Real Estate Reality Check: Investment Risks, Rewards, and Community Impact with Paul Bennett

It really is like at the end of the day, if you can find something that you are feel you're helping people, you're helping your community and it fulfills you. Like to your point about being genuine, I fully believe that you're genuine when you're trying to help all of your business clients, associates, friends.

What are some things that people should be looking for if they are ready to enter into the market? What do good real estate investment opportunities.

Look like as long as you manage those two things, expectation and risk. Real estate is such a huge world.

Foreign. Welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. I am excited to have you here today and I gotta tell you why and I'll share share this a little bit more in his intro, but one of my closest friends, super successful guy, you know, just a genuinely good human doing great things for people, always with great intentions, very high integrity. So I'm really excited to have him come in today. He's a developer, a real estate investment expert and excited to share his insights with you of what current challenges are in the market, what we're going to see in the future, and maybe ways that we can make real estate investing quite successful. So before I jump into a full intro to one of my close friends here, I just want to remind you that we are at the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. This is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. Okay, so my good friend that I'm bringing in here, his name is Paul Bennett and we're going to title this episode Building Success Paul Bennett on Real Estate Development, Investing and Entrepreneurship. Now, I don't have a scripted outline for Paul Bennett, but he is the founder and CEO owner of Ashburnham Realty. They are a fairly substantial real estate development firm out of the Peterborough, Ontario area. They definitely have more cranes up building new facilities, accommodating the housing crisis more than any other developer in the area and doing so with high levels of integrity. Paul's been doing this for a very long time. We're going to get him to share the story, but he's been doing it since early or mid 2000, right around the time that I had started this firm as well and has lots of experience up in cottage country related to real estate and also in the development of some major facilities and acquisitions and investments in in non developed properties as well in the area. So once again couldn't be a better guy, a more knowledgeable real estate developer on the Intricacies of what it takes to get a building from foundation to completion. So really excited to bring my good friend Paul Bennett into the show today. And so I am so excited to welcome Paul Bennett to the show. But before Paul, I bring you in and start sharing maybe some of your entrepreneurial journey. You know, for everyone listening. Paul, first off, you're going to notice right out of the gates, he's a very genuine human being. One of my closest, dearest friends as well. I know we share a lot of great ideas about building a stronger community and a stronger city and just always has and does everything with the highest integrity possible. So without further ado, Paul, welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. Great to have you in studio.

You really set me up to failing and not being genuine is going to come across.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm not worried about that with you. I feel like, you know, first off, we're going to have a little bit of fun here. But second, you know, I know from my experience, especially in the Peterborough community, anyone who is from this area would recognize your company, Ash Burnham Realty, and a lot of the great work that you guys do, not, not even just the company and the development side, but the community building that you guys continue to be part of, which is something obviously we, we have a joint connection with because we're always trying to help everyone in the community continue to move forward. Paul, I would love for you to share with our audience a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey all the way back to where things got started, maybe on the lovely Stony lake.

Oh, wow. Okay. That's going way, way back. But hello, everybody. Nice to e meet everybody. And I'm really happy to be part of this. It's exciting to sit down and stand up, talk.

Paul has shorts on. I'm just gonna say that he's very worried about the shorts, but we can't see.

So we're good.

The.

I'll obviously we're talking to potential investors and stuff here, so I'll try and keep it focused on the real estate side of things. I always having these conversations. I always talk about the idea of opportunity. I was fortunate in my early, late teens, early 20s that I was able to get into buying homes and you know, at that time, what would be called flipping them. And that was simply out of opportunity. At that point, you could get very good mortgages, which is not the world, unfortunately. So sitting down to have conversations with younger folks these days about how you can get started and how you can get rolling in the real estate investment world, it's not like it once was. I was fortunate again because of opportunity. So. Yeah, and from that, you know, first little nugget of getting a taste of the industry in terms of figuring out how to renovate and the extent to which my hands can do anything other than work on a computer these days, but learning those things from, from the ground up, then we got into, you know, one project and another project, and that's when I really started to fall in love with the idea of community building and building neighborhoods. And same to you. I also love working with entrepreneurs and helping businesses grow. So that links to the commercial side of what we do in terms of helping businesses grow and move around in their space and finding the perfect space. Yeah. So it's, it's a much longer story than that, but obviously that, that's kind of the. Everything comes from opportunity. I wouldn't have, aside from enjoying Monopoly and Lego as a kid, I would have never thought, if you would ask me, when you're Jack, your son's age, that if what I was going to do, I wouldn't have said I would have been building buildings. So it's always comes out of opportunity in terms of, you know, those little nuggets that you can see that are left in front of you.

Well, it's, it's interesting too, because you're saying, so Jack, my son is, is 16, he's in grade 11. Talk about what it is that he wants to do for a living. And you're saying, I would have never pegged myself as building business, building buildings at, at 16 years old. But I think when people watch what you do, and obviously just like every other entrepreneurial journey, it's not always all highs. You know, there's lows, especially when you're dealing with people. But I think a lot of people look to you and say, well, I would love to do what Paul does. Like, you make it look easy. And really the outcomes that you're creating for the community are so, so great and so vast that, you know, I think people younger, the younger generation would look at you and say, I want to be a developer. Now, Paul's really made this look like a fascinating sort of career choice. Is that how you feel?

I think part of where this conversation will go is it's not.

Yeah.

And probably why I wouldn't have thought to get into it. No, it really is. Like, at the end of the day, if you can find something that you are, feel you're helping people, you're helping your community, and it fulfills you like to Your point about being genuine, I fully believe that you're genuine when you're trying to help all of your business clients, associates, friends. I feel in my world I can affect change through that. The headaches that are associated with that are huge. But at the end of the day, worth it. Right. So is it a good world to get into? The funny thing is now there's actually schools, like business degrees, have, you know, real estate development diplomas with them where I would have loved, like, yeah, I took my real estate dice this when I was, I don't 20, just so I could learn. Because you could do it over a small, short period of time. Now you can go to school and learn probably, hopefully things that I don't know. So now it is, it's an industry, right? It is, it has become, you know, in my generation, it has become a true industry in terms of. Well, and it is, it is literally what our communities are built on and.

We need it, and we need it.

But now, right now more than ever. And I'm sure we'll probably get into that.

Well, yeah, I was just going to say definitely a need. We all know across, I would say North America, you know, the housing shortage that we're all facing is causing problems, it's causing anxiousness, inter disputes in communities. And now municipalities are maybe starting to look at freeing some of this up because they've created so much red tape. Maybe talk to us a little bit about what the real estate market looks like right now. Maybe even some of the opportunities that you're starting to see for, for building buildings in the future.

Yeah, the word anxious is really good because anxious can be negative. Positive, right. So from a negative perspective on the anxious side of stuff like, you know, since COVID we've had, you know, the costs of building have gone through the roof. You know, this, our whole, and I just referred to our community in general have a lot of uncertainty about them, but that same anxiety brings the opportunity for change and positive change. So kind of never in history have we ever had not history, but in recent history, 50, 75 years have we had to rethink building, planning, how we do those things. And that goes right down to a city infrastructure, how cities are planned ways to prevent sprawl so that we can afford our cities to go forward, which is a whole different conversation. That would be a whole different podcast and that's different. But yeah, it brings, for folks looking for things to do and opportunities in the world of investing or even as careers, brings a lot of positive change, positive ideas in Terms of what the next 10 years are going to hold. Hopefully on the positive side of anxiety that. That we need to grow.

Absolutely. And so thinking of what the market is right now, another. You know, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, we're continuing to see reductions in interest rates, which is awesome. Another one today, actually. So that part of the market is starting to look a little bit more favorable. There's still lots of work to get to back to where you started. You know, interest rates like that still got some room. What is it like working with the municipalities, you know, interest rates aside in collaborating and creating these projects, is that like a. Well, I'm sure it's not going to be the most fun that you have, but is that starting to open up a little bit depending on. On the times like now?

I think certainly in my lifetime that things now more are looked at as a team effort and they kind of have to be. There's no relationship of any kind that can't be a team. So if there's, you know, some order give or order taker relationship, it's just never going to work. So, yeah, I do believe there's a, you know, on all levels of government, they see, you know, for lack of a better term, the writing on the wall in terms of what you know, is potentially coming or kind of here in the building world. If, you know, if there aren't things in the pipeline right now, that means we've got years of lull. So it's not. If things are bad right now and we don't, the next couple years ahead are going to be vastly worse if we don't have things starting right now. So I think, you know, the folks in government can see the challenges that are ahead and they've started making some policy changes. And, you know, real estate is such a vast world to talk about. You know, we focus on neighborhood community building. So that's a lot of infill projects. It's how we kind of believe in creating communities. Not that we don't believe in the need for subdivisions or the need for commercial buildings or the need for industrial plazas or any of that. It's just that's our kind of a niche and how we want to grow our community. So, you know, speaking about that side of things, things are really changing in my world because there's a lot more, you know, where there used to be a lot of opposition to what we did because people didn't like, if you live in a neighborhood, new buildings coming out, they don't like New things all the time. We're now, I think we're getting a lot more folks in communities realizing the need not only financially, which is super important for communities to get the density there, but also the vibrancy of communities creating those neighborhood, those walkable neighborhoods, the commercial services to supplement those neighborhoods. That's not always part of the planning conversation unfortunately, because it has a lot to do with money and where the biggest money making areas are where I do believe that now there's been a kind of a shift back to that true neighborhood community building. But yeah, at the end of the day to your, to your actual question, the biggest piece right now is affordability costs. The world we operate in is, you know, we can have the biggest spreadsheet that an accountant could ever put together.

You know, but it's when it comes.

Down to per square foot of building costs and square foot of rent, it's the easiest equation you can think of. And if you can't get those two numbers to balance out at the end, you can't build a building. And that's happened all over the world for decades and hence where condos came from. So at that point in time those numbers didn't make sense. And so people building buildings had to sell off their inventory so that they can make sense of building those buildings. Interesting. Hence why up until a few years ago our compartment buildings weren't being built because it just didn't make financial sense. So now with some of the things that are happening, you know, there are a bunch of tools in the toolkit that kind of allow them to kind of make sense, but we need them to really make sense because you can see in our community there's not a ton animal going up and you can see some of the horror stories from other larger communities, what's going on there for sure. So yeah, there needs to be more emphasis put on that to grow an infill communities. So the infrastructure is there for a healthy community. Yeah, that's a longer conversation.

But. Well, and let's talk about the affordability piece because I think this is a conversation that a lot of people don't understand. Right. And, and I know we've had the opportunity to chat about the affordability and a lot of the time people are matching affordability and low income housing in there where maybe that's not necessarily what it is. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe the stigma that's attached to it?

Yeah, unfortunately I've probably for a decade I don't even use the word affordability because first of all, I don't know what it means. So yeah, like, I don't think any of us could properly define what affordability means. And your opinion of it, my opinion of it could be totally different. And so it's just something that we can't really even use. But you're right, unfortunately, there's some negative connotations that come with that word. Really at the end of the day, like for me, just affordability is keeping every price as low as possible. And that's in building new homes too. So, you know, even if we're having a conversation about building, you know, subdivision homes, the, the subdivision builders are now hit with a, you know, their per square foot cost is three times what it was 10 years ago. And the house costs are, have to be the same.

Right.

So it's very, it's very easy to say, hey, these costs have gone up, so now the house cost has to go up. So it's not, you know, it's, it's math and simple science. Like it's, it's not, it's pretty easy to follow. But in terms of affordability in general, there's got to be some way between, you know, red tape, as you said, building science, which is super important, and there's all kinds of new prefab looking for efficient ways. Yeah, efficient designs. Different types of mixed use communities where these things weren't a thing 15 or 20 years ago. They've been around like the electric car. They've been around forever. But now is a time when we have to find ways to make that happen quicker and much more of them.

So. And I don't even know that we were planning on chatting about this, but I think it's something that's important. So even as a real estate investor, which I'm sure even if you're an entrepreneur and a business owner, you've likely thought about real estate. And like Paul is one of, again, my closest friends, real estate isn't for everybody. Okay. And how tall are you by the way? This looks really awkward. I need a box to stand up. But, but one of the things that I always feel that people jump into immediately is, oh, well, if you want to get wealthy, you've got to build real estate. Or not. Not build, sorry, acquire real estate. And that's got to be part of your portfolio. And I think, you know, one of the challenges that we're seeing for the next generation as well, you know, my kids for sure, 16 and 14, affordability of being able to even get a home is going to change so when we're looking at real estate investors, what does the future market look like for the demand of housing as a rental versus virtuous buying? Because I don't know that my kid like maybe I'll be able to help support my kids financially and maybe you'll be able to support your kids financially in this but you know, who knows what, what the costing will look like. What does the market look like for, for owning real estate?

I wish I could tell you.

Yeah, and, and damn it Paul, I want answers.

But at the basis of that there are some pretty simple things. Canada has always had a much higher than normal homeownership like different models around the world. Europe's always the one that people speak to as a more model that's going to work better over the length of time, less percentage of the population own home. And it's funny like we would have grown up in the same type of household where you know, you pick your school, if you're lucky enough to do okay, you buy a house, start your family, all that kind of stuff. I do believe that it's totally changed and we from the renting world and I have this argument all the time because I, I would like someone and I've seen lots of articles about this Peter putting it that lifelong 20, 30, 40 year span of homeownership versus rental as long as the person renting does invest in something, whatever that may be. Where for those who own a house we have the mortgage pay down of our mortgage so we're forced savings where if that renter forced savings every month and didn't have the capital expenditure of a forty thousand dollar roof and a fifteen thousand dollar furnace and all those things over the period of the home. Really what the homeowner benefits from is appreciation and hopefully it's enough to cover off the capital change for sure. So it, it'll be interesting. And there's a lot of Toronto right now is a tough one because there was a boom what 8, 10 years ago where everyone was buying a condo to rent. I believe the gold mail came up with an article two or three weeks ago that said I might get this wrong, but it was in the world of 80% of people that did that are underwater on their own.

Geez.

Which from a math perspective you understand.

Not great from an economic standpoint either. No, from a country.

But you to your point about real estate investing, you go into it with a hey, we can buy a half million dollar condo and rent it out and we can rent it for 2,500 bucks. A month. But now our mortgage payments, 2500 bucks a month for sure. And you're underwater.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so like, I think from a real estate. And that's, that's very doom and gloom. Like, hey, what should I do with real estate investing wise? Yeah, there's still tons and tons of opportunity. I think that the two big things that you have to be, obviously, you know, risk conscious and expectation conscious. I feel, you know, a lot of folks that I talk to went into real estate or go into real estate or thought about going into real estate thinking there's this big bag of money sitting there waiting for them, whether it's every month or once a year or at the end of the rainbow, whatever that may look like. But like everything else, it's hard work. And if you're not willing to invest your time, including your capital, you're just not going to get out of it what you expect. So, you know, the expectation is the big one, I feel, you know, because for a decade every book was about owning real estate. Oh, yeah, because it's sexy. Like, it's somewhat sexy to be able.

To say, hey, I own that, the building.

Yeah, I did that. Or I could do that. And so people got into that without and thinking, I'm going to make this extra income. And you can, absolutely can. Yeah, gotta work. And it's inevitably not going to turn out how you wanted it to. Like everything else, you've got to expect those ranges of outcomes.

Right. I've got a, I've got a client that I chatted with yesterday and he's just former athlete, just sort of on the retirement stage, not a whole lot of capital after retirement, has got a business going, it's fairly successful, and instantly he's got real estate investors going, hey, do you want to invest in this new development? And so, you know, the conversation came up yesterday and he said, what do you think I should do? I said, not a chance. You should be investing this. And he's like, oh, really? Why? And I said, well, first off, everyone has this perception that if you want to be wealthy, you have to own real estate, which may be a really great vehicle for wealthy people, no question. But I said to him, you know, if you put this 50,000, you're only $50,000 into this real estate fund to build this property, you're not getting that back anytime soon, like. And he's like, well, the, you know, the idea for the real estate investor, they're going to buy it, they're going to improve it, increase the value, increase the rents increase the appreciation, sell the property.

Sounds awesome.

It's great. Yeah, I love that in theory and, and you know there are professionals who do that and raise capital but it's not happening overnight. And you know, for this individual I'm going this real estate is not something that you need to be focusing on right now. Focus on the business developing that you because you know how much capital do real estate investors have to have in these properties? You know just working with the banks and the debt service coverage, you know their ability to fund higher leveraged projects are really low. When you're a newly entering into the market real estate investor like you can't. The affordability is non existent. So as much as I love it and certainly cheering you on from the sidelines with all the things that you do starting into this is maybe not the best idea unless you have a significant amount of capital that you want to get working for you. Is that a fair sort of assessment?

And the example you just gave is probably a great example for someone if they have a bit of capital for someone that's retired from a great career and they have, you know, whatever that person comes to you and says hey, I've got X amount of money. Sure, it's a piece, it's a piece of what you're looking at and do.

This, this part of your portfolio, whatever.

You want to do, it's a great and it's something that they probably want to do it it gives them a lot of worth and meaning especially if those projects are in their community. So if there's that that you know, it's again they get. I'm very fortunate to have that. I can walk around and say hey, I can fix this, I can do something. I can make this area better. I can, you know, I can do that where I think a lot of people like that feeling because they, a lot of people feel helpless within their community in terms of seeing some of the social issues and what goes on in a community they want to help. And quite often real estate and improving areas of a community is one way of doing that. Should a person do it on their own? I would say absolutely not. But so the example you just gave is probably a good portal into, into that world. Right? But not hey, here's my, here's a checkbook for everything I got left. Here's a bit of what I've got. Excited to be part of it. But I'm not driving the bus, I'm.

On the bus and I'm not putting all my eggs in bringing the Whole. Yeah, we're not going all in on this because cash. What, what were we talking about the other day? Revenue is vain. Profit is like the most important thing and then cash is king because it's like, you know, revenue and growing a business sounds like a really nice idea, but unless it's profiting, it's really not worth very much. And then even if it's profiting, if your cash isn't there, don't put all your cash into the real estate because if you need it, you can't get it right. And if real estate, if you are in an emergency situation where you need to get your cash, say goodbye to all that appreciation that you've had. You know, timing has to work out.

Well, you know, this, like, from my perspective, probably the first 10 years of my career, I lived in my own apartment and I, as long as I made a dollar, like my goal across everything that I did was to get a dollar so that it was breaking even on everything. And there were years I didn't do that. And because you're, you know, in the real estate world, you, there's ups and downs and investments and reinvestments. And so again, it's the expectation of being able to say, hey, I'm, I hate to say it. It's no different than kind of gambling. You've gotta. Yeah, if you're putting your chips on the.

It is a gamble.

Don't double down just to keep your house money in your pocket. And yeah, if you're happy, if that's money you're good with and you want to play with, it's more than likely going to pay out. Yeah, but it isn't going to pay out in your first hand. You know, you got to stick in.

And play right up 100%. I want to just circle back for a second talking about the owning property personally versus maybe even renting. So another client example I had, and they actually, at the end they said, we got caught up in the idea of home ownership and it, it nearly put them in a really bad financial position. So Toronto went in, obviously needing a whole lot of capital, borrowed the capital at high rates to invest in getting this house that was very heavily priced. They had no access to that equity, plus they had to pay interest on it. Then they were paying large mortgage payments and substantially interest only. So they were putting themselves in this cash position. They just made the decision. I told them, you know, I'm really proud of you guys for making this decision to sell this place. And they're probably going to sell At a loss. Just like Paul was talking about, you're going to sell at a loss. But they made the connection that home equity and home ownership wasn't what they thought it was really going to be because there was just so many downsides and just be grateful that they didn't have a roof or something that came up because they would have never been able to afford it. And it's super challenging. So.

But there's a great lesson there. Like you can't, you're not always going to win. And sometimes, yeah, your biggest win is taking a loss. Right. So, yeah, again, that's where I think human nature. And I've lost many, many.

Yeah. So.

But human nature is I can't lose. Like I, you know, I'm gonna, I will make this work. I'll get to the end. I'm gonna make a buck. Yeah, sometimes your biggest win is getting out.

Yeah. This is the decision.

Otherwise it's going either way. Right. So there's a human nature piece to real estate that, you know, you make mistakes, you make, make. We make them every day. Everyone makes them every day. It's just knowing to.

I don't, but you do.

I understand accepting to know when you made mistakes and yeah. Figure out how to best move on and make that decision. Right. If your last decision was wrong, doesn't mean this decision has to be wrong. Make the right decision now.

For sure. And I can imagine as you're going through some of your development projects, only because I know this, because again, I am privy to having some conversation socially with you on some of your projects. These things don't go perfectly. Regardless of what the situation is, things always seem like they're going to go smooth. And this, you know, we're all business owners here, entrepreneurs in some form or fashion, maybe real estate investors. We all know that life isn't just going to go as perfectly as we planned. You know, I know I had a specific day last week where I must have had the up and down emotions five times and to the point where I put a social post out that it was like, oh, I am a hero. I've got the world by the ass today. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to go bankrupt. And then you're immediately, you're like, oh, look, I'm, I'm a genius. I came up with a, this great idea. Oh my God, nobody likes me. And you know, that's the reality of, of anything, especially if you're going all in, you know, and to Paul's point, talking about making the dollar. He was all in. You know, I know the, the days and my wife would still say, you know, I wish some people would know that you're still doing work until two in the morning most nights because you're, you're all in. You know, if you're care, if you're wanting to grow, you're wanting to make an impact, you're wanting to, you know, do what? Well, uphold that integrity that, you know, that means so much to both of us. It's wild. Like the journey is not easy. So if you're going through a bumpy road, without question, it's, it's bound to happen. And real estate just happens to be one of those bumpy roads. It's not going to be perfect. We can't control interest rates, we can't control economy, you know, but yeah, and.

That'S why this is awesome, this community you've created. I've always talked about the idea of making sure that everyone that has a business, no matter what it is, you're accountant, you have a widget that you've designed or whatever, whatever your world is, you're not on an island. So what you just said is what I go through, what you go through, what people listening go through in their world. Right. So it's, it's good to do this especially with folks from different industries because again, real estate is one of those industries I think people look at and they say, hey, if I make some money, I'm going to put it there. It's just going to make a whole bunch more money. Yeah, it's an industry. It, it is another job and it is a great job. It is a great wealth driving absolutely. Whatever you want to call it, but it is a job. It is work. There's nothing that comes without work and hard work and showing up and being up till 2. So if, if people are willing to do that. Awesome.

Yeah.

World isn't willing to do that as much as they used to be.

No, absolutely. And, and yes, more than ever post 2020, I feel like there's a lot of people who've focused on the work life integration and focus more on the life component of that versus work.

Which is awesome.

Yeah. Which is fine. And you know, we've, I've talked about this a little bit lately to the whole lifestyle business and we can incorporate that into real estate and people say, oh, you know, let's. Real estate is just a lifestyle business. We just, it just runs itself and it's like, no, it's not. Well, you don't have to work hard, you just invest and it just brings money home for you. Well, just imagine the combination between hard work and this type of investment.

I would love that to be said in our office. Like if someone came into our office and said, this is great. People are always so happy. It's like it's because. Absolutely the total opposite.

Right.

So though our world has.

Yes.

Is a good, good thing. Has created a higher expectation in everything.

Yeah.

They'll go out for dinner now. They have a higher expectation of the food and the service. We. One of our first goals from when we started was, you know, our. The housing, apartment real estate industry is a very transactional industry. Right. So we. We wanted to make it a service industry. So we, we aren't gone at. When here the keys are. We're there for the process.

Yeah.

We then we shifted the other way and said we're not just taking over a building that we had someone else build for us. We want to have that service element through the build too. So we have that, you know, that whole spectrum of service. That's what our world is. It is all about service. It's all about client expectation. Where you have done that in the accounting world. I've said this numerous times, like in an accounting world.

And it's never perfect. Is just. We all strive to create perfection in.

It, but usually it is transactional. It is. Here you go. Take care. And that's not what you do. That's not what I do in the housing world. And it's not what people want. They want to be involved. They want to, you know, know they're being heard. They want to get good advice. Like it's not simple, but it's work.

Yeah. And a process and lots of learning along the way. And something that when you gain momentum and you, you know, you get your hands dirty and you've had some fails, you know, you just bring a lot more to the market. Like you. Right. You try to.

Like you try and make it better.

Absolutely. So we've. We've talked a little bit about why no one should invest in real estate. And. And I say that guys. But I do have real estate investments as well. It is a good investment in the right circumstance. It's just not always the right investment for everyone. So now that we've put that out there and we're thinking of, you know, identifying good real estate investment opportunities. What are some things that people should be looking for if they are ready to enter into the market? What do good real estate investment opportunities look like? Yeah.

As long as you manage those two things, expectation and risk. Real estate is such a huge world. Right. I've got hundreds of friends in real estate and I can't say that I do the same as any of them. So you've got, you know, first of all, it's, if you can find a way of, of meeting people in the industry, you know, take someone, you know, to lunch, you know, to get to know what your little niche might be. Because for it to be successful, you have to love it. So it's not, it's not just like, hey, I'm going to, when I make enough money, I'm going to buy a duplex.

Great.

And that might work out awesome. That, that's really great. The world is getting tighter in that, in that like it's, it's not what it once was and maybe it returns to that. But you need to make sure whatever it is, whatever avenue you're going, you love it. Like, it's something you actually enjoy because again, it is, it is effort. It is something that you're going to want to do. And some people absolutely love it. Like, I love it. And if someone is a accountant, if someone is a teacher, if someone fireman, if you have time and you want to get in that world and you find like a little niche, maybe you've created an Airbnb rental, maybe you've whatever, like, there's a bunch of different, like we can list so many, but it needs to be something that fits you, that you love doing because otherwise it's just not going to work. So, you know, we can sit here and talk numbers and rates return and all that stuff. All we want. I, I think, you know, it's the same as starting a business. If you don't start a business and that you love, no matter how hard you work at it, no matter what.

You do, with a purpose that aligns with who you are and what you want to accomplish.

Yeah. So like, you know, obviously, you know, to each person, they're hopefully going to find their little niche in the real estate world if that's where they want to go. But that would be my, my big advice in that is it's not about, hey, go look at these types of properties or go look at these, because there is success in all of. So, you know, even though we just talked about something like Toronto, where those folks are really struggling because they over purchased or whatever, that also is opportunity for other folks for sure. So yeah, it's, it's, you know, there, there is never a shortage of opening your window and Going, there's so many options for me to look at. But I think more than ever you need to make sure that you manage, Manage your risk, manage expectation is the big, big, big one. And then find something that actually aligns with what you like and the change you want to make.

Yeah. And then follow that up with service. Service the hell out of it. Yeah, I can appreciate that. That's very good advice, Paul.

So, so it isn't like the whole first half, you know.

Yeah, well, and more so again, I think part of your, your points in there was managing risk. And I think the first point portion was identifying risk factors for people who want to get into it, you know, and, and it can be scary and it can, it is. Again, it's so capital intensive that you just can't put all of your eggs in because you can't control the market. And we just don't know what's going to happen. We, nobody would have said in 2019, oh, you know what's going to happen. We're going to have this global pandemic and nobody's going to go outside for two months, you know, so it's just one of those things. We don't have control over it. That's why I focus on, you know, if you have a business focus on that, that is your golden goose. Don't ever give up on your golden goose and take away your capital. Now if you're a real estate investor and a developer, that is your golden goose. It's a little bit different, but if, if it's a, you know, a passive investment stream that you're not intending to be actively involved in. Just don't go all in on your capital. Be conservative, as Paul said, use it as part of your portfolio. It's a great investment opportunity in the right situation. What are we missing, Paul? What haven't we talked about?

Well, again, real estate is such a huge world. I wouldn't want to, like, we could get down some serious rabbit holes. But I definitely don't want to speak negatively and get people off the track of doing this again. I love it and I think there's endless opportunity. And the big thing about the housing world or the real estate world in general is there's so many problems to solve right now. Unlike, you know, it's, you know, some of the first places I bought in the 80s had that were renovated in the 80s have no insulation. So we're in it, we're in a period of time from the 80s to now where energy was so cheap that no one put Insulation in homes. So you're. It's shocking. We've. The world is flipped upside down in terms of how people live, how they're going to live in the future, how they work. And then Covid hits and we go from a world where we're this huge open economy that, you know, outsources half of our stuff from around the world to totally back into a community where we're trying to source everything locally again. So that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of infrastructure and work and ideas. So certainly there's no, There's. It might be, but I mean, from my perspective, there's no bigger world of opportunity in the real estate world.

Yep.

There's just the equal amount of challenge. So it's.

And be passionate about it.

Yeah.

Because if you get into it, it's going to be as tough as your business is. Real estate is going to be equally tough in its own unique way.

There's more people involved so that, you know, if, you know, in, in our world, there are, however you want to call it that, many more pans in the pie. So everyone wants to be part of how a community grows, how a country grows, because it's important and, and those people should be involved in that. It just takes a lot of time. So the message in that is please don't let it shy you away from getting involved. Certainly anyone who is looking at like, you know, the Jacks of the world who are looking at what their future is going to look like, we need all the brightest minds in the world get in that world because it's going to be tech related, it's going to be building science related. Our aging population needs incredible amount of, you know, care at home, age in place locations because we've got a lot of big problems coming. Right. So we need the brightest minds out there to solve and find some solutions for that.

Last question I'll leave for you, Paul. Is Ashburnham Realty again doing lots of great things, lots of projects on the go? You can see the buildings going up and the lives that are being changed. At the end of the day, when you're all said and done in your development days, what are you hoping to have accomplished?

People ask me that and that's a really good one because I don't think I have an answer for that. I do feel I get an answer almost daily, like, you know, giving you an example.

See, I told you he was a nice guy.

Oh, but really so, and, and I, and I, I'm not going to say that we all need an end of the line goal because I don't. Some people probably do. I think everyone is, you know, intrinsically motivated by different things. If I wasn't motivated daily by what we do as a team, I don't think I would feel fulfilled. Like I wouldn't be good to strive towards one end goal. And maybe folks are like that, maybe they're not. But you know, we move a couple that we've been working with for two years because they were selling their house and they couldn't get over the hurdle to sell their house and one of them is sick and you know, all the million things that are going on and we do a move into them in a beautiful new large suite and they're crying. It's like a huge life change for them. That's awesome. You know, that, that makes me feel like I helped that person's life. You know, a business, if I'm able to work with a new business, they're super successful for a year and they have to go to a larger location because they've been so successful. That's fulfilling for me. That makes me go, hey, I've really enjoyed what I'm doing. This gives me that, you know, get up and go, as you said the day last week where maybe, maybe you.

Cried, maybe eight emotions. I, I didn't quite do it, but I felt like it.

Well, there's been days I've cried. So like. So maybe that maybe gets me the day up for the day after I cry. But yeah, you've got to find those things, those wins and everything that you do to make sure that. And that's for every entrepreneur you're talking to. I'm this exact same. You got to find what those daily wins, those weekly wins, whatever they are. And again, this is really important. I, you know, it's something that I get away from a lot too is talking to like minded people. This community that you've created I think allows people to understand that, you know, everyone isn't on an island. Then the nights that you have where you're feeling like you want to give up, everyone else has those nights too. Yeah.

So we just try and make sure that they're spread out a bit. Yeah.

When there's a few in a row. Yeah. You just maybe not don't have any drinks in those nights.

Exactly. Or just keep, keep the drinks low. Thank you for this, buddy. Once again, I value you in our community as a friend. You're a wonderful person doing incredible things. Thanks for jumping in, sharing your insights with our community. Super grateful to have you.

Well, thanks everybody. And yeah, always available if anyone wants to reach out and love to help.

And so how would people reach out to you? Any of your social handles at Ash Realty, Ashburn Realty.

And yeah, and I love doing that. So if there's anyone that has interest in, in real estate investing, you know, community building is obviously my big passion. I would love to sit down and chat about your ideas and yeah, help in any way I can.

That's fantastic, guys. This has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. If there is something that you have appreciated, some insights out of here, make sure you give us a, like drop a comment. We want to hear from you. We want to make sure that we continue to bring you valuable insights to you and your business. Make sure you hit follow. We want to make sure that the next episode gets in your inbox and that you're notified. And at the same token, if you have found insights here that you feel could be shared with someone you know, make sure you share this information. We are on a mission to empower entrepreneurs and real estate investors to have the right financial information to make informed decisions and change the world together. So every time we share this with someone, we're able to make an impact and that's what we're happy to do together. So once again, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate you guys jumping in and look forward to catching up again next week.

Thanks, everyone.