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Podcast Transcription
Georges El Masri [00:00:01] Welcome to the Well Off podcast, where the goal is to motivate, inspire and share success principles. I’m your host, Georges El Masri. Thanks again for tuning in. I interviewed Ian Poulin today. Ian has a lot going on. He’s actually an investor. He has a construction company, a full time job with Volkswagen, and he’s a licensed realtor. Recently got his license, actually. So we talked a bit about managing all these things that he’s got going on, how he’s able to run a construction company, the systems that are involved in order to make the most of his time and then working around his full time job, making sure that he also stays and doing all these things. So I think for anyone out there who has a full time job and is interested in figuring out how they can get more involved in investing, this is going to be a good one for you. We touched on some of his projects. He’s working on a severance and an infill development, and then he’s done a ton of duplex conversions and triplex conversions. So hope you’ll enjoy the episode. Make sure to leave us a review on the Apple Pot podcast platform. And if you are interested in reading some reports that we’ve got, we’ve got one that discusses why you should buy rental properties in Burlington or Oakville. We run through some numbers and compare in comparison to other cities. All you have to do is go to Wolf dot CA Forward Slash podcast and you can download all the reports for free. There you go. If you want to connect with me again, all you have to do is go to Wolf Dossier. Dot CA is a contact page there. I’m happy to discuss with you some of the opportunities we have in the Niagara region. Well, in St Catherine’s we’ve got some off market stuff that you might be interested in. Make sure to reach out in that situation. Enjoy the episode. All right. Everyone is here with Ian Poulin. Ian came down from Niagara Today, made them he told me he made the best of this trip and was able to go to Rona and pick up some stuff. So that’s great. Ian For those that don’t know, he’s got a lot going on. I just got a full time job construction company, a realtor. He’s got his own rentals going on. So thank you for coming by today, Ian.
Ian Poulin [00:02:10] Yeah, I’m happy to be here. Like, stay busy. Make use of that trip.
Georges El Masri [00:02:12] Yeah. So tell me a bit about your childhood where you grew up. One or two things you remember.
Ian Poulin [00:02:17] Sure. Let’s jump back. Born and raised, Niagara. So Niagara region at your falls went to school there. Just typical, normal stuff. I always loved business. Always like being busy and doing something and went through like so my last name is Poulin, you pronounce it really well and went through like French school there. And then after. I mean, elementary is not too significant for most people, but went to University of Brock and then into the European Business School in Germany. So I did a dual degree program, studied business, a little bit of finance. And yeah, it’s kind of my background in terms of like where I’m from.
Georges El Masri [00:02:53] About what made you want to go to Germany to study?
Ian Poulin [00:02:57] It wasn’t necessarily that I had like chosen Germany. I knew I wanted to study abroad or do something like living abroad for a little bit. And Germany was a program that Brock had, and it was two and a half years at Brock, a year and a half in Germany. And it was business and it was it was suitable for me and it seemed like a good time. So we went and had fun.
Georges El Masri [00:03:14] Awesome. That’s really cool. I love hearing people’s stories when they go abroad to study. I was always a little bit jealous of people who did that because I just went to a local. I went to a school in Mississauga. I stayed close to home, never got to experience living abroad. But anyway, how did you get involved in real estate? Because I was doing a little bit of research. I saw that you bought your first rental on your graduation day, right?
Ian Poulin [00:03:37] Yeah.
Georges El Masri [00:03:38] So tell us a little bit about that.
Ian Poulin [00:03:40] That was maybe five years ago. So 2017 is when I graduated and I was in Germany kind of figuring out like what I want to do when I get home or like going to stay in Europe. I had a job offer in England to run sort of like it European office for like some automotive marketing company. And I decided like it was raining a lot in England. I didn’t really want to deal with that and the pay wasn’t as great as I wanted. I thought I could do better and ultimately decided if I came home. I love doing like marketing, real estate, sales, entrepreneurship, finance, like all these different things, right? Operations, design. And so I thought like, how can I do something with a little bit of everything? And it kind of came to light like I was like, well, real estate would do some of that. And so I got back in, I think July or August of 2017 and started looking for a place that I could like, you know, get my feet into. And there’s a place nearby. My parents and I ran the numbers like several times. Right? That’s a big investment. First one, you know, it’s kind of that scary feeling of like, is it going to work? Is it not? So I had, you know, if I flipped it, if I rented it myself, like rent it to somebody for a family or whatever, if I lived in a house and all that kind of stuff. So ultimately I decided I’d house Hackett and that’s how I got started. And it was, uh, 2017 and getting into real estate at that time, I was just, I didn’t think I was getting my real estate license and. So not like a huge aspect of my career at this point but do like ten deals a year kind of thing. Stay a little busy with that and yeah, you know, remodel that house had help from my parents like my dad went skiing one weekend and he did the floors and stuff like that, which was awesome cause I would have had to come back and do it, but I did a lot of the work myself and then had my uncle help out and paid him to do some of the stuff he actually drove up from Ohio like on weekends kind of thing. So I just came from Ohio. Yeah, it’s like 3 hours or so, but it was fun. We had we had a good time doing it and that’s when I, you know, converted the basement kind of thing. And, uh, yeah, just piece by piece getting started and seeing like opportunity, how I wanted to do something. That’s really how it starts to get into real estate.
Georges El Masri [00:05:43] Awesome. And then I think so, yeah. You’re you’ve also got a full time job. You work for Volkswagen. Yeah. How are you able to manage doing that? Because you’ve got so many different things going on. How are you doing ten transactions a year, like you said, and then working at Volkswagen and running a construction company at the same time?
Ian Poulin [00:06:01] It’s a fair question. I get it. Often the answer is organization. It’s pretty organized. It’s kind of an answer of like, I also don’t know. It’s just when you when you pull your head up and like you slow down, you take your foot off the gas, then you can’t get it all done. But my foot’s usually on the gas all the time. And I had a buddy we were talking the one day and I was asking the same question and he’s like, I just leave everything to the last minute because then you go going can do it. Like you give the time to something that you have. So let’s say you have an hour to do a task, you’re going to get it done right. Has to get done. But for me really it systems I have a business partner in the construction business and I had started it kind of previously prior to him. But working together like we can get a lot more done and yeah, like Google spreadsheets everything’s so my Google Drive, super organized, systematizing things. So we do a lot of conversion projects and keeping things in a certain system the same way each time really helps. You know, the process is similar. There’s always a couple of variables, but we trying to standardize it, which helps, you know, my day job working from an office, I have a computer in my cell phone and stuff like that, but it’s an it’s a very demanding job being a business manager, a finance manager for a dealership. And, um, yeah, I enjoy what I do. So I work long hours, I work all the time but doesn’t really feel like work. It’s enjoyable, so it’s good.
Georges El Masri [00:07:22] So okay. So tell us a little bit about your construction business. What do you said you focus on conversions quite a bit. You have a partner. What’s your role in the company and did you start this company when you bought your first rental? Or like when did that start?
Ian Poulin [00:07:36] Sure. So the way I got started, so I had done my own. So like I mentioned, I had a house at my place and after that then I had to wait like two years because I’m in a commission role. So encompass not like a salary where the banks will just say, here’s, you know, here’s a mortgage. And so anyways, I waited and worked really hard just to my income up and then I was able to get financing for another place. And so from having bought the first place, it’s kind of a longer story. But finally, having bought that first place, connecting with a realtor and somebody through Kijiji in a strange story, I ended up finding a place off market at that time and, you know, put every last dollar I kind of had into that place. And I did the conversion. So I worked on it again myself. I hired out some people. You learned a lot of lessons, did it me, and the place turned out pretty nice. And so somebody later had asked me to do a project for them on the next one that they would have coming up kind of thing. And I thought, you know, maybe it’s just like an offer, a generous offer, whatnot. And then that person like acquired a property and they really wanted me to do it. And so we worked together to get that done. And then I did a couple of other conversions that year on my own, as I think that was 20. 20 was right when the pandemic hit actually. And I got laid off from my job and we had a month, two months, three months or so, whatever it was. And so at that time it was a triplex conversion that had started essentially the company with and from there just, you know, more people had asked me to do it and I tried to create those repeatable systems. And then 2020 and of that, Bob and I partnered up. And then 2021 we did, I don’t even know the exact number, but probably over a dozen conversions. And were we’re doing another 1012 right now.
Georges El Masri [00:09:09] Where are you doing these conversions? Are you focused in a specific area in Niagara or are you all over Niagara?
Ian Poulin [00:09:15] Hamilton Yeah, good question. So the company name is Niagara Investment Contracting, and so we only do Niagara. It’s in the name I guess, right. But yeah, well, in Port Coburn’s and Catherine Snelgrove falls like those are our core markets. Well, it’s been a great market. I own property there and it’s nice to work with because you can really maximize like the use of a space, a house. Whereas in Katherine’s is more challenging in the sense of what you can put into a basement or even Niagara Falls. You gotta learn to work with it and really maximize the space that you have in those cities. Whereas in in a city like Whelan, you can really get like a full basement of a bungalow.
Georges El Masri [00:09:53] Yeah, Whelan’s been a pretty awesome place.
Ian Poulin [00:09:55] Yeah, I think it’s pretty hot.
Georges El Masri [00:09:56] It’s been so good for so many different reasons. The people are so. Like the building department. Everybody’s so much easier to work with, I find, than in other places. So a lot of investors are flocking to those areas. So. Okay. So you’re doing you’re focusing on Niagara. I first of all, how did you get people to work with you? How are you finding your clients? You’re you kind of started off fresh and you did a bunch of conversions in 2020 and 2021. How did that happen?
Ian Poulin [00:10:28] So it started because I did my own first and somebody saw what I did and they like that and they, I guess, you know, saw an opportunity to make sure they could make that happen for them as well. And. After that, it was more before a word of mouth, like, we really don’t do a lot of marketing. Keep it kind of low key, just referrals from clients. And you know, we’ve been plenty busy enough with all of that. It’s about helping people like accomplish what they want to do, right? So they want to make something a duplex or a triplex. Right. And in terms of dealing with a contractor, like I won’t physically be on the tools or anything like that. Like I did some of that work for my first projects and stuff. But you can’t when you’re running ten, 12 sites, right? There’s not enough time in the day to do that, plus have a full time career in other business. Right. So. Working us, how clients are working with us on the other side. That’s how two trades work. Well, that’s two rates. I’ve been through different people and we know who we want to work with. And if somebody wants to manage their own project, right, I did it. People can, but it’s a lot of work and that’s why people hire us to make sure we get it done for them. And so in terms of clients working with us, I think it’s just our reputation and how we take care of the places Bob and I like. We each have our own investment properties and stuff, so we understand what it’s like to be the investor kind of investor turned contractor. And so we know that it’s important to communicate with people, you know, deliver a product or a finished result that you’re proud of that is safe, that tenants would like all that kind of stuff. And so we, um, we just look at these places as like, kind of like our own right. So we want to make sure that we would do it the way that we would. And we really try and make sure that we convey that to our clients and say, like, you know, we would consider doing it this way. And there’s a lot of trust that clients put with us. Right? Like they’re spending a lot of money to do this. And so we want respect that.
Georges El Masri [00:12:04] Well, if you have all these things going on right now, why didn’t you just say to yourself, I’m just going to focus on construction or just focus on real estate or just focus on working with Volkswagen? Why is it that what makes you want to do all these things at once?
Ian Poulin [00:12:17] It’s a good question. So at some point, obviously, my career, right, run, my business is going to be, you know, I enjoy it. You know, for yourself, there’s a little bit more I don’t know, there’s more to it that way. But I’ve asked myself that question before because I’m like, why do you do it all? And I think the answer is because I can. And so with the systems in place like it, it really works out well. Obviously having a job helps with mortgage qualifications as well, but with a business and, you know, saving and stuff, you can still get, you know, be lenders or whatever you need to. Then when you show that track record of like, you know, payment and deals and stuff like that should be all right. But um, yeah, there’s, there’s like always chapters in life and so, you know, writing a chapter right now where I wrote three things and do it all and that chapter will change at some point in time. But I don’t know exactly when. But yeah, I can, I can do it all with the systems that are in place. And so that’s really helpful. Like if you didn’t have if I didn’t have all the systems in place, I won’t be able to.
Georges El Masri [00:13:08] So if you had a friend or family member like a younger person that was asking you for advice, would you tell them to do what you’re doing now or would you tell them not to steer away from that and kind of just pick one thing and do it?
Ian Poulin [00:13:21] I think I’m a conservative person, right? So I had my bet straight. If one doesn’t work out well, you have two others to work with. They’ve all been good. They’ve all worked out. But, um, I would. The advice I’d give somebody is you can build something quicker if you just do one thing and you got a bet on yourself if you think you’re doing that. I was already working and so the job was already there in place and I just stacked on top. And so I think that’s why, um, you know, I have all three, I’ve just layered on top of each. But if somebody was starting it, it would be based on what their goal is. So if they want to go fast and far, like just do one thing and work with others, like find really good talent talents. Like the number one thing. You got to find people that can do stuff that you know, like they can problem solve. And then if they were a little uncertain about kind of what they want to do, they want to feel things out, which is pretty common. Like a lot of people don’t know what they want to do. And I didn’t at a certain point and I kind of I’d say I fell into this, but I just took one step at a time to feel out what I liked, what I didn’t like, and then did more of the things I liked and less of the things I don’t like. And so for that person who’s getting started or like that younger person, if they work a job and they can find some form of like side projects, side hustle, it’s nice to have a project based because it’s like a start and an end. Yeah, I would recommend like if you do something consistently over a long period of time, they’ll be able to get those results. But sometimes if they just do a little bit of effort and that’s all they’re doing and they’re and they’re doing that for a long time, that gets pretty tiring. So they might give up, but it’s either go fast and fire like quick with one thing or start to build something up so that you have like contingencies and backups because you never know what can happen, right? And when you’re doing multiple things, you kind of you catch different opportunities because like, I mean people through work, I get trade referrals from my dad. So my dad works for like a Chrysler and Dodge and stuff. And so like if he’s got, you know, contractors or people that we can work with, then I’m always kind of connecting with people.
Georges El Masri [00:15:18] That was that actually leads me to the next question, which was how are you able to find good people? Because you said it’s really important to hire good people or to partner with good people. How are you finding these tradespeople for your construction company?
Ian Poulin [00:15:32] So putting in time and testing things out and that’s one of the answers is you got to work with people and you got to see how they can perform. And you know, you go through stuff and you’ve created situations and you deal with it and you move on and it’s super stressful at times. But, you know, the resiliency and the ability to figure things out like everything is figure out able is I can’t prove who said that, but it’s a good quote. And yeah, when you start to get a feel for people, right. You have to you have to be able to read people and understand them, too. There’s certain things that you can tell about, let’s say contractors, for example. Like, I don’t know, like you want to be somewhat well put together like a little rougher is not a problem. But if they’re completely the. Questionable. You know, you know what you’re getting, right? And so, you know, if you smell alcohol in somebody’s breath, like that’s a you know, it’s a pretty telltale sign. Like, you’re not showing up for my job, right? Like, there’s no chance. Yeah. But then I think sometimes, like, you know, I think a lot of people have been there where they’re like, okay, I need to get it done. I don’t know anybody else I can get to do it. And so they let that slide. Right.
Georges El Masri [00:16:29] That was an important thing. You mentioned about setting standards for your site and making sure it’s clean and whatever else. That’s a problem that I’ve been running into the last little bit where contractors like the plumber will come in and then just leave all the pipes on site or like on the front lawn or whatever. And I try to tell him, you can’t do that or whatever, but just it doesn’t the problem just persists. And then the other contractors are like, Oh, okay, well, the plumber is leaving stuff, so I’ll just leave it. And now you have a bunch of garbage on site. So how are you able to settle standards?
Ian Poulin [00:17:03] So the way we did it is and it’s always a work in progress, so don’t think we’re perfect, but the way to make it better is when you work with people consistently, then you can start to hold them accountable for that, like a one off kind of thing. Let’s say you’re plumbers on site. You know, you might not be able to make it perfect each time. But really, the thing is that we want to have a dumpster on site. If there’s a dumpster on site and your trash is still there, you’re going back to clean it up or like the invoice doesn’t get paid yet, or you’re buying lunch or you’re paying for, you know, somebody to come clean up that trash. Right. If we have to do it. But you’re paid. Why are we doing it right? And it’s just logic. So I try and use logic a lot and I think, does this make sense? And if it doesn’t make sense, then why are we doing it? Um, we’ll also periodically have like our guys clean up just sites across the board just to tidy everything up because there’s a lot of construction work and like, they’re intense, there’s a lot of trash and we’ll just take it to the dump, right? Or throw in the dumpsters that we have with other trades. It’s like send us pictures when it’s done right because we don’t need to go check every single site. Once they’re done, they know what we do, it’s repeatable, that kind of thing. And yeah, again, so it’s our guys just making sure that they understand, right? Communicate. We told you to do it. Why don’t you do it? Well, you can’t just not do what we asked you to do, right? We’re paying you. Right. Same way that our clients are paying us. They’re expecting us. And so it’s just it’s holding people accountable. And it’s crazy that, you know, you have to do this with, you know, grown men and women and adults and stuff like that. But that’s it. So that’s how it goes.
Georges El Masri [00:18:24] Yeah, because everybody’s like, could be lazy if you let them, right? Absolutely. Like, oh, whatever the other trades are doing it. I’m going to do it too.
Ian Poulin [00:18:31] And if you let them slack. Yeah, it’s kind of like it’s just, it’s just human nature, right? Like in a certain way, like, you kind of do as little to get by as possible. But that’s definitely not my motto. Do more to get ahead. But certain people will just, do you know enough or just, you know, be as lazy as they could be. Our trades are pretty good. Like they’re great guys and girls that work with us. But if you give somebody that space to like just to leave the trash, for example, then yeah, they might take it and use it. So how you do anything is kind of how you do everything. And so we try to make sure that they understand like this is important and if you leave something, the next person well as well, and then we have a mess to deal with and we don’t want to.
Georges El Masri [00:19:09] Yeah, for sure. All right, that’s cool. And then your trades, are you mostly finding them by word of mouth referral or are you finding them on Kijiji or some other way.
Ian Poulin [00:19:19] Yeah. So it’s, it’s everywhere that I can, it’s again like I said, find that talent like who can do work and who’s available, who’s willing to, who can work with our standards, that kind of stuff. We’ve been through different people. Things change. People become more available, less available pricing changes, different factors. And so really with as many sites as we do, we always have like people available because we have so many going and we between plumbers, electricians, h-back like it’s yeah, it’s a lot of people and you try and just assign, you know, the job to, to the people that, that work with you best basically. Yeah.
Georges El Masri [00:19:57] Can you tell us a little bit about the order? Let’s say you’re doing a full rhino, either a full house or like a unit, but you’re removing all the drywall and then doing the plumbing and the electrical and everything. Can you walk us through the order of how you do things to be as efficient as possible?
Ian Poulin [00:20:13] Sure. I have a Google spreadsheet where I’ve created, you know, each step of the process we use. Yeah. A lot of like digital tools to kind of keep track of the stuff. But first thing’s going to be like a site visit. This is at the coding stage too. So like we’re going to visit with the client, obviously working on securing the opportunity to work for the client. Then we’ll work on demo, just scoping everything out, making sure that we identify some of our fire separations, where we’re going to be, you know, putting, let’s say, drywall on the ceiling joist to run hood ranges or bathroom fans, those kind of things in basements particular or then work on framing. We’ll get everything framed up, then we get into plumbing h-back we like to do plumbing HVAC kind of first just because they take up the bulk of space in joists and cavities and then we’ll get into wiring, electrical, that kind of stuff because the wires can go kind of anywhere. They can work around the larger space and then after that. Yeah. Just again, we check up on each stage kind of thing and make sure that’s cleaned up and tidy up. We miss anything and we’re going to get into like insulation, fire separations, fires, toppings, and then we’ll get into like the resilient channel drywall. And there’s inspections at different stages, right, for each of those kinds of things. But then once we’re into the drywall, it’s really nice to see everything close up, but it takes a lot of time to get like, you know, concrete out of the way or just the site ready with all the mechanical systems and move everything. And I kind of see it as like three phases like that, that pre demo or like that demo phase. Then there’s like the rough and then there’s like completion. And so post drywall it’s, you know, paint flooring, trim and you kind of adapt based on what we have for availability and time, whether we need to get our flooring guys in or paint first and then cover up the floors like you just work with it, right? Coming from a corporate world or like a university world where everything is, you know, calendar based and white collar and just everything can be planned and organized really nicely. To start the construction company was a little tougher because it’s so dynamic, there’s so many moving parts and I think clients realize that when they try and do the projects themselves first and then they understand why people hire general contractors, right? Because I’m the kind of person that will figure something out or do it on my own because I can. But then there’s just so much work involved that people have to get, you know, a couple of quotes. Is it the right pricing that I’m getting from this plumber? And then they have to do that for the plumber, the drywall, the electrician, the framer. They’ve got to source materials. If something’s missing, it’s just so much work that people don’t realize until they do a project and go, Holy cow, I need somebody, right?
Georges El Masri [00:22:34] Yeah. And it’s true. It could be very it could be overwhelming for the average person. And there is a lot that goes into it. So I appreciate that you’re sharing that. You also mentioned that there were tools that you use electronic tools, technology, whatever. Can you share what you said, Google, spreadsheets. Is there anything else they use to make sure you’re organized and you’ve got systems in place?
Ian Poulin [00:22:56] Absolutely. So Google’s great for us. Like the G suite. We got, you know, Gmail, everything just works well together on that. I save all the products in the drive, so each one has its own folder. We’ll save all the inspection sheets so that we can provide that to the client at the end of the project so they can see all the inspections are passed and completed. We’ll work with a tool called the Santa Project Management Software, and it’s great because I’ve built a template for the projects where there’s each individual phase and all the things that are kind of typical are standard. And then if one of the items like one of the tasks doesn’t fit in terms of the project that we’re doing, then we’ll just delete that task so we don’t have it on there. And then when it’s completed, we mark it off or we put notes, we can come in back and forth. Those are for the guys that work with us most often are like not the large subjects, like an h-back contractor or a plumbing. Like those guys will do their own thing. It’s pretty clear scope of work, but for all those little loose ends, that’s all built into our software that we’ve set up and then whatsapps great work is all the trades, you know, we got that set up. So Bob and I being involved together, we really help support each other and make sure that we’re up to date on everything and as opposed to playing telephone, you know, WhatsApp, everybody communicates through that channel, try and keep it clear that way and that’s primarily it.
Georges El Masri [00:24:07] So on Asana, who’s reviewing that? Is that your contractor on site that you’re having them fill out checklists and whatever else? Or is that just for you and Bob to review?
Ian Poulin [00:24:16] It’s a bit of both. So basically we would review it, maybe add some notes, some detail, some specs that we want to make sure that they hit. And then they can also coming back and say, you know, we’re going to need this material for the next day or something like that. It’s pretty dynamic.
Georges El Masri [00:24:29] Cool. Yeah, that’s really good. So Google spreadsheets, you’ve got folders that are all set up so that you can constantly review and whatever else. Asana, you’ve got templates set up in there. You, you also use WhatsApp. So these are some of the tools that use to make sure that you’ve got your systems in place and that you’re able to do a full time job. And I ran a construction company.
Ian Poulin [00:24:49] That’s right.
Georges El Masri [00:24:50] How are you? So at what point do you fit in showings and listings and all this other stuff on the realtor side?
Ian Poulin [00:24:56] Yeah. So most of the clients that I work with will be investor clients, and so I can kind of go and check out a place. And again, WhatsApp videos like text messages to show somebody the place. I know what’s going to work, right? So as the contractor and the realtor, you kind of know the budget, you know what’s possible. You know, by law, you know, when you’ve done like, I don’t know, at least a dozen 20 conversions, then you know, you’re getting into it, right? And so I think sometimes it’s like, let’s say you were just a realtor and you didn’t know the construction costs or what kind of budget. So roughly, you know, sometimes you try to make those numbers work and the you know, the renovation budget might be, you know, $80,000. Well, it’s going to be more than that. Right. And so I think clients enjoy working with somebody who knows, you know, both ends of the costs because then it’s got to be realistic, right. You can’t say, oh, it’s going to be 50 grand and then show up in 150. Right. So you have be genuinely what you’re estimating putting those things in early mornings, late nights. Some properties are vacant, some aren’t, you know, fitting them in on Sundays and Fridays. My days off my schedule is a little different with Volkswagen. So on Wednesdays I’ll start at like 11 a.m. But if I got to go and do something early in the morning. He’s got to fit it and you got to be adaptable. Yeah. Just figure out some way it’s going to get done.
Georges El Masri [00:26:11] Yeah. You just make sure you’re. You’re organized, you work, we’re on your schedule. So it’s cool that you’re able to do all that. Yeah, you’re doing a ton of different things. You’ve got a severance as well that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, before we started recording, you’re working on a severance and an infill as well. So can you tell us a little bit about what you have going on there?
Ian Poulin [00:26:31] Yeah. So in the same way that I did my own duplex conversion first, I like to do stuff for myself first just to make sure that, you know, I’m competent enough and I can handle it and everything that way. Obviously, I believe myself that I can, but I wouldn’t risk doing something for a client that haven’t done for myself first kind of on my rules. And so at this point I’m building a house, so it’s gonna be for myself. But, um, the project there, it was a, it’s a duplex on the front lot and the gentleman severed the back end of it and it’s kind of on a corner. So you can imagine how you can add that backyard as a, as another property. And so that’s a new project, a new venture to build and go through that whole process. There’s different challenges, but there’s also easier things to do, like there’s nothing in your way, you’re just building what you need to. Whereas with remodeling, there’s everything’s in your way, basically, right? So that’s one project on the go. And then we purchased a doublewide lot and it’s got a house on that. So we’re going to duplex that same process now. And the goal is to sever the other half of the lot and put up a triplex or whatever we can to maximize that space. And that’ll be an infill sentence.
Georges El Masri [00:27:34] Where at what point are you at with that infill development?
Ian Poulin [00:27:38] So the one that’s being built is at the footing stage. So we’re dealing with some soil stuff, we get a check on some things like that, but that’s the nature of it. You deal with what comes up. And then on the southern side, you know, we’ve got at the one property like the house on the property and then the lot basically it should be pretty. Straight forward to get the severance, as far as we understand. Obviously, we’re gonna have to work with a couple of minor variances just because a lot we’re going to maximize the use of that space of parking and setbacks and stuff. With that being said, though, City of Welland, we’ve already been through pre-concert meeting and it seems like it’s favorable so that they’re pretty well good with it. There’s a couple things left to do. I’m sure there’s things that will come up, but it seems like it’s going to it’s going to work. All right.
Georges El Masri [00:28:22] Awesome.
Ian Poulin [00:28:23] Which is nice because you never know, right? There’s so many variables to these things. But when you can secure something and it’s not like you’ve got to jump through hoops, maybe a couple, it’s not so bad.
Georges El Masri [00:28:32] Absolutely. And like we said before, well, and this is a pretty good place to do that kind of stuff. Yeah, it’s great for you. Do you feel like there’s anything we haven’t covered, anything that’s important to touch on?
Ian Poulin [00:28:44] Not really. Touched on a whole bunch of stuff. Um, again, everything figured out about people can do these kinds of things on their own and you just got to start. Um, especially when I work with new clients, I try to remember the feeling of, you know, doing my first place and everything is a concern. So you’re, you’re worried about every factor, right? There’s a little bit of water, you know, what are we going to? But that’s what we worry about that. And because I move fast, I move through a lot of projects and I move quick just because I know what I’m doing. Sometimes I try and slow it down and understand the concerns of newer investors because, you know, they’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something. They want to make sure it’s going to work. Right. And so when I was doing my first project or, you know, the first duplex and I was putting literally when I was signing for it, I had to save more money and close in a couple of months to make that down payment. And so those are those fears or those concerns or stuff. If you work with the right people, you know, it’s something that they know how to overcome and deal with. And having that confidence definitely helps because then you can do more, more deals and get things done. But anything else that we should cover?
Georges El Masri [00:29:49] I don’t think so. Maybe the last thing is so if somebody is looking to invest with you, like to buy a rental through you or for if they’re looking for some construction work that they need help with, how to what’s the best way to contact you.
Ian Poulin [00:30:03] Through email or through my website? Some of those things are being worked on, but again, we don’t do a ton of marketing. I’m pretty low key and the website that’s up is probably outdated, but it’s been proven dot com. We’ve got a website come and built by and I see. So now you’re investment contracting built by and si.com or dot CA and email. Just social media is a good place to reach out to. And yeah, if it’s just capacity, well we’ll try and work with people and help them accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish.
Georges El Masri [00:30:29] Awesome. Ian, thank you for coming by today. I appreciate you driving down here and look forward to chatting with you again soon.
Ian Poulin [00:30:36] It’s been a pleasure.
Georges El Masri [00:30:37] Thanks for listening to this episode. Your support is truly appreciated and if you can share this with a friend or family member that might benefit from the information. Remember, our goal is to motivate and inspire others to take action and to build wealth and to become well-off. Enjoy the rest of your day.