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The Truth About Real Estate Investing... for Canadians

For Canadians by Canadians sharing the truths about generating wealth through real estate investing. This show is about getting rich slowly, investing is a marathon, no get rich quick methods will be discussed here hosted by award winning investor and three time Realtor of the Year Erwin Szeto aka Mr. Hamilton
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The Truth About Real Estate Investing... for Canadians
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Now displaying: November, 2019
Nov 23, 2019

On to this week’s show!

We have a very special guest in Derek Foster of Ottawa, Ontario.  He’s happily married with eight kids. Derek jokes it’s because Derek doesn’t have a regular job and neither does his wife so they’re home a lot hence the eight kids.  Derek is a six time best selling author and my favourite book of his is Money For Nothing And Your Stocks For Free because he introduces his strategy for option selling.

If you’re new to investing in the stock market, I recommend you read Derek’s books as they are written at an introductory level for a grade schooler. I wish I’d read these books when I was younger as I’d be further ahead.

Anyways, I’m a big fan of Derek and it’s not easy to get him as a guest so I bought of bunch of his books to get his attention that I’ll be giving away to iWIN members.  Derek explains on this show how his strategy worked, the mistakes he made and his biggest wins. How he lost 75% of his savings before finally getting himself properly educated.  

For anyone who thinks stock options is risky, Derek shares his own experience, strategy and stocks he’s trading. 

Disclaimer time!

This service is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not investment advice to you or any other person. We are describing the investments we have made for ourselves and is reflective of our own circumstances. Your circumstances are different and any discussion here is not intended to be and must not be considered to be a recommendation for you to make the same investment(s).  Consult an adviser or dealer licensed in your jurisdiction before making any investment decision.

Derek is a nice guy and so am I I hope. FYI, Cherry and I made a $10,000 donation on behalf of the Wealth Hacker Conference to clothe, feed and provide presents to Hamilton’s most impoverished families.  We’re still processing payments from the event and will make a second $10,000 donation for a total of $20,000. That’s enough to fund an entire holiday budget for us to support 40 families or our preferred metric at the Hamilton Basket Brigade: best Christmases ever.  I’m not bragging however I do believe actions speak louder than words and we Wealth Hackers, we will be the change we want to see in the world.

It is my honour to present to you Derek Foster

Nov 23, 2019

There’s so much going through our heads in the last 48 hours.

As excited as it was for us on Saturday at the Wealth Hacker Conference, we didn’t start out that way.

Our journey started off around the time when Cherry’s grandma passed away. A small idea was planted by Maryanne Gillespie, Erwin’s coach, to host free classes to share the idea of building long-term wealth through real estate investment.

We discussed and we brainstormed, nothing really firmed up and Cherry took off to Hong Kong to attend her grandma’s funeral.

When Cherry arrived at Hong Kong after her 16-hour flight, Erwin already recruited a bunch of his friends, most of them are real estate experts, to join him on hosting an all-day educational event.

Talking about taking action, I’ve never wasted time to take action!

That was the beginning of Wealth Hacker Conference.

In February, we attended 10X Growth Con at Marlins Park Miami, part of the 32,000 people who attended the event. We were completely blown away by the 10X philosophy, but we had little idea how much 10X Growth Con affected our own planning.

We hired an event planner, Shauna Arnott, who’s also the host of the event Haste and Hustle. She brought up the idea of bringing Grant Cardone to Toronto. 

Grant is a real estate mogul. His philosophy is about investing in himself and building long-term wealth. He’s all about taking responsibility of our own lives and 10X the goal and effort to achieve the 10X goal.

Grant was a great fit, but … would his personality get along well with our humble Canadian crowd?

When in doubt, Erwin turned to Facebook.

He posted the question and asked, “would you like to see Grant Cardone or Robert Kiyosaki?”

The rest is history.

We had delay booking Grant, then we had competition. Then we had problems firming up a venue.

We wanted to deliver the best value, instead of just another real estate educational event.

Erwin reconnected with his friend Omar Khan, who has been tirelessly sharing his simple stock investment strategy with everyone around him.

Omar has lived his life on his terms. He spends most of his days managing his properties and trading stocks. Almost no one has seen him speak in public before.

We know that the world needs to hear him sharing his virtually unknown investment strategy, but we had our doubts about him early on. Can we put Omar on stage to speak to 1,500+ attendees?

Our ticket sales weren’t exactly how we expected in the summer. Our marketing agency decided to leave us before end of summer. It was tough, but it was a blessing in disguise.

This was the turning point for us. A light bulb went off in our heads. We realized that both of us needed to step up, take charge, take responsibility and promote.

If this event is our version of 10X, we gotta 10X our effort to 10X our results!

It wasn’t easy. From writing the emails that you see everyday, to posting on social media strategically, to driving for a few hours to present at different venues, to interviewing Grant Cardone in person in Miami, we spent a lot of time, effort, money and tears along the way.

Is it worth it? Hell yes. 

We have grown to become someone that we have never thought possible. We now come to appreciate the value of our network and our list 100X more. Thanks to Tom & Nick Karadza, who taught us about building and nurturing our list, before we even started having any businesses.

Are we done yet? We hope not. 

We still have a message to share. We still want to continue to help you to build your long-term wealth.

We still want to make sure you can take control of your financial life, quit the job that you always want to quit, pay for your children’s education and travel around the world.

You can continue to join us on our wealth hacking journey here.

Thank you once again for joining us at Wealth Hacker Conference.

 

Until next time,

Erwin

Nov 9, 2019

Hello Wealth hackers!!

What a week!! Fresh off Thanksgiving so it’s already a short week and I took a 6am flight to Miami, Florida on Tuesday for my meetings with Grant Cardone and Steve Spray at Cardone Enterprises.  Honestly, I don’t usually book my own flights, Cherry usually does or my travel agent but being ultra frugal at times can cost me in different ways than money and this time it did. Getting up at 2am for a 6am flight really cost me a lot of energy on Tuesday so let that be a lesson learned for next time.

Hotel check in time is not until 3pm anyways so arriving at noon wearing in a suit jacket in humid, 28 degree celsius weather while dragging luggage with me is hardly practical…

Thankfully, I was able to check in early, Thank you Courtyard Marriot, at noon, I felt like crap so I had a nap and did some work. Till my 3pm meeting with my videographer Dorian Nash.

Dorian is a good guy, 25 years old from Michigan and moved down to Miami to get out of his comfort zone, make more money to pay off his student debts from college.  Sadly he could not find his path in college, he did study Psychology but they didn’t teach him anything about the Psychology of Success (That’s the title of a wonderful book by Brian Tracy that I highly recommend).

Sadly Dorian’s story is not uncommon.  He went to college, it hasn’t helped him in his career but he’s still paying off the debt.  He asked me on camera what I would advise someone who is 25 years old and my advice doesn’t change.  

Invest in yourself first, get educated in ways you can provide the most value in your current situation assuming you like where you work.  Look at who makes the most money in your organization then request to take on similar duties. You’ll notice whoever makes the company the most money or saves the company the most money earn the highest incomes. 

My path was no different when I worked in corporate: I explored ways to transition into the Sales Department as our Sales Executives all made six figure base salaries and very lucrative bonuses based on performance.  I was highly inexperienced when I checked the job description so I made the move from Operations to Product Management.

In a software company that sells software products, those who manage the products are valuable and my salary increased by over 40%.  Increase salary meant more savings, more RSP matching, more credit for mortgages for investment properties or funding your stock investing account.

Many people start out trading time for money so you may as well trade your time for as much money as possible.  I was no different and Dorian is no different. Then we discussed real estate and stocks. As he’s still in debt and doesn’t have a downpayment for a property, I suggested stock hacking and he’s definitely interested.  He’ll start small just like we all do but it’s better to start and start small then not at all.

Anyways, as mentioned, I was in Miami, Florida to meet with Grant Cardone’s team and to interview Grant for my podcast.  I’m just waiting on the recording and we’ll publish it right away. For me it was an awesome interview. I took a week to prepare my five questions I had to submit in advance, I wrote a sixth on the spot then had to freestyle as I think Grant was enjoying the interview and we went over the 20 minutes I was allotted.

I don’t want to spoil too much, we discussed how he’s scaling his business both in revenues and in staffing: today, Cardone Enterprises is around 175 staff. I think they were three around ten years ago.

We discussed how to avoid burnout, how he’s raising his daughters and their education, why he shows off so much with his Roll Royce and private Gulf Stream jet plane, why people hate him and why people love him.  The lovely Elena Cardone walked in during the interview as well so I couldn’t help but ask her if she’s coming to Toronto on November 9th and spoiler alert, she is.

Elena Cardone is totally underrated as an influencer by the way.  She has so much presence, it felt like Julia Roberts walked into the room when she did. 

I’m getting side tracked, on to this week’s show!!

Ready, Fire, Aim Real Estate and Stock Hacking w/ Habib Olawale

We have my friend Habib Olawale of no surname :) Habib doesn’t share his surname on social media so to respect his privacy I’ll leave it out here as well.

Habib is a real estate investor with properties all over the Greater Toronto Area.  His strategy is not quite refined but he’s bought mainly new construction condo apartments spread out over the Greater Toronto Area.  He’s done some stock investing as well as he explains but I think it’s safe to say his strategy was hardly sophisticated.

We met over social media as Habib reached out after being a fan of this show, he came to an iWIN meeting in July, saw the presentation by Matthew, Omar and Adriano, my stock hacker friends and ever since, Habib has been obsessed with stock hacking.

Habib took the first Stock Hacker Academy course in September and to date has made himself over $10,000 as a beginner stock option trader.  Note he’s made far more on his real estate but even Habib wouldn’t recommend anyone follow his strategy but the most important part is he got started.

For anyone interested, the presentation that launched Habib to 10k in less than three months, you can see that exact presentation if you use the promo code stock when purchasing your tickets to the Wealth Hacker Conference.

All you need to do is go to www.wealthhacker.ca and just before selecting what level ticket you want, click on the promo code blue hyperlink and enter stock.

Or use the direct link in the show notes: 

Link: https://wealthhacker.eventbrite.ca?discount=stock 

For anyone interested in taking the same Stock Hacker Course Habib did then save the dates Saturday and Sunday Nov 30th-December 1st for the in class portion of the next Stock Hacker Academy.

 
Nov 2, 2019

Here’s a quick update from these parts, my stock option selling is going great, my realized return is $550 and I’ve collected $1,100 in cash. 

In bigger news, my AirBnb is now sold, fully furnished and we close in just a few days! I can’t wait to have that capital back so I may trade more stock options!  The plan is to increase my bank roll into six figures and take it from there. The last six weeks have been amazing for myself and our group of 70 stock hackers. With each day that passes, we have more investors reporting in their first thousand dollars in profits.  Several have a couple thousand, my friend Monica reported 10% in returns in just six weeks. That’s the high number for the group thus far and just to clarify, those are absolute numbers not annualized and the last few weeks have been quite good for the market… let’s see how long the stock market holds up.

In even bigger news, we’re about to pass 1,200 in ticket sales for our Wealth Hacker Conference.  I’m realizing I don’t mention often how many tickets we’ve sold but for everyone involved, this is the biggest audience we’ve ever spoken too.  Grant Cardone our keynote has done several talks to much bigger audiences but this is yet another step out of my personal comfort zone.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable I always say.  If you’ve followed my story of always trying new things out: AirBnb, private lending, stock option selling to stuff in my personal life, I’m a weak swimmer but I got my SCUBA license and have done at least ten dives.  Crossfit, Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, my fear of heights etc…. I’m no one special but I’m determined to just show up, go through the process, give my best on a daily basis and results tend to show up. 

For my fellow introverts, this may shock you, I prepared and delivered a presentation in Toronto last week, I went through my slides once in preparation to a room of 50-60 of mostly strangers. I’ve never given a talk on joint venture investing in real estate before but it was well received.  Just like this podcast, I think people enjoy the, no agenda, no holding back sharing we do on this show. One thing I don’t like to do on this show is to NOT scare the listener. As I produce this episode, Halloween is only days away but I’m talking about much scarier things such as a recession.

Recession, recession, recession.  There I said it. I hear it often, I don’t know when it’s going to happen, my crystal ball is no better than yours but what I know my portfolio is designed for said occurrence because it pays for itself.  My portfolio mix is almost entirely duplexes and student rentals in areas with very little vacancy.  

The great things about recessions however is the opportunity to buy the bottom and retire shortly after like this week’s guest Brian Zammit.

How An Investor Retired Him And His Wife With Dividends in 2011 With Brian Zammit

I’ve known Brian for a couple years.  He’s extremely successful with his ecommerce business of buying goods from the far east to market and sell to the west, some on Amazon too. Brian has been doing it very successfully for years.

Brian is also a real estate investor but he didn’t retire off of his real estate, he is a real estate investor which qualifies him to be on the show however I wanted this specific part of his story so you the listener may benefit and hopefully retire shortly after the next recession like Brian and his wife did.  

Brian retired him and his wife off of the stocks he bought in 2008 and 2009 after learning how to sell stock options by reading Canadian author Derek Foster’s book “Money for Nothing.”  The same book we’ve mentioned one this show a couple times.

Brian timed a once in a lifetime opportunity and nailed it.  He doesn’t think so and I’ll let him explain but if you can make an investment and retire off of it, I’m all ears because who knows when the next correction comes because I want to be ready for it.  

Brian shares how he timed the market, the plethora of books he’s read, what he really thinks of Omar and Matthew’s Stock Hacker Academy, the same program him, myself and a couple other past guests are taking.

Brian is a good guy, really sharp, and I’m really glad we had someone like him in the first group through the Stock Hacker Academy to validate the strategy works.

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