Leadership, Performance & Aliveness – Oliver Manalese
Hello Everyone investing in real estate!!
I have always wanted to give blood but my fear of needles held me back.
After the van attack in Toronto, I wanted to help outside of donating money, and one very important way to help the victims is to give blood. I’m always looking to push limits and test fears, so Team Titan member Tammy Ditomaso and I did on Friday. Like anything, things gets easier with practice. Whether it’s giving blood or real estate investing, and it wasn’t so bad.
The funny part is the questions they have to ask. I know I’m different, but it’s a different thing to explain how weird you are, talking out loud to strangers. While signing in to give blood, the conversations goes like this:
Nurse: Have you had breakfast?
Me: No, I had a fatty coffee, I fast in the mornings (after speaking, I realize I should have just said “yes”)
Nurse: You really should eat something before giving blood, this is taxing on the body
Me: I train MMA, I can handle it, I fight adult men all the time (I say MMA thinking it is a more widely known term than Brazillian Jiu Jitsu but whatever, I didn’t properly think through this conversation)
Nurse: Please have a juice box, what flavour would you like? (I’m sure they offer juice boxes to all the wannabe tough guys)
Me: I’ll have apple. <I sip my first juice box since high school>
The whole thing was quite painless compared to the other things I do. I still don’t like needles, but like anything, it gets easier with experience.
On Saturday, I got my Crossfit report card from my head trainer, which is awesome because he took time out of his busy schedule at no added charge to review my performance, grade my efforts, and provide feedback on areas of weakness and strength.
This month I’m testing out time restricted eating (TRE) thanks to my bleeding edge doctor, Dr Cowan. To improve my digestion I am restricting my eating to when I normally eat breakfast, 7:30am for a 12 hour window ending at 7:30 at night. I’m not trying to lose weight though, just improve my energy and improve my digestion (apparently all high level athletes have elite level digestion, it’s how Michael Phelps could eat McDonalds and still collect Gold Medals).
Have you been to Ghost Busters virtual reality game at the Rec Room just south of the CN Tower? It’s a lot of fun!! This was my second go of the game, and this time was with my brother and my very silly childhood friends.
what’s actually going on in the real world, plus the game is sensory overload with ghouls and ghosts and marshmallow men attacking you. I highly recommend!!
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As with my real estate investing, I prefer to operate differently than the masses. We avoided the crowds of February 14th by enjoying a quiet night over at the local gastro pub while watching Raptors game on TV. 😃 My wife, Cherry, shares my passion for Toronto Raptors Basketball and we don’t have cable television anymore, so our dinner date was a treat on many levels. We even went home at half time to read bed time stories to the kids and put them to bed, as one of my favourite things in the world is have both kids on my lap and reading to them. It really was the perfect evening. The Raptors won via another brilliant performance by the bench, who are very fun to watch. They play at a frenetic pace and execute well.
This past Friday, the Mr Hamilton/Halton REI/Titan Realty Investment Group (yes we have another new brand, more on that another time) team finally found time in our collective schedules to celebrate a successful 2017 over dinner at Milestones and a somewhat friendly, trash talk filled, bowling competition. In the picture at dinner, I’m holding baby Owen. He goes everywhere with Jay and Erika Spencer, so don’t be surprised when Owen makes an appearance on a St. Catharines investment property tour or your private one on one showing.
I actually led for a bit after being one of the worst in the first two games. The point I’m making is no one always wins and not all tests are successful. Investing is no different. I’ve tried day trading, investing in stocks and bonds, small cap, blue chip, tech stocks, mutual funds, online poker etc… Am I a failure? Maybe, but I didn’t give up and that it’s how I arrived at real estate. Nothing has come close to the returns of our real estate. Other than real estate, I invest in some private equity in land development north of Toronto. Haha! I can’t wait for my review with Certified Financial Planner Kathleen Van De Berg to see what a professional thinks of being a little concentrated in real estate. In the end, I’m all about results, and not too concerned what other experts think…. unless they make greater returns with low risk somewhere else, then I’m all ears!!! That’s actually a great segue into this week’s podcast! SEO! High return with less investment.
giant tree, and, the star of the show, Santa!! Santa asked my kids if they knew they had brought Christmas magic with them. My kids had no clue what he was talking about, but then Santa reached behind my daughters ear and illuminated a light within his glove between his index finger and thumb. The look of astonishment on my kids faces made me nearly lose my composure. I couldn’t have been happier with the experience, but my daughter had more in store for us.
Who doesn’t like live music, especially when they put on THE BEST live performance. My credo is, life is all about experiences. I recommend you catch USS if they’re ever playing a gig near you. At the show in Hamilton, I had a great time with my friends Mike Gillespie, St Catharines investor extraordinaire; John Roumanis, Hamilton investor of $600,000 in 6 Years fame; and Steve.
Championship in shocking form. You can’t tell from the picture but we were all jumping up and down when Georges connected with that short left hook. We were so loud we woke up Cherry. 😛
Here’s what my friend Monica said, who is a busy mom with three young kids who could only make the VIP lunch. She’s also an ultra successful investor:
Last Thursday, I had the honour of representing the HamiltonBasketBrigade.com on Cable 14’s “City Matters” to share our story of humble beginnings of plans for Roger Auger and I to deliver groceries for a Christmas dinner for three families each and now we’ve grown with YOUR HELP to provide for 300 families in need this Saturday!!
This week I’m excited to bring to you my friend and client Kaush Nanubhai (pronounced Koh-shh Na-new-bye) who started off buying condos in downtown Toronto as a young professional Accountant as he described buying a condo better use of his disposable income than drinking and partying. Many years later and having bigger goals in mind including more income and improved lifestyle, he’s now built himself a sizeable portfolio now at 11 investment properties, acquiring eight of them in the last four years with plans and joint venture partners for many more. Learn about what Kaush wishes he could go back and do over, what drives an already successful professional like Kaush to do even more, how he’s created more time for what’s important, time with family and taking care of his health. Kaush invests in student rentals and legal basement suites in Hamilton, St Catharines, Welland, and Niagara On the Lake.
This week I’m excited to bring to you the return of Charles Wah, you might remember him from our land development interview six months ago and he’s fresh off the set of Scott McGilvray’s newest show to give you all an update on his land development projects and the new investments and building development projects he has on the go. We’ll take a sneak peak at the behind the scenes of HGTV’s biggest star, how Charles spends his off time, and we will share our thought’s and lessons from the phenomenal Archangel Summit. It was so good, we already purchased our VIP tickets for the Archangel Summit in September 2018. You want to know WHY this super successful and very young investor does what he does? Then have a listen….
Who wants to golf?! Not me. Swinging golf clubs is tough on my shoulders as it’s repetitive, I swing way too hard, and I have no technique. It all started when John from podcast episode 6-years-part-time-and-600k-in-returns reached out asking if I wanted to golf and I responded, let’s do something fun instead. The somewhat local gun club (Silverdale Gun Club) had a special on a sniper rifle package and that’s what we did on a Friday afternoon at the gun club. We shot a couple rounds with an AR15, SKS, Remington 700, and the big daddy of them all, BMG 50 which weighed in at 34 lbs and each additional bullet would cost us $15 per. Don’t worry if the gun names mean nothing to you. I have no idea either, this was only my third time ever holding a gun in five years…. Our instructor Eric was patient and excellent and the gang agreed, it was better than playing 18 holes. We all had fun but make no mistake, the afternoon was a productive one because everyone one in attendance is an active investor with numerous properties and leaders in their fields. When you spend time with like minded people, you are guaranteed success. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
We are also moving our meetings to a new location: we’ve out grown the Rock Star Office’s training room, though we loved the price and convenience, we could use more space for comfort and to allow more attendees as in the past, we’ve had to wait list and turn away people. We want everyone to have a chance at financial freedom so we are relocating to the Sheridan College’s Conference Centre located at 1410 Trafalgar Rd, Oakville, ON, just north of the QEW.
I am super proud of my little cousin Christopher, here I am wearing his Timmy’s visor. He’s not really little anymore as he just turned 17 but he did get a summer job at Tim Hortons. He’s still in training but the plan is he’ll keep working when he’s back to school to save up money for a car. Christopher is crazy passionate about all vehicles: tanks, planes, trains, cars, bikes. I seriously ask for his advice when buying cars but I have to temper his preferences as he seems to think I operate without a budget. I don’t need a BMW M3 or M5, I don’t care about the extra 2-300 horsepower, I care about my monthly payments and how much of my lease is tax deductible
large portfolio of buy, rent and hold investment properties with her husband. She co-founded a property management company based in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Elizabeth also runs a boutique Rent to Own company, which specializes in providing home ownership options for families.
We’ve had guests in the past from the other side of the country. Don Campbell, who resides in British Columbia, Pierre Paul Turgeon, who’s from Alberta. This week our guest, Andy Tran, is on the other side of the world in Japan, visiting his wife’s family. I’ve been friends with Andy since 2009, when we met at a mutual friend’s birthday and ran into each other again at REIN. Andy was one of my first clients, as I helped him purchase investment properties in Hamilton back in 2010, but now the tables have turned as I have hired Andy to prepare my investment property for a legal basement suite conversion. As always, I believe in hiring the best to work on my business and it just so happens that Andy is a leading expert in accessory apartments in the golden horseshoe of Ontario. Andy is guiding me and my property through the city’s permit process including building code, certified drawings, working with the city’s planners and inspectors etc… stuff that I neither enjoy nor have time for.
