**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Welcome to the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians, My name is Erwin Szeto, host of the number 81 ranked podcast for iTunes, president of the trustor charity, the Hamilton Basket Brigade, four time realtor of the year to investors. And among our masterminds, we have 45 Self, maybe off the millionaires. I spent all this time sharing all this, not because like to brag, but quite honestly, there’s a lot of coaches out there love do recent real estate influencers, some of them are going bankrupt and taking their clients with them. So I’m just here to share what we’re up to. And we are very grateful for the trust of our clients that they’ve placed in us. And we’re overjoyed with the results that boring systematic cash flowing real estate has provided, I was just reading an article about a gentleman, a lawyer who purchased two preconstruction houses for close to $2.5 million each. And they are at risk of losing their $100,000 in deposits, because those properties will not appraise and that the mortgages will be higher than what the properties are worth. So it’s unfortunate what some people are doing out there for real estate investing. I honestly do not know what Java does decisions. I do believe that pre construction speculators, speculators in general flippers and Burr investors, they will continue to leave the headlines for 2023 in terms of where the pain is. And that honestly means that’s where the opportunity is from me as well. Continue to hear rumblings among our lawyer market, legal market lawyer market, our lawyer friends, a local lawyer friends are telling us that they are seeing more and more power sales crossing their deaths. So I don’t think it’ll be huge amount, we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see how many there will be. I don’t think there’ll be a massive amount, though, that will flood the market and cause any sort of significant correction. If anything, we’re seeing a lot of buying activity, we’re seeing the last two weeks or so we’ve been very busy actually, including selling off the majority of our listings. So our listings, which are primarily entry level real estate, they were sitting at some of them were sitting and now they’re gone, sold as sellers are coming to terms with the market values are and buyers are adjusted to the current interest rate environment. So we’ll see who was right at the end. Whether or not these optimistic buyers are right, but just look to know the market is active for entry level real estate. Speaking of entry level real estate, especially ones that generate income, positive cash flow income, say the date the morning up Saturday, February 25. In Hamilton, we are going to be on the streets in Hamilton. We’re bringing our poli sci view investors who are listening on to this we’re going to learn on the streets in Hamilton in properties that my clients own, that they are currently doing burrs or flip Sue, where they aren’t converting houses mainly, specifically the basements into the old basement apartments. If you’re already on my newsletter, then you’re still see the registration is available. www dot truth about real estate investing.ca is where you can go to enter your name and email address if you don’t already get if you’re not already on my email list. Our newsletter goes out to over 10,000 Hardworking comedians, so maybe it’s a good idea that you join them as well. And maybe even one day join my Hall of Fame. Millionaire self made real estate millionaire clients. Also thanks everyone who attended our sold out in person only island meeting last this past weekend, we raised over $1,000 for those are on the proceeds for our personal meetings, we raised over $1,000 and selling tickets for that meeting. And those funds will be used to buy warm winter clothing and boots at this tenant will sell prices for underprivileged children in Hamilton. Needless to say, the idea of children going cold in the winter. Wearing cold soaked shoes with holes leaving toes exposed to the elements is just a sad thought. Hence we here at the Hamilton bash brigade are doing something about it. If anyone would like to help, honestly the best thing to do is other than making a donation is to refer people you care about to charity and ice businesses. The more people we can help become rich, the more donations and the more generous donors we help and donations come back to business. Does everyone see the baby calves latest raise tertiary increase of 25 basis points. So that’s 0.25% increase to a total of now 4.5%. And tip Macklin also promised continued quantitative tightening as in there’s gonna be less money in the system and a plan to conditionally hold rates there to see where inflation in the economy goes. Our central bank is the first major bank to say it would pause rates. The Bank of Canada forecast the economy will stall in the first half of this year does not foresee a significant recession. and inflation is expected to be about 3% By the middle of the year. I have any thoughts for you many thoughts about this subject? That’s the lawyer who bought the two properties in Ottawa pre construction homes for almost $2.5 million each. It’s the same people I do. Funny enough. Yeah. Why didn’t the government so fast forward? Why didn’t the government baby Canada control their spending of debt level in the early pandemic? I think it’s an excellent question for our leadership, especially after our former Finance Minister Bill Morneau his book, which came out in January 17. It details how the Ministry of Finance would make recommendations. That’s our job. You know, the Ministry of Finance, which was supposedly about finances. Bill says there are fiscally responsible recommendations to target those specifically those who are losing their jobs due to the pandemic, only for the Prime Minister to ignore said recommendations in creating greater Oh, his own decisions to spend more, make more people happy, which would get into and get more attention from the media, or great optics, great politics in the short term, terrible fiscal policy and hindsight and also as we into the medium and long term. As we the taxpayers will forever be burdened. Bail is at a debt. Only see small businesses like gyms and restaurants only now fail now. due to inflation, recession, lack of labour, all of this can be dealt the pandemic with technology terrible, without all of us tax payers being on the hook for it. Plus, when we’re going through economic pain mail, all this inflation added debt to only delay the recession about three years, all this debt and money in the system inflation to delay a recession three years wasn’t worth it. In hindsight, hindsight, so it’s been 2020. That I don’t think so. These government decisions are well done, I pay grade. So we investor entrepreneurs must just roll with the punches and play the hand that were built. I know what I’m doing. I know that sounds cliche. But if you tune in into any representations of the wealth hacker conference at Cherry’s client, we webinar or our past, I have a meeting that was done in person meet, contain which we then you know, where we think this is all going. And honestly, I haven’t seen more green lights in a long, long time. Pretty nice to tell me that should be buying long term Bible cashflow and investment properties. So if you’re interested in learning more about these opportunities, and how to cash flow real estate, make sure you’re on the Nelson tour. And also we will be offering an offshore tour in in March as well. We will be turning quality income properties from what we’re seeing does look like we’re past the bottom in terms of the properties that we target for investment purposes in the startup market. And our clients stand to benefit the most from this market. Again, if you’re not already already on newsletter, www dot truth about real estate investing.ca Get on our email newsletter, enter your name and email right. I’ll see you at one of our events. onto this week’s show. We have an author coach, mentor, mom, wife, and investors since only 2017 has done a lot while keeping her day job. Keeping those kids and keeping her husband happy. English isn’t even brushings first language she moved to Canada from Taiwan at the age of 17. Brooke has done a lot in her career. She’s had lows, she’s openly shares that she lost $50,000 on a joint venture in Winnipeg with a non bank partner who drove a Porsche. to Now she’s done nearly 33 Zero rental property deals, she owns a bunch of duplexes and she’s now focusing more on private lending and building her custom home custom dream home. Thanks to paid for by the profits from tenants buying out rents owns and also selling other income property is a leader within the trustor talent Academy. Like pass tests, Tim sigh in bits Lee Brooke story is a good one, how much one can accomplish very much in a short period of time, while keeping their day job and how its goals change over time. For example, Brookings hustled very hard beginning, but now she’s more focusing towards more passive investments and more equity growth. All of it works. Wonders must decide for themselves what journey they’re on. Please enjoy the show. Everquest keeping you busy these days,

Brooke  

lots of things lately, building my own home, taking care of the kids still work. A lot of them Busman still going and coaching and mentoring as well. A lot of public speaking lately. I think it’s because probably since the pandemic, there’s a lot of zoom meetings, and we have a lot of time at home. So started to get trained on speaking communication, that kind of thing. That’s actually what I’m focusing on personally in terms of learning. Yeah, what is your personal goal every year this year for me is communication. That’s the only goal. No, that’s a personal goal. That’s a personal goal. And like I mentioned, I told you I was building my own home. So another financial goal, of course to build up my portfolio again. I actually sold a few properties so I can take all the bucket of gold to build my home in Midtown Toronto,

Erwin  

okay,

Brooke  

let’s have a full you got to note.

Erwin  

How many houses do you think you’ve sold in order to finance your finance fund your custom build

Brooke  

my custom builds, there’s quite a few rentals closing my own. It’s basically almost one or two every month last year. I actually didn’t tally up. I know our tax will be high last year, even though our castle was significantly reduced. And my physical year for my company is what June? I know this year, we’ll have to Yeah,

Erwin  

no, I love it. It is your point in the master journey where your your investments are paying for things that you want in your life. Yeah, right. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit about the custom home you’re building? Yeah,

Brooke  

I actually set that goal for four or five years now, when I started investing, and you know, the market kept going up, right? So at the time, we couldn’t even secure a property. And funny enough, we live in a very old part of Toronto. So at least I’d close to East York, a lot of the properties are old, built in the 1940s. Some are, they call it cat, so used to be a bungalow, a lot of them are still in Scarborough. So they kept it, they just build on top. When we did inspection, there was quite a few issues. So even when we finally secured a property, we always found something. And in the end, we finally decided let’s just rebuild something of our own. So we bought a really old house. Actually, the owner is she she was 90, we bought it almost two years ago. She was almost 90. So she was the original owner, she was closer 90 or 91, I think at that point, and she smoked her whole life. So the house was gross. The house was was coated and smoke grease on the wall. Yeah.

Erwin  

Oh, just for listeners benefit. Like for US veteran investors. That’s what that’s the stuff we buy. Stuff we bought, how many offers? Was it 13, still 30, you know, all the all ones tear down, then

Brooke  

they all wanted to tear down and you won. We won, I think because we’d live two blocks away. So before I put in an offer, I already talked to my neighbours. And I said, put in good words for me if you know this lady, and I wrote a letter to say, I know a few good friends on your street. Because we’re in the neighbourhood. We’re two blocks away, my friend’s friend, and then you’re part of the community, not just not something crazy, but little things help. And then we have the bank draft ready with our offer. When we put in the

Erwin  

was that aggressive? No, a lot of people do that. Yeah, we my experience, not a lot of people do not a lot of

Brooke  

people do that. So we actually put in six figure the word we thought, hey, if it didn’t go through, I’ll just put the money back. So yes, we were really aggressive. And as I was setting in the parking lot off the bank, my realtor said there were a lot of offers coming in. So we’re just sitting at that time, I think was like six or seven. And then the number just kept going up, which is sitting typing the letter saying I live in the neighbourhoods, I have good friends on your street, I’m pretty sure they would have given me the recommendation. So I just throw them out there saying I have friends there. If you request recommendations we would. So I think that’s what set us apart.

Erwin  

Right? Right. So sorry. You said your realtor was sitting at the property in their car waiting unless you were

Brooke  

looking up a ladder to say, Okay, I want to go with my offer.

Erwin  

That’s actually a really good point for anyone. Like, for example, this is what we did all the time, pre pandemic, when we were doing offer presentations in person. If you wanted to win, I always tell my client think of all the things you have to do to win. I be there, right? Because a lot of people will not. And also these agents who’ve learned recently how to be agents. Yeah, the email everything. No idea how to negotiate in person, let alone present an offer in person. This email they’re offering does just pray. Right. Yeah. That’s how they represent their client. Do you believe it?

Brooke  

Yeah. So I guess you would tell your realtor or yourself how Yeah, I wants to be done. Right.

Erwin  

Or I want to negotiate a face to face. You know, I I’ve trained for this. Yeah, I played a win. Exactly. Right. Yeah. I don’t just send offers into cyberspace.

Brooke  

Yeah, exactly. So same thing we put in a lot of offers. We actually were pretty lucky considering how we live in a community where there are a lot of kids, so a lot of families want to get in. So we were lucky that we actually got all the other properties under contract. Like I mentioned, however, after inspection, we found something and that’s investors. We actually call the city sometimes when people add an addition to the house that we found problems. Another sorry, something funny because

Erwin  

which is often something that’s always a common issue additions that were done without permits, like Yeah,

Brooke  

yeah. Or even when we walk in the house, we realise a part of the house was really cold. So they just basically put the slab and then build another room. And we actually call a city just to confirm then the city showed up at the house for quickly, and we were surprised because we were just inquiring. And usually you know how long it takes for the study to come when you need a permit. Interesting. Yeah. So, so we didn’t get into that deal. But even then we didn’t secure another property under contract to.

Erwin  

Okay, so what are you building? This is like a big hose? No, the

Brooke  

lot is only 30. In the front. Okay. Yeah. 3030, about 140. So it’s a long of deep, yeah, free. Yeah, we’ll still have to go through variants. Because an ECR, they’re pretty limited as to how much land you can build on.

Erwin  

Right. So you’re gonna tear down the house? Are you reusing the foundation? Anything? It’s completely new? It’s fresh. It’s completely fresh. Yeah. And then we’ll be building couple 1000 square feet

Brooke  

2600 And then plus basements. So it’s a huge, huge, it’s good for a family of four, or even occasionally entertaining. It’s pretty good.

Erwin  

Plus garden suite or anything? Absolutely. Could

Brooke  

I’ve seen laneway? In our neighbourhood? Yeah. Yeah.

Erwin  

Awesome. Love it. No, I love the fact that you’re paying for this through the proceeds from investments.

Brooke  

Yeah, that that’s not just it, because I think also, you know how to finance, right? Because if you don’t know how money works, I mean, we now live in a 1200 square foot. That’s how we got into the neighbourhood. So you’re, you were frugal, we were full gold. But at the time, we were so nervous when we bought that house. So thinking back, if I have to take on something that’s big, it’s just mentally, I don’t think we could have, if not have gone through all the mortgages for investment and knowing how money works and built up a little bit of equity. Yeah. From other properties.

Erwin  

So why did you start investing? Like you seemed really smart? I think you make a lot of money at your job. Why did you think you need to invest to

Brooke  

actually, our house was always my big why? Because we live in a 1200 square foot, I look at your exercise equipment. Now I work, I work at home, I don’t even have enough space to lay down. I have to push everything away, right? It’s things like that. And when I started investing, actually stayed at home with my kids for 10 years. And when I went back to work, we’re double income, and chariots koa dealing with that, we will realise we pay a lot of tax and we hardly save enough for RSP we did however, that’s not without hard work. And life. I don’t think our quality of life improved that much. Even though we were double income from a single income family. And I was already over 40 then so I thought if I don’t learn about this now, I would probably never do it or would have been pretty late. Yeah,

Erwin  

so like what was your first income property? What was your first education in real estate?

Brooke  

My after like we had the condo we used to live in and downtown However that’s not really investing because we just happen to be there happened to be in Toronto happened to have equity. The first investment I had was actually in Windsor. Income Property.

Erwin  

Okay, yeah. From downtown Toronto Windsor. Okay,

Brooke  

I never saw the property it was just somebody I took the class with. And we were both the new nobody wanted to invest in Windsor at the time. I remember we closed in January 2017. Okay, so beginning of 2017 That was my first Yeah,

Erwin  

so you just want a leap of faith with the with a fellow student

Brooke  

Yeah. However, this was exactly what we learned in class it was income property. So it was a three bedroom home easy to add another drywall no structure issues then it became a four bedroom and at the time Windsor properties were just above 100,000 at the time. So it really makes sense. And you can you can at least get 1200 of rent for example, so easily meet the 1% rule at the time and is the single family home. So that was my very first income property after I got educated. Yeah, that my second one was rental.

Erwin  

Sorry, the first winter property was a buy and hold

Brooke  

flipper. No, it was just a single family home straight rental,

Erwin  

straight rental so board

Brooke  

get a more credo right?

Erwin  

Because everyone’s goals are different, right? Because we were discussing before before we were recording I personally never did rent to owns because I’m just greedy. I want all the equity gains for myself. Right hindsight 2020 It was I was very right. But you know, the attractiveness of rent to own makes a lot of sense. Right tenant takes better care of the property higher cash flow, you get some income you get some money up front to help with the down payment and all that sort of things to you know, protect your your cash flows stay very positive on the cash flow side. A lot of it makes sense again.

Brooke  

Well, well I get that. Well, you said the goal because you know we had equity right in Toronto and you’re in Hamilton the surrounding area. So I want to see this really works. To me rental is interesting because it’s really creative. Not something I’ve heard of before. I started with real estate A education. So one thing is I want to test it out, make sure this worked. And I started working. So I want to see if the cashflow can really replace my working income

Erwin  

right here. Right? Yeah. And then how many rentals Do you think you’ve done since then?

Brooke  

I’ve slowed down. Because since 2017, that’s when I started. Probably 20 to 30. Not crazy numbers consistently. And I slowed down quite a bit. Yeah, I slowed down quite a bit right now, in terms of rent to own another thing is harder for tenant to qualify, you know, the mortgage rules, etc.

Erwin  

Yeah, cuz prices have gone up so much. Equity games, I’m banking,

Brooke  

also stress test, right? They have to be able to qualify. Yeah. So now, the reason three rentals I did are in Alberta.

Erwin  

And currently, how many do you hold? How many do you have in your portfolio? Now,

Brooke  

under 10, I will say I think I counted in my head was around eight right now. And they’re mainly just maintaining, they’re not new rental almost recently. And I’m just waiting for them to complete the programme right now.

Erwin  

And because you’re slowing down, so you can take the capital to rotate into your custom build

Brooke  

that too, and also into other investment. So I’m involved in more private lending now. Long term holds. And I get that now, I think I want to build equity. Now my rentals are closing, I have to actively look for new deals. If I want to keep that going. Everybody’s goal is different. So at this point, cashflow is not my number one, it still has to cashflow. However, I do see that at this age, I think I should build more equity. Right? Build more wealth.

Erwin  

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, I think we might piss off a lot of people by saying that cash flow is not our number one.

Brooke  

It was for a very long period of time. Well, for three years now, though, that was my number one

Erwin  

concern for recording because my stance is multiple streams of income. And because Chennai, we enjoy our careers, we generate good incomes, right? So then I the way I view it is that I’ve looked at my everything is very holistic. So so because I have we have income coming in from our careers, it’s less important to me that our portfolio cash flows a lot of money. Okay, right. I’m okay with like, my with, like my duplexes being like minimal cash flow, right, because I’m more in, you know, historically, we’ve been seeing even before the pandemic, historically, we’ve seen about 7% appreciation a year. Okay, that’s a lot. That’s a lot. Right. So, you know, even if we get 4% appreciation, I’m very happy. Okay, going forward from here. Okay. So that’s, that’s my own stance. And that’s where I am my journey. I see. Because I’m not trying to retire. I don’t think I’ll ever retire.

Brooke  

I don’t think I’ll ever ever retire. I don’t think that’s a term in my vocabulary, at least as far as I can see.

Erwin  

Right? Yeah. I just like you’re saying it’s more difficult than than ever due to rent to own. extrapolate that to say, it’s harder than ever to become a full time real estate investor, unless you can really slasher your living costs, like like, like Vince, who was on the show. Now he lives in Edmonton. Yeah. So he just slashed as housing costs. Yeah. Right. So I can see how that’s more possible. I like living Ontario. I like living in Oakville. It’s not an option for me. Yeah, you obviously like living somewhere, you’re in the GTA, like, your build is not going to be cheap.

Brooke  

Isn’t this crazy expensive. I’ll be honest. However, when I started building, we didn’t want it to be limiting because of our financial resources. At the same time, I don’t want to be taken over right either when it comes to expenses. And when it reflects to rent Oh, it doesn’t work well in Ontario. Now. However, that’s why I invest in Alberta for example now, right? And also I work with a lot of say flippers or people in the real estate community. When I mentioned I did private lending, sometimes we joint venture or however I can see that for you have to work with people who are experienced, yes, it’s getting harder. However, there are still people who are able to do it.

Erwin  

There is people able to do it, like like I mentioned, like Vince, but also on the other side. Yeah, incomes are higher than ever in terms of wage incomes. So you know, I’m a capitalist. I make the most money for my time.

Brooke  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s how you evaluate right your ROI is high.

Erwin  

I speak to many investors are new investors who make like two 300 grand in their day jobs. Exactly. Okay, how easy is it that replacing as a real estate investor?

Brooke  

I know you have to really active I can see that if you’re constantly buying and selling.

Erwin  

If you first level

Brooke  

however, is you have that income you can tolerate more risk. That’s a side hustle right

Erwin  

right. Yeah. Oh, exactly. That’s why I’m saying like cheap income. It really it really reduces your risk for real estate. Miss me. How’s it hustle. Sorry about that income. Yeah, I mean go full time, you have to take on quite about quite a bit around risk.

Brooke  

Yeah. Because I’m at the age, if I hate my job, even if it’s a lot of money, I probably still wouldn’t do it. I don’t know about you. So I see a lot of people, yes, high income, especially as a lot of my friends at this age. And I think 47 If I remember, the sad is when you you have your peak income throughout your career. So I’ve seen people doing that. However, a lot of people are very, very unhappy. I’m happy with my work. If they’re unhappy for real estate, too. If you’re unhappy, you’re making 200 or 300. Don’t do it. Because return on your time, like you said, yeah,

Erwin  

you can start work at five, six o’clock, and then like, not have any worries. As an entrepreneur or a real estate investor. Yeah. And that doesn’t happen. Exactly. Don’t.

Brooke  

Don’t end it. However you feel you have more control, right?

Erwin  

Absolutely. There’s just everyone. That’s why I like talking to veterans like yourself, is you can share your journey. And then I think people can can take from that, where they fit in. Right, versus what’s marketed out there. Yeah, quit your job today become a full time real estate investor, like, yeah, people that understand you take on a monstrous amount of risk. And then now in hindsight, those are the folks who are now going bankrupt and moving back into their parents basements. Right. But that wasn’t that wasn’t mentioned marketing.

Brooke  

Yeah, I’m like you i open to everybody at different stages in their life. Yeah. For people who have health issues, I’ve seen some friends with health issues. And even if they made a lot of money, they probably couldn’t sustain, then cut your expenses. Right? I don’t think it’s a bad idea. We’ll ask them faster. It’s not a bad idea. If you rent or, you know, rental, expensive versus mortgage people have to take on today. I mean, find alternatives. You don’t have to live in a bigger house. I’ve seen people downsizing as being a private lending and alternative financing. I’m thinking about what can we do with reverse mortgages? Well provide opportunity and in different ways for people to retire as as investors. Sometimes we’re the private mortgage, maybe we can help other people to do reverse mortgage, a lot of people are doing retirement homes, and a golden girl type of housing. I can see that.

Erwin  

Yeah, I love all those investments. Yeah, I’m not sure where I want to go with this. Okay, that’s, that’s private lending. So again, ignorant outsider observing, like the trust your talent community, is the same as a lot of you do business among yourselves, which I think is pretty wise, since you seem to be all be pretty good investors,

Brooke  

is because I think mainly people have the same mindset. I just want to clarify, we don’t directly do deals with students, students would come together naturally, to work together. We as trainers and mentors, yes, we do among ourselves. However, students, they usually naturally work together, just like I mentioned, my first investment was somebody sitting on my table while I was training, right. Well, while I was being trained, right, yeah. So it’s mainly I think, the mindset, and naturally, people have the same frequency. Right, what gets together? I think that’s just natural.

Erwin  

But your coaches and mentors are vetting a lot of these deals? We would, yes. So then there’s, you know, there’s actually oversight.

Brooke  

That’s the point, right, we won’t tell them exactly what to do. We’re part of their power team, right? Yeah.

Erwin  

So you’re talking to garbage deal not to touch it?

Brooke  

You know, it was funny, you don’t say that directly? Because it’s part of that training, right? You have to figure out yourself. So we kind of direct them. So if they, they want us to look at it. We have to not directly state yes or no, they still have to analyse that’s what trainers and coaches do.

Erwin  

But what I liked about the treasure Tang community is, you know, like, Tim, is Tim the only lead like the top of the chain top of the organisation.

Brooke  

So he and his partner Ray are the founders. We the OGS started on the beginning. We were also there. That’s all Tim basically is the principal that started the organisation.

Erwin  

Tim Sykes has been on this podcast. So he’s actually been a professional educator in wrestling for for 10 years. 10 years. Yeah. So he was paid for 10 years to teach real estate investing.

Brooke  

So I was part of that group. So I started by learning from him and, and started my journey that way, too. Right. So I see it as a legacy. You basically pass it down to the new investors. Yeah. So that’s

Erwin  

what I like about the community. Is that a strong education experience oversight over what transactions get done within the community? Yeah, versus the bankruptcies that I’ve been studying with not not within the wider real estate investor community. Yeah. Is certain organisations have consistent failures, right? Yes, but I don’t see that from your community, your specifically your group. So All right, you guys are doing something, right?

Brooke  

Yes, that’s a good indicator, Ashley, and we’ve only been around three years, but we have at least four or five students reaching their financial freedom goal. So that’s the passive income. We’re talking about the cash flow. However, we mentioned that perhaps capital is not what we focus on. However, I

Erwin  

think I like my day job. Yeah, I

Brooke  

1. I do, too. I get that if you want to not worry about survival at all. You want your money to work to have the cashflow? Yeah, at the same time, they’re also I think, the first set of students, they cut their expenses. I’ve done that too. Yeah, I’ve done that in the past couple months, because we went over budget by quite a lot. So there was one month except basic expenses. I didn’t spend anything, which actually not hard, just don’t go shopping as much. No new clothes, new shoes. It’s actually not as smart as x. I thought.

Erwin  

Yeah. Because my when I started investing, I knew this is early days, right? So I knew two people personally, who I considered very financially free. One on two triplexes lived in one of them. Okay, no car, no kids, right? So very frugal living. Right. So she can live off of that rental income from just two triplexes. And again, living in one of them are showing a five units rented. Right, initiative dog. That’s it. So that’s, that’s probably the only that was probably her biggest cash outflows. So very modest living and then my other friend in St. Catharines. He owned I forget the number of Eagleton closer to like 10 Student rentals. And then the car he drove very modest. 10 years old, paid off. Right? His home very modest, probably like yourself, like probably 2000 1200 square foot house. Right. So to me that was from from them sharing their experience with me. That was the path to financial freedom. So very different than what’s been marketed at us.

Brooke  

You want to have that choice? Oh,

Erwin  

absolutely. Absolutely. Just realise that frugal living is a much easier path to financial freedom than filling up a gigantic or real estate portfolio. Yeah. Cuz I think one of the things that’s gonna come out of this, this high interest rate environment, this tough market housing market, we’re gonna see some of these influencers go bankrupt, I think I

Brooke  

think I’m not sure who however, I do see a lot of people being quiet, because I’m thinking they don’t want to have the exposures now.

Erwin  

Yeah, yeah. But social media, people only only shout out successes. They don’t share failures. Yeah. But what I’m learning from this period is that you’ve run into these people are like, are they just like, they’re like, Wow, I can’t believe how many transactions you did. I can’t believe you’ve found that many. Like I had one guest on his podcast who said he was like writing offers like almost every day, right? How do you find that many deals? Unless they weren’t really deals. Now isn’t the quality what’s the deal wasn’t there?

Brooke  

Or you just lowball everything and then see which ones stick?

Erwin  

No, no, he was actually executing deals. Oh, wow. Right. So then like, so. I used to be like, I was like, I was so impressed. Now more like I saw seems like a potential red flag. That’s true. Yeah. And that was turning out to be a legitimate red flag based on the ads. It’s all rumours right now. But we’ll see. I don’t wish bad on anyone. Yeah, I’m just more interested in learning from everybody. Everybody else wants what’s working? What’s not working?

Brooke  

Yeah. When you mentioned duplexes, and triplexes I actually sold three duplexes doing my belt. One was before, before we even had the property under contract, I’ll tell you why. I think at different stages, I would do different things. But the reason being a found in Ontario, I have to get it vacant in order for it to be marketable. How is that control for investors? And I didn’t like that fact. And like you said, the cash flow is getting slimmer. So if I have to take out my bucket of gold from different investment, I decided to sell all the duplexes I had. So one the basement tenant moved out, that was the first one I sold, then the second one both moved out. Finally, the third one which is closing in five days, the opera unit tenant, it took me nine months to evict through landlord tenant board. I finally evicted him. And then I thought do I want to keep it because the rent is really good now. However, I thought I don’t like the fact I don’t have control another tenant comes in. I have to wait till that tenant moves before I can decide what I want to do with my property. Yeah.

Erwin  

are using front lobby please donation from I am Yes.

Brooke  

Also I want to say for rent to own operators use it because you help them improve their credit. So for all my rental and tenants, I use it and there’s one rental and tenant for a very, very short period of time his credit score was increased by 30. I think that partly that

Erwin  

helped. Wonderful. So that helps you actually helps you your tenants exit the rent. Oh,

Brooke  

yeah. So I’ve been using them from probably day one when they were under a different name too, right?

Erwin  

Yeah. And their

Brooke  

landlord credit bureau. Yeah. So I’ve been using it

Erwin  

confused the crap. And I mean, when they change their name.

Brooke  

I even used them to do a collection a while ago. Yeah, yeah. But that tenant declared bankruptcy. So I was on their report whenever we received the bankruptcy report. My name was Ashley there. Yeah. No, knock on us. Luckily, like you said, I think a lot of us were saved by the appreciation in Ontario. So yes, I came up pretty well. However, that’s that was what happened,

Erwin  

are using single key for screening.

Brooke  

I have property managers. I actually switched a couple property managers until I found one that was really good. Yeah, yeah.

Erwin  

It’s a challenge. Property Management. You know, I’ve been through like five of them. Wow. Yeah. Which as I always say, like before, before anyone ever decided to pick a pick a where wherever they’re investing neighbourhood town, whenever I say you have to have at least three property management options. Yes, right. Yeah. Three good ones. Right. So if a town only has one, I won’t invest there. Yeah, well, because if you if you go through them, like they suck, and then now what? Now you’re the property manager.

Brooke  

Exactly. Even though I have property manager, there’s still incidences where I do have to take a look at the property and decide what to do. Because you have to manage the manager. And also at the end of the day, it’s still yours. Oh,

Erwin  

yeah. Yeah, it’s your financial, everything. Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned that your other than the build, other than the build that you’re trying to you’re capitalising, you mentioned private lending. But you also mentioned that you trying to build your equity, how are you trying to build your build, build your net worth.

Brooke  

So active income is working private lending is mostly short term. So that’s where I have money to pay for a lot of the financing, for example, for the house, in terms of building our worth, I’m keeping properties that are a tenant in Ontario, because the tenants the tenant, like I mentioned, I do find it to be problematic at times. And from lobby, I think sent me an email not too long ago. I think there’s over 40% of tenant being late recently. And I do see that happening. I have tenants constantly every month. I do have to chase them. And I mentioned I just went through landlord tenant board evicted in September. Yeah. So I do see that happening. That’s why in Ontario, I’m going to just keep the A tenants. Yeah,

Erwin  

knock on wood. I’m good on rent. Yeah, thank you front lobby, shout out with our lobby. I’m pro tip from lobby.ca or.com. I forget, if you don’t know what they are, just Google them. You know, I type in front lobby.com. You mentioned private lending. What are you looking for in a private land? Because I know it’s a it’s a really popular topic. I think a lot of people do and don’t do it. Right. As a lending on, I’ve seen some, I think they’re the term that they’re getting. I wouldn’t touch What are you looking for in a private land?

Brooke  

You know, when the market was really good knock on wood? It all came back?

Erwin  

Is everyone returning your calls? Everyone who’s borrowed money from you? Was that is everyone returning your calls your private Landstuhl there were so

Brooke  

low that got me worried. Which is important. That’s exactly so there were times and I’ve done promissory notes before without putting the collateral on the property. I’ve done that. However, this is investor I don’t know. Well, but I know. And I know he has a lot of properties under his portfolio. And even though it’s promissory note, I found that during this time, the return that’s fantastic and crazy high Come to think of it. Now I would rather put on the collateral meaning being registered, even though the interest rate might be slightly lower. I think I would rather do that. And so you’d

Erwin  

rather more security, that’s gonna like your lesson from this period. Yes. However,

Brooke  

now the interest rate, say 70%. Even if it’s from your own HELOC, I don’t see. I don’t see the private lending rate being that much higher, though. It’s not climbing as fast.

Erwin  

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And your are you doing live living within your community?

Brooke  

I did one through a mortgage broker, which I just closed yesterday. This personal because I think if it’s somebody I know, I can call you and ask you what’s going on, even though there’s mortgage broker, who is probably the middle person in their experience, sometimes I found myself lean towards working with people I know. I’ve learnt before,

Erwin  

right? Because you have relationship equity. You’re on the same community. Yeah. wants to maintain the reputation.

Brooke  

Exactly. Deals are vetted, and they save on broker fee too. So they’re willing to do that. Right. Right, right.

Erwin  

Okay. Can you share, like what are terms you’re looking for in this market? So again, we’re recording sales for a second. We just had hopefully our last rate increase. So I think we’re up overnight rates are About 4.5, I believe right now. So what kind of terms are you looking for? If you’re attending today’s market,

Brooke  

still in double digits right now? Yeah, well, that will do. Yeah. So 10 is probably the lowest I will go. Okay. And so usually with people I know, at this point, I did have lazy money sitting around. So I reached out to mortgage broker in the past. However, for that reason I mentioned to you I do want to have more control. Yeah.

Erwin  

So, so registered on title is your now your requirement? Yeah,

Brooke  

now, it’s my requirement, I would actually advise people to do the same. And I do get that now, why the private lending rate hasn’t gone up that much. Because for people who are borrowing your money to the opportunity is probably different from before. So for them to just go up and return because your borrowing costs go up? It’s also harder for them to find the deal, too. Yeah.

Erwin  

So what are you lending on is that these flips? These birds are just for just a bridge finance, it’s mainly flips, mainly flips. And then is there like an LTV target along the value target that you won’t go over?

Brooke  

Actually, no, as long as it makes sense. And if I’m as long to value over 100, if after repair value makes sense, in the right market, where I’ve done flips myself, so if I see the number making sense, I’m not handy. I don’t know what’s behind the wall. I can read inspection reports. However, I haven’t an idea if they can actually make that money back.

Erwin  

Right. Right. All right. All right. So just a warning to the listener. Brooke is sophisticated. This is not for beginners. This is not for beginners. Yeah. Okay. Is that enough disclaimer?

Brooke  

I will also say understand the strategy you’re investing into? Are you doing brute force?

Erwin  

These are markets you understand as well.

Brooke  

Market, you understand what isn’t? If you don’t, it’s not hard to get comps for within your network or find a realtor or find a way to to understand that market,

Erwin  

you’re able to reference check the deal pretty easily. Yeah, right.

Brooke  

Yeah. I’ll tell you one thing about the deal. I closed yesterday, I usually ask for the borrower’s ID. And this time I didn’t. So I was a little worried because they were slightly late. And they didn’t call me or communicate with me. So I got a little worried. However, I usually ask for their ID. That’s one of the due diligence you do. Or yeah,

Erwin  

I asked these questions, because I don’t know why he only saw this article three weeks ago about the specific to Epic Alliance. Basically article in the CBC. So this is not me, folks. I’m not making this up and go go look it up here Alliance CBC. They only had one appraiser, Oh, wow. Vast majority, one appraiser that they controlled. Like as a as in like, for example, when when you and I do borrow money, especially when the bank, we don’t have any influence on who that appraiser is. Right? They usually take out from a list of people they trust, right? No one has an evil influence. It’s usually like kind of random, who is what appraiser there is, so that it’s truly independent appraisal, versus what I’m reading on the CBC article was that it was really like one or two realtors. Yeah. But Emily, like the one appraiser.

Brooke  

The difficult thing is sometimes the investors are not in that market. Right? They have a lot of auto province investor. So I’m thinking if I’m in that position, I trust her the market experts. Yeah.

Erwin  

So for example, you mentioned that you do business in Alberta. I imagine you have quality relationships there.

Brooke  

Yeah, a lot of I actually go to Alberta now because of trust or talent. or twice a year, at least now. And I’ll be honest, because this is in the book. Anyways, I’m completely open. I had a deal that went south, it’s in Winnipeg, and I lost 50,000 was my early investment. So I was really, really nervous. That was probably my second or third investment, since I got educated. Okay, so that was really scary. I did fly over there. And so you didn’t see the property before you did the deal? I didn’t. Okay, I didn’t see the property. Did you have it inspected? Well, they inspected it, and when why learned is wrong, the numbers, the numbers made sense, because it’s a property that had to fire, they have money in the buy, and they had insurance money to to start the belt. And number wise, it made sense. However,

Erwin  

there’s other factors, right? So who appraised it

Brooke  

somebody local there, and this is not your not your appraiser know,

Erwin  

who was a realtor? Was your realtor that our realtor? Is there a realtor? Okay, so they controlled all the information,

Brooke  

they can’t hold all the information. This is not a vending deal. This is a GP LP setup. And the deal wasn’t that big. And I thought at the same

Erwin  

time, I managed to lose

Brooke  

50k 50k

Erwin  

Right. Yeah. Because you were an owner, or you lost this is your investment.

Brooke  

The investment because there’s a GP LP situation or right so

Erwin  

yeah, limited loss. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Even worse than if you weren’t an owner. Like yeah, exactly. As we went there, and then heard epical I’ve heard people lost more money on public lands deals where they were the owner, right? Because they’re equity owners. So people need to remember that you can make a lot of money in real estate. But if the property value goes below goes underwater, as in like, it’s gone. The prices drop more than your downpayment, you owe that money. Right? Yeah. Negative return. Yes. Not just loss of your investment.

Brooke  

Exactly. Because that person who was in charge of the project, she was relatively new as well. And I’m a purse, people kind of person. And when I met him, he was pretty humble. He’s Asian. And we can say that only weekend. And I met him when he was with his mom. So he seems like a good son. So personally, I thought he was a really nice person, which he probably is. However, I think they overspent.

Erwin  

Yeah, I think that’s, that’s been part of the message I’ve been trying to get across with some of the past guests as well, this person may not have been a bad person that just failed to execute. Right? Like failing to execute doesn’t mean to mean doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Just like if you had to steal bread to feed your family. I don’t think that necessary, makes you a bad person. Right, right or wrong. But this person may have had great intentions, just they just failed to execute, which is not uncommon.

Brooke  

It’s not uncommon. However, I was hoping he will come back up. I didn’t hear from him. He declared bankruptcy. And he was a flashy type. He drove a really, really nice, Porsche SUV went to went to visit the property in Winnipeg, a few years back. So there you go.

Erwin  

And that’s a challenge of being an influencer. You know, like, before I became a realtor, I drove a car drove a used Honda Accord. Yeah, if I never became in sales, I would never drive something that cost money.

Brooke  

My first car was a Honda Accord,

Erwin  

anyways, but like, here’s my real estate investing is as soon as I got I switched to BMW, I was doing more business, because they give the image of success. Right, exactly. Yeah. But I’m a frugal person. I don’t like spending on these things. Just the car. I love. I think more than once people understand that their money can make money for them. It makes no sense to spend it on frivolous thing. Exactly. Right. Yeah, that’s fine. I’m a little bit overboard. universitari I’m a little bit overboard. How cheap I am.

Brooke  

Well, that’s also Asian

Erwin  

bowls. But again, like, like, I’m pretty confident I can make consistently 20% on my money in real estate. Right. So why would I want to spend it on something like like, like a Porsche, right, you know, as long as it’s safe, right? So it goes back like the BMW, it made me return. Right? It helped me my business. Exactly. Right. So that to me, it’s kind of like it’s a business expense that actually returned, right? Yes. But if I didn’t have that, I would never drive a vehicle that

Brooke  

expensive. Okay, what do you enjoy, though?

Erwin  

I’m not a car person. So I don’t enjoy those things. I really value consistency, reliability over everything else. Okay. All right. So I do not need flash. And also because I know your Porsche, everything cost more your tires, your maintenance your chain. That’s that’s, that goes against my values.

Brooke  

That’s that’s, that reminds me of something. I grew up in Taiwan. And there was a point in time, if you’re flashy, you might get kidnapped. Oh, my, you know, so like, naturally, I’m subconsciously, I would think why would you want to put yourself out there? Exactly. Same thing with investors. Liabilities, right, right. That’s why we set a corporation. I actually have investors that kept saying, or even new investors coming coming in kept saying, I want everything under my personal name, right. I want to be on title. I think a lot of it is just because you want owning at the same time, they haven’t evaluated the liability, for example, and partly to understand the full picture or the text structure and everything else that that could be the benefit. Yeah,

Erwin  

not uncommon for novices. Yes. It’s just, I always hope that provinces understand like, there’s so much more. Never Never think that you know, everything. I don’t think I know,

Brooke  

I don’t think I do either.

Erwin  

I know, I don’t know, everything. I know. And this to go back like this gentleman in Winnipeg with a Porsche. In my experience, I have over 350 clients, and they almost all fit the profile of the Millionaire Next Door in the book. Right? Humble do not show their money frugal, right. So when someone does show their money, they are an outlier. Okay, from my experience, they are an outlier. And that’s it. That is part of the formula for being an influencer though. So I just think people need to understand that.

Brooke  

Yeah, yeah. All for if it’s something you love. If you’re a car person, probably totally Yeah. Then use your cash flow or use your residual to enjoy what you love to do. Well, here’s

Erwin  

the funny thing like a friend of mine. Lost Ferraris has One doesn’t show up anywhere on social media.

Brooke  

Okay, so many we mutually know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think I think I Okay. All right, I get that.

Erwin  

So it’s, you know, again. So I guess my point is if someone shows flash, there’s usually an agenda behind it. Right? Yes. Right. Yeah. Because again, like, why would you want to display that you have stuff you might get robbed? Or the CRA might come to you? About to? Sadly, yeah. Okay. I think we’ve gotten sidetracked. I think it’s worth it’s worth going back to RTOS. I imagine it’s still a big part of what you coach and teach in your business. In your coaching business. Yeah. Who is it right for who is the right investor to get into rent owns,

Brooke  

I think it’s the avatar of me when I started, if you want cash flow, like you mentioned, you might not want cash flow, you’re actively building your wealth. However, I do think cash flow, if you have the ability to do that, for a lot of people, it’s good to have that cash flow to say that, hey, I can have investment income and not having to worry about my work. Not everybody loves their job, some don’t. So that will make sense for people like that. To get started, it is more creative. So at the same time, I don’t think everybody should just jump in and do it. I’ll give you an example. It’s funny that just happened. Somebody called me to say, this realtor suggested that I go into rental home with him, they have a potential tenant buyer, when I hear the profile of the tenant bar, it just doesn’t work out. Because you want to make sure that tenant buyer will be able to purchase at the end, it doesn’t sound like somebody in the end will be able to purchase because this tenant buyer has a pre construction condo, that’s gonna close which is gonna take up their mortgage room, or things like that. And they’re saying, Oh, I heard cuz of Ontario tener la, the tenant will usually take care of the place that sounds like a good idea. However, you have to consider other things not just because I want to get into investment,

Erwin  

right? Yeah, I think for the listener, understand like real estate, in general is very capitalist industry. People are not my experience, most of the industry does not understand rent to own like your regular everyday realtor does not understand regular everyday mortgage person does not transact on a regular basis. Right. So they do not like for you and I we have very different criteria for what they would consider a good rent to own. Exactly right. Because I’ve literally seen this I’ve seen I had a builder send me me rent to own deals. That made no sense, right? Yeah. Like the the tenant is like two years from retirement. So how are they supposed to get a mortgage? From biotech? So like, my point is, even though I believe in the strategy can work really well. Not every opportunity is truly an opportunity.

Brooke  

No, it’s actually quite a lot of work to find a qualified tenant buyer.

Erwin  

Right? It is what do you think the ratio is like one in 10?

Brooke  

A lot worse, I put down my book. So when I started, I was actually looking back in the days it was Kijiji I think now people use Facebook marketplace more. So the media changes. The point is, at that time, I probably talked to 100 people 10 look promising ended up with one. Wow, that was.

Erwin  

So 100 leads 10 are worth talking to

Brooke  

worth going to the next day. I probably talked to so many people at the time. I don’t even remember. And right. I mentioned I live in a small house. So when I was on the phone with the potential tenant buyers, everybody in the House knew what to say. Usually going to talk about on the phone. Yeah, that’s how many calls I’ve been on. It’s very active. It’s just I wholesalers, when they start they have to talk to how many people were same idea and that very first deal I also wholesaled it to somebody else. wholesaler meaning I got the deal. I packaged it, I found a tenant buyer, they found a market than some other investor takeover.

Erwin  

At what point do you present it to other offer? Investors? Do you have the property in mind already, or we’re

Brooke  

usually when I have the tenant buyer, because very quickly, very quickly, they will start shopping. So very quickly, we’ll have to make offers. It’s better to have investors ready already. Right?

Erwin  

Right. Right, because they’re gonna be they’re the ones who are actually buying the property. Right. So thanks for sharing those ratios. I think people need to understand these things, I guess. So don’t just take the first one that comes across.

Brooke  

Also, in the beginning, everybody was talking about their life problems, right? Because their rent to own tenants, they rent it for a while they are divorced or they’re self employed, their credits are hurt. So they want to tell you their life story. Yes, make the connection. However, I used to spend like 4050 minutes and still didn’t get to the questions I want answered. And the end 15 minutes I could get all that I need to stay, if they most likely will qualify or not. So it’s not a total waste, considering how much time I used to spend on it.

Erwin  

All right, so you are, you’re putting in the sweat to earn your wholesale commission

Brooke  

at the time and especially, I was really active when I started till 2017. So remember the market kept going up. And so at that time, a lot of tenant buyers are interested. I don’t see as many people as interested now, at the same time, you know, even investors when the market goes up, everybody was worried they are in too late. So the tenant buyers, same thing they want to get into a house sooner than later. Especially, they hear other homeowners are profiting, right. Yeah. So there were a lot of people out there time looking into it,

Erwin  

compared to now. So even rent to own tenants for like, FOMO

Brooke  

Oh, yeah. Homeowners are emotional. Yeah. So So So

Erwin  

you’re telling me that their behaviour, emotions were the same as homeowners, homebuyers?

Brooke  

They’re very emotional as homebuyers because when they look at a house, they don’t look at the worst house on the market. Like we’re looking for money in the bar different. Yeah. And sometimes I see a property I’m like, just putting a load of money and it worked really well. Great area. They want it to be like a

Erwin  

home. Turnkey show. Yeah. Something we couldn’t be proud of.

Brooke  

Yeah. So stage nicely and just like home,

Erwin  

and then what markets are you looking at? What rental? Yeah, everywhere.

Brooke  

So I’ll tell you every time people ask an Ontario loan, so as far as outside of Kingston, Durham, which I’m done, Ottawa, Toronto, London, Strathroy. Woodstock, so north to bury metal Maitland, so it really doesn’t matter.

Erwin  

No, it doesn’t matter. I’ve heard of all these cities. versus, you know, you have some minimum criteria, do you not?

Brooke  

Yes, in Ontario slightly harder, because they have to have certain level of income to be able to qualify. And, again, we don’t anticipate them to fail. However, if you hold that property, you have to be able to sell it. If you buy a property worse. Yeah, if you buy a property with 300 people in the neighbourhood, how are you going to act six? So yes, all these considerations

Erwin  

give a number for your minimum population, like 50,000 10,000.

Brooke  

You know, what’s funny, sometimes, because we’ve been qualified for so many different municipalities. I’ve talked to so many different cities, as a result, every study is different. So sometimes I’ll give you an example. Gravenhurst, they might consider us only this many people. But if you consider their surrounding, and it’s a good community,

Erwin  

it’s summer versus winter, it’s very different.

Brooke  

So as long as you understand the market, I will say not like 1000. Nope, that’s kind of small. Another indicator, if sometimes they don’t have city service of sewer and things like that, right?

Erwin  

Not because it’s hard to get financing on it or not on city water

Brooke  

also means that it’s not populated enough. Yeah, it’s things like that. It’s not an absolute no, because the city is moving towards those places, too. So it really depends on the market. Right? Yeah.

Erwin  

So again, you’re approaching this sophisticated not just blindly buying anything.

Brooke  

No, you know, how listeners to they just want a simple three rules. What am I supposed to do? Do I buy or not? If there’s, there’s a septic, it’s things like that, however, really do look at the overall picture, like I mentioned, that’s usually an indicator. It’s a smaller community. However, is the city moving in? Yeah, it’s things like that.

Erwin  

Yeah, the last property, we bought the septic we got a huge discount on the entire neighbourhood was was serviced. Just this one homeowner chose not to connect to city boss services. Right? Yeah. And so it was a massive stigma. Well, it does cost money, right. But yet, instead of like 12 offers, there’s only three offers. So it’s so so for us it was opportunity and our climate a tonne of money.

Brooke  

I think that’s an opportunity. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

Erwin  

then, so yes, you’re right. I love it. I love the point in the traditional financing. So again, it’s not an easy answer.

Brooke  

Yeah. So it depends. It all depends.

Erwin  

So you know, have a good team to make these decisions.

Brooke  

Yeah, I will also want to add something to it. Because I had investor, I think the power teams are there, and you have so many to Power team member, they’re there to advise you, you ultimately still have to make the decision. If one Power team member says no to you, that doesn’t mean that’s your decision. I still think you have to collaborative flee. Make a decision and what makes sense to you. Yeah, like rent to own. It might not make sense to somebody, but it makes sense to me for my journey.

Erwin  

But that’s what I love about this podcast is that, for example, some people get in real estate because they see an ad, they go to a workshop. They’re like what’s taught there, whatever, right? Whatever they teach there might not be right for you. Right, and that’s why like, you know, like some of these workshops are intended for people to go full time real estate investor. So I think it’s good expected information, but 95% of those folks who go will never become full time real estate investors, and probably 80 person I will never buy an investment property.

Brooke  

Yeah, that’s a good point. And also a lot of people coming even to our bootcamp, for example, they want simple answer, just tell me exactly what to do which property to buy. Yeah, it’s

Erwin  

complicated. It’s complicated, especially if you want above market returns, which you and I want. To be a market insider is not easy. It’s, it takes years.

Brooke  

Also, I think a lot of it is just you can, you can decide what you want to do. But it’s a lot of it’s a mindset, right? Really, it’s not, you’re not going to get to it the very next day. However, a lot of people are going to go into different places thinking I’m just gonna get the answer. Get it done the next day.

Erwin  

Can you tell us about your book? Is that a good place for novices to get started?

Brooke  

Yeah, actually, that’s the audience I had in mind. When I wrote the book, he

Erwin  

shot to the camera. Oh,

Brooke  

I haven’t looked at the camera the whole time. That’s okay. No,

Erwin  

no one watches this show.

Brooke  

What’s it called? Financial freedom, the royal way. Why? Because the railway, the railway is because, you know, I work very flexibly, and my parents, my family is in Taiwan. And I think the lifestyle of a lot of people is to be able to travel and have the lifestyle you want. Just like the Royals, you do whatever you want. And I know financial freedom is a term that that’s being overused. However, I think that’s still what people gravitate towards. Yeah, it’s the lifestyle, and also whether we’re away because I’m older compared to a lot of new investors. So if I’m already at the age of the Queen, it’s not the railway.

Erwin  

Age of the King, the current king, she lived forever. So

Brooke  

I don’t mind.

Erwin  

For context you’re sharing before recording, even before the pandemic, you’re in the office once a week was it

Brooke  

once or twice a week is very flexible. It wasn’t always like that. When we started building up the business in Canada, it was a little bit more demanding. However, when I took on the job, my kids were even younger. So I already said, I do have to pick up the kids at three o clock from time to time. So I think even starting then I was already pretty flexible. Right? In a way. Yeah.

Erwin  

So you have a lot location freedom or time from time freedom. Yes, right. Yeah. So I guess when you go to Taiwan, you’re you can still work.

Brooke  

I can still work. However, sometimes our late night meetings, I aim to have all the meetings before 12 o’clock, local time. It could still work.

Erwin  

And then from my experience, like I’ve had clients who had a lot of work flexibility, they were very successful investors because they were to be able to come like, they would be able to come almost on demand. Like I literally had a client who worked in it even remote, but his clientele were small businesses, and you can’t do anything. You can’t shut down their servers and stuff until after five o’clock. So during the workday, he was free to come with me local property. Right. So like a property would come up. I tell him like, Hey, can you come see it? Now? He’s like, Yeah, I’ll be there in 30 minutes. Maybe the first one to offer? And now and now he’s rich and retired?

Brooke  

Yes. Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, it’s how your user time That reminds me, some people probably would just sit around, some people use a flexible time to look at property, build their business, right, or learn some new skills. So I love the flexibility. Ashley, when I started working, my dad passed away in 2017. So I knew I had to fly back on demand, basically. So that’s also another reason I told the company that I wanted the flexibility. And that kind of every time I went back to Taiwan sometimes to extend the trip. So I didn’t know when was his last day. And some people asked me, I don’t quite remember those days, because we were just there. And we were just supporting him at the time. And I really needed that flexibility at the time. So I kind of forced myself having to have enough money to fly back to Taiwan, having to have the time flexibility to go back at the same time.

Erwin  

Are you saying that it was a big trigger moment for you too?

Brooke  

I would think so. I didn’t think that way at the time. However, when you look back how things lined up?

Erwin  

If you could do it all over again. Would you wait for that trigger moment?

Brooke  

Probably not. However, I think I was very lucky. Because I was staying at home for 10 years. So I got to spend quite some time with them. Every time I went back, it was around three months before I took on the job. And even around the time he passed away. I still went back around at least 1233 months every time I was there. Right? Right. Yeah.

Erwin  

Okay, we’re way over time, bro. Thank you for being so generous. I do have I didn’t even ask you but the market that we’re in right now. So you guys coach and mentor a lot of students what are you telling them but this time so again, recording February 2, is now this bad time to be in real estate good time. Where are your students hearing?

Brooke  

So even you and I we’re still investing? I do think we have to look at things differently now. It’s no different than when I Started, everybody was saying the property price are too high, I cannot secure anything. I cannot do anything. Now there’s

Erwin  

the rates are too high. The rates are too high.

Brooke  

Now the rates are too high, the property value went down. Are you getting into take that advantage? Yeah. And we always say here is your strategy first. Second market property is the very last thing you look at. So if this strategy doesn’t work, switch to a different market that could work. Finally, find the property in that market. So you don’t just rush in and say the market is restricting me? Then pivot? Yeah.

Erwin  

Look, thanks so much for being so generous with your time. Any final words you want to share?

Brooke  

Um, we have so much to talk

Erwin  

about. Yeah, we have four hours.

Brooke  

Yeah, that’s right. So reach out to me, I’m really open to talk to new investors, because I think I’m in the position to share and to contribute at this point. That’s why I wrote the book. Because, really, I wasn’t aiming to make any money. So I’m lucky that I’m actually not losing money at all. I broke even a while ago, so anything beyond thanks, everybody, and I’m easy to reach out to any social media. Brooke Shang I’m the only one. Not the only one. It’s just Brooklyn.

Erwin  

br o k.

Brooke  

There’s no EBOKE there is me there is any br o ke s h a n g. Otherwise, there’s broke?

Erwin  

No, no. But yeah, you see, Brock is spelt like Brooke Shields. Okay. Yeah.

Brooke  

That’s why I have the name Ashley. Because I didn’t know too many English names, and she was popular in Asia.

Erwin  

One more time,

Brooke  

well, where can people get the book? Amazon is the easiest way. What’s it called financial freedom, the royal way. And then the subtitle is Seven Commandments. I put a number in there because then people think it’s doable. When you put down number seven, number four, they kind of see their system up. It’s not overwhelming. So seven chapters.

Erwin  

Fabulous. And now for our listener listeners all of this on the show notes as well. Okay, all right, because books gonna send it to me. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you Ron.

Erwin  

Before you go, if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing by 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 for the 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 are 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 and 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.

 

 

To Listen:

 

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Youtube: https://youtu.be/0CROG_WA0Ps

 

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Erwin  

Hello, and welcome to another episode The truth about real estate investing show little Canadian podcasts meant only for Canadian real estate investors, which makes up like one 2% of attaining population, the number 39th ranked country in terms of population. Yet, this little show manages to punch above its weight, with our number 81 ranking in all of iTunes in the business category. So that’s not even the real estate category, let alone investing category, let alone real estate investing, but rather all of business, we’re not even that well rated. Because we have numerous haters. And to the annoyance of my team, I almost never asked for five star reviews, which are much appreciated. I do appreciate all the kind words that people believe that believe on reviews, I do read them all. So I should I should ask for more, as the algorithms actually use reviews and shares and subscriptions to make this show more prominent, prominent on the interwebs. And I don’t know how this all works. But yeah, the more positive stuff more sharing happens, the more iTunes and whoever else, Spotify, YouTube will make this show more available to others, more visible to others. And that’s reached more people who want to learn the actual truth about real estate investing, versus someone who has an agenda sell to sell garbage investments. That’s the honest truth. The truth about real estate investing is a fund’s investments are garbage, they will eventually catch up to you. For example, Paramount equity financial corporate Corporation, I don’t think I need to be worried about being sued by them. Hopefully not Paramount equity and Financial Corporation, they were in the news just recently as the receiver. So the accounting company, which is taking control of the fund is currently suing the developer partner of paramount for stealing funds from the retail investors who are friends of mine, many of them were friends of mine, were just average hardworking, everyday Canadians, as someone who’s filed the case closely because again, I have friends in investment, I have clients invested in the whole fund and investments look terrible. Same with the fund management, hence they were shut down by the Ontario Securities Commission. Rightly so as the fund managers changed the investment focus of their private fund, they weren’t disclosing that they had changed. The original intention of the fund was that it would only fund second mortgages, the funds would be used for private lending on second mortgages on people’s principal residences. Instead, the fund managers pivoted to fund large land developments to build large projects like retirement homes, or converting properties into something else. Again, large complicated multimillion dollar projects that would take years to complete some of them without even permits or the zoning to do so. So the underlying investment changed completely, while offering what I consider and I think most pretty much everyone would consider very low returns to the investor compared to the amount of risk they took on. I take responsibility to learn from this experience. So this may never happen again, to anyone I care about. My lesson is to invest in oneself. I read a lot, a lot of courses and then the day Terry and I we control our assets, as in 90% of our real estate portfolio is under our own names are under controlled and owned by corporations that only cherry and I own. Yes, being more active means more effort and time. But I avoid losses, which is rule number one by Warren Buffett don’t lose money. And we’ve even though we were very boring, I consider our investment quite boring. Same with our clients or clients investing is fairly boring. It’s systematic, it’s repeatable, repeatable and by anyone and they’ve achieved world class results. In turn I educate myself gain experience and create more value for our coaching clients. My business the our real estate team is a bit different than others, though, that we are licenced realtors. And we’ve coached our 40 or something clients into execution of world class investment property. And the numbers show excluding the pandemic run up our clients average five year return from between 2015 to January 2020 was about 341%. That works out to about 68%. Again, this data was done internally by surveying our own clients. We know what our clients own. And we’re pretty good at estimating what those properties are worth. Again, that data was 2015 to January 2020, before the pandemic run up. While the music is pouring out stories of folks struggling to afford higher interest rates on their mortgages. My clients are making travel plans and retirement plans and travelling all retired and some are even buying houses for their kids at these lovely prices that we’re seeing right now. At the wealth hacker conference. Our keynote speaker just the it’s so shared that his secret to success was to pour his heart and soul into each project, whether it be a private jet company, or a marathon through death valley. Yeah, I think you need to give everything you got to train for a marathon through Death Valley, you know, plus 40 degree weather for me, you better believe I poured my heart and soul into managing our eight figure real estate portfolio. And in terms of lessons for our friends and clients to create their own means towards financial peace. No, it’s not easy. But it sure beats losing money and having taxes, governments and inflation eat away at our wages and savings, multiple streams of income. That’s the only way. And it’s only getting worse as my bold predictions for 2023 and beyond. Speaking of bold predictions, in contrast with the Bank of Canada and US reserves are saying my liberal prediction is we’ll see an interest rate cut sooner than they say. So. And this is actually interesting for the first time and as far as I can remember, again, I read pretty much everyone’s economic predictions, I find that I’m usually I’m usually moderate. I’m usually moderate. But I find that I seem to be more. The term is dovish, I believe I believe the market will turn around foremost. And this is like the first time that’s I’m more optimistic than most of what’s out there in the media. My team and I will be sharing more predictions for Kenyan real estate on January 28. At our in person I one meeting, we do have a new format with all the folks working from home are focusing more on and more on networking this year. So you don’t want to miss this. You never know what connection or introduction you’ll receive that will change the trajectory of your career, or career or investing career. Want to learn how big time professional apartment buildings invests, are you interested in multifamily investing, then you don’t want to miss our guest speaker from Equitana Lawrence propone. I’ve asked Lawrence to share his share the benefits of investing in a real estate investment trust, and how the company how their company invests specifically, how do they find deals, and what numbers of returns they need before even considering making an offer. What I want for our attendees is to understand the relative difference between investing passively, versus being completely active. In my humble opinion, one must earn at least three times more than the passive rate to consider being active. Plus, I know many are looking for cash flow. And REITs often make regular cash distributions. So you want to be there, January 28, doors at 8:30am optional mastermind to follow after that, and I will be there as well. From the questions that I’m getting in my email and from you my 17 listeners in my DMs. There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty. And honestly, my team and I can likely be a lot of help. We’ve been at this for a little bit. And if you’re on my email list newsletter, then you’re already receiving events to our invites. And if not, that’s just silly. www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side and you’re good to go. Just this past week, we actually just gave a free webinar on how to sell a tenant ID property. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. And it was great presentation. If you’re interested in how to maximise your income on when you exit your investment property. And as tenanted, you want to have watched that presentation. And honestly, January, but Happy New Year to my 17 listeners. I wish I knew all your names as I showed you out. On the personal note. December wasn’t a fun month for Terry and I even with the wealth hacker conference behind us, we couldn’t get away on vacation that we didn’t try. We had a Caribbean cruise booked as we had credits leftover from 2018. And we had to use them before they expire in a pile of Aeroplan miles accumulated over the last three years because we didn’t fly. Thanks COVID. Unfortunately, on December 16, my daughter Robin complained of an ear H. We swim a lot. So I suspected an ear infection confirmed by an ER doctor at 11am before our 6am flight to Florida, so we had to cancel everything. We had a little insurance. But I found out so he got some money back some money back. But my Aeroplan miles are gone. And yeah, it’s so we still have to make a travel insurance claim was made we still have to get paid. More importantly, we were not going on a badly needed vacation. But we booked everything again for the second week of January. But unfortunately the cruise cost 20% More than the one we cancelled. We do like to travel for cheap. Hence we had originally chosen the cheapest week. But we made the best of the situation aboard a gorgeous ship we ate at least for myself. I weigh too much as the food was excellent. We took full advantage of the complimentary baby City Railway than physically sampling attended the most of the time. My daughter did crafts. Every day she bring home like five pieces of crafts. We hit the beach and the highlight for me was taking the kids snorkelling and open water for the first time. Brewster to do the experience quite well on pretty quickly. Robin How long have my arm the whole time? It was kind of sweets. But kids are used to murky lakes and Ontario.

 

Erwin  

And backyard pools are so small and you can’t see much so it wasn’t a big deal to me, but For them, yes, it was a brand new experience topping into a clear open water that looks like it goes on forever and all the aquatic life was a bit of a shock to their senses. We are but grains of sand compared to the grand expanse that is the Atlantic Ocean. We saw sea turtles, we saw a Stingray, my daughter and I were early to one beach and we were fortunate enough to see an octopus. Unfortunately, no one else on the beach saw it. But fortunately enough, I was looking I was looking in these coral crevices and these hollows in the coral and I happen to see an octopus pretty sizable octopus. It was hiding but I managed to see it. tardiness eight arms dive scuba dive quite a bit. So I know a bit about how to look around and find those goodies. And so we were the only ones done tends to be the only two on the beach to find the octopus. And later we saw puffer fish as well. So it was super cool. Very rewarding. I’ll count that as a Memory Mate with our clients on sorry, clients, kids, kids. Yes, kids are important. It’s not just about business. To this week’s show, we have something different in that our guest is a successful entrepreneur in the world of business and not real estate investing yet, so don’t get mad folks. I’m warning you now. This episode is is not just about real estate investing. But we have an entrepreneur expert who does have. So first off, I view real estate investors as entrepreneurs in the real estate industry, either as realtors, mortgages, marketers and even investors, you’re still a small business owner in race. Nick Kindler is the chapter president of entrepreneurs organisation, a private membership of seven figure entrepreneurs that cherry and I also belong to. As a member of the real estate community, I find learning from entrepreneurs outside of our real estate community, just as helpful. So I learned from both areas from those communities. And just to broaden my learning, I also see the all these memberships being promoted memberships and masterminds that cost 20 to 30,000 or more per year. But I wanted for you my 17 listeners to be aware of other mastermind membership groups that are available, and entrepreneurs organisation which I’ve been part of for three years, I’m big fan of and it cost less than 10,000 a year. So the value in my opinion is there who better to talk to about entrepreneurship than our very own chapter president. Again, kindler, who happens to be my client who’s working with my team member, Chris, the tumtum hook to acquire all the investment properties. Nick is here today to share his experience as an EO member, the president, his entrepreneurial journey, which includes a sadly, a 4.5 million business plan, a $4.5 million business that did go bankrupt, unfortunately, but more importantly, how he bounced back, and also there are lessons in there. So again, I would like you all to avoid the same mistakes. FYI, failing businesses, losing money and letting stuff go is not a fun experience. So do make sure you take notes. If you’d like to learn more about entrepreneurs organisation, please reach out to Nick on his company website can learn and company.com/contact where you can hit me up on email and bar DM, you can look up your own local chapter, you can really just google the name of your city and entrepreneurs organisation. I’ll be at the open house that Nick mentioned on March 9, and you’re likely in downtown Toronto. So I hope to see you there. I’ve got a link in the show notes for it. Nick’s consulting business so to explain an entrepreneur experience, his current business is a consulting business that helps innovative leaders communicate better. For example, I attended Nick’s two day workshop on how to give a TED talk, which was excellent where Nick had deconstructed for us what goes into an excellent talk. And then walk us through how to write our own and also how to deliver it, how to deliver a stage presence. So we learned about storytelling, about joke writing about being vulnerable about body language, learn all those things in a two day workshop. Nick is also the author of impact, simplify, transform and perform pitches and presentations available at www dot impact book.ca Without further ado, I give you Nick Kindler. Hey, what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Nick  

Well, podcasting just sitting here with you is keeping me busy today. No, this is great. Because today I looked at today is kind of like almost like a day off. I have a conversation with you and then a couple of quick calls and then I get to go and be part of my forum group which is part of EO which I’m sure will we’ll talk about at some point. But what’s keeping me busy. I have amazing clients that I get to coach one on one webinars and I’m running workshops that we provide to help leaders become better communicators. I just had a great off site with my team this week planning the the next quarter and we have some really great consulting clients. We’re working with two so I am full tilt like each day is full, full full. I hit the pillow and I fall asleep pretty quick. And I’m having a lot of fun.

 

Erwin  

So I started reading The Miracle Morning again. You’re familiar with Doing what sort of a Miracle Morning Hal Elrod. He’s a 5am. Guy. Yeah. Okay, time to get up. Just curious.

 

Nick  

530 every day. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

Okay. All right, show us the truth about real estate investing. So tell me the truth. Do you get up like on fire motivated?

 

Nick  

What’s my routine? Is that what you’re asking? Or is it

 

Erwin  

like quick just because I just started, started getting up early again.

 

Nick  

So I do I don’t wake up on fire. No, no, I’m I’m fog. But I have a process to get me going. And it’s now been almost a year that I’ve done this process. And it’s changed my mindset completely. Yeah. And maybe it’s kind of taken from the Miracle Morning. So I wake up at 530. I write in my journal for about 20 to 30 minutes, free form thoughts. But I start first with three things I’m grateful for. And so I write those down. And I try and make them different every day, meaning I can’t repeat what you know what I said before. So I’m always trying to find things that I’m grateful for. And then I freeform thoughts. Sometimes they’re like just garbage. It’s just garbage out on the page. And sometimes it’s the impetus for things that I speak a bit, and keynotes they deliver. Or sometimes it’s just problem solving stuff that I’ve got to deal with during the day. And I’m thinking about it already. And then putting it to paper, putting it to paper, a book just like this, and I’m writing a couple of pages down, and then I close it up. And I have a cup of coffee. I Wordle.

 

Erwin  

All that game. Yeah,

 

Nick  

I would do that. If I didn’t get to it today, because the day was a little different. But and then I go for a run or I bike, try and do push ups and sit ups and crunches, I don’t do like a million of them, I just do a small set. And I have not looked at my phone in my email yet. Just to be clear, I’ve worded I haven’t turned everything on, then I go for a walk with my dogs and throw the ball for them come back, then I you know, get going, I either get to the office or I open up my laptop and I start start thinking about the day. If I’m rushed to get to a client, sometimes things get shortened. But for the most part, that’s my process.

 

Erwin  

How long you’ve been doing this?

 

Nick  

I started that process. The journaling. Exercise has always been there. But the journaling and gratitude has been the last 1011 months, okay. And it really has changed my life look at really, I used to be a New York Times addict headlines at a Globe and Mail addict, I would look at what was happening in the world politics. And it fed into a stress of an overall feeling of negativity. And I still look at that stuff, but on my terms and at different times more regimented. So I have a diet of that stuff. And it just, it didn’t serve me. I feel that I’m still well read. I understand what’s going on in the world. But I do it on my timeline when I’ve gotten things out of the way that I want to get out of the way.

 

Erwin  

So that’s not why I invited you on the show. Okay. Well, I think it’s important to bring up because I’ve spoken to a lot of people 2022 is not a good year for many, mostly mental health terms. So for many people’s mental health terms, like no one likes these high interest rates, my community’s a bit divided. Yeah. In that, like, my clientele is amazing. Like everyone knows if you’ve owned property for five or more years, you’ve you’ve done amazing. Yeah, right. So that’s my, that’s my clientele if I want to go outside of my circles, and like other people were like, generally newer, yeah, a lot of them are getting hurt or hurt financially. Sure. But overall, I think mental health has been was a bad year for 2022. It’s just my sense is what I see out there. Well,

 

Nick  

I would say I would say yes. And so is 2021. And so is 2020. And so what I would I prophesize is that we are now seeing ripple effects of what’s happened from COVID. Like there was a there was a lot of stress. I mean, last time I was here, when you showed me around your office, which is awesome. By the way, he was quiet. It was like two of us here, maybe three. And now there’s full house almost like it’s pretty busy. And that was during COVID. Right? Or we were allowed to connect. We weren’t breaking any rules or anything like that. We weren’t on lockdown, but it was quiet people were not. That has an impact on people. When your life comes to a screeching halt, financially, socially, psychologically, that has an impact on people. And I think there’s waves of change and that it comes back and people, it impacts people. So you mentioned interest rates, such as the current ripple, that it may be an impetus for people going, Oh, I’m not good. I’m not doing so well. And I would say just because you mentioned mental health. If anybody is struggling with it, get help. There’s lots of Help to be had, I have a very close family member that struggles deeply with mental health. And I will be the first to say don’t wait for Bell Let’s Talk Day. Talk about it. Now there’s nothing wrong. If you’ve got a cold, and you tell people you’re sick. That’s honesty and truth about your how you’re doing. If you’re feeling very, very low, because you’re suffering from depression, that is the same thing and talk to people about it, get help, you can get help

 

Erwin  

people will help you. So that’s actually really,

 

Nick  

that’s that’s my soapbox. Sorry.

 

Erwin  

That’s really good segue for entrepreneurs. Organisation. EO. Yeah. Which you are the president of the Toronto chapter. Currently the President? Yes. Which is the largest chapter in Canada. Like quite a bit, isn’t it?

 

Nick  

No, we are the second largest to Vancouver. territory, Vancouver, and I believe Edmonton is a close third. And they’re really great chapter as well. Lots of great chapters all across Canada. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

I imagine we have more chapters as a province than other provinces. Where it’s fragmented. Yeah. I mean, that’s all I get. We’re just doing we’re doing off by point, though, is that? You know, I’ve been part of masterminds for years. Yep. Right. And those have been my places to connect, and to talk about problems that we face in business in life. And in my experience, so I’ve been part of EO now. I joined in 2020. January 2020.

 

Nick  

Yeah, so you joined, like, eight months after I did.

 

Erwin  

Right. Right. Yeah. And then the shit hit the fan. Immediately after? Yeah, it was hilarious. So for less than one week. So just a backup for the listeners benefit entrepreneurs organisation, what you’re no better than I am. You’re the president.

 

Nick  

Go for it. Man. I’d love to hear you say it. And then and then I will course correct. If need be,

 

Erwin  

please, please, just some basic highlights. It’s a private organisation, I tell people is basically a co op. It’s a nonprofit, nonprofit, okay, that’s probably a better term. So basically, does not make money. That’s probably a good reason why the cost is very low. It’s been around for quite some time to join minimum a million dollars, revenue us a year, you have to apply. And it’s, it’s quite a bit of commitment.

 

Nick  

It is a commitment, but it’s worth its weight in gold. Is that as a phrase we can say on an investment podcast. It really is, though, it is probably, you know, I’ve got some things that I all say like were some of the best, you know, I love that question. Like, what are the best things you ever bought? Right? You know, and I will say, my dogs, like they’ve been a big, some of them have been a big suck on on financials sometimes. But they brought us so much joy and happiness. And it’s not a thing that we get that appreciates. It’s a thing that I love, right? Or a dog is, you know, a creature that I love, EEO, one of the best investments I’ve ever made in myself. And so you did a great job. It is it’s nonprofit. In Toronto, we’re about 130 members strong. And it’s growing every day, every day, we have people applying and it’s member vetted. So you apply you do have to have a minimum of 1 million US in revenue for your business. And you also have to apply and be able to show that you live the values of EO. And then we vet your members you’re interviewed, you’re vetted by the board, you’re vetted by all members. And then you get to join this amazing not just local group of EO Toronto, but the region and the global community. And it’s a powerful community. And I think I’m going to keep going if that’s alright, and explain why it’s a powerful community. Because before you

 

Erwin  

do that, yes, sorry. Go ahead. It’s been a while since I’ve been tested on what the values were. So

 

Nick  

don’t do this. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me. I’m gonna I’m gonna have to refer to them. Because I cannot remember off the top of my head. I know be bold. Yeah, people, you know, and I’ve turned my, my phone off in order to do this. I should have known you’re going to ask me, but I’m going to look them up.

 

Erwin  

He’s had to fill these out in my application. Right? Okay, so the values are yours.

 

Nick  

It’s brutal, because I’m terrible with these kinds of recall. So I’m sorry to all my EEO members that I didn’t remember this, but trust and respect, thirst for learning, which is one of the reasons why I love this organisation. Think big, be bold, and together we grow. And that last one is a huge one for me as the current president, our theme for the year is stronger together. You know, we’ve came out of COVID and I want people to recognise as this community that we really are the sum of our parts, like we are stronger when we work when we collaborate when we share, and we grow together. And, you know, one of the amazing things about EO and those values is that you have to have those when you get in. And then one of the things that I’m doing today is participating in one of the, one of the really the 10 polls, if you will, of EEO is forum. And so when I leave here, today, I drive into the city. And I’m going to have a three and a half, four hour meeting with eight individuals, all who embrace these values, and all will share what is going on in their personal lives, in their family lives and in their business lives. Because as entrepreneurs, we can sit here and you know, we didn’t know each other and we didn’t have this ego connection. What might happen is, hey, nice to meet you. How are you? Good. What do you do? I do this, what do you do? Great. Tell me more about your business. Here’s what we do. Here’s what we do. Great, superficial. But

 

Erwin  

no, definitely want to put on social media.

 

Nick  

Exactly. Exactly. But because you and I know each other through EO. And we’ve met we we’ve not we’re not informed, but we’ve met at events and we’ve chatted before I can remediate. We’re sworn to privacy, and we’re sworn to privacy, we can dive quickly and deeply into challenges, real challenges, like how are you doing? Cash Flows concerning me right now? Oh, well, have you experienced this or this? Oh, I haven’t. Why? Well, because when I experienced this, let me share what and this is a big part of what EO forum is all about experience sharing, we can get to a better place faster. So my relationships with people in my form, are incredible. But I also have friendships, real deep friendships with people that I sit on the board with, that I’ve met, just through learning events that are other members, that I also trust, I trust that what I share with them is not going to be broadcast to other people or shared at a cocktail party, that they get what I’m going through, because likely they’ve either experienced it, or they know other people that have experienced it. Because I’ve

 

Erwin  

gone to the forum training just recently, again, no nice, just the online stuff. And for folks, just to clarify, again, the four by forum, the more common term, the mastermind, except that we are we are we have a defined process process, we’ve had to go through mandatory training, our form is committed to 10 meetings are more commonly referred to as mastermind meetings. And also we each are required to share our what we call Top 5%. Yeah, or the 5%. Right. And I love it to top 5% And bottom five percents. Right, right, the good news and the terrible news that you don’t share with anyone else, right. And so

 

Nick  

it’s cathartic. I mean, that’s the word that comes to mind. It’s cathartic, you can celebrate those wins. And there is a process by which you do this, like if somebody in my forum group and it doesn’t happen very often is skating by and not sharing the real 5%. And that that 5% is what’s really going on beneath the surface. What’s really going on in your family, what’s really going on up here in your in your brain, and what’s really going on with your business. And if everything’s great, then I’m not as interested, I’m not looking for drama, and tragedy, although we’ve supported and we will support people who are going through tough times. And that’s one of the reasons why we are there we are there at forum, or they can pick up the phone and I know I can pick up the phone and call any of them at any time, by the way, to who will support me because they know I’ve got their back and I’ve and they’ve got mine.

 

Erwin  

So I’d say so these are some of the deepest relationships people have anywhere in their lives, sometimes even more deeper than their spouses. Sometimes even deeper than some cases.

 

Nick  

In some cases. Yeah, that’s very true. And, and I would say that’s unfortunate. For some, and also what a wonderful opportunity. Because it’s together we grow, right, let’s grow let’s learn how we can have better relationships and and look, EO we’ve just touched on forum but I’ve talked about how we’ve chatted and met many times and learning opportunities. We’re gonna go to the one coming up next week. And you know, we host incredible learning opportunities once in a lifetime learning experiences for entrepreneurs that want to take their business or their personalised or their families to the next level. I know that sounds like an odd way to position it. But, you know, we’ve, we can have speakers on negotiation and marketing, but we can also have speakers that come in and talk about how to have better relationships. How to better sex lives. I mean, it’s it’s everything.

 

Erwin  

It’s comprehensive. It’s holistic. Yeah, right. We had the speaker there. We’re sorry, the author of five love languages, I think was his some pretty heavy pandemic times there might have been two years ago, I forget. Yeah. Yeah. And that was awesome. And it was available to everyone. Was it not? Yep. Every evil, every evil member across the globe? Yes. And yeah. And again, we got the author. Yeah, that’s pretty, that’s pretty. And it didn’t cost us any extra.

 

Nick  

That’s the thing is, you know, there is an investment when you first joined. But it’s actually not ridiculous considering? Well, I can tell you that within minutes of joining this organisation, I was able to find the right lawyer to help me with something I was able to find the right, I was looking for something for my home. So I got a supplier that through EO that had the right supplies, and an incredible cost. So I saved 1000s of dollars there. And I saved hours and hours of stress and probably more than 1000s of dollars on the lawyer. And that’s all within six months of joining you. Not to mention the support that I received from my forum group. So I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, this is my little pitch if you’re an entrepreneur in Toronto, but I can’t even go beyond if you’re an entrepreneur in a major city centre. And you’re in the States or anywhere around the globe, there’s very likely an e o chapter in your city, we’re all over the world, I want to say over 140,000 members across the globe, that number is slightly off, I think maybe 135. However, if you’re building a business, that’s about a million dollars in revenue at US dollars, or if you’re close to it, go and look for that EO chapter because number one, there’s an accelerator programme e o a entrepreneurs organisation accelerator as part of it for you. And it’ll take you from 250 500 up to a million and then you can join EO. So just to

 

Erwin  

add in there from my experience of entrepreneur, yo a the accelerator programme, I’d highly recommend it for anyone, especially if they did not do business school. If they had no formal business training. It is Chris’s crazy and expensive. Yeah. And the people that are in it and the teach it. So understand. I came from business school. Ah, okay. The people who are teaching are largely academics. Yeah. They may have a business as a consultant as somebody operated a business of one themselves. Right. But they were never in our world. Yeah. So they don’t have the same experiences. They can never talk to you about like how to fire someone right now. Things like that. Versus again, yo, a Do you remember the price? Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m putting you on the spot. Show we do need to talk about the investment.

 

Nick  

I don’t remember the price for ELA. I’m sorry. I don’t but here’s the thing. If you want to know more about eo will my email be

 

Erwin  

your email, I wouldn’t recommend giving okay.

 

Nick  

If you want to go to if you want to go to that, go to your website, or your website, you can go to my website then you can go to info at Kindler and company.com. Got it. I’m happy to share with you anything and point you in the right direction. There’s chapters all over the world. There’s chapters in Toronto, there’s chapters in southwestern Ontario, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, I keep buying Well, yeah, and ELA is a great way to get yourself fast as an accelerator to a larger business. And then if you want to sustain and scale your business, and have a good life, be a good person be a happier person. eo is the ticket. I’ll share a quick story just on this because I never actually thought about that specifically, until recently, Shane Bennett and his wife Shawn, were over for dinner, just before the holidays. And when I sat on the board, serving under Shane became very close to them. I just really liked him as a leader I follow and I he’s he’s been a good friend and a mentor as I’ve taken on this role of a president of the chapter. It’s pretty amazing. He’s an He’s an amazing man. I love him. And, and his wife’s amazing too. We’ve all become very good friends. And I raised the glass I said, Hey, Shane, I just want to say thank you for being such a good friend and a good leader and my wife’s interrupted me which I thought was kind of weird because I I’m gonna go further and she goes, working with you was exceptional for NEC and I just need you to know that EO changed his life. And I was like, my wife is not dramatic at all. She said, it was changed him. She’s a better leader. He’s a better entrepreneur. He’s a better person, ever since he’s joined this organisation. And I sat back and went, Okay, I guess I better stick around.

 

Erwin  

I did not authorise that statement.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Well, in that that means a lot. She’s not a highly emotive and declarative person. Like, she’s certainly speak her mind. But I found it interesting that she felt compelled to say that and

 

Erwin  

I should clarify, I mentioned to you before we were recording that, even though we’re talking about entrepreneurs and businesses, I always consider real estate investors to be small business operators. So they are, by definition, an entrepreneur, just that they’re in the industry of real estate investing. Yeah, absolutely. So I think this everything we’re talking about today applies to them. Accelerator programme, like has, like the accelerator days, everything that they have for the for each year. Yeah, for each year. And basically the main pillars of business, like cash flow management. Yep. Which is a big problem these days are who the people they call people but more people out here, management people management, more people know it as HR. Yep. Strategy day and execution. Yeah. All right. And it’s two year cycle to go through. So every two years, it’s those done there. We start over. Yeah. But again, like I attended these, I paid a lot of money for business school. People are paying way more today because I’m old. So I paid. I paid a lesson fleet and trace for business school. People today are paying like, double triple what I paid. And what what do charges for, for these courses? Like?

 

Nick  

Yeah, that’s great. And there are a lot of members of EO that like to go to those just for learning and bring their staff. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Erwin  

Because I bring my staff member to next week’s workshop on marketing from a branding. Yeah, I’m excited for that. Me too. Yeah. I don’t think what else wants to ask my experience as well feel free to reach out the usual Pat channels. But yeah, that’s enough about yo. So actually, it’s great to have you come on talk about yo, because I haven’t been a member that long. And I’ve been in business that long either. But your successful entrepreneur.

 

Nick  

Define successful entrepreneur? It’s hard to say. Yeah, exactly.

 

Erwin  

And also, we have this confidentiality thing.

 

Nick  

Yeah, absolutely. But before we switch gears, I just I do want to just say one more thing about EO, which is that you get out of it, what you put into it, I think it’s really important. It’s like, if you sit there and expect everything to come to you. It’s like anything in life. It won’t. And I’ll just finish by the I know, we’re switching gears into entrepreneurship, and I’m happy to but I just I think I’d be remiss to say, you know, the, the working the forum experience that I’ve had the going to learning days and learning experiences, going to the conferences, going on convexity was a major back city, and Victoria is coming up in June, going to I get to go to Cape Town to go to the global leadership conference in April. There’s all kinds of learning. Also, because I volunteered to be on the board, which was also a growth and learning opportunity. I think it would be remiss if I didn’t say, you know, it’s a wonderful organisation, it thrives on the volunteer on the volunteer community. And so I’m one of those many, many volunteers. And I guess I would just say, join and get involved. And also for all those volunteers at EO that may be listening to this. Thank you. It’s awesome. Thank you for everything you do. Because you

 

Erwin  

are a volunteer president to absolutely you don’t get paid like a $400,000 salary.

 

Nick  

No, no, I don’t. In fact, I think I might be giving the equivalent of that in time. All joking aside, I love it. And it’s been very rewarding and continues to be

 

Erwin  

my last point about the topic. Is this why the cost is so low is because all these talented people are volunteering their time. Yeah.

 

Nick  

And the people you get to meet not just from your, your chapter, but the region and around the globe are exceptional leaders.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, and this the drilling, this has surprised but I’m paying less than 10,000 for just the membership and that includes many events does include like the bigger ones like Victoria, Quebec City, but the local ones almost Everything’s Included. Yeah. Including with the holiday party, which is a great party at the at the Grand bed. Okay, enough about that. So again, the show is about investment though, before self development, invest in yourself. The value here is incredible.

 

Nick  

Absolutely. Yeah. And again, reach out to either one of us if you’re interested in in learning more,

 

Erwin  

actually. I don’t know how it works these days is pre pandemic, other members invited me out to events? What is available to people interested in attending events? Well, who are non members

 

Nick  

if people are interested, first of all we’re going to be doing. I don’t know when this comes out Monday. Oh, it comes out Monday. Wow. Okay, so in March, and I might want to open up my calendar and look at the specific date, I believe it’s March the ninth. And I keep turning my I think it’s March the ninth bear with me while I look, we’re going to be doing a test drive, which is an opportunity for you see ya March, the ninth See, sometimes my recall works. It’s called the entrepreneurial experience. And it’s going to be downtown Toronto, at the national club. And Oh, fancy, yeah, we’re doing a national club event. And we’re going to walk people through what our strategic partners have to offer in terms of complementary services that can help their businesses. But beyond that, we’re also having regional leadership from entrepreneurs organisation, talk about all of the amazing things that you have access to that you probably don’t know you have access to. Like, there’s amazing discounts and and services that we as members get access to, like dozens and dozens and dozens of offers, that some of the things we use every day in our business and we may not be aware of. And before it, I’m inviting people who are interested to come to what I call the test drive, or an I don’t call it, it’s called a membership test drive, where you can come and experience and hear a little bit about what eo is all about. And experience a little bit about what this forum thing is all about. And then you can stick around and join us for the entrepreneurial experience event at the national club. So if at dinner and drinks, dinner drinks, schmoozing, you get to meet partners that we work with, you get to meet all the members, and you get to meet the regional leadership too. So it’s a real opportunity. If you’re interested, and you have a business that qualifies, you should definitely come for that 90 minute test drive before and then come afterwards for the party. Sorry, the event I should say, it’s not a party, there’s a little bit of party, but a lot of experience as well.

 

Erwin  

It’s like open food and bar, this kind of a party.

 

Nick  

And if you’re interested in that, just reach out to me and I’ll make sure that you get an invite. All right, awesome. info at Kindler and company.com.

 

Erwin  

I’ll have that in the show notes, folks. If you’re driving, you don’t need to do whatever. Alright, see ya. Yes, I would define you as a successful entrepreneur. Thank you, but hasn’t always been successful. But let’s look at the successes. Your big time. You’re quite wealthy. I bring it up because a lot of marketers are out there telling people quit your job. I’m self employed. Yeah. Not everyone’s fit to be so agreed to be self employed. You know, as an example, a friend of mine a bit of a mentor. When I used to work for IBM, His thing was just even be a consultant to go from employed to becoming country or consultant. He said, I need double. And he didn’t pay double. Because all the BS that comes with being consultant, for example, collecting. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So I don’t argue the same for anyone for being in business for yourself as well. You should be trying to earn at least double what you earn as a salary. And then I’ll even throw it in like, like, this is not the time to try to become a full time real estate investor. It’s just everything is so much more difficult than ever. Right. So yeah, you chose the difficult path.

 

Nick  

I did. I didn’t know. I have chosen it. And I’m glad I did. I guess this is the pathless the road less travelled. Right?

 

Erwin  

Can you tell us about maybe your first business?

 

Nick  

Sure. My first business was I was in comedy. And we can talk about that too, if you’d like. But I was in comedy. I’d had this experience as writer and director and performer in a comedy troupe. And I think either I think it was around that time that we were my wife was pregnant as like, I think I need to start making more money. And so I started I had this idea that hey, we could start selling what we’re doing for fun and making a little bit of money on it to corporate audiences. So literally being a competitor to the second city, like who do does corporate improv etcetera. So improv workshops, custom performances for large events,

 

Erwin  

just apologies in case anyone doesn’t not familiar with Second City. I know Second City for going to improv shows. And they have an incredible list of alumni.

 

Nick  

Yeah, I mean it a second set. It includes John Candy. Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Mike Meyer and Mike Myers was there. Yeah. So you have people who are on the main stage, who performed there. And then they have a school that takes people through from level one to master classes. And I did school, and I had my own sketch troupe from a bunch of people that were in some of them that were in that school with me. And we ended up having we did shows that there’s a real legendary bar downtown called the Rivoli. So we did monthly shows there. We did regular shows that the second, the second city, and we toured different bars and clubs across Canada. And we had our own TV show on CBC for a period of time, too.

 

Erwin  

Because one of my first impressions of you actually took the impression took some time to build, but my impression was, oh, Nick’s really funny. Because you’re the president, you have to get you introduced a lot. You open a lot of shows up on a lot of meetings. Like what makes funny like, how do you do that? And then here Oh, yeah, okay. He’s like Second City. Okay, got it. For A Living,

 

Nick  

I’m not a joke teller. I’m not a stand up comedian. I have tried stand up. And I have nothing but admiration for for the people who can do that so well, because it’s a craft. But for years, I did improv and I put myself out there and we failed. Every week, on stage. In front of people, I’ve been heckled and booed. And then I’ve been cheered. And some of my highest moments were in front of a live studio studio audience at the CBC studios, here in Canada. For those of you listening elsewhere. That’s downtown. We were getting, you know, standing ovations and people cheering and people crying with laughter as we finish our performance. So I’ve experienced the highs and the lows of performance. And when you do that, you also learn how to manage through and muddle through when things aren’t going well. I need five more minutes. Okay, I need to change gears I’m, you learn how to read a room. So that’s one of the reasons why I have that skill set.

 

Erwin  

Interesting. So you’ve actually learned a lot on thinking on your feet have experienced a lot of rejection. A lot of outside your comfort zone?

 

Nick  

Almost daily.

 

Erwin  

Yeah. And then you thought you build a business around this?

 

Nick  

Well, you know, it’s funny you say that. So you asked what my first business was? So just to answer that, that was a business called Creative performance that was kind of outs, consulting, and doing workshops and building shows for large corporate audiences. I had a business partner who was also my housemate in university, my friend Ron tight, who’s now has an exceptional agency, church and state and as a two three time author, and an incredible keynote speaker. So he’s a very good friend, but we were business partners for a very short period of time. That was my first business.

 

Erwin  

And then you still do a lot of these things for your current clientele, do you not in your current business?

 

Nick  

I offer workshops, but not necessarily improv workshops, there are performance aspects to the work that I do for sure.

 

Erwin  

So it was just to clarify, because Because Because I attended your workshop for free.

 

Nick  

You did I gave it as a gift. Yeah, give it as a gift. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

Yeah. So just to for the listeners benefit, because a conscious venue in Ernst and Young’s downtown Toronto tower in I don’t know what the what they call it area, but it’s probably their entertainment area for their high end clients. Yeah. I don’t know how I got invited. But it cost me nothing.

 

Nick  

Got me to split up the water there.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, lunch and dinner. We get to attend your two day workshop on how to give a TED talk in a day. Yeah. So that’s why that’s why I kind of that’s why I kind of extrapolated between the two. And even though it’s not improv it is we did we were out of our comfort zone. Oh, yeah. Learn how to give presentations.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a big part of what I do. So my current business, which is named after me, very selfishly, self centred Lee, Kindler and company, we help innovative leaders become better communicators. And I look at anybody that’s trying to grow a business, make change, do things differently. They’re an innovator. And they’re in especially if they’re a decision maker within an organisation. They are a leader. And so we have a number of different programmes, and that was our TED talk in a day programme. And that one is like a sprint. Right? You are part of it. It’s like we go through the fundamentals of how to give a communicate clearly, how to pitch how to present how to communicate, and then all the way along your building and then we got you up on your feet and you delivered a nice little crisp I think it was the test drive from your day note from your conference.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, I tried some stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I was not nearly as good as the other people.

 

Nick  

You are great, you are great. And what’s awesome about that day, and I, you know, I do those all the time, I was out west working with Marc Anthony group, with their winemakers just a few weeks ago, doing a multi day programme like this. And so I work with leaders and organisations, helping them and deliver these both virtually and in person. And what’s always amazing to me, is you get these folks who are very, very quiet at the beginning, or they seem reserved, or they’ll ask me, because I do coaching we one on one, I’ll connect with them out throughout the day to try and ensure that their messaging is moving forward, it’s getting clearer and clearer. And then these folks get up and they just deliver these awe inspiring messages. I don’t know where out of nowhere. And so there’s some really great, it’s an opportunity to evolve very quickly as a leader and show people, what you’re made of and what he can do.

 

Erwin  

And just for the listeners benefit all other find leaders in leaders in many things, because I believe you have academic leader colleges. Yeah. So my kids are in public speaking classes. And I and for the first time on the report card, it was a quote from Warren Buffett. I don’t know if you know this one.

 

Nick  

No, I’ve heard of Warren

 

Erwin  

was, the quote was something along the lines of invest in how to speak? Because as smart as you are, if you can’t convey it, nobody knows. Actually, I’ve heard that

 

Nick  

I’ve heard that him say that. And yeah, it’s true, I think, look, I think you made a comment earlier about so Is that Is that why you do what you do. And fundamentally, I followed the unique ability approach to building my business, I’d actually just very quickly, I’d gone from running that business that I mentioned, to become a being part and I worked for an agency for a period that did meetings and conferences, ran my own meetings and conferences agency for more than 10 years. And while I did that, I learned about this concept of the unique ability. And I realised unique ability, by the way, comes from the Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan, I believe he may have got it from somewhere else. But that’s where I learned it from. And Dan Sullivan defines unique ability is something that you’re excellent at, and that you love doing, you may be excellent at that you don’t love doing. And there may be things that you love doing that you’re not excellent at. Right? Like I love playing tennis, not excellent at it, right. But my unique ability, I realised as I was going through that programme was I love helping people get clear. And so part of what I was doing in that old in that older business was doing that. But my current business is built completely focused on helping leaders get clear, helping many people get clear at a time. And through workshops and one on one coaching and online programmes. There’s a whole bunch of different ways that we go about it. But that to me, is really important for any entrepreneur. So if you’re an investor, what’s your unique ability? And what what are you really good at? And what are you passionate about, and then build your business on that. And hopefully, it’s on investing in real estate, because that’s what this podcast is all about.

 

Erwin  

It’s not just that because I’ve said many times on the show, like I don’t love being a landlord. But I love where it gets me. I for example, turn to turn on the lose no sleep better financial future. Right. I know my kids are taken care of. Yeah, right. That’s what it gets me. Like for example, I had a call. I literally had a text from my tenant on December 24. The furnace isn’t working.

 

Nick  

Man, that’s a bad call.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it’s bad call. I mean, but you know, up about I’ve been under this long enough make two phone calls, a five minute drive guys goes and goes. And then Thankfully, it was a really minor one of my tents, their patio umbrella had blown up against the house and was blocking the air intake for the furnace. So is that easy. Just remove it, put it away. So the problem the release was a really, really inexpensive fix. Yeah, but you know, pain in the butt. But in the very grand scheme of things. It’s not that big a deal. Yeah, I think people deal with way worse things as an employer.

 

Nick  

Yeah. But but you your business is I mean, that’s one part of your business. But you have, I mean, you train people, you there’s a lot in your business. And so if you don’t mind me asking, What would you say your unique ability is what you’re excellent at and what you love to do? Is my guess is it’s your business is it’s in this business.

 

Erwin  

Just an observation that we’re gonna make money. If I can step back and just observe what I do. Like, for example, the conversations I have with people I find in generally know a lot more than they do. Like for example before we’re talking like I told you, you were successful. I am I, I talk to a lot of people. I have a lot of clients, I have a 400 clients. Yeah, I speak. This is like this is gonna be like the twin ADF podcast episode. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you awesome. And pretty much everyone on the show crazy successful. So I have contexts. And for like the last two years I’ve been seeing a lot because of this, the amount of fake news has been coming out or like the sound bites and the cancelled culture like you’ve said this in the full context, right? Yeah, I always find myself saying that in the full context is that’s this, like, it’s a completely different story. Right? So I find I have a lot of context. And that seems to be my advantage over many, many other businesses and operators, is because I’ve just been around a long time, and also just my drive for continuous improvement.

 

Nick  

Right? See, I was just gonna add to that, like, not only are you knowledgeable, but you’re curious. You’re constantly, right learning, reading. I mean, these books aren’t here for show. Right? You love to read, you love to go. That’s why you’re also at a lot of the EO dance and taking your shop. Yeah. And so interesting. You’d like to provide information and you’d like to learn. And so you build a business focused on a particular niche that does exactly that.

 

Erwin  

And before we were recording about being light, yeah, I’m very well liked by my collections. Yeah. Because they’ve done very well. Right. Right. So and that, that, to me, is the ultimate reward for what I do. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Everything else was painful.

 

Nick  

This is the reality for the world of entrepreneurship is, oh, my goodness, like the lumps and pains and blows that you got to like to embody that you got to take as you go along. Hopefully, they lessen over time, or maybe you just get more calloused. Like, they’re still there. Yeah, but it’s true. It’s hard. It can be very hard.

 

Erwin  

Speaking of. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Oh, gosh, no, yeah. You’ve had some business. Less successes.

 

Nick  

Yeah, I have, look, I’ve been very open about this in the past, you might be able to find stuff of me sharing. So I did a talk on failure once and I shared very openly about how failure has served me. And I believe failure is something that’s serves us if to bodily expression, we fall forward, or we fail forward. So if we fall backwards, if we fall backwards, we’re further behind than we started. But if we fall forward, we’re still further ahead.

 

Erwin  

Can you hear the story?

 

Nick  

What I did? What happened? Sure. I mean, which failure story? Are you looking for? All joking aside, I’ll share it. Because here’s the thing I know, I’m joking. And I’m putting off telling the story. But we fail every day. And if we’re not failing, we’re not trying. So.

 

Erwin  

So that’s a great point. Absolutely. You’ll never, I find even myself. Yeah, so many people fail to start because they’re so afraid of failing. Yeah, just try. But everyone who’s successful has failed many times.

 

Nick  

Yeah, my brother who’s my my best friend. And my biggest fan, and I’m his biggest fan, has always encouraged me to do just say just go for it. We’ve got it. This is this is your like you’ve got what’s the worst can happen. And that question is amazing. What’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s never, it’s never what you think. So I did experience what I thought would have been the worst thing that could happen. And this was post 2008. I had an agency we’d grown it from Bootstrap zero funds zero funds put in to at its highest point, it was a four and a half million in revenue agency. We worked with some of the top pharma packaged goods, retail, and tech businesses in Canada, producing their national sales meetings, product launches, internal communication, newsletters, and all kinds of media that we would do for them. And then post 2008 pharma was a big part of our clientele. And there’s something called the patent cliff where in pharma post 2008, all the big pharma companies dropped in revenue by some of them almost in half. Oh, boy. And so our revenue dropped and dropped and dropped. And I started investing

 

Erwin  

started to just point of clarification, patent dropped as in they can no longer legally defend their products.

 

Nick  

That’s right, sell their products, or they could sell them but defend them because now a patent, generic brand of that brand will come out

 

Erwin  

and it’s cheaper to pay for the r&d in the marketing.

 

Nick  

Oh, no, no. And there’s a service that pharma plays, right. And I’m a big believer in in that model, because they’re

 

Erwin  

paying for all research. They’re bringing solutions to the table. They’re the one risking their necks,

 

Nick  

and their investors are to write their investors. So we had grown we trunk I’d put money in for cash flow purposes to keep us afloat. I did not belong to EO did not know it existed. And by the way, everything that’s happening comes next to me might have gone differently if I belong to EO, I actually think it probably would have, I’d had partnership challenges for about a year, you know, when things are not going very well and a business partnerships usually get rocky, and might only changes everything in relationship. Absolutely. And I had to offer to buy her out. At the time, we couldn’t come to any resolution. And then we hit a point about eight to 10 months later, when we were at the end of the road. And this was very daunting the end of the road, there was really only a couple things we could do, I would have to convince my wife that I would throw another $100,000 into this business to keep it afloat for a little bit of time, we would have to close the doors, send everybody home, or choose three people and try and figure out how to just work on one client. And what we decided to do, because we weren’t working well together anymore, was we were going to lose our shirts, meaning all the money we put in, we would commit to completing every project that was on the books. And we would lay off our staff and close the doors. Oh, damn. So it was about a two month process. In order to do that we had the business had to declare bankruptcy. And that was one of the worst days of my life. Now I’ve had worst days. And I’ve had lots of level sets, since that needs nothing, right? I mean, money. And the business was important to me. I’ve got a whole bunch of other priorities now and ways that I can level set things, but just just know at the time, it was terrible. And when I was done, I thought with all due respect to professional baristas, I was going to end up as a barista at Starbucks. That was my mindset. You’re that low, that low. So what did I do? I thought, Okay, I need people to know how to reach me. So I created a new URL with my name in it. I sent out an email to all of my clients to say, hey, you know this already, because we’d had to let we’d call every single client to let them know it was happening. And by the way, most of those clients said, Why didn’t you tell me? We could have helped you. Why didn’t you tell me

 

Erwin  

where were you two months ago?

 

Nick  

Well, we didn’t. We didn’t talk about the problem. We kept it to ourselves, we were ashamed, but about how we’ve managed cashflow. We were ashamed about how we lost this business and lost that business. But we still had core clients. So I created this URL Kindler and company.com. And I sent out an email to about 100 150 people, clients, saying, hey, you know, but if you need to reach me for any reason, here’s my email. Here’s my phone number. Within minutes, I got emails back saying hey, can we talk. Within days I got offers of work. And I started up a mini virtual coaching and agency. Within months, I had recovered financially because I had no overhead. And within the year I’d more than recovered and I was making a great income. But more importantly, is I started to focus on my unique ability 100% and I created a product that I thought or a service I should say. I remember sitting with my good friend Rob Dryden who is a great EOS implementer Entrepreneurial Operating System implementer here in Toronto,

 

Erwin  

love us learn us through EOC the

 

Nick  

book behind you as you know weapon but anyways, I remember sitting with him coffee for a few times, like what if I created a coaching subscription only for senior leaders to help them get clear on their messaging is like Well, yeah, I could try it. And he was very supportive about the model and ideas. And I sold one. And then I sold another and then I created programmes. And things really started to take off. That’s part one of the story. Do you want me to keep going? Yeah,

 

Erwin  

this is fascinating out of like, going down and burning flames do?

 

Nick  

Yeah, it was a pretty quick turnaround, a pretty quick turnaround. I was full of shame and embarrassment. I feel I couldn’t talk about it for a long time. And then I realised that I needed that needed to happen. I needed to go through that to learn what I was good at what it was what happened. And then, by the way, I’m going to fast forward. This is not part of the story. But when I joined EO going back to that and my First Forum experience, and we did this exercise where we shared everybody’s life experience, flying experience. I actually got choked up emotional because I heard from Lee Four of the people in my forum, the same story, or when some of them went through it two or three times. I’m like, Where was this organisation? Numbers again, 10 years ago,

 

Erwin  

anyways, you’re not alone, not alone, not alone at all. Going back

 

Nick  

to her at the beginning of when we talked about mental health, I’m going to say to the cameras that my camera there, you’re not alone. If you’re watching this, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not. And it’s never, it’s never too much. If you like it,

 

Erwin  

you have relationship problems, marital problems, money problems, investment problems, business problems, work problems, you’re not alone, you’re not.

 

Nick  

So the long and the short of it is I did that business. And then my father got very sick. And I was a solopreneur. At that point, I hadn’t scaled that business at all. And so I just took, I took a moment in my life, and I paused, I reduced my income, I made a conscious choice to turn down opportunities. And I worked with my mom and my dad during his decline, and he passed away. And at that point, I was kind of like, okay, let’s start again. I volunteered at TEDx Toronto, I volunteered the United Way, I started to go like, let’s go out into the community. Again, let’s learn and see what it’s all about. The TEDx thing was highly informative, and formative. And I met an individual there, and we started a new company, that took a lot of the things I started with this coaching model. And elevated it, we turned that into fairly successful one and a half million coaching business. Just to be clear, that’s a high margin business. And unfortunately, after about three or four years, that we once again, I experienced some challenges with my business partner, there was some trust issues that we both had. And we decided to part ways I sold my shares in that business and relaunch Killoran company, just as COVID came in. So I’ve gone through it all man, like I’ve gone through the highs of winning big programmes of building and scaling, I’ve gone through the the lows of losing my business, I’ve gone through the experience of challenging partnerships. And I’ve also gone through the experience of trying to grow a business in during it wasn’t an official recession. But during co technically

 

Erwin  

it was, yeah, all the money in government spent like crazy.

 

Nick  

And I can tell you right now, my business is thriving. I worked really hard, day in and day out to continue to build and grow, find the right team work with amazing clients, and amazing people. I’ve got strategic partners, and people that I work with that just are exceptional at what they do. And my team is exceptional at what they do. And my clients who trust me are exceptional at what they do. There’s a lot to unpack here. All right, sorry, if I went on,

 

Erwin  

no, sorry, fine. It’s just we have so much more to unpack. So congratulations on your success.

 

Nick  

Thank you. I mean, again, it’s a journey, man. I don’t look at it as done.

 

Erwin  

Now. I want some I’m trying to pull some lessons out of you. As a successful engineer. I want to pass on some lessons tomorrow to our clients. Yeah. So you’ve grown a business really quickly from nothing in the middle of a terrible time. Like it was during COVID Like a lot of people froze their budgets. labial freezing their budgets now, do ya, depending what industry but yeah, like 10 for example, though, like they’re all freezing their budgets. Yeah. Loving your planning level and letting people go? Yeah, what I want to ask is like, can you categorise like, what are the three things that you have to do every quarter or month or week to move your business forward? So again, apologies. I’ve been reading my Miracle Morning. So recency bias, is like, there’s all these things we should do. I should walk the dog, I should work, you know, like roulette, remove everything. And what are the three key things you need to do for this to start with, this is investing podcasts, we’ll keep it to business are the three key things you have to do for a business? For example, like for most investors, I would say business development, you need to be making really good connections, build really strong relationships, and really important people on your Power team, as we call it. So often your realtor, your product manager, your handy person, your mortgage person.

 

Nick  

Okay, so I may cheat and this might become four things instead of three. But I think, honestly, you have to start with your health. You’re going to be hit and we talked about this, your pummelling, right and time and again, even as things are going great, there’s curveballs all the time, and if you’re not healthy, and focusing on some fundamentals, so your morning what sort of morning Hey, what’s going on Miracle Morning miracle. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it. I honestly think that taking care of yourself is first. So I know that probably isn’t what you’re looking for from a business development perspective or a business growth perspective. But you can’t manage the insanity of it, because it is crazy to do what we do. And I’m not saying that as a, hey, look what I do. I’m a marathoner or a triathlete, or look, I’m amazing. It’s just kind of crazy what what entrepreneurs do on a daily basis. So take care of yourself, take care of yourself, that’d be my first thing. So the second thing I do agree with business development 100%, one of my foreign mates when I was going through one of my tough times during the early parts of COVID, and I was struggling. He’s like, you don’t have a business if you you’re not selling anything. And so figure out your pipeline, like get your pipeline as full as possible, of potential and then qualified leads, I’m assuming that people are very clear on what their product is. So we don’t need to get into that here. As a as a key thing. I guess one other thing that I’ve spoken about quite a bit in my coaching recently, and in conversation with others, another again, my formate said this to me, because I was I remember having this lunch. And I was like at this turning point going, I felt like a turning point like, Oh, I’m sort of keep hitting this brick wall. You know, people aren’t meeting people. And he goes, he said, Have you asked for help? I said, What do you mean? He goes? No, ask them for help. I said, I don’t understand. And he’s got a several businesses, very successful entrepreneur, because I asked my my clients, and these are very successful leaders for help all the time. That’s how I get stuff done.

 

Erwin  

She give an example of the help I asked for, or like an example from one of our clients. Because I have a big ego. I have travelled?

 

Nick  

We many of us do. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know, there’s an aversion to asking for help, especially in the entrepreneurial side of things,

 

Erwin  

because generally, we’re very driven. And we

 

Nick  

know that we know the answers, but we don’t

 

Erwin  

we least put on the face that we know all the answers.

 

Nick  

So So what’s an example of this? An organiser, I’m not going to use names, because I want to be very respectful of the people that I work with. had an idea I had an idea, working with an amazing colleague of mine, that we could come up with a new solution that would help organisations in you know, how I work with leaders and or in groups of leaders, one on one and with groups to get really clear on their message. Well, organisations suffer from this in a big way. I mean, marketing is not talking to product products, not talking to HR, HR is not talking to whatever it is. It’s just, it’s siloed communication. We’ve seen it time and again, and part of it is there’s translation issues. Sometimes there’s just barriers in general. So I had this idea, like, what if we took this idea of like the one on one, but we figured out a way a process to, to help organisations across. And I worked with my friend and colleague on developing a process. And during one of my coaching sessions with one of my clients, who is brilliant leader, and just such a lovely person. I said, I’m hearing that you have this problem, I might have this solution, we’re developing this thing. Can I ask you, would it be helpful? And can I help you? And can you help me just if I share this with you? He said, Yeah, that’d be great. Because two things happen, right? I might be able to help you. And you might be able to help me. But number one, people want to help. Like, if I were to call you, I mean, you’d need to know me. But if I were to call you to, hey, when can I get your help on something? I’ve got this idea. I want to build a podcast studio like this. How do you do that? What would you say to me? Not now. Right? Like, there’s a part of you that would go Yeah, I I’d like to help like, because I got this I have knowledge. You like to have knowledge and you’re this one of your knowledge and sharing the knowledge. That’s your, as we talked about earlier, your unique ability. So I share this model. He’s like, this is really interesting. Can we talk about this with my team? So we go and have a meeting with the team? Proposal, large project? Because I asked him for help. Right very, very. I didn’t go in asking for the business. I went and asking for help.

 

Erwin  

So I’ll just the real estate analogy is for my clients, especially if they’re looking for to find partners within their community or their family to help to join them in their real estate journey is often tell them like, go ask them to go to coffee. And the help would be, can I share with you what I’m trying to do? Right? Yeah. Does this make sense?

 

Nick  

Yeah. Absolutely. If you’ve got a new product or service, if you’re unsure about how to approach something, it’s why yo exists going back to this forum. And again, it’s you asking for help. In fact, today, I’m doing a presentation on a new product and service, because I don’t want validation, from my my colleagues to say, what would you do differently? How could this work?

 

Erwin  

Alright, we’ll move on number four. What’s that? You said? There’s four things.

 

Nick  

I said. Take care of yourself. Yeah, a pipeline of business. Ask for help. Yeah, I guess it’s not like a plan this cuz I’m gonna walk away from here. But oh, I want to say this. But but for

 

Erwin  

Dorian, no one gets their questions in advance. Yeah. So so.

 

Nick  

So honestly, I would say systems and processes, like everything can be systematised and put into a process. And I’m not a systems thinker. Although my friend and colleague told me the other day, he thought I was really good at it. And I was like, I’m more of a creative, you know, person, I like to come up with new ideas. But when I start to see people doing stuff, like my team, and if it’s taking them an amount of time, all I can think of is, what systems can we put in place? What tools can we potentially purchase? How are other people doing this faster? And that’s not in an effort to be ultra profitable. It’s an effort to make life easier, because life’s better when it’s easier. Yeah, so I would say systems and processes, why, you know, Eos, I’m a believer in, I like to have my coaching has a model, my, my whole book that I wrote is all based on core principles and a model that we follow. So I’m a big believer in using these models to simplify our lives.

 

Erwin  

That’s a great segue in your book, what’s it called?

 

Nick  

Impact, simplify, transform, performed pitches and presentations? Where can people buy it? Amazon, Barnes and Noble, every online retailer, you can go to impact book.ca. And you’ll find videos and testimonials and access to where you can buy

 

Erwin  

1. Excellent. I have a copy not here.

Nick  

Yeah, I should have brought another copy. Sorry, I should have. So I could be doing this. But yeah, it’s available. Were all at all online books, bookseller, sellers, and

 

Erwin  

all over the world. Fabulous. Now, this is an investment show. And we’re running that time machine over time. Thank you for your patience. Oh,

 

Nick  

I’m loving the conversation. I love chatting with you.

 

Erwin  

We can honestly keep you for another three hours minimum. This is an investor show. And before we’re recording, I said you’re successful. We are We are quite well off. Why would you want to invest in real estate? Because that’s why that’s like some of the conversations you had. You’re interested in investing in real estate. Yeah.

 

Nick  

And you and I have chatted about this before the show, and I know some of your teams and working with and looking for, for investment properties.

 

Erwin  

Find by the way.

 

Nick  

Yeah, yeah. So why? Why am I interested in it? Because why should somebody be that’s a very common

 

Erwin  

question for the show is like, why why do this? Why be an investor in real estate? Because it’s not. It’s not it’s different for you?

 

Nick  

It is, it’s a total departure. And as you know, I’ve been anxious about it nerve, it’s nerve racking for me, because I’m a hands off investor, I like I’m like, let it sit and grow kind of, you know, minimum x number of years kind of thing. And that’s not that this isn’t bad, but there’s a little more stuff to do. But why am I interested in why why would I recommend it is, first of all, it works. I mean, it works. It has significant growth opportunity. It actually, if you can find the properties that cashflow for the amount or less, for example, if it even if it doesn’t, for the amount of joining a good club or a gym a month, you can have a growing asset. Like that’s, I don’t know, you know, I’ve been looking at my different properties with Chris and 120 300 bucks, like my wife and I paid more for that for a gym membership. And you own a property. And then at the end of 10 years, 15 years, 30 years, you can liquidate or you can take the the income from it and buy more like it’s just it’s it’s a pretty great model. So if you’re looking for why would I do it? Why would I recommend it? Because it works

 

Erwin  

What keeps you from doing it sooner? It’s a rhetorical question because I know you’re really busy.

 

Nick  

Well, I’m what keeps me from doing more of it. And sooner is time, and education. Like, I think, I think your podcast and all the videos that you do, and I think it’s important work. You know, I say this to a lot of people about everybody has a purpose. And if people can understand that this isn’t a frivolous thing to do. It’s not a throwing money at something and hoping it sticks kind of thing. It works. But it’s time. The reason I haven’t done it is time and knowledge, like just education

 

Erwin  

can help you with that. Yeah, yeah. And you have been happy. As I figured I was talking to yesterday, I was explaining that there are businesses basically, this to set up the franchise systems are all in place. The people are on place. You just need to put up the money and get a mortgage.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s brilliant.

 

Erwin  

So we try to do what we try to do make a brilliant model.

 

Nick  

It’s a brilliant business. Seriously, kudos. Like, I think it’s amazing.

 

Erwin  

It’s just everyday for us. So it’s kind of funny, because like, every time what you mentioned before about, like reading the news, too early in the day, I did that for a long time reading the news too early in the day. Yeah. Because especially now like leaving headlines always Ukraine.

 

Nick  

It’s depressing. And I think we should know it. But it’s when should we know it? Anyway? Sorry.

 

Erwin  

First thing in the morning? Yeah, yeah, exactly. set the tone for the day. Yeah. Yeah. Just because I consumed so much. I’d actually argue I consumed too much. Because I say that because it gives us feeds into my analysis paralysis. And honestly, if I were just doing more business stuff, more investing stuff in that time, rather than just trying to be so knowledgeable, and probably make more money. I know this, because I’ve blogged a lot like my previous mastermind, which is all real estate investors. Yeah, I found a new lot. Let’s say I knew a lot more. But economics needed. Definitely spent more time. Yeah, understanding of what how the world is working in monetary policy, almost What’s complicated things there are they’re investing just killing it. So they have larger portfolios that like, you have a larger portfolio, you’re going to outperform me? Versus I’m just like, yeah, just keep consuming. But yeah, but then kind of, to your point earlier, you have to get started. So I always suffer from like, as this right thing does the right thing.

 

Nick  

And that is me, too. I think if you can do if there’s a way to help people remove that analysis paralysis, which is exactly what I suffer from, especially in getting into this kind of investment. It’d be amazing,

 

Erwin  

right? Awesome. I’ll share some stuff with you. I had to give a webinar this Friday on a macro economic update in some of the research. So it’s like, Oh, I’m not ready for this. And then so this morning, German miracle morning, I got up early. I was like, Oh, I create my outline, like, took 20 seconds. Because I’ve researched this stuff

 

Nick  

all the time. This is what happens with our brains, too, right? We’re thinking this happens to me all the time. Like, Oh, I haven’t been I gotta do this. And then I’m like, oh, oh, I obviously have been thinking about this.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ve been thinking about for a long time. But yeah, all signs point to owning hard assets. Did you know we had 800,000 new people in Canada, in the last 12 months? I did

 

Nick  

read that. And I also read that it’s only going to go up based on forecasting. Yeah. I was gonna say, I think that’s exciting. And from for a whole bunch of reasons.

 

Erwin  

I think it’s exciting for them. Because I think people always forget to reach new life, I find a lot of Canadians forget to be grateful for what we have. That’s a lovely thing about travelling. You travel. Like I was just in Dominican Republic, for example. Oh, nice. Oh, that’s lovely. Yeah. But oh, boy, is Canada nicer.

 

Nick  

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

My point being is that like, climate change is a real thing. And it’s affecting many countries really badly. Which is drives probably reason why people want to come to Canada. Yeah, right. It’s only going to keep going. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. Nick, any final thoughts you want to share? I asked him any questions. So

 

Nick  

you know, you’ve got asked some great questions. I’ve loved chatting with you. I do one more for you. Okay, no, absolutely. Shoot, man. Shoot, shoot.

 

Erwin  

I forgot why we were on the topic. I study philosophy of many things. No, no, again, just spending way too much time in my head and studying stuff. Yeah. And so one of the business philosophies and observations that I’ve noticed is that some people, rightly or wrongly, because someone fails in their business relationship thinks they’re a bad person. A good example in the real estate industry is property managers. They the turnover as high as in those law companies don’t stick around. And so many so often their clients, that’s a bad person, but tennis would say that’s a bad person. And what I see as an outside observer is they tried their best. This can do it It’s a tough, tough business. Yeah, right? I don’t know if that necessarily makes them an evil person. So we were talking about earlier before we’re recording is like, Are you a bad person, if your business

 

Nick  

fails? Well, if, if that’s the case, then I’ve been a bad person. For many years,

 

Erwin  

we’re gonna cut up, we’re able to keep this podcast short.

 

Nick  

And here’s what I actually do know, is I’m not a bad person. In fact, I live my life with core values, and behaviours. I treat people with respect. And when I don’t, I apologise. And because I’m human, I’m fallible. And this isn’t me kind of giving myself a pat on the back, it’s me pointing out that we fail all the time, we talked about failure earlier in our chat today, I don’t think that if somebody’s business fails, they’re a bad person, they may have made mistakes, mistakes, does not equate with bad mistakes, equate with error. And perhaps Miss judgement, if they’ve made a series of decisions. Knowing that the outcome is going to cause X or Y, impact the lives of people take money from people, then you’ve got a values issue. But if you’re operating on on, trying to be true to your values, and the world somehow presents these challenges that you are not able to overcome, it does not make you a bad person. It just doesn’t mean your human life is long. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And in that marathon, and I’ve done four of them, it’s painful. The training is hard. There are times when you’re doing it, that you’re just think you’re gonna, you’re gonna die, you’re paying in pain, but keep going. And you know, in my morning routine, often the last words I write the end of every session is keep going.

 

Erwin  

So normally, I would say we ended there. But just to give context, why where the question comes from, is because anyone has been investing in the last few years. Who started especially at the start in last two years, they’re probably hurting their message likely or not performing well. Stock market, crypto real estate, anything, anything, anything. Yeah, but you maybe he’s doing well, no. And my point is, doesn’t mean they’re a bad person.

 

Nick  

Gosh, no, no, no. Your business is an entity that you drive. Your Business shouldn’t drive you. You drive your business, and you might have other people that help you drive it. If your business is struggling, you are not the business. Because that’s really what I’m trying to get at. You are not the business, it may feel like it. It may feel like, Oh, well, I’m gonna become a barista, which is what I thought because that business was in the toilet, and I’m a bad person for failing. You are not. You are not the business. And the sooner you learn, anybody learns that you are not the business, the better. Don’t get me wrong. It’s hard to do. It’s an I haven’t mastered it. I’m working on it every day. But cash flow and revenue and all these challenges and hitting targets or missing targets, whatever it is. That’s not you. You is the relationships you have the people who love you, love you not for the cashflow. They don’t love you for the revenue. They love you because you’re a good person, because you’re kind because you do nice things because you’re funny, because you’re a good father, you’re a good husband or you’re a good wife, whatever it is, whoever you are, they love you for you not for your business. And that that’s what you should be carrying forward. I don’t know if that answers your question.

 

Erwin  

I don’t think it’s perfect. And I’ll just add to that, you know, it’s been two three years of you need a larger sample size. If you think you’re a bad investor. Now, let’s revisit you in 10 years. Right? Yeah, that’s

 

Nick  

a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

 

Erwin  

All right. Thank you. How’s you go, Nick? Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this.

 

Nick  

Thank you, man. Great chatting. Awesome. 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 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 for the 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 are forgive 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 it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines, Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more and 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 what 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.

 

 

To Listen:

 

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Youtube: https://youtu.be/bR8KVl5rp8I

 

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Happy New Year, fellow hackers, true seekers. Welcome to the truth about real estate investing show where we continuously look to learn best practices from doers, not just talkers, to extract them repeatable investment strategies, and break them down into actionable items for both novice and seasoned investors like a word on seasoned investors. I was talking to a client about her coach, she was assigned from one of those large real estate education companies and she told me her coach was very experienced, I asked her to tell me more as experienced means different things to different people. For example, if I were to hire a coach, I would want someone who is highly successful with more skill and experience. The funny thing is the person I would hire cost very similar to these new coaches who at the scene in the last three to five years who haven’t really been investing for maybe four to six years, some of them have investing less than that, and have even worse or even worse, have dubious track records of investments themselves. This market downturn and higher interest rates have let me know what the real investors and coaches are. And no, I’m not going to get them here. I don’t want to be sued. But I’m hearing in the streets there are a number of investors and coaches struggling mainly folks with multiple flips and burrs, they cannot exit. Normally cash flow times like these is the ultimate stress test. Doing one’s own due diligence with the internet and social media has never been easier. It’s never been easier and fun fact of the day, many podcasters do not background check their guests, I can tell a quick update on Clydesdale capital bankruptcy. The owners Fiats Mark Smith and ox saga have turned down my invite on the show, Alex has been advised by his lawyers not to come on. So I don’t blame him went bit, Alex and I did chat and he confirmed my understanding. If you’ve been following me and my I went to networking meetings, I’ve mentioned before how these times are just part of the market cycle causing greed and hence new entrants into the market, both investors and coaches and influencers when you have lack of experience, skill and capital that leads to poor execution. And one has to wonder about the 10s of 1000s spent on coaching each year to arrive at bankruptcy at the business and personal level. If that was money well spent or not. So many have gotten burned with excessive leverage poor business models, lack of cash flow management, in times where the market was already very greedy. I’m not getting for either. The duplexes that Jerry and I bought in 2021 are cheaper today than then when we pay for them. But thankfully, they’re fully tenanted at really high rents, we got them rented out pretty quickly, and we will manage just fine. We are in this for the long term. So well beyond the next three to five years. We’re into this for like 10 years or more. But don’t look at my crypto grow stocks portfolio. Thankfully, by design, these positions were a very small percentage of our overall portfolio. Since we’ve, as I’ve shared before, over 9% of our investment allocation is towards real estate that we control. Because it’s so to me if I consider it really safe when it’s done right, and when done right can outperform the market. That said I’ll be taking advantage of both real estate and stock market going forward in this market correction. If you haven’t been around a correction before, I strongly recommend you study what happens in recessions and how many people get rich while exiting crashes all my friends with some with more grey hair than I do, who’ve been actively investing since prior to 2008. We all regret not buying more than and now is the time to write that regret. As usual, we will be covering the how tos and real estate investing via virtual webinars that are not in person. Monthly, I will networking meetings and our practical street smart tours, where we tour target neighbourhoods for income properties. Both the neighbourhood and the properties themselves, followed by a mastermind lunch, the next 18 to 24 months will be a wonderful time to be greedy, while the masses are extremely cheerful. So yeah, above market returns are available to those who invest smart with a minimal wrist. They just need to know how to do it. That’s how we’ve been doing it. Since I’ve been investing since 2005. I own real estate. It’s been here since 2010. And we have a track record of over working with investor clients, over 400 million in transactions and we have very, very wealthy clients and that track record speaks for itself. If you’re looking at me 2023 Your Best Year and to make the best decisions for your financial peace. Then you’ll want a copy of my book. The electronic version is free from my website, www dot truth about real estate investing.ca Enter your name and email and you’ll also be notified when we offer our educational events at nominal costs. In my experience we have numerous millionaire multimillionaire millionaire clients who have never paid for a five figure coach nor networking group. Just recently at at a client’s only event. I have several clients say to me that being part of a certain networking group where they met me they’re saying these are the words not mine, but meeting you is the best thing to come from that investment. I’m humbled and honoured and can’t wait to make a difference in more people. Lise onto this week’s show. We have Ken between them who is up to many great things to generate cash flow and build wealth in his real estate for him and his son. The best part is Ken is available for hire. One can hire Ken’s company legal second suites.com. For major rental renovations to your home or investment property, including basement suites and garden suites, Kenyan legal second suites has been in the news for quite some time, representing a one of his clients. A mutual friend of ours, Alex, who happens to be Ukrainian who wants to number his garage into a garden suite to rent to Ukrainian immigrants. But the rich neighbours think that added density of tenants living in a garage will damage the neighbourhood increase overall traffic and parking issues. Right. Thankfully, the municipalities are trending in the right direction to allow us private investors create more housing. Well, I won’t spoil it for you. I can explain it to you on a story yems REITs homeowners versus rental housing for Ukrainian immigrants. And today’s show can details what strategy makes up the majority of his portfolio, including cash flow source that provides some very significant cash flow. Kenza Pascaline of mine, so I know some of this portfolio quite well. It’s not what you expect, as none of the influencers out there are promoting or offering courses on this strategy. Ken shares how to invest in garden suites, including build costs plus brands. Are you seeing plussing conversion projects he’s working on both big and small 10s working on a former commercial building 10s of 1000s of square feet and converting into an apartment. He’s working on a new triplex build. So this is really a great episode for educational purposes for both big and small investors. So do have those pencils, pens and pads of paper ready? I give you my friend can be Yeah, what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Ken  

All sorts of different stuff. Like I know I’m involved in lots of different types of projects these days, you know, anything from you know, the basement apartments and the duplexes and triplex conversions, but also involved in some, like larger building conversions, like commercial residential stuff, church conversions, triplex build, like a new build, you know, I got a land development project to that I’m working away on. And all sorts of all sorts of different stuff. I got some land severances down there, I’m also actively involved into, and kind of all shapes and sizes of different types of conversion projects. But basically, it’s all about increasing density, finding the highest and best use for for land and, and, and what that looks like, you know, so there’s, like, you know, the last couple years here, and even like, actively as of today, with the, you know, the latest provincial announcements about Bill 23, like stuff is changing, like, by the month, by the day, by the day, right. So it’s really exciting time, it’s really exciting time to be in this industry. And because opportunity is opening up everywhere, you know, which is amazing. This is one of the best time to invest in I don’t know how long, no, especially like, especially for us, you know, younger guys coming up young developers, you know, young, no investors coming into this space, like it is much easier now.

 

Erwin  

And you want to grow stage, you want to grow stages, this is beneficial. It’s terrible for anyone to try and divest. Yeah.

 

Ken  

But it’s much easier now for us than it was for the guys before us. You know, like the developers up till now have had a really hard time trying to get stuff done. Right. So for me, it’s like super exciting, because now it’s like, great, like, you guys, you guys didn’t know paved the way. And now the province is changing all this stuff. So it’s like really getting easier for us guys. So,

 

Erwin  

again, depends on the municipality, but for the big investors, they always had pretty good for us that were like, you know, below 10 units. Like it’s been a tough go like for

 

Ken  

forever. Well, yeah, up until like, you know, they started coming out with Bill 108. And that’s what kind of really spurred the changes, right? No, for sure. It was, you know, like when I was first getting in this industry, like, they didn’t have an SDU bylaw. You know, they have secondary dwelling

 

Erwin  

units, like basement apartments. Exactly. Now, more now, we’re starting to some garden suites yet. Like, you know,

 

Ken  

we were doing basement apartments for many, many years, like, you know, 1520 years, like my dad was doing basement apartments when he was a young guy in real estate. So it’s not like it’s a new concept. It’s been around for a long, long time. But we didn’t have the zoning bylaws in place.

 

Erwin  

There was no proper permitting process to allow for this. Yeah, exactly. And then let alone inspect. So then, therefore, inspectors were not trained on how to inspect for it. It basically wasn’t allowed and pretty much every municipality we know.

 

Ken  

So it’s gotten very, very, I wouldn’t say easy is not the right word, but it’s gotten much easier like less there is less rotate and there there used to be even myself to like I’m finding myself less at committee of adjustment for minor variances because they’ve cleaned up their violence and they got the right bylaws in place. Now it’s not perfect. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of like outdated bylaws or we’re up against you know when it comes to adding adding units, but you know, I do give the province and municipalities a lot of kudos to for me Any changes that you have?

 

Erwin  

Some are better than

 

Ken  

others. 100%,

 

Erwin  

you know are right next to Burlington. So it’s not we’re not we’re not given an infant that many kudos. Nor St. Catharines

 

Ken  

St. Catharines. In Burlington, like, we do work in both 40 plus different municipalities and townships. And those two in particular, are like brutal. It’s like they’re completely backwards. They don’t want it the tiny home show back in August. We had on a municipal day, we had the city councillors, and, you know, from lots of different municipalities, but, but they had some reps there from St. Catharines. And even the

 

Erwin  

counsellor I was talking to it was booing you, when you were on stage?

 

Ken  

No. Like this, the city counsellor from St. Catharines was basically saying, yeah, they’re gonna make up of counsellors right now, an older mindset, an older way of thinking about things. And that’s why you see, certain municipalities really just not come around and embrace this idea because they have this old mentality,

 

Erwin  

but the protectionist understand that nobody wants, you know, I remember getting mad at people parking outside my house. But you know, so much thought is, it makes sense, like the existing neighbours are the ones that both come in, and they don’t want development. They don’t want more density. They want to preserve their sightlines and their parking, like Ben wants on street parking, those sorts of things. I get it. I get

 

Ken  

it, like nimbyism is, it’s a powerful thing. It’s a really tough thing as a politician to deal with, especially as a ward councillor, they get the worse, you know, the first one that gets called if they have a complaint, but from the NIMBYs exactly right. So I can see, you know, from the province perspective, like why on their task force, they said, in order to get some form or fashion of housing built, like we have to start limiting to certain extent, the amount of public consultation, so it’s a hard road to walk, it’s a fine line to walk, you know, living in a democracy, you know, being able to, you know, have public consultations about certain things. But at the same time, you know, it’s not, we’re not doing justice to the everyday resident by fully engaging them and asking their opinions on like city planning matters, and zoning bylaws for which they’re not truly equipped or educated on the subject matter to really have a valid opinion. You know, like, we have planning staff and city, city planners, who have they’ve gone through years and years of education and public planning, city planning, and know they spend their lives figuring out like bylaws and how to grow the city. And then we go ask Mr. or Mrs. Smith around the corner about oh, hey, should we put a garden suite in a backyard? They don’t want to go to the city? You know, like, why are we asking them for their opinion? Right, like,

 

Erwin  

even like, there’s like a bunch of people say, it’s your favourite restaurant. I don’t want to get busy, right? I always want to be able to get a table, so I’m not gonna tell other people about it. So same idea. Yeah, NIMBYs don’t want other people coming into their neighbourhood. So it’s,

 

Ken  

you know, I’ve been up against a lot of nimbyism, like a lot of angry neighbours that you’ve had a bad event in the paper. Been in the paper of I’ve had people drag me through the mud on like social media. So like, have a couple of recent examples. So we tried to do this to garage conversion and existing garage conversion up on Rendell Boulevard and Hamilton’s in the newspaper. So I don’t mind saying the street name. But no, we had to apply for a minor variance for a reduction in one parking space. So this was before Hamilton had changed their bylaw to basically remove all of the parking requirements. So you don’t need any parking. We don’t need any parking spaces now for new St. Use and Hamilton. But at the time of our application that we still did. My personal opinion is that they did change the bylaw in light of this reaction that happened with this project on rundown. They saw the uproar in the neighbourhood about something so silly that, you know, Council and planning committee went and kind of revised the parking lot to basically remove it. But

 

Erwin  

it makes sense because with climate change the way it is there’s just so much rain, we can’t be expanding all of our parking pads taking away ground to absorb the water. Yeah, it makes less sense to not have keep creating more parking pads on property covering up lawn.

 

Ken  

Like this particular application. This property we were very close to a bus stop. We were within 120 metres of a bus, a major transit corridor. This parking was required for this garage for a unit which was only 520 square feet a little little one bed unit. And so is like even the ward Councillor agreed that parking wasn’t the primary issue here. You know, the street was wide open. There’s plenty of on street parking. Parking was not the problem, but it was the variance that was required. Yeah, it was the neighbourhood who just didn’t like the idea of a garage being converted and so we saw like 100 150 Plus neighbours sign had a petition against our application is subsequently got denied a committee of adjustment. We then appealed it to the llt, the Ontario land tribunal, and during the period of time between the denial, and when we applied for the llt appeal, the City of Hamilton changed their parking Bylaw and removed the parking requirements, which was great for us as we went and we reapply. And we got our building permit approved for the garage conversion because you guys were likely the trailblazer. It was the first application up on the east mountain in Hamilton in that particular ward. And a couple of other applications. Were some of the first ones in the city, Israel, just because we’re actively doing this been working with investors all the time, right. So soon as a new kind of chamber comes about. We’re on top of it right away. But anyways, it goes to show you that like you know, nimbyism is powerful, very powerful, very powerful. It’s not going away. It’s not going away. It’s something that size can be very problematic as we try and grow the housing supply. And to certain extent, yes, we have to limit to a certain extent the amount of public consultation, but it’s really about getting the correct common sense zoning bylaws in place, so that we don’t even have to go from our doing it more as of right, and this is where, you know, we hear the politician saying, as of right zoning, like being being able to do things as of right. So

 

Erwin  

there, we needed less red tape on certain things. Yeah, yeah. So again, like you mentioned, like people cannot make educated decisions on this. So for example, Mike, Dr. Mike Moffet. He tweeted about, he doesn’t like the whole Greenbelt expansion thing. Right. And but he’s saying it’s nimbyism, causing it. We either we either intensify existing neighbourhoods or we go into the Greenbelt. So this is why we’re going into the Greenbelt. So we know who to blame.

 

Ken  

Yeah, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s like we you know, it’s a balancing act here of, you know, growing within the existing boundary or expanding the boundary. You know, we see protests on both sides. You know, we can’t even get a garage, converted without 100 neighbours coming out protesting. Yeah, the structure, there’s no change to the exterior, like every single developers application in the city, get hundreds of neighbours coming out opposing their towers and their condos. And stuff is being appealed all the time. Right. So I don’t understand how the public thinks that we’re going to get housing built, if they don’t want it here. And they don’t want it there. Where are we going to build this stuff? Right.

 

Erwin  

I think we’ve been at all benefit if all those who want more housing, go have a protest?

 

Ken  

Yeah. Well, at some protest City Hall. It’s very interesting to watch, because some of the people that are actually out there protesting. They’re the ones that need to housing the most. Right? They’re the ones who need the housing the most. It’s very fascinating. The people who don’t need to housing there are they’re busy, they’re working, they’re building their businesses, they’re growing their companies, they have a place to live, right. The people who have the time, first of all to be protesting, you know, they’re the ones who need the housing, there may be renters or low income. And they’re like, they’re not helping themselves. Right. Right. I don’t want to get too political.

 

Erwin  

I know. I know. Because this is a real estate show. We need to get some folks in the listener some tactics. So one thing I wanted to cover off is your investor. Reindl Randall Randall road on rental road. Yeah. Brandon Boulevard rental Boulevard. Yeah. How were they able to hold the property while they’re trying to convert the garage was the house already rented was well,

 

Ken  

so we were we already obtained a building permit to convert the bungalow into two units. So the main floor unit in the basement unit, we had an active building permit we’re active on the site constructing that while we’re also trying to apply for the garage. So the bungalows weekend. Yeah, the drop is still at this property is still vacant, cuz it’s still under construction. We’re still actively

 

Erwin  

renovating the property. This isn’t fun for the investor.

 

Ken  

No, it’s been very stressful on him. Yeah. You know, he’s, he’s from the Ukraine, actually. And he was going to use some of the or the garage unit for a family member from Ukraine. And so that was also you know, even on him, you know, the neighbours to basically didn’t believe him there. They kind of dragged him through the mud as well, thinking that he was lying about this whole Ukrainian thing. But it’s very true. You know, anyways, is is it’s just sad. And also nice guy. But look, we got to get the permits approved, you know, and ultimately, we got the permit. And we’re forging ahead with the garage conversion.

 

Erwin  

So Alex is a nice guy.

 

Ken  

I’ve met him at my charity event. Yeah. He’s a great guy. He’s a great guy. It just it’s sad to see him go through that didn’t deserve this. No. But it’s a result of an outdated Zoning Bylaw. And so if the city was much more proactive, right, we could have avoided all of this nonsense,

 

Erwin  

but if you were to start this practice today, what’s the difference in the process? Well,

 

Ken  

the biggest thing is parking, where they got rid of the parking like 95% of minor variances for st use, were was a result of some form or fashion of a parking issue, right landscaped area, are we gonna have enough space for the parkings? Right, they’re gonna reduce the parking or we have to expand the driveways. So now we’ve reduced our landscaped area

 

Erwin  

seriously, we remove 90% of impediments to Yeah, executing Yeah, like I’m not

 

Ken  

Committee of Adjustment anymore for parking. reductions were, you know,

 

Erwin  

what are you still doing for, like setbacks? Or,

 

Ken  

um, yeah, so for like, the latest variance obligations on that to see for is just some of our Commercial to Residential commercial projects, and especially right

 

Erwin  

before we move on to that, because I want to finish off, I want to finish off the, because my thing is, for most people, most investors, most of the time, thought real estate investing should be a side hustle. So for example, the SDU conversion, the basement conversion, the garage conversion to a garden suite that is accessible to a side hustle investor, we’ll get to the very sexy stuff in a moment. But I want to go through some of the numbers, for example. So what why should someone convert a garage sweet, besides creating more housing, very social people, very nice people to create more housing, but there’s financial implications, right?

 

Ken  

Yeah, like, well, obviously, you know, there’s another opportunity on land that you already own, to basically invest further money in and get a good return on that money, right? Let’s say you have $100,000 or $150,000, rather than going out and you know, putting a down payment on another piece of land, and investing another couple $100,000. To renovate it like this is you’ve already got that land, you already own it. You don’t feel like re qualify and go to the bank. And like you own that, that parcel, right? And so you take your 100,000 and you know, you invest it into the existing garage, or it’s not, it’s gonna be more than 100,000. So like, 150,000, to convert these existing garages typically depends on condition. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely depends on the condition, like going to a new build structure, like from scratch is gonna cost you a lot more. But we’re seeing them around 150,000 right now to convert existing garage structures into units, whereas the new build stuff, you know, it is a bit of a sliding scale, depending on the footprint, you know, single story two story, is there a basement involved or even a modular versus stick frame? What type of foundation are you putting the structure on is a helical piers is engineered grade slab is an actual report foundation walls there. So there’s a there is a sliding scale of costs, right? Like, I’m seeing some guys do them in around the $200,000. Mark, and other people have done them up like 350 On Toronto

 

Erwin  

that everything’s over for, because they’re making them really nice, big, like, I’m

 

Ken  

consulting with a client right now. He’s got a huge piece of land. And we can do an 800 square foot like single storey structure. Well, even that’s like a bungalow, you’re building a house or building another house is very fast house on your property. Right. And so he’s probably, yeah, easily be 350 400,000 on his belt, you know, what do you think is like the sweet spot? So like we were saying earlier, like, day by day, things are changing. Yeah. So there’s been some some leaks that a certain municipalities already going to grow goes straight to fourplex. Well, so Hamilton is actually very proactive. They already back in August 12. Council had already approved for unit conversions in the city as part of their new official plan. But the Official Plan was appealed to the llt because of the Boundary Expansion issue. And so that kind of was put on hold until the province kind of ruled on on this whole issue. So they ultimately did rule on it, like we heard in the news. So back on November 4, you know, Hamilton has now approved a four unit conversion bylaw. So um, so a lot of these like Hamilton mountain bungalows, and these different types of neighbourhoods have now changed into this r1 and r1 a zone which allows for unit conversions. So you can do either four units in the principal building you could do three units in a principal building last the coach house you still can’t do two units in the coach homes only one unit in the strong

 

Erwin  

chose holism when it’s going on here

 

Ken  

that’s really opened the door to like create a lot more opportunity. You know, four unit conversions were happening anyways, like especially in you know, these these two and a half storey older Victorian century homes, three and four unit conversions were happening all the time. No, many of them were illegal twos plus an illegal third or illegal fourth. So now we’re basically just you know, recognising what was already happening so there’s good on Hamilton’s part for doing that because you know, now they can properly inspect the units they can you know, select their building permit fees and property taxes and all that kind of stuff. So it is a good move

 

Erwin  

right the path for all US investors to do things properly. We want to do things properly. Because for example, I had a friend convert a little six Plex I think the legal uses one single family home slash was chopped up into a six Plex and he converted to a triplex but it was like a two year process. Right? Yeah,

 

Ken  

yeah. So Like it’s yeah, there’s some really exciting things happening on that front, you know, and like I said, like, week by week, we’re finding out about these updated bylaws and requirements. So what I tell investors who are out there looking for opportunity is like, look for these bigger houses, look for these bigger plots of land, the bigger the building, the bigger the land parcel, the more potential opportunity, you have to do something as far as increasing density when you need to do a street tour, you know, and because zoning bylaws are changing, like things are aggressively changing right now in the province, with the bills coming out with each municipality, updating their zoning bylaws, and so you can be buying something now that may not be zoned exactly for what they want to do. But who’s to say that six months from now, a year from now, next year from now, that the zoning to change, and all of a sudden, you’d be allowed to do a four Plex or a truck or like a six Plex there?

 

Erwin  

So when we were speaking earlier about opportunity, like the bigger houses, especially with current use of single family life, you know, even if it’s the chopped up illegal, whatever, like that property, and on bigger lots is what’s been discounted the most in the current market. Yeah, it hasn’t like the prices have come the furthest off the peak. Right? Yeah. So to me, that sounds like a great opportunity. Obviously, you need a significant amount of capital. It’s not like it used to be, but that is the opportunity that is probably your, your opportunity for greatest ROI.

 

Ken  

Yeah, right now, like the sweet spot is in these little not at all, but they’re, you know, these three, four, maybe six unit conversion projects, we can’t make the numbers work off to we can hardly make them work off of three units, you really need to start getting into that fourth plus units to kind of really get your ROI and get your cash flow.

 

Erwin  

I think we shouldn’t coordinate a street tour, you know, some listeners might come out and look at some of these smaller properties that would make sense no 100 100%.

 

Ken  

Like there’s you got it, you got to walk buildings and houses a lot to kind of see the opportunity. And to see how you can subdivide, you know, I’m in houses every single week, you know, I’m looking at 20 houses and land parcels a week, not always on site, but even just online, like through through the listings or through the aerial maps and the city mapping software and like you have to be actively analysing buildings to see opportunity, right. And so for an investor out there listening, like if it was not easy for novice, it takes practice, it takes time for sure. But if this is something you want to focus on and be the full time on even, or really make this your side hustle like you got to learn your city, you know, don’t learn the province. Don’t don’t learn 4050 different municipalities. Focus on your focus,

 

Erwin  

not just city, but focus on your team. Yeah, you don’t need three cities, three different teams, that’s just yeah, not right off the bat.

 

Ken  

Stay up to date on what’s happening in your city. So that you can see opportunity when it’s right in front of your face.

 

Erwin  

And no one can pull the wool over your eyes if you’re focused. Yeah.

 

Ken  

So, ya know, there’s, there’s tremendous opportunity out there. And it’s like, you know, I was doing a consultation with a realtor actually, who was we set up a meeting to talk about, you know, opportunities so that she could then inform her, her clients. And we’re just selling the mapping software, like just the interactive zoning map on the city mapping website. And I was saying, look, here’s a property, you could do this. And this site. Here’s another one. Here’s another one, like the neighbourhoods are littered with, with opportunity, you know,

 

Erwin  

and there’s less bidders out there. Yeah. Oh, man.

 

Ken  

So yeah, man, it’s sweet.

 

Erwin  

You free January 28?

 

Ken  

No, it’s, it’s really exciting.

 

Erwin  

You think I’m joking.

 

Ken  

I’m back from my holidays. So So you know, like, it’s, it’s good, you know?

 

Erwin  

Okay, so, a lot of the people be listening to this potentially in the new year. So a lot of people are gonna be thinking, like, really ambitious goals. So before you got full time into real estate, what did you have that enabled you to go full time? Because for example, a lot of projects you talked about, like your your conversions their weekend, right? So you have no money coming in. So you must have other venues of money coming in? And to allow you to be full time. Am I right?

 

Ken  

Yeah. Like, like, my journey is no different than many, many other investors. You know, but

 

Erwin  

you’ve been a lot longer than I specifically bring this up, because there’s been a string of bankruptcies and I’m gonna guess there’s gonna be a lot more of them. Yeah, because a lot of people were doing aggressive burrs and flips. So they, again, they have no money coming in. And if they can’t get stuff done on time and exit, they’re gonna go broke, you know, for sure, obviously, like, how do you how did you not go broke?

 

Ken  

How did I not go broke or I’m not going broke? Well, like my personal portfolio properties, like, you know, the vast majority of them are student rentals. You know, so, you know, I thank the Lord for my Student rental properties. I know not every single investor likes that type of type of investing product or a student rental. But for me, it’s really kept cash flow coming in. And what’s nice is that the students do turn over. And when I hear about a student group that wants to move out, like, I get super excited, you know, cuz it’s

 

Erwin  

Well, I mean, tenant, Ontario.

 

Ken  

But, you know, it’s, it’s an opportunity for me to refresh the unit and get a fresh batch of students in there, full market rent, or even above market rent. And so, you know, just on the personal side, that’s, that’s allowed me to, you know, keep keep cash flows coming in. But I also have an active business to like, I’m, you know, the design side of the business, and the construction side of the business, all obviously brings an active income, right? And so, you know, if you’re an investor, you don’t have a active source of income coming in, yes, it can be very difficult to know, keep things going, if you’re just using all private money, but you have no other source of income to help pay those. So those interest payments, right, yeah, it’s like anyone can get a private loan or a private mortgage, but you have to pay the interest on the monthly interest on those. So you don’t have active income coming in. Yeah, that’s where people get tight, right. And people they over leveraged themselves, and they can’t make those monthly payments. And if you get any sort of delays, or hiccups on your project, permits take too long contractors or you know, the mess off or something or you’re over budget, like, you know, should never happen, right. So, I’m,

 

Erwin  

I’m being complete, sarcastic. So like,

 

Ken  

so for me, I’m a little bit of a different situation where yes, I have, you know, pretty high cash flowing student rental properties, because that’s how I built my portfolio at the beginning, which laid a really strong foundation, and then I have my active design an active construction business that are bringing also active income in. And so then when I’m getting into like my other, you know, personal investing projects like the triplex rebuild, or the church conversion of land development and opportunity, like I have active income coming in to carry and cover those interest payments, you know, not to say that, you know, like everybody else, you know, interest rates are rising and your your monthly carrying costs are increasing. But that’s why in my business, I’ve made a really conscious decision to double down on my marketing in the last couple of months, we’re doing radio campaigns now on 900, CML, we’re broadening we’re casting our net wider, as far as the types of clients that we help, my focus has always really been on the everyday real estate investor, you know, doing it for a return on investment and doing this, you know, to make money and all this kind of stuff. But you know, as interest rates have risen, the investors are the amount of investors or less coming in the door doing conversion work, right. So we’ve really switched our focus to focusing on the everyday homeowner, and helping everyday homeowner with basement units and conversions for their ageing parents, or their disabled child or their adult child who needs a place to stay. So that’s really kept no leads coming in the door. It’s like any business, when you start seeing a slowdown in the market or a slowdown in your business coming in, you have to be quick to pivot. Right. And that was happening for me, basically, you know, into June, July, August, where we saw leads, like die off from investors. You know, nobody was buying anything. Right? So I’m like, crap, what am I going to do? You know, I got to do something. To do the staff, I got employees, I got, you know, ongoing projects, we got to we got to find, right. So I’d like, I double down on my marketing. Right? You do regular rentals, too, right? Yeah, we’ve no, we’re doing just interior alterations, you know, you know, our company gets involved in, you know, kind of some custom renovations for a homeowner, you know, it’s not all just investor projects, you know, so the vast majority is, but, you know, we’re a design build construction company, contractor. So, you know, we can do all sorts of types of projects. But, you know, if you’re a business owner out there, or you’re an entrepreneur out there, when things are getting tough, don’t pull back on your marketing, you know, keep your marketing budget there, spend the money, because your competition is probably not spending money on marketing right now. But if you keep spending money on marketing, when the market does rebound, and those leads come in, who they’re going to call first or even calling you first, right, right. And that’s what’s happening right now with us, right

 

Erwin  

being being better known as incredibly important in business. Yeah, everyone needs to know that. where to go next? Can we run through some numbers for a garage? For garage conversion? No, like for example, if we go back to like the last class garden suite build that you’ve been doing? Yeah, how Big sets a empty piece of backyard. How big is it? How many square feet

 

Ken  

is a great question? Like, this is what you know, everybody’s asking me Okay, well, what’s the what’s the cost here of what we’re going to build?

 

Erwin  

Because I’m looking for like a cookie cutter solution because like our basement apartments are pretty cookie cutter, we’re all looking for two bedroom. We know we have our egress window requirements we have our fire suppression requirements is pretty, pretty similar between all of them. I’m just waiting. I’m just wondering like, what is is there a best practice for

 

Ken  

garden suite to a coach house is not like cookie cutter? Because, you know, there’s depends on the city you’re working in. First of all, great, you know, because every city will have different setbacks or gross floor area requirements were to dictate the size right? For on a bigger parcel, we’re building a bigger structure

 

Erwin  

than something else government needs to standardise

 

Ken  

a lot, we’re gonna be doing a much smaller unit. Once you access like to get into that space, you know, we’re working through a three foot gate, or do we have like a big laneway? We can drive in excavators. And right now we’re doing poured concrete foundations versus helical piers like

 

Erwin  

this and start with what are we looking for in a property? Because I think I think especially in this market, that we’re in having a bit more balanced in the market, I’ve been telling you telling everyone be more picky, and what you want. So if you’re being picky, what are you looking for in a property in a lot? If you want the option?

 

Ken  

When we’re looking at stuff, you know, let’s just take the simple, you know, bungalow model, a bungalow on a nice 50 by 100 foot lot or something there, the very first thing I look for is do we have good good side access to get into the backyard? You know, if we’re looking at doing a garden as the strategy, no, we’re getting involved in new construction. Okay. And so you know, we need good access into that dark side, you’re not only for equipment, but also know some of the zoning bylaws require a one metre wide, unobstructed pathway. And the reason for that is for firefighter access. So from the street to the entry door of the unit in the backyard, you need a one metre wide, unobstructed pathway. And that’s so that, you know, an ambulance can show up with a gurney and go down a pathway to get somebody out of the unit. Right. So So that’s first and foremost is making sure we have the space to get into the the yard.

 

Erwin  

So I guess it’d be like a bigger issue like lower city, for example, where the houses are really close together. Yeah.

 

Ken  

So in the older parts of the city, like the downtown cores, houses are much tighter together, right? This has been a very common issue. I’ve seen come up with people with properties. And I’m like, Look, you know, what, you do not have that pathway, you do not have the whip, you will not get a building permit, right? Yes, it’s a zoning bylaw requirement, but it’s a zoning bylaw requirement that has specific health and safety, which we were talking about one of respect. Yeah. And, you know, to me, if adjustments will not approve or variance for that,

 

Erwin  

then sounds like you need way more than one metre. And because the analogy I would automatically comes to my head is if you’re trying to put a pool in the backyard, you need room for equipment. Like like, you know, like a bobcat, for example needs to be able to fit through, yeah, if

 

Ken  

you’re, if you don’t have that laneway access, and you have like, you only have a three foot gate to work through, like your cost of construction is gonna be through

 

Erwin  

the roof, so you can just create it in.

 

Ken  

Yeah, but modular is not always cheaper than stick framing, like that’s a bit of a myth out there. You know, I’ve interviewed and met with lots of different modular builders as we’re exploring different options for these garden units. And they will admit to you directly that it’s not cheaper, you know, modular is not always cheaper, in some cases, it can be more expensive. And I’ve had numerous conversations about this, because we’re trying to find an efficient way of investors, there is a lot of efficiency on site, right, your overall site time is reduced because the structure is being built off site. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into lower cost

 

Erwin  

or error All right, right you know, so like we’re good corner lots be something you would target for example,

 

Ken  

no definitely corner lots right because we have no it’s with the corner properties you can definitely create a more kind of separate private coach house you know, people have their own personal driveway oftentimes, you know, you can fence the yard in such a way that it feels like they have their own kind of throw their own separate house you know, it’s a corner lots are great, they’re fantastic. He’s got to be careful sometimes with the corner lots not the principal building the house is not too far to the one side because you know, there’s still setbacks you have to maintain from you know, the rear and side lot line, but also many municipalities have a minimum setback between the house between the principal building and your coach house. And so sometimes in a corner lot that could get difficult, you know, which could could also lead to minor variance. Right. So, I’m always looking at it because these are still relatively new types of structures happening. I’m very conscious about minor variances, because I want to avoid that at all because dever you know, the vast majority of neighbours do not like this idea of you putting in a coachhouse okay, you think it’s a great idea, but Usually you go talk to 10 of your neighbours, and they probably won’t agree with you. Right. So I’m very conscious about the particular zoning bylaws of that city and trying to do it as of right now, at least in the current climate that we’re in right now until they further clean up their bylaws to make it easier. But, but as you sit right now, we’re kind of in this period of time between the passing of Bill 23, and the municipalities updating all of those zoning bylaws, the current bylaws are still in place, you know, and so we still have to comply with them. And so it’s, you know, to make your life easier, you want to avoid these variances at all costs. So yeah, that’s why it’s so important to know your city, to Know Your City to know where you’re working and to know your city’s bylaws, for sure. And to have a great team to help you out. If you don’t yet have the time to learn everything, give me a call, absolutely, you know, reach out or your cell phone number, or reach out to us at our website legal second, suite.com. And, you know, we’re happy to set up consultations and that’s what I do, you know, three days a week, I’m doing consults all day, I probably do anywhere from like, eight to 10 consults a week, with people discussing their projects. So yeah, there’s tremendous opportunity. You know, sometimes it’s easier said than done. And, you know, we’re dealing with construction and bylaws and permits and so there is some complexity there some technicalities. You know, it’s all about the black and white on the paper.

 

Erwin  

See, I have a 50 by 100. Lot. I have good eyesight access, what would your recommended size for garden sweet b? Again, let’s generalise and say town with the mountain. Okay,

 

Ken  

so let’s say we’re okay, we’re in the City of Hamilton. Right? Okay. So, you know, in Hamilton here, they have a 75 square metre maximum area, sorry, how many square feet is that? That’s 800 square feet, approximately, oh, that’s big, gross floor area. So maximum gross floor area, 75 square metres or 800 square feet. That’s that’s Hamilton’s bylaw. But they also have another bylaw provision that basically says the building area, the building footprint, can’t be more than 70% of the principal building. So this is where I tell people like the bigger the building are, the bigger the the bigger the lot, you know, the bigger potential structure you can build. But there’s other bylaw provisions like we have to be 7.5 metres from the principal building to the coach house, right, which is 25 feet, that’s a lot too big distance. It’s not. And that’s in any direction, right. So let’s say let’s say you have a bungalow off to the side, you have a side driveway, and then you have your backyard, it’s not good enough just to put the coach house like off to the side in the backyard, where it’s not directly behind the principal building, because they’re going to take a dimension line from the corner of the house to the corner of the coach house and gotta be 25 feet. Right. 7.5. It’s a big gap. Right? It’s one of the Zoning Bylaw provisions that I’ve seen in other municipalities too. And it is can be very restrictive. It’s one of those, what I call a not common sense bylaw. Because, you know, you could build a garage, or an accessory building or any other type of building in your backyard, and they don’t have that Zoning Bylaw provision, you can be closer. Right? You know, so it’s a bit ridiculous to me that we have this 25 foot 7.5 metre kind of restriction, you don’t

 

Erwin  

ever agree like, like house fires are so rare, like what are we trying to prevent here?

 

Ken  

I don’t know what the existing

 

Erwin  

houses aren’t 25 feet from enough

 

Ken  

for them to control, you know, the size of the structures, you know, and control density to within a neighbourhood because, like, the bigger the structure, the more bedrooms you can put in the more people in the neighbourhood. More potential cars, you know, it’s one of many things that they do to help control the size and how many of these units are out there too.

 

Erwin  

Okay, so So because she with this example, I have good side access 50 by 100 foot lot, I have my 25 feet distance, what am I looking at a building in terms of a garden suite?

 

Ken  

Well, so in here in Hamilton, we can go up to six metres so we can do single story or two story or you can do no single story in a basement if you want that’s not really happening a whole lot. We’ve designed one out like that with the basement. But as much with my client, I think it’s my might be my client, possibly. Okay, but it doesn’t, you know, it’s much more costly to build putting a full basement underneath a coach house, right? Like you’d only do that really if you’re, you’re very limited on your building footprint. And maybe your particular Zoning Bylaw doesn’t allow two storeys because some cities don’t like Branford for instance, we can’t go to stores on our courthouses, they have to be single store. Hamilton allows to store other municipalities they only allow single store and so in order to get the gross floor area, you know, you dig down and you put a basement and but that gets a lot more costly. Right

 

Erwin  

now the only reason I would do it is for the upside potentially to suite it in the future.

 

Ken  

No for sure. And like I said, you know, zoning bylaws are changing, you know, and who knows, maybe at some point in time, they’re going to Are two units in these coach houses? Right? Which would be like super exciting, you know, but ya know, like a lot of structures we’re building like, you know, we’ve done a lot of like 20 by 20s. You know, we’ve done some like, you know, 14 by 20s are 1212 by 30s. You know, what’s nice about when you’re doing a more traditional stick frame build is that you can fully maximise the allowable footprint and gross floor area of your structure. And everybody I’ve worked with so far, they want to maximise their structure, they’re not looking at putting in the tiniest structure, they’re looking at putting the biggest structure they can possibly third doctor because they want to create nice units, nice one bed to bed units, they don’t want to just feel a little tiny bachelor, right? And so I’m sorry to

 

Erwin  

surprise you there. Because from my experience, that that sweet spot is for rental income, you want that two or three bedroom. So you need usually around 600 square feet, at least for two bedroom roughly, in order to get enough rent for the build to make sense.

 

Ken  

Yeah, yeah. And so like on the modular side, when you’re working with a modular type of structure, you’re working with a preset size, right? And that’s fine if you have a really big lot. And, you know, you don’t have to worry about setbacks, and all this kind of stuff, or gross, like lock coverage or anything else, because you’re such a huge land parcel, and you have great access to no crane in a unit or to ship in a unit. And so, you know, maybe not case modular, is suitable, right, because you’re not restricted. But in so many properties, we are restricted, you know, with lot size, access setbacks, floor area, you know, building area. And so oftentimes, when we’re looking at doing a modular unit, we’re not fully maximising the opportunity. Sometimes I don’t really know how to maximise opportunities, and given that modular is not necessarily cheaper. And in some cases, it can be more expensive to say, Okay, now we’re at a point where no cost point can be the same, or potentially could be more, but then we’re not fully maximising the available footprint we have, right? So that’s what I’ve been seeing a lot is like, it just, you know, modular has its place. But especially when we’re working in urban settings, and existing backyards, it’s not always practical,

 

Erwin  

or it. So you mentioned a couple of like, you mentioned a couple footprint sizes, like 20, by 2012. By 30. How do you price these by square foot? Or do you have

 

Ken  

lost? Like, you know, I hate talking about square foot pricing? Because it’s really scope of work, when construction is all scope of work? And I’ve mentioned it a couple times already is like, okay, like, what’s your foundation? Like? Is it single storey to storey? Are you doing, you know, simple vinyl siding? Or you can do like a brick veneer for most

 

Erwin  

investors doing? A lot of data, I

 

Ken  

know, you’re still relatively new, right? What would you do? You know,

 

Erwin  

if you’re building a 20? By 20? What

 

Ken  

would you do? Right now I would. And the ones that we’re actively getting into, are like a traditional stick frame built structure on an engineered grade slab.

 

Erwin  

How thick is that slab?

 

Ken  

Typically, you’re about, like, you know, two feet thick on the sides. And you go to like a four inch slab in the middle. But it’s engineered with rebar, and Styrofoam like insulation, rigid, rigid insulation, for the frost protection. And then yeah, rebuilding, you know, depending on the city we’re in, you know, we’re building a single story or two story structure on it. And, you know, most cities are, you know, if they do have a bylaw in place, like we’re basically the max we’re going is a two bedroom, a two bedroom unit. And most cases, it’s the one bed, a one bedroom unit. Yeah. And, you know, those are kind of starting at, like 200,000 to 250 rooms. You know?

 

Erwin  

And then what do you see in terms of rent for these

 

Ken  

for rent, so we’re seeing similar rents to a main floor apartment of a house. So like, in that, you know, anywhere from on the low end, maybe 17 to the high end, like 2000, you know, and that really depends on the size, the overall size, if it’s a bachelor, one bed or a two bed unit. Alright. So but you know, there’s still not a lot, a lot of data out there are really only this construction season that we saw units going in, you know, and so in some of those units aren’t even done yet. They’re still under construction. Some, you know, they’re done construction, but they’re, they’re not rented out yet. Or they’re rented out yet, but we haven’t got the appraisals and yet, or they haven’t been refinanced yet. So we don’t know what the lenders are doing. So it’s still next year for sure. We’re going to be a hell of a lot better data.

 

Erwin  

Just a typical numbers, for example, it used to be old rule of thumb, if you could get the monthly rent to be 1% of the investment, then that’s a no brainer, right? So we have 2k some around 244 1000 Right, that’s pretty close. This is pretty much a no brainer.

 

Ken  

Yeah, like I tell people, like, let’s

 

Erwin  

look at the money

 

Ken  

right now. Given that, you know, it’s we don’t know, 100% where appraisals are going to be, we don’t know 100% Really what the lenders are going to do.

 

Erwin  

We’re bleeding edge here. Hopefully everyone appreciates that were your bleeding edge here.

 

Ken  

Every investor I’ve worked with so far has been like, one of the very first ones, you know, kind of doing them. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

So the banks have ever seen these before? I look out

 

Ken  

okay, no, you’re gonna get your let’s just say $2,000 A month rent for it. So that’s, what’s that? That’s 24,000 a year. Right? And so if it’s gonna cost you BCT, 50, to build, you know, like, that’s a good 10% return. Right that,

 

Erwin  

like, I think people would, I think pretty much everyone would love a 10% return. Right?

 

Ken  

So 24,000 divided by 250,000 builds been very rough. No, yeah, it’s 10% right to 10% cash on cash return. So if you’re gonna take that money, and you put it into the mutual fund, or a GIC or something like that, like, you know, it’s still better spent doing it this way, getting a 10% return of, you know, the alternative that you could private lend that money to you and get 10% or borrow. Yeah, but that’s just the straight cash on cash return. Like obviously, we do know that there’s an improved the property, we’ve improved the property, we do know that there’s appreciation there on the property, you know, we do know that that there’s no principal pay down on that. If it’s a loan, you know, that there’s principal payback on there. So like, we do know that the return is higher, but I tell people look like just very simply, you know, run the math, you know, if you’re happy with just that basic simple metric, have a cash on cash return and do it.

 

Erwin  

And this is why I love especially the two car car garage conversion, if you’ve can find a good one. That’s one that’s in good shape, because then your renovation budget like half

 

Ken  

Yeah, no, exactly similar, same rents. So you know, I love the existing houses, the existing garages, because, you know, we don’t have to worry about setbacks. You know, with existing garages, they could still they’re even more vaguely six inches off the fence line. And it doesn’t matter because it’s an existing structure

 

Erwin  

that American put your garage, Guy garage, but really close to his house, but it’s existing so,

 

Ken  

so So yeah, like these existing garages are amazing. You know, if you can find a good solid one, like a good cinderblock garage, or something good brick veneer garage, like, good, solid structure. There’s not that many out there, though. You’d be surprised, you know, you go look at an aerial map of the city and you start

 

Erwin  

I know by hunting for sale, don’t for sale? Sure. If you want to buy one today, it’s probably not a heck of a lot of them. So that’s the warning I’ve been giving people giving people Yes, the market expect the market to decline until probably April, March, April, and then things will probably start picking back up. But you can’t just wait to the bottom because you can’t find these unicorn properties that easily. Yeah, right. Unicorn unicorn makes makes itself available. You kind of gotta get it. Yeah, because it won’t be available in the spring. It wasn’t will not be available, like this time next year.

 

Ken  

No, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be really interesting seeing what happens here. Like, I’m excited, you know, like these new changes in Hamilton with these, the r1 and the r1 a zone like these four unit conversion zones, like, like hack, if you have a nice big, big house with a garage like, easily default limits, you know, your neighbours not going to like it, because they think that it’s only a single family home zoning, but they have no idea what’s coming. You know, that’s,

 

Erwin  

that’s the future because that’s like, that’s exactly like downtown Toronto. Right? Like, there’s tonnes of houses being converted. Yeah. And there’s like, no resistance from the city, like the city is incredibly supportive of densification. Especially if you’re near transit, like you don’t need like any parking. And the stories I’m hearing from folks in Toronto, right, like, you mentioned that you weren’t 320 metres from a bus stop. If that was Toronto, they remove all requirements of parking.

 

Ken  

Shouldn’t be like, Oh, the tower shouldn’t be, you know, because that we need to encourage transit. When you remove, like, just parking, as an example, like, what we’re doing is we’re allowing the market to dictate what should happen, right? Like, if a tenant is not going to rent that unit, because it does have a parking space. Like, yeah, that landlord will quickly switch gears and be like, You know what, I can’t rent out my unit because I don’t have a parking space. Well, on the next project, I’m going to make sure that there’s a parking space. Yeah, you know, so like, it’s in the rent will be cheaper. It’s supply and demand right. Now, why are we telling people how to live? Like, why are we telling people, you know, oh, you should not live in a 300 square foot unit, or you should be living in an 800 square feet, you know, like myself and my family. You know, like, everybody’s living situations are different, right? Everybody’s needs are different. We have to have a wide spectrum of different types of options for people.

 

Erwin  

Alright, can we move on? We just a lot of you have lost sexy stuff to talk about. 75 hard

 

Ken  

75 Finished. I did. Yeah. I, shockingly, but I did you. So how many people started out with you. So when we first started, we set up an accountability group, and we have 83 people in our accountability group. So before we officially launched, we had that many people in our group, how many people you think got started. So how many people fail to start, so more than half failed, who even start, so they got excited, they join the accountability group. But they didn’t even start day one of the challenge, you know, there, there are more there just to make themselves feel good. And don’t get me wrong, it’s good to be part of a group with other people doing stuff so that you can feel motivated, like we do it all the time. We’re joining Facebook groups for land development, even though we’re not land developers ourselves, we get there just for education and to get motivated, right. And there’s, there’s something to be said for them. But this was an accountability group. Okay. And people joined it to be free. It’s free. So yeah, more people are gonna join. Yeah, but they’re, you know, the joint have to be held accountable. And yeah, sure enough, you know, not even half even more than half didn’t even start. So that was really interesting. And then yeah, another, you know, I would say, so, let’s say just for easy math, you know, let’s say like, you know, whatever, 50 people didn’t even start, okay. And then there’s probably probably another 20 people who did start, but then they quickly failed. So like, whether it was day two, or day three or day 10, they failed to do one of the five daily tasks, and then they didn’t even restart. Like, they didn’t even bother trying to restart, you know, then there’s probably another like five guys who, yeah, they made it quite quite a ways through like, they made it to like day, 30 day 40 day 50. But then they failed for whatever reason, like they got sick or something like legitimate happen, and they failed one of the tasks, but they restarted and they’re, they’re like, no, they’re back on track. And they’re now did like day 50 or something. So like, there’s a bunch of guys that are okay, are still working through the but people who actually started and finished, I think there’s only like four of us out of the 80 people who actually okay, or 83 people have actually started so very interesting. Just

 

Erwin  

over, I’ll give credit to the folks who are continuing and going. I’m just gonna assume they’re strong enough to finish. So we’re talking about nine out of 83. So let’s just over 10%

 

Ken  

Yeah, yeah. And I would say that’s probably a stretch. So it goes to show you that you know, that Yeah, well, one the challenge, you know, the challenge is difficult. I’m not, I’m not gonna say it’s easy, or easy at all, it’s definitely a challenge. But it goes to show you that like out of, you know, out of the public or other people in general, like, you know, people in our community 80% of people don’t do anything right

 

Erwin  

now, I think it’s even higher, because there’s people like me that even join during the accountability group.

 

Ken  

It’s that small percentage of people who actually take action, who actually follow through who actually commit to actually get it done that fall through all of this, you’re gonna see results, right? And you got to take action. Right? So it’s very interesting. I’m actually shocked that I actually even made it like that actually completed, I thought I was going to fail on day five, too, you know, because I’ve never been a guy to work out go to the gym, like no beyond diets and read books and all this kind of stuff. Like that was not me. I wasn’t that type of guy. But, but I was I was the one who started the accountability group. And so I’m like, crap, I can’t like I can’t be the guy who starts the accountability group and and not be the one to actually finish it either. So So had a lot of motivation to keep going. That’s obviously I kept it going. So congratulations.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, you look I can see in your face. You look slimmer. Yeah, I

 

Ken  

know. I’ve definitely lost weight of oxygen. No, I did put on some muscle mass too. So like I’m still alive. So I’m done. 75 heart I’m not doing the five daily tasks anymore. But there’s couple things I am still keeping up and keeping up. I’m doing one workout a day now. Just primarily strength training. You know, as we get into the colder weather here, I’m not as eager to be outside on my bike, and biking so I’m just sticking with indoor strength training

 

Erwin  

if you check out his lift party maybe tried his lifting. Stop. That’s like a virtual biking indoors. You put your bike into basically a treadmill for your bike like a trainer. Yeah, no, but it’s all kind of a peloton, but it’s been more a bit more for racers.

 

Ken  

Okay, yeah, I have a trainer from my from my my bike. So I can ride out inside

 

Erwin  

there. Yeah. And then it’s interactive. Like it’s part of your no oh, there’s dinner. I just

 

Ken  

had my road bike and I put it into a trainer and I can ride my road bike like just like a stationary bike

 

Erwin  

or Yeah, so you can actually make it like a character video game. You can gamify and other people all over the world will out with you. Interesting. Okay, yeah. So you see everyone starts to see each other’s avatars.

 

Ken  

Okay. Check it out,

 

Erwin  

I’ll share with you the I have a couple friends as well. It’s not cheap, but I think you can afford it.

 

Ken  

I definitely recommend it to people like it’s no, if you actually finish the challenge, it actually is life changing, you know, not just physically but you know, the daily reading of self development books can have a huge impact on your mindset. You know, for me, I read two parenting books I read. So I read like 14 gospel principles of parenting, I read the seasons of fatherhood. So the different stages of life that we go through as fathers sort of founders to be very, very beneficial with, you know, how I how I’m raising my son, and being a parent, and all of this. And then I read how to win friends and influence people and never split the difference. So like in a negotiation book, and I found those two books very, very helpful with how I work with my staff, how I work with my clients, being a lot more patient a lot more empathetic, being a lot more intentional about giving praise, you know, really praising my guys are really praising the team, giving kudos really pumping people up, you know, when I pick up the phone, and I’m talking with the client, putting a smile on my face, trying to come across in a positive manner. You know, like, all these types of things can have a huge impact on your, on your brand on your business, and ultimately on your pocketbook. Right? And so, yeah, super thankful that I decided to do the challenge. And I encourage anyone out there listening, like definitely take a look at it and do it because it does all of the guys I’ve seen who’ve done it, they’ve been able to scale up been able to do more, and they’re doing more and they’re doing amazing things in their life because of it. So I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I’m just following success and I’m following other people that are doing amazing things and just copying what they do.

 

Erwin  

Amazing. Well, I’m sure a lot of you will know what else you’re up to because you’re doing another amazing things. Which project would you like to cover next your triplex build or your conversions I

 

Ken  

got a triplex build going on in in Branford that was a really interesting experience. Like we’re actively on construction right now we’re on we’re on a couple of weeks into the build. But again, that project needed a minor variance. And so it was interesting was one of my first experiences where I had to be escorted out of city hall by security because we had 25 neighbours come out you’re building a triplex protesting my my project they’re doing this for your safety date. Yeah, they did mine. Yeah, yeah, very interesting. No, that got quite heated in the council chambers where we were having the minor variance here and again, like you know, people were were digging through my personal Facebook digging up stuff I said about housing trying to use it against me for building a triplex or monster although all I was doing was applying for a variance to be able to put a full second story on a bungalow, and make the house into a triplex and like a triplex was permitted like as a use. It was only a gross floor area increase that I needed, but again, so a lot of like misinformation and misunderstanding of the technicalities of the Zoning Bylaw and how we’re asking neighbours for permissions on stuff that they really aren’t fully equipped or educated on to make an informed opinion on and

 

Erwin  

usually selfish opinions Yeah, I don’t want to be I don’t want to hear construction now once the construction vehicles I want construction vehicles blocking my driveway. Like I get it

 

Ken  

Yeah, but that’s not really interesting anyways, yeah. How to get escorted out of City Hall security walked me to my vehicle to make sure I got there safely.

 

Erwin  

That’s nice. Yeah, no

 

Ken  

is definitely very appreciative of them. But so yeah, that was an interest anyways, the project is underway and super excited about about to build and to be nice. So we tore down old bungalow, we tore it down to the existing cinderblock foundation we put two courses of cinderblock on the foundation to raise up the basement height and then just doing a two storey framed structure on top and make it into into a triplex

 

Erwin  

when you first look at the property what was it about it that you that made you interested

 

Ken  

in once a corner property? And yeah, it was just it was well priced? It was an old outdated, rundown bungalow not was very well it was on MLS, but it’s just very very well priced. Given the current market that was in when I was when I bought it bought it about like 10 months ago,

 

Erwin  

right? Was this such a bad condition that like no bank would touch it type thing or? Um, no, I

 

Ken  

got a mortgage on it from the bank. Oh, like a regular schedule a bit. Yeah, CIBC mortgage, oh, you know, just regular typical a lender on it. But it was it was quite rundown. It was quite rundown. And you know, I wanted to increase the density there. So like I first explored you know, doing a typical basement apartment, but I’m looking at it like shoot, okay, well, maybe I could do a second floor on this. And then you know, then you start looking at what it would take to put the second floor on the project and I made the executive decision to basically let’s just tear it down to the block to the cinder block and rebuild one of the bank. Think about the the bank is excited about it. They’ll find out when I do the refinance. No, no, I’ve already been talking to CIBC about construction financing on it. I ended up not going with them for construction financing. I’m just self financing it. But by no the bank was the bank is okay.

 

Erwin  

Why did the decision to do a top up versus garden suite? Like I could walk us through the math? Because again, we’re trying to educate? Yeah, mainly novices like I’ve never done I didn’t top up, but it was like over 20 years ago.

 

Ken  

Yeah. Well, so like anything like any project you’re looking at doing. It’s all you start with the Zoning Bylaw, and what you can and can’t do, right. And in this particular zone, in the City of Brantford, which was an RC zoned residential conversion zone, we weren’t permitted to do courthouses in that zone. But we were permitted to do what they call the converted dwellings, which is basically, you know, we can actually do X amount of dwelling units, as long as you can comply with building code. So so in this case, we’re applied as a converted dwelling. But one of the bylaw provisions was for a converted dwelling, we can only increase the gross floor area of the building by 50%. So in this case, we had a bungalow, but they only counted the main floor as the gross floor area. So I would only be allowed to increase by 50%, which would be only half of the main floor. So it will be very expensive. A second, a full second floor. That’s 100% increase on that, on that gross floor area. Not uncommon. No, no, it’s ridiculous Zoning Bylaw. It’s so it’s such an outdated Zoning Bylaw, which I had my you know, own arguments with city staff about it that they had to clean up the Zoning Bylaw provision that they hope to, you know, increase density here, but no one

 

Erwin  

would do it then if you if it was just 50% Well, it’s way too expensive.

 

Ken  

The zoning bylaw dates back to the 1950s. But people weren’t like expanding buildings for adding additional dwelling units for

 

Erwin  

Britain have a housing crisis than the other. So it’s only been in the last like, you know,

 

Ken  

three years that people actually started expanding the buildings for additional units. And now they’re discovering that this Zoning Bylaw provision is really restricted triggering minor variances I’ve another one in right now tune the city for the exact same Zoning Bylaw provision, but you know, so for the neighbours, they see a minor variance application for 100% increase in growth they think I’m building a mansion you know, they think I’m building an apartment building that was some of the comments that were coming back. I thought you’re doubling the size of the foot. I’m like no, this is we’re only adding a second floor to this house in the zoning permits three floors. I wasn’t fully going for three floors I was only going on two floors. Anyways I don’t like you know interesting stuff when you’re dealing with with neighbours and zoning but yeah super exciting project super exciting project you share some numbers like what the property cost you so I bought it for basically for 454 and 50,000. My build is about 500,000 and I got an as built appraisal in today’s market 1.2 million on it. So I had the appraiser get done did this so I hired an appraisal company to give me an as built valuation on the building

 

Erwin  

right you know you made money already if I haven’t built it finished it

 

Ken  

Yeah, yeah. So that faster basically I was I bought for 450 My build price is about 500,000 including the landscaping and driveways and everything and then I my as built is valuation is 1.2 in today’s market so obviously once construction is done and it’s rented and actually get a true like bank appraisal on it. We’ll see what comes in at that time.

 

Erwin  

But sorry to have you back do you have pictures on your Instagram on this property or anything?

 

Ken  

It’s on my Facebook right now I’m doing updates on my Facebook where can where can folks find your Facebook? I’m the only can beacon dam in existence on planet earth so you Facebook slash can be condemn Instagram slash can be condemn my website, obviously legal second suites.com

 

Erwin  

They will have this on the show notes folks. Sorry, what do you think he rented for?

 

Ken  

Yeah, so basically we’re looking at about so we have we’re going to do a two bedroom basement unit. So I’ll be putting that up around 1900 Plus utilities. We have a three bedroom main floor unit, which we’ll be putting up around probably 21 or 2200 ish. And then we have a three bedroom second floor unit which would probably be very similar around that 2000 Maybe maybe 2200 range. Also three bedroom or Every bedroom, so one, two bed and two, three bed units,

 

Erwin  

and then how much parking you have on site. I’m talking about parking so much.

 

Ken  

Yeah, how the required parking. So we’ve made we have X kids, it’s a corner lot. I have two driveways on the property, one from each street. And so we can actually fit basically, upwards of six vehicles. So basically three, three parking spaces, but in tandem. So each each occupant or each tenant can have basically two cars parked in tandem. So that’s trick Yeah. And that’s what that’s what’s nice about corner lots is that you can have multiple driveways oftentimes. So it can really help your parking situation. And in this case, in this zoning, they still had parking requirements.

 

Erwin  

So hyper comply with parking. Sounds pretty sweet. I’m gonna keep this one.

 

Ken  

So yeah, that’s gonna keep it as a long term buying hold. You know, it’s kind of just a personal one I’m working on right now just for my own fun. You know, it’s not like necessarily like a slam dunk investment. But but it’s still I’m getting my money out. It’s going to be good. A good project. I’ve done know, others have been like, you know, a lot a lot better projects. But But yeah, it’s it is what it is. It’s good.

 

Erwin  

Now slam dunk. Till that hurt yourself. Hey, we’re running out of time talking about want to tell me about one of these, like larger, aggressive commercial conversions you got going on? Because that’s that’s like not that common?

 

Ken  

Yeah. So yeah. So this year, we’ve definitely pivoted into the Commercial to Residential building conversion. So looking at vacant office buildings, and converting them into like, you know, 20 plus kind of apartment units. So we do have an active project right now. We’re actually purchased it. We’ve submitted for the building permits, we’re still waiting for the building permit. But basically, it’s a vacant medical office building, downtown Hamilton, and we’re converting it into 22 apartment units. So really exciting project. It is a yeah, basically a cinder block, building cinder block in steel trust building to a very solid building. It’s really just going in and framing up interior partition walls. And what was nice about this project is that we could do it all or

 

Erwin  

it’s not just that, but we’d like to do it all the wiring, and everything. There’s no kitchens and bathrooms already.

 

Ken  

There’s there’s a lot going in on the mechanical side, and for sure, 100%. But what was nice about this practice is that we could do all as of right zoning, so it was zoned to permit multiple dwellings.

 

Erwin  

And that was absolutely key, wasn’t it? Yeah.

 

Ken  

Key key point is it permitted to 100% residential. And the other key point was that because it was an existing building, and in this particular zone, when we convert existing buildings, there’s no parking requirements. So because this building took up 100% of the lot, like there’s no excess space for parking. But because we’re just converting the existing building in this particular zone in Hamilton, we didn’t require parking. So we could do all 100% As of right routine, which is nice, because we’d have to go through any sort of like rezoning or any sort of like additional processes is really just a matter of doing the building drawings to mechanical drawings, and then submitting that to the city for this type of project that the mechanical design took some time to sort out because we were we’re also applying for the CMHC MLA select programme. And we’re trying to hit some of the points with MLA. So we’re doing that through basically energy efficiency. And no, we’re doing it all through energy efficiency. So we’re sorry, we’re targeting 50 points with a multi select, and we’re doing it all through energy efficiency. So there was a lot of back and forth between our mechanical designer and our energy efficiency consultant to sort out the mechanical systems here. And like when you’re getting into any sort of larger, multi unit conversion building, mechanicals, typically is our biggest hurdle, figuring out you know, how much electricity capacity can we get to the building, we’re going to split everything Individual heating systems are going to have a common heating system for the building. You know, there’s a lot of decision points that happen along the way. So in this particular in this project was no different. There was a lot of back and forth between our our contractor like our H fac contractor, H fac designer and the energy efficiency consultant. But anyways, really excited

 

Erwin  

for him to fight with the city and neighbours though.

 

Ken  

No and what was nice, it was vacant. So we didn’t have to go in and evict tenants. There was no tenants, there is a vacant building. We can go in and we can design it however we like. And we can set the rents to whatever we like, and they’re not subject to rent control. So that’s what’s really nice about doing these larger projects, these Commercial to Residential conversions, is that you know, the biggest thing is we’re not dealing with existing tenants and anybody who’s bought a larger multi unit building and trying to do Cash for Keys right now is Having a hard time, the price for Cash for Keys has gone up tremendously. Like we’ve had a building recently where, you know, it was in need of major renovations, like it wasn’t a habitable building. But the tenant was offered up to $30,000. And they still would not leave, because they had no other they wanted to accept the money. They could not find another place. There’s no vacancy, right? Yeah. And they may not qualify and didn’t qualify, nobody would accept them. So sometimes, people want to accept the money, but they just can’t find a place. So anyways, that’s what’s nice about the vacant commercial stuff.

 

Erwin  

Can you share some numbers? I’m gonna let you go.

 

Ken  

Yeah, we bought it for 2 million, our renovation budget is 1.7 million on it. And the as built appraisal is 6 million on it. And it’s about an 18 month timeline. And it was costly to carry this on, like monthly cheering costs. Well,

 

Erwin  

we have because we need to stop people having going bankrupt. People seem to forget to like bail, calculate carrying costs.

 

Ken  

Amazing financing on this building, actually. So we have is BC 7.95%. And that’s mortgage plus construction. So we have 100% financing on the construction through our lender magenta. And they’re paying out the construction money in $300,000 drawers as we as we need it.

 

Erwin  

That makes me a good contact for from agenda. So shut up agenda.

 

Ken  

So we had a really amazing financing on this on this project. So definitely, you know, the we’re not like paying through the nose on monthly interest. You know, for a project of this size, like to get mortgage plus construction for 7.95% is great.

 

Erwin  

And then when you can also rent for

 

Ken  

the total building, like all of the units. So on average, we’re targeting about 1700 a month on average for their 22 units.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, I have a calculator too. I want to let you go after this. 1700 times 20 units. That’s over 34 grand times 12 Started with 35,000. It’s almost 450 Oh my god. So we’re, we’re also taught foreigner that’s almost 450,000 in rent plus utilities.

 

Ken  

Yeah, plus utilities. Everything is separated. Yeah, we’re taking you through the CMHC programme. So we’re going to get a really good exit financing on the back and when it’s done. And we’re also applying for a lot of city grants, because this particular building is in it’s in a box in the street village.

 

Erwin  

In the winter, where the rents are low.

 

Ken  

Well, yeah, so there’s cinnabar street village. And and there are their smaller bachelors and one beds.

 

Erwin  

Oh, well, yeah. Well, how come you chose the smaller units versus two bedrooms? Well, so

 

Ken  

this is great top disagree. Point is how do you define your unit mix, when you’re doing a larger building, it’s really like, You got to consider the location that you’re building is it right, and this location, being in the Burton street village area in the downtown core of the city, the demand for Bachelors in one beds is much higher than demand for two beds, or even three bedroom units. And when it comes to building, it’s all the building valuation is all about your noi, your net operating income, right? So basically, we’re looking at the building footprint, you know, how many units can be fit in the building. And basically, you know, there’s a lot of things to consider like windows and means of egress and other building code requirements, minimum unit size, and all this kind of stuff. And be able to thought through what we came up with, we came up with like, you know, a mix of bachelors and one beds for the unit mix. And that’s, that’s what in demand in that part of the city. You know, this was up on Hamilton mountain, we would definitely be wanting more ones in two bedroom units, not bachelor units, it’s really important to know, know where you are in your city, and what types of units are in demand in that type of location. Yeah,

 

Erwin  

fascinating. All right, Ken, we’ve gone way over. I think, hopefully, the listener enjoyed this because I enjoyed this. I took several pages of notes. Yeah, no,

 

Ken  

thank you for having me. And it’s great to come in and kind of chat with you and get updated on stuff. And there’s a lot of things happening right now. And I’m even having a hard time trying to stay up to date on all the changes, you know, cuz they’re happening. They’re happening weekly right now. It’s crazy. It’s awesome. But it’s exciting. Yeah, it is. It is,

 

Erwin  

especially as more deals come up. So Ken, thanks so much for doing this. Oh, where else can folks reach you? You shared your screen? Yeah,

 

Ken  

basically, Facebook can be condemned. Instagram can be condemned legal. Second suites.com. You can definitely go there. Please book a consultation. If you do have a project coming up. You do want to talk about it. You know, I’ve been in a position in my life or a point in my life that I have a fair bit of experience in different types of things. And so we’ll definitely talk about your project and see if there’s a way that we can help you

 

Erwin  

raising and then what about the do get ahead are these for sale on your website?

 

Ken  

No these are just for fun know what I got these hats sweet John legal and the basement of business so I got these tasks to give to my clients so when they successfully finished a project, then I’m gonna give them the hat basically saying sweet on legals

 

Erwin  

at least was signage in the in the suite for the tenant 10 Thanks for doing this.

 

Ken  

Yeah, thanks.

 

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 for the 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. Forgive 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 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 secure for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca Enter your name and email address on the right side will include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself what 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.

 

 

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**Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Bruce (Erwin’s son]  

Hello, and welcome to another episode of truth about real estate investing.

 

Erwin  

Hey everyone. Oh, that’s first by the way, as the year winds down, it’s been a challenging one for many, especially those who over leverage. Those who gambled on the market going up forever, or market going up folks who grew too fast too soon spread too thin, poor systems poor oversight. list goes on and on. We see it everywhere too, in other different industries. For example, you know, SPK Sam bank when freed of FTX has been arrested in the Bahamas, the South Korean gentleman and responsible for Luna coin is hanging out in Serbia. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos has just been sentenced to jail. Very interesting documentary on Netflix if you haven’t checked it out. So do please be careful out there. Back when I was taking courses in commercial banking, banks don’t get rich by making bad loans. Nor do they Underland. So for example, if a business needs say, for example, a million dollars to survive, the bank doesn’t just lend, say 500,000 to reduce the risk, because the risk of the business fails and that one that $500,000 loan is loss. They lend either the whole amount or nothing at all, or they make that loan contingent on someone else loaning up the rest of the money. Because no one no one wins in making bad loans. In these challenging times, we’re seeing I’m seeing even more coaching programmes, more coaches, offering programmes more beginner coaches entering coaching. And I’ve seen more capital raising offerings. And I’m hearing lots of rumours of failing portfolios. I don’t know anything’s confirmed. Again, these are rumours. But like the saying goes, when there’s smoke, there’s fire. So I’m being cautious. As always, there’s lots of red flags out there. So as always do your own due diligence. And, you know, maybe have an expert set of eyes help you with that due diligence. And just be careful out there. I do feel these times are the time to be greedy and to be picky for Chennai. That means we’ll be buying another investment property in the near future. Not sure whether that’s going to be you know, I’ve been having friends tell me I need to get in more commercial more. So I don’t know what we’re going to be buying. But we plan on taking advantage of this dip and buying soon. And my extensive experience, the best investment is one that’s well researched, supported by the best Power team in the business based on economic fundamentals. That one controls control is huge. for carrying out we trust ourselves over anyone else with our money in our investment. Onto another subject. I want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s supported cheering I am sharing our YouTubes or podcasts to those that who care about to our staff who worked so hard this year, so that our clients and you know, attendees of our conferences, are taken care of thank you to our clients who put their trust in us and guiding them in their financial journeys towards financial peace, especially for sending us referrals. We love referrals. A common question I get about Sherry, is she able to take on more clients? Yes, Jerry’s company is taking on more clients. They just hired a new accounting manager in order to handle more volume. Thanks to all of you, who had just mentioned my Sunday listeners chairs, YouTube watchers, my YouTube watchers. I almost have 2000 subscribers. I guess it’s nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, I have more YouTube subscribers than I have podcast listeners. Anyways, it’s thanks to all of you, and especially our clients in the day, it’s our clients that pay our bills and help us fund our charity. Charity, I have a registered charity. We call it the Hamilton bash brigade. The charity was able to donate $10,000 worth of winter wear to school kids in Hamilton, Ontario, as is our way for charity and I love value. We’re very frugal individuals. And we love efficiency. Hence we purchased directly from a manufacturer or wholesaler we received a 20% discount since we’re a charity. The winter coats for example, we bought these are adult sized winter coats, we were paying about 45 each 45 for $45 Each and winter boots. Also they are adult size because we’re going into high schoolers. So these kids are not small and winter boots, for example, around $40 for a brand new pair of boots with tags, and these are quality items. In total, we provided for schools 142 winter jackets, 21 pairs of winter boots, 160 hats, 50 pairs of gloves, as the need is great. My friend Nancy, who is a school administrator in Hamilton and one of the high schools shared with me that they receive a couple of refugee families per week from Ukraine, Syria, and we’re at a place where we just fought a war Afghanistan. Some kids do not even have fixed addresses as they do not even live with their parents. It’s incredibly sad out there. And I encourage everyone to give however they can. We’re done for the season. So feel free to give to your local school church, your local charity, donate your time, whatever it is, there’s a lot of meat out there. And all you investors out there who haven’t started investing the need to invest has never been greater. Anyone didn’t notice healthcare is on the decline, senior care as well as on a decline, rents have skyrocketed and the demand supply mismatch for real estate has never been worse. We all have a problem to solve All to ensure our family’s financial and healthy well being. Health well being is to be taken care of my team and I are here at Iwan real estate are here to help if you have not already gotten onto my email list and receiving the invites to our webinars, meetups, property tours and mastermind lunches. Well, that’s just silly. On my website. There’s my free book became real estate investment playbook. You can sign up for the book for free, you can sign up for my newsletter along with 10,000 plus other hardworking Canadians. Learning the latest truth about real estate investing, simply add your name and email address on the right side, www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Again, that’s www dot truth about real estate investing dossier in 2023. My plan is to double our amount of educational content we produce as we love to help. To be honest, I think it’s a public service that we need to be done. As we need to crowd out the less qualified who are putting out content, we will start hosting meetups as well. We are expanding as well. We’re going to begin hosting meetups and tours east of the GTA, for example, Oshawa to Kingston as we’ve expanded thanks to add the addition of coach Steven Phillips of HGTV fame, who joined our team in 2020 to 2023 is going to be an amazing year for many. When people look back 510 years from now they will definitely no hindsight being 2023 This hindsight being 2020 2023 was an amazing year. It will also be a terrible year for many as interest rates are going to be elevated for a while. And for those who invested wrong. My forecast is for our clients to kill it as they always have since 2010. Thanks to our repeatable systems and our best in class power teams. And that is the truth about real estate investing. Hopefully you will join us or some someone that you care about. Again, that’s www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. This week, we have the lovely story about a young millennial who started the journey in his passion, which was health and fitness. If you’ve ever met or seen Vince Lee in person, you know he’s jacked. He looks like a personal fitness trainer. Unfortunately for personal trainers living in Toronto, it’s hard to get by thanks to a supportive partner shout out to chewy and the trustor town community shout out to them say Vince has been able to create a side hustle and real estate investing specifically started in rental owned he scaled us since this scale to larger and more projects branching out and strategy as well. We think we mentioned some of our short term rentals and even small apartment building investing is also moved the family from the expensive Toronto area to the more affordable Edmonton, Alberta, which is to me it’s unfortunate that we lose some of those talented events from our area to somewhere else for affordability reasons, but Vince’s story is a good one. It reminds me of why I invest so hard so I can afford to keep my kids close, living close to me. Which means living in Ontario slash GTA. Congrats to Vincent success. Please enjoy the show. Vince, how’re you doing?

 

Vince  

I’m doing great. How are you doing?

 

Erwin  

Way too overworked. But what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Vince  

More. So my real estate investing business trust your talent is an organisation that I’m part of. And I just had a newborn on August 23. And so the biggest bulk of my life right now is being a father. So that’s that’s where most of my time is going and then it goes into my business and then and then into treasurer talent Academy.

 

Erwin  

Pull my busy busy. Congratulations on being a father.

 

Vince  

Thank you. It’s different, or girl girl, her name’s Mira i What’s the background on that it’s a Japanese name. I’m Chinese, but it’s a Japanese name. It means I thought it really well because it means the future. And so I see her as the future because as you know, we’re on this path towards financial freedom and wasn’t taught this in, in school wasn’t taught this through my family or friends and really had to learn it the hard way. And so I want to I set the future because I it’s a unique name, by the way. And also, I see her as an opportunity where she’s the new generation in my family where, you know, living life a lot different. And I don’t even know if she’s gonna end up going to University of anything, but she may I’ll let her make her own decisions and choices and but it’s really teaching her that she can she can really do her own thing if she want it to whatever she wants to do. Fantastic.

 

Erwin  

And before recording you mentioned you’re from Cape Breton. You don’t even know if like for someone from Cape Breton.

 

Vince  

I am definitely a half newbie. And if I drink enough, the the accent does come out.

 

Erwin  

Are you kidding me?

 

Vince  

Really? It does. It does. So I would drink some water to

 

Erwin  

make this happen. You went to town I had been in town ever. What was the last time you were in town?

 

Vince  

Well, I moved. I moved to Edmonton six months ago. So last time I was in town was back in September for a conference there. What I’m hearing there I mean, you know, I can travel when I can when I want to at the moment not so much just because of the fatherly duties. I’m kind of strapped at home and my boss and my second boss now is not giving me any vacation time so rarely at home most of the time. But yeah, I’m from Cape Breton Island. I grew up in North Sydney Nova Scotia. That’s where I was, was where I was raised. I was like A small time boy and I grew up proud being the the Asian guy or the Asian family in town, I did have a little bit of racism there too. But it wasn’t really I didn’t think of of it as racism more so than ignorance. And it never really hindered me because I just thought it was just how people’s opinions or thoughts and I just kind of fit in with that and went on with my merry way. And but I made the move. And I was really excited to make the move out into Ontario because there wasn’t many opportunities growing up as a kid. And I guess, more small minded, if anything, and no offence to my own people there. But people don’t really think outside of the box. And so when I moved to Ontario was when I kind of started seeing more opportunities or different types of people and different views. And that really opened up my mind to really seeing more potential on things I could be doing out in Ontario. The opportunities were different.

 

Erwin  

What was like the career path your parents had for you? Back in Cape Breton,

 

Vince  

typical Asian parent, what do you think? Lawyer Doctor somewhere in the healthcare, some kind of professional field that has a bit of title under the name

 

Erwin  

primary in Halifax? Or like in Toronto or New York? Like what were the toronto, toronto? So the plan path for you was to to go to Toronto

 

Vince  

then okay, yeah. And ideally was going into like a bigger school like Toronto University. I like to say I’m one of those failed Asians, I was never good at school, I was actually really bad. I was not like an a PA student, I think, if anything, c plus two a B student horrible at math as well. So was not my strong suit. I’m not good at math. And even to this day, I’m not good at math. However, it was the fact that my trajectory was to do well in life. And that was what I wanted to do was to do well, and that was what was ingrained. And now I, I went to Toronto, I went to school at York University instead. And I graduated from Kinesiology, I actually did seven years of education prior to university was college, and I did health and fitness from there. So I wanted to stay somewhere in the health industry, at least, at least a sense of success of anything in the health industry, I was not really a doctor, but I was a kinesiologist. And I was working towards becoming a physiotherapist. But that was that was kind of where my roadblock started. And I wasn’t really making ahead in life, you know, I was making probably 30 to $40,000 a year, living downtown in Toronto. And what kind of bothered me too, was the fact that my partner, she worked at the bank, and she didn’t really go to school for that she just kind of got hooked up from one of her associates. And you know, one thing led to another, she just moved up the chain, and climbed the corporate ladder. And she’s like, you know, making 60 70,000 to 80,000. Whereas I was stuck at 30,000, and then up to $40,000. And I’m like, I studied seven years for this, and I’m working my butt off. And this is my passion. You know, this is my dream job. This is what I wanted to do. And I’m only making $40,000 a year. Whereas my partner here, didn’t go to school for this, she just kind of got the job. And then she’s just climbing the corporate ladder, and she’s making all this extra money. And I’m thinking, wow, like, that’s not fair lifestyle fair. And so she worked a lot of hours, and I worked a lot of hours trying to make ends meet. And we were together and, you know, got to a point where, you know, you’re not getting built, you’re working. And the same thing every day, you’re really busting your butt off. And you’re not really getting ahead in life, you’re not making the money that you want. You’re literally just scraping by paycheck to paycheck. And I remember like living in my little apartment in Toronto, and it used to be like cockroaches and like random bugs that I would see. And it kind of was disgusting. But we live there. And we couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. And so we just had to make ends meet. And I didn’t know there was another option. I didn’t know there was another way of doing things. I just thought you had to go to good like go to school, get good grades graduate, and then you would find a good job and job ideally with benefits. And then you would work till you’re what 6570 And you retire from there. That was the path that I was on like most people, but

 

Erwin  

doesn’t work. So I changed like oh, you’re down the real estate path.

 

Vince  

So what changed was when so as I was saying I was working there. I think I was working for about four years I worked four years at the time and first year was pretty good. Second year I started wondering how much more longer do I have to continue doing this third year I was like okay, is the same thing as the first year and second year and I wasn’t getting paid much more until the fourth year. That was about the time I kind of hit my I would call it you know, you heard a midlife crisis. quarter life crisis bit Sure. Mine was a quarter life crisis. I didn’t know that was even possible. So I hit my quarter life crisis that at about 26 my personal life was falling apart and I made my Bob asked excuse of why I didn’t see my friends or families for so long because I was working to be successful really. And so I haven’t seen my friends and family for about four years, I just really focused put my head down and worked hard because that’s what you were told to do. And to the point where I work myself to not being able to even see my own partner who I see only at nighttime, I see her at nighttime, we watch a little bit of TV go to sleep, and then we wake up and do the same thing over again. And so on the fourth year that our relationship was really getting a hit. And she was probably the only person I was close to at that time in life, because I haven’t seen anybody else for the longest time. And she was my only support my only communication with with a real person. And what happened was me and her, we were going through a rough patch. And she’s like, you know, this isn’t working. We thought we were gonna break up and you know, I was thinking like, maybe I should start seeing other people and I kind of started seeing somebody and it was just just to fill the void, really. And then we realised like, okay, like we’re about to break up at this point. And I had a moment when I was going to work. This was when it was like, I think it was sometime in June, back in like 2017 2018. I was heading to work and sunny, it was sunny like morning, six in the morning, I’m going to meet one of my clients one on one training. And to give you a little context of my client, he basically broke his back. And he was working as a contractor and fell off to stories. So he He almost broke his back and he’s almost paralysed. So his job was literally trying to kill him. And so I was training this guy, he’s probably one of the most negative people you’ll meet, and me and him were good. And I quite understood what he was going through because this guy, you know, his entire life is kind of upside down at the moment, he would use me as a punching bag. He would, you know, just say like Vince, you know, life’s not fair. You should treat me better, like things like that. He jokes around a lot. He always does that. One day, I was coming into work to meet him. This is the time I was going in in the morning to meet him. And I get up to the clinic. After writing the TTC, which you know, TTC is probably one of the most depressing places the public transit of Toronto, depressing place ever, especially during the winter. I was going to work and you know, I had the music blasting my ear and I was just trying to drown out my depression because that was what I was facing. I was going through a depression in my life. I was feeling so hopeless, I was lost. I was confused. My life was in shambles. I didn’t know who to talk to. I just kept everything to myself. And most most Asian guys do that as well, because you want to keep pace. You know, a lot of people show sign of weakness. And that’s what I was doing. And I got to the clinic, I started walking up the stairs and the moment I met I met eyes with my client. He started like throwing some jabs at me like Vince, why are you late at six o’clock? He should be on time. Like, hey, at 6am What should I pay you for and and the clinics open right at this time the clinic is open, it’s alive. And there are you know patients coming in and our clients coming in and out. There’s massage therapy, chiropractors, physio treatments happening, this is all the morning crowd, my my bosses, their managers, supervisors, they’re everything’s operational at that time. And I’m going into clinic, trying to put on my happy mask with a big giant crack in the middle of it. And the moment he started using me as a punching bag, I was just like, No, not not today. And I started throwing back jabs at him. And literally, like, as a professional, I was throwing down with this guy in the middle of clinic. And to the point I was like, go find a new trainer, like literally dropped the F bomb on him just completely broke apart in the middle of clinic. And I was like, Holy crap, I’m actually doing it. Like I’m actually saying, and it feels so nice to say it. But I’m like, I gotta hold myself back because it was my job or something’s gonna happen. But it just kept on coming out. It just kept on spewing. And right at that moment, I was like, Oh my god. This is my entire career that I just lit up into flames. And I’m like, Okay, I gotta really, really got to get my stuff together, because I’m probably gonna get fired very soon. And there’s, like, what am I going to do? Am I gonna live on the streets? Is my partner going to be the one that’s supporting me the whole time? Like, how am I gonna find a new job, like, all these thoughts started coming into my head, but I knew I didn’t want to work anymore. Because if I just found a new job, it’s going to be the exact same thing. It’s just me working at a place that I’m not going to find fulfilling. And I was thinking like, even if I was getting paid 50 bucks an hour, I’m not going to be making enough to survive and live a comfortable life in Toronto. So I actually went to the back of the room that at that moment, and I was I was just sitting on the computer in the office and back. And I was just pondering my life like what did I just do? Like what just happened? I’m recollecting all my thoughts and pulling my composure together. I’m on the computers searching up 26 year old don’t want to work what to do. And that was the first time I was introduced to passive income. That was the first time I was introduced to the word buyer, which stood for financial independence retire early. And then passive income, financial freedom came about. And then I started thinking, okay, so there are these people who are on this path to financial independence. And I’m I’m only learning about this. Now, I’ve never been taught this and never thought that this is even a possibility. However, people are finding ways to do it, whether it’s through real estate investing, whether it’s to stock trading, or to investing to I don’t know, any kind of vehicle that you can think of, but people are making it work. And so that was the turning point in my life that really sparked that light bulb moment of, okay, there are people figuring out how to hit financial independence and financial freedom. And so the question to me was, how do I do this? I don’t have any money. I don’t have any qualifications as as an agent or as a mortgage broker. So how do I do this? How do I start? Where do I start? So I started looking for solutions or looking for answers and start reaching out to people and seeing how they do it. Start watching podcasts like this, that gives people some kind of spark and hope that if there is a possibility, there’s different options that you can do. It’s not just one track minded, there are ways to do it. And so that day I went home, it was very humiliating. By the way, it was very shameful, like, what happened, I felt so embarrassed of everything that just like, I can’t even believe that I did it. But I went home with my tail tucked in between my legs. And I just said, you know, this is what happened at work today. I like lost my mind. And I just want to tell you that our relationship is not doing well, I’m not happy, I’m very depressed, I don’t even know what I want to do anymore. However, there’s something that I want to do, which is I want to go on this path of financial freedom. And that was when I started talking to my partner chewy, about financial independence, financial freedom, and there’s a way to be able to do it. But we got to really put our foot into it and make it a commitment in our life if we want to do better in ourselves. And I knew at the time, my time was very, was very strapped because I knew I was gonna get fired. And I was like, we got to do this, like, as soon as possible, I gotta fire my boss before she fires me. And so then, as we started looking for solutions, that was kind of when I, you know, I ended up going, going to this workshop, a three day workshop, and went there and quite sceptical. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting into. I didn’t know anybody that was at that workshop. And I was, I wasn’t sure if they were just trying to scam me or steal my money. However, I knew that. If I didn’t do something, my life would be exactly where it is. But if I’m willing to do this, it’s not it’s not pretty, but at least it’s better than what I’m doing now. So I took the leap of faith, and I jumped into professional training, I got myself a mentor. And that’s actually where I met Tim and Ray, who’s my mentor, and they really showed me the light on what could be possible. And

 

Erwin  

this sorry, this was rich dad, the euro. Yeah. It was it was called that at the time,

 

Vince  

right? Legacy, it was called legacy at the time. Oh, okay. Okay, so. Okay. Yeah. And I don’t even want to say it was legacy that that helped me get to where I was, it was the people that I associated with. That was people that helped me get to where I were, where I am today, my, my coach and my mentor who had taught me everything that I need to know, to be able to think a little differently and think outside the box. And so that was when, like, what was getting started, I think within four months, when I first got my my first real estate investment deal, like within four months after getting education minute, not having my own money starting it was the fact that I knew what I was doing. And then people that I took the same education with, they knew exactly what I knew. So they knew how to structure the same deal. Or and I was like, Well, I don’t have any money. You have the money. But you know, we have the same deal here. Let’s do a joint venture. Let’s do a 5050 split and let’s make this happen. That first deal, right in the same week. Then I had a second deal tied up right up right after. And I’m like, Wait, did you put any money in? No, that’s the thing. So yeah, 50% of the deal for doing what? For bringing a deal together, putting my knowledge and education together. Okay, right. Like that. That was the only value I brought to the table because I physically did not have money going into the deal. So what I brought to the table was the deal and my knowledge and what I’ve been taught, right, I’m sorry, the Who was your partner, another investor that was in the class with me, okay, they didn’t want to do the work. She didn’t have their first deal yet. They didn’t have their first deal. Okay, okay. First deal, right. And I was taught also at the very beginning by my coach and mentor and they’re like, you know, you never use your money for one deal. If you have a deal, share the wealth. You have your money, but your money with somebody else’s deal because someone else is gonna put their money with your deal. So you always have deals going back and forth. No more Like, that makes sense. Well, regardless, I don’t have money to put into other people’s deal. I need other people’s money to put in my deal. That’s the only way I’m going to work. And so I brought in the deal. And actually that taught me about this first deal about this first. Yeah. So this first deal. The thing is, it was a cookie cutter for the second deal. Also cookie cutter, the third deal,

 

Erwin  

but the first cutter, but not everyone, not everyone has training. Yeah, don’t please tell me about it. What was it?

 

Vince  

Yeah, that first deal. I think we were making $1,000 cash flow. And that was that was after a 5050 split. It was a lease option deal. That was my first strategy that I’ve learned ever in real estate investing. It was a lease option deal. And so that lease option deal, basically gave me the confidence. And I’m like, Oh, I can really do this.

 

Erwin  

I’m really sorry, for apologies for listener doesn’t know what a lease option deal is. Please explain it.

 

Vince  

Okay. Yeah, sorry about that. So lease option, or the street term is called rent to own. So it’s a, it’s a programme to help individuals who are looking to get into homeownership that can’t qualify for a mortgage, for whatever reason, it could be for like, let’s say, lack of downpayment, maybe they haven’t saved up enough money, maybe they have some credit issue. And the credit isn’t at the best outstanding position to qualify for mortgage, sometimes they’re just new to the country, and they don’t have established credit, or they have the money and the credit. But they haven’t lived in the country long enough, or they don’t have employment history. So there can be multiple factors that may be holding them back from being able to qualify for a home. And so somebody like myself will come along and be able to structure a rental deal, where I come in with basically the tenant who’s looking to buy a home. And the deal that I put together, which is the rent to own or lease option deal. And then I find an investor who’s willing to put the money down and qualify for the mortgage. And so when I tie all those things together, we have a programme to help that family assist them into homeownership in the next two, three, or even four years. And the goal is to ensure their success in homeownership, which I think, given our current time, right now, today’s economy, I think rent to own is, is really taking a light on because that people are starting to recognise Oh, this programme actually started this new programme called rent to own. And I know it’s not new, it’s been around for a very long time. But people are starting to recognise there is options for them to get them into homeownership. And I often like to say, as well as turning renters and homeowners and homeowners and investors, because you’ve started already establishing that relationship with them as well. So but hopefully that answers the question of rent.

 

Erwin  

Oh, no, I have more questions. Like details? What was the first property? What was the property?

 

Vince  

This was an Ingersoll, so we were working with the family and they were basically Hey,

 

Erwin  

are you like yada yada, yada, a whole bunch? I went education and put the deal together. You didn’t mention that you’d like went to Ingersoll? Yeah.

 

Vince  

So the numbers made sense in Ingersoll and that was the family that was looking for a home. And so they were from Ingersoll. And so for me, it didn’t really matter where the location was, as long as the numbers made sense. And the deal made sense. That was why I ended up doing it there. Even though I lived in Toronto. I was still renting and but I ended up helping a family. Get into homeownership prior to even me being in homeownership myself. Okay, good.

 

Erwin  

I’ve heard of Ingersoll at least so between Woodstock in London? Yeah. So what was it? Three bedroom house? What was it?

 

Vince  

Yeah, so three bedroom house. This was a family and he was a regional manager for furniture store, a family of two or sorry, a four. So mom, wife and husband and then two daughters, and they had a dog. And the reason they couldn’t get into a home was simply because behind us regional manager here, right? They do make he makes really good money, whilst also making good money, but they couldn’t get into a home. And the only reason why they couldn’t get into home, what was it down payment or credit, it wasn’t down payment or credit. Actually, they did have a little bit more down payment. But it was the fact that they bought four Cadillac cars, one for each one for each family member. So wife had a Cadillac, the husband had a Cadillac and the daughters both had a Cadillac. So that’s why they couldn’t afford to get into a home. So part of the programme was to help them pay down their cars, and then to buy them the time so that they can get into their own home. And so that’s why these trips to the rental on deal with them.

 

Erwin  

That’s the first I’ve heard of the hot water before.

 

Vince  

It was it was a it was a great experience. And as an investor, my investor who was working with us we made really good returns on it so right couldn’t complain on that deal.

 

Erwin  

And for the listeners benefit putting together a deal is not easy. You have to go find the tenant. Yeah. Then you have find the house and the house is over an hour drive from you. Yeah, So

 

Vince  

funny enough, like, Yeah, I had to I did drive to that property. And I did drive to see the family as well when I first started, but you’ll, you’ll soon realise that you really don’t need to see the house, you really don’t even need to see the family in person. You could relatively do everything will resume. These days,

 

Erwin  

you’re talking about 20? I don’t know if zoom existed back in 2018. It did.

 

Vince  

It did. I just didn’t know that I could do it. For virtual, I just wasn’t comfortable yet. Because it was my first deal. And I’m like, Well, I’m just nobody over the phone. And it looked like a baby. I didn’t have beard at the time or anything that’s like, literally looked like a baby. And I was like, Who’s this guy that’s going to trust me, and he’s a regional manager of a furniture store. And he’s looking at me like, Okay, can I even do this for him? But yeah, exactly. You know, I was really just doubting myself in my ability, because I wasn’t sure if I could do it. It was it was my first deal. I wasn’t sure this is even legit, and like how possible it was. And I was doubting my own competence. But that was the thing. Once I tied everything together, I was like, Oh, this really works. Like it actually really works. And so that that’s what I mean by cookie cutting. Because once I did that one time, I just repeated the same thing for the second time. And I repeat it for the third time and on going forward. And each time that I did it, I got better at it, it got a little bit faster, got a little bit more systems in place. And that’s why I said I, I do it’ll resume now because I don’t even have to see the property. me seeing the property doesn’t bring any value to the table. Because if I go there, I don’t know what I’m looking for in terms of the foundation, or if there’s any problems with the drywall. Like, my goal is let’s get a inspector who who’s a professional at that and leverage his abilities. And he can just drag me up the report. And I’ll look at the report to see if it makes sense. All right, I’ll ask a realtor to help me find the home because what am I going to do one MLS and look for a home for them? Like, no, let’s get the religion I helped me look for a home. And that way I can structure everything together with with the inspector and or and if the house makes sense, let’s buy the home the family and as long as the family likes the home themselves, and we’re good to go.

 

Erwin  

Are these regular realtors and home inspectors that you’re using?

 

Vince  

Well, a lot of them we’ve built relationships over time. And with realtors, it took some time to find one that actually made sense. And that knows what they’re doing. The first realtor that we worked on, not so well. But you know, we just have to remind them that we’re the buyers, not the tenants, though the tenants are going with you to look for the home, we are the one that are going to buy the home. So as long as the realtor is really on point and they know what the relationship is like. I think that’s that’s why it’s important to know that where they stand and where we stand in that aspect. So yeah, I wouldn’t say the regular realtors, I look for realtors that are a little bit more investor friendly. And the they know that they may have to think a little bit outside of the box as well. And as long as they can think outside the box. And they’re open for that. Those are the people I want to work with fabulous. So it depends. It depends.

 

Erwin  

Okay, so tell me what the thing is hold property, do remember how much it was, ah,

 

Vince  

I think it was around the 400 range. It wasn’t that expensive. And we sold it to them at a higher value, obviously for the next three or four years. And we locked in a new purchase price in the future. Despite by the way how the economy is just going crazy right now. I think right now, it’s probably going at like seven or 8%. Right now. We locked it in at about four or 5% at the time. Appreciate Oh, four or 5% appreciation per year. So for the next three or four years. And so when actually we exited out of that house, I think it was last year of September when we exited. And so they were like the tenants were like just laughing because the houses were so much more expensive. And they got it locked in at this price. We’re okay because we’re we’re looking at okay, this is a business for us. And we have a happy client right there. We still made our money that we were intending everything was agreed on and we honoured the price. And everything worked out really well. Right. So we rented it for the rent was a little bit higher that there was a bit more premium rent on that. But they I knew they could afford it. And there was also an option consideration as well, which is an additional amount that we were putting aside for them every month. So that was part of our cash flow as investors and pence. I think the cash flow was around like $2,000 a month was the total rent, the total rent, I think it was like almost 4000 Almost. That was the total the total mouth. Yeah, so not exact same the exact numbers but I’m just giving some ballpark numbers right now. But that’s what I remember from

 

Erwin  

and then based on the rent, how much do you factor in for the to go towards the down payment for the house?

 

Vince  

That depends. So that depends for them. We were aiming for about I think it was more than about 15% I believe it was. However, when they actually went to qualify for the home, they actually didn’t need 15%. So they actually had a little, a little bit more money saved up at the end of the day. And funnily enough, they used all the money to buy furnitures at the end. So

 

Erwin  

they sell the catalogues. Do you even know how to stop the Cadillacs? Oh, yeah. Well, for the same way, it’s not gonna really turn over and buy New Orleans.

 

Vince  

Yeah, that’s what happened on that first deal. So that was, that was really an eye opener. I didn’t know something that like that would be possible. It was it was crazy. It was just really like, Okay, I managed to make this happen. And I didn’t mean use my money to do it. So different perspective of looking at it

 

Erwin  

will get you to put the hustle together to put the deal together. Yeah.

 

Vince  

But it would have not been possible if I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. That was why I say like education was what brought me into the light of being able to make it possible.

 

Erwin  

Did you collect the lease option fee upfront.

 

Vince  

So the way that the rental home works, and just for the audience, the way that the I guess the cash flow, or the money works on this deal, you do get three sources of income. So there’s an active part, there’s a passive part, and then there’s an equity part at the end when you sell the home. So for them, they put a bit of a deposit upfront. So that was roughly about $10,000, that they put up front. And then there was their monthly amount that that is basically our cash flow. So the passive income from the cash flow from the 4000 rent, yeah. And then when we sold the home back to the family, that was the additional amount that we made, which was the spread of how much the cost of the value of the home in the future. So we made money off the back end as well. And so that’s where are all three streams of income being received this?

 

Erwin  

Right. So even if you did, like 20%, down, you’re earning four to 5%. Price Appreciation per year. Yeah, yeah. times five, you’re making 20% of your money just on appreciation. Why have cashflow while you have? Why do you collect the 10? Grand up front? Yeah, yeah, if everyone works out, well, it was great.

 

Vince  

Yeah. And that’s the thing, right? Like, I mean, if you don’t know how to do it, and you’re trying to put this all together, you could put yourself at risk, you could put your investors money at risk, you could put the family at risk. And I wouldn’t recommend people who don’t have professional training, just try to structure any type of deal if they don’t know what they’re doing. Like, you got to really take care of people’s, you know, the money and the family that you’re working with, like, these are real people. And these are live people that you’re taking responsibility for. It’s not something that you joke around with, especially if someone’s giving you the life savings, for example, it’s, it’s a real thing that you got to handle.

 

Erwin  

I agree with you more, because you’re dealing with the property, which is your asset, the tenant is almost like your asset, because like your customer, correct. And of course, you have your investor and put the money. So everybody’s gonna be taken care of. Yeah, so that’s a great first deal.

 

Vince  

And, you know, I want to say that I did have a lot of support along the way, like, it wasn’t just me doing it all, figuring it all by myself. Like, aside from the education, I had my mentor there guiding me all the way through, because anytime signing documents, and like the paperwork, like trying to understand all these paperwork, I was quite lost. But I had a lot of help from from my mentor. And also my partner was there as well. So my partner was played a huge factor in getting these figured out. And as I mentioned, I’m not good at math. So even crunching the numbers, I realise it’s not even about understanding math, but you can do everything on a spreadsheet if you want it to. You just punch in and go. So for the listeners right now, if you’re bad at math, don’t think that investing is all about math. It plays a role, but it’s not the key factor of financial success is just a part of it. Makes it a little bit easier. But

 

Erwin  

yes, I’m checking numbers.

 

Vince  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I had I had people checking my numbers, my mentor checked the numbers, my partner’s checking the number and everything made sense. And we just went with it.

 

Erwin  

And then is this your primary business putting deals together? And then I’m guessing you’ve invested some in some of these as well.

 

Vince  

Yeah. So I think fast forward from there. When I first started, most of my deals were acquisition mode. So I was out there actively acquiring properties and putting deals together and finding and raising monies for my properties. And then fast forward to today, like 2022, there’s a bit of a transition in my portfolio, because a lot of my deals are starting to mature. And I’m able to pull out a lot of equity. And finally, once in my life, I actually have money to reinvest in the the passive investor. But getting started, I think, when I was starting first and foremost, I had to be very active, and start raising all of it and doing all the work by myself. And then now I’m trying to transitioning over on the passive side where now I have the active income. And all this income that I’m utilising now is going into the passive side and I’m getting other people to invest with me and for me investing with other people. And then making sure the deals that I’m investing makes sense to me. And so I say it’s trust and verify. So in the last like three and a half years. I wasn’t just actively investing in creating deals and Lisa options, I was also still getting myself educated into more different strategies, learning how to do creative financing, learn how to do multi units and learn how to do short term rentals. So I can open my horizons on different strategies. Even if I’m not the active investor, I can now basically be able to have money from somewhere and tie up a deal and treat the deal as if it was my own because I’m looking at it like, oh, okay, the numbers make sense to me. I’m verifying the deal, despite me trusting you or not, as long as I trust you, and I verified the deal now. Okay, let’s make the deal happen. Make sense? Right. So and still the money’s not all of it coming from myself, sometimes I may borrow money from a private investor, I become the bank. But now I become the joint venture on the deal. So it kind of goes, money just kind of flows through me now as as the individual the personal value or worth of being able to put together and that’s, that’s really the magic of it. It’s quite awesome.

 

Erwin  

Do you have a preference for investment strategy? Now? Are you doing Oh, are you doing a little bit of multi bit of short term rental but a rent to own?

 

Vince  

I still really enjoy lease option, I think lease option, to me really a spirit of going seeing the families succeed. But I did get more into creative financing like private lending and whatnot. Sorry, you’re lending your funds. Yeah, I’m lending a lot of money out to and then of course, backed on hard assets that I believe in. So the deal makes sense to me. I’m willing to lend privately to you for the deal that you’re working on, even though not directly on the deal. And as well, I got private, sort of a private, a lot of mock teas that I’m working on as well out in New Brunswick. So there’s a few deals there. Currently a move I moved to Edmonton, as I mentioned, and we’re working on

 

Erwin  

you mentioned that before we were recording, yeah. So

 

Vince  

So now, yes. For the audience. I moved to Edmonton recently from Toronto. And while I’m here, I’m actually looking at a lease option deal in Calgary. So I’m in Edmonton, so it’s a three hour distance, that everything’s done over zoom, by the way, so I’m not driving to Calgary to do that. Let’s say you love this work from home business. Yeah, it’s nice. It’s quite relaxing. Let’s just say like that. And then we’re looking at a home in Edmonton as well for short term rentals. We’re dabbling a little bit in the short term rental in, in Edmonton us walls just to see how that goes. So it’s nice. So I’m quite diversified in that aspect to different real estate strategies that I’m working on. Fantastic. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

Explain why did you move from Edmonton, Toronto? Very different segments

 

Vince  

in Toronto’s Edmonton?

 

Erwin  

Sorry, what? Why did you make the move? Because in the last quarter, I think we’re probably gonna see for a while, something like 20,000 folks from all over Canada are moving to Alberta. Super exciting. And then before we’re before we’re recording, even though you are from the East Coast, it seems apparently I was reading in the paper that less people from the East Coast are moving to Alberta. Yeah. You know, people right. You know, people that have had done previously made the trip people from maritimes has moved migrated to Alberta to do work in the oil sands, for example, that sort of stuff.

 

Vince  

If you ever come to Edmonton, you’ll see, you’ll see a lot of people that who have moved from the Maritimes, to the Edmonton area, they usually have the Newfoundland sticker or the Cape Breton sticker on their on their car. So and you see it all the time in Edmonton. And it’s really cool to meet other fellow maritimers here. But at the time when I was growing up and living in Toronto, and when I was working a lot of the friends that I had in the East Coast, I guess some of them didn’t go to further education. Instead, they started working and blue collar work in town, I guess. A lot of them not even moved to Alberta at the time. They basically travelled there to work and then travelled back home. And I believe that work schedule was about working two months and then going home for a week and then working another two months. And then going home for a week that was kind of like a like a typical schedule. So a lot of people that I knew work in Fort McMurray on the oil rigs, and they were actually in the in the oil rigs themselves. But they made really good money they were making like anywhere from $200,000 and upwards. I know some people that are working on the oil rigs in the ocean from the Newfoundland side. I think they were making up like $300,000 and more. But then you got to wonder money. You gotta wonder is worth it because you’re only coming home every two months for a week and then you go back to work. And then you come back for a couple for like a week and then you go back again. So the schedule, you got to really factor in like okay, what am I missing in my life if I’m, if I’m spending all this time on the oil rig, and then you got to wonder how dangerous these positions are. Because you never know what can happen in these positions. They’re quite dangerous there and heavy and it’s very lavoris. Right. But yeah, so to answer your question, a lot of the people I’ve seen in Edmonton, there’s a lot of people that have moved to Edmonton, so a lot of my old high school or elementary school friends currently live in Edmonton, but I haven’t met up with them yet because I’ve been I’ve been here for the last six months now. And I just talked to a friend on Facebook and she’s like, Oh, I’m in Edmonton, too. And I’m like, No way. We’re in Evanston. She’s like, Oh, I’m in the metal area. I don’t even know what the metal area is yet. But she told me, she’s in Edmonton. So, you know, once I settle down a little bit more, I think I might end up reconnecting and rekindling. Some of those relationships are rare. But I moved to Edmonton simply because it was, it was kind of part of my plan in life. Because when I first started this journey back when I was 2627, by the way, when I was 27, was when I hit financial independence, I quit my job at that time. And that was when I fired my boss. So I did fire my boss before she fired me. So but at the time, we were talking about how we wanted to structure our life, what do we want to do for the next year, the year after, and this was obviously before COVID, we didn’t know COVID was going to happen. So the plan was back in 2019, into 2020. We were gonna get married, and we wanted to get married and Santorini. So we were, we were planning out our, our wedding, me and my partner were planning a wedding. And after we get married, we wanted to buy a house. And then after we buy the house, we were gonna like start family. So have a kid, that was the three year plan that we had on the agenda. And then as you know, 2019 happened and COVID happened. So we’re like, well, the Santorini plan is not going to work anymore. However, we’re still sticking to our plan, we’re still working on portfolio and, and instead of spending the money on a wedding, we just reinvested all the money to grow a portfolio. And so that’s what we did.

 

Erwin  

And she was okay with this. She was okay that you blew up the wedding budget on houses.

 

Vince  

It was fine. Like she’s on the same path as me. And she understood exactly what we were doing. And what was that? Wait, how did

 

Erwin  

you get her on board, not many people would be on board with blowing the wedding budget on buying investment properties.

 

Vince  

She was on board with me because she actually jumped into the education with me. And she was my only she was my only support. She was the only person that was there to believe in the thing that I want it. You have no idea how lucky you are. And I hear this all the time from people because it’s hard to get your other significant other on this path because you’re like, it almost seems like you’re crazy. That’s what it sounds like. And yeah, so she she was on board with me. She’s literally my my b&b partner we call in bed and business partner. So that’s what she is

 

Erwin  

always supposed to right and better.

 

Vince  

We basically said, you know, cancel a wedding with Asian weddings. The reason we chose that Turini was because we told our parents, generally with most Asian weddings, your family is inviting like everybody. And there’s, you don’t even know who’s at the wedding anymore. Like it’s all strangers. for yourself. Or your parents. Exactly. We chose your friends, they invite their friends. Yeah, it really it is that’s exactly what it was. And that’s why we chose Santorini. Because we said guys can invite whoever you want, won’t pay for your plane ticket will pay for accommodation. But if you invite anybody, it’s it’s your responsibility. You pay for their ticket, you pay for everything else on their end, or they pay for themselves. Yeah. But you know, the wedding never happened. So we reinvested the money for real estate properties. And as the year was progressing, really, okay, maybe COVID is not going to clear out anytime. So let’s, let’s just put the wedding on hold, who cares about the wedding. And that was when my partner came up with the idea of in loping, so that was a first time hearing about moping where instead, if we’re going to, we’re going to get married, let’s just travel the world and buy a tuxedo and a dress. And then we’ll just take pictures at different parts of the world. And then that will be our wedding instead. So that that was the second plan on on the bucket list. However, COVID really didn’t die down, like COVID kept on going strong for the year after. And it’s even to this day of 2022. It’s still around, it’s like, lingering around. It’s still around on the table, but we wanted to start a family. And as a woman, for the women listening on the call. Sometimes they’re thinking about their biological clock, they’re like, Well, I’m not getting any younger, I gotta get get this done. So we’re like, well, let’s, let’s start a family then. And so we were people were telling us like, it’s gonna take you a year you should you should start trying like as soon as possible because it’s gonna take some time. And so we’re like, Okay, let’s start trying, let’s let’s start making this happened. And everybody told us not gonna happen overnight. You’re gonna have to work at it. And everybody likes me. Everybody lied to me. It happened overnight. Sounds like Sam like now. Well, okay, we have a baby on the way. And so now we have to find a house ASAP. And so this was when all the prices were skyrocketing Ontario, like actually, even Ontario right across the country, the prices were going up, and we made the decision to move to Alberta and this was before everybody was going to Alberta. So we’re like, you know what, let’s go to Alberta because cost of living is a little bit lower. And I could definitely make my money run a lot further if I ever wanted to. travelled back to Toronto. I have a lot more money to allocate when I’m living there because cost of living was lower. Right? And so tell us how much lower What were you renting in Toronto before I was renting in Toronto. However I was living in I actually got really lucky on the rent that was at so I was in 700 square feet apartment began. This is Yong Yong and Sinclair. So wasn’t wasn’t a bad location, and I was paying a little 1500 a month. That’s cheap, very cheap. However, the fact though is, if I was raising my baby in that place, it wouldn’t make sense. Yeah, but you know, yeah, people have been been through worse, but I didn’t want to do that. Yeah, because I knew I had options on the table. This was already when I was doing financially well. And if I could choose, I would I would continue renting. That was what I would have done. We were actually planning to rent and we were looking for a place to rent in Toronto. We were looking looking for more of a home like maybe a townhouse or you know, what’s that called? Like? A two story apartment. That’s like, like, a lot, like a lot. Okay,

 

Erwin  

a lot of our styling for a stock condo or something like that. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Okay.

 

Vince  

So we were looking for it. And we’re like, if we rent it somewhere like that, you’re already looking at like 2500 to 3000, maybe more every month. Or we could buy a house. Or maybe we can rent a place in Edmonton. We looked at different places. We thought about New Brunswick. We looked into Vancouver and we’re like, well, Vancouver is too expensive. New Brunswick doesn’t have anything there. There’s no food. There’s no anything. There’s no. It’s like in the middle of nowhere. Saskatchewan. In the middle of nowhere. Manitoba was in the middle, no matter

 

Erwin  

how many more people you want to offend. What did you end up choosing?

 

Vince  

And so we looked at, we looked at our bird and we’re like, Well, my partner is from Calgary. And she’s like, well, I don’t want to I don’t want to go Calgary because my

 

Erwin  

Okay, yeah, because it’s nice. So,

 

Vince  

yeah, Calgary is really nice. And they have a little bit more of more, I guess, amenities there and restaurants there. Yeah. And we’re like, let’s move to Calgary. She’s like, No, my family’s there. I don’t want to live close to my family. Okay, it was like, okay, so where’s the other option? Well, there’s Edmonton. And I’m like, Well, I’m missing gets really cold. It’s like, last time we went there was like minus 40. However, if it’s minus 40, during winter, we can always go on vacation, if we wanted to, we have extra money to allocate, let’s let’s use the money to go on vacation, then. That makes sense. And so we decided on Edmonton as the the final location of where we want to stay. And so that’s why we chose Edmonton as, as our, I guess, home base now.

 

Erwin  

So we moved to Edmonton. And then limited, you got a house you renting,

 

Vince  

buying a house, we were going to structure a rent to own for ourselves, but it didn’t make sense. So we didn’t end up struggling to rent a home for ourselves. Then we thought about House hacking. And we were thinking, okay, maybe we can, we can buy a duplex. And we can do a short term rental on one side, and we’ll live on the other side. And then we looked at it, it’s like, oh, it’s not worth the work in the hassle. So we’re like, Yeah, let’s just, you know, screw it. Let’s just bite the bullet. Let’s just buy a liability for ourselves. And we’ll just buy a home and we’ll pay for it. But we can afford it. So let’s just do that. And so we ended up just buying a house to screw it. Let’s just buy a house.

 

Erwin  

So why don’t you buy three bedrooms? Something?

 

Vince  

Yeah, so three bedroom and video contacts. I was under 700 square feet apartment. Right? This was a 1700 square feet home, not including basement. So the amount of free space I have now is not even comparable. So I’m like, okay, not even not even joking. This is like a huge, huge upgrade in my life. And I have this beautiful home and pretty much brand new and I’m raising my kid in this house now. And then, as you know, I’m living from Toronto moving to Edmonton. I have to buy a car because I can get around. So then I ended up buying a car too. So I was like, okay, I can afford to buy a car. This was my car too. Then we got a car. Awesome, like enjoying 31 years old and I bought a house bought a car. start a family. It’s kind of hard to believe for most millennials nowadays because it’s things are so expensive now. Right.

 

Erwin  

And I’m sure people will fall behind you as well, where you’ll see more people in Alberta in the Eurasia group.

 

Vince  

Yeah, yeah. They’ve been expanding the soil in Alberta in Edmonton, where I live anyways, the city is in the centre of a giant road around the ring. It’s we call it the ring around Edmonton. And the ring has been expanding on their their lanes so they’re they’ve been opening up new lanes to accommodate the new population boom. So which is awesome because if Edmonton is growing I’m they’re growing with it, which is awesome. Amazing. Yeah, happy. Pretty happy.

 

Erwin  

Happy for me. Awesome. So then you see a lot, but you see a lot of deals like especially because of the year and they’re pretty active community of like Tim seems very rare. They seem extremely legit. Yeah, I know, I know all your friends there, they seem extremely legit in terms of in terms of investing, as soon as you guys invest in each other’s deal, so you must. So you see a

 

Vince  

lot? Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s the benefit. I mean, that’s the benefit of being part of a community who’s active, who’s been educated, who have the right mindset, and who’s thinking of growing and succeeding as well. Because really, there’s no win and lose, it’s more like Win Win, like, how can I help you to help me help you because now we can work together to grow and to share the not even just our wealth, but sharing our resources, sharing our knowledge, because I’m not going to know everything. But I’m sure I can find somebody that knows what I need to look for, if I need it. I’m not going to have all the money in the world. But I know there’s people that I’m working with that have extra money sitting around that’s willing to invest. Very, very, but that’s your deal

 

Erwin  

looks like, looks like Yeah, yeah. And

 

Vince  

even if you were, for example, like let’s say you’re in Ontario, just because you’re Ontario, you you’re not going to know everything about Ontario. And if you are looking to invest into other places, like different provinces, or if you’re planning to go to the states, if you know, people who are, who are actively engaged, they’re actively investing there, that knows that market better than you, right? You have somebody that’s ready to go, right. And you could be the same person in Ontario, who knows the Ontario market. So if I needed something like, oh, we jump to you?

 

Erwin  

Right, right. And you share values, you’re, of course, I’m destined, you’re all protective of your reputation within the community as well,

 

Vince  

for sure. I think the reputation, my mentor always says, you are only as great as your last your last deal. Honestly, honestly, the truth, right, and it’s not about the money. It’s about the relationships that you built and the reputation that you’ve created. And if anything, it’s it’s always thinking about how you provide value over profit? Is the profits, just the byproduct of what you’re gonna get? What kind of value are you actually providing to the people that you’re working with? Because that’s, that’s where the real thing is amazing.

 

Erwin  

Now, what’s your what’s your current deal that you’re working on?

 

Vince  

So the current deal, I have a few Maltese in New Brunswick. And then I got the short term rental that we’re looking for right now. And then the lease option deal that will work in in Calgary, that’s probably the bulk of it. And then I made, I think, two private loans, just in the last four months. And so I got those data just leveraged out recently. So that’s pretty much everything that’s on my plate right now. And in terms of my own personal business,

 

Erwin  

right, so you have your hands on a bunch of things, how many hours a week, are you working?

 

Vince  

Funny enough? It’s not as crazy as people think. Even going back to a lease option deal, you’re, you’re probably spending total it does take like maybe three months to put everything together. But in total hours spent, you’re probably spending about 10 to 15 hours in total, putting everything together. It’s just making a few phone calls here talking to a few power teams over here. And you know, just putting some of the numbers together here and all accumulative like on a lease option deal, you’re probably looking at 10 to 15 hours in total. Something with multis, it may take a little bit longer, because there’s ongoing moving pieces that are consistently moving and progressing. So

 

Erwin  

there’s renovations that are always going on. Yeah, exactly. So

 

Vince  

that that probably takes a little bit more time it takes time to stabilise the portfolio in terms of novelties, but it’s not as what people think of it, it’s not like, you know, you’re like pulling out your hair unless you’re going through some really big, big problems in your in your portfolio. But in terms of hours, I mean, you’re really just allocating time where needed. And remember, we’re not looking to do this to buy ourselves a new job, we’re doing this the buyer sells more time. And so how you decide on allocating your time and even if anything, is creating a system around the processes that you’re doing it so that way it becomes more streamlined, just like the lease option deal. My first deal probably took more than 10 hours to put together because I actually had the drive there, meet the client meet the realtor, look at the property that probably took a lot more time but now it’s like okay zoom call, one hour call zoom call with my mortgage broker one hour call and and then talk to my relative another hour call. So it’s like it’s not as time consuming as you think it is. Awesome.

 

Erwin  

So Ashley, can you tell us about your Calgary rent to own I’d love to have something to compare against Ingersoll

 

Vince  

this this property that we’re we’re still in the process of putting together this one is $400,000 property that we’re aiming for.

 

Erwin  

Oh, so inflation didn’t happen.

 

Vince  

So we’re still in the process of getting the deal structure. So we do have a family and she’s from India. The reason why she’s looking to get into rent to own is that they are currently living with their parents and I guess they’re trying to be independent and live on their own to have them like a kid. On the way I think, and basically they’re they’re looking for a way to actually buy their own home, but they’re not in the position because they don’t have the downpayment saved up, and credit scores, perfect that no problem with credit score at all. So their their main reasons that they don’t have the downpayment, that’s the main thing that they’re lacking. Now, basically, the husband is the one who is looking to qualify for the home on his own, because he’s the one he’s the breadwinner, and family, he makes the most money. However, we’re planning to factor her income as well. So with her income comes into the picture, we’re looking at maximum, I think, like $430,000 as a home purchase price. So actually, sorry, home purchase price would be less than that, because that’s the appreciate. That’s what we’re selling the home back to them at 454 50 Max 430 is what we’re aiming for four days, the maximum that they will be able to qualify for at the end of the programme. So the house that we’re looking at would be what’s the value of it today? Probably, I think we’re looking at like 375 or something around that price point. And then the appreciated value after the three years would be able for 50. Max. Hopefully that makes sense for the audience.

 

Erwin  

Are you taking any money upfront?

 

Vince  

We are so we’re looking at $10,000 upfront. And the cash flow, we’re not sure yet because we don’t know what the price of the home is going to be. But we’re still working

 

Erwin  

with you have a some sort of benchmark for rent, though.

 

Vince  

The rent are probably looking around. So if it’s around 375, we’re probably looking at 1800 $2,000 Just as rent on its own just rent, not including the option not including anything else is just the rent on its own.

 

Erwin  

Got it. And then once you know what the what’s what’s know what the host is going to be Ben, you’ll factor in, Yeah, unfortunately goes towards the down payment.

 

Vince  

Exactly. Well, we got to factor in, we got to factor in our cost of carrying the mortgage as well, because we’ll be carrying the mortgage, the interest rate may be a little bit higher for us as well, because of obviously, what’s happening with the economy. So depending on what the interest rate that we’re getting at them, we can really figure out what the what the rent should should be sitting around for them as, as the renters of the property. The numbers aren’t set yet. We’re still working in the process with with our mortgage broker. Right now, once we get the numbers finalised, the next step is getting him into talking with the real estate agent. Amazing example. Yeah, Nothing’s set yet everything’s still up in the air. But I think things are really progressing slowly through the process.

 

Erwin  

And what do you see going forward? Like? No, these are pretty rocky times. We’re recording this late November 2020.

 

Vince  

This is a good question, because nobody knows what the future holds.

 

Erwin  

I’m sure you already are Yeah.

 

Vince  

Yeah, so of course, I’m always adjusting pivoting and just changing with the times, despite the fact that interest rates are going up. I mean, property values gone down like crazy, which is perfect time for anybody, if you make if you actually calculate the numbers, and it just makes sense, despite the interest rates are up. But you got to think about it like, Okay, I thought about like, Okay, if interest rates are going up, prices of properties are going down. Do you think maybe that there may be foreclosures coming up, maybe during the recession, as things get a little bit harder may be a good opportunity for investors who are educated to take hold of opportunities that are presenting themselves. And I always say, as an investor, we’re there to solve problems. And when a recession does happen, and if and if and when it does happen, I don’t know if we’re living in one right now. Or if it’s just gonna get worse from here. When that recession happens, as a problem solver, there’s gonna be a lot of opportunities are presenting itself. And if you are not prepared for these opportunities, then you’re missing it, you’re missing the boat. And one day, down the road, people are gonna say, well, Vince, you got lucky you are there at the right time at the right moment. And you took advantage of of the recession. I’m like, No, yeah, definitely. I was there at the right time. But you were there, too. What were you doing at the time when I was doing it? And the biggest difference would be the fact that I was prepared. I got myself educated, I got the skills, I got the knowledge, I got the right people around me have all my ducks in order. So when I need anything I can I can always reach out to somebody to prepare myself for when those opportunities present themselves because it’s fair game, anybody and everybody has those opportunities, equal opportunities, but it’s really, do you see the opportunity? And if you do, do you know how to act on? Because if not, you missed it. That’s the sad reality of it. And I don’t want to, you know, punch anybody in the gods, but that’s just the truth of it.

 

Erwin  

So is the truth about real estate investing events? I actually think it’s a great way to end in the interview. where can folks follow up with you if they want to follow on your journey?

 

Vince  

Oh, yeah, so you can always follow me on on Instagram. It’s the only events you can also find me on Facebook is the only Vince and also take a look at trust your talent is trusted.

 

Erwin  

Literally, it’s the only events because the only a few go to LinkedIn and type instantly. Too many. So you specifically it is type in the only Vince Lee is the

 

Vince  

only Bensley, I’m the only one.

 

Erwin  

Like type that you can

 

Vince  

also find me at trust your talent on Instagram, we’re really active on that as well. So it’s trust, and then you are and then talent. So you find me as as well there and a lot of stories and students to connect with as well. But you can find me on Facebook as well. I’m very active on Facebook, don’t hesitate to reach out, I’m always open to a conversation. No matter where you are in your journey in your life. Sometimes it just takes that one conversation to really change the perspective of what you believe in what you see the world. And I think it’s not just about how, how to do something, but also who you know about doing something. Because once you meet that person, they may give you a different perspective. And you’re like, Oh, I never thought of it that way. And that might set you on the right path and what you need to do, right?

 

Erwin  

So speaking right paths, have you staved off the bad dad bod.

 

Vince  

I still have a dad, I still have it. I bought

 

Erwin  

whatever buddy. You gotta be the most jacked guy in your group.

 

Vince  

Remember, it’s no different than financials, health and fitness is no different than financial, you don’t have to be, you know, like, you don’t have to be like an accountant or a lawyer to be you know, well versed in it. You just need to understand finances and you need to understand how money works to be able to create financial success. Same with the dad bod. If you want to learn how to be healthy, you got to learn it. You don’t have to be a fitness trainer or a kinesiologist you just need to know how it works. And nowadays, I look at labels before I buy any food. I’m looking at it like oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like okay, before I buy it because it’s innate and needs part of my lifestyle. So when I buy properties, I do the same thing. I’m like, I’m looking at the labels and Okay, does this make sense to me before I buy it? It’s the same idea. Amazing. So

 

Erwin  

FYI, folks, you’re running events, and he’s jacked up because he’s jacked. All right. So because you can’t tell him or zoom that he’s Jack, but he’s Jack. All right, Vince, thanks so much for doing this. Congrats on your success, man. Happy to hear you. Yeah, yeah, let me know next time you’re in town. I got to make one of these. One of Tim’s events. didn’t raise it. Yeah.

 

Vince  

Thanks so much for for all your support and happy having having me on the podcast as well. She thanked

 

Erwin  

him for that.

 

Vince  

Every weekend. Thank you. Take care. Have a good one.

 

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 for the 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 were 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 your pocket like it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more but secure 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 what 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.