The 5 Questions Podcast
Join us as we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time.
The 5 Questions Podcast
Unlocking Real Estate Resilience with Elizabeth Kelly's Innovative Strategies
Elizabeth Kelly, the powerhouse behind Kirtland Lake's largest residential housing enterprise, spills the secrets of her success on the 5 Questions Podcast. Ever faced the daunting task of scaling a business amidst tight financial straits and a competitive job market? Elizabeth shares her journey from overcoming these barriers to launching the transformative Rent to Home initiative. This inspiring conversation unpacks how she navigated the rocky terrains of financial management and staffing, all while empowering families to transition from renters to homeowners, giving them a newfound sense of control and stability in their lives.
Venture into the world of real estate resilience as Elizabeth highlights the importance of diversifying investments to weather uncertain times. Learn how to generate additional revenue streams by branching into property management and construction, and discover the game-changing role AI plays in streamlining operations. The episode also touches on the Real Estate Resilience Summit, a beacon of knowledge and networking for investors, co-founded by Elizabeth to provide affordable expert insights. Elizabeth's wealth of experience shines through as she discusses the tailored approach of personalized coaching, ensuring each client receives the bespoke guidance they need to thrive in real estate and business development.
https://ekconsulting.ca/
So if you closed on a property a year or two ago and were expecting positive cash flow, if you're not paying attention, you could have moved into the negative cash flow very easily and not even notice.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast, where we unlock real estate and business insights one question at a time. Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast. I am your host, mario Lamar, on our show today. Our guest has a rich background in business development, with over a decade of experience. She is the largest residential housing provider in Kirtland Lake, ontario and she is the co-founder and co-host of the Real Estate Resilience Summit. Welcome, elizabeth, kelly. Elizabeth, welcome to the 5 Questions podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here, elizabeth. The concept of the podcast is very simple. I ask 5 questions about real estate or business, and we get straight to the point you ready.
Speaker 2:I'm in All right. As I mentioned in the intro, you are the founder of the largest residential housing provider in Kirtland Lake, Ontario. Growing your business. What challenges did you face scaling your business? But, most importantly, how did you overcome those challenges?
Speaker 1:That's an awesome question to ask. So biggest challenges were to do with the finances. So one of the things that happens is, as you're growing or scaling your business, you get pulled in a lot of different directions and sometimes you forget to come back to home base, which is always to watch and track your financial situation, to make sure that you know how much money is going in, how much money is going out and to make sure that everything is flowing in the right direction, which obviously is growth. So that was a big one. Another challenge that we encountered was staffing. So we were sort of a big fish in a smaller pond.
Speaker 1:Population of Kirkland Lake, where we were based, was nine or 10,000 people, so not a huge pool to draw employees from, and our main competition was the mines.
Speaker 1:So the mines pay a lot, they have a lot of benefits, a lot of time off and just a lot of extra perks that people really enjoy, and it's hard for us to compete with what they were offering, given that we were a small family business. So we needed to find unique offerings for people. We needed to find people who didn't wanna work shift work, who didn't wanna go underground, who had different needs and things that they were looking for, so we could really cater to employees who were looking for something different. And, in terms of the financials, we made sure we put some solid bookkeepers in place so that we always had the data at our fingertips and we could check in. We started booking weekly meetings, monthly meetings for looking at the overall financial picture. And if I had to talk about why so many real estate companies are struggling right now, I really think it is that focus on the finances and the fact that you know, as real estate investors, we become entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a lot of us don't have that financial background. So we need to make it a priority, we need to focus hard on it, because it literally makes or breaks us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I agree with you on the financing. It's not given to everybody. They don't really teach that in school first of all, and if you don't have it well, surround yourself with somebody who does, because it is a priority in real estate think a lot of people when they run numbers.
Speaker 1:They look and they go. Well, I should have, you know, $200 a month in cash flow. But the reality is what happens after you close. You know what happens one year in or two years in or five years in can be very different. We've seen the utilities have gone up dramatically, insurance has gone up dramatically. Of course, interest rates have gone up. So if you closed on a property a year or two ago and were expecting positive cash flow, if you're not paying attention you could have moved into the negative cash flow very easily and not even notice.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It brings us to our second question. Rent to Home focuses on helping families transition from renting to home ownership. What inspired you to start this venture and maybe what impact has it had on the community?
Speaker 1:Well, what inspired me was that my background is a not for profit. I worked for some charities, some big charities like the Multiple Sclerosis Society, united Way, heart and Stroke Foundation. So I needed to feel, when I left work at the end of the day, like I had made a difference, like I had helped someone. And being in real estate, you know you're buying multi-unit apartment buildings you don't get that same sense of personal fulfillment. And when I learned the rent-to-own strategy in 2008, I was like this, this is how I can help families, this is how I can help good people who've been through tough circumstances get into the housing market. So that was what I loved so much about it.
Speaker 1:And what I found is it's not so much that it changes communities, because you tend to do them in different communities, but what I find is that it changes the trajectory of a family's journey. So when you take out the uncertainty that comes with renting in any community whether it's the landlord deciding to sell, whether it's challenges with the landlord passes away, or maybe they don't know their obligations as a landlord so they're fighting you when there's repairs to be done it gives control back to a family. It gives them stability. It enables them to choose a housing or to choose a school district and know that they will have housing in that district for the entire time that they want to have it. So it creates tremendous change and empowerment for families.
Speaker 2:And this is one big thing about the rent-to-own strategy in real estate is you make a business deal, because we're there to make business first, but you're helping someone along the way, which is so fulfilling. So that's a really, really great strategy to utilize.
Speaker 1:Yeah, landlords are bashed pretty heavily right now in the media and um it's. It really gives me the opportunity to be able to go back and say I know I've made a difference for people, I know I've helped people and made their lives better.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Brings us to our third question, and you work with a lot of clients in your coaching and your different programs, but you emphasize creating new streams of cash flow for entrepreneurs. Can you share some maybe key strategies or systems that you recommend for achieving financial freedom?
Speaker 1:Well, I think one of my cornerstones that I believe in is diversity. So I think we have a tendency to become hyper-focused as real estate investors because, let's face it, there is I mean, we're all different, but there is kind of a type. Like you go into a room of real estate investors and we are a type you know we're very focused, we're very driven, we're very motivated. We have a tendency to, you know, to personal development and all those kinds of different things. But the reality is diversity can be really helpful because that's what helps us get through tough times, and I was going through a tough time with my properties in St John, new Brunswick. It was my properties and my portfolio in Kirkland Lake, ontario, that got me through those tough times.
Speaker 1:The diversity is helpful. So what I like to do especially because so many real estate investors right now are struggling to find properties that cash flow. You talk to anybody who's looking for multi-unit buildings and they're disheartened, they're discouraged, they're kind of banging. Some of them are banging their head against the walls going. I'm just not finding numbers or financing that makes sense so that I can buy these properties. So the great thing about diversity and creating additional cashflow is you might not be seeing it as much from your real estate portfolio right now, but if you have a side hustle or an active business, then it gives you the opportunity to take control of your cash flow and turn it up with something as simple as hey, I'm going to increase my marketing, I'm going to expand my services, I'm going to look at a different type of offering, I'm going to move online from bricks and mortar. There's just so much more control that we can take back In the world of real estate. Right now, the banks and the government are controlling a lot of what we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and sometimes it's not having to reinvent the wheel. But, like you said, maybe look for strategies just to add something on the side of what you're already doing. So if it's real estate, well, maybe you can offer a service that revolves around real estate you don't have to start something else.
Speaker 1:No, if you're self-managing, you could open a property management company. If you're fantastic at renovations and you have a good team that you work with, then you can start a construction company. There's things that you can do that are adjacent to real estate, that allow you to take your skillset and your experience and to be able to turn that into cashflow. And then you can I mean, with the help of AI, we reduce the amount of hours we put in. Then we can hire people to do some of the other really heavy pieces.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Our fourth question is here. The Real Estate Resilience Summit became an annual event now and about sharing. You know, expert knowledge, and you co-founded this event and you're co-hosting this event. What inspired you to co-found this summit and what can maybe attendees hope to find or gain out of it?
Speaker 1:So what inspired it was my friend Corey Sperley and I who founded it and did it together for two years, and we wanted people to have access to high quality information but commit to real estate but you don't have to spend $50,000 to decide that and so we wanted to bring really high quality people together with great information.
Speaker 1:Virtually there's a little bit of sales at the end of each. You know, it's just kind of each speaker saying this is what I'm offering to people who've attended, but the focus is on the information and enabling people to make high quality decisions with that information. And this year we have pivoted. So we are offering not just real estate, but we've expanded into the business space and we've also expanded into the US, so we're bringing in some American speakers. Some of these people have never spoken to Canadians before, but they are crushing it in the US and as much as we don't like to think of the US as, like you know, our big brother, the reality is what happens in the US can typically be adapted for success in Canada and this gives us a lot of insight into some of the opportunities to create more cash flow summit for an affordable price, because a lot of people maybe are curious and are not going to spend 10, 15, $20,000.
Speaker 2:You said $50,000 for something that they're not even sure if they're going to pursue a few years later. So, opening the doors to you know people and seeing what they to see what they like, if they like it, it's absolutely a great idea. And now to bring in the US into this, as far as speakers is, is brilliant because, like you said, they're crushing it. They have strategies that maybe we don't utilize or we don't know how to utilize in Canada and we can, you know, copy them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, the reality is most of the stuff we do here in Canada was done first in the US, Even the agreements for sale that are really popular out in BC and that are moving into Ontario now and they're popular in Alberta as well. I mean that all came from the US anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're just sort of the slow adopters right. We watch the US to see you know what works and what doesn't work, and what works we adopt and bring in here and make it work for us.
Speaker 2:Elizabeth. Our fifth question is here. Already you work, so you offer coaching, and you work with different clients and you're a little bit different. Usually coaches you know they teach a certain way and then if the client or student aligns, it's great, but if not, then they part ways. Your coaching approach is highly personalized. How do you tailor your coaching strategies to meet the unique needs and goals of each client?
Speaker 1:I appreciate you noticing that I don't think anyone's ever asked me this question before. The way I look at it, I've been an investor for 20 years just about and I was a trainer for Rich Dad for eight years. So I had thousands of students through my classroom and I got very comfortable with the idea of helping people figure out what they need and then figuring out how to provide it to them. So I have experience that I can lean on and rely on, which I'm very fortunate to have. But also I like a challenge and I think I learn a lot as a coach from my clients as well as enabling them to learn from me. So when I have someone, my husband and I are in business together and I know there's not a lot of coaches out there that would be willing to say hey, you and your spouse come here, sit down. You've identified communication between the two of you as one of those challenges, so let's figure it out together. And I enjoy a challenge and I enjoy the opportunity to see others thrive and succeed, and I think that sort of inspires me and motivates me to be willing to.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't have a strict program. There's not a 12 weeks and week one we're going to do this. It's really sitting down and saying okay, what do you need the most right now? What is your biggest obstacle? Let's figure out how you're going to overcome that and the next time we meet we're going to tackle your next biggest one. So it actually helps people build momentum and partway through the program they're kind of looking around going I can't believe all the challenges we've overcome and how quickly we're moving forward. I didn't even realize this was possible.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And the fact is, when you do it the way you're doing it, you get more personal with your student and maybe they have some challenges because in business we're still humans, we're still we're not robots. So sometimes there's things that affect us, that will affect, in the end, our business, but doing it in a personable way, you can help them along the way as well. You know, as a mental state, to be in the best mental state to run a successful business. So I find your approach very, very brilliant.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and you're absolutely correct People's mental state. I mean, you can teach the real estate courses, but if people can't get out of their own way, if people don't believe that they deserve to be successful, if people don't have a good relationship with money, it doesn't matter how much they know, if they can't get to the point where they can take action.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Elizabeth, thank you so much for spending the time with us on the five questions podcast today. Lots of knowledge. I know it's quick, but it's. We try to give a lot of value in a short amount of time to our listeners and you did that, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you. This was phenomenal. I absolutely love this format and I appreciate you offering so much value and information to our real estate community. Thanks, Mario.
Speaker 2:We'll talk soon. Thanks for tuning into the five questions podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and hit the notification bell on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more insights and tips to transform your real estate and business game. See you next time.