Hey, everybody. It's Karen. Danielle. Hello.
And we're here with Van Sturgeon.
I'm excited to have Van on because he's like, what?
He's like an old guy like me. Like.
Like you. He's been through it. UPS and downs.
He's had lots of success.
He's had the land developer, home builder, general contractor, restoration,
property management and Van lives in Chicago, Toronto, Miami.
He's semi-retired.
Welcome to the show, Van.
I thank you very much, Danielle, for having me.
You know how you got started
because everybody knows my story, but I'd love to know yours.
Well, I my parents are immigrants.
They found out that the building
that they were living in actually had gone up for sale.
So instead of actually going and buying their dream home, they became landlords.
They borrowed from friends and family
to put down a down payment and they bought this apartment building.
We had to buckle down. We had to do everything ourselves.
We couldn't afford to use
electricians and plumbers and painters, all that kind of stuff.
We were able to manage through things turn it around.
And in the process is a great investment that my parents made.
And then eventually I went off to university, graduated
could I became a lawyer and I came back home and I just
didn't want I couldn't see myself doing that.
I want to become a general contractor like this renovation stuff,
buying and flipping, creating our portfolio.
And that's how we got into other things.
Like property management.
Yeah.
The other thing
that I remember when Danielle was first looking at this one house, like we
we went over to it and it had like horrible pictures
as I was like, she's like, Oh, I'm going to pass on that river.
Yeah, yeah.
I always wanted them, you know, tidy and already done place, but that's a lot more.
And I'm like, no, no, no, this is a lot.
This is the where we were, you know, because like you,
you know, that's where the value is created, if you know how.
Absolutely.
Well, I
that's one of the things I kind of preach and I discussed in the folks that I have
encountered or helped.
Usually I'll get in the first real estate deal that,
you know, the trend that they do is they do it all themselves.
You know, Hollywood romanticize the whole DIY stuff.
You just go in there and you rip out the washrooms
and the bathrooms and all that kind of stuff
and you know, that two or three month project all of a sudden
turns into seven or eight every weekend that you have,
every vacation you start, you know, you are not wasting trying to do that.
And a lot of folks after afterwards realize I saved a lot of money.
But at the end of the day, they they didn't they didn't like the process.
They didn't want to do that.
So they turn around to the next property if they if they ever get around to do it,
if they purchase the second property, the hire general contractor.
The problem with hiring a general contractor
is that you got to be very careful how to plan and manage
something out like that, because what will end up happening is
your contractors will take advantage of you.
And so after that first experience and the second experience, a lot of folks
don't know aren't sure what to do, what to do.
And so that's one that's where I step in.
And I help people in a whole, you know, the whole systems of process associated
with being able to properly plan and manage a successful renovation,
but also at the same time being able to scale.
Because at the end of the day, as a real estate investor
with us, we want to create a portfolio, want to get some mass right
and in order to be able to do that, you have to have systems.
You got to be able
to have some process in place to be able to take you from identifying that deal.
And then through that whole value add renovation process,
to get you into the day to to meeting your goals.
For those people who don't know how,
what's the best way to find a contractor and a manager contractor?
You know, because you you look at it from the lens of being a contractor,
but this is where a lot of things come up.
Right.
And and so what are some things people can do?
One of the biggest things that I had people come to me complaining about,
whether it's on a single family home site or multifamily, is
we can't find contractors or the contractors we find.
They're all so busy.
I'm a big advocate of a being a professional real estate investor.
Creating a detailed scope of work and then contacting contractors.
And by virtue of our scope of work, presenting it
if it's done properly, you know, good general contractors, good contractors.
Look, that document and will will be interested in quoting it
because all the information is there, good control actors hate having to babysit.
We I make money by turnover of projects not sitting there milking one
and another place.
Another issue that I find that folks that complain about
is that they don't know where to find contractors.
One of the things every real estate investor should be doing again
single family or multifamily in the market said you are concentrating that you have
that you've got some scale in you have relationships, you've created
a team there, you've got real estate agents, you've got mortgage brokers,
insurance brokers, wholesalers, hard money lenders, banks.
You got a whole bunch of people there on the ground in that marketplace.
Each one of them has a sphere of influence also, which includes contractors,
if you were to go reach out to your partners, you've done your job properly,
you will have a whole list of individuals that you can get from them
that are have references.
These are people that have been working with those people so that you got a list
already created to be able to reach out to next level, which should be
you should be
a member of your local real estate investment association and local areas.
You should be a member of your local meetup group.
You should be maybe a member of a Facebook group that's specific
to your area where there's real estate investor jibber jabber
and those are the places where you send the word out.
And based on what you get back from those, you should get an again so that the goal
list, a big old bucket of more contract just for you to draw upon to talk to.
Once you have that and you created and you've got a detailed scope of work
to identify the list of people you want to do business with,
then you go out there and you tender it.
You say, Hey, here's my telescope work.
I want you to quote it and I'll give you a deadline to get me a quote back.
Once you have quotes, if you've done your job correctly
and you got to create a detailed scope of work,
those quotes should be more or less around the same.
And from there you identify one or two that you want to do business with.
And then the next step is you kind of go out and check references.
So don't be lazy, get in your car, go visit your previous job sites,
talk to the principals there, go to existing job sites
where contractors working, see the condition because can
what's good for me quality wise might be yours due to to you
once you got that tender out,
you got these quotes you've identified to client of be sort of a contractor.
You want to do business.
I can.
There's an agreement you got to put in the place
that you're going to present you with.
You make sure that your detail scope work is part of that agreement.
You need to have a payment schedule and a progress schedule
attached to the agreement and if once they've you implement
everything I've talked about, it becomes effortless.
And it's really now you're banging out cookies, now you're banging out cookies
because you got everything nailed down.
You got to scope of work.
You figured out what you need to do in every project was a goal,
and then you and then you know how to handle contractors.
So Van, fascinating fascinating talk.
How what's the best way people can reach you?
Because I know you help a lot of people, you know, managing through
a lot of this stuff and other things that we didn't touch on today.
What's the best way for people to to reach out to you?
Well, I've got a website you mentioned.
That's Barnes, Sturgeon that com.
I've got a wealth of information there from books and and free giveaways
that people can download and read.
Also, like there's an opportunity.
There's a free training there that folks can watch to be able to walk through
in more detail the steps to planning and managing the successful renovation
where really you should be able to recognize this, become,
you know, be able to create a multifamily portfolio or real estate portfolio.
Well, you're doing it.
And, you know, congratulations on all your success and I'm glad you're
helping others achieve their dreams and successes.
And as always, Ken it's always great chatting with you.
Thanks for your time today.
Thanks, man. Nice to meet you. Yeah. Thank you, guys.
Okay. Cheers.