Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Erwin Szeto [00:00:08] Hello, my fellow. Real estate investors and stock investors think hackers. This is the real estate best in show. My name’s Erwin Szeto. And speaking of wealth hacking, our conference is coming up on November 12th and it will be the event of the year, just like it was in 2019. And I’ll let you in on a little secret cherries. Second year, second 20th birthday is coming up. And because that’s two times 20, we have a 40% total off the price special for Cherry’s second 20th birthday on August two. If you’re on my email list or social media, you’ll be informed of promotion when it drops. Please do make sure you’re there at the conference and bring those you care about because straight up the future won’t be easy. I don’t imagine any generation parser will make more money from us, so hopefully you’re taking care of them as best you can and those you care about are taking care of all their kids and future generations. So an observation I always have to do is to show them observations. One of them is that one’s willingness to get outside their comfort zone is an indicator of future success. Unless one is taught all their lessons while growing up, that’s actually a big benefit. This is an observation I made. For example, our last guest on the show comes from multiple generations of successful entrepreneurs, and investors can save amass enormous amounts of wealth. So for those of you who are successful real estate investors or stock investors or entrepreneurs, just imagine all the lessons you can pass on to your children and our grandchildren. For example, the owner of the boxing gym, his 16 year old daughter, would beat my ass at kickboxing thanks to the world class coaching from her father, who is a retired fighter. 37 professional wins combined with her years of hard work. Note that my ass is not that much to brag about. Thankfully, our kids have adapted to new learning. Not exactly sure what we did right, but two weeks ago we dropped them off at their first weeklong overnight camp. They were excited leading up to the way up to the event and the drop off and we dropped them off. Not once did they look back. They hugged their goodbyes and they walked off with their stuff to their cabin. We could see them for another minute or so, just walked away, never looked back. It’s an odd feeling of sadness that Olivia’s not caring. While we’re happy that they’re acting all independent now, we also talk to our kids about money investing in stocks, real estate. Well, my son said that he had saved up, like, $80 or something. I said, we’re going to go buy a big stock which pays dividends. He knows about that passive income that he’s all. Over. Investing for our charity as well. They help with the best grade so they understand how lucky we are and it’s part of our duty to give back to those who can’t, because there’s many out there who don’t have money for food and clothing. I can’t say I know what we’re doing, but it feels right thing to be. Speaking of being out of one’s comfort zone, this is just my old friend, Ryan Carter. So Ryan and I go way back when you actually mastermind it together for about four years in the same group. So he’s back on the show. We share and we have common beliefs and values. For example, we both share the practice of seeking highest and best use of our time and capital. However, he’s more aggressive and ambitious than I am and hardworking. And I mention that when I think of Ryan, I think of hard working. For example, just until recently, he used to work seven every day. So that’s 12 hour days, seven days a week for ten years. He runs a lean mean in business and he’s made a lot of money flipping 60 houses duplexing guidance reading and build and development. Small apartment building, tiny house short term rentals. Cottage has a renovation team on payroll. He’s done basically everything under the sun. Almost forgot. He is one of nine and he is one of the stars of TV’s newest show Order House Flippers today ranked share how it all came about including you share some behind the scenes experiences are working on your TV show in some really gross unsafe water houses. If you don’t know what a hoarder is, it’s people who just collect stuff over years. So if you didn’t had any, you didn’t throw it anything for the last ten years. Imagine how much stuff you’d have and that wouldn’t be hygienic. That would be a health hazard. That could be a safety hazard, too, because these things, if you have if you had belongings that stacked up to the ceiling, that could potentially fall on you and you might get buried alive in that being buried alive by your player, by your possessions. So, again, Ryan’s here to share what kind of projects he’s investing in right now. He’s also writing a book and starting a podcast on the subject of highest and best use of real estate. So you want to pay attention to what Ryan shares because in my in my observations, I have lots of beginners often get this part wrong. They’re not the most efficient as they could be with their time and money and not maximizing the returns. Please enjoy the show. Hey, Ryan, thanks for coming in today.
Ryan Carr [00:05:00] Hello. Thanks for having me on.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:01] What’s keeping you busy these days?
Ryan Carr [00:05:02] What’s keeping me busy? Lots. Lots. TV show number one, still an active real estate investor? Very much so. Number two, a little bit of personal time, which is kind of cool. Number three.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:14] That’s a mouthful. You have no idea how busy you are.
Ryan Carr [00:05:16] I’m an actual active investor. Yes, for real.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:21] So we’ve known each other for a while. And you’ve been on the show. This is probably the third or fourth time, I think, as long as I’ve known you. You’ve been a seven day seven investor as in like 7 a.m. to 7 p.m..
Ryan Carr [00:05:30] At a minimum. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:31] For how long were you doing that?
Ryan Carr [00:05:32] I was only. Yeah. I’ve been investing for just over ten years, since 2012. So I was doing those hours or more for the majority of that time.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:43] And how many weekends?
Ryan Carr [00:05:44] All of them.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:45] And you’re still married?
Ryan Carr [00:05:46] I’m still married.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:47] You’re married that whole time?
Ryan Carr [00:05:48] I was married that whole time? Yeah. 20, 20, 30. So almost that whole time? Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:55] And first wife. Just the.
Ryan Carr [00:05:57] Only person.
Erwin Szeto [00:05:58] Well, the first and only way.
Ryan Carr [00:06:00] I had a conversation with somebody the other day, and I was at the dentist’s office studying this. And my we got to chatting and I went to back it up. When I was a mechanic, I got laid off from doing that job and I was on unemployment for about right. So I had a chance to go to the school where they taught you to be an entrepreneur. And I met this girl who wanted to start a dental practice. So I go to her dentist’s office and depending on how tired I am when I’m lying in the chair, that tells me if I’m working too hard or not like that has been on my metrics. If I’m lying there and I’m like, Oh man, this is so relaxing, I need to take it easy. Then I know how I need to pull back. And if I’m lying there and I’m a gung ho, then I know that I can give it up. And it’s just it’s just one of those ways that for me, over the years, I just, I don’t know, I just kind of adopted it because going to the dentist is historically not fun or not, you know, getting your teeth drilled. It’s not fun. As the laying in the chair, I’m like, okay, cool. This is it. This is like this. This like intuitive guideline inside of me. This is, Hey, either you’re working too hard or you’re well to go. And I was talking to her and I said, like, how long have we been out of school? And we just got chatting about that. And she said, How long have you been doing real estate? And I said, Well, just over ten years now. And she goes, How many hours a week do you work? And I said, Like a lot of them. Right? And I said, For every one year that I’ve been doing real estate, it’s like I’ve put in the hours for two. I’ve been doing it for ten years, but I’ve put in the hours for 20. Right. And I do attribute a lot of the time spent to my successes today.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:25] Right. And I think that’s a great point. On that level of knowledge, hard work and mastery, you have the subject because we’re going golfing after this. So the golf analogy is, oh, I’ll have a.
Ryan Carr [00:07:38] Golf this year by the way associate interesting around. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:42] And you want to golf today you say oh yeah I golf the season. Yes. Once.
Ryan Carr [00:07:47] Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:48] It’s like, you know, oh I’m a real estate investor, you know, say you own three, whatever, whatever properties don’t care. I’m a real estate investor. So is Ryan. Ryan. He’s also a real estate investor. It’s not the same thing. Right. Just. And we’re playing my friend Jeremy today. Yeah. He plays four times a week. He’s going to slaughter us.
Ryan Carr [00:08:04] I was going to destroy.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:05] Do not bet him money. My point, though, is also is that we’re not the same. Yeah, right. So I think another analogy I give is my car, my German car, I won’t name it and just assure me as I have it has GPS checked the box.
Ryan Carr [00:08:18] Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:19] But it sucks. I never use it. Yeah, I just plug in my apple.
Ryan Carr [00:08:22] And your phone. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:23] Right. But my point I’m trying to make is I see all these investors who say, oh, I’m secured on title. I’m. I’m safe. I’m like, Is that the only parameter that you need to determine your level of safety and security on an investment.
Ryan Carr [00:08:36] On a percent?
Erwin Szeto [00:08:39] Yeah, I don’t know. I went on a bit of a tangent there. You know, like you measure risk, like as an observer, one of your skills is you’re good at math and good being good at math is to be able to judge quantify risk. Yeah. Do you agree?
Ryan Carr [00:08:50] I do agree. Like you mentioned being on title so like you can be on title in the house is worth half of what you’re secured for. Like you’re on title, you’ve done the thing. Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you’re safe in exactly.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:02] And losses on title is right.
Ryan Carr [00:09:04] Right. There can be ten mortgages there and you can be the person last in line who knows, like you got to bet on the jockey, not the horse, especially if you’re a lender. It’s yes, it’s kind of about the asset. But like a good investor will turn around a bad deal about investor will completely obliterate a great deal, you know, so it’s the jockey, not the horse.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:20] I say it’s all because you forget that more. I’m sure we evaluate all a quality jockey, so I’m trying this, okay? If you’re a top jockey, you’re like, come on, one of the top horses.
Ryan Carr [00:09:30] Likely, likely you would make good decisions.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:33] If you’re one of the best F1 drivers, you’re likely on a good team. Yeah, right. I don’t know if I’ll qualify it, but whatever. I just throw it out there. Yeah. If you’re a great Instagram influencer, I don’t know. It doesn’t tell me the horse is good.
Ryan Carr [00:09:44] True. Well, you look at the Fyre Festival documentary, right? All of these people that had great influencer accounts at the time when they were talking about this new festival that was coming in.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:53] Including all legitimate artist music artists. Yeah.
Ryan Carr [00:09:57] Like all these people are talking about this thing, and then this thing didn’t work out and all of these people look bad for promoting that. Thing, you know.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:05] And you’ve done. Do you even know how many deals you’ve done?
Ryan Carr [00:10:08] 67. 68 over 60.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:12] Media. The dollar amount.
Ryan Carr [00:10:14] Told dollar volume no.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:16] To begin there I have you.
Ryan Carr [00:10:17] Never I’ve never added that up actually dollar amount of like you know I think my rental portfolio at its peak was worth about 20 million that.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:25] So again I think people again we’re trying to make a point in trying to make it is to qualify opinions and expertize and know how to qualify a horse is qualify an investment property. Right. You know, I have units to yeah. My unit is probably worth like 10% of one of yours. And the amount of effort to put in is fly less than 10% of what you put. Oh I just a decade with a bunch of duplexes.
Ryan Carr [00:10:54] Oh man. You started on that; do you rush.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:59] Oh, I don’t like I don’t like inside jokes on the show. Well, we’ll circle back and not come completely back in together, because I do want to talk about that that person, because that whatever. Yeah. Tell us about a show that is TV, because when did they first reach out to you?
Ryan Carr [00:11:14] So this all started in 2019. My wife and I live in Durham Dirt Region, which is just east of Toronto, and somebody had asked me to come and speak at the seminar in like the Kitchener-Waterloo area. So I did. Sure, I’ll come out, I’ll speak. You know, we’ll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about because I just I’m a pretty open book, right. So came out to my speech, got off stage, and this person approaches me from the crowd and says, Hey, you spoke really well up there. You ever thought about doing a show? It’s like, not specifically, but like, what did you have in mind? And he goes, Well, I’m a producer with HGTV. Why don’t we keep in touch? So we did. From there, my wife and I and Kiki, we went to Corus Entertainment in Toronto, which is the parent company of HGTV, Canada, and a whole bunch of other networks. Right. They own them. So we met with all these big exact cities like great Big Table, and all these people were in here talking and asking us questions and they’re kind of they’re feeling that our character, they were feeling at the show, we’re kind of bouncing ideas off each other and everything was good there. And then, boom, COVID hits 2020 and everything got put on hold for a couple of years. So that that was a bit of a drag because we were super excited to do the show. It’s called Hoarder Has Flippers. It’s finally out now, which is great. We just went through the first season and it was a lot of fun to shoot. But yeah, that took time to get to okay camera go right. Like there was three years there of waiting and okay we’re going and did we find the property and okay, that’s not the right property. And you know, all those things happened logistically. So yeah, it took time but worked out how.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:38] Long a time. We’d all like to talk about it.
Ryan Carr [00:12:40] Those couple of years because it was all kind of under wraps for a while. I don’t know why they do that specifically. I’m sure there’s reasons behind the scenes that we don’t know about, but everything just kept hush hush and the show worked out. So for whatever reasons they have, I’m sure that’s cool. Maybe I’ll never know. But yeah, it was all hush hush for a bit because.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:59] I knew about it. It was hard for me not to say anything was even harder. I think we leaked it on the show, but we edited.
Ryan Carr [00:13:04] It out by mistake every day. We did.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:08] We edited it out, though.
Ryan Carr [00:13:09] Well, we had to be so strategic to, like you knew because it was strategic. We were in a mastermind together and like there was a select group of people that did know because I had to be on point to find properties at the drop of a hat. I had to be on point to make sure that like mentally I was in the right spot kick and I had to be on point to make sure that we were in a good place with our relationship, which we always are. So like all of these things, like our support network still needed to be supportive for that role that we took on.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:37] And then how long between starting the shoot? It’s a complicated topic because the scope of these properties is not easy, right? Like first you to find a hoarder house meant.
Ryan Carr [00:13:51] Like out of all of the houses that are out there of like flipping potential. I talked to a lot of wholesalers. Right. And I counted the other day I’m on over 20 wholesale lists now planning and I reached out to a few of them and said, hey, of all the properties that you get, whether it’s, you know, ten a year, 100 a year, some people get more than that. How many of these would fit the criteria of hoarder house in the area that you farm? Right. And they said less than 5%. Great. So, you know, it’s not very many properties that are hoarded and ready for an off market person to purchase, but they are out there. So for anybody listening, if you find a whorehouse, we would love to film in it. You know, please don’t clean it out. Call us first class to do that on camera. You know, it makes for a great episode.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:36] What stops you from just, like, throwing garbage to a house to convert a crappy house into a hoarder house?
Ryan Carr [00:14:42] Real. It’s not real. You know, people want real. They want authenticity. Would you watch any of those storage shows knowing full well that somebody planted a diamond ring in the back corner.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:51] Don’t they? I don’t.
Ryan Carr [00:14:52] Know. They do. Right. And when that stuff comes out, people are like, oh, well, it wasn’t really real. Like, it’s not that exciting. We know there’s going to be something cool in there.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:59] I’m not TV expert because I watch very little people watch wrestling.
Ryan Carr [00:15:03] Yeah. For sure. And that’s more theater than fight club, right? But like, yeah, they want it authentic. They want it real. When we go through these houses, it’s the real deal. Like, we find some stuff and they’re like, oh, my gosh. GROSS stuff, fun stuff, neat artifacts.
Erwin Szeto [00:15:19] During some examples.
Ryan Carr [00:15:21] Anything from, like, the dirtiest underwear you’ve ever, ever seen to be so gross to really cool antiques that we repurpose and like, stage the homework. Beautiful teacups, kick Kiki starting a t line. And in each of the two episodes that we filmed this year, she found teacups and saucers and all this stuff that we were able to stage the homes with. So that was really cool. Right. And she was able to put them in the kitchen cupboards behind glass, and they were showcased in episode six, which just aired last night. We were actually able to set the entire table with these beautiful china dishes, have a gold leaf and scripture in blue. They’re really pretty. We found them in the house.
Erwin Szeto [00:15:59] You were careful taking the garbage out.
Ryan Carr [00:16:02] Yeah. There’s some cool stuff I found, like, 5000 bucks worth a snowblowers and generators and lawn equipment. Then one of the episodes we did.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:08] You’re making this sound sexy.
Ryan Carr [00:16:09] Yeah. I mean, like, it’s like there is a component to the super cool, and then there’s some stuff that’s like. It’s kind of gross. Yeah, let’s move on. Let’s fill the dumpster with that.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:18] How many dumpsters on average?
Ryan Carr [00:16:20] 707. 740 are bins.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:24] Jeez. Yeah. What is your typical nine flip? So you’re taking it down to the stud.
Ryan Carr [00:16:29] Down to the stats. So this isn’t even down to the studs. This is just stuff from inside the house. Some we don’t.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:34] So seven. Just a stuffed.
Ryan Carr [00:16:36] Stuff, plus.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:37] More for the renovation. Yeah.
Ryan Carr [00:16:39] Oh, mine. Usually like one bin for the rhino. Six worth of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of a lot, a lot, a lot of belongings in these homes. Find a lot of duplicates. We find a lot of things from 30 years ago that have been buried, you know, so it’s almost a time capsule in the house. It’s kind of fun to unearthing some of these things. I found a book from the late 1800s of all the surveys used of Toronto. Right? So it was talking about like Oshawa and Pickering and Bellville and all these all the surveys were in this great big book. It’s like it’s maybe two feet tall and 18 inches wide and beautiful coffee table book in great shape. So all the pages had like that, that old mothball smell to it. You open it up and it’s just like it’s a piece of history. It was buried under all the stuff you would have never known.
Erwin Szeto [00:17:25] So other than the bins, how does one prepare for cleaning out a hoarder house? Like, what are you wearing?
Ryan Carr [00:17:30] Oh, example. Yeah. So for us, we’ve been able to do it in plainclothes, sometimes masks and respirators. Gloves, obviously, because you, you never know what you find sharp stuff. But generally we’ve been okay. There’s been other people that have been for hazmat suit, mold, you know, wet basement, like the whole bit. It’s been it’s been pretty rocky. But for us, we’ve been lucky. We get I did.
Erwin Szeto [00:17:51] Have some free time and I tuned into the show, but it wasn’t you guys weren’t on it was as a family in the states of think three two brothers and a cousin or something like.
Ryan Carr [00:18:01] That. Montreal, they’re from Quebec.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:02] Oh, okay. Yep. I knew something was off there. English prices were really low, though.
Ryan Carr [00:18:06] Oh, dude, I’m so jealous. So we got in the show. There’s six episodes in total. Kiki and I have two. A couple from Manitoba has two, and then a couple of them are the brothers from Quebec. They’ve got two as well, so six in total. And basically in the Montreal market, just outside of the Montreal market and then in the Winnipeg market, their houses are like a couple of hundred. And then you come into the GTA market and the houses are like a million bucks from like one spring. This is nine day, nine day different. Like the cost of their purchase is like the cost of our bathroom renovation. Like, it’s just it’s ridiculous, right? It’s so it’s so different. But the essence of the show remains the same. People have stuff, remove the stuff, make the house pretty, turn it back over.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:44] Are the sellers ever part of this in terms of. No, nothing? No.
Ryan Carr [00:18:48] So this isn’t about the people. This is about the real estate and about the house and the transformation. Right. So there’s other shows out there that talk specifically about the people and the circumstance and all that. That’s not our that’s not our forte. We’re investors first, right? So we talk about the asset in the house and how we can transform.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:05] And it’s your crew and it’s part of your investments that’s doing this. And then you take care of the faces.
Ryan Carr [00:19:12] Yeah. So like, this is still real, like real business day to day. In essence, the camera is documenting our journey. Right. And they’re coming along for the ride. Yes. There are things that you have to do to move an episode along, because when you’re having a conversation about a house or when you’re actually flipping the house, sometimes just long gaps between progress. Right? So when they’re filming, we have to be strategic as to how we bring the cameras in that the viewer can follow. Otherwise it would make for good TV, right? So but 95% of what we’re doing is sequential. Right. And it’s actually happening real time.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:42] Now, there are some out there who criticize these TV shows around their budgets. But you know your numbers. I do. Where you’re transparent with your numbers.
Ryan Carr [00:19:49] I was I was very much so. So, I mean, like, what we spend is what we spend. It’s a real deal. In fact.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:55] It was donated.
Ryan Carr [00:19:56] We do get free dumpsters, which is good, but I do try to include that. So if we spend a.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:01] Budget, how much is the dumpster.
Ryan Carr [00:20:02] You know? I’m sure like a thousand bucks each. Typically, depending on the size and the weight and so on. But I mean, like, like we’re sponsored by Psycho Paint, so it’s kind of interesting. Sometimes we get free flooring or things like that. We do get some freebies. But like, generally speaking, I factor in dollar for dollar. Like, what did we spend? Let me be transparent. I think when people watch these shows and they don’t get the full story, it gives a false expectation in the market. Right. And when I was first an investor to like learning how to do things, what does lumber cost? What does paint cost? If somebody says are renovations 20 grand and then you go in the real world and it’s 60, well, you start to question like, am I doing it wrong? Do what? Do I not know? Right. So I do try to be very transparent.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:45] That well imagine the poor contractors like Oh, I should get through quote unquote, all through contractors quote. I’m like, oh, and that show is like 30% less. And you’re quoting me, you’re screw me over. Yeah. And the contractors like one another one another 80.
Ryan Carr [00:20:57] 80. Yeah. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:59] But you get the real.
Ryan Carr [00:21:00] I keep it real.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:01] Thanks for keeping it real.
Ryan Carr [00:21:02] Welcome. Welcome. I’m transparent. I always have been. I’m always just. I’m just an open book. I think you’re better to just be honest with people. Right. And then if you come on a show like this and people ask you questions, it’s like, yeah, this is what happened. This is what it is.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:14] Which is wack. Cause a lot of shows are not real at all. I remember, remember watching a show when like one of the it’s a realtor working with a couple, whatever and like, wow, they get every single property, he always wins. This is not possible. There’s only one other offer was the last time we had one other offer to compete against in the GTA. So I knew had context. And then then you find out like the couple already owns the house. They’re just acting.
Ryan Carr [00:21:41] Yes. That’s why they wanted the house to be authentic.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:45] Wow. This isn’t this is a new angle that they’re going for.
Ryan Carr [00:21:47] It’s a good question. I don’t know. I didn’t get to into I didn’t get too into the weeds on other shows and how they function. Right. In terms of like what they do or are their houses real or whatever? I just know what we’re doing. Right. And so far the show’s been really well-received. I like I wouldn’t know any different because this is our first time, right? But from what people are telling us and what we hear from friends, family, people in the industry, we’re doing great from what we’re told. So I’m happy about that.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:13] I’m glad because maybe that’s just the tone going forward that things should be more real; things should be more transparent. Sure. You know, if people have ownership in these things or if things are being donated or and just be frank with people. Yeah, I don’t know.
Ryan Carr [00:22:26] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:27] My trust is broken with for a lot of TV shows is that I know it’s not real or other shows it they’re just feeding the cast alcohol. Right. It’s a trade drama. This isn’t real.
Ryan Carr [00:22:39] We don’t we don’t get to do that. We don’t get to drink beer on our show and get dramatic is funny say because yeah when we first started the show kick and I said, okay, how do we want to be portrayed in it? Like we had this really real visceral conversation and you can be like you can be like the disappointed wife and like the asshole husband, or you can be the couple that bickers, right? Or you can be like, one person is all about the money. The other person is all about making it beautiful. And you’ve got conflict, right? Where you can be like the wholesome, genuine couple that we actually are. Right. And just be real and be fluid throughout not only the show, but our life, too. Right. And that’s the way we decided to pick like let’s just be us if people like it. Great. And if they don’t, that’s okay too. You know, not everybody will enjoy everything about every episode and we’re okay with that. But at least Richard herself was.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:24] Talking about Keith a little bit when she joined the business like full time.
Ryan Carr [00:23:28] Full time. So she joined the business, I would say, a couple of years ago, just as the show was kind of gearing up. She was always in the background doing like we had done the first couple of properties together, which is cool, including her principal residence. Right? Then she can do the wrong thing for a bit. Then she kind of came back and then we realized, Hey, you know, we really have something here. She’s got a good eye for design. Let’s come on board. Let’s make these properties beautiful. But we’re fixing them anyways to actually make them pretty and color coordinate and all that stuff. We can make some extra lift here, right? Let’s bring her on board and let’s get her let’s get her opinion.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:56] But she also working.
Ryan Carr [00:23:57] 777 No, I always keep growing. I work the crazy hours.
Erwin Szeto [00:24:00] Always keep working.
Ryan Carr [00:24:01] She’s sporadic on an hour, so she’s a little bit different. So one thing that we’ve both learned about ourselves is that we operate very differently. I’m more of a morning person. She’s not. She’s more of a night hawk. I’m not. Right. So, like, if I get up at six, I’m going home, like, ready to go, right? Maybe she’ll be sleeping at that point where the sun hasn’t even come up yet. So we have to be very conscious and considerate of each other because we’re not the same. Right. And that’s okay. All right. That’s okay. Knowing yourself is so important to like real estate investing, life relationships, whatever you got to know, you don’t know. And if you don’t know it, take the time to know. Do a test, do a desk test, do a Myers-Briggs test, do some kind of a personality test. I did that and it was huge for me. I like to discuss just because I understand it, but like tons out there, just do it for yourself. And then you realize, hey, I’m more of a dominant personality or I’m more of a compliance personality or, you know, I’m a stay at home mom. And this is the way that I operate. You know, whatever you’re whatever your thing is, play into that strength.
Erwin Szeto [00:24:58] So we actually disc everyone in all of our all of our companies. We are just. Everyone loved it. And then we actually try to read our clients as well so that we can better communicate with them and understand them and also how we communicate with them. I think I repeated myself. Can you show what your desk is?
Ryan Carr [00:25:15] Yes, I am. They asked me. I forgot. I am a s. Mm. No. What I.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:24] Wrote the deal.
Ryan Carr [00:25:25] There is. I think I’m a CD.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:27] You see.
Ryan Carr [00:25:28] First CD? Yeah, I’m a CD. I’m not an overly dominant personality unless I’m in a leadership role. And I have to be a more of a more like a passive guy and they’re going compliance, math, data, stuff like this. That’s how I help justify my decisions, right? I’m not an I look, I’m not an influencer. I don’t need the flashy whatever for that weird stuff. Sometimes I like it. Well, I know what you mean inwardly. Sorry. I enjoy the things. I enjoy the flashy things for personal reasons, but not to prove anything to others.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:59] Right? Yeah. You’re a bit of a gearhead.
Ryan Carr [00:26:00] Yeah. Which is very different than having to buy the convertible because you want people to see you driving down Main Street with the loudest radio, right? That doesn’t matter to me. That stuff doesn’t matter. Even being on TV, that doesn’t matter to me. Like I’m not doing it for those reasons. So people go, you know, Ryan or Kiki, you guys are amazing. We just love it. Like, like the accolades are they’re cool, but like, that’s not why I’m doing it, you know? It’s not me.
Erwin Szeto [00:26:25] It is just for the listeners benefit. Tony Robbins gives away the test for free. So you could Google Tony Robbins. Anthony Robbins dice. See, you can go fill out the survey and the questionnaire and exchange for your email. They’ll email it to you so you can find out what you are as well and compare yourself to Ryan. Yeah, see if you’re also a CD and you’re going to make $20 million like Ryan.
Ryan Carr [00:26:48] I didn’t make 20 million.
Erwin Szeto [00:26:52] So I brutalize your story when I try to summarize. Summarize you do people, very young gentleman that I’d like you to meet afterwards if you’d like your car. I explained to him like Ryan was a mechanic and he’s good with his hands. He figured out how to renovate houses off YouTube and then just took action and. Worked hard. And now here he is. Yeah, we got it a lot there.
Ryan Carr [00:27:15] Right?
Erwin Szeto [00:27:16] Seven hour days, seven days a week. But you’ve slowed down a little bit. Why slowdown the market?
Ryan Carr [00:27:22] Yeah. No, not necessarily. It was more of an internal thing. So, again, going back to, you know, knowing thyself, going through all of COVID, I realized that I’m more on the introverted side, less on the extroverted side, even though I do like to speak and things like that. And like I think it’s fun. I am more on the introverted side and I’m okay with myself. I’m okay with like not going out on a weekend. I’m okay with these things. Right. So on the disc test personality side, that really helped me in terms of what was questioning it. Slowing down. Slowing down. Yeah. So in terms of slowing down, you know, being an introvert, I was okay with like just taking it easy, taking a step back, really realizing, okay, I’ve worked really, really hard for ten years, put in enough time to call it 20. In terms of human hours. Right. And it’s time to enjoy some of the some of the things that we have, whether it’s, you know, we talk about cars. So like whether it’s cars or whether it’s hobbies or whether it’s spending time at the cottage or whether it’s just like, you know, cooking. I like to have tea and pie on Thursdays, completely non-monetary, you know. And we’ve been so monetary for so many years trying to figure out how do we make money, what do we enjoy, things like that. What’s up tempo on Thursdays it’s 12 bucks, right?
Erwin Szeto [00:28:29] Oh, you go to a restaurant.
Ryan Carr [00:28:30] Sometimes we do. Sometimes we go home and just, like, get a pie from, like, a bakers market or something and. And make tea in the backyard. Super simple. But those little moments are what changed my focus into saying, okay, if you don’t enjoy life now, when will you ever do it? I’m 34 now. I’ve worked really hard for a long time. Ten years plus. Okay, let’s. Let’s take a breath. I need to headspace.
Erwin Szeto [00:28:52] See cut back on by a lot.
Ryan Carr [00:28:54] Yeah, I did. Well, one time I think the max had Max properties, I had I think I was 15 and I’ve cut back quite a bit. So like right now we’ve got a couple interactive construction which is, which is plenty, you know, it’s easier to manage fewer moving parts, less capital over there. The market is changing right now. Interest rates are up, market is down. The Oshawa market, which is one of the markets that I primarily invested in, is off 26% since last year.
Erwin Szeto [00:29:20] So much to unpack here, but you still have any buying holds.
Ryan Carr [00:29:23] You still haven’t hold steady.
Erwin Szeto [00:29:26] To hold for.
Ryan Carr [00:29:27] Forever. No, no, not forever. I’m not a forever guy. So like some people say, you know, what is your what is your forever home or what is your for? I’m like, oh, I don’t know, going to be in ten years, right? I can’t look that far, but that’s just for me. Some people can like I’ve got a 30 year plan, a ten year plan or whatever. I’m like a one year plan to your plan, five year plan, let’s reevaluate type of guy. So for me, yes, I do still have some buying holds. Do I think I’ll have a forever? No, I don’t. Do I think I’ll have some for a long time? Yes, I do. I do like the benefits of owning real estate, whether it’s from a tax perspective or whether it’s capital gains versus active income like a flat, like all of these things play into my thought process. But yeah, I’ll keep some for a long time. Some are. Okay.
Erwin Szeto [00:30:10] What’s the makeup of your hold right now primarily small.
Ryan Carr [00:30:14] So I’ve got one, one multi-unit and then a bunch of duplexes, a couple of single families. The single families are primarily used because I’m seven land, you know so buy the house split land eventually sell the house that’s why that’s why I have those financing is a little bit more favorable. If you’re buying a single family home on a big lot, you don’t have to close it private. You can close it with bank finance, like things like that. And then I’ve got a bunch of land that I’m developing as well.
Erwin Szeto [00:30:39] As the land through. We’re going to build what are going to.
Ryan Carr [00:30:42] Build duplexes, single family semis, triplexes, things like that. I mean, lots, not that many. Eight, eight, ten.
Erwin Szeto [00:30:49] Something can be hard.
Ryan Carr [00:30:51] Are they hard? Yeah. They just take the cooperative. They take time. They take time. Generally speaking, you know, borrowing, being close to like a creek or like in some weird area, the cities are relatively supportive of infill development because you’re using the existing services close to transit spines, you know, grocery stores, whatever. All of that stuff’s great. On the flip side, if you’re in a part of town where like, I’ll give you a real example. So I bought a piece of property three and a half, maybe four years ago, right? It was my first infill development project, so I bought it like older farmhouse on a lot in town. And I went to the town, said, okay, I want to take the house down, cut the lot in half and build two new ones. Generally they were supportive, except I found out six months later that I got stuck in what was called an interim control bylaw. An interim control bylaw is when all the neighbors get together and they complain to the town and they say All these developers are walking down the old houses on bigger lots and building mini mansions. And we don’t like that in our area. It’s like, All right, so I got stuck in this thing for two, two and a half years. Oh, my. Yeah, I had the shittiest tenants in this property. They ripped the cabinets off the wall, the damage, the place. It was just a mess. One tenant moved out, ripped cabs off. So I called the police. I was like, okay, so I’ve. I’ve been clearly vandalized here, right? Like this. This is beyond this is beyond just like wear and tear. Like, you know, the corners are worn off because I have a big dog. Not like the carpets were torn out. There’s garbage all over the counter. Cops come in and they’re like, Yep, I understand where they are tenants. I said, Yeah, they’re my tenants. Look what they did. Right. And the cops are like, Sorry, can’t do anything. If they weren’t your tenants, then we could find these people and press charges. But because of your tenants, they’re basically protected. And I was handcuffed. Not physically, I was handcuffed like of the property.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:30] Thank you for clarifying. Yeah.
Ryan Carr [00:32:31] Yeah. The property was, like, physically handcuffed. I couldn’t do anything.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:35] I’ve actually spoken to a police officer in our community and he says they can really it’s interesting. It’s just, again, it’s in their opinion, how much work they want to put in, I guess.
Ryan Carr [00:32:46] I guess so. Like that, you know, shit like that, that really sucks and gives me that. You know, I was really good at these people as a landlord to try to be really good to the tenants for good people to get back to you. Right. Unless they’re unreasonable people to begin with. And you just can’t reason with that. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:58] Sorry. Just to clarify my case, I had a witness. I’m one of the roommates, but still cops were called and they wouldn’t do anything. Yeah, but again, it depends on who you’re talking to. Yours would be tougher because you never witness.
Ryan Carr [00:33:11] Yeah. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:33:12] See, I like context.
Ryan Carr [00:33:14] That is context.
Erwin Szeto [00:33:15] I keep telling you the context is everything.
Ryan Carr [00:33:17] It is. It is. Yeah. You know, you could glaze over that story and be like. Ryan buys house. Ryan takes house down, builds new house. Ryan keeps us long term. But like there’s so many details in between that story of like, you know, what happened to the market, what happened with the tenants, what happened with the town? How did you push through it? The house I built the house all through COVID. What about the price of lumber? What about the price of drywall? What about finding skilled trades during that time? You know, what about watching the government say, okay, everything’s open, okay, everything’s close. Okay. The hardware stores are open. The hardware stores are closed. Right? Like all of these things? Yeah. You have to chop through and the margins have to be there at the end to actually make that make sense.
Erwin Szeto [00:33:56] So another thing observation I have a view is that on the outside you look like you’re calm because everybody telling me one story of how you saved the foundation because you just happened to check in and you sat and you caught the midpoint foundation and everything, and that would have been a complete disaster that you were not there.
Ryan Carr [00:34:13] That was this house, this new building.
Erwin Szeto [00:34:14] You just are so calm about it. It could have cost you like 100 grand probably, or something like that.
Ryan Carr [00:34:18] I would have. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:34:19] You’re just so calm down at though. Were you really calm on the inside?
Ryan Carr [00:34:22] On the inside. I was freaking out. I was freaking out. That was the first time. So what had happened was.
Erwin Szeto [00:34:28] And again, context, right? Yeah. Again like that. But that quick summary that you gave, you could have had a 100 grand mistake if you were not there and not just if you were not there, there or not. You had the experience and the knowledge to spot the problem.
Ryan Carr [00:34:42] Yeah, that’s exactly what and.
Erwin Szeto [00:34:44] How do people have that everyone the jobs they didn’t apparently didn’t.
Ryan Carr [00:34:47] Apparently which was unfortunate. They dug up the municipal road. Right. For the listeners. They dug up the roadway and they were putting in the water, sewer and storm connection into the two lots that I was servicing. Right. Well, they went to backfill a whore, which is when I pulled up or pulled up and they were missing the water pipe on one. Like the sewer pipe on the other. Oh, like, what are you doing? And then like, what do you mean, what do we do? So you’re supposed to have three pipes in the hole and you’ve only got two. Where’s the third pipe? And they’re like, Well, it’s not on the drawing. I said, Do you think I’m going to go and build a house with no sewer pipe on one and no water pipe? Like what? How am I going to make this house function? You have to dig Roback up. Oh, that makes a lot of sense, he says. Who are these people? Well.
Erwin Szeto [00:35:26] The municipal workers.
Ryan Carr [00:35:28] They’re contracted by the government to put in the services. Yeah. So frustrating. I thought to myself. Are you kidding.
Erwin Szeto [00:35:34] Me? You can delegate the scale, Ryan. You guys, you missed that. You missed that look in the motivational whatever. Yeah.
Ryan Carr [00:35:40] So I was so rattled on the inside. I was I was I was upset that they didn’t catch it because they were professionals at what they were doing. Right. They’re supposed to do this every day. Every day. Right. I don’t I’m not a sewer guy. I don’t know. But I’m, like, bright enough to know that, you know, you need sewers and water and all the rest of it to make my housework. So, you know, I said, hey, put the thing in it, put it in, and they put it in there like, okay, can we back to the hall? They said, you’re like, so, so trivial. But that would have been so expensive to.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:07] Fix and.
Ryan Carr [00:36:07] Delay. Oh, it would have been horrible.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:09] I would problem you probably like finding the problem. Like.
Ryan Carr [00:36:13] Well, yeah, like, where’s my pipe? You would have been digging. Looking for the pipe that wasn’t even there. Would’ve been horrible. Oh, yeah, but cut it. Right. Another roadblock. I call it. Move on. Let’s build a house. We’re okay.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:25] I don’t want to scare people from doing these things.
Ryan Carr [00:36:27] No, no, no, they should.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:29] By real estate investments, we should at least talk about what it’s. What it is.
Ryan Carr [00:36:32] Yeah. Like there is positives and negatives to anything. Same thing with stocks. Sucks up, stocks go down, you hit the button instead of sell button. You know, trouble. Yeah, the sell. But instead of the buy button, maybe save yourself. Who knows? Right, but educate yourself, move forward, figure out the solution, put it on and go slow.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:49] I see all these investors were just. It’s not that common, but this incredible ambition right out of the chute.
Ryan Carr [00:36:56] Yep. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:57] They’ll take on the Ryan car side project. Like their second deal for the buyer. Vacant piece of land of realtor dot CA. Holy cow. What did you find? What did you see in this property that no one else saw that largely looked at this?
Ryan Carr [00:37:11] You wouldn’t believe? I get like people call me from time to time to say, Hey, can you help me with this? So I’ll try and help them. Right. And I talk more people out of doing deals than doing deals because they’re too ambitious. As you say, I can’t reasonably see a positive outcome. Right. And they have no idea what they’re talking about. And I’m like, hey, you might be missing this. You might be missing this business. You ever thought about that? And they say, no, I haven’t. Right. And I’m like, there’s more deals that are bad deals than are good deals. And most people don’t understand that. All right.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:42] Well, a lot of the good deals never see the light of day. So. Yeah, yeah. I think people need to understand that, like if it’s on realtor dossier or I see I see X even around, but.
Ryan Carr [00:37:52] I don’t think it is.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:53] I think you’re right, the commercial version of them, if it’s made it there, a lot of people already looked at it. So you have your guard up.
Ryan Carr [00:38:00] Yes. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:01] Be extra.
Ryan Carr [00:38:01] Critical. Yeah, right. Yeah. Crazy.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:05] So tell me about the deals the other deals work that you’re currently active on. Yes. Because you’re known for doing highest and best use.
Ryan Carr [00:38:11] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:12] What are you doing that’s highest and best use. And these are with it’s just ugly houses.
Ryan Carr [00:38:16] A lot of ugly houses. But I mean, land services are big rezonings, you know, cutting corner lots, cutting the backyards off corner, lots of good tear down rebuilds, rezoning for a higher density. That’s big, coach houses are kind of like the new big thing. So I’ve got a couple of those in the pipe. I might convert them to Triplexes instead of coach houses just because it’s more cost effective to build.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:35] Okay, so how do you what’s the type like? Can you paint a picture for me?
Ryan Carr [00:38:38] Yeah, sure. So by a big infill lot, cut a lot in half. Take the house down by the triplex on the left and a triplex on the right. Oh.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:47] So what is it, like three?
Ryan Carr [00:38:50] I saw it. Three units in one building, small apartment building.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:53] So basement unit mean for unit. Their second floor.
Ryan Carr [00:38:55] Unit. Yeah. I try to build them as a res bungalow or like a res basement style. So the basement four feet in the ground, right. Everybody has nice big natural light, the bottom and then the second floor is elevated a little bit. Third floor, even more so. Right, right, right. And then because excuse me, there’s more stairs to get to a third unit on the top level, right? When it’s when it’s raised a little bit, we try to incentivize that top level unit. So maybe give them ten foot ceilings or vault the ceiling. So when you get up there, it’s like really beautiful or they have a nice balcony, right? And that helps offset the pushback when people say, oh.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:25] That’s good too.
Ryan Carr [00:39:26] I don’t want to go that high.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:27] How deeply at the poor erase bungalow?
Ryan Carr [00:39:30] Well, depends on the answers. Four feet, right. Which is your typical for us coverage.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:35] Okay, good.
Ryan Carr [00:39:35] Right. But I mean, it depends on your area. So like in Florida, they don’t freeze. So you’ve got less of less floating coverage there. But here in Ontario, we’re about four feet.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:44] Are you see more deals available now?
Ryan Carr [00:39:47] I’ve seen more volume now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a deal. So just because it’s inexpensive.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:50] More things are come across you.
Ryan Carr [00:39:51] Desk, right?
Erwin Szeto [00:39:52] Because of the 20 wholesalers and the email.
Ryan Carr [00:39:55] Threats like stuff is happening, things are moving in the market because the market is coming off. So people either want to save face or claim profits or whatever. But like whenever you get a market change, things come out of the woodwork.
Erwin Szeto [00:40:06] And you know, two aspects. You mentioned Florida. So back in the mind, are you doing anything out of our country? Out of province.
Ryan Carr [00:40:11] Nothing.
Erwin Szeto [00:40:12] Come on, Ryan. There’s gotta be some shiny things you can chase. I know it’s more than an hour drive from your house.
Ryan Carr [00:40:16] I’m trying to. I’m trying to not do that actively. Like, there’s. There’s an opportunity in so many areas that I could. That I could reasonably foresee a positive outcome. Hmm. So many areas. It doesn’t matter what is you. Could you. Could you own a better restaurant or could you have a better cotton farm? Or could you have, you know, the best piece of real estate? Or could you, you know, like I went all the stock hacker stuff. Mm hmm. Right. I took the course, but I never did actually do it. Right. And I thought the course was fantastic, and I thought you guys nailed it. Right. But I knew after I took the course that I couldn’t have a split focus between real estate and being great at that. Mm hmm. And doing stocks integrated that for me. That doesn’t mean nobody can do it. Sure, there’s less people to do. I just knew that for me, if I split my focus, I would split my result. And I could do it right.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:00] Right. Between a retired.
Ryan Carr [00:41:01] Maybe.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:02] Maybe I truly retired. Yeah. You make you make so much money being so active in your business and you’re so good at it and it seems like it’s your highest and best use.
Ryan Carr [00:41:13] It is. I just I’m able to see opportunity like that, you know.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:17] Because the direction that stockbroker academy is now is where I see challenges in the market for people are all these people who are private lending who are taking away too much risk for a fixed return?
Ryan Carr [00:41:26] Yeah. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:28] And so the analogy I often give them is like, you know, a TD bank payment will pay me over 4%. Dividend tax taxpayer for preference. Yeah. And I can, I can do something really simple like cover sell cover calls on it. Yep. I don’t think I’m going to lose that much money on TD, nor will it go to zero versus we know people are losing some money in like the promissory note market in America and some rights that are at risk out there like your rates. So yeah, I just I just want to put something out there that there are the risk and the reward is more in line with at least more conservative than the massive amounts of risk I see depleting. Yeah. You know, I agree with you with what you’re doing, especially with how busy you are. Back to the triplex. No, I don’t know where. I want to dig in to one of these strategies. Okay. Because we have a lot begins on the show. Which of the strategies that you’re currently doing is something more something that a beginner can bite off a server and build seven triplex, just a basement suite.
Ryan Carr [00:42:24] I think the entry level stuff is always a basement suite. I mean, I cut my teeth. I do basement apartments, really, you know, ten years ago when I got started. And like a lot of the same a lot of the same techniques you need to do a basement hold true for a lot of development. So like getting a building permit, lowering that process, doing a set of drawings, learning that process, understanding what a site plan is, where we putting parking, how deep is the backyard? You know what is a setback, right? The setback is how far you are from a plot line, from your structures. All of these things matter. Right. So when you take that that concept and then you bring it over into infill development, right? The same thing applies. Where are you putting the house? You know, how do you get your blueprints done? What are your setbacks? All of these things are the same. Right. It’s just on a basement apartment. It’s easier because you have a defined space that you’re working with on an infill lot. It’s a little bit trickier because you’re trying to deal with the town as something new. Right. Basements are existing construction. So basement apartment. That’s the answer. That’s the easiest entry point.
Erwin Szeto [00:43:18] Is that you’re on crews working on these on these projects.
Ryan Carr [00:43:21] Sometimes. Yep. So I think at my peak, I had three, three crews on the go. Right now I have one, sometimes two, but mostly just one full time staff to four employees. I’ve had them for years and they’ve been awesome. I attribute a lot of my successes to having full time staff because they push me to be better, because I want to be better for them, not because I want to be better for me. Right. I’m always working six months ahead of my guys, my staff, because it takes time to find the house close on the house, finance the House, whatever, plan the House, so that they can come in and do the construction. Right. And that evolved naturally. I used to be the guy doing the construction. That was great. But you can’t scale your physical labor. You can only scale your thoughts, other people’s labor. Right. So that’s how that came about. But like, yeah, I, I can confidently say that if I didn’t have full time staff, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today because I wouldn’t have pushed in the same manner.
Erwin Szeto [00:44:14] Now, having full time staff has. So it’s fun. Yeah. Not many people have full time staff, so. Yeah. Some questions around it. I think hopefully it benefits the listener. How much are you able to outsource and delegate to their full time staff? Are you able to be like, go golfing? You mean you can explain it? How involved are you on what the construction since you are full time staff last year.
Ryan Carr [00:44:36] So now more so in the beginning. Right. So when I, when I kickstart a project, we’ll call it every project. My start one, I’m a little bit more involved at the beginning because I have to steer the ship right. I’m the maestro to the orchestra, I have to say. Okay, the tuba goes here, the trombone goes here, the violin. Now it’s your turn. Whereas after that is set and the sheet music is written, they just have to play it. And I say, just have to play it like kind of tongue in cheek, because there is still some technique there and you still have to be good at their job. But like what I didn’t understand when I first started my business was I was just looking for people that were inexpensive because I just wanted to write. And a lot of people go through this, they don’t want to pay and whatever. Now I need people that come, batteries included, no assembly required because I have to be able to delegate a task and say, okay, you go hang the drywall. I’ll be over here when you’re ready. Then we’ll go on to the next task. I can’t spend the time to show you how to hang the drywall. Otherwise, I would just have to do it myself. So that was a big takeaway for me as I continued to grow and now I’m less involved. I do still start the project, like I mentioned as we progressed through the project last year. So right. And the final 10% is always the hardest because then I come back in and I say, okay, we’ve got to still got to do this. Still got to do this. Okay, now we’re ready to go.
Erwin Szeto [00:45:47] So part of the challenge with investors is they want to be as passive as possible.
Ryan Carr [00:45:51] That’s horseshit. Tell you right now. Anybody that wants to be like super hands off and I don’t want to know anything about the problems and, you know, just call me when it’s done and here’s the keys and whatever. That only works later in life. It only works later in life. That’s been my experience. I think that’s been a lot of people’s experience. I can’t speak for every scenario, but anybody that says, I don’t want to know anything about it. Right. Fair. Fine. But you will pay for that one way or the other. Like something will come back in a year. It’ll be bad, right? But it’s the wrong way to go about it if you can’t see yourself in that business long term. Right. I personally don’t believe that you should start because something will happen and you’ll get frustrated and you won’t want to be there and you won’t have the foresight to work through the issues.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:31] I just wait for the person that things like, Oh, Ryan works 77, I can fix that. I can outsource and delegate. I’ll hire an in-house operations manager, for example.
Ryan Carr [00:46:40] Mm hmm.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:41] Does the model work with the full time staff between you and the project so you don’t ever have to go on site?
Ryan Carr [00:46:46] Sometimes it does.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:47] Maybe someone. Sometimes your products are usually pretty poor. Have good meat on the bone.
Ryan Carr [00:46:53] They do. They do. So, like if you have a ton of margin where you can make all the mistakes and you can hire other people and stuff like that, everybody that’s just like I would just delegate that, delegate that, delegate that. Well, eventually when you get to the end and there’s nothing left but you delegated everything, what have you done it for? Right. So you’ve got to be really cautious on where you’re spending your money. You could lose so much in operational inefficiency that like there’s like the project is a zero or a negative at the end and you’ve just put in all the time, even though you’ve outsourced it and got your time back, right? It’s all for naught. So you do still have to look at the margin.
Erwin Szeto [00:47:24] Mm hmm. Right. And that’s the thing that I see a lot of books talk about is like, oh, yeah, this outsourcing delegate everything. My experience is similar. You are just so much. You can’t.
Ryan Carr [00:47:33] You cannot. It’s very hard to delegate vision. Right. It’s very hard to delegate like a one off chore. It’s very hard to delegate art. It’s very hard to delegate anything that isn’t clearly repeatable. Mm hmm.
Erwin Szeto [00:47:46] Exciting things. But, for example, lead from the front. I don’t know if you can inspire people. If you’re on the golf course and not doing any work, all you just do is cut and recount and checks and signing checks. Yeah. I don’t know if that is necessary. Inspires your staff. No, I mean.
Ryan Carr [00:48:01] I wouldn’t think it would. That’s why, you know, I talked about this in the book, which, by the way, is coming. It’s been the longest. It’s been the longest a book.
Erwin Szeto [00:48:10] Or are you supposed to announce it today?
Ryan Carr [00:48:12] Oh, it’s been like, okay, it’s been the longest book release ever. And at first it was like the production side that was kind of getting held up on. And now it’s clearly just my fault. Like, it’s just clearly my fault. The book is written. It’s been proofread, right? And there’s still a few things that need to be done. And it’s just like I am the bottleneck in that process. And speaking of outsourcing, I can’t outsource a couple of the things that need to be done because it’s coming for me. Right. So I’m the bottleneck. This is like real world entrepreneurship. I’m the bottleneck. This is it. Right. But like, you know, I talked about some of these things in that book where you have challenges in the business that it’s got to be you to fix it.
Erwin Szeto [00:48:47] I did hire someone to read my book directly.
Ryan Carr [00:48:50] Yeah, you got to say it forever. Terrible.
Erwin Szeto [00:48:52] It is out, though. To get the audio, books, audio yet. But it’s hilarious because like it’s like the big oh is it very fresh long doesn’t stutter like I do. I love I love it.
Ryan Carr [00:49:04] I can’t wait to read it or listen to it.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:07] I heard I heard a sample of Cherry’s, but I thought we hired someone. A woman at least like to hear, like a professional speak versus cherry with her accent.
Ryan Carr [00:49:16] Yeah. Hilary, those are very articulate with the word, a very delicate stuff.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:21] Because for me, whenever I read Cherry’s writing, I hear her voice in my head. Oh, wow. So they hear.
Ryan Carr [00:49:25] So completely different voice.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:27] Throw throws. We are threatened by the car.
Ryan Carr [00:49:30] We can. We can.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:31] You like.
Ryan Carr [00:49:32] Cars? I do like cars. Forever. Forever? Yeah. As a kid, I was always very mechanical. So, like I before I got into being a mechanic, I was, you know, like doing go karts and minibikes and wellbeing and stuff like this all through, like public school and high school. I was more into sports in public school and then I gravitated towards work with my hands even more so, you know, when I was like 13 or 14 and then it just always stuck around.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:56] And it wasn’t just any cars particular brand and everything. Was it on your vision board or anything like that?
Ryan Carr [00:50:00] Absolutely. So I didn’t even know what a vision board was when I was a kid, but I always had little toy Ferraris. That was always my thing. It was my brand. They were red and they were fast and they’re fun and they’re sporty. And that always stuck with me. And then going through, like, all of this real estate stuff and, you know, making some money and like having successes, I said, okay, like if I’m ever going to buy a sports car or a Ferrari, like now’s the time, let’s do that. So I did.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:22] What was the time?
Ryan Carr [00:50:23] What was the time for.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:24] The trigger event? But it was like, now’s the time to buy it.
Ryan Carr [00:50:27] Yeah. So this cool story, I always said to myself that I wanted a Ferrari, but I never wanted to pay full price for it because I was buying equity in real estate. I wanted to do the same thing with cars. I said to myself, When the market falls apart, luxuries go on sale and that’s when I’ll buy it. Right. And I did just that. So over the number of 60 some ideas, I saved up a couple grand here, a couple of grand there, just kind of put it aside, forgot about it. That was my car fun, right? And I got to the point where COVID came in, the market fell apart. Luxuries went on sale. It was a very short time period, but there was the opportunity. There was this window. I found the perfect car a lot of right there. The rest is history.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:05] How you how you found it? How you found the car.
Ryan Carr [00:51:08] Yeah. So I actually did Kijiji, Facebook, Marketplace, AutoTrader like all the online like all the online at and I did a we buy Ferrari’s faster cash program and in among that I had like.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:20] You had a you’re the ad you had a little.
Ryan Carr [00:51:22] Ad yeah. Just like people do we buy houses and then of fliers I did like a I put one on Kijiji.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:27] So instead of like house pictures or house logos you put it was a car is a car.
Ryan Carr [00:51:31] Yeah. Ferrari. Yeah, yeah. I saw.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:33] Ferraris.
Ryan Carr [00:51:34] Like red with nice rims and like all this stuff, right. I put it up there, I think I put it in like Microsoft Paint, but it was a cheesiest ad. It’s like we buy Ferrari for cash coming. Then in among that campaign where I was waiting for inbound leads to come in right and be reaching out to people saying, yeah, you know, I see your cars for sale. If it was a sale, give me a call like things like this, right? In among a campaign, I came across the car that I wanted. There are two particular models and the rest is history. Like a battery there. I bought equity. The person I bought it from was fantastic. Like really great guy. Still have a relationship with that person today. And I love the car.
Erwin Szeto [00:52:10] It doesn’t feel slighted how much you’ve made.
Ryan Carr [00:52:12] Look, no, no. You know what? He was thrilled. I think. Then all I can do is insert myself into the way that I feel. He was thinking at the time, right? I called him. He didn’t pick up. He called me back like a week later and I figured, well, this car’s pretty reasonably priced like and it’s really pretty. It’s probably gone. So I just kind of wrote it off. Well, he called me back a week later, Hey, I’m so-and-so. Whenever you’re available, let me know. I’ll get the car down.
Erwin Szeto [00:52:40] User down.
Ryan Carr [00:52:41] Yeah, that’s what I said.
Erwin Szeto [00:52:42] Okay, down, down, very down for him.
Ryan Carr [00:52:45] Okay. So I roll up and he takes it down off the hoist and takes it out into the driveway and it’s all nicely polished, recently serviced all the owner’s manual, service records, the whole bit. And the car was really beautiful and everything that I wanted and the guy was awesome too. He’s like, Come on into my home in a coffee. Talk a little bit about it. I met his wife like really great. Just. Just like three people, right? And not only did I get the car, but I got the relationship. And I think that’s really cool.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:11] So he call out your ad or they posted an ad and.
Ryan Carr [00:53:14] I reached out to him. He posted an ad in my campaign of inbound and outbound try and fine. I had reached out to his ad and he called me back.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:24] There was a price on the ad.
Ryan Carr [00:53:25] There was. Oh, there was. So I got a little bit of a reduction. Right, which is great. And I also got an awesome car.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:32] Any idea he any other any serious inquiries?
Ryan Carr [00:53:35] He did. He did. I again, I can only guess based on my interaction with him there. I think he sold it to me because he liked the relationship to. That’s my guess. That’s my guess.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:49] Can you give a percentage? How much has gone up in value?
Ryan Carr [00:53:51] Oh, yeah. That car went up in value. I think I bought it about $0.60 on the dollar. So it’s probably gone up 40% or more.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:01] Is it a dollar then, or a dollar? 6% of 40% of $0.60? You know, I mean, so it went up 20%, 26, $0.28. That’s heavy.
Ryan Carr [00:54:09] Math. I don’t know. Probably went up by 20. They went up by half the value of the car.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:16] Okay. Yeah. Okay. Oh, it’s over. It’s over. The dollar amount mountain. If you paid a dollar on the dollar, then you’re over.
Ryan Carr [00:54:23] I paid $0.60 for what the car was worth, and then it went up a bit. I don’t know. It just.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:29] Went up. Did you mean money?
Ryan Carr [00:54:30] I made money.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:31] And you’re happy?
Ryan Carr [00:54:32] I’m very happy.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:33] You ever going to sell it? That dumb question for you?
Ryan Carr [00:54:36] It’s again, for me, it was more the emotional by buy like this wasn’t a with this isn’t a flashy thing and I post on social media like doesn’t I know you do. I ask every time I go somewhere. People like a picture of the car on my shirt. Right. But like, I’m not opposed to stuff like I’m not a flashy guy. Doesn’t mean that stuff doesn’t mean anything to me. Emotionally, I wanted it for me, not for others. And the fact that other people enjoy it, I think is great. How do you feel?
Erwin Szeto [00:55:01] How do you feel about it?
Ryan Carr [00:55:02] I love it. Makes me feel good, right? It just I get in, it’s tight, it’s fine, it’s sporty. I take it to the track sometimes. You know, it looks great to be.
Erwin Szeto [00:55:10] Able to park near you. The ride. You’re lucky. Yeah. This track’s nowhere near here.
Ryan Carr [00:55:14] So the Ferrari dealership, they called me and said, Hey, we’re doing a track. Why don’t you come out? So we went out like there’s. There’s a guy, like, with the espresso machine, it was like, it’s all like a nicely done day, whole bunch of people with other cars. And it was a really cool experience to be able to take my own vehicle to the track and I did a little video on the way there. I never ended up posting it, but I did this little video and I was like, I just sent it to my family and I said, Hey, big day, I’m going to the track today. And the coolest part is that I get to take my own car, right. And, you know, I sat next to people at lunch that sold their companies to American Express for like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Use me like, you know, a little rental portfolio to.
Erwin Szeto [00:55:49] Take care of the duplex.
Ryan Carr [00:55:50] That’s right. That’s right. So it was a really cool experience to know that there’s people out there with, you know, with more money or more experience or better cars or faster cars. And, you know, I was able to compete with that and hang out for the day.
Erwin Szeto [00:56:03] And are you able you’ve done any business with these people? Like is it is it good networking opportunity?
Ryan Carr [00:56:09] I haven’t done any business with anybody car related. I imagine it would be a good networking opportunity, but I don’t really use it like that yet. It definitely does though, because I’m part of a few other car clubs. It definitely does open the door before you even open your mouth. Right. It’s just a visual representation of some success that you’ve had in your business career and people automatically attribute that to. Yes, I probably know what he’s talking about. Right. So that is really cool.
Erwin Szeto [00:56:34] That’s cool. Now we’re running out of time. So I want to ask you, you’ve done a fair amount of education, hired coaches and stuff. Any particular favorites, any favorites that you’ve probably you’ve dropped a lot of money on coaching?
Ryan Carr [00:56:48] I have, yeah. I’ve probably spent, I don’t know over a hundred grand anyway is coaching but that’s returned to me. I don’t know how many, but several times. Even just, just negotiating with tenants and stuff like that, trying to figure out, okay, I want to put a house on the market or on the market. What does that mean? How can I parlay this to the tenants so that it’s advantageous for both of us? Right. How do we work on that? So just the way that you use your words is important. Any particular favorite right now? I really love Alex Ramsey. He’s on he’s on YouTube and he’s got some podcast stuff. He’s great. He’s not a formal coach of mine by any means, but his content is terrific. Very, very good.
Erwin Szeto [00:57:20] See the former gym owner? Yeah, lots of gym owner.
Ryan Carr [00:57:22] Yeah, yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:57:23] Always a disciple of Russell Brunson is.
Ryan Carr [00:57:25] A guy I know he did a bunch of stuff with him. I didn’t know that he was like a descendant of. Yeah, okay.
Erwin Szeto [00:57:31] Any of the paid ones, any of the paid real estate coaching that you done you want to shout to specifically?
Ryan Carr [00:57:38] No, no, I just I really do. I really do appreciate when people share information with me. And I do appreciate paid or free content. Right. And I just think that if you’re able to digest that and then use it in the market, it’s worth the money because you’ll get it back. I’ve said it for a long time. Education is like a stove. Buy it once and use it forever. Right? And like that just rings true for anybody who’s active and actually doing the doing. You’re not doing the doing like don’t read the books because it’s just not worth it. Don’t take the courses, don’t do the weekend training because it’s just not worth it. Like whom said that quote, it was like there’s no difference between a person who doesn’t read and a person who can’t read. So Mark Twain.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:15] And I always thought it was somebody wonder.
Ryan Carr [00:58:17] Like Mark Twain or Jim Brown, I don’t know one of these guys, but like it’s true. You know why learn to play pool. If you’re never going to play pool again, why would you why would you go to a weekend course to play pool billiards? Right. If you never play with your friends or if you never go to the bar and plainly.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:33] Or for my case, why learn golf when you’re stuck somewhere?
Ryan Carr [00:58:35] There you go. Right. It’s just it’s true.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:38] And so we’re running out of time. Right. I want to ask some final thoughts like we’re in the middle of a declining market and everything right now.
Ryan Carr [00:58:47] Stocks, everything.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:48] So is it time to, like, pull a shoot and know, sell everything or what you think.
Ryan Carr [00:58:53] I’m short term bearish. Long term bullish, right. I think I said this in the downturn somewhere in 2017. We talked about on the show, I was short term bullish long term or sort of short term bearish. Long term bullish. They’re right. And I feel the same way now. I think we’re going to go through some choppy waters next couple of years. I don’t think anybody saw what happened with COVID happening because interest rates are so low and they printed so much money was short. The market like straight to the moon. So I mean, yeah, I still think that we’re going to be in a short term tough time. I think we’re long term bullish because at the end of the day, it’s inflation that. So what? Right. They target 2%. Inflation is like the goal, right? Because if we don’t have inflation, consumers get very bearish and they don’t buy because they know tomorrow it’s going to be worth even less. Right. So to kick start the economy, they keep a 2% hedge knowing that, okay, right. Next year is going to be worth more, which means consumers will shop. 2% is the goal. So long term, I’m still bullish. Short term, I’m definitely bearish. Right. But that brings opportunity. Right. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:55] So then the immediate term, you’re still buying stuff. Something makes sense to you.
Ryan Carr [00:59:58] If you buy equity. I’ve been like that in a good market and a bad market. Right. The strategy still rings true. Obviously, you don’t want to catch a falling knife. That’s like the gold term, you know, right now. But it’s true. Like if you buy something for 100,000 today and the market falls 20%, it’s only worth 80 tomorrow. Or if you bought it for 60 or you’re still out, you are still good? Mm hmm. So, see?
Erwin Szeto [01:00:19] Fantastic. Brian, thanks very much for doing this. Thanks for making the drive out. Thanks for being the car.
Ryan Carr [01:00:23] Thank you for having me on.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:24] Hopefully we have some fun golfing.
Ryan Carr [01:00:26] I agree.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:27] Awesome. Thank you. Before you go, if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already and sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stocktaking. It’s a 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 5 to 10 years ago when I started. There are forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more limbs 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 rental in St Catherine’s, Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more, register for free for my newsletter at WWW. Truth about Real Estate Investing dot CA into 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 with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase their cash flow. And if you can’t tell, I love teaching and sharing the stuff.