Podcast Transcription

Erwin Szeto [00:00:08] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the truth about reality and Best in show. And can we do away with all the daylight savings business? I mean, I wake up in the dark pretty much every day anyways. Now I’m driving home in the dark, but at least we can walk our kids to school in the morning in the light. I hope you’re all adjusting better than I am. I made the mistake of going out on Friday night until the early hours of the morning, on Saturday morning with a bunch of guys. Four guys night out with my ham abundance group. No need to adjust your audio. My real estate buddies group is called Ham Abundance. It’s a word mash up of Hamilton in abundance. It’s a play off the elite mastermind group called Go Abundance that I was too cheap to join. So my buddy Charles won. I formed an abundance with a group of other successful real estate investors like jeans, moneybags bags and to train Roger Auger. Kevin My mortgage guy, a builder, one of my most successful clients. John We try to meet once per quarter for 24 hours of fun. That’s all the time we can afford away from away from work and away from our families so as to be 24 hours. The Friday started with Pupu at an indoor shooting facility with airsoft guns, so it moved through obstacles, obstacle shooting ranges and being timed so with a group of competitive types that can be a lot of fun. Thankfully, no one got shot like last time when we were in Vegas. That’s a story for another time. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Next is the commute to dinner because getting around downtown Toronto takes forever like it always has. That’s why I use the Where can you commute? We dined at a restaurant known for serving game meets place called Antler. They are famous because as a tongue in cheek joke on their sidewalk chalk sign, they posted, quote unquote, venison, the new kale banquet. Well, animal rights groups did not think that was funny at all, so they proceeded to protest outside the restaurant on weekends. Keep in mind, folks, this is a small local individual, one restaurant. The chef butcher is the owner of a small restaurant. This isn’t factory farming. That’s nothing like that. So anyways, but animal rights activists were protest this restaurant regularly on weekends. And so the restaurant made international news. The owner of the restaurant was even invited on to the Joe Rogan podcast to share his story and ever since. Celebrities from all over the world stop in whenever they’re in Toronto to support the restaurant. We didn’t see any celebrities, but we like them. Considering the size of our bill afterwards, I had to turn in the venison ribeye, which tasted nothing like kale. I should ask for my money back because there is nothing like the advertising. From there it was drinks at one of our friend’s condos in downtown Toronto and then a rooftop patio with the sea and tower in the background. Needless to say, the day and the night were legendary. While pricey, thankfully, it’s a business expense for me since we’re talking real estate all night while standing on the rooftop of the patio on the patio with Amy Tran. I couldn’t help but think about how much things have changed and how much hasn’t changed since Andy and I first stood on a roof together. The year was 2010 and it was the house fire. At the time I was his realtor. Him being a home inspector, he was inspecting the property himself, which was a bungalow that he purchased initially. Yeah. Back when we could negotiate and get condition conditional on inspection. But we were inspecting the house and I was a new agent at the time and I was keen to learn. So I was happy to be following India around, who’s a friend and he being the home inspector, he got a ladder out and got up on the roof. And meanwhile dress business casual and dress shoes, I, I fall behind him on the ladder. So we’re both now on the roof and he turns around, looks at me as if I have two heads. I ask what? And he shares that in his in around 1200 or 5000 home inspections that he’s done. I was only the second agent to ever get on the roof with him at a home inspection. That was over ten years ago. Standing on a bungalow he bought for just over 200,000. That’s now worth about four times that. Quick pat on the back. I’m a pretty good agent. Fast forward to today where we both have a lot more laugh lines and gray hair while sipping ridiculously expensive drinks at the time, one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city. Life can be good, and it’s even better when you’re on a journey with likeminded friends. Good friends. We started from the bottom and now we’re here. I hope you all out there taking the opportunity to grab some friends. You know, be safe. Do what’s comfortable for you. My friends and I are all fully vaccinated, so go have a good time and maybe get more a lot more sleep than I did after this week’s show. My friend Elizabeth Kelly is joining us to share what she’s been up to the last two years since she’s been on the show. Elizabeth was a paid instructor. She was a hired real estate trainer. And she’s trained hundreds, if not thousands of investors and many of the real estate strategies raising capital rent to own, wholesaling, buy and hold, etc., etc.. Many of the influencers today have been her students, so thankfully. Because I’m old, you know, because I’m old. I’ve been around for a while. So thankfully, I’m able to reach out to some of the original of the OGs of real estate and real estate training. Elizabeth has done over 100 homes as investments for herself. She manages over 400 doors. Most importantly, she’s discovered what she enjoys most, and that’s helping people via coaching. That’s why we get along so well. We both enjoy helping people. She’s on the show today to share many of the lessons and hurdles that newer and older investors both make. She shares with Marcus. She’s selling your properties in is probably the first time she’s probably sharing it as well. So if you’re looking at the same market that she’s looking at, may want to ask why she’s selling while all these other investors are buying and the lessons in investing in a mining town, Elizabeth and her husband and they both invest in a resource base town. So it’s actually not what I expected. So she shares some of her best practices. What kind of renovations? What kind of price points to target folks in a mining town? So did you take plenty of notes and please learn from Elizabeth’s lessons and enjoy the show. Hi Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:06:05] Hey, Erwin how are you?

Erwin Szeto [00:06:07] Busy. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:06:09] Keeps you out of trouble, though, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:06:11] Gets me into a lot of trouble, too. But what’s keeping you busy these days?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:06:15] Well, we were an essential we’ve been an essential business, so we are just we’ve kept doing what we’ve always been doing. So I’ve been I started a coaching business, actually, right before the pandemic. So thank you are my very first podcast. I was really honored. Yeah. So January 2020, I officially opened the doors on my coaching and I’ve been busy with that, helping people figure out their way, navigate their way through their real estate journey. And that’s been amazing. I’ve enjoyed every moment of that experience. All right. And continuing to do property management and keeping busy with that, too, is lots, lots going on in northern Ontario. The price of gold is going up and more investors in town, as they’re unable to find, are struggling, I guess, to find deals that make sense down here. So it’s I’ve been really lucky. We’ve been very fortunate. I know there’s a lot of people who’ve suffered a lot over the last 18 months.

Erwin Szeto [00:07:11] So. And so you’re one of those folks that, you know, have four or six properties. And then you started a coaching business.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:07:16] Now, not that I would judge, but no, we’ve been investors for 15 years. We have almost well around 400 doors that we manage. And I’ve done just about every strategy in real estate, which I was sort of thinking back on. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s not a great thing. Great because you know a little bit about everything. But I find it’s important to figure out what really makes you happy and to pick a strategy that really fits with your long term goals. Like, you know, there’s a show that shows up on HGTV and suddenly everybody’s into flipping and it will really work really well for some people. And that’s amazing. And then for other people, they don’t realize what that strategy actually looks like when you put it into practice, or they might not be comfortable or know how to turn doing one flip into a scalable business. So there’s a lot of, I believe anyways as a real estate investor that we need to take a step back in the beginning and make sure that we’re being strategic about it, that we’re choosing strategies that help us achieve our goals in the long run, that we aren’t compromising or sacrificing our quality of life, our time with our family, our health and well-being, that none of those are going to be negatively impacted in our pursuit of, you know, freedom, financial freedom, time, freedom, whatever our goals are in real estate. I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that I see. And that’s a mistake that I’ve made, too, where I say, Well, you know, in five years I want to be here, in ten years I want to be here. And you put your head down and you start grinding and you pick your head up in a couple of years and you go, What’s my quality of life like? What am I doing on a day to day basis? I’m working 14 hours a day. You know what’s happened to my health while I’ve done this? You know, what are my friends and family doing or going through? So I think it’s important. I think balance is important, if that makes sense. That was a very long answer for a short question, wasn’t it?

Erwin Szeto [00:09:18] It’s a long answer. It’s a long answer. But I like learning, so I’m all for it. You know, you mentioned how you went. You’ve done basically every strategy. And obviously, if you didn’t do that over 30 days or 90 days, you did it over years. Yeah, right. And you know, I’m not that different from any strategies. Yeah. And it’s just, uh, I like to try things and see if it works for me. All right? But your investing is very different than mine. Like, you know, I invest within an hour, drive from my home, and even before we’re talking, recording the there is an investor where you’re construction condos rights for them. Yeah right. And then yourself, you know you’re on the far end of the spectrum in terms of active real estate investing. Mm hmm. Right. And then again, we have to all make our choices. Let’s shoot us because there’s no one shoe that fits all.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:10:06] No. And I think that’s the beauty. Both of being human and of investing in real estate is the fact that our journey could and should look different from everybody else’s. And I think the challenge, you know, but also the opportunity that’s really come up over the last, you know, sort of five, ten years. You know, when we started out in real estate and my husband and I joke around because, you know, we would go to the realtor’s office and sign all the paperwork or, you know, we’d have to fax it over like everything had to be done in person. And now, you know, we hire people and we work with lawyers and we work with realtors and everything else in there hours away and everything’s done online then, you know, most of our interactions with people, particularly over the last 18 months, have been over social media. So, you know, what everyone’s journey looks like is different. And our perception of other people’s journey is really based on the information that they choose to share.

Erwin Szeto [00:10:58] Yeah, social media is not like it’s not all there.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:11:01] Yeah. And I think it’s important, you know, if you want to have results that give you the life you want, I think you have to be honest with yourself right from the very beginning. What is it you want to accomplish? What is it you want to achieve? What is it you want your life to look like? And once you’re clear about what you want your life to look like, then you have to do your research and you have to talk to people and you have to, you know, read books and listen to podcasts and figure out what strategies are going to help you get to where you want to be. You know, my husband, he loves multifamily buildings, thinks they’re amazing, would buy them all day long. That just doesn’t resonate for me. I have to be honest, as someone with a background in working for a not for profit, in in working for a number of charities, I need to feel good about what I do. At the end of the day, if I don’t feel like I’ve had a positive impact on somebody’s life in some way, shape or form, then to me that’s not a great day. And I think that’s why coaching has become so fulfilling for me.

Erwin Szeto [00:11:57] That’s funny because teachers often have a there’s that saying those who can do, those who can’t teach. Yeah, that I hear in your case.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:12:07] But I know it’s not super accurate for me. I really believe that teaching is probably the biggest opportunity that I have to share. You know, the mistakes that I’ve made, the knowledge that I’ve gained so many people when they’re starting out in real estate, you know, they consume huge amounts of information. But a lot of people are lacking the framework in terms of how do you put it together? How do you decide, okay, this piece of information is relevant for me or this is something I need to know versus this, you know, doesn’t apply to me or to my particular situation or this is an information that I need at this particular moment in time. I’ll put it away for the future. And I think people are literally overwhelmed and to some degree, social media contributes to that. I have a client who, you know, her journey is different than some of my other clients. And she said to me the other day, she said, I feel like I should be further ahead than where I am. And I said, But we have to be kind to ourselves. We have to say, yes, we have our goals. Yes. But, you know, we all have other things, whether it’s family, whether it’s illness, whether it’s, you know, a 9 to 5 job. There needs to be a balance. Like we can’t sacrifice our health in order to have, you know, two properties by the end of 2021.

Erwin Szeto [00:13:28] Yeah. And to your social media point, I’m we’re seeing on the news an investor had their Airbnb tenant call a short term rental tenant because I don’t know which company they’re using a short term tenant or staying beyond the end of their term. You know what was like a week or something. Yeah. And they stopped paying as well. Yeah. And then they called the cops and the cops like, we can’t do anything. This is a landlord tenant dispute. And, like, this is this is not that. Yeah. And so the investor was interviewed on the news. Mm hmm. And then I went and searched her on Facebook and asked, they want to come on the show. And they didn’t want to because they didn’t want to go on the news, but they didn’t want their peers to know what happened to them.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:14:12] I think that’s so sad. And I think that’s part of the image that, you know, we sort of feel compelled to create on social media about everything being wonderful and about never making a mistake. And, you know, I look back and I go, I learned more from my mistakes than I ever did from what turned out correctly. Because when things turn out correctly, how often do you stop and look back and go, okay, what really worked here? And What do I need to replicate? And we can always attribute, you know, a causal factor to our success, whereas you look at moments when you failed or moments when you know things haven’t gone according to plan. And I think it in part comes back to, you know, the mindset that you and I were talking about earlier. Where are we finite or infinite? And listening to this podcast with Brené Brown and some. Simon Sinek. It really sort of gave me the framework to be able to say real estate. We’re viewing it as a finite event. We’re viewing it as a beginning, a middle and an end. And I think for those of us who are serial entrepreneurs and who want to create this future for ourselves and our families, I think we need to switch more into the infinite mindset where, you know, we have teammates, we don’t know who they are necessarily, but when we need people, our teammates step in and help us. Invisible teammates, they call them. And I think it’s important that we focus on what we want the outcomes to be and think about what made us successful and move towards what made us successful. I only want to make a mistake once, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to tell people what that mistake was, because the moment I try and hide my challenges, then I am no longer helping and contributing to the greater good, I believe.

Erwin Szeto [00:15:58] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:16:00] Sorry. I got really, like, really out there on it, didn’t I?

Erwin Szeto [00:16:03] That’s okay, because I might try to dig into it. You mentioned it last multifamily, but you don’t have an interest in it now. Can you dig into that? Because I have my own I have my own mental blocks around apartment building investing. So I’ll just quick share. Is that based on my values, my investing will focus on creating housing supply. Okay. All right. So, for example, if I buy an apartment building, I mean, creating new supply. Mm hmm. Right. So that’s why it’s not of interest to me. Why is it you are not opposed but doesn’t interest you? Is that the right term?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:16:34] Yeah. It just I think when we ran the numbers initially, you know, we were counting on cash flow of this amount. And when we actually got into owning multi units, we found a lot of challenges. We encountered a lot of challenges that we didn’t anticipate. And my goal with real estate was always to be passive and hands off. You know, I didn’t when we started, my goal was not okay, you know, let’s self-manage 150 units and then let’s go to 300 units and then let’s start managing for other people. That was never on my radar. It’s something that happened. So when I look at what do I want it to be, I do want it to be passive. I do want to have my time freedom. And at least the way we approach multifamily is not what the experience has been, if that makes sense.

Erwin Szeto [00:17:22] What’s the lesson there? Because I’m sure lots of people who, you know, prefer or prefer recording. For example, we talked about how are the teachings of the same? You know, I’ve only been I’ve only been in the world since like 2008 in terms of consuming real estate education. But, you know, multifamily apartment buildings, that’s been a consistent through time.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:17:42] Yeah. And I know this is different than what a lot of people talk about right now. You know, there’s a lot of investors who are buying multifamily and doing really well with it. And I think that’s amazing. And obviously that is part of their journey. I’m just figuring out it might not be part of mine. I think the biggest take away from it, one of the biggest ones has been higher property management company. You trust a lot of the investors that I see struggling and the landlord groups are trying to self-manage and when you have tenants who have access to information and access to free legal counsel the way you do in in most of the provinces in Canada right now, you’ve got your hands full. And when you add in the emotional involvement piece with, you know, these people are destroying my home, like I, you know, I signed the lease myself, I interviewed them myself. And you’ve just got all these emotional components going in. And I think it leads to some decisions that might have been different if there was less emotional involvement. And I think that’s part of it for me. You know, if we had found a property manager who, you know, we really clicked with and resonated with and they saw things the way that we did and they did things the way that we wanted them done, the way we wanted our tenants managed. I think maybe this experience would have been different.

Erwin Szeto [00:18:57] Right, right, right.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:18:58] But for me, I think my first, you know, looking back, I started doing rent owns 12 years ago. I think those will always be my favorite investment strategy.

Erwin Szeto [00:19:07] Interesting to get back to the end of it. So actually, let’s stick with it for a little bit. Are you still doing rent owns?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:19:16] I’m on hold for a little bit right now. I have some things that I’m sort of working on and sorting out. And, you know, as a coach, my number one priority will always be my coach and clients and, you know, whatever their needs are and what they have going on, what kind of support they need. But I know it will come back around and I will be I will be doing them in the future.

Erwin Szeto [00:19:35] Got it. And to give some context to the listener, how many rent tones have you done? It’s a lot.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:19:41] Yeah. So my partner, Michelle and I, between the two of us, we’re at about 100.

Erwin Szeto [00:19:46] Just 100.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:19:50] Honestly, I love coaching about rent to own and I just get such a great. To me, it’s an opportunity to help people. Help people. So I don’t feel the need to do it myself. When I have you know, if someone approaches me for my rent, for a rent to own, I have this amazing network of people that I can refer them to. It doesn’t have to be me doing it. What I can do is work with people who want to do rent to owns in a really honest and ethical way, who want to set their, you know, tenant buyers up for success. And I’m more than happy to refer people. And I think that’s part of what resonated so much with for me, with the idea of these invisible teammates is, you know, we sort of go through our life and we don’t know who’s on our team. So when we come across these amazing people that we can refer clients to or that we can refer investors to, it’s such a gift to be able to help everybody grow as opposed to having this sort of scarcity mindset. So I think I’d rather train people to do rent owns.

Erwin Szeto [00:20:49] Okay. Say all of our on the show about a month ago.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:20:51] She’s awesome.

Erwin Szeto [00:20:53] Over 500. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:20:55] Yeah. She’s a rock star, is. No doubt about that. Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:20:58] Yeah. That’s why Rachel and I get along is our values are aligned in that, you know, in the rent to own who’s the most vulnerable in the rent to own relationship between the landlord planner slash investor if there’s a couple. If there’s a G partner in the tenant. Mm hmm. The tenant? Yes. And there’s a lot of rent on businesses that have kind of like self that tend to fail, but we won’t get into that. So that’s what we’re here for today. Can we talk about how much teaching you’ve done? Because you were you were a hired teacher as well for real estate? Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:21:29] I was a trainer for Rich Doug, Canada for eight years.

Erwin Szeto [00:21:32] How was that?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:21:32] I loved it. It was like it was like it took all the pieces of my real estate journey and my real estate roles and brought them all together in one place. And it made them all kind of make sense for me. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that real estate has given me. You know, it’s okay to be a real estate investor and not be like, I love real estate. And I think people feel this like compulsions. They I love real estate. I live for real estate. I eat, sleep and breathe real estate. It’s okay if real estate is also a tool the same as, you know, stock hacking. And I know you love stock hacking and I enjoyed your course tremendously. And that’s definitely in my future as well. But for me. These are tools that provide me with what I need to be able to create the life that I want. And to me, those are different.

Erwin Szeto [00:22:25] Okay. I have so many questions asked. How many students do you think came through your programs? The ones that you taught at an average. Ten. Thousands. Thousands. I’m big fan of Rich Dad. Poor dad. Robert Psyche.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:22:37] Yeah. He started the journey for just about every I’d say. If you talk to a room of a thousand investors, I think 900 plus of them are going to tell you that their journey started with rich dad. Poor dad. You can still go back and read that book and the fundamentals are there. Right. Decades later.

Erwin Szeto [00:22:53] And just as a disclaimer that I have no affiliation reached out to you, this is not an endorsement for them. I don’t even know who runs that thing. Who does run it in Canada.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:23:05] I’m not sure it’s active right now.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:07] Got it. So you’ve seen a lot of students. You’ve seen successful ones. You’ve seen, I should note. Let’s go back to what you’re saying about I love real estate. I don’t know if I ever loved real estate.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:23:19] And that’s okay.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:20] And that is okay. I was talking I was golfing with a gentleman doesn’t have kids so pretty young, early thirties, mid-thirties, whatever. And I say and, and we’re talking about real estate and he’s saying, I don’t know if I want to be a real estate investor. And I’m like, you don’t really have a choice.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:23:39] In my that.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:41] It’s not something you can or can’t sustain you like you can choose to not do it. Yeah, this is a big mistake not to do it right.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:23:49] I think it’s part of creating an overall strategy and an overall like, you know, you need we all want to retire and it’s just some of us start working on that retirement plan sooner rather than later and some of us have shorter. I think the goal post is. Is closer than. And other people.

Erwin Szeto [00:24:06] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:24:07] Does that make sense?

Erwin Szeto [00:24:08] Yeah. I think you’re used himself as an analogy because I found a he used to play triple-A hockey.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:24:13] Okay.

Erwin Szeto [00:24:13] Yeah, I think those things cost a lot of money. Yep. So I should just push back. How do you think you’ll pay for that? Yeah. Right. What if your kid, you know, our own kids like to play for Team Canada, that they go to the Olympics? How much is that going to cost? Right. You know, say no.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:24:31] Yeah. With that kind of opportunity. Right. Looking at you, I think to people have this idea of what it means to be a real estate investor and they don’t realize that it can look different for different people. I mean, there’s people who are real estate investors who never leave their house. Mm hmm. And then there’s other people who are on a job site every day and, you know, hiring contractors and building relationships. And, you know, depending on the number of deals that you do in a year and depending on the strategies that you choose, you’re the one who’s, you know, I mean, they say, you know, we’re living the decisions that we made in the past. So the decisions we make now are going to shape what our future is going to look like in one, two and five years.

Erwin Szeto [00:25:04] Yeah. Every time I made that conversation with the client yesterday, how you been? And I always feel awkward about this. Mm hmm. Not with the clients, because they know how well they’ve done as real estate investors. Mm hmm. It’s like, you know, we’ve all done really, really well in real estate. Then typical Canadian modesty is like, Oh, yeah, we get lucky. Like, get lucky. We get lucky. And then I go, Well, no, we knew money printing was happening. Mm hmm. We knew the immigrants want to be here. We knew that the government would continue printing money. Mm hmm. We’re going to have money. Are going to have, uh. Or is it. There always be a lot of inflation. It just happens sooner than we expected. Yeah, but like you said, we did. We said we wish we set ourselves up for this.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:25:42] So then the question becomes, you know, as a real estate investor, you know, when we started investing 15 years ago, we were buying stuff with 5% down. And there were investors that when they I think was 2010, they brought in the rules that investors had to put 20% down. And like investors were throwing up their hands and they’re like, how can this possibly be and how are we going to keep investing? And this is ridiculous. And like literally half of our competition got up and left the left the space. And, you know, here we are ten years later. And, you know, people are still investing, people are still buying, prices are still going up. Like it really I find resiliency and resourcefulness are probably two of the most important qualities that a successful investor is going to have.

Erwin Szeto [00:26:30] Definitely resiliency. A good friend of mine, Nicorette, always says those who deal with the most shit damage and the rest of it.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:26:37] I bet it was a good phrase.

Erwin Szeto [00:26:39] Nick Also Jeff, along the lines of those who deal with more shit when the wall was in the end. Yeah, right. Oh, I feel bad that hopefully you didn’t listen to the show.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:26:48] You can put this in afterwards. Okay.

Erwin Szeto [00:26:52] So I wanted to ask you about your experience working with. With students of real estate. Mm hmm. So I think I think anyone who signs up for an education program should have expectations. Mm hmm. And that’s the hard part, is I don’t even know if anyone knows what the outcomes or the outcomes of students of programs are like. Mm hmm. So, for example, when I was I remember what they were saying from stages, like at a table of ten. Mm hmm. Only. One or two of your interjection. Mm hmm. Right. If you took action, you’re playing a pretty big winner. Even if you bought one, two or three houses. Right. Even if you own your own home, that’s a pretty good level of success.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:27:25] Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:27:26] But again, only one or two people are going to take action out of ten. Mm hmm. Right. How students perform when they take a program. Let’s start with that and then begin the coaching.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:27:34] Sure. Well, the first thing I think a lot of people make the mistake of not doing enough due diligence before they choose either a program or a coach. So I think it’s important to get a sense of, you know, who is out there in the marketplace and what is their particular or unique niche. Because I won’t be a coach that would be ideal for everybody and the same as, you know, any of the large education companies, they’re not necessarily going to be ideal for everybody either. So it’s important that you at least know enough about what you’re looking for and what circumstances are environment you learn best in. And then look at the companies to see it, to see what they’re offering and, you know, talk to former students. That’s one of the biggest things you can do is talk to students about what they learned and what their key takeaways were from this particular program. Because some people will do better with hands on, you know, one on one coaching and other people, you know, they know that the larger companies might be more expensive, but they want to go because they want the networking opportunity as well. So it really comes down to fundamentally, what are your goals, what is your reason for this education and what are you looking to get out of it? Right. Right. Because a lot of the companies and you’re having work for rich dad friends who work for his buyer, you know, clients and friends who have gone through, you know, Stefan Arnaud’s Black Card University like these are all companies that have impacted people’s lives. And in major ways, I think if I had to look at, you know, the students, I’d say most people, the reason why they don’t take action ends up coming down to fear. And the ones who are able to figure out a way over, under or around the fear of making a mistake, they’re able to take action. And once they get the first one done, the, the.

Erwin Szeto [00:29:20] The.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:29:20] Subsequent deals become easier. But I also think that a lot of people think that being a real estate investor means you must own apartment buildings and it means you must have hundreds of units. And the reality is you can be a successful real estate investor if you’re buying, you know, a duplex or a couple of duplexes a year and you’re just hanging on to them. Again, if you’re happy in your job, you don’t need to be planning to retire in the next 48 months. You know, you can buy real estate and choose a stable market. Choose a market that has consistently over the last 50 or 100 years, see an appreciation. And then, you know, you put that I know you bought houses for your kids, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:29:57] Yeah. Back in 2014. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:29:59] So I would imagine they have increased significantly in value in 2014.

Erwin Szeto [00:30:03] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:30:04] So as long as you’re doing, you know, as long as you’re actively doing what you can to mitigate risk, you know, you keep a reserve fund in case the tenant doesn’t pay or in case there’s an unexpected expense. You know, as long as you’re running your numbers correctly and accurately at the beginning and you’re mitigating your risk as best you can along the way, you know, check your insurance policy every couple of years, make sure that, you know, there’s nobody out there that, you know, like you can’t get complacent as an investor. Like, you still have to, you know, check in and do your due diligence and pay attention to what’s going on. But I think people have this idea that to be successful, you must have this massive portfolio and you must have you know; you must hoard properties. And the question I asked one of my coaching clients a couple of weeks ago was what would happen if instead of doing, you know, seven flips or eight flips this year, what would happen if you did five flips but you made sure they were higher quality ones instead of taking everything that comes your way? And they went, really? And I’m like, Yeah, absolutely. You’re going to put the same amount of work in, but you’re going to get a better return on it. And they went, okay. And now their business plan includes, you know, four or five flips next year, not seven or eight. So they’ve given themselves time and quality of life and all they’ve done is a little more selective. They draw a line in the sand and they said, this is not what we’re going to do. This is what we’re going to do.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:25] The benefit of a quality second set of eyes. I was going to say a second set of eyes, but I just in the word quality. Mm hmm. Because opinions don’t matter to me unless are qualified.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:31:35] I think that’s valid.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:36] That’s good. That’s a.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:31:37] Good perspective.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:38] And you mentioned, like, fear. So if someone doesn’t know how to run numbers, you know, just run their numbers and bounce off someone that you respect. Right. Now, that heard.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:31:48] No. I had someone who approached me a couple of weeks ago and she said, we have a couple of properties right now. She’s like, We don’t know what to do. Should we sell? Should we keep? Should we what should we do? So I she hired me as a consultant for an hour and a half, and I sat and I ran the numbers with her. I looked at everything, talked to her about her goals, her long term strategy. The end of the day, I said, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I said, But if it were me, this is what I would do. And we have this idea that we must always hold and we must never sell. And I just think that’s such a fallacy, because there are times where it does make sense to sell. If it’s not serving us, if it’s not, you know, contributing to our cash flow into our bottom line, if it’s tying up, you know, our ability and our access to future financing. Like those would be reasons that I would consider selling if, you know, if we have a partner in it and the partnership is not doing well, then either replace the partner or sell the property. You know, if we and this comes back to finite versus infinite, if we view this real estate investing journey as, you know, infinite opportunities, infinite possibilities, you know, letting one property go doesn’t mean anything in a negative context. Sometimes it opens up tremendous opportunities that are coming to us in the future by letting go of a property that’s not performing or not serving us.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:06] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It’s more common with my clients that they’re selling this. The more the properties that require more management, or if it’s a single family, for example, then they can’t convert it to a duplex and they’ll sell those. Mm hmm. Then buy somebody who can convert. There’s always good reasons to sell. Nothing wrong with taking profits. No one ever goes bankrupt by taking profits.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:33:25] No. And I think you have to look at what again, we come back to quality of life. So if you don’t want to self-manage and you have a single family home or a couple of single family homes, you sell them, you take the profits, you put it into private lending, and you’re still making a really good return. But you don’t have any of those headaches.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:44] Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:33:44] Mm hmm. So I would take smaller returns for greater quality of life.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:49] Mm hmm. Now, I want to talk about specifically your style of investing. Mm hmm. Before we talk about Kirkland Lake, do you invest? Do you have any investments outside of Kirkland Lake?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:33:57] Not at this time, no. I will in the next two years. I will, but not right now.

Erwin Szeto [00:34:01] Where?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:34:02] I’m not to. Oh, I shouldn’t say that. Actually, we have a bunch of properties in New Brunswick. Oh, I.

Erwin Szeto [00:34:06] Forgot about Forget Forever, the bunch of properties we own, Larry. How long ago did you get in Brunswick? I ask because it seems to be more of a seems to be something that came up in the last year where there seems to be a more of a.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:34:20] Rush 2010 to.

Erwin Szeto [00:34:21] Get the rockets that you were a part of that rush there, weren’t you? Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:34:25] Yeah. It’s an it’s been an it’s been it’s been challenging, to be honest, to be in New Brunswick over the last ten years. And it’s because the market’s been really flat. And this is I’m really happy to see the market pick up. I’m happy to see new investors and interest in New Brunswick. And this is, I think, one of those real things where, you know, buying in a market like Ontario that seen growth the way it has since 2008, it’s been hard, like not everyone has made money, but most people have made money. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, as a real estate investor, the real test for me comes, you know, if a market isn’t going up, can I still make money if the market isn’t going up in the pandemic for some people has been that test. You know, if my tenant stops paying rent, how am I going to get through this? What kind of reserves have I built? What what’s my fallback? What’s my exit strategy here? So I’m not in any way judging anyone. I just know that New Brunswick has been more of a test for us than anything we’ve bought in Ontario, and we bought in most of the provinces across the country over the last 15 years. New Brunswick has definitely been I mean, I did Rent to owns in New Brunswick in 2012. I did six of them. And we didn’t do well on those.

Erwin Szeto [00:35:38] Did you lose money? Yep.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:35:40] Overall, yeah, probably. Yeah, I had one of them that went really poorly and that probably took away any profits from the other ones. So what I learned or my takeaway from that was the importance of choosing the right market, the right market for the right strategy. Just because it makes sense to own apartment buildings in Saint John, New Brunswick does not mean that the numbers made sense to do rent owns out there. But I didn’t know enough at the time, so I just went, okay, well, it works in Ontario, it works in Quebec, and we’ve done them in, you know, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. and P.E.I. and Newfoundland. And, you know, we’ve done them in Alberta. I’m like, okay, so New Brunswick is going to make sense too.

Erwin Szeto [00:36:18] Nope, it did not.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:36:21] But again, that’s one of those things where I learned so much more, and I feel like it prepares me to be a much better coach because I can talk about here’s all the mistakes that I made.

Erwin Szeto [00:36:31] So and I’ve tried all the provinces. So the strategy is, has.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:36:36] My client, please don’t make those mistakes. And that isn’t to say that we started at the beginning of our journey and we say, okay, I’m never going to make a mistake. I mean, that’s not realistic. You need to be prepared that you’re going to make a mistake. But I think the difference you know, the way to overcome fear is to say, you know, have I surrounded myself with the right people? Have I got people on my team that I can trust that are going to be looking out for my best interests? Are they, you know, the right people to provide the information that I need? And I think probably if I had had a realtor at the time who had been a little more honest about what the market was doing, that could have been and I’m not in any way blaming anyone other than myself for the mistakes that I made. But I think it might have been helpful to have someone who was like, Well, you might want to reconsider that, because I don’t know that we can count on 5% appreciation a year. Here in Saint John, New Brunswick, on houses.

Erwin Szeto [00:37:26] So there’s a lot of impact there, as with everything we’ve discussed. You said so you took responsibility, which is funny because I think it’s not funny. Shouldn’t be so funny. I think somewhere around 75 to 80% of the population blame someone else. They usually blame whatever situation and then they blame someone else. And then the term is the locus of control. Where is the control? Is it with myself or is it outside of me? Right. So 75, 80% of the population believes that control is outside, outside of them, but they don’t control their own country.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:37:57] Okay.

Erwin Szeto [00:37:58] I know. I know we only have an hour and I do the same thing and take responsibility. But then just to speak my mind like I tend to do is not everything is about your control there.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:38:11] I would say circumstances are not always under our control, but our response always should be. And that’s where I derive my control from, is that, you know, we can’t control a pandemic. We can’t control, you know, a variety of other factors. But I always have 100% control over how I respond.

Erwin Szeto [00:38:27] Yes, I like that. Absolutely. It’s just tough sometimes when you take responsibility and as it was out of your hands.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:38:35] Yeah, it is. And sometimes it doesn’t feel great. But I find that right before, you know, my greatest moments of insight, right before my greatest growth comes these periods where I’m, you know, frustrated or I’m unhappy or I’m struggling. And that’s when I reach out to my team, to my high performance coach. And I’m like, I am struggling here. Like, can you help me see this from another perspective? And nine times out of ten, when we ask better questions, we get better results. And that, I found, has been one of the biggest challenges. I didn’t ask the right questions about the market in 2010 in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Erwin Szeto [00:39:16] Damn. Okay. So fast forward today. Are you buying, selling, holding in Saint John’s New Brunswick? Because I’m sure some listeners are looking at that market right now where.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:39:27] So this is interesting because this is a thing that I think a lot of real estate investors don’t necessarily go through, or at least they don’t necessarily talk about it. But I would consider the phase that I’m in right now repositioning. So I’m looking carefully at everything that we hold. I’m looking carefully at all the partners that we have. I’m looking carefully at the returns that we’re generating. And I’m saying to myself, Does this serve me and the future that I want to create? And if the answer is no, then I’m letting it go, because what I will do is open up tremendous opportunities for things that are going to serve me and to help me create the life that I want.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:05] Can I ask then what you’re doing with your Saint John’s New Brunswick portfolio?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:40:08] And we will probably be looking at letting those go.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:13] Natural question that someone’s looking to buy, how can they contact you?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:40:17] We haven’t quite figured, you know, what that looks like and what the process is.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:22] Going to be for. I know it.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:40:24] Won’t be any unsolicited pictures this time.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:28] But pictures of offers over asking. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:40:36] I mean, I always love to hear from people. I do am you know; I love hearing about people’s journeys and about what people have learned. And I love connecting with people. And that’s probably one of the biggest things I miss since, you know, not teaching anymore is not having those, you know, two or three days where you’re in the front of a room and then on breaks, you get the opportunity to meet so many different people and hear their stories and to learn about them. And I look at my Facebook and so many I go back through. And I mean, you have Joel, who works for you, who was a student. Like, I just have all these pockets of people everywhere. And that’s I consider that a real gift just to enable to be able to connect with so many people over the years in so many ways. But, yeah, people can people can message me if they want.

Erwin Szeto [00:41:26] Keep us civil, folks. Yeah. A couple of things I want to talk about. Let’s talk about Kirkland Lake. Sure. We’ve had a couple guests on the show recently and it’s you kind of talked about it as well. Like affordability is issues and it has major issues, especially in greater Vancouver, greater Toronto areas, probably Montreal. Aside from that, probably not nearly as bad anywhere else. And in the pursuit of cash flow of people are driving further from city centers. Kirkland Lake, I think would qualify as far from a city center. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:41:59] Probably take us about 7 hours from here to get there. From here today.

Erwin Szeto [00:42:02] Yeah. So you’re Manitoba somewhere, right? Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:42:06] Quebec border.

Erwin Szeto [00:42:06] But yes. Went the wrong way. Well, first of my geography.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:42:11] No judging.

Erwin Szeto [00:42:12] Your folks. Do Americans think they’re listening to this shows about Canada you don’t know where this we don’t know where Kirkland Lake is in Canada.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:42:22] Ontario is pretty big. I don’t expect everybody know the little town I’m in right now.

Erwin Szeto [00:42:27] When we were talking over lunch. So what I’m trying to get to is I find a lot of investors are pursuing investments in towns that are based on natural resources, a lot of mining, oil and gas. Yesterday I had someone from Grand Prairie, Alberta. So that’s, you know, oil and gas. Last week, someone from investing in Sudbury’s nickel mining. And I want to ask about what the investment strategy is for Kirkland Lake, because I think a lot of people will be running into similar economy and in turn tenant profile and how to operate how they should operate their business. Hmm. As long question I got your back.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:43:07] So yes, it’s funny because when we started investing in Kirkland Lake in 2010, like originally at and I drove up and we drove through the town, we’re like, oh my gosh, there is so much opportunity here. There are like there are so many buildings that are in rough condition. There are obviously so many owners who are really struggling. And that was just what we saw was the opportunity to come in and to bring our expertise and, you know, to bring some of our investor partners from down south and really be able to make a difference in a small town. And, you know, we’ve taken a lot of buildings over the years and fixed them up, done renovations, you know, taken uninhabitable units and turned them into homes for people. And that, I think, has been tremendously rewarding. And, you know, as a property management company, my philosophy is in order to truly be able to serve a community, you have to provide a range of housing options. So we definitely have, you know, sort of more cost effective options with, you know, less bells and whistles. But what we’ve really specialized in, you know, coming from Toronto and going up to a smaller community, what we’ve really specialized in has been, you know, taking units and turning them into higher end and higher end in Kirkland Lake is not like high end in Toronto. Higher end. And Kirkland Lake is like if it has a dishwasher and a backsplash and the kitchen is higher end.

Erwin Szeto [00:44:23] Every time, why stainless steel? At least not even no g?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:44:27] No. So and that is, doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like to create that I would, but there just isn’t the demand for units like that. And I think that’s important to understand in a community like this is you have to follow the demand, right? So for us, you know, we have the ability to furnish or furnish units at will and we have a large storage facility so we can pull all of our furniture out if the demand is there for unfurnished units and if the demand starts increasing for furnished, then we’ll furnish a bunch of units. I think it’s important to have a really good understanding of what your community wants and needs, like Airbnb or any of these other short term housing providers. Not really a thing up there. Like they just call the local property management companies and say, Hey, do you have a furnished apartment for rent? You know, can we take it for we’ll only do it by the month. But, you know, we definitely offer furnished rentals by the month and it really is about figuring out what the community wants and needs. And I think a lot of people don’t understand that if you don’t provide housing for the people who are in town to do business, then a community’s going to dry up. So you have to have a range of housing available, right from, you know, entry level housing all the way up to, you know, somewhere for executives to stay when they bring them in, you know, from wherever to stay for a period of time. So that’s been I think one of the things that has really set us up for success is making sure that we always offer a range and we have a number of housing options available.

Erwin Szeto [00:45:53] But I as the term executive rental whether we right term search term for this.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:45:57] I call them executive rentals.

Erwin Szeto [00:45:59] Okay. Can you break down? Okay. So if I was to buy a house today. Elizabeth in.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:46:03] Kirkland Lake. In Kirkland. Okay.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:05] Yeah. Can you give me example? Like what kind of property are we looking at?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:46:09] So it really depends. So there’s houses you can still buy houses for under $100,000 in Kirkland.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:15] Right.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:46:18] Now. They’re not always, you know, the biggest house. They’re not always you know; they don’t always have all the amenities. But so I’ll just give you an example of one. So we had one listed for sale. We had it listed for sale for 99,000. It didn’t sell for whatever reason. I think, you know, most people look at that. It’s a two bedroom house. So when you have a one or two bedroom house, you got fewer potential buyers, right? Which is why I always if I buy houses, I’m buying at least a three bedroom. So again, these are learnings. So. We had one listed for sale for 99,000. And it went through the summer. No, none. None of the locals bought it. Nobody wanted to live there. So we turned around and we furnished it.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:56] And then what happened?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:46:57] So we rented.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:58] It to an executive.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:47:00] Yes.

Erwin Szeto [00:47:01] So explain, because we were talking about this over lunch. I want to listen to hear this as well. Like, what does the executive bring their family? Are they are they just like kind of like a they.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:47:11] They just want somewhere to sleep while they’re in town and they go home to family typically. Now, there are some we have had executives. We had, you know, one of the mines brought an accountant up from Mexico and he brought his family up and that was fine. We don’t have any issues with that. But most of the people who are renting furnished rentals from us, it’s not with families and everything, it’s they’ve left their family at home somewhere. They’re used to working for the mines, which means they travel a lot. Mm hmm. So we have this house. 99,000. We rented it for six months. For $800. Not everything is like that.

Erwin Szeto [00:47:43] That was it, right?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:47:44] Yeah. That’s inclusive. But that’s just us knowing our market. Being able to identify a need. Being able to pivot easily. And the thing is, there is tremendous backlash in. You know, we have Facebook groups where people advertise properties for rent. And, you know, there’s a lot of people in Kirkland Lake who are saying, you know, that’s ridiculous. Not everybody works for the mine. And, you know, how can you expect people to afford that? And the short answer is, I don’t expect everybody to afford that. You know, this is a particular type of unit that is catering to a particular type of client. It’s not meant for, you know, a husband and wife and two small children. This is this property, quite frankly, is not ideal for them. There’s no there’s no yard there. There’s no. So it explains why it didn’t sell. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t serve a purpose, that there isn’t a need for what we can offer at that particular point in time.

Erwin Szeto [00:48:32] Mm hmm. All right. Before we go on for a further investment strategy, can you give an overview of why Kirkland Lake. You touched on some of it already, but what economic factors makes Kirkland Lake a viable town for you to invest in? Because I don’t want people to go out there to like. But worst thing to look at do is go to, like, a ghost town. And, um. Oh, yeah, yeah. Know, like, oh, everything’s dilapidated. And here’s the opportunity, you.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:48:55] Know, and I’ll be, I’ll be honest, you know, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing between 2010 and now. There was a few years we went there where, you know, we were having to reduce, you know, units would come up and we’d have to knock 50 bucks off or 100 bucks off of the rent because, you know, we were at a period in time where there wasn’t a lot of demand in that town. And that’s always the risk you take with these smaller communities, is that, you know, there’s it’s a smaller pool, it’s a smaller market, and it’s therefore impacted. You know, when one employer does a layoff, it has a much greater effect in a smaller community. Right. So the reason we went up there was because my husband, we had just gone through some training and education on the value of investing in gold and silver. So we thought, okay, well, we want to get into real estate. And we went, you know, maybe you would make a lot of sense to go somewhere where they’re mining for gold and silver, because as the price of gold and silver goes up, the demand for real estate in those communities is going to increase as well.

Erwin Szeto [00:49:52] Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:49:53] So that was how we ended up there. When we got there, the numbers made sense all day long. Every single day. Mm hmm. And it’s been. It’s funny, like having grown up in Scarborough when I got married, I lived in Newmarket. Like, I had this idea of what small town living was like. It’s not that. It is not what I sort of it’s not a Norman Rockwell painting by any stretch of the imagination. The communities in northern Ontario have had some challenges with drugs in particular in the last little while. And when you’re in smaller communities, it’s more apparent. But some of the heart and the, you know, the community and the it’s just been phenomenal. Like it it’s really and it’s been a great learning experience for me because as someone who was never an entrepreneur before, as someone who had always worked for other people, you know, in 2005, I didn’t think I’m going to become an entrepreneur, so I’m going to invest in real estate so I can be an entrepreneur that was not on the radar at all. So, you know, I’ve made some mistakes. I made some business decisions that I’m like, wow, you know, looking back, maybe I shouldn’t have done that or maybe I should have done something differently. But it’s been a really great opportunity to be able to find my feet and figure out who I am.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:04] So if you do it all over again, you do it again.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:51:06] I wouldn’t change anything if I changed anything about my past, I wouldn’t be who I am and I wouldn’t be where I am. We might not be here having this conversation.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:15] I’ve been the same way, but I would have loved to have bought bitcoin at $200. Yeah, but.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:51:22] But because you didn’t do that, what other opportunities did you get in place of that?

Erwin Szeto [00:51:26] I did a lot of real estate.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:51:28] Yeah. And you might not be sitting here like you and I are talking. And you’ve got some pretty incredible things going on in your business.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:35] I don’t own Bitcoin for $200, you know.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:51:39] But you got a lot of other cool.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:40] Stuff when you guys go to learn about the value investing in Bitcoin. Because he did gold and silver like some digital gold. I’m just teasing. It’s like, you know, you’re investing in a mining town. Like I think, Oh, how do you invest in a mining town for bitcoin?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:51:54] Honestly, I really want to get start cracking down. I’m super excited about stock hacking because I think for him it’s a little bit for him the real estate is the thrill of the chase. So I think stock hacking would be like on a daily basis the thrill of the chase for him. So I think that would be really exciting for him, but I’m going to figure that out. And then can we talk about this like can we talk in a year? We usually seem to talk every year or so.

Erwin Szeto [00:52:16] It’s just more of that. Your schedule when you’re in town? Yeah, well, more often, yeah. I used to talk all the time. I know we masterminds together. I know every month. I know at a minimum; I know I’m trying to be back in high school.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:52:30] So give me a little bit. I’ll be back.

Erwin Szeto [00:52:33] Take time. Yeah. Always be here.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:52:36] I appreciate that.

Erwin Szeto [00:52:38] So how has the market behaved? How small? Kirkland behaved in terms of market appreciation. Did you like, for example, on small towns? Well, the media the media tends to shine a light on these tiny towns. Yes. All over Canada. Just that population explosion. Yeah. Are you seeing anything like that?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:52:54] Definitely. We’re seeing apartments go up for rent like somebody gives notice on the first of the month. We list the apartment immediately and you know, by the fourth or fifth of the month, it’s rented. So we’re definitely. So that would be like a negative vacancy rate, right? Like where and there are times where we’re going back to the tenant who’s moving out. We’re like, hey, if you want to leave early, we’ll give you your last month’s rent back. But we have somebody who really needs to, you know, they’re coming to town for work and they really need somewhere to live. So that’s been that is our probably our biggest indicator of where the market’s at. And it’s doing it’s doing really well. But we always lag a little bit behind. So when you guys started seeing the boom down here, it was a little bit before we saw it up there. You guys might be seeing, you know, 30% appreciation rate and, you know, we might be seeing 15 like everything is just a little bit behind and a little bit smaller in in the more rural. But I mean, there just there just isn’t any more land like we’re not making land. So it’s always in my opinion, it’s always going to go up. There might be the blips in the radar, there might be the dips in the market, there might be the contractions. But in ten years, 15 years, 20 years of properties still going to be worth more than it is worth right now.

Erwin Szeto [00:54:07] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:54:08] And that’s why, fundamentally, I believe real estate is such a strong investment. And that’s why I believe it’s okay if you want to buy one or two or three properties a year and just hang on to them for the long term, you don’t have to buy 30 to be successful.

Erwin Szeto [00:54:22] Couple questions to ask, but sorry. When you talk about Kirkland Lake, are do you find are people moving in from out of town as well? Like, do you have like new? Is the population growing, for example.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:54:34] To some degree.

Erwin Szeto [00:54:37] Doing like people from Toronto. I sold my house in Toronto for 2 million bucks and then moving here.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:54:41] We’re not seeing that so much. Like I know there’s a lot of the other communities like, you know, Bellville and some of the other ones, you know, Cambridge and that kind of said they’re seeing the people moving out from. We’re not really seeing that. But what we are seeing is that demand is increasing. You know, the mines are doing really well. They keep finding more and more gold.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:01] And the problem to have. Oh, absolutely.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:55:04] There’s talk. So a couple of years ago Kirkland like gold while they were just they just merged with Agnico Eagle but they announced a $320 million investment in building a new mining shaft. So they aren’t even finished that yet. And they were talking about they found more gold and perhaps a shaft five opening.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:23] Or the last gold going because Canada doesn’t own any under the government of Canada.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:55:27] No, they don’t. People are buying it.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:31] I know people are buying Americans, China, Russia. Of course people are buying it. Yeah, it’s like Canada.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:55:35] And the interesting thing is the cost of pulling gold out of the ground per ounce in Kirkland Lake is extremely low. So you look at all the mines and the cost per ounce is Canada at the scale gold sites are, you know, the top.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:49] Right. So it’s more profitable business.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:55:51] And it means that even if the price of gold goes down, they’re much less likely to close up or to stop pulling gold out because they have a much greater profit margin to work their way through than anybody else.

Erwin Szeto [00:56:02] I don’t see gold going that low. Yeah. Like going up like bitcoin though.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:56:09] I know. Honestly, I don’t know much about bitcoin. I if I bought anything, it would it would be about you telling me, okay, go buy this.

Erwin Szeto [00:56:16] We’ll talk more offline. Mutual friend of ours bought back in March 2016. And what I’ll tell you afterwards. Okay. Sounds good. So we got it for like two or 300 bucks. Wow, a coin. And today it’s 61,000 us. Is that all? Is that all? Is all the things we missed out on? Okay, so a, you’re investing is different than mine. It’s totally okay. I believe I believe everyone should invest. But even if you get it wrong, we should learn from it until we get it wrong beginning. But then we stick with it. We’ll learn and get better as long as they’re willing to learn.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:56:52] Can I. Can I jump in for a second? So most people don’t get into real estate because they’re afraid of making a mistake. So if I told you could spend $10,000 and not make any of the basic entry level rookie mistakes because you’ve got someone who’s going to help you, would you spend that $10,000 to not make the $100,000 mistakes? So that to me is the difference between people hiring a coach or getting, you know, some level of education versus people who don’t.

Erwin Szeto [00:57:22] Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:57:23] That’s literally it can make a huge difference. Like if you invest $10,000 in your education, then you’re and you’re eliminating, you know, 80% of the mistakes that new investors make. If you want to take action and do it, then do.

Erwin Szeto [00:57:36] It. This quick story. Share. Amber. People I met at a real estate thing. I’m a deal and they’re all gung ho and they heard. One of the good things to do is go directly to the sellers to buy properties. They did that to interact with the seller. They bought a triplex or something like that. And then when they owned it, they found out, Oh, there’s all these problems. It’s not a legal triplex. And they learned found out how much it would cost to replace the fire escape. Mm hmm. So there is a $60,000 bill that had to be done immediately. Mm hmm. Because the home was not safe at 18 by the fire department. And but, uh. But they all. We saved the realtor commission because if they had hired me, if I put the $60,000 fire escape you have to replace. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:58:21] Absolutely.

Erwin Szeto [00:58:22] But they said the real estate commission.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:58:23] But that’s the difference between, you know, surrounding yourself with the right people and the right knowledge and the right information and trying to go it alone because you think a couple of thousand dollars in real estate commissions or coaching fees or course fees are better spent elsewhere. It’s a huge.

Erwin Szeto [00:58:40] Difference. So we people and they took it so bad because they had this they sold them for pretty big losses.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:58:47] That’s unfortunate. I hate hearing stories like that because the thing about real estate, too, is sometimes if you can just find a way to hang on to it, you can recover a lot of those losses.

Erwin Szeto [00:58:57] Yeah, that was that was a messy one to the fire departments on them. They had immediate things happen to their only choice really was to go to single family. Yeah. So the requirement for the for the fire escape no longer existed. And then take it off. Right, right. And trash it. And so. Versus having to try to build a new one properly. Wow. Right. And it wasn’t in a good area.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:59:16] So and it always makes you wonder what the highest and best use for that property is too. Right. Like, I love looking at stuff like that and saying, okay, if it doesn’t work like this, you know, could we do this or could we do that? Could we bring in a private loan and fix it up and reposition it? Could we knock it right down and build like what are the zoning? Do you know what I mean? Like, I love looking at stuff like that. It’s a puzzle, right? And you just have to figure out what the picture looks like at the end.

Erwin Szeto [00:59:40] It’s a 100 year old house. Mm hmm. Yeah. Which is bottomland, newer, less old. That’s all that’s built.

Elizabeth Kelly [00:59:47] Works less old.

Erwin Szeto [00:59:48] That’s all right. By something that’s 50 years old versus 100. Yeah. Big difference. Yeah. Who is the candidate for coaching? At what point does someone start with a coach?

Elizabeth Kelly [00:59:59] I think it really depends, because I find there’s sort of two, two waves of people. So you get the people who are starting out who are like, I don’t own I don’t own any property. I don’t know what I don’t know yet. But I know that that I don’t want to make mistakes, so I want to hire a coach. So that’s sort of the people, the first wave of people. The second wave of people is, you know, I own some properties. I’ve made some mistakes. I want to continue to grow. A lot of people come to me because they’ve maxed out on financing and they’re like, you build a portfolio, how did you do that? Or I need to start working with joint venture partners. I need to start finding private lenders. How do I do that? So the people who already have experience typically are coming to me with a very specific problem or challenge that they want some help with. And other people come to me because they’re like, I’m just overwhelmed and I don’t know where to begin and I don’t know what. I don’t know. So help me do this in a way that’s going to make sense, right?

Erwin Szeto [01:00:52] Because at a minimum, you can review deals for people.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:00:54] Oh, yeah. And I certainly do that as well. But a lot of people don’t realize sort of the fundamentals you need to have in place. It’s like they start throwing up drywall without having the studs in. Right. So you need to you don’t want to build a house like that because it’s not going to stay around long term. And it’s the same thing when you build a portfolio. Why are you laughing at me?

Erwin Szeto [01:01:13] Oh, that’s right. You know, because a lot of investors want to do work with their permits. Like at times you don’t need permits, but it isn’t going to do that to get a firm.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:01:21] Yeah, no.

Erwin Szeto [01:01:22] I also inspected.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:01:23] I never believe in cutting corners like that. I don’t believe in saying that you’re going to live in a property so that you only have to put five or 10% down to buy it. Like, I don’t believe in any of that stuff. I feel like your reputation, you know, even if it’s just you right now, in the future, you may want or need private lenders or joint venture partners. I wouldn’t compromise my ethics or my integrity just to just to get a deal done. It’s one deal is not worth it. There’s a million others out there. Mm. And that I think is a big thing that the scarcity mentality. Right. Is why I have to do this deal and I have to make this happen because I’ll never find another one. No way. There’s so many investors, there are so many deals out there. You’ll always find something else.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:02] There’s a lot to say there. That’s the challenging part with investors, is there? There are expectations all over the place. What they’re capable is all over the place. So let’s go here, for example, is interviewing young gentleman yesterday. He lives in Grand Prairie to work and you have a tax and he rents to people at an oil and gas industry. Right. But I asked them all, where’s your next investment property going to be? Here’s all I want. I’m going to invest in closing where I live. Yeah, right. Very, very different to be in corner B.C. versus Grand Prairie. Yeah, right. To the if you’re a listener from Ontario and you’re comparing like investing in Mississauga versus small town Ontario. Brooklyn like? Yeah, potentially like that. Yeah. Because one’s an equity play. Yeah. One is largely a cash flow play. So what investors should be going for a cash flow play? What investors should be going for equity play.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:02:51] So I believe that the biggest determining factor of each is largely based on your income goals. So if you are looking to leave your job within the next couple of years, you need to be looking at strategies that generate cash flow for you. So whether it’s, you know, multi-unit apartment buildings or whether it’s, you know, rent to owns or I mean, the buyers generally when by the time you refinance, they’re not generating fantastic cash flow. So that’s where you’re looking at your flips and those kinds of stuff where you’re generating cash flow consistently and rapidly. Whereas the equity stuff that those to me would be more if you’re, you know, long term retirement planning or maybe you want to like I have a couple of clients I’m working with right now and they know they want to retire in the next 7 to 10 years. So our goal is to buy properties in markets that have good appreciation rates, not because it’s going to give them income every month, but because in 7 to 10 years they will reposition, they will refinance, they will pull a chunk of money out of it, and they will deploy those funds, whether it’s through private lending or whether they’ll start doing some more active strategies once they’ve left their job. But it’s really typically a tradeoff of time versus money. So the more time you have available to you, then the more freedom you have, right? The more opportunity to look at different strategies.

Erwin Szeto [01:04:11] Because, yeah, like you said, the cash flow strategies are all rather active.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:04:15] Yeah, I mean, there’s very few I can’t think of any strategies where if you want to generate cash flow, then you don’t have to put any time in. Like really? I mean, I guess maybe private lending might be a good one where you don’t have to put in much time, but it still generates a solid return every month. Mm hmm. But you don’t have, you know, all the benefits of. Of long term appreciation and everything else. Mm hmm. So, I mean, flipping. That takes time. Buyers. I mean, while you’re doing the renovations, that takes time. You know, short term rentals, you can build a team around you, but you still got to manage the team.

Erwin Szeto [01:04:48] Yeah. And then deservedly takes 20%.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:04:51] Oh, absolutely. And even studio rentals. I mean, student rentals. I’m seeing 20% management for student rentals, too. Why? Because they’re so time consuming. So we’re always trading time for money. Mm hmm. Question is, which do you want more? Do you want more?

Erwin Szeto [01:05:04] I don’t have time. That’s why I’m buying turnkey. Turnkey duplexes.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:05:08] Do you want more time?

Erwin Szeto [01:05:09] I don’t have time. Right. That’s the most finite resource for me. See, I have finite mentality. Yeah. I’m just joking that. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:05:21] So you would like to. You choose investments that. That give you back time. And that’s why you buy.

Erwin Szeto [01:05:27] Turnkey limited time. Yeah. Take very limited time. But our hardest part up front is the finance thing.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:05:34] You’re self-employed? Of course. It’s the hardest part.

Erwin Szeto [01:05:37] With the number of with the number of properties. That is by far the hardest part, like getting a tenant, the renovations. We matter that that’s all very easy. Yeah. And little risk relative to game financing.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:05:52] But you showed.

Erwin Szeto [01:05:53] Our for our experience for where we are in our lives.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:05:56] Absolutely. But you showed really good alignment and decision making where you’ve chosen an investment strategy that helps you, that that furthers you or gets you closer towards your goals.

Erwin Szeto [01:06:05] Mm hmm.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:06:05] Which is really good. And I think that’s where a lot of new investors struggle is. You know, there’s, you know, something becomes popular because, you know, there’s a super-hot guy who’s, you know, has a TV show about it and everybody’s like, Oh, this is what I want to do. Without knowing and understanding what that actually translates into on a day to day basis.

Erwin Szeto [01:06:22] To do that on those projects. Mm hmm. You know, I did a project. It was like 120,000 rental play cost more than that. But it was like, you know, basement was moldy, basement was leaking into wiring tons of work to be done. Right. That took a lot of time, not just money. If it’s just money, it won’t be a problem. So here’s a check. Go. Yeah. But no, it took a lot of time. The more time to go deal with and follow up and chase and stuff.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:06:48] Yeah, absolutely. And I think.

Erwin Szeto [01:06:50] That’s okay for people. If that’s if you’re just know, that’s what I will sometimes say. You’re better off not knowing how things can go wrong. Yeah. You need a little bit of ignorance to get into it because if everyone knew how challenge it can be at times, they probably wouldn’t do it. But it’s often. But the thing is, after, after like a sample of, like, five years. It’s worth it. Mm hmm. Right. If they run into an early problem with that first 636 first year, then the worst thing you can ever do is give up. Right? Yeah. Sorry I cut you off.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:07:19] No, I was just going to say, I think that’s part of what we’re seeing a lot more of in Kirkland Lake in the last year or two years has been a lot of investors coming up and they’re like, we don’t have the ability to go back and forth. We’re like, absolutely, we got you. No problem. So, you know, Emmett is a fire prevention engineer and, you know, he does all of our he does all the building permits for our owners. He manages all the construction, pays attention to all the details, sends reports, here’s photos, you know, here’s what happened this week. Here’s how everything’s moving forward, like. So if you if you really are committed to a strategy, like a flip, then like you said, if you don’t want to have to put in a significant amount of time, then you just have to find the right people. I love that.

Erwin Szeto [01:08:01] But you found yourself you start your problem.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:08:04] That wasn’t there wasn’t how we intended it to be.

Erwin Szeto [01:08:06] You couldn’t find a property manager. So that’s actually something I teach to investors as they wait, for example, to say, Hey, what do you thing about this town? I said, First off, like, I’ve just been around for a bit, so I know all about town. I know a lot. Investors had troubles with property management. Yeah. So if you’re going to invest there, have three. Have three that you would that you would that you would hire. Yeah, right. Because there were only three because you’re not, you’re going to fire at least one of them. Yeah. So if you need a backup and there’s a chance you might fire that second one, so you’re going to be the third one. Basically, you guys went straight to hiring yourselves.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:08:40] Well, no, we had it. We had we hired other property managers and we I think we had three or four. And we are just I don’t know, maybe our expectations are too high. I’m not sure. But we just we just knew how we wanted our tenants to be managed. You know, we didn’t want somebody showing up at the door on the first of the month, you know, going around door to door, collecting all the rents. We felt that was very dangerous. You know, we wanted tenants. You know, if there was a problem like dog poop in the yard, we didn’t want somebody who just, you know, would just show up and, like, scream at them to fix it and leave again, like we wanted. Okay, here’s an official notice. You know, the landlord tenant board is more and more and more present. More and more people are aware of it. So, you know, things need to be documented. We wanted to be able to see what was going on in our property. So we picked building as a software in order for us to be able to not just manage the properties, but also to give our owners and investors insight into what’s going on in their properties.

Erwin Szeto [01:09:37] For property managers can work with. And I’ll make the point that I think there’s massive ROI from good property management, right? You screen well the treated hands well, but these are customers that pay a lot of people, you know, even near cheaper like your wealth here, the executive rental that gets paid, you know, for 20,000 a year in rental income, you know, for any small business owner, how would you treat a customer that pays you $20,000 a year?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:10:06] Oh, absolutely. They are going to get, you know, white glove service. They’re going to be they’re going to be treated really well. And that’s I think the challenge is that, you know, the whole landlord tenant relationship has shifted and it’s become, you know, what are you or me and what do I owe you? And it really should be about, you know, you’re my customer. You’re my client and I value you.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:25] Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:10:26] And the you treat the good ones well and the ones that aren’t so great. Well we help them find, find reasons to move on.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:33] One my 10th email that has a lot more broke so you need to get them. I mean one is always paid on time. For the last four years I might work on Lois’s Web site. One more is on sale when I should just be. Go pick one. Yeah, pick whatever you want.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:10:54] But then it comes back to a cost benefit analysis to like, how much is your time worth? And would it make more sense to say, Hey, you know what, here’s a budget, go find whatever you can, you know, spend up to this. Do you carry buys it from now like send me the receipt and let him go and do you know, maybe he has some bells and whistles he wants. Maybe there’s something special. Maybe he can find a deal and you know; he can buy a weed at the same time. Like, it doesn’t make sense for you to be the person who’s doing all that because that’s like a $25 an hour activity. So give him a budget, let him do it and tell him what you need for the accounting on the back end.

Erwin Szeto [01:11:28] That’s pretty telling me.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:11:30] Well, we just this is where it comes to. We’re making emotional decisions, right, where we think that we have to do things. And the reality is, when you read who, not how, a lot of times there’s people who are better to do it than you are.

Erwin Szeto [01:11:41] Yeah, it’s pretty dumb of me to be going on this website and trying to find what’s on sale.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:11:45] I didn’t say that. I’m not judging you.

Erwin Szeto [01:11:48] This is my cheapness that’s overruling very good use of time. So that’s for sure, that experience of having to go through product managers because again, I don’t want anyone to invest in a city unless you can find quality property management column mistakes. I find with product managers, some of them charge way too little money. Yes, I think I’ve said this to almost yeah. Almost every product manager except my wants you to charge. They don’t charge enough.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:12:16] Well that’s it. The margins on property management are really thin. So when I have clients, you come to me and there, you know, they’re running numbers at 5%. I’m like, you know what? Honestly, like, I’m a property manager. I know what it takes for me to stay in business and to run a legitimate business, to have, you know, the proper insurances that I need to have to, you know, be able to support the software, to have the staff to be able to maintain my reputation. Then I can tell. 5% is not enough. So I’d rather pay someone 10% to get things properly managed so that I legitimately don’t have to do anything in my business than pay someone 5% and have to keep checking in and following up and looking over everything they’re doing because they really aren’t charging enough for their services.

Erwin Szeto [01:12:57] What do you see as ranges for property manager, property management for say, a single family home then for the beginner investor? Well, for single family or duplex, what percentage should they should they expect to see?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:13:10] It really depends on the market that you’re in. I don’t charge any less for more or less units like we’re just 10% across the board. I know that there are some companies that offer discounts as you have more, but the way I look at it is if I’m managing eight units for you, if I’m managing 80 units for you, I’m not treating it any differently. I’m still paying the same number of bills for you. I am still, you know, filling you know, I’m still filling a unit and giving the same amount of time, care and attention to selecting quality tenants. I’m still communicating with the tenants the same way and responding to everything. So, I mean, I guess it’s sort of like the difference with snow plowing where you have some people who will say it’s $50 every time I show up and plow your snow or you say, I have, you know, I’ll charge you $500 for the season. When you charge $500 for the season at the end of every season. Inevitably, one person came out ahead or one party came out ahead and another party lost. So either the person doing the plowing didn’t charge enough and is in trouble and might not be back next year or the person paying the bills could have paid less for the actual services that was provided. And my preference is always just to pay what people are worth.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:17] Yeah. Because again, go back to the tenant that’s paying you $20,000 a year. If you went to a restaurant and dropped $20,000 a year, what kind of service would you receive? What kind of service would you expect? Absolutely right. It’d be over the top. Yeah.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:14:30] If you went to a hotel in Vegas, what would you get?

Erwin Szeto [01:14:32] Yeah. Yeah. They gathered. You drink for free?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:14:36] You’d be a whale.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:37] Yeah. That’s not a good investment. No, that’s a terrible investment. So, Elizabeth Kelley, we’re running out of time. I always like to give my guests free time to share whatever they want to share but get out whatever is off your chest or words of wisdom that you. That’s really rang true with me. I’m sorry. I don’t share with you the lessons from the pandemic to some ideas. Anything you want. Wow.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:15:04] We’ve covered so much, and we’ve really kind of gone deeper than I thought we’d be able to. And just some of the stuff know that some of the stuff that I think is important. I think if I had to if I had to talk about one thing I think we need to do less of in 2022 and compare ourselves to everybody else. Assume that, you know, what we see on social media is somebody’s real life and then feel like, you know, we have shortcomings or failings based on that. I think if we’re adopting the infinite mindset, then we just say, How do I find the people who are on my team that are going to help me be successful and really focus on what our success looks like and not worry about other people and what they’re doing.

Erwin Szeto [01:15:43] So we were talking before recording that we’re talking about I knew about Amy Dukes, but yeah. Have you read?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:15:48] I have not. I would love to like it.

Erwin Szeto [01:15:50] Okay. There’s a part in the book where she talks about the largest determining factor of whether or not someone’s happy is and comparing themselves to others.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:15:58] And what does she say about it?

Erwin Szeto [01:16:00] She’s just she’s really just quoting a study. Right. And to figure out how. Here’s an example. Here’s the example question. Would you rather make $70,000 today or $70,000 a hundred years ago?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:16:13] Interesting.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:15] All right. What’s your answer? And then for the listener before Elizabeth answers everyone in the show listening, all 12 of you. What is your answer? Would you rather $70,000 of income today or 70,100 years ago? I think either 70,000 per year.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:16:31] I would have picked 70,100 years ago.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:33] Great. What is lifelike a hundred years ago? Oh, it was tough, right? It was.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:16:38] Really tough.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:39] Anything. Life expectancy was.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:16:41] Definitely shorter than it is now.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:43] How easy is it to get clean water?

Elizabeth Kelly [01:16:44] Yeah. No quality of life 70 years ago. Unless you’re really rich, right? 100 years ago?

Erwin Szeto [01:16:49] Yeah. No apple watches and diamond rings or glasses. Yeah. Right. Crazy. Yeah. But if you made $70,000 a hundred years ago, you’re. You’re rich, richer than the king, probably. But your quality of life. Yeah, very interesting.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:17:10] That is. That’s really neat. What about you? What would you have said?

Erwin Szeto [01:17:13] Well, knowing that they’re bit flippant about it that way, if I rather today because life is good today. Right. Yeah. You know, especially look at the Canadian free health care. Yeah, I look expectancy is like 77. Yeah. Right. Depending on who wins, the election will play a free dental for free pharmaceuticals. Yeah. I smartphone. I can argue with people from different countries in the world. Look at our whole you have a dishwasher that’s stainless steel.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:17:43] But let me ask you that, then. If everything is better now, then why do we have, like the mental health issues that we have? Like they’re talking about anxiety and children being off the charts. So what is it about society now and our world now? That’s that. Like, did they always have the did the children have anxiety 100 years ago and we just didn’t know. Like there’s a lot of other health measures that maybe were better back then. Things were simpler, there were less expectations, there was less pressure, there’s less stress, there was less workaholism.

Erwin Szeto [01:18:18] It’s just. So one of my beliefs is that things are much easier today. That’s why we have. So, for example, I come from a family of immigrants. You know, just two generations ago, food risk was a major issue. Yeah. You’re your family with your consumed with.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:18:37] Finding food.

Erwin Szeto [01:18:38] Finding food, hustling for food or growing food. When you’re that razor focused, you don’t have time for anything else. Hmm. Right.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:18:47] I wonder, too, if it has something to do with if you’re growing your own food and everything, you’re much more active. Whereas as a society, we’re in general more sedentary now.

Erwin Szeto [01:18:55] There’s also that. One of my neighbors is a child psychologist in the public school system. Mm hmm. And I don’t think it’s just talked about enough, but he says, yeah, drug usage is way higher among kids, like. Like riddle and stuff like that. But what else is higher among kids than ever? Screen time. Yeah. Right. Versus I don’t want my kids any screen time. Not. Not, not none. Mm hmm. But they might watch an hour a week.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:19:22] That’s impressive.

Erwin Szeto [01:19:22] Right? And I’d choose it, right? The choices are limited. Right.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:19:27] How do they feel about that?

Erwin Szeto [01:19:28] I love it. They read books and stuff and that’s awesome. Right. So again, like, I’m just making conscious decisions to be proactive. And it’s hard. Admittedly, it’s hard. Ask any parent. It’s just hard to keep your kids off screen time. Yeah, I’m not judging. I do have a nanny. That helps. Right. That’s how I make it happen. But, yeah, but I think I think I think a lot of mental challenges come from just like if you if you do accept what’s coming in. So you watch TV all the time? Mm hmm. So you watch Fox News all the time. You’re gonna be angry. Mm hmm. Right. You read certain media, you read any. You read any mainstream media? Often they’re trying to scare you. Right. So how are you not surprised that people would be fearful. Fearful. Mhm. Absolutely. Fearful. Upset because media all sorts of stuff is just trying to trigger you. Because that’s something, that’s how the media makes money these days since they can’t. So they don’t have classified ads anymore. We can’t sell advertising. Right. The Internet destroyed those businesses. That’s why they’re all focused on triggering you. So, yeah, can you see why? And then like, you know, against Facebook, Instagram, like they know and it was just in the news last week. They know they’re not healthy for people. Yeah. So maybe look away. Yep.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:20:45] Absolutely.

Erwin Szeto [01:20:46] Yeah. Yeah. So I think that’s why. Yeah. I mean, simpler than we think it is. The problems are simple now. It’s. It’s simple, but. Yeah. Put the phone away.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:20:55] Yeah, it requires discipline.

Erwin Szeto [01:20:56] They’re not going to book a library. It’s free. Yeah. All right.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:21:00] Go enjoy.

Erwin Szeto [01:21:01] Nature. And there wouldn’t be libraries 100 years ago either. Well, yeah, we wouldn’t be driving to Kirkland Lake.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:21:10] Well, you might, but it would take a week, not a day.

Erwin Szeto [01:21:14] Elizabeth Kelley, thank you so much for coming on.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:21:16] It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Erwin Szeto [01:21:18] Driving all 7 hours just for the show and then leaving immediately after 7 hours again.

Elizabeth Kelly [01:21:25] Thank you is my pleasure.

Erwin Szeto [01:21:35] 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 to my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s 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. Never forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St Catherine’s, Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more, register for free for my newsletter at WDW dot Truth About Real Estate Investing Dossier. Enter your name and email address on the right side will include in the newsletter when we announce our next Free Stock Hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell, I love teaching and sharing the stuff.

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