**Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Erwin  

Hello, and welcome to another episode The truth about real estate investing show little Canadian podcasts meant only for Canadian real estate investors, which makes up like one 2% of attaining population, the number 39th ranked country in terms of population. Yet, this little show manages to punch above its weight, with our number 81 ranking in all of iTunes in the business category. So that’s not even the real estate category, let alone investing category, let alone real estate investing, but rather all of business, we’re not even that well rated. Because we have numerous haters. And to the annoyance of my team, I almost never asked for five star reviews, which are much appreciated. I do appreciate all the kind words that people believe that believe on reviews, I do read them all. So I should I should ask for more, as the algorithms actually use reviews and shares and subscriptions to make this show more prominent, prominent on the interwebs. And I don’t know how this all works. But yeah, the more positive stuff more sharing happens, the more iTunes and whoever else, Spotify, YouTube will make this show more available to others, more visible to others. And that’s reached more people who want to learn the actual truth about real estate investing, versus someone who has an agenda sell to sell garbage investments. That’s the honest truth. The truth about real estate investing is a fund’s investments are garbage, they will eventually catch up to you. For example, Paramount equity financial corporate Corporation, I don’t think I need to be worried about being sued by them. Hopefully not Paramount equity and Financial Corporation, they were in the news just recently as the receiver. So the accounting company, which is taking control of the fund is currently suing the developer partner of paramount for stealing funds from the retail investors who are friends of mine, many of them were friends of mine, were just average hardworking, everyday Canadians, as someone who’s filed the case closely because again, I have friends in investment, I have clients invested in the whole fund and investments look terrible. Same with the fund management, hence they were shut down by the Ontario Securities Commission. Rightly so as the fund managers changed the investment focus of their private fund, they weren’t disclosing that they had changed. The original intention of the fund was that it would only fund second mortgages, the funds would be used for private lending on second mortgages on people’s principal residences. Instead, the fund managers pivoted to fund large land developments to build large projects like retirement homes, or converting properties into something else. Again, large complicated multimillion dollar projects that would take years to complete some of them without even permits or the zoning to do so. So the underlying investment changed completely, while offering what I consider and I think most pretty much everyone would consider very low returns to the investor compared to the amount of risk they took on. I take responsibility to learn from this experience. So this may never happen again, to anyone I care about. My lesson is to invest in oneself. I read a lot, a lot of courses and then the day Terry and I we control our assets, as in 90% of our real estate portfolio is under our own names are under controlled and owned by corporations that only cherry and I own. Yes, being more active means more effort and time. But I avoid losses, which is rule number one by Warren Buffett don’t lose money. And we’ve even though we were very boring, I consider our investment quite boring. Same with our clients or clients investing is fairly boring. It’s systematic, it’s repeatable, repeatable and by anyone and they’ve achieved world class results. In turn I educate myself gain experience and create more value for our coaching clients. My business the our real estate team is a bit different than others, though, that we are licenced realtors. And we’ve coached our 40 or something clients into execution of world class investment property. And the numbers show excluding the pandemic run up our clients average five year return from between 2015 to January 2020 was about 341%. That works out to about 68%. Again, this data was done internally by surveying our own clients. We know what our clients own. And we’re pretty good at estimating what those properties are worth. Again, that data was 2015 to January 2020, before the pandemic run up. While the music is pouring out stories of folks struggling to afford higher interest rates on their mortgages. My clients are making travel plans and retirement plans and travelling all retired and some are even buying houses for their kids at these lovely prices that we’re seeing right now. At the wealth hacker conference. Our keynote speaker just the it’s so shared that his secret to success was to pour his heart and soul into each project, whether it be a private jet company, or a marathon through death valley. Yeah, I think you need to give everything you got to train for a marathon through Death Valley, you know, plus 40 degree weather for me, you better believe I poured my heart and soul into managing our eight figure real estate portfolio. And in terms of lessons for our friends and clients to create their own means towards financial peace. No, it’s not easy. But it sure beats losing money and having taxes, governments and inflation eat away at our wages and savings, multiple streams of income. That’s the only way. And it’s only getting worse as my bold predictions for 2023 and beyond. Speaking of bold predictions, in contrast with the Bank of Canada and US reserves are saying my liberal prediction is we’ll see an interest rate cut sooner than they say. So. And this is actually interesting for the first time and as far as I can remember, again, I read pretty much everyone’s economic predictions, I find that I’m usually I’m usually moderate. I’m usually moderate. But I find that I seem to be more. The term is dovish, I believe I believe the market will turn around foremost. And this is like the first time that’s I’m more optimistic than most of what’s out there in the media. My team and I will be sharing more predictions for Kenyan real estate on January 28. At our in person I one meeting, we do have a new format with all the folks working from home are focusing more on and more on networking this year. So you don’t want to miss this. You never know what connection or introduction you’ll receive that will change the trajectory of your career, or career or investing career. Want to learn how big time professional apartment buildings invests, are you interested in multifamily investing, then you don’t want to miss our guest speaker from Equitana Lawrence propone. I’ve asked Lawrence to share his share the benefits of investing in a real estate investment trust, and how the company how their company invests specifically, how do they find deals, and what numbers of returns they need before even considering making an offer. What I want for our attendees is to understand the relative difference between investing passively, versus being completely active. In my humble opinion, one must earn at least three times more than the passive rate to consider being active. Plus, I know many are looking for cash flow. And REITs often make regular cash distributions. So you want to be there, January 28, doors at 8:30am optional mastermind to follow after that, and I will be there as well. From the questions that I’m getting in my email and from you my 17 listeners in my DMs. There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty. And honestly, my team and I can likely be a lot of help. We’ve been at this for a little bit. And if you’re on my email list newsletter, then you’re already receiving events to our invites. And if not, that’s just silly. www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side and you’re good to go. Just this past week, we actually just gave a free webinar on how to sell a tenant ID property. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. And it was great presentation. If you’re interested in how to maximise your income on when you exit your investment property. And as tenanted, you want to have watched that presentation. And honestly, January, but Happy New Year to my 17 listeners. I wish I knew all your names as I showed you out. On the personal note. December wasn’t a fun month for Terry and I even with the wealth hacker conference behind us, we couldn’t get away on vacation that we didn’t try. We had a Caribbean cruise booked as we had credits leftover from 2018. And we had to use them before they expire in a pile of Aeroplan miles accumulated over the last three years because we didn’t fly. Thanks COVID. Unfortunately, on December 16, my daughter Robin complained of an ear H. We swim a lot. So I suspected an ear infection confirmed by an ER doctor at 11am before our 6am flight to Florida, so we had to cancel everything. We had a little insurance. But I found out so he got some money back some money back. But my Aeroplan miles are gone. And yeah, it’s so we still have to make a travel insurance claim was made we still have to get paid. More importantly, we were not going on a badly needed vacation. But we booked everything again for the second week of January. But unfortunately the cruise cost 20% More than the one we cancelled. We do like to travel for cheap. Hence we had originally chosen the cheapest week. But we made the best of the situation aboard a gorgeous ship we ate at least for myself. I weigh too much as the food was excellent. We took full advantage of the complimentary baby City Railway than physically sampling attended the most of the time. My daughter did crafts. Every day she bring home like five pieces of crafts. We hit the beach and the highlight for me was taking the kids snorkelling and open water for the first time. Brewster to do the experience quite well on pretty quickly. Robin How long have my arm the whole time? It was kind of sweets. But kids are used to murky lakes and Ontario.

 

Erwin  

And backyard pools are so small and you can’t see much so it wasn’t a big deal to me, but For them, yes, it was a brand new experience topping into a clear open water that looks like it goes on forever and all the aquatic life was a bit of a shock to their senses. We are but grains of sand compared to the grand expanse that is the Atlantic Ocean. We saw sea turtles, we saw a Stingray, my daughter and I were early to one beach and we were fortunate enough to see an octopus. Unfortunately, no one else on the beach saw it. But fortunately enough, I was looking I was looking in these coral crevices and these hollows in the coral and I happen to see an octopus pretty sizable octopus. It was hiding but I managed to see it. tardiness eight arms dive scuba dive quite a bit. So I know a bit about how to look around and find those goodies. And so we were the only ones done tends to be the only two on the beach to find the octopus. And later we saw puffer fish as well. So it was super cool. Very rewarding. I’ll count that as a Memory Mate with our clients on sorry, clients, kids, kids. Yes, kids are important. It’s not just about business. To this week’s show, we have something different in that our guest is a successful entrepreneur in the world of business and not real estate investing yet, so don’t get mad folks. I’m warning you now. This episode is is not just about real estate investing. But we have an entrepreneur expert who does have. So first off, I view real estate investors as entrepreneurs in the real estate industry, either as realtors, mortgages, marketers and even investors, you’re still a small business owner in race. Nick Kindler is the chapter president of entrepreneurs organisation, a private membership of seven figure entrepreneurs that cherry and I also belong to. As a member of the real estate community, I find learning from entrepreneurs outside of our real estate community, just as helpful. So I learned from both areas from those communities. And just to broaden my learning, I also see the all these memberships being promoted memberships and masterminds that cost 20 to 30,000 or more per year. But I wanted for you my 17 listeners to be aware of other mastermind membership groups that are available, and entrepreneurs organisation which I’ve been part of for three years, I’m big fan of and it cost less than 10,000 a year. So the value in my opinion is there who better to talk to about entrepreneurship than our very own chapter president. Again, kindler, who happens to be my client who’s working with my team member, Chris, the tumtum hook to acquire all the investment properties. Nick is here today to share his experience as an EO member, the president, his entrepreneurial journey, which includes a sadly, a 4.5 million business plan, a $4.5 million business that did go bankrupt, unfortunately, but more importantly, how he bounced back, and also there are lessons in there. So again, I would like you all to avoid the same mistakes. FYI, failing businesses, losing money and letting stuff go is not a fun experience. So do make sure you take notes. If you’d like to learn more about entrepreneurs organisation, please reach out to Nick on his company website can learn and company.com/contact where you can hit me up on email and bar DM, you can look up your own local chapter, you can really just google the name of your city and entrepreneurs organisation. I’ll be at the open house that Nick mentioned on March 9, and you’re likely in downtown Toronto. So I hope to see you there. I’ve got a link in the show notes for it. Nick’s consulting business so to explain an entrepreneur experience, his current business is a consulting business that helps innovative leaders communicate better. For example, I attended Nick’s two day workshop on how to give a TED talk, which was excellent where Nick had deconstructed for us what goes into an excellent talk. And then walk us through how to write our own and also how to deliver it, how to deliver a stage presence. So we learned about storytelling, about joke writing about being vulnerable about body language, learn all those things in a two day workshop. Nick is also the author of impact, simplify, transform and perform pitches and presentations available at www dot impact book.ca Without further ado, I give you Nick Kindler. Hey, what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Nick  

Well, podcasting just sitting here with you is keeping me busy today. No, this is great. Because today I looked at today is kind of like almost like a day off. I have a conversation with you and then a couple of quick calls and then I get to go and be part of my forum group which is part of EO which I’m sure will we’ll talk about at some point. But what’s keeping me busy. I have amazing clients that I get to coach one on one webinars and I’m running workshops that we provide to help leaders become better communicators. I just had a great off site with my team this week planning the the next quarter and we have some really great consulting clients. We’re working with two so I am full tilt like each day is full, full full. I hit the pillow and I fall asleep pretty quick. And I’m having a lot of fun.

 

Erwin  

So I started reading The Miracle Morning again. You’re familiar with Doing what sort of a Miracle Morning Hal Elrod. He’s a 5am. Guy. Yeah. Okay, time to get up. Just curious.

 

Nick  

530 every day. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

Okay. All right, show us the truth about real estate investing. So tell me the truth. Do you get up like on fire motivated?

 

Nick  

What’s my routine? Is that what you’re asking? Or is it

 

Erwin  

like quick just because I just started, started getting up early again.

 

Nick  

So I do I don’t wake up on fire. No, no, I’m I’m fog. But I have a process to get me going. And it’s now been almost a year that I’ve done this process. And it’s changed my mindset completely. Yeah. And maybe it’s kind of taken from the Miracle Morning. So I wake up at 530. I write in my journal for about 20 to 30 minutes, free form thoughts. But I start first with three things I’m grateful for. And so I write those down. And I try and make them different every day, meaning I can’t repeat what you know what I said before. So I’m always trying to find things that I’m grateful for. And then I freeform thoughts. Sometimes they’re like just garbage. It’s just garbage out on the page. And sometimes it’s the impetus for things that I speak a bit, and keynotes they deliver. Or sometimes it’s just problem solving stuff that I’ve got to deal with during the day. And I’m thinking about it already. And then putting it to paper, putting it to paper, a book just like this, and I’m writing a couple of pages down, and then I close it up. And I have a cup of coffee. I Wordle.

 

Erwin  

All that game. Yeah,

 

Nick  

I would do that. If I didn’t get to it today, because the day was a little different. But and then I go for a run or I bike, try and do push ups and sit ups and crunches, I don’t do like a million of them, I just do a small set. And I have not looked at my phone in my email yet. Just to be clear, I’ve worded I haven’t turned everything on, then I go for a walk with my dogs and throw the ball for them come back, then I you know, get going, I either get to the office or I open up my laptop and I start start thinking about the day. If I’m rushed to get to a client, sometimes things get shortened. But for the most part, that’s my process.

 

Erwin  

How long you’ve been doing this?

 

Nick  

I started that process. The journaling. Exercise has always been there. But the journaling and gratitude has been the last 1011 months, okay. And it really has changed my life look at really, I used to be a New York Times addict headlines at a Globe and Mail addict, I would look at what was happening in the world politics. And it fed into a stress of an overall feeling of negativity. And I still look at that stuff, but on my terms and at different times more regimented. So I have a diet of that stuff. And it just, it didn’t serve me. I feel that I’m still well read. I understand what’s going on in the world. But I do it on my timeline when I’ve gotten things out of the way that I want to get out of the way.

 

Erwin  

So that’s not why I invited you on the show. Okay. Well, I think it’s important to bring up because I’ve spoken to a lot of people 2022 is not a good year for many, mostly mental health terms. So for many people’s mental health terms, like no one likes these high interest rates, my community’s a bit divided. Yeah. In that, like, my clientele is amazing. Like everyone knows if you’ve owned property for five or more years, you’ve you’ve done amazing. Yeah, right. So that’s my, that’s my clientele if I want to go outside of my circles, and like other people were like, generally newer, yeah, a lot of them are getting hurt or hurt financially. Sure. But overall, I think mental health has been was a bad year for 2022. It’s just my sense is what I see out there. Well,

 

Nick  

I would say I would say yes. And so is 2021. And so is 2020. And so what I would I prophesize is that we are now seeing ripple effects of what’s happened from COVID. Like there was a there was a lot of stress. I mean, last time I was here, when you showed me around your office, which is awesome. By the way, he was quiet. It was like two of us here, maybe three. And now there’s full house almost like it’s pretty busy. And that was during COVID. Right? Or we were allowed to connect. We weren’t breaking any rules or anything like that. We weren’t on lockdown, but it was quiet people were not. That has an impact on people. When your life comes to a screeching halt, financially, socially, psychologically, that has an impact on people. And I think there’s waves of change and that it comes back and people, it impacts people. So you mentioned interest rates, such as the current ripple, that it may be an impetus for people going, Oh, I’m not good. I’m not doing so well. And I would say just because you mentioned mental health. If anybody is struggling with it, get help. There’s lots of Help to be had, I have a very close family member that struggles deeply with mental health. And I will be the first to say don’t wait for Bell Let’s Talk Day. Talk about it. Now there’s nothing wrong. If you’ve got a cold, and you tell people you’re sick. That’s honesty and truth about your how you’re doing. If you’re feeling very, very low, because you’re suffering from depression, that is the same thing and talk to people about it, get help, you can get help

 

Erwin  

people will help you. So that’s actually really,

 

Nick  

that’s that’s my soapbox. Sorry.

 

Erwin  

That’s really good segue for entrepreneurs. Organisation. EO. Yeah. Which you are the president of the Toronto chapter. Currently the President? Yes. Which is the largest chapter in Canada. Like quite a bit, isn’t it?

 

Nick  

No, we are the second largest to Vancouver. territory, Vancouver, and I believe Edmonton is a close third. And they’re really great chapter as well. Lots of great chapters all across Canada. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

I imagine we have more chapters as a province than other provinces. Where it’s fragmented. Yeah. I mean, that’s all I get. We’re just doing we’re doing off by point, though, is that? You know, I’ve been part of masterminds for years. Yep. Right. And those have been my places to connect, and to talk about problems that we face in business in life. And in my experience, so I’ve been part of EO now. I joined in 2020. January 2020.

 

Nick  

Yeah, so you joined, like, eight months after I did.

 

Erwin  

Right. Right. Yeah. And then the shit hit the fan. Immediately after? Yeah, it was hilarious. So for less than one week. So just a backup for the listeners benefit entrepreneurs organisation, what you’re no better than I am. You’re the president.

 

Nick  

Go for it. Man. I’d love to hear you say it. And then and then I will course correct. If need be,

 

Erwin  

please, please, just some basic highlights. It’s a private organisation, I tell people is basically a co op. It’s a nonprofit, nonprofit, okay, that’s probably a better term. So basically, does not make money. That’s probably a good reason why the cost is very low. It’s been around for quite some time to join minimum a million dollars, revenue us a year, you have to apply. And it’s, it’s quite a bit of commitment.

 

Nick  

It is a commitment, but it’s worth its weight in gold. Is that as a phrase we can say on an investment podcast. It really is, though, it is probably, you know, I’ve got some things that I all say like were some of the best, you know, I love that question. Like, what are the best things you ever bought? Right? You know, and I will say, my dogs, like they’ve been a big, some of them have been a big suck on on financials sometimes. But they brought us so much joy and happiness. And it’s not a thing that we get that appreciates. It’s a thing that I love, right? Or a dog is, you know, a creature that I love, EEO, one of the best investments I’ve ever made in myself. And so you did a great job. It is it’s nonprofit. In Toronto, we’re about 130 members strong. And it’s growing every day, every day, we have people applying and it’s member vetted. So you apply you do have to have a minimum of 1 million US in revenue for your business. And you also have to apply and be able to show that you live the values of EO. And then we vet your members you’re interviewed, you’re vetted by the board, you’re vetted by all members. And then you get to join this amazing not just local group of EO Toronto, but the region and the global community. And it’s a powerful community. And I think I’m going to keep going if that’s alright, and explain why it’s a powerful community. Because before you

 

Erwin  

do that, yes, sorry. Go ahead. It’s been a while since I’ve been tested on what the values were. So

 

Nick  

don’t do this. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me. I’m gonna I’m gonna have to refer to them. Because I cannot remember off the top of my head. I know be bold. Yeah, people, you know, and I’ve turned my, my phone off in order to do this. I should have known you’re going to ask me, but I’m going to look them up.

 

Erwin  

He’s had to fill these out in my application. Right? Okay, so the values are yours.

 

Nick  

It’s brutal, because I’m terrible with these kinds of recall. So I’m sorry to all my EEO members that I didn’t remember this, but trust and respect, thirst for learning, which is one of the reasons why I love this organisation. Think big, be bold, and together we grow. And that last one is a huge one for me as the current president, our theme for the year is stronger together. You know, we’ve came out of COVID and I want people to recognise as this community that we really are the sum of our parts, like we are stronger when we work when we collaborate when we share, and we grow together. And, you know, one of the amazing things about EO and those values is that you have to have those when you get in. And then one of the things that I’m doing today is participating in one of the, one of the really the 10 polls, if you will, of EEO is forum. And so when I leave here, today, I drive into the city. And I’m going to have a three and a half, four hour meeting with eight individuals, all who embrace these values, and all will share what is going on in their personal lives, in their family lives and in their business lives. Because as entrepreneurs, we can sit here and you know, we didn’t know each other and we didn’t have this ego connection. What might happen is, hey, nice to meet you. How are you? Good. What do you do? I do this, what do you do? Great. Tell me more about your business. Here’s what we do. Here’s what we do. Great, superficial. But

 

Erwin  

no, definitely want to put on social media.

 

Nick  

Exactly. Exactly. But because you and I know each other through EO. And we’ve met we we’ve not we’re not informed, but we’ve met at events and we’ve chatted before I can remediate. We’re sworn to privacy, and we’re sworn to privacy, we can dive quickly and deeply into challenges, real challenges, like how are you doing? Cash Flows concerning me right now? Oh, well, have you experienced this or this? Oh, I haven’t. Why? Well, because when I experienced this, let me share what and this is a big part of what EO forum is all about experience sharing, we can get to a better place faster. So my relationships with people in my form, are incredible. But I also have friendships, real deep friendships with people that I sit on the board with, that I’ve met, just through learning events that are other members, that I also trust, I trust that what I share with them is not going to be broadcast to other people or shared at a cocktail party, that they get what I’m going through, because likely they’ve either experienced it, or they know other people that have experienced it. Because I’ve

 

Erwin  

gone to the forum training just recently, again, no nice, just the online stuff. And for folks, just to clarify, again, the four by forum, the more common term, the mastermind, except that we are we are we have a defined process process, we’ve had to go through mandatory training, our form is committed to 10 meetings are more commonly referred to as mastermind meetings. And also we each are required to share our what we call Top 5%. Yeah, or the 5%. Right. And I love it to top 5% And bottom five percents. Right, right, the good news and the terrible news that you don’t share with anyone else, right. And so

 

Nick  

it’s cathartic. I mean, that’s the word that comes to mind. It’s cathartic, you can celebrate those wins. And there is a process by which you do this, like if somebody in my forum group and it doesn’t happen very often is skating by and not sharing the real 5%. And that that 5% is what’s really going on beneath the surface. What’s really going on in your family, what’s really going on up here in your in your brain, and what’s really going on with your business. And if everything’s great, then I’m not as interested, I’m not looking for drama, and tragedy, although we’ve supported and we will support people who are going through tough times. And that’s one of the reasons why we are there we are there at forum, or they can pick up the phone and I know I can pick up the phone and call any of them at any time, by the way, to who will support me because they know I’ve got their back and I’ve and they’ve got mine.

 

Erwin  

So I’d say so these are some of the deepest relationships people have anywhere in their lives, sometimes even more deeper than their spouses. Sometimes even deeper than some cases.

 

Nick  

In some cases. Yeah, that’s very true. And, and I would say that’s unfortunate. For some, and also what a wonderful opportunity. Because it’s together we grow, right, let’s grow let’s learn how we can have better relationships and and look, EO we’ve just touched on forum but I’ve talked about how we’ve chatted and met many times and learning opportunities. We’re gonna go to the one coming up next week. And you know, we host incredible learning opportunities once in a lifetime learning experiences for entrepreneurs that want to take their business or their personalised or their families to the next level. I know that sounds like an odd way to position it. But, you know, we’ve, we can have speakers on negotiation and marketing, but we can also have speakers that come in and talk about how to have better relationships. How to better sex lives. I mean, it’s it’s everything.

 

Erwin  

It’s comprehensive. It’s holistic. Yeah, right. We had the speaker there. We’re sorry, the author of five love languages, I think was his some pretty heavy pandemic times there might have been two years ago, I forget. Yeah. Yeah. And that was awesome. And it was available to everyone. Was it not? Yep. Every evil, every evil member across the globe? Yes. And yeah. And again, we got the author. Yeah, that’s pretty, that’s pretty. And it didn’t cost us any extra.

 

Nick  

That’s the thing is, you know, there is an investment when you first joined. But it’s actually not ridiculous considering? Well, I can tell you that within minutes of joining this organisation, I was able to find the right lawyer to help me with something I was able to find the right, I was looking for something for my home. So I got a supplier that through EO that had the right supplies, and an incredible cost. So I saved 1000s of dollars there. And I saved hours and hours of stress and probably more than 1000s of dollars on the lawyer. And that’s all within six months of joining you. Not to mention the support that I received from my forum group. So I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, this is my little pitch if you’re an entrepreneur in Toronto, but I can’t even go beyond if you’re an entrepreneur in a major city centre. And you’re in the States or anywhere around the globe, there’s very likely an e o chapter in your city, we’re all over the world, I want to say over 140,000 members across the globe, that number is slightly off, I think maybe 135. However, if you’re building a business, that’s about a million dollars in revenue at US dollars, or if you’re close to it, go and look for that EO chapter because number one, there’s an accelerator programme e o a entrepreneurs organisation accelerator as part of it for you. And it’ll take you from 250 500 up to a million and then you can join EO. So just to

 

Erwin  

add in there from my experience of entrepreneur, yo a the accelerator programme, I’d highly recommend it for anyone, especially if they did not do business school. If they had no formal business training. It is Chris’s crazy and expensive. Yeah. And the people that are in it and the teach it. So understand. I came from business school. Ah, okay. The people who are teaching are largely academics. Yeah. They may have a business as a consultant as somebody operated a business of one themselves. Right. But they were never in our world. Yeah. So they don’t have the same experiences. They can never talk to you about like how to fire someone right now. Things like that. Versus again, yo, a Do you remember the price? Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m putting you on the spot. Show we do need to talk about the investment.

 

Nick  

I don’t remember the price for ELA. I’m sorry. I don’t but here’s the thing. If you want to know more about eo will my email be

 

Erwin  

your email, I wouldn’t recommend giving okay.

 

Nick  

If you want to go to if you want to go to that, go to your website, or your website, you can go to my website then you can go to info at Kindler and company.com. Got it. I’m happy to share with you anything and point you in the right direction. There’s chapters all over the world. There’s chapters in Toronto, there’s chapters in southwestern Ontario, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, I keep buying Well, yeah, and ELA is a great way to get yourself fast as an accelerator to a larger business. And then if you want to sustain and scale your business, and have a good life, be a good person be a happier person. eo is the ticket. I’ll share a quick story just on this because I never actually thought about that specifically, until recently, Shane Bennett and his wife Shawn, were over for dinner, just before the holidays. And when I sat on the board, serving under Shane became very close to them. I just really liked him as a leader I follow and I he’s he’s been a good friend and a mentor as I’ve taken on this role of a president of the chapter. It’s pretty amazing. He’s an He’s an amazing man. I love him. And, and his wife’s amazing too. We’ve all become very good friends. And I raised the glass I said, Hey, Shane, I just want to say thank you for being such a good friend and a good leader and my wife’s interrupted me which I thought was kind of weird because I I’m gonna go further and she goes, working with you was exceptional for NEC and I just need you to know that EO changed his life. And I was like, my wife is not dramatic at all. She said, it was changed him. She’s a better leader. He’s a better entrepreneur. He’s a better person, ever since he’s joined this organisation. And I sat back and went, Okay, I guess I better stick around.

 

Erwin  

I did not authorise that statement.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Well, in that that means a lot. She’s not a highly emotive and declarative person. Like, she’s certainly speak her mind. But I found it interesting that she felt compelled to say that and

 

Erwin  

I should clarify, I mentioned to you before we were recording that, even though we’re talking about entrepreneurs and businesses, I always consider real estate investors to be small business operators. So they are, by definition, an entrepreneur, just that they’re in the industry of real estate investing. Yeah, absolutely. So I think this everything we’re talking about today applies to them. Accelerator programme, like has, like the accelerator days, everything that they have for the for each year. Yeah, for each year. And basically the main pillars of business, like cash flow management. Yep. Which is a big problem these days are who the people they call people but more people out here, management people management, more people know it as HR. Yep. Strategy day and execution. Yeah. All right. And it’s two year cycle to go through. So every two years, it’s those done there. We start over. Yeah. But again, like I attended these, I paid a lot of money for business school. People are paying way more today because I’m old. So I paid. I paid a lesson fleet and trace for business school. People today are paying like, double triple what I paid. And what what do charges for, for these courses? Like?

 

Nick  

Yeah, that’s great. And there are a lot of members of EO that like to go to those just for learning and bring their staff. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Erwin  

Because I bring my staff member to next week’s workshop on marketing from a branding. Yeah, I’m excited for that. Me too. Yeah. I don’t think what else wants to ask my experience as well feel free to reach out the usual Pat channels. But yeah, that’s enough about yo. So actually, it’s great to have you come on talk about yo, because I haven’t been a member that long. And I’ve been in business that long either. But your successful entrepreneur.

 

Nick  

Define successful entrepreneur? It’s hard to say. Yeah, exactly.

 

Erwin  

And also, we have this confidentiality thing.

 

Nick  

Yeah, absolutely. But before we switch gears, I just I do want to just say one more thing about EO, which is that you get out of it, what you put into it, I think it’s really important. It’s like, if you sit there and expect everything to come to you. It’s like anything in life. It won’t. And I’ll just finish by the I know, we’re switching gears into entrepreneurship, and I’m happy to but I just I think I’d be remiss to say, you know, the, the working the forum experience that I’ve had the going to learning days and learning experiences, going to the conferences, going on convexity was a major back city, and Victoria is coming up in June, going to I get to go to Cape Town to go to the global leadership conference in April. There’s all kinds of learning. Also, because I volunteered to be on the board, which was also a growth and learning opportunity. I think it would be remiss if I didn’t say, you know, it’s a wonderful organisation, it thrives on the volunteer on the volunteer community. And so I’m one of those many, many volunteers. And I guess I would just say, join and get involved. And also for all those volunteers at EO that may be listening to this. Thank you. It’s awesome. Thank you for everything you do. Because you

 

Erwin  

are a volunteer president to absolutely you don’t get paid like a $400,000 salary.

 

Nick  

No, no, I don’t. In fact, I think I might be giving the equivalent of that in time. All joking aside, I love it. And it’s been very rewarding and continues to be

 

Erwin  

my last point about the topic. Is this why the cost is so low is because all these talented people are volunteering their time. Yeah.

 

Nick  

And the people you get to meet not just from your, your chapter, but the region and around the globe are exceptional leaders.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, and this the drilling, this has surprised but I’m paying less than 10,000 for just the membership and that includes many events does include like the bigger ones like Victoria, Quebec City, but the local ones almost Everything’s Included. Yeah. Including with the holiday party, which is a great party at the at the Grand bed. Okay, enough about that. So again, the show is about investment though, before self development, invest in yourself. The value here is incredible.

 

Nick  

Absolutely. Yeah. And again, reach out to either one of us if you’re interested in in learning more,

 

Erwin  

actually. I don’t know how it works these days is pre pandemic, other members invited me out to events? What is available to people interested in attending events? Well, who are non members

 

Nick  

if people are interested, first of all we’re going to be doing. I don’t know when this comes out Monday. Oh, it comes out Monday. Wow. Okay, so in March, and I might want to open up my calendar and look at the specific date, I believe it’s March the ninth. And I keep turning my I think it’s March the ninth bear with me while I look, we’re going to be doing a test drive, which is an opportunity for you see ya March, the ninth See, sometimes my recall works. It’s called the entrepreneurial experience. And it’s going to be downtown Toronto, at the national club. And Oh, fancy, yeah, we’re doing a national club event. And we’re going to walk people through what our strategic partners have to offer in terms of complementary services that can help their businesses. But beyond that, we’re also having regional leadership from entrepreneurs organisation, talk about all of the amazing things that you have access to that you probably don’t know you have access to. Like, there’s amazing discounts and and services that we as members get access to, like dozens and dozens and dozens of offers, that some of the things we use every day in our business and we may not be aware of. And before it, I’m inviting people who are interested to come to what I call the test drive, or an I don’t call it, it’s called a membership test drive, where you can come and experience and hear a little bit about what eo is all about. And experience a little bit about what this forum thing is all about. And then you can stick around and join us for the entrepreneurial experience event at the national club. So if at dinner and drinks, dinner drinks, schmoozing, you get to meet partners that we work with, you get to meet all the members, and you get to meet the regional leadership too. So it’s a real opportunity. If you’re interested, and you have a business that qualifies, you should definitely come for that 90 minute test drive before and then come afterwards for the party. Sorry, the event I should say, it’s not a party, there’s a little bit of party, but a lot of experience as well.

 

Erwin  

It’s like open food and bar, this kind of a party.

 

Nick  

And if you’re interested in that, just reach out to me and I’ll make sure that you get an invite. All right, awesome. info at Kindler and company.com.

 

Erwin  

I’ll have that in the show notes, folks. If you’re driving, you don’t need to do whatever. Alright, see ya. Yes, I would define you as a successful entrepreneur. Thank you, but hasn’t always been successful. But let’s look at the successes. Your big time. You’re quite wealthy. I bring it up because a lot of marketers are out there telling people quit your job. I’m self employed. Yeah. Not everyone’s fit to be so agreed to be self employed. You know, as an example, a friend of mine a bit of a mentor. When I used to work for IBM, His thing was just even be a consultant to go from employed to becoming country or consultant. He said, I need double. And he didn’t pay double. Because all the BS that comes with being consultant, for example, collecting. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So I don’t argue the same for anyone for being in business for yourself as well. You should be trying to earn at least double what you earn as a salary. And then I’ll even throw it in like, like, this is not the time to try to become a full time real estate investor. It’s just everything is so much more difficult than ever. Right. So yeah, you chose the difficult path.

 

Nick  

I did. I didn’t know. I have chosen it. And I’m glad I did. I guess this is the pathless the road less travelled. Right?

 

Erwin  

Can you tell us about maybe your first business?

 

Nick  

Sure. My first business was I was in comedy. And we can talk about that too, if you’d like. But I was in comedy. I’d had this experience as writer and director and performer in a comedy troupe. And I think either I think it was around that time that we were my wife was pregnant as like, I think I need to start making more money. And so I started I had this idea that hey, we could start selling what we’re doing for fun and making a little bit of money on it to corporate audiences. So literally being a competitor to the second city, like who do does corporate improv etcetera. So improv workshops, custom performances for large events,

 

Erwin  

just apologies in case anyone doesn’t not familiar with Second City. I know Second City for going to improv shows. And they have an incredible list of alumni.

 

Nick  

Yeah, I mean it a second set. It includes John Candy. Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Mike Meyer and Mike Myers was there. Yeah. So you have people who are on the main stage, who performed there. And then they have a school that takes people through from level one to master classes. And I did school, and I had my own sketch troupe from a bunch of people that were in some of them that were in that school with me. And we ended up having we did shows that there’s a real legendary bar downtown called the Rivoli. So we did monthly shows there. We did regular shows that the second, the second city, and we toured different bars and clubs across Canada. And we had our own TV show on CBC for a period of time, too.

 

Erwin  

Because one of my first impressions of you actually took the impression took some time to build, but my impression was, oh, Nick’s really funny. Because you’re the president, you have to get you introduced a lot. You open a lot of shows up on a lot of meetings. Like what makes funny like, how do you do that? And then here Oh, yeah, okay. He’s like Second City. Okay, got it. For A Living,

 

Nick  

I’m not a joke teller. I’m not a stand up comedian. I have tried stand up. And I have nothing but admiration for for the people who can do that so well, because it’s a craft. But for years, I did improv and I put myself out there and we failed. Every week, on stage. In front of people, I’ve been heckled and booed. And then I’ve been cheered. And some of my highest moments were in front of a live studio studio audience at the CBC studios, here in Canada. For those of you listening elsewhere. That’s downtown. We were getting, you know, standing ovations and people cheering and people crying with laughter as we finish our performance. So I’ve experienced the highs and the lows of performance. And when you do that, you also learn how to manage through and muddle through when things aren’t going well. I need five more minutes. Okay, I need to change gears I’m, you learn how to read a room. So that’s one of the reasons why I have that skill set.

 

Erwin  

Interesting. So you’ve actually learned a lot on thinking on your feet have experienced a lot of rejection. A lot of outside your comfort zone?

 

Nick  

Almost daily.

 

Erwin  

Yeah. And then you thought you build a business around this?

 

Nick  

Well, you know, it’s funny you say that. So you asked what my first business was? So just to answer that, that was a business called Creative performance that was kind of outs, consulting, and doing workshops and building shows for large corporate audiences. I had a business partner who was also my housemate in university, my friend Ron tight, who’s now has an exceptional agency, church and state and as a two three time author, and an incredible keynote speaker. So he’s a very good friend, but we were business partners for a very short period of time. That was my first business.

 

Erwin  

And then you still do a lot of these things for your current clientele, do you not in your current business?

 

Nick  

I offer workshops, but not necessarily improv workshops, there are performance aspects to the work that I do for sure.

 

Erwin  

So it was just to clarify, because Because Because I attended your workshop for free.

 

Nick  

You did I gave it as a gift. Yeah, give it as a gift. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

Yeah. So just to for the listeners benefit, because a conscious venue in Ernst and Young’s downtown Toronto tower in I don’t know what the what they call it area, but it’s probably their entertainment area for their high end clients. Yeah. I don’t know how I got invited. But it cost me nothing.

 

Nick  

Got me to split up the water there.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, lunch and dinner. We get to attend your two day workshop on how to give a TED talk in a day. Yeah. So that’s why that’s why I kind of that’s why I kind of extrapolated between the two. And even though it’s not improv it is we did we were out of our comfort zone. Oh, yeah. Learn how to give presentations.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a big part of what I do. So my current business, which is named after me, very selfishly, self centred Lee, Kindler and company, we help innovative leaders become better communicators. And I look at anybody that’s trying to grow a business, make change, do things differently. They’re an innovator. And they’re in especially if they’re a decision maker within an organisation. They are a leader. And so we have a number of different programmes, and that was our TED talk in a day programme. And that one is like a sprint. Right? You are part of it. It’s like we go through the fundamentals of how to give a communicate clearly, how to pitch how to present how to communicate, and then all the way along your building and then we got you up on your feet and you delivered a nice little crisp I think it was the test drive from your day note from your conference.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, I tried some stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I was not nearly as good as the other people.

 

Nick  

You are great, you are great. And what’s awesome about that day, and I, you know, I do those all the time, I was out west working with Marc Anthony group, with their winemakers just a few weeks ago, doing a multi day programme like this. And so I work with leaders and organisations, helping them and deliver these both virtually and in person. And what’s always amazing to me, is you get these folks who are very, very quiet at the beginning, or they seem reserved, or they’ll ask me, because I do coaching we one on one, I’ll connect with them out throughout the day to try and ensure that their messaging is moving forward, it’s getting clearer and clearer. And then these folks get up and they just deliver these awe inspiring messages. I don’t know where out of nowhere. And so there’s some really great, it’s an opportunity to evolve very quickly as a leader and show people, what you’re made of and what he can do.

 

Erwin  

And just for the listeners benefit all other find leaders in leaders in many things, because I believe you have academic leader colleges. Yeah. So my kids are in public speaking classes. And I and for the first time on the report card, it was a quote from Warren Buffett. I don’t know if you know this one.

 

Nick  

No, I’ve heard of Warren

 

Erwin  

was, the quote was something along the lines of invest in how to speak? Because as smart as you are, if you can’t convey it, nobody knows. Actually, I’ve heard that

 

Nick  

I’ve heard that him say that. And yeah, it’s true, I think, look, I think you made a comment earlier about so Is that Is that why you do what you do. And fundamentally, I followed the unique ability approach to building my business, I’d actually just very quickly, I’d gone from running that business that I mentioned, to become a being part and I worked for an agency for a period that did meetings and conferences, ran my own meetings and conferences agency for more than 10 years. And while I did that, I learned about this concept of the unique ability. And I realised unique ability, by the way, comes from the Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan, I believe he may have got it from somewhere else. But that’s where I learned it from. And Dan Sullivan defines unique ability is something that you’re excellent at, and that you love doing, you may be excellent at that you don’t love doing. And there may be things that you love doing that you’re not excellent at. Right? Like I love playing tennis, not excellent at it, right. But my unique ability, I realised as I was going through that programme was I love helping people get clear. And so part of what I was doing in that old in that older business was doing that. But my current business is built completely focused on helping leaders get clear, helping many people get clear at a time. And through workshops and one on one coaching and online programmes. There’s a whole bunch of different ways that we go about it. But that to me, is really important for any entrepreneur. So if you’re an investor, what’s your unique ability? And what what are you really good at? And what are you passionate about, and then build your business on that. And hopefully, it’s on investing in real estate, because that’s what this podcast is all about.

 

Erwin  

It’s not just that because I’ve said many times on the show, like I don’t love being a landlord. But I love where it gets me. I for example, turn to turn on the lose no sleep better financial future. Right. I know my kids are taken care of. Yeah, right. That’s what it gets me. Like for example, I had a call. I literally had a text from my tenant on December 24. The furnace isn’t working.

 

Nick  

Man, that’s a bad call.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it’s bad call. I mean, but you know, up about I’ve been under this long enough make two phone calls, a five minute drive guys goes and goes. And then Thankfully, it was a really minor one of my tents, their patio umbrella had blown up against the house and was blocking the air intake for the furnace. So is that easy. Just remove it, put it away. So the problem the release was a really, really inexpensive fix. Yeah, but you know, pain in the butt. But in the very grand scheme of things. It’s not that big a deal. Yeah, I think people deal with way worse things as an employer.

 

Nick  

Yeah. But but you your business is I mean, that’s one part of your business. But you have, I mean, you train people, you there’s a lot in your business. And so if you don’t mind me asking, What would you say your unique ability is what you’re excellent at and what you love to do? Is my guess is it’s your business is it’s in this business.

 

Erwin  

Just an observation that we’re gonna make money. If I can step back and just observe what I do. Like, for example, the conversations I have with people I find in generally know a lot more than they do. Like for example before we’re talking like I told you, you were successful. I am I, I talk to a lot of people. I have a lot of clients, I have a 400 clients. Yeah, I speak. This is like this is gonna be like the twin ADF podcast episode. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you awesome. And pretty much everyone on the show crazy successful. So I have contexts. And for like the last two years I’ve been seeing a lot because of this, the amount of fake news has been coming out or like the sound bites and the cancelled culture like you’ve said this in the full context, right? Yeah, I always find myself saying that in the full context is that’s this, like, it’s a completely different story. Right? So I find I have a lot of context. And that seems to be my advantage over many, many other businesses and operators, is because I’ve just been around a long time, and also just my drive for continuous improvement.

 

Nick  

Right? See, I was just gonna add to that, like, not only are you knowledgeable, but you’re curious. You’re constantly, right learning, reading. I mean, these books aren’t here for show. Right? You love to read, you love to go. That’s why you’re also at a lot of the EO dance and taking your shop. Yeah. And so interesting. You’d like to provide information and you’d like to learn. And so you build a business focused on a particular niche that does exactly that.

 

Erwin  

And before we were recording about being light, yeah, I’m very well liked by my collections. Yeah. Because they’ve done very well. Right. Right. So and that, that, to me, is the ultimate reward for what I do. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Everything else was painful.

 

Nick  

This is the reality for the world of entrepreneurship is, oh, my goodness, like the lumps and pains and blows that you got to like to embody that you got to take as you go along. Hopefully, they lessen over time, or maybe you just get more calloused. Like, they’re still there. Yeah, but it’s true. It’s hard. It can be very hard.

 

Erwin  

Speaking of. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Oh, gosh, no, yeah. You’ve had some business. Less successes.

 

Nick  

Yeah, I have, look, I’ve been very open about this in the past, you might be able to find stuff of me sharing. So I did a talk on failure once and I shared very openly about how failure has served me. And I believe failure is something that’s serves us if to bodily expression, we fall forward, or we fail forward. So if we fall backwards, if we fall backwards, we’re further behind than we started. But if we fall forward, we’re still further ahead.

 

Erwin  

Can you hear the story?

 

Nick  

What I did? What happened? Sure. I mean, which failure story? Are you looking for? All joking aside, I’ll share it. Because here’s the thing I know, I’m joking. And I’m putting off telling the story. But we fail every day. And if we’re not failing, we’re not trying. So.

 

Erwin  

So that’s a great point. Absolutely. You’ll never, I find even myself. Yeah, so many people fail to start because they’re so afraid of failing. Yeah, just try. But everyone who’s successful has failed many times.

 

Nick  

Yeah, my brother who’s my my best friend. And my biggest fan, and I’m his biggest fan, has always encouraged me to do just say just go for it. We’ve got it. This is this is your like you’ve got what’s the worst can happen. And that question is amazing. What’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s never, it’s never what you think. So I did experience what I thought would have been the worst thing that could happen. And this was post 2008. I had an agency we’d grown it from Bootstrap zero funds zero funds put in to at its highest point, it was a four and a half million in revenue agency. We worked with some of the top pharma packaged goods, retail, and tech businesses in Canada, producing their national sales meetings, product launches, internal communication, newsletters, and all kinds of media that we would do for them. And then post 2008 pharma was a big part of our clientele. And there’s something called the patent cliff where in pharma post 2008, all the big pharma companies dropped in revenue by some of them almost in half. Oh, boy. And so our revenue dropped and dropped and dropped. And I started investing

 

Erwin  

started to just point of clarification, patent dropped as in they can no longer legally defend their products.

 

Nick  

That’s right, sell their products, or they could sell them but defend them because now a patent, generic brand of that brand will come out

 

Erwin  

and it’s cheaper to pay for the r&d in the marketing.

 

Nick  

Oh, no, no. And there’s a service that pharma plays, right. And I’m a big believer in in that model, because they’re

 

Erwin  

paying for all research. They’re bringing solutions to the table. They’re the one risking their necks,

 

Nick  

and their investors are to write their investors. So we had grown we trunk I’d put money in for cash flow purposes to keep us afloat. I did not belong to EO did not know it existed. And by the way, everything that’s happening comes next to me might have gone differently if I belong to EO, I actually think it probably would have, I’d had partnership challenges for about a year, you know, when things are not going very well and a business partnerships usually get rocky, and might only changes everything in relationship. Absolutely. And I had to offer to buy her out. At the time, we couldn’t come to any resolution. And then we hit a point about eight to 10 months later, when we were at the end of the road. And this was very daunting the end of the road, there was really only a couple things we could do, I would have to convince my wife that I would throw another $100,000 into this business to keep it afloat for a little bit of time, we would have to close the doors, send everybody home, or choose three people and try and figure out how to just work on one client. And what we decided to do, because we weren’t working well together anymore, was we were going to lose our shirts, meaning all the money we put in, we would commit to completing every project that was on the books. And we would lay off our staff and close the doors. Oh, damn. So it was about a two month process. In order to do that we had the business had to declare bankruptcy. And that was one of the worst days of my life. Now I’ve had worst days. And I’ve had lots of level sets, since that needs nothing, right? I mean, money. And the business was important to me. I’ve got a whole bunch of other priorities now and ways that I can level set things, but just just know at the time, it was terrible. And when I was done, I thought with all due respect to professional baristas, I was going to end up as a barista at Starbucks. That was my mindset. You’re that low, that low. So what did I do? I thought, Okay, I need people to know how to reach me. So I created a new URL with my name in it. I sent out an email to all of my clients to say, hey, you know this already, because we’d had to let we’d call every single client to let them know it was happening. And by the way, most of those clients said, Why didn’t you tell me? We could have helped you. Why didn’t you tell me

 

Erwin  

where were you two months ago?

 

Nick  

Well, we didn’t. We didn’t talk about the problem. We kept it to ourselves, we were ashamed, but about how we’ve managed cashflow. We were ashamed about how we lost this business and lost that business. But we still had core clients. So I created this URL Kindler and company.com. And I sent out an email to about 100 150 people, clients, saying, hey, you know, but if you need to reach me for any reason, here’s my email. Here’s my phone number. Within minutes, I got emails back saying hey, can we talk. Within days I got offers of work. And I started up a mini virtual coaching and agency. Within months, I had recovered financially because I had no overhead. And within the year I’d more than recovered and I was making a great income. But more importantly, is I started to focus on my unique ability 100% and I created a product that I thought or a service I should say. I remember sitting with my good friend Rob Dryden who is a great EOS implementer Entrepreneurial Operating System implementer here in Toronto,

 

Erwin  

love us learn us through EOC the

 

Nick  

book behind you as you know weapon but anyways, I remember sitting with him coffee for a few times, like what if I created a coaching subscription only for senior leaders to help them get clear on their messaging is like Well, yeah, I could try it. And he was very supportive about the model and ideas. And I sold one. And then I sold another and then I created programmes. And things really started to take off. That’s part one of the story. Do you want me to keep going? Yeah,

 

Erwin  

this is fascinating out of like, going down and burning flames do?

 

Nick  

Yeah, it was a pretty quick turnaround, a pretty quick turnaround. I was full of shame and embarrassment. I feel I couldn’t talk about it for a long time. And then I realised that I needed that needed to happen. I needed to go through that to learn what I was good at what it was what happened. And then, by the way, I’m going to fast forward. This is not part of the story. But when I joined EO going back to that and my First Forum experience, and we did this exercise where we shared everybody’s life experience, flying experience. I actually got choked up emotional because I heard from Lee Four of the people in my forum, the same story, or when some of them went through it two or three times. I’m like, Where was this organisation? Numbers again, 10 years ago,

 

Erwin  

anyways, you’re not alone, not alone, not alone at all. Going back

 

Nick  

to her at the beginning of when we talked about mental health, I’m going to say to the cameras that my camera there, you’re not alone. If you’re watching this, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not. And it’s never, it’s never too much. If you like it,

 

Erwin  

you have relationship problems, marital problems, money problems, investment problems, business problems, work problems, you’re not alone, you’re not.

 

Nick  

So the long and the short of it is I did that business. And then my father got very sick. And I was a solopreneur. At that point, I hadn’t scaled that business at all. And so I just took, I took a moment in my life, and I paused, I reduced my income, I made a conscious choice to turn down opportunities. And I worked with my mom and my dad during his decline, and he passed away. And at that point, I was kind of like, okay, let’s start again. I volunteered at TEDx Toronto, I volunteered the United Way, I started to go like, let’s go out into the community. Again, let’s learn and see what it’s all about. The TEDx thing was highly informative, and formative. And I met an individual there, and we started a new company, that took a lot of the things I started with this coaching model. And elevated it, we turned that into fairly successful one and a half million coaching business. Just to be clear, that’s a high margin business. And unfortunately, after about three or four years, that we once again, I experienced some challenges with my business partner, there was some trust issues that we both had. And we decided to part ways I sold my shares in that business and relaunch Killoran company, just as COVID came in. So I’ve gone through it all man, like I’ve gone through the highs of winning big programmes of building and scaling, I’ve gone through the the lows of losing my business, I’ve gone through the experience of challenging partnerships. And I’ve also gone through the experience of trying to grow a business in during it wasn’t an official recession. But during co technically

 

Erwin  

it was, yeah, all the money in government spent like crazy.

 

Nick  

And I can tell you right now, my business is thriving. I worked really hard, day in and day out to continue to build and grow, find the right team work with amazing clients, and amazing people. I’ve got strategic partners, and people that I work with that just are exceptional at what they do. And my team is exceptional at what they do. And my clients who trust me are exceptional at what they do. There’s a lot to unpack here. All right, sorry, if I went on,

 

Erwin  

no, sorry, fine. It’s just we have so much more to unpack. So congratulations on your success.

 

Nick  

Thank you. I mean, again, it’s a journey, man. I don’t look at it as done.

 

Erwin  

Now. I want some I’m trying to pull some lessons out of you. As a successful engineer. I want to pass on some lessons tomorrow to our clients. Yeah. So you’ve grown a business really quickly from nothing in the middle of a terrible time. Like it was during COVID Like a lot of people froze their budgets. labial freezing their budgets now, do ya, depending what industry but yeah, like 10 for example, though, like they’re all freezing their budgets. Yeah. Loving your planning level and letting people go? Yeah, what I want to ask is like, can you categorise like, what are the three things that you have to do every quarter or month or week to move your business forward? So again, apologies. I’ve been reading my Miracle Morning. So recency bias, is like, there’s all these things we should do. I should walk the dog, I should work, you know, like roulette, remove everything. And what are the three key things you need to do for this to start with, this is investing podcasts, we’ll keep it to business are the three key things you have to do for a business? For example, like for most investors, I would say business development, you need to be making really good connections, build really strong relationships, and really important people on your Power team, as we call it. So often your realtor, your product manager, your handy person, your mortgage person.

 

Nick  

Okay, so I may cheat and this might become four things instead of three. But I think, honestly, you have to start with your health. You’re going to be hit and we talked about this, your pummelling, right and time and again, even as things are going great, there’s curveballs all the time, and if you’re not healthy, and focusing on some fundamentals, so your morning what sort of morning Hey, what’s going on Miracle Morning miracle. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it. I honestly think that taking care of yourself is first. So I know that probably isn’t what you’re looking for from a business development perspective or a business growth perspective. But you can’t manage the insanity of it, because it is crazy to do what we do. And I’m not saying that as a, hey, look what I do. I’m a marathoner or a triathlete, or look, I’m amazing. It’s just kind of crazy what what entrepreneurs do on a daily basis. So take care of yourself, take care of yourself, that’d be my first thing. So the second thing I do agree with business development 100%, one of my foreign mates when I was going through one of my tough times during the early parts of COVID, and I was struggling. He’s like, you don’t have a business if you you’re not selling anything. And so figure out your pipeline, like get your pipeline as full as possible, of potential and then qualified leads, I’m assuming that people are very clear on what their product is. So we don’t need to get into that here. As a as a key thing. I guess one other thing that I’ve spoken about quite a bit in my coaching recently, and in conversation with others, another again, my formate said this to me, because I was I remember having this lunch. And I was like at this turning point going, I felt like a turning point like, Oh, I’m sort of keep hitting this brick wall. You know, people aren’t meeting people. And he goes, he said, Have you asked for help? I said, What do you mean? He goes? No, ask them for help. I said, I don’t understand. And he’s got a several businesses, very successful entrepreneur, because I asked my my clients, and these are very successful leaders for help all the time. That’s how I get stuff done.

 

Erwin  

She give an example of the help I asked for, or like an example from one of our clients. Because I have a big ego. I have travelled?

 

Nick  

We many of us do. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know, there’s an aversion to asking for help, especially in the entrepreneurial side of things,

 

Erwin  

because generally, we’re very driven. And we

 

Nick  

know that we know the answers, but we don’t

 

Erwin  

we least put on the face that we know all the answers.

 

Nick  

So So what’s an example of this? An organiser, I’m not going to use names, because I want to be very respectful of the people that I work with. had an idea I had an idea, working with an amazing colleague of mine, that we could come up with a new solution that would help organisations in you know, how I work with leaders and or in groups of leaders, one on one and with groups to get really clear on their message. Well, organisations suffer from this in a big way. I mean, marketing is not talking to product products, not talking to HR, HR is not talking to whatever it is. It’s just, it’s siloed communication. We’ve seen it time and again, and part of it is there’s translation issues. Sometimes there’s just barriers in general. So I had this idea, like, what if we took this idea of like the one on one, but we figured out a way a process to, to help organisations across. And I worked with my friend and colleague on developing a process. And during one of my coaching sessions with one of my clients, who is brilliant leader, and just such a lovely person. I said, I’m hearing that you have this problem, I might have this solution, we’re developing this thing. Can I ask you, would it be helpful? And can I help you? And can you help me just if I share this with you? He said, Yeah, that’d be great. Because two things happen, right? I might be able to help you. And you might be able to help me. But number one, people want to help. Like, if I were to call you, I mean, you’d need to know me. But if I were to call you to, hey, when can I get your help on something? I’ve got this idea. I want to build a podcast studio like this. How do you do that? What would you say to me? Not now. Right? Like, there’s a part of you that would go Yeah, I I’d like to help like, because I got this I have knowledge. You like to have knowledge and you’re this one of your knowledge and sharing the knowledge. That’s your, as we talked about earlier, your unique ability. So I share this model. He’s like, this is really interesting. Can we talk about this with my team? So we go and have a meeting with the team? Proposal, large project? Because I asked him for help. Right very, very. I didn’t go in asking for the business. I went and asking for help.

 

Erwin  

So I’ll just the real estate analogy is for my clients, especially if they’re looking for to find partners within their community or their family to help to join them in their real estate journey is often tell them like, go ask them to go to coffee. And the help would be, can I share with you what I’m trying to do? Right? Yeah. Does this make sense?

 

Nick  

Yeah. Absolutely. If you’ve got a new product or service, if you’re unsure about how to approach something, it’s why yo exists going back to this forum. And again, it’s you asking for help. In fact, today, I’m doing a presentation on a new product and service, because I don’t want validation, from my my colleagues to say, what would you do differently? How could this work?

 

Erwin  

Alright, we’ll move on number four. What’s that? You said? There’s four things.

 

Nick  

I said. Take care of yourself. Yeah, a pipeline of business. Ask for help. Yeah, I guess it’s not like a plan this cuz I’m gonna walk away from here. But oh, I want to say this. But but for

 

Erwin  

Dorian, no one gets their questions in advance. Yeah. So so.

 

Nick  

So honestly, I would say systems and processes, like everything can be systematised and put into a process. And I’m not a systems thinker. Although my friend and colleague told me the other day, he thought I was really good at it. And I was like, I’m more of a creative, you know, person, I like to come up with new ideas. But when I start to see people doing stuff, like my team, and if it’s taking them an amount of time, all I can think of is, what systems can we put in place? What tools can we potentially purchase? How are other people doing this faster? And that’s not in an effort to be ultra profitable. It’s an effort to make life easier, because life’s better when it’s easier. Yeah, so I would say systems and processes, why, you know, Eos, I’m a believer in, I like to have my coaching has a model, my, my whole book that I wrote is all based on core principles and a model that we follow. So I’m a big believer in using these models to simplify our lives.

 

Erwin  

That’s a great segue in your book, what’s it called?

 

Nick  

Impact, simplify, transform, performed pitches and presentations? Where can people buy it? Amazon, Barnes and Noble, every online retailer, you can go to impact book.ca. And you’ll find videos and testimonials and access to where you can buy

 

Erwin  

1. Excellent. I have a copy not here.

Nick  

Yeah, I should have brought another copy. Sorry, I should have. So I could be doing this. But yeah, it’s available. Were all at all online books, bookseller, sellers, and

 

Erwin  

all over the world. Fabulous. Now, this is an investment show. And we’re running that time machine over time. Thank you for your patience. Oh,

 

Nick  

I’m loving the conversation. I love chatting with you.

 

Erwin  

We can honestly keep you for another three hours minimum. This is an investor show. And before we’re recording, I said you’re successful. We are We are quite well off. Why would you want to invest in real estate? Because that’s why that’s like some of the conversations you had. You’re interested in investing in real estate. Yeah.

 

Nick  

And you and I have chatted about this before the show, and I know some of your teams and working with and looking for, for investment properties.

 

Erwin  

Find by the way.

 

Nick  

Yeah, yeah. So why? Why am I interested in it? Because why should somebody be that’s a very common

 

Erwin  

question for the show is like, why why do this? Why be an investor in real estate? Because it’s not. It’s not it’s different for you?

 

Nick  

It is, it’s a total departure. And as you know, I’ve been anxious about it nerve, it’s nerve racking for me, because I’m a hands off investor, I like I’m like, let it sit and grow kind of, you know, minimum x number of years kind of thing. And that’s not that this isn’t bad, but there’s a little more stuff to do. But why am I interested in why why would I recommend it is, first of all, it works. I mean, it works. It has significant growth opportunity. It actually, if you can find the properties that cashflow for the amount or less, for example, if it even if it doesn’t, for the amount of joining a good club or a gym a month, you can have a growing asset. Like that’s, I don’t know, you know, I’ve been looking at my different properties with Chris and 120 300 bucks, like my wife and I paid more for that for a gym membership. And you own a property. And then at the end of 10 years, 15 years, 30 years, you can liquidate or you can take the the income from it and buy more like it’s just it’s it’s a pretty great model. So if you’re looking for why would I do it? Why would I recommend it? Because it works

 

Erwin  

What keeps you from doing it sooner? It’s a rhetorical question because I know you’re really busy.

 

Nick  

Well, I’m what keeps me from doing more of it. And sooner is time, and education. Like, I think, I think your podcast and all the videos that you do, and I think it’s important work. You know, I say this to a lot of people about everybody has a purpose. And if people can understand that this isn’t a frivolous thing to do. It’s not a throwing money at something and hoping it sticks kind of thing. It works. But it’s time. The reason I haven’t done it is time and knowledge, like just education

 

Erwin  

can help you with that. Yeah, yeah. And you have been happy. As I figured I was talking to yesterday, I was explaining that there are businesses basically, this to set up the franchise systems are all in place. The people are on place. You just need to put up the money and get a mortgage.

 

Nick  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s brilliant.

 

Erwin  

So we try to do what we try to do make a brilliant model.

 

Nick  

It’s a brilliant business. Seriously, kudos. Like, I think it’s amazing.

 

Erwin  

It’s just everyday for us. So it’s kind of funny, because like, every time what you mentioned before about, like reading the news, too early in the day, I did that for a long time reading the news too early in the day. Yeah. Because especially now like leaving headlines always Ukraine.

 

Nick  

It’s depressing. And I think we should know it. But it’s when should we know it? Anyway? Sorry.

 

Erwin  

First thing in the morning? Yeah, yeah, exactly. set the tone for the day. Yeah. Yeah. Just because I consumed so much. I’d actually argue I consumed too much. Because I say that because it gives us feeds into my analysis paralysis. And honestly, if I were just doing more business stuff, more investing stuff in that time, rather than just trying to be so knowledgeable, and probably make more money. I know this, because I’ve blogged a lot like my previous mastermind, which is all real estate investors. Yeah, I found a new lot. Let’s say I knew a lot more. But economics needed. Definitely spent more time. Yeah, understanding of what how the world is working in monetary policy, almost What’s complicated things there are they’re investing just killing it. So they have larger portfolios that like, you have a larger portfolio, you’re going to outperform me? Versus I’m just like, yeah, just keep consuming. But yeah, but then kind of, to your point earlier, you have to get started. So I always suffer from like, as this right thing does the right thing.

 

Nick  

And that is me, too. I think if you can do if there’s a way to help people remove that analysis paralysis, which is exactly what I suffer from, especially in getting into this kind of investment. It’d be amazing,

 

Erwin  

right? Awesome. I’ll share some stuff with you. I had to give a webinar this Friday on a macro economic update in some of the research. So it’s like, Oh, I’m not ready for this. And then so this morning, German miracle morning, I got up early. I was like, Oh, I create my outline, like, took 20 seconds. Because I’ve researched this stuff

 

Nick  

all the time. This is what happens with our brains, too, right? We’re thinking this happens to me all the time. Like, Oh, I haven’t been I gotta do this. And then I’m like, oh, oh, I obviously have been thinking about this.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ve been thinking about for a long time. But yeah, all signs point to owning hard assets. Did you know we had 800,000 new people in Canada, in the last 12 months? I did

 

Nick  

read that. And I also read that it’s only going to go up based on forecasting. Yeah. I was gonna say, I think that’s exciting. And from for a whole bunch of reasons.

 

Erwin  

I think it’s exciting for them. Because I think people always forget to reach new life, I find a lot of Canadians forget to be grateful for what we have. That’s a lovely thing about travelling. You travel. Like I was just in Dominican Republic, for example. Oh, nice. Oh, that’s lovely. Yeah. But oh, boy, is Canada nicer.

 

Nick  

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

My point being is that like, climate change is a real thing. And it’s affecting many countries really badly. Which is drives probably reason why people want to come to Canada. Yeah, right. It’s only going to keep going. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. Nick, any final thoughts you want to share? I asked him any questions. So

 

Nick  

you know, you’ve got asked some great questions. I’ve loved chatting with you. I do one more for you. Okay, no, absolutely. Shoot, man. Shoot, shoot.

 

Erwin  

I forgot why we were on the topic. I study philosophy of many things. No, no, again, just spending way too much time in my head and studying stuff. Yeah. And so one of the business philosophies and observations that I’ve noticed is that some people, rightly or wrongly, because someone fails in their business relationship thinks they’re a bad person. A good example in the real estate industry is property managers. They the turnover as high as in those law companies don’t stick around. And so many so often their clients, that’s a bad person, but tennis would say that’s a bad person. And what I see as an outside observer is they tried their best. This can do it It’s a tough, tough business. Yeah, right? I don’t know if that necessarily makes them an evil person. So we were talking about earlier before we’re recording is like, Are you a bad person, if your business

 

Nick  

fails? Well, if, if that’s the case, then I’ve been a bad person. For many years,

 

Erwin  

we’re gonna cut up, we’re able to keep this podcast short.

 

Nick  

And here’s what I actually do know, is I’m not a bad person. In fact, I live my life with core values, and behaviours. I treat people with respect. And when I don’t, I apologise. And because I’m human, I’m fallible. And this isn’t me kind of giving myself a pat on the back, it’s me pointing out that we fail all the time, we talked about failure earlier in our chat today, I don’t think that if somebody’s business fails, they’re a bad person, they may have made mistakes, mistakes, does not equate with bad mistakes, equate with error. And perhaps Miss judgement, if they’ve made a series of decisions. Knowing that the outcome is going to cause X or Y, impact the lives of people take money from people, then you’ve got a values issue. But if you’re operating on on, trying to be true to your values, and the world somehow presents these challenges that you are not able to overcome, it does not make you a bad person. It just doesn’t mean your human life is long. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And in that marathon, and I’ve done four of them, it’s painful. The training is hard. There are times when you’re doing it, that you’re just think you’re gonna, you’re gonna die, you’re paying in pain, but keep going. And you know, in my morning routine, often the last words I write the end of every session is keep going.

 

Erwin  

So normally, I would say we ended there. But just to give context, why where the question comes from, is because anyone has been investing in the last few years. Who started especially at the start in last two years, they’re probably hurting their message likely or not performing well. Stock market, crypto real estate, anything, anything, anything. Yeah, but you maybe he’s doing well, no. And my point is, doesn’t mean they’re a bad person.

 

Nick  

Gosh, no, no, no. Your business is an entity that you drive. Your Business shouldn’t drive you. You drive your business, and you might have other people that help you drive it. If your business is struggling, you are not the business. Because that’s really what I’m trying to get at. You are not the business, it may feel like it. It may feel like, Oh, well, I’m gonna become a barista, which is what I thought because that business was in the toilet, and I’m a bad person for failing. You are not. You are not the business. And the sooner you learn, anybody learns that you are not the business, the better. Don’t get me wrong. It’s hard to do. It’s an I haven’t mastered it. I’m working on it every day. But cash flow and revenue and all these challenges and hitting targets or missing targets, whatever it is. That’s not you. You is the relationships you have the people who love you, love you not for the cashflow. They don’t love you for the revenue. They love you because you’re a good person, because you’re kind because you do nice things because you’re funny, because you’re a good father, you’re a good husband or you’re a good wife, whatever it is, whoever you are, they love you for you not for your business. And that that’s what you should be carrying forward. I don’t know if that answers your question.

 

Erwin  

I don’t think it’s perfect. And I’ll just add to that, you know, it’s been two three years of you need a larger sample size. If you think you’re a bad investor. Now, let’s revisit you in 10 years. Right? Yeah, that’s

 

Nick  

a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

 

Erwin  

All right. Thank you. How’s you go, Nick? Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this.

 

Nick  

Thank you, man. Great chatting. Awesome. Thank you

 

Erwin  

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, then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s 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 five to 10 years ago when I started there are forgive 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 it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines, Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more and register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself what 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 this stuff.

 

 

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