Mathew Frederick: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the REITE Club podcast. I'm Laurel Simmons, a co-founder of the REITE Club, and today my co-host is Victoria Cluney.
Hello, Laurel, how are you?
I'm doing great, Victoria. Glad to be here with you. And we had a great conversation with Matthew Frederick, who was our guest today. Most people realize that we do record them and then we do the intro. After, because it's nice to know what our guests will have said before we actually do the introduction. Wow. Matthew is so knowledgeable, isn't he?
He is. I was just saying I took a page full of notes after this conversation. He has so many little nuggets and things that you wouldn't even really think about that. I really appreciated.
Let's go right into the interview and then at the end of the interview, after he's finished, let's you and I talk about one or two things that we thought were the most important.
I love it.
Laurel Simmons: Hi Matt, and welcome to the REITE Club Podcast. It's great to see you again.
Mathew Frederick: It's always great to be here.
Laurel Simmons: Yes, on this we're recording on a rather cool winter day and but the clouds are starting to go away and we are starting to see some sunshine. And I also think we're starting to see some sunshine on the real estate front, aren't we? So can you tell us what's your're involved in right now and what do you see happening?
I started investing back in 1984, so I've actually gone through about three recessions and some were in Ontario, some were in Alberta, some BC, and some in the US as well. So when I look at recessions or the market slowing down, I see more of an opportunity, meaning I can actually do something about it or get moving on something.
It's the weirdest scenario because I've actually gone through these recessions and what's different is, normally what happens is you see a lot of unemployment, and if you look at the USA right now, they're at 3.4% unemployment, which is the lowest since 1969. Now everybody says yes, it's gonna go up and things like that.
It seems like they just keep calling it. There's gonna be a recession. There's gonna be a recession. The fact is it doesn't seem that way. It is mild. And in the end, even if there was one, it's okay because we just have to make a few little small adjustments. What I've always done in these times is to tighten up.
A lot of people look at how do I make more money? I first look at how do I make everything more efficient, and then at the same time, I'll actually look to make increase my revenue as well. So again I don't worry as much about the situations that I cannot control. What I can do is control me. I can be more efficient.
I can circle myself with amazing people. I can take the time to learn. Even Covid was a scary time for most people. I spent two years, none of my sofa, eating pie. I actually created a hundred video library, about 80 hours of information initially for my daughter who's 15. I turned it into something great. Ultimately I think that's what we have to look at. What can we do in this time to make life better for us and the people that we love.
Victoria Cluney: Spoken like a true entrepreneur right there, being able to turn the bad into something good and opportunity. So the fact that you've been through three recessions is pretty impressive, and that's a lot of data to be able to draw on. So can you tell us a little bit, any mistakes that you learned from, or lessons that you can impart that you have gained after each recession?
Mathew Frederick: It's important to understand that when you're in a recession, it's not gonna last forever, and at some point you're gonna come out of it. So after I came out of my last two recessions, what I did, I sat back and I said, you know what?
Let's go for five years where I'm going full out. And I'm gonna probably do about two years where I keep my fields foul, which means not buying anything, not planting anything in the real estate world, because I know after every five to seven years there could be an adjustment. And therefore, I was ready this time, that 2022 I didn't buy anything.
I saw a lot of stuff that I could do, but instead of forcing myself to actually go and do things because I'm not really behold to anybody but my future self, I'm not competing against anybody on Facebook or whatever the other investors do. I'm happy for them, but it doesn't cause me to want to do something because they're, I was able to keep my power to dry for about a year and a half.
I spent two years taking all my, I have 27 building. Taking my variable mortgages to fix mortgages, but three year fix, not five year, cuz I couldn't see five years, I couldn't see about three. And some of them I went through C M H C, which is a bit longer. But the biggest lesson I learned from the past is once you come out of it go hard for a few years and then keep your fields follow so that when everybody is in drought season, you can actually do something with it. That's an important lesson that, that I pick up.
Laurel Simmons: I really agree with you cuz I too have been through a number of recessions and it's funny I remember the first one and I went, oh, you feel like the sky's falling, right? And then you learn, wait a minute, it ends, there's a cycle to everything.
Then some years went by and then there was another one and then that, oh. It's not so bad and you just get used to it. And I find it really interesting right now with people who, especially investors who are just getting started. It's oh the sky is falling. The sky is falling.
I know it's not, the clouds might be getting a little bit lower. But they're going up. It's like the weather patterns. They come, they go and you start to understand the flow and I really like your approach of doing something and then just. Being a little quieter. It's not that you're not doing you're doing a lot, but you're just putting your energy and your focus somewhere else to prepare for the next sort of growth spurt. And you mentioned 27 buildings though, so you're mostly in commercial right now, aren't you?
Mathew Frederick: I started with let's say two unit, three unit, and I think I got up to maybe about 30 of those. But I, to me it was almost like having 30 to 60 kids and I couldn't handle it. A couple of 'em after my hard days work, cause I was still working in fact, when I started investing, it was 10 years before I actually walked away from my position and my job.
It was like I started investing and then next year I quit. But I found that I came home from a hard day's work teaching college, and then my phone would be flip phone, yeah, back in those days. But my phone would be blowing up every now and then. So I thought, you know what? Instead of having so many different locations and houses are great, but they're almost like Honda Civics.
They're not really designed to be beaten up. Buildings are built to be beaten up. So I thought, you know what? I'm gonna transition on some of my houses and get into, six unit, but then I started going to 12 units to 24 units. My sweet spot is between 12 and 24. Two small for the big guy, and two big for the small.
Most of my buildings don't probably fall between 24 and 34 units, and I don't go higher than 64 only because I'd like to keep my eggs not in one basket, like 150 unit property. To me, that's too many beg e eggs in one basket. And I have a lot of partners with those. So I didn't buy all those with my own money.
I was able to join venture with people. And find the right people to help me get into that, right? So again I do have buildings and it, it is a lot easier because there's a manager there full-time. I only get the bad phone calls, by the way, like when somebody's died in one of my units and two weeks later they found the person, then they call me. I have to deal with that, but I don't get that as much.
Victoria Cluney: You never get like just a chat call from your property manager.
Mathew Frederick: How was your date's? World's come get part.
Victoria Cluney: I wish they'd sprinkle it in just once in a while so you don't dread the call so much. But no, that's good to know. Between your 12 to 24 units, can you expand a little bit on your criteria? What are you looking for? What kind of building is gonna get you excited and move forward on?
Mathew Frederick: A lot of it is the mix. I love kids but I'm not looking for three bedrooms, only because sometimes that family's gonna be there from grade one all the way to grade 12, and like them to move on to other spaces so I can adjust my rents.
Now, I do have stuff in Alberta, the rental control situation that is different. It's not to see him as Ontario, but ultimately I'm looking for two bedroom. I'm looking for probably a mix, 60%, two bedroom and 40% one bedroom. Generally two bedrooms. People last about four, four years. One bedrooms about three.
Today because rents are so high, people will probably stay a lot longer than they normally would because if they leave where they are now, they're probably paying just a little bit too much. I'm not crazy about elevators. So if I can stay to two and a half stories and not have an elevator to always worry about, that would be better for me.
Obviously I like to have an onsite superintendent that I charge full rent and then I rebate, or I pay them for their job and then I break the jobs up into if there's a portion that they're not doing very well, cuz maybe they just can't, I can pass that job onto somebody. I like a flat roof.
Now, I've always liked strip plazas, but for last three years, that's very difficult to get financed on a strip plaza with the bank. I like them because while you give somebody a thousand square foot, empty space, maybe you have about five stores. They do all the lease hole improvements. They cover all the expenses.
Anything goes wrong, they fix it and It's a stronger situation and it's their job as well. So if I could get away from multi-family and just do strip plaza, I would, but strip plazas do not succeed the same way multi-families do in a recession. And that's why in my strip plazas, I do a recession proof, internet proof, and now pandemic proof.
RIP System So that I find stores that can survive a recession, an internet situation. If I needed to get my hair cut, I cannot send it to India or China, get it cut and have it sent back to me. So that's internet proof. Unfortunately, cutting hair is not pandemic proof, but it's a mix. And then today I'm looking more at warehousing and I've done self-storage in the past.
Just quickly, my best highest performing assets would be self storage. Secondly would be strip plazas, but very hard to finance and you have to have the right businesses. Third would be multi-family, and I've always stayed away from warehousing, but now I'm gonna get into it.
Laurel Simmons: Okay. So I have a couple questions about that. First of all, cause I was gonna ask you just before you started explaining what your portfolio mix was is your portfolio. Partly mixed use in that you have some commercial, I don't mean commercial in terms of financing, but business and residential, like mixed use that way.
Mathew Frederick: I actually like the strip plaza. It has six stores and six apartments above because that's the best of both world. Because you have somebody who lives there all the time. Obviously that's a very safe bet. Harder to finance because banks are not financing commercial as much as they used to. Maybe they'll brave up a bit and start being our friends again, banks, will you be my friend again?
Multi-family. It's the most work, the heaviest to deal with because my strip classes, I don't worry about a whole lot. But they are more survivable and people are more accustomed to them. People ask me, why did you get into self storage and why did you get into multifamily and why did you get into strip plaza and why'd you do all this stuff?
I've been investing for 38 years now, so as an investor, I'm more like a wolf or let's say a lion. We have to sometimes follow our prey and we have to sometimes. Burr worked great for a period of time for me, but then seasons Burr had left and then I had to do something else, wholesaling, and then when those seasons left, I did buy aix sell.
When those caribou moved on, I did something called tax sale. And when those caribou moved on, I did multi-family. So I didn't just wake up and say, I'm gonna do all this stuff. I was just surviving over the last 38 years.
Victoria Cluney: That's again, the entrepreneurial way, right? You're able to adapt to the market as it changes and diversifying the portfolio. I know a lot of people do say, To niche down, but I'm a big believer that you build on your skills and your skills can allow you to open up so that you can take on these bigger projects because it might be a little bit of a different, but a lot of it's still the same. The principles are still the same, the fundamentals are the same.
I have a question about the self-storage. I see a lot of these self storage properties now that aren't purpose built, so they've got all the c cams on them. What are your thoughts on that?
Mathew Frederick: I started with obviously the purpose-built of the garages. I didn't wanna get into it. I was pulled into it just really quickly. I used to have cottages up north and six cottages, and we had store stuff at a self storage and an older gentleman, a grumpy old guy when I said old, he's probably my age now, but he was very grum. I would bring him a coffee all the time because it was one hour to highway 12. Tim Hor, Tim Horton's, can I bring him a coffee?
I'd leave it. Double. And nobody talked to him. And after about two years he said to me he was dying. And he wanted me to buy his sell storage. And I'm like, I don't buy self storage. I like beautiful property. Self storage to me is not that attractive. And he is in his words, he's my wife is not attractive, but she's a great woman.
I'm like, okay. He goes, self storage is a great woman. He goes, I want you to buy it cuz don't want my kids to have it and I want to give you a big VTB so my grandkids can get that vendor financing in about five years. So I says, you know what? I understand good women, so my mom is incredible.
My grandma's incredible. So I bought it, and I gotta tell you, it was the most amazing thing I've ever bought in my life. For me, I would prefer to build, in other words, I would rather build 144,000 square foot. So 45,000 square foot per level three levels high. And not look like cell storage, about 800 units.
I prefer to do that or go with the regular. Ones that you see that, that have the garages. The fact is cities don't like 'em. They do not like the, anything that anybody's doing except for the larger ones that you build. And they don't like them because they take a lot of room up and they don't employ that many people.
They don't pay as much taxes. But for me, it's either gonna be the garage doors or it's gonna be building a brand new three story, 144,000 square foot, 800 unit system that you see with a Bluebird or any of these companies around.
Victoria Cluney: Amazing. That's awesome. And so what kind of areas are you looking at for those type? Are you purchasing the land? Are you developing it? What? Very fascinating because it is something that you hear a lot about from the recession proof, and it's been a buzz for a while, so I'm sure people wanna know.
Mathew Frederick: That's a really great question. Cell storage is the hardest zoning to get. So if the land is not zoned for self storage, Good luck.
It just is not gonna happen in my experience. So obviously cell storage is zoned closer to highways or overpasses or underpasses or exits, and if it's already zoned for that, then okay. You know what? I don't mind grabbing something that's already there. Like I wouldn't mind grabbing a three story building that already exists, a warehouse that's not working, and convert it or build brand new.
Oregon have the other types that, that you see around, but it's a very hard zoning to get. Now I see the market is being flooded everywhere you look. Now there's self-storage, so you really have to be careful to understand how many units are in your area and how many units are coming into your area.
Because when a self storage goes empty, it takes about two years to get to about 80%. I keep mine at about 93%. You also have to have some leeway so that people can move up or move down as opposed to moving away, meaning they want a small unit or large unit, and people who drive by if they don. Have a place to come, then you become irrelevant.
If I'm full, I just increase the price, but I do what's called personal billing. In other words, each person is billed based on what I have available for storage. So if you have, if I have a 10 by 10 unit, and let's say it's 350 bucks. I'm not gonna charge that to everybody. I'm gonna say, how many units do I have available?
That 10 by 10 could be a bit more or a bit less, and therefore I'm able to increase that person's personal lease yearly, as opposed to saying, in January, I bought all the units and now I'm gonna hit you with a increase. They've never had an increase. You'll lose 80% of them. So I, I'm rambling on, but I'm just saying that ultimately, it's not an easy business.
It is a business, somebody's employed and you have to run it like a business. But it is productive if you do it correctly.
Laurel Simmons: I was just thinking that's pretty sophisticated and complex system because you have to keep track of. I don't know. Okay, lemme move this way. I don't know how many spreadsheets you have. But I can see a lot to manage that cuz and you would need obviously the help to do that. Cause you can't do that all by yourself.
Mathew Frederick: For me, you know what I'm a systems analyst and I was a programmer. And that's why I taught in college programming electronics. So I programmed my own system. But if I were to pay someone to create. Would be about probably 15 or $16,000 just for that. So I would prob probably go, and find something off the shelf design just for property management, for self storage. And that might be probably $6,000 plus a yearly license. I wouldn't program it. I put a lot of time into programming it and I just realized how much I hated programming after I created it.
Victoria Cluney: I feel like our powers combined would be pretty good. I'm a behavioral analyst, comes in behavior. We would conquer the world. But can you talk to us a little bit about the backend of your business, about how you've set it up, maybe what the struggles were at the beginning, thinking about with investors and how they can get that support and what that looks like.
Mathew Frederick: Right off the start, two things. Number one, I knew that I did not want my business to be a cult of. Meaning some people want their business to be ran by them, and therefore they have to have their finger in every single pie. So from day one, I said to myself, as a systems analyst, I want to be able to have a system running where I'm not running it, but I'm actually controlling it from 50,000 square feet.
I have the option to come down to Earth when I need. Walk among the troops. So ultimately I've created my systems like that. Everything that I do, I sat down and wrote out what do I do in a one month period? And I just would record everything that I do. And then I started looking at each activity and saying, is that my best use?
I'm great at, let's say negotiating. I'm great at talking to strangers. I'm great at doing a bunch of things. I'm not great at other things. So I started just looking at everything that I do in a month period. Just recording it and just saying is that using my best skill? Is that using my skill? Is that using my skill, the ones that were not using my skill, which didn't motivate me to do.
I found other people to do that, and then I had to work a little bit harder to be able to pay them, and I had to take. , which means I didn't take the vacations I wanted to, I didn't drive the car. I wanted to, in order to pay for someone to do that administration stuff that I, I didn't like doing. So that, that was one of the main things that I did.
Then secondly, I looked at everything like, okay, you know what it's like a car. People know how to drive a car, but they don't know how a car works. So a car's got steering system, a braking system, even a pedal gas system. And if you only have a braking system, you don't go anywhere if you have a steering system, but no breaking system.
Hit the wall soon enough. So I had to identify looking at my business, what are those key elements? What is the steering wheel from my business? What is the break from my business? The steering wheel might be my acquisition system. How my acquiring property? What are all the steps of those steps?
What is my best highest use? And what can I do to teach people how to do those steps? And maybe the steering system might be a different. Oh, and the breaking system might be my property management system. So again, I looked at all the systems in the car. What do the systems do? Now? Can I map my business systems onto the car?
Which is which? Which part? Who should I bring in to do it, that they can do it and I don't have to be worshiped. And then at the same time, what areas can I do to control and test those things? So those are the two things that I did to approach it. And it seemed to have worked very well. But I do that with other businesses. I've had many restaurants also, and I did that with the restaurants.
Laurel Simmons: I think though that you've hit the nail on the head when. You don't make the business about you. And I see a lot of people that do that. And it can be a conscious choice. And if you want the business to be about you, that's fine. That's one model. But if you, I think if you want to grow and really expand the boundaries, it's impossible to do that if the business is about.
Mathew Frederick: That's right. And what I also did was right off the start when I was like 24, I got what I call a personal board because you know how businesses have a board of directors. So I got a personal board of directors, just four people that I really trusted that were, that had be better understanding better ethics than I did. There's so many times that I invested in things where. I was successful and because I was successful, I felt invincible and I felt so invincible that I would take risks that a normal person wouldn't do.
I would win. But sometimes what happens is you fly too close to the sun, and I can tell you probably six times in my life when I flew too close to the sun and I'm on my back thinking, but I'm better than this. Why did I collapse and fail? One quick example is I had a buddy of mine who said, Hey, give me money to buy six houses in Windsor and then I'll fix 'em up, meaning him, but I'll give him the money.
He was always an e. It's the best pizza, buy the best suits here, the best everything. But for some reason I thought that my intelligence, my ability will compensate for his lack of exactness. And boy, guess what I learned . I'm not that great. I'm not Jesus, and I cannot fly forever. So again, I've learned through hard knocks to have my board.
Keep me back in check because sometimes we can go crazy because we're invincible. And that's my, that's been my biggest problem and I've had to always deal with that so that the ego doesn't get too big, that I don't take on projects that are impossible, but it's, there's just a natural thing you do if you are an investor. So my board keeps me in check. They slapped me around.
Laurel Simmons: I think that's a great idea, don't you, Victoria? Having a board like to, because you need a sounding board. It's really what it is. You absolutely have someone to say, what are you thinking about?
Victoria Cluney: You absolutely do. And sometimes you know, it's you can get around the hype a little too much. It just depends on, cuz it can go both ways. If you take in too much news and too much doom and gloom, then you'll start to believe that. But then there can. Almost toxic positivity of this hype. And so especially you saw a lot of that last year and being able to keep yourself in check with people that you trust can tell you straight up who you, who know will actually be able to give you the truth.
Mathew Frederick: It's true. And I just remembered something that helped me to survive. Two recessions. I'll just take a second to tell you. A lot of people buy properties and they hold onto it. It's like I'm gonna buy and hold forever. And sometimes they hold something because they feel if I sell it, it shows failure. So I have to fight this thing until I beat it.
People have to stop looking at it as though they're antico collectors. You have to look at it like you're a coach of a baseball team, and right now you're at the bottom of the ninth, you're the last team up and you're tied and you have three runs you can get. And you have a guy on second. Now, if the batter decides he wants to do a home run, then that could be good.
I may say to him, I want you to bunt the ball. That's a sacrifice. I want you to sacrifice getting to first base in order for my man to get from second to third. The next guy up, he wants to slam that thing outta the park. But I said, no, you popped that ball up. Get it all the way to the. Don't catch it, you'll be out.
It gets the third guy, the guy on third, to be able to run into the home base and plow into the catcher. So sometimes you literally have to give up what you love the most in property during tough times in order to score and win that game, and mid-season, you may wanna bring in, a high heat pitcher, maybe pay extra bucks.
Just for the six months of the year, and then, you know what, if that's a property or a partner that can get me through that hassle. I'm gonna do it. So forget this antico collector nonsense. Gonna be like a coach of a great team. And that's how you gotta look at it, if that makes sense.?
Laurel Simmons: That really makes sense. And you know what, we can talk about this all afternoon, I swear. You can just go on. There's so many examples. You have, you've been doing this for a long time, and y like you said, you had failures, you had massive success too. And that's part of a successful Real Estate career, isn't it? The ups and downs, and as long as at the end of the day you you're on the positive side of the balance sheet, I think that's. It's important. It's true, and you've enjoyed it. I really believe that too. You must.
Mathew Frederick: That's the important part. You have to enjoy it. Yeah.
Laurel Simmons: All right, so let's move on to the lightning round. As we ask you four questions. These are not trick questions. All you have to do is say what comes into your head. Victoria, would you like to take it away with the first question?
Victoria Cluney: I would love to, I really wanna know if you could start all over again and tell your 18 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Mathew Frederick: I think it'll be to play in the big kid's yard. because sometimes we're restricted to, let's say grade three or grade four, and the big kids' yard is dangerous. So don't play in the middle of it, but still be in your yard, but still peek over the fence still, be in the peripherals because even at a time like this to survive, you have to increase your brain matter so sometimes playing in, in the big boy's yard, a big girl's yard, Is understanding the next level up, multi-family.
If you're doing houses, even if you don't need it right now, it expands your mind. Or maybe, how do I build, even if you're not looking to build. So expands the mind through your real estate. And of course then you also have to do something like, I'm learning languages now. Because when you learn a language, it increases your cognitive, it increases your volume and density of your brain. You know what? I just, every morning I learned some Spanish, I'm not good at it, but just to increase the brain matter, open up the field because you need, it's not a field now in a recession. I know that, that's too long of an answer.
Laurel Simmons: That's great. Okay. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? And I know you've received a lot of advice over the years, but if you can think, what is the best piece of advice you've ever received about real estate investment?
I think real estate investing is only about 30% physical real estate and about 70% of the human factor dealing with the personalities of the people on your team, dealing with the contractors, dealing with your investors, dealing with yourself, and dealing with your partners.
Even when I build buildings and I've built three, like 50 unit condo buildings and I've built over 280 houses, so subdivisions I find that dealing with you. It's still a lot male dominated, but it's like dealing with high school. So ultimately, the HVAC guy has a bigger ego than the plumber and then the electrician because they need more room.
The rest of the guys blame the framer. So a lot of real estate is really to do with the soft skill as opposed to the heart skill. And, you find yourself in the HOV lane moving faster than anybody else and your friends. Who in traffic become frenemies, and then you gotta deal with that as well. So I find advices understand, the social and the mental aspect of dealing with people. And that's probably the wrong word, Victoria, I'm just saying
Victoria Cluney: You're speaking my language. I'm picking it all up. I love it. So true.
Mathew Frederick: It's about 30%, 40% physical but the battle really is in the mind.
Victoria Cluney: Yes, I mean they the high-end name is like the interpersonal skills, those relationships that you can have with people and having the emotional intelligence to be able to read the room and know your audience. So it's so true. People think real estate's about numbers, but it's a big people's game. All right. My last question, since I know that you're a systems analyst, I wanna know what is your favorite resource that you have that you use?
Mathew Frederick: My favorite resource, let's see. You know what it's my resource is really a behavior because that behavior that I do gathers me information. Okay. So you can go to a resource that's a physical book or video or even a tool, but I change my behavior, which means if I'm driving, if I have a meeting at 10 o'clock and I have to leave at nine 30, I'm gonna leave at nine o'clock, so I have a 30 minute window, and the behavior is to leave early. And if I see an opportunity, I see an owner of a building, I see a house that looks interesting.
I'll turn my car in, pull in. Okay. Maybe I have to put my theme music on for a second. Theme music for two seconds, and then turn it back off. Get out of the car and talk to that person, they're on the spot because now I'm getting information and resources from that person. The resource might be they want to sell, they don't want to sell.
They might know somebody who wants to sell. They may have a son or daughter who has a development project that just got stuck. So ultimately it's to stop and talk to people. Don't just go past it and behave myself into that. So if I go to the grocery store, behave myself into hitting a few new streets on the way there. Because that's information coming in the real world. Three dimensional hitting me from all sides as opposed to just resources from, the internet or a book or things like that.
Laurel Simmons: That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Matt, your last question, totally different from the other ones. What do you do for fun.
Mathew Frederick: You know what I'm a single dad. I have a 15 year old daughter. She lives with her mom, and her mom's great. Not great together, but her mom's great. So what I do is I hang out with my daughter a lot. I try to, she's getting older. It's getting harder because she's got tons of friends.
I do that. And you know what, I started exercising. This covid, I've sat back and I'm a bit outta shape. I don't fit my suits anymore, so I enjoy going for walks. I enjoy. In the past I traveled a lot e Every year I would take about three little trips but now because I'm learning my languages, I'm learning Spanish, so my next trip is to Spain and I'll learn Fran French to France and then I'm try to learn German, so I go to Austria in different places, right?
I think a little bit of traveling. I, I do like outdoors and I do spending time with my with my daughter. And lastly, my dad's 89. My mom's 88. In the last four years, I've spent more time with them than I have, let's say, in my entire life. And we were always close. So I get joy just in being there with them. I. Because, a billion dollars won't bring 'em back. So I'm living today, for today. I learned from the past. I have goals for the future, but I'm just enjoying my day and that's I find something that's really important. I just enjoy my day. I'm happy to be alive.
Laurel Simmons: Wow, you know what? I don't care what career you have, what life path you have, however you wanna phrase it. That to me is the most important thing you can say and believe, because I can tell you believe it cause you're doing it. People can talk about it, but not say I believe it.
If they don't do it, there's no action to back it up. They don't believe it. But, wow. That to me is the most important thing and joy today. Right now cuz that's all we've got. Enjoy your family. Enjoy your parents. I have an aging parent too. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Enjoy your children cause that's all we've got.
Mathew Frederick: That's all we got. It's true.
Laurel Simmons: Thank you so very much Matt. That was great. And we'll have you back again cause. Oh my goodness. Oh, we could just talk, couldn't we? Victoria, like firm over all this stuff. I have a page of notes here. . Really great, great conversation, Matt.
Mathew Frederick: Thank you.
Laurel Simmons: Thank you so very much. We'll talk to you later. Bye.
Mathew Frederick: Thank you. Take care guys.
Laurel Simmons: Well, Victoria, we weren't lying, were we? When we said he has so many nuggets, pieces of wisdom to share.
Victoria Cluney: I feel like we literally just scratched the surface. There's so much information that we could have gotten from him, but yeah, just a resource of knowledge.
Laurel Simmons: What was the one big takeaway for you?
Victoria Cluney: The one that stands out to me, I really liked his, he had this acronym, r i p, for recession proof, internet proof and pandemic Proof when he's looking at his properties, something I have never heard before. And we'll keep in the back of my mind.
Laurel Simmons: That's true because I, normally we don't think of pandemics. Why would we? This is the first one that probably 99.9999999% of the population has ever lived through, right? In, in that has affected us the way it's affected us, in the last few years. Yeah. It was really cool to think about that because it's not just about pandemics. There could be other events that you could replace a pandemic with.
That was really cool. I think for me what I like. Really, I'm paraphrasing what he said, but is let's get your ego out of the way. What about you? . Yeah. Check yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Or get somebody else to check yourself . Oh, yeah. Or get someone to help you. Check yourself. That's right.
Just get yourself out of the way. So often, we are o we are our own worst enemy. That's. Everyone, I hope you enjoyed that podcast as always. If you like the podcast, please go on to the platform you're listening on and rate us that helps us to reach other people. And don't forget to go to thereiteclub.com and sign up. There's lots of great content there. You can watch videos listens to more podcasts. Feel free to go. Until next time, bye for now. Take care.
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