Angela Dupuis and Joey Sicarella
Laurel: You have 20 years experience in real estate investing. You do know that kind of makes you even though you both look quite young, that makes you like the grandparents, 20 years is a long drive in this business. You've done buy and hold, short-term rentals, college rentals and BRRRs, which is a lot of different strategies.
I know that you work across Canada with investors to build cash flow in portfolios and you want to get your partner's investment back to them within a year. It's a big deal, so good for you. Angela you're also a co-host and partner with the Real Estate Goddess Network women like REIGN.
Angela: It's new, we just started it.
Laurel: I think I'm going to have to check that out. The real estate investors of Montreal REIGN, the focus is on networking, sharing and supporting each other. It sounds like supporting each other is really a foundation of your business. What's not to love about real estate investing? How do you work together? What's your insights?
Angela: I hate to be repetitive, but the DiSC, I'm going to start there because Joey and I are as opposite as two human beings can get from each other. I'm high, red and yellow, and he's high, green and blue. Clearly everybody knows what that means and it does present challenges.
Laurel: Actually, I'm not sure that everyone does know what that means. Just quickly tell us.
Angela: The "D" and "I", the red and the yellow, are the extroverts of the circle and then the other two are introverted. I'm an extrovert, he's an introvert. I think it was Gary. He actually described it very nicely. I was really happy to hear how he described it all. He's the cautious, calculating, careful stable systems when, and I love the networking and the sales and talking to partners.
I'm a doer. What are you going to do? But I wanted to say, I just wanted to share a book that I read recently that goes over this so beautifully and really helped me understand Joey a lot better and a lot of people in our group. I do spend a lot of time in these groups, the real estate investors, Montreal, and the REIGN group and all of our partners actually have several partners now. Many of them are clearly different profiles for mine.
For anyone who's interested, I highly recommend the book, "Surrounded by Idiots". I admit, but the book is really rich in content and it's really great. Another one for people who are interested in this kind of profile thing is the Enneagram Test. That's a very interesting one too. How do we leverage each other? I come from corporate. I was an area vice president and managed sales and teams and budgets and stuff. Joey came from renovations and facilities management. We did come with completely complimentary, but very different skill sets that when we left our jobs full time, they worked very well together.
Laurel: Joey, I know that you're the introverted one, but you do have to say something now, come on. How do you see your relationship working and how, where do you see your strengths are? Because yeah, we all have weaknesses, but I think as much. I think it is more useful to talk about the strengths, because that's what we can build on. Joey, what are your strengths? And then how do you build on that with Angela?
Joey: I guess the quick one that comes to mind is that, I'm finding my instincts, finding a good property, finding a good investment. It just comes pretty naturally. We're both really good at it. I've been pretty successful at pushing properties on us. Even when Angela isn't super into it or everybody. Sometimes there's properties and we run them by friends and family or investors and people just don't see it. But I managed to push them through if it's really good. I managed to convince everybody to see the light.
Laurel: Do you see the numbers? Do you see the completion? How do you see, you push people to see the light, but what does that mean? Do you actually envision it and then you can articulate that vision to other people?
Joey: Definitely.
Angela: A couple of the larger plexes that we've purchased over the past year with partners were ones that I didn't get, I wasn't so interested and that's actually one of the things that I find as a couple works really well, is that both bring different types of projects to the partnership. He gets fired up over larger multiplexes and I get super fired up over the BRRRR strategy.
Joey: We both get fired up.
Angela: Yes, but both of the larger multiplexes you brought to the table and they've turned out to be really good investments.
Joey: We work really well together, mainly because I think we get out of each other's way when Angela's passionate about something and she wants to see it done. I'm just happy to help make it happen or get out of the way if that needs to happen too and vice versa. It's the only way we're not going to try to get in each other's way to block something from happening. If we're passionate about something, we'll try to make it happen for each other.
Laurel: What's your vision then? Because you're working together late in what, five years? 10 years? I don't know, 20 years down the road. Where do you see yourself ending up?
Angela: We have a few things that we both want to see happen. We've talked a lot over the years about fostering kids, which I think is something that we see in our futures. We both have extensive travel history. Actually, in the past seven or eight years, we haven't left Canada and we're going to Mexico in a few weeks, but we want travel to be something in our lives.
Joey: Fostering, traveling and I'm pretty passionate about getting into fundraising for charity or donating time to charity still haven't dialed in exactly what that's going to be, but that's definitely going to be in our future when we have a bit more free time.
Laurel: That's great. Those are the things that make you get up in the morning, right? Because you can be passionate about real estate, but at the end of the day, real estate is just the fuel. It's the gasoline you put in the tank that gets you somewhere.
Nobody went to their grave saying, oh my God, I missed that deal. I should have bought more. Nobody says that. They say, I wish I had done this. I wish I had spent more time with this person. That's what you're talking about and that's really wonderful. Do you guys have offices in the house together or are you separate or how does that work?
Joey: The main office is the dining room table.
Laurel: That works okay?
Angela: Yeah, it does. We don't actually work in the same room.
Joey: Not right now, but we've started off side-by-side for the first 8 months.
Angela: I really loved that. I did and I missed that. I look forward to us doing that again, but again, we're just so different. We've got different rhythms and different ways of working. I'm not gonna force anything. He can work in the basement while I work in the dining room.
Joey: I'm working on other things right now. I'm focusing on health. I've completely changed my diet. I'm exercising. It's been a few months now, but we spent the summer in Moncton getting some new bases, renovating some places we had already purchased.
When we got back and got her son back in school. I just lost all energy. I had no drive and I realized a lot of that was due to my health. I wasn't looking after myself for a long time. And so right now that's the priority for me,
Angela: There are going to be ebbs and flows in any job that you do and in any relationship. I think respecting where each other is in time and what their priority needs to be is an important thing for you to do as a couple, if you're doing this together.
Laurel: You're absolutely right. There are ebbs and flows in anything and you have to focus on it. I love the fact that Joey, you're focusing on your health, because if you don't have your health, you have nothing. If you're sick all the time, you can't do anything. You can't be a partner. You can't be a spouse. You can't be a mother or father or whatever it is. You need to be all the roles we play. You can't, if all you're focusing on is on how sick you feel. That's not fun for anyone.
Congratulations. You sound like you're really doing well. We're really gonna look into that network, the REIGN. I just love that, that acronym. Just before we go. Is there anything, any deal that you think you might've done differently, or you bet you learned a lot from and your regrets?
Angela: We always say that our biggest regrets are having sold properties. Now, it would be worth it today. However, having that capital enabled us to actually leave our jobs and do this full time. I think one of my regrets is not leaving corporate sooner. Not seeing that there was an alternate lifestyle, not seeing that I could actually follow my passion and have the life that I want.
I think so many people get trapped, the golden handcuffs because you've got a good salary and you've got stability, but you're just maybe not fired up anymore. I hadn't been fired up in a while and I should have, I did, but I regret not starting this full time sooner.
Joey: Not buying in Moncton sooner.
Laurel: There you go. But you know what, we will talk about regrets, but if we hadn't done what we did, then we wouldn't be where we are now. It all works out, doesn't it? Thank you so very much, you had some really great insights and it was wonderful to help talking with you. Thank you.
Joey: Thank you for having us.
Laurel: I saw the book that you mentioned, it's in the chat Angela, "surrounded by idiots". When I say I don't like surrounding myself with idiots, I don't mean my husband. I have a hard time with idiots. I really do. People who know me well know that I don't deal with idiots very well. Anyway, thank you very much.
- Log in or register to post comments
- ARNEL-LLEMIT-1637316866's Blog