Vinod Krishnan: That's exactly what it was. Having said that, I guess because of the pandemic or whatnot, it didn't exactly work out the way I wanted it to.
Alfonso Salemi: Welcome back, REITE Club nation, another episode of the REITE Club podcast. I'm Alfonso Salemi, and today my amazing co-host
Francois Lanthier. How are you doing, Francois?
Francois Lanthier: Very well. How about you, Alfonso? What's going on?
Alfonso Salemi: Oh, doing great. We are minute by minute waiting for the arrival of our little baby boy, myself and my fiance. So on pins and needles waiting and in the home office not being too far from home, but still very grateful and fortunate that still being able to get a lot done remotely with the blessings of technology and everything that we can do. Yeah, it's been great. And yeah, continuing to move forward. And how about you, Francois? What's new with you?
Francois Lanthier: I'm actually taking some Spanish lessons. So I did speak Spanish, but it's been seven years, so I'm quite rusty. But that's really fun and it just changes the mindset completely. So it's important to be immersed in real estate, but sometimes doing something altogether different brings in a fresh perspective. So that's why I'm doing it.
Alfonso Salemi: I love that. So you're, I think I know that's about all I know in Spanish. But for me, that's tennis. I take some tennis lessons and I play tennis a couple times a week. And it, you are immersed. You can't be thinking about anything else. For myself, playing tennis, being in that moment when you're trying to learn Spanish and thinking. Probably, I don't know, in English or French. This is a third language now for you.
Francois Lanthier: It gets very tricky. I end up speaking English instead of Spanish. It's very weird.
Alfonso Salemi: You have to translate to yourself sometimes, but now that's fantastic and it is, it's being immersed and whatever we're doing right is having that balance and balancing moving those things across, because sometimes you can be too much into one thing. But it gives you that other perspective and going through that. But that's fantastic. And yeah, super excited.
Have a great guest today. Nod, who's, I guess pretty, I guess just finishing up his rookie season, if you wanna call it in real estate and really accomplished so much in a short period of time in the middle of a pandemic have a great chat with him on how he was able to grow build teams, invest remotely that's something that I have a little bit of issue, trouble with or, again, wrapping my head around investing remotely, having teams of people in different areas, having them there and not being able to see or be there at the property. he speaks about it great.
He's an IT. Which again, is a whole nother discipline and different than real estate without having that background and great chat with him and how important networking is. So we're we're super happy that we're doing these podcasts, that our network is growing, the REITE club's network is growing.
If you haven't reached out or got in contact with us, make sure that you do get to thereiteclub.com reach out to us and we want to hear from you. If you wanna be a guest on the podcast, have a cool story. Or maybe have some good resources that you can offer to the club. We would love to hear from you. So what do you say, Francois let's get to the show.
Francois Lanthier: Yes, let's get to it.
Alfonso Salemi: Welcome to the podcast, Vinod Krishnan. Thank you so much for joining, Francois and I and looking forward to getting to know you a little bit. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.
Vinod Krishnan: Thanks, Alfonso. And thanks Francois thanks for having me.
Francois Lanthier: It's a pleasure. For those that are listening in, I've been following Vinod for about a year. We follow the same mentoring program and I've seen all kinds of great stories on Facebook. And funny enough, as we're recording this, there's a big Facebook outage, so can't find out more.
We have to go by memory , but Vinod. Welcome and I'm gonna take Alfonso's line. Could you give us a 30,000 foot view of your background as a real estate investor? Before we came on, you were telling us some background, so please go ahead.
Vinod Krishnan: All right. So I am an IT manager by profession and I still am about a year ago, actually exactly a year ago, September 29th, 2020 is when I started my first investment. I always had this idea of investing in real estate. Just didn't know how to do it. I thought I figured it out. At least
I saw other people doing it around that time and I decided to jump in right away. So I started with a couple of buy and holds, and then I realized, oh now what do I do?
That was a traditional mortgage, the traditional 20 percent mortgage, and I bought a couple of buy and hold and then I don't have any more money to put in as a down payment. So I decided to do a pivot on my strategy, and then I jumped right into some flippings. So some active investments there.
I started in January 2021. I did my first flip in January, 2021. And since then I did six flips and all of them remote. So I live in Oakville, Ontario, and those who know this area know it's a pretty expensive location to do flip especially for a beginner. So all of these are remote flips, and that's something exciting that I wanted to talk to you guys too here, because I have seen a lot of investors, new investors especially struggling with this exact reason.
Hey, I can't find anything near me. I don't have the courage to do remote investing, so how do I do this? So that's something that I would like to talk about. So yeah, all of my flips are remote. Really, I haven't really gone to visit any of these properties except the last one, which is in Kitchener.
That's the closest to me. So a few flips there. We just added one property to BRRRR and we have something in Alberta for infill. It's a new development and an Airbnb and recently getting into some, a bigger flip, which is an acreage flip in Alberta. So that's where I stand right now. Bigger things in the pipeline. But this is where I am right now.
Alfonso Salemi: That's fantastic. Cause that always comes up, right? The remote investing and, I know Francois, you've invested remotely and in some ways I have too. If you consider Northern Ontario, even eastern Canada with some rent to own a little bit different when you're investing that. But doing flips from a remote area that's incredible because I did some renovations on a project. Luckily it was like a three minute walk and I was there almost every day. I didn't do anything, but I just walked to make sure that it was clean and stuff like that.
With your background as an IT manager, how does, to me it almost seems like conflicting, the hands on and the hands off or how did you manage that? How did you get past that barrier, to do that remotely and what would you recommend that someone either get better at or higher out when you're doing things like that remotely?
Vinod Krishnan: Number one, I'll jump directly into it, right? Number one managing a project. And number two, trust people. And processes. So one thing that worked for me is I'm part of a few networking groups and some of them are very close like the council from Cash Flow Tribe and me, Dave Group and so on.
I'm in a very close knit group there and I do have several allies and I network, like I do pick up the phone pretty much every day. Talk to someone new every day, pretty much. So I network and I have developed some allies. During this process, there are a few individuals that I know that I can really trust working with, and I don't really need to micromanage.
I'm okay with letting it go. I really don't need to control everything as long as I know the, at a higher level, I know the numbers work. I know this is what's needed for innovation. Plus 10% age maybe. I know this is the ARV, so as long as I trust the person who I work with to find out the ARV, I trust the person who I work with to find the renovation and to execute the renovation.
I'm okay with that. So I'm lucky to be able to find such individuals in certain cities. And that's where I went for flips to those cities. Moncton, New Brunswick, Saint Mary Ontario, Pembroke, which is near you Francois, right?
Francois Lanthier: Yes.
Vinod Krishnan: Pembroke and Pua in Ontario. And the closest is Kitchener here. I also have a couple of flips in Alberta, and, which is a slightly different story because now I do have a team in Alberta, so that's slightly different. But other cities. Yeah, I was really trying it out and came out without much damage.
Francois Lanthier: That's quite a variety of markets. And earlier on you mentioned something else that's interesting and that I know where it comes from, but the Airbnb arbitrage, it's something we don't hear too much on The REITE club. But I have heard it on many other networks. So does that tie in with the flips? Do you how, like how do you get into that same market or totally different?
Alfonso Salemi: If we could take it a step back, explain that cuz I've obviously heard of Airbnb, but the arbitrage maybe Yeah. Explaining and how to do that cuz I've never heard of that.
Vinod Krishnan: Okay. So Airbnb arbitrage again, I was involved with some networking groups out of Alberta and I was talking to them and I got this idea like, if we can lease a unit and then do an Airbnb on it.
Why not? Again, I didn't know whether it was, it would work, but I just wanted to give it a try. And that's exactly what I did. I will give it a try. So there was a management company in Alberta who would manage it as for us, this is supposed to be completely hands off. And so they would manage, they would find the unit.
All that I needed to do was to sign the lease. And pay the rent every month and pay the management fee, and they would manage everything. So yeah that's exactly that's exactly what it was. Having said that during guessing because of the pandemic or whatnot, it didn't exactly work out the way I wanted it to.
Again, there is not much of a damage for me, but to tell you the truth, it was not a huge success. So that's why I didn't go for the second, third one or the fourth ones. So I just had one and I'm still running it.
Alfonso Salemi: If you could do something differently, or if you would've changed something in that process what maybe would you apply now if you were to do that again?
Obviously nobody could have predicted the Covid pandemic, but, what would you have done differently or advice that you'd give to someone that would, you know, to, or the next time that you make an investment?
Vinod Krishnan: I would suggest that you do your own due diligence. Do not rely on Someone else's due diligence on this. Do your own and then identify, know your target market. There are tools out there called AirDNA, for example, where you could do your own research on a specific market during market, during specific times, and so on. So do that and if you think that the numbers work very well for you.
Then, jump into it and also make sure the target city is again, so during the pandemic, The tourist cities really got hurt. Keep those things in mind. Probably do that in a bigger city than trying to do it in a very touristy city. And so do your own due diligence and find the right property management company.
It's a very hands on business if we have to do it ourselves. It's a very HandsOn business, so ideally you should give it to a management company to do it, but do your own research.
Francois Lanthier: That's what I was gonna say. My AirBNB it's very much like a baby. Alfonso. You'll know all about it very soon. So you need to keep an eye on it, water it, and really keep a close eye on housekeeping and supplies and there's a patio door that fell off like you never know what's gonna happen and you need to keep your client out.
They're much more demanding. And that's a very interesting insight, like you. So the market where you went was very much tourism, but I found during the pandemic, the biggest clients were actually workers. So nurses, people isolating a very different clientele we've never seen before. Like you said, no one could have predicted that.
That's great insight though, and something really interesting to try for those that have maybe limited funds or like a smaller budget, like you said, you're renting a unit, you furnish it somehow. Maybe it's rent to own furniture. And or some sort of creative strategy to furnish a place, and then you can rent it in AirBNB if it's allowed by the owner and the city and all those fun levels. Wow. You've done quite a bit in a year . So how is it with your family? Do you have a wife or someone that supports you in all this?
Vinod Krishnan: That's very important. Yes. Absolutely. And so it's very important that your spouse is on. When you are in the real estate business, because you do spend a lot of time on the phone talking to different people and networking and as long as they understand why we are doing this, I think that's half the battle. So that's very important. Take them into confidence as to why we are doing this and yeah, she's very supportive. In fact even when I was only thinking about nine to five she's the one who taught me, there is a world out there outside of nine to five. So yeah, absolutely. Very supportive.
Alfonso Salemi: That's wonderful. Sorry, go ahead.
Vinod Krishnan: I just wanted to add during this pandemic and we work from home, so that kind of helped too. Like I don't have that commute time between my city and Toronto and, I saved a lot of time there and I could put those times to good use.
Alfonso Salemi: Absolutely. That's definitely been one of the positive things. Less commuting time, maybe less pollution out there as well too in our vehicles. But using that time whether it was, the commute time to, like you said, network. And, if I'm, and if I'm trying to keep track here cause that is a lot that you've done in the past year.
Two duplexes of buy and hold, six flips a BRRRR the AirBNB arbitrage, which. Can't wait to dig into this a little bit more and learn a little bit more about that. And now, with an infill lot, so with those people up there saying, Of course. You live in Oakville, you have lots of money.
You bought all these properties, you have all kinds of money. How did you finance these? How did you do this? Was it yourself? Was it joint venture partners? Conventional financing. Walk us through how you were able to qualify. Obviously you talked about the due diligence and the importance of making sure that ARVs and the finances are working out, but how did you purchase these and finance these products properly?
Vinod Krishnan: How did I do this? Two words. OPR and OPM, right? Other People's Resources and Other People's Money. And somehow, I usually don't use the word other people's money. It's not like we are using somebody else's money. We are working together with them to invest so that we benefit and they benefit.
Everybody wins in this game. So only my first two properties, the two duplexes, that's the money out of my pocket. The rest, everything, 100 percent are investors funds and it's a networking. The group, the council group and my other networking groups, prosper Path, that's, I'm part of that too.
I'm part of a lot of networking groups and I meet individuals there. I met investors there. I talk to them and I pitch them ideas. Yeah, so I did source most of the funds for all these flips from there. And I have also used institutional lenders, in some cases. For example, my latest flip in Kitchener, that's pretty high, it's a high end flip in a way.
I had to put together like 800,000 plus, and so part of it was like institutional money. But the other part was private individuals and JV partners. So yeah, I have had all kinds of different sources, JV private individuals and institutional investors.
Francois Lanthier: Do you find, like you mentioned, lots of networking. After a while you have a few partners and then they wanna rinse and repeat. You don't need a million partners, you need lots. But so what's happened for you, like the same few people?
Vinod Krishnan: Absolutely. The first few projects, I exceeded all the first few projects and then the same individuals are investing with me for my current projects. And now I have something, the project. Coming up is pretty big. So I need a little bit more funds than usual, so I need to go outside of that circle. But generally, yes they're repeat investors.
Francois Lanthier: That's great. And now you know where to find more investors and how to approach them. And that's something a lot of people ask me, how do I find investors? So do you have some tips Vinod, like on how to build your profile and what do you do to attract people?
Vinod Krishnan: It all goes back to, there's one thing more important in real estate than location. And that's the network, right? It's just talking to different individuals.
There are enough people with money out there, they want to do business. It's just that you need to create that report with them. Start interacting with them, talk to them, let them know what you do. Keep them updated. Keep your social media updated. See, normally I'm a very private individual.
I'm before real estate. I would hardly post anything on Facebook. Again, it's the nature of the business. Others need to know what we do for two reasons. Number one, if that inspires someone, great. If this interview inspires at least one new pairing. Investor. That's awesome. I think this, it served the purpose.
Number one, go out there, put it out on social media. It could inspire some people. And number two, like investors getting to know you and other parts, potential JV partners with or without money, it doesn't matter. People will know you and you have a lot of opportunities to work together. So I would say network. That's the key.
Alfonso Salemi: As the listeners are, listening to what you're saying, networking and, it's definitely got a little bit harder, with the digital and, less in-person events. Now we're. Thankfully getting back into more in-person events. But when you were working with your first joint venture, you said you had done two projects under your belt, that first one, that's awesome that you took that yourself and you went on and you learned and you had that experience.
You gained a little bit of experience, but then when you found that first joint venture partner like I just can hear the question coming in from all the listeners, I don't have any experience, I don't have any knowledge of how to do this. How do you answer those questions or, if an investor or joint venture partner says to you why should I give you your money? Or what experience do you have? How did you, I'm sure you must have handled those objections.
Cause I know I took a similar path where I'd invested on my own and then started bringing on joint venture partners. How did you address those concerns and what can you share with the listeners?
Vinod Krishnan: Through this networking, even before I started looking for properties I did the networking and I had already built a kind of support system among our investor community.
Here's the deal. I think it was the end of November or beginning of December. My realtor from Pembroke, she called me and said, Hey, I know that you're looking for a flip opportunity. We do have an opportunity here in Pet Baba, which is right next to Pembroke, it's a very good deal. So I asked her for details. She gave me the numbers, she gave me the pictures, I did trust her and I said, okay, yeah, let's do it.
I didn't know where the money was gonna come from, but I knew that I had to close it on January 5th, and by the nature of that purchase, I couldn't even put some conditions there, and I wouldn't recommend that to everyone, but I'm just saying this is what happened to me.
I knew in my mind that the deal was good and I would be able to find money for that. Now it's just a matter of where to source that from. So I did let all my friends know, I did let everyone in that inner circle know that I'm looking for this. I did have a couple of sleepless nights. I need to tell you the truth.
Because nothing happened the first two or three days. And on the fourth day someone called me, so you want funds for this ride? I'm like, yeah, still looking for it. Okay, I know. So he connected us and so that individual was looking for an opportunity to invest. I was looking for doing the flip and, it's again the networking that helped me.
That guy brought the person in. And then we did a joint venture. So my point here is you are not going to get everything perfectly aligned. Before you are able to start getting into real estate, as long as you are confident that the numbers work, the numbers are good, you have enough time before closing to get things in order. If you have confidence in yourselves I'm sure you'll find a way. So I knew I would find a way somehow. I just didn't know how.
Francois Lanthier: You invested in yourself quite a bit. You've joined a few different mentoring groups and programs, so that's really an important part as well. Like it inspires confidence and like you said, you set up a network before. Going out and offering your deals, cause then people start getting back to you. But yeah, there's always an element of risk and I really admire what you've done.
I've had those sleepless nights. Like you said, sometimes you bid on it, no conditions and oh, yeah, I need to get that money soon. And that has happened to me before. That's excellent. So do you have any key advice you'd like to share with our audience? Something that really stands out?
Vinod Krishnan: It was like that old Nike Air. Just do it. Do not wait. That's exactly what I just mentioned: do not wait for everything to align. It's not gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. Just do it, but do the right thing. And it doesn't mean that do the right thing, doesn't mean that you. You're looking for perfectionism there. By that, what I mean is do not cut corners. You are here to serve others. Just keep that in mind, always right.
You're here to serve others for some short term gratification. Do not mess up your long term goals or your long term prospects. Follow the process, trust the process, follow the process. Success will follow later. Do not look for instant success. So yeah, just do it, do the right thing. These would be my two key sentences for any aspiring investors, and of course, two more, which is get a mentor.
It's very important and without a mentor, I compare it to someone who wants to be the fastest runner in the world. And this guy, he may be very fast, but he may not be doing it the right way or using his potential to the maximum without a trainer. It's very similar in real estate. You may know everything that you want to do, however, without a mentor you may not be doing in the right way. You may not be doing it the right way or you may not be using your full potential to get there. So get a mentor and just do it.
Francois Lanthier: Excellent advice. I really enjoy it. Thank you so much. So now we're gonna transition into our lightning round. So we have a series of four questions. We ask all our guests, and they have to say the same answer. No, I'm kidding. It's always the same question. So anyway, and I never remember them, so it's always new. So question number one, are you ready to play this game?
Vinod Krishnan: All right, let's do it.
Francois Lanthier: The first one is easy. What is the best advice you've ever received from another investor or at a networking event?
Vinod Krishnan: Oh, get a mentor. I got the same advice.
Alfonso Salemi: Nice. Very good. Okay, so without being repetitive here now, what is your favorite resource for real estate investing? And that could be anything, a book, a training, a personal event, but a resource that maybe you use quite often that's useful.
Vinod Krishnan: I would say other people my Allies.
Alfonso Salemi: It's all about that team. You mentioned all the different team members having that trust. Especially when you're from different provinces or remote locations, having that team and building that trust and knowing who they are and knowing what they stand for and what their goals are is so greater.
Vinod Krishnan: It's better than any books out there.
Francois Lanthier: It's true. Living knowledge, living books, and the third question, what is the attribute that has made you most successful?
Vinod Krishnan: I am not risk covered, what is the opposite of risk covers? I don't caring. I'm okay taking risks as long as I know what I'm getting myself into. And so I think if you want to scale, that's very important. You can't always be safe and have success in business. So yeah. I love that. Again I take risks.
Alfonso Salemi: You have to, there's no, we take a risk every day, waking up, crossing the street, doing what we have to do. And so that's great advice. I know, and just before we started recording, you mentioned you have two young boys, eight and five years old, and obviously you mentioned your wife and her support. What does a typical Sunday morning look like for you? Is that family time? Is that working time? Is it looking at deals? What is a typical Sunday? What Do you think?
Vinod Krishnan: My Saturday is family time. Sunday I get a little bit more into some business. So I do have a call with me so I do have a business partner. He lives in Alberta. His name is Hael and a lot of the success is, I can't claim it all myself. It's equally attributed to him. So I do have business calls with him every day, every morning and I do have other networking calls.
I would've set up some networking calls with someone on Sundays. And in the afternoon I do have a call with my mentorship group. And sometimes I go to my Property that's happening in Kitchener right now. So Sunday is for work, Saturday is for family.
Alfonso Salemi: I love it. And as you were saying that, it made me think of a quote, and I think we've heard this before, right? But if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with many, right? And bring those people along with you and learn from the ones that have gone farther ahead and you're so humble.
When you do share those successes and the people you know the great story within a short period of time, you've amassed a lot of experience and can't wait to talk to you even, six months from now and another year from now, and see you at The REITE club event and adding to the strength of our network of the people around us there. If people wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that?
Vinod Krishnan: The best way to reach me is on Facebook. You can look for Vinod Krishnan or in Instagram it's the same handle, or you can email. I don't know if you have it. If you're gonna show it somewhere, but if you want to email, it's kanvin.properties. So email, Facebook, or Instagram. I'm available and I love networking as you probably would've already learned by this time. I would love to talk to you.
Francois Lanthier: Excellent. Thank you so much. And you have final words of advice. Something else you'd like to add? For our listeners.
Vinod Krishnan: I think I already talked about my final word of advice. It's just that do not just sit on the sidelines, just get into the business and everything is, as they say, figure outable. You can figure out everything. You will learn everything on the job unless you start doing.
You will never figure these things out. I just read somewhere today that Netflix didn't, did not start as a streaming giant and Amazon did not start, as this company that sell everything. They started selling books. Netflix started with renting DVDs. So look where they're now. So just start and you will figure out where you want to.
Francois Lanthier: That's so true words of wisdom. Alfonso, I think that's what you did. You started it and look at where you are now. That's what I did too. In the worst case, we sell the place and move on. So the excellent words of advice. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you REITE club nation for listening. And it's been a pleasure. Until the next time, come grow with us.
Vinod Krishnan: Thanks guys. Bye.
Francois Lanthier: Alfonso, what did you think? I was inspired, all this energy one year doing long distance flips, duplexes, Airbnb, arbitrage joint ventures, and private lenders. I don't know, I'm just, my head is spinning. This is such a great interview.
Alfonso Salemi: Absolutely. And you know what a multiple of different disciplines and in trying different things, learning from some mistakes as well too along the way. And yeah, I definitely picked up some information there. The Airbnb arbitrage is something that I'm gonna look into and there's something that he picked up that I think may go unnoticed on most days, on most of my days.
Talking to somebody new every day or learning something new every day, whether it is about real estate or something completely different. But continue to expand your knowledge base, expand your network, and continue to grow. And that's what it's really all about. And that's what I really loved, what he said is that he's made it a focus on growing his network.
Coming from an outside industry where it was nine to five and working in that industry, but being forced to grow that and getting into different groups and meeting all kinds of people really is what the little seedlings of The REITE club was all about is growing networks and meeting new people.
Francois Lanthier: It was a great takeaway and absolutely this growth and this, he went from being risk averse. In the beginning he said he had analysis paralysis, and now he's not risk averse. So this is crazy. It's like swimming or biking. You jump in or start pedaling and at first, you'll fall, but eventually, you're like, this is easy, just like swimming.
You can float. Worst case, hopefully, you don't float, and I find the arbitrage maybe with some floating, but in the future, he has a new strategy he could explore. So I really invite all our listeners to take some notes. This was a really good episode and great advice and make sure to reach out to Vinod and find out more.
Alfonso, we should advise the listeners as well to give us a rating on Apple Podcast. What did you think about this? Give us some notes, we wanna know. And yeah, that's it. Come grow with us. And also our new tagline, customize your life. So I love that in Alfonso, I think you're doing that. You said you moved. I moved three times this summer. And anyway, we can all customize our lives. So yeah, that's it. Till the next time.
Alfonso Salemi: See you next time guys. Come grow with us.
Francois Lanthier: Take care.
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