# Ep 26 - Dave Hulshof

An episode of [Shit My Dad Taught Me](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1794241148), 4 Sep 2025, 55 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/10ad395cc/podcast/play/110125853/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-9-23%2F409855542-48000-2-922b2008f4c518c7.mp3

Dave Hulshof is a commercial real estate expert with over 15 years’ experience in investment advisory and wealth management. As Co‑Founder of The Investments Group at Royal LePage Burloak, he co-leads one of Canada’s most active property investment teams—analyzing over 1,500 deals annually and facilitating more than $100 million in transactions in 2023 alone Holding respected financial designations (CLU, CFP), Dave approaches real estate not just as a broker but as a strategic financial advisor—leveraging a vast network and sophisticated analysis to unlock hidden opportunities. Whether it’s off-market properties or complex valuations, his work helps clients build generational wealth through smart, data-driven investments. Topics Discussed in This Episode – How Dave’s father saved their home from foreclosure – Lessons in resilience and how they shaped his parenting – Commercial multifamily strategy and CMHC financing – Co parenting, therapy, and mental health – Starting a finance podcast with his son – Fitness shows, jujitsu, and personal discipline This episode was sponsored by Matthew Stevenson Insurance. Website: https://matthew-stevenson.ca/#work

## Transcript

[0:03] This episode of Shit My Dad Taught Me is brought to you by
[0:06] our sponsor and good friend Matthew Stevenson, insurance and
[0:09] estate planning expert. If you're listening to this and
[0:12] you're a Canadian business owner, you're probably paying
[0:15] too much in taxes. Matt can prove this to you, and
[0:17] most importantly, he can help you greatly reduce the amount of
[0:21] taxes you pay. He's not just an insurance guy,
[0:23] he's a strategist. He works alongside your
[0:25] accountants, lawyers, and other advisors to build a real plan
[0:29] that protects your business business, your family, and your
[0:31] legacy. Trust me, if you run a
[0:33] successful business and you're not talking to Matt directly
[0:36] right now, you're overpaying taxes.
[0:38] Period. If you're ready to stop paying
[0:41] more than you need to, reach out to Matthew Stevenson.
[0:44] You can visit him at matthew-stevenson.ca.
[0:47] Shoot him Adm. We're going to tag him on this
[0:49] episode. Tell him Chris and Jamie sent
[0:51] you. Thanks, Matt.
[0:52] Shit my dad taught me. Shit my dad taught me.
[0:55] We got here today our. Special guest today.
[0:56] Thanks, Jamie. Thanks so much for asking Dave
[1:00] Holchoff, David Holchoff. Dave and I go back.
[1:04] We were high school buddies, still Burlingtonians.
[1:08] He's put together quite a career for himself.
[1:10] Welcome to the show, Dave. Thank you.
[1:11] Thanks for having me. Little intro to kick it off, a
[1:14] little chat to you. Our way of throwing it in he.
[1:16] Looks like he's got more energy. I think he had more sleep last
[1:19] night than the two of us did. Time.
[1:21] I'm feeding. Guys, I always have high energy,
[1:22] so yeah, we're good. Yeah.
[1:24] I'll pull you back out. How?
[1:25] Much sleep did you get last night?
[1:26] Six hours. Oh, pretty close.
[1:28] Is that good? For you it was like a six year
[1:29] number. I was like 3 1/2.
[1:32] You were like 3 1/2 four. What are you guys doing?
[1:34] Kids sleeping. I'm doing my MBA right now, so I
[1:36] fucking have so much ridiculous school.
[1:38] So I stayed up till 3:00 in the morning just like hammering
[1:40] through because I'm going to his family's cottage this weekend.
[1:42] And like there's a big project due tomorrow, a ton of group
[1:45] session shit to do on the Saturday morning that we're
[1:47] supposed to like do as a group. So we just hammered through a
[1:50] whole bunch of shit last night and submitted it all.
[1:52] It's like we're good till Wednesday.
[1:53] Fuck it, nail it in. And then you both my kiddos are
[1:56] sick. Yeah, so they had me up.
[1:57] But ain't nobody got time for that.
[2:01] You guys make a a solid intro 6. Hours on both.
[2:08] That's it. Miles will like speed it up or
[2:10] something. We'll sound like we're full of
[2:11] energy. Chachi BT Intro Dave Halshoff is
[2:14] a commercial real estate expert with over 15 years experience in
[2:17] investment advisory and wealth management.
[2:20] As Co founder of the Investments Group at Royal LePage Perloque,
[2:24] he Co leads one of Canada's most active property investment
[2:27] teams, analyzing over 1500 deals annually and facilitating more
[2:31] than 100 million in transactions in the year 2023 alone.
[2:36] So far so good. Yeah, that's.
[2:38] It so far. Holding respected financial
[2:41] designations CLU CFP, Dave approaches real estate not just
[2:46] as a broker, but as a strategic financial advisor, leveraging a
[2:49] vast network and sophisticated analysis to unlock hidden
[2:52] opportunities. Whether it's off market
[2:54] properties or complex valuations, his work helps
[2:58] clients build generational wealth through smart,
[3:00] data-driven investments. Wild, wild with this thing.
[3:03] Just sound like a pretty good dude, just like.
[3:05] That I've got it fooled. They fooled the.
[3:07] The the Internet. But all your exes agree with
[3:10] this. Yeah, yeah.
[3:12] We almost did. We got that out.
[3:15] Yeah, Yeah, that's right. So that's the business side,
[3:18] man. And then we also like to talk
[3:19] about the personal side too. So that left it out.
[3:21] But maybe we start there, man. Go back to day one.
[3:24] How'd you grow up? Tell us about family.
[3:26] Grew up, born in Sarnia, so two hours from here.
[3:30] Moved to Burlington Grade 3. That's where I think we did.
[3:33] You go to Tuck. It was Pineland back then.
[3:36] That's why we didn't get along. Yeah, that's it.
[3:37] That's it, yeah, Rivals. Still still feeling it today.
[3:41] Went to I don't know from there, Nelson's.
[3:43] That's definitely where I'm at. Went to Laurier and from there
[3:47] kind of did a tour through a bunch of different financial
[3:50] institutions. Did you?
[3:52] Chris and I were chatting. Taught all through Ontario.
[3:56] Corporately owned life insurance.
[3:57] So it's a tax minimization strategy.
[4:00] Went from there to private wealth and then from there into,
[4:03] into the job I do now. So and then on the personal
[4:06] side, father, father of one beautiful son, Kai, who you've
[4:09] met as well. And yeah, that's that's the the
[4:12] CV. That's it, man.
[4:13] And then how about you're growing up?
[4:15] So you have a brother you've got.
[4:18] Yeah, got a brother 2 years older.
[4:20] He actually lives in the US right now, which is wild
[4:23] experience for him. We're both right outside of
[4:26] Tampa. Yeah, Yeah, he loves it.
[4:28] He actually works for Oracle. So they, they gave him an
[4:31] opportunity, worked. He's working in Canada and
[4:34] they're like, we'll move you to the US and, you know, you can
[4:36] pick where you want to go. So he went on a tour with his
[4:39] wife and his kids to decide where across the US he wanted to
[4:41] land. That's awesome.
[4:43] Yeah, that's. Cool, Super cool.
[4:44] What's he doing with Oracle? He kills me because I get it
[4:47] wrong. I say he's a network engineer,
[4:49] but I think he's a sales engineer.
[4:50] He's a little bit outside my scope, but he's very good at
[4:53] what he does. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[4:55] He's going to let him be like, still, still after all these
[4:59] years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[5:01] And then yeah, Dad lives in Burlington too, my stepmom.
[5:05] So they're, they're actually not too far from me as well, so.
[5:08] Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
[5:09] So let's talk a little bit about being a dad, man.
[5:12] So you've got a son, Kai. What's that like?
[5:16] I mean, you guys know it's magic magic.
[5:18] I was describing it to my one buddy.
[5:19] He's he just had a kid and I'm like, your, your scale of love
[5:23] is going to go from like 1:00 to 12:50 to 100.
[5:26] That's crazy. You know, it's just been the
[5:29] most magical of experiences. I just.
[5:31] I yeah, I'm sure you don't like you just you don't envision how
[5:34] wildly amazing it's going to be until you go through the process
[5:37] and you're just, like, wowed every day.
[5:38] It's unbelievable. Hard to describe unless you've
[5:40] been through it. Right?
[5:41] How old is Kyle? He's 9.
[5:43] Yeah. Yeah, he's 9 going on 30.
[5:44] Yeah. It's crazy, but you got to tell
[5:46] us about that, man, because you, you guys started to work
[5:48] together. Yeah.
[5:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's so he's incredibly like
[5:52] eloquent. He's very mature for his age.
[5:54] He just has these really poignant questions all the time.
[5:56] It's like, wow, it's like the ones that kind of catch you.
[5:59] Like I got to think about this answer.
[6:02] So through my career, one of my passions has been taking
[6:04] something that's seemingly complex, boiling it down and
[6:07] then kind of regurgitating it in a way that's easier to to
[6:10] understand. It's kind of served me well, but
[6:13] it's something I just love. Like if you got to really
[6:14] understand it, to kind of throw it back and make it easier to
[6:17] understand. So I think just through the
[6:19] course of his and my relationship, we've been doing
[6:22] that. I've been doing that with him
[6:23] and we're just talking about investments and crypto and tax
[6:28] and just the way he was responding.
[6:30] So wow, this kid, he gets it. So we've, we decided to start a
[6:34] podcast and the whole premise is we're going to take different
[6:36] financial topics and him and I were just going to go back and
[6:39] forth on it. So if it's complex, I'll have to
[6:42] teach it to him. And at the end, he's going to
[6:43] kind of spit it back out to me to make sure we we both are on
[6:46] the same page. That's amazing.
[6:47] Yeah, the first one was hilarious, like he was just,
[6:50] he's just a star. Like we were talking about we
[6:52] did the contract, we're talking about the IP and who owns it,
[6:57] right. The the podcast itself and, and
[6:59] taxes and structure. And he starts chocolate because
[7:02] at the beginning we're putting on these, you know, these
[7:04] microphones because it's not quite as nice of a podcast
[7:06] studio as this one and it's not clipping to them.
[7:09] So, you know, in this in this podcast we're talking about yet
[7:12] you got to there's taxes and you know, you don't get to keep
[7:14] everything. And he's like, you know, we
[7:15] should do should reinvest it into the podcast.
[7:18] That way we don't have to have microphones like this.
[7:20] That's like, he's gripping me, chirping us.
[7:23] Yeah, he's a little superstar. So we're going to build that
[7:26] series out, which is super cool. That's awesome.
[7:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's.
[7:29] Crazy how quick they become real people.
[7:31] Like at 9, they're their own thing.
[7:34] It's like. Doesn't party.
[7:35] You want to go like but slow down like it's be 9, go be 9.
[7:39] Don't be 15 yet. Like it's, it's funny because
[7:42] when he was young, you know, you're just like, I don't want
[7:45] anything to change because this is perfect.
[7:47] And then you enter into the next stage and you're like, this is
[7:50] different, but equally as beautiful.
[7:52] And it's like now that he's 9 and he's just, he's growing up
[7:55] so quick. It's like at some point you're
[7:57] just going to be off to university.
[7:59] Like that's freaking me out, man.
[8:00] You know, I don't want him to go.
[8:01] I just want to keep him. Yeah, same.
[8:06] So your dad, Tell us a bit about him, man.
[8:08] He is a just a huge beautiful soul.
[8:11] So he's he is retired now. He ran.
[8:16] Have you ever heard of Woesley Company called?
[8:19] Woesley yeah, I've seen the sign there.
[8:20] They've got an office in Burlington.
[8:22] Yeah, yeah, pretty big outfit. So they do like pipes, valves,
[8:24] fittings, things like that. So he ran the Canada division
[8:28] for quite some time. So he sort of moved up the
[8:30] ranks. He's just like the most like
[8:32] manliest men, but in a good way. He's just like been a rock.
[8:36] But like I'll come to him for sport.
[8:37] And it's always like tough love. You know, you're in some bad
[8:40] spot and you're like, I need help.
[8:41] And it's like, I'll give you some advice, and then that's it.
[8:44] There's no handouts, right? So it's been a gift.
[8:46] Like, you know, when you're growing up, I gotta be such a
[8:48] Dick. And then later you're like,
[8:50] thanks for that. Yeah.
[8:52] That's why. Yeah, that's why, right.
[8:53] It's the struggle of being a parent too, because it's like,
[8:55] man, I'm like, I don't want to be too nice to my kid just for
[8:59] some balance, right? And it's hard to strike.
[9:01] And then, you know, when it's happening, when you're a kid,
[9:03] you feel like it's way too hard not though.
[9:06] So yeah, he's a good, he's a good soul.
[9:08] He's good stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
[9:10] Yeah, I struggle with that too, man.
[9:11] And I think it's different when you got girls too, because the
[9:14] way that they look at me, sometimes I'm like, oh, you got
[9:18] my number. That's when you came home and
[9:20] play soccer the other night and yeah, and the girls are just
[9:23] cheering Daddy on. Oh yeah.
[9:24] So. So was mom.
[9:25] Well, I wouldn't say Mom was cheering on.
[9:27] She was kind of like chirping. Chirping.
[9:29] Was mom chirping? Yeah, yeah.
[9:30] There were seven or eight people watching and one laughing and
[9:32] the only one laughing. Yeah.
[9:34] Hi, honey, thank. You thank you for the shadow.
[9:37] Love it. Wouldn't be love if it wasn't
[9:39] that, right? But the girls were just jacked,
[9:41] man. They were so excited.
[9:42] Yeah, they are fun, man. And that's, and again, like
[9:44] Lucy's 9, she's turning down this year, but it's the same
[9:47] thing. It's like Kate, you turned into
[9:48] a little person and now we get to go do stuff like real stuff
[9:52] and have like, you know, and we've, we've talked on the show
[9:54] a little bit about some of the things that I'm doing, not too
[9:56] dissimilar to what you're talking about with Kai, just to
[9:58] try and explain the world to clean finances, you know, And
[10:01] we, we've obviously fully support that and we're trying to
[10:04] do that in our own little way. We we might have some new
[10:07] content coming out that it's kind of that kind of literally
[10:10] shit my dad taught me, but just putting it into little bite
[10:13] sized pieces. Finances for little fuckers,
[10:15] yeah. That's right, yeah.
[10:17] Yeah. So yeah, I think it's cool when
[10:20] you take them with you like that because there's nothing better
[10:22] than seeing it hands on. So was your dad like that with
[10:25] like the examples he'd give you or?
[10:27] Yeah, yeah, his, his thing was just kind of like leading by
[10:30] example. And then, you know, if he was
[10:32] there if you needed him. But his big thing was just that,
[10:34] you know, just diligent to what he needed to do.
[10:37] That's what I mean by being man, right?
[10:38] Just like being there doing the things he needed to do to make
[10:40] sure things ran successfully. So very smart financially, just
[10:43] had his, you know, he had his, he had his path.
[10:46] So I when we were younger, so my mom left when we were in grade.
[10:50] I was 12 and so it was like big, you know, obviously catastrophic
[10:55] event, but from a financial perspective, we were like on the
[10:57] ropes and he just managed it. And it was, it was really like
[11:01] at the time was stressful when you look back and you're just
[11:03] like, wow, what a would a gift to have gone through that to
[11:05] watch what like, you know, your, your hero does in hard moments,
[11:09] because I was probably at the time, one of the hardest things
[11:12] for us to navigate. And I remember he, he told me
[11:16] later, but he went into this is back when banking was a little
[11:19] bit different, but we were close to, you know, because of all the
[11:21] payouts and everything close to losing the house.
[11:24] And he went to the manager at RBC and was like, here's my
[11:27] analysis. This is how I'm going to make it
[11:28] work. Like, I know you think you need
[11:30] to make me sell this, but if you give me a rope, I will make it
[11:33] work. And again, different banking
[11:35] times because they could. They could a little bit of
[11:36] flexibility, a little bit of. Flexibility from yeah, they the,
[11:39] the manager. So they, they took a flyer on
[11:41] him and he's like, I never missed a single payment.
[11:42] Did exactly what he said he was going to do.
[11:44] We got to keep the house. We, me, my brother and him all,
[11:47] all lived there. So it was, you know, it was, it
[11:49] was a wild experience. And then you look back and
[11:51] you're like, so you know, some of that's where I think some of
[11:54] the, you know, the foundational desire to have some financial
[11:58] literacy comes from. So we didn't have that.
[12:00] We would have been out of the house, right?
[12:02] We might. Thank God he did.
[12:03] Are you able to, are you able to talk about like what, what
[12:06] happened with your mom when you were 12?
[12:07] Like went, yeah. Yeah, open Buck.
[12:08] Yeah, she I don't, I don't know exactly.
[12:10] So she when I was younger an amazing mom.
[12:13] We had a really good relationship and then mental
[12:17] health, I think she just kind of up and started changing pretty
[12:19] quick and then and then split. It was pretty wild.
[12:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy when I was.
[12:24] And that was you and your brother at the time.
[12:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All three of us.
[12:27] So when it was interesting, 'cause when I was in my early
[12:31] 30s, I, I, I was like, man, like, 'cause we didn't have a
[12:35] relationship after that and she just kind of split.
[12:38] But when I was younger, we had a good one.
[12:40] So it's interesting, your mind, like, as you grow, I'm like, how
[12:42] much of this is a narrative I'm telling myself this is pretty
[12:45] interesting. So I actually reached out to
[12:48] her. And then we met and it was a, it
[12:50] was a crazy, weird experience. It was very bizarre.
[12:53] It was like we met the first time.
[12:56] Very weird to like, go and have dinner with an estranged parent.
[13:00] It was very awkward. And then we met again.
[13:02] And I remember we were like walking down Bran St. actually,
[13:05] so not too far from here. And I was like, you know, yeah.
[13:09] I was like, I got to ask you a question, but you just think on
[13:11] the answer. It's like, how'd you how'd you
[13:13] leave Steve? And I like my dad and her might
[13:16] have had things, but like me and Steve, that's what I'm
[13:19] struggling because you. Were 12 and he was 14.
[13:21] Yeah, yeah. So I was struggling to like, it
[13:24] wasn't apparent at the time. So it was interesting.
[13:26] The only reference I had was my dog.
[13:27] I had for like 10 years at the time.
[13:28] I was like, it's, you know, it's hard for me to to wrap my head
[13:32] around like what happened there. Like, you know, and and I'm not
[13:36] going to judge your answer. I just if you and me want to
[13:38] have a relationship, I got to have an answer.
[13:41] She's like, that's you know what?
[13:42] That's super fair without like, I want to justify your answer,
[13:45] so I want to think about it. So like, give me 24 hours and
[13:48] then I'll call you want to give me an answer.
[13:49] And then she never called again. Never call me again.
[13:52] Yeah, yeah. Crazy.
[13:53] Get the fuck out. Yeah, yeah.
[13:55] That's. Wow, so you guys chatted twice
[13:57] and then since then? Nothing.
[13:59] No. Yeah, but it's like some people
[14:01] just aren't designed for the job that they are gassed upon them,
[14:04] right? Yeah, it's crazy.
[14:08] Yeah. Yeah.
[14:08] Here's so many stories of like when the kids are super young,
[14:11] right? Like 123, like one of the
[14:13] parents for whatever reason, just like it's not their game
[14:16] and that's not what they. But like, yeah, 12 and 14.
[14:20] Like you've gone through that whole process.
[14:21] Like you've loved those kids for 1214 years?
[14:25] It's mental health. I so I, I coin it, but you know,
[14:28] it's interesting. Like you go through something
[14:30] like that and it's like, you know, Tony Robbins called
[14:31] something you see human experience, like people go
[14:33] through things, right? And it's sort of like, you know,
[14:36] there's a story of a, a dad who's an alcoholic and there's
[14:39] two kids and one of them is he becomes an alcoholic.
[14:42] It's like, well, why does he become an alcoholic?
[14:44] Because his dad's an alcoholic. I'm sorry, are you watching me
[14:47] when I get home? No one too close to home.
[14:51] Yeah, I listen. To a few of our podcasts.
[14:54] And then the other one is the other.
[14:56] The other son doesn't become an alcoholic.
[14:59] That's why. Because his dad was an
[15:00] alcoholic, right? It's like, well, you got to
[15:03] think about how you're interpreting what happened to
[15:05] you. So one of the things I've gotten
[15:07] out of it over, you know, enough time was, you know, I'm an
[15:10] amazing dad, have a great stepmom, a mom who left.
[15:15] And now that I'm a parent, like I'm I'm pretty damn good parent.
[15:21] And I think a lot of that comes from, you know, having both
[15:24] sides, the left and the right on the spectrum of like a, you
[15:26] know, a parent that wasn't capable of parenting and a
[15:28] parent that was an amazing parent.
[15:30] And watching him navigate like really hard times and doing it
[15:33] with, you know, conviction and never wavering on being a good
[15:36] man and, and a good parent and even being hard as hell when he
[15:39] needed to, which meant like, I can't even imagine in the chaos
[15:42] of all of it and being like, Nope.
[15:44] And so, you know, you get those. So from a, you know, through my
[15:47] own lens of life, looking at kind of the left side, the right
[15:50] side, it's like, man, I'm, you know, pretty fucking proud of
[15:52] who I am as a dad. And I'm confident that a lot of
[15:55] that, you know, made me even better because I know, you know,
[15:58] the left path, the right path, you know, certainly a gift from
[16:02] that perspective for sure. It's amazing that you and your
[16:05] brother both ended up taken that right path.
[16:08] Yeah, like you say, like a lot of times it's a split, right?
[16:10] Like one of them ends up going the other way and the other one
[16:13] goes. Yeah, and, and not without,
[16:14] like, some of our chaos when we were younger, for sure.
[16:17] But you know, nothing's a free ride.
[16:19] But yeah, I mean, and in the testament to my dad, because
[16:21] both of us, you know, ended up pretty good.
[16:23] You know, my brother's doing amazing.
[16:24] Beautiful father, Kids are great.
[16:27] Love him and he's doing really well.
[16:28] So imagine your dad's mindset and and stress level like dude
[16:32] when that's not. On command like Unreal, I can't.
[16:35] I actually can't even. Probably at the point where he's
[16:36] still not successful, he's still trying to build on his career at
[16:40] that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[16:41] Like, not established and trying not to lose the house.
[16:43] Like, crazy, man. Crazy.
[16:46] I remember one night, I only know what I might be telling
[16:47] this. He was asleep.
[16:49] My brother was gone. And I heard him screaming.
[16:51] And I was like, what the fuck? Can I go upstairs and open the
[16:54] door? And he woke up from a nasty
[16:56] nightmare of some things that he was sort of yelling some stuff.
[16:58] And I'm like, are you OK? And he's like, what?
[17:01] Yeah, yeah. It's just like, bury that shit
[17:03] down and there's the answer, right?
[17:05] Yeah. OK.
[17:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking crazy.
[17:08] Yeah, good man. What?
[17:09] What was your dad's first name? Dude.
[17:11] Henry. Henry.
[17:12] Shout out Henry. Yeah, shout out to the Yeah,
[17:14] that's. That's a lot, man.
[17:15] What's so you go through that and you obviously I like the
[17:19] fact that you're, you know, retroactively looking at it and
[17:22] saying there was a right way and a wrong way and take those two
[17:26] examples. Go back to Henry.
[17:28] What are the things that he's taught you that you implement as
[17:31] being a father today? What?
[17:32] What's the carry forwards? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[17:35] I frame it differently. But his thing is that he would
[17:37] always be like, I'm not your friend, I'm your dad.
[17:39] Yeah, that's come up a few times.
[17:40] It's like, OK, that's such an old mentality, but I understand
[17:43] the premise, right? It's like, I'm fathering you
[17:45] first. So like our relation, and it's
[17:48] hard to conceptualize. When you're young, you're like,
[17:50] it's kind of fucking weird thing to say, but as you get older,
[17:52] you're like, right. There's like, I'm doing things
[17:55] for your benefit, not for you to like me.
[17:58] That's what I don't know. If you guys struggle, that's one
[17:59] of my biggest struggles. Like with my son.
[18:01] It's like man. Because we want to be our kids
[18:03] best friend. We're like our dads weren't ever
[18:06] trying to be our best friend. It was very different.
[18:09] I actually had the chat with my son two weeks ago because I'm
[18:13] being harder on him, right? And I'm like, and he's such a
[18:16] good kid. Like I'm not going to wait.
[18:18] Like I, we don't, he's a gift from God.
[18:20] Like we don't have big troubles with him.
[18:23] He's just a great kid, But you know, there's things, these
[18:26] small little things where I'm like, I'm trying to push them,
[18:28] right? Just to like, my job is to make
[18:30] sure he is a capable father, a capable man, right?
[18:34] So I'm pushing him. I'm pushing him.
[18:36] You know, I do. I realized I didn't, I didn't
[18:38] tell him this. I just started doing it.
[18:40] It was like a conscious effort to start being a little bit
[18:42] harder on him. And I like, shit, I got to have
[18:46] this conversation. So I sat him down.
[18:47] I'm like, hey, I want you to know something like you're
[18:50] probably feeling me be harder on you and I'm doing it for these
[18:52] particular reasons, right? And kind of talk about my dad
[18:55] and some of the history and what we're trying to accomplish.
[18:57] I'm like, it doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong.
[18:59] I'm just trying to be there for you to try to help you develop.
[19:02] It's OK. And I said like, I'm kind of
[19:04] building this plane as we're flying it.
[19:05] So you you know, if I go a little too far or not sure why
[19:09] I'm doing it, like I want to have disco.
[19:10] I want to have a conversation, right?
[19:11] I'm going to figure it out together.
[19:13] OK, fair. So he got him shoes, his mom and
[19:16] I in two two different pairs and long story, but he thinks
[19:20] they're the right fit and then they're not.
[19:22] You know, it's age-old story, small potatoes.
[19:24] He comes to get them and he's carrying two boxes downstairs.
[19:27] So can you get the door for me? I'm like, no, I said OK.
[19:31] So he goes and leaves. I'm like, that was stupid.
[19:32] Why don't I get the door for him?
[19:33] That was weird. That was a weird moment.
[19:34] So the next time he comes over and I have us, he's like, hey,
[19:38] you couldn't even hold the door for me.
[19:39] I'm like, really happy you brought that up.
[19:41] I have no idea. I thought it would be a good
[19:42] teaching moment. And when you laughed, I thought,
[19:44] what an idiot. That was a dumb thing to do.
[19:45] And he's like, good. I was trying to think of why you
[19:47] did that. I'm like, no reason, right?
[19:49] Swinging mess. There it is.
[19:50] So yeah, it's been good. But at least you're swinging.
[19:55] So definitely that would be a big one that my dad's lesson.
[19:58] It's like, you know, not just sitting there and being like, Oh
[20:01] my God, you know, life cast something upon me.
[20:03] It's just like he's really good at just moving through, OK?
[20:07] This is what my new path is. There's something to this.
[20:09] I'm going to put my head down. We're going to make it work.
[20:11] And he just kind of over and over and just has this whole
[20:13] story of just doing the things he needed to do to become, you
[20:17] know, yeah, where he needed to go.
[20:19] Your dad. And Kai super close.
[20:21] Yeah, they're close. Yeah, they're funny.
[20:22] It's wild to see them together. Now.
[20:23] He's just, like, soft. He told a story, right?
[20:26] I'm like, hey, man, a few times he's like, come on, don't be so
[20:29] hard on him. I'm like, no, no, no.
[20:31] I didn't get that love from you. Yeah, no way.
[20:33] Yeah, but that's what you get to do as a grandparent, right?
[20:35] Like my job is done. I'm going to be just hanging and
[20:37] have fun, right? Yeah, that's like on my wife's
[20:40] side, same thing growing up, you know, he was all about business.
[20:44] He was he very focused guy, extremely successful guy.
[20:47] So you know, wasn't the warm and fuzzy dad because it just that
[20:51] wasn't him. But now as a grandparent, like I
[20:54] see it through my wife's eyes like, well, and you've seen it
[20:56] too, like. Nicest guy in the world.
[20:58] He'll just, yeah. And he's always down for
[20:59] Hangouts and, like, play time and like, I remember one time,
[21:03] too. He's like, OK, bye, girls love
[21:05] you. And my wife is like, pardon,
[21:08] like it was so different, right. But that's that's our evolution
[21:11] though, Yeah. It's a different generation too,
[21:13] 'cause you think about it like, you know, their generation,
[21:15] presuming an age where, you know, in the war running from,
[21:18] you know, some chaos, some real chaos, and then it goes to the
[21:20] next generation, right? So either immigrant, second Gen.
[21:22] whatever. And so you were raised by people
[21:25] that kind of ate potatoes to survive, you know, like really
[21:28] rough stuff. So it's like, of course they're
[21:30] going to be, you know, each generation gets a little bit, a
[21:32] little bit softer. It's like, where is it again?
[21:35] Where's the line, right? It's like, how do you balance
[21:37] that piece out? It's like for sure, that's
[21:39] that's the trick. World's heading for a little bit
[21:41] of a tough place. I think quick, right?
[21:45] Yeah, let's go back to the mental health piece, man.
[21:48] So your dad, obviously that's a crazy amount of stress and
[21:51] obligation and, and he got through it in his way.
[21:55] And we're finding on the show too, that like everybody's kind
[21:57] of got their own take on how they balance out mental health.
[22:00] What's how do you how do you approach yours?
[22:03] Yeah, I, I have a bunch. So got a therapist.
[22:06] Amazing. Loved it.
[22:08] Was it was probably one of the better things at the time that I
[22:11] needed to do big. First step that everybody needs
[22:13] to do. Huge.
[22:14] How long ago? 6-6 years ago.
[22:19] Maybe I'm bad with timelines. But mid 30s, call it.
[22:22] Yeah, yeah. It's a Side Story but I did a
[22:27] bunch of Muay Thai and jiu jitsu.
[22:28] Still do jiu jitsu, but and with my son's mom, when we were
[22:32] together, we would do these couples training.
[22:34] And there's a doctor there and his wife was a therapist, sort
[22:37] of trained with them all the time.
[22:38] Beautiful human beings. And I'm dropping my son.
[22:41] It was a terrible day dropping my son off to his his like
[22:45] before school care. And she's there dropping her kid
[22:49] off. She's like, looks at me.
[22:51] She's, you know, looked at us like your soul.
[22:53] She's just staring at me and she's like, you OK?
[22:56] Like, no, which is crazy. And I said no, yeah, which I
[23:00] would never do, never do. I was just like, I, I don't
[23:03] know. It was, you know, God's
[23:05] intervention, but I'm like, no, I'm not.
[23:07] She could just see it. It was like, no sense of even
[23:09] lying. You know, when they're looking
[23:10] at you, like, fuck, you got me here.
[23:12] So she's like, well, you know what I do, right?
[23:13] And I'm like, yeah, She's like, hey, 2 give you 2 options.
[23:15] Didn't even say like, do you want.
[23:16] She's like, you can go have a coffee as a friend when you have
[23:18] time and talk or I can, you know, you can come see me and be
[23:22] my patient. Basically I was like, wow, I
[23:25] think we'll we'll choose the latter.
[23:26] Let's just do that. So perfect.
[23:28] It is interesting because like, I don't know if I would have
[23:32] went and, you know, haunted for therapy.
[23:35] It was just kind of gifted to me and it's kind of a theme that
[23:39] happens a lot if you're looking for it or if you need it and
[23:41] you're paying attention. So we're just kind of gifted to
[23:43] me. So that's huge.
[23:44] Therapy is big one. Preach it to whoever.
[23:47] Getting health in order is a big one.
[23:49] You know, I had, I had really bad anxiety and it was funny.
[23:53] I was like, fuck, man, I have terrible anxiety and I can't
[23:57] figure it out. And then you, you sort of like
[24:00] meditate on it at night and I'm like, eat like shit don't work
[24:04] out. I don't sleep well.
[24:06] I was like, maybe we need to cut some of these things out.
[24:09] It's like made a real concerted effort to get real healthy
[24:12] alcohols basically minimize and drink very rarely and eat really
[24:17] healthy. It's like anxiety is gone, like
[24:19] you just had. You just had guys qualities.
[24:21] Like change your body, yeah. Yeah, it's like, I didn't need a
[24:23] pill, I just needed to get stuff.
[24:25] Yeah, in order, right. So that's a huge one.
[24:27] It's just something physical. Jiu jitsu's been amazing.
[24:31] Like I don't know if you guys have ever done any type of.
[24:33] That's your your aggression release and mental release and.
[24:36] And it's just like if you meditate, you can kind of go to
[24:40] another space for a while. But if you go do something like
[24:43] jiu jitsu, whatever it is, you can't think about anything else.
[24:48] You're not thinking like, shit, I got to study for my MBA and
[24:51] you know, like girls are sick at home.
[24:52] It's like, no, no, no, you're, you're in it.
[24:54] Like you are in it. So when you're done, when you
[24:56] leave the mat, it's like it's a known thing.
[24:57] Like all the guys and gals just sit around and you're like
[25:00] almost high man. You just feel amazing after.
[25:03] And it's just a bunch of like cool, chilled out people that
[25:05] are all having fun trying to better their life.
[25:07] It's it's beautiful. It's amazing.
[25:10] Those are those are the kind of the key aspects, I would say.
[25:12] Yeah. You got into the fitness thing
[25:14] quite a bit, right? You were competing at some
[25:17] point. Yeah, did the did the the
[25:19] fitness shows when I was younger.
[25:21] Well, for a little while there. That was interesting.
[25:23] It was like I, so I played football my pretty much my whole
[25:27] life like from grade 3 to, you know, first year university
[25:31] decided not to play in university because I'm in 5-10
[25:34] and white. So I don't know if that's going
[25:36] to take me anywhere. They're doing 2 days at Laurier
[25:38] and I'm like, I'm not sure this makes sense to me.
[25:41] Yeah. So kind of stepped away from
[25:44] that and yeah, anyway, sort of just because I wasn't doing
[25:49] football, I ended up like just packing on a ton of weight and
[25:53] it's first year university so you're partying and Oh my God,
[25:56] it was, it was massive. So just bunch of fat.
[25:59] So that's kind of where the anxiety started to take place.
[26:02] And then I think it took a couple of years, but anyways,
[26:05] friend of mine was about to do a fitness show and I was like, I
[26:08] didn't even know what it was and started talking to his trainer
[26:11] And I was like, fuck it, I'll just do it.
[26:13] Like let's do this. So I was like big thick guy and
[26:16] he's like, this is going to take a little while kid, but we'll
[26:18] get you there. So I just full, full force, he's
[26:22] like, he can't drink. You know, you got to do this,
[26:23] you got to do this, you got to eat these meals, you got to
[26:25] weigh this food like, but you commit to something, you got to
[26:29] do it. So it was an amazing experience.
[26:31] Like just to have that discipline kind of cast upon
[26:35] you, especially nutrition wise. I kind of never weighed food.
[26:38] I didn't really understand a bunch of it.
[26:40] And he kind of coached me through it was amazing.
[26:42] Yeah. Amazing.
[26:43] Yeah. Big time and.
[26:45] What are you doing these days for the physical side?
[26:48] So you've got your Muay Thai and.
[26:50] Yeah jiu jitsu mostly. So do jiu jitsu.
[26:53] Gym all the time is a big one. And then once a week doing like
[26:57] high rocks training. Just pretty cool, pretty
[26:59] gangster. What's this?
[27:00] It's kind of like high rocks community is going to kill me.
[27:03] In fact, I need to be careful. Because AF 45 or cross family.
[27:07] It's a it's a yeah. This is literally like the
[27:10] caveat to the high rocks people because they're going to cast me
[27:13] out. But it's like you're so you
[27:14] nailed this, like F45's here across the tier and it's kind of
[27:17] like a little to the side. Yeah, yeah, but it's cool.
[27:21] You just go. It's just honestly, it's just a
[27:24] it's a good community. You go, I go once a week.
[27:26] I'm not training for the actual high rocks, but you just go once
[27:28] a week, head down, you know, I burned like 1200 calories one
[27:32] day. It was insane.
[27:33] It's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty intense.
[27:35] I think go home and eat a whole fucking pizza, Just it's called
[27:38] balance, yeah. You got to get a carve up right?
[27:43] That's neutral. That's how that works.
[27:45] You know. And then so parenting dynamic,
[27:47] man, I want to talk about that because I know that you've got a
[27:50] modern parenting situation going on.
[27:53] Yeah, we, so we were together, pretty crazy relationship, you
[27:59] know, both of us were pretty nuts.
[28:01] So terrible split. And then we, we, we despised
[28:06] each other, like court, like everything.
[28:08] You, you name it, we went through it very, very bad.
[28:11] How old was Kiddo at this time? Two, I think would've been 2.
[28:16] So just completely like priorities Askew for both of us
[28:20] like just not the people we needed to be for him.
[28:23] It's wild how you get there, but you're there.
[28:25] And so anyways, I ended up I ended the relationship.
[28:30] I remember it was very hard because I I come from a broken
[28:34] home. So I was like, I can't do this
[28:36] fucking do this to my son. But what ended up happening was
[28:39] I started thinking about like who I was becoming in the
[28:42] relationship and how I was just becoming a shell of a man.
[28:46] It's just like it was crazy and and ended it, it was so bad.
[28:52] And then we just started to kind of forge a new path.
[28:57] So she stopped drinking. And I'm not blaming like, it's
[28:59] not just the drinking that was, you know, the catalyst.
[29:01] We were both idiots when we were together.
[29:03] But she just cut out drinking completely, started dating a
[29:06] guy, was sober and just got pulled into it.
[29:08] Not because he pushed her. He was just like, it was his
[29:11] life. And she watched him do it.
[29:13] And she was like, I think I want to try that.
[29:15] And she did change it. It was crazy because I didn't
[29:18] really think she had a drinking problem.
[29:19] She'll say she did. And she was cool with me saying
[29:21] that I didn't see it that way. And when she cut it, she just
[29:25] totally, you know, changed her perspective.
[29:28] I'm going through my own growth phase at this time, right?
[29:30] Really trying to be a better dad, be a better parent.
[29:33] And it's interesting. It's like the real turning point
[29:35] for our, you know, Co parenting relationship was when we both
[29:39] started to look at our own mistakes as opposed to the other
[29:43] ones. It was like after we broke up,
[29:44] it was a year of like, she fucking did this to me and I did
[29:47] this to her. And right, right.
[29:48] It was terrible, terrible, terrible.
[29:49] And then you start kind of like once you feed that animal long
[29:52] enough, like how we've done that and they start thinking
[29:55] especially therapy helps, right? You start looking at like some.
[29:57] Layers back a little bit what? Role did you play in that right,
[30:00] so you start kind of developing through that and then, you know,
[30:05] once we got to a point where we stopped being so selfish and
[30:08] sort of focusing on Kai, the relationship started to boom and
[30:11] we're actually like very good friends now.
[30:12] It's amazing like you saw us at the mall together and of course
[30:15] her and Kai. That's awesome like we're we're
[30:16] good buddies and it's it was a complete 180 like I remember
[30:20] there was a time I was just like it was so chaotic and I remember
[30:24] it was like literally laying there by myself and just being
[30:27] like OK, God like like almost bringing him on like in a bad
[30:31] way like this is so fucked up now let's see you do something
[30:35] with it like very antagonistic and then not to make this too
[30:39] too much about God, but we she so I was reading these like
[30:43] Bible passages to Kai at night right.
[30:45] It's a nice thing to do. Good framework.
[30:48] And. And that's it.
[30:48] And then he starts talking about it to his mom.
[30:51] His mom does a bunch of research and finds this church she wants
[30:53] to go to. And this is years and years and
[30:55] years later. And she's like, hey, would you
[30:57] come to church with Kai and I? Amazing.
[31:00] Yeah. That's crazy.
[31:01] I would love to do it. I've been to church for a while.
[31:03] And we go and they're like, oh, no, no, no.
[31:07] There's kids upstairs. The kids go upstairs so I'm
[31:10] literally downstairs in church with my son's mom side by side
[31:14] where we were in one of the craziest again, like core like
[31:18] just the most chaos, you know, years prior.
[31:21] It's like wild 180. And you know what?
[31:24] We're such better Co parents than we were partners.
[31:28] It's been beautiful. It's like a new age way to to
[31:30] kind of Co parent, but it's it's beautiful.
[31:32] And the great thing is that he, like he wouldn't remember any of
[31:35] those bad times and tough times. He remembers one thing and he
[31:38] brings it out often. I'm like, it's not even that
[31:41] bad, just so you know, But it's nothing else.
[31:44] It's like it was enough that like the chaos was not there for
[31:49] him. Thank God.
[31:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he knows.
[31:52] He knows we're buddies. We get along great.
[31:54] Like it's it's such a gift for for all of us and especially
[31:58] him, because if you fucking hate each other, man, I can't like I
[32:00] can't envision Co parenting in chaos.
[32:04] Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot of
[32:05] people who deal with that and it's tough, man.
[32:07] And. Both sides get vindictive the
[32:09] entire time. Oh.
[32:10] Man, there's never. A proper resolution, yeah.
[32:13] No one. It's like it's interesting
[32:14] because like I guess similar to the therapy story, it's like I
[32:18] wish there was something I was like, ah, this is what you need
[32:20] to do. And like maybe we looked at both
[32:22] of our own perspectives, but like it wasn't one thing that I
[32:25] did or all these things I did or one thing she did.
[32:27] It was a cumulative path of us both working on ourselves
[32:30] individually to be able to come and Co parent.
[32:33] And now there's like there's legitimate therapy for that.
[32:35] Like it's not couples therapy. It's more like it's almost like
[32:38] divorce therapy. Oh, really?
[32:40] It's. It's for for helping like people
[32:43] be better Co parents. Like hey, it might not have
[32:45] worked out for you guys, but like to be better parents.
[32:47] Like you should go to this kind of therapy and like learn how
[32:51] you can be a better parent and better Co parent and become
[32:54] friends again in a way. That man, that's a beautiful
[32:57] thing. It's interesting because like.
[32:59] It's just a matter of usually those two people, when they're
[33:01] going through that, they're not going to agree to go to that
[33:03] kind of therapy well. Again, like a gift from above
[33:06] because like you go through this and it's like you, you, it takes
[33:09] two people, right? Like, so we're kind of
[33:11] navigating it and I'm doing my own path aside from each other.
[33:14] We didn't communicate other than like pick up and drop off time.
[33:17] We hated each other. So I didn't know she was on her
[33:20] own path and she didn't know I was on my own right.
[33:22] So it's like it's going to take. Luckily we were both doing that.
[33:25] So we hit a point where like, oh, see some change in each
[33:28] other and form this this friendship.
[33:29] So and the therapy would definitely, if you can start
[33:32] looking at the perspective of your child or children, I think
[33:35] that helps a lot. Right.
[33:36] For sure not making it about yourself, which you know, I know
[33:38] we were both guilty of. Certainly I was too for for a
[33:41] long time. Then you kind of spin out of
[33:42] that and you're like, oh fuck. Because everybody takes the
[33:44] selfish side and the pride side of it, right?
[33:47] That's like put the kid first. Legitimately put the kid first.
[33:49] You could say you are but like. Are you really?
[33:52] Yeah, Do it. That's a.
[33:53] That's a tough thing, though, to park your ego like that.
[33:55] Yeah, but especially with like when it isn't a, you know,
[33:58] relationship or a marriage like that, you know, we, we see it
[34:01] like I've got a friend right now that is just going through it
[34:04] because it's like she's got her version of events and he's got
[34:07] his version of events. And we're good enough friends
[34:09] with them that I hear both sides.
[34:11] And like, neither of them are saying anything that are worth
[34:13] burning the house down for. Like.
[34:15] Both sides have snowballed and they've got their points and
[34:19] they've got their whatever, but there's this ego piece there
[34:22] where you almost just want to walk up and be like, for the
[34:26] sake of the kids, park that for two seconds, let's go talk to
[34:30] somebody because that reset button is like right there.
[34:34] You can actually push it right now, you know, and just just hit
[34:37] that reset, give each other some grace and be like, you know
[34:40] what? There's a lot I love about that
[34:41] person. There's a lot I love about being
[34:44] a parent and I want to, you know, do what's right for the
[34:46] kids. But ego gets in the way and
[34:49] these little issues snowball and, you know, you burn the
[34:53] house down over, Yeah. And sometimes it's not going
[34:55] together. Like even just go on your own,
[34:57] you know what I mean? Like, do it for yourself.
[34:59] Yeah. That's like you were saying
[35:00] about you guys walk in your own paths.
[35:01] How much did that work, right? Yeah, you could still do that
[35:04] inside of a marriage. Like you could be doing the
[35:07] Wellness and speaking to somebody and taking care of your
[35:09] physical and all that stuff. My, my therapist said this to me
[35:12] once because like there was a time where like we would drop, I
[35:15] dropped Kai off and it would just be like he wouldn't be
[35:17] there, but he would just be like, like, you know, 2 pitbulls
[35:20] just waiting to fight right? Just fucking and she and I was
[35:23] like, you know, that's frustrating because it's just
[35:25] like keeps happening and she's like, why don't you look at her
[35:28] like, you know the interaction with her, not her interaction
[35:31] with her like a gym. It's like you go and your job is
[35:35] to maintain your peace. That's your only job.
[35:38] That's it. Don't let her get, you know,
[35:40] because it's phrase that too, because don't let her get you
[35:42] in. It's not that it's how you
[35:43] interpret it, but it's like don't get off your own peace
[35:46] path. Just stay on it.
[35:48] And so it became like a game, even though it's not a game,
[35:50] right. So you get in these these
[35:51] situations and I'm like, the blood is boiling.
[35:54] And I remember I very clear and at one time I did it whole thing
[35:57] and she was fucking trying and nothing.
[35:59] I was like, oh shit, I did. I told my family I fucking did
[36:01] it. It was amazing.
[36:02] And it becomes like it's a muscle.
[36:04] You start working on it. And then what happened?
[36:06] And again, it's not, this is not the only reason we turned a
[36:07] path, but is I'm not, I'm not your sparring partner anymore,
[36:12] right. So that kind of goes away.
[36:14] Like I'm not fun to do this with anymore.
[36:16] And again, she's on her own path, but like, I'm not feeding
[36:19] into that now. I have been finding peace and it
[36:21] becomes easier and easier and easier.
[36:22] And then it's kind of like, oh, this guy's not attacking me
[36:25] anymore. It's probably easier for her.
[36:27] And we're just kind of leveling up.
[36:28] And then you have a drop off that is decently pleasant.
[36:32] Yeah. What a difference.
[36:33] And then it becomes nice. And then we're like, hey, do you
[36:35] want to, you know, take him to the pumpkin patch together?
[36:37] And it's like, cool. It's like great situation.
[36:39] So it's like those those paths and then that that ended up
[36:42] being a gift for me because now when I get along great, that's
[36:45] amazing. But that key that I got was
[36:48] somebody pissed me off. Now it's like I'm not really
[36:50] that pissed. Not a big deal.
[36:52] And you got like a black belt and staying calm and peaceful
[36:55] through like chaos and all these weird gifts that like life casts
[36:58] upon you as you go through these things and navigate, right.
[37:02] Yeah, that's a great skill that applies to everything.
[37:05] And I think too, when you guys figure that out, and obviously
[37:07] you're still, you know, figuring it out as you go, you know, use
[37:10] your analogy about rebuilding the plane as we fly it kind of
[37:13] thing. The more you can create those
[37:15] systems and processes, it's the same thing you do with your work
[37:18] life, right? As soon as you have those
[37:19] systems in place, then there's a road map, you know, but but it
[37:23] takes the self discovery, it takes talking to some smart
[37:25] people, it takes, you know, wanting to.
[37:28] That's a good thing because a lot of people don't identify
[37:30] like how close that reset button could be, or how nice it would
[37:34] be if that reset button was placed right or pushed.
[37:37] Like presumably at some point you guys got long and you know,
[37:40] you're you're all sharing the blend that you want to have the
[37:43] best situation for your kids. And it's like, yeah, it's just
[37:45] that just getting off your own little high horse, you know.
[37:48] But look, I mean, there's obviously circumstances that are
[37:50] different for everybody in some way worse situations that, you
[37:53] know, there's there's there's probably non recoverables and,
[37:56] you know, violence and stuff where people have to leave.
[37:58] So it's different. But you know, for the general
[38:01] populace, it just takes that little bit of shut your mouth
[38:05] and yeah, on right. Have you guys both like moved on
[38:08] to like serious relationships and stuff and do your guys
[38:11] supposes like. So I'm single, she's single now,
[38:14] but she was in a, in a long term relationship.
[38:16] It was great. Like it's so interesting.
[38:18] We actually laughed about it because it's been so long now.
[38:20] But like no matter where you are in your, your path, that first
[38:24] time you see them, it's just like, and I didn't like I didn't
[38:28] have feelings short, she didn't have feelings for me.
[38:29] But like the first time, like, good God, that's tough, right?
[38:33] And then same for her. And then it just kind of like
[38:35] dissipates and, you know, the, the guy she was dating, like
[38:38] actually the last two guys she was dating, like the the sober
[38:41] guy is amazing, good, good guy. And so is the other guy, like,
[38:45] just good human beings. And it's nice because she's on a
[38:48] good path or left going quite well.
[38:49] So she's, you know, attracting good quality men into her life,
[38:52] which is a gift. Gift for sure.
[38:56] Yeah. That's great.
[38:57] Yeah. And so if we had Kai here that
[39:00] that 9 going on 30 year old. Son of yours.
[39:02] And we said, Kai, tell us about your deaths.
[39:05] What do you think he'd say? What would you want him to say?
[39:10] Oh, what a good question. I'd want him to know that I like
[39:15] I care that I'm trying doing my best him and I have a very good
[39:19] relationship and I just I know he knows I've got him, I've got
[39:24] his back. I'm just, you know, this whole
[39:26] thing like a big, big, big part in my life has been trying to be
[39:31] a better man. Because who am I to help my son
[39:35] be a better man if I'm not? A lot of it has been a lot of
[39:39] self discovery, a lot of trying to level up my life in all
[39:42] aspects to teach that to him. And I think he'd get, I think he
[39:47] knows that like a lot of this has been for his his purpose,
[39:51] which is help me. I don't know.
[39:52] I'm selfless to it, but I think he knows that.
[39:55] I hope he knows that. Yeah, and encourage him to do
[39:58] the same, right? Yeah, yeah.
[40:00] Figuring it out. Yeah, I'll tell you this quick.
[40:02] We had to go to the dentist and just I have a big, big thing I
[40:05] said, Pat, like if you say you're going to do something,
[40:07] you got to do it. And we all agree, right.
[40:09] So got to be a maneuver word. We go to the dentist and he's a
[40:12] cavity. He's like, fine, it's not going
[40:16] to be an issue. They go to put the needle freaks
[40:18] out. Never seen this from him and
[40:21] he's like panicking and they're you know, it's getting it's
[40:23] getting to be too much. And I'm like, hey, I'm like to
[40:25] the back off for a second, like if you don't want to do this, we
[40:28] don't have to do this. You're in control.
[40:30] It's you, your situation, your teeth.
[40:32] You can do what you want. I would do it.
[40:34] If you don't want to do it, you got my word.
[40:36] You don't have to. He's like, yeah, I don't want to
[40:38] do it. I'm like, oh fuck, I didn't see
[40:40] that coming. I thought I'd worry weasel my
[40:42] way through this path and like, shit, I just I can't believe I
[40:45] just did that right. He's like, I cannot go back on
[40:47] what I just said do it. So we're so the dentist, I'm
[40:51] like, OK, we're done. We're out of here.
[40:53] And I'm driving him to school. And I'm not talking because I'm
[40:55] trying to think of like, I painted myself in a car.
[40:58] I should not have done that. I was in the state.
[41:01] Oh my God, do I come clean? But it's like I gave him my
[41:04] word. I was very clear about it.
[41:06] Shit. So into a school and he gets out
[41:09] of the car and he's like, are you mad at me?
[41:12] Oh no, man, I'm not mad. I got to be honest with you.
[41:15] I let you do something and I'm going to stick to it because
[41:19] that's what we do. But this has a high likelihood
[41:22] of going real bad real quick, right?
[41:24] He's got a you got a cavity. It's going to do this.
[41:27] It's going to do that. But you're your own man.
[41:31] Like, yeah, I think I'm going to do it.
[41:34] I'm like, hey, that's amazing. Rebuke it.
[41:36] So we're going to rebuke it. I'm like hyping them up now It's
[41:39] like down four days later. I'm like, buddy, you know, it's
[41:41] going to hurt. It's not going to be easy.
[41:43] I'm not going to return. It's going to be easy.
[41:44] But I don't think it's going to be as bad as you think it is.
[41:47] OK? And I'm like, you got to give me
[41:48] your word now that you're going to do it.
[41:50] He's like, I'm going to do it. I'm like, OK, so we can park,
[41:53] get out. And he's like, get your camera.
[41:55] I want to take a video. I'm like, this is crazy, OK.
[41:58] And he's like to any of the kids out there that are nervous, you
[42:01] just got to believe in yourself and gives this whole speech
[42:03] about like doing it. He sits down, he's bawling, he's
[42:06] shaking. And I'm like, you could he's
[42:08] like thumbs up, you know, hands going and he did his teeth and
[42:10] he was so hyped and proud of himself after.
[42:13] And I was like, I and I hyped him up.
[42:14] My man. I I thought I made a mistake by
[42:16] giving you so much autonomy and you crushed it like it that he
[42:21] like. Good for you.
[42:22] Yeah. And sometimes it's it's not in
[42:24] the moment though, like the reason that story so good is it
[42:27] gave him that self reflection time.
[42:29] He did need to build up the confidence mindset.
[42:32] Yeah, he built that. He's got his own little internal
[42:34] like fortitude, his little. Strange mind.
[42:36] He's like, let me help other people.
[42:37] Yeah, that's what I love the most, right?
[42:39] He's like, how do I pay this for it?
[42:40] I'm like videotaping a little tear in my eye, like the buddy.
[42:42] The kid loves the camera. Is it good?
[42:44] He's got a beautiful heart, so yeah.
[42:46] That's great. Man nine years old. 99 So yeah,
[42:49] yeah, yeah. That's a compliment to you and
[42:51] yours though. Man, it's.
[42:52] Building an awesome little human.
[42:53] Do you want to talk about Workman?
[42:55] Do you want to talk about what you do?
[42:57] Yeah, you. Want to plug?
[42:58] Just to walk us through. Yeah.
[43:00] So we specialize commercial. So don't do residential.
[43:04] It's all through Ontario. Most of what we do is apartment
[43:07] building sales apartments are multifamily buildings right now
[43:10] are just kind of on fire. Big reason for that is you can
[43:15] get and like it's, it's pretty wild.
[43:16] You can go, let's say you buy a 30 unit building, you can go get
[43:20] them at with CNBC financing, which is just government insured
[43:24] financing at, you know, somewhere very likely at 15%
[43:28] down and the buildings are going to cash flow very well stay like
[43:33] as they are and the and there's a bunch of lift on them.
[43:35] So you know, there was a big thing ages ago of people paying
[43:38] tenants to leave and evicting them and you know, not the place
[43:42] you want to do want to exist in, but now you can just get a
[43:45] building, send it to CNBC. You get really, really good
[43:48] financing. You're 15% down, you're casually
[43:50] amazing. You're cash on cash is awesome.
[43:52] And they're, you know, this builds in every single thing you
[43:55] can think of like repairs and maintenance and hiring property
[43:57] managers. So they effectively pretty,
[43:59] pretty close to hands off and just, you know, legacy style
[44:03] money. And it's amazing.
[44:05] Like we're, you know, a lot of people own, you know, singles
[44:09] and duplexes and condos and they just simply don't know that
[44:12] there's another option. You know, how many people do we
[44:14] know they own 5 condos and none of them are cash flowing.
[44:18] And it's like, man, you know, there's solutions out there that
[44:20] we can navigate you and like Monopoly and move you into a
[44:23] larger and larger sub sack. And it ends up being a much more
[44:26] beneficial shift. It's, it's incredible.
[44:29] So we're, we're booming right now because of, because of that
[44:33] fact. Like there is really good
[44:34] inventory out there that you know has strong, strong cash
[44:38] flows and even if you kind of predict for the the rents that
[44:41] are going down or just stress testing and building out like
[44:43] lower, lower rents and they're still working.
[44:45] Why do you think like, because most of these buildings are
[44:47] older buildings, Like there's not a ton of apartment buildings
[44:49] that are being built nowadays, but like, why do you think the
[44:53] people that own those buildings are trying to sell them right
[44:55] now? Yeah, great question.
[44:57] It's funny. One of the things, so I have a
[44:59] corporation, I kind of own some of my buildings whole.
[45:02] The whole plan was give it to my kids, big, big thing or give it
[45:05] to my son. And so many building owners do
[45:10] that. And most of the time their kids
[45:12] don't want it. It's crazy, right?
[45:14] It's it's like, you know, Dad's 80 years old, he wants to unload
[45:17] his entire portfolio and you're meeting with the kids and your
[45:20] guys don't do it. I'm talking about myself.
[45:23] Building a job. Don't do it.
[45:24] Don't do it. They want to do it.
[45:25] It's it's wild. So that's a big one.
[45:29] There are some people that kind of overextended themselves and
[45:32] you know, you see that because these guys will go and they'll
[45:34] buy a 20 unit, 30 unit and they expect that they're, you know,
[45:38] they buy it on private debt and they're stacking on all this
[45:41] money that's not theirs and, you know, running really lean and in
[45:44] the negative. And those guys have to sell.
[45:46] We don't, we don't engage in that.
[45:48] That's not the model. We, we, we kind of preach, but
[45:51] there's that. But most of it is just multi
[45:52] generational buildings not going to the next generation.
[45:55] They're just unloading it. Do you think a lot of it has to
[45:57] do with like, Ontario has really, really shitty landlord
[46:00] laws too? Like, you know, Alberta's
[46:02] finally like fixing theirs. You know, in the states, a bunch
[46:05] of states are doing like what Florida did.
[46:06] Like you don't pay your bills in 30 days, like fucking doors are,
[46:09] yeah, you're out of there. Do you think that's got a big
[46:12] part to do with it too? Because like, now it's like,
[46:14] well known, like if somebody doesn't want to pay rent, it
[46:17] takes 10 months to get them out of there.
[46:18] And like, for a lot of guys, if they own a 30 unit building and
[46:22] ten of those units are doing that, they're fucking upside
[46:25] down quickly. Yeah.
[46:26] Not so much in the buildings like it is.
[46:28] I mean, look, there's there's always that risk for sure.
[46:30] But if you think if you have a duplex and one of the tenants
[46:33] doesn't pay us 50% of your rent roll, you're you're fucked.
[46:36] If you have a 30 unit, the likelihood that most people are
[46:40] good people for the most part, most people pay their bills.
[46:44] So if you have a 30 unit building, the likelihood that
[46:46] you have 10% of those, like 33% of it is, is 0.
[46:49] Like this is just not, it doesn't happen.
[46:51] You can kind of statistically model this out.
[46:53] You might if you're unlucky, you might have a few.
[46:55] But even then there's, if we're doing it properly, there's
[46:58] enough cash flow in there for you to sustain it and be OK.
[47:00] So from a risk perspective, multi families certainly a
[47:04] better path from from that point than than a duplex.
[47:07] So you know, we're seeing like, you know, interest rates play a
[47:11] big factor and I think that's part of it too.
[47:13] People just get tired, right. If you've been doing it like
[47:16] anyone tells your real estate's hand off, it's definitely not.
[47:18] It's definitely work. And you know, I think if you've
[47:20] been doing it for 80 years and you've got a massive portfolio,
[47:23] you just your kids don't want it.
[47:25] Yeah, it's time to get rid of it.
[47:26] Do you think you're going to start to see builders start
[47:29] building out more of these apartment buildings?
[47:31] Like condo buildings aren't going to come back for like
[47:34] probably 5-6, seven years because there's so many empty
[47:36] ones. But they're going to want to
[47:38] build something. These companies aren't going to
[47:40] want to go away. Do you think they start?
[47:41] They're already starting, yeah. So it's partly what keeps us
[47:43] busy too is not the huge builders, but the the mid to
[47:46] small size. They're going to go out and get
[47:48] a, you know, 1015 unit building on a big lot.
[47:51] So now they have cash flow by owning that, that existing
[47:54] building at while they work on the development piece of
[47:57] building another 15 units or whatever you know will be
[48:00] allowed on it. You're seeing that a lot like
[48:02] the builders are pivoting and then new development, you're
[48:05] seeing those kind of more to the small size, like 8 to 20 units.
[48:09] You're seeing a lot of those go up.
[48:11] OK and builders are pivoting and it's crazy.
[48:13] CMHC again will on some of this new construction give you like
[48:17] 80 to like 95% loan to value on post construction cost.
[48:21] And the cost to go higher doesn't really increase a lot.
[48:24] So like you had a few more floors and.
[48:26] But we we tend like. It's crazy though, because if
[48:28] you look at it, the you could buy the 30 and we're talking
[48:31] about like the building you buy that's existing.
[48:35] It is way below the cost to construct a new one right way
[48:39] below. So you don't get that to the
[48:42] same degree. If you go to Florida, for
[48:43] example, the the delta between the two is is much smaller or
[48:47] here it's it's it's wide, it's millions of dollars difference.
[48:51] Even the existing builders start looking at it and go.
[48:53] So we'll just by this existing building as opposed to build a
[48:58] new one. So it is very dependent on
[48:59] models, but that's that's becoming the big business right
[49:01] now with some of these mid, mid sized ones and just setting
[49:04] them. Are there a ton of these on the
[49:05] market right now? No, we're like we specialize in
[49:09] it. So we see most of what's out
[49:11] there and most of what sells is off market.
[49:14] Like you go down the last you see sound, but that's like it's
[49:17] gone before it hits that 8090% of the deals we do are off
[49:20] market. And it's a lot of like, you
[49:23] know, because if you do a building transaction, your
[49:26] conditional for 40 to 60 days and then closing after that can
[49:31] be 3-6 months. So you know, you're six months
[49:35] into a deal with somebody. So a lot of my sellers don't
[49:39] even want to go to MLS because they're like no, bring us people
[49:42] you know that you know will execute right?
[49:45] And they want to know who they are and they want to meet with
[49:46] them. It's not like, oh, we do a res
[49:48] deal and you 2 never meet. They meet often.
[49:51] So a lot of it is just never on, right?
[49:54] In your book of business, you've built up a client base already
[49:56] that's like, hey, we have people ready to go with buyers and
[49:59] yeah, yeah, so we have a whole. Like league of of buyers that
[50:03] are already prepped, like we go through a whole process with
[50:05] them, spend time, kind of educate them, ensure where their
[50:08] funds are, make sure they're working with the right, you
[50:10] know, mortgage brokers because you can't use a res guy to do a
[50:12] commercial deal, right lawyers. So it's just like a basically a
[50:16] pocket of of buyers ready to transact with different models
[50:20] to them. And then once we get a building,
[50:21] it's just very easy. A lot of the deals we do are
[50:24] pretty internal or it's another agent that we've done 100 deals
[50:27] with, maybe not ten deals with. And you know, they none in their
[50:30] group want to buy it, so they send it to us, right.
[50:33] Yeah, it's great. It's yeah, much, much less
[50:36] temperamental than Rez, which is nice.
[50:37] Like all my all my clients are data-driven, emotionless in
[50:41] these scenarios. It's beautiful.
[50:43] Which area you're seeing the most action in for that kind of
[50:46] stuff right now? Is it like Hamilton?
[50:47] Is it Halton? Yeah.
[50:49] You don't see as much in like the Burlington, Oakville kind of
[50:53] Toronto because the cash flow is pretty muted because they're
[50:56] they're just a lot more expensive price per unit.
[50:59] We've been doing a lot kind of Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph,
[51:02] those areas don't do too much out north.
[51:06] Like if you go too, too far out there, we just don't tend to
[51:08] grab. They happen out there.
[51:09] We just don't gravitate there as much.
[51:11] So yeah, that's kind of the pocket that most of it's being
[51:14] done. Interesting.
[51:16] Unplug the pot or any of the. Yeah, I think, yeah, look at me,
[51:20] this is I gotta get better at that.
[51:21] Yeah. So we have a we have our own
[51:23] podcast. So the REI hot seat.
[51:24] So REI hot seat, that's pretty much every platform, YouTube,
[51:30] Spotify, all that. But it's it's interesting.
[51:33] We it's super niche, right. So what we'll do is we'll take a
[51:36] deal on or off market and we'll break it down and run through
[51:40] all the numbers, the underwriting on it.
[51:41] And you know, hey, if you put debt on it, what does it look
[51:44] like and where do you stress test it?
[51:45] And we were like just did it for passion and then it started kind
[51:50] of growing and growing. And like we've got a solid
[51:53] group. I think we have 2000
[51:55] subscribers, which in a niche thing like that is quite
[51:57] substantial. And I think on average a couple
[52:00] 100 views, which is which again, for something so niche is quite
[52:03] a lot. And it's been, it's been really
[52:05] like we didn't do it like the main premise of how many people
[52:09] are going to watch this, but it end up really generating a lot
[52:11] of business just by kind of giving, you know, behind the
[52:16] scenes look at what what actually should be done on these
[52:18] buildings. So yeah.
[52:20] Yeah, that's cool. Anything else you want to?
[52:23] Plug websites, the investments group, same with Instagram.
[52:26] So yeah, if it's a follow, love that.
[52:30] We asked you to bring something. Yeah.
[52:32] So everybody's favorite. Segments.
[52:35] I wrote them down because guess what?
[52:36] This is a chat GVT. I hope that these aren't done
[52:39] already. I got 2.
[52:41] I got 2 because, you know, just in case.
[52:43] There we go. OK, what did the Well, I guess
[52:45] we got to preface, these are dad jokes.
[52:48] Dad jokes. Yeah, they're not jokes that I
[52:50] think are absolutely hilarious. OK, what did the ocean say to
[52:52] the beach? Oh, it's going to be.
[52:55] Do you want me to guess? Yeah, it's going to be.
[52:57] It didn't say anything. It waved or something like that.
[53:00] Shit, that's a bad joke. Because you got it.
[53:02] Yeah, nothing. It just waved.
[53:05] OK, you get this one, you win. OK, what did the golf or why did
[53:09] the golfer bring 2 pairs of pants?
[53:11] Because he had a hole in one. Did you hear these?
[53:14] Before no bro I do this. Professionally well done Sir,
[53:18] well done. I appreciate those, I got one
[53:20] too. I heard one the other day and I
[53:22] thought it was pretty funny. Jamie, guess it.
[53:24] Oh, you got it. Well, no, maybe you got to get
[53:26] it. Get back on the board.
[53:27] Bro pass it to him. Why did the grizzly bear put on
[53:31] socks and shoes? I have no idea.
[53:35] I have no clue. He didn't like his bear paws.
[53:44] So that's all the dad joke's been flying in the dad group.
[53:46] Yeah, the last 2-3 days, yeah. What's the funniest one?
[53:48] If you can remember 1. I I'm the worst one.
[53:50] So I don't remember them at all, but like Daryl Fowler and Mark
[53:53] DeSoto showed up. Those guys, they've been going
[53:55] off for the last three days. Like every three hours there's
[53:58] like a new one and they're so bad.
[54:00] Yeah, some of them are like, well, the one that Ella always,
[54:02] so my youngest daughter always tells, 'cause she thinks it's
[54:04] hilarious is why did the kid cross the playground just to get
[54:12] to the other slide she loves? She'll like, she'll tell it.
[54:16] And she'll look you right in the eye and wait.
[54:18] For you to laugh, that's good too.
[54:21] Funny. So that's everything I got, man.
[54:23] I want to say thanks for coming through.
[54:25] Thank you for having me. Appreciate you.
[54:26] Congrats on all your success professionally.
[54:29] His father. Super fun to watch man, keep it
[54:31] up. Appreciate you both.
[54:32] Thank you. All right, man.
[54:33] Good luck with the rest of the business, too.
[54:34] Cheers. Thanks guys.
[54:35] Chat soon bro.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.