Life’s Ups & Downs and What to do About Them

Mel Dupuis
 
Sarah: This time is just going to be Mel Dupuis, in which Mel and her husband, Dave are known as the investor couple. Mel and Dave have acquired over 200 apartments in just a few short years using absolutely none of their own money and without JV partners. Fully owned by Mel and Dave. She's also a wife, a mother, an entrepreneur and author of, "The Only Woman in the Room". She's going to share a key thing that she struggled with today in 2020, what she learned and how she and Dave overcame that struggle as well as their plans and what they're doing for 2021. Welcome, Mel.

Mel: Thank you so much for having me. Yes, Sarah. And I'm actually going to share a couple more struggles because I've had more than one. So, I hope both my personal struggles and my business struggles that you can relate to somehow, or even as far as you're a little bit, whether you're just starting off in your investing journey or you have a lot of properties and I've had many struggles at that.

Some of you may not even know about including a filled construction business. My first property was a bad purchase. It was so bad. I had to sell it. My ex-husband and I had to spend weeks and weeks with my daughter with sick kids, not knowing how to. We had to rely on other people's money to pay the bills, expensive bills, multiple surgeries, not knowing if she was going to survive. Then I got the divorce and went through all of that, which if anybody's been through before, they know how difficult that is and a very difficult, sad time in my life. Tend to judgment. Lost a lot of friends. And then I ended up in a two bedroom apartment and it was actually my own building, but it was with awful neighbors.

They were banging on the door, asking me for drug money and I knew that I wanted something better for my life. And for my two girls and I had, at that time, two apartments or two properties, then I met Dave and he had one apartment and we decided let's do this. Let's get started in real estate. And that's exactly what we did. And we slowly started buying apartments one at a time, but we hit the common roadblock. We ran out of money, which is very normal in real estate investing. You can work all the time. And I was teaching part-time, working full-time. Teach the second job at their job as well.

Dave was working full-time as a full firefighter and doing other things as well. And we resisted because we did not have enough money. And we knew that we could do joint venture partners and for us don't have anything against it in general, there's, tens of benefits, but for us, it just wasn't a good fit. So, we were stuck. We couldn't grow until we read the book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. And that book changed our lives because we realized that we were doing all wrong. We were turning, we were switching our time for money and that's exactly what we were doing all our time working and not making money work for us.

Then we ended up purchasing the next year, 12 properties in less than 12 months using none of our own money and without joint venture partners. And the reason we were able to do that was with creative financing, such as seller financing. Using somebody's RSPs. So, those were our strategies that were working full-time at this time with three kids by then.

I was still scared. And maybe you guys have fear and let me know in the chat comment, if anybody else had ever had any kind of fear with real estate because I assume had tons of fear and now the fear came up, quitting my job. When do I quit my full-time job? And I was still working, although I had the income to quit, but the fear was there until in 2018, we were on our way to a real estate investing conference.

And another life-changing day, we were in a horrific car crash and it was a very bad car crash. It was caused by the transport driver who was charged for careless driving. He hit a vehicle that hit us and we literally rolled just before Canada's wonderland. Rolled four times across the highway to be cool was completely crushed.

It was a day that forever changed our lives. And that was it. I just knew that I had to do something different with my life and that same weekend, we decided to change our lives and leave a bigger mark on the world because that's what we wanted. So, that we can, without any luggage without anything. We still went to the conference. We decided to write a book, which before we were so secretive on how we did this, but we decided, why are we holding this back? Anyone can do this. So, we wrote a book, it became a bestseller shortly after it was released. And then I would quit my full-time job shortly afterwards.

And it gave him that freedom that I've had for so long. And now we met with people across North America. We have over 600 mentees. Now that we're showing them our strategies. We solely own over 200 apartments. I was asked last year to be co author of a book, "The Only Woman in "the Room". That one also became a number one bestseller.

Now, how did I manage it all? And here's the key. It was a delegation. I did not do this on my own by myself. It was a delegation. I have four virtual assistants. I have a very large marketing team. And if you haven't seen our marketing ads, I'll have to talk to them afterwards, but hopefully you've seen them.

You don't have a large team and I spend my time doing what I like. So, I scheduled time off for myself every day. The mornings are my time. I don't go to the office usually before 10, so I can work out and do things. My kids and I work all day with my best friend, Dave. And we do our YouTube and our tech talks and all that kind of fun stuff that we have a lot of fun doing. So, whatever circles you've had in the past that you've had today, know that whatever it is that we all have struggles, we all have our stories. I'm just sharing mine today because sometimes people think, oh, hey, you have all these apartments great for you, but I've had a lot of struggles and it was a choice to get through it.

I'll just wrap it up becauseI have 20 seconds left here. With the last paragraph of my chapter here. And it says I'm not luckier or more special than you are. I'm limitless. And so are you limitless. You can achieve massive success. If you truly believe that you can and then choose to take action. Ignore the naysayers because yes, they are out there. Send massive goals, take massive action and achieve massive results and go and do it.

Sarah: That is very inspirational. And I want to ask a question that we got here from Alex, as well before we move on. What are you delegating? Because obviously it's a lot for just you and Dave and it's clearly not just both of you, but who do you have on your team and who are you delegating to and for what?

Mel: Honestly it's both personally and business wise. Personally, I don't do my groceries because again, I can be spending my time doing other things. And once I'm home, I want to do home cleaning, those kinds of tasks at home. And from a work perspective, a lot of my social media, all my edits for my videos the property management. So, I'm completely hands off with the property other than overseeing it, of course, but the property and you gotta make sure to do that because that's an error.

If you let it go. Keep an eye on your properties. But overall, I'm not hands, I don't speak, I don't do the viewings and all that kind of stuff as well. And essentially any tasks that I don't love doing once I get tired of it, I'm not enjoying it. Then I'm a kid. Maybe somebody else can do that. All the accounting, the finances, I don't like doing that kind of stuff. So, I have a financial controller.

Sarah: Can I ask roughly how many people you've got on your team that you've hired personally, whether they're VA's or employees?

Mel: Probably between everyone, between because we have multiple companies or property management and the investment mandate probably about 30 ourselves. So, we have quite a large team.

Sarah: You guys are mostly managing them then instead of managing all the day-to-day stuff.

Mel: Exactly. And have some managers overseeing that team as well. So, the marketing team, I have a director kind of overseeing the script, the emails and all that kind of stuff.

Sarah: I do want to ask one more question, because I think that's would be, this would be interesting as well, but what are the main things that you focus on, that you wouldn't delegate because that is going to be your biggest lift essentially?

Mel: I guess it's essentially social media, when it comes to me being, talking my hands on with my mentees. I don't want to delegate that. I don't, they're not paired off with a coach. Because at the end, I'm the one that talks with lenders and with Dave and I and accountants and we are the ones that got a whole lot of nos throughout the years, but we're also the ones that got a whole lot of yes. And I think it's very important to me. So, that's something that's true to our hearts that we want to continue to be very hands-on with our action takers.

Sarah: Awesome. What about looking and finding properties and making deals? Is that you and Dave, or is that a manager? That's doing that for you guys.

Mel: No, Dave still wants to be hands-on with that one. So, he's not willing to let go of that one either yet.

Sarah: And then just one last question, where are you finding deals?

Mel: Yes. We're finding that both listed and off listed. We're investing in our city right now just because it is easier since my entire team is here. But we are looking, we do want to expand to the states. That's been on our bucket list. We're starting to look there as well, but if we had a huge growth last year, we bought 119 apartments last year. So, a lot of our time this January and probably February is just, restructuring and adjusting. Normal as well, when you grow, you gotta just slow down and have systems and strategies.

Sarah: Amazing. And you're in North Bay for those that don't know. And what we'll do Mel, is we'll add your contact information to the chat there, and guys keep in mind, club community. If you do have any questions for Mel in the chat, just put them to all panelists and attendees. Mel, thank you so much.

Mel: Thank you so much, Sarah and the REITE club. I appreciate it. And you guys are awesome.