Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
[00:00:00] Scott Dillingham: Okay, welcome back to today’s show. I’m really excited today. I’ve got a long-term, customer of mine that I’ve seen grow and develop and to date mixed between wholesaling and flipping many Cabral has turned over 30 plus properties, which is quite impressive.
So welcome to the show, Manny.
[00:00:18] Manny Cabral: Thank
you, Scott.
[00:00:21] Scott Dillingham: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. So how did it start? Did you have this idea of flipping houses when you were younger? Or is this like, where did it start when you were
[00:00:28] Manny Cabral: little? No, it didn’t. I, it didn’t start when I was little that’s for sure. I They’re growing up.
The last thing on my mind was flipping properties or being in the construction industry, but my father was a carpenter and in the construction industry, but that’s not really where it came from, I guess it just grew over the years. But as I got into my later teenage years, I did get interested in construction.
It really it was really something that grew on me and I ended up going to George Brown college and took all kinds of courses with the blueprint, reading and drawing and drafting and all that stuff. And ended up working for a construction company at a very young age served my apprenticeship there, my carpentry apprenticeship moved on a little bit up there and became a, a foreman in some of the.
And eventually met my business partner who was twice my age at the time. And in about two years of working for that company, we actually started our own construction company which was cool. We were basically doing just commercial because that’s what I was experiencing at the time. We did some residential, but a lot of our stuff we’re commercial projects.
And we ended up starting a small company called the S. And what we actually specialized in after awhile was a computer room design and construction, back then, and all the big computer systems all had to be air conditioned. So we would do the raised Florence we’d come in and design the whole project.
Then we did some projects for some big names, like blue cross and Ontario STM systems. I think it was part of TD back then we had a big facility out on, I can’t remember the street, it was on the lower Mississippi. So we specialized in designing and construction, constructing computer facilities for big companies.
So that’s awesome. Yeah. Unfortunately after a few years I did develop very serious back issues I guess from doing stupid things and things probably I shouldn’t have done and had a couple of really bad disks in my back that actually put me out at home for a year. What could hurt.
And at that point I sold, I, while I didn’t sell the business, my partner bought me out. And I was at home for a while trying to figure out what I was going to do. And I wanted to get out of the construction industry for a while and get into something else. I love cars. I love sports cars, as you probably know, and I’ve always done very well picking values and stuff on vehicles.
So I ended up actually. Buying a couple of places that did a rust proofing and pay protection and detailing for a lot of the dealerships out in in Mississauga actually inherent would auto center. I probably did half of those dealerships that was quite busy. We were running shifts sometimes 24 hours a day, occurs cars coming in and out.
Again, a lot of work. It required me to be there a lot of days, sometimes Saturday, Sundays, cause it was extremely busy. And after a couple of years of doing that, I had an offer from a major GM dealership to come and work for them as a, as an assistant used car manager at the time.
So I sold my my detail shop and ended up working for a GM dealership as an assistant used car manager. Then I moved up to used car manager and wanted to go to facilities and then ended up working at classic Honda, which is the biggest. I guess one of the biggest import stores now in Canada,
[00:03:37] Scott Dillingham: that’s where we met as you were there.
[00:03:39] Manny Cabral: When we met, I think we met. So what happened at classic Honda? I ended up getting an offer to go work at a team Honda because I had left a classic Honda and they found that I was leaving. So they called me up and I went over there. I think that’s where we met was a team Honda in. Okay. So I was there for a few years and what, I quite enjoyed the car business cause I loved cars.
I did pretty well and the baby pretty well. And I worked with some awesome people. Team Honda was a great place to work at, most of us are like friends over there and we still, keep in touch, on Facebook and stuff here and there, but it was a great, it was a great place as well.
And I didn’t leave there because. We had anything bad going on there. I left there because my mind was already focused on moving forward with my construction industry, that my son was still working on while I was working there. And he got too stressful for him to do on his own. And we wanted to focus more on getting a few more properties, getting into it and, invested in second sweets and stuff.
And we were getting extremely busy, I would say in Hamilton, we were probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest. Construction companies for doing second suite conversions. And to this day, we still get a lot of inquiries, which we actually have to change our website so that, people are not wasting their time trying to get ahold of us.
Cause we don’t do that anymore. Not for clients anyway, we’ll do it for ourselves. Yeah. But the time came or it was time to believe. And I just put in my resignation and left and we went full time in the in the real estate business and here we are.
[00:05:09] Scott Dillingham: No, that’s incredible. I know so many people dream about, leaving their full-time job to be real estate investors or flippers, and you’ve actually done it, which is incredible.
You had the the construction business before and you had that experience, but it’s really cool to see somebody do that. And I’m sure it’s so much more rewarding.
[00:05:30] Manny Cabral: Oh a hundred percent. Working for the dealership was great. There’s no doubt. I got to say we, we got along well they treated me very well and it was awesome there.
But at some point in time in punching in a clock, you’re working for somebody you’re not really getting ahead. And I wanted to get a lot more ahead than I was. That was, I was doing fine. But I, I didn’t want to work for somebody anymore. I had the skills and the opportunity to say, I’m going to move on my own.
Now I’ve got to take those golden handcuffs off. And I had to concentrate 120% on real estate investing. So I made the decision to do that and I did it, and yes, I had some, I had quite a bit of experience reading in construction industry. So obviously for myself it was a lot easier to get into.
But I wasn’t that experienced in buying a ton of flips and wholesale in and all that stuff. I learned that long, along the way. You know what? I just executed a lot of stuff that people told me I was crazy to do, but I wasn’t over analytic. I know investors today that, or want to be investors to the, I guess that don’t get too far because they’re over analytic on anything.
They don’t take any type of an action. They’re still waiting for the market to crash. I talked to people, at meetup groups five and six years ago that were mining anything because they’re waiting for the market to crash five years. Yeah, so you can’t be over in analytic and you gotta be able to take action and you gotta be able to take risks as long as you can minimize your risks as much as possible.
And I do that, but we’ve been very successful and I’ve tended to concentrate in a certain area and we’re very successful up into here in Simcoe county. So it’s gone very well, but yeah, I I wanted to have my own time, I love. I love my job. I can’t even think of retirement because I love what I do and I think that’s important.
But I can do what I do a lot of times from sitting on my boat to be in a way for a few days somewhere. I don’t have to punch a clock if I want to take a few days off and go in and my wife, I can do that. You can’t really do that when you’re working for an employer. Which is understandable.
And at the age I was, I had the experience. I’m not telling anybody to go quit the job right now and go buy properties or flipped them. There’s a lot of things you can do in investing, even if you really love your job. It’s all about what you do with your disposable income and how you work at making that grow because you can still have a job.
Staying in it and you can still invest in real estate. So not everybody has to quit their job to get into this. I did because I was at the point where I wanted to focus on running their own business. So I did it.
[00:07:46] Scott Dillingham: Yeah, no for sure. And you’re right. And so w we do actually have to take a quick pause, but I want to pick up right where we left off.
And I want to dive into a bit more about the flipping, so we’ll be right back.
welcome back. Before the break, we were just chatting about how a lot of people want to quit their job, but they’re scared to, and they don’t take action. And I agree with everything you’re saying.
It’s that’s why most investors don’t get started. They’ll go to all these training seminars. They’ll read all the stuff online. They’ll do all these things, but they just don’t take action. So I think that is super important is for someone to take action. Now, I am curious personally, because you stated.
That you had a back injury from the construction, right? And then now you’re doing construction again. Is that injury still there or how did you get constantly?
[00:08:31] Manny Cabral: I’m doing well. I’m not physically doing construction. I’m totally out of the business. We’re running our construction business for our own projects, but I don’t do any type of physics.
Okay. I’m out overlooking the business, running the business, taking calls. I do SIS hour appointments meet with investors set up the funds, those types of things. And I visit my projects as well. I I. Pop in here, pop in there and see what’s going on, but I don’t do any physical construction myself.
[00:08:56] Scott Dillingham: Okay, good. I was just curious. Yeah. Like how do you heal from that? But that makes sense. Yeah. So you’re just like acting like a general contractor
[00:09:04] Manny Cabral: yeah. On my own projects but I’ve got my son acting more as that on a project because he looks after a lot of that, I look after more of the money stuff and dealing with investors and.
And I work on some of my marketing my younger son as well, helps me quite a bit on marketing because he owns a marketing company. Okay. So he’s helped me quite a bit and steered me to certain marketing things that I’m doing today is probably because he pushed me in that direction. For instance, I’m on radio every day and it was the last thing I thought of doing, and it was actually his idea.
And it’s probably working better than anything I’ve done so far.
[00:09:39] Scott Dillingham: Yeah it’s true. I noticed with our radio show here, that you’re a part of today is same thing. People, they can hear about you from friends and family, but once they start to hear about you on, on, on radio or TV, it’s completely different.
[00:09:51] Manny Cabral: Oh, yeah. I get calls every day. Someone wants to sell their houses because they heard me on the radio or, you know what? I’ve got a bunch of ads. Like I don’t just do radio. I’ve got radio. I’ve got, pretty, I spent quite a bit of marketing. I’ve got radio, I’ve got YouTube ads. I’ve got Facebook ads.
I’ve got flyers that go out. And sometimes someone will call me and say, Hey, I had your flyer for a while, but I didn’t even remember about it until I heard you on the radio. And I put two and two together. So everything works together. Yup. So it’s all about being consistent because I’ve been in the advertising industry before, even through, the dealerships and a lot of people will say how are you getting properties?
You got to spend this while I don’t have that kind of money. You have to invest in order to get it. And you can’t sit back and say, I want to flip and buy all kinds of properties, but how are you going to find them on MLS? That’s not going to happen. So you have to have be consistent. And when I went into.
I knew it. Wasn’t going to go crazy first month, second month, third month. But I made a commitment, from day one and say, Hey, I’m going to want for an entire year. Because I know it has to be consistent and it’s working very well. I’ve been on there for more than a year now, but it works very well.
And it’s something that I’m going to continue doing. And I bumped into a lot of people that say, Hey, I heard you on the radio. I wasn’t sure if that was you and so on and so forth. So it helps.
[00:11:07] Scott Dillingham: It’s a bit of a. Yep. So for whoever’s listening today like the radio show that we do you can hear it through like a podcast as well.
Do you have that? So if somebody could no.
[00:11:19] Manny Cabral: So no, so basically my radio is all ads and I’m on rock 95 every day, probably four or five times a day is it’s just a strictly a, I run 60 minute ad camp. Okay. Gotcha. So that’s the type of radio I’m doing. I’m not on any specific radio podcast show. There’s a bunch of other stuff that I’m working on thinking on doing, and coming up with a full flipping seminar through, through YouTube and all that stuff.
I just haven’t done it yet. Cause we have to it’s all about timing as well. We’re quite busy right now, but I wanted to put some time together to start actually doing some stuff, to actually teach people and help people. Cause I enjoy sharing my knowledge and getting people motivated and out there to do something and to better their life.
I Working for someone is great, but you got to know what you’re going to do with that disposable income or you’re going to be in the rat race for the rest of your life. And to get ahead today, especially with inflation, that means your money in a bank. Is it appreciate an asset? What did he say?
Savers?
[00:12:11] Scott Dillingham: Yeah. And we were just discussing this before the call, right with inflation. They’re actually seeing, you’re losing money by keeping it in the bank. Oh,
[00:12:18] Manny Cabral: huge. Huge. That people don’t understand that I’ve had discussions with friends that are excited. Oh, I’ve got, I’ve saved up 50 grand, a little great.
Your 50 grand is being worth less every day. So hopefully you put in a ton more every day to try to get. The money in the bank let’s face it, it was making money with the money in the bank. It’s the bank of, yeah.
[00:12:34] Scott Dillingham: Yeah. You’re right. In my last episode, I discussed that with the banks, they get to lend out more money based on the deposits that they have.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:12:42] Manny Cabral: What is it? Is it like four times or I can remember.
[00:12:46] Scott Dillingham: I don’t remember the exact ratio, but I think it’s even higher than that. Now
[00:12:50] Manny Cabral: I heard as high as 10 times what you put in the bank. So basically if you put a hundred K in the bank there, they will only not a million. It could even be more than that.
But if that’s how banks make their money and you gotta think, get your money working for you and people are sitting on a ton of money. They don’t even realize, I’ve got lenders that they’re not all familiar, but you know what? They’ve got a ton of. And their properties and they’ve gone out and taken lines of credit to, to loan out and to make money on that money that’s sitting there.
So it’s all about being creative and making your money work for you. What do they say, make your money work for you even when you’re sleeping?
[00:13:25] Scott Dillingham: That’s right. Oh, that’s right. So I have a question for you because a lot of people watch like HGTV shows and then they’ll think they’re property flippers and they get into a project and it’s just full of mistakes.
So when you have some tips for people who are listening, who might be inspired and they want to start flipping things to avoid or what to look for in a property to make sure you’re not getting a bad enough.
[00:13:48] Manny Cabral: Number one, if you’re not experienced in construction, you should have a really good, reliable contractor that can come with you to visit the property.
And to give you a proper quote. I don’t do that obviously because I’m the contractor and I can basically walk in and out. I already know because I’ve done so many of them, basically what my costs are going to be. And I can look at foundations and all that stuff and figure out the issues that.
That’s a big key because I know flippers have gone in and bought a house. They done, they didn’t have a contractor, they just guessed on what they were going to do. And all of a sudden they’re a hundred thousand dollars renovation as a $200,000 problem and they’re making no money. So it’s all about having a proper team as good lawyer, great mortgage broker, a great agent to help you with comparables as well. That’s also very important. You gotta know your numbers. If you don’t know your numbers, don’t be buying a flip. So you need a great agent to work alongside and you can help you with comparables. It’s going to sell your property.
You need a good contractor, and it’s going to be able to come in and say, Hey Joe, this is what I think it’s going to cost, based on division that you have, or, but they’ll give you, a great idea on the structure of the property. Getting a home inspection is great as well, but you need a good contractor.
If you’re not a contractor yourself, if you are, that’s fine. If you’re not a contract. It’s important to have a great contractor who really knows the industry that can come in and help you put a quote on your property that you’re trying to flip that because it’s going to be difficult to do yourself.
[00:15:13] Scott Dillingham: Yeah, no, that, that makes so much sense. And we’ve actually specifically chatted about this to teams, make a difference who you work with makes a huge difference. A
[00:15:22] Manny Cabral: hundred percent. I have a team of between my lawyer and my agent and that we all get in fight. I need to call my lawyer for something it’s for a lot of times I’ll call them and say, Hey, I need to check our liens on this property or leans on that.
Because I have different creative structures that sometimes I use to put a deal together and I’m not waiting for two days to get information. I can literally call my lawyer and we’ll have her assistant on the phone and give me the information I need right over the phone while I’m driving.
That’s very important to have, right? The same as my agent who’s, become a great friend. That’s very helpful. And a lot of times, great ideas and great input. For from him as well. That helps me sell my flips. It’s better to have two heads than one and the same thing. You’ll, I get help with the comparables.
And when I think I’m going to be able to sell this property for down the road and let’s face it, we only know what we’re going to sell a property for today. So I keep telling people don’t base your numbers on today’s numbers all the time. You got to be safe, going to a flip because flipping is very highly speculative.
You know what the market’s doing to. You have no idea what the market is going to do six or seven rate or nine or 10 months down the road when you’re finished. So you better be careful, and really know your numbers and, not get over too excited to try to get into a flip cause you think you’re gonna make 50 grand you’re 50 grand profit could be $150,000 loss if you’re not.
[00:16:42] Scott Dillingham: Absolutely. No, absolutely. So we’ve only got about a minute left. Okay. So I know there’s a couple things. I know you have a few options for investors to invest with you in these projects. You also have a, like a wholesaling list for people can sign up on and any properties that you find off market people can potentially buy.
So can you dive into quickly your partnership and the wholesaling list you have? Yeah. So
[00:17:08] Manny Cabral: if they hop onto simple house buyers.ca, there should be a link there for a buyers list and you click on that. You put your information on there. It should automatically. Add you to a buyer list. So a lot of times we may have a property that we’re going to wholesale, and the reason may be because we have multiples going on at the time and I have to pick and choose how many I can do.
It’s all about return on investment. I’m not going to end up with 10 properties at one time and not be able to get the five of them. So we’ll work on five we’ll wholesale, the other five. So you can get on you’re on the buyer’s list. You’re going to get a great deal on an off-market properties. That’s still going to have a merging.
The opportunity other opportunity we have as well as for landing, if someone wants to get involved in our projects most of our projects, 99% of them are all private lenders that I work with over the last couple of years. So there’s another opportunity for someone who wants to get on to the lending side and that’s basically just re reaching out to me or sending.
Through a Simco house buyers.ca I am on Facebook quite often. I post a lot of my projects, my daily stuff, personal work. So very easy to reach. Yeah. That’s my biggest problem. It’s Corvettes, right? I have too many hobbies between Corvettes and flying model, aircraft, planes, and boats and play music. I don’t have enough time for all
[00:18:29] Scott Dillingham: of it.
That’s for sure. And actually you want to vote it’s quite a few times.
[00:18:33] Manny Cabral: But it keeps it keeps me busy and occupied. That’s for sure. I’m never bored. I can tell you that.
[00:18:39] Scott Dillingham: Yeah, for sure. That’s awesome. I really appreciate you coming on today. Mania. I love your story because it’s it’s motivating to someone cause a lot of people want change in their life, but they just don’t take action.
So I think that’s the real key takeaway is just do whatever it is. Even if it’s not flipping houses. Alright, regular nine to five and
[00:18:57] Manny Cabral: Yeah, exactly. It doesn’t matter what it is. I think everyone, if you put your mind to it, everyone has the same capability of, achieving their goals and achieving their dreams.
I didn’t come from rich family. My family was came over here, pretty poor from Portugal, with the no money in their pocket and into a rental. And my mom was cleaning homes. So I didn’t come from Richard. So basically what I’ve made is, in my future for myself, I made myself and that was doing whatever I needed to do this.
And I was taking TAMU courses back when I was 23 years old, I always had that real estate thing in my head. I took courses that were worthless but I always wanted to achieve something I never gave up. I have to work a second job to make an extra income. I would do that. But at some point in, in my life, I wanted to be very self-sufficient and working for myself and not punching the clock.
And that’s where I am today. Very happy doing it. I’m doing, and I love what I’m doing. So to me, it’s not a job. Yeah,
[00:19:49] Scott Dillingham: no, for sure. And honestly, it’s awesome. So congratulations on that. Manny. We do have to run, but I hope everybody has a great day. Thank
[00:19:57] Manny Cabral: you, Scott. YouTube. Appreciate it. No
[00:19:59] Scott Dillingham: problem. Take care.
[00:20:00] Manny Cabral: Have a good one. You too.