Mini Retirements and Finding Balance

Gary Hibbert
 
Sarah: Gary Hibbert is a real estate realtor, ninja of Smart Home Choice. I mean he and I have been cottage neighbors for a little while. He purchased his first investment property in 2008, six years later left the corporate world to become a full-time real estate investor. He's an agent, he has various realtor awards. He's an educator, a coach, a mentor. He's got a group as well that educates on real estate investing. But one of the reasons I wanted to, or we wanted to bring Gary in is very early on.

We started talking and Gary has a really cool concept about mini retirements and just that whole work-life balance and how you can do it, still, creating that income from real estate and ensuring that you're enjoying it with family. Welcome, Gary, I'm excited to have you on the show.

Gary: Sarah. Thank you very much for having me here. I'm excited.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely. How can we balance all of this and maybe just give us a bit of an overview of what you're managing in terms of investments in what you do and then how to really ensure that your life balances itself out?

Gary: Yeah. And I think that's always the difficult thing, is trying to create that work-life balance. I think, I would say the real mantra to success is obviously consistency and growth. And so if anybody tells you, you can find that perfect work life balance. It's difficult, it's not an easy thing to accomplish. And if anybody says it is, then they haven't been an entrepreneur. Okay. So, if you're going down this path there's going to be some difficulties going on here, however it can be achieved. And so, one of the things that I asked you guys to try to take a look at is developing a sense of priority.

If you can develop a sense of priority that will help you get there. And so, what I mean by that, you've got your family, and you want to spend time with them. Then you've got this business and you're trying to create income. You're trying to create wealth. If you want to spend time with your family, it's going to take away from building on this business.

But if you're building this business and then take away time from working on your family. How do you manage that? And that's when it comes on priority. One of the things that my wife and I did when we started Smart Home Choice. When we started going out in the world of real estate investing we came up with this concept of mini retirement.

When we were building the business, working in the corporate world and this is it's long hours. Okay, long, long hours. However, once we finally broke out of that corporate world, what we did was, we said, okay, listen, instead of worrying about retiring at 65 because that's when you're in that nine to five job, that's essentially what you're always thinking about.

I'm like when I'm 65, that can be a really enjoyable life as opposed to when I'm in my thirties or my forties to be able to drink and party and have a good time. We said, why don't we create a mini retirement? And so what we did was as soon as we left the corporate world, we said, we're going to take four months. Okay, we're going to take July and August off and we're going to take December and January off. And so, since 2012, we've been doing that. And so, this is actually my first webinar that I've actually done since the end of November. Like, we take this very seriously. Any of the investors. Members that we work with, they know that we are off.

Now, we do a bit of work, but we do primarily hang out with the family. And that's what I'm talking about now, where you create that priority of, I'm gonna spend more time with the family and my friends and Sarah, I've got that cottage. And so, every weekend, obviously pre COVID we're partying, we're having a good time. We're having drinks. And, but let me tell you, by the end of that, you're done with the retirement and you want to get back to work and that's essentially what we do. And then from September until December, we are working our butts off.

What are some of the things that I'm focusing on this year? Because I think 21 is going to be a very interesting year. Everything that's been happening now with COVID. And so one of the things that I think I may have talked about this before is that I'm really big on focusing on what has happened in the past, because I think if you study history, I think if you understand what has happened before is the best crystal ball that you can possibly have for the future.

What we're going through right now, this has happened before. It doesn't feel like it's happened before, because you've never experienced it. But if you go back into history, you go back. As far as the Roman empire time, this stuff has happened before. So, now I'm spending six to eight hours a week understanding this. If I can understand that better, then I'll know where I need to be when the transfer of wealth happens. That's when I was spending a lot of time on understanding right now.

This is where I think you're going to see where this largest separation is. The haves and the have-nots, this is where you're going to see the middle-class start to know whether you're going, it's a good thing. You guys are doing these classes and these webinars to then get into that. Upper-class because if you don't, you're going to slide down to, into that poor class and it's the printing of money. You look at what happened with real estate over the last a little bit, and look at what happened in Durham region, 22% increase.

These homes go up by 22% or was it monetary policy? And is it the printing of money? That's now creating these homes that go up. And so if you had a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, okay. And you left it in there, you now have what? 78,000. So, hard assets are what's really important right now. Real estate, gold, silver, maybe even potentially Bitcoin. And I'll wrap it up with I think three action items that you guys can actually use and take away from what I've talked about today.

This is what's really helped me in my whole entire life. Okay. Number one. Learned to say no to the right things. And I think it's very difficult because always, something comes in front of you and you want to take action. You want to do it. Here's what I did. And I learned this back in 2008 from Jim Rowan. If you guys don't know who Jim Rowan is, take a look at him. He's phenomenal. Here's what I do. And I'll ask you guys to write down a hundred things that you guys want in your life doesn't matter how small it is. Doesn't matter how large, just write down a hundred things where we want to go. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? What do you want to travel? Write them all down.

Then write down a 1, 3, 5, or 10 beside it. Those are the years that you think that you can accomplish it. So, whatever it has, that's what I'm on your whiteboard. You always take a look at me. I always have my whiteboard out. Okay. The three is a five, in a tens, put it in a drawer because you can accomplish that this year. So, you don't have to even pay attention to it. And people get mixed up, I think and overwhelmed when they have these vision boards that have this big house in this car that they want to get. And it's too daunting, just focus on the one year goal. And if you do that, that then makes it so much easier for you to say no to when things come into your life because it's not even on your whiteboard.

Number two, know your, why? I think you guys have all heard this before, but I know when I first got into real estate investing, It was a "what", "how" and the "why". The "what" was real estate investing? Of course the "how" was doing rent to own a single family and the "why" was I wanted to get rich? That's what everybody wants to get rich. However, what I realized after about four or five years of doing this is that I didn't want to deal with tenants. I didn't want to deal with maintenance issues. I didn't want to deal with contractors.

I realized, I really like real estate investing. But what I'd liked was, what it was doing for me in the lifestyle that I was creating. And then, I had to take a step back and take a look at what my passion was. And my passion is to love doing the podcast. I love inspiring other people to take action. And I love traveling. I love hanging out at the cottage and drinking and having a good time.

I'm human. Okay. And then the last one is, I think probably when I heard this really completely changed my whole entire life is that everything gets created twice. Okay. Once in the mental and then second in the physical. So, take a look at anything in the world. See, in a tower that didn't disappear. Somebody thought of it that he created the four months, somebody thought of it, that he created it. And so, that is how you can create wealth just by using this and then turn it into the physical.

Sarah: That is great. Some great, action items. And can you tell us the name of your podcast?

Gary: Real Talk with Gary.

Sarah: "Real talk with Gary". Gary and I have done, I don't know, maybe five or six podcasts together. You do a lot of research on this stuff. So, it is great, you're very inspirational. And I think you've got a great take on it because real estate is a way to get to where we really, truly want to get to. And it's not because we liked the brick and mortar and we'd necessarily like tenants, but it is, what kind of lifestyle can you live? What can you do with your family? Thank you so much, Gary for some great insights and some key takeaways.