Daniel St Jean: Good afternoon everyone. So this is Daniel St Jean one of the co-founders of the Reite Club, and our special co guest, co-host today Victoria Cluney. Hello. And who is going to, the two of us are going to just grill Jacqueline and of course, what, when you know what Jacqueline does for a living, she can take it. We're ready to go. Ready to go? Let's do this. All right, let's do this. Special guest today is Jacqueline. How are you doing, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline Marshall: I'm fantastic. I'm in great company with you too.
Daniel St Jean: Thank you, but you're the guest here, so we're putting you on the hot seat and we're going to find out. As much as we can about you and. You will be able to share information that will make, that will help our listeners to do better with their real estate investing. I'm going to go right away to you there, Victoria, because Jacqueline a lot more than I do.
So why don't you start the conversation and then I will. Pick up little bits here and there, and I'll pop in.
Victoria Cluney: Amazing. Thank you, Daniel. Jacqueline, nice to see you again. I hope you're not sick of me yet, because we have spent so much time together in the past couple of weeks. I guess I'm gonna just start the question off, just asking you to give us a little bit of background about yourself. I know you're good with the elevator pitch, so let's go right into the elevator pitch and here, who are you?
Jacqueline Marshall: I'm Jacqueline Marshall, and I am from a small rural town in Newfoundland. That's where I grew up and was raised. And I became a dental hygienist. And three years into that career this was not the career I had thought or had anticipated or hoped it would be, and very unintentionally and accidentally, I became a real estate investor. And how that happened was I wanted to move to a house closer to the office, dental office that I was.
I put my current house up for sale. It didn't sell, so at a frustration I put it up for rent and I had no idea that you should do something like tenant screen. I had no idea. So I'm definitely the poster child for. You can start and have a good jumping off point when you don't know anything.
I'm the poster child for that. I was so intentional. I had no intention of becoming an investor or a land lady and very unintentionally I did that. And so if you don't have to have it all figured out to start and be successful, that is, I love that. That is true love. That is so true. And so I bought a second.
And I was having relatively good luck with the first set of tenants I've ever had in my life. And I just decided to rent the house that I was in, and I bought another one, and I kept on doing that. So over a three year period. I accumulated a number of single family home rentals, and then I got into flipping, and that is when I walked away and took a leave of absence from dental hygiene.
And I just absolutely loved it. It was really hard work. There was learning courage. There was growing pains. I did not know what I was doing. But that is where the YouTube university came in. I would do a lot of YouTube and Googling just to learn whatever DIY project I happened to be working on that day or that week or whatever I was sinking my teeth into.
And that is how I learned. And I, a lot of times, doing those first couple of flips, I had to redo things over and over again, sometimes three times. And yeah, so YouTube University has given me a better return than any university degree so far.
Victoria Cluney: Amazing. And so really what I'm hearing, and I think a lot of investors get into investing accidentally or unintentionally. At what point did you decide to actually take on intentional investing. Do you remember the time where you actually made that decision to go from trying to just navigate, figure it out to actually, no, this is what I want to do. And describe that to us of what your thought process was.
Jacqueline Marshall: It was over three years. That was when the light bulb went off for me when I had a X number of single family homes. And then I realized that the cumulative passive income, after all, everything was paid, that what I had left over from those rentals at the end of the month was replacing dental hygiene. And I was like, okay, I hate hygiene. I could live off of this. And so the light bulb started going off cuz I was like, why am I still working as a hygienist.
Victoria Cluney: Your teeth are great though, by the way, for anybody who can't see Jacqueline, your teeth are so pearly white.
Jacqueline Marshall: Thank you . But yeah, so I had this conversation and I wanna highlight this point too. It is extremely important to have a real estate agent who is an investor themselves or extremely knowledgeable in an. Helping you buy an investment property and the different things that you can do as an investor. So three, three-ish years into that point I had a conversation with Steve, my real estate agent, and I asked him, I said so besides doing rental properties, how else do people invest in real estate?
What are my options? He gave me a number of options. Flipping stood out to me. It appealed to. And so I bought my first cosmetic lipstick, flip a house that benefit from cosmetic updates. And I did it. And there was a big learning curve, like I said, but I tackled it. And after my first flip as much as a hard work, it wasn't, there was some tears, and colorful language. I don't wanna walk away from this and have to return to the dental office. So I kept on going. So now for over three years I have been flipping houses.
Victoria Cluney: Amazing. I love what you said about finding a real estate agent that is investor friendly because it is so true. A lot of times real estate agents and it's no fault of their own, but they deal with customers that make their decisions based on emotion, those buys. Like when you're buying your own home, but an investor makes decisions based on the numbers and they remove emotion from it. And so having an agent that understands that and doesn't try to pressure you one way or another is so valuable.
So that is awesome. Are you still doing flips today? And if so, what is your strategy moving forward in the new landscape that we're facing with the market change?
Jacqueline Marshall: The market is not the landscape of that is not something I have ever taken into consideration or even bothered myself. I don't laden myself with that. But I'm not currently right now working on a flip, but I will be because I do want to have. Up to date I've only done one flip, finished it, sold it, moved on to the next. I do want to have multiple flips going on concurrently and cause I want that construction renovation management experience under my belt.
Because I'm hoping that will make me very appealing to JV Partners or bigger projects and things like that. But no, what I've wrapped up right now is that I closed on a multi-family last December. That was my first refinance transaction or experience process, and so what I'm hoping to do with that refinance money is buy a bigger multifamily or a multifamily commercial.
Daniel St Jean: I have a couple of comments about what you've been saying here over the last few minutes. And I want, cause I wanna pull a lesson from something that you said, because you said, I got into this and I really didn't know what I was doing, but you got into this and you did it. And we both, all the three of us here, I've met people where we meet them at networking events and they've been going there for five years in six years. And when we asked them how many doors, they say I'm almost there. I just need to know a little bit more about this and a little bit more about that.
So folks, you don't need five years of education to start doing a little bit of real estate. Look at this lady here where she is now, and again, she didn't really know. At the same time, she's really smart. Okay. Alright, , so that helps. But she, and you know what, if it doesn't kill you, it will teach you something and if you're smart enough, you're not gonna make the same mistake again.
You don't need to wait till you know everything, because guess what? You never will. Does that my first. I wanna make your you agree with that, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline Marshall: I do. I think whatever learning curves or mistakes I made, they may not replicate themselves to someone else who's doing a flip next door to me.
Each one is going to be different. So it's great to hear someone else's experiences and knowledge and things like that, but your experience is just never gonna mirror someone else's. And I've done eight or nine flips now, and each flip. Comes with its own unique set of issues and problems and hurdles.
It's just about you have to anticipate problems, prepare for it, and just have that mindset that shit's gonna go sideways. It is. And you just gotta set yourself up and have that mental fortitude. And when it does happen, focus on finding the solution for that roadblock so that you can get on with the next day and the next day.
Daniel St Jean: My second lesson that I learned that I wanna share with from what you said is that you don't need to know what you need to know is where to get your information. And you don't need to go spend $30,000 to do, to join a group or maybe you don't. A coach is always useful, but at the same time, a coach will only go so far after that.
You need to do it yourself, but you need to know where. Your information and information can come from all kinds of sources. For example, you got a lot of your information from YouTube.
Jacqueline Marshall: For the DIYs? Yes, for the DIYs. That except the electricity bill or wifi or something.
Victoria Cluney: And it is so true, and I love the fact that like from the DIYs, especially for, somebody like me that doesn't consider themselves very handy, I think the listeners could really get that value, understanding that you are self taught and you are at the, you've gone from, as we, we've called it the school of YouTube and now.
You are sharing your DIY tips and tricks for everybody else. And so talk to me a little bit about that how you've navigated that world to go from learning to now teaching and what that's done for you for growing social media and how that's impacted your real estate investing
Jacqueline Marshall: I've been investing for over seven years, seven and a half years now, and the social media has only been a two year thing. And when I started with social media, I had no idea what I was going to share. What would people, what do I have to share, what you know, And so finally with the DIY tips and my before and afters and just my rent, my real estate journey with the flips and doing the DIYs on rentals, I thought that might bring value to people particularly women.
And because I'm not a big woman. You've seen me, Victoria. I'm not a big girl. I'm not like a sheha here by any means. Unless I'm wearing those pink platforms. But I think what it comes down to, and this is unique not unique to me, but it comes down to just, you have to have grit.
You have to have mental toughness. You have to have determination. You gotta have confidence in yourself. And because up to date, I still have never read a real estate book. I own a bunch of real estate books, but I haven't read any of them except past a chapter or I haven't overindulged for the first five years of my journey, I didn't even know that real estate podcast existed.
So again, I'm the poster child. You don't have to have these expensive, to your point Danielle, you don't have to invest in these expensive coaches, mentors, and packages and stuff like that to get started. It's as simple as, Buy a house, what do you wanna do with it? Do you wanna hold onto it or do you wanna put value into it and get rid of it 3, 4, 5 months down the road?
Just decide. I think one of the most important things to do, if you want to start, is just have clarity on what asset you want to sink your teeth into. Have clarity, cuz you've got, there's like what, 15, 20 different things that you can invest in. Oh, many. Focus on one thing, have clarity, then gain knowledge, and who do you have to know for that one particular asset?
If you're into multifamily, don't waste your time trying to figure out, oh, how to do student rentals or flipping, or anything like that. If you decided on multifamily focus, your energy on gaining, curating knowledge for that asset. And then once you've done that, none of this paras analysis, that's just silly as far as I'm concerned.
Be tough with yourself. Give yourself a deadline and take action. Pull the freaking trigger, give yourself a deadline. So clarity, knowledge, and action, that's, those are the three things you need. And it doesn't take a lot of money to figure that out.
Victoria Cluney: I wanna dig a little bit deeper in what you said about grit, because I couldn't agree more. Grit is, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room, but. It's the being able to pick yourself up and keep going. And so where does your grit come from and what makes you continue to persevere through your challenges?
Jacqueline Marshall: Oh, it has a lot to do with my mom and my upbringing. I was brought up by a single mom and that woman gave me the best, some of the best financial tidbits that I have, and I can credit to me today, like she gave it to me. She died young. But, so I got this information from her when I was a teenager. But to this day, as a grown woman, when I was a dental hygienist and as an investor, I echoes in my head.
And a big part of it is before becoming an investor was live beneath your means and you will never run into trouble And. Carried that mindset into real estate investing too. Like just be live beneath your means. And you will never run into trouble. You will never declare bankruptcy. When we were at the conference in Ottawa I, unfortunately, I got, talked to this couple and they said, oh, we've lost everything.
And in my mind I'm just like, how is that even possible? I can't even relate to that. With all due respect, like you did something you don't know how, you don't have good financial habits if you lost everything. So something went wrong somewhere. So yeah, it's, but that's just me. That's just my attitude, my point of view.
Daniel St Jean: Yeah, at the same time, they may have lost everything, material and financial, but what I keep hearing here is grit, determination, mindset, your why, and take action. So after you lose everything, if you still have your, all of these, then they're the tools just, right back up. Brush yourself a little bit. And then go right back to for another one.
Jacqueline Marshall: Yep, absolutely.
Daniel St Jean: That was interesting Victoria to add to hear you talk about grit from a girl who's been in the armed forces for 21 years.
Jacqueline Marshall: I know a little bit about it. I do.
Victoria Cluney: It really sets people apart and I think it's a big misconception that people have, that they have to know everything. I just love that you bring that up as part of your story and to. Make sure that everybody understands that we all have different stories, but that perseverance, that grit, as you say, the hardiness, there's so many ways that we can describe it, but really it's the like sticktoitiveness of just keep moving forward and every successful person will have a story behind their challenges, but the thing that they all will have in common is that they get backup.
Jacqueline Marshall: I think that's what separates regardless of whether it's real estate investing or whatever like that, what's, that's a key point of what separates successful from the unsuccessful. It is just that you are, you have to be prepared for the sacrifices and the concessions and you have to be prepared.
There are gonna be some really shitty days and some really hard days and weeks or months, and there's gonna be setbacks. But you just have to brush yourself off and go. How do I what? What are my takeaways from this experience? Take that takeaway, snowball it into the next one and the next one. You've just got that much more insight and education, knowledge and experience, and you'll do better. And keep mitigating the risks, as you keep going and snowballing it all into the next one's. What I've done. That's what I've done.
Daniel St Jean: I have a specific question that I wanted to ask you while we are on this this interview. Now, for those of you who are watching the recording, you'll understand what I'm talking about here when you look at Jacquelin. For those of you who are just listening, let me just point out the fact that if you're sitting in a restaurant somewhere and she walks through the restaurant, you're thinking she's on her way to the next room where they're holding the. Canada pageant. That's what she looks like. With that in mind, when you are in a flip situation and this big burly contractor comes in and you're gonna tell him what to do, how to do it, and where to do it, how does that work?
Jacqueline Marshall: The first Time that I met my team, cuz when I scaled from lipstick or I graduated from lipstick flips into flips that the scope of scale of work really graduated into things like new roofs, knocking down walls, rewiring a house dealing with the the plumbing and redoing all. So I have to hire people because I draw permits on that.
So the first time when people show up, They see me, again, cause I'm not a very tall person, . And they're all bigger, like burly, like you said. They thought I was joking. They thought, they didn't realize that I was serious about being a serial house flipper. And they didn't believe that I actually lived in the flips.
Now the flips that I've. That I do where I had to hire people. They're very smelly. They're very disgusting. And I stay there, I sleep on the floor, I put plastic down, I put a mattress down. That's where I sleep. And until I get things going so I can set up a bed frame and stuff. And once they see, because while.
I'm working while they're working, and they see that. And so when they show up at the second house, they were like, oh my gosh, you were you were telling the truth. And so it raised a level of respect and just everything. And it was very instrumental in how successful I was in that market, cause I've used that team now for over. Almost three years now. Yeah. So that was very instrumental. Yeah. But they listened to me .
Daniel St Jean: You remind me of another person that we see very often at at the Reite club events. And I'm sure, I'm pretty sure we have recorded or podcast before, but do you know Danielle Chiason? Because you two could write a book. First of all, you look like twins and you could write a book together because she's the same. She, it took her a long time to be able to get some authority. When contractors and professionals come in because she looks like she's on her way to a beauty contest, not with the pink overalls in the pink hat, and she has pink boots, So you, but now with your experience when they come in and they know what you've done, you lead the plan and they follow, right?
Jacqueline Marshall: Yeah. They listen to me.
Victoria Cluney: It is a common bias that women have to face in this world and anything that is male dominant. And so having that awareness in the back of your mind can just help. And there's like a quiet confidence that I often see. Strong women have when they come into these opportunities. And I've seen Jacqueline for the past couple of weeks now and I can certainly vouch for that that confidence. And it's served you well and it's just such a great example to be not only just for women, but for all investors that. Don't necessarily feel like they might have the skills or the background to be able to take on a challenge like that, but that you're just paving that way and being able to show people that anybody can do it.
And then the way that you can create these engaging videos and reels that you're putting out on your social media, on Instagram in particular. Is just so simplified and I'm sure it's not, but you just make it look so easy that I would love to hear from people that have actually ta tackled these projects based on your videos. Do you ever get that? Do people ever give you feedback on whether or not you help them?
Jacqueline Marshall: I've gotten a few dms like over the past year or so inspiring them and they're all from women like you inspired me to, just be courageous about X, Y, Z. But I just wanna highlight another thing where YouTube University has been really beneficial to me. When it came time to hiring, and I think this is very important too. Become knowledgeable on what you're, what you are hiring about. So when I was hiring an electrician and the thing and the scope of work that I was doing in the first house, I researched all of that. And I wrote down all my questions, what you should ask an electrician, ask him about permits, ask him about this.
That was a thing for YouTube University as well. And I remember Neil, the first time that he showed up, he was like, you know what you're talking about? And I'm like, no, I don't. And it was like, and it wasn't until the second house where he showed up for the second flip I did. I told him, the days leading up to you coming and giving me an estimate.
I just educated myself on electrical things and what's involved and what is an appropriate quote for the scale of work that I'm getting done and things like that, like the range and everything. I just really educated myself about it. And the questions that you should ask. I've also YouTubed how do you find a contractor?
How do you source them? What kind of questions do you ask them? , I've researched contracts and everything like that. So that when they're in front of me, I'm like, no, this is how it's going to be. And then, it's hard to pull the wool over your, have the wool pull over your eyes when you come across particularly a woman when you're being very you have a lot of conviction about, no, this is how I want it done. This is what I expect in the contract. You don't want to do it that way. That's fine. I'll find my another contractor.
Victoria Cluney: Absolutely, you're taking control and I love it because there has never been a time in our lives where more information is available for free. So much, but people just need to be able to take that control to be able to do the necessary research. Not everybody's willing to, but it's clear just from your experience, that when you do take that control, that it can just like work wonders and you can accomplish so much from that.
Jacqueline Marshall: Yep. It definitely mitigates risk and it gets you to be taken more seriously by whoever you end up hiring. They have a little more respect for you, and they also have that oh, I don't know. She knows a thing or two about a thing or two, so I don't know. I think she. It's gonna be hard to take advantage of her.
Daniel St Jean: And I want to comment on one last comment about the word risk before we go into our lightning round questions. And what I mean by that is you have to remember people that real estate investing is not brain surgery.
You would not expect somebody after Three days of watching or three hours of watching YouTube to go and operate on somebody's brain because you kill the patient, but you can't kill the house. You can't, of course, if you're gonna do electrical yeah, okay, that's a different story, but come on, you get in the deal, you get, the worst that can happen is that you're not gonna make as much money as you talk, or it's gonna take a little longer, but it's not brain surgery, get in there, do it, learn and you'll be better the next one than the next one.
Daniel St Jean: And first thing you know, you're an expert, geez, do it. Question what is. Jacqueline, what is the best advice you've ever received from another investor or from a networking guru or real estate guru? What's your, the best advice you've ever received?
Jacqueline Marshall: Don't procrastinate on the knowledge that you're going to need in order to scale up, succeed, and keep going. Don't procrastinate on what you need to. All
Victoria Cluney: Okay, second question. What's the one thing you wouldn't do again?
Jacqueline Marshall: How much time do we have ? What would I not do? Not do? I, when I was starting out if I had my time back, I'm gonna answer this a little bit differently if I had my time back, and I know I'm, when I find myself in a situation where I'm lacking confidence, I remind myself about a scenario that I had with my real estate agent five, five or six years ago. I didn't move forward on a great opportunity in Niagara Falls because I didn't feel confident. On taking on five or six tenants all at once. And so yeah, whenever I'm in a situation where I'm lacking confidence, I'm just like, no, you just stopped that because you missed out on a great opportunity five, six years ago and you are, and you know now that if you run into problems.
There's an answer. There's knowledge for that problem to resolve it. So now just go buy the damn property. Just go into that market. Go do it. Because you know that the answer is there. It's, and it's gonna be temporary. It's be a temporary roadblock or setback. It's all gonna be temporary.
Daniel St Jean: Two more questions. I'll ask the next one. Share one fun fact about yourself.
Jacqueline Marshall: I don't know, like a fun fact. I think the fun fact about me is people are surprised when they find out that I'm from Newfoundland, that I was born and raised there because I don't have the accent anymore. At least I don't think I do. But I don't know. I don't know. When I graduated from high school my mom allowed me to go to Europe for a year before entering university. She wanted me to have that. Thing, I don't know, for a year. And so I went over there and I stayed in youth hostels, , and I hitchhiked a lot for a year. I'm lucky to be alive.
Victoria Cluney: That's a good segue for my last question. If you could tell your 18 year old self something, what would it be?
Jacqueline Marshall: Don't take your dating boy situation very seriously. I'm sorry, but for the women that are listening to this, if you are young, that 19 22, 23 year old relationship that you think you're so in love with Set yourself up for life before you commit to anything like that. Go to university. Don't let any relationship stop you from going to university, going after that career, going off to anywhere to.
Get things out of your system or travel or anything like that. Do you live you and don't live it for anyone else's on anyone else's terms or a relationship.
Daniel St Jean: And my last question and our last question for today, and it's very interesting that we're gonna be asking that question because you just talked about travel. If right now, this minute, if you could be anywhere in the world right this minute, where would it be and why would you wanna be.
Jacqueline Marshall: I am in love with Victoria. I went to Victoria, Canada, BC for the listeners the very, very first time in April. I am in love. It's a, I was born and raised in Newfoundland. I was born on the ocean, you've got 10 months of winter , in Newfoundland.
It was like everything that I love about my home and what's in my heart, it was in Victoria. Without 10 months of winter. Yeah, Victoria in BC. A house on the ocean set me up with no neighbors.
Victoria Cluney: I spend some time in Victoria. The mountains are beautiful.
Jacqueline Marshall: Oh, I can see me ending my days out there.
Daniel St Jean: And then just getting your car and drive to the butchers garden and bring a picnic and, yes. Okay. Jacqueline, thank you so very much. This was inspirational, educational. This was, oh, I really enjoyed what you shared with our listeners and Victoria. Wow. It was fun working with you.
Victoria Cluney: As you, Daniel. Thank you. I appreciate it. And this is, finally my first experience as a co-host on a podcast. Oh, right off my bucket list.
Jacqueline Marshall: Thank you.
Daniel St Jean: Now, remember we we are back to doing live events. We're gonna, there's gonna be some more coming in the spring. You're in Waterloo. That's not a very long distance from where we are. So please come and make sure you come and see us at the next live events. Thank you. Have a pleasant rest of the day.
Jacqueline Marshall: Thank you guys.
Victoria Cluney: Okay, Daniel, what a great guest Jacqueline was. What was your biggest takeaway? My biggest take takeaway was grit. , she doesn't look anything like grit, but obviously her mindset and her heart and her spirit is all about grit and wow. I thought that was really inspiring for people to get up their wheel, their their rocking chair and get going and just do it.
Victoria Cluney: Oh, I totally agree. She gave a lot of good information, lots of good stories, and lots of good nuggets for people to take and be able to apply it just in their own daily lives. So I was really happy to be a part of this podcast. Thank you.
Daniel St Jean: Thank you for being a co-host and folks, just remember we, we produce a new podcast or we release a new podcast every Friday. So keep listening, keep getting better at what you're doing, grow your portfolio, and then you can customize your life and live whatever it is you wanna live. See you next time.
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