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Epic Alliance empowers you, the investor, to have a consistent passive income and complete peace of mind by utilizing the power of real estate in Saskatchewan. You as an investor can reside in any city of Canada and still hugely benefit from the booming real estate market in Saskatchewan.
Four years ago, Epic Alliance Inc. was incorporated with only one mission in mind, that was to create win/win opportunities for everyone involved in every deal and the company has never looked back. In 2016 Fortune Builders awarded Epic Alliance Inc. For the most creative residential real estate investment deal in North America.
Find out more about Epic Alliance online at:
www.epicalliance.ca
Stefan A.: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show Respect the Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who’ve achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors and anyone who has achieved mastery and examined what it took to get there.
Today on the show I have Epic Alliance. This is Alisa and Rochelle, two of my favorite real estate investors from way out in Saskatoon. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I always get Saskatchewan and Saskatoon mixed up.
Now I’ve got these two ladies here. Met them years ago. They are people who have taken some real estate training. They’ve been crushing it out. They work unbelievably hard. They do great stuff and I can’t wait to interview these people for you today because Alisa and Rochelle have done some great things in real estate and they are true Grinders, true survivors and we’re gonna talk about real estate and all the different programs that they’re doing right now.
So Alisa and Rochelle, welcome to the show, Respect the Grind. Thank you so much for having me. How are you guys doing today?
Alisa: Great. Thanks for having us.
Stefan A.: Awesome. So for the people at home who don’t know Epic Alliance, in Canada, I think a lot of people know who Epic Alliance is, but we’ve got some Americans, we got people all of the world watching this show. People from Sweden, from Australia, from all over the place already, which is crazy.
Tell us about Epic Alliance, how you guys got started, and what you guys do.
Alisa: Sure, okay. So honestly, we got started roughly five years ago in real estate investing. We’re actually a pair of female electricians. And so our journey began with us, oddly enough, we like to jokingly say we met in prison, just to give everybody a good joke.
And what happened was, we were in school to become electricians and ended up volunteering to speak to female inmates about nontraditional work. And from there we went and met and had coffee and then actually completed our project, which was a one-bedroom basement suite in 30 days, where we did all the work and got it rented and then looked at each other and basically said, “Do you want to be an electrician? I don’t wanna be an electrician. Maybe we should look at something like this instead”.
So it just led us to that journey. And then we took a bunch of education and here we are today. We started with flipping houses and moved forward. Now we have transitioned more into a rental property opportunity for people, which is doing gangbusters for us. So yeah.
Rochelle: And we look at ourselves like residential real estate problem solvers. So if anyone brings us anything, whether it’s distressed property, or they just want to invest possibly but they don’t know what to invest in, we can facilitate win-win opportunities all day long in anything to do with residential real estate.
Stefan A.: Awesome. So you guys met in jail-
Rochelle: We weren’t attending, but yeah, we were visiting there.
Alisa: We were hanging out there.
Stefan A.: Hanging out at the jail. You know, lots of people … Real estate, it’s interesting, it’s a business like drug dealing or prostitution, it’s like right down at the bottom of, it’s like a street business. It’s street people.
So you guys met, you met in jail and then you went, you did like a basement suite and you guys are in the trades. Alisa, you’re an electrician. Are you both electricians?
Rochelle: That’s correct. Yep, we both are.
Alisa: Yep.
Stefan A.: Okay, so you’re both electricians so you got the pink hard hat, the girl power. No, you guys got the …No, I’m just kidding.
So couple electricians, and you guys took, now we met in 2000, was it 2012?
Alisa: Yep.
Stefan A.: So we met in 2012. I remember you guys gave me this business card. It was like a caricature business card of your faces. Do you guys have that to hold it up to the screen?
Rochelle: Let’s see if we can hold it up there.
Stefan A.: Whoa. So that business card, it’s quite ugly but it works, you know, it’s good.
Rochelle: Quite ugly? How could you say that?
Alisa: It’s cheesy, it’s not ugly!
Stefan A.: Cheesy, ugly, yeah yeah yeah. It’s a great card though because everybody remembers it. I remember you ladies gave me that card and we were taking Rich Dad Education together years ago, was that 2012 or so? Or was it ’11, 2011?
Alisa: It was ’12, it was ’12.
Stefan A.: 2012, right. You gave me that card and I was like, “Who are these ladies?”. And then I think we met again in 2014 in LA.
Alisa: Yeah.
Rochelle: Yep.
Stefan A.: At another event. And what’s amazing about you guys is you guys are survivors. I think 3900 people every year take that Rich Dad training, real estate education training, and they give out six Hall of Fame awards. I got one in 2014. You guys are survivors. You guys are doing what, a hundred houses this year you’re buying?
Alisa: That’s our goal.
Rochelle: Our goal is, yeah.
Stefan A.: Okay so you’re buying a hundred houses in little old Canada, in little old Saskatoon. What’s the key to being a survivor in real estate? Because a lot of people, they get into this real estate investing game and they just don’t make it. What made you guys into hardcore survivors for the last six years?
Rochelle: Yeah I think that’s a great question for sure. I think with us, it’s just the tenacity and the fact that we just don’t give up, right? And so, sometimes we have a strategy and we go and do it and it doesn’t work like we want it to, so then we just have to pivot and change things, right? And that’s how we created the House of [inaudible 00:05:46] Program, which is really the game-changer for our business and it’s literally just blown up into something we didn’t even forecast.
Alisa: And I’ll summarize it as jump in with a plan A, and if there is no plan B, plan A will succeed.
Stefan A.: Oh I love that. So you guys burn the boats. You said, “We’re going in, we’re doing it, that’s it”.
Alisa: Yeah.
Rochelle: Yeah.
Stefan A.: I love that. You know everybody I talk to on this show, I talk to a lot of real estate people and entrepreneurs and a lot of high achievers. There’s something in common that happens to everybody, myself included. There’s a desperation, you know. They got themselves sleeping in their car, they’re on the edge of bankruptcy, they’re sick, you know something happens, right? Somebody dies … It’s like the more horrible story and what I find is the more horrible the beginning is, the better the ending is. So what was life like for you guys before you started to hit success? How bad was it? Was anybody sleeping in the car?
Rochelle: Actually, that’s ironic, because she was. A truck, but yeah.
Alisa: Yeah. Before we really started this I actually went through a separation and I did end up having a little bit of time there where I was sleeping in my vehicle at nights and stuff or couch surfing.
Stefan A.: Wow.
Alisa: And I’ve progressed to quite a bit better than that now. I really … It was good though, any time you go through something like that, you’ve got two options. Either you fall into that victim crap or you pick up and you go and you move and you move and you move and you move and I honestly, coming to your one event there in Calgary…
Rochelle: The Self-Made Event.
Alisa: Yeah the Self-Made Event.
Stefan A.: Self-Made, baby.
Alisa: Yeah, I owe you a huge, huge thank you because when I was there, I’d already always known that a person should have a vision, a why, a goal and all that stuff but I never was able to pinpoint it until you pointed it out and said, “If it isn’t a moment in your life that doesn’t pretty much make you emotionally break down, it’s not strong enough to push you through”. And you gave me that and that was one of those kinds of moments, I have two in my life but that’s one, and I would … When you pointed that out for my why, that was the game changer for me. Just to make this all-in.
Rochelle: Have the why that makes you cry.
Stefan A.: Have the why that makes you cry, yeah. So that’s something I remember when I went to my first real estate seminar years ago and they said, “Well you need a strong why”. And I remember my first why was, I want to do the impossible. And it was just such a lame why. It didn’t have any emotional charge, it wasn’t powerful, it wasn’t dark. Let’s get dark for a minute. Why don’t you tell me what your why is, Alisa, and let’s go to that darkness and go to that moment so people can understand how bad it can be and then when you go to that moment, you’re like, “I’m never going back”, and you just push forward. What was that moment for you?
Alisa: Well one was, exactly we touched base, I never ever want to get to a financial place in my life where that’s my situation. Where I’m having to be a single parent and my option is to stay in my vehicle. And I just don’t ever, ever want that again. And so, my one why is, the main thing is the control of my finances and my future as in, if I’m going to screw up and I’m going to end up back in a vehicle it’s going to be my fault. It’s going to be because I did everything I possibly could to not get there, and if I end up there, it’s on me. It wasn’t my circumstances. It wasn’t somebody else making it happen. It was on me. That’s my big one.
And then my other one is in regards to … I’ve had two major surgeries and one of them was caused by doing 17 years of high-voltage power line construction, I blew my back out, herniated two discs. And I was was like, “I will never trade my body for money again”. My time and my body are mine and I’m going to use my mind and make things go better and be that business person and that was a big one for me. I know you’re laughing at my comments. She’s always going to that dirty place.
Rochelle: Sorry. It’s how I’m wired.
Stefan A.: So, question for you guys then. We talked about victim mentality really quick. And would you say that the big turnaround point for you then Alisa, and maybe Rochelle, is it when you took ownership of your life and you said, “I’m going to own this. I’m going to own the living in the car. I’m going to own being a single parent. I’m going to own the finances”? Was that the turnaround point, when you took ownership of everything and let go of the victim?
Alisa: Yep, absolutely. When you no longer believe your circumstances are controlling everything, the amount of questions you’re able to dig to to ask yourself or others is completely different from when you’re like, “Oh well, you know, today just sucks because the sky is purple”. Well then you’re thinking with this really closed-box mindset, right? “Hey, you know what, the sky is purple, why is my camera not out? Why am I not capturing this? Why am I not, you know … If it’s really that awful that means everybody’s in their house, why am I not making phone calls? Because that means they’re gonna answer their phone”. Now your mind changes because now you’re grabbing things and going, “How do I make this better? How do I change this? How do I use this?”.
Stefan A.: Hmm. Hmm. So what are some things that people can do to get out of the victim mentality into the ownership mentality? Because you guys have come a long way from living in your car, which is amazingly a lot of people start out with like a bankruptcy or living in their car or on the edge, lots of very successful people. What’s something that people at home can do to change their mindset?
Rochelle: Yeah so I think for us, a lot of this started actually with self … Personal development, personal growth. So reading a lot of books, attending different seminars. But not just attending but actually learning and implementing. Because if you go to a session or you go to a course and you don’t actually implement it, or you read a book and you don’t actually live it and put it into play, then what are you doing? You’re just wasting your time, right? Because there’s a lot of seminar junkies we meet along the way too and they’re just not living it. They just go from place to place to place and they’re not getting any better, they’re not moving ahead. So I think that’s like number one is just do and I always say, “When you know better, you do better”. And it’s a huge thing.
And then asking yourself great quality questions is also a big thing that gets me out of my head. So if I’m having one of those funky days or something and I’m like, “Wait a minute. Wait. People have it way worse than I do, it can always be worse, right?”. So if you ask yourself great quality questions about what can I do to up level or who can I surround myself that will put me in a better mood or just better quality questions for sure.
Alisa: Absolutely. And I always am a huge believer. One of my favorite sayings is, “Knowledge is not power without action”. If you don’t use the tools that have been put in front of you, if you don’t feed your mind and utilize it as actual fuel, then you’re just wasting your time and you’re wasting everyone else’s time. Period.
Stefan A.: Hmm, I love that. I love that. We gotta get there and apply it.
Stefan A.: Now something that’s interesting about you guys is you are ladies. You’re females, you’re in real estate.
Rochelle: Yeah we are. We hadn’t noticed, Stefan.
Stefan A.: Yeah, well I just noticed right now, I’m like, “Hey, there’s a couple females on the call here”. And you know, it’s interesting because my audience is about 88% men, 12% females. Oh by the way, we are booking Arlene Dickinson for the super conference so you guys are going to have to get some tickets. There’s just less females in business. There’s less females in real estate. There’s less females. And it’s interesting for me because I put on seminars and I do events and I put out books and I do all of this stuff and I always get this like, “But what about women? What about the female side?”. And there’s always this … I guess there’s like women events, they make like this is a woman event or Think and Grow Rich for women, or they make Rich Dad Poor Dad for women, they always make this for women.
You guys are like playing in the men’s league and playing way better than most men. Do you guys get treated differently being women? Is it a different standard? Is it a different game? Does the gender play in at all? To me, I judge people on their work. I don’t care if you’re a man, woman, black, Asian, gay, straight, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me, I care about the work. Do people judge you guys because you’re women?
Alisa: It happens. It depends. It’s not … You know sometimes it’s actually to our advantage and sometimes it’s really fun because we’ll pick on contractors for example. That’s an easy one, right? So you go into a house and you’re going to interview or whatever you want to call it, a contractor for a property. And there’s nothing more fun than when he comes up and goes, “Now dear let me explain to you how this gadget works”. And then all of a sudden you get to go, “Oh you mean a GFI breaker and this and that”. And then they go, “Oh crap”.
Rochelle: Because they’ve just given you a quote that was double what it actually should have been, so then it’s like, “Hey man, we’re actually electricians so there’s the door. Thanks for coming out. You just lost a lot of potential jobs”.
Stefan A.: So do you guys have to be better than … You know they always talk about in the corporate world, women get promoted based on their achievements, men get promoted based on potential. Is there a barrier there or is it just like a mask and you wear this female mask and people don’t really know what’s under the hood? How does that work?
Rochelle: You know, I think personally for myself I don’t like labels. I was just at an event last month and basically it was an Aboriginal female entrepreneurial event where they wanted to get feedback from females who are Aboriginal entrepreneurs. And so one of the questions that came around for me was, and everybody was to answer this question but, it said like, “What do you think your barriers are by being an Aboriginal female entrepreneur?”. And I said, “That’s an interesting question, for myself I don’t actually like labels so I label myself as I’m a full-time entrepreneur. I am a full-time real estate investor. I don’t add labels. Yes, I have boobs. Yes I have brown skin. But that doesn’t define me, and I don’t use that ever as an excuse, right?”. And so I think a lot of people give their power away when they actually tag on those labels and I’m just awesome at what I do and whether you like that or you don’t that’s on you. And I always just say, we’re just alpha females and we can play in any league. And that’s kind of our power or strength I think.
Stefan A.: Right well you guys are totally playing in the men’s league hockey here. This isn’t like 17-year-old boy hockey, it’s not girls’ basketball.
Alisa: Top shelf, baby. Top shelf.
Stefan A.: It’s not a smaller ball. It’s not a lower net. You guys are playing as good or better than any man. What’s your obsession? Everybody who’s a high achiever has some sort of obsession. What’s the Epic Alliance obsession or the Alisa and Rochelle obsession?
Alisa: There’s a few of those ones. I think one of our biggest ones is we love to say, “Take over Saskatoon and then the world”.
Stefan A.: Okay so let’s talk about that. A lot of people don’t know where Saskatoon is. Especially global people here on the call. Like I’m from Winnipeg, people don’t know where Winnipeg is. Well if you don’t know where Winnipeg is, we have an NHL hockey team for God’s sake, if you don’t know where Winnipeg is you for sure don’t know where Saskatoon is. So let’s talk about, you said to me once if you could make it in Saskatoon you could make it anywhere. Let’s talk about that mentality.
Rochelle: For sure. So when we talk to people, especially people in the States or in other countries, when we say we’re from Canada they’re like, “Oh are you from Toronto or Vancouver?”, and we’re like, “No, no, no, we’re right in the middle. You’ve never been there but you should come. In the summertime”.
Alisa: So yeah that’s always a big factor and I always like to say, “Well we’re this big land base that’s nestled between Manitoba and Alberta. And you know, it’s always windy here because Alberta sucks and Manitoba blows”. So, you know. We’re stuck in the middle but honestly it’s really easy, look at Canada and basically go slightly to the left of the center and throw a dart and you’re going to hit Saskatchewan. It’s a big land base and Saskatoon just happens to be in the middle of Saskatchewan and it’s really … I love that people don’t know it’s here because there’s so much here that when it explodes and the things really come together, like the global transportation hub and all the extra mining that’s going to be hitting and happening, when it hits and all of a sudden people go, “What?”. Saskatchewan leads Canada in gross domestic product leaving Canada and yet we’re the province that nobody knows about. I love it because that just means it’s easier for us to come in and dominate when it comes to investing and doing things.
Stefan A.: Right, right. So let’s talk about, I like what you guys are saying. It’s like an unknown market. It’s a value market. That’s one thing, there’s value and there’s vanity. And vanity markets to me are Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary’s vanity, LA is vanity, New York is vanity. People move there, little boys, little girls want to move there to live the dream. Nobody wants to move to Saskatoon. And let’s revisit that, with that, if you can make it in Saskatoon you can make it anywhere. Why do you think it might be tougher to do business in a small center like that, like Winnipeg or Saskatoon? Why is it if you can make it there you can make it anywhere?
Rochelle: I think the biggest thing is just competition because if there’s more people doing it and there’s less volume of inventory and deals to be had, it’s a little bit tougher. You gotta make sure that your reputation is everything. Like for Alisa and myself, integrity is everything. We won’t do a deal if it’s not a win-win opportunity. And even when we make low-ball offers on properties, we tell everybody like, “Look if it doesn’t feel right, don’t take the offer”, because I don’t want people going around being like, “Oh Epic Alliance screwed us over”. And it’s like no, we have people being like, “You guys were angels. You just showed up and we didn’t know what to do with this house and all of a sudden you just came and bought it”. And we’re like, “Yeah”. That’s the legacy we want to leave is that we were able to help people create win-win situations.
Alisa: And I think one of our other big hurdles would be education. We’re constantly having to educate people why is this a great place [inaudible 00:20:57] because we’re from here. That’s a big hurdle when you go to Ontario to deal with investors or BC and it’s like, “Well why would I want to put my money there when everything’s booming here?”. And I’m like, “Because you can take your money that you’re thinking about putting in Vancouver and 10 times it in places like Winnipeg and Saskatoon and actually be a real estate investor, not a real estate speculator”. And that’s the hard part.
Stefan A.: Right. I was talking to a guy this morning from Vancouver, he’s a commercial real estate investor and he said … He spoke on a stage, I think it was in Vancouver, I’m not sure. He gets off stage and there’s people throwing like three, four million dollars at him because in Vancouver you can’t even spend a million dollars. Like you can’t even buy something for a million dollars. So there’s investors out there who have the million bucks and they’re like, “Hi, I have a million cash, what can you do?”. You can do a lot in Saskatoon. You can do a lot out in Winnipeg.
Now, here’s another question, changing gears guys. What motivates you to be great at what you do?
Alisa: Again I think it still comes down to that big philosophy of, “Take over Saskatoon and then the world”. When we decided to do this it was hardcore, you know. We’re on 10 the whole way and again, like I said, when you have a plan A with no plan B, it drives you in a performance mode that is second to none. The minute that you still have a toe or a foot or a leg in a safe spot, you’re never, never, never gonna put yourself to that point where how far can you go, how hard can you push.
Rochelle: Yeah and it’s one of those things where a lot of people still have a job and then they do this on the side so they’re dabbling. But the minute you quit your job and you do this full-time you’ve gone over the edge. There’s no going back. And it’s like the most exhilarating thing. I’m a total adrenaline junkie so I live for that feeling, but some people don’t, right? And so you need to know yourself before you make that jump because some people, it will hurt them so much that they can’t handle it so then they are gonna regress so bad that they’re going to fail. And they’re going to kind of force their own failure. So you gotta kind of know yourself as well, but for myself, we go all out. We live hard and we just do the best we possibly can and we’re always bringing the best versions of ourselves.
Alisa: And sometimes, I’d like to envision this a little more, but you lay there and you envision, okay, I’m in the last five minutes of my life. I’m about to stop breathing. And I’m looking at everything I’m doing and every decision I’ve made and everything I’ve done, am I going to be proud of myself and am I going to be okay with that. And I think when that becomes a part of who you are, you’re going to push harder and you’re going to try harder and you’re going to make those leaps and those bounds into things that, “Hey, I never thought I would do this” or “Oh man, let’s try this!”. Because you’re specifically putting it in that moment and analyzing it as in this is it, there is not other moments. And I think that puts that natural pressure on you that you need.
Stefan A.: I love what they say. They say, “Pain is mandatory, suffering is optional”.
Alisa: Yes.
Stefan A.: And you guys hit on a really important thing, I think you said it Rochelle where people get into this stuff like real estate or business or investing, and they start feeling the pain, and if they’ve got a toe or they have a leg or an arm out of the game, they’re going to try to quit. I always say to my coaching students, I’m like, “At six months you’re in the pit of despair. You’re in the darkness. You’re going to want to quit. You’re going to hate me. You’re going to say that I’m the worst person ever. You’re going to try to stop”. That’s why I don’t like to do payment plans on coaching because people in the middle, they quit. They’re just like I’m going to save money and just run away, right? What do you think is the biggest cause of failure in people?
Rochelle: Self-doubt, I think.
Alisa: Yeah I think fear and self-doubt. I think are two of the biggest ones because fear is just the unknown, and self-doubt ties into if you don’t know, then you doubt yourself, right? So they just feed off each other and if you don’t sit down and go, “Am I fearing? Am I self-doubting?”, and ask that question to yourself then you’re never going to push yourself beyond those. It’s funny because the minute I get comfortable, I get scared. It’s like, “I’m comfortable. This isn’t right”. Because I’m better in that uncomfortable zone because I’m always pushing. I’m always performing. I’m always doing. And that is a … I prefer to be there.
Stefan A.: I like that. We were talking the other night about, what was is about two weeks ago when you guys were here in Winnipeg, about how Alisa, I was saying I was in the jungle fasting and you can really connect to the infinite intelligence. Some people call it God. Some people call it the universe. You were telling me you like to go into the Arctic North with your bow and go hunting. Tell me a little bit about that kind of ritual where you go into the wilderness and you just clear your mind and what does that bring to your business?
Alisa: Honestly, it’s like a soul cleanse. I don’t know how else to describe it. You go there and your phone’s not ringing. There’s not something grabbing at you. And it’s been a little bit since I’ve had the time freedom to hunt but when you’re out there hunting and you’re 70 kilometers, 80 kilometers, 120 kilometers from the nearest person to help you, you have to have that ability to think for yourself, think on your feet, put a foot in front of the other and have faith that there’s going to be something there for you.
And by going into those opportunities where you’re pushed like that, I think it strengthens and makes faith so much more solid. And when I say faith, it’s a multitude of faith. Faith in yourself, faith in something bigger than yourself, all of that kind of stuff. Faith in future and everything. And I love going up there and just doing that. Our minds get so busy, especially I have ADHD and dyslexia, blah blah blah. And so going somewhere like that, I’m just forced to kind of like mentally vomit. And then it’s like, okay, now I’ve got this palate and I can come in, and it’s clean and I see angles that I didn’t know I could see because they were messed up because everything was a mess. And so I just love that.
Stefan A.: Yeah I love that. That’s a big thing, a lot of top achievers, they do meditation or they go away or they fast or they purge or do something to clear their mind. Now ladies, this is for either of you, what do you think are the top three books that changed your life?
Alisa: Well, first one would be for me Rich Dad Poor Dad. Absolutely, hands down that’s a big one.
Rochelle: Yeah, for sure. That one for me completely changed my perception and it changed the entire direction of my life, so that was huge for sure. Another one, I really enjoyed The E-Myth. That changed my perspective from just being a single real estate investor to actually running a full-fledged business where we could leverage systems and really duplicate and really grow. Like that’s where our plan to take over Saskatoon and the world actually moved to fruition. I think that one’s a big one for me.
Alisa: Yeah, and then I think probably … Geez, there’s so many, that’s like asking when you have a platter of cheese which one is the best cheese. They’re all good.
Stefan A.: You only have three cheeses here, though. You only get three.
Alisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stefan A.: This isn’t cheese buffet. You know we’re on a sinking ship, you got three books. We got E-Myth, we got Rich Dad Poor Dad, what’s the third one?
Alisa: Honestly, probably the third one would be for me would be Brendon Burchard’s The Motivation Manifesto. It’s just, the way he breaks down and goes over everything from fear to again the self-doubt, all these kinds of things. He’s so in-your-face, just like seriously, give your head a shake. This is just crap. I love that. So that one was really big for me.
Stefan A.: Nice. Now if you ladies could go back to being 18 years old, what’s the advice you’d give yourself, 18-year-old Alisa and Rochelle?
Rochelle: For me, the biggest one would have been get into real estate investing sooner. I bought my first house when I was 20 just as a fluke because I told my mom I wasn’t going to pay somebody else’s mortgage. I was like, “I’ll pay you rent until I’m blue in the face, I don’t care”, but you know. So I got my first house when I was 20. I just ended up buying a five-bedroom house and renting out four bedrooms just completely as a fluke. Just because I was never home and you know, it made sense. But I had no idea, nobody in my family had real estate, I didn’t know. So if I would have had Rich Dad in my pocketbook and in my world at 18, oh man that would have been a game-changer for myself.
Alisa: My self would have been, I would have talked myself into believing in myself more. Ironically when I was 16, I went to my parents and said, I had it all mapped out, my life. Literally, at 16. Shocker. But went there and told them I wanted to be an auto mechanic. Now I’m in my 40s, right? So this is 20 plus years ago and then some, and honestly I sat them down. I had it all mapped out. I was like, “Hey, I want to become an auto mechanic. I want to run my own shop. And how this is going to work is all the women will bring me their cars, all the senior citizens will because they’ll trust me and they’ll want to bring a woman their car. And then I’m going to hire a secretary that looks like she’s a centerfold from Playboy and the dudes are going to bring me their car just so they can talk to her. So as long as she can answer the phone and write a name, we’re golden”.
And I had this literally mapped out and I sat my parents down and I was like, “Hey I want to take mechanics in high school and I’m just going to” … And of course, then my parents were blue collar. My mom worked for the government. My dad was a potash miner. And their heads started spinning and went, “No fricking way! You’re going to university!”, and blah blah blah. And I went, “Oh shit. I guess I am, right?”. And I would kick my ass and go, “No, if you gotta go sleep on a street to make it happen, make it happen”. And I would have believed more. Told myself to believe more in myself. So it took me twenty-some years to come about to become an entrepreneur again.
Stefan A.: Wow. Wow that’s incredible. It’s amazing the time versus money. People say time is money but time is really everything.
Stefan A.: A couple more questions super quick, we’ve got to wrap it up ladies. What is the one thing that young people need to succeed these days?
Alisa: Honestly I think get off your entitlement and your high horse. I’m just going to cut right to the chase. I’m old so … Older, so I’m just going to hit that right there and be like, “Who do you think you are walking into some place thinking you should just start at the top? Get out of your own way”. I think it’s great that you can be as creative as you are. I think it’s great that you can utilize the technology that you are, but I’m sorry that still doesn’t replace experience. And you still need to get your hands dirty and you still need to do some things with the right people to make yourself into that position, not walk into that position. That would be a big one for me.
Rochelle: Yeah and I think for myself it’s really communication skills. Because it’s scary how many young people won’t actually answer the phone, they just text or send emails or send Snapchats. And I’m like, you know what, you need to be able to have a conversation and be able to hold a conversation with people. And I think that’s a skill that is actually going by the wayside and that scares me for the future.
Alisa: Yeah, and the big thing a lot of young people that have that skill, they’re going to be so steps ahead of others it’s not even going to be funny.
Stefan A.: Well I’m just going to say what we’re all thinking, Snapchat’s for nudes. So it’s interesting that I noticed with social media, it keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber. It started with Facebook, that was for people that can read. Then it went to Instagram, that was for illiterate people. Then you got Snapchat, that’s for illiterate people who can’t last more than like two seconds and can’t watch it again. You know it keeps just getting dumber and dumber and dumber. Mark Cuban was saying that right now, in 2018, an English degree now is very valuable because people need to be able to write and communicate and that degree, I have an English degree, 2008 I graduated. It wasn’t worth very much back then but now suddenly the writers and the communicators are the people who hold the keys to the future. Now ladies, two more questions super quick, are there any resources you can recommend to people who want to start out and follow a path like yours?
Alisa: Well, you’re obviously one. You’re a good resource. You’re Canadian. You’re doing it. I think that’s the big thing, look at the people in your area. Back to the technology, if you’re going to go on there to fart around, why not fart around productively? Google people that are actually doing it. Start reading their articles. That’s what I would say.
Rochelle: Yeah we actually hosted you in Saskatoon here, right? Because we have a lot of people asking us to coach and we don’t coach, that’s not our thing. We’re just building businesses. And so we said, you know what, let’s invite Stefan out here because that’s what you do and you’re great at it. And so we just want to always promote other people who are already doing it and we have a lot of intermingling and we have a lot of mentors that we will connect people with and we also are always like, “Well we don’t do that but we know somebody who will”. So there’s a lot of different awesome people and then there’s a lot of other real estate investing courses that are not worth the money. So if somebody ever had a question about which one should I invest in, we actually kind of sit down with them and say, “Well what are you wanting? Are you wanting to invest in apartment buildings? Are you wanting to flip houses? Are you wanting to do long-term buy-in-bulk?”. Because those are all different training things that you would learn and so we can point people in the right direction.
Stefan A.: Yeah I love that and thank you for the plug, I wasn’t looking for a plug but I appreciate that, thank you. Final question ladies, are there any programs or causes you’d like to promote?
Alisa: There’s always some.
Rochelle: One that’s near and dear to our heart, and this is where we channel a lot of our fundraising activities for is Habitat for Humanity because it aligns really well with what we’re doing because it has people volunteering on their own builds and then other people can go and actually get a hammer and carpentry experience or whatever they decide to learn on the site. And then it’s also helping people get into homes that might have not been able ever afford their own home. And chances are, and the staff are really amazing for this too but, when you are raised in a home where your parents had a mortgage, the stats that you’re actually going to own a home in the future and have a mortgage of your own is huge as opposed to somebody who grew up on a system and doesn’t know about getting a mortgage, doesn’t know about owning a house.
Alisa: Doesn’t know about a bank account.
Rochelle: Everything is cyclical.
Stefan A.: Doesn’t have a bank account, wow.
Rochelle: It happens. It happens. So that’s big for us.
Alisa: The only other one I would say that’s in the moment right now would be the Humboldt Broncos tragedy. So we actually are pairing with the group out of BC, they’re going to do some fundraising and send a check back with us for that tragedy. So we’re always partaking, we’re also walking in the Relay for Life for cancer. I think that’s part of if you’re going to get into this world, that’s the other part you need to do. I think that’s what helps keep you human and whole that you do partake in those things.
Rochelle: And you’ve got to give back, yeah.
Stefan A.: Love it. Thank you so much ladies. Any final words?
Alisa: Stay epic.
Rochelle: Thank you so much for having us on Stefan, it’s a great opportunity. We really appreciate it.
Stefan A.: Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you soon. Buh-bye.
Rochelle: Bye.
Stefan A.: Hey it’s Stefan Aarnio here, thank you so much for listening to this episode of my podcast Respect the Grind. Now if you loved this episode, I want you to check out my book, The Ten Commandments of Negotiation. Now negotiation is one of the things that most entrepreneurs struggle with. In fact, many of them fail at it. My book, The Ten Commandments of Negotiation’s going to show you the exact method, the exact steps that people use all over the world for creating massive wealth in real estate or in any other business. If you need to close the deal, if you need to sell, if you need to make things happen, if you need to negotiate, this book is a game-changer for you. So you can get a special offer if you go to xnegotiation.com. That’s the letter X, negotiation.com/podcast. I’ve got a special offer for podcast listeners only. That’s letter Xnegotiation.com/podcast for a special offer just for podcast listeners. Go there now, don’t delay. You’re going to love what I have in store for you.
