AJ Unfiltered - Real Estate Podcast

welcome to AJ unfiltered, today, I have a very special guest, someone I'm super excited to jam with here for the next hour, a previous mentor, actually a current mentor of mine, Mr. Terry peran. She has over three decades of real estate experience, sold over 12,000 homes, and has earned over $50 million dollars during his career. This man is truly an expert in all things real estate, both the selling it and the acquiring it. He is truly what I consider to be an expert like myself, someone who has made all of the the available mistakes in a very narrow field, and he has come out the other side, more prosperous and with all of the battle scars to prove it, and so I'm excited to jam with you today, Terry, I know we're gonna cover a lot of ground, and, yeah, let's just kind of get into it here a minute. But welcome to the show. Well,

Speaker 1 1:52
I really appreciate that very kind introduction. AJ, and you know, as I've said to you in the past, I'm just so blessed to know you, and I'm so proud of you and everything that you've accomplished you and I have similar, let's just say, earlier stories where, you know, we were just a couple of guys that had a dream, and we were young guys, and we chose to get into the Greatest industry in the world, because it's the greatest trade of time for compensation. And we went out and did it. But you know, the biggest thing, you know, even in your introduction, one of the things you talked about is, is learning, and, you know, being a student of the game. And you know, a program that I built called always be learning or ABL, is something that I think the industry, even though the industry touts that, you know, we're always about education and learning. But what I'm finding is, and again, I've been, you know, at this for, you know, over 30 years, and started in my early 20s. What I'm seeing now is a lot of these, what I call manipulative buzzwords that are around, and they're often very confusing, not for the even just a brand new agent, or the agent that's been around for five or 10 years, or even the seasoned veteran. They're very confusing. And at the end of the day, you know, real estate, you know, is the greatest business to be in. But there are a lot of very, very common strategies that have become, you know, have become forgotten. AJ, and so, you know, we'll talk a little bit about that today. And you know, my mindset hasn't changed in 35 years. And as you know, you know, people often say to me, you know, Terry, you're, you're pretty much an old school guy. It's because old school works

AJ Hazzi 3:49
100% there's a lot of lessons to the way it was once done. And I want to get into that. I mean, firstly, I'll just share that I went to your boot camp over 20 years ago, and you bring the same energy today as you did then, which I imagine you were just in your early 40s or late 30s at the time, and so you are. You're the same guy. You haven't changed a damn bit. But I do want to go back into the 90s before the internet. So you started in the early or mid 90s, 94 was it? No, 1991 91 so well before the internet. And I want to talk about a just kind of bring us back to that space, paint us a picture of what it was like to do real estate without the technologies that exist today. And then I want to dive a little deeper into you got to watch the agents who did not adopt the online space at all. You got to watch what happened to them. And I want curious to know whether you think a similar thing is going to happen now with the advent of AI and AI enabled agents, sure.

Speaker 1 4:45
Well, when I got started in the real estate business in 1991 AJ, there were no computers. They were those fat MLS books. And you know, that's, you know, primarily how you gathered your information. And there was a lot of photocopying. And I. Fax work at that particular time. And, you know, computers were just becoming part of the industry, you know, for real estate agents to do home evaluations and all those processes. But at the end of the day, you know, those were fun times. But when I got started my first office. I lasted two days. I was hired by Royal LePage, and then east end at Edmonton, where I grew up. And the manager was a great guy. He was an ex hockey guy like me, and we got along. And I walked into the office, there was these cubicles everywhere, and you know, only a couple of offices you know that were available in that particular space. And you know him, and I started walking around, and you know me being a young, confident guy. I you know, I said to him, Ivan, I said, Do I do I get an office? He says, No, you get one of these cubicles of four right here. And I said, okay, that that's great. But prior to getting into real estate, I was watching what real estate agents were doing. You know, very, very basic newsprint advertising. And I had read the book by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerrilla marketing. And prior to real estate, you know, at your event, we'll talk a little more about what I did prior to real estate, but I had a good idea on what marketing and or advertising should look like, but guerrilla marketing was about setting yourself apart from the competition, doing something that nobody else is doing. And at the time, the word brand wasn't around. AJ, so I began to build a brand, but I didn't even know it. So I came up with this idea because all the advertisements were exactly the same, newspaper ads, you know, real estate agents advertising, you know, their listings for sale or open houses. And when I asked some colleagues in the office, I said, Look, I'm brand new. I'm excited, you know, I can't wait to get started. And they all said the same thing, you know, Terry, I want to give you some advice. You know, this is a really tough business, and you know, you're really young, you have no experience, and you probably have no money. Well, they were right on all three things, but the fourth and most important thing that they were wrong on is that I had a burning desire to succeed and to learn. And what they didn't know was I was reading these books on marketing, how to set myself apart from the competition. So I had this idea to dress up in a Superman costume and call myself Terry Superman branch, and we're going to share some of that at your mastermind and what it looked like. And so I went rented a Superman costume and the old Londonderry hotel. I want you to picture an old hotel. I don't know if they have any left in Kelowna, but an old hotel that was up on Fort road where I grew up, they actually had a red phone booth, like the old Superman phone booth that you'd see in the movies in the lobby. So I called my cousin Roman Petru. He was a photographer, and I put on this outfit with the red boots, and I blew out of this phone booth, and he took all these different shots. Then I got up on our roof, and I just started at REMAX. I got up on our roof, and he took all these pictures, and I had the REMAX sign and Mina Superman outfit. Then I started to go to a few homes that I listed, and in front of my For Sale sign, I wore a suit, but I took out the Superman logo like this. Well, as we discuss my I guess you could say setting myself apart from the competition. This took me to a whole new stratosphere. You know, I started to to really focus on direct mail campaigns, where I was calling myself the Superman of real estate, Terry Superman, peranish, and what ended up happening is I gained national attention. I didn't even know what press releases were at the time, but at that particular time, the media outlets, Edmonton journal, Edmonton sun, the Calgary Herald, even the National Post and the Toronto Sun, who is this young guy calling himself the Superman of real estate. What is he doing? And I gained national attention, and that's how it all started. So everybody called me Superman, and they thought it was lots of fun. And what that was called at the time, in the late 80s, in real estate, we used to see a lot of guys be in front of their car on the golf course, in front of a yacht, and that never really resonated with me. That was called image advertising. And why that didn't resonate with me so much was, well, if this guy's standing in front of a yacht, he's got no time to sell my house. If this guy's taking a shot of himself on the golf course, he's got no time to sell my house. So I wanted to create. Was a positive image, and Superman was a positive, you know, an influence on many people over our lifetimes, and it just blew up from there.

AJ Hazzi 10:09
Yeah, that's great. And so you obviously leveraged PR right out of the gates. You got some attention. You were kind of going out on a limb to try this Superman thing. Now, how long did it take before you actually realized this was working? This was working. This was actually going to make you some money. How long did you have to stay true to this wacky idea before you got validated?

Speaker 1 10:27
Well, you see, when I rewind it a little bit, AJ, I lasted the two days at the Royal page office, because when I presented this idea to the manager, he looked at me, and he said, son, he said, Are you crazy? He said, That's never going to work. And he said, Why would you come up with such a crazy idea? And I said, because I don't want to be like everyone else. I want to get noticed. I want to set myself apart. And he said, You know what? Come with me? And at that time, I had had a couple of proofs of free home evaluation flyers or certificates, and I made a pile of money with flyers, as you know, over the years. AJ, so I showed him what I wanted to do, and he said, Come with me. And he took me to the little back room, where they have all the little cubby holes where the realtors get their mail. And there was this old wooden rack with all these Royal LePage branded flyers, and they were terrible at the time. And he said, listen, Terry, you could pick any one of these that you want and put your picture there and your name. And I said, Well, why would I do that when I want to set myself apart? Because he said, because that's not the way we do things here. So anyway, I lost it two days there met a couple REMAX broker owners, and the rest was history. But again, to answer your question, that Superman campaign lasted about two years, and I got so much mileage from it, but then Marvel Comics found out and sent me a cease and desist letter saying, Hey, this is really cool, but you know what, you can no longer market yourself as Terry's Superman. Peranak, so all I did, but by that particular time, AJ, I had such a good understanding of setting myself apart from the competition in getting my phone to ring, because I, like many other agents, did the same thing. When I first started, I went to a bill NASBE seminar, and Bill was a great guy, but Bill taught door knocking. And I remember I took this course all day long, and we got on these school busses at five o'clock, and the script was very simple, Hi, my name is Terry peranage from Remax. Were you planning on buying or selling a home the near future? And the goal was to door knock at five o'clock when everyone was home. And this was another pain point for me that made me change, because pain makes us change when we associate, associate enough pain to something we want to change it. Well, you know, I showed up at this store and this guy no shirt on hairy chest. I was with another lady. We were all miked up. And, you know, she was one of the other ladies in the event, and spaghetti all over his face, whatever. And he was like, like, get the fuck, you know, off my doorstep. And so the amount of pain I associated at that particular time to door knocking, I knew there had to be a better way. That's why I dove in to books like guerrilla marketing to set myself apart, and I created a brand by not even knowing it. But after two years, I now knew I had to get into because I tested so many different flyers, I would change them all the time. You know, the best paper seven point separation. But the problem was I didn't know anything about copywriting. So then I became a student of direct and emotional response advertising, how to create a compelling headline, how to how to create a compelling sub headline, then into the compelling reasons, then into the CTA or the call to action. So all of a sudden, you know, I'd do a flyer drop, and I'd get 63 home evaluations in within a week. And so then I traveled all over. I had very little money, but I invested everything I could, and I learned from people like Jay Abrams, Dan Kennedy, Trevor Levine on how to write copy. And then at that point, I was Terry peranage. And you know what was interesting? AJ, my very first REMAX awards conference, I started in REMAX of October of 1991 and the awards conference for that particular year was in January. And I'll never forget it was at the Edmonton Inn. And, I mean, I had just been in the business a couple months, and, you know, sold my first house, my buddy's condo, my buddy Kendall velash goes condo. And. And I was at this awards banquet in January, and sitting around all of our colleagues, there's about 500 people there REMAX Edmonton, and I said, I'm going to be on that stage next year, and I'm going to be in the top 25 I'm going to be Rookie of the Year. And they all looked at me again and said, Terry, you're young. You have no experience, you know. And I just started, you know, and, and, you know, it's, you know, you're, you've got all these great ideas, but it's going to cost a lot of money. Well, at the end of the day, I associated something to that in that moment, that no matter what I was going to do it well, the following year, I finished fourth overall and was Rookie of the Year. And by my third year, the second year, I made the state same statement at the same banquet, after I got my rookie of the year trophy and and my top 25 trophy, that I would be number one. And my third year, I was number one in all of Edmonton of just over 2500

AJ Hazzi 16:01
agents, wow. And how long did it take you to get to number one in the world? Because you had that title for

Speaker 1 16:06
a little while. You know, I got to the top 10 in Canada within my first five years. And you know, I was number one in Western Canada for probably 1518, years straight. And you know, number one in the world was, was something that I thought was possible, but my average sale price at the time was under $250,000 so I was focused on, you know, volume. And you know what, in 2006 you know, I was the number one agent in the world for number of homes sold, and I was always in the top five for also commissions earned and but it was a little more difficult for me because my average sale price was so low. I mean, there were people in the top five worldwide with commissions earned that sold 175 homes, but their average sale price might have been $3 million so, you know, that year I was over 1100 transactions. So, you know, it was a, you know, it was, it was an honor to do that, and but, but the biggest thing is, is that comparison is the root of all evil. I didn't really care what anyone else was ultimately doing. I was just trying to find ways to my, make my business better, stronger, bigger and more profitable, and to empower those around me. And you know, I'd say, you know, my greatest accomplishment is just seeing the number of people that I brought into the real estate industry that are, you know, so successful today, and I had a small part

AJ Hazzi 17:50
of that that's really cool. I think for me, that's probably the most fulfilling aspect of this job now, is watching other people succeed in some small part by something that I shared with them or mentored them. That is really where the juice is these days, especially after you've done 1000s of deals. A little bit of that the thrill of the deal seems to kind of go away. You get desensitized to it the same way a doctor or a surgeon would performing the same surgery years and years. But there doesn't seem to be anything better than seeing somebody who joins the team and maybe doesn't even think certain things are possible, like, you know, cracking a quarter of a million dollars a year, or buying a rental property or something like that. And you see them two or three years into joining the team, and suddenly, now they're making, you know, double what they didn't think was possible before, and they've built a portfolio of real estate. And you can sort of sit back and look and go, You know what I feel like I influenced this person's life and potentially even their kids lives. And it's really fulfilling to watch someone else succeed.

Speaker 1 18:48
It sure is. And you know, I remember when I first met you, and you know, you still look the same. You know, think you're the best looking guy in the real estate industry. I think everybody would agree with me. Hey, escandra, what do you think? Look at this guy. But I remember when you first came to one of my superstar agent boot camps, and I remember you in the blue suit, the cuff links, and you had the puff. The only thing you didn't have was suspenders like me. And you know, you look, you sat there, you took it all in. And you know, as you recall, and would remember, my whole premise with my boot camps was give, to give my participants a proven, duplicatable system to take back to their market. You don't have to overthink it, but you need to implement it. And that's exactly what you did. And you know, I'm grateful to have you know have met you and played a small part in your success,

AJ Hazzi 19:46
yeah, and it actually was a fairly large part in it, because I had to be re presents to it after our meeting. But the fact that I switched my commission structure right after leaving your boot camp has been responsive. For over $10 million of additional commission over my career. And then, of course, the other message that was really well drummed into our heads at that boot camp was to eat our own cooking, to be our own best customer. And I've certainly done that as well. So, I mean, I attended as a 20 year old kid, and left there with major dollar signs in my eyes. And so, yeah, I owe a lot of that. I mean, I obviously had a drive as well, and was going to be driven to succeed one way or another. But you gave me a real shot in the arm coming to that boot camp. Now, I want to go back now. So, you know, obviously you started an analog period of time. So did I? I mean, I, when I started in 2002 I still had a pager. People did still come into the office to look at the MLS book. A lot of the agents were not even considering getting a personal website you mentioned, kind of moving from brand at the beginning into direct response marketing, which obviously did a great job of getting people to contact you. But I'm curious if you were going to visit yourself, or, let's just say, if you were going to start over. Now maybe is a better way to frame it if you were going to start over now, how would you play the game differently, like given today's tools, given access to all of these different platforms, whether it be social media content YouTube, how would you play the game differently if you were coming into it trying to make a name for yourself from The beginning?

Speaker 1 21:19
No different, no different at all. I would declare myself a specialist in an area or an expert, just like I did when I started. And you know now you have all these social media tools, Facebook, Instagram, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tiktok, which I don't give too about, because I'm too old for that crap. And, of course, YouTube and but, but the greatest thing about social media, for the most part, it's what's what I call Zero Based Marketing. And AJ, if you recall in my boot camps, zero based marketing is when you spend anything less than $1,000 a month on a marketing system, like an expired listing program, a for sale by owner program. So as an example, you know, I used to spend up to $200,000 per month on marketing, advertising and my brand, which consisted of direct mail, newsprint, radio, television, bus benches, billboards. I mean, I had billboards as big as football stadiums, 278 bus benches across Edmonton. I mean, I mean, you couldn't go anywhere. And we'll talk more about, you know, how I built Bert and executed my brand to mastermind. But you can do the same thing with social media by posting six to eight times a day, but it must be valuable content that offers benefits to the consumer. So not only are you branding, but you're also marketing and advertising, and you have to be able to track it so you can capture it. So really it's the same concept.

AJ Hazzi 23:03
I talk a lot about building authority, and that was sort of the thing that you mentioned right off the bat. You said you would declare yourself the expert, and you know, I call that building an engineering authority. And because when you have that authority, not only do you attract your ideal customer, but when you're in their presence, they have a totally different frame. They're looking at you with this upward view, and they're like showing up with the I don't know if you would be willing to take me on, but would you be okay with discussing, you know, the selling my home and helping us buy another one? It's a very different frame, because you've declared that expert status and you've become an authority. How would you recommend somebody who maybe hasn't put a lot of effort into that up to this point. How would you have them start declaring that that line in the sand of I am now an expert, and I'm going to develop this authority? Well, number

Speaker 1 23:53
one, you need to find somebody who's done it, and you need to look at what they're doing. So as an example, if I was to move to Kelowna, and as you know, I have a beautiful house up in Upper mission and and I live in Edmonton, but do I really know if any real estate agents in Upper mission has, have I identified anybody? Not really, I know you, I know another group, but outside of that, I don't really know of anybody. So what I would do is find somebody that is an expert in an area that is very well known, that is very prominent, that is very dominant, that has that authoritative President presence of being what's called the brand of choice. And that's what you want to want to become. Is the brand of choice in your neighborhood or area that you're working well now, how do you do that? Well now you can start targeting marketing. Target marketing those areas by by ways of social media, building databases, newsletter, getting newsletters, getting involved. Involved in the community. There's lots of zero based ways to do it, but one of the challenges is, is that often newer agents, or agents who are just starting to scale forward in their business, they will look at some person that you know has a gazillion people on their team. And the truth is, most of these teams are full of anyway. They're not really teams. There's like 80 people. They're brokerages. Okay, like, I see a lot of these different companies out there, and, and, and I could care less about who works for who, but, you know, I have a team, the guy, guy or gal says, I have a team, and they have 90 people. They're not a team. They're a brokerage. And so at the end of the day, how does that? How does that real estate agent within that? We'll call it team or brokerage. How do they set themselves apart and create their own unique brand, their own unique identity? Well, often they can't, because it's, it's governed under that one authority brand. So there's lots of little ways you can do it. I know. I mean, now I just, you know, I'm semi retired, as you know, and I have a small boutique team, but I give sure we have, have have a certain protocol with the way we present our brand to the marketplace. AJ, but I give them lots of autonomy to promote themselves as well. There's only a couple of minor little things that I want to see based on my experience, because I know it works in how they promote themselves. And again, I they promote themselves, and all their social media networks, all their social media channels, their past clients, their friends, their family. And it works, and it works brilliantly. But at the end of the day, from the past or yesterday, year to today. Now, all the you know, I had a I saw an ad on Facebook the other day. You know, some old fucker, an old, old guy, okay? And he's saying, let me show you how I'm selling 40 houses a year, and AI has replaced me like, really, come on, at the end of the day, this is still a people business. Your AI is not going to sell houses. People want to deal with real estate professionals and any of these pretenders that are out there that are doing, you know, seminars or podcasts AJ, and they're telling you, you know, you listen, real estate will always be a people business, and I will challenge anybody on that anytime. I

AJ Hazzi 27:31
agree with you 100% and I think that each time we get this sort of wave of new technologies, there's always this promise of disintermediating the realtor and replacing them with some new whiz bang technology, and lo and behold, by the time the cycle plays out, real estate still remain at the very center of the transaction, because we are very critical, because we provide this, this humanized role that Only a person with empathy, only a person with experience, can do and that's that buffer between two people who are not at their best. Let's be real. They're at their stressed and they need that cartilage between the two of them. And so real estate agents facilitate a very stressful situation for most people. And no, AI, certainly not in the near term is going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 28:23
AJ, I had somebody have a discussion with me the other day and said, If I could show you a way, Terry, that AI can do all of your follow up. You don't have to make another phone call again, another follow up call. It will do everything for you. And my response to him was, well, then what am I going to do? Right? He didn't have an answer, and at the end of the day, no, this is a personal choice, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to talk to my friend. AJ, has he Okay? I want to talk to my friend, you know, Susan Thompson, my past client, I don't need, you know, an artificial intelligence to do all that for me. But again, I strongly agree with you that, you know, at the end of the day, people want to work with somebody who's an expert, who's a specialist, who has the education to help them with the biggest investment of their life, and that's not going to be artificial intelligence.

AJ Hazzi 29:25
I agree. Speaking of investment, what do you think is the best investment you've made outside of real estate that brought you both time, freedom and peace of mind? It's throwing a curveball at you. The

Speaker 1 29:37
best investment working on myself, getting out of my head and into my heart, because, you see, for a long time, AJ, I wore several different masks. You know, one mask is, you know, I'm this upbeat, positive guy, you know, working crazy hours per. And per week, but at the end of the day, I spent no time working on myself. And even though, when it came to, you know, building a brand, marketing, advertising, becoming a very successful real estate investor, builder, developer, truth be told, I was unhappy inside because I had no time left to really work on what's important to me. And you know, so what ends up happening is you wear these different ego masks. You know, there's a different mask all the time, and then when you finally have some alone time, and I call it getting dark. You start to get dark, but that's where you find the magic. That's where you find your real peace. So it was some years back when I took a look at it, and I rewound the tape all the way back to when I was first starting, or when I was a young entrepreneur in my early 20s, and I had no money. I had to fight to try to borrow money from the bank, and I was in this learning mode. Well, that was the greatest time of my life. And then when I became a, you know, a millionaire at 28 and a multi millionaire shortly after that, you know, and this is I'm not having this conversation to impress anybody, but to impress upon everybody that when you stay in a place of gratitude and being humble and always be learning, You can learn from the person that you least expect, that you could learn from. And that's the kind of person I always was. But I went away from that because I was so busy working, you know, on my business, in my business, having to maintain this image, and I struggled, you know, I struggled with a lot of a lot of different things, because I'd mask it. And it wasn't until the time that, you know, I really made the decision that I need to interrupt this pattern, and I took some time off, and I took that time to work on myself, and I was feeling so complacent, I couldn't understand that. And I know when we we met at the Yacht Club in Kelowna a few weeks ago. You know, I was just like in this dark place, but I was trying to find the light. And there were times I would see this light, and it was euphoric, and then the shadow would overtake me again. It's called the shadow effect, and I couldn't understand why. It's because I became complacent. And for a lot of the real estate professionals that are listening to this, that have been in the business for 1015, 20, even, 25 or 30 years. And, AJ, I know you're, you're what? 20 how many years now, 2323 years. And you're starting to look at this, and you know, it's almost like, you know, you're on this merry go round, and you can change that in an instant. Because when I peel the onion all the way back, and it took me about 19 months, as I mentioned to you before, AJ, because I was look in the mirror and I'd say, like, what is going on? Like, what's wrong with you? Money's not my problem. I'm financially independent, great, you know, great wife, two great kids. You know, everything's great, but why am I feeling this way? And it's simply because I stopped learning, and I changed that in an instant. And what caused that is because you have to be willing to change. You have to be willing to learn, but when you become unwilling, because I'm going to keep doing things the way I've always done them. And part of that is one ego mask, and I ran into that, especially when, you know, social media came out and all these different things, I was still spending, you know, at that time, 50, $60,000 a month of marketing and advertising in my brand, and it wasn't working as well as it used to work, and I couldn't really understand it. So what happens? Your ego takes a little bit of a hit. But again, being a, you know, high D personality type of guy, a guy that's very driven, a guy that never quits, but sometimes you have to take all the masks off, get out of your head, get into your heart. And, you know, go back to where you started. And that's what I did, and it was the greatest, that was the greatest investment I ever made. Love

AJ Hazzi 34:35
it. Thanks for all that vulnerability, too. So what I'm hearing you say is you've got to stay curious. You've got to stay humble always be learning. And if you find yourself in a place of complacency, it's likely that you've stopped growing. And I know from my own career, and not just in real estate, but even I think back to my boxing career, when I first started, I was learning so much, I was getting my ass kicked by guys that were much further along. In their careers and and I was just learning and learning and learning, and I was growing, and it was so fulfilling. And then, of course, those guys aged out, and I became the coach, and I had some accolades, and now I've coached, I'm coaching, but I'm not really learning anymore. And you can I started to lose the love of the game because I had stopped growing myself. And the same thing in real estate, you know, eventually after 20 years, and now you're a coach and you're a team leader and all these things, and you feel like you've kind of learned everything. But the reality is, there's an infinite amount that we can grow and we can learn. And so anytime I find myself in that space of complacency, I start cracking books again, I start going down YouTube and consuming the right kind of content again, and hiring and hiring coaches and learning from people who are even further down the track. I mean, for me, I want to build $100 million thing now. I haven't been to that mountaintop. I'm looking for guys that have been there to learn from and like, like, I say, there's always an order of magnitude more. There's always more to be learning. And when you're in that space of that humble space of learning and growth, that's the most fulfilling pattern in your life.

Speaker 1 36:02
And thank you for that, and that's 100% correct. You see, if you choose, if I could leave everybody with something on this podcast today, the greatest thing that I've ever learned is Stay curious and not judgmental, and I'm able to figure things out pretty quickly. And there's so much noise. And, you know, I built a one of the things we're going to talk about the mastermind is I built a program called Turn off the noise. And there's always be learning, but turn off the noise. We are bombarded by so much noise. Do this? Do that? Look at me. Look what I'm doing. But you see, you said something very important. AJ, is that, you know, when you seek to learn, you gotta be curious. And you know earlier, when I said, Listen, there's all these guys trying to sell you all this different stuff and and this and that, I'm able to siphon through a lot of the bullshit that's out there. And you want to get to $100 million $100 million company, when you find somebody that's actually done it, that's actually real, and you see, when you finally get to that point of, you know, when you're out of here and into here, and you're at peace. I'm at a point now where I have five very successful businesses. They're all profitable, but my my goal now is to manage them, take care of them, and to leave this legacy for my kids and and, and, but it was so hard for me to get there, because I was always such a driver and a pusher. And now, you know, I did that work, I got dark, I did that work on myself, and now I'm at a point where am I growing my businesses? Sure, I'm still always, you know, me real estate always be buying, you know, we just closed on a on a 74 unit multifamily development. My partner and I were really excited about getting in the ground on that semi detached homes up in the north side. But, you know, I'm just doing one project at a time and and I'm just growing at the pace. And I call it pace equals peace, or peace equals pace. And that's, that's kind of where I'm at right

AJ Hazzi 38:19
now. I love it, and we'll get into a little bit of the investment stuff here in a second, but I want to stay in that sort of life beyond the hustle space for a minute. And you, you called it going dark, so I mean, Terry, you've achieved more in one career than most people will dream of in terms of success. But what's something that success maybe has cost you, and do you regret it?

Speaker 1 38:42
Well, it cost me a lot of a lot of time. And you know, time is so valuable doing some of the things that maybe you wanted to do, maybe travel to certain different regions of the world. You know, some of the regrets was, you know, how I treated people, even though I'm a, you know, I believe I'm a very nice guy and a very genuine guy. And you know, I, I came from very humble beginnings. My mom and dad didn't have much money at all. And my Baba, I'm Ukrainian, lived with us when my Dido died. And, you know, I always had a pair of used hockey skates or a pair of soccer boots. And I was raised to always be very kind, but there were times that I wasn't so kind, and that's where I did the work, and that is one regret. And I've tried, you know, very hard if I did mistreat somebody in the past, and simply it was because of this, this, this, this mindset that I had to get ahead and I mistreated somebody. So I I really worked hard to make and I'm not. Saying this was a daily or a regular occurrence, but I worked really hard to make amends with, you know, people that I may have mistreated, because at the end of the day, I don't know if I'll be here tomorrow, and no different, and I don't want to leave this life with any regrets, you know. So when I talked about, you know, two words earlier. It's really, really simple, just be kind. And so, you know, I would say, I would say that that's a big one for

AJ Hazzi 40:30
me. Yeah, that resonates with me, particularly the part about, you know, rubbing some people the wrong way along the way. While you're, you know, you're still in your learning phase. You're still figuring out who you are, and you're still trying to figure out what to do with the success. And some of it goes to the head. I mean, I certainly experienced that, particularly when I was a REMAX agent. That was that sort of 2000 567, era where, you know, even a turkey could fly in that windstorm. And you know, you start thinking that you're God's gift to real estate and order the Aston Martin, and you know, some of the old dogs are watching you, going, like, Who is this punk, right? And I definitely was short with some people, and probably came off a little arrogant, like I had figured out marketing and cracked the code to sales and all this stuff. And you know, if I ever regret it's definitely just not being a little more humble and not having, you know, expressing that humility and just playing nice in the sandbox and treating people the way I would want to be treated now, and the way I would want them to treat my agents at our brokerage now. That's a big regret of mine, and I I am trying to make amends, and that's part of why I do you know these events, and part of why I do these podcasts is to try to bring you know great information for free, to to endear this industry and people here, locally and abroad,

Speaker 1 41:41
ownership, accountability, because we carried a lot of shame, guilt. I know I carried a lot of, you know, guilt and shame with some of the things that I did. And you see to me, the Truth always wins and so but when how you set yourself free is by taking full ownership and accountability and understanding that your past is your greatest teacher. And it wasn't until I really realized that, you know, we pack so much stuff on, and I know we talked a little bit about that at the Yacht Club. AJ, is that, you know, it's like putting a knapsack on when you first start a brand new knapsack when you're starting school, and as the school year goes on, that backs that backpack gets heavier and heavier and heavier. Well, I call that the backpack of life, if we're always getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and we don't unpack anything, eventually we're going to fall down. But at the end of the day, if we reframe it and look at all those different things that we've gone through and those different experiences, and we take ownership and accountability, and we realize that our past is our greatest teacher. It sets you free. And you know what? You see a whole new version of yourself and and a version of other people that maybe you didn't see, because I remember the same thing. AJ, nobody was going to tell me anything. I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to do it my way. It didn't matter if it was the REMAX region, you know, who are all great friends of mine. They're all retired now, but all great friends of mine, and they were great to me, but again, or just like I said, bulldozing other real estate agents. Because you know what? It was wearing that ego mask. I have to be right. But you see, when you set yourself apart from the competition. And I want to dive back into this a little bit, and you want to build a big brand marketing campaign. What I came to realize is there's an 8020, rule, 10% of the people. And I want our listeners to hear this, 10% of the people out there. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are, how great your marketing is, your brand is, they are not going to like you. My advice, who gives a okay? Now 80% of the people out there will, in fact, they love that person that puts themselves selves out there and is doing business. Those are the clients that are going to call you, but it's that other 10% and here's another little Zero Based Marketing nugget that I want to share. It's those 10% remember, AJ, when I told you to give you a raise, to raise your commissions. Real estate agents will be in this career for 3035, years, and they never give themselves a raise. As a matter of fact, their commissions go down, and they think it's okay, it's not okay. But that extra 10% if you play the 8020 rule, those 80% are going to be your raving fans, 10% are going to be your haters. Who gives a shit about them? But it's that 10% that are in between. They might not call you the first time. They may call a friend. A referral, or just some real estate agent and they're unhappy, and I made an absolute killing on expired listings, because I would say to people, you know, when people would call my office, one of the questions was always, how did you hear of Terry? Well, we got a flyer, we got this or that, and then it became what we see his name everywhere. Now, when I would get to the listing appointment, I would say, Mr. Hazzi, can I ask you a question? Why didn't you call me the first time? Okay? Because I want to know, I'm surveying my customer Well, we weren't really sure. We saw that you sold a lot of real estate. You know, we saw your name everywhere. But we just decided to call this, you know, my cousin's cousin was in real estate, and, you know, we call her or him, and you know, they didn't get our household. So I was always curious. But it's that extra 10% that you can go from having 80% of the market to 90 and the 10% don't worry about it. You're not going to

AJ Hazzi 46:01
please everybody. Certainly not now, on that note, I think you and I have a shared experience of potentially putting a target on our back with the marketing we've done. We both have toed the line. We've both made bold claims, and have you know, maybe followed a ask for, uh, forgiveness versus permission, type style or approach to some of the to the market, particularly in the early years. Now, obviously things have have clamped down. There's a lot more clarity around what you can and can't do. But what would you say to somebody who is maybe a little bit fearful of rocking the boat or of standing out for fear of, as you mentioned, the haters, people that are gonna, you know, make complaints to the board, or, you know, write you up or write you off for the type of marketing that you're doing in an effort to set yourself apart.

Speaker 1 46:53
Very, very simple, everybody, get your pens out and write this down. Other people's opinions are none of my business. And once you repeat that over and over and over, it was an affirmation that I I created on what I called a clarity card. And I'll bring some clarity cards to the mastermind, and I'll show you what I mean. And I have them everywhere, in my day timer, in my SUV and my trucks, everything I and they're everywhere, is that when I would start to feel that little bit of anxiety again, things were appearing for me that, you know, people are talking negatively about me, you know, especially With my big brand marketing campaign, and I will share some adversity that I went through at the mastermind, but I would just simply look at my clear clarity card. Other people's opinions are none of my business, and it put me out of anxiety, into action, and I continued. That's my best answer.

AJ Hazzi 47:58
I love it. I think I know the answer to this. But in your prime, not that you're not in it now, but in your in your heyday of selling 1100

Speaker 1 48:05
homes, I still got them. Look at those guys. Come on.

AJ Hazzi 48:10
But let's call, let's call that sort of mid, 2000s early 2000s the the heyday. What do you think made it impossible to compete with you in Edmonton during that time?

Speaker 1 48:20
Well, I mean, when you got up in the morning, when a consumer got up in the morning, or let's, let's say, a potential customer got up in the morning, and they turned on talk radio, and everybody would listen to talk radio, which was 630 Chet. And, you know, there's my 15 second spot, sponsoring the weather. Then there would be a 32nd radio spot of me talking about, you know, obviously, the the benefits of, you know, hiring the Terry parent Real Estate Group and the benefits of my system. Then, of course, there would be Don Cherry, who was my third party endorsement partner, and then so when they would drive to work. AJ, there's a program I built with my bus bench campaign, what was called stagger marketing, and people have habitual driving patterns. This is what I figured out. I mean, what my wife, Heidi, goes crazy because I always go the long way, and she hates it, you know, she wants to be more efficient. But people are very, very habitual a lot of the time, and their habits, especially when it comes to driving. So when people would drive to work, they'd see me eight times all my bus benches were angled, and they would all say the same thing, you know, sell your home fast. And for top dollar. Terry perenni sell your home fast and for top dollar. Call now for free home evaluation. Terry peranak sells homes fast. Your home sold in 90 days. Or I'll buy it anyway. We won't get into what they said, but then they'd be on the way to work, they were listening to the radio, and they'd hear me six to eight times. Dollars. Now when they drive to work, they see me six to eight times. Now when they drive home, guess what? Now I'm sponsoring the Edmonton Oilers. They're listening to Oilers. Now, I was the sponsor of that. So not only would I get all the idents from the radio personalities here, then I get the 32nd commercials, and they're seeing my bus benches. Then they get home, they go to their mailbox and what do they pull out? Sell your home fast and for top dollar with Terry. Peran itch is guaranteed Home Selling system. When you list with Terry, you receive these guarantees for compelling reasons. Call Terry now for free home evaluation and start packing five star reviews in the back. That's the first thing they see. Now they're taking their kid to hockey practice or soccer or figure skating. Now they go the other way. What do they see? Now they see my super board, and then they see another one on the freeway So, and then they see more benches. So again, that was called maximum exposure marketing. It didn't matter where they were. They were seeing me. So what was I doing? I was burning my brand in their subconscious. So when they and here's the here's the oh, here's the better thing. This is even better when you burn your brand. That's strong. I want to roleplay for a second, AJ, and we're going to pretend that you, you and I are two people that work in an office downtown, and I want you to say to me, Hey, Terry Susan and I are thinking of selling our home. Sure.

AJ Hazzi 51:26
Hey, so Terry Susan and I are thinking about selling our home. What do you think we might want to do there?

Speaker 1 51:33
You know, you should call that Terry peranich. He's everywhere. He's the best, like we see his name everywhere he sells all these houses. You should give him a call. Third party endorsements, okay, not advertising endorsements, but people that don't know me, I've burned my brand and their subconscious, so now they're referring me. Because we would now ask Mr. Hassey, well, how did you get our name? And he would say, well, Susan, you know Susan Smith in my office. Well, we go into our database. Well, maybe I should use a different name, Susan yakobowski. I'm Ukrainian, Susan jakobowski. And we got no Susan yakubowski in our database, and and we would say, Well, you know Susan, who's Susan? Well, she's just a gal I work with, and she referred me to you because I burned my brand into her subconscious, and she referred me to Mr. Mrs. Hassey to help them sell at home.

AJ Hazzi 52:28
You're totally right on that, and I've lived that experience as well. We we ask everybody you know, who do we owe for the introduction? Or who should we thank for the introduction? And they'll usually give us the name. And as you mentioned, go into follow up, boss. And no, they're not there. And what we're realizing is that it's this person we own their mind share. Our brand is the first to come to mind, and we've created the credibility and the social proof with the third party endorsements, with all of the, you know, sold signs they see on their drive, the billboard, you know, the TV ads, all of that stuff, but and so I can say 100% what you're saying is true. What you're really doing is you're you're playing with the concept of frequency and reach, and you have to get the frequency and the reach of your marketing high enough that it actually can move the needle a lot of people what I think. And this was my problem when I worked at REMAX, and why I went my own way with my own brokerage and started a pooled resources model is, I think most people have 1000 bucks or 2000 bucks a month that they can spend to try to brand or market themselves. And so you might have 200 agents working out of an office, and everybody's spending their $2,000 so you've got, you know, $400,000 in marketing being spent a month collectively amongst that brand, but it's so disjointed. It's 200 different messages, 200 different channels, and all the audience, or the public hears is noise, and because not one of them has the frequency, nor the reach, to actually get their message across and to own that mind share so that people actually do think of them first when their friend asks them, who should they use? Then really, everybody's just pissing dollars away or lighting money on fire, and for as a consequence, they're constantly looking for the next thing that's gonna for $1,000 a month save their business. The reality is you need to get you need to go deep on one channel. But what I'm coaching people now, and what you did, and what I did early on, with the billboards, the radio, the TV, the endorsements. I mean, all of that takes an enormous amount of cash to do to create the eight impressions that people are going to get on their drive to work every morning, but you can do that now in digital so much cheaper with remarketing. For example, if somebody watches a piece of your content, if somebody visits your website, you can cookie them, just like Lululemon will do. If you look at their leggings, you're going to see those puppies 15 times a month until you buy them. Right? They're burning that market share. Well, the cost of a retargeting impression is literal pennies. To get your billboard to look at, to be in front of somebody. We're talking big money every. Month, but you could set up a remarketing budget of $500 and target a narrow audience of 5000 people who maybe have been to your website or watched a video on YouTube or consumed your content on Instagram. And you can become the expert in their eyes. You can become that person that is etched into their brain for pennies compared to what we had to do when we first started. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 55:24
I agree 100% the other thing that I wanted to add to that, AJ, is often real estate agents will get into this business. And I've got got a great story that I'm going to share very quickly. I had a very good friend of mine was a golf who's an assistant golf pro, then he became a golf pro. And golf pros are, you know, they, they teach lessons and what, what? What is really a golf pro. He's kind of like a concierge. His job is to make everybody feel good when they come to the golf club. Hey, Mr. Hassey, how are you? You may do lessons, you may not, but his job is to make everybody feel good when they come to his or her course. So my friend got burnt out of the golf business, and he went through a difficult relationship breakup, and he was at a low point his life. And he came to me and he decided he wanted to get licensed to sell real estate. He got his real estate license, but again, he was carrying some heavy weight that I was helping him unpack, and he said to me, I just don't have the energy. Because again, we had, you know, several funnels of new customers for him to call and for him to prospect, but what about the gold that he's already been panicked? What about the gold that he's already found? So what I said to him is, I said, Paul, look at the number of people that love you. Look at the number of people that you've made such an impact on over the past 22 years in the golf business, all that gold that you've already been panning. I said, Let's go after that gold. So again, more traditionally, we just reached out to everybody by way of letters, business cards, notepads, and he earned over $200,000 his first year on my team. That's 400,000 because I got half, because I took 50% and at the end of the day, 90% of his business came from that gold that he had already been panning for 22 years. I've had ex police officers, school teachers, who, have, you know, retired after 2025, years, whatever it is, or people have maybe gotten a buyout, but these are good people who've already created relationships. So what happens is that often, new real estate agents will get in, and they'll join these big teams, and all they want them to be is like, you know, telemarketers basically, you know you need to make, you know, you got to call this customer 18 or 20 times within a week. That's a bunch of bullshit I'm telling you. If, if anybody is telling you that I don't agree with it, some people are going to argue with me on it. I don't care. Again, other people's opinions are none of my business. But I don't, I don't like to do business that way. I know when my phone rings and I'm starting to get harassed, you know, by people I'm very, very I moved to confrontation to eliminate that drama. Don't call me again and I'll block their number. But the bottom line is, is, you know, a lot of people will get into that business and they don't realize the gold that they already hold. They call it holding the gold, and that's all those people that they may have worked with in the past, or relationships, sports team, you know, groups, clubs, whatever it may be. And there's and again. But you know, we earn our income on what's called, and I don't like to use the word real estate commissions. I use the word real estate compensation. So when we look at the word compensation, look at all that compensation that's sitting there. You just have to let people know, because what do people really want? AJ, they want to You see, when you're building a big brand, what are you also doing? You're trying to build that brand, to create trust within the consumer, that authoritative trust. But if you don't have the money, and you're basing this on a zero based marketing program, and you have to target market correctly and re target market. But you know what the best market is? Usually the one that's right in front of you, all those people that you've touched in the past, you're 100%

AJ Hazzi 59:40
right. You've got to get everything that you can out of the people who know you, like you and trust you. Now, a lot of people don't have that luxury. They're, you know, transplants from another area. They're coming in without networks. And so thank God for direct response marketing, you know, lead online, lead generation and things like that, that people can build those relationships, but once you have them. To your point, the gold is in nurturing those relationships, because that's truly the value of your book of business right then and there. So I want to switch gears for a second, right? As you know, most agents sell homes make lots of money in commissions. I mean, I shouldn't say most do, but those that stick around long enough will make hundreds of 1000s, if not millions, of commissions, but they never really invest in the thing that they sell. They never build any lasting wealth. You know, what was it that kind of drew you to real estate investment? Ultimately, what did that teach you about building long term wealth creation and you know, what can you share with the audience about eating your own cooking?

Speaker 1 1:00:45
Well, when I was in my late teens and suffered my, you know, career ending hockey injury, I had to start looking at, you know, you know, different career paths. And you know, when I was in school, I always felt some shame inside, because I had a lot of friends that had already decided we're going, I'm going to university, and they're going to be a teacher, or they're going to be a lawyer. One of my best friends, her parents, owned a little confectionary store called Poons where I grew up. And you know, Doreen became a lawyer, Marlene and her sister became a doctor, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I always held it inside but and I remember my mom saying, My late mom, who passed away a year ago, she had said to me at my wedding when she got up and you know, my my mom and dad talked, she said, you know, the thing about Terry is he always, he never stops trying. He's always, you know, curious. He's always looking at different things and and the thing is, is when people, you know, used to say to me, well, Terry, come on, just you gotta go get a job. I had a lot of my buddies get into the trades. And so when I was in my late teens, you know, I was reading those books, those how to get rich books. And the ones that really influenced me and had the biggest impact on me were the ones that talked about real estate, and I had a genuine interest in real estate. So prior to me even getting into real estate, I had five investment properties. But in 1986 I went to a real estate seminar that was at Lister Hall, which is just like a big hall a residence at the University of Alberta, big conference room. It was put on by a fellow by the name of Raymond Aaron. And Raymond Aaron, you know, was a big real estate promoter, and his headline was how to buy real estate with little or no money down. Well, I had no money, so, I mean, I scraped up enough just to go to the event, but then, you know, he had people coming up and giving testimony and how they're buying real estate. And sure enough, what he was really doing was trying to sell one of his projects up in St Albert. And I think a lot of those people bought him, and I'm not sure they did very well, but I just took it all in and met, met a very, very good friend of mine who's still a buddy of mine today. I mentioned his name earlier, Kendall, and I met him and his dad and his brother at that seminar. But I scraped together about $1,500 so I started at that time you could assume a mortgage without qualifying. So I found this little house, 158, 10, a 100th Avenue, a little two bedroom bungalow that was all renovated, and it was priced in the low $60,000 range. I think it was 69 nine. And I ended up buying that house for $3,000 down. I think I paid 62 assumed 59 the payment was like 580 something, and I rented it out for $675 and that was my first foray. It had a little bit of positive cash flow, but if you look at the rate of return, 125 bucks a month, times 12 $3,000 initial investment, it's a pretty good rate of return. So that was my first foray into investment real estate. And you know, when I was a kid, I used to collect hockey cards, so I I set a goal that I wanted to buy one piece of real estate per year. And I don't have a lot of time to talk about MERV today, but MERV was something that had an impact on me a long time ago, a gentleman that I met. I'll mention it more at the mastermind, but he had said to me, you know, Terry, what if you could buy one property but get two paychecks? I said, What do you mean a side by side duplex or an up and down duplex? So, you know, I only knew MERV for about seven months before he passed away, but he was a real estate agent for many years. Never made an AJ, I told you the story. Never made much money, but his funeral wasn't well attended. I went to the funeral, but I went for lunch with him every Friday, and he was an amazing man. And after he passed away, his wife had said some months after, I met his kids, three. Of them that went through university, I went to their their home in rail yard district in Edmonton. It was a half duplex, very 1970s inside. And she said, the reason I called you over, you know, you were like another son to move our kids were gone. He appreciated the fellowship. We'd go to the house of Quan every Friday, and we'd have lunch and we would tell stories. But he told me at that time, you want to become your own best client. And you know, I see real estate agents for years and years, cars, houses, shoes, handbags, all the fucking bullshit. But you know what, they're three paychecks away from bankruptcy. Okay, so I realized in my early 20s, you know, I bought that first investment property six days prior to my 21st birthday. But getting back to MERV, his wife said, you know, Terry, the kids don't want the portfolio, I'd like you to sell the portfolio. And he had been a real real estate agent since the late 1950s and probably never made more than about 60, 70k a year, at tops. But him and his wife had a portfolio of 44 duplexes, 44 accommodation of 44 duplexes. And four Plex is free and clear. And so that was early in my career. As a matter of fact, I still own one that I bought from them and but I helped them sell that portfolio, and that was that really made sense. So I started, you know, buying up and down side by side duplexes, then I graduated to four plexes, then six sweeters, and I kind of found my niche in 10 and 12 suite buildings. And you know, the biggest building I bought was, was 109 units, a concrete building in downtown Edmonton. And we built that and rehabilitated it. And with the condo conversion, we paid 5.3 million and ended up selling on it for about 20 to 22 and a half million. I mean, we spent a lot rehabilitating it, but we sold them off as condominiums and and hindsight, again, I should have kept it, but, you know, a lot of viewers will know that I've, you know, I used to do the how to create amazing wealth by investing in real estate seminars here in Edmonton and and Calgary. And I have 1000 people attend their free seminars, but I rid them of all the bullshit, one property at a time, just one at a time. And I have clients. I have a good friend of mine that I went to school with, an ETS Edmonton transit system bus driver 30 years he just retired, but he has 19 doors, and we did it over time. So you buy a great piece of real estate, and what's your best friend in real estate time, but we'll talk more about that at

AJ Hazzi 1:07:47
your event. I bet you in hindsight, when you're thinking about merv's portfolio, after you realized all the creative ways you could get your hands on real estate, I bet you wish you would have done a deal with his family to have them vendor finance, the downstroke. Maybe you could have thrown your commission and then you could have absorbed or assumed that portfolio that would have given you a real shot in the arm at that age.

Speaker 1 1:08:07
Yeah, I was able to buy, I was I was able to buy one and barely qualify, because I now had, I think, six or seven. But you know that first deal, 158, 10, I had $1,500 I borrowed 1500 from my choche marusha, which means anti Marian Ukrainian, because I needed the money. And, you know, my dad, mom and dad, you know, it was kind of month to month, and our family might have bought it, and I paid it back. And now that that little house, I ended up finally selling, but I bought the two next to it, and I sold them to a commercial real estate developer, and now there's a daycare, a flag shop and a thonaire shop there. So,

AJ Hazzi 1:08:47
so cool. You mentioned attending that seminar for how to buy real estate with no money down. It made me think of a late night infomercial I stumbled upon to when I was 19 years old. It was by a gentleman by the name of ad Kessler, and it was called a fortune at your feet. And essentially it was about 60 strategies laid out inside of about 180 pages on how to acquire real estate, most of which only worked in the US because they were, you know, they're pretty creative strategies, but there was a couple of them that I latched on to. One was lease options. One was agreements for sale. We didn't have the the assumption, without qualification that you guys had in Alberta, but I got my hands on all kinds of real estate when I had run out of resources and down payments by just simply using a lease option strategy. The other thing I think a lot of agents forget is that we can use our commissions as parts of our down payment. And real estate commissions have price elasticity. You can negotiate a deal with a higher commission. That's your right to do that. And so I would negotiate sometimes five, even more percent down right out of my commission. So maybe I gave up a little in the negotiation, but I still got these properties for under their list price, and padded my commission so that my cash to close was was not that much. And. You know, when I look at your example, you know, obviously the numbers are small. So some people listening might, you know, discount it by saying, Well, that can't be done today. But ultimately, what you did was you got 20 times leverage on your three grand and then you bought something that basically barely covered itself. Well, that very strategy can work today. And in fact, you're at an advantage, because if you want to make six figures on your real estate investment today, let's say you bought something for six or $700,000 same way, 5% down, most of which is your commission, and you barely cover itself, which is still doable, I believe, in Edmonton and other parts of the country, if you allow a couple of years appreciation, which we're gonna go back into an appreciation cycle. Soon you'll make $100,000 on on 10 to 15% of appreciation, whereas for you at 60k for your property to go up to 180 it had to triple. For you to make $100,000 on a $60,000 property, you needed 270% appreciation. Well, now you need 15% which is going to happen in a lot shorter amount of time. And so I wouldn't let the big numbers feel as though that puts you at a disadvantage. In fact, I think it puts you at a massive advantage. For the other reason is that, in your case, you had a tenant that was paying $675 a month covering your mortgage. Well, now you could have a tenant paying 3500 or $3,800 a month, paying down a much bigger mortgage. It's the same game. Other People's Money is paying off your debt on an asset I would much rather. I mean, you remember when we first got into this, it was like, how quickly can I get to a million dollar portfolio? And we had to amass 1015, even 20 doors to be able to get to the point where we could say, I've got a Million Dollar Portfolio. You can go buy an average single family home right now in today's market that just covers itself, or a duplex for 1.1 million. That's even positive cash flow, and you're a Million Dollar Portfolio owner from day one. So I don't think it's a big disadvantage to people right now. And I tell everybody that comes to work for me, you got to be your own best customer. If you're starting right now with a joint you have a J, O, B, before you become, you know, a contracted person that's going to take a couple years to get finance. You should be talking to a mortgage broker today. Let's see what you can qualify for, because the best time to buy real estate is right now. And I just, I think so many agents miss that piece. They, you know, they work in the business, and they think of it as some sort of commodity that they trade in, but they don't actually truly eat their own cooking, and they don't build any lasting wealth. And I tell everybody, listen, you give me 10 years on the team, I'll show you how to make lots of money, but how you're going to get ahead, and how you're going to be able to be a multimillionaire and then decide from a place of power in 10 years that you actually love this business and want to continue is by investing in the real estate. By creating that financial independence, you'll be a multimillionaire inside of 10 years, as long as you do, as you said, buy a piece of real estate every year, whether it's creatively or whether you hustle up the 20% down payment that you need. You make it your mission every single year. And then 10 years we can take inventory and say, Do we really even like this, or did we just use this as a vehicle to become a multi millionaire, and now you can enter the next chapter of your life. Well,

Speaker 1 1:13:09
I have a $3 million house with a billion dollar view in Kelowna, yeah, with a private driveway. I own all the land around it. How did I buy that? What allowed me to buy that? Well, I don't like to have mortgages anymore. And two apartment buildings that I held for a long, long time that had been free, free and clear. One I bought for 28,000 a door. The other 130, 3000 a door. They were now 1960 circa era buildings. One was a 10 sweeter. One was a 12 sweeter. You know, we we really took care of them with with due care and attention and lot of due diligence, but they were now going to require some maintenance. And our market went like this on the smaller apartment buildings, and I kind of had the foresight in the last three to four years to sell those two buildings. And you'll hear me talk about a lot, I never sell anything, but I sold those two buildings because they were free and clear. And now my dream home in Kelowna is free and clear, and that's what paid for the house in Kelowna. Now my house in Kelowna has gone up probably about $750,000 from the time that I completed construction a couple of years ago. So again, my apartment buildings kind of because of their age and where they were located, I wasn't really able to get any more rent out of those buildings so they hit their maximum cap value, and I sold at a high time, and was able to buy this extraordinary piece of dirt in Kelowna and then build this beautiful house, which, by the way, I also have a fully self contained suite. Right in that basement that you never know that is there that generates me $2,500 per month, and I've got a lovely residential tenant

AJ Hazzi 1:15:08
there. Not only that, it saves you the speculation tax you don't have to pay because you have created a rental unit. All right, let me ask you this, if you were had to start from zero today, you're an agent listening to this. You you're starting from zero. You have no portfolio at all. You've just got your license. You got a little bit of knowledge. You're thirsty for knowledge. How do you go about building a $10 million Portfolio inside of 10 years? What would you do starting from scratch today?

Speaker 1 1:15:33
Well, I mean, that's, that's really easy. I would, I would buy a side by side duplex or a triplex. And I missed one in Kelowna some years ago. AJ, just before you get downtown, you know, you go Pat, just before you know you're going to get downtown, like, from my place there, there's a little triplex four Plex on the corner. It still drives me crazy. It was rough. Now it looks good. I should have bought it, but all I would do is go out and buy, buy a side by side duplex, or a triplex or a four Plex, something that has one property. It may have two, three or four paychecks, and then simply, you continue to build on that. And you know, then you may go and buy a six sweeter or a 10 sweeter, and you just continue to collect real estate like stamps. Now, again, I always share the truth, because my real estate compensation earnings were so large for such, or, you know, such, such big net profits in my company, I was always able to put 2025, 30, sometimes 35% down. But early in my career as Aj is talking about I wasn't able to do that. So one of the things that I did is I created what was called a bucket theory. I created different buckets, and one bucket was a savings account, another bucket was a RRSP, another bucket was insurance, another bucket was my personal residence, but the most important bucket, now use this finger over here was my real estate investment bucket. So every single paycheck that I received from real estate commissions, I would put a percentage of that paycheck into my real estate investment bucket. So as I was already building equity. You see, I built something called the Terry parentage teeter totter. You see, when you buy a when you go to a park, do you ever see a teeter totter sitting like this? No, physics don't work that way. They're like this. One end is on the bottom, one end is on the top. So the Terry prenic real estate investment teeter totter works this way. When you acquire a property, it's just like this. But at the minute you acquire it and the tenant makes it's your first mortgage payment, you start to build equity. And over time, what's going on the left hand side here, right here, is appreciation. So you're building equity this way. But and then who's making the payment? The tenant and your property is going up in value and it's appreciating, and in the end, when it's free and clear, that's how it's sitting. That's called the Terry peronics teeter totter real estate. And that's all I ever did. And you have to be a turtle in fifth gear. You and you know what? You know these people that I see in like Toronto, Vancouver, buying these condos everywhere, even, quite frankly, in Kelowna, you know some of these condos that are going up downtown and paying all this money, and then you know what, a year or two later, they're upside down, 100 200 some people in Toronto, four or 500 grand buy a piece of dirt that brings you two or three or four paychecks and graduate slowly, and like my friend Kevin, he's got 19 doors. AJ, he was a bus driver, but we set a plan. We tried to buy investment real estate, a duplex or a four Plex every two to three years. So Kevin worked hard. He took overtime shifts. But guess what happened over those See, real estate works in cycles of about nine years, and in nine year cycles, you usually will see that, okay? And then you have a little bit of roller coaster in the markets, but you'll usually see these real estate locals cycles, just like the stock market. You know, I have a large portfolio in the stock market, but it's probably names that, you know, you wouldn't think that I own, but these are all simple names, Coca Cola, Apple, okay, Microsoft. I own names that, you know what, are never going away, and they always go up in value. And you know what, most of my portfolio gives me a dividend. But see, real estate, it's like this. The secret to owning real estate, buy and hold time is your best friend in real estate. But you see real estate agents like AJ said, they're so caught up in working in their business, working on your business is becoming your own best client, if all of a sudden, in lower mission. And there was this great little, you know, let's say rental property that came up, AJ, and, you know, all of a sudden, either yourself or one of your team members. This is, you know, this is that, that mindset that you need to to break out of. Real estate agents need to, great, break out and become your own best client. Why are you going to sell it to that guy when you could go buy it yourself, and what I hear in my seminar is, oh, it's a conflict of interest. It's against the rules that break the rules. It's not against the rules. Okay? It's not against the rules. There is no conflict of interest. If you're going to go and it's a great investment property with tremendous future potential upside, why wouldn't you buy it? Why are you going to sell it to him? Right? But again, I built a whole nother department in my business, like I have Edmonton real estate investor.ca I generate and again, zero based marketing. It's a landing page. We spend, I think, five bucks a day on Facebook. Marketing this I average between nine and 23 first time investors, second time investors, seasoned investors that fill out the form, put their hand up and want Jamie and I to help them buy more investment, real estate.

AJ Hazzi 1:21:19
I love it. Well, that's awesome. Hopefully we inspired a few people to, like, I say, be their own best customer. Get out there, get your mitts on some real estate. You will not regret it any. The only the regrets I have are the things that I sold. And if I had any critique of the story you shared about your apartment buildings, is I probably wouldn't have sold them and taken the big tax hit. I feel like we pay enough tax in this business. I would have just remortgaged him. You had him clear title. You could have yanked some money out. Tax Free. Tenants would have still paid for the debt and used the debt to buy the place in Kelowna. But I know you're a little bit debt adverse. I'm a leverage guy. I like leverage more than most, so I would have done the refi in order to obtain the dream home.

Speaker 1 1:21:58
Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about that, different strokes for different folks. Yep. AJ likes leverage, refinancing things so you can buy more. That's a phenomenal, phenomenal strategy. I'm a little more old school the community I grew up in. I learned from the Italians, the Portuguese you know, they worked at Lafarge or standard general, one of the concrete companies that worked nine months a year, you know, six days a week. Sunday was family day, and they'd have the winners off. But over time, and I remember Mr. Nacorado telling me, he says, Daddy, you know, we want you to I sold. They looked at a side by side duplex, two brothers and their families and their grandparents, and downstairs in the duplex, there was like, like, actually a door in between them. The kitchens were in the basement. And I sold this brick duplex like, you know, up in East Central Edmonton, where I grew up and had the lions, and he bought a beautiful house on the lake in Lake Hall of Canyon. I used to live there in the East End. And this is where the all the Italians and the Portuguese would, you know, when they after they immigrated here in the 50s, then they went that way. But the reality was, was that I said, you know, Mr. Nacarato, like, How'd you do this? Because him and his brother had 10 or 12 other houses in the neighborhood, but they pulled their money together, they rented them out, and they paid them off, and I just never really bent from that model. But as I mentioned earlier, AJ, yeah, you know, I could be worth five times what I'm worth, but I'm okay with where I'm at and what I'm worth. And I just turned 60 years old on May 31 so right now I'm about wealth preservation just continuing to grow it at a respectable rate of return. And yes, AJ, those two buildings that I sold, you know, I did have a bit of a tax hit, but it was my wife's dream to have that house in Kelowna. I didn't care. I mean, we're going to buy it. We're going to own it, have it clear title, but again, at the mastermind coming up in Kelowna. I mean, even just thinking about this, the value that AJ and I have shared with you today, this is just an absolute snippet, not even 2% or 1% of what you're going to learn at Aj is mastermind, and I'm so honored to be there and to be there with all you and and to have a great time and just to share our wisdom and learn from each other. But this is just 1% of what you're going to learn that day, not just about marketing, advertising, branding, scripts, dialogs, but how to become your own best client. You know, how to leverage yourself to you know, think about this for a minute. Why did you get into the real estate business? And I would always ask people this, you know, I get asked to speak all the time with different companies. I've been all. Over North America, speaking to every different company. And I ask agents in the room like, so, you know, why did you get into the to the business? And a lot of people say, you know, balance and all these other things. And they give me, you know, all these different things. And you know what? And I always say, Okay, there's usually one person that will actually tell the truth. I got into this so I can make a lot of money so I can give my family everything that they deserve. That's the reality. Well, I got into this business because I like to help people. Well, that's part of it, but the reason we get into this business is by helping people. We get to help our families by making a lot of money, but yet, you know, this industry, industry lends itself to so many other different profit centers. Like another thing that I I, you know, I do a lot of private lending commission advance, you know, lots of different things that I've gotten involved in, lots of different profit centers, but I'm just so excited. I mean, AJ, I think, I think we've given them a lot today because we got to save some, because you and I will be be here till midnight, just like at the Yacht Club. AJ and I went for a little afternoon shift. We thought we're going to have coffee. We we were there for six hours because we couldn't stop. And that's what we're going to give you at the mastermind.

AJ Hazzi 1:26:18
Can't Wait, my friend, we're going to jam we're going to leave it all on the table for everybody. Terry, thanks so much for coming and spending 90 minutes with me. I know you dropped some serious bombs for everybody. I appreciate you and for the audience of AJ, unfiltered, this was our first show. I think we did a pretty good job bringing you guys a legend. It's going to be hard to top that, but I will endeavor to do so do if you haven't bought your tickets, we still have some of the the heavily discounted 35% off tickets. Terry's gonna kick my ass for actually ever selling tickets this cheap again. They will never, ever be this cheap again. I think you get for 325 bucks, which is literally what it costs to photograph one of your listings. You can have a two day event where you get to learn from this gentleman here and myself and other guest speakers, looking forward to jamming with you guys, September 25 and 26th down in the show notes, you'll see a link direct to the landing page. You can get your tickets. We are 40% sold out now and again. That's September 25 and 26th so mark your calendars and grab your tickets now. Terry, thanks so much, my friend, and we'll check in with you here a little later this week. I know we've got lots of stuff. Lots of stuff to discuss.

Speaker 1 1:27:24
You. Betcha. Thanks again. AJ, it was a pleasure to be on the show you.