June 27, 2022

Building a $2 Million portfolio in Canada during the pandemic

Building a $2 Million portfolio in Canada during the pandemic

In this episode, investor and consultant of Home Maintenance London & RO Business Consulting, Riley Oickle, talks about his journey into real estate as a serial entrepreneur, being a buy and hold investor, framing new partnerships to enhance his business, investing during the height of the pandemic and much more.

Segment Timestamps

  • [00:51] Who is Riley?
  • [02:45] Why did Riley get involved in real estate and is “burning WHY”?
  • [04:03] Difference in investing in Canada versus the U.S
  • [08:46] Managing investments in landlord friendly provinces and the eviction process in Canada.
  • [11:56] Affect of the pandemic on his business.
  • [15:29] Situation(s) that did not go as planned and key takeaways.
  • [19:54] Riley’s definition of success.
  • [21:13] Biggest surprise Riley found in his success.
  • [24:36] Systems put in place to accelerate his success.
  • [27:02] Biggest failure.
  • [28:41] Riley’s least favourite part of his job.
  • [31:59] Time-saving hacks to navigate the day-to-day.
  • [34:32] Tips for new or aspiring investors.
  • [36:38] What’s next for Riley? New program launch, Airbnb for Dummies partnership with James Svetec.

 

Episode Highlights

  • “Funny enough, when I was doing it for myself, I wasn't nearly as motivated as I am right now and to do it for other people. So that says something to, naturally you want to kind of work for other people. And it's feels better, it's more fulfilling to actually give than receive.”
  • “We have a very thorough screening process for how to find tenants, screen them, select them, place them in the units, how to manage them long term, we really like to treat them as our clients versus like they work for us sort of thing. And the idea of the slumlord is not something that we embrace at all, we’re the opposite of that. They are our clients or our customers, we want to serve them.”
  • “Make sure that if you're looking to do joint venturing or raise money to do deals, that you take your emotions out of it as much as you can, and makes sure that you're realizing, hey, if this isn't the right person, that's okay. Just because they have money they're willing to give it to me, doesn't mean you have to go and use it.”
  • “Be as thorough as you possibly can. When you're doing your renovation budget, make sure that you're actually talking to contractors, you're being extremely thorough during that walkthrough. You're analyzing as much as you possibly can to get the best number for that renovation budget as you can before you buy the property.”
  • “It's one thing to create a business, but it's another to be like the slave of that business, or the employee of the that business that you just created, you really want to be the business owner.”
  • “I think the way of the new Rich will be run by like VAs it will be run by people that maybe don't live exactly in your country.”
  • “It isn't about your resources and the resources that you currently have like your skill set right now. It's about your resourcefulness.”

 

More About Jeff Copeland

Riley Oickle is a graduate from Western University where he studied Business & Kinesiology while competing in Varsity Track & Field. From the age of 18 to 24, he started multiple businesses including ‘Home Maintenance London’ & ‘RO Business Consulting’ which combined surpassed $2 million in revenue.

Since then, Riley still operates his businesses from afar, and now focuses his career in Real Estate Investing full-time. He is passionate about helping people take their first step toward financial freedom through the investment vehicle of Real Estate.

 

Recommended Reading

Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki.

The 4-Hour Workweek.

Airbnb For Dummies.

 

Relevant Links

Website:          rileyoickle.com.

Facebook:       riley.oickle.

Instagram:       rileyoickleinvestor.

LinkedIn:         Riley Oickle.

Transcript

No BS Apartment Investing Podcast – Riley Oickle        

 

[00:00:03] Marc Cesar: So welcome back everyone to the “No BS Apartment Investing” podcast. We are talking today with Riley Oickle, who is an out of state, actually out of the country real estate investor. He's based out of Canada, and he is a full time real estate investor and mentor, or consulting coach, if I'm correct. And he will be sharing his story and his journey on how he's managed to combine and surpass $2 million in revenue and how he's managed to raise his portfolio out of Canada. Riley, welcome to the show, sir.

[00:00:40] Riley Oickle: Thanks for having me on, Marc. It's a pleasure. Looking forward to it.

[00:00:43] Marc Cesar: Awesome. I appreciate it. So let's jump right into it, man. Can you give us a little background about who you are? And how did you get started in the space?

[00:00:51] Riley Oickle: Sure, yeah. So obviously, my name is Riley. I invest here in Ontario. I live in Toronto, but we actually buy in kind of Southwestern Ontario. I guess how it all kind of came to be was, I started learning about this topic when I was in kind of late teens, early 20s. And really knew that I wanted to start buying property, for a couple of different reasons, I realized that assets are mainly just like tangible items, things that you can go and touch. Banks are only willing to give you loans based on assets, and owning stocks or bonds, that sort of thing they don't really give you loans on. So that's what really attracted me to the idea of owning property. And ultimately, my goal was to do renewable energy, realize that I needed a big loan from the bank to be able to do that, to be able to run a massive kind of geothermal company. And that's why I needed the asset. So that's really what sparked my interest here with buying investment properties. And we've been doing it for a few years now. And it's going really well, I really enjoyed it. And we just started doing some short term rental properties, but mainly it's a portfolio of multifamily property that we own.

[00:01:56] Marc Cesar: Awesome. And do you solely invest in Canada, or do you also buy in the States?

[00:02:02] Riley Oickle: Right now, we're 100% concentrated in Canada. We have some in the East Coast, and then some kind of more Central Ontario. But we've been interested in different areas like Tennessee and Texas due to tax reasons. We actually just had a trip to Austin, Texas to kind of go in scope with the market and look around and see where we want to buy a property. So, we're definitely going to be probably buying here in the next year or two in the States.

[00:02:29] Marc Cesar: Awesome. So what you just share with us why you got the reason you got into real estate, like what is your burning? Why do you wake up in the morning and decide, hey, I want to go look at assets or do such a strenuous job?

[00:02:45] Riley Oickle: It's an interesting idea. I unlearned the onions of my why quite a few times. And it really is because if someone says, why do you want to buy property? Usually, the direct answer is, well, I want to have some money. You can't really do anything with that onion, because it doesn't really keep you warm, you can't eat it, money really has no intrinsic value, it's a means to an end, or what's that end. And I think for me, it's always been being able to have freedom, freedom of time, freedom of location. For not just myself, I've kind of achieved that for myself. And I'm pretty confident that if I'm retired, I guess we could put it that way. Like, I don't have to work again. Now it's just a matter of achieving that for my family, like my mom, my dad, other people as well, that I care about. And that's my why. And funny enough, when I was doing it for myself, I wasn't nearly as motivated as I am right now and to do it for other people. So that says something to, naturally you want to kind of work for other people. And it's feels better, it's more fulfilling to actually give than receive so and we're coming up to the holidays now naturally in a few weeks. So that's an alignment there too. It always feels better to give a present and then to receive one. So that's my why right now is to give giveaway financial freedom to the ones around me.

[00:04:03] Marc Cesar: Nice, I love it. It's not always about self. And as you mentioned, it's always about you feel you get greatest satisfaction just provide it to others. And I think that's definitely a burning “why”. Now, can you elaborate on how investing in Canada is slightly different compared to how we invest in the US? Are there any similarities? Are there any differences in your opinion?

[00:04:28] Riley Oickle: Yeah, but we're looking at the different systems or processes that we use here to run our portfolio, which would be acquisitions, how do we find, analyze, close on them financially, with the banks, whatever. And then how do we do the renovation? How do we do property management, the bookkeeping and stuff? There's actually only a few things that are not transferable. We do coaching and consulting, like you'd mentioned. And the majority of the students right now are concentrated in Canada. At the same time, we do have American Students. And so for those students, there's very few things that are not transferable from the Canadian market to the US market. I can kind of pinpoint the ones that are not transferable as much that you have to learn differently about. The first would be, the privacy rules, and the states are a bit more open than they are in Canada. So it's a bit easier to get into contact with sellers. If you want to buy a property off market, that tends to be a bit easier actually, if you're in the US versus Canada. The next one would be your analysis is the exact same, it's not gonna be different. And how you analyze both cities and properties will be the same. It's really though how you finance the property, you have way more banks in the US than we do here, we have five major banks here, whereas you guys have a lot of banks, thousands. So that's a big difference. So the financing is quite a bit different. How you write up your agreement will be different, but it's also like state based. Like, if you're in one state versus another, how you write up your agreement of purchase and sale to buy the property would be different one state to the next. Same in Canada, one province to another, it's a bit different. So the legalities of the closing with that agreement would be a bit different. Renovations are the same. Renovations have changed from one country to the next. How you budget that renovation, how you deal with people is the same thing. Property Management is the exact same, when it comes down to like, again, the legalities though of like how you can evict tenants and how you cannot. I know in certain states in the US, it's a bit easier. In Texas, you just take the sheriff there, I think after 30 days, they're gone. Whereas here, it's like a 6 month to 12 month runway to try to get someone out if they're not paying rent, so it takes a long time. And again, it is province dependent here, like one province compared to another, it's a bit different. And then naturally, your taxes are going to be different too, because we have the CRA here, where you guys have the IRS in the US. So those are, I guess the differences. But once you can wrap your head around how each of those work in one country compared to the other, it's not a big deal. You could probably learn that in a week or two, you can figure out the differences and learn it all.

[00:07:09] Marc Cesar: Very interesting. Good food for thought. Do you guys also have like tenant friendly provinces like we do up here or landlord friendly provinces?

[00:07:23] Riley Oickle: Yeah, there's a few provinces that are a bit more friendly towards landlords and tenants. It's very rare, but in New Brunswick, I forget the exact procedure but they do have something there where you can, it's after for 30 days, you can have the tenant leave, or you have the tenant leave there if you need for renovation. So if you're going to do a renovation within, I think it's 30 days, you can have the tenant leave. So if you're like, Hey, I'm doing a renovation here, you need to leave in 30 days, they'll actually leave which is pretty sweet. If you're wanting to do a renovation and return to that property. In a lot of provinces though, it's way more tenant friendly for sure. Like, the landlord tenant board here in Ontario is 90% definitely in the favor of the tenant, 10% in favor of the landlord. And it makes it really challenging. It certainly does. It's all kind of balanced at the scale, but at the same time, that's not very equal. Not to get into a big rant on that topic, because I could but it is what it is, the government definitely wants to protect tenants, which is fair, I get that. But a lot of investors are kind of going away from investing here in Ontario and going to different provinces in Canada due to the fact that Ontario is definitely more tenant friendly.

[00:08:46] Marc Cesar: So with that being said, I like to dig a little deeper into that. You said that a lot of investors are actually shifting away more towards landlord friendly states, provinces compared to stay in where it's tenant friendly. So how are you and your partners in your portfolio managing the investing in landlord friendly provinces? I mean, tenant friendly provinces?

[00:09:11] Riley Oickle: I think it's just all about having really good systems, again, around how to work with tenants, whether you're inheriting them, or you're putting them in place. If we put tenants in place, we know that they're going to be good tenants. Like we have a very thorough screening process for how to find tenants, screen them, select them, place them in the units, how to manage them long term, we really like to treat them as our clients versus like they work for us sort of thing. And the idea of the slumlord is not something that we embrace at all, we’re the opposite of that. They are our clients or our customers, we want to serve them. So we know that hey, if we go through the whole screening process, and we put them into place, they're really good. We don't have to worry about any issues with the landlord tenant board or evicting people that sort of thing. But if we are inheriting tenants, that can be a bit different. Maybe the previous owner didn't do as thorough of a job that skirting selected them and they stopped paying rent, or they're disrupting the well-being of the others in the building by noise or smoking in the building, or maybe they're really distressing the unit, they're destroying it or not treating with respect, any of that happens. Usually there is noise, smoking in the unit, disrupting the well-being of the others, naturally, and then kind of not respecting the unit, if any of that happens, then we can legally evict them. But it's the length of that eviction process, all we have to do is just set aside more money, because it will be 6 months to 12 months to evict someone to set aside more money in order to cover the holding costs during that eviction process, because you have to think of it if that tenants not paying rent for 6 to 12 months because of ‘X’, ‘Y’ or ‘Z’, what are you doing to cover the costs of that property? So you know, it just a matter of maybe having a larger cash reserve in the properties bank account, like a security reserve or a float to just ensure that if something were to happen, you can cover the cost long term, and you're not left high and dry with a negative deficit every month that you have to continue to put more of your own money into the property, you just kind of keep more cash flow in that properties bank account, because things do happen.

[00:11:26] Marc Cesar: Correct.

[00:11:27] Riley Oickle: You know, at the same time, as long as what you're doing with evicting tenants, and you know how to get them outs, and there's different things that you can do called Cash for Keys, you can give them a certain amount of money, and just say, Hey, get out of here in 30 days, and sometimes that works quite well too. So that you can kind of fast track the whole 6 to 12 months, you could just give them a big cheque for a certain amount to have them leave. And that check in represent first last month's rent can represent, moving costs, or whatever you'd like it to.

[00:11:56] Marc Cesar: Nice, I like it. It is just mind boggling in regard to the 6 and 12 months of eviction process that is very lengthy. And that can definitely if you don't based on what you're saying, if you don't account for those expenses in your initial analysis, it can definitely affect your numbers and your returns. Now, with that said, I know we’re still going through a pandemic, and how did that affect you guys in your business up there in Canada? Where you guys hit hard? Did you guys have to face? Well, we faced up in the states where the government backed a lot of tenants where they say, “Hey, you don't have to pay for such amount of time.” Like, what was the process for you guys?

[00:12:43] Riley Oickle: We didn't have anything that really penalized us or hurt us as much like you're mentioning, the tenants didn't have to pay rent, we didn't have anything of that nature. So that was good. There were a few myths that were floating around. Like, I don't know who it was, but someone was posting, flyers on telephone poles saying, you don't have to pay rent as a tenant or something like, so things like that are on social media, you can stop paying your landlord rent, but there were rumors or myths floating around, they didn't have to. So I know some of my buddies or my friends that own property they did get screwed over because the tenants had thought that they didn't have to pay rent. But when in all actuality they did, didn't happen to me luckily, we had a bit more turnover in some of our student rentals. So some of the students there they just said, “No, I can't pay rent. I'm leaving”. So you just kind of left, because schools were shut down too. So some of them were living in more of a student city just to go to school, but when the schools got shut down, and they could do it remotely, well, then they kind of left that student city and they went to a different area that they were actually living in. So we lost some tenants that way. Mainly, though, I think the biggest hit that we had taken was through the renovation costs, the cost of materials like tripled or even quadrupled in some cases. And so we were stuck in the middle of two projects, one in particular, we got really run out for supposed to be 75K renovation, and we ended up kind of spending 110, 115. And it was because the cost of materials went up so much. So those are things you just can't predict, we were faced with the dilemma of, do we go through and pay this extra ungodly amount for two by fours and sub floors and drywall and whatever and kitchens and bathrooms? Do we do that, or do we wait? However long this is going to take is it going to be 2, 3, 4, or 5 months until this rental or until the cost of materials comes back down to what it was before. And we have a 5K a month holding cost amount. So if it takes us three months or five months, there you go. There's our 15 to 20 grand or 25 grand that we're losing just in holding cost alone. So we're like faced with the dilemma. Do we go down that path, or do we pay the extra amount for materials? So, we didn't choose to go the path of materials, which ended up being much cheaper than it would have been, luckily, so we did make the right decision. But naturally, it was just kind of a hit there on two projects that we had. Otherwise, it wasn't an issue. Like, we didn't face any other issues. It was just the cost of materials for renovations that we were doing.

[00:15:29] Marc Cesar: Good to hear. I know a lot of people I hear don't have the same story. So, it's good to hear you guys fared well up there with this whole pandemic situation. Now, going into the stories that you shared, can you elaborate on a situation or story where something in your journey just went totally left side, left field where you guys planned for something to happen, you projected it and your plan just went totally awry? Like how did you guys manage, how did you guys are fare, and how did that situation help you guys become better and savvy investors today?

[00:16:11] Riley Oickle: Yeah, it's a really good question. I would say, looking back on the journey, there's been a few bumps on the road for sure. It's never as easy as you imagined it to be. I would say two different scenarios for sure. I've learned a lot from and I've made some pretty big mistakes on. The one was finding a JV partner, one of my first joint ventures that I had done, didn't go that well. And it was just like, I didn't do a great job at screening them and like understanding what their motives were. And so the joint venture agreement just didn't go well, because I just didn't partner with the right person. I was in a scarcity mindset of like, oh man, someone has money, they have a mortgage, they're willing to partner with me, let's go in, and let's do it together. And if I would have just taken myself out of that position for a minute and removed my emotions, and looked at it objectively, I probably could have assessed, they only do have 50k. And they're basically putting in every dollar of their every saving every, every dollar of their savings they're putting into this deal. So that's probably not a good idea, because if the deal goes south, or if they need money, because COVID hit, so naturally, they back out of the deal after two years. So I front load my entire five year plan with a JV partner, I put all the effort pretty well, and within one year, because that's what I'm going to go in there, I'm going to do my evictions, I'm going to do the renovation, I'm going to return to the property, we're going to set up all the bookkeeping, all the accounts that need to be set up for the property well within that first year. So, I'd say 90 plus percent of my work that I do with a joint venture over the course of five years is concentrated to year one. So if it doesn't go well, this one didn't, I wasted pretty well a full year of work to then just go and sell the property afterwards. So that one didn't go really well, I should have screened them a lot more and before working with them. Luckily, that's the only one that kind of went south, but all the others have done pretty well. And then, I would say that this whole fiasco with COVID, and the renovation costs being a lot more was difficult to work through. Again, it's one of those things that I don't know what I would have done differently. The cost of materials goes up, it's kind of out of your control. But you can have different contingencies in place in case things were to happen. But we just didn't know that the cost of materials was going to quadruple. I definitely had done the walkthrough as well, like probably inappropriately. Like during that property, I just didn't do it as thoroughly as it probably should have. And I miss things that were a 5K expense there, 10K here. And so it added up to be a lot more as well in the long term, or a lot more than it should have been. When I budgeted to be 75,000, I probably could have said it was going to be 90, had I looked a bit more thoroughly at what actually had to be done. So, I think there's two takeaways to your audience that listens, the first would be make sure that if you're looking to do joint venturing or raise money to do deals, that you take your emotions out of it as much as you can, and makes sure that you're realizing, hey, if this isn't the right person, that's okay. Just because they have money they're willing to give it to me, doesn't mean you have to go and use it. So that's kind of the one takeaway for sure. The other would be as thorough as you possibly can when you're doing your renovation budget, make sure that you're actually talking to contractors, you're being extremely thorough during that walkthrough. You're analyzing as much as you possibly can to get the best number for that reno budget as you can before you buy the property.

[00:19:54] Marc Cesar: Great takeaways, I appreciate you sharing those stories. Now I know everyone has their own definition of success, what is your secret to success?

[00:20:06] Riley Oickle: It's really holistic. I've always just said health, wealth and happiness. And that's kind of my philosophy on it. So health, your mental health, your physical health, maintaining that stuff is very, very important. Because if that doesn't work well, if you're not fueling your body properly, then nothing else is going to work well either. And then your wealth part, wealth for me is just purely real estate right now. And then your happiness, once you have really good health, and you have wealth taken care of so that you can live, wherever you want to live, and you maintain good relationships with friends, family, the ones around you, that happiness is just kind of happens, you know what I mean? It just comes kind of a byproduct. So once all three of those things work well in your life, then that to me is success. Success isn't just like finite to one of those working well, like just wealth, or just your health, you need to have all of it to kind of really reach success in my mind.

[00:21:13] Marc Cesar: I love it. I love the order that you put it in, because I think a lot of the myths, the biggest misconception out there is that it's wealth, then health or wealth and success and health. And I always say that you can be the richest person on earth, but if your health is not intact, you can't really enjoy that wealth. So it's definitely good to always make sure that your health is first priority, and then everything follows suit. So I appreciate you touching those points. Now, what is the biggest surprise that you found in your success?

[00:21:53] Riley Oickle: How difficult it is to be consistent. It's really, I just had a really good year, this last year. And I'm really realizing how you can have a really great year, you can have one fantastic year where things work well, you have the health, you have the wealth, you have the happiness, how the heck you're going to keep this thing going for 40 years? We call it keeping that gravy train running in the business, it's how do we keep the gravy train running one year to the next? Because like I said, you can kind of hit that hockey stick curve, and you can just shoot up and do well. And I think we've done a bit of that here in 2021. But how do we do that in 2022? How do we do it in 2023? And I'm not so focused anymore on how do we grow this, triple or 10x it. But how do we just keep this gravy train running? We keep the money coming in. How do we continue going to the gym? Continuing maintaining a healthy lifestyle, setting aside time for friends and family? How do we do all this? So it's tough, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I think for anyone that is after all three of those components in life to be successful. It's going to be a lot of hard work to just keep it consistently going. And it does get easier, but it's just consistency day after day after day. I think there's a lot of people in the world that have made a million dollars. They've made a million dollars in maybe a year, let's say, but how many of those people have actually continued to make that million dollars in year two, year three, year four, year five? I'd say very few, you might hit a really good business idea once or twice, but how do you just continue that going year after year after year after?  So my worst fear is that you kind of think of it this way where success is a big spike up in a year or two or five years, and then you're down. How do you keep it even plateauing is okay. Once you kind of reach that standard that you want, how to keep it going? It's not easy to do. So that surprised me, I would have thought that it would have been just continued. But it's difficult to make a business that just runs itself and that is independent, and continues to grow without you involved. So this last year worked probably 60 to 80 hours a week. I know that's not healthy. I can't do that long term. So how do I continue to do what I just did this last year without putting in 60 to 80 hours a week? Well, I need people, I need good systems, I need things to replace me so that I can get some of my life back.

[00:24:36] Marc Cesar: Well said, I was actually about to ask you what is it that you're doing differently to be more consistent compared to know others out there who are just working 80 plus hours on their business, like what systems are you putting in place to take yourself out of your business and be more so of the front man, the visionary of your business?

[00:25:03] Riley Oickle: My goal in 2022 is to put in less, to have the ability to put in less than 15 hours a week if I like. I'm not necessarily worried about the top line as much. I'm not worried about how do we buy twice as many properties this next year? Or, how do we make twice as much revenue? I won't actually keep it all consistent, but be able to actually look at we have enough margin, enough profit in the businesses and then the properties that I'm trying to see if there's a way in which I can go from 60 to 80 hours a week to 15 hours a week, and still maintain a relatively healthy profit margin and keep the business trucking. So it's going to take people, I think that's what I'm going to have to do differently. I just hired like two VAs that are overseas, and they're going to be helping out quite a bit with just continuing to run the business, but I need some high level people that are willing to operate this thing. And to get them trained, and up and running and excited, looking forward to actually working on it.  So that's what needs to happen. If I can put in 10, 15 or less hours a week, I'm envisioning that and it's like the E-myth, the book E-myth, you can kind of take yourself out of the business and now be the business owner, not the technician, not the person running the thing in the trenches, you can be at a higher level working on, it's not in it. And that's the goal for this next year. I think everyone needs to be the technician, at some points, you kind of dig in, you go into the trenches with the army, and you really get into the depths of things and you figure it out, and you're running. And then it's like, now it's time to, we have the margins where we need it to be. Now, let's take ourselves out of this position, and put ourselves at a higher position to look over it all and make sure it operates correctly without us. It's one thing to create a business, but it's another to be like the slave of that business, or the employee of the that business that you just created, you really want to be the business owner.

[00:27:02] Marc Cesar: That is powerful, “Not being a slave of your business”. I like that quote. Now, what is the biggest failure that you've learned from?

[00:27:14] Riley Oickle: I think the biggest failure would be going all in on work. And just kind of like putting up the blinds to the blindfolds to everything else. It’s not a healthy way to live life and grow business as well, we definitely want to be holistic, and try to balance it all out. So I think a big mistake I've made in the past has been not actually structuring in time for myself into my schedule on a big Google Calendar guy, my entire life is lived off of Google Calendar pretty well. And the idea of putting your rocks into place first, those big things that mean more to you, you know, your health, your happiness, whatever that might be for you, putting those things in your schedule first, and then filling in the cracks with like, work and the wealth piece. So I've done it in the reverse, where I always put in the work first and then play later. Because that's how I grew up and my family was like, work hard, play later. I think that's actually not the right way to live life, I think you need to put in your play and your schedule first and then your work later. Because the work will ultimately balance out the play, it needs to be equal. If you're only working, there's gonna come a point where you're burned out or that work isn't going to be as optimized and as effective as it could have otherwise had been. Had you taken some time for yourself alongside of it.

[00:28:41] Marc Cesar: Totally agree. I'm with you there as well. I'm a big advocate for Google Calendar. I think the best lesson that I've learned this year is time blocking. And I live my life 30 minutes a day at a time. If you know I tried to give, I work on giving everyone 30 minutes of my time, and of course 30 minutes of play and stuff like that, and it was a lifesaver. So I’m glad you shared that tip as well. Now as an investor, what is it that you find that you don't really care about doing or that gets you disgruntled in your day to day?

[00:29:23] Riley Oickle: Sure. A few different things. I look at the weaknesses that I have in the business. Like, the first one is for sure is the marketing of the business. We just started up the consulting business here a few years back and a lot of what drives the revenue and just our audience tends to be the marketing naturally, that's mainly digital marketing. And there's a lot to do, so I hire that I assume someone that kind of helps me with the digital marketing in the business. Because whatever your weaknesses are, like I always found anyway, that's what you want to leverage first and foremost. So marketing was a weakness, I'd say. I really suck at renovations. I can't swing a hammer to save my life. So naturally I'm not the guy that goes on the job sites and starts telling contractors, hey, do it this way, don't do it that way. I'm the last person to try to give them advice and critique what they're doing. So I need someone on my team that actually does know what they're doing. So I do. I have someone that's fully employed with us now is kind of the project manager. And he oversees all the contractors that do the projects, because, I just can't do it. The bookkeeping, the administration, complete nightmare. Honestly, this is crazy. Like beforehand, we were keeping receipts in shoe boxes, and there's a lot of bookkeeping and admin to do. Now, it's all digital, so completely paperless. And it's a very, very streamlined structured process that we have developed and I’m happy with it. But it's taken quite a while to get there. I would say that those are the top three that I've struggled with, and the weaknesses that ultimately, again, if you're bad at something and you have the money there to put it to solve the problem. I always recommend solving it, then you can operate in your sweet spot, I find my sweet spots are in finding the properties, communicating with homeowners or the investors that are selling the property, negotiating, closing, writing up agreements, analyzing the property, and then really overseeing the project manager for the renos and overseeing the being the financial manager that oversees the person that does the bookkeeping, the admin work, the accounting. And that's kind of where I write thrive. Not necessarily like the guy, designing the social media Instagram posts, or not the person that's doing the bookkeeping and administration reconciling the books. That's not where I thrive at all.

[00:31:59] Marc Cesar: I like that find. Focus on your strengths and find someone who can complement and enhance your weaknesses to make the train run smoothly. I love it. And I think that I'm really starting to hear a lot of people that I'm talking to as of late, it's bookkeeping, or marketing seems to be the most hated role within their real estate business. I need to dig in deeper into that fire to figure out why, but thank you for being vulnerable on that point. Now, do you have any time saving hacks that helps you out on your day to day, whether it's business or whether it's personal, that you care to share?

[00:32:40] Riley Oickle: Sure. If anyone listening to this hasn't read “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss read it, that's my only recommendation. I think the way of the new Rich will be run by like VAs it will be run by people that maybe don't live exactly in your country, if you're in the states, if you're in Canada, make sure that you're looking to the idea of having a virtual assistant, someone that can help you to do different things, each of us as a business owner need an assistant, I think that's the very first role. And if they're working for your, for 40 hours a week, that alone can be awesome. Every morning, I wake up at 8 o'clock or so and get ready for work, and then a 9:30 that's my very first meeting. And so with my VA in Bosnia, and she's already worked seven, eight hours, and she really kills it with us, and that makes my day so much more productive too because when I'm starting work, we've technically already done like six or seven hours of work that day, because the time zone differences, seven hours ahead for them. So it's fantastic. And one plus one doesn't always equal two, sometimes one plus one can equal like 5 or 6 or 10 if the synergy is correct, so she's really good at my weaknesses and where I don't thrive. And so that's why that synergy works so well, because I probably have a strong suit that maybe she doesn't have as much, and then vice versa. So it's very complementary. And that's again, the probably the first hire that someone should make is like, in that assist in that person that can really fill the gaps of exactly what you're missing. And then again, you can spend more time in your sweet spots where you thrive the most.

[00:34:31] Marc Cesar: Awesome. Now, do you have any tips that you would share with new investors or aspiring investors who are looking to get into the real estate space?

[00:34:42] Riley Oickle: Yeah, if you haven't bought a property yet, I would recommend a few different things. I suggest what's stopping you? Number one, what's your limiting belief? Is there anything there for you? Is it that you're like, hey, I don't have enough money or I don't have mortgage capability, or I'm not a handy person, that's what it was for me. I didn't buy because I thought like, I can't buy real estate. I’m not handy, or how to do a renovation? I'm not good with numbers. Some people say I'm not good with numbers, I can't be an investor. You can always partner with someone or team up with someone that does have that skill set, where you can learn how to do that thing from someone else. So now, it isn't about your resources and the resources that you currently have like your skill set right now. It's about your resourcefulness. That's a quote from Tony Robbins. So be resourceful. And think about, well, if I don't have that skill set, if I don't have that knowledge, how can I go and get it? And, obviously, we have the internet, which is fantastic. But we also have other people I'm sure, around you that that probably have that skill set that you can ask. We also just developed a program that helps people that are complete beginners to buy their first income property, it's called “Your First Income Property Program” you can look it up on my website at rileyoickle.com. And that's a great resource to for helping people. And we have like a whole free training on exactly how to buy your first investment property. So we put that together, because we had found that the first property for a lot of people tends to be the most challenging. And once you buy that first one, the second property is 10 times easier. It's like riding a bike, and by the third one, it's like you've ironed all the wrinkles, you have the processes and systems dialed in. And now this conveyor belt that you can just continue doing projects on to the point where the question isn't how do we do the next one? It's how do we do the next 10, in the next 12 months? So that's where I like to get people because that's a pretty great place to be.

[00:36:38] Marc Cesar: Love it. The law of the first deal that's a powerful thing, the first one is always the hardest to get. But as you mentioned, once you get that first one, then it's smooth sailing from there, it’s to figuring out how you can scale quicker now. So I appreciate that. So we're coming down to the wire here. So what is up next for your company's Home Maintenance London and RO Business Consulting?

[00:37:02] Riley Oickle: Yeah. We just started up another kind of program. It's an online course to help people buying short term rental properties  so that's going to be the main focus here for the next 6 months to 12 months. I partnered up with the owner of “Airbnb for Dummies” so if you guys know that for Dummies line. So James Svetec and I are business partners and we already launched a program it's called “BNB Inner Circle” and it helps people that want to scale a short term rental portfolio, like an Airbnb portfolio basically. If anyone's interested about that, you can shoot me a DM on Instagram or Facebook, and I can send you the training that we have on that. But I would say that that's gonna be my main focus. We're also looking to probably buy maybe a half a dozen Airbnb’s in the next 12 months. Because they're doing really well right now with the domestic travel at an all-time high. A lot of people are traveling here in Canada, locally and so Airbnb’s are doing extremely well.

[00:38:05] Marc Cesar: And I'll throw this out as well, since we mentioned in the beginning that you're definitely looking to expand in the Tennessee and Texas markets. So I find if you guys who are out there in my circle or who are listening, make sure you reach out to Riley on LinkedIn and see how you guys can add value to each other as he's looking to expand. So Riley, this conversation was very amazing. I learned a lot about how Canada Real Estate works. That's something I'm definitely going to have to dig deeper into. But before we pretty much wrap it up we do have a few get to know your questions, sort of like a fire round that we've added to the show just get to know you. So I hope you're ready for a few questions. Not too hard.

[00:38:54] Riley Oickle: Sure

[00:38:55] Marc Cesar: Favorite book of all time that's that has impacted your life immensely?

[00:39:02] Riley Oickle: Yeah, this is a classic. I have to go with “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.

[00:39:07] Marc Cesar: Awesome. Huge life lesson that you can share with us and how has it changed your life thereafter?

[00:39:17] Riley Oickle: Yeah, when I realized that life begins at the end of your comfort zone, things have changed for all the areas of my life and not just work but my personal life as well. So life begins at the end of your comfort zone. And I like to embrace that as much as I can. So something's a little uncomfortable, doesn't have to be so uncomfortable that I'm trembling, but if it's just a bit uncomfortable, and I'm like, God, I know I don't really know how to do this thing. It's like just at the edge there, I've never done this before. That's where I know I'm in a good place because that's where a lot of my learning has come. It’s like curiosity piece. It's like being curious. And then also just having the willingness to go and step outside of your comfort zone. Because if you can do that, again, that's how you can learn something. And if you can learn it, and you can actually go through the experience and do it, then you're just growing as a human being.

[00:40:18] Marc Cesar: If you have to start over but with the knowledge that you have now, what would you have done differently?

[00:40:27] Riley Oickle: I took for granted when I was at university, how structured the education system was, and how they taught you everything in chronological order, like chapter one and chapter two, chapter three. And chapter three builds upon one and two, so what I'm learning a topic at the very beginning, it was a dumpster fire approach, I was just like searching the internet, and watching YouTube videos, podcasts, and reading books, and it was just a bit of everything. And so it's very scattered minded when you're looking at it that way. Whereas now, what I'm doing is I'm actually doing programs or courses, or I'm learning from someone that has done it. And they can teach it to me in a way that I can process it much easier. And I find that that really condenses my learning curve. So if I want to learn chess, I'm just trying to learn chess now. I'm doing a program online that teaches you chess in kind of the order that you should be taught it, versus going in reading random books and listen to podcasts and watching YouTube videos. And I find that really condenses the learning curve down exponentially. So I'd say just learning from people that have done it or doing a very structured course or program to learn something.

[00:41:30] Marc Cesar: Powerful. Favorite hobby outside of real estate and consulting?

[00:41:36] Riley Oickle: Favorite hobby, Golf right now. I really enjoyed golf during the pandemic, there was really nothing else to do. Well, a lot of the activities were shut down and I just learned golf and it's been a blast about two years now of golfing as much as I can. So it's a good hobby.

[00:41:53] Marc Cesar: Nice, I love it. Well, if anyone wanted to get in touch with you and wants to connect and learn more about what you do or how you can help them, how would they go about doing so?

[00:42:04] Riley Oickle: Yeah, easiest way will be on social media. So you can go on my Instagram or Facebook @rileyoickleinvestor. So you can follow me there on Facebook or Instagram. Shoot me a DM if you'd like to connect. You can also go to my website too if you want to kind of see the services that we offer. And that's just rileyoickle.com, so either of those work

[00:42:26] Marc Cesar: Awesome, man. Just an FYI, all the links and stuff that Riley just mentioned will definitely be in the show notes. And with that said ladies and gentlemen, we are thankful to have had Riley share his story and his journey in the real estate circuit as an out of country real estate investor and again, let's share this message, connect with Riley and he's a wealth of knowledge. I definitely will follow up with him as well and this has been the “No BS Apartment Investing” podcast. Until next time.

Riley OickleProfile Photo

Riley Oickle

Riley Oickle is a graduate from Western University where he studied Business & Kinesiology while competing in Varsity Track & Field. From the age of 18 to 24, he started multiple businesses including ‘Home Maintenance London’ & ‘RO Business Consulting’ which combined surpassed $2 million in revenue. Since then, Riley still operates his businesses from afar, and now focuses his career in Real Estate Investing full-time. He is passionate about helping people take their first step toward financial freedom through the investment vehicle of Real Estate.