Episode #235 - The 'Be a Pro' Mindset with Adam Finch

[00:00:01] Speaker A: If you're looking for the skills and tools to succeed in real estate investing, you've come to the right place. This show is about breaking through barriers, breaking through limiting beliefs and breaking through to the life that you want to live through the power of real estate investing. You're listening to the Breakthrough Real Estate Investing podcast. And now here are your hosts, Rob Brake and Quinton d'. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Souza. Welcome back everybody. Thanks for joining us again. Super excited to be back. It's been a little while, so we've got some stuff to catch up on. Quinton, what have you been up to. [00:00:40] Speaker C: Traveling all over the place? I've been, I was in the Rockies with my wife, so we, we did Banff and Lake Louise and surrounding area. Then I was in the UK doing Hadrian's Wall and out there for about a week. [00:00:58] Speaker B: And then, so when you say doing Hadrian's Wall, like, what is up, what does that mean? [00:01:03] Speaker C: It's like 130 kilometer hike across from one end of the, of England to the other. It's a 2000 year old Hadrian's Wall was the end of the Roman Empire. And so you can see the, the remains of the walls and the fortresses along the walls and, and it's a fun hike. The center is quite beautiful. The ends kind of not so much, but, but it was good. And then I was in Lisbon with my forum group from the Toronto Business Society and we're doing some touring, just talking business. And so that was good for the last week and then I'm off to Spain in the middle of November for three weeks. So. [00:01:49] Speaker B: So the lessons learned here, everybody, is that, no, when, when you're successful at real estate investing, then you can do stuff like what Quentin's doing. He's worked like a long time to get there. And now you're 20 years. Yeah. Now you're doing a lot of traveling and enjoying yourself, having fun. Yeah. And still, still making money and still, you know, minding things while you're somewhere else. [00:02:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm making more than I have ever before. And just because I'm, I'm reaping the benefits of owning assets for 20 years and you know, not selling everything. [00:02:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:02:27] Speaker C: Instead of selling it, refinancing. And like right now I've got, like I said, I think I've said this before, I've got four refinances that should be coming through and that should release, you know, probably around 500 maybe, maybe about 7 or 800,000. And then I've got another refinance with CMHC that should happen at the beginning of the year. That'll release another 150. So, like, that's, you know, it's, it's part of owning assets and not selling them and then, you know, repurposing the capital and reinvesting. You know, I just wish it was a little bit easier to do. Right. But it's, you know, if it was. [00:03:11] Speaker B: Well, everybody would do it. You have mentioned it before. You mentioned it, I think, last month and the month before and the month before. So, you know, again, like, this stuff isn't necessarily the easiest thing to do, but the rewards are big. [00:03:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And. And it's what you like. Like, I'm not a. I'm not a supercar. Like, I've got friends that have, like, two Lamborghinis and, you know, McLaren and stuff like that. And I have friends that, you know, have like a 4,000square foot house. And that's just. Just not, you know, not necessarily my thing. Like, I. I enjoy traveling and I'm I'm really. I really enjoy understanding, like, social dynamics and people and learning new things. So that's why I like this podcast. We have great guests and, you know, it's just. Just fun. [00:04:02] Speaker B: And I was gonna say, speaking of traveling, there real quick, it's getting cold there. It's getting cold there yet. [00:04:07] Speaker C: A little chilly. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, a little chilly. It's nice and warm here. So, you know, anyone that's interested in. In learning about the buying process and that kind of thing in Costa Rica, please reach out to me. I don't say that enough. I don't think, you know, and I think now when people listen to this and they're like, it is cold. Yeah, you're right. Maybe I'll give Rob a call and see what that's all about. So definitely encourage you to do that. Reach out to me. Robisterbreakthrough CA we'll say it at the end as well, but, you know, it's nice to just put it out there. We are coming into high season. The rains are gonna die off and it's gonna be sunny for, like, six months straight. So, you know, gear up and come for a visit. [00:04:48] Speaker C: I. I am gonna come for a visit and then we'll do, like, a live podcast together, you know, on. On site in Costa Rica, because I had fun when I brought out that group from Durham, rei, and we did. [00:05:00] Speaker B: Tour, had a blast. [00:05:02] Speaker C: So I might. I. I think I'd like to just do it myself and, and, you know, we'll have some fun and Maybe I like the cruise that we did and it'll be good. So we'll, I'll figure it out with you. We'll get it going. [00:05:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. Okay, everyone go over to Breakthrough reipodcast ca listen to all the old shows, connect with all the people that we've had on as guests. They've lot of helpful, useful, brilliant, hard learned information to share. So go over and do that and then go over to itunes and leave us a rating and review. It helps. It gets us out there to see, to be sorry, seen by more people. So please go over and do that. And that is it for housekeeping. Quinton, let's bring in our guest. [00:05:49] Speaker C: All right, so I'm going to introduce Adam Finch. He's a licensed carpenter, construction manager, real estate investor. 20 years experience in residential, commercial and high rise development. He formerly owned a renovation company. He now assists planning and coordinating multi million dollar projects across Ontario as a construction scheduling manager at Malo Blarney Construction. I don't. I'm going to mess that up anyway. [00:06:15] Speaker B: It says blammy, doesn't it? But what is it? How do you say it? [00:06:18] Speaker A: Adam Malul Blamey. [00:06:21] Speaker C: Blame me. Okay. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. [00:06:23] Speaker C: Out of Waterloo. And it is known for his expertise in workflow, efficiency, automation. He's helping teams modernize their systems and improve communication between field and office with technology and the emerging world of AI. He's a passionate speaker and podcaster father and he shares insights on construction, innovation, real estate investing and leadership. And lead with a be a pro mindset. [00:06:51] Speaker B: There you go. I like that. I like that. Be a pro. Well, that's good. And I've seen some of your. Sorry. Welcome Adam. Thanks for being here. [00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for being. Yeah, thanks for having me. [00:07:01] Speaker B: And I've seen some of your posts and I really like that, you know, just your attention to detail on the construction that is being done at. I'm assuming those are probably some of your rental properties. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:15] Speaker A: If you see a lot of stuff on the residential to other properties I've seen. Or some of the stuff. Yeah. That I've, I've built and had to work on over the years for sure. [00:07:24] Speaker B: And you know, let's. We're gonna probably get into this more but there, there is something to be said for that. But also at the same time that attention to detail costs money. Right. So we're gonna talk about walking the thin line to navigate how you can have both. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. And I'm the guy who. I love quality so I always end up overspending which can be good and bad. Depends on how much overspending you do. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Okay, so just, I guess let's start with how you got into real estate investing. [00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So high school, like, I was, I was, I was, I was so lucky. And kids don't have as much luck nowadays. So, like our middle school had a full wood shop, so 1112 years old. We were using planers and joiners and scroll saws and skill saws, which when you think back is pretty crazy that we were using these crazy power tools. But I had a really good teacher then, and I kind of. My dad was a. Was a millwright. So he always did stuff around the house, renovating. So, you know, you're always just seeing that as, as a kid. And then high school, got into construction tech. And we were lucky then that we had a home building co op. So it was like 13 kids in the teacher. We framed an entire house. The foundation was done for us. We framed the entire thing right up. And so, yeah, I loved, I loved the world of construction. But I finished high school and started framing houses and realized, like, I'm not ready to work full time at 17 years old. All my friends are out partying. So I ended up going to school for architectural engineering technology here in Conestoga, Conestoga College here in town. So I learned the whole aspect of how to build and then. So I wanted to do more, I want to do more with that. So I ended up working for a general contractor out of high school, which is Malou Blamey Construction. So I spent about 10 years there, worked my licensed carpenter helping supervise sites. Left in 2018 for two years, ran my own renovation company. And during this time as well, I got married, met my wife, and so we had our first house. And of course, money was a little tight when she was on maternity leave. So we're like, how can we make some extra money here? Well, we got extra bedrooms, and my wife's friend at the time was just looking for a place for a semester. So we're like, cool, come, you can rent one of our rooms, right? And we know the person, so that's cool. She moved out. We had another student come in. Then my wife was pregnant with our second kid. So we realized we were going to be short about $500 a month. So what could we do to kind of offset that? And then we found an old. It was perfect timing. We found an old duplex a couple blocks away from my parents, and my mom was retiring that same year. So not only are we going to have help with the kids by being close to her. But then we just like fell into this whole thing of becoming real estate investors and landlords and having tenants. So we did that for a couple of years. And then we were also renovating the houses while ren it. So we did that a couple times, flipped their own. I got into now the house that I'm in now, I've leveraged that. And it's all these things that I had no idea what I was doing because I wasn't part of a community and all this stuff. And people talk about, you know, buying coaches and, you know, you should pay for a coach and all this stuff. And I was always the guy like, I'll just do it myself. I'll figure it out myself. But I would be so much further ahead if I had gotten, you know, a coach earlier on or joined a community of people who knew what was going on. But, you know, from there then I was helping my brother do some duplex conversions with himself. And then we just did a duplex conversion of a single family house here in town and sold it in the summer. And then on top of that, I'm working. So after 2019, just before COVID I was actually lucky. I went back to go work for Maluable. They had a bunch of big projects coming up. I went back there, did a couple 20 story towers. And then the last couple of years, then I moved into the office side of things, doing some project management and then really specializing in. In project scheduling and efficiencies. Being a guy with that experience in the field for 20 years, I was then able to kind of do this hybrid role now where I work with our supers, I work with our project managers. I've got the schooling, I've got the hands on, and then on top of it, I'm understanding the business too, because I've joined masterminds and different real estate groups that are. People are building these big buildings. So now I'm starting to understand their side of things as well. So it's just kind of a big circle of life and collaboration of all this knowledge now. And yeah, just. And it all just comes into just taking that opportunity, jumping at the opportunity when it's given to you. And that's kind of where I am right now. [00:11:46] Speaker B: Well, it is interesting because, well, there's a lot to unpack there. But, you know, the old way of real estate investing, I mean, to my understanding, is buy a single family home. It's pretty much ready to go. You don't have to do anything. You rent it out, you make some money. Then, you know, people started to realize, huh, because of pricing and whatever inflation, this isn't, this isn't quite viable anymore. It doesn't make money when you do it that way. So now what can we do? Oh, let's renovate an old house, bring it up, refinance it and, and pull some money out. Or let's add a secondary suite or whatever it is that people need to do. But generally now you, it involves a renovation of some kind, small or, you know, quite large. So, so this information that you're going to share is going to be super valuable for people I think, listening to this. So I think that we need, I don't even know where to start. What do you think are some of the big mistakes, I guess, that people make when they're doing renovations? [00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so the biggest one, and this is kind of why I got into doing some of the coaching and speaking engagements that I'm doing now, is because, you know, I' joined a couple of these groups and I saw people planning renovations and they were waiting till the day that they moved into the house to do any of the planning. Meanwhile, they had a 60 to 90 day close where they just sat on it doing nothing and twiddling their thumbs, which was actually the very first speaking engagement I ever did. And it was, it was 60 days of planning for 30 days of renovation. Because that's all it takes. You know, when, if you're doing, you know, nothing too crazy, some new, new kitchen cabinets, new bathroom, new flooring, new trim painted up and you're ready to go, that's 30. But how long are your, how long is your kitchen going to take? How long does flooring going to take? Is your contractor ready? I know some people, they get the keys, but their demo guy wasn't ready for three weeks. But if they would have closed a week earlier, they could have had that demo guy or if you could offset and close later, then again you almost, you know, you're, if you're burning 2, 4, 8, $10,000 a month in carrying costs like that's, that's all coming out of your pocket in the end. So the whole thing is to smartly renovate and plan ahead of schedule. And it all starts even before you start to look for properties. And that's building your power team of contractors and building inspectors, your realtor, your investor focused realtor, having a lawyer that you can bounce some stuff off of and then also knowing those people that have done it before so that you're not recreating everything from scratch between schedules that you're going to create for. For planning. And where do you look for flooring and all that stuff? Where can you get discounts? You want to make sure you've got all that figured out before you even go look at the property. Because I'm at the point where I can look through a property. The first thing I do is I take a picture of the electrical panel and a bunch of the wires and send it off to my electrician. So I know before I even leave the property. I just tell him ahead of time, hey, I'm going to go look at a property. I'll shoot you some videos. And then while I'm there, he can also be asking me, hey, can you go research something? Can you, you know, take a. Take a better picture of it? So we're working in conjunction with each other, and then they know, too, when they come to look at the property. They've already got all that knowledge ahead of time. Same thing with your plumber, your H Vac guys having a demo. If you are doing those older houses, having a demo contractor as well, you can take a picture of some, you know, ceiling tiles or floor tiles. So you can go, you know what, it might look like asbestos. We got to do a little bit more digging. And that's all before you even put an offer on the property that you've done all of this back end and it's just sitting there ready to go. Right. It's no different than learning. Right. You know, before you drive a car, you learn how to drive a car. Before you renovate a property, you should probably learn how to renovate it. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one of the big things I've told this story before, but the very first renovation I did was a flip house. And we hired a contractor. He came over, he looked at everything, you know, planned out a little bit of stuff, told us how it was going to go. But, you know, being new to it, you're kind of just like, okay, well, you know, what's going on? Said, we need a couple thousand dollars to get things going. Here you go. And then he didn't come back. Right. You know, just started off, oh, my car is broken. And, yeah, you know, two, three days later, I'm like, okay, I see what's going on here. And so I had no idea what to do and where to start. So I just called a friend of mine who I knew, you know, knew how to do renovations. It was Frank Janeski. I called Frank Janeski, and. And I'm like, What do I do? He's just like, okay, just start with this and do this, you know, and then just talked me through basically the whole thing. We ended up doing almost all of it, or not a lot of it ourselves, as much as we could. But I think it's, you know, one of those things where you don't even necessarily know what order things should go in and, and then the order that you think it might be might not be the right one. So there's a lot to learn and. [00:16:56] Speaker A: It'S no different too. When you get on our larger projects, it's the same thing. So like I said, I work for Mallow Blamey Construction. We've got anywhere between 20 to 30 projects throughout mostly southern Ontario. Here we have supers that have 30 years experience that are just doing their very first apartment building. So they don't even know the true process of it. Right. So they gotta catch up to speed with it. So it's no different. Yeah, I mean, obviously you're a homeowner, you've never renovated something before. Like Even if a 30 year old veteran needs help, you definitely want to get help on the front end. And there are so many. There's, you know, we live in amazing world right now where you can just ask ChatGPT to even help you estimate your, your property with just a quick sketch and then on top of that you can ask it processes. What's the best process to. At least then if you've already got some of that knowledge, when you go to ask your contractor, like you can even ask things like how often should I be paying somebody? There's all these resources out there. So that when you go to talk to a contractor and he says, yeah, you know, we normally take 50% upfront and you've never heard that from anybody you've ever listened to or talked to or discuss this with, that's a red flag right there. And then learning how to vet your contractor too is a very important thing. Like in today's world, if they don't exist online, you have to be really leery about them. Unless you've got that referral from somebody who's used them before or you know, your community has used them. And I've seen it time and time again. Friends and people reach out to me all the time to come look at my, at their projects that are, that are going downhill. And that's the number one thing that, you know, they're doing a full house renovation, putting a basement suite in for you, and all they've ever done is custom millwork, and 11 months later, you don't have a project done, but it should have been done in three to four months and there's no permits and everything needs to get ripped down. And now all of a sudden, you've wasted an entire year and $60,000 and you still got to put another $60,000 into it. And now it doesn't even make sense. You can't pull your money out of it. And it, it's unfortunate, but that's, that's the world we live in right now. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be some unexpected things. I think that you should budget for that. But, but, you know, those, those big ones can be avoided with doing what you said, you know, doing some research and knowing exactly what you're getting into before you do. [00:19:12] Speaker C: It's, it's hard, especially when you're getting started, because you may not know what you don't know. And that's where you start to get into trouble. A lot of the times when we're, When I was, I, I did probably about a dozen flips in a year, and a lot of times it was more about learning the. Before you close by bringing in other contractors to give you different sorts of opinions and ide. Ideas of direction. And I found that that was useful. And also, you know, when we, when we were applying for permits, we would include a clause in our purchase and sale agreement to be able to apply for permits on the owner's behalf as a, as a, as a, as a way to start the process. Because some municipalities, although they, you know, they're supposed to take, you know, 20 days or whatever, however many, many business days they're supposed to take. It's largely depends on the municipality. And, you know, they'll push back on those dates. And you know what, you can try to take it through the process and it's just not worth it. Like, you, you just have to wait for them to, to, to, to give you back those, those permits and, and, and, you know, however long it takes to get it done. So those are some really important, you know, pieces. [00:20:34] Speaker B: So that's a step that's one step further than what Adam was saying too, is like, yeah, plan everything too. But then if you can start by applying for permits before you take possession, that'll just get you one step ahead. You can, you can, you know, start on day one. [00:20:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm actually really. So I've got, I've got a. Like we, we just added two units to two apartment buildings, a unit to another apartment building. And then one more that we're working on. And then I've got two locally that I'm working on right now as well as basement Renault. Like I've got a lot of different things on the go. I'm kind of curious, you mentioned AI and automation. How do you see like that fitting in not only now, but the, you know, the future of construction and real estate investing. [00:21:31] Speaker A: So I mean it's, it's, it can do basically replace most menial, you know, tasks that are repetitive and also just help you with everything from vetting. Like I said, you can do a quick calculation, like a quick square footage of your basement and say, you know, typically, you know what it's going to cost. Two by four walls, drywall, insulation and research right now. And I created a little custom GPT. I play around with this stuff all the time to see what we can do. But then I can say this is how many square feet this is. This is. I'm going to drywall the walls 2x4. I need to insulate vapor barrier sound, bats in the ceiling and 18 pot lights. And I can tell it to then just go look on, on Rona's website. It'll pull all that information and within a couple minutes I have the entire, like a really good budget of what you need. Square footage of siding, vinyl siding, so you can have all this stuff ready to go and you just ask your GPT to just, you know, I'm working on all this stuff with a bunch of different people. So I mean, I'm all over the place with, with what it can do. But you know, when you get into larger developments, planning and scheduling, you know, talk and text to it, you can have it. If you're a wholesaler, you're a realtor. I'm working with a guy right now to kind of help bring automated phone answering systems to people. So he's already doing with some H Vac companies. So at five o' clock, when no one's in the office anymore, you call in, the AI bot picks up and says, hey, I'm an AI bot. If you'd like to, you know, if you have an emergency, please let us know and I'll forward you. If you'd like to make an appointment for tomorrow, I can make that appointment. Or if you'd like to talk to a person and they got someone on call as well. So it's all these little things and you know, we, we have it where our guys, if they want to create, you know, their safe work procedure, hazard assessment for the day as they're walking to the site, they can just talk and text real quick. And we've got our template done up and the 10 questions it needs to ask you. What is the job site? Who's doing the work? What are you doing? What safety equipment are you using? What tools are you using? So, you know, in 20 to 30 seconds, they talk to their phone, they hit generate it, creates the PDF Word document, they send it to our office, they send it to our super, and their paperwork's done without them having to even open a computer now because most guys don't on site, don't have a computer. Or how do you get 20 guys to fill out paperwork, you know, and in one day? And that's. That's obviously moving to the. The bigger projects because you're not doing that every day. But just. Yeah, just the estimating the walkthroughs, checklists. So same thing you can walk through and just, you know, talk and text. Hey, create me. You know, if you want to do this yourself, create me a checklist, a really thorough checklist for planning out a kitchen renovation or a bathroom renovation. And, you know, what. What things should I look for? And you could even ask it two years of, you know, what year. What year is asbestos? Was asbestos used in, you know, Kitchener Waterloo for houses? What does aluminum wiring look like? It. There's so many things out there, and all you have to do is just ask it to, you know, first you just sit there, hey, can you create this for me? And then you ask it how you create it, and then you just ask it to create it for you. And it's. It's amazing that, you know, like, 20, 30 minutes, I created a little, like I said, custom GPT that anybody can use for estimating their basement and with logic in there. So I put logic in there where I said, you know, if you come to a corner, add two extra studs. When you got a window, I need you to add four extra studs because you've got all your extra framing. And you can ask it to explain that to you as well. You can say, just give me the number, or give me a thorough walkthrough. So I could, you know, talk to a homeowner and say, this is how I got my numbers, or, you know, to my investors or whatever. I can say, look, as you can see here, this is why we need 102 by fours. You might look at that wall and go, how do you need so many? There's. You can give you a custom breakdown, and it can teach you Too. You can ask it to, hey, show me how I would estimate this basement. Show me how I would estimate a kitchen. There's, there's so much out there. Literally, if you can dream it, you can definitely achieve it right now with, with AI. And this is just where we are now. [00:25:28] Speaker C: So you put the, so you put the measurements in with pictures of the space and then you, you overlay that with instructions and. [00:25:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:25:37] Speaker C: Yeah, that's how you're able to do it. [00:25:38] Speaker A: Yep. And literally you can just do a sketch, you know, 20ft, 10ft, you can even, I mean you can just write all of it right on there. Like just write, you know, an arrow. Insulate exterior. Insulate, insulate, insulate. Uninsulated walls, soundproof ceiling. And then you can just say, here, here's a picture of what I want to build. It's in a basement, eight foot high ceiling, seven and a half foot high ceilings. Like it can do all that. It's smart that way. And once you kind of have your system done up, if you're paying for ChatGPT plus, then it will help you walk through creating little custom GPTs, which are like mini apps within ChatGPT that you can just open up and you can get it to prompt you a bunch of different things. Like for instance, you know, our guys on site, it could be, you know, you click enter, create a safe work procedure, create a, you know, a hazard assessment, create a, whatever site walkthrough, and then depending on which one you click, then it pulls up all that information. So you basically have templates and spreadsheets created on the back end that's stored in ChatGPT that I can pull information from if you've got templates. Or you can just ask it with some, you know, general information to pull that information for you. [00:26:48] Speaker C: It's interesting. What about like local building codes or codes that. Oh yeah, or bylaw and things like that? [00:26:55] Speaker A: I do that all. Yeah, I do that all the time. Because especially around here, for instance, the little municipalities have little difference differences in, in just escape windows and egress windows in your basements. Some you need a 33 inch window. Well, some need a 3 foot 3, some you only need 18 inches, some there's a height difference for it. So yeah, you can, you can ask all that stuff. And we're creating, we're trying to work on creating little ecosystems right now in our bigger projects where, you know, we've got all our information stored somewhere. So right now we're using ChatGPT. So we've got all our pos, we've got drawings, changes, budgets, all that stuff. But we can just quickly go chat GPT and say, hey, pull me up the masons PO and highlight the section that says, you know, they're responsible for putting bearing plates in. That's, you know, that's, that's a common thing that people. We. Sometimes it's different and go right here, here. I just pulled it up real quick, just on my phone. I didn't have to open my computer because we've got all that information stored. So not right there, just sped up. That's like 10, 15 minutes of your time. You could even just tell the mason, here you go, open up the GPT. And you know, you can say hey, pull up that. You pull up, you know, first floor drawing and it'll give you the PDF. Or you can say here, send the link to so and so on site. There. There's so much that it can do. And this is, and the crazy thing is this is just today. Like a year ago I had a video recently a year ago I was telling everybody about how awesome spreadsheets are for doing their basement rentals. And I was spending. Every other week I'd spend like 10 to 15 minutes on Rona's website making sure that the 2 by 4 prices were right when I was calculating because, you know, prices fluctuate with wood every day. Now I just tell it, I need you to pull up the information on what's a 2 by 4 by 8, what's a 2 by 4 by 10 on Rona's website today. Information's right there. You can ask it how much is in stock. Like there's so many things that that AI is going to afford us. [00:28:47] Speaker C: That's cool. [00:28:48] Speaker B: It's pretty exciting. I found it's saving me time as well and I've been using it quite a bit too. So I wanted to just ask you now let's. Other than that, like, I mean there's. What are your tips and tricks, I guess of keeping investors on schedule with their renovations but also, you know, being able to do that, do the job with quality in mind. [00:29:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So the biggest thing is to, is to make sure, like I said, you're making those contacts with either suppliers or tradespeople and especially finding out where there's discounts and tracking discounts. If you look at all of the big box stores, they are usually on like a four to six week repeat on sale. So insulation will be one week. Ronan Lowe's used to always be like there's like 20% off flooring the next week, you know, it's 10% off insulation, then it's going to be interior doors, then it's going to be trim. So knowing that if you've got the space, you know, you can store material. Knowing that, you know, especially if you're doing it personally, you know, if you got a garage, you can fill your garage up with whatever stuff comes on sale. So knowing that stuff. But you can also, if drywall is on sale today, I can order it, say I want it delivered a month from now. So you can, you know, and that's, that's the whole point of scheduling out your project as well. So you know, roughly. But you know, what, if the day before comes and you're not quite ready for drywall, you can always just call up Rona or Load or whoever you're using, say, hey, I got to push that off for a little bit. And then utilizing as well. If you really want to get utilize money even more because you're a business, you're a real estate investor like at Lowe's or at Rona. Sorry, you can, you can sign up for their VIP Pro. I was just talking to the guys about this. You can sign up for VIP Pro, which saves you 5% on most material right off the bat, 10% off paint and I think appliances. So you're already saving, you can already save there. On top of that, sometimes they've got sales going on. There's places like Tile Master, they'll give you 20 off. So if you need any of your waterproofing and some of this stuff, depending on what your contractor is charging you, as long as you're buying the right stuff, you can get discounts that way. Landscape supply places. A lot of times we have that or we just use our landscapers account to purchase material in perpetuity. Even if he's not using that job, I'll still use his. I've got accounts too set up personally as well. So. So all my friends and family can go. And those ones. I make sure though that if you're sharing that stuff that you don't have a credit account because then you never know who's buying stuff and not paying you for it. But talking about the credit accounts, you put something on credit, you don't have a month, you've got a month before you gotta pay that. Then you can pay it on your credit card and you've got another month before you gotta pay that. So if you're doing a quick flip and a quick turnaround like we had our one property. We listed it three days later. Firm offer with a 21 day close. It's like everyone's getting paid within a month, which is a crazy thing. And I've made deals too, with my contractors knowing that the refinance is coming. The electrician needs 20 grand for his, you know, for whatever. He just did new panels and all this stuff. And I said, hey, if you can just wait an extra week or two, I've got the refinance coming in. You know, I'm good for the money, right? We've all got those relationships as well. And for him, he's doing the exact same thing, right? He doesn't owe that money for 60 days as well. So, so planning ahead. And that's, that's, that's one thing too I thought about is you can get your refinance started before you're 100% done in a lot of cases. We had, we were just finishing our flooring in our basement. We'd already done the upstairs for this duplex. We were finishing the flooring in the basement and I already had the guy coming through. So we, we were just doing finished paint. We already had the refinance and we already paid out from all the money we put in for the renovation. So that's another one too. Knowing when the project's going to finish, where you're going to be at each, then you can get, you know, your appraiser coming in. And obviously this appraiser we've used a bunch of times as well, because we did, we did a lot of stuff with bank of Montreal. So again, knowing bank of Montreal and having that strong familiarity with them is that they, they knew exactly what we were going to be doing. We're like, yep, we're recreating upstairs down here, exact same thing. And they're like, cool, yep, we know you're good for it. And, and everything was, was done so lots of different ways to, to get ahead and to save money. And then when you're saving that money, when you're saving that time and you know that your renovation is going to be completed on time, that's where you can do things like maybe you're going to put the granite in, sit on the laminate countertop instead of the vinyl tub surround, you're going to do a, a nice tile back or, you know, tub surround, you can do a backsplash and you know, instead of just a regular countertop, you know, with the little 4 inch one, you're going to do a full tile backsplash. And then that Way you're that little bit above everybody else for only a little bit more. And especially if you've got those breakdowns like the guys I get granite from here locally, I priced out, yeah, laminate and, and granite. It was about 800 more to do granite. So it's like 2400 bucks for the laminate. But it was like 3, 800 or whatever. 3, 600 for, for the granite, no seams, you know, I mean like it just looks way better. And we're having this big island too. So just if you, if you're doing laminate, you can only go so big with it because the sheets only come. So having that, that contact there allowed me to now produce even better. And again, that house sold like within like two weeks of being on the market for exactly what we wanted. And we were way better. The neighbor tried to sell his house and he only had laminate countertops. And it sat on the market forever because now they look at what I did for my house. But even then I was making a huge profit on my house. We bought it for like 280, put like 60, 70,000 in. It was worth 500. But again, I had all those connections with people, so I was only spending a fraction when anybody else would have had to spend for that exact same project. [00:34:29] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:34:32] Speaker C: I think you mentioned maybe off the podcast, the Be a Pro network. What is that? [00:34:40] Speaker A: Yeah, so I've been trying to figure out a way to create a community just where anyone can reach out and ask for help, ask for a contractor. And you know, Facebook's cool because it's free, but you don't know who you're talking to on there. So if you guys know Gary Vaynerchuk, he's. So I get, he's, he's. I guess he's, he's helping promote Stan Store. So Stan Store, it's just like school. But so yeah, he had a challenge. I, I joined it. And then I realized what they're creating on Stan and a school as well is, is basically what I'm looking for to do is to create this community of like minded people, of, you know, investors, homeowners, contractors, where people can come together, they can network together. No competition with, with everybody. We're just helping each other out. And I'm charging a dollar a month for it to join to it. And then on top of that, we do have a private Facebook group for, for ease of messaging people and stuff like that. But I'm planning events coming up as well, like speed networking events and stuff like that for Anyone who joins it. But I think this is just a great way to just get all those people in a room together, all as one, where we can share events, we can share our knowledge, we can share discounts, we can share resources together because, you know, margins are getting tighter and tighter. So how do we become more. We, we gotta become more efficient. So how do we become more efficient? We, we share the resources together. So, you know, if you're creating a custom GPT, if you're creating a spreadsheet, if you're creating a workflow or a system or a checklist, you know, it's no money out of your pocket to share that with somebody who's, you know, in Alberta and you're in Ontario, right? But maybe that guy then has a hookup for, you know, a kitchen supplier or a countertop guy, or he knows an electrician or a friend. So, yeah, like, I just believe that collaboration, you know, over competition is a big one. And I, I noticed that recently I went out to Alberta, they had re icon out there, and I couldn't believe that they had all these wholesalers there helping each other and just this huge community aspect. And I said, like, this is what's missing because I, I just find it in Ontario. Here, everyone's like, only for themselves, not helping, not collaborating. But how much more time and effort are you spending trying to start from scratch as opposed to learning, you know, which is why I love people like, like a guy like Gary Vaynerchuk who just gives everything for free. The knowledge is there for free. You want to go on social media, listen to exactly what I'm saying, do it. Here's all the free resources. And so I'm looking to do the exact same thing, but I want to make sure that whoever's there is there for good. And so just charging that $1 a month helps make sure that, you know, no one's going to go to another site and type in a credit card for a dollar a month or debit or PayPal, whatever they got to set up. You know, if they're, most people, you don't have to worry about scammers and all stuff. And you get vetted too. You got to answer some questions before you get in there. And then, I mean, my, my whole plan is the, the money that we make will just be used to either purchase resources, you know, when we're doing like group networking events, stuff like that, and then I want to give back to the community as much as we can. I've been so lucky. I've been afforded such great opportunities here. I've got so much great knowledge and I'd love to be able to give that back to the community. Whether it's helping with charities or, you know, people in need. I would love to be able to be that guy, you know, spends all his day making YouTube videos, helping, you know, single moms and people, you know, fire restoration and, and damages. Like that's what I grew up on. That's what I was always taught as a kid. You know, do unto others, you know, be the change and, and, and give back as much as you can. And, and the last year I've, I've, I've been focusing more on, on giving back and that's why I been creating is all the videos that I've been creating and all the knowledge and tips would add some humor into it as well, just to give that back. And, and you know, I feel so much rewarded every day from what I'm giving back. And there's so many people, you know, thanking me. And then I see those same people applying that knowledge to help others now as well. Which is, which is so fulfilling to me when, when I see other people giving back because I gave back and they now have that knowledge and skill to help somebody else. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. And one thing that I've tried to avoid is having that kind of a scarcity mindset that, you know, that there's not enough for everybody and there is. Right. So it's just, but that's hard for a lot of people to get. They don't, you know, it is kind of a different way of thinking. Right. So people don't wrap their head around it right away. So, you know, I would encourage everybody listening to go over and take a look at the Be A Pro Network and, and see what Adam has to offer there. It sounds really good. And you've also got a podcast and a live stream network that you're going to launch. [00:39:29] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm working on that as well. So. Yeah, so I plan to launch the Be a Pro Network. It'll be a 24 hour live stream on YouTube. So if you've got videos of whatever we're throwing around, show ideas, I got a couple people out there, I've got, got some guys that want to come on and do like a mortgage minute type of show and I've got realtors, you know, that it's, it's. I think it'll just be a great opportunity again collaborating with everybody. You can have your own YouTube channel 24 hours day. 24 hours and you know what? This is the whole thing. Technology now exists nowadays to upload all your video to. To online databases, and YouTube can just pull from that and stream and you can go live on there as well. So, yeah, I'm coming up with a bunch of different show ideas for people. I've already had a bunch of people reach out to me right now. So, I mean, yeah, you guys can have your. Your podcast on there too. And it could, you know, it could be every Monday at 9:00am you know, we got the, you know, this podcast comes on and we know at, you know, 10pm and the beauty is you can run this 24 hours a day with live video all over the world because, you know, real estate is worldwide and you never know, you know, who's tuning in and at what time. And the beauty is it. It can all link back to. To your channel as well. Right? So you put your show on this channel, we link everything back to your channel. So again, like, this is, you know, I. I love technology. It's great. I love technology. I love real estate. You know, I love it all. And now, finally, where I'm living in the perfect time right now, where. Where all of this can come together to one and I can help people. Yeah. Grow their audiences, grow their network, and share the knowledge. Why not, again, collaborate together? And why are we competing with each other on a million different YouTube channels? Which is cool to still have your own brand, but let's collaborate together, and in doing so, we then give back to each other and to the entire community. [00:41:13] Speaker B: I like it. And I think Quentin would obviously agree with the statement that, like, him and I don't make any money from this show. We're just doing it for fun because we want to talk to you, you know, and so I. I would. I would be happy to be a part of that if we can. You know, if you think that there's value that people can get by putting this show on there, then I'm all for that. Yeah. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I see so many people you think about, you know, just. It can be as simple as people make stories all day long. You save all that video, you got 20 or 30 minutes of clips for the whole week. You go on cap cut or whatever, you compile it all together, let's put it on there. It doesn't need to be 100 polished. And you know it. People just want to hear your true, authentic self, which is what I love about this podcast. I've been binging it for the last couple days and listen to all my friends it's amazing how many of my friends I went from back, you know, years ago, and. And I'm just like little nuggets. And I was like, I. I didn't know about. I didn't. I didn't know about that. You know, about my friend that. You know, that that's how they got started. You know, we never talk about that. So we talk about the deals we're doing right now, but I don't know their true story. And I would love to know everybody's story, which is why I love. Yeah, listen to a podcast like yours because you guys really dig deep into that story. It's exactly how I. It's. I. I always love when I run into guys like you, because it's like, you guys have the show that I would do if I was running a show. Right. You know, I started showing to be competing with you guy. But, you know, I had a friend, his name's Michael Emanuel, he wrote a book on, like, project management and rehabbing. And I read the thing, and I'm like, man, I hate you because you just wrote the book that I wanted to write. Like, the book already exists. But I said, good, though, because I don't need to write the book. The book already exists. I share it with people. [00:42:51] Speaker B: People. [00:42:51] Speaker A: Because it's such a valuable resource. And. And so, yeah, like, that's just it, you know, I want to see your true, authentic self, you know, and as everybody grows up, they can see how hard you worked, you know, on that first flip project and the fails that you had. And, you know, I. I'm more inclined to work with that guy who failed a million times and now he's killing it than the guy who, you know, raised $20 million and built one apartment building. It went good because he doesn't know what happens when it goes bad. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Right now. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to the building show in Toronto as well, coming up. [00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm gonna be. Yeah, yeah. So the buildings with an S show. This is the power of social media. Those. You know, I wanted to do some more speaking gigs in the construction space. You know, I love real estate. Or I like. I say I like real estate. I love construction, I love building. I love. I love the fact, you know, I had this live stream for four hours on the weekend painting my house, and it was just kind of funny. Everyone was joking that they're just like, yeah, nothing like watching paint dry all weekend long. Right? But just talking about how to paint all weekend long, I just. I love construction. I love building. And I was like, look at this. Look what I just did in four hours. Painted this whole room that, you know, I. Redoing my kids. My kids bedroom. Yeah. So, yeah, so I was reaching out to all these different building shows. Yeah. And these guys said, hey, we saw your stuff. We love what you're talking about. You want to come help promote our event? Sure. They had already gotten their speakers already lined up because it was, it was happening sooner. But. So I'm going to be talking on a panel December 3rd. So if you guys are in the area, in the Toronto area, you want to come in for the event. Three day event. We've got construction, real estate development tools. Everything to do with construction, real estate will be happening and diverging onto Toronto for that week December 3rd to 5th. I do have a discount code you can use Finch 10. Save 10 off on that. Or if you guys want, I can, I can send you the link directly. [00:44:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. We'll put it in the show notes, send everything over for, for all the ways to get in touch with you. [00:44:45] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. [00:44:46] Speaker B: And we'll put in the show notes. [00:44:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And then, and then, you know, if you guys ever seen. Read the book 2x or 10x is better than 2x. Like, thinking big, thinking bigger. Right. Like, I always thought like, cool, I got a duplex. And then I go to hang out with guys who are like making 100 million or a million dollars a month in real estate and they're like, why don't you have your own apartment buildings? Like, you know how to build it. Why don't you have your apartment buildings? I was like, you know what? I never thought, I never thought big enough for that, you know. So like I said, I reached out to. What's the biggest, what's the biggest construction show in North America? The International Building Show. It's in Orlando next year. So I applied and yeah, so I'm going to be speaking on two sessions there. They actually picked both my sessions that I applied for. So one's on, you know, the emerging technology of AI and project management. And I'm also going to be speaking about properly scheduling out your projects and your renovations as well. So, um, so yeah, again, I'm so grateful that, yeah, I get to, to spread, spread the word of construction and, and efficiencies. And that's what, that's what gets me so excited when I can do something faster than I did it the day before. It's like the, the notion they say, if you want something done fast, find a lazy person and not that I'm lazy, but I just hate wasting time and energy and efficient, you know, and being inefficient on a project. [00:46:00] Speaker C: So, yeah, you got to find the things that work for you. Is that 10x book by Dan Sullivan? [00:46:07] Speaker A: I'm not quite sure. I can't remember who it is. [00:46:10] Speaker C: I remember something along those lines. Very similar. Dan Sullivan, I, I used, I hired him as a business coach or as part of his business coaching program. And that was, that was really good. He, he's an excellent speaker and he definitely works well with business owners and just the right mind mindset. I mean, it was an expensive program for sure, but it was definitely worthwhile. So that's, that's interesting. And you're right about the apartment building stuff and I, we do about a million dollars a month in revenue from our apartment building, all our stuff. And you're right. You know what, like, I was a law for a long time. I was working in the business and just doing all the renovations and the processes and the systems. And now I work on the business. You know, every once in a while I still have to deal with problems, but for the most part, that's where I'm making the most money because I'm thinking of it differently and trying to create systems and process to take me out of the day to day. And as I've kind of grown, it has made more sense to me. It's taken a while to understand it, but, you know, using those books and tools like from Dan Sullivan and other, you know, really great thinkers have been helpful. So I'm glad that you mentioned his book. And, and also it was, it was really good to have you on. This has been a great podcast. [00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, and I'm, I think we would be very happy to collaborate on something where, if. Where we could be valuable to a different audience, possibly. So that would be great. Yeah. And yeah, thanks for sharing everything today. Appreciate it. And we'll have to have you back on sometime. We'd be happy to do that. Yep. What's the best way for people to reach out to you? [00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah, anything. I'm on all social medias. It doesn't matter what it is. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. I'm even on some of the smaller ones like our Clapper and, and Blue Note and their Blue sky, whatever. I post everything. But yeah, if you just search, search for me on whatever platform you are, it's always the Adam Finch. Everything is the T H E A D A M F I N C H. The Adam Finch Everywhere, Facebook, Instagram are my two biggest ones. I got my biggest audiences. And then Tick Tocks. I'm trying on Tick Tock, but I don't know, it's just not. That one's just not working for me yet. So it's the challenge, my next challenge. Challenge to try and grow there. [00:48:44] Speaker B: I don't get it. Like, we had a guest on. Or I was talking to somebody not too long ago, and it was Victoria Clooney. [00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:52] Speaker B: And she goes, you got to get on Tick Tock. And I'm like, okay, fine, I'll do it. You know, and. And I go, I. I literally signed up and then I put it down for a little while, and then I went, okay, no, no, I gotta get back on this. And I open it up and it says, you're banned. Or for some reason, they'd kicked me off. I had literally done nothing. I hadn't looked at any videos, I hadn't posted anything, and I just got banned for no reason. So I'm like, that's it. I give up those, like, the second time that I've tried with that thing. So, yeah, no, you know, you find. [00:49:26] Speaker A: You find your. You find your niche. Right. Like, I. I find with. With anything. Instagram is the biggest one, so that's where I get most engagement and most. Most views from. And every platform's a little bit different. I know Victoria well. I met her in Edmonton, so we've talked a bunch of different stuff. And she's getting into some stuff with construction as well, with helping people build their businesses as well. So she's a great resource. [00:49:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, thanks, Adam. You know, appreciate you coming on. Like I said before, we'll have all your links in the show notes, and people can reach out to you and learn how to be part of the pro Be a Pro mindset. [00:50:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Have a Be a Pro mindset. [00:50:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:08] Speaker A: Quality. Always. And whatever you do, that's. That's what I say. The Be a Pro mindset. That's why I call it the Be a Pro network. Because everything that I do, I always want to do it like a pro. [00:50:17] Speaker B: Perfect. Quinton. How can people get in touch with you? [00:50:22] Speaker C: You can always come out and visit us at Durham REI ca. That's where I speak once a month. And you can always connect with me via email through that website, or if you want to speak real estate for 15 minutes whenever I have a chance. I love chatting with our audience. You can go to quintindesouza.com and, you know, book a 15 minute call. Happy to do that. And Rob, how about you? What's the best way for people to get in touch with you? [00:50:50] Speaker B: You can always email me at robusterbreakthrough Ca. And if you want to see what we're doing here in Costa Rica, go to Point Break Home cross.break homecr.com we're also on Facebook. Point Break, Homes, Costa Rica. Okay, thanks, everybody, for listening and we will see you next time. Have a great day. [00:51:08] Speaker C: Awesome. Have a good one. I gotta, I gotta get going for the. My next call. [00:51:14] Speaker B: All right. Next thing. Okay, see you. [00:51:16] Speaker C: Have a good one. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Thanks. [00:51:16] Speaker C: All right, take care. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Thanks.