Daniel: Ken Beaton is our next presenter. He is the president of ARCA real estate. He's a full-time investor in Eastern Ontario and actually came all the way from Ottawa to speak to us today. He has been a full-time investor since 2001 focusing on apartment buildings. He was a mentor for a while for Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That was in 2007, 2008. He moved from beautiful where you are in Ottawa to Edmonton, where you opened a real estate brokerage there and you were there from 2010 to 2013.
You are now with EXP, currently a broker and realtor. Your passion which made you drive from Ottawa to come and talk to us today and your focus is on educating and helping others to achieve their goals. Ken Beaton..
Ken: A lot of the information I'm gonna share with you, you've already heard, but I don't know whether it has truly resonated and sunk in. I'm going to go over a lot of that same information again. I'm gonna share with you what I'd discovered to be the missing piece to keeping you or getting you unstuck. I'm gonna share with you my journey and how I discovered this missing piece. I'm gonna share with you a little bit about who I am, where I came from, what I did and what I currently do to help others. I'm going to go into depth of my past that I've never gone into before, because I think it's really important for you to understand who I was then to who I am today.
Who is Ken Beaton? When people see me, meet me now, what I drive, how I dress, where I live, all these things they automatically assume I'm on the rich side of this balance beam. That's not where I started though. But most people believe that's the silver spoon type of thing. I was very much over on the poor side.
Today I am on the other side. How did I get there? To give you an idea of where I grew up, this is a small three bedroom bungalow and small town, Eastern Ontario current place that my father built, who was a machinist and just a tradesperson. My mother was a stay at home Mom. She did not look like that and raised three kids. Very modest lifestyle. I would say, very average, if not below average, one thing that I had that most people do not have the privilege of is growing up in the family campground.
My grandfather bought this piece in the early forties and started the campground business. My father took it over. I had the opportunity to grow up here in this environment, in the summertime which was a great place to grow up. But again, it was not here's a picture of the wrong thing, that's a picture of me and my second birthday. You can tell the cottage is not a Taj Mahal but it was a great place to grow up.
I was very fortunate to meet and marry my wife, who I'm still very happily married to. I was only 21, she was 19. We just celebrated our 39th anniversary actually. I graduated high school with a D average 54% average. I ended up because I couldn't go to college and university with those grades. I ended up working at the family campground in the summertime and I became a ski technician at a local ski shop in the wintertime with no full-time career.
I'm a father of three beautiful daughters. If any of my daughters were brought home, somebody with that pedigree wouldn't happen as if I have anything to say. I've learned that lesson too. I quickly realized that I need a career. I went off as a mature student to a local college, literally in August school starts September and I'm scanning through okay, that looks interesting. I picked civil engineering, loved it, graduated with honors top of the class. I worked in that field for over two years, but in the Ottawa market, then it was a dead end.
I had three options. First option was to move West or up North to a little place called Fort Mac, which I had never heard of before. I said, no, there's no way I'm leaving my family, my home. Nope, can't do that. The second option and I was really pushed hard by one of my professors to go off to university for another year. I would've had my engineering degree. I thought that meant leaving home again, but more importantly, I'm not smart enough to do that. That was my mindset.
The third option, the option I went with was to go home to my comfort zone. I ended up going back to the family campground. My wife and I purchased it from my father in 1986. It's 20 acres of prime waterfront 40 minutes from Ottawa. I think there's some opportunities there. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have sold it for dirt cheap but I did. The reality was with that business we were living on $24,000 a year income. It just was not a very profitable business. We had an extremely cheap mindset that we could do everything ourselves. We wouldn't pay for tradespeople.
I do all my own electrical, plumbing, you name it, I do it. Scarcity mindset, huge scarcity mindset as well. There's not enough to share this business with anybody else. Ignorance, we both operated from a place of ignorance that we didn't know any better. We operated in this fear of failure all the time rather than try something new. You stick with what and you just keep repeating that. The fear to ask for help, because we were very young at that point in time, a campground of people who are twice our age. We were always operating in this place with fear. We operated from a survival perspective.
I had multiple jobs, two, three jobs every year, all the time. I was a driver instructor for a year, which was a lot of fun. I like to say scary fun. I saw my life flash by a couple times. but that's where I was introduced to teaching and helping other people. I really loved it. I got my real estate license and tried my hand at real estate for a few years in the early nineties. I sucked at it. Terrible agent and I'm not much better now, but I realize now what I could have done back then as well. I ended up being a school bus driver for 15 years, which worked well with the campground and actually did snow plowing in the winter and I was an awesome handyman. Still am, unfortunately.
Life would've continued on, except I experienced a major turning point and we all experienced these major turning points. Mine took place in 1997. Both my parents passed away very suddenly, operating the campground. We closed Thanksgiving weekend. The weekend after that my mother passed away very suddenly. My father had early stage Alzheimer's so we had to take care of him. We took over his house. We're gonna renovate his house, sell our house. We're in the process of doing all that. January 1st, 1998, he passed away. okay. What happened January 2nd of 98? Ice storm in 98.
Now, we're living in the country, burying my father, no power for the next 15 days, a house to renovate, a house to sell. The campground opens in two months. No time for grieving or anything of that nature. That was my major turning point. I'm now 39 years old, married with three beautiful daughters. I just lost both my parents. Living paycheck to paycheck, no savings, no education fund at all for the kids, no retirement fund for ourselves. We weren't even thinking about retirement. I was definitely feeling like a failure. So, to say it was a low point in my life would be an understatement. Fast forward another year pulled myself up.
We gotta start taking care of ourselves. This gentleman came out and sat with us and I simply asked one question, how much would we need to have in our savings? If I wanted to retire with $3,500 a month. When I turned 55 or 60 he came back $3,500 a month. Isn't a whole lot of money. It was to us back then. I can't imagine living on $3,500 a month at this point in time. I might cover our mortgage maybe. He came back with an evaluation of a million dollars. He might as well have said 10 million, a hundred million, because I never even heard of a million dollars at this point in my life, but we moved on and did the best we could.
The solution appeared in the form of a little book in 2001 while searching for, we were homeschooling our kids. I'm always looking for some financial literacy information for the kids. Actually we were down in Toronto in a bookstore. I came across this little book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, who has not read it. Should they read it? Yes, absolutely. This changed my life and it has changed so many other people's lives as well. After reading this book, I knew that real estate was the solution.
I ended up taking some real estate courses through the wealth intelligence academy. I was one of those people who spent $30,000, $35,000 after going to a free evening event. I saw the value in it. I went and I signed up for those courses. That's where I was also following Robert Kiyosaki very closely back then as well. That's where I was introduced to personal development first with Marshall Silver, and secondly, with Tony Robbins and many others since then.
Over two years, I'd invested over $80,000 and we still wonder where we came up with that $80,000. I have no idea, but you just spend it and the money, as long as you keep paying your bills, keep spending. I ended up mentoring for WIA, which was then eventually taken over by the Rich Dad Education company, because they saw that I was applying what I was learning and I was getting the results. They asked me to come and work for them where I discovered my passion for helping other people. Then I started fast track real estate brokerage in Edmonton because I was invited out there by Darren Weeks, who I had been following here in Canada as well because he was known as the Rich Dad of Canada.
Darren convinced me to pull up roots, move to Edmonton, start a real estate brokerage focusing solely on investors. It's pretty difficult to find a real estate agent who understands what you're trying to do as an investor. Would you agree? Imagine having a brokerage that's all they do. That's what we did. That also allowed me the opportunity to work alongside Robert Kiyosaki and Ken McRoy which was pretty cool to be in that inner circle. I then realized that there's a lot of expensive education out there that people can't afford or refuse to invest in that people should have access to.
I created my own online courses. I have three online courses that people can purchase and learn from. I also have a mentoring program as well. This has all allowed me to purchase. I'm way over 200 units now. We're actually reconfiguring our whole portfolio. It's still growing but shrinking at the same time. This is a building that we're purchasing in two weeks. It's a brand new building in my hometown of Almont and there's one just to the right hand side. That's being built right now, land on the other side, where two more are being built next year. I own all four of those in a row.
Let's get to what I believe the missing piece is that keeps people stuck. We've heard the 80-20 principle already, Pareto's rule. If you have a hundred people in a room attending an event, 80% will do below average, 20% will do above average of the 20%, 80% will do pretty good, pretty well. The other 20% are gonna do extremely well. That works out to being 4% and that's where Joan and I found ourselves in that 4%. While we were going through this journey, we started off with the education with another couple, from a local town close to us. No kids, both working full-time. They had more money than we had the same opportunity to invest yet. They did nothing. We ran into them a couple years later and they said, yeah, the program doesn't work. Okay, that was interesting. They were definitely on the 80% side. I let that go.
As I started to teach, I saw this over and over again, as an educator. It's very discouraging to watch 80% of the people do nothing and keep showing up to the same events and keep doing nothing. That's always been in the back of my mind. I love the idea of a car dealership. You walk into a car dealership, you see the sales team, they're working for the same company, selling the same product. They've got access to the same training and the same opportunities. Yet one experience is success and the other one, not so much. Can you relate to that?
Why does this happen? That's what's been eating at me for all these years. How do we break through this 80-20 barrier? I'm gonna share with you the top three reasons why I feel most people fail to break through this hidden barrier and fail to achieve their goals and keep them stuck. Is that of any interest you wanna hear? In reverse order, staying stuck, lack of proper education. Now, I'm not saying that you're not intelligent. You haven't got a university degree or anything of that nature. I'm not saying that at all, because right now in one of my mentor groups.
I have two lawyers, a doctor, an engineer and a high tech programmer whatnot. Very smart, very educated individuals, but they didn't have the right education with respect to investing in real estate. We've heard about no money. Is that a challenge for most people? Like it keeps them stuck, no deals out there. Apparently there are deals in Toronto, even who knows. No partners or bad partners, you have all this negative information about it. That's one of the reasons for staying stuck. If you have these beliefs and again, that's why I created my three courses. I'm not here to sell the three courses or talk about the three courses because I can do an hour and a half on each one.
I do have information at the back of the room. If you want to come see me later, I can talk about those. The second reason for staying stuck is lack of support. This is a huge one. There's a lot of newbies, just getting into the game. Are you here with your partners at home? When you go home, what's your partner gonna say, what's your family gonna say, what are your coworkers gonna say? What's your circle of friends gonna say, right? They're gonna pull you back down. Why? Because they haven't done it. They don't wanna see you succeed. Stay with me, please make me feel better.
It's not about you. It's about them. Lack of support means that you need to have the right team and that team includes your spouse. Including your family includes your friends, coworker, and then your lawyers, your accountants, your realtors, all of these other people that you need for success as well. But you also need to continue learning and growing. With all the years of experience I have, I still have one thing, I don't know everything and I never will know everything and I keep learning every day.
You need to surround yourself with more education, whether that be reading books, going to events like this, going to paid events, hiring mentors. It'll pay huge dividends. Number one reason for staying stuck. This is the missing piece that actually I've heard it talked about several times today already. But this is huge. It's allowing your negative beliefs and paradigms to control your destiny. That little, or perhaps not so little voice that's in your head.
If you're wondering what that little voice is, and you're saying to yourself, what the heck's he talking about? That's the voice I'm talking about. Every one of you has that, the little voice in your head. If you don't think you have a little voice in your head, you might need some therapy. What is this little boy screaming at you? Not whispering, screaming at you? Who do you think you are? You're not smart enough. You don't know anyone with money. You aren't worth enough. What will people think of you? That is risky? What if you fail? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Can anybody relate to that?
If you're not putting your hand up, that little voice is doing something to you. What's my little voice saying to me? What if I fail? What will people say? What if I stand up here and who was it? I'm sorry, your name again for the property management company. Brady, you stood up here and you made a commitment to the room. The room is gonna hold you accountable. It's terrifying isn't it? What if you don't do that now you're gonna look like a real schmuck if you didn't think that now you do. Rejection, who loves rejection. Good sales people do, but most people don't, therefore you try and avoid the rejection who likes to hear no. I can't afford that. I don't deserve to be successful.
Brad and I were talking about this last night. Brad's over here. He's one of my students and he works with the epic girls, actually now. Brad and I had a little bit too much scotch last night. We didn't have enough and it's still half a bottle up there. We were celebrating his birthday. We were talking about all of this stuff as well. He said, you don't have any fear of doing stuff? I said, absolutely. I still have all of these fears and paradigms in my head, screaming at me.
Sometimes the difference is, I don't allow them to control my destiny anymore. If I went back and thought back to my university opportunity, what a lost opportunity. I don't regret that now because I wouldn't be where I am today. I'm very happy where I am today, but my life would be very different. Moving forward, I still have those same fears, those same paradigms and limiting beliefs, but I just choose not to listen to them. I don't allow them to control me anymore. I control them. Make it make sense.
How did I get to this point? It was through personal development. I took the real estate courses, but so did many other people and 80% of those people did nothing or very little with it. The people who actually committed to making the change and invested in the next step, which is personal development, are the ones who really took off. I started off with Marshall Silver, as I mentioned. Investing $15,000 with him over a period of a year and a half, two years. That's where I had my first one-on-one mentor. He was a phone mentor. He was in Florida, one of the best experiences I ever had. I never even heard of a mentor before that.
We've gone through all of Tony Robbins programs. Amazing, highly recommended, but not cheap. Robert Kiyosaki, I've been following Robert since I first got into it in 2004 was the first time I met him and I've done a book study with him. Like we had a small group of 12 people. We did a book study about a pretty cool guy to get to know. Dave Debo, I think many of you have seen and heard Dave Debo before. Dave and I are best friends. I met Dave in 2008, and invested in a program with him. We've invested together. We help each other all the time. Bob Proctor, who's from Toronto. I've invested with him recently. He is probably the single person who knows the most about think and grow rich, the book think and grow rich. He studies it every day.
Mark Frent, in 2014 to present, I say priceless. I'll tell you about that in a second. Over the years I've invested easily over $150,000 just in personal development and that's US dollars. We're talking over a couple hundred thousand dollars and I continue to do it as well. Why do I continue to do it? Because it improves me, but it also helps me provide more service and more help to my students as well. Who is this Mark Frent guy? Mark, I met him in 2014. He signed up for one of my programs. Dave Debo invited me out to an event in BC. I went out, spoke and did a presentation. My wife happened to be with me at this time. She is still with me, but she was on that trip.
Let's be clear about that. She took this trip with me and Mark fell in love with us and he really loved our relationship and he wanted to get to know us and he figured the best way to get to know us is to sign up for the program. He signed up for the program and then he signed up for the one year mentoring I was doing at that time, which was $12,000. He didn't know where he was getting the money from. He had to sell that to his wife. He was still in university. He managed to pull that all together, got to know Mark very well.
Has anybody met Mark by chance? I don't think he's been down here in this area. He's from Calgary. He's now my business partner, because as I learned from him, he's a psychologist studying psychology and neuropsychology with a passion to understand what causes change and motivation in people. He worked with the Alberta services in the addictions, mental health, people that were basically written off in society. That's who he was focusing on. He's just passionate about understanding human potential plus he's a real estate investor.
Over the years I've been trying to teach what personal development I had learned to my students to help them, but that's not my area of expertise. I'm a real estate investor. Mark came along and we partnered up and with my encouragement. He took the thinking in the results coaching program. He now does his own programs that he sells as well, but we've partnered up. What we do now is we offer this quantum leap weekend event. And at this three day workshop, actually, we're not supposed to say workshop because it's not work, but who's kidding who it is work. It's personal development. It is hard work.
What we do is we help you identify what your hidden beliefs and paradigms are. We share with you how to truly mastermind who's in a mastermind group right now, very few people. It is one of the most important tools that you can participate in as a mastermind with other like-minded people to help you get ahead. We do that for three days and we go through a raising capital exercise. You learn why you do what you do. All of our habits and beliefs, but more importantly, you learn why you don't do what you should be doing.
You learned to mastermind like Napoleon Hill in the book, "Think and Grow Rich". Imagine sitting in a room a little bit smaller than this, about 40 people, because we keep trying to keep it small and you have an opportunity to share a challenge with this room. Now, you've got 40 other people who are focusing for the next 10 or 15 minutes on helping you come up with solutions to your challenge, any value in that huge. No money, not a problem. We go through a raising capital exercise, like no other that I've seen anywhere else. It's hosted in a social environment and we teach you how to attract joint venture partners.
The quantumly weekend event. A little bit about that. It's November 22nd, 24th in Mississauga, Ontario. My database and students are primarily in West Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. I wanna get down into the Southern Ontario market. I am from Eastern Ontario. We decided to host one in Mississauga, November 22nd and the 24th. Oh. The investment is $497 for the weekend event. At events like this, we always offer an opportunity to take advantage of a discount or an early bird discount. It's not gonna be $497. It's gonna be $397 plus you can bring a guest for free for three full days. If that is of interest, all you have to do is pull out your phone right now, go to quantum.arca-wa.ca and you can go online and you can register or enter early bird for the discount price.
This is the first time I'm launching this. My newsletter goes out today as well. It'll be in my newsletter and we're doing webinars and email blasts and whatnot. It will fill up but yes, you have the first dibs at this event coming up. I'm at the back corner. If you have any questions, please feel free to come and see me. One last thing.
If I can have one minute, we wrote this book because of going out west and starting the real estate brokerage, all the people wanted my agents to teach 'em how to invest in real estate. I said, no, that's not what you're there for. My wife and I wrote this book, how to buy and manage investment properties in Canada to give out to the clients. We came back east before we got used to this. I also have copies of this book at the back there. You're welcome to buy. Who would like a copy?
Lesson: take action. Thank you very much.
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