Sarah Larbi: REITE club nation., I hope everybody is doing awesome. I'm Sarah Larbi, and I am here with Francois Lanthier.
Francois Lanthier: I'm glad to be co-hosting again amazing investors and interviews and what a privilege to be involved.
Sarah Larbi: I'm really excited to have you as my co-host. You've brought some great guests today as well for our podcast. I'm excited to bring them in
Francois Lanthier: Yes, I agree, focus on good things that bring in value. So I'm excited about our guests today. I'm glad to introduce them to you and to The REITE Club Nation as well.
I thought they had some great value to add. And I'm sure you'll get lots from this interview. I learned a lot from them and I think I'm gonna start applying some of those tips. So pay attention.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. They've got 25 plus years of experience. Joey in construction renovations, restoration etc. And also Angela, has done this for a while and they've paired up together and really scaled their portfolio. Now they're going through and just really scaling, using the joint venture strategy and a really cool twist on the joint venture strategy.
You're gonna have to listen to it. So that you can see how some of it can be very different from your typical JV setup. So if you haven't left a rating and review, please do and by the way, our meetings are resuming and we've got some in-person stuff coming up soon as well. So check out thereiteclub.com and check out all of our upcoming events. There is a ton of awesome stuff I'm excited about. But today we are gonna be doing this podcast, so let's bring in Angela and Joey.
Francois Lanthier: Welcome Angela and Joey. I'm really excited to have you on today. We met in Moncton, so for those listening you may know, I moved to Moncton for six weeks and came back to Ottawa.
Crazy adventure, but it was worth it. I got to meet Angela and Joey in person and if you could introduce yourselves to our members. So give us a 30,000 foot view of who you are, what you do, and where you're from.
Angela Dupuis: We are a couple . We're full-time real estate investors. We live in Montreal, but I'm from New Brunswick. We have an eight year old. He just turned eight over the weekend and a dog. And that's a big view. Anything that you'd like to add?
Francois Lanthier: That's it. That's quick, but there is some element there. You really skipped something really important, and Sarah and I share this with you.
You both quit your jobs a little while ago, and that's quite a bold move, especially with a kid and a dog. So could you tell us more about this?
Angela Dupuis: Joey had already been working on our, we already had our staff going, we'd been doing real estate investing since we met and I was doing it long before.
We both had full-time jobs. I was working at Randstad for almost 16 years. and I really thought I would retire there. I really loved it. I had, it's a great company actually, and I loved the people I worked with and we did real estate part-time. We were managing Airbnbs and doing BRRRR for ourselves.
Just very intuitively though, without ever getting education or listening to podcasts. And then one day something happened at work and I didn't like it. And we had just sold a couple of buildings to be a little bit more calm in our lives because it was really a lot to manage with full-time jobs.
We'd sold a coup, we sold a triplex downtown and another house here in Montreal. And so we had some money and when something came up and
I said, I am just leaving. It's time for me to do something different. I've been doing this for so long and truthfully, I was a little bit envious of Joey who was focusing on our properties. He was doing renovations at one of our cottages and setting his own schedule. And it was really not super jealousy.
Joseph Sicurella: Jealousy. What led us down our path.
Angela Dupuis: There was some jealousy, but Yeah I did it and I knew when I did it that it was the right thing to do, and I felt super confident that we would figure it out.
Having some money in the bank really helped things. He wasn't really happy with the decision. He was like shouldn't we have a plan? I'm like, we're not gonna figure out a good plan while I'm working full-time. I need to really figure this out.
We went all over the place, like I fell deep into a rabbit hole of podcasts and listening to audiobooks on Fast Forward and went from one strategy to another until we found one that worked, which was a JV partnership, like what we do now is BRRRRs with partners and figuring out the financing for all that. And we launched our business in March and by a month later we had all the partners that we were hoping to get and a bunch of properties renovated.
Sarah Larbi: Very cool. So obviously a lot of stuff to dissect and I just wanna take a step back cause I don't know you, but I know Francois does and I'm excited to learn a lot from the both of you today and hear a little bit more.
It sounds like you're currently doing JBs and you're doing BRRRRs, but prior to that you had some multi-family, some Airbnb, some cottages is what I'm hearing. So before the JV, did you have a main strategy or were you just dabbling in a few different things.
Angela Dupuis: I bought my first duplex loan before I met Joey. And I was house hacking and tiling myself. I was 25 and I liked the idea of not paying someone else to pay down their mortgage. So if I was gonna pay, in fact, what happened was my roommate kicked me out. She wanted her boyfriend too, she kicked me out and I was like, I'm not gonna rent another place.
I need to figure out how to buy a place. So I borrowed money from a couple of friends and bought a duplex, renovated it, and rented it. Moved next door, did the same thing, took out the equity that I'd created to buy another place, convinced my parents to invest and we bought a duplex together in New Brunswick.
That was in 2007 I would say. We bought our first duplex in New Brunswick. And then we met around that time and he comes from a background in construction. He's been doing that for a long time. So we moved in together and he started fixing up the place and he did really nice stuff. Then we had a son who liked skiing. We put him on skis at two. So we're like, we need a cottage near a ski hill so that we can do this every weekend.
Joseph Sicurella: I didn't wanna spend the kind of, On a ski, if we're gonna spend that kind of money, you better have a lake so that we can use it all year down. And so we put a heck of a lot more effort into finding one that met that criteria close to a mountain on a lake. It was really hard to find one that we liked, but we found it. But it wasn't what we initially wanted, we were looking for a turnkey one that didn't require any work and in the end we bought a project.
Angela Dupuis: That's right, because at that time we had a young child and he was always working on our primary residence. So you know, he replaced the driveway with Stone and built a nice fence and built a shed with cedar shingles and so he was always working on the place. Then it turned into always working on the cottage.
Sarah Larbi: It sounds like you've got some properties in Montreal, some properties out east or Francois also invests. That's awesome. So let's, before we fast forward into the whole JV route, I obviously love interviewing couples and just seeing who does what, how they split tasks and pass one and Jennifer, for example, like they're a power couple, one compliments the other in a certain way.
Just curious from you, Joey, like, how are you guys now that you are both doing this full-time, maybe just working together without it's hard. I'm assuming it's hard to work with your spouse, but maybe for you guys it's not. But how are you splitting the task and how are you dividing all of that and what it is that you each do.
Joseph Sicurella: Well, typically I will take care of renovations and planning for those renovations and we're working hand in just about everything we're doing. But, I can see a place pretty quickly and know how much we're gonna spend without getting into too many details. I'm really involved in the acquisitions and project management and Angela's more involved with the financing and I have a background in dealing with contractors.
I used to work in facilities initially that was gonna be the plan for me to take on as well but because Angela's managing the budgets, it's also making sense for her to be involved in that. And she has a bit more of a design eye than I do. Like I have the things that she likes and she has the things that she likes, but it makes more sense for her to be a bit more involved in that. So we're, we're blending back and forth, but generally renovations and money.
Angela Dupuis: We don't have super clear lanes yet.
Francois Lanthier: That's okay. And that's how it becomes interesting. So Jennifer and I are the same thing. We're yeah, somebody has to decide at some point, but sometimes it's a take, give and take.
Also with a kid. So this summer, thanks to all this freedom and this real estate, you did something quite interesting. I don't know if you'd like to share how you spent your summer. That's something unusual and interesting.
Angela Dupuis: Since we can work from anywhere, we decided to go to Moncton for the summer. My parents are there, so we stayed with them. It was supposed to be a vacation, but we ended up picking up more properties. So what happened was we got there and realized that my parents needed a different type of layout for their home. They were on board right away. So we got to house shopping for my parents and in house shopping for my parents.
Found a triplex over by the university and another triplex over downtown, and we ended up moving, helping them move. It was a lot of work actually, that whole process and then picking up some new properties. Plus we had renovations going on two duplexes.
Sarah Larbi: That's cool. So you've got, obviously, a lot of projects on the go and now that you're both doing this full-time, you don't have a T4 job anymore. Is that how you got into the JV piece or were you starting to dabble in that before you left your job?
Angela Dupuis: Never. It was never even a concept in my brain before I left my job. We did a BRRRR on our cottage. I told you we sold a couple of properties. We bought a cottage with cash. We renovated it.
We got a nice lease. We refinanced it, but we got blocked by our debt to income ratio. So we ended up leaving some of the money in the property and we were like this is gonna be a problem. How are we gonna do this over and over again?
Joseph Sicurella: We had all these big plans on how we were gonna scale everything and we were starting this business, and then all of a sudden we realized, oh, okay, banks aren't gonna let us keep doing this.
Angela Dupuis: I heard a podcast. Andrew Hines with Mandy Branham, and we must have listened to that five times. Before we were like, people are going to give us their money and we're gonna do the work . So it took a while for us to really let that concept sink in and then it made sense and that's what we did.
Sarah Larbi: That's awesome. So do you mind if I ask like, how many joint ventures? You have currently?
Angela Dupuis: I think 12 right now.
Francois Lanthier: 12 different partners or with some partners. You have multiple properties or..
Joseph Sicurella: Hold on. No multiples yet. That's just about to happen, earnestly.
Angela Dupuis: It depends how you look at it. Let's say 12. We have 12 different partners and we have a couple with one of the partners.
Francois Lanthier: Okay. That was, that's what I was gonna say. And how do you mind sharing your structure, are they corporations or it's the old-fashioned jv? They're on the title and you have a, like a side agreement? A JV agreement?
Angela Dupuis: Most of them are that, but we have a new partner and we're going to work with him because he's out of the country. And we have so we just formed a corporation and we just opened a corporate bank account for that corporation and we're doing everything that way. So we'll be refinancing that property with the commercial mortgage.
Sarah Larbi: I just wanna take a step back just because if someone's listening and hasn't done a JV, are you able to explain how each of them actually technically works. Like not in so much detail, but I'm guessing option one is it's there's an active partner, there's a passive partner, and it's 50-50.
They bring the money, they bring the financing, they're on title behind the scenes. You've got an agreement saying it's 50-50 or whatever. That's option one is about what you guys have? Okay. And then option two, are you able to explain how option two
Angela Dupuis: works.
Option to the commercial one? So it's similar. We have a partner who is going to be both. So he has the money to purchase and do the renovation.
Joseph Sicurella: To step back a second, just about all, not, maybe not all, but most of the partners right now, we didn't use their money for the initial purchase. We're using private money, hard money for the purchase, and we're using the partner money for the renovations.
Then we do the refinancing, get the private money paid first and when we do the refinancing. So we're not requiring the partners to come up with the full purchase of the building for cash, and we're not even requiring them to come up with the financing for the purchase. We're financing the purchase with hard money. And then private money sorry, private money and then doing the refinancing after that. So the partner really only has to come up with the renovation money. It's a lot.
Francois Lanthier: Alright, very different.
Sarah Larbi: That is actually very different than most JVs because the fact that they don't have to come up with the finance. So you're essentially putting the property in a corporation then, and are you both on 50 50 in that corporation or are you then passing it off to them on the refi? How does, like, how does that play out?
Angela Dupuis: We're all on title.
Sarah Larbi: Sorry. Okay, cool. Sorry, Francois. I didn't mean to cut you out, but I just had a thought and I was just curious what the rest of the answer is.
Francois Lanthier: I agree. Me too. because I do a lot of JVs and that's a very different way. Normally it would be exactly like Sarah described it. The partner comes in with the money, renovation money, they qualify for the mortgage and then they qualify for their refinancing as well. And on the commercial side, the same thing.
If I do a corporation just like you guys are doing, they come up with the money. We qualify for the mortgage because it's commercial. Really, it's the building that qualifies maybe our net worth. Sometimes you need a stronger net worth statement because you're buying a much larger building, so you need someone with a few millions in the bank somewhere.
Then the refi did the same thing. So the partners help qualify for the new price. Those are quite new your JVs, do you have a term? I usually have a five-year term. Do you guys have some sort of expectations?
Angela Dupuis: We all want long term buy and hold. So when we enter into the agreement the goal is to hold it for as long as we want. So the term of the mortgage.
Joseph Sicurella: Yes minimum the first, the five years. We'd like that to be the minimum. Yeah. And then we can decide, have a discussion if we wanna go further or sell it. But generally the minimum requirement would be for the first term of the mortgage, the first five years.
Sarah Larbi: Awesome. Let's take a little bit of a pivot. I'm just curious when it comes to the renovations and what you look for and what, the renovations that you've done has worked out the best or brought the most value. Maybe Joey, if you wanna answer that one.
Joseph Sicurella: We're looking for generally pretty run down places that require a lot of forest equity. So that's also what helped inspire us to find private money for the purchase because the banks were a little bit reluctant to lend on some of these places that had nobbed tube wiring or a bad foundation or a roof that was leaking.
Doing it with private money made it a lot faster, a little bit quicker on our feet. Get the place, get it renovated, and then the partners could approve for the mortgage once it was all renovated, but banks didn't, just humming and hying when they see.
Aluminum wiring or noob and tube and stuff. But we're gonna do it. We're gonna fix it right away. And it was a hard sell, so yeah. We're looking for fixer-uppers big time. That's where we're getting the most value.
Sarah Larbi: Are you doing any conversions or are they mostly like already legal units that you're just fixing up?
Joseph Sicurella: We have one triplex right now; it's a duplex with a third unit on the top that hasn't been used as a triplex. It's a building from the early part of the century where there was a unit there, but it didn't really have plumbing and it didn't really have a lot of that stuff that you would wanna have today.
It's been, I don't know what they were using it for all these years, but it was just super cool, a super cool space that was clearly set up. Somebody was using it, but just not set up to modern. So we're happy that it's zoned to be for a triplex. So all we have to do is bring it up to code and we'll have a triplex instead of a duplex.
Angela Dupuis: We have another one right now that we're closing on soon. That's on service in New Brunswick. It's a triplex, but it's actually a fourplex. So when I called the city to see if it was zoned to be a fourplex, and he said yes, actually they took out a permit in 2005 to add the fourth unit. So it's totally legit.
Francois Lanthier: Wow. So you're really seeing value where others are not. Like you mentioned aluminum wiring. A lot of people with runaway knob and tube. Again, that's scary.
Angela Dupuis: Oil heating.
Francois Lanthier: Yes. That's very common in New Brunswick Oil. So you see the oil tank. Could be a big can of worms and lenders. Like you mentioned, a lot of lenders might say environmental phase one, phase two can get quite pricey and crazy.
How are you doing for labor? Cause I know New Brunswick, all of Canada, but New Brunswick had a major labor shortage to get all this work done.
Joseph Sicurella: We've been really lucky, I think, because we haven't end up knocking on. So far we've found the people that we needed and we trust 'em and they're happy with us and we're happy with them and everything's going great. We have four teams going now.
Angela Dupuis: I have an unfair advantage in that I grew up there and I have 81st cousins. Several in the trade now. I see one of our contractors actually grew up down the street or lives a few houses down from where I grew up, and one of his flooring guys bought the house, who's now my uncle, bought the house from my parents in the nineties. So it goes a long way. My plumbing guy, I went through grade school all the way through high school. The HVAC guide too.
Sarah Larbi: There's a lot of connections that ended up working really well for you. Because sometimes when you hire friends and family, that doesn't always work. But it sounds based on what you guys are doing and location and the teams that you've got, so far so good. Knock on wood.
Angela Dupuis: They're good. They do good work. They have good reputations, so Good.
Sarah Larbi: Awesome. So I have a question because you mentioned private money, hard money that gets you, at least the acquisition that a lot of lenders don't touch. How did for somebody that's new, that's starting out and is potentially looking for that hard money or private money, like what are some things that you have done to be able to acquire that and where did you go.
Angela Dupuis: Okay, this is, I think, a good story actually. So the first time we had to find some, it was out of necessity because we learned a lot of things by making mistakes. At first we didn't necessarily know to make sure our JV partners don't leave their jobs before we refinance, for example.
Okay, so that happened. Now we insist that they use our mortgage person because in this particular case, we're the first time we got private money. They wanted to use their mortgage person, but because they're in Quebec and most of our partners are actually in Quebec, in Ontario, so their mortgage person didn't do properties in New Brunswick, so she had to refer the file to her colleague who totally went the bed and a week before closing admitted that he hadn't even submitted the file yet, and we should go look else.
I looked for Facebook groups that had investor friendly Facebook groups. So I probably posted in all of them the situation we're closing in a week. I need money. Who has $175,000? I'll pay whatever you want. So I think I was offering 15% to 17%. I reshifted to Matt pk. So by this point I had been listening to a lot of podcasts, so I had an idea of what was possible.
I reshifted to Matt phe, but he doesn't do, or at this time, didn't do properties in New Brunswick. Somebody who we've ended up working with several times since Richard. And said, I have money coming back today from the Olympia Trust from a deal. It's just enough. It will cover the right amount. So my guardian angel, and then speaking with her more and more realized that she also became a partner on other deals and she's lending on another deal that we have coming up. So we use the same, we have a few private lenders now that we've worked with, that we're working with repeatedly.
Sarah Larbi: That is a great story. Do you mind if I ask on average what the rate is from a monthly, interest and potentially points on, it could, it doesn't have to be like one specific person, but just what you're seeing in general based on what you're borrowing, what and what's out there right now.
Angela Dupuis: Now we're not paying more than 12%. I'm looking for one. I wanna continue working with the lenders that we have, because I love them actually. But I would also love to find someone who does 10%. So we also look for a hundred percent loan to value because we're looking for the entire purchase price to be covered by the private lender.
Sarah Larbi: I'm guessing this is usually non-registered funds if they're gonna go into first position.
Angela Dupuis: They're registered. It's with Olympia Trust.
Sarah Larbi: Okay. So sorry, I just meant registering as in like RRSP or like a tax-free savings account or something.
Angela Dupuis: They use both.
Sarah Larbi: Up to a hundred percent loan to value because for some reason, and I don't know, like I , you guys can jump in. I thought you could only go up to 95% loan to value with RSPs. But I could be totally wrong.
Francois Lanthier: Hundred percent. You can go. I do it all the time, but it is, but you need the lender who's allowing that. So the person lending it, most of them say no. So that's the problem. Most people go to 80, sometimes 90, but yeah, then you get some guardian angels, they're like, yeah, let's do a hundred . No problem. Which is perfect. So that's great. And how is that process, cause Olympia Trust, I just went through one this summer can be challenging. One week, how smoothly did that go? Cause you need some good lawyers that are on their, like quick on their feet.
Angela Dupuis: Our lawyer, he's the one who is recommended by real estate investors who use private funds. In New Brunswick, he also used to work together in Montreal 20 years ago, and now he's a lawyer in New Brunswick. So somebody recommended him to me and I was like, I know that name. And when we got on the phone the first time, I'm like, did he used to work in Montreal in a call center?
Sarah Larbi: You just happen to know everybody that's in the industry.
Angela Dupuis: In that are New Brunswick or Moncton related, let's say. So what was the question?
Francois Lanthier: I forget what the question was. Oh, just the process. So you have a lawyer that's got experience dealing with registered funds in New Brunswick. That is a rarity. And the process can be slow. Even in Ontario, I just went through one, I had to change lawyers halfway cause it was taking forever. You need the right lawyer, right lender. Everything needs to line up. So what's the timeline? How long does it take for a transaction?
Angela Dupuis: Our process is we find the deal, we get it under contract, and then we figure out how we're gonna pay for it. So then we figure out who's gonna be the lender and do we need a new lender?
Then we figure out who's gonna be the partner to exit with refinancing. So there's usually a little bit of time there for us to advise the lawyer and to get it. I haven't had an issue with the timeline. I don't know how long it takes, but we haven't had any delays from that end.
However, we also do private lending. We have our funds at Olympia Trust, and as a private lender, I found it to be really heavy when I was trying to lend to a friend that does investing here, and in the end, it didn't go through like I had out of all the documents I had to fill out. And we even went through the notary and in the end, Olympia Trust didn't even get it put through. In time, so we had to go elsewhere.
Francois Lanthier: I'm not surprised. That's what I mean. It's a great solution. Registered funds are awesome, but be aware of timelines and yeah, they could push back. You never know. There's different conditions that come out at the last minute, so it's good to have a parachute like you guys did.
Angela Dupuis: Just a question.
Sarah Larbi: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Joseph Sicurella: Community trust. There needs to be more, there needs to be some .
Sarah Larbi: Community trust, cause I had some stuff with them. They're now moving everything over to Olympia Trust cause they're outta that business it's life. So it's interesting. But on a side note, obviously, as real estate investors we make mistakes or stuff happens, and it sounds like you've had a good amount of success. But what are some of the challenges that you've had along the way or maybe some mistakes that you could share or that you've made with some I invest or with our investors or listeners so that maybe they could avoid doing the same.
Angela Dupuis: The first big mistake was when we did the BRRRR on the cottage thinking we were gonna get all of our money back because the appraisal work the appraisal came out perfectly for us to get everything back, and then we were blocked at how much they would give us. That's a $70,000 mistake. That's a big one.
Sarah Larbi: Okay. Anything else that you can think of? What about Joey? From a construction standpoint.
Joseph Sicurella: Our, one of the first deals we had going in Moncton, we were working remotely. We ended up going to Moncton, but prior to going to Moncton, all of the planning stuff happened before we got to Moncton.
We didn't really do a detailed walkthrough with the contractor. We just trusted his opinion. And as soon as we got to Moncton, we realized that all of the counters really needed to be changed and there was a lot more work. Being a contractor who works in Moncton, because that street was less than desirable in his mind, he was renovating it.
In terms of the current clientele, our idea of renovating the place was to elevate the property and bring it to a new clientele. And so he didn't quite understand that and we didn't communicate properly. So I think what I learned from that was to really get into the detail walkthrough, get the phone going, let's look at every item and decide are we changing it, are we not?
More effort in the planning stages I think is something that we made a bit of a misstep there because then we had to backtrack and we had to order stuff on the fly. He didn't get to do the windows, he didn't think that the windows were necessary because it was a crappy area, and he didn't think that you should do that. The windows really needed to be changed. Little, it was just it was hard to backtrack in the renovation and we got it all done and it's working great and I'm pretty sure it's gonna work perfectly.
Angela Dupuis: Today was the appraisal. We're waiting on the final numbers.
Francois Lanthier: That's great.
Angela Dupuis: There are some mistakes that happened on the bank. Things I would do differently, like having different bank accounts with all the different banks, knowing how flexible they are with, for example, how much you can send in an e-transfer per day. It's very frustrating when you can only send $2,000 a day and you have three different partner accounts each needing to pay people.
It's frustrating, I wouldn't go with RBC for the next one's insurance, you've insurance is not something to leave till the last minute, especially once, at this point we know that this is gonna be a challenge. This is gonna, aluminum wiring obviously not being tube, but that's What we do now because of the Greener Homes program in Canada, we register our properties for those what do you call Siva rebates?
Francois Lanthier: Yes. There's quite a program in New Brunswick right now as well.
Angela Dupuis: We register those before we even take ownership of the property so that the timelines kind of work out. So that we get rebates when we do the roof for the basement or the windows. Just things you learn, as you go.
Francois Lanthier: Excellent tips. That's great. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and some of the ups and downs and things to look out for. We're gonna be getting to our lightning round now.
I've never done the introduction. Sarah, you'll have to ask question number one cause I don't know it , but we asked you a series of four questions. They're always the same. All our guests answer them. And then Sarah, if you could do the honors of question number one.
Sarah Larbi: All right, here we go. So I will ask Angela first, and then Joey, you can answer afterwards. So here's question number one of the lightning round. What is the best advice that you have ever received from another investor or at a networking event?
Angela Dupuis: That's a good question. I settled on the answer, which is to know your market. Pick a market. and that's worked well for us. So you wanna know exactly what a good deal looks like, what the average concrete that should be, for example. And then you build your teams and everything gets easier and easier as you stick to one market instead of moving all over the place.
Sarah Larbi: That's great advice. Joey, what about you?
Joseph Sicurella: Always go with three quotes. Never go with the first quote that you get. You need at least three.
Francois Lanthier: That's so true. It can save you thousands and thousands or like a silly little detail that everybody overlooked, but the third person is whoa, you need to do this. And then it changes the project completely. Excellent advice. So question number two is, what is your favorite real estate investing resource? Could be a book, a person, a podcast, something to Angela.
Angela Dupuis: For me, it's changed over time, but right now I would say, We have this real estate investing group in Montreal that we do every Wednesday, and I learn so much from that every week. So I would say right now, that's my go-to place. Like when we are sitting together and we have a challenge and we're trying to figure it out, we're like, we'll bring it to the group on Wednesday. That's my favorite resource right now.
Francois Lanthier: Excellent. Yeah, networking is so important. Your net worth is your network. So Joey, what about you? What's your favorite resource for investing?
Joseph Sicurella: Right now for us, though, I don't use it as much as Angela does these days, but Trello for project management. It's really great to have everybody involved and partners and friends and family whatever you're doing with each project, it's really easy to give access to different people to see what's going on different projects.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. At some point as you're scaling a software option is definitely gonna be key in ensuring that communication gets sent out, but as easily as possible. So like texting and coordinating, without a software, with multiple properties, at some points, especially if you've got a bunch of construction projects on the go, it's definitely very difficult. Awesome. Thanks. So question number three, Joey, we'll start with you on this one. What is the one attribute that has made you most successful?
Joseph Sicurella: Attribute that's made me most successful? It's a hard one. I was gonna say my attention to detail, but at the same time it can hinder our budgets so I can, I'm definitely one that likes to do everything that needs to get done, and that's not always in budget. So Angela's really good at reeling me in . Yeah I'll, but I'll stick with that, my attention to detail.
Sarah Larbi: All right. Awesome. Angela, what about you?
Angela Dupuis: I think shoot, I would say time management skills, which involves being able to prioritize, knowing what has to be. Being organized, delegating what can be delegated. So I would say that has helped me personally get here.
Francois Lanthier: Excellent answer. And then the fourth and last question. So what do you typically do on a Sunday morning? We'll start with Joey again.
Joseph Sicurella: Sunday mornings usually sleeping in, that's our sleep in day.
Sarah Larbi: What's sleeping time?
Joseph Sicurella: I'd say nine, 10 o'clock, depending on the morning.
Sarah Larbi: All right. So you definitely are sleeping in with an eight year old boy who doesn't wake you up?
Joseph Sicurella: No, he's happy when we're sleeping in. He gets some extra phone time.
Angela Dupuis: He's a night owl also.
Sarah Larbi: Ah, okay. All right. Anything else you wanna add to that?
Angela Dupuis: I would say it's the one day of the week that we just don't rush. Every morning it's rush to get out the door and get everything in place. And Sundays we can be in our pajamas and drink coffee and not rush.
Sarah Larbi: That sounds nice. That sounds awesome. On that note, Angela, Joey, where can our listeners reach out if they want to find out more about you or connect with you?
Angela Dupuis: Angelajoey.com or joeyangela.com on Facebook and AngelaandJoey.REI on Instagram.
Sarah Larbi: All right, very cool. And we always ask this and you can end it as together or separate. Any final last words of advice for The REITE club nation?
Angela Dupuis: Just do it. You've just gotta do it. You'll make mistakes and you'll figure it out. And we see so many people waiting and waiting for the right perfect. It's never gonna be perfect. Just freaking do it.
Sarah Larbi: Just do it. That is awesome. Thanks very much Joey, Angela, it was a pleasure getting to know you better and and thanks for sharing all the wonderful information and insights with our community.
Joseph Sicurella: Thanks for having us.
Angela Dupuis: It was nice to meet you, Sarah.
Sarah Larbi: Take care.
Francois Lanthier: Thank you. See you again. Sarah, what did you think about Joey and Angela's story? How, like, how inspiring? They both quit their jobs and the FU money. I love that part. I wish I had that.
Sarah Larbi: The FU money is awesome. You always wanna have some FU money because you never know when you are going to need to use it so that you don't need to rely on that job. But I really liked how they dissected, some of the stuff that they've been doing, sharing some of the joint venture strategies and how they've done that, but it's just also nice to see how they've been able to, from Montreal investing in Montreal cause it's a whole different market and also in New Brunswick out east. And so it's, it is just always awesome to interview different people from different parts of Canada.
Francois Lanthier: Yes, and what I liked as well, Angela's story, like all her friends and family from when she was a kid living in New Brunswick and then as a teenager, an adult, and it all came together. So it really shows your network again but a very different type of networking, just to put it in perspective.
The population of New Brunswick is smaller than the City of Ottawa, so 775,000 people. So it is big, but it's spread out and as she said, 81st cousins. That's a lot of people. You get to know the whole town , and it really helps. But they've put it together very nicely, taking advantage of rebates and all kinds of great tips and tricks. I hope people got good value out of it. Interview. I sure did.
Sarah Larbi: I sure did as well. REITE Club Nation, thanks so much. Don't forget, tune in every single week. Friday mornings we have new episodes. Until then, Francois is great to see you again and REITE Club Nation. See you very soon.
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