What if you were living someone else's purpose?
Yes, my friends, that's exactly what happened to me.
Although I didn't know it at the time, but that was what I was doing.
Now, mind you, it was a pretty cool purpose.
Once I got clear on what my purpose was, my business trajectory completely changed.
In fact, you could say my life changed for the better.
And I got to share this story just a couple of weeks ago at the Okanagan Real Estate Investors Group in front of a live audience.
It was fun to do that.
And I got to meet some amazing people.
And I shared with them my backstory and how I became real estate investor to what led me becoming a realtor and having tremendous success there.
But the cool part of the story was I started getting trained on becoming a real estate investor and in realtor when I was just a kid.
And I share that story.
And also maybe more importantly, how two words changed my entire life.
which has led us down a completely different journey.
The neat part is the people that are in attendance, they, you could tell that they were just having a great time tuning into what I had to say because maybe it was relatable and
it really hit home.
But I got to tell you, knowing your purpose and getting clear on that will change your business.
So I'm to play that, that audio recording now.
I hope you love it.
Remember two words changed my life, which has changed so many, allowed me to change.
and help change so many other people's lives.
I hope you enjoy it.
Here's the recording.
Julie, thank you.
I appreciate it.
It's a great, honor to be here.
And I love that message of stopping so you can start something.
We can learn a lot about that tonight.
And maybe my story ties into that.
I'll tie my story into that.
The power of one, and I'm share with you my journey through real estate and kind of how I ended up here in the Okanagan.
and all that kind of stuff and how I bought a number of properties all without my own money.
I think I bought 50 properties and I didn't put a dime in on deposits or down payments or anything.
We use joint venture partners for all that kind of stuff.
And I'm sure some of you can relate to that already and how and why we did that.
Out of today's conversation, I'm going to be a little bit.
vulnerable, and I'll share with you kind of, you know, some of the deeper parts of my life and why I do the things I do, and maybe it relates to you.
And I truly believe my career trajectory, we can call it, of creating opportunities for others changed when I got real clear on why or what my purpose was.
And I'll share with you tonight what that is.
And my goal for you is you can take that and perhaps it ignites your purpose or provides some clarity to what you're doing and
When Julie says, I've helped thousands of people, I actually, I have.
And I host a lot of online videos, all that kind of stuff, whether you're an investor or a realtor, there's probably, I've done a video for you.
The cool thing is, I didn't know I was gonna do it.
And that's part of my story.
And there's two words that changed my life, which is,
why I'm here.
And I'll share with you what those two words.
I'll share with you also a little bit of some practical things that you can do in your real estate investing or any type of investing right now.
Does that sound good?
Sounds good.
Okay, good.
And I might ask you questions, so don't be afraid to respond.
In fact, I want you to respond.
Have you ever, ever said something or acted upon something and you've ever felt like this before?
I'm hearing some giggles and yeses.
Yeah.
It could be something that somebody's asked you a question you instantly regret.
Right?
I know I have.
It could be something that you've done that you instantly regret or perhaps we don't even know what she's feeling, but a lot of you, a lot of you connected with her just in her
look, right?
Whether it was
fear or excitement or what did I just do or I don't know what it could be.
But here's what I know is I can remember distinctly in 2007, Christmas of 2007, my father, and I'm gonna share a lot of stories about my mother and father.
My father, we were over at Christmas at my parents' house.
So my dad says to me, you know, the only time I've ever really made money was in real estate.
My father, my parents were serial entrepreneurs.
So if you could do it, they've done it.
Anything, multi-level marketing to the U-Naver, they've done it.
We'll get into that.
And in that one sentence led to, Garrett, I'm going to be buying some properties this summer.
I didn't know what that meant.
And I didn't even know what I was saying, but all I said was this.
Without skipping a beat, I said, my wife and I have been married for maybe 10 years at that time.
I said, we're in.
Fast forward, that was 2007.
I can't do the quick math, 15, 16, 17, 17 years.
I can tell you my life has changed over and over again because of those two words.
And the opportunity that has been opened up for us is incredible.
The cool thing is, what I didn't know then that I know now because the hindsight's pretty clear, right?
2020, right?
I've been able to...
helped so many different people, whether it's been helping them buy a property as a realtor or partner with a property or the types of tenants that we're working with or the
story that I get to share, that one thing changed.
And I'm sure you've thought, people have asked you over and over again, why are you investing in real estate or like all those horror stories that we're talking about at the
beginning, right?
There's so many people that would never do it, but there's also that.
fine small group that are willing to take chances.
And that's what we did.
It was all about taking a chance.
The cool thing is, those words had a tremendous amount of weight that I didn't know.
And I got a picture of a buffalo here.
This is a weird little sidetrack, but I think it's a kind of a cool image to put up.
A buffalo will stand facing the storm.
You know that?
Do you know why a buffalo, well, do you know why we think a buffalo does that?
We never asked a buffalo.
Do you know why do you think a buffalo does that?
It faces the storm.
sees what's coming, but we believe the buffalo faces the storm because it'll get through the storm faster walking through, walking towards this one.
And sometimes our words have that type of power, right?
The other cool thing is sometimes we need the courage to say yes as well as no, right?
What are you gonna stop?
What are you gonna start?
And sometimes,
I will say you could probably take out that word courage and also be naive to say yes.
Right?
As I think I was when I said to my dad, we're in and like, you know, we ended up buying 50 for some odd properties and doing all sorts of crazy stuff.
didn't know what I was doing or what I, what I had signed up for.
The other neat thing there is there's a moment of trust where put up your hand if, if you're buying properties with partners, whether it's joint venture partners or, or what
Yeah, a lot of us and I'd say most of us in here, some sort of partnership.
in fact, I think we all are kind of take a step back because who's our biggest partner when we buy a property, Greg?
The partner.
OK, that's probably a perfect answer.
Yes, your actual partner, as well as I was going to say to the bank, right?
The bank is our biggest partner.
I like that answer.
I think I I got to run with that.
But there's a moment of trust.
And it's so much easier to buy properties with someone that's already done it before.
So much easier to do something like the jump off a cliff in a sense, right?
With someone that's done it before, right?
Cause they modeled the things that you're supposed to do and you're going to follow that.
Another piece of this too is, we said that there's joint venture partners in here and you're raising capital and everything like this.
And, and I, here's what I do know.
No one will invest.
in a property before they invest in you, right?
They're not saying yes to this great opportunity you brought them.
They're saying yes to you.
I, where that became so clear to me is, I have friends, I'm from Ontario and I just moved here three months ago.
And I got to tell you, it's like, if you want a new person, a person that just moved here, you want their opinion on what I think Kelowna is?
I think,
Craig, you just moved here too, we'll call it three years ago as well.
Like it's all the nicest, coolest people in Canada decided to come to one city and call it Kelowna.
Everyone's got a great opinion on where you should ski, where you should bike, what wineries to visit and breweries to go to.
But I got to tell you, we were loving it.
It is very cool.
A moment of trust though, is simply this.
I had friends...
Joel and Andrea called me up a number of years ago.
They knew that I'd been investing in real estate and had some significant success there.
said, Karen, we got an opportunity about rent to own.
We don't know a lot about it on paper.
This looks like an amazing deal.
Could we take you up for coffee so you can kind of give us the ins and outs of it?
Because they know I've done a lot of that.
Yeah, no problem.
So I go sit with them, learn about their opportunity, learn about what's important to them, that type of thing.
I share the good, the bad, the frustrations with rent to own.
the great stuff and everything.
And I'm just sharing.
I didn't think anything of it.
And I get a call about a week later, Joel's on the phone because Gary can put you on speaker.
Yeah, yeah, no problem.
I said, well, Joel says to me, just want you to know, we're not moving ahead with that rental opportunity.
Well, we have a question for you.
Yeah, sure.
Go ahead.
We want to know if you're able to invest with you instead of this other opportunity.
I had to think.
back for a moment.
I like, well, yeah, the answer was yes, by the way, if you're wondering, of course you can.
The cool thing is though, I showed up and I wasn't being a salesperson.
I wasn't trying to solicit, you know, opportunities and that type of thing.
I was just being my authentic self.
They were investing in me.
We're not buying anything, three properties together.
And, we're, we're great, friends.
And like I said, they are investing in me.
I think probably had nothing to do with it.
The opportunity, the fact that I was able to share with them authentically, what was great about the opportunity, what perhaps they should look for in the opportunity.
And there is a huge, not normal, I wouldn't call it a moment of trust, it's just trust, right?
It's just trust.
The other neat thing too is, and this perhaps didn't come to my awareness until I was a little bit, I am also 51.
So maybe when I turned 50, I started learning or thinking more about my legacy.
I didn't know at the time when I said yes to my parents 17 years ago, we were going to start buying properties, that it would start that legacy dream that I'd always had.
Because we had a young family of two kids at the time, about to have a third shortly after that.
I was in full on parent mode, right?
We probably all remember some of those days if we've been there.
But creating wealth for me is not necessarily always about creating money.
Really creating wealth for is time.
Time that I can now work.
semi part-time for that brokers back in Ontario and manage 10 different offices and that sort of thing.
it's really part, I created a part-time so I can enjoy life out here.
And that is what all of that has been able to do and what Willis State's been able to do for them.
Let me tell you my backstory.
We all have a backstory.
This is my picture of my family.
I think I'm 18 here.
I have three siblings.
There's my mom and dad.
My parents immigrated to Canada, probably like many other parents did in the early, early, early 70s.
And my both my mom's dad and my father's dad died at an early age.
And my father, like I said, is a serial entrepreneur.
So where do you learn that?
If no one's modeling that for you, you just go do it.
That was my dad.
He just does it.
My mom's my mom's the bookkeeper, the accountant.
She's now an accountant.
Well, that's everything.
So you can see how those two roles come together.
And I started investing in real estate, not 17.
probably about 40 years ago, without me knowing it.
was my parents, as I said, were buying properties back then.
And I would get sent to properties to go cut the grass.
I couldn't figure out why I'm cutting some strange, complete lawn, right?
And we'd probably all been there.
If your parents owned properties, some painting rooms that I would never sleep in or maybe even see again, all that kind of stuff.
And in my teenager years, I actually thought it was normal living in Ontario, just outside of Toronto that...
Every family where I lived had multiple problems.
I that was normal, or at least normal to me.
And it wasn't until I was probably in my mid-20s, maybe into my 30s, I realized that's not normal.
Especially after you get your first mortgage and you have a couple of kids, you're how did we make ends meet?
That's definitely not normal.
And the cool thing here is I was being modeled how to be an investor at such an early age.
was being modeled for the art.
Do we have realtors in here?
or any sort of sales, of course Kelly is, anyway, we all do sales.
If we're all attracting joint venture partners, right?
Or they're like, I was being modeled, I ought to be a sales person, probably at the age of seven or eight, nine, 10.
Okay, for some you won't remember this, but for others you will.
Trivial pursuit, yes?
Yeah.
I think, correct me if I'm wrong, it came out around 1982 or 83, we'll call it.
And my father looked at this game, it was gangbusters.
Everyone talked with this game, trivial pursuit, a trivia game on cards if you've never seen it before.
And my dad looked at it, Julie, you might appreciate this.
He said, we need a Bible version of this game.
Nine months later, my dad comes from a background of being a printer, printing presses and that whole thing.
And within nine months, not only he had written, him and my mom and another partner wrote 2000 questions.
from like a very beginner age.
could take a five-year-old and ask questions to like a theologian.
You could ask these types of questions.
It was kind of cool actually.
And they had developed the game, packaged it and sold it.
Now in 1983, there's no internet.
So how do you sell a cardboard box game?
Door to door.
He would literally take us on family vacations, packs all these games or boxes in our motorhome that we had.
And we would travel around Canada and the United States going from at that time, I guess it was quite popular in Christian bookstores.
And we'd walk in with the three kids or whatever and four kids, well, sometimes three, because this one, Angela, is 12 years younger than me.
In our family, there's a joke, before Angela or after Angela.
Did we do all these vacations before Angela?
So I think Angela's born by then.
In any case.
They speak to store manager, please.
Store manager comes out and I would seriously sit there and watch my dad sell 10, 50, a hundred of these games to these store managers.
10 years old, I couldn't care less.
But when I became a realtor, I remember these things, right?
And I remember not how to sell.
I remember what it took to sell.
that, my parents modeled this incredibly was connecting with people.
And it's why, you know, we bought all those properties and I'd like to say we had 50 different joint venture partners.
We actually, I think we only had about four or five because they want to come back and do it more and more with you, right?
And it's just able to connect with people.
like my parents modeled that, incredible.
Fast forward now, we're buying our properties and let me tell you about how we bought our first three properties.
This is kind of a neat story.
19, 2008.
So there's two things that happened in 2008 that I remember.
One, we bought our first three, actually four properties that year, that summer, and then the stock market crash, right?
Well, we bought our properties in July and we had negotiated to buy a five-plex, four-plex and another five-plex all from the same investor.
He was retiring in his eyes.
And how we negotiated at that time, some of you can appreciate this.
He provided us with venture take back mortgages for 15%, which meant they would go in second place of our first mortgage, which is 75 % loan of value on the first mortgage.
Then his 15, which meant we came up with 10%.
Cool.
During that same time, that's when we joined another investment club like this, Rain, and we started to learn about joint ventures.
Now, my dad, like I said, had been buying properties for many years with his buddies, and him and his buddy would just sit around the table.
He asked, go buy a property.
Okay, let's go do it.
Well, now we had an actual structure of what a joint venture could look like through contracts and different setups and scenarios.
And I ran with it.
And then we sat down with my dad's best friend and his son, a really close friend of mine as well.
And we explained that we're going be buying properties with joint venture partners.
They loved them.
We told them about the three properties we were about to close on in about a month.
and we were obligated, sorry, obligated on whatever, we were set and ready to close the most properties ourselves.
And at the end of the conversation, Terry, by Dan's friend, says, well, why can't we buy those properties with
And my dad and I looked at each other because we couldn't think of a reason to say no.
We said yes.
And since that day, we've never bought a property without a property.
The cool thing, I don't know if this is cool, the neat thing is later on that year, the stock market crashed.
Terry had just sold a large local lumber mill in that area, invested money with us and invested money in the stock market.
Guess where he came back?
Because the stock market had a bit of a tumble and he lost money there, but he didn't use money in his Ontario real estate, thankfully.
And that bloomed into an amazing partnership.
over the years.
We use that to leverage buying more and more properties.
I use that experience and that knowledge and I was very, very thankful.
Julie, you might be, I'm not sure if you're part of some of these books as well, but I have different chapters in these three books because of my experience that those
properties have allowed us to do.
If you want to talk about rentals, I've done everything you could possibly renovate, do additions to knock over, everything like that.
We were talking earlier how bad potentially the BC Landlord tenant board or the like is here.
Trust me in Ontario, it is just as bad.
Absolutely just as bad.
All those types of things.
But I've been very, very fortunate to have different things like that.
The neat thing is as I move forward, this allowed me to become a realtor.
Why I tell you this is because I found myself in a job.
I was doing telecom for about 15 years.
And I liked it.
They would say I loved it.
And I found out that when you started a small telecom company, you end up working for a bigger telecom company because it just keep getting bought and sold and bought and sold
and so on and so on.
And I ended up at Bell Canada.
And I look around, I was in my, I think I was 35 or 36.
And I now in a union, a unionized job, not the plan that I had for myself at
the absolute top pay I could possibly reach.
And I was in my mid thirties looked around funny enough, I looked around and the guy beside me, my desk, my desk partner, he was 50 kind of the age I am right now.
Like I don't want to be that guy in 12 or 15 years from now.
And a friend of mine said, should go get your Realtors license.
I did.
And the first thing that I learned when I got my license is there are not a lot of Realtors.
or I should say experienced realtors that have the experience of owning investor products.
So if you're a realtor in here, this is a great opportunity for you to leverage that.
A lot of success.
I won't get into all that success today, because I want to talk about something that is really, really important to me.
I said I want to share a purpose.
my purpose, and people will call this the why, and I don't want to get too deep into this, but it definitely is my north star.
And what I didn't realize up until probably, I'm gonna say 10 years ago, where it came really clear to me, maybe a little bit longer than that, 12 years ago, I was actually
living someone else's purpose, but I didn't know.
I felt really good about it.
My parents and my sister,
During that time we started buying investment properties, they also became the directors of a not-for-profit organization back in Ontario that helps developing countries around
the world with clean waters projects, micro businesses, like really cool stuff and stuff the world needs more of.
And I thought the more passive income we can create, it helps them to do real.
That was, that's what I kept thinking.
I kept saying to myself, and I felt really good about it until
you start having your own family, your own kids, and you create your own life.
And I know your why does need to adjust, your purpose needs to adjust as we get older.
My wife and I found it very difficult to have children.
And you're very, fortunate.
18 years ago now, I have three kids.
18 years ago now, we had our first dog.
And two years, exactly, I'm not kidding, exactly two years later, we had our second dog.
And I don't know about you, but when you have two daughters and you're a guy, or maybe you're a mom as well, you kind of want a son.
I don't know.
At least I did that personal, that personal journey.
And sure enough, 18 months later, we had a son.
This family is now complete.
All we need is a dog and don't worry, we've got a dog, right?
This family is complete.
I'm pretty pumped about this.
And I remember
You know, you're getting on the phone telling your family and things like that, that your son's born and they have a new grandson and all that kind of stuff.
And two hours after my son was born, two doctors walk into the room that we were in and didn't recognize them.
They weren't part of the birth or anything like that.
They look at the baby, my son, Tavish, and they're examining him.
And it's all kind of a blur to me, but it's also very clear to me.
They looked at Tash and then they said to Michelle and I, your son has Down syndrome.
To our absolute surprise.
And I gotta tell you, I didn't know, it rocked my world.
A, we weren't prepared for that.
And whether you're prepared for a birth of a child or not, I don't think anybody really has it, is at all.
But I gotta tell you, it rocked my world.
Now, Michelle and I are the type of people that are.
We do our change management, they call it, very quickly.
We get off of that negative piece or that news pretty quickly.
And what I thought I wanted is not what I But I can tell you what I needed is what I got.
My son Tavish is, he's changed my life.
He's changed everyone's life.
There's my family there.
Michelle, my wife, my 18 year old, Karis Brecken, who's 16, Tavish.
which is grade nine, started high school this year, zero health problems.
And I can tell you, obviously my girls have the opportunity to go create their own wealth and their own journey.
Tavish doesn't necessarily get those same opportunities.
He, they, I should say, is the reason why I create wealth, why I create time, why I create an opportunity for her future.
And I can tell you that...
There is never a bad day in Tavish's life.
Never a bad day.
And I don't know if you've been around anyone with Down syndrome or anything like that.
He's pretty much, if it's not this look, it's this look.
I'm steaming something.
Right?
It is, I gotta tell you, it's a blessing.
It has opened up so many other doors, introduced us to so many new people that perhaps we didn't have that opportunity before.
I get to share with them not only about Tavish's story or my story.
The things I can share with them, things that I'm doing to help others.
And I train a lot of realtors.
I train a lot of investors and it has definitely readjusted my purpose.
When I started to figure out that my purpose was for my own kids and Tavish's future and Karras' future and Reckitt's future, everything shifted.
My realtor business trajectory,
completely changed.
2016, got my, I think 2012, 2016, I started a real estate team, took off.
I became the manager of, like I said, 10, 12 different offices.
Everything changed because I got very clear on what I was doing.
Very, very clear.
Which has allowed me to kind of think about this, the PPC, not pay-per-click stuff, but proper or purposeful property checklist.
So when I go and help,
people buy properties.
But when I buy a property, there's, I like things in threes, as you can tell.
Three kids, three questions, three things I can remember.
I use these three things and another three I'll share with you in just a moment.
Then we'll wrap up.
This is a question that I ask myself.
Does this investment align with my financial lifestyle goals?
What does that mean?
It could be a number of different things.
To me, it means does this property create cash flow, appreciation, or other things that I need today?
Do I need some tax benefits from it?
Is it going to create headaches?
That type of thing.
Does it align with my financial lifestyle goals?
The next one here is how does this investment contribute to my long-term legacy?
So is this a short in and out?
When I say in and out, I mean 12 months.
I'm not talking about a couple of months.
Something like a 12 month investment or is this much, much longer?
Is this going to add value to my wealth at the end of the day?
instead of add value to my kids.
Because I don't think enough investors ask that question.
How does this investment affect my little spirit, my little family, my little child?
The last question, really important, and I think this often gets overlooked.
Am I ready to commit to the responsibilities of this investment?
That could be a lot of different things.
Like, I gotta tell you.
I, who loves property management?
Yeah, who's not?
I absolutely hate it.
I, even though I can connect with people, I hate it.
I hate it.
Is this property going to take, you know, create a property management nightmare and that type of thing?
Is this a long-term investment or do I have to look at this from a 10-year perspective?
can I own this?
property for 10 years and can I financially contribute it to the next 10 years?
Those are the types of questions.
I got three bonus and then that's kind of it.
I tell all my realtors, all my investors this, if you want to look incredibly smart and perform with anybody, use these three questions.
These ones are good.
I like these because they kind of helps with my bigger vision.
These three questions are the three questions that I use when I buy a problem.
And I can talk a whole seminar on these three questions.
One is how am going to buy the problem?
Colin Craig, do you need lending?
What is that?
All that kind of stuff, right?
Cash, deposits, everything.
The next one is how can I add value to the property?
I think we're all doing that in here, right?
Buying a property, bringing it up to spec, adding income, adding new income streams to it.
The third one, which I've had to learn the hardest way is how can I exit the problem?
How can I sell it?
Is it in an area where people are looking to purchase or am I just in love with the numbers?
I don't care about the area.
Those are bad things, right?
How can I buy it?
How can I add value and how can I sell it?
That's those are the three gems.
That's it.
My friends, my friends, I'm going to wrap up with that.
Do what there's the new podcast I just started.
I do have another one with my, with my business partner, the not so black and white real estate podcast.
And I would be forever grateful.
Okay.
got two things here.
know Kelly has a YouTube channel.
Follow Kelly's and then, and then if you feel inclined, follow mine, but I do appreciate your time today.
And I will hang around your ears if you want to chat and connect.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.