Having walked the walk, taking a few left turns, to becoming a successful real estate investor and award-winning mortgage broker, our podcast guest this week, Brian Hogben shares his insight to help you maneuver to success.
Katherine: Daniel, I'm really excited for today's podcast recording. We've got Brian Hogben from Mission 35 Mortgages joining us.
Daniel: Mission 35, everybody has heard of the movie mission impossible, but with Brian getting a mortgage and financing your property is not mission impossible. We're totally excited to hear what he is gonna share with us dos and don'ts to help you get your mortgage as the best financing possible. The guy is very knowledgeable about mortgages, but also as a real estate investor. All of this information, I am sure, is going to be very useful to our listeners.
Katherine: The fact also that he's not only a mortgage broker, but he's also a real estate investor and has been for a number of years since he was in his early twenties. Through mission 35 mortgages, he has over 500, five star reviews. The guy knows his stuff. This is really awesome. Let's get to the show.
Welcome Brian. Glad you could join us today.
Brian: You know what, thank you guys so much for having me. I always love being here with the Reite Club and talking about real estate investment and how to get lots of money to get you up past your shoulders in real estate investment, Katherine, cuz that's that we wanna completely submerge you in real estate investment, right? That is our goal because the fruits are plentiful.
Daniel: Brian before we tell other people how to get mortgages and increase their portfolio. You have built a massive real estate portfolio. What have you done from an investor's point of view yourself?
Brian: You know what? I started out buying my first property and then I bought another property and another property and then eventually I think I stacked the knowledge. You take the knowledge you get from the first one, apply it to the next one. That led me to be able to get, from single family to duplexes, triplexes to small, mixed use commercial buildings all the way up to 12 unit apartment buildings to an investment in Florida. To get that, so really just taking everything that I've learned over. It's been a long time since I've invested in real estate investing.
It's probably about my first house that I purchased in my early twenties. Like you had said earlier, it's not something that happened overnight. But now for being in real estate investment for the good part of 20 years, you get to see the fruits of it. It really grows.
I always equate it to a snowball. When you get into real estate investing, it's like pushing a snowball downhill. You can't stop it. You can have good markets and bad markets, but it just keeps getting bigger. I think that's why I love The REITE Club and sharing these stories with people because you just gotta get started and start building that portfolio.
Daniel: I'd like to make a little correction to what you said there about the snowball. A lot of people might think that's the way it is, but I want you to picture this. You start with a little snowball and then it goes uphill a little bit, because you're going up the side of the hill and you want to reach the crest and then it's gonna start going down at some point.
But at the beginning, when you start and you don't have every member of your team and you don't have trust from the other people for OPM and you don't know everything that you should know that the snowball is uphill for a little bit. And then it feels so good when it finally starts to go by itself.
Brian: You know what I appreciate you saying that I couldn't agree more. You know what I think after 20 years, I'm luckily on the downhill slope, but that uphill you're not wrong. There was a lot of slush, a lot of summer days where it almost melted. And a lot of backbreaking work. It's a great prequel to that analogy. I'm gonna steal that for next time Daniel. That's really good.
Daniel: I'm reading something in your bio here and there are over 400 5 star reviews for your business. Number one, that means you've been around more than a few weeks. How long have you been doing this mortgage thing? And number two, how do you get a team or a business? A mass to put together or to earn that's the word I'm looking for a 5 star review. Tell us about that.
Brian: Thanks Daniel. You know what I think? Mission 35, we started in December of 2016 and it started just with a handful of us, me and a couple of other really key people. I think, to get that, because we're growing, we're getting more and more. We're getting closer to 500 now as well too. It really comes with just doing the right things for people. It's not rocket science.
From a mortgage broker perspective, we take an education point, similar to The REITE Club. We like to educate our agents. When people come and work with Mission 35, we love to have real estate investors come work with us because we like to work with real estate investors. We really pride ourselves on doing the right thing for people. We're as happy, we joke and say we're as happy to get people into debt as we are to get them out of debt.
I think that was where those reviews come from. I think what our real secret sauce is, I've always been a big advocate for our team. Some people always say that the customers are always right. I take the advantage that our team is always right. I have the back of the team and we always support our team.
I think what manifests out of having just a phenomenal team. Phenomenal customer service. If everybody feels like they've got support, they're in a great culture, great team, like no different than having your real estate investment team, then you can't help but have great results and happy clients. And that's where I think a lot of those reviews end up coming from.
Daniel: You use a keyword here in my book that I wrote 15 years ago. I talk about the difference between customer and client and the mentality of people. When you have customers, you treat them a certain way. But when you have clients, it's a different approach and you use the word yourself. People you work with are clients, not just merely customers.
Brian: You know what, and I think we try to really dig into our raving fans as well, too. The ones that are like, we have a program now we call it mortgage free university, MFU and we've been thankful over the past almost six years now, we're going on almost six years.
We've actually been able to see a lot of people that have become mortgage free. That's where Mission 35 came from, for me to become mortgage free. Mortgage free by the time I was 35 and now we've started through real estate investment. We've got a whole bunch of people that have actually achieved that too.
It's just, they become friends. Those people become friends, just the people in The REITE Club. They become friends and you get to share best practices, good ideas, and you get to learn from each other as well, which is just awesome.
Daniel: You wrote a book called, How to Get Mortgage Free Really F*$%ing Fast, right? What do you do with these people once they're mortgage free?
Brian: You know what I think, the start is, when we say really really fast to put it in perspective, the plan on there is it's really fast in comparison to the average Canadian. The average Canadian is taking an amortization of 30 years to pay off their house. What we're saying is being able to pay it off in 10 years. It's a third of the time, right? To put it in perspective, you're not paying it off in one month or three weeks. No, it's still a 10 year timeframe, but I think what ends up happening is I think that'll be the next book about what to do after your mortgage free, because the beautiful thing is once you've paid off, your mortgage is making sure that you continue down that path. You use that leverage.
The idea is not just to pay down your mortgage, to have it with nothing on it, that old sort of burn your deed kind of mentality. Like back in the old days, it was, Ooh, burn it up. We don't have debt anymore, but it's getting rid of the bad debt. The non-tax deductible debt, the non leverage debt is how we determine mortgage free. Putting still a line of credit or using that equity in your house once you're paid off, or even as you're paying it down, that actually accelerates getting you mortgage free.
Daniel: I'm so glad you went there because that's what I was gonna take you. I was gonna grab you there, whether you wanted to or not, because I've been working on a little booklet for a little while. I started a year ago and I'm gonna finish it one day and I think the title will be, so your mortgage free. Are you out of your freaking mind? And the reason for that is because I'm addressing people like you say, who have this old mentality of, oh, we're mortgage free. Now, we can burn the deed.
Quick story here to illustrate this friend of mine in Orleans. I visit her, I look at her house and I say, what is this worth? She said, oh, about 700. And I said that's great. A new mortgage. She laughed, she said, we've been mortgage free for 10 years. Anyway, long story short, a month and a half later, she went back to the bank to get a $500,000 mortgage at 1.95%. And she invested the money at 15.75%. She's making almost $70,000 a year of interest.
Instead of saying she was gonna retire in seven years, she's retiring next year. Why? Because I asked her the question about her mortgage and now she saw the light. Cause my point to her was you've worked hard for your house. Why don't you make the house work hard for you now? I could change her life completely. Now, she's gonna retire five years early because the house is working for her.
Brian: That's amazing. I think it's hard for some people to change that mindset. I think the more that they can relate to change that mindset from good debt to bad debt. It's what the banks have done for years. I think we can all agree. The banks have done pretty well. They'll take your investment, your bank account, pay you 0.001% on your hundred thousand dollars. And then they'll lend it out at one or two and they're making a spread. There's no reason why we can't use our homes and do the exact same thing. I 100% agree.
Katherine: One of the things that I'm really interested in, because you've seen an awful lot over the last few years. It's been changing and ebbing and flowing. How is the mortgage market? What have you seen? What are the changes that you've seen?
Brian: I think over the past few years, I think we've seen like I remember once upon a time, and I'm not that old, but I remember being able to do 40 year mortgages with zero and this isn't even that long ago, this would be within the past probably 10 years. When I look at it, you used to get a house, a hundred percent financing in Canada and get a 35 or 40 year mortgage. I say that just because that gives you a great indication of where mortgage rules have gone.
If we could all hop in our time machine, I would've been like, okay, I'll take 10 of those, please. For all those rental properties, finance, 'em a hundred percent. But now, we're at a place where mortgage rules have gotten restricted year over year. I think it's part and parcel to a lot of things.
We have a lot of investors entering the market. We have a lot of people speculating on properties, which is all great. But there's always those people that have abused the mortgage system and just use their house and racked up a lot of debt. We're constantly in an environment in the mortgage world where it's getting more restrictive to get money for financing.
I tell people that, and it's not doom and gloom. It's not like it's impossible, but it's, I don't think it'll ever be easier than it is today. Whenever you're listening to this, it's probably pretty hard. I don't think it's gonna get easier 6 months or 12 months from now, just like six months or 12 months ago.
There's always gonna be issues when it comes down to mortgage financing, there's always gonna be problems with mortgage financing. I don't think it's gonna get easier. I think for anybody that's investing in real estate right now, take out a line of credit. If you can talk to a mortgage broker, if you can, right. Take out and leverage up the money to use it, because it will likely look different 12, 18 months from now than it does today. Just like it looked different today than it did two years ago.
Katherine: Really good point. When somebody is coming to you, what can they do? What are some of the things that they can do that makes your job easier? You can better help them, help themselves.
Brian: You can really tell I'm a mortgage nerd, when you get excited about questions like this, hey I'm just like, Ooh, let me tell everybody right. Cause I love this and I think this is a secret in learning what I've learned and I'll use an example.
I went to refinance one of our apartment buildings about a year and a half or two years ago. You know what, guilty of me. The banking statements were a dog's breakfast because as we all, sometimes people don't pay on the first. Sometimes they pay on the second or the third, you're gonna have some late payments every once in a while. But my statements got a little bit out of hand and the underwriter said to me, and I was a little embarrassed to even share this, but she said, Brian you gotta understand that this is a reflection of how you run your business.
The whole reason why I share that with you is firsthand, I don't run my business that way. I ran it perfectly. I'm just kidding. But the reality is that when you're going to apply for financing, whether you're applying for your first investment property, or you're applying for a 20, 30, 40 unit building the paperwork that you present to the mortgage broker, which then in turn gets presented to the lender is a direct correlation of who they're gonna be dealing.
If it looks like crap, the lender's first perspective or first impression of that is gonna be like, this person is unorganized. When you're going and getting into real estate investment, it is imperative. Have your taxes done. Like it's not rocket science. Have your taxes done. If your taxes aren't done well.
How old are you? You're 30, 40 years old. You don't know when they're due by now. Have your taxes done, have them up to date? Have a package readily available for financing. If you have a job, have an up to date, letter of employment, pay stub, T4. Have your lease agreements in place.
If you have multiple properties, have your lease agreements in place, up to date with mortgage statements. If you're submitting lease agreements that are four years old and they've never been updated and you've never had rental increases, if I'm a lender looking, but I'm like. Wow, you don't look like you're managing this business very well.
In order to get the best financing, and I think, it is important at all times to try to get the best financing. Sometimes, and I've seen investors do this, they settle for private financing because private financing does not have as much of a due diligence requirement when it comes down to paperwork. Because they're saying I'll charge you more.
If your paperwork is terrible. That's okay. I'm lending based on equity, interest rates go up and down and we've seen some rising rate environments where it pays to have a cheaper mortgage and it pays to have your paperwork in order. If you're a star, regardless of where you are on the spectrum of real estate investment, make sure that you treat it like a business and you have your paperwork in order and up to date, because if you don't, it's a reflection on you and the lender will see it the same.
Katherine: That's really great advice.
Daniel: I just want to add one comment to this. The difference between getting a commercial mortgage and getting a private mortgage for residential. I'm always told, when the bank looks at a commercial, they're looking at the value of the property, which is based on rent and stuff like that. And you matter, but not as much as from what I heard here is that basically. It's like when you're doing a commercial mortgage, it's the property first. And then you second, but when you're buying a house, it's you first and the property. Yes, of course. The property has to be in a good area. But if all of that is perfect, your records suck. You're not gonna get a mortgage.
Brian: I think that's important, Daniel, because you're absolutely correct with a commercial mortgage. They're basing it off of cap rates, cash flow and the property. Just like in any business, you're building relationships, you're trying to build a relationship. Let's say First National, it's a great lender that does a lot of multi-unit apartment buildings at exceptional rates. If you're trying to build a relationship there through your mortgage broker, and they have renewals as well too. They'll have, let's say at the end of two years, they'll ask for your financial statements.
It's not like they're gonna call the mortgage, but they wanna see how things are doing. And the credit unions will do this often, too. If you're terrible to deal with, the next time you go to apply for one, they may look at it a little bit stricter and may say, Brian is really tough. They wouldn't say that, but Daniel, no, they wouldn't say that either.
Let's say Bob's really tough to deal with. You know, his paperwork, so, you're absolutely right. But on the residential side, it is both, but I think in both cases, it's imperative to have that paperwork in order for both, whether it's residential or commercial. It'll bode well with helping you get the best possible financing and best interest rates.
Daniel: While we are talking about the individual and everything about you, one of the big things I'm thinking here, remember, I get a lot of mortgages, but I don't give out mortgages. I'm asking a question from the other side of the fence here, how important is my credit score? My credit bureau. And in terms of the impression or the little boxes that the underwriter has to take in order for me to get a mortgage.
Brian: That's a great question. It's extremely important because credit speaks to character as well, too. When an underwriter or someone looks at a credit report, and you've seen this many a time, it is reasonable that there can be a blemish, bruise, sore spot on a credit report where I could say, okay Brian had a membership at Premier Fitness. He thought he canceled it. I'm not picking on Premier. But I saw that one a lot and it went to collections and never got paid.
I can justify that if there's one on there, but if a broker or anybody's gonna let 'em say, I had an issue with Premier. And then I had an issue with cash money. I had an issue with Horizon utility. There's a common denominator there and it's you, right? Not the credit report. I think perfection is a really hard goal to strive for, with anything and a credit report doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to make sense.
Credit score is extremely important and what's also important is if there is a blemish on there, what's the story to it. Don't be shy. Tell someone, people go through hardships in life. People go through death, divorces, they go through hard things. If you communicate that, for example, you may have had three or four bad blemishes on a credit report, which happened in March of 2020.
If there's a reason and an explanation for it, and then things got better afterwards, tell the story. Don't hide under the covers and think, no one's gonna figure it out, come out for it. Because an approach we always take is an underwriter's gonna uncover a problem. Shine a light on. And because if you shine a light on it to your mortgage broker lender, and then we shine a light on it to the lender, it builds trust throughout the entire transaction.
I trust you as the mortgage broker. The lender trusts the mortgage brokers, they're saying, oh, and I'm saying right away. I know there will be a problem in 2020. This was the problem. This is why it happened. This is why things got. Instead of saying, some mortgage brokers are just like no, you just didn't pay his bills. Why?
One simple thing I encourage everybody to do for your credit. It's so simple. Just set everything up possible on an auto payment. It's the simplest thing in the world. And it just, it doesn't have to be the full balance if you have any credit cards or things like that set up a minimum auto payment. If you're away living the dream like Daniel somewhere, away for three weeks, then the minimum payment's made is what your credit report is gonna recognize.
They don't care if you make a massive payment late, as much as if you make a regular payment, which is small on time, it's all about the consistency, more so than it being the big lump sum payment, that's late.
Katherine: I've heard about the differences between paying by the due date and paying by the statement date.
Brian: A quick fun fact, but I always end if you set up a minimum payment it'll always take it on time. You set up the minimum payment date and set it up for a certain time or if you wanna be really diligent, you could set up an auto payment by week. Let's say your minimum payment is gonna be a hundred bucks a month or 200 bucks a month. Set up an auto payment for 50 bucks every two weeks. You'll never be late. But a good practice is if you don't have an auto payment set up, set it up.
Make your payment at least three business days before the due date. The reason being is because with some bank to bank transfers, even in this wonderful world of technology, there can be a delay for an online transfer. You could make it on the due date online and it could still show up late.
Just make sure you're always three business days prior to the due date.
If you're not gonna set up an auto payment, but even better is setting up 50 bucks every two weeks. And heck if you go into a credit balance, hallelujah, do you know what I mean? You've got 50 bucks extra on your credit card. It'll cover a 10th of a tank of gas these days.
Katherine: This is true. One of the things that I did find when cell phones all came out, is that those cell phone providers, man, they're a little bit nasty. If you're one day late, they're dinging your credit rating. What I did is nuts to you guys. I knew what my monthly payment was and I prepaid. I had a full month's payment.
A little bit more and I just kept a minimum balance on it, which is they're making money on my money, but I thought I'm not, you guys are bullies. You're playing a game and I'm not gonna play. There you go. And then every month I just paid my bill in full, of course, obviously, but I always had that backup that was there. It was my little way of doing a little raspberry to them.
Brian: I like it. You know what? I think that's perfect. I'd rather have them play with my money and be on time than not another thing that I would like to do cause I don't call myself cheap, it's thrifty. Anytime you get the opportunity to put something on a points card, like if you could pay your cell phone through an auto payment with a points card.
Why not put it on through the points card that stuff adds up. Especially as your business grows. Might as well get leverage outta that. Find a great points card and pay as many bills as you can on auto payment through the points card, then put the auto payment on the points card.
It's a little bit of a, but it's it's you might as well have your money make a little bit extra money. It could be your plane trip to Costa Rica who knows. It could be something.
Daniel: Brian, one quick comment here, and I'd like to hear your comment on that. I'm mostly addressing younger people here where they'll get an account with and I'm using Telus because I've seen that happen before. There's an issue at some point with Telus and then they get a bill and then they look at the bill and they're going, I'm not paying that f..ing bill. And then they ignore it and whatever, it's $32.
What do you mean a long distance from the state? I never went to the state. This is a mistake. And then they let it go. And then two and a half years later, they're at the bank and then they have end, whatever online or something like that because Tellus took them to collections and they never paid attention. And that $32 is gonna cost them how much now. Basically, I'm just saying, be careful of these. It doesn't look like it's much or important, but isn't it Brian?
Brian: You know what, it's funny. I equated it to if you have an argument with your spouse, it's do you wanna be right? Or do you wanna get along? What is your outcome there? It's funny you say that Daniel, cause you are spot on that $32 that you owe Telus who cares if you're right. Pay it, because it is gonna do way more damage to you. Cause you way more problems later. It's gonna go up as a collection cuz tell us they have a whole collections department.
They have no problem registering a $32 collection on your credit report. What's gonna happen? You're gonna have to pay it anyways because the bank, if that is an isolated incident, they're gonna say, I'm really sorry that happened. I'm sure you were right, but I don't care. Pay it and we'll give you the loan.
It's almost like they work together in collusion somehow behind, but closed doors but I totally agree. Just pay it. You may be wrong, but you may be right, but what's your outcome? You want the loan, don't let $32 hang up a four or $500,000 loan.
Daniel: In other words, pick your battles.
Brian: Yes.
Daniel: I have a question for you here since I have an expert mortgage broker. We had a guest here a few weeks ago from England and houses in downtown London are what they call generational mortgages. They're a hundred years old. They're a hundred year mortgage.
Somebody buys a house and then their kid will buy it from them. And then their grandkids will buy it from them and so on because I don't know, I guess prices of houses are so expensive over there or whatever it is that it takes. Basically, they never pay off the mortgage. Do you think we'll ever see a 40 year mortgage, 50 year mortgage? Because who now can afford a 1.6 million bungalow in Mississauga.
Brian: That's a great point. I think they have that in Hong Kong as well too. I've heard that as well in certain places. And you know what I think, to our earlier point, we've seen mortgage rules get restricted, and in Canada mortgage rules get restricted. When we see property values go up. I'm part of an organization of mortgage professionals in Canada and they do a lot of lobbying and talking to the government and the government's perception on things is we will not loosen mortgage rules when property values are escalated, we just won't do it.
In order to see what we're saying of a generational mortgage or a 40 or 50 year mortgage, we would have to see in my opinion, based on what we've heard feedback from. We would have to see a serious decline in price because if the government saw a serious decline in price, they would do that to stimulate the economy again.
When we're higher than ever, The last thing they want to do is create an opportunity for the prices to go higher. If that ever happens, if we ever get into an environment where rates go up really high for a long period of time, and we have a recession that dreaded our word and property values were to go down for whatever reason. I could see something like that coming into play, but likely not until something like that was to happen.
Katherine: Because you've been in the business for so long, you've grown exponentially. How many businesses or how many locations do you now have?
Brian: That's a good question. I'm not sure. Off the top, I think we're at 11 or 12 because we have a partnership with Remax, Niagara and every time they open up a new office, they're opening up new offices all the time. We put a Mission 35 mortgage agent, each one, and right now I know they're growing and I think they just open up an office in Fort Erie and Welland as well because Niagara is really booming.
We are currently staffing positions there right now as well, too. We've just launched a new training program. One thing is that we're really similar to The REITE Club. I think one thing that mortgage brokers haven't done a lot of lately is train new mortgage brokers. It's hard to train. It takes twice as long to teach someone as it does to do it. Like we all know that, but then we teach other people because it brings us joy.
I think it elevates our community, The REITE Club. We teach people how to invest in real estate because we get to learn from everybody and everybody grows as a community. Mission 35, we've taken the standpoint that we do attract a lot of seasoned mortgage professionals, but we've also really started to push our training program now for brand new mortgage agents, because there's a lot of even real estate investors looking to become mortgage mortgage agents these days.
It's like how some real estate investors wanna become real estate agents sometimes too. We're seeing a lot of this come into play. I think it's helped us had a lot of growth by being able to take the time and put the systems and education in place for a brand new person to learn.
It's so much fun to see brand new people grow just when someone's bought their first investment. To see their eyes light up and how exciting they see that. It's the same thing we find when we hire a new mortgage agent, that's starting a brand new career and they bring so much excitement and joy and passion and anticipation into the business as well too. I think that keeps me young as well too, if so maybe I can keep the Mission 35 name for a little while when I turn 45 and 50, just for a little while longer.
Katherine: Yes, we've got before we head into our lightning round, which is our follow up and our rapid fire questions. Is there anything else,
Daniel? Do you have any last questions that you'd like to ask Brian? Is there anything you'd need that you think that we need to know as our investors and our community need to know about when they're going in and they're getting their mortgages. Anything you'd like to add on?
Brian: You know what? We've seen a lot of ups and downs in markets. We've seen rates go up, we've seen rates go down. We've seen them go up again. There's always a lot of strategies, which I love hearing about all the time. Just make sure you really run your numbers under the worst case scenario.
I think it's really important to do because we've seen markets where people get excited about things and sometimes skip the steps. I think with real estate investment, it's very important to talk to a qualified, educated mortgage agent and run some worst case scenarios. If you take a variable rate mortgage, guess what? It's variable which means it could go up or down.
Take the time to say, what does it look like if rates go up? What does it look like if rates go down and make sure you understand how my cash flow is going to be affected? Because as we know in real estate investment, the only constant in life is change. You could bank on things changing. Just have an understanding of what that looks like, especially whether you're on your first investment or your 50th investment forecast, those numbers don't skip those steps.
Don't think that more than you do, it's almost like taking the same steps you did during step one. When you're on property number 10, and sometimes I see, and I've been guilty of it too. You get to property 10, you start to think, ooh, I know a lot but the fundamentals from property one still hold true. Make sure you still bring yourself back, run your numbers, run your worst case scenarios. That way, if you're in an up market, hallelujah, you can handle it if you're in a down market. What do I do if I'm in a down market and how do I mitigate my risk if that happens in this investment.
Daniel: One more thing I'd like to add to that is don't bite more than you can chew actually don't bite more than you might be able to chew two years from now. Here's what I mean. You look at your numbers. You look at your income. You look at the mortgage rates 2.75 it's good. I can afford that $1.1 million home. Everything looks fine. Four years from now. It's now at 4.75 and I have to sell the house. You shouldn't have bought that house in the first place.
If you were this close to one and a half or two points, and now you can't pay the mortgage. That's what I mean by don't bite more than you might not be able to chew two year, three years down the road. If the rates go up a little bit. That's what you mean by running your numbers and giving yourself a little bit of reading room.
Brian: I think that's put very well put Daniel and I think have some patience, I think, too often, when you look on Instagram, everybody became a millionaire and got a Lamborghini in five minutes, but it didn't happen like that. I think I have some patience and enjoy the journey cause it's a pretty fun journey along the way whether the snowballs going uphill or the downhill, it's still a journey.
Daniel: I remember an interview with you's too young to remember that group ZZ Top. I saw them live in Vancouver back in 86 or 87. I can't remember. But anyway, in an interview they were saying something. They became very popular, very fast at a certain point, especially with the MTV videos and stuff and all those songs there with their car, the eliminator and whatever. And then somebody said, wow, how do you explain your overnight success? And that guy said 14 years in little bars in Texas.
Brian: Yes. I love that. That's such a good answer.
Katherine: It's true. Let's get to this lightning round. Daniel, I know that you've written a couple of lightning round questions. Did you wanna start off first?
Daniel: Yes, Brian. What is the best advice you've ever received from another investor or at a networking event or from anywhere? What's the best investing advice you've ever received?
Brian: Robert Kiyosaki's cashflow Quadrant, the book that got me started, I got it at the bank. I remember the first time somebody gave it to me. I was like, I don't wanna read this. And then someone gave it to me again and it changed my life. Like it got me thinking. Because I was working at a bank making 30 grand a year and I was like, I need to get my passive income to exceed my employment income.
Daniel: In one of his books there, he says, you don't buy liabilities like a Porsche, you buy an apartment building and with the money you make with the asset, you buy the Porsche, but you don't buy the Porsche by itself. You take that money to buy an asset and the asset will pay for the liability.
Brian: That's the best, I love that one.
Katherine: You just dovetailed in with that one. I'm going to actually ask you what is the one thing to not do?
Brian: That worst thing you can do is nothing. You know what, nothing. I think I just talked to a client the other day and I had to kick his ass a little bit because he hadn't bought anything for two years and he had been preapproved. I said, where do you think you'd be? If you bought something two years ago, stop, like you gotta do something at some point. I think the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Daniel: We're gonna sway away here a little bit. I have three questions for you. We're gonna sway a little bit here from real estate investing because I want to dig into the head of Brian, the person not Brian, the mortgage broker.
Brian: I could get scared, Daniel.
Daniel: Of all the places you've been to, or you've traveled to, where would you go back to in an instant, if I could wave a magic wand and why?
Brian: Best place. My wife on vacation was at the jolly turtle house in Exuma, Bahamas. It's an Airbnb. You can look, I wonder if it's still there, actually a jolly turtle house. I hope it's not something weird now, but anyways, it was really cool, it was just Exuma Bahamas. It's one of the islands in the Bahamas. They have swimming like off this coast, it's such the bluest water I've ever seen.
It's one road. Like it's the only place I've hitchhiked and felt safe. Not that I hitchhike often, but anyways, it was just magical Exuma, Bahamas. I would say that was the best place I've been to. And if you can wave a wand. That'd be even better, so I don't have to fly.
Daniel: Of all the places you want to go and visit, where would you go right now? Right this minute, if I could wave a magic wand and why would you go there?
Brian: You know what, I've never seen the water bungalows. I'm a beach guy. I like the sun. I like the sand. I think like Bora Bora would be pretty cool, to see those water bungalows and you know what, and just to maybe do a podcast from there, with that background, that'd fun, and be like, it's not a virtual back. It's real.
Katherine: You let us know when you're there. We'll get that podcast back.
Brian: Deal. I like it.
Daniel: My last question for you is if you could meet anyone in the world today for dinner, who would you like to meet and why? And what kind of question would you be asking him or her?
Brian: It's a toss up. You know what? It's a toss up between probably Mark Cuban or Tony Robbins. I've always been a big Tony Robbins I just think I could just, I would just ask him about what do you think's going on in the world? You know what I mean? And just to pick his brain would be cool or Mark Cuban, and I think Mark Cuban would just I'd tell him my business plan and he'd give me direct feedback and yell at me for five minutes and tell me what I'm doing wrong. I think that'd be cool too, actually. I'd like that. Either one of them.
Daniel: It's interesting. You mentioned the business plan, because I have a book downstairs here in our business library entitled, Do you wanna make God laugh? Show him your business plan.
Katherine: I love it. And on that note, Brian, where can our community find you? What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Brian: Follow me on Brian Hogben on Instagram or Mission 35 on Instagram is probably the best way and just send us a DM and we can get in touch and help out with any questions that you have myself Brian Hogben or at Mission 35 mortgages. Or you can email us info@mi35.ca.
Katherine: Thank you so very much for joining us today. We look forward to connecting with you and interacting in our REITE Club community. That is actually anybody listening to this, our podcast. You're gonna be able to download it on any of your favorite listening apps, as well as you can find anything.
All you need to do on our website is to put in the search Brian Hogben or Mission 35 and Brian has been a part of our community for the last five plus years. Any of the segments that he's been in any previous podcasts, anything that's been with the blog or whatever, all you have to do is just put that in the search and everything pops up. Search words, and it's really great there. Again, Brian, thank you so very much. Appreciate it greatly..
Brian: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you as always for chatting with you guys.
Katherine: I'm so glad that Brian was able to join us today. That's Brian Hogben from Mission 35 mortgages. Daniel, there were so many questions and so much information. What was your biggest takeaway today?
Daniel: My biggest takeaway was when you asked a question, Katherine and you said, what is the one thing that people should not do right now in the real estate investing world? And his answer was nothing. And for a second there, I thought, okay what do you mean by that?
The worst thing that people can do right now is do nothing because there's so many things that you can do. There's so many ways right now to benefit from the situation. Sitting on your butt and just watching the parade go by and do nothing is the worst thing that you can do right now in real estate investing.
Katherine: Really good point. That is one of the things that you do mention whenever we have any of our events, whether they're live or virtual. When we're reading our disclaimer and telling everybody, this is what you need to do for your due diligence, and then you follow it up with, and then take action. Very good point.
I think my biggest takeaway was some of the tips that he actually was hardcore foundational tips that are so important, whether you're a first time investor or whether you're a seasoned investor with a larger portfolio that's growing. Some of the things that make not only the mortgage broker's job easier, but how to keep your ducks in a row that helps you establish and keep your credibility. For those in the business of financing as you move forward.
Daniel: Yes, and right along those lines again another big takeaway, but it's just adding on to what you just said is that while a people might think that getting a mortgage is all about numbers it is but Brian made it very clear that it's also about you because sometimes the numbers you will show will tell the lender what kind of character you have, what kind of person you are. It's not all the numbers.
It's also about you, the person, and you have to keep that in mind when you're quote unquote, working on your docs in a row. It's not just numbers that you need to keep in a row. It's also your personal trace of character in what you do, paying bills on time. Yes, Katherine, your docs in a row, your personal docs and your business docs.
Katherine: Absolutely, and for anybody who'd like to be able to follow up with this and any of the other phenomenal five and a half years worth of hardcore foundational information for those in the business of real estate investing. Make sure you head over to our website at www.thereiteclub.com and just it's really easy peasy. It's a free platform. All you need to do is just sign up. We do need to get you to sign up, but then in the search, all you need to do is put what topic you want.
If there's a particular person, anything else, and it just goes boo. And it just all populates with all kinds of resources and information for you. On that note, thank you so very much, Daniel. We'll see you on the site.
Daniel: Thank you. Goodbye everybody.
DJ: Thanks for listening to The REITE Club podcast, where the focus is on helping all levels of real estate investors advance to the next level and help you customize your life. Be sure to tune in next week at thereiteclub.com/podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you get a few seconds, please rate the podcast. Wherever you're listening, it helps the show get noticed by others like you. And we truly appreciate it. And don't forget to subscribe.
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