me but there’s also my wife against me. And so there’s a very few amount of people I’ve been actively building my tribe in that way and being wildly open so I could find those relationships. So it’s a really big deal. So that’s where that’s where a lot of it’s a really great place to jump in. If it’s not about just coaching on real estate and stuff. It’s a really cool place I envision team showing up there and and doing something together that would be just completely game changing.

Erwin  

Sounds awesome. Venues filled. Yeah, so you sold your company because I’m so unsure some people are interested in that. But you took an exit.Why? Why did this isn’t to sell, 

Ben  

I never wanted to be an agent. Never did. I’ve been trying to exit first since my second year of real estate to be honest or what I am deeply obsessed with human behaviour and helping people I’ve lived a life on the streets. I’ve been in rehab for over 365 years I’ve had some real painful times in a psychiatric ward broke out of the psychiatric ward was on the news my parents saw me i fraudulently flew to Las Vegas as a kid on through, beat the airports and everything and 15 years old and got stuck out there like crazy life I’ve lived. And so I’ve had a lot of pain. Depression is a massive thing for me rage and anger massive. So once you’ve got like, for so much of my life, I’ve just been trying to be normal, that so many things that was always unfair, like I have a good little boy, and life life, kicked my ass. And I think it’s the greatest gift I’ve ever had in my life now because I wouldn’t be so obsessed with making an impact and helping people. And so real estate is one of my avenues that that I used so I can impact lives. And I freakin love business. I love sales. I love it because I’m gonna freakin connect the dots kind of guy I see through walls. And so yeah, like it’s real estate, I sold my business because I was always trying to sell my business. You know, if I did it again, I probably could have done a little bit better. If I sold a little bit earlier, I waited a little bit too long, because when you got a cash cow running, you know, you’re free hundreds of 1000s of dollars coming in and you don’t need you literally don’t even need to show up. That’s hard thing to sell. So I probably waited too long lost some value, because some guys leave right? When you’re selling a real estate company, the biggest thing you’ve got is your systems and your team. And so and and your advertising. And if you’ve got a really good brand, you’re obviously buying the brand as well. And so to evaluate a company, it you can evaluate your company with your sales. So let’s just say I sold 100 properties, and my team sold 20 I can only evaluate my team is 20. Because you’re not buying me you know you’re you’ve got some you got some intellectual property, and you’ve got some, you know, my list, but they all know me. So for two years before I sold, I was moving my client base to my team planning to sell. But the thing is, though, I should have sold when it was at its peak, I didn’t know when it was at its peak, and I wasn’t ready. And this how it life is. But I ended up selling, I got a pay day. And I won’t disclose that. And in light of you know, it’s obviously not not for me to disclose. It wasn’t a massive payday. But I’ve structured a deal. That’s five years. So I get paid for five years because I know my base and I know how many people call me still. And I know that business. So I’ve kind of got similar situation to when I own the company a little bit less obviously, because I’m sharing now, but it’s like having a team skills for the next four or five years in the next five years. And I’ve got and that’s how I exited. I know other people that just took a quarter million dollar check, but the value, the value and it’s not the best business to sell but it’s a great business to exit with a sale like most guys just fade away like it’s crazy. You’ve got 20 years, 30 years, man if you would do you know why they don’t sell because they don’t keep a business. They’re a salesman with a phone, there’s no value in it. My value was I had full from start to finish processes built my assistant runs the business, my team systems, we had marketing out there we had all of these different things, but it was a business. It was run without me. That’s when you can sell it if it’s honestly right Without you, you know like I think there’s that’s the value. Why wouldn’t you like Cory McCune who bombed my company think what he has now he literally has t monster belt in the same town. He’s got my entire base instantly overnight, and my sales team and my office and my assistant overnight, it’s just crazy. Like the value that he picked up was just unreal. So why not buy a business? Why don’t even talk about this man, no many people right now why don’t you go the old timers and say I want to buy your list? Why don’t you come up with a deal? But guess what, you could probably buy it for a couple grand. They don’t know nothing. They probably didn’t even keep their list. They’re like, oh, sure sounds good. All you want is them on it for a year them to make send out a good email. So he’s joining my team as he retires. I had to plan for this. I was going to pick up all the old timers and build my team this way. Thinking imagine you could go you could literally get to 3000 people on your list by picking up these guys and have the retirement guru. I loved it. I love the game man. I love the game of real estate and building business. I could go all day on any business and I have all kinds of crazy ideas and never executed on I love sharing those with my crew love it. That that’s a great way so think about that’s business mind versus a salesman’s mind.

Erwin  

So then selfishly I want to ask question because we’re running out of time. So again, selfish question not for me. It’s more by my audience and all our people are struggling out there. Mostly mental health wise as no I think statistically, I think one in three people responded to a survey seeing their mental health is suffering but

Ben  

New strain of COVID

Erwin  

Are you suffering? That’s not really the question. Say you are suffering…

Ben  

Genuinely last year was the most oddest year one of the best years of my life and honestly really hard. After after the second year mentally did weigh on me like I like if you think about I got five kids now we’re trying to we’re trying to like they were home. My wife is my wife hasn’t gone to the gym that for a long time there was like there’s all this different stuff going on. We moved from Edmonton to Vancouver, like on paper, social media, it looks amazing. But that’s taller. And we’re I’m also going from mentally running a real estate business to full time, everything to do with coaching, which is a dream, which is that’s what I want to do. It’s kind of been doing that. But it’s like, I created more space. And it’s like, so cool, but definitely challenging. We’re looking at scaling, we’re building but I love the process. But I had to get really honest with myself, I put on a little bit of weight. And I was like, What am I doing what’s happening to me, because I disconnected with the emotional things I needed to deal with. I disconnected from it. So I could just plough forward. Okay, because I had to move, we sold the company, we renovated the house, we had to get the cool the skin the kids set up. So when you’re grinding so hard, what you do is you block out the emotion that’s telling you to slow down and I didn’t for a bit because I needed to move I needed to do these things. And the real raw truth of it is that it cost me a bit on my I was tired. I’m coming out of it now strong, like I’m definitely losing weight and I’m fixing that all up. No problem. I’m back on track. But the thing is, I had to come to terms of ya know, this got me a bit, they call me a bit and I realised I disconnected from the emotions so I could keep moving forward. And that’s my go to back in the day. That’d be a shadow of mine, where I’ll just be like, I don’t care if I’ve got a frickin broken leg. I’m winning the game I kind of shifted into like I kind of almost had to moving a company selling selling a company selling a house renovating a house moving to West Vancouver, you know, finding the kids schools practical stuff, like and but it was like, how are we going to move our kids we got multiple cars, like just plus running a real coaching business and national company had investment properties, just the amount of things that we hit through the transition of multiple things. I realised wow, I should have stopped and felt sad. I should have stopped and identified with my emotions instead of just kept pushing. And I’m okay with that. Like it. I’m not perfect, man. It’s It’s part but I’m very self aware that that’s what happened. I’m learning my lesson again. When we push too hard again, I push too hard again. And I could have done a couple more days off. I should have taken another weekend away during the process even though my life felt like I couldn’t. And so yes, my mental health definitely got touched. And now we finally feel like over the last few months like okay, okay, baby, let’s effin go baby, let’s go and I’m feeling back to myself like yes, eaten killer doing well, coaching is on fire and everything’s good again. It’s just like, it’s just part of the process. So mental health is and I’m stronger. Like mentally I’m strong. And so I know and I and I was living a 1% life in it. So I’m very well aware of the privilege and the privilege I fucking work for every dollar but anyways, back that’s another another another topic but I I am sitting in a privileged position for sure. But I worked for that. So but I think about the people that don’t have that. And they have the struggles and there’s more child helplines doubled from like a million calls a year to 2 million. Those things destroy my God. You’re talking about the police calls out there about battery like more and more about physical beating each other up and like just I think the undercurrent of our society is fragile right now. mentally. I really do.

Erwin  

That’s why I told my wife to do, to learn Krav Maga.

Ben  

Is that fighting Krav Maga. What does that again? 

Erwin  

That’s Israeli. 

Ben  

That’s legit man, those scary those scary dudes.

Erwin  

And they play for keeps. It’s like they cause damage, right?

Ben  

I’m gonna interview your wife on my podcast here. 

Erwin  

Ask her about Krav Maga.

Ben  

Erwin thinks that you should be a fighter.

Ben  

No, she took lessons on my advice. 

Ben  

Okay, cool. Good tip, I’ll ask her.

Erwin  

So you have a book coming out. Can you tell me about it?

Ben  

The richest real estate agent how to build a seven figure business without sacrificing your relationships. It’s the first mindset book in real estate that’s ever been written that has a tonne of unbelievable tactics and strategies, all wrapped in mindset and personal growth.

Erwin  

I wish I read that instead that other book called the Red Book, you know the one I have a feeling emails coming in.

Ben  

Erwin, I paid scribe, to help publish this book, I’ve invested probably $20,000 At least into writing it. These guys were they helped me so much because they said, Ben, if you read a tactical real estate book, you’re going to be invisible. Like I know, I don’t want to do a tackle real estate book. But I want to do a personal growth book, I want to do something that actually matters. And they’re like, Well, what if we bridge the gap? And I’m like, Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. And it’s very difficult to blaze a trail in in an industry that doesn’t have that trail blazed yet. So it’s like, is it gonna even like, no one’s going you need to work on your inner game. Hey, we’re a relationship business. Should we train on relationships? No. Lead Gen. Like, I get to me, it’s really obvious. So I’m the first and honestly, the results of the people going through my stuff is wild, but people are really having massive success starting from the inner game and the thinking. And so this book bridges the gap between a marketing sales business development book, with it all is based on mindset 100% on emotional intelligence and mindset, because you want to be in what is rich rich is like a like a very good dessert. Like if you have a rich dessert, it’s just rich and you want to wake up in the morning feeling like an amazing feeling on every area of your life. Money is not rich, but the rich is the marketing ploy the richest real estate agents good marketing. So we now have richest real estate agent group for real estate agents. And we have our podcast riches, the rich real estate agent podcast and the book and it’s coming out in April 2022.

Ben  

Oh it’s soon. Where can folks get it?

Ben  

I think check Amazon, my websites. Probably Amazon’s going to be probably the number one place people buy it. Okay, so that’s gonna be that’s gonna be the place that you can’t get it now but you can go to my website right now if it’s before April and join the waiting list. I’m going to do something special for anyone that wants to jump on my VIP early list. 

Ben  

Well, now I want to copy for everyone on my team.

Ben  

I have a feeling, I have this weird fire in my belly that’s like a this is this might hit home because Can I tell you something? Or when I have my group, right? And I asked the group, every time someone says I want to join your Facebook group I asked what is one way you get yourself in your own way? Dude, it is so crazy. Every real estate agents. I overthink. I have I’m a people pleaser. Like everyone has massive emotional, intelligent issues. They have psychological stuff that these and guess what it’s like, and there’s no solution for those. Unless you go to a therapist. I’ve now bridge the gap with this book, truly. And so people are going to understand how to raise their emotional intelligence become mentally healthy while building a real estate business that can truly hit seven figures.

Erwin  

I’m excited. I’m trying to bust through add dip through the book.

Ben  

I’m gonna do an audio book but I’m not doing it till probably the fall sometime. So I can relaunch it. It’s a good marketing one right to get once it starts dying out. I’m going to come up with a audio book and fire that baby up again. So

Erwin  

Sounds good. Sounds like it sounds like I’ll get excited enough to read a hardcopy.

Ben  

I think you’ll actually really like it.

Erwin  

Can’t wait. I signed up for it. Ben just been a blast. My team’s big fan of your work. And for context for listener like my team has been attended Ben’s events in Toronto. So yeah, all feedback is fantastic. Can’t wait to see the book. Can’t wait for For more events in Toronto. Travelling open up like crazy.

Ben  

Oh, really? I had it ready to go dude, for March. I was gonna come to Toronto, I had all things lined up and I was like, nope, cancel that baby. I’m not gonna risk it again. I gotta wait. Gotta wait. But it’s probably the book. I’ll do some touring. I’ll do some speaking and things. It’ll be fun. 

Erwin  

Awesome. Let me know. Let me know. Let me know when you’re out this way. 

Ben  

Yeah, you got it. 

Erwin  

Alright, cheers. 

Ben  

Thank you so much for having me on again

Erwin  

No, thank you.

Erwin  

Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up to my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate from cash flow but with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there. Forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself but so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.