Unlocking the Secrets of Real Estate Success with Patrick Francey
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There's always another deal. Don't chase it. Do your diligence. Don't get caught in your ego.

But this is such a great deal. Yeah, okay, well, it's not that great and it's gonna stretch you and you're not ready for it. There's always another real estate deal. - Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert Podcast. I am doing this podcast from Cabo. Super excited. I got Patrick Franci here. He's an expert in real estate finance podcasting.

his podcast, The Real Estate Investment Network, and he's the host of the Everyday Millionaire podcast. He's near Vancouver, but spends a lot of time all over the place. Yeah, why don't you just tell us a little bit about you and how the audience gets to know you a little more? Well, a little bit about me. Cole's Notes is I've been in business just over 40 years. I'm still fired up, ready to go. There's that old phrase that when you're

Vocation is like a vacation. You never work a day in your life. That's how I've been feeling for a number of years. I started in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I have a couple of retail businesses out there. I've been entrepreneurial. It's where I did a lot of my real estate investing. And in 2000, when I started real estate investing, I came across an organization called the Real Estate Investment Network, which was all about providing education to primarily do-it-yourself real estate investors. We didn't sell

real estate we literally had a subscription or membership-based business uh a community of like-minded individuals that wanted to learn how to invest in real estate that organization grew to be national right across canada and that's the coolest notes of where i'm at today i started my podcast the everyday millionaire in 2014

And my wife, who is a Olympic and world-class mental performance coach, and I, we do a weekly show called Mindset Matters. It's under the umbrella of the Everyday Millionaire Mindset Matters. And both her and I have done a lot of the personal professional development coaching over the years. And that's a little bit about me. Yeah, talk to me about what that means, Everyday Millionaire. How does that... I talk about this a lot. Yeah. But I want to hear your...

explanation and definition of it. Well, you know, for what I'll give you a little bit of a quick backstory was that

I had been approached back in about 2014 to, and leading up to that, to write a book. You know, Patrick, you've got to write a book. It's all about branding. You've got a great message. You should do that. I didn't feel like I had a book in me, number one. And secondly, you know, hindsight, I'll probably still end up writing a book at some point in the near future. But at that time, I always...

was under the, you know, there's things were changing so much. And I say, and it's great to say you're an author, but I want my work to be current. And, you know, if you've got a book, unless it's a really special book, you know, they kind of have a shelf life. So that's all to say that as I'm contemplating the, you know, a little bit of peer pressure that I was feeling, um,

I was literally on the beach in St. Lucia kicking back and reflecting and taking some downtime and the whole concept of podcast popped into my mind in literally in a meditation on the beach and I

Didn't know anything about podcasting. It was pretty new back then. I mean, it was not a lot of, you know, podcast was not common. And I thought, well, what a great way to stand out. And then the concept of the everyday millionaire, because of what I found myself, Tommy, is across, we have 3000 members across the country and just ordinary people that were growing and building their real estate portfolios. But within our cohort was a number of business owners, 60% of them.

And I realized that everybody aspires to make money, invest in real estate as one of those avenues and to build that network of a million dollars. That was a target. And still to this day remains that, although it doesn't sound like a lot of money these days, it still is a goal for many. And I realized that I was surrounded by individuals who just quietly were people who lived their life, went to work,

quietly built their businesses. And the next thing you know, they are what I would refer to as everyday millionaires. And so the premise of my show, The Everyday Millionaire, was really just built on seemingly ordinary individuals who achieve extraordinary results. Hence, I

enjoyed having you on my show because here you are this young man that had this weird idea went through all the trials and tribulations that you win the next thing you know you're crushing it in a whole new business and doing your thing and making a difference in the world and that was the whole concept there um you know if you put money away early enough i looked this up the other day on chat gbt i think it was nine nine percent of change are millionaires in the united states

And I don't know if that number is accurate, but it makes sense because just to buy a piece of real estate now in Phoenix or California or Denver, I mean, you're looking at half a million to a million bucks for something decent.

The actual definition of having a millionaire status is a net worth of liquidatable assets of a million dollars or more, not including your principal residence. That's the kind of the box that... Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's the box I play in so that it is the benchmark. It is a benchmark and it's not my benchmark. I adopted it from that explanation that I was given.

Because ultimately, to be that individual that has a net worth of a million dollars, you don't want to have to give up your home. You don't want to have to give up your key assets. You don't want to have to sell your Rolex watch. I mean, ultimately, you want liquidatable assets. I guess a Rolex watch could fall into that category. But assets that are a million dollars or more. You know, my memory might be off, but I used to work on this program called

It was by Dave Ramsey. And it was, I got, I entered into this for my whole company, not really for myself. And he sent me a book and I think it was called Everyday Millionaire.

Dave Ramsey, I own the trademark for the everyday millionaire here in Canada. I think he's got it for the U.S. Or he has that tagline somewhere along the line. That's okay. Yeah, I wasn't sure. So when you guys – so tell me a lot of – tell me what this program was because it sounds like you've been 3,000 members, 60% of them own a business. What did you –

What's the purpose? I mean, what do you guys coach on? Well, ultimately, we showed people how to invest in real estate, what we would consider the right way. So a lot of people get into the world of investing in real estate because they see a boom cycle. You've been through it in the U.S., different states, of course, in Canada, same thing.

Where you get into these boom cycles and everybody becomes a real estate site real estate genius, you know my brother-in-law Hey, we just did he just did a pre-construction condo and you know, he didn't even have to take possession of it and he made $150,000 well now he's bought five of them and I can do that too and so it doesn't it isn't really investing it's speculating some would even argue gambling so

Ultimately, what we were teaching is how do you invest in real estate the right way based on the economic fundamentals that drive real estate? In the world of real estate, as investors, what is it we're trying to do? We're trying to look into the future.

put our capital to work, leverage our capital through that whatever mortgage program you might have, 20% down, 5% down, 25% down, whatever it is. And you're going to leverage that capital into the future.

and own that hard asset knowing that when you've got a strong economic fundamentals, and I'll give you some parameters for that, that we know real estate will generally appreciate in value. So in a simple context of buy and hold, you're going to buy that piece of property today in a city, and you're going to go a minimum of five, seven, 10, or even longer years into the future,

and get a return on that investment of capital. And because it's leveraged, you get a bigger gain. Now, how do we look into the future? What do we know drive real estate? It's not rocket science, but some people don't think about it. Population growth driven by GDP because people move into areas where there are jobs. And when people move into an area, generally, especially immigrants have to rent.

And they have to rent because they may not have a credit rating when they come into the country or into a state, whatever it might be, or they don't have a credit rating. They don't necessarily know what their job is. Is it sustainable? Culturally, they go, well, I don't even know where my people live. Like I want to. So they rent for a couple of years. So that drives rental demand up. And we want to be the rental housing provider that provides.

We operate as a business and people rent that property from us. We get cash flow, hopefully at least a little bit of cash flow. We get mortgage buy down and we get appreciation. That's in the most simple explanation. And is there a formula for, you know, I used to work with this couple. I used to provide their garage doors and their plan was to buy one house a year for the first 10 years.

and then sell the first house to number year 11. They'd flow up to 10 years and flow down through 20. Do you guys have any type of formula like that or not really? Those are all strategies and tactics. So yes, we taught many different strategies, many different tactics, depending on what your goals were. I'm part of an initiative called the Self-Funding House because our affordability, particularly

here in the country where we have an average house price of $780,000 across the country, the point of injury for that cohort of under 40 year olds is like, we'll never own a home. We'll never have that, you know,

white picket fence in the backyard, we can't afford it. Here in Vancouver, you're almost buying a teardown for 1.2 million. So that's the challenges. So we then said, okay, well, there is a strategy. Most are familiar with it, but they're uncomfortable with it. So we educate people in what we call a self funding house, which is nothing more than buying a property with an ADU, an additional dwelling unit on it. And that could be a basement suite. It could be a laneway home as in a coach home.

something along that lines that really supports the home owner, the new buyer, being able to live in that house, offset their costs,

and be able to get financing because the bank looks at it. And when they go to get that financing, they say, okay, well, you're making a hundred grand a year. You're a little bit short on that particular house. You know, your affordability, you can only afford, you'll only qualify for a $750,000 mortgage. But the next thing you know, if you can get an extra $2,000 a month in rent, they add that to your income.

So they it's called a rental offset. And then all of a sudden you can afford an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar house. And because you've got that rental offset and the bank looks at that as a positive. So it's a way to own that home, hang on to it for five, seven, 10 years, work your way through it. Then you might just say, OK, I'm done. I'm going to keep that as a rental property, put it into my portfolio, hold it as an asset. Now I'm going to go buy my home. And that's how that is. And by the way, in Canada,

because that's your principal residence if you were to sell it you don't have a capital gain what's it like here when you got to live in it for two years or something similar different different programs yeah yeah i met a guy recently and what he does is he looks for expired large real estate rv type stuff just just big park type stuff and he says if they own he's got a tool

skip trace that he looks at and says if they got it paid off yeah but what he'll do is he'll get them to do a land contract on it because that way they they don't have to pay capital gains and I don't know exactly all the intricacies but when you he's like I gotta get my CPA on the phone with their CPA

to be able to you know their tax advisor to be able to explain why this makes more sense via tax to do a 10-year or a seven-year land contract with some type of balloon i don't i don't know the exact strategy but he's a really smart guy and i was like there's a lot of money to be made in real estate well then well let me i'll share this with you and then i'll ask you this question so when i first got into business many years ago 40 some years ago

I had my first business and it was doing relatively well. I was working hard and doing all the things that we do in business. And, you know, I'd surrounded myself with some really great people. They were business owners and many of them very successful. And my observation of those individuals was that regardless of how well their business did, they all owned real estate.

And so I looked at that and one day I had a conversation with my friend and a friend of mine and he says, well, you know, he says, ultimately, what are you doing with the capital that

you're making in your business? What are you doing with the profits? How are you reinvesting in the business? Got it. You're paying yourself well, got it. But how are you preparing for the future? Because ultimately you don't have a retirement plan and you hope to one day probably exit your business and sell it. That may or may not work out. But on the other hand, you know, the way to safeguard that is to have other investments and real estate is the way to do that. So

So for me, I got into investing in real estate because of that kind of fundamental thought process. So when you look at you yourself, how much real estate do you own?

Oh, let's see. I've got two small apartment, 120 units. I got probably, you know, I got a couple of commercial buildings in about seven. I rest my case because it makes sense to do that, to park your capital. You know, there's a fundamental, and you know this as well as anybody is, you know, we think that our...

property prices and our assets are increasing in value. I mean, arguably it's really the devaluation of fiat currency. And I mean, that's not a new concept. It's just really in our face the past several years that we realized that our dollars are being devalued. So whatever the reason that is, we can debate that all day and blame banks and central banks and politicians and do all the things that we want to do. But ultimately it's up to us to

to go okay this is the environment we in that we're in these are the crap decisions that are being made that we don't have control over so how do we play the game and win the game and the way we do that is buying and owning stores of value what we call assets and real estate happens to be one of those assets uh you you fan of michael saylor

Oh, I'm a huge fan of Michael Saylor. I've made a lot of money off of Michael Saylor. So that's just me. I just started to see some commonalities when we talked about fiat and money. It was interesting because he's a big Bitcoin advocate. In 2015, I was hanging out with actually a competitor of mine, but really a mentor. And he said, Tommy, my best thing I could ever tell you is buy your buildings. He goes,

throughout the years as I buy a building, grow into it, grow past it, sell it, grow into the next one. He said, I think he had done four buildings. He's like, that made me millions and millions and millions of dollars. And so, you know, I tell people, make sure you got great credit. Make sure to get a hold of Don's and Bradstreet. Build your business credit. Make sure you really understand what the SBA does.

and get a building as soon as possible as long as you know you're going to be able to make rent and you're not buying something way too big but if you buy something way too big hopefully you can put a second suite there and you know rent it out until you're ready to fit into it

That's an easy way to make money. Those that are listening, I wish I would have known to buy a building right away. Everything turned out really great, but I know I could have bought one a lot before I did. It's not a correction. The only way I would reword that is that I don't think it's

I think it's simple. I don't know that it's easy. The first time, especially it's, it is simple, but it's not necessarily easy because you got to go through all the things you got to go through. So I don't try and paint any, you know, rose colored glasses pictures. So you got to work and you got to be a little bit courageous and, and you got to put time into it. Right. Well, the, you know, my, my stepdad used to tell everybody that he'd meet, they go, why did, why is Tommy so successful?

And let me see. I always want to say this on the podcast. He said he's got the biggest balls I've ever seen. He goes, his ability to take risks, you know, educated risks, but, but not like, I always was like,

I knew there was a path to do what I wanted. So I think a lot, what stops a lot of people is they're just, they're waiting for this perfect time. Like they're waiting for this perfect building or these perfect things to it. Perfect is the enemy of just getting started. It is. And there's a, there's another side to that too, which is,

you know, it, I use the term courageous, you know, you could use the term big balls, it all matters, right? The point is, is that you're willing to take it on and go through it. And you don't need to have all the answers. There's a good friend of mine who, like you, and I'm going to call you young only because listen, at my age, anybody under 50 is young. So, you know, I refer to them as kids. That's just, that's how I'm wired. But a good friend of mine who like you is a

very successful at a young age and he just turned 40 or 41. And, uh, you know, he probably got a net worth of 50 or $60 million, but he has a very fundamental philosophy. And that is, he's the guy that'll jump out of the airplane without a parachute.

And the reason he'll do it is he's 100% confident that he'll get that parachute built before he hits the ground. So when he starts on a project, he sees the vision. The vision is I'm going to jump out of that airplane. I'm going to have a soft landing. It's going to be the ride of my life.

and I know I can do this and I don't need all the details. You know, I'm willing to do that, take that dive and build it as I go. And he's built that way because he has that level and that degree of confidence in himself. So when he takes on a project, he

He looks at the end and he goes, okay, I'm just going to take the next step and then decide what needs to be done next. Then I'm going to take the next step and decide what needs to be done next, given the circumstances that occur. That's how he builds things out. And that way he doesn't get too deep. He doesn't build a baby grand piano when all he needed was a player piano. If you get that analogy, he doesn't overbuild things. Yeah, my sister, I was telling her how much I might roll into this next deal with the company that drives your business.

And she goes, why would you gamble with that much? And I said, this is the farthest thing from gambling you've ever seen. But I learned that through my Goldman account, I could actually, this is interesting for the listeners out there.

If you do it right, it's easy to borrow against a public traded stock. That's how Elon Musk bought Twitter. But you could also borrow through Goldman or through Morgan Stanley against your private stock. It's not as easy. It's a little bit higher interest rate, still below 6%, 5.9%. But if I could borrow against there, not only does the PE company borrow a ton of money, but I could borrow against my own shares.

and leverage it into, you know, 20, 25% IRR. So, or go buy, here's what's crazy. I can go buy all the leases of A1 garage door service, strap a 10-year lease on it. It's worth 60% more. So let's say I put $200 million in buying all the buildings in every market, you know, 40 markets, the good, nice buildings for A1. Put a 10-year lease on them. They're worth, the 100 million is now worth 160 million.

because it's got that 10 year lease. So I don't think people, I don't know if people, I don't think they're going out looking for the answers that sometimes I am like trying to figure this stuff out. There's a guy named Brandon Turner used to have the podcast, bigger, bigger pockets. And he and I became good friends. I went out to Hawaii, visited him and he had me speak at his last event he had in Phoenix and

And it's just fun learning. I'll tell you this, for me, for sure, the most people I know that have done very, very well as far as wealth, it's been through real estate. I mean, that's just me. But now I would say home service is catching up because I'm in a different box with these guys than I'm with every big plumber and HVAC and roofer across the United States. But real estate just seems to be one that there's enough for everybody to do well. Yeah.

And you got to do your own work. I mean, it's no different than you building your business. So recently there's a group in Canada called McKay CEO forums. Now McKay is CEO peer to peer forums. So they put a maximum of 14 CEOs in a room that

do a minimum of 5 million top line, five, you know, it's really 5 million to 5 billion. And, you know, once, well, six times a year, these CEOs get together peer to peer. I facilitate them. What's considered a chair, um,

And, you know, there'd be a room full of Tommy's in there and not non-competing businesses, by the way. But what you just shared, Tommy, as much as that is a normal conversation for you and I to have, depending on who your listener is, you are just speaking Greek or some other language. Right. You know, and so.

The reason I share that is because putting yourself in a group of like-minded individuals, wherever you are on your journey is critical to upping your game, to learning what you don't know, to gaining the insights into what's possible. As you go through your willingness, what makes you great is your willingness to research,

to do what it takes to learn what you need to learn, to grind it out. And that's what sets you apart. And, you know, what you just described is your willingness to take that level of education of yourself on and then making sure that you're reaching out, having conversations with people. Yeah. You know, people always ask me like, what's your superpower? I say, I get in the right rooms and I don't like one of my buddies, uh,

He's like, I want you to meet. He goes, I want you to listen to this guy. He's like, his name's Jeremy Miner. He's a sales coach and his stuff really works. I listened to one little podcast the guy had and I said, I like this guy. So I just got ahold of him.

It wasn't easy. There was a couple of gatekeepers, but he took my call. We went to dinner, and now he and I are together twice a month hanging out. BS. I might even be investing in his business here shortly. You know, we have these things like YPO. I don't know if you've ever heard of YPO. But everybody's begging me to get in these, and I'm never too busy to network, but I'm pretty...

I want to show up in a big way if I become part of those things. I don't want to like miss it all the time. So I said, it's just, I'm kind of in the grind right now. So, but there's all kinds of them. There's tiger 21. There's, you know, there's, you name it. Like there's, there's a lot of these things and I want to make sure I go into the right ones. I thought, you know, for a guy like me, and I'm sure you understand this is I don't need any more ideas right now. Nope. Yeah.

Even when, and I'm sure you're the same as I am. If you're, you know, if you happen to be chairing a meeting, you know, and there people are, you know, having conversation, I can't tell you how many times in a given meeting is I'll say, guys, we, you know, ideas are the last things that we need right now. So your wife is a performance coach, um,

Let's talk about that for a little bit. I think, you know, Kobe Bryant, there's no major athlete, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Brett Favre, like they all have this idea of the mindset, mental toughness performance coach. Let's find out, like everyone should have somebody that helps them with this, but nobody really, a lot of people don't.

Well, there's a, you know, the, as you know, you know, I think the term mindset gets overused, but I, you know, I don't know that anybody's come up with a better word at this point, but ultimately, you know, I'm going to use the example. So my wife, Stephanie, her background was in the world of ice hockey and skating. And so she was the first female NHL skating coach. And so you think about that for a second, you've got

players that are of a quality that they're at an NHL level, what was she going to do? You know, technically she could support them a little bit, but what she discovered early on in her career back in the 90s was that

It was less about what was happening technically, but as she was having conversations with these young men, they have all the same problems that everyday people have, you know, relationships, family stuff, money issues. And if she could listen and hear them and talk them and, you know, have conversation with them and help them break through some of the challenges that they were facing, guess what? They became better players.

The next thing you know, she was being talked about as this really amazing NHL skating coach. And she went on to work with St. Louis Blues and Florida Panthers and then many NHL players. The point of that is only to say that

they're already at an NHL level. They're already, you know, somewhere in the, you know, front four lines. And so technically as skaters, what can you really do? And although that was the point of entry, it was what she was having the conversations with them on the ice while she was working with them. And so that was, you know, that point of entry for her and she left that gig, you know, in that rambunctious,

role who she saw as a business in that, but she went on to work. She works now with a figure skating couple. She is a matter of fact, works with the USA Olympic team and in figure skating, that's one of her clients. She has 14 or 16 different countries that she represents through her business. I am, or her and her partners out of Montreal. But the point of it is, is that aside from what happens technically,

and physically, nutritionally. In the world of figure skating, there's choreography. So there's a whole team of people behind these individuals that you see on the ice surface. Although there's only two of them, there's a whole team of people behind them, same as a basketball team. But each player has a team behind him generally, especially the better players, to your point. They have specialists that come in and work with them. And the mental performance of it is not necessarily that they...

the, you know, it's not a psychiatric thing necessarily. It's how do I deal with my life? And that's where it gets in the way, whether it's marriage or friends or in-laws or kids, other team players, you know, how do you handle some of the things that go on? And that's a mental thing. It's not a physical or technical thing.

Makes sense? Yeah, well, it reminds me of the show. I didn't watch a lot of it, but it's called Billions. And they got this, the guy's name is Axel and his shrink or whatever is called, her name's Wendy, but she's got to help everybody out mentally be ready to do their best. They're, you know, they're stock trading and doing big deals every day. Yeah, it's an important aspect of it all.

I'll give you a quick story that was in only because I was kind of connected to it. She worked with a player who is a fourth line player. He was better than the fourth line. He believed himself better to be than the fourth line player.

But he could never cut a spot on the second line or the first line. And so she started working with him. And, you know, she's seeing what he's operating on top of his resentment for the coaches. And he doesn't feel like he's being seen and da, da, da. And she said to him, she said, I'm going to give you a little different view of the world. She says, why don't you consider being the captain of your fourth line? And why don't you focus on being the best fourth line in the whole league?

And so she started working with him to be the leader on that fourth line, not the whole team, be the captain of your fourth line and be the best line on the ice, drive your guys to do that. Well, interesting. I knew that backstory, you know, a few months in where I'm happy to watch a hockey game, which I rarely do, but the announcer, when that line came on and he talked about that particular player, he goes, Oh,

definitely the best fourth line in the league. Every time they come out, they make something happen, blah, blah, blah. By the end of the season, he was playing second line. And so that was not a shift in his abilities. It wasn't a shift

in what he did technically and how he stick handled or how even many goals he scored. It was a shift of how he viewed his world. He upped his game and how he occurred. And ultimately, the coaching staff couldn't help but bring him up in terms of playing time and who he was on the team. Do you think, as a question I have to think about is, I was with Nick Saban recently and we were talking about, is it the talent or is it the drive, the mental drive?

And he said both. I can't take five foot two guys and turn them into, you know, an amazing Alabama player. But, you know, I've seen great, decent players become great players from the coaching. I've also seen great players become lousy players because of the coaching. How important is the coach? Well, obviously, well, I don't want to say obviously, you know, to me, coaches are a big part.

They have a big impact on the whole team, their strategy, how they treat the players, how they can read players. So I have a trainer that comes into my home and works out with me two or three days a week. Here's the thing about it. I've worked out most of my life. I know how to lift a weight, but my own self-talk, my own body says, no, you can't do this.

my coach who I've been my trainer who I've been working with for several years knows my body better than me because I bitch about it I go there's not a chance I can't I'm not doing 10 of those and he goes he says you'll do 10 no problem he says I'm expecting you'll probably do 12. he's generally right my point is as a good coach that knows the team and when I've worked with a couple of NHL coach coaches

He said, if you, because I was doing some technical stuff with a player and, and he said, we'll see if this works because if it improves him a half a stride, I'll know it. That's a coach. That's like, if you, if you improve him a half a stride, I'll know it. And you're in. And like, if you can do that, if you can repeat that, we're all over it. So that's a coach.

You know, they know their players. They know what it takes. You know, I think coaches could be mentors, but...

I want to talk a little bit about mentorship. Yeah. How did that, how did, how did your mentors, how'd you find them? How'd you know they were right? How did they guide you through business and investing? I don't know that I, you know, it's, that's a good question, Tommy. I think that, you know, personally, I didn't have what I would call, I did have a, what I would refer to as a mentor early on in my own, like when I was from 18 to let's say 25.

and a guy I hung out with a lot. Now he passed away and cancer back in those years, but that's not to say I had great relationships with individuals that were very insightful and we could have lots of conversation. I would consider them a mentor, but they weren't

We didn't recognize, I didn't recognize them as a mentor in the capacity as an official mentor. You're my mentor. You know, what we did was we got together and broke bread and maybe had a beer and we chatted business. That's how I operated. I'm not saying that's the right way, by the way. I actually am a mentor to a couple of different people. So what did you, so, so.

By the way, I think that's the right way to look at it. I mean, I guess the way that I look at mentors, and it's not always been this way, but whoever I pay each year, usually there's a series of people, whether that's a couple different speaking coaches, you know, I figure, well, I'm paying this person to coach me.

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So join our Facebook group, The Home Service Expert, if you haven't already, and keep an eye out for our announcement about the webinar. All right, back to the episode. You know, I was with two of my buddies I grew up with from Michigan this past week. Actually, yesterday we were chatting. I said, you know what the difference was between us, you know, when I turned 20 and you guys did? I didn't say it exactly like this, but I'm going to be a little bit more. I said, you know...

I sacrificed everything and I lived below my means for that next decade. I lived so low, such like a scavenger. Like I could have afforded so much more, but I started to earn interest and compound and compound. And that's what everyday millionaire really means to me is without even my business doing what it needed to do. I was making investments that no matter what I was going to become a millionaire.

And I just, my buddy goes, yeah, that's not me, dude. I don't want to live like that. And I'm like, oh, you know, I can see. And I was trying just not to be mean, but I'm like, what?

Who cares? I think we care too much about what people think sometimes. So let's unpack that a little bit, if you're okay with it. I think that first and foremost, to this day, I live well below my means. That's just how I was raised. It's what I believe. I live below my means. We invest. We do all the things that we do. Our focus is on lifestyle and our health. And our health, by the way, when I talk about health,

you know, we use a context of seven areas of life, you know, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, vocational, familial. Are you healthy in all those areas of your life? Because you can be very healthy physically, but emotionally, you could be a train wreck, you know, mentally the same way. So there's a fundamental back to worrying about what people will think. That's a unique quality that you seem to have. And I believe that you're pretty intense.

And hence you drive success. Now you can still have success to different degrees, not being as intense, but of all of the very, very successful guys that I've met the most on the outside successful in terms of what they've done with their businesses and their net worth have been the most intense individuals. Their whole mantra is your opinion of me is none of my business. You know, it's like, I don't care. I'm moving on. So

Having said that, a friend of mine, and I'm going to give this example and then see how you relate to it. So a friend of mine comes out and he says to me, and we live in the country, and he one day is over and he says, I'm going to buy a, gosh, what do they call them? I'll call it an earth mover for lack of better words right now. And big piece of equipment. And I said, really? I go, what for? And he goes, well, I use it to do this and that. And I go, okay. I said, yeah.

what do they cost to rent? He says, probably a couple of grand a week. And I go, gosh, what are they to buy? He says, 200. And I said to him, he says, wow, you can, you can do a lot of rent. You can rent that thing a lot and not spend 200 grand. Why would you spend 200 grand? And I'm thinking of it as a business thing, you know, like why would you? And he said, well, you know, my neighbor's got one and, you know, he kind of got his helicopter and we were joking about a little bit. And I finally, I said to him, I go,

answer this question for me if nobody knew you owned it but you would you still buy it anyway

Yeah, no. He says, that's a great question. He goes, that's a really great question. I should ask myself that more often, but he's, you know, he's certainly got lots of money and it's not like you can't, you know, it's, it's not a case of, I can't afford 200 grand. He's not going to go into debt for it. That's for sure. But the point of it is, is that sometimes we make these decisions and you know, when you really think about it. So at this point in my life, as I said, I'll be 67 shortly when I reflect and

I worried too much about buying stuff and I worried too much about what somebody might think. And if I was giving any guidance, if I was a mentor to anybody, that's the question I would often ask them before they made a purchase of anything that they didn't need, that didn't have a actual application. You know, are you going to get a return on the investment? That's how I look at it. Yeah. It's funny. That's a really smart question. If nobody knew you were going to own it, would you still buy it? I, I, um,

I got these rocks. They're called amethysts. They were my cousin sources rocks like it's his life. He's a geologist and he knows how to get rocks. So I said, find me the largest amethyst you could find. And he goes, it's going to take a year to get here. I said, fine. I go, how much? He goes, it's 85 grand. It comes with two rocks in the base.

And I said, what's it worth? He said, well, after I get it from Uruguay and get it shipped out, he goes, I can easily sell it for a hundred grand per rock. And I said, okay. And I said, well, this ever in your opinion, well, let's go down to value. He goes, no, these are rare, very rare this size. In fact, you can put these, we can sell these to a museum. So, you know, it's something that I think is important now. Yes. There's one other thing I think about when I think about purchases and this is,

you know i'm in the midst of buying a stancraft boat and i think about experience about building stories and adventures and life and like my father's 70th birthday party my mom's 70th birthday party just recently my birthday party at the house and like everyone stays under one roof and we like have the time of our lives and we had a super bowl party and so some of mine is says

because i lived in a i lived in a thousand square foot apartment for four years and i had a lot of other things but and i didn't care people used to come over all the time and they'd spend the night and i pull out the couch and it did i never was like because they were like why do you do this i'm like just stacking stacking cash right now but you know it wasn't really necessarily like i never was embarrassed i wasn't like like people were like really this is where you live like yeah i own the apartment complex so relax but this is the one i choose to stay so

You know, that's the only caveat I'd say is like, is this going to bring emotional fun? I guess the best word for me is fun experience, like memories that matter. Because in the end, that's all we've got. Well, I think there's a fundamental around that. And yes, at the end of the day, you know, it's always about relationship. When you create that

financial kind of wherewithal to have and to create those memories for others. There's another part of it which drives you, which is just your desire to not only have fun and create memories, but to be a contribution because many of the people that are at your party could never have that, could never do that.

And or, you know, this is about your ability to be a contribution to share in the experience with others that you want to have relationship with. And that's creating memories. That's not even buying stuff, although it can be an expensive party. You know, it's not about buying the stuff. It's about creating the environment to have a ton of fun and create many memories, build relationship. And I mean, there's nothing more valuable than that.

Yeah, I kind of got to explain that to people as I'm like, you know how many experiences that this, you know how many people that I'll grow closer to and that I'll just, and it's not necessarily because they like nice things, but it's like, I'm here in Cabo. My whole team's coming out here.

There's pools everywhere. There's probably lazy rivers. We're going to go have a big volleyball game. This is an experience that we're doing with my team. So it's the same thing as you do. It's just going to be around the houses that we're doing. I look at this as a first and foremost, I don't ever go down in value, the houses that I buy. Because I think mostly about this for houses. And then the stand craft is an all wood boat.

That only goes up in value. As we know, boats go down in value right away. Not this boat. This boat I could drive for 10 years, put all the miles on it, and it'll go way up. I don't know what's shifted, but it had to be in my 20s when I'm like, is this going to be going up in value or down? Yeah. It's either an appreciating asset or a depreciating asset or a depreciating cost, you know?

So you coach a lot of people. Yeah, 100%. And that's where my mind goes. What's one piece of advice you find yourself giving over and over again to newer investors? To newer investors, there's always another deal, you know, is don't chase it. And, you know, if you do your homework, do your diligence, don't get caught in your ego. There's always another real estate deal.

but this is such a great deal yeah okay well it's not that great and it's going to stretch you and you're not ready for it there'll be another deal so you know depending on i'm often there because they're chasing it rather than really stepping back they're buying it or investing in it for the wrong reason so you know that's in from a from an investment point of view does this really support the outcome that you're looking to achieve and if you happen to force the river yeah you're probably better to walk away there'll always be another real estate deal

So when you started the Everyday Millionaire podcast, what was the, I know you talked about, I think it was 2014, you thought about writing a book. What's your goal now behind it? And what do you hope listeners take away from it?

I don't, you know, that's a great question. I think ultimately, you know, I do the podcast, I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy having conversations like this one. You know, part of what I want to do in this next phase of my life is terms of my brand is to be able to continue doing the coaching that I want to do. I'm excited about my

bringing that level of CEO into the same room and facilitating those conversations. These are not coaching. And I'm really, as much as I enjoy coaching,

coaching, I spent 25 years speaking and being a facilitator and I love doing facilitation, being able to support a room of coming to answers, solving somebody else's problem, being able to draw out answers from others who are in the room and create

swim lanes for people to swim in so that they can be a contribution and get a lot out of it and recontextualizing things. And so from within the podcast, it's really about meeting people about the brand and continuing to get my brand out there and grow within that context and support others in their success. I want to be able to, as people listen to your podcast, by the way that you and I did, my goal is for the listener,

to go, gosh, Tommy can do it. I can do it. You know, like I want that. And you're the kind of guest that I have often have, you know, that kind of attitude that you bring, which is you put it all on the table. Here's what I did. Here's how I do it. This has been my life. I'm not far from perfect, but this is what I've been able to create.

And your story, your results, if somebody listening to that can go, oh, gosh, well, gosh, if he can do it, I can do it. That's ultimately what I hope to be able to share with others. Yeah. This idea of why not me has been a big thing that's kind of pushed me is like I get into the right room and I'm like, wait a minute, they got the same 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. And all of a sudden light bulbs go off.

But they just... People... It's fun to be around those type of people because they think differently. When you watch the way they think and the way they act and the way they represent themselves, it rubs off on you. That's the thing. When I watch somebody...

not growing it's because they're in the same circle the whole time nothing's changed nothing changed that's the same employees they work around the same c-suite the same events they go to the same events for the next 10 years it's all the same and i'm like

But you haven't changed since 10 years ago. People won't change until the pain of staying the same gets greater than the pain of change. So that's the first part. Secondly, is that there is a discomfort that people aren't willing to go through.

And, you know, you show up the way you show up and you if you know to get stronger, you have to be prepared to get uncomfortable. So we use this analogy, you know, of the gym, you know, so we go in, nobody can do your push ups for you.

And you say, okay, well, I'm going to do 10 or 12 or 50 push-ups, whatever your number is. But to get stronger, you got to do one or two more. You got to push harder to build that muscle.

And the, you know, you've learned this is, I mean, think about the first time you, whatever your deal was, whatever the first sales call you made, or maybe whatever big deal you did, what was big back then, maybe it was a $50,000 deal. Well, now it's, that's almost passe, you know, you know, you want million dollar deals and multimillion dollar deals because you've worked that muscle.

You know, oh, I, you know, now I do a hundred pushups because I'm stronger. Like, okay. 50 is boring. 25. What the hell? It's not even a warmup. You know, that's what we have to get to. But if you're not willing to do that, if you're not willing to get uncomfortable and actually risk not completing that exercise, going through it and actually failing it, you know, then if you're not willing to risk that, you just don't get stronger. No.

Yeah. It's why sports are important. You know, we talk about, you know, sports often, you know, I'll, I'll use figure skating as an example, but it could be anything, you know, are you willing to keep falling down until you get it right until you can do it? And that's where good coaching technical comes into play. Good coaching mental, like, you know, can, can you inspire somebody to do it again and do it better and try harder and work harder and get the hell out of their own way? Yeah.

If you can't do that, and that's what sports does for kids. If you give it that context, it isn't about winning. It's about who you need to become to win. I look and say, okay, well, in a few short years, I'm going to be 70. So my hack is, you know, I look at other 70 year olds that I admire. So Patrick, if you had to go back to your 25 year old self, which quite a few years ago, what would you be telling them?

I've actually had that thought many times. So I look at somebody like yourself at your age and based on conversation we had on our podcast, and I look and say, where wasn't I that? What was in my way? I cared too much of what people might think. That was one thing. So at 25, I would have dumped that a long time ago.

uh i would have focused a lot differently on how i built relationships and the kind of relationships that i built now having said that i don't tend to spend a lot of time back there i don't have regrets i'm we have an amazing life i have an amazing wife and children and grandchildren and

And so I got absolutely nothing to complain about. So I don't spend too much time there. I'm still on my journey of always every day. How do I become and be the best version of myself? And sometimes I do a great job and other times I don't. So my question to myself is in the back of my mind, always running in the back of my mind is how can I be the best version of myself? And am I doing that? Love it.

Is there any books, I've got a million, I mean, you know, is there any books that are not ordinary like Dale Carnegie or Napoleon Hill or the Bible, the E-Myth and all these ones that we know of? You know, one of the, a more recent book, recent as in the past three or four years, but one of the more, and this probably goes back to even the original question that you, you know, that question you just asked.

I read the book by Jocko Wilnick, Extreme Ownership. And I had my whole team read it. One of my very good, I'll call him a business partner, read it. We all read it. And it was really, it changed everything.

a lot of things for me and it just fine-tuned what I already knew and it gave me some insights into a conversation that I had with a CEO that I admired and was a good friend of mine many years ago. I had a very successful business. I made some comment to him about, literally about his stock boy.

And it was a serious issue because we were doing business with him. And he said, you know, at the end of the day, it lands on me. I said, no, it was your stock boy. It was your inventory guy. He goes, no.

He says, I got to look in the mirror on this one because he said that my stock boy is the way he is because of me. So it was like, oh, okay. You know, but it didn't really register in the way he meant it to register for me. But ultimately after I read that book, I went, oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a great book. And then there's, there's a book kind of like it by David Goggins called can't hurt me. That was another good book, but different, different thing. And then,

I think you'll really dig this book. It came out just a few months ago. It's called the courage to be disliked. Love the title already. Yeah. I think you would dig that book. So Pat, what's Patrick, what's the best way to reach out to you? If someone wants to go learn more about you, learn more about the, obviously the podcast, you've got a couple of them. You've got the everyday millionaire and the mindset matters. Yeah.

The everyday millionaire.ca is, is, you know, certainly my podcast P Francie. I'm, you know, Instagram and Patrick Francie on LinkedIn, that kind of stuff. I'm pretty available. If somebody literally wanted to email me, CEO at rain Canada.com. So it's CEO at R E I N Canada.com. I answer emails all the time and yeah, that would be the best way to get ahold of me and would look forward to having any conversations.

And we talked about quite a few things here. So I'm just going to give you the stage here or the podium, I guess the microphone, to close us out on any topics that you feel like we may have not discussed. Well, I think we're going into some very, I don't know, challenging, I'll use the word challenging times ahead, you know, both politically, economically, globally. I think it's important to

Make sure that you're surrounding yourself with the right people. Make sure that you've got a great community of individuals who are like-minded, that share common values. Honor your integrity. Be true to yourself. Don't compromise your values or your identity to fit in. Be willing to stand up and even stand out.

And for 2024, and we carried it into 25, we had a theme called clarity equals velocity. We see often that where things get sticky, where people don't achieve goals, where the teams get in their own way is because of breakdown of clarity, which is about identity. It's about communication. And so when you start to think about

Are you clear? What are you, are you leaving questions unasked because you're uncomfortable? Are you nervous about having a courageous conversation? Those are all things that, you know, look in the mirror. Our life is a reflection of who we are and how we're being. If you don't look your life, if you don't like your life, take responsibility for it. Look in the mirror, see what you need to do differently. I love that. Yeah.

There's this song, if you don't like your life, then you should go and change it. And it says you're on vacation because every single day I love my occupation. It's one of my favorite songs. I used to walk out for that song for the last six or seven years. Patrick, fabulous job. I really appreciate you doing this. It was fun. Well, I appreciate you, my brother. And anything you need, you...

You get in touch. I'm going to have Ashley make sure we set some time to talk again here soon. But thank you. Look forward to it. Thanks, Tommy. Have fun in Cabo, you know, Cabo Wabo, all the things you do. Anyways, have fun. Thanks, man. We'll see you soon. Have a good time.

Like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.